Too many melees on Tectus?

[Deleted]

Hey guys,

My fairly casual raiding guild started to venture into Highmaul last week, Kargath and Butcher were downed without bigger problems, but Tectus is causing a lot of frustration.
The problem is, that our damagedealers consist out of ca. 2 ranges and 7 melees, so our healers claim they have to do a lot of running with the crystalline barrages and cant really focus on keeping us alive, the best we got was to get to the 4 motes and one shard.

Our tactic: Ranges and healers stay in a camp and go clockwise around the arena to the next position when the Pillar spawns, melees stay on the boss and sometimes switch on to an add.

So, does anyone else got experience with a melee-heavy group? Or should some of us really consider rerolling to ranges, because it seems that Brakenspore and Twins are also very melee unfriendly?

I hope you can share some tips and experiences!

[Deleted]

It's not that it's "melee unfriendly" since it's actually melee friendly - the issue is that you have a terribly unbalanced raid setup - we are raiding with a melee heavy setup, but this means around 12 melee+ 2 tanks vs. 6 healers and 8 ranged - therefore at least the number of people who stay in melee and who are at range is 1:1...

[Pur1tas]

What kind of healers do you have? How many heals do you have? I think we miss some important information here. Overall I would say especially in the beginning and even when there are 2 mini tectuses there should be no problem at all. I can understand it might get messy when there are 4 small thingys but with a meele heavy setup like this there should be no problem in bursting down 1-2 small ones very fast with bloodlust. If you give us some more insight on what your raidsetup overall is this would make an improvement suggestion much easier. If you are running with 4 enhancement shamans and 4 rogues though I doubt this will ever work they do to little dmg to make it happen.

[Sonnillon]

It's not melee unfriendly. There is so much damage you can avoid in Tectus, only beating would be the ones that tanks get and you aren't running most of the time when Upheaval is cast. You just need damage reduction CDs and some AoE raid healing to keep people up through Upheaval (damage reduction + healing CD for later ones). Your people just need to pay more attention in not staying in the small pillars and moving out.

Since when is Brackenspore melee unfriendly? Boss+big add under shroom = win. And the occasional moving to Shooter by melee if ranged is slacking isn't to big off a DPS loss. Just have your 2 most lowest DPS melee handling the Flamethrower and not an issue.

Twins requires everyone to pay attention anyway and as tanks are not standing in fire, so is easy for melee to move with tanks. If one boss is doing Whirling melee can be on the other one and your ranged can bait the Shield Charge just fine. So easy to stack on Phemos for Enfeebling roar and heck... who with that amount of melee would be afraid of silence for casters

EDIT: If however some of your melee are playing classes which are generally under performing due to class related issues or are just bad, they might as well consider rolling to a ranged class, but other then that, being melee heavy is not that big of a problem at any boss in NM/HC at least.

[MyndZero]

If your ending up with too much damage going out, take a note on the big add that you guys aren't killing ( as you need to kill one off, and its 4 that it spawns off first completely), that add gets damage increase stacks, so you may want to look at putting one or two of your ranged DPS on that big add that isn't being focused the entire time (until swapping to down the other adds when required) so those stacks stay down, and there is a lot less raid damage.

[Beace]

Doesn't matter if a fight is melee friendly or unfriendly. Going with a setup like yours (which I assume is 7 melee + 2 tanks vs 2 ranged + 3 healers) is just asking for problems.

[bigbad]

Melee is better in cleaving so it's only an advantage on tectus? If people avoid shit they only need to keep the tanks up. I recon avoiding shit is the problem

[Sonnillon]

If your ending up with too much damage going out, take a note on the big add that you guys aren't killing ( as you need to kill one off, and its 4 that it spawns off first completely), that add gets damage increase stacks, so you may want to look at putting one or two of your ranged DPS on that big add that isn't being focused the entire time (until swapping to down the other adds when required) so those stacks stay down, and there is a lot less raid damage.

Why swap targets, cleave from everyone is more then enough to keep the damage low... We keep all of them stacked -_-' and everyone is happier, people just have to pay attention to various things. There is no need to have someone tunnel the "alone Shard" by someone, your Shard tank (if you desire to keep them split) just calls out when stacks go to high for people to swap to lessen the stacks.

[Deleted]

Melee is better in cleaving so it's only an advantage on tectus? If people avoid shit they only need to keep the tanks up. I recon avoiding shit is the problem

The disadvantage is that crystal barrage forces targets to run, and only targets ranged. Which means that if your ratio of melee to ranged is bad, your healers will be targeted constantly which will make it a lot harder for them to heal. Melee is an advantage on Tectus, but only if you have enough ranged/healers to handle crystal barrage.

[Snixs]

Why swap targets, cleave from everyone is more then enough to keep the damage low...

They do get a buff if they're stacked tho.

Before you say no, take a look here: http://www.reddit.com/r/wow/comments...atboss/cmnyl1y

[Deleted]

They do get a buff if they're stacked tho.

Before you say no, take a look here: http://www.reddit.com/r/wow/comments...atboss/cmnyl1y

The buff they get while stacked is the buff which is removed by damaging them. If you have enough cleave, it's a non-issue.

[Sonnillon]

The buff they get while stacked is the buff which is removed by damaging them. If you have enough cleave, it's a non-issue.

And even with very few melee present (the opposite of the OP's group) it's still more the viable enough way to go, trust me Snixs, you won't even feel that there are any stacks ^^

[Snixs]

The buff they get while stacked is the buff which is removed by damaging them. If you have enough cleave, it's a non-issue.

