[Cho'Gall] A desperate plea.

[MerinPally]

*Note to all repliers*
This is a fairly lengthy post in which I'll include a lot of detail for ease of helping you help us. I've tried my best but I'm no longer an expert on half these classes or this fight due to not farming it with another guild. I need help on where to improve. I'm not after a "do more deeps lulz" but if you can help in the slightest bit, even for only one person, then I thank you so much.

*Note to all mods*
This is NOT a name and shame post. All people I talk about will be guildys who I've talked to at great length about this. They are definately not random people who I am trying to slag off. Some of them know they are more of a problem than others, and I'm just trying to find areas where they can improve - if you guys have suggestions to positioning, ways to eek out more dps etc. I have permission from said people to do this in order to get us a kill we've been working on for over a month.


The Issue

In 30+ attempts, getting on for 40, we have got Cho'Gall to phase 2 maybe 5 times, more by luck than anything else, and it really does feel like I'm bashing my head against a brick wall. Our raid composition is as follows:

Tanks
Merinicus (Paladin) http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...nicus/advanced
Krisps (DeathKnight)

Healers
Phinx (Paladin) http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...phinx/advanced
Cantaya (Priest)
Tahani (Priest)

DPS
Gesar (Hunter) http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...gesar/advanced
Boombeer (Hunter)
Aeyla (Rogue, Combat offering to go Mut)

This is where it gets complicated. Due to work, depending on what day we go to Cho'Gall, we have 2 of the following in our usual team:

Coiren (Mage)
Highwind (Moonkin)
Bioz (Spriest)

Although we have not brought him recently, as I've been attempting to keep to the same team (ie ranged heavy), we have the capability to bring a frost death knight who seems to pull a very high dps number relative to everyone else - Michael (Deathknight)


Now... here comes the problem. I've given you the breakdown of our regular team and players - so that those with good knowledge of 1 particular class on this fight can pick and tear through my friends and help them out where they can. I was under the impression that you need to average about 13k dps over the entire fight to be able to keep up with the numbers (Factoring in a potential higher dps from ranged on the adds). Now, our 2 hunters, Gesar and Boombeer, always seem to do in the region of 15k dps, which I and others applaud them for. Bioz, Aeyla, and Coiren seem to jump between 11k and 13k, normally closer to 12k. Highwind knows he is a weak link, normally getting stuck at about 10k - however, despite this, he is more dependable than the tide and does not ever get hit by avoidable shit, meaning that he is our greatest assest if we can eek more dps out from somewhere else.

Tactically, we are following the same strategy (albeit 10man) as the best guild on our server. Their tactics are as follows, with killing the adds behind the portal in the corner, thereby funneling the adds in a nice tight line towards us, over a plethora of traps and magic mushrooms. We have tried the Tankspot strategy for about 25 attempts and it just doesn't seem to be working, so we try the following strategy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZy7Cs3Dpxc Only difference being that the ranged stack up under the boss so that my Avengers shield can bounce around like a buggar. For the adds - our 2 hunters take out the first 2 waves on their own with ease - on the 3rd wave (assuming Coiren isn't there), Highwind our moonkin helps out, then on the 4th wave, Highwind helps out again and we use those Frost Grenade things that act like an unbreakable Frost Nova ( http://www.wowhead.com/item=32413/fr...ade#created-by ). When Coiren is there however, the 2 hunters do the first 2 waves, we use frost grenades on the 3rd wave, and Coiren helps on the 4th wave as with an Impact proc, he tears the adds a new hole.

What I percieve to be the problem is low dps numbers, and people standing in Corrupting Crash, and having 30+ corruption at about 50% of the boss health. I know I'm tanking the boss but me and Krisps never seem to have more than 10 corruption whereas Aeyla always has about 60 and our healers have 30+. The following is a link to our WoL page, and then underneath, all the parses in chronological order to show our dps numbers (and corrupting crash hits - if someone could enlighten me as to whether we're having an abnormally large amount). Is there any reason why Aeyla always gets ridiculous corruption numbers? I just can't see it... I would've assumed Krisps would get the same due to sitting at the adds face... but no, he gets the same amount as me.

http://www.worldoflogs.com/guilds/92975/
http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/pw19du5d0rlqbp9q/
http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/wxkpwib4uaaxdjmk/
http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/9z3xwlv8ofjyukct/
http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/y9f1hq95gq461duc/ - last night.

