10m Nef Questions

[schuey]

We just downed Cho'gall last week and we are concentrating on Nefarian now. We had 3 nights last week attempting him, the first and third nights were awful, the second night we were getting to the third phase pretty consistently.

We run with
tanks:
dk
war
Dps:
surv hunter
rogue
bal druid
ele shaman
fury war
Heals:
shaman, druid, pally

http://www.worldoflogs.com/guilds/126559/

We use the druid and pally as tank heals.
Our warrior tank, Armytank, is the one that tanks onyxia and the adds, do you think he's undergeared for this? Should he tank nefarian instead in the first phase?

Ok so the night after we had a lot of good attempts into the third phase, we were having a ridiculous amount of problems.
We have the warrior tank pick up onyxia. We have the raid spread out in the center of the room, and a warrior tank or a frost dk if we switch him out kite the adds.

The majority of our problems the third night came from the healers getting stunned from onyxia's tail when we turned her for static discharge then having a crackle come, while the tanks are behind on health. How can we avoid this? We use the pallys aura mastery to prevent the stun when nef is landing. Should we use this differently?

First question how should we deal with the adds? We always drop traps and actually run the adds around to mitigate damage. Should we just straight up tank them instead with the warrior with a shield and defensive stance? Also the big problem we have is getting to drop the adds in a nice pile on the outside of the platform for p3. The dps will usually die if he gets hit by static discharge and the adds. Is there anyway to deal with this or any suggestions?

P2 is whatever, just interrupt. But how imperative is it to drop nef down 10% in this phase? We can usually swing at least one, but at times we just push the phase. Has anyone ever heard of mind freeze missing or not interrupting the blast nova, or am I just getting a piss poor excuse from someone?

P3, I think most of the fails is the war tank not keeping the adds out of the fire. We were doing it with nef on the side of the room and everyone stacked on the belly. I feel like it might be better to tank him in the center of the room and move him as need to allow the offtank freedom of manuever. My question is should he just straight up tank them rotating cooldowns, or can he time shockwaves after shadowblazes hit to help mitigate damage taken?

Also any tip son mitigating crackle damage? I drop nature aspect, shaman uses spirit link, I don't know if emphasized it but the warriors should be using rallying cry. Are there any other tips on how to take less during this?

Thanks for all help in advance.

---------- Post added 2011-05-09 at 01:43 PM ----------

Anddddd I just checked the logs a little more and the warrior is definitely failing with his cooldown usage.

[Brael]

You can time shockwaves for after shadowblazes but it has to be done very carefully so the fire doesn't move to the adds or the next blaze doesn't land right on them.

P1: You can have your warrior tank tank Ony and the adds, but their energy will reset after every breath meaning you'll not be able to do crackles in phase1 it'll just be about getting through the phase asap.

P2: You don't seem to have any problems here, although without a raid wall from a paladin tank I wouldn't risk having a crackle in this phase unless your healers are very good.

P3: It's imperative that the adds don't touch the fire, it's just something your warrior tank is going to have to get better at. As for positioning, you can have Nef at the side of the room or you can have him in the middle, either works, you'll just have to be careful of breaths going on the adds in P3 if you tank it in the middle, meaning either turning Nef straight around by having your DK run through him or move him continuously around in a circle so that his head stays ahead of the add tank. It's fully doable with no crackles in p1 or p2 but it'll mean your warrior will have to get good at kiting those adds. Good luck.

[Ozzy1346]

If your ony tank is quick and watchfull he can bait tail lashes before turning to the group. BUT not all of them are avoidable so you can't completelty blame the tank. I would say if you guys are getting like 7 tail lashes with what I'm describing maybe 3 or 4 are avoidable out of the 7

[schuey]

P1: You can have your warrior tank tank Ony and the adds, but their energy will reset after every breath meaning you'll not be able to do crackles in phase1 it'll just be about getting through the phase asap.

