Blade Lord Ta'yak Help

[Jellystrudel]

1.We're wiping on 10 man normal, Blade Lord Ta'yak.

2. Our raid generally consists of:
MT: Prot Paladin
OT: Either a Prot Pally or a Blood DK depending on who shows up
Heals: Resto Druid, Hpally (If they don't want my mage) or DiscPriest/RestoSham (If they DO want my mage.)
Dps:
Survival Hunter
Survival Hunter
Enhancement Shaman
Feral Druid
Arcane Mage (Switched out if I heal or not)
Demo Lock

3. There's so many wipes right now we had a bunch of frustrated and angry people leaving early and almost rage-quitting last night.

4. If we make it past the first phase we usually die on the Frogger phase or to his berserk.

5. Many things. Our tanks sometimes get one-shot despite taunting at.. 2 stacks I think. Even if everyone is stacking during unseen strike we sometimes lose people. Frogger seems really hard for people to live through as well.

6. We've been trying to get our paladins to BoP anyone with the DoT to save some healer mana. (Despite the tanks saying they wanted to keep their personal CDs for that tier....) We have our resto druid use symbiosis on the shaman so she can run and tranq on the frogger phase. We've left a healer (not the druid) at the end to heal people that fail at frogger up and to heal up the people that run down the slipstream at 11%.

7. I have no idea how to share our logs with you but our guild name is Fates Call on the horde side of Borean Tundra US if that helps any? I don't think I can post link yet anyway.

[Ninotchka]

Tanks should taunt the moment their stacks fall off. This should be just as the second stack is applied to the other tank.

Do you put a lock portal halfway down the hallway, with the exit at the far end? That means that 5 people don't need to make the full run.

People take fair to middling damage during the transition between phases 1 and 2. It's a good idea for everyone to pause at that point and let the healers get them to full before they start the run. Are you doing that, or are people getting out of range before they're full health?

If you have a lot of dots, 11% might be too late to get a full free ride. Try calling for the slipstream at 11.5-12% and leaving a tank behind to make sure he tips over.

When is your next attempt, and is it a fresh raid week? Sometimes a little gear will help a great deal.

[Jellystrudel]

Thank you for your reply!

I'll try telling the tanks that, I've never done it tanking so we'll see.

That might help, he's been putting the lock portal in the middle so ranged can jump back after an unseen strike, so we'll see if that works considering how many people suck at frogger.

Yes, I suppose I forgot to say that, our healers are supposed to heal us up before we run down.

Yeah, if we don't call it at 11% our tanks can't get him to 10%.

Our next attempt is Saturday, we raid Sat and Mon nights. I believe they ran MSV without me after HoF so yeah, maybe better gear will help a little.

[Ninotchka]

Whatever you do, don't put the entrance to the lock portal at one end of the hall and the exit about halfway through. Yeah, I know, it seems obvious. Only an idiot would do that and have the portal passengers land in a tornado. Um, not that I know anyone who's done that.

There should be plenty of time and room for your ranged to get away after Unseen Strike before the windstep. If not, then either your tanks aren't moving the boss around the room often enough or your ranged are lazy. We usually move the boss right after the Unseen Strike after every other tank swap. I use the knockback from Unseen Strike to get free distance.

[Kurzior]

4 - For tornadoe dodging, I recommend 2 things, in case you aren't already doing them. After everyone gets pulled to the end of the hallway, stay there and do not run forward until the healers have everyone topped off. Healers should pop offensive cd's to top everyone quickly. Usually our group (resto shammy/holy pally) can top everyone in 5-6 seconds. Then, call everyone to move together. Second, make sure your druid throws roar to everyone as you move out. After that, its all on individuals to dodge successfully. One key point to enforce is that it is FAR better to reach the end of the hall slowly, but miss all tornadoes, rather than getting their quickly after being hit even once, because there's very little ability to heal people during the run.

5 - Tanks should always have some form of CD up for the second assault, especially later in the fight as his attacks become stronger later in the fight. You may need help from healers as well such as pain suppression or hand of sacrifice.

For unseen strikes, you need to have everyone taking the hit or someone will likely die. Later in the fight, raid cd's will help a lot with this. Rally cry and PW:Barrier are great for surviving. Also try to have your healers throw a fast aoe heal as the strike lands like Light of Dawn or just have a healing rain under the group.

6 - I don't recommend wasting BoP on wind steps until tay'ak reaches ~30% health. Up to that point, there's not a whole lot of damage from it. A few disc shields and HoTs to keep targets alive is not very mana intensive. The real key to this phase is making sure everyone shares the unseen strikes. The damage is such that unless you have at least 7 people hit, its likely to kill players with lower armor values.

