Mythic Archimonde - DPS Question

[Scyclone]

Hello Everyone,

Finally on the last baddie of the expansion. We are preparing to clear once or twice more and then just go full tilt into Archimonde for the kill. With that having been said, we are trying to find a good class/role balance for handling the various DPS checks/requirements of Archimonde.

We will be using 2 tanks, 3 healers, and the rest all DPS.

At the moment, we are thinking of bringing 6 melee and 9 ranged. So as I try to get this situated, I have a few questions regarding our composition and roles for each person.

• Should I bring in any specific amount of AOE? (Currently, I am thinking of assigning an Unholy DK, Fury Warrior, Boomkin, and either another Boomkin or Windwalker monk to this portion).
• Do we need anyone specifically assigned for priority adds, such as Hunters and what not, or will we need our entire group of DPS to focus on the Deathcallers/Overfiends?
• Given the mechanics of the fight, I am trying to see what our best options are to still kill adds but put a lot of focus into just damaging Archimonde. Is this the incorrect way of thinking for this fight? Should we be slowing up and moving a bit off of Archimonde to focus on adds?
• All DPS will be dealing with the Orbs, Crystal and Infernals in P3 as top priorities, then focus on the boss.

Any thoughts on setting up a good composition or am I overthinking it a bit?

Thanks.

[Deleted]

Gear up any Mage/Rogue/wlock alts in the coming resets you are gonna do, other classes are useless. Adds die to cleave just focus the boss.

[Adramelch]

Gear up any Mage/Rogue/wlock alts in the coming resets you are gonna do, other classes are useless.

Yeah boomkins (for example) are so useless in this fight. Right.

@Scyclone: Playing Fury as a Warrior in this fight is kind of a waste. The fight has a lot of cleave (through the Doomfire, the Deathcallers, the Sources etc) and given that P3 is also kind of a run against the clock, Arms excels on it. Boomkins are also really strong on this fight (strong burst for p1, decent priority damage on deathcallers and pretty strong on infernals in p3), so I'd add another boomkin into the mix since you have that option.

In regards to target switching on adds, the 1st Deathcaller can be cleaved down in p1 (since the tank has the anti-shadow buff), but in general they need to be focused down by everyone. Overfiends die fast from cleave, but need to get interrupted as the cast hurts quite a bit.

[steveh]

Depends on the strategy you go for. If you are trying to do the 1 doomfire strat, bring a bunch of burst classes like arcane mage, rogue, aff lock, etc. If you are doing 2 doomfires, then it doesn't matter as much what you get in comp.

AOE doesn't matter that much except for clearing the dogs and if you have a few boomkins, its not too much of an issue.

Overall you are probably overthinking it unless you are going for 1 doomfire and then you need to plan and see if you can meet the dps check.

[Sandraudiga]

As long as you can burst the boss to 70% with one doomfire, you are golden. Saves alot of stress for the rest of the upstairs part.

If your healers are good and you have decent amounts of cleave damage you can cleave down the deathcallers, if you don't then assign enough people without cleave to hard swap to him. Can do the same with the overfiend if you have ranged that are on the ball with interrupts.

Can stack in closer than normal to help cleave/aoe down the dogs, preferable to make sure your second ring explodes on the boss alone.

Downstairs, get people with grips/interrupts to separate the infernals ASAP so they don't heal. Use as many people as you need to focus them down before they start pulsing, probably nearly everyone in your first few kills. This is super important for the third and fourth waves as they have 4 infernals and not 3. Second and fourth waves of infernals have a melee use the ring and stand on the far front left part of the platform so the ring explodes on the boss and not the crystal.

If you have spare combat rezzes you can sacrifice a tank to the crystal, just make sure to not heal him so he dies before he gets pushed off the edge. You can angle yourself to hit rocks, but easier just not heal him. Crystal dies with the tank so if you do do this ignore the crystal and gain a fair bit of boss damage.

Void stars are super important to get down ASAP, but they have next to no health so it shouldn't ever be a problem.

Aim to kill the boss before the 5th wave of infernals, or at least before they start pulsing. If you get a good handle on the infernal damage you can get classes that sacrifice alot of damage when target swapping to tunnel the boss instead.

[Khebul]

You want as much ST as possible while still able to deal with phase 3 adds. All-out AoE is useless, but cleave (specifically ranged cleave) is more than welcome. There are 3 specs who can carry you through phase 3 during progression: mm hunters, boomkins and destro warlocks. They excel at priority target damage and target switching.

P1 priorities depend on your strat and comp. BL@start (one doomfire): Archimonde -> everything else (assume mages and hunters can cleave down first doomfire fast enough). No BL : Doomfire -> Deathcaller -> Archimonde

P2 priorities are always the same: Deathcaller -> Overfiend -> Archimonde -> dogs

P3 priorities depend on comp: everyone helps on infernals and non-sac Sources, void stars should be easily killable only by hunters/boomkins/warlocks if you have enough of them.