In my opinion, we have no choice but to continue forcing people to do boring farm runs in an attempt to get them a gear level higher than most peopel have when they kill this, because we seem incapable of pulling the numbers. However, this has the downside of people are sick to death of farming runs, and I'm at my wits end as with what to do. Persist with farm runs and lose interest/people, or continue mashing my face into a brick wall and hope.

So - what am I after? Advice from any experienced dps or fellow raid leaders on how to get higher numbers out from people, whether we're undergeared (which is more unlikely than the existance of God...), or whether I need to get in fresh blood to keep the guild alive (Somethings I DESPERATELY do NOT want to do, we've been the same collection of friends since 1 month into WOTLK and we don't want to cause rifts).

So - a raiders plea - anyone who can pull a high dps number on this fight and has any tips for my beleagured raiders, or any tactical tips they can suggest, then please, I beg you. I don't care if its a massive sweeping comment about "do xyz, ??? profit" or whether you can just help out 1 particular raider, but all help will be greatly appreciated.

Thank you very much for all the samaritans out there

//Merinicus & the rest of Social Rejects.

[ekhie]

You mentioned people having high corruption in phase 1 - this is definitely something you need to fix. You should start phase 2 with pretty much 0 Corruption if you're doing it right. This means:

First of all, don't stand in Blaze or Corrupting Crash. If you want to monitor who isn't doing this very well, get a failbot addon (ensidiafails is the name if I recall correctly) and it will tell you on the spot who took how many crashes.

Secondly, you NEED to interrupt every single Depravity cast by Corrupted Adherent. This is very, very important because an uninterrupted cast deals Corruption to your whole raid.

Like I said, if people are over 50 corruption in phase 1, you will NEVER make through phase 2. That's just the way the fight is designed.

Sorry, I'm in a bit of a hurry at the moment, but I'll see if I can check through the logs sometime later.

---------- Post added 2011-04-07 at 09:45 AM ----------

Oh, and how low do you get Cho'gall after you've killed the 4th wave of little blobs? Because this is usually the point where you push him to p2 while off-tanking the fifth adherent (you have time until the 5th Fester Blood).

[Deleted]

Problem with dps? Let mage stand in the black pool, get the debuff (don't dispel), get 100 corruption. Watch mage dps explode, throw pws on him to keep him alive. When he dies in p2 you combat ress and continue as normal.

[Deleted]

Well, yea, there is actually no reason why any person should have even 1% corruption at the start of phase 2. No reason at all.

We basically leave the melee on the boss at all times for better overall dps, but if the add is not dying before fester blood, that's a major problem, so put a melee on the add too.

The add tank should, not taking into account % miss chance, be able to interupt every depravity cast. I have 0 hit on my tank and it very rarely gets through. For extra safety put a hit capped melee on the add too.

Spec for add killing... if this means lower overall dps, so be it.

Basically I killed it in a pug 2 days ago, and, we had 3 dps pulling off 10k each, but going into phase 2 with 0 corruption on everyone meant we just did not feel the pressure at all. Handle the adds well.

Get your healers to DPS! You heard me! At large large portions of the fight (when he's not doing shadow novas), only one tank is taking any damage at all, and everyone else is sitting at 100% HP. I see it on my raidframes all the time. At this point your raid healers, hate it though they might, SHOULD be dpsing to push every last bit of dps possible.

Definitely take a frost DK to do the howling blast slow thing if your ranged are still in trouble with the adds.

Finally, in phase 3, the best setup we found is to have every class without an interupt stay on the boss. Every class with an interupt (melee, the offtank, mages, shammies etc) on the tentacles, trying to spread out and interupt the beam as much as possible. Keeps healing light even if dps may be slightly lower than usual. This usually leaves us with 2 dps solely on the boss, and 3 killing adds when they pop, depending on the group. (I know the tankspot video said to all follow and kill the same add, then the next - but they are wrong about this. It's far better to have every interupter take a different tentacle to help interupt better)

Hope this helps?

[Ynna]

Well, if people are that high corruption they're doing stuff they're not supposed to. Keep track of who has this, and ask them to pay better attention.
Secondly, if you have low dps consider doing it with two healers. It might sound harder, but I've found two-healing it is easier.

[Herecius]

As if the OP wasn't clear enough, keep it clean.

---------- Post added 2011-04-07 at 03:00 AM ----------

Ok, my first, and most serious observation (and possibly your most serious problem, you -can- do this fight with slightly low dps)... there's a massive amount of damage from depravity happening. A massive amount. This is the cast that must, MUST be interrupted from the adherents. You've got to get those interrupts sorted.

