Horridon 10M heroic suggestions

[deidios]

Me and my guild were working on this fight for the first time yesterday which went fairly well, after 10 or so wipes we were consistently making it to the last phase (unless someone went full retard), but i feel going into that last phase the boss has way too much health, generally when war-god jalak jumps down the boss is somewhere around 70% health. For the people who have killed this what is the bosses health around this time supposed to generally be around? What suggestions can you make to help improve on this.

It just seems like this burn phase takes an eternity and on our best attempt both me and the other tank completely ran out of cooldowns before wiping at 12%. I have linked to the attempt we got the boss to 12%, any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

http://worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-w1...?s=8420&e=9085

[devilminion]

70% is actually pretty good. We attempted HC horridon last week for teh first time and got it after 15 attempts or so.. we only made it to last phase like 3-4 times so if u are consistently making it to last phase then imo its yr healers or tanks need to step it up. We have a blood dk (me) and pally tank for the fight. our pally tanks horridon entire time during first 4 gates. he switches to jalak when he spawns and i tank him till his stacks fall off. rinse and repeat. the dmg is really freaking huge. Save yr defensive cds for 5th+ stacks. In our kill i actually died right when my pally tank's stacks fell off and he ended up tanking the boss for 11 stacks and died when boss was at ~1% hp but we managed to get the kill with a bit of kiting.

[Deja Thoris]

Firstly, you are doing well to get that far after so few pulls.

Secondly, take this constructively but I'm going to be hyper critical.
11 minute fight you used:
- DP 6 times out of a possible 10/11
- HA once!!! (This has to be the single best physical damage reducing CD in game imo) - 45% dmg reduction for over 30 seconds.
- I don't see GoAK there but I suck at reading logs.
- You completely ignore your level 90 talent. Holy prism is immense on this fight. Fire it off just after a direcall and 5 people within 15 yards of its target gets a whopping vengeance buffed heal

Approach the last phase like this:
Make sure you, the pala are tanking the boss first, make 100% for certain damn sure that you have sotr up for every triple puncture. Get up to 4/5 stacks and bubble, let the other tank take over. Put your vengeance buffed sacred shield on him, that's at least 100k absorbs every 5 seconds. When he gets to 5 stacks taunt, make sure u have HP so u can chain back to back sort's because the swops are a bit scary. Now you've taken the boss back and you have no stacks. Work with whatever cooldowns you have but use them from smallest to biggest since triple puncture hurts more later. If you can save HA for here you should be golden. Make good use of externals, you have ironbark u can call for that's used rarely, sac the other tank if needed but make sure it doesn't kill you and so on. Also HoP the other tank after u take over from him to reset his stacks, if you die he gets to take over from zero stacks again.

Finally I recommend US on this fight, it will reduce the CD of ur DP (glyphed) to close to 30 seconds allowing u to use it 20 times + in the fight which is immense.

[pld]

Firstly, you are doing well to get that far after so few pulls.

Secondly, take this constructively but I'm going to be hyper critical.
11 minute fight you used:
- DP 6 times out of a possible 10/11
- HA once!!! (This has to be the single best physical damage reducing CD in game imo) - 45% dmg reduction for over 30 seconds.
- I don't see GoAK there but I suck at reading logs.
- You completely ignore your level 90 talent. Holy prism is immense on this fight. Fire it off just after a direcall and 5 people within 15 yards of its target gets a whopping vengeance buffed heal

Approach the last phase like this:
Make sure you, the pala are tanking the boss first, make 100% for certain damn sure that you have sotr up for every triple puncture. Get up to 4/5 stacks and bubble, let the other tank take over. Put your vengeance buffed sacred shield on him, that's at least 100k absorbs every 5 seconds. When he gets to 5 stacks taunt, make sure u have HP so u can chain back to back sort's because the swops are a bit scary. Now you've taken the boss back and you have no stacks. Work with whatever cooldowns you have but use them from smallest to biggest since triple puncture hurts more later. If you can save HA for here you should be golden. Make good use of externals, you have ironbark u can call for that's used rarely, sac the other tank if needed but make sure it doesn't kill you and so on. Also HoP the other tank after u take over from him to reset his stacks, if you die he gets to take over from zero stacks again.

