Having problems on council.

[tsagbotxd]

We killed council of elders last week, however this week we are struggling a lot.

To be more specific its Council 10 normal.

Our raid composition is:
druid and warrior tank
pally dk and rogue melee
mage warlock and hunter ranged, also got a shammy avaliable.
disc priest and pally healer, also got a monk avaliable but then we cant have the mage.

Our main problem on the fight is that the ranged keep dieing during the fight, they describe the problem as: when they group up for frostbite, they get quicksand under them, however we are probably not doing all the other things perfect either.

Our tactic is Warrior tank on high priest marli and druid on other 2 bosses, we are not tank swapping the frigid assault.
Pally is fulltime on sul to help interupt.
Ranged on Loa spirit, this is useally never a problem.

When Marli and Kazrajin are empowered we useally dont get them down in time.

We aim to kill Sul before he gets empowered so he doesnt cast Sandstorm.

WOL from last raid: worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-xy30ywojqx9ffzab/

Any suggestions on what we could do better?

[Trucks]

A few pointers, since we struggled with this the first week and had to overcome it very quickly.

1) You do not need a tank to sit on Mar'li. If you cannot clump her up (due to low DPS), then just have a tank get initial aggro on her (attack for the first 5-10 seconds of the fight) and then move over into the melee pile. This will allow you to taunt for Frigid Assault and have more DPS/Cleave on Sul and the pile. *edit: For this to work you CANNOT interrupt Mar'li while she is not Empowered, but no one should be targeting her anyway as they should be burning Sul and cleaving onto Malakk.

2) Kill Sul before Sandstorm is cast. This should be really easy as long as your group has an average ilvl of 505+.

3) Use raid cooldowns for when Kazra is doing his Discharge, and also have everyone ready to hit him really hard when he goes to roll (ranged get a good 5 seconds of DPS with no damage reflected while he is rolling, even during Empower).

4) The easiest thing to do with Frostbite in normal is to have that ranged player run in and stack it on top of Sul and the tanks/melee pile. This way, you don't have to coordinate a ranged pile moving every time Kazra wants to charge that group, and AoE heals on the melee/tank/Frostbite target will be very useful.

Edit: A few other tips.

Your Rogue can drop a Smoke Bomb on top of Malakk before he casts Frostbite and the cast will not land (skip 1 Frostbite each Malakk phase).

Having a slow on the Loa Spirit is paramount, initally we used a warrior with the glyphed (or talented, I forget) Charge so that it would be auto-slowed.

Using raid cooldowns appropriately for Kazra, he will do three Discharges per Empower (or maybe 4 on normal, but it shouldn't take that long). Use any raid cooldowns, Banner/Rallying/Tranq/HTT/Devo/Revival/Spirit Shell etc. and have a set order.

Once you get Sul down, the fight is more of a survive-the-mechanics fight and becomes far less hectic. Take things slow and you'll be fine.

[tsagbotxd]

If we keep Mar'li next to the other bosses, wont her Lua spirit heal up the bosses?
And why exactly should we not interupt her?

Thanks a lot btw, the 4th point + the rogue trick is brilliant.

[Panther-z]

Its actually easier imo to not kill the priests adds its only 5% heal on normal isn't worth the time to switch and kill them. Expect when shes empowered those adds have to be killed. Don't both interupting the priest because the damage she deals isn't high at all, plus you want everyone putting as much focus and dps into Sul as possible. Once he dies the fight gets much easier. Also in 10 mans we treat the tanks like dps. That priest hitting your tank will give him more venegance and more dps to kill Sul.

I would put your warrior tanking Sul and the priest, and the druid on Malakk, the tanks should be putting all there dps into Sul, hitting the others enough to hold aggro.

Another tip don't switch as soon as on gets empowered keep hitting Sul, we usually switch to Frost king when he's as 65 energy, Kazra at 50 (we have a lot of range dps, so you might have to switch earlier)

Make sure any dps that has biting cold, they are not dps kazra the thorns damage plus the debuff will kill them. We have are healing paladin grab hand of purity, cast it as soon as someone gets biting cold/frost bite. It gives them time to group up and the healers time to get some shield/hots on them.

[Radio]

You can also just have the Frostbited person standing alone, it's only 110k damage taken per second which can be self/external cooldowned through.

Heroic strats work around Frostbite dealing 300k DPS on the player so 110k should be achievable for your healers.

Still the Frostbite on melee trick works nicely in normal and only makes the affected people take 22k dps. Sul will not Quicksand ranged players in melee range as long as there are ranged players still outside of melee range.

