Bat kiting on Heroic Tortos 10 man

[Jbreezy]

Guild started heroic Tortos progression last night. We tried a few different strats and decided on having me kite bats. I'm wondering if anyone has any tips/advice for me. I was using glyphed icebound, desecrated ground and pvp trinket for stuns. Kiting generally went ok until new spawns, my biggest problem was I was doing a terrible job at locating the bats quickly. Anyways, any and all tips are greatly appreciated.

[Deleted]

Assuming DW frost? Not done the fight on heroic but could get a warlock to shadowfury the existing bat pack when the new ones spawn to make them more obvious.

Chilblains might work though I'm not sure it's overly needed - I would imagine mastery-buffed howling blast spam would pick them up pretty quickly.

[Murdos]

You should have your second tank picking up the bats, having a DPS actually doing anything but helping kill them is royally misguided because of the buff they get vs targets with less then 350k HP.

Second Tank picks up bats, pulls them to the melee pile, melee cleaves them down with the boss and the primary tank holding Tortos. Works like a charm.

[Nillo]

You should have your second tank picking up the bats, having a DPS actually doing anything but helping kill them is royally misguided because of the buff they get vs targets with less then 350k HP.

Which doesn't matter since you should never get hit by them anyway °_°

[Murdos]

Which doesn't matter since you should never get hit by them anyway °_°

Because your Tank should be holding them in the first place.

[Roc]

Assuming the op of this thread is a blood tank, and he/she is kiting the adds for the full duration of the fight, I recommend using roiling blood, chillblains, glyph of D&D and glyph of pestilence. The standard kiting build. The hardest part is picking up the new bats before they hit the ground. Try throwing either outbreak or icy touch while they are still in the air, and start using blood boil before they touch the ground. That way, chillblains gets spread to all of the new bats asap, while at the same time sending aggro your way.

Your recommendations to mitigate the stun from the stomp are worthwhile, although the PVP trinket is probably overkill.

[bals]

Because your Tank should be holding them in the first place.

not really sure what your point is.
bat kiting is a viable strategy on heroic (which is what op is talking about). it's probably easily for a tank to do it for more wiggle room but a frost dk could do it easily with bp as well. so you could either do 1 tank + 7 dps or 2 tank + 6 dps. Op really didn't give any information on what spec he was or any other information really.

Picking up the bats when they first spawn is the most difficult part so they don't go and gib a healer

[Berri]

Would also suggest Howling Blast with Chillbains, Remoreseless Winter, and DnD glyphed to slow in a case like this.

However, I think the tactic to have a tank grab them and cleave them with the boss is a lot more effective, and is probably what your raid should be adopting.

[Murdos]

I'm not doubting that it's viable, I just don't see what the gain is, you're pulling a powerful DPS off target to run around like a madman and kite a target a tank can hold.

You'll still be getting heal-bombed regardless of if you're a tank or DPS because of the nature of Crystal Shell during the fight, and since they're making you kite, you don't even get the standard Single-Tanking benefit of an extra DPS, because you're wasting kiting bats. So really, it'd be better to just put out the extra oomph to heal a tank and get your cleave on.

Viable? Sure, just doesn't seem optimal.

[Linnea]

I'm not doubting that it's viable, I just don't see what the gain is, you're pulling a powerful DPS off target to run around like a madman and kite a target a tank can hold.

Yeah you're pulling a dps off target but that means you are required to have one less tank, which means the amount of dpsers is the same as what you suggest anyway, just in this case you're not needed to dps the bats.

[bals]

I'm not doubting that it's viable, I just don't see what the gain is, you're pulling a powerful DPS off target to run around like a madman and kite a target a tank can hold.

You'll still be getting heal-bombed regardless of if you're a tank or DPS because of the nature of Crystal Shell during the fight, and since they're making you kite, you don't even get the standard Single-Tanking benefit of an extra DPS, because you're wasting kiting bats. So really, it'd be better to just put out the extra oomph to heal a tank and get your cleave on.