Finally I recommend US on this fight, it will reduce the CD of ur DP (glyphed) to close to 30 seconds allowing u to use it 20 times + in the fight which is immense.

GoAK doesn't show up in WoL I believe, so hopefully OP was using it.

Like Deja said, US is great for this fight. Use it over Clemency. I tried both HA and DP and I decided to roll with DP. HA is a great shield wall that you can pop multiple times during the fight, but I just enjoy DP....chalk it up to playstyle.

Some tips:
- You seem to have a Boomkin - have him Symbiosis you for Ironbark. It'll give you an additional CD to use every 1 minute.
- Your Sacred Shield (52%) and Shield of the Righteous (38%) are both fairly low. SS should be 90%+ and ShoR should be ~50% although I find my ShoR uptime a little bit lower on this fight because I bank HP sometimes in anticipation of a Triple Puncture.
- I usually use Devotion Aura during Door 2 and 3 to help out with any random damage. The poison pools and frozen orbs hit really hard so it'll just help out healers.
- From my experience, you can usually clear your stacks right before Jalak drops and continue to tank Horridon for a while
- We tank Horridon and Jalak next to each other for the cleave. Not sure if this is the normal strat, but it helps.
- Horridon was normally ~65% when we finished off Door 4

When Jalak drops, you'll need to roll CDs constantly. I pop GoAK off the bat and then use Ironbark/DP as needed. I would suggest setting up a cooldown order with your healers and be very vocal about your CD usage. It's very likely that you'll die despite defensive CDs so make sure your other tank is ready to pick it up ASAP. It's best to save battle-rez for this final burn phase so cross your fingers that your DPS or heals don't get derpy and die during the fight.

[deidios]

Firstly, you are doing well to get that far after so few pulls.

Secondly, take this constructively but I'm going to be hyper critical.
11 minute fight you used:
- DP 6 times out of a possible 10/11
- HA once!!! (This has to be the single best physical damage reducing CD in game imo) - 45% dmg reduction for over 30 seconds.
- I don't see GoAK there but I suck at reading logs.
- You completely ignore your level 90 talent. Holy prism is immense on this fight. Fire it off just after a direcall and 5 people within 15 yards of its target gets a whopping vengeance buffed heal

Approach the last phase like this:
Make sure you, the pala are tanking the boss first, make 100% for certain damn sure that you have sotr up for every triple puncture. Get up to 4/5 stacks and bubble, let the other tank take over. Put your vengeance buffed sacred shield on him, that's at least 100k absorbs every 5 seconds. When he gets to 5 stacks taunt, make sure u have HP so u can chain back to back sort's because the swops are a bit scary. Now you've taken the boss back and you have no stacks. Work with whatever cooldowns you have but use them from smallest to biggest since triple puncture hurts more later. If you can save HA for here you should be golden. Make good use of externals, you have ironbark u can call for that's used rarely, sac the other tank if needed but make sure it doesn't kill you and so on. Also HoP the other tank after u take over from him to reset his stacks, if you die he gets to take over from zero stacks again.

Finally I recommend US on this fight, it will reduce the CD of ur DP (glyphed) to close to 30 seconds allowing u to use it 20 times + in the fight which is immense.

TBH I really didn't use my cds before that last phase because I use them when I need to and until the last phase I really don't need them, I use DP more because well I get holy power from that and it is up close to every 35 seconds, the rest of them I don't use unless I am low on health or expect to take a lot of damage and during the door phases as long as I don't fuck up having SotR up for triple punctures the damage taken is quite minimal.

The last phase the DK tanks the boss for most of the time (I tank the 4th door and he takes it from there), When he gets around 6 stacks I tank it until about 5 stacks and he takes it back. He has a big epeen and thinks he takes less damage so he has me tank as little as possible in the last phase /sigh. Should I break it to him that it is better for me to have priority on tanking the boss during the last phase?

