Brewmaster vs Horridon Adds

[Pandaapple]

Hey guys, only my second time posting here, but I'm in need of the brains trust.

Our ten man team has recently started on Throne of Thunder we flew through Jihn'Rok, and are now stuck on Horridon. We seem to be progressing ok on this guy, but the third door is absolutely wiping the floor with me.

My armory can be found by searching "Pandaapple" I'm on US-Nagrand

I'm hit/expertise capped, and heavy into haste and crit. From most of my reading and researching, this is generally the ten man raid build.

Now, just last week we started a boss strat where our Paladin tank, solo tanks Horridon, and I do the adds on every door. Seems to be working fine. I've been using Ring of Peace on the adds, but read this morning that the Frozen warlords will syncronize their mortal strikes if I use this on their door. One of my questions is, as beneficial as it is to have Ring of Peace, especially for the second door with the Venom Priests, is it worth switching out to leg sweep, or charging ox wave, to be able to stun the Frozen Warlords?

In reality, we've not spent A LOT of time on Horridon yet, forgoing him last week, to do old content because some of our raiders were away, however, I do feel like we're hitting that third door and coming to a grinding halt. Our healers are saying that by that door they're trying everything they can to regen mana. Sometimes I feel like I'm taking a tonne of damage, with nothing to mitigate it, usually I have a cooldown on the ready, but is there any advice that you guys can give me?

Most recent we have is from two weeks ago. World of Logs search for US-Nagrand... raid team "CV"

Any information that can be given would be appreciated greatly.

Thanks guys!

~Pandaapple

[Deleted]

Don't think the frozen warlords can be stunned, nor can any of the "big" adds on any door. All the adds apart from 3 big and dinomancer can be stunned if I'm not mistaken.
You having particular troubles with third door? May wanna lust there then, you don't really need it in last phase. Biggest thing to note though is that the adds can NOT be tanked, apart from frozen warlords/dinomancer. You can taunt, and they will fixate for 3 seconds, but that's about it. Not worth wasting time on. Lust as soon as the first frozen warlord pops down, and zerg him before the other 2 spawn. Once he's dead make a mark (or do so beforehand) and let ALL your dps stack up, including melee. The adds will randomly fixated and this way you can easily AoE them down and AoE-heal. You just take the 2 frozen warlords and tank em away from the rest of the group, kite when they spawn orbs. Xuen can tank one as well for a while. Tell your dps to blow any taunting guardians/pets (like army, earth elemental, etc.) once you are a fair distance away and have aggro on your 2 adds. Zerg dinomancer quick, let someone use orb, and finish the warlords while going to 4th door.

Also you say "I'm hit/expertise capped, and heavy into haste and crit." buuuuut... I don't see it. 4.5k haste and 2.7k crit? That's nothing. Stop stacking stamina imo, mostly gems/enchants. There is absolutely NO need for that with the content you doing. I have over 20 ilvls on you and you have more hp than me (not by a lot, but still). You can easily get away with just the stamina that comes naturally with gear and enchant/gem stuff like agility/crit/etc.
If you feel that there's a boss that you wouldn't mind getting a bit more stamina for, use a stamina flask and/or food buff. Or carry some inks to swap your shoulder enchant really cheap if you want more stamina for a certain boss (shouldn't be needed at all tho).

[Pandaapple]

Thanks for the tips! What I should have said is that I prefer haste/crit. The reason I stack stamina is because of my raid leader. I swear he dislikes monk tanks and kept complaining that I had way less than our pally tank (which is what is SUPPOSED to be the case) but he kept harping on about it, and getting on my back. I will switch out my stamina gems and enchants, and go for agi crit and haste.

I'll talk to them about saving Lust for the third door and burning the frozen warlords quicker. I don't necessarily think it's an issue with me, I'm not sure the healers have enough mana/or are watching close enough for the mortal strikes that are being applied to me. I used expel harm and zen sphere off cooldown. Hopefully taking out my stamina and getting more of the other stats will lead to higher avoidance.

[Shamanberry]

The Mortal Strike shouldn't be immediately fatal even with 3 of them on you on normal mode - particularly with that level of stamina.

Looking at your last public log:
http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/i...verkill%3E0%29

It looks like every time you die, you let shuffle fall off. On this fight, it's easy to fall into a trap of playing like a DPS class, particularly while struggling to hold aggro. However, the third door (and to an extent the 4th) are pretty rough on tank damage, so you have to play it smart - rather than focusing on doing damage, just do enough to hold the Frozen Warlords, and focus on keeping yourself alive.

Another thing that helps is if your raid's DPS is properly assigned. If the first Frozen Warlord isn't dead by the time the Dinomancer comes down, something is going horribly wrong, and it can make things much harder since you'll still likely have the debuff from the first add when the second two hit you. You can mark adds before the fight starts - it may help to put a marker on the first Frozen Warlord that comes down and instruct your raid to focus DPS and burn it down as soon as it spawns.

[Deleted]

I usually stick xuen to eighter the first when i'm off to pick up the 2 others, or to one of the two if the first is alreaddy very low.
He tanks a warlord just fine.

[Pokedex]

They are easily aggroed by just spamming keg toss that's how I do it. They normally just come to me and just keep your provoke on cd for the "fixate adds"

[Nikkaszal]

If you're just tanking the adds, this door is the time to use cooldowns.

RoP, pop Dampen Harm during it to eat the Mortal Strikes that come after, Fort Brew, offtank with Xuen, if needed ask for a healer CD.

If the Warlords aren't focussed down after all that, it's up to your DPS to work more efficiently.