Viable? Sure, just doesn't seem optimal.

once again, op never said if they were dps or tank.
either way the same amount of dps in the raid on the boss is the same.
actually means more dps on the boss itself as bats don't have to be killed.

[zer0xfr]

Just cheese the fight. Get a Monk to kite them around all fight long. Np.

[Jbreezy]

I am dps. Our plan is to have me kite entire fight and we never kill bats. Our raid comp is pally tank, tg warrior (good tank set also), monk healer, pally healer, demo lock who went affliction for CoE, boomkin, fire mage, shadow priest, hunter and me.

[Deleted]

Your raid group has a pally tank? In that case, you should know that paladin tanks are capable of solo tanking Tortos AND all the bats.

What our paladin tank does is as follows:

- Shield of the Righteous up for every Snapping Bite, with enough holy power generation/Divine Purpose procs for 1 or 2 in between
- Obviously, Sacred Shield 100% up
- Judgment on Humming Crystal macro
- Seal of Insight and Battle Healer glyphs make paladin tanks add magnets. Bats will run straight for him or her as long as nobody touches them until they're being tanked. Melee DPS go blow them up once they're inside the Consecration
- If there's a stomp with bats up, a major cooldown or external cooldown is used

The only downside of this strategy is trust in killing the fight is placed 100% on the tank. One mistimed Shield of the Righteous, for example, will make the tank go splat.

watch?v=xTDiGrSWOY on Youtube, I can't post links yet. A video of a pally tank solo tanking all the bats and boss.

[Tojara]

We killed the boss in 7:20 with me kiting bats. One tank, two healers. If we had a prot paladin we would likely just kill the bats and three heal.

Lots of ways to do this boss, none of them wrong. Kiting the bats if done properly means that one person is dealing with an entire mechanic by themselves. Between killing turtles and bats there is very little time to DPS the boss. When we kited the bats people got a good break to DPS the boss between turtle spawns.

I ran with IBF glyph and that was it. Just make sure you have good distance before a quake and the bats will never get close to you. I would just loop around the room in a giant circle and actually DPS the boss for 10 seconds per loop when I passed in front of Tortos. Just make sure you don't pass in front of him when turtles are spawning.

The only tricky part is when new bats spawn as. They spawn really high up in the air and actually take 5 seconds or so to make it to a level where they will kill your healers. What I would do is have our warlock shadow fury stun the pack of bats I was kiting a couple seconds after the new bats spawned. This allowed me to pan my camera to ceiling and locate them rather easily. One howling blast in blood presence and they will be glued to you. Glyphed DnD helps a lot here too. I would throw DnD on the stunned bats so I didn't have to worry about them losing their snare and clobbering me. Depending on how they converge on each other will dictate my movement. As long as they aren't too spread out it's usually fine. They don't need to die so just make sure you aren't spamming HB on CD.

I picked up gorefiends grasp for what its worth. There were times when they got slightly separate because of things like multiple healers having aggro or balance starfall. This allowed me to put them in a neat little clump.

Our two melee tunneled the boss (except for the first turtle spawns) and our three ranged dealt with the turtles by themselves. I kited the bats and our kill was extremely fast. I think this is the fastest/efficient way of doing the boss currently if you have a monk/DK who can kite stuff. Not all my damage was bats either. I burned CDs at the start and did lots of damage to the boss in the first 35 seconds, helped with the first three turtles (which are the most important ones) and ended up cleaving a lot of damage to other turtle waves as well. You can DPS the boss a lot too if you kite them intelligently, although it's not needed. Kiting bats also allows your warlocks to do an insane amount of damage. Destro locks get infinite embers and affliction locks get infinite soul shards. This basically means their damage will skyrocket and it also means that they require almost zero healing because of soul leech.


I took literally zero damage throughout the entire fight. Grabbed the crystal buff at the start, IBF the stomps I could and use AMS during rockfall. I catch some random hots from healers and it keeps my shield up the entire time. Pretty joke of a boss if you can kite them properly IMO. The point of having someone kite them is so you can drop the third healer and/or not heal bomb the second tank so they don't drop below 550k HP (which is the life drain on heroic). I never need to be heal bombed when I kite the bats, odd hots that AoE heal or the occasional single target/efficient heal is all I need.