Also GoaK does not show up on WOL, I did use it in the final phase.

[Deja Thoris]

Not using cooldowns on progression because "you don't really need them" is poor play.

Anything you can do to help out the healers you should do. How much more mana would the healers have at the end if you played a bit smarter using the tools you were given? HA and AW are dps cooldowns as well, smacking off 20 sotr's and doing more damage with wings? You have AD and a 5 stack bastion of glory to heal you up which with vengeance is as good as a lay on hands if you need oshit buttons.

The last phase is up to you and the other tank to get the raid through. You are a team and you should probably neuter his epeen, regardless, use bubble and bop to reset stacks and it doesn't really matter which you choose as long as you do it smartly. (Maybe he takes "less damage" because he uses CD's :P)

[deidios]

Some tips:
- You seem to have a Boomkin - have him Symbiosis you for Ironbark. It'll give you an additional CD to use every 1 minute.
- Your Sacred Shield (52%) and Shield of the Righteous (38%) are both fairly low. SS should be 90%+ and ShoR should be ~50% although I find my ShoR uptime a little bit lower on this fight because I bank HP sometimes in anticipation of a Triple Puncture.
- I usually use Devotion Aura during Door 2 and 3 to help out with any random damage. The poison pools and frozen orbs hit really hard so it'll just help out healers.
- From my experience, you can usually clear your stacks right before Jalak drops and continue to tank Horridon for a while
- We tank Horridon and Jalak next to each other for the cleave. Not sure if this is the normal strat, but it helps.
- Horridon was normally ~65% when we finished off Door 4

Resto druid uses symbiosis on me for cleanse, for some reason last night it kept bugging out and she would still have cleanse but I wouldn't have barkskin, not sure what was up with that but it was quite annoying to say the least.

SotR I wait for the triple punctures, other fights that I'm not staring at an 8-12 second timer it is around 50%

As for sacred shield, admittedly I have always been bad with that on fights I tunnel on timers (triple puncture, snapping bite, hard stare, etc.), I will probably change my weak aura before raid to better get my attention when it drops.

Yes I can clear my stacks before Jalak drops but big epeen dk wants to tank horridon at that point so I don't bother.

---------- Post added 2013-06-05 at 11:12 AM ----------

Not using cooldowns on progression because "you don't really need them" is poor play.

Anything you can do to help out the healers you should do. How much more mana would the healers have at the end if you played a bit smarter using the tools you were given? HA and AW are dps cooldowns as well, smacking off 20 sotr's and doing more damage with wings? You have AD and a 5 stack bastion of glory to heal you up which with vengeance is as good as a lay on hands if you need oshit buttons.

The last phase is up to you and the other tank to get the raid through. You are a team and you should probably neuter his epeen, regardless, use bubble and bop to reset stacks and it doesn't really matter which you choose as long as you do it smartly. (Maybe he takes "less damage" because he uses CD's :P)

I agree that I should at least be using DP on cd and barkskin when symbiosis doesn't bug. HA I should be using on the 3rd door when tanking the boss but I'm usually so pre-occupied with dispelling I forget until the door is over. I don't want to use it on the 4th door because I want to make sure it is up for the final phase.

[Xucuroz]

Symbiosis normally bugs after a corpse run, due to the range between you and the druid. They often keep it, you lose the buff. Just make sure you both check before pulling.

Apart from that, don't have anything else to add thats not already been said. If you can make it to last door, your going to get it eventually. As long as the rest of the raid is alive and don't mess up their direhorn fixates (like some in my raid did last week -.-).

[Orion Antares]

I've got a question about the fourth door. We had to run three heals because of healing issues so we were lower on DPS. We got to the fourth door but seemed unable to kill the first bear and shaman before the Dinomancer dropped while keeping the flame casters at manageable level. Would it be best to just tank the 3 warbears and focus on killing the Flame casters until the Dinomancer drops, then clean up the three warbears and shaman one by one after we pop the orb?