If players are having trouble watching the cast bar for depravity, tell them to use Quartz to create a massive castbar that spans the entire top of their screen, something so huge it's absolutely impossible to miss. This isn't an absurd suggestion, I'm being dead serious; I am not kidding when I say I did the exact same thing for the Lich King's Defile, to make absolutely sure I would never be caught unawares.

[MerinPally]

First of all, don't stand in Blaze or Corrupting Crash. If you want to monitor who isn't doing this very well, get a failbot addon (ensidiafails is the name if I recall correctly) and it will tell you on the spot who took how many crashes.

Already got this addon, it makes grim reading. I berate them raid after raid with how they avoid the fire on other bosses yet when we get to something where it actually matters, they seem incapable -.-

Secondly, you NEED to interrupt every single Depravity cast by Corrupted Adherent. This is very, very important because an uninterrupted cast deals Corruption to your whole raid.

Am aware of this, but not to the extent of the effect that its having. Would you say this warrants bringing a second melee? To sacrifice the add damage for the interupts? (this would definately require us spamming frost grenades like nobodys business, and using melee on 4th - is that normal? because I've seen some people lauding it and others making it sound like the worse thing since Mr Adolf)

Oh, and how low do you get Cho'gall after you've killed the 4th wave of little blobs? Because this is usually the point where you push him to p2 while off-tanking the fifth adherent (you have time until the 5th Fester Blood).

He tends to vary, somewhere between 30 and 35% when the 5th add spawns. This is whats leading me to believe its a dps issue. He's almost casting Fester Blood by the time we push him. If we do get to this state though, would you suggest we make our melee abandon the boss in order to get Depravity? Because this could potentially be counter productive.

I should also mention that I am a COLOSSAL penis. One other major factor is the Conversion/Prayer thingy. When we're stacked it's fine because I can break it 9 times out of 10 on my own. However, when we scatter for the add, I can tend to only hit one... then noone bothers to break the other, meaning we end up with 2 stacks of the buff on Cho... through my Flames Orders... which stresses the healers. Also, the add only seems to die just before he casts Fester Blood, again making me think "Ah dps issue". I had a revelation in the shower just now and remembered to mention this.

[Deleted]

Hello Merinicus,

Just like Ekhie I don't have time to look through your logs now, but if you get high corruption in first phase they are standing in shit. You say that both tanks have ~10 Corruption, meaning all Depravities are interupted. So the only way to get Corruption is hugging the small adds, Blaze and Crash. So your rogue defenitly is getting hit by Crashes, just have him focus more on where they are then his dps. Call it out on TS/Mumble/Vent if needed.

For the DPS problem, I don't really understand why you only use two players to finish the first two groups of adds. Your moonkin's starfall is up every time for the adds and the mage could always throw in an blastwave. Adds will die a lot faster, which means more dps on the boss. This is also the reason why your hunters do more dps and the moonkin is at the bottom.

PS You have the perfect setup for this boss, I'm a bit jealous :P

EDIT: For the worship you really need to make your raid aware of this. I don't know who heals which tank when the big add is up, but the rogue, dk and it's healer(s) should take care of each other and so does the ranged groups with you and your healer(s). Here is a list of interupts everyone have, make sure they use them:

Merinicus (Paladin): Avenger Shield, Rebuke, Hammer of Justice
Krisps (DeathKnight) Mind freeze, Strangulate, Death Grip
Phinx (Paladin) Rebuke, Hammer of Justice
Cantaya (Priest) Psychic Scream
Tahani (Priest) Psychic Scream
Gesar (Hunter) Scatter Shot, Wyvern Sting, Silencing Shot (if Gesar goes MM)
Boombeer (Hunter) Scatter Shot
Aeyla (Rogue, Combat offering to go Mut) Kick, Blind
Coiren (Mage) Counterspell, Blastwave (get's resisted for ~40%, but very easy to use), Impact
Highwind (Moonkin) Solar Beam (Typhoon should be saved for small adds)
Bioz (Spriest) Psychic Scream
Michael (Deathknight)Mind Freeze, Strangulate, Hungering Cold, Death Grip

[Kurdiern]

It seems like you don't have much trouble with adds. First and foremost you should work on avoiding corruption. There's an achievement for killing Cho'gall with only 30% corruption for a reason. I usually have 10 or so at most when entering Phase 3 as DPS. Dodge shadow crashes, interrupting depravity, all these things are key.

I noticed you are 2 healing it. Take the dive and try to 2 heal it. That extra DPS makes a world of a difference. You're raid members are pulling average or slightly below, so that extra DPS could be the x-factor.