[Valech]

Fine. Make your Warrior tank grab Mar´li and the Druid tank pick Sul and Malakk. Make your warrior specc Massspellreflection, Disrupting Shout and Shockwave. Make him use the glyph of Spellreflect. Make him write the following Macro: /tar Malakk /cast taunt. He will never want to taunt something else in that fight then Malakk and that Macro eliminates the possibility, that he fails at tabbing to the right guy/takes to long to click his face on the right side of his interface.

To the fight! Make EVERYBODY focus Sul. make him bleed. Pop Bloodlust, pop Skullbanner, rip him. Make your druid announce, when Malakk reaches 50% energy. Don´t forget to stack up with two other people in that phase if you get Malakk´s debuff. As soon as Malkk reaches 50% energy, all range DDs switch to Malakk. Both Melees stay on Sul and keep cleaving him. The druid should move those two guys at all.
Meanwhile your Warrior rotates Spellreflect, Massspellreflection, Pummel and Disrupting Shout. For those bolts he cant cheat, he should use a nice 60 rage SBarrier. Also, he should save his shockwave for every second add. Make the hunter, and the hunter alone, focus that add. He has more than enough ways to slow/stun that add. If he doesn´t manage to do it alone, crossdot the add. Malkk should reach 75% at around 90% energy. Most likely Blanca (read: kazra´jin) will empower next. Make your ranged DDs hardswitch to him. Remember to NOIT stack up anymore with the debuff and remind your hunter kindly to STILL KILL THOSE ADDS. When Kazra´jin is at 75%, Sul should nearly be dead. As soon as Sul is dead, make the Melees focus Malakk. Ranges still switch to the empowered Dude. Simply rinse and repeat. Don´t kill yourself when Kazra´jin reflects the damage, don´t forget to run away from empowered Mar´li´s shadow thingies and kindly remind your tanks to taunt at around 9 Stacks. Your Warrior should pop CDs for the short while he tanks Malakk and Mar´li. The druid should retaunt Malakk as soon as his ability allows it.

[Senen]

What we do in our guild:

I put a triangle mark on Sul's spot and two other marks (let's say A and B) at ranged location.
We tank everything on the triangle mark (Mar'li's tank haveto interrupt her to bring her at the good position). I assign a ranged dps to the empowered boss and ask other dps to focus Sul and cleave/aoe as much as possible. Ranged dps have to switch on Kazra'jin when he is empowered, melee dps stay on Sul (depending on the number of ranged, I may ask some melee to switch too). The heal provided by loa spirit is compensated by the dps increase of the aoe fest.
The ranged are stack on the A mark and move to the B mark over the duration of the encounter to avoid aoe.

We tried to method to handle Malakk's debuff.
For the "standard" method, the debuff'd player goes stack with melee dps and tanks.
We prefer another method. Two ranged dps stand away from the raid as long as Malakk is empowered. If someone has the debuff, he goes stack with them. If one of these two players has the debuff, a third ranged player (also chosen before the fight) goes stack with them.

[Javster]

Our Strat...

Stack up Marli, Sul & Mallak. Our 2 highest DPS focus on sul, while the other 3 dps the empowered. When marilii is empowered all DPS switch. 2 tanks trade agro on mallak and the Sul tank interupts Sul as much as possible. Tanks are normally doing over 100k dps so between the cleave damage and the 2 dps that are focused on sul, he normally dies before sandstorm. He actually went into sandstorm once, and we just had everyone stack on the boss momentarily for aggro then spread once aggro had been established, but he died pretty quickly after that.

It's a rough fight on healers the first couple of minutes, but it eases up once sul is dead.

[Deja Thoris]

There is no reason not to stack the Priestess and cleave them all. The dps gain far outweighs the pitiful healing the adds do.

If the druid is about to get stunned the warrior should taunt frost king. Clicking "taunt" is better than blowing a big defensive / wasting healer mana / losing 15 seconds dps.

You can let the frostbite person stand alone, just make sure they pop a personal then move into melee to share the debuff. The damage on normal wont oneshot them whereas on heroic it will.

The key to this fight is killing Sul before he empowers. Stack them and focus dps and interrupts on Sul, only breaking the first empowerment close to dark power. After this, balance dps between Sul and the empowered dude to make sure you don't get dark power yet keeping enough dps on Sul to make sure he dies.

[Belloc]

I can't imagine why you're letting your Malakk tank get stunned by Frigid Assault... that just sounds incredibly lazy. Taunt when the tank's stacks are above 10 and no later than the moment it hits 13 (Malakk can apply two stacks at once, so if you let it get to 13, it may jump to 15).