To say it's completely not optimal is misleading at best. It's a legitimate strategy. It's a balancing act though and if your DK/Monk mess up it's an instant wipe. But so aren't a lot of things.

[Murdos]

I took literally zero damage

And then...

The point of having someone kite them is so you can drop the third healer and/or not heal bomb the second tank so they don't drop below 550k HP (which is the life drain on heroic). I never need to be heal bombed when I kite the bats, odd hots that AoE heal or the occasional single target/efficient heal is all I need.

Hyperbole doesn't make a good case for something being ideal.

Not for nothing, all the bits you posted are mechanically sound for the most part... but you seem to lack a fundamental understanding of how Crystal Shell works for someone who's completed the encounter successfully.

Also I'm still arguing against the idea of hinging an entire fight on your one player never, ever getting a single mistake or lag-spike, camera wonk or FPS dip as optimal as far as a strategy goes,

Needless to say, I'm not convinced this is a universally applicable strategy, may work for you, doubt it's going to work for everyone.

[CptAwesome]

Also I'm still arguing against the idea of hinging an entire fight on your one player never, ever getting a single mistake or lag-spike, camera wonk or FPS dip as optimal as far as a strategy goes,

Right, because this is a new concept?

There have been tons of fights over the years which demanded perfect play from one player, it's not really an issue if you have the right player for the job. The standard tactic for this is to use a Brewmaster for the exact same job.

On topic: Would suggest just doing the kiting as frost. You're not supposed to get hit, so it's not like survivability is an issue and the use of Blood Presence + Howling Blast should be enough to pick the adds up pretty quickly, as you can hit them while they're still in the air. As far as locating the bats goes, if you have a Holy Pala, he can use Righteous Fury so they all gravitate to him, just needs to make sure he's standing somewhere sensible otherwise he's a goner. If you don't have one, then just designate a rough area for your healers to be near. The bats will always go for one of them, so having them positioned consistently will help you find the bats' landing point much more quickly.

[Murdos]

Yeah, a brewmaster has slightly more room for error then a Frost DK, just sayin'.

Which goes back to my idea that the standard strategy is pretty solid, even if the brewmaster misses with a slow, he's not as likely to be instantly gibbed into chunky salsa like the frost DK is.

Looking at my group comp, we could likely have our Prot. Warrior handle it with Piercing Howl, he's already ridiculously good at mobility - as any good warrior player is - and he's a bit less squishy then I am.

[CptAwesome]

A prot warrior would have an absolute nightmare there... how exactly is he supposed to pick up the adds and keep them on him?

You have howling blast; 30 yard range, hits everything, dots them and slows them.
He has to use both thunderclap and piercing howl, his aggro skill is separate from his slow, and he has far less range on both of them.

I don't see why you would want to make him do it when you would have a far easier job stance dancing and spamming howling blast....

[Murdos]

A prot warrior would have an absolute nightmare there... how exactly is he supposed to pick up the adds and keep them on him?

You have howling blast; 30 yard range, hits everything, dots them and slows them.
He has to use both thunderclap and piercing howl, his aggro skill is separate from his slow, and he has far less range on both of them.

I don't see why you would want to make him do it when you would have a far easier job stance dancing and spamming howling blast....

Because I can do 150k dps single-target. He can't.

He's also pretty damn amazing, he's got more then Thunderclap; Cleave, Revenge, Shockwave and Bloodbath all spring to mind as ways to keep the distance in check. Also, Mocking Banner much? AOE fixate? That's plenty of flash-pickup. Add in a fairly large array of stuns and a lot of mobility. Our Bear Tank can hold the boss solo, and our Destro Warlock can also do work on the bats, as been mentioned before in the thread.

This is a perfect illustration of how your idea is fine for YOUR group, but not every group - particularly not every 10 man - can field the same strategy with their composition.