M Reaver - forced barrage

[evotech]

Hey guys,

Just wondering if you could offer tips on a strategy I've heard about for M Reaver, where all of the dps stands on one side, and then the healers on the opposite. As a result, we force barrage to a certain location and none of the dps have to move for them.

Has this worked better for some of you? Would you guys recommend trying this out? Is there a video maybe that you know of showing this?

We have killed Reaver before but we still have dps dying to barrage on basically every single cast so it's a bit tricky.

Thanks for your responses.

[Ebalina]

Finding a tactic that caters to bad players wont help you latter on in the instance.

Your sensible option should be to just replace these people that constantly die to barrage even if its for abit lower in terms of dps players.
Dead dps does 0 dps.

But if you really wanna force the barrage just put the healers on 1 side since it only targets them as a priority mark and unless all of them are dead it will always go to a healer.
And you are done but this means each barrage your healers will have to move lowering the trough put of each one of them and while this isn't really healing intensive fight if ppl don't pay attention and are not spreading properly they can still die to multiple stacks cause they clump on each other.

[Deleted]

Ever since we found out the barrage targets healers only we have been baiting to them and never looked back since.

Having it so your ranged dps doesnt have to move helps alot and having planned healer and defensive cds for everything really sorts out the issue of them having to move.

We split half our healers on the left of the boss and the other half on the right. This way only half of your healers need to run at any one time.

Being close to the boss makes it alot easier for them to side step it. However they need to remember to get back into position after the barrage. The only issue here is bombs because if they drop on the healer sides dps need to be active and move towards them to dps.

Good luck on Reaver

[Deleted]

I guess you could, but wouldn´t overthink it.

People just need to learn to stand semi close to boss (but spread for Unstable orb) and when barrage is being cast where they are standing, they should keep walking until its over. Alot of times people think they are far enough out and get hit by the side of barrage.

[Youn]

 <- T      D D 
    T  Rm D D
        H  D D
   X<- H H ->

That is pretty much the formation you will form. Tanks run out behind them. Healers either run past melee or left and right. Melee and Ranged never stand near healers. Collect loot.

Note: We put a hunter at X to kill bombs that occur far out behind healers.

[Deleted]

nice for Speed kills, where it helps that the ranges dont have to move.
Tanks in front of the Boss.
Healers stack behind the Boss. ( not so far away, you have to get out of the Barrage cone)
raid split on both sites (grp 1+3 on the left and 2+4 on the right), remember you have to kill the bombs.

Good luck

[Kanika]

We've always taken advantage of this strat, and as Shadohw said, splitting them in to 2 groups either side of the boss means you'll always have healers free to cast at any given moment, so i'd recommend that.

We just have them close-ish to the boss, and the rest of the dps spread around in an arc between the 2 groups. Set a couple of markers for where the healers need to go back to each time, and that should keep the dps away from the bad stuff (or at least give them no excuse!). Just remember that the ground gets pretty full of fire for them so your raid may need to adjust if they need to. Be sure you also look out for bombs spawning behind them and have some take care of them.

Just remind the rest of the raid that they know where the healers are, so its their responsibility to stay in range for healing.

It's a very easy tactic to take advantage of, and speeds up the fight a lot. I dont really see any reason not to do it that way other than proving that your raid team are capable of moving properly

[evotech]

These are really helpful, thank you. I like the healer split on both sides idea and dps behind. Let's see how it goes tonight hehe

[Aktec]

Having the healers split either side of the boss and dps behind definatly seems like the easiest tactic. 2 things you have to pay attention though, make sure the healers actually stick to their markers because if you get 1 healer out of position and the barrage goes towards the dps who aren't expecting it, deaths become likely. Also the range dps has to get closer to the boss to be in healing range, especially during pounding.

[WarcraftMages]

It's a bad idea to have healers stack and all others stack because bombs and blitz and other stuff scatter the raid to different directions. The proper way to deal with this knowledge is to have healers try to be in the middle spaces between four groups so that they minimize barrage's importance.

[Tharkkun]

We tried it finally this week after our raid leader was out sick. So much easier.

Rather than have 1/2 your raid moving you have a total of 4 or 5 people moving. Your risk of unstable orb crossover is far less. Blitz goes towards the wall he's furthest away from so you can plan accordingly based on where he's tanked.

We did 1 healer clump group ourselves. If you have a monk, they can stand with the ranged/melee.

[Youn]

Be warned Monks do not count as healers. If you try to do this with all monk healers. She will pick a random person to barrage. Not necessarily the monk.

[Dracodraco]

Finding a tactic that caters to bad players wont help you latter on in the instance.

That doesn't really make sense. The guild I lead tend to rank in or slightly outside of the top 100, and we very much do go for the most retard-proof strategy that we can possibly come up with. This gives better chances of killing a boss, quicker progress, and helps identify what can be key issues in a fight. Using any tactic that makes a fight simpler should ALWAYS be used, because it makes it easier to get a kill. Saying "WELL THEY SHOULD BE ABLE TO DEAL WITH THE MECHANIC!" is dumb.

Take Fel Lord as an example. The standard tactic to kill it before the current "immunity-soak" tactic became well known involved the people who got sent downstairs lining up on the same positions as the seeds, giving them all ample space to dodge everyone elses waves. The one issue being that by the time you got to the third wave, so many things where spewing shit absolutely everywhere that dodging it all and not exploding your raid was incredibly difficult. The first 30 kills or so, the attitude was: "Well, it's got to be done, get good or we'll keep sending down new people untill we find someone that has the micro-management skills to dodge all of the rings and waves so we can kill the boss".

When the *immunity strategy* became known, where you stack everyone going downstairs tight in one spot then use personal immunities to block the damage from everyone elses waves exploding on you as you exit, the fight went from being pretty fucking difficult to execute due to the downstairs phase, to being a simple DPS-race because you removed the difficult part of the fight.

Now, would you also recommend a guild progressing on Fel Lord to use the first variant of the strategy, involving dancing with waves and rings downstairs and trying to line up so they won't explode all over everyone else? Or would you recommend them to use the EASIER strategy of abusing immunities to ignore the mechanic?

If it's the latter, why wouldn't you recommend using healers to bait the barrage, making the encounter simpler/easier?

[Youn]

You play the encounter as written. It's on your group (or a previous group) to figure out what works. It's called strategy.

If the observed behavior is it only attacks healers and it hasn't been shown to be an exploit, why wouldn't you use it?

[Will]

We tried baiting the healers but it just made things more confusing so instead we identified the people who kept ****ing up and replaced them. Fight's a good'un now.

[Nzete]

We put marks on the healers' heads, so that any dps who knew that they were bad could know if they were lining up with healers. Given that hunters can't be convinced to stand close (whether or not they have the Archimonde trinket that is evidence that Blizzard hates healers), standing on the opposite side of the boss from the hunters is dead dps (because they can't figure out how to move closer even if they are dying).

[Cheze]

we usually have healers stand to the left and right of the boss, while ranged stand opposite the tanks.

in practice it eventually gets mucked up due to fire/blitz and general movement badness, but it lets the DPS get ~30s of uninterrupted opener time and at this point that's basically enough to guarantee a kill

[Soulzar]

Finding a tactic that caters to bad players wont help you latter on in the instance.

Using suboptimal raid positioning and strategy is also not going to help later on in the instance.

[RyanEX]

Using suboptimal raid positioning and strategy is also not going to help later on in the instance.

Very helpful. You should write a guide.