Oh, i did not know this. I stand corrected

And even with very few melee present (the opposite of the OP's group) it's still more the viable enough way to go, trust me Snixs, you won't even feel that there are any stacks ^^

See above. My guild don't have a problem keeping them apart tho. Back to stacking them up for more efficiency it seems

[Deleted]

And even with very few melee present (the opposite of the OP's group) it's still more the viable enough way to go, trust me Snixs, you won't even feel that there are any stacks ^^

Should be noted that this tactic puts a lot of pressure on the healers though. The more damage a "tectus mob" takes, the faster their energy goes up, which means more tectonic upheavals. If you tank the two shards together and cleave, chances are you will eat more upheavals than if you tank them apart and focus down one.

[Zaak]

I actually think keeping them all together is the more casual-friendly tactic. When we first tried him we had them separated and it wasn't going so well damage wise and they didn't die in the first upheaval, then we decided to keep them all together (shards as well as adds at the beginning) and it is still close, but at least we manage to get him down.

Also, as some already mentioned, once the first shard dies and the motes spawn, there shouldn't be any more incoming raid damage apart from tank damage, as the motes shouldn't be living long enough to cast upheavel (so it shouldn't be a problem for the healers to be running around)

[Sonnillon]

Should be noted that this tactic puts a lot of pressure on the healers though. The more damage a "tectus mob" takes, the faster their energy goes up, which means more tectonic upheavals. If you tank the two shards together and cleave, chances are you will eat more upheavals than if you tank them apart and focus down one.

That's why I mentioned in my first post that you will need healing+damage reduction CD rotation for the Upheavals later on. Once we sorted the proper CDs out was really easy. In all fairness we tried keeping the bosses spread - didn't really work. The DPS we had to switch (ranged) to reduce the stacks on the Shard who was kept away was the exact amount we were missing to kill the Shard during Upheaval and getting too many Upheavals was the reason for our early wipes.

Just to comparison our both Tectus kills: https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...wJ9pMC#fight=7 and https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...6r1Gn#fight=16

[Deleted]

That's why I mentioned in my first post that you will need healing+damage reduction CD rotation for the Upheavals later on. Once we sorted the proper CDs out was really easy. In all fairness we tried keeping the bosses spread - didn't really work. The DPS we had to switch (ranged) to reduce the stacks on the Shard who was kept away was the exact amount we were missing to kill the Shard during Upheaval and getting too many Upheavals was the reason for our early wipes.

Just to comparison our both Tectus kills: https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...wJ9pMC#fight=7 and https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...6r1Gn#fight=16

That's interesting. The way my guild does it is we pop cooldowns during the first upheaval to take the big one down immediately. We then focus one shard, having some ranged throw dots and maybe a few attacks on the second shard, but not too much, and then we take the first shard down after an upheaval (we have never been able to take the first shard down on its first upheaval even when we focused it completely, but that's fine because the berzerk timer is not that tight). When the first shard goes down, there's a bit of downtime before the motes spawn in which time every DPS focuses 100% on the second shard until the motes are collected by the tank. This small amount of time is enough to almost clear the stacks on the second shard completely. We then keep one melee dps on the second shard while everyone else takes down the motes, which is enough to keep the stacks really low on the second shard.

Safe to say, we were pretty close to the berzerk, but it felt like we were in control the whole time. I think we could have tried stacking them, but our cleave wasn't amazing anyway.

[Varabently]

Our melee do really well on this fight, so having more might actually make it easier. Obviously they need to be adept at avoiding damage though.

I'm not sure it's ever a good idea to deviate much from 50/50 ranged/melee though. Mostly because you probably don't have a balanced setup of gear needs, which means you'll gear your group up unevenly and waste drops. Unless both of your ranged and healers are all cloth-wearers, you're going to start wasting gear. Though I guess this is assuming you're doing group loot.

[Radish Spirit]

Why swap targets, cleave from everyone is more then enough to keep the damage low....

So why does it matter one tiny bit? Both shards need to die, and they don't heal so there's no loss of DPS to have a couple switch to the 2nd Shard.

Cleaving is absolutely not always enough to keep the stacks low. We found cleave-only strategy still stacked Accretion on the 2nd shard. Maybe our cleavers are weak or we don't have as many in the raid, but in any case why risk it? Switching is the more reliable strategy obviously.

Just have the ones hitting the 2nd shard switch back for Tectonic Upheaval and you will still kill the 1st Shard during the first upheaval.

There is no need to have someone tunnel the "alone Shard" by someone, your Shard tank (if you desire to keep them split) just calls out when stacks go to high for people to swap to lessen the stacks.

Dude... what?

Instead of just having people hit it, your plan is to have a tank make a raid call during the fight, have people target switch, and then switch back. Why? To what end? You just solved the same problem with a vastly more complicated strategy AND your strategy involves the 2nd tank waiting for stacks to get high whereas just assigning DPS to the 2nd shard keeps stacks completely cleared the entire fight.

You accomplish the same thing as having people focus the 2nd Shard, but throw an additional raid call and more target switches and additional tank damage into the mix. Nonsense.


Also, why would you desire to keep the shards split? There's no reason.

[Deleted]

Welp, thanks for all the comments so far!

It does sound as if our raid needs more ranges first and foremost, the rest thats seperating us from killing Tectus, Brakenspore and Twins seems to be plain old skill (my Ret-paladin, iLvl 624 out-dps't most of the better-geared rest of the raid (Including two other, better geared Ret-palas) except a WW-monk and a Hunter, by about 1-3k dps one day after i raised him to 100...)

Our healers are a Resto, a Disci-priest and Holy-Paladin, I cant say much about them since I dont know how you could accurately gauge their skill.

Well, some people considered rerolling anyways, so for now we will recruit some more and just try until they are down.