Horridon 10/25 N Strategy (<500 ilvl)

[Pf0llz0r]

We took him down after 5 wipes yesterday and he really wasn't that bad once you got the interrupts under control. We was 16/16N last tier and our average ilvl was somewhere between 485-500.

The way we did it was:

1st door: Our hunter took care of the stonegazers while the rest nuked down the first wastewalker, when the second set of wastewalkers spawned we marked the first and had our warrior/shaman interrupt that one while the rogue/monk handled the other. I used Mass dispell pretty much on cd this phase since the group is pretty stacked up on the adds.
2nd door: Everyone nuked the priests and the hunter took care of any Effusions, interrupts were handled the same as the previous door.
3rd door: We pop bloodlust and nuke the living shit out of the warlords while the tank kited away from the frozen orbs and dispelled when people reached ~4-5 stacks of the debuff.
4th door: Aoe'd them all down while staying out of totems.
Last phase: Burned down War-God Jalak as fast as possible and then simply nuked down Horridon while the tanks/healers rotated cooldowns to keep the tanks alive.

Our setup:
Blood Death Knight
Protection Paladin

Discipline Priest (me)
Holy Paladin

Destruction Warlock
Assassination Rogue
Elemental Shaman
Survival Hunter
Windwalker Monk
Fury Warrior

[Sonnillon]

How does 2 healing the fight feels, how punishing will it be on healers? How much fkcups it allows to have in form of too high stacks or missed interrupts?Or does the 50-70k extra DPS in form of someone's OS will balance it out and make things die faster?

[Deleted]

On first door we just did it normally, focused on stonegazers/wastewalkers.
Second door I had boss (prot pally) and I kept dispelling as much as possible the poison effects.
Third gate same as second, we were just careful not to get hit by orbs/etc. Also I didn't let any champions/warlords on tanks (on previous tries an add would slip from the other tank's threat table which resulted in the death of Horridon's tank). I kept dispelling diseases. We also popped a hero on this gate.
On fourth gate we just spreaded and didn't stand in front of bears.
On war god we just tanked and spanked it and healed through it, it should be pretty trivial, we had the greatest difficulty in gate 3 too but after a tank swap it all went good.

[Pf0llz0r]

How does 2 healing the fight feels, how punishing will it be on healers? How much fkcups it allows to have in form of too high stacks or missed interrupts?Or does the 50-70k extra DPS in form of someone's OS will balance it out and make things die faster?

Once we got the interrupts under control the fight was quite easy to 2-heal but some parts can be quite hectic (3rd door for example) but our elemental shaman helped with healing cd whenever we needed some help.

As a disc-priest I went all-out atonement while weaving in shields whenever the raiddmg was high (and on people with debuffs since there is no way to dispell everything in time except on the first door with mass dispell)

We started with 3 heals (resto-shammy) but there was hardly anything for him to heal on the first 2 doors so we decided to let him go dps instead.

The extra dps really help since if the mobs die faster there will be less dmg going out (esp now after the nerf on the adds)

[Sonnillon]

That what is probably a bad thing for us, that we don't have a disc priest. We did T13, T14 w/o one. And now this tier will go w/o one as well (since we have lot of other class healers to choose from having one extra in 10-man will be an overkill and make the rotating people harder then it already is). But well if we hit enrage or go on too many tries with 2 many adds into another door, then I will suggest 2 healing or well can have a chat with our healers tonight as well.

I picked up on another topic that with HoP paladin can reset anyone's puncture stacks... So maybe, just maybe it is worth it to have the same tank for door 3 and 4? Makes traveling with the adds easier and picking up extras, when some of the old ones are not dead (though if old adds are up, most probably a wipe).

[Pf0llz0r]

Ye having a disc priest really help but I'm pretty sure most healing comps can 2heal it.
Our prot pala solo-tanked Horridon for the majority of p2 (after the gates) since our dk died quite soon after horridon recieved his rampage-buff and that was due to HoP from both himself and our holy paladin.

Also don't get discouraged if someone dies toward the end, one of our dps died ~8min in to the fight and our tank ~9min and we still got the kill (took us 10:57)

[Devwar]

The nerf was about 15% hp on each mob i think i saw, previous was 1.6 mill on the basilisks, now i think they have 1.4. The councile nerf was about the same 15 million lower (was 90mill now 75), but it just seems like a bigger nerf due to the mechanics of the fight (empowerment).

Adds appeared to have the same health as when we attempted the encounter on Thursday. Stonegazers around 840k hp in 10 man, wastewalkers around 6.4 mil. Sometimes it has taken until a server reset (on a Tuesday) to have hotfixes apply properly, and not being uniform for all lockouts. I could be mistaken but I didn't notice a difference in add health on the encounter.

[Deja Thoris]

Theres no hotfix notes on horridon whereas there are on the council.

That leads me to believe that horridon was not tweaked. Can't say 100% for sure without seeing them again though.

Having said that, they are different types of fights. Horridon is less about numbers and more about execution with the council reversed imo.

[Devwar]

From the Hotfix notes from yesterday:

Reduced the health of the Gurubashi, Amani, Drakkari, and Farraki adds on the Horridon encounter.