The tornado dodging is just down to people being heads up on a fight mechanic. I don't recommend having someone stay behind though as you'll want both healers at the far end to top everyone off before the run back. If nothing else, get your lock to drop demonic gateway at one end of the hallway to help stragglers.

[Deja Thoris]

- The strike that applies the 2nd stack to the tank is a huge hit. They need a bigass CD to survive it. You need to use bossmod timers to prepare for it, its the most important aspect of the fight for them, followed by moving the boss to give ranged space.
- If you have BoP's available use them on debuffed people before unseen strike. Theres no reason not to, its the best possible use and doesn't interfere with other CD's. If palas don't talent clemency here then they are not using their talents well.
- Try to use a disc priest, spirit shell (CD lines up with unseen strikes) is godly. Start applying it 10 sec or so before unseen strike and it will give big shields and make derps more forgiving.
- Get the resto dru to symbiosis the shammy for tranq on the run. Try different things in the tornado phase to find what works for you. We personally have one dru do the gauntlet with us and the 2nd healer just wait for people to start coming back. The person staying back can hot up people (ie pally with EF) before they get out of range and the dru can tranq part way thru. Don't forget personal CD's, bubble, barskin, deterrence and so on. The shammy also has offheals and the palas can talent lights hammer too.

Finally, on attitude. Chill! It's meant to be fun. When you wipe do a quick recap on what went wrong and how they can fix it. It's not to point fingers but to help people improve. Did tanks use a CD before the 2nd strike? Were people standing too far back to enable them to run in for unseen strike etc. Dieing is part of raiding, if you get something out of it then its no biggie.

Good luck.

[Jellystrudel]

Deja, I don't think you read my first post. :C Thanks though.

Thanks Ninotchka and Kurzior, we'll try all those things on Saturday! I'll update this thread if I see anything else.

[Deja Thoris]

Deja, I don't think you read my first post. :C Thanks though.

Thanks Ninotchka and Kurzior, we'll try all those things on Saturday! I'll update this thread if I see anything else.

Could you elaborate? I thought I addressed each of your points in turn. "Our tanks get gibbed" Solution watch bossmods and use a Cd at the correct time.
"We don't want to use HoP cos of ahem "personal CD's"" solution, "Use it"

I'm slightly confused but its becoming more and more apparent why you die and not the boss.

[Jellystrudel]

Could you elaborate? I thought I addressed each of your points in turn. "Our tanks get gibbed" Solution watch bossmods and use a Cd at the correct time.
"We don't want to use HoP cos of ahem "personal CD's"" solution, "Use it"

I'm slightly confused but its becoming more and more apparent why you die and not the boss.

Wow, you are very rude. o-o

I said the tanks are grumpy about it but they are using the BoP. I also said our druid already puts Sym on the shaman, etc. :C It's hardly my fault you didn't read. It's ok though, I got some good answers. Thank you anyway.

[Sonnillon]

- The strike that applies the 2nd stack to the tank is a huge hit. They need a bigass CD to survive it. You need to use bossmod timers to prepare for it, its the most important aspect of the fight for them, followed by moving the boss to give ranged space.

This is half true. Boss gains stacks of intensify, which increases his damage done. At first the Assault doesn't do that much damage that you need to use a major CD to survive. A minor one at start is more then enough.

However once the fight progresses and he has 3+ stacks of intensify, then you need to use a major def. CD if you are a tank, or if you are out of CD's, just ask for someone else to help you out. As only then the application of second stack will truly start to hurt.

However. Both of your tanks no matter who is tanking, need to be kept at max. HP. Just cause they can take the boss any time (even if it is not their "turn" to tank) if other tank needs some space. The tank tanking the boss at present should be always kept at max. HP and topped up as soon as possible. As he likes to melee before and after the application of Overwhelming Assault. His melee attacks do hurt.

In general note, speaking from personal experience here (and we are not high progression HC guild). The boss HAS TO BE pushed to p2 when he has 5 stacks of Intensify on him. Why? The fifth stack requires your lowest health raider to have around 380k HP to survive the Unseen Strike damage. Anything lower then that, will be killed with that Unseen strike. An external or def. CD will make the person out live that Unseen Strike, but the 6th one will do even more damage. So push your DPS pr if your raiders have too low HP, have them take stamina flask.

Good stacking in p1 is a key as well and also moving from the Windstsep and tornadoes. Have your raid spread near the walls of the room. So the path to move the boss would be clear. Doing this gives you room to move the boss to your desired location and also makes finding people with Unseen Strike easier as they are not hiding behind a wall of tornadoes. If someone gets Unseen Strike have them move toward the tank. Everyone else however have to be prepared to move to the person as well. Good stacking is the key.