[Pandaapple]

So we made it past the third door. Have regemmed and chanted everything. I seem to be doing much better. Cooldown priorities are better as well. All your pointers and tips were greatly appreciated. We're just on a five minute break right now, but I thought I would quickly post that we progressed a bit further, and no one is complaining about me being hard to heal and not having enough health, so always a bonus!

Slowly working Rushing Jade Wind into my rotation, I kept forgetting I had it, even though it was on my bars, so I have it bound to a mouse key now to work it in. Shuffle uptime seems to be better as well tonight. As Shamanberry said, I had fallen into the trap of playing like a DPS class instead of worrying about my avoidance uptime. So I've fixed that now.

[Deleted]

Do you have a DK in your raid team?

We found the best way to deal with the third door, was to either blow our heroism or use a DK's Army of the Dead to suck up a tonne of the disease debuffs, conserving mana and preventing any unecessary near-disasters.

Fourth door is about keeping the adds on you - especially the bears. They can't be facing the raid, and when the bear dies, the Shaman that hops off needs to die fast too.

[Nikkaszal]

Slowly working Rushing Jade Wind into my rotation, I kept forgetting I had it, even though it was on my bars, so I have it bound to a mouse key now to work it in. Shuffle uptime seems to be better as well tonight. As Shamanberry said, I had fallen into the trap of playing like a DPS class instead of worrying about my avoidance uptime. So I've fixed that now.

I haven't taken RJW for a while, but as far as I remember it beats BoK's damage with even a single target. Seeing as it costs the same Chi and provides the same Shuffle, you should look to using it as often as you can on every fight you have it up. That said, it's not really the best talent you can take for Horridon seeing as it's mostly aimed at sustained AoE (the true bonus comes from spamming beefed-up SCK's after it) and this fight's all about cleaving down small numbers of adds at a time. RJW's definitely beneficial, sure: it can be rather useful for picking up adds when a few spawn in several different places at once since you can Provoke one and fire RJW at another. However, the benefit of Xuen can't be overstated - not only does he cleave with his Lightning (the main source of his damage) and provide silly numbers when you park him on the boss, he's also terrific for quickly grabbing and offtanking adds.

[Areohotah]

Do you have a DK in your raid team?

We found the best way to deal with the third door, was to either blow our heroism or use a DK's Army of the Dead to suck up a tonne of the disease debuffs, conserving mana and preventing any unecessary near-disasters.

Fourth door is about keeping the adds on you - especially the bears. They can't be facing the raid, and when the bear dies, the Shaman that hops off needs to die fast too.

monk tanks and dps can dispell diseases. just saying

[Deleted]

monk tanks and dps can dispell diseases. just saying

Rather depends what DPS you have. Only our druid could as far as I can recall, and myself, along with whichever of the two healers could.

[Pandaapple]

After getting through the third door once more, and then realizing that our dps needs to pick up its game a bit, I've decided to go to Xuen for an offtank. The benefit of having him seems to outweigh the benefit of a beefed up spinning crane kick.

The fourth door seems like it will be ok, the issue we had last night (we were so close, dinomancer when down, but so did our MT) was that the dps and healers lose track of where they are, start running around like mad hatters and end up all over the place, so I'm playing catch up with adds to bring them back to me and face the bears away from everyone. But it's progression!

Do you have a DK in your raid team?

We found the best way to deal with the third door, was to either blow our heroism or use a DK's Army of the Dead to suck up a tonne of the disease debuffs, conserving mana and preventing any unecessary near-disasters.

Fourth door is about keeping the adds on you - especially the bears. They can't be facing the raid, and when the bear dies, the Shaman that hops off needs to die fast too.

No DK. But we have a priest, two druids, a shaman, two paladins and myself. Between us all we can get diseases under control pretty well. This fight really is a progression of doors. Each door is like a mini boss. It's chaotic, but you have to try and make it organised chaos.

Just as an aside, with regards to Xuen, is he healable? If so, does he show up on healbot/VuhDoo?

[Takeada]

I haven't taken RJW for a while, but as far as I remember it beats BoK's damage with even a single target. Seeing as it costs the same Chi and provides the same Shuffle, you should look to using it as often as you can on every fight you have it up. That said, it's not really the best talent you can take for Horridon seeing as it's mostly aimed at sustained AoE (the true bonus comes from spamming beefed-up SCK's after it) and this fight's all about cleaving down small numbers of adds at a time. RJW's definitely beneficial, sure: it can be rather useful for picking up adds when a few spawn in several different places at once since you can Provoke one and fire RJW at another. However, the benefit of Xuen can't be overstated - not only does he cleave with his Lightning (the main source of his damage) and provide silly numbers when you park him on the boss, he's also terrific for quickly grabbing and offtanking adds.

While Xuen can be very beneficial, it's long cool down isn't ideal for this fight so much when dealing with the adds. RJW however can easily be used to pick up adds much more easily, especially on the later doors that get more chaotic. Yes, it's slightly more difficult to use compared to Xuen, but used correctly it can be much more beneficial overall in dealing with adds. Both of the talents have their places, but saying RJW doesn't have it's place in this fight when it's practically designed for a fight like this is just incorrect.

On topic: If it hasn't already been suggested, try using heroism on a door you're having trouble with (typically one of the later two) to see if it can help you get through the door more easily. It's definitely not needed at the end of the fight for the boss burn.

[Nikkaszal]

Just as an aside, with regards to Xuen, is he healable? If so, does he show up on healbot/VuhDoo?

Xuen's definitely healable - not only can you target and cast heals on him, but he's also a viable target for smart heals (ie when he tanks 5-man bosses for me, he's kept alive by my Chi Wave bounces).

I haven't used VuhDo in a while, but I don't think he'll show up. He's classified as a Guardian, not a Pet (rather like shaman elementals) and I don't think VuhDo has frames for temporary Guardians.