Mythic Spellblade Help Requested - With Logs

[Broccoliz]

We are 4/10M (first three + Krosus) and got 28 pulls on Spellblade. We managed to arrive at the end of arcane phase a couple of times. Of course our healers were pretty oom :P So I'm hoping to get some tips on how we can lower the damage we are taking. We are doing the usual strategy of 4 then 10 for first marks and 5 then 10 for second marks, and we were getting good at adjusting on the fly.

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...ulty=5&wipes=1

Problems I have identified -
1) I am not 100% sure but I believe Frosts are touching too early (9) and the mark thus passes to a random as the partner is still debuffed.
2) Oom healers - maybe assign a group to heal first set of marks (right side) and a group to heal second set (left side)? Better CD use as well. Any suggestions on CDs? I think we will do sac/darkness/link at arcane detonations. Tranq the transition from frost to fire. And hymn during fire adds. Revival as emergency during frost detonation/frost phase?
3) Fire adds - we don't really have a solid plan for them besides poop them around the boss and then have people call out which they are interrupting. Is there a better way? It was suggested to stack them and rotate stuns but I haven't found any videos of that and it seems like the splash damage would destroy when pools drop. How can we clean this up?

Any tips at all based on our specific logs would be great. I really appreciate any insight. I'm glad we got to arcane phase but repeating it while oom won't work, so we have to heal more efficiently and take less damage when able I feel...

[KaPe]

Don't stack the fire adds. Pyroblasts are dangerous on their own, but the aura would absolutely murder you. It's already around 700k (x20) every 3 seconds with just six of them. Any extra buff is a huge damage spike and aura cannot be stunned/interrupted. We just put them in two clearly marked rows, right next to the boss. Six spots, close enough to optimize cleave damage and make it easier to stun them all at once. If you spread them out too much, the aura damage will certainly drive your healers oom.

You have people getting hit by two Marks of Frost at once. Either they are standing too close, or they are dropping debuff at the wrong time. They get a double tick, then explode and then probably get a double tick from the other pair. The explosion knocks you back a bit, so if no one moves fast enough, it's extra hit at 10+ stacks. It's probably a combination of all those things - people must keep an eye on the range check or they're doubling the damage they take.

You have people dying to Charge. It's a nasty spike damage that requires personal cooldowns, even a healing pot if you also have Frost on you. Fire dot does a ton of damage, charge hits hard and even initial dot application is painful. Also, at that point, if you have Mark of Frost and get charged, you can probably drop it if it keeps you alive. There's only a few seconds left so it won't kill anyone even if it jumps in some weird spot.

You have some healers going oom and yet they don't drink a mana pot. Maybe deciding that "it's already a wipe, it's not worth it", but it's terrible attitude. Non-Leytorrent mana pots are dirt cheap and you can't really afford to be stingy at this level.

No one uses any mana trinket, either. It's good for throughput, sure, but if you're useless for half of the fight, it might be worth to change? Admitedly, once you improve your Frost and Fire handling, you'll need a lot less healing, so messing with trinkets might not be needed at all.

[eschatological]

It's so, so so vitally important that your ranged don't take double ticks of the frost pulse from the Mark of Frost. Your soakers can't be too close, and they have to pop between pulses. There's plenty of time for them inbetween pulses to pop.

Another peripheral thing is that when they pop, it's important they don't get knocked back into the people who are picking up the debuff. If you're doing a front soak/back soak (as opposed to side to side), this is a serious potential problem for the front team if they simply strafe into each other. The knockback works on which way your back is facing, so if you strafe into your partner, you'll get knocked back into the group behind you, and a tick with 10 stacks of the debuff is going to wreck you. Instead, you need to turn and run into your partner, which may mean a lost GCD, but then you'll get knocked back to where you were standing, not behind you.

Also, pop personals during fire charges from Spellblade. I personally tell the frost marks to simply pop before the charges (and let them bounce to random people), so there's not frost mark targets taking huge damage while charges are going out. You can do this and allow it to bounce to random targets because the frost mark expires soon after, so the random bounce targets don't have to do anything with the mark.

[Broccoliz]

It's so, so so vitally important that your ranged don't take double ticks of the frost pulse from the Mark of Frost. Your soakers can't be too close, and they have to pop between pulses. There's plenty of time for them inbetween pulses to pop.

Another peripheral thing is that when they pop, it's important they don't get knocked back into the people who are picking up the debuff. If you're doing a front soak/back soak (as opposed to side to side), this is a serious potential problem for the front team if they simply strafe into each other. The knockback works on which way your back is facing, so if you strafe into your partner, you'll get knocked back into the group behind you, and a tick with 10 stacks of the debuff is going to wreck you. Instead, you need to turn and run into your partner, which may mean a lost GCD, but then you'll get knocked back to where you were standing, not behind you.

Also, pop personals during fire charges from Spellblade. I personally tell the frost marks to simply pop before the charges (and let them bounce to random people), so there's not frost mark targets taking huge damage while charges are going out. You can do this and allow it to bounce to random targets because the frost mark expires soon after, so the random bounce targets don't have to do anything with the mark.

That's really good advice. We are doing front/back soaks. I believe we can just swap our square so that instead of your partner being next to you they are behind you, so swap to the side method. I do think that was causing a lot of damage as after swapping at 10 stacks our front row was knocked back into the pulses. I feel easiest fix for this would be to adjust in this way, would you agree or what is the downside to that? I guess it makes dropping off the detonated slightly harder but not significantly harder...