When an Unseen Strike comes, the boss will delay his application of Overwhelming assault. So be ready for it. Try to move the boss to a new location (pre-set) after second Unseen Strike in old location as that gives you room to place the tornadoes and none will get stuck behind one. How you kite or where you drag the boss is your decision. You will have to find out which works for you.

Pop BL/hero on pull as soon as your tank has the aggro.

When you reach p2 and you are transported to one end of the room. Have your raid wait and have someone use a raid wide healing CD to top people up. Your raiders will have to rely on them dodging the tornadoes, using personal CD to survive the trip as healers cannot help them out that much. Be aware that if you use the lock's portal to get across the tornado alley, you WILL have to pay attention are there any tornadoes in front of the portal you exit or not. As if you time you "portalling" badly you will land in a tornado. Be very mindful of tornadoes near boss as well, as they spawn there rather quickly. So when you're just about to reach the boss, just watch for red circles on the floor and don't be in one. As the animation and the effect some times are not alligned and one can come before the other.

Top people up if most of them have reached the boss for the first time. When you hit that 11% have ALL of your DPS and healer jump into the wind wall and be moved to other side. As both of your tanks can survive on their own for the last 1% and should have a CD available for traveling to other end.

It comes down to avoid things, using CD properly and surviving in p2.

As for frustration of your raiders. All I can say is chat with your raiders at the beginning of the raid in terms of raid awareness > anything else and motivate them. Make sure that they understand that if they want the kill, they should just chill and do their best w/o stressing too much. Our GM/RL had a chat with my raid tonight about their performance and other things. And guess what. We killed 2 new bosses in ToES. The key is motivating people and just not stressing that much.

GL and have fun.

[Deleted]

I'll add just some things that I found important for our group altho Sonnillon made quite a nice post.

1. Leave the person with the bleed debuff out of the stacking for unseen strike. We hade some cases where the we got smacked into a tornado and the one would die.
2. make use of the room, its huge, but dont overdo it. the more you move the boss arround the less dmg you get on him (people need to find spots so they are spred)
3. Use healthstones while runing and run as a group

[Ninotchka]

Our first few kills were very messy, don't give up hope! It took us 3 weeks from our kill until our first one-shot, and it was an embarassingly long time until we had our first 'everyone alive and full health at the end' kill.

More prot pally specific tips

For the main fight, don't burn the big cooldowns too early. You can survive the first double stack with a minor cooldown, as someone else said. There's no point in going to two stacks before you switch on the pull. Have the offtank take the boss after the first stack is applied, then have the tanks taunt when their stacks fall off, not at two stacks. Sometimes when you move the boss you squeeze out a bit of extra time so that you don't have to live through that second stack. Kiting is a fine time-honored tradition.

We pull him and tank him where he stands. We make the healers and melee snug up against the walls behind and to the sides at the pull. This makes the first sets of tornados appear in places that they're less likely to cause grief when we're moving around the room.

For tornado alley - I save my Holy Avenger for when he's getting below 40%. I try to hit a SotR just before the transition so there's less of me to heal when we get to the end of the hallway. I'll BoP our best runner for the run, so that they don't need many heals if they reach the end before the healers do. I spec into Light's Hammer and throw it down once I reach the end of the hall. It's not huge healing but every little bit helps, eh? Holy Prism wouldn't be too horrible either. I devo aura when we start the second run down, when the boss is at 12-13% and intensify is ramping up. The tornados are physical damage but the Intensify is nature damage. I'll bubble myself for part of the tornado run, and once I'm to the end I'll try to watch for stragglers and Lay on Hands if they look dangerously low, or sac them. Often Guardian will be up for me at the 15% mark, so I save that to use just before the run back. And glyph Battle Healer, use SoI. There is no tanking in the final phase; all of his outgoing damage is AoE. So my job is to stay alive, act as 1/3 of a healer, and do whatever dps I can.

[Deja Thoris]

I said the tanks are grumpy about it but they are using the BoP

6. We've been trying to get our paladins to BoP anyone with the DoT

Seems you didn't say what you thought you said. Don't accuse me of not reading your post, theres a world of difference between "we try to get them to do it" and "oh they do it but it makes them grumpy".

For the gauntlet I also told you to pay attention to offheal capabilites but you got stuck on "gosh our dru already symbis the shammy, you didn't read my post" For instance, if you feral hotw tranq's at a stage there its a buttload of healing.

