Razorscale Sentinals and Enrage

[jpwkeeper]

Last night we were working on getting our group's first downing of Razorscale (10 man, but using mostly 10 man geared toons). On our first attempt, it took us 4 ground phases to get her to 50%. We wiped at 10; it was so close!

However, it brought up two questions.

1. She went WELL past the 10 minute enrage timer. When we wiped she still hadn't enraged. Is time added after you get her to the ground?
2. We had NO sentinals, and keep in mind that we had 4 phases of adds. I know RNG can be cruel or it can be kind, but that seemed way TOO lucky.
3. The next round through, we got a sentinal every single ground phase. Once again, the RNG can be cruel or kind, but having these two happen back to back is pretty long odds.
4. We've also had RZ enrage in the air well before her enrage timer hits.

So my questions are:

1. How does the enrage timer work exactly? We've seen both short enrages in the air and long enrages on the ground.
2. Has anyone explored the possibility that the sentinal adds may not be random, but are triggered by something?

I mean, it took everyone a while to figure out the mechanic of tanking XT near the trash piles to prevent them from spawning adds, so I'm wondering if there isn't something that actually triggers sentinals to appear.

[Bainz]

The enrage timer was nerfed into the ground.

The adds are random from what I've seen.

Honestly though, how many Healers/Tanks are you running with, four ground phases is quite a while...

[jpwkeeper]

The enrage timer was nerfed into the ground.

The adds are random from what I've seen.

Honestly though, how many Healers/Tanks are you running with, four ground phases is quite a while...

Our DPS is 10 man geared and not even close to BiS at that, so please do not expect us to crank out the 6,500DPS each needed to get her down in 2 phases (we were less than 1% away from getting her in 3 one run last night, but that was with Heroism on the first ground phase, which we normally don't have available since we rarely run with a shammy). We run with 2 tanks and 3 healers. But that wasn't my question; that topic is being heavily discussed in other threads.

I know the enrage timer was nerfed, but it does NOT appear to be a flat 10 minute enrage. It appears to be less than 10 minutes in the air and more than 10 minutes if she gets to the ground. Does anyone know if this is true and, if it is, what the actual enrage times are?

[Bunta]

If I remember correctly, the enrage timer is a 10 minute one.

If your using Deadly Boss Mods for the timer, it has yet to be updated with new enrage timer. Same with XT so it will warn you Razorscale is going to enrage but infact you still have pleanty of time left. Bigwigs has an up to date timer and will show you the time correctly if you want to install that as well, or if you want to wait until DBM is updated just use the /sw 10:00 option to start the ingame stopwatch at ten mins and track it yourself.

[sharkee]

As far as I'm aware it's 10 minutes from the start of the fight regardless how many tries you need to get him down to 50%

local enrageTimer			= mod:NewEnrageTimer(600)

This is what it says in the DBM file for Razorscale, there's nothing else there about various other enrage timers.

Addspawns are indeed random as far as I can see. We have fights where we have none and fights where we get 3. They shouldn't be that big of a deal really, unless you're running with a melee only group.

[Iradain]

Not sure how it works now that the enrage timer was changed but when ulduar came out it there was 2 enrage timers, 1 in the air phase and 1 for when she was permanently grounded.
Anyway rng is rng and you should tell your dps to shape up.

[Cerelli]

you might consider doing the fight with 2 healers instead. As long as people stay out of the fire the fight doesn't require much healing. Also have your healers throw out as much damage as they can while the boss is on the ground.

How are you handling the spears? Using them immediately or waiting between trash waves?

[imabanana]

I've seen Razorscale beeing downed in 13'31, so it can't be 10 minutes now

[jpwkeeper]

While I appreciate the tips and do not appreciate the criticism of my DPSers, as we are not all over-geared people who raid 20 hours a week, allow me to restate the question (one or two of you actually did answer what I was asking):

1. I have twice seen razorscale enrage in the air well before 10 minutes. I have now seen Razorscale on the ground go well past 10 minutes without enraging. Does anyone know for sure how the enrage timer works on her? I'm fairly certain it is not a flat 10 minutes. Either the encounter is bugging back and forth or the enrage timer is not that simple.

2. The current party line is that sentinals are totally random, but has anyone considered that perhaps they are not? Blizzard hasn't told us they are random; we as a community conjectured this.

The thing at makes me wonder this is the fact that, for a week or two, nobody seemed to know that XT only spawned adds from piles that were a minimum distance away, thus the early strats to kill him were much more difficult than they needed to be (everyone recommended tanking him either in the middle or at the base of the stairs, leaving you with either 3 or 4 piles of adds, until someone said "Hey, my pile didn't spawn adds twice in a row" and got people thinking).