[Pearsyn]

Resto druid uses symbiosis on me for cleanse, for some reason last night it kept bugging out and she would still have cleanse but I wouldn't have barkskin, not sure what was up with that but it was quite annoying to say the least.

SotR I wait for the triple punctures, other fights that I'm not staring at an 8-12 second timer it is around 50%

As for sacred shield, admittedly I have always been bad with that on fights I tunnel on timers (triple puncture, snapping bite, hard stare, etc.), I will probably change my weak aura before raid to better get my attention when it drops.

Hey Deidos,

Couple things, Any tank is fine in the last phase, but if your DK wants to inflate his own epeen, let him, but you need to be prepared to tank Horridon when he dies, because well, you are better suited for the job.

You mentioned poor use of Sacred Shield, this is something you're going to want to be actively aware of, I'm not going to tell you exactly what addon you need or how you need to do it, I'm just going to tell you the principal.

You're reaching the last phase with Jalak and looking at one of your attempts you were already at 11 minutes, you did 601M damage to horridon and he had only healed for 21M total, that means you had ~75M to go, We've killed Horridon by just ranged kiting him and threat dropping bouncing him around with that much health and a huge damage taken buff. Keep that in mind.

More importantly though, as Horridon Rampages, if you are tanking, your vengeance is going to rise dramatically. Sacred Shield without vengeance is pretty shitty, Sacred Shield WITH vengeance is incredible. It snapshots your stats. If you apply sacred shield and then taunt and start tanking horridon you're going to be taking an immense amount of damage, you might pop GotAK but the damage taken is still going to be abnormally high. Basically what you want to do is be able to use a cooldown like GotAK to allow your vengeance to spike up without dying, as soon as your vengeance is super high, apply sacred shield. You now went from absorbing 20k damage every 3-5 seconds (depending on haste) to absorbing 200k+ damage every 3-5 seconds(depending on haste). You essentially have already shaved off 33% of the damage you're taking just with that little maneuver. You couple that with your other CDs DP/AD and lets not forget Shield of the Righteous (which should already have a high uptime). Was already mentioned in this thread about Holy Avenger as well.

With all of those combined, you also have a shield, compared to a DK with high vengeance, he really can't compete. He more/less only has Death Strike to work with, Bone Shield once a minute, a 1 horridon rampage melee hit self heal (death pact), IBF and yep thats it. He could runic empowerment to reset his runes, but that only buys him a couple seconds.

If you do it right as a paladin you will make it incredibly easy for your healers to heal you. The worst thing that can happen in your situation though is you being ill prepared to tank your masterpiece, aka dk dying and ~5 seconds later you die as well. The last phase is all on tanks, period.

I solo tanked the last phase on my paladin with only 1 healer. It puts you on edge and forces you to play your class. My paladin isn't anything special like a 530 ilvl, he's 513 with only 6500 haste.

As for the symbiosis thing, both of you need to make sure that you both have it prior to pulling Horridon. It doesn't magically disappear going into combat, it does however randomly disappear under certain circumstances that revolve around changing talents/glyphs and resurrecting. All you need to do is check you both have it before you pull.

---------- Post added 2013-06-05 at 11:55 AM ----------

I've got a question about the fourth door. We had to run three heals because of healing issues so we were lower on DPS. We got to the fourth door but seemed unable to kill the first bear and shaman before the Dinomancer dropped while keeping the flame casters at manageable level. Would it be best to just tank the 3 warbears and focus on killing the Flame casters until the Dinomancer drops, then clean up the three warbears and shaman one by one after we pop the orb?

Your DPS sounds incredibly low or on the wrong target. You should be looking to kill the first bear and practically the first shaman by the time the 2nd/3rd Bears spawn. If you're not killing the first bear til the dinomancer spawns the amount of raid damage you have created from just hex of confusion/chain lightnings/warbear cleaves/fire balls/ is just immense.