And yeah, what you are suggesting with fire+frost is what I was thinking as well - if it's the end of marks debuff just toss it around Willy nilly and focus on surviving the charge.

Thanks for the great tips everyone. This really helps me identify areas of improvement.

- - - Updated - - -

Don't stack the fire adds. Pyroblasts are dangerous on their own, but the aura would absolutely murder you. It's already around 700k (x20) every 3 seconds with just six of them. Any extra buff is a huge damage spike and aura cannot be stunned/interrupted. We just put them in two clearly marked rows, right next to the boss. Six spots, close enough to optimize cleave damage and make it easier to stun them all at once. If you spread them out too much, the aura damage will certainly drive your healers oom.

You have people getting hit by two Marks of Frost at once. Either they are standing too close, or they are dropping debuff at the wrong time. They get a double tick, then explode and then probably get a double tick from the other pair. The explosion knocks you back a bit, so if no one moves fast enough, it's extra hit at 10+ stacks. It's probably a combination of all those things - people must keep an eye on the range check or they're doubling the damage they take.

You have people dying to Charge. It's a nasty spike damage that requires personal cooldowns, even a healing pot if you also have Frost on you. Fire dot does a ton of damage, charge hits hard and even initial dot application is painful. Also, at that point, if you have Mark of Frost and get charged, you can probably drop it if it keeps you alive. There's only a few seconds left so it won't kill anyone even if it jumps in some weird spot.

You have some healers going oom and yet they don't drink a mana pot. Maybe deciding that "it's already a wipe, it's not worth it", but it's terrible attitude. Non-Leytorrent mana pots are dirt cheap and you can't really afford to be stingy at this level.

No one uses any mana trinket, either. It's good for throughput, sure, but if you're useless for half of the fight, it might be worth to change? Admitedly, once you improve your Frost and Fire handling, you'll need a lot less healing, so messing with trinkets might not be needed at all.

Great advice, thank you. Is there a weak aura or addon you use so people know which marker to drop
their fire pool on? Like if you have searing brand you get a marker and go stand on that marker.

[eschatological]

That's really good advice. We are doing front/back soaks. I believe we can just swap our square so that instead of your partner being next to you they are behind you, so swap to the side method. I do think that was causing a lot of damage as after swapping at 10 stacks our front row was knocked back into the pulses. I feel easiest fix for this would be to adjust in this way, would you agree or what is the downside to that? I guess it makes dropping off the detonated slightly harder but not significantly harder...

And yeah, what you are suggesting with fire+frost is what I was thinking as well - if it's the end of marks debuff just toss it around Willy nilly and focus on surviving the charge.

Personally, I just told my raiders to be aware of how the mechanic worked and to not get knocked back. You just have to assess how your are. You can do side to side, front to back, or even a cross shape. The problem with side to side or cross might be placing detonates, and side-to-side detonation risks bad bounces if your non-soakers are sloppy with their positioning. CF the gif below I made for our raiders. Even though we didn't use it, the cross shape guarantees non-bad bounces, if that's an issue. I'd say side-to-side risks the most possibility of bad bounces, while the cross formation is hardest to not run thru people with stacks to place the detonates, which happens twice in the fight (once per frost phase). The front-to-back is about the middle of the road. It's all about the geometry of the square of people soaking, it was an interesting little mental exercise for our team to figure out which worked best for us.

http://imgur.com/R0P9YRt

[Broccoliz]

Personally, I just told my raiders to be aware of how the mechanic worked and to not get knocked back. You just have to assess how your are. You can do side to side, front to back, or even a cross shape. The problem with side to side or cross might be placing detonates, and side-to-side detonation risks bad bounces if your non-soakers are sloppy with their positioning. CF the gif below I made for our raiders. Even though we didn't use it, the cross shape guarantees non-bad bounces, if that's an issue. I'd say side-to-side risks the most possibility of bad bounces, while the cross formation is hardest to not run thru people with stacks to place the detonates, which happens twice in the fight (once per frost phase). The front-to-back is about the middle of the road. It's all about the geometry of the square of people soaking, it was an interesting little mental exercise for our team to figure out which worked best for us.

http://imgur.com/R0P9YRt

That image is awesome, thank you for sharing! Did you end up sticking with front/back then? And made sure raiders in the front positioned their backs? We've been having only one of the partners move to trigger the pass, so the other would want to be sure to shift their back even if not moving...

Is there a way to see who took damage from someone else's pulse? I think fixing that problem will help a lot as well.

[eschatological]

Yeah, we did front to back. And yes, if one person isn't moving (perhaps a healer) they also need to position their back.

Unfortunately, WCL lists all pulses of Mark of Frost as coming from "Environment" and not the player they're on. You just need to look at who is taking damage twice, and/or who is taking damage above 10 stacks.

[Broccoliz]

Yeah, we did front to back. And yes, if one person isn't moving (perhaps a healer) they also need to position their back.

Unfortunately, WCL lists all pulses of Mark of Frost as coming from "Environment" and not the player they're on. You just need to look at who is taking damage twice, and/or who is taking damage above 10 stacks.

Thank you very much for the help! We killed Spellblade our next night on her I really appreciate it.

[eschatological]

Congrats.

The middle of this instance is a huge pain in the ass, so good luck!