Anyway, gl.

[Keldion]

In general note, speaking from personal experience here (and we are not high progression HC guild). The boss HAS TO BE pushed to p2 when he has 5 stacks of Intensify on him. Why? The fifth stack requires your lowest health raider to have around 380k HP to survive the Unseen Strike damage. Anything lower then that, will be killed with that Unseen strike. An external or def. CD will make the person out live that Unseen Strike, but the 6th one will do even more damage. So push your DPS pr if your raiders have too low HP, have them take stamina flask.

380k is a bit high; Unseen Strike is mitigated by armor. Healer CDs will help, but the players in danger of dying should also use personal CDs to survive.

[SurrealNight]

5. Many things. Our tanks sometimes get one-shot despite taunting at.. 2 stacks I think. Even if everyone is stacking during unseen strike we sometimes lose people. Frogger seems really hard for people to live through as well.

Tank this for our 25m every week (where the damage is even higher) and just need to make sure the tanks understand when the OA's proc. Shortly off the pull the MT will receive the first OA stack (should never be an issue) and then it goes into a repeating cycle.
1) Boss does Unseen Strike and will proc OA almost right after once in melee.
2) Boss does Blade Tempest and will proc OA almost right after once in melee.

1 & 2 pattern repeats endlessly until phase transition or wipe. Also, the tank that takes the strike after either will always be taking it on the same ability. Since I pick up boss after the 1st OA on the pull I am always the Unseen Strike OA unless something gets messed up.

As a monk my Guard ability alone can soak the whole thing (seen it eat 500k) but I try to cycle my 1.5 and 3min CD's around the strikes just in case. Considering Pally and DK's have more CD's than me it should be cake one they get the "rotation" down.

Also on a sneaky note if he is very close to P2 transition and Unseen Strike comes off CD he will sometimes go ahead and proc the OA instead and forgo doing Unseen Strike at all before moving into the next phase. So make sure you don't trust timers at that point and taunt even if Unseen Strike hasn't occurred.

[bromli]

as far as the pally talent goes: on normal mode neither talent is needed, really. wind step doesn't hut that badly, and you have enough tank cds even without the extra DPs. in other words, take the talent that will help you with the mechanic you are struggling with.

your problems are deeper than this, though. if you die to berserk it is because of correctable mistakes. the dps requirement is quite lenient if you are able to keep everyone alive. what this means is that people must stack correctly and dodge tornados. tip for stacking: after he disappears and then his ghost image shows up, click on him as it makes it easier to see which direction he's facing. imo it's easier for each person to make sure they themselves are in front of the boss rather than trying to all stand in the exact same place, as one person standing 3 yds off can confuse a 2nd person, and then only 8 get hit, for example.

[Xsy]

The way we do it: Start at one end of the hallway , everyone has a 'spot' in a half circle behind the boss. Boss is moved slowly during the encounter to the other end of the hallway. Movement speed depends on tornado placement. By being in a half circle , everyone is usually the same radius away from the middle , so our stacking point is always right where the boss was. We always keep a healer out( usually disc priest , or myself a resto druid ) for all unseen strikes to top the raid quickly , and we also keep the person who currently has the wind step debuff to stay out of the unseen strikes. This leaves 8 people to soak , which on normal is more than enough.

On the tornado phase , we start running immediately. I pop stampeding roar and everyone uses health-stones and defensive cool-downs. If we have a shaman in the raid I put symbo on him and run 75% of the course with tranquility and pretty much prevent anyone from dying. If some of your guys have trouble getting to the other side , have them practice in LFR a few times to get the hang of it. Also, it's vital for the two healers to always reach the other side.

Another thing , its usually advice-able to get him into phase 2 ( or 20% ) before he reaches 6 stacks of insanity , so make sure you dps is adequate for that task. About tanks getting one shotted , we had that as well. It's usually solved by better gear and the more hp that comes with better gear. The timer you see on DBM is just for the cooldown of the ability , tayak can choose to cast it a few seconds after the timer is over , making cooldown usage slightly harder than usual. Just make sure that when the CD is over , your current tank who is about to get a second stack is on 100% at all times , throw a shield if you have a disc or ironbark for a druid.

About your raid attitude. Wiping on a boss for a while is annoying , I know as we actually wiped on tayak about 40 times , which is embarrassing considering he is not that hard. But , we never had any rage occurrences because we always kept an optimistic view. Every try was a kill try , and after every failed try or failed night we kept the spirits up by pointing out positive things and making sure that the next time , it will be a kill. You must work on that. I wish you good luck , and i'm sure you'll have it dead soon enough!