When I mentioned the warrior tanking these, I was referencing the fury warrior we have, and just having him put on a shield and stay in d stance for the duration of the adds. Mainly my question is does he have to kite to avoid hits? Also, how can we down the adds in a nice group and out on the rim of the platform without him getting nuke by the static discharge? I was trying to mark the first one I saw come up so he can just look at the energy on that one before moving over to the determined spot, but this still leaves us with the risk of eating a full duration of static discharge while waiting to drop all of the adds together, Whats a good way to do this?

[Fedexkilla]

Generally for P3 we park Nef against a wall and DPS with 2 healers stack next to his gut while our Prot Pally scoops up the adds and is followed around by a holy pally. It's not super clean but it will get the kill.

[Deleted]

We've always done it with a dps rounding up the adds, be it a feral cat in bear form, a fury warr with a shield for using until the adds die or a frost dk in blood pres. We assign one healer to stay with the ony tank, one to go with the nef tank and one to focus on the dps tanking the adds. We tried it with traps and slows and such, but in the end found it easier to just have the dps group them all up and tank them until they despawn. It does mean he will take 1 or 2 static hits, we simply just use the tanks cds for one (IBFort, Survival Inst, etc) and a healer cd for the second (Hand of Sac, Pain Supp, etc), anything you use will have come off cd by the time you really need it again for p3. You can in theory tank them in the centre away from the lightning until shortly before they start going down, but then you risk a tail lash on the add tank which always causes big problems.

Once the adds are down and the dps has switched to Nef (we usually leave ony at 20%, dots and the ony tank do enough to bring her low by the time we need to kill her) the whole raid bar the ony tank and their healer should be at nef, where they should be out of range for a tail lash from Ony, you just need to make sure your Ony tank has a cd for both crackles - Tol Barad trinket is excellent for this, all tanks for this fight get great benefit from it, though DK can just use AMS each time so perhaps you might want to put your DK on ony in p1 (makes no difference as to who takes Nef in p3).

Its not imperative at all to push a crackle in p2 once your p3 add tank has the kiting down. We simply burn through the Chromatics as fast as possible as this phase can be a pain for healers (less so with the reduced damage now in 10man), but if you feel you can get one in without adversely effecting the raid then by all means go for it. We've never done it though and have several kills, so it isn't necessary.

P3 is usually what makes or breaks the kill for us, if the kiting tank can get the adds reset twice you basically have a kill, if he fails you'll always wipe. We have Nef in the centre with the add tank and his assigned healer moving around the outside, the nef tank just has to take care to rotate nef so that the kiting team is always at his side to avoid breath/tail lash. The adds aren't really being kited in a true sense, they are being half tanked/half kited, they only really need to be moved when the fire gets too close to them and when Nef casts shadowblaze. We had a problem with the kiter moving around the edge as fast as he could, which just meant he was running back into fire before it despawned. Your kiter will have to practise and use his judgement as to when they need to be moved and when he can stay with them (or stun them) for a few seconds. It will take a few goes, but once he has it down you have your kill provided you handle the crackles properly.

You have 2 shammies so no reason not to have a nature resi totem down for every crackle, leave one by the ony tank in p1 by say putting your resto sham on the ony tank and have your ele sham drop one by the nef group that way everyone is covered.

[schuey]

Great post alpha thanks for the tips. I'm going to sit down and talk with everyone before our next attempts. The one day our biggest problem was the adds in the p3. We were just having problems in the first two phases on a bad day I guess. But ya these suggestions should help a lot I appreciate it again.

[shokter]

I am a warr tank who got his first Nef kill maybe 2 weeks ago. Mirror of Broken Images is your friend on this fight...we had every raider get one to help with crackles.
As for the kiting in p3: You can do your warr tank a huge favor and figure a way to get all the adds to die in one pile so that they all re-animate on the first shadowblaze in p3 and don't get on separate cycles. Every single decent p3 attempt we did was because our p1 add ppl did their job well. On attempts when the pile was less than clean it made the p3 kiting much more messy. Have your hunter ready to help MD as p3 starts in case your pile wasn't great and your tank has a stray add or two spawning late.

Have patience with your p3 kiter...its one of the rougher jobs in the fight and he or she may only get sporadic looks at the phase if your group is struggling with p1 and p2. There are several good p3 warrior pov vid on youtube she should consult to see the best way to kite.