[VladimirM]

For ranged - we have 3 warlocks (2 affliction, 1 destruction), 2-3 mages (all arcane), 2-3 hunters (all Marksmanship), 1 Elemental Shaman + on last kill we had a boomkin instead of a mage. Having more than 1 destruction warlock is waste of dps (both for first and last phase) since adds are sniped by Arms Warrior's cleave (Sweeping strikes) and 1 shadowburn + Chimaera shots. In last phase with proper dps duties, you can kill all Infernals very easy with similar setups.
For mele, we have 1 warrior (arms), 1 deathknigh (unholy with Sindragosa's breath as lvl 100 talent), 1 rogue (Subtlety), 1 Retribution, 1 Enhancement Shaman, 1 Windwalker monk.
Our tanks are Protection paladin who is solotanking phase one while Blood Deathknight is busy with soaking doomfire.

With this setup we are doing 1 doomfire strat with everything on pull (bloodlust, ring, all cooldowns) and zoning into Twisting Nether before third wrought chaos.
In twisting nether phase, we are killing first and second Source of chaos, ignoring third and forth (tank is soulstoned and aiming to hit that rock in back so he isn't pushed off and is just killed off by beam damage). That gives us free time to burn boss without problems and kill him before we are overrun with Infernals. Your mages and rogues can solo Marks with Iceblock/Cloak for more dmg onto boss/less running/pushbacks etc... When boss is few percentages away from being dead, start sacrificing dpsers who get Mark debuff while others are freely killing boss/infernals... When you learn how to deal with 2 OHSHIT moments where you get conduits, dance infernals and orbs at same/similar time, you will deal with boss easy in last phase

Good luck, hope any of this helps

[Deja Thoris]

AoE is completely unneeded. The deathcallers get focussed at the right times and as long as the overfiend is interrupted it can be cleaved with the rest.

If you are making the 1 doomfire check easily and consistently then you can tell the DK to spec out of BoS if you want more add damage. The only time we actively try to clear up the adds is when the ring is popped at 55%(ish) to clean up the adds to get the ring to explode on the boss (this is important) and when he transitions at 40%. It's always just cleaner to have the adds dead asap when you phase imo though its not a game breaker.

For the nether adds you don't need a "composition" but having assignments helps. We generally have 2 dks grip infernals to front left and right and hunters distract ones to the back left / right markers. Honestly once you've got the idiot check out of the way and people kill stars and don't die to the dance etc the infernals are the only true wipe mechanic. Learn to pool resources for them / have CD's / pot where needed and so on.

[Halwyn]

Ppl you might want 1 doomfire strat

- Arcane Mages - as much as you can get, insane P1 burst
- Warlocks - Affliction if you're struggling with P1 burst, Destruction is monster at killing infernals
- Sub Rogues - same as mages
- Boomkin or two - nice all-around spec, good P1 burst, nice passive AoE and good damage on infernals
- Hunters - Voidstars and Infernals damage, bonus points for an ability to taunt infernals apart, also good at soaking Doomfire (tip: assign each hunter to a voidstar on the back, exact same spawn pattern)
- DK - while lacking burst (can be fixed with BoS though) can help a lot with the dogs using necroblight. Gripping infernals out as well, if you can, I'd suggest you go with 1 blood and 1 uh
- Arms Warrior - passive cleavage all around, also nice to have on the last phase
- SP - CoP is strangely good at infernals, while also maintaining good boss damage and some spread AoE with Cascade. But don't expect it to switch a lot.

Other specs are somewhat "meh".

[shi]

sub rogues are crazy good on this fight. their p1 burst is second only to mages, and they can line CDs up with second doomfire if you decide to go down that route. they can also line shadow dance up with every wave of infernals.

[Russia]

We will be using 2 tanks, 3 healers, and the rest all DPS.

God Bless, tired of seeing people on here trying to 4 and even 5 heal the fight at 740 ilvl.

[Relapses]

God Bless, tired of seeing people on here trying to 4 and even 5 heal the fight at 740 ilvl.

If your guild's DPS sucks to a point you can't push a single Doomfire even with Lust/Hero on the pull, it's not the worst idea since you can just handle the 2nd Doomfire and use it in P3 instead.

[Dracodraco]

Archimonde has a very, very relaxed setup-requirement for an end boss. You can do the boss just fine with pretty much any combination of classes (as long as you're not stacking an obscene amount of something stupid such as say, feral druids or shadow priests). This held true for early progress as well, by the way - it was truly one of the best designed end encounters I've progressed yet. It's not just the ring and Ilvl upgrade that made pretty much all classes viable on the boss (unlike fucking Blackhand and it's 3-hunter 3-boomkin 3-rogue bullshittery).