Phase 3, kill the eye beams. Interrupt them as much as possible. Cho'gall is a fight where it clicks. Once it does, it becomes a hell of a lot easier.

[AlisonPrime]

Simple fix - Your Death Knight should be the one kiting the adds. You have the rogue following him to assist and they both go for the interupt so that none ever miss. If your dps and other tank are smart they will avoid the shadow crashes and a cast of Depravity will never get off. You kite your adds to the back of the room and up the stairs to the door. Once your add dies, your dk and your rogue rush back into the group and tank swap. Rinse and Repeat. Now our guild has a trick that works in our 25 man and it should work in your 10 man. When he's at 30% and an add just dies and the oozes spawn, just slow them and push the boss. He will absorb all the oozes and thus you dont have to deal with them. Then in phase 2 its all about killing and kicking adds which with your set up seems like you will have two...maybe 3 kickers. Your best off just killing adds as fast as possible while kicking what you can if your DK isnt tanking cho'gall at that moment. Remember Fury of cho'gall will still cast.

[Deleted]

Your Holy Priest glyphs Lightwell and then hardly anyone clicks it, it's barely going to make any difference in P1 but it still makes me sad

[Deleted]

If we do get to this state though, would you suggest we make our melee abandon the boss in order to get Depravity? Because this could potentially be counter productive.

Once the fifth add spawns, let your current tank who is not tanking Cho'Gall to pick it up and just get the last % on Cho'gall til you hit phase 2. All adds (this include the Blood of the Old Gods) will disappear. This does not open up for "oh, let's ignore Fester Blood and have a soft enrage when the bloods get close to Cho'Gall" moments. Fester Blood = a TON of corruption for Mr. Offtank.

So, if you can't burn Cho'Gall down before the fifth add, but shortly after Fester Blood, get rid of the add, slow the bloods and nuke Cho'Gall.

edit: Also, I pretty much TL;DR'd your post, but I'll try to share my stories about high corruption in phase 2.

When we started on getting Cho'Gall to phase 2, alot of people took a ton of damage. Surely our healers thought that phase 2 just is that way. But after a quick look at the combat logs and Skada Death logs we reached the conclusion: People had 50 corruption and thus puking all over the place. This was a BIG deal. So if a player is getting close to 50, for the love of all that is holy, tell him to gtfo.

edit 2: If you're interested, our raids look like this: T: Druid, DK. H: Paladin, Shaman, Shaman. D: Hunter, Warrior, Priest, DK, Mage.

Hope this helps somewhat.

[MerinPally]

For the DPS problem, I don't really understand why you only use two players to finish the first two groups of adds. Your moonkin's starfall is up every time for the adds and the mage could always throw in an blastwave. Adds will die a lot faster, which means more dps on the boss. This is also the reason why your hunters do more dps and the moonkin is at the bottom.

PS You have the perfect setup for this boss, I'm a bit jealous :P

Our first thought on having only the small number of people on the adds, was because at first we had an even bigger dps issue, having him at about 40% by the time the 5th add was being affected by Fester Blood. Our thinking was that if we could minimize the amount of dps we have to sacrifice on the adds, we could have another dps or 2 focus for those extra 10seconds on the boss, meaning we'd get an overall dps increase - which we are slightly, granted its only 5% sometimes but occasionally it is as high as 10%.

With regards to the moonkin, due to his employment he can't raid with us that often, as he's normally not geting out of work until midnight (by which time we're all in bed). To give you an idea of the dps he's pulling though, it varies hugely - being as low as 8k averaged over an entire fight, even one where he hasn't had to do the oozes because we've wiped between add 2 and add 3.

@ raid comp... our guild got kind of renowned for having 10-12 players with every single class raid ready and all 3 specs most of the time At the moment, we aren't in a position where we have alts ready for Cho'Gall, but we have a habit of playing 6+ raiding characters (In ICC, every single person had between 4 and 8. Yes gear was easier to get but we surprisingly aren't far off that now either!)

[Herecius]

I know you said that you don't really want to just hear 'you've got to do more deeps' but that is a very true and simple fact here. On top of needing to interrupt all of the depravity casts and never standing in corrupting crash (make sure every one of your raiders has an updated boss add, preferably DBM since it BLARES a trumpet at you if corrupting crash is coming your way), you're just going to need a bit more DPS. The little things really do add up. Everybody should be flasked, everybody should have a food buff, all of your dps should check some class resources to make sure they're gemming right, enchanting right, doing their rotation correctly, everything else.

