Nefarian P3

[Deleted]

Alright, so we spend 1.5 raid on Nefarian (10m) for tries. Best try is 39%. On good tries we can reach the third phase with everyone alive and with sufficient mana on healers. At this stage, Nefarian is at about 72%.

We push 2 crackles in phase 1, and 0 in phase 2. It was just a matter of preferance from the raid leaders I think but is it possible this way? Or should we start taking 1 or 2 crackles in phase 2 as well?

We have our warrior tank taking care of the adds in phase 3. Im not entirely sure what's he's exactly doing since im healing on the main raid but he doesn't seem to be able to keep it up for a longer duration. How should he handle the adds? Any tips, tricks?

Thanks

[Strafir]

Pushing two crackles on phase one is good, not taking any in phase two is just plain stupid. Its going to
take you ages to get nefarian from 72 to 0, and as a prot warrior tha always has handled the adds, I can
say that it really gets abit hectic if you the rest of the raid isnt able to kill the boss fast enough. Having
to do more than two 360 degree kitearounds will drain pretty much all your cooldowns, and the chance
that there is that one flame pool in a inconvenient place is too great.

Two crackles in P1, two crackles in P2, then zerg the boss down to execute range and blow heroism/bloodlust
to get it over with. A prot warrior does not need the assistance of any hunters traps/frost novas etc etc to
complete this task, so you should have everyone except 1-2 healers full on Nefarian.

[Ultima]

Push two crackles in Phase 2. Really.

[Pokty]

Unless every single raider has a cooldown ready, taking crackles on the pillars is very RNG, while taking more crackles in phase 3 is all about the skill of the kiting tank and his healer. I prefer the latter. Plus, staying on the pillars longer than necessary just drains your healer's mana.

(10 man)

[beingmused]

Our guild struggled with things until we switched to 2 P2 crackles. Are your players spreading out on the pillars to avoid splash damage from the shadow bomb? Are your players getting out of the lava and interrupting every blast wave? If you don't take avoidable damage, then you can do 2 P2 crackles. That is far easier than making your add tank survive 7 of them.

[Brett Skullcrack]

We push 2 crackles in phase 1, and 0 in phase 2.

Your add tank won't stay alive long enough in p3 if you do that. You pretty much have to push 4 crackles before p3 to have a chance.

---------- Post added 2011-01-25 at 03:11 PM ----------

Are your players spreading out on the pillars to avoid splash damage from the shadow bomb?

Shadow bombs do not do splash damage, it's just multiple bolts targeted at different people.

[foofymoonkin]

Your add tank won't stay alive long enough in p3 if you do that. You pretty much have to push 4 crackles before p3 to have a chance.

This.

The longer you have to kite the more wrecked the tank will get. So you want to kill Nef as fast as possible. Phase 2 allows you time to catch up on Nef while you keep the Adds interrupted.

[beingmused]

Shadow bombs do not do splash damage, it's just multiple bolts targeted at different people.

Interesting - our healers were quite insistent that damage taken dropped off immediately after we spread out on the pillars on 25man. Perhaps due to other factors.

[rohendar]

We've killed Nef twice now in the last 2 weeks by doing P1 : 2 crackles + P2 : 1 crackle. So it's definitly not needed to do 4 crackles before P3. However 2 crackles isn't enough I feel. Reason we only do 1 crackle is with CD's this is reasonably easy, but not everyone has 2 CD's for that phase and we don't want to risk it.

[Deleted]

If your rDPS is high enough : try to put Nefarian at 69% just when Onyxia dies.

[suleria]

If your rDPS is high enough : try to put Nefarian at 69% just when Onyxia dies.

I would definitely not recommend doing this. If timing is not perfect either the crackle goes off early and blows up onyxia or goes of late causing the raid not to be topped off for lava. For this to work you would need to time a crackle and top the raid off in a 10 second window. It is much safer to push that crackle 15-30 seconds into phase 2. In 10 man i would recommend doing 1 Crackle. In 25 man, you should do 2. Doing 0 crackles makes phase 3 extremely difficult because a second reset is basically required, which is very difficult to achieve with the full cooldown reduction on the fire. A 1 reset kill is touchy (but achievable) going into phase 3 at 63. It is fairly simple going in at 55

[Deleted]

Well we use this tech every pull so it's definitely achievable...