Assign 1-2 DPS to interrupt and kill the flame casters, everyone else should be helping with that bear/shaman

Horridon tank if necessary can hold a warbear for a short while, until you get warbear 1 and 2 under control

Protector adds don't really hit for anything a plate dps can tank them just fine.

The 3 largest sources of raid damage on the 4th door are from Warbear Cleaves, which should be on your add tank. Hex of Confusion, slow decurses from druids/shamans/mages is going to kill someone, 3 per shaman per cast. Last but not least Fire Balls from the flame casters.

[Deja Thoris]

I've got a question about the fourth door. We had to run three heals because of healing issues so we were lower on DPS. We got to the fourth door but seemed unable to kill the first bear and shaman before the Dinomancer dropped while keeping the flame casters at manageable level. Would it be best to just tank the 3 warbears and focus on killing the Flame casters until the Dinomancer drops, then clean up the three warbears and shaman one by one after we pop the orb?

Its better to fix your healing issues. Look at the OP's logs, neither of their healers were healing over 40k hps average for 11 minutes. The nature of the fight means you need to react to some burst damage though. 3 healers means adds do more damaging shit to you like applying diseases. I'm pretty flexible as far as using 2/3 healers on most fights but I'm adamant that horridon is a 2 heal fight.

If you absolutely have to go with 3 healers have the horridon tank pick up 1 warbear and the add tank the other 2. That way of working just seems suboptimal to me.

[deidios]

I've got a question about the fourth door. We had to run three heals because of healing issues so we were lower on DPS. We got to the fourth door but seemed unable to kill the first bear and shaman before the Dinomancer dropped while keeping the flame casters at manageable level. Would it be best to just tank the 3 warbears and focus on killing the Flame casters until the Dinomancer drops, then clean up the three warbears and shaman one by one after we pop the orb?

For this door we had shaman and rogue on flamecaster's and the rest of the dps on warbears but we only use 2 healers.

I wouldn't suggest 3 healing, we 2 heal it with a druid and shaman with no issues. In the end with 2 healers they are only having to pull around 45-50k hps for the overall fight which is pretty low, if your healers can't pull that much you should re-evaluate them. Alternatively if they are having to pull more then that you should be re-evaluating your tanks/dps/healers for taking unnecessary damage.

[Orion Antares]

We only have one decurser. That's the reason I felt just holding the warbears for later clean up would be a better option.

Its better to fix your healing issues. Look at the OP's logs, neither of their healers were healing over 40k hps average for 11 minutes. The nature of the fight means you need to react to some burst damage though. 3 healers means adds do more damaging shit to you like applying diseases. I'm pretty flexible as far as using 2/3 healers on most fights but I'm adamant that horridon is a 2 heal fight.

If you absolutely have to go with 3 healers have the horridon tank pick up 1 warbear and the add tank the other 2. That way of working just seems suboptimal to me.

Fixing the healing issue is a work in progress. In the mean time we're also looking at adjustments in the rest of the raid to compensate.

[deidios]

More importantly though, as Horridon Rampages, if you are tanking, your vengeance is going to rise dramatically. Sacred Shield without vengeance is pretty shitty, Sacred Shield WITH vengeance is incredible. It snapshots your stats. If you apply sacred shield and then taunt and start tanking horridon you're going to be taking an immense amount of damage, you might pop GotAK but the damage taken is still going to be abnormally high. Basically what you want to do is be able to use a cooldown like GotAK to allow your vengeance to spike up without dying, as soon as your vengeance is super high, apply sacred shield. You now went from absorbing 20k damage every 3-5 seconds (depending on haste) to absorbing 200k+ damage every 3-5 seconds(depending on haste). You essentially have already shaved off 33% of the damage you're taking just with that little maneuver. You couple that with your other CDs DP/AD and lets not forget Shield of the Righteous (which should already have a high uptime). Was already mentioned in this thread about Holy Avenger as well.

I feel kind of embarrassed I didn't think of this, I didn't realize how much it actually scaled with vengeance and was only refreshing it once it's duration had run out. Thanks for the tip.