Faction Champs help

[tyden49]

AoE resist doesnt affect cleaves, which means pretty much every melee class has free reign to attack them at will. Target non-specific aoe such as swipe will take the damage reduction but things like seal of command dont.

Im sorry I dont run fraps for our 10m reg kills and I really dont feel its necessary. If you think im lying take a click on my sig see my glory of the ulduar raider, tribute to insanity, my alone in the darkness 10m.... I have no reason to lie about it.

lol well played. good job on ur ach's,

[abraxa]

This week we had shammy and druid healer, and one rogue (me) can easily lock down the shaman while the druid is focused down.

Sap shaman and have a dk deathgrip druid, vanish and cs the shaman right before sap breaks. Then pop AR (if combat), be ready to 5p KS when he starts casting, kick next cast, etc. If you keep him away from the rest and avoid cc's on yourself he really shouldn't get any heals off before druid is down.

[Ogait]

tyden49 first of all, have someone dispelling the entire fight. That helps you a lot! Keep dispelling NPC's and you. Keep in mind Lifebloom when it's dispelled, heals a lot also! Make sure you dispell Earth Shield when it cames, that heals alot.

Sap + Death Grip like you do and pop Heroism and kill it.
If you have one rogue on Shaman, tell him to sap and go Druid apply some poisons and go back to Shaman (1-2 heals aren't enough to keep druid alive, while 6/7 DPS burn him down) and keep doing it.

When druid comes down, just nvm shaman heals and bring another DPS down (1 healer can't keep him alive), just trow one Strangulate, Fear, Blind when your target is coming low.

[Munk]

tyden49 first of all, have someone dispelling the entire fight. That helps you a lot! Keep dispelling NPC's and you. Keep in mind Lifebloom when it's dispelled, heals a lot also! Make sure you dispell Earth Shield when it cames, that heals alot.

Sap + Death Grip like you do and pop Heroism and kill it.
If you have one rogue on Shaman, tell him to sap and go Druid apply some poisons and go back to Shaman (1-2 heals aren't enough to keep druid alive, while 6/7 DPS burn him down) and keep doing it.

When druid comes down, just nvm shaman heals and bring another DPS down (1 healer can't keep him alive), just trow one Strangulate, Fear, Blind when your target is coming low.

Youre absolutely right about dispells but you also need to be careful, if you get the lock he will often cast unstable affliction which if removed will deal a substantial ammount of damage, its a good idea to check with your healers so their raid frames are giving priority to that effect so that way they know NOT to dispell it from the target as its better to toss a HoT and let it run its course. If however the target is high on life and you can quickly afford the heal then by all means get rid of it but be aware its comming and dont do it if they are being chased by a heavy melee.

Generally in 25's we assign dk's to watch any of the dk/warrior/rets and they call out in vent who their target is while they do there best to harry them with chains of ice, taunts and death grips.

There are a lot of layers to the FC fight and how many of them you need to utilize depends entirely on your ability to nuke the healers. IE if you can take out a healer inside the initial blood lust your dps is good for the fight and shoudlnt need to worry too much about cc as targets will generally be dead before they can cause too much trouble however if your group isnt capable of brute forcing the encounter than you have to worry about things like alternating cc to sustain the DR on cc.

Also some form of MS and offensive dispel are almost mandatory for the fight.

[jazza23]

Just normal mode, we have a disc priest constantly spamming dispel, holy pally, prot pally, 3 dks (yeah we got a lot), a warrior or rogue if we are lucky, warlock (me) and a ranged and a healer pug.
I havent heard of killing a melee first, is it a viable option seein as our dps fails abit? should we try and cc healers whilst burning or just concentrate on the burn?
kinda offtpoic but doen anyone know how to get a focus with experl (im a clicker and trying to CC 2 targets is gets annoying when i got some melee raping me and i have to keep clicking diffrent targets as well as my abilities.