We switch to Nefarian when Ony is at ~20%, then one of our DPS switches back to Ony when Nefa is at 75-80% so he can kill her at the right time.

[cheesypeas]

Going into phase 3 with 72% is do-able (our first 10 man kill was like this), but it makes it's a lot harder for kiting the adds for so long. We even reached 8% in 25 man going into phase 3 with just over 70%. We were just really paranoid about the amount of damage in phase 2... however it's a LOT easier if you can push him down during P2.

With a best try at 39% though it won't help much if you knock off another 20% in phase 2 as you'll still be almost 20% from a kill. It's still going to take some practice kiting the adds, keeping them out of the fires.

[Xilarating]

taking zero crackles in phase 2 works fine. ignore the people who say otherwise

make sure all the adds die in relatively the same spot in phase 1.
phase 2 - burn the adds and make sure you get the interrupts
phase 3 - take nefarion in the middle of the room while having him face the direction the adds are lying dormant. nefarian will breathe on the adds causing their energy levels to be the same. (as opposed to coming up 1-2 at a time and them dying off in a staggered rate)
kite the adds around the outside of the room and rotate nefarian as necessary. your tank/raid may have to move slightly to avoid fire, but it wasn't much of a problem for us.

[gruggi]

Lol, not entirely sure why peope are saying this, ignore them. leave crackles alone in p2. P3 is just faceroll, if the tank can kite the adds through lets say, 50% he can do it through 70% of Nefs health, we used your tactic and downed it after 5 hours of progress.

and yeah, it was 10 man.

[DraconusIX]

I believe one of the keys to p3 is where you tank nefarian, as it determines where the adds are kited.

[beingmused]

taking zero crackles in phase 2 works fine. ignore the people who say otherwise

make sure all the adds die in relatively the same spot in phase 1.
phase 2 - burn the adds and make sure you get the interrupts
phase 3 - take nefarion in the middle of the room while having him face the direction the adds are lying dormant. nefarian will breathe on the adds causing their energy levels to be the same. (as opposed to coming up 1-2 at a time and them dying off in a staggered rate)
kite the adds around the outside of the room and rotate nefarian as necessary. your tank/raid may have to move slightly to avoid fire, but it wasn't much of a problem for us.

You're right that that positioning helps a lot in phase3. But if your healers are good enough to keep the add tank up for that long in p3, then they should also be good enough to handle 1-2 crackles in p2.

[Aleysia]

My guild downs him with 3, yes 3, crackles in phase 1 and none in phase 2 due to the RNG nature of the shadowflame barrages that we struggled with a lot when we first started working on the encounter. At a certain gear level, you can probably heal through a phase 2 crackle fine, but the RNG does mean you can have one healer going into phase 3 with full mana and another running on fumes.

Yes, Onyxia's lightning will one-shot the raid if you let 3 crackles go through in phase 1... unless you kill her right before the 3rd crackle goes off. It requires no small amount of coordination on the part of your dps, but it's cake once said dps have mastered the art of killing Onyxia in the 5 seconds between Nef's crackle warning and the actual crackle. A frost mage saving deep freeze is win.

However, you probably don't want to go back to wiping on phase 1 at this point, so yeah, it will make your life easier to get a crackle or two in phase 2, depending on what your healers can handle. You need to ask your add tank/healer what's going wrong... is his healer oom? flame hitting the adds and refreshing their energy? running out of room to kite? So pop cooldowns/get a timer for the breaths/kite slower.

[Deleted]

On 10man we are doing in P1 2crackles and in P2 1crackle.

[Deleted]

taking zero crackles in phase 2 works fine. ignore the people who say otherwise

make sure all the adds die in relatively the same spot in phase 1.
phase 2 - burn the adds and make sure you get the interrupts
phase 3 - take nefarion in the middle of the room while having him face the direction the adds are lying dormant. nefarian will breathe on the adds causing their energy levels to be the same. (as opposed to coming up 1-2 at a time and them dying off in a staggered rate)
kite the adds around the outside of the room and rotate nefarian as necessary. your tank/raid may have to move slightly to avoid fire, but it wasn't much of a problem for us.

Worked for us VERY well, we dont face him to the adds how you said though since we had a feral DPS druid going bear form to place the adds close to echother in P1 but the principle of taking the boss to the middle and kite adds in a circle still presists.

Here a movie on how it looks like. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXb3_9T2En8
Cho'gal was harder in the end Imo.