Thoughts on Avatar HC?

[Deleted]

Steadily progressed through HC ToS with guild since launch, but have hit a wall with Avatar HC. It seems in p2 we start dropping like flies. Tornadoes are very difficult to dodge on top of soaking / running out with immunities with Dark Mark. I know it got nerfed recently with Mark no longer targetting healers and a 25% damage reduction buff, but nados seems to cream us pretty fast. We seem to average heading into p2 at ~25% Avatar HP, sometimes a bit less, and if we lose more than a few DPS, it's a wipe.

[Spotnick]

Seems like you need more healers.

[Nitros14]

When we did it first week we wiped every time he was above 25%.

Tornadoes were the main culprit of wipes, just gotta spin your camera around and move. It's just a case of you gotta avoid them or you're going to wipe, not overtuned really.

[theburned]

Steadily progressed through HC ToS with guild since launch, but have hit a wall with Avatar HC. It seems in p2 we start dropping like flies. Tornadoes are very difficult to dodge on top of soaking / running out with immunities with Dark Mark. I know it got nerfed recently with Mark no longer targetting healers and a 25% damage reduction buff, but nados seems to cream us pretty fast. We seem to average heading into p2 at ~25% Avatar HP, sometimes a bit less, and if we lose more than a few DPS, it's a wipe.

Get a better strat for breaking the floors, the dps check right now is really easy, but we fucked up once last week in our heroic splits, so avatar was at like 40% when we dropped down, and just due to having a way better way to break the floors, it felt like we had so many tiles left.

[shyguybman]

My guild wiped on him for a few hours last week and this week we got him in a few pulls. The only real difference is we had 1 more healer (4) and made sure if people could solo soak they do so. Near the end we sacrificed some people to just solo soak and die so others could keep dpsing

[xcess]

Just did it in pug so yeah, I guess people in your guild just need to concentrate more on tornadoes. Sometimes you get unlucky and have several cut you off or you get blown back into one but they are pretty slow. Pull your cameras back and maybe have someone call out if one is going in melee

[PBitt]

Two things you could do:
1. Take advantage of that fact you can do so and force him into p2 right away and make your raiders learn how to do p2 properly that way instead of wasting the 4 or 5 minutes it takes to push him into p2. Keep doing this until people stop fucking up.
2. Simply sacrifice the people that get dark mark in p2, though this only works with bigger groups of around 20+. Sounds counter-intuitive, but it works extremely well if you enter the phase with boss at low hp (25% or less), and better yet if you do so cleanly and have brezes available. This way the only thing your raiders have to do is dodge tornadoes. If you're getting him to 25% before p2 your damage is pretty good and you should have him dead before he breaks more than 3 platforms: unless everyone is a complete idiot taking dark mark out of the equation makes p2 about as simple as it gets. If no one one else dies to random stuff you're going to get yourself a very easy kill.

[Minttunator]

Yeah my guild is definitely struggling on him as well, first real roadblock we've hit in ToS HC. That said, we've had several sub-5% wipes so I'm hoping we'll get him down tonight!

[powerpigs]

Much harder gear check than anything before. Upstairs is pretty simple with soaking the 3 pools and dodging unbound consistently, but downstairs is a mess and dark marks are really disruptive.

1. Have people with immunities solo soak their marks. The knock up is super disruptive to everyone they share it with, especially with tornados.

2. Don't bring too many melee. This fight sucks for melee with all of their forced movement. Unbound chaos also causes melee problems more frequently than ranged.

3. If too many dps are dead in p1 you're going to die to maiden shield.

4. We've used bloodlust at the beginning and the end and it's really a matter of your raid comp. at the beginning when everyone has their cds going is probably best for optimal dps, but delaying it until downstairs can help your healers and execute damage too

[Deleted]

Start sacrificing people if the tornados are killing you when the marks come in. Otherwise it's simply about dodging a fast moving swirly, it's not that hard to be honest but you need to remain aware of your surroundings, they can come in fast.

You shouldn't have deaths in phase 1. If you do, and it's causing you to enter P2 at high HP on the Avatar, then you need to clean up the first phase. It's entirely predictable.

Entering Phase 2 with 25% or less is perfect and you should be able to kill him in about 3 rupture realities.

[Holovik]

Killed him after about 30 wipes with a pug this weekend.

Some takeaways:
1. No one can die in p1. You need that DPS to get him sub 30% before the phase switch to make p2 doable. I think he force switches to p2 if he reaches 20% so aim for just above if you have the DPS. In my kill we got him to 24% at the switch.
2. On the same note as takeaway 1, you want all your brezzes for p2 so try to keep everyone alive.
3. If you have personal CDs in p2 to avoid the soak, USE THEM.
4. We soaked the first 2 rounds and then sacrificed people and brezzed them if they were healers. DPS check was not a problem, it was just healing.
5. Comp was 2/4/12, seemed to be a good balance of heals and DPS. 2/3/9 would probably be good as well.