Ok, I can't talk about how hard the bosses are now because I'm from a 25 man High-End guild so we outgear the 10 man content. But I suggest getting a Death knight to go frost and even put defense gear on. Get your warrior to charge into the fight and fear off the bat, while one Death Knight Grabs the first healer to burn into the group, and you go as hard as you can from there, Bloodlust, pop CD's, whatever. Once fear is off, that's frost Death knight you have if the first healer isn't dead, should drag the other healer away from the group, it isn't going to do much damage to that Death knight but will heal if it's close to the other mobs. So keep it as far away as possible. If you get targetted by any of the mobs, try to run away to minimise your damage, but obviously not out of range of your healers. Once the first healer is down, it's really your choice on where you go next. If you can keep healing through the damage being dealt, burn the second healer. If not, then burn 1 or 2 DPS while the Frost Death knight Keeps that second healer still away from the group. The Frost Death Knight in defense gear really shouldn't be taking much damage, we even tried it with a new alt who was way undergeared for the content and I only had to keep a shield and renew on him for the fight. And he was soloing the rogue away the group, not the healer. So that strategy I think would be best for you.

Sorry for the wall of text. I hope this helps

[Geomatician]

One shot heroic by having all of them grouped up with slows, on our warrior tank using mages blizzard/slow effects and using two loldk's doin 12-14k dps

Hopefully will use same tactic comin reset if so will hopefully have a WoL and a ss for you all

it works like a charm though, rogues/warriors are almost completely immobilized for a massive amount of the encounter with interrupts kept on the holy priest and druid banished while all dps except mages/dk's burnt down the shaman healer

Only thing you really need to worry bout is the dk's threat gen i.e. they take insane dmg


We threw our heads against the wall with this fight but it really is that simple, one shot it with this tactic for the first time

Edit: typo's

Above is 25 man heroic, didnt realise it was 10 man you were talkin about

Wipin on 10 man? :S

[Surfd]

Two things really play a big role here... your setup and the Champs setup.

You can get really unlucky and they have 2-3 healers, but if your cc is working then it shouldn't be a problem.

Ok, i may be wrong on this, but in 10 man you will NEVER have 3 healers. I keep getting into this arguement with people i pug this with all the time. When they come down from the benches, the healers are ALWAYS in the front row, and there will ALWAYS be two of them.

You can have priest, paladin, shaman or druid as a healer. But you will only ever get 2. If you happen to get both shaman, or both priests or both Paladins, the DPS specced one NEVER heals.

What kill order you use is often largely dependant on how much CC you have. If you have a huge amount of Interupt / lockout CC, you can lock down both healers and blow up one or two of the more dangerous DPS (usually the Mele Ones).

If you have more kiteing / slowing type CC, you can lock down one healer, burn the other down, and then switch to the DPS, who will drop a lot faster with only 1 healer.

I have seen it done both ways. In one fight, we had the Resto Druid, so we just had our Moonkin and Warlock keep the Tree locked down for the entire fight and killed him last.

[General Vezax]

Every time i have wiped on 10man FC, it was becuase of one thing:

NO ONE WAS PURGING (yes im a shaman, irony, i have alts)

the Disc Priest's bubbles, the Hots of the Tree, and the assorted thing the Resto shaman brings NEED to be purged asap, or they will never die. Purging has a higher priority than interrupting unless the healer is a paladin.

[comablack]

ccing the second healer is epic fail, stick an interrupter on it instead, idealy a rogue that knows what his gouge button looks like

also you need to be spamming purges/dispells on the dps target

something alot of healers don't understand, esp pugs ones: its better to dispel a dot that ticks for 4-5k then to try to heal through it

[Aswed]

Well on ToC10 Hc we were having trouble with the shammy killing all of our healers and DPS so we decided to nuke the shaman then the rogue.

We had a Warlock and a mage taking turns to Banish > Poly > Fear > Poly > Banish the Druid healer.

and a rogue stayed on the pally Healer to interrupt.

we had 1 tank taking the rogue and shammy as much as he can and we had random CCs on the DK, Warr and the other.. not sure.. think it was warlock or SPriest.

For healers we had a druid, shammy and a disc priest spamming mass Dispell.

1 shotted it after a few wipes trying to kill healers first.

oh and this was a PuG but ofc we were good geared and skilled Still failed a lot on Anub missed the ribute run.. oh'well.

[Ashvael]

We had a Warlock and a mage taking turns to Banish > Poly > Fear > Poly > Banish the Druid healer.

Would love to see a tree sheeped.