Stack the bosses up -- the heal is negligible and cleaves/AOE damage will more than make up for it.

Quicksand isn't a one-shot or a two or three-shot, so your frostbite soakers have no excuse. If that's your "main problem," then your ranged seriously need to learn how to pay attention. I'll suggest making all of them download the addon "GTFO." It will play a loud sound every time they're standing in something bad. This is pretty much my main suggestion here, because the rest of the fights in ToT all have a don't-stand-in-this mechanic and you're going to be in for a big wake-up call if your players can't fix the issue now.

Your ranged dying issue might also be related to your tank-stun issue. When your tank gets stunned, he requires more heals since he's no longer dodging or using his active mitigation. That might be preventing your healers from keeping up your ranged. Honestly, it sounds to me like your ranged just aren't paying any attention and that your healing might be a bit weak.

Either way, the quicksand issue is a major player error and the only thing that will fix it is your ranged DPS paying more attention. The no-taunting-on-frigid-assault thing is a major strategy error and it needs to be changed. The only situation in which it is "acceptable" for a tank to get stunned on this fight is when they're solo-tanking it.


Finally: If you're just now getting to this fight, I'm going to guess that your raid is probably lacking in all areas. This isn't an insult or anything, it's just an assumption. There's a good chance that you won't have the DPS to kill Sul before he gets empowered without dying to other stuff along the way. If that's the case, I'm going to suggest having a heart-to-heart with your raid members and basically force them to learn how to play their class. All it takes is 15-minutes reading icy-veins or some other appropriate site and bad DPS will turn into acceptable DPS. You'll suddenly start killing bosses faster and having an easier time with mechanics. Your raiders won't like it, but tough shit -- it's better to spend 15 minutes reading and 15-30 minutes practicing than x-hours wiping to a fight without any improvements. Being "casual," as is likely the case, is not an excuse. I've seen one-day-a-week raid guilds clear instances on heroic.

edit:I just looked at your WoL report and my assumption was correct. The best thing you can do for your raid is to train your players. You've pretty much reached the limit of where you're going to go in there without major improvements.

[Deleted]

Don't know if its viable (sufficiantly geared alts?) but having that many melee caused us trouble, less overall dps with people running around chasing bosses and whatnot.

You say the ranged claim that frostbite/quicksand is killing them, is it possible someone is stacking too late on frostbite and causing the others to take too much damage? As for the quicksand not much to do there beyond awareness and watching what you stand in.

What we do is open with hero and all dps on sul, until the first empower, then most dps go to that boss, frost king I think, leaving one dps (me) on sul to nuke him down before he gets empowered, when gear was an issue with me putting out what was needed our other melee would be on sul during the rolling boss phase, to add some extra dps to him to make sure sul died in time.

[Deleted]

Looking at the longest log and deaths:
http://worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-xy...?s=9206&e=9597

the warlock didn't really get any heals when he had frostbite. He goes from an overheal light of dawn
[23:54:35.213] Breinlolz Light of Dawn Nyxhel +8513 (O: 16340)
to being spammed 9 secs later
[23:54:44.885] Breinlolz Flash of Light Nyxhel +64149

taking 5 ticks of biting cold during these 9 seconds of no heals.

The druid got stunned 6 times during this fight too. When our druid tanks, he can reset his stacks and not get stunned at all. It's a big drain on the healers if the druid is getting stunned since they can't dodge. Just tank swap at 10 stacks, both tanks should be in melee pile.
I haven't really played Guardian, but the druid tank only used savage defence 6 times in 6 minutes, is that not low, especially if you're trying to reset frost stacks? And 0 frenzied regeneration? Sounds like something is wrong there.

So people are dying from no heals and the healers are being strained from people standing in crap and tanks not playing well.

[Deleted]

ur raid sucks go back to ds noobs

[Embermoon]

Also, if you have a shaman, have them take the 2nd tier talent that frees ppl from movement impairment effects. Can't remember the name atm.

[Deleted]

A few pointers, since we struggled with this the first week and had to overcome it very quickly.

1) You do not need a tank to sit on Mar'li. If you cannot clump her up (due to low DPS), then just have a tank get initial aggro on her (attack for the first 5-10 seconds of the fight) and then move over into the melee pile.

This makes no sense. The whole point with clumping up is that you get MORE effective dps from the extra cleave than the heals Mar'li does. There isn't a raid dps threshold to overcome in order for clumping to be a good tactic. It is ALWAYS a good tactic since your extra dps will be larger than the heals from her.