[Deleted]

Killed him after about 30 wipes with a pug this weekend.

Some takeaways:
1. No one can die in p1. You need that DPS to get him sub 30% before the phase switch to make p2 doable. I think he force switches to p2 if he reaches 20% so aim for just above if you have the DPS. In my kill we got him to 24% at the switch.
2. On the same note as takeaway 1, you want all your brezzes for p2 so try to keep everyone alive.
3. If you have personal CDs in p2 to avoid the soak, USE THEM.
4. We soaked the first 2 rounds and then sacrificed people and brezzed them if they were healers. DPS check was not a problem, it was just healing.
5. Comp was 2/4/12, seemed to be a good balance of heals and DPS. 2/3/9 would probably be good as well.

This was very much so our takeaway from the whole experience as well. We really hope to take his down next reset. Thanks for the input dude.

- - - Updated - - -

but downstairs is a mess and dark marks are really disruptive.


2. Don't bring too many melee. This fight sucks for melee with all of their forced movement. Unbound chaos also causes melee problems more frequently than ranged.

Melee stacking was a big issue for us actually, we had practically no range online that night. We also used BL at the beginning. Thanks for the pointers!

[Kluian05]

Good DPS makes this fight night and day. I tried to pug this on my DK and our group wiped for hours and rarely ever reached P2 properly. Then I got in a good group on my mage with nice DPS (22% P2 start) and we 2 shot it.

My guild also killed it this week for the first time (2/3/10) hitting 25% P2 transtion. The change to Dark Matter with only DPS getting it and less damage is fairly substantial. If you have a lot of DPS with immunities that helps immensely (mages, hunters, ret pali, rogue cloak?). On our kill we did this rotation:

1st set: Hope some DPS immunity, rest soak
2nd set: Have one person or two people suicide, battle rez them.
3rd set: All suicide, focus boss.
Boss should be dead by 4th set.

Mages, Druids, DKs, Warriors, Monks are also good classes to help soak Dark Matter. They can blink/charge/AMS/port to make the punt up mechanic negligible, allowing them to focus on the boss.

DPS should aim to get him to 25% before P2 starts. Its very important you stress that no one hits tornadoes. It's way too taxing for healers to keep them up. For example, when running out for his explosion ability, its better to take more upfront damage and fall in lava (not run as far as you could) rather than run into a tornado trying to get out if you have to choose. Also make sure the raid and tanks coordinate before hand which way they are going to go after the platform starts to break. My raid we always went clockwise so the DPS/Heals ran out on the correct side with the tank to get back on the boss.

[The Cheat]

Is there a set threshold where the Maiden of Valor will instantly die even if the Avatar is not at full energy? I haven't seen this in Heroic vids or Alpha's Mythic stream but on normal she seems to instantly die for us after dropping below 12%, and we can't seem to reliably avoid this so he typically heals for an annoying chunk if DoTs did too much work. We even kept our DoT-heavy classes off her last night and she still inexplicably died without warning and with the Avatar only at 78 energy.

[Jastall]

Ph1 is mostly on tanks, and not fucking up the blades really. The soaks aren't very hard, usually 2 people on each is enough for them to survive even if barely.

Ph2 can get hectic, tornadoes and marks will wipe careless/tunneling raiders. Forcing ph2 to practice it a bit might help, but really it's down to having the boss low enough, then dodging shit. Sacrifice the Marks once the boss is low enough, especially in larger raid sizes.

Also, composition matters. Too many melees will fuck you over on this fight, because blades can leave pools close to boss (which will make tanks hate all of you), because soaks are usually ranged, because they cant DPS during Rupture Realities, and because Unbound Chaos is more of a pain the more melee you have. Our raid assigns quadrants of the room where people stay (so long as no Maiden's involved ofc) so the Unbound Chaos is evenly divided.

[Radio]

Is there a set threshold where the Maiden of Valor will instantly die even if the Avatar is not at full energy? I haven't seen this in Heroic vids or Alpha's Mythic stream but on normal she seems to instantly die for us after dropping below 12%, and we can't seem to reliably avoid this so he typically heals for an annoying chunk if DoTs did too much work. We even kept our DoT-heavy classes off her last night and she still inexplicably died without warning and with the Avatar only at 78 energy.

Avatar will auto-consume her at ~20% health (of his own health, not hers) iirc. We had to switch to her on normal because Avatar was going down way too fast.

[The Cheat]

Avatar will auto-consume her at ~20% health (of his own health, not hers) iirc. We had to switch to her on normal because Avatar was going down way too fast.

Strange. We had him around 29% or so when she died. Alpha also just had their Maiden inexplicably die at around 2% health despite Avatar's energy not being quite maxed. Possibly a bit buggy?

EDIT: I definitely misestimated. Ours hit 20% on the dot. Makes sense.

[Sierra85]

heroic avatar is currently my favourite fight in ToS. really fun