[Racetrack]

Basically try out different kill orders until you find one that works for you.

Our set-up is 1 tank, 2 healers and 7 dps. The tank runs into the group while we have the DPS stack on a DK at the side. The DK deathgrips a healer (priest is best as it goes down quickly). Pop heroism/bloodlust and kill it. Then all move onto the next target on your list, for us it's the Shaman if he is there. Everyone nuke and move onto the next one.

Let your whole group use their entire array of abilities available to them to make the fight as easy as possible. Once the first 2 or 3 die the rest is easy if most of your group is still alive.

[Rowen]

We're wiping at FC 25 hard, and while I won't ask for advice (everyone seems to follow a different strategy), does anyone have a clue about how their AI works? Specifically, who do they target? In 25 hard looks like they focus fire on someone random, but I don't know if there's some more depth to it. Sometimes they just like to focus our tank, which makes the fight much easier while it lasts.

[Deleted]

Ok inb4 everyone else TOC is easy blah blah, you guys suck, raiding is easy, ok whatevs.
Now my guild has recently progressed up to faction champs we are a 10 man late night raiding guild (we usually have to pug a couple of spots). We've spent alot of time wiping on these guys, most of the time us not even getting one of them down, we are not rich in CC and are pretty melee heavy. Our main strat so far has been burn one of the healers down, get a tank to deal with the warrior or dk, and a bit of CC here and there, but we never seem to be able to get the healer down or if we do we have lost a couple on the way, now our dps isnt great, but it could be a lot worse. Does anyone have any good advice or strategies that could help us out. It would be greatly appreciated.

and please dont start flaming on us saying we fail and shit because we might but we just want to progress and have a good time like anyone else.
i thank people in advance for there mature responses.

i am a warlock, just like you. i use a banish focus and fear focus macros, helps alot with cc.

Edit: added Macro

#showtooltip Fear
/cast [mod:shift,target=focus] Fear; Fear;
just switch fear for banish

[Bluepaws]

One strategy that I cant see anyone above mention.

The healers will always heal their team member with the lowest percentage of health.
As the hunters or warlocks pet has a small health pool, any damage taken to that pet can cause the healer to focus on them instead.
For 10man TOC's use set your own hunters or warlocks pet onto the FC's pet.
For 25man set your own pets and maybe a ranged dps onto the FC pet.
You will notice your burn target take a lot less heals.

As an ele shammy, I find myself purging the kill target more than actually dps'ing.
Watch out for the FC shammies totems.
The healing totem can heal for massive amounts.

Cheers

Bluepaws

[Canbie]

We are having a similar problem on heroic 10 man.

On regular what we do is:

Prot warr on a healer, usually the priest or pally
Prot pally taunts, stuns the melee (dk, warr, ret pally, enhance shammy, rogue) and silences the rest (aveng shield/arcane torrent)
Shammy spams purge and heals
DPS burn down 2nd healer (druid or shammy) then continue through the DPS
The prot warr does a great job of locking down the other healer so we leave him until last.

While all this is happening, hunter keeps freezing trap down. If anyone gets aggro (esp clothies), kite them away through the trap.

This doesn't seem to work well depending on the group in heroic though. Main problem being if we get alot of melee they rip the squishys apart and you cannot taunt. (they are immune from the start on heroic)

Good luck!

[Ashvael]

We're wiping at FC 25 hard, and while I won't ask for advice (everyone seems to follow a different strategy), does anyone have a clue about how their AI works? Specifically, who do they target? In 25 hard looks like they focus fire on someone random, but I don't know if there's some more depth to it. Sometimes they just like to focus our tank, which makes the fight much easier while it lasts.

I'm obviously not sure but one theory of ours was related to debuffs. ~3 weeks we had our protection warrior piercing howl specced trying around stuff after he seemed to tank all of the melees the previous week. In the end, where we got to was, if he charges in and everyone else does nothing at all till he got the piercing howl off, the mobs would stick to him. Then he would continue to spam piercing howl (and debuffing them with demo shout / thunderclap) while everyone else was just doing their normal jobs. This worked perfectly fine 2 weeks which made the kills easy as pie. The week after it didn't work anymore at all. Sometimes he would get the mobs for a short time but losing them rather soon again as well. So, there either was a change by Blizzard or we just were lucky for 2 weeks.
Well, that was one theory of us concerning the AI but seeing as the champions aren't that hard, we kind of just stopped bothering and are doing them the "normal way" for weeks now. If you want advice (and I know you said you didn't) you could as well scroll through my latest posts and somewhere I made a long post concerning them few weeks ago where you might get a few hints. Good luck.