Even if the hotfix was in, our DPS was too slow at prioritizing adds. We'll be back on Thursday so we'll know for sure if the hotfix was in or not on Monday, but should definitely be in on Thursday.

[Deleted]

Just compared 2 logs from before and after the nerf, and they show 15% reduced HP on Wastewalkers and Venom Priets. (I only checked these two types of "priority" adds but i assume the last ones was nerfed aswell.

I compared to a log from monday night on a US server = the changes are live so you do not have to wait for server reset (Hotfix)

[Deleted]

Killed horridon 2nd pull...not even remotely overtuned

Phahahhahaa sure he isn't, and you're not ilvl 516 at all. Riiight. Lameass.

[Deleted]

glad we killed it and council before nerf then :P small achievement for casual guild like ours

[jearle]

Even if the hotfix was in, our DPS was too slow at prioritizing adds. We'll be back on Thursday so we'll know for sure if the hotfix was in or not on Monday, but should definitely be in on Thursday.

The hotfix was in last night after reset as I went in with an alt group from our raid. It is not an extremely noticeable nerf though compared to council as i said earlier.

The nerf to horridon won't let you skip learning the fight (unless youre raid us geared 505 pus). At higher gear levels I can see the fight being laughably easy. But when it takes time to kill the adds it is def more of a challenge.

---------- Post added 2013-03-12 at 09:22 AM ----------

The way we did it was:

1st door: Our hunter took care of the stonegazers while the rest nuked down the first wastewalker, when the second set of wastewalkers spawned we marked the first and had our warrior/shaman interrupt that one while the rogue/monk handled the other. I used Mass dispell pretty much on cd this phase since the group is pretty stacked up on the adds.

I dont believe these adds can be interrupted, I could be mistaken though.

[Pf0llz0r]

I might be wrong on that point but thats atleast how we did it on the priests from the second door

I'm only the healer after all.

[Coldkil]

glad we killed it and council before nerf then :P small achievement for casual guild like ours

Gratz We had basically the same problems as everyone - poisons on door 2, adds on door 3, slowly progressing. I think that with some more time, maybe only an evening, we would have downed him.

Anyway, i think the nerf has its reason; i like the fight mechanics and i like how it's tightly tuned for a 10man (also i assume some fights are harder for 25man due to mechanics), but still it was too much for healers having to burn a lot of mana for dispels. Well, if the nerf is actually live, this evening we could get a kill.

[Aquamonkey]

btw, as 3/11, they just nerfed the trash on Horridon.

"Reduced the health of the Gurubashi, Amani, Drakkari, and Farraki adds on the Horridon encounter."
http://us.battle.net//wow/en/blog/8953693

It was overtuned. I guess that answers the thread's original question.

[Sesshou]

It was overtuned. I guess that answers the thread's original question.

Looks like they thought the mechanics in general were too hard I guess as they are nerfing 25m also. I think they should have held off on nerfing until the first half of lfr was out and people had more valor for 522s though.

[refire]

Gratz We had basically the same problems as everyone - poisons on door 2, adds on door 3, slowly progressing. I think that with some more time, maybe only an evening, we would have downed him.

Anyway, i think the nerf has its reason; i like the fight mechanics and i like how it's tightly tuned for a 10man (also i assume some fights are harder for 25man due to mechanics), but still it was too much for healers having to burn a lot of mana for dispels. Well, if the nerf is actually live, this evening we could get a kill.

This is my sentiment as well. Raiding with a casual group 6 hours a week ranging from ilvl 485-495 (only three sha kills as a group so far) the fight was just to tightly tuned in that it not only required strict mechanics on not missing an interrupt and very coordinated assisted damage but that it also required a lot of damage in general.

Tightly tuned bosses are great and fun but when on the second biggest server in the US (Mal'ganis) only 4 of the 25 man guilds cleared the whole instance yet there were 7 25 man guilds that finished the last tier 16/16H, clearly implying that there are many roadblocks for a casual guild, let alone a relatively well progressed guild and having such a roadblock as only the second boss when the Dark Animus, Lei Shen, Durumu, etc. are all still looming ahead is a bit rough so it's a nice change, in my opinion.

[Cirque]

We killed horridon prenerf in an altgroup, around ilvl 490 or so for everyone in 10man.

The key to this fight is interrupts. If you do that properly, it'll be dead. The moment a dinomancer spawns, that one is prioritized. And dodging ice balls, etc., well, that's pretty much normal, and if your dps is not doing that, you will wipe on it.

I think Horridon was fairly easy, we were dreading it with all these reports, but it was very doable. The nerf is still justified IMO, to preserve difficulty smoothness. Megaera is another one that makes no sense in the current curve, but ah well.

[Sonnillon]

A very dumb question (laugh if you want, I don't care ^^). If you tank the adds which of the adds you always should have on you beside the big things like warlords and priests and the 'mancer? I know that the small shits that run around on p3 have random aggro table. Which of the adds actually hurt the DPS when they have their aggro (aka what should you taunt with prio off from healer/DPS).

We're not wiping cause of the adds running amok in raid (well some people take pointless damage due to that), but other silly things. Just want to get the adds on the tanks, not on everyone else, and limit the pointless damage.