[Deleted]

Also, to point out, if your adds aren't in a nice pile going into p3 (one shadowblaze wont revive them all at once) then get your Nef tank to aim the breath at the adds, so you can pick them up straight away.

Also, for reducing damage on crackles, use spell block/shield block, and ideally shockwave the adds a few sec before crackle then move away a bit - you should be healed up again by the time they're back and hitting at you.

[Akilliez]

My guild has downed this boss several times on 10M. We spent 16-20 hours wiping before we got a kill and now we 1-2 shot him every time.
In P1 we have a Frost Dk in blood pres tank/kite the adds through frost nova/ring of frost until they despawn. He takes quite a bit of damage before they die but we handled it no prob. We also had a problem with the adds not all getting re-animated at the same time at the start of P3 (our Dk was still working out the kinks of positioning the adds). One thing we found helpful was to have Nef intentionaly breath on the adds at the start of P3 to ensure they all get re-animated at the same time.

As for weather to push an electrocute in P2, we we're unable to down him untill we learned how to push one P2. (we have 2 pally tanks which can bubble for electrocute and 2 mages who can ice block to avoid it). We can bypass the P2 crackle on 4/10 people.

In P3, we have a pally kite the adds around and our other tank (me) has Nef on the side. Your P3 add tank will just have to learn the ins and outs of the adds and the fire.

One more thing that got us our first and all kills was popping Heroism/bloodlust at 30%. We tryed 40%, but that made too many electrocutes
come too fast. 30% was our magic number.

For reference, we have 2 electrocutes in P1, 1 in P2 and the rest in P3. Hope this helps and good luck!

[Brael]

When I mentioned the warrior tanking these, I was referencing the fury warrior we have, and just having him put on a shield and stay in d stance for the duration of the adds. Mainly my question is does he have to kite to avoid hits? Also, how can we down the adds in a nice group and out on the rim of the platform without him getting nuke by the static discharge? I was trying to mark the first one I saw come up so he can just look at the energy on that one before moving over to the determined spot, but this still leaves us with the risk of eating a full duration of static discharge while waiting to drop all of the adds together, Whats a good way to do this?

My apologies, I didn't realize you meant the fury warrior, my bad. There isn't really a "good" way to do it unless you have a feral druid or with the crit immunity talent, a bazillion useable CC's. Like you already said marking the first one then him moving over when it's almost dead is probably your best bet. Only advice I will give, make sure your hunter is specced into Entrapment and when the first add is going down, or when a crackle is coming, or when static discharge is coming, have him trap the adds to lessen the damage on the warrior for a few seconds. Also, if you plan on tanking Nef at the edge of the room in p3, just have the warrior keep the adds in the middle of the room or near a far pillar so as to not get hit by tail lash but still parallel with Ony so as to not get hit by static discharge.

I didn't actually know about having the Ony tank take the adds until a few days ago, since I do 25mans now it's not really an issue, but if I was still running my guild then I would definitely have been doing it this way, plate dps still have the chance of being gibbed by the adds if they get a few crits. Easiest way in my eyes to do Nef now is get through P1 and P2 asap and get your tank practicing the kiting in P3, he'll need the practice if you ever plan on doing the hardmode.

Make sure once the first add dies he doesn't move otherwise it'll be a nightmare for your warrior to pick them up in P3 if they're resurrecting at different times. I'm sure you know this though.

[Deleted]

First question how should we deal with the adds? We always drop traps and actually run the adds around to mitigate damage. Should we just straight up tank them instead with the warrior with a shield and defensive stance? Also the big problem we have is getting to drop the adds in a nice pile on the outside of the platform for p3. The dps will usually die if he gets hit by static discharge and the adds. Is there anyway to deal with this or any suggestions

In 10 man, there are 2 simple ways to deal with the adds.
1.) Get a melee DPS to do it. Easily healable, just shove BoL on him and don't worry
2.) Only done it this way a couple of times, but i found it fun...get the Holy Paladin to do it. Gets the phase done alot quicker as all DPS are free to bash on Ony/Nef and the Holy Paladin shouldn't have a problem doing this.