[Gadirm]

Coming from someone that had a lot of problems with them the 1st week i know how hard it can be if you're not constantly watching out for anything and everything. Although the most important thing is to make everyone realise you cant just stand still and nuke at all times if you are low on CC/interupts, it is a high movement encounter and everyone need to use abilities they sometimes are unused to be using in regular PvE fights.

All in all you have to be aware of where people are standing in relative to yourself, as platewearing melee you should be trying to kite the hardhitting melee on the opposite side, this means DKs use death grip and CoI, taunt CoI, warriors use their taunts and (if you have it) both intimidating shout plus piercing howl, make them separate and put preasure on them, not the other way around.

From a mage perspective (my class) i usually start of with Sheeping one of their casters, usually they get cleansed directly but just use it again and in about 3 secs worth that someone is out for about 5 secs, thats less preasure on the healers, then i usually start nuking until the main target is dead.
Have the RL put up new markss on which target you want to focus down (usually skull) and use CC when applicable, nuking that target for about 7-8 secs then switch to a random target outside the main target area so that the CC target isnt affected by any possible splash damage.
Its mostly a rince and repeat after that.

Most important thing is to remember to use abilities that are for slowing down and/or debuffing your targets, have the rogues use crippling/wounding poisons so the targets move slower and dont get healed for massive amounts if you miss an interupt, also remember that if you lack shaman DPS you probably need to have a priest to do some cleansing to to remove HoTs/Bubbles, or the fiight will go on forever.

[nietmakkir]

ok, think everyone else has pretty much covered it, but heres my 2 cents anyhow ^.^

1) you're not alone, we wiped so many times on these gits, and still have problems with difficult setups sometimes

2) we always burn down one healer first, but then normally take down some of the more bursty dpsers before the 2nd healer, we just have a rogue solo-interupting the 2nd healer the entier fight.

3) totems; asign someone to take them down, and a second person incase they get cced/ dead

4) try to impress on people that dps isn't as important as stoping the healers getting off casts; if you leave one healer un-interupted for 2+ seconds, they will get back atleast half their health. and again, don't underestimate healing stream totem

5) pop all cds asap; the longer thefight goes on, the easier it gets. also sortof along this line, we normally have *atleast* the healers & main interupters equip a pvp trinket so one fear/ sheeping doesn't wreck all the work you've done

6) imo, faction champs is by far the most difficult encounter here, it gets easier from there, so don't give up ^.^ one of the anoying things when first doing this fight is you don't realise how close you are, there's no 'we got them down to 10%, this time they're going down', instead it seems to be going not-so-great, then suddenly a healers down, the dps start dropping and you realise you'v got it sorted

[Geomatician]

We're wiping at FC 25 hard, and while I won't ask for advice (everyone seems to follow a different strategy), does anyone have a clue about how their AI works? Specifically, who do they target? In 25 hard looks like they focus fire on someone random, but I don't know if there's some more depth to it. Sometimes they just like to focus our tank, which makes the fight much easier while it lasts.

90% of the time, when one person.. lets say a clothie is being targetted by any of the dps classes, what happens is that you dont move at first, you get taken to 45% hp quite fast, the very same instance you see 2-3 of the champs switch target to you and start to nuke you aswell. Your healers spam heal you and you get back to full hp after moving around enough.. the champs who were targetting you now switch target your safe to go back to do what you had originally been doing.

In short: An FC burns you to 45%, the AI within the FC realise that you are a potential kill for them, so a number of them switch target and try to burn you down. After you get spam healed for a few secs they realise that you wont die quite fast, so they switch targets again.

In short again:
Use a prot and have them kept sub 50% this may potentially keep more targets on the prot more often


Also if you think faction champs is hard on 25 man heroic, wait till you are on p3 anub ><

Pretty much one shot champs every week now (touchwood) but have only reached p3 once on anub :<