I'll direct some bits for your hunters, since that's my best are, and leave other classes to other people:

Questions to direct to your hunters: for survival, they should have entrapment specced for this fight, only one of your hunters does. It's absolutely invaluable. Gesar is missing a socket on his bracers as well as a blacksmith. Why isn't Boombeer specced into One with Nature? It's a very large DPS increase relative to other points. He should emulate Gesar's talents, as his are much more suitable for Cho'gall. Are they both using Cobra Shot and ignoring focus capping (i.e. never casting Arcane Shot) when Cho'gall is above 80%? They want to do this because of their Careful Aim talent. For Lock and Load procs, are they handling them by going Explosive Shot>Cobra Shot>Explosive Shot>Arcane Shot>Explosive Shot? I know that this sounds like nit picking, but it really is the little things that make the difference between 13k dps and 20k dps, I'm not kidding at all.

For the record, the hunters can solo the first wave of bloods easily. You don't need to have everybody on them. If they're good, they should have no issue soloing the second wave of bloods either. This will be especially true if they're both specced into entrapment and are laying their traps properly. If you really want to, you can even look at our second kill (on 25, but the princible is totally the same) from a partially survival hunter perspective: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tOumDuNvwLg

[Choda]

While we were progressing on this boss we've been seeing the following numbers:

When the first add spawns - boss is at 82%
First wave of slimes dead - 75%
Second wave of slimes dead - 55%
Third wave of slimes dead - 40%

If you can do that, then you can get him to phase 2 before the 4th slime wave, just off-tank the 4th adherent. Note that the tank alone CAN and MUST interrupt all casts of depravity. There is no reason to throw melee at it, nor ranged, nor people to help interrupts, the tank can do it alone, and failing to do so will spread your dps too thin.

Next up, people simply MUST avoid corrupting crashes. There is no excuse to fail on it. Make sure that your mage is aware that impact works as a stun and thus breaks the mind control. Have him make a counterspell macro (/stopcasting /cast Counterspell) and keep an eye on people that are MC'd while people are spread during the adherent dps. Killing the adherent just before fester blood is fine, assuming you manage to do that with 3 dps on it. You should have at the very least 1 dps on Cho'gall constantly. Your rogue should go for assassination as it is MUCH better for Cho'gall, especially phase 2, where he gets to backstab all the time.

Lastly, people MUST interrupt the adds in p2 as soon as possible, although from what I can see you guys are mainly looking for p1 pointers.

Bottom line is, your biggest 2 issues are depravity interrupt and avoiding shadow crashes. Fix those 2 things and you're on your way to a kill.

[Atrea]

Try 2-healing it, instead of 3-healing it. We couldn't down him with 3 healers either, then on our 3rd or 4th attempt with 2, we did it.

[MerinPally]

paragraph about a *simple fix*

If you checked the logs, you'd notice the deathknight is already tanking the adds, the rogue is already assisting, and we abandoned that tactic in favour of the one of making the adds funnel, because after 30 attempts it sometimes got incredibly messy. Thank you for the advice on the "burn boss and pray the adds dont reach us", because that will probably come in useful - all shall be revealed tomorrow night.

[Téuntjûh]

Try 2-healing it, instead of 3-healing it. We couldn't down him with 3 healers either, then on our 3rd or 4th attempt with 2, we did it.

This. Cho'Gall needs 2 healers, get an extra dps in to get adds down faster

[herpecin]

drop down to 2 healers if you can, it seriously makes the fight much easier. my group stops DPS to make sure he festers a 3rd time(he doesnt seem to eat little adds for us)

having 0 or very very low corruption going into P2 is key, as other have said people MUST move out of colored things.

the only damage your non tanks should take is from shadow nova in P1, and that is easily healed with low priority AoE heals.

if your not doing it already, have atleast 1 hunter go surv with entrapment. if you can get both of them to do it and stagger frost traps they could probably 2 man up to the 4th wave.

the vast majority of bosses in WoW are not going to be brought down by simply running at them 50+ times and eventually RNG goes your way and they die. if you dont know what to do and how to counter the situations the boss puts you in, you wont kill him.

(warning possible flame inc but my team is going through something similar) you may find yourself in a position where your team is simply too bad to do the fight. at which point you have to ask yourself, do you like your team more then you want to kill bosses? if yes, then just wait till he gets nerfed. if no, then start shopping around for a new team.

[Darsey]

Replace one of your ranged with the frost DK. it is because frost DKs can interupt the add casting with ease, and rogue lose too much damage for switching targets.
Frost DK is also a good solid plus on the fester blood adds.

In your current setup I think that what kills you is the big add aoe thing, as you don't have any solid interupter