That being said, if you have them available:

1-2 DKs will make infernal splitting a lot easier and quicker in P3. With 1x DK, have tanks on one side to taunt in an infernal, and the DK on the other side in melee to grip one, to split apart the 3x infernals quickly. With 2x DKs, obviously have one on each side.

1-2x hunters will do the same for the ranged infernals - place one on each side to deal with an infernal each with distracting shot, and have them obliterate the void star on their side aswell (leaving just the middle-back one for the rest of the ranged, and the two melee ones).


A boomkin can carry the damage of an infernal wave to an obscene degree. I've seen boomkins pump out +4M damage in a single infernal wave (and the waves of 4x only HAS 10M hp total, unless they heal) - that's 40% of the damage needed. If you've got multiple boomkins, make sure to have them stagger their cooldowns, and tell them to not use them with the ring to max their DPS - two boomkins, one for each wave of 4x infernals you'll likely do will make P3 a ton easier.

Apart from that, there's really not anything else the fight "requires" or "needs" - stack burst classes if you wish to go for 1x doomfire in P3, have a holy paladin in the healing team and you're pretty much set. If you have 2x hunters, 2x dks and 2x boomkins to optimise the infernals in P3, you also have an absolute shitton of AOE (2x DK diseases, 2x starfalls) for the dogs, along with great cleave for deathcallers (2x hunters with Chimera shot cleave and Aimed/Kill shot sniping at +80% hp and -35% hp respectively on the deathcaller/overfiend).

One thing to note if you're bringing a lot of rogues, you want them to be on the side opposite of the tanks in P3 - they can't backstab if they're on the same side as the tank, so more than 4 rogues does become a slight issue (as you still want the DK on the side opposite tanks aswell, for the grip).

[Deleted]

You dont really need to focus/aoe very hard for the dogs. If you are gonna encourage aoe it could be towards the end of p2 so you go into p3 as clean as possible.

But we leave the dog killing to hunter barrage, dk nec plague and boomkins.

In p1 you can completely ignore the deathcaller. Let it die to passive cleave. The buff from the pillars make the tank immune to shadow damage.
P2 We only focus them down if the tank needs help. If you want to max damage on the boss have your raid swap off them around execute and let the spriests, hunters, warriors finish it off.

The overfiend dies to passive cleave too. Just assign a stun/interrupt rotation on it. You will want ranged to help out interrupting when you have to move.

For the stars in p3 just assign 1 dps per star and that person is responsible for that star. Mages can slow with glyph of slow, if you have a a druid they can faerie fire slow them but they die so fast anyway.

The only time i have seen people stop/slow dps is just before 2nd wrought/chains. If you push the boss past 56% the adds will start spawning and having to dodge dogs/void zones during wrought and chains will be a pain in the ass. I only recommend this if you struggle with that combo. We just stack Rally + Healing Cd during it to compensate.

Bring whatever your best players are but if you can get
2 dks, 3 hunters, 2 boomkins you wont have much issues if they know their roles on adds

[psyquest]

We did it with 4 shamans and 1 SP and 7 melees. It can be hairy in phase 1 with all the melee, but we managed.

in short, the compo is rather lax, bring the best players.

[Dracodraco]

We did it with 4 shamans and 1 SP and 7 melees. It can be hairy in phase 1 with all the melee, but we managed.

in short, the compo is rather lax, bring the best players.

How is Melee ever an "issue" in P1? We've done it with 8 melee and not noticed a difference before. I can't think of a reason why melee would be bad in this fight.

[miffy23]

How is Melee ever an "issue" in P1? We've done it with 8 melee and not noticed a difference before. I can't think of a reason why melee would be bad in this fight.

Only if they're bad and struggle to spread appropriately for Wrought.
That being said more ranged is a little preferable for P3 for Infernals as well as Star handling. It's just more effective.

As others have said your exact class/spec comp is almost irrelevant at 740 with rings, as long as your players are decent and know when to press what buttons you should not struggle with DPS. Some Destros/Boomies are nice for P3. You should not stack too much single target burst just to skip through P1, it should be doable without optimizing for that, instead build your composition around P3, P1 should be doable with almost any mixed setup at this ilvl.

[Deleted]

Our first kill setup was - (Yes we 1 doomfired it)

Tanks: Blood DK and Guardian Druid

Healers: Discipline Priest, Mistweaver Monk, Holy Paladin, Restoration Shaman

Melee DPS: Feral Druid, Arms Warrior x2, Retribution Paladin x2, Subtlety Rogue

Ranged DPS: Arcane Mage x3, Markmanship Hunter x2 and Boomkin x2