The above should also fix the adds dying as you won't be slowing/CCing them in anyway, and they'll just drop.

P2 is whatever, just interrupt. But how imperative is it to drop nef down 10% in this phase? We can usually swing at least one, but at times we just push the phase. Has anyone ever heard of mind freeze missing or not interrupting the blast nova, or am I just getting a piss poor excuse from someone?

If someone says an interupt missed, and it was after 4.1 came out, they lied to you. They just noobed up and were looking for an excuse.
You don't HAVE to drop a crackle in Phase 2, but yes it definitly does help. Phase 2 will last 3 minutes, or until you've killed all 3 adds. We just let it last the 3 minutes and nuke down Nef as much as we can during that time.

I can't give too much advice to the tank with part 3, as I play a healer, however we do 10 man with Nef being tanked in the middle and the adds being kited in a very long circle around the outside. It is very important to make sure they reset and that the tank strafes, instead of runs with his back facing them.

Hope it helps and best of luck.

[enq]

We use the pallys aura mastery to prevent the stun when nef is landing. Should we use this differently?

You definitely should, because it makes no difference. It makes you immune to interrupts, not disorient/polymorph/fear/etc - in this case stun. There are many effects that stop your castbar without being interrupts. If there's no Tail Lash during Aura Mastery that's just luck.

[Deleted]

The majority of our problems the third night came from the healers getting stunned from onyxia's tail when we turned her for static discharge then having a crackle come, while the tanks are behind on health. How can we avoid this? We use the pallys aura mastery to prevent the stun when nef is landing. Should we use this differently?

You can't aviod this, the tank should be using his small cooldowns when his healer is Tail Lashed and he starts dipping a bit. Is the shammy using an Armor totem whilst the Paladin is using Resist Aura? If not make sure they do, it reduces damage quite a bit.

Also any tip son mitigating crackle damage? I drop nature aspect, shaman uses spirit link, I don't know if emphasized it but the warriors should be using rallying cry. Are there any other tips on how to take less during this?

Most classes have something that can reduce the damage of crackle...
Druids can Barkskin, Paladins can Divine Protection, Shammys can swap weapon enchants for a second, Warriors can swap stance for a second etc. While most of that isn't really needed, it should help whilst healers get used to it.

[AdHoc]

Geh, wrote a long response to this, but lost it when my browser crashed. xD

Anyway it roughly consisted of the following points.

• Use prismatic elixirs if the damage seems to high, 10% off magic damage is awesome. We even kept our hunter in aspect of the wild for that extra boost as DPS wasn't a problem.
• You don't need to use a plate dps/Bear to tank the adds as a fire mage I kite them with the help of a rogue's crippling poison and ring of frost them as where the first one drops.
• On a related note, nef's position in the air when you pull directly relates to where he drops the adds, you this to your advantage and drop the adds in a nice way. I preferred pulling him at 11:30ish (where 6:00 would be right over top where the raid enters the fight) So the first add would spawn to the left just beside the pillar and the last to the other side of that same pillar. Which made it convenient to run to where we stack the adds without running through them. (we stacked them somewhere on the edge between 10:00 and 7:00).
• It is entirely possible to kill nef without pushing any damage to nef in phase 2. We take nef to 75% and kill ony, then leave nef alone in phase 2.
• For phase 3 we had nef at the edge rather than the center as the fire seemed to chase people and not the adds (I was under the impression it chased the adds before)
• We save hero for 22%. The burst in DPS can overwhelm the healers if you push to many electrocutes too fast. So we save it til the end when we didn't need to worry about the healers recovering.

Hope this helps in some way.

[ant13]

Try to have 2 electrocutes (crackles) in P2 (combined with 2 from P1), it will make the fight a lot easier... After 4.1 the damage from shadowflame barrage in P2 is ridiculus.
They key to this fight is to have nef fly as much as possible.

[kapg12]

most of your questions were answered. just gonna add a few of my own tips. I play as a holy pally for my raid and on this fight I heal the ad tank (however in your case i think the resto druid will be idea ad tank healer since that role is so mobile).