Obviously some of you don't have the answers, but I'm not asking for RZ strats here or asking you to diagnose problems in my raid. I'm trying to understand things I've seen in an encounter that don't seem to make sense, and may point toward a much easier strategy. As it stands right now, RZ is much, much more difficult than XT given the proper XT strategy. That could mean that we've been doing RZ wrong all this time.

Likewise with Ignis. The strat to kill him up until recently was to have the raid on the floor, and the aggro dump of the construct was seen as an annoyance. Now the idea of having the raid on a ledge, which means that when the construct dumps aggro and runs for the healer he ends up right where you want him (in the water) makes that fight a lot easier because the OT can just let him go and get ready for the next add.

Blizzard is building these mechanics into these fights and not telling anyone. They're waiting to see if we can figure them out. However the early guilds doing these fights have mostly been blowing through them in 25 man gear on 10 man and/or have been people who put in enough hours that they're very, very good at what they do, so they can actually beat the fights without the mechanic in place. But with them the fights become much easier. XT is literally a 1 shot boss now, easier than FL, because we know the secret.

[evoslayer]

LOL at 6500 dps each required to get her down in 2 phases, more like 4-5k each, MAYBE

[Sausagefan]

While I appreciate the tips and do not appreciate the criticism of my DPSers, as we are not all over-geared people who raid 20 hours a week, allow me to restate the question (one or two of you actually did answer what I was asking):

1. I have twice seen razorscale enrage in the air well before 10 minutes. I have now seen Razorscale on the ground go well past 10 minutes without enraging. Does anyone know for sure how the enrage timer works on her? I'm fairly certain it is not a flat 10 minutes. Either the encounter is bugging back and forth or the enrage timer is not that simple.

2. The current party line is that sentinals are totally random, but has anyone considered that perhaps they are not? Blizzard hasn't told us they are random; we as a community conjectured this.

The thing at makes me wonder this is the fact that, for a week or two, nobody seemed to know that XT only spawned adds from piles that were a minimum distance away, thus the early strats to kill him were much more difficult than they needed to be (everyone recommended tanking him either in the middle or at the base of the stairs, leaving you with either 3 or 4 piles of adds, until someone said "Hey, my pile didn't spawn adds twice in a row" and got people thinking).

Obviously some of you don't have the answers, but I'm not asking for RZ strats here or asking you to diagnose problems in my raid. I'm trying to understand things I've seen in an encounter that don't seem to make sense, and may point toward a much easier strategy. As it stands right now, RZ is much, much more difficult than XT given the proper XT strategy. That could mean that we've been doing RZ wrong all this time.

Likewise with Ignis. The strat to kill him up until recently was to have the raid on the floor, and the aggro dump of the construct was seen as an annoyance. Now the idea of having the raid on a ledge, which means that when the construct dumps aggro and runs for the healer he ends up right where you want him (in the water) makes that fight a lot easier because the OT can just let him go and get ready for the next add.

Blizzard is building these mechanics into these fights and not telling anyone. They're waiting to see if we can figure them out. However the early guilds doing these fights have mostly been blowing through them in 25 man gear on 10 man and/or have been people who put in enough hours that they're very, very good at what they do, so they can actually beat the fights without the mechanic in place. But with them the fights become much easier. XT is literally a 1 shot boss now, easier than FL, because we know the secret.

You're not appreciating the criticism of your DPS, but it's the problem with your raid =/ The human mind is extremely inventive, as it can create patterns out of literally nothing. Most of the "strats" thought up for boss fights are moot if your DPS, tanks and heals are actually performing.

And your Ignis comment, I've never seen or heard of anything involving a ledge. It's not hard to pick up mobs.

[Saonserey]

We had an enrage timer of 15 mins when we did Iron Dwarf, Medium-Rare the other day. Can't really tell you anything past that though, she's usually dead in her second ground phase.

[Dumbhammer]

I'm not dissing your DPS, but simply put if it takes them 4 phases to get her down, it's not geared enough. Go do more naxx, and gear everyone up.
My guild does not do 6k, we have 2 healers / 2 tanks, and the 6 dps do 2-3k dps on this fight. On our first attempt 1 day after Ulduar, it took us around 6 wipes to get Razorscale down, but even then it only took us 2 phases.

Basically
- Consider 2 healers. This is entirely possible if people watch aggro (let tanks pick adds) and dont stand in the fire.
- Get better gear from Naxx. It's called progression for a reason.

[openair]

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/th...74158165&sid=1

"The enrage time for the Razorscale encounter has been increased to 10 minutes."

[Donolgann]

One tip if you're having trouble with Razorscale. If you run with a hunter or a lock, have their pet attack Razorscale while she's still up in the air. They'll soak up all her fires and significantly reduce the amount of raid damage going on. Then you can drop 1 healer and get 1 more dps in.

Of course you shouldn't need it, that fight is about as trivial as a raid encounter can get, but if you're having DPS issue, that could allow you to drop a healer and allow you to move to another boss.

GL, and don't listen to trolls.

[Daesik]

It's not 10 minutes. We ran a 3 healer 5 DPS setup last night, one of our DPS died and we had no bloodlust, so it took 4 phases to ground her. We killed her in 11 minutes 30 seconds. Which is pretty rediculous, that attempt should've been a wipe.

[jpwkeeper]

You're not appreciating the criticism of your DPS, but it's the problem with your raid =/ The human mind is extremely inventive, as it can create patterns out of literally nothing. Most of the "strats" thought up for boss fights are moot if your DPS, tanks and heals are actually performing.

And your Ignis comment, I've never seen or heard of anything involving a ledge. It's not hard to pick up mobs.

I don't have a problem with my raid, thank you very much. We might be elite, hardcore, or over-geared, but we do just fine. RZ is not trivial for those in 10 man gear that raid fewer than 12 hours per week. I'd go on, but I'm trying to stay civil here. I'm not sure when this forum became a venue of no-life elite or elite wanna-be snobs. Crap, slipped. Back to being civil.

However, it's also totally and utterly beside the point. I wasn't asking for help killing RZ, I was asking if anyone had noticed what we had noticed, which may hint toward a hidden mechanic like the ones for XT and Ignis that have been discovered. Hidden mechanics to fights are something that interest me, and having seen 2 fights already with hidden mechanics involved I'm very curious to know if there are others.

So if you do not have a comment about the variability of the enrage timer or a possibility that the sentinels may not be random, which is the point of this thread, please reserve your comments for another thread requesting help or chest thumping about how easy everything is to you.

[arantes]

If "hidden mechanics" of fights interest you then why don't you come up with some ways of testing it, create a hypothesis and figure it out yourself. If noone has done this yet maybe it's because the best explanation currently is RNG. I mean not getting a sentinel on 4 waves is really not much at all - you certainly aren't basing your comment on a significant sample size.

[sleepinglamia]

We ran 10man last night and DBM said the Enrage timer was around 13 minutes.

As far as Sentinels go, we got them every ground phase, but it was usually just one of them.

We usually get her grounded by the third time she comes down, of course our raid has 25man ulduar gear as well.

Good Luck.

[Shinshiva]

I don't have a problem with my raid, thank you very much. We might be elite, hardcore, or over-geared, but we do just fine. RZ is not trivial for those in 10 man gear that raid fewer than 12 hours per week. I'd go on, but I'm trying to stay civil here. I'm not sure when this forum became a venue of no-life elite or elite wanna-be snobs. Crap, slipped. Back to being civil.

It's not trivial for my 10man guild in 10man gear. Trivial fight is trivial. That 6.5k dps comment and all this crap about how you don't want help with downing him is just your resentment at failing an easy fight.

However, it's also totally and utterly beside the point. I wasn't asking for help killing RZ, I was asking if anyone had noticed what we had noticed, which may hint toward a hidden mechanic like the ones for XT and Ignis that have been discovered. Hidden mechanics to fights are something that interest me, and having seen 2 fights already with hidden mechanics involved I'm very curious to know if there are others.

What hidden mechanics on Ignis? This 'ledge' thing? I know that some guilds have their tank sit in the scorches. Our guild kites him around in a rectangle between the 2 pools in the center of the room. The molten constructs losing aggro doesn't seem to happen for us, maybe your dps needs to get that 5k crit on him before he becomes mobilized again?

So if you do not have a comment about the variability of the enrage timer or a possibility that the sentinels may not be random, which is the point of this thread, please reserve your comments for another thread requesting help or chest thumping about how easy everything is to you.

Enrage timer: I dunno, I always thought it was 13min.
Sentinels: Just because there just so happened to be a run of no Sentinels and then a run of straight doesn't mean jack shit. We cleared two trash mobs just before Auirya and they both dropped epics. Random chance is random.