- I highly recommend you push a crackle in phase 2. if blast novas are all interrupted its not too difficult to heal people up after a crackle in this phase. during crackle in pahse 2, all dps pop defensive CD's (such as bubble, ice block, totems, etc), pally can HoS a tank and fivine protection or bubble himself, etc. someone in vent should be calling out boss hp % constantly so healers are well aware of when a crackle is coming so they have time to top everyone off.

the reason I beleive pushing a crackle in phase 2 is so important is because as you've said phase three can be really tricky / frustrating with the ads resetting and so on. Basically the more crackles you have going off while dealing with resetting ads, the harder it is on the tank and heals. the tanks and healers should coordinate their CD's so they dont overlap CD's during a crackle (i.e. tank pops his trinket during first crackle, pally HoS's and divine protection's during second crackle, etc).as long as each tank always has a damage reducing or health increasing CD up during a crackle they shouldnt dip too low in health.

that said, if tanks/healers run out of CDs to use and a crackle hits (let alone if it hits while giant ads are wailing on tank) its basically over.

- in phase 1 if your ads kiter gets tail swiped he will need large heals fairly quickly since ads will likely catch up. I've found a frost mage or a hunter can kite ads in phase 1 very easily and because of their many cc's usually can get ads to die in a nice little pile.

- my raid tank nef off to the side in phase 3. This way we can let ads die / respawn in the middle of the room and ad tank's healer isnt in danger of getting tail swiped (sometimes happens when nef is in the middle).

- if one ad keeps not resetting and is getting huge / is hitting ads tank like a truck, it helps to have a pally fear it or priest shackle it.

- after phase 2 there are several seconds before any heals are needed in phase 3. Once lava drains from the room, everyone should jump down, pop mana regen CDs, and healers should use concentration potions so that heals are at full mana for phase 3.

- once all the crackles have gone off in phase 3, a healer (probably yer holy pally) can run out to help heal ads tank / pop some CD's on ads tank since raid will be taking little to no damage.

-as someone mentioned, ads tank must resist instinct to just bolt around the room and needs to learn the rhythm of tanking, then kiting, then stopping and tanking, then kiting, etc. Constantly kiting ads in phase 3 spreads out fire too quickly and causes healer to be less efficient / fall behind and sometimes out of range. DBM announces when flame is coming, at which point tank begins kiting ads away. once ads are out of fire he should stop and tank them again to conserve space.

- in phase 3 watch ad tank healer's mana closely and have someone innervate, mana tide totem, etc if it gets low. If ad tank healer goes completely oom ad tank will not survive for long.

- if ad tank dies and nef is in the last few % of hp, a dk can pop army of the dead which will keep ads off raid for a short while and give dps time to lay down CC as well.

hope those tips helped. nef can be a real pain when your raid is learning it, but once you get the mechanics down it becomes much easier. Just remember nef is not a burn-dps-asap boss. he is a slow, calculated boss. if he is close to crackle and raid is low on hp tell dps to stop, so healers can get the raid up, on phase 3 dps must not push crackles too quickly.

[Tingol]

well mate on those logs i only see you 2 times in p3 with half wiped raid. it seems that you are mostly dieing due to: ony tank death, (put dk on ony, she does more dmg and he can use anty magic shell to avoid electrocute) ppl are slow from jumping out of lava, (well this is jut "up your game issue") missed interrupts, (same as last time) and lack of healing in p2 (dont try to pull crackels in p2 if you cant handle them.

Regarding the adds in p1 (they need to be buched up when they die for p3)... This is how we were doing it, it might help:

[Notdev]

Killed this in our alt group Sunday with a ret paladin sword/boarding and picking up all the adds and simply tanking them so they all die next to each other in p1. We had a Resto Druid on him as well as my beacon, and I healed the nef tank while a shaman healed the ony tank. I also did this initially when we were first doing 10 man on my fury warrior, just using sword/board/defensive stance and using shield block and shieldwall when i had them all picked up.

Also you can LoS lightning discharge behind a pillar, which is the optimal place to have all the adds deactivate. Damage shouldn't be too bad as long as you have a healer on him, just pop a cd when healing gets rough and adds should start dying immediately afterwards.

[Ossian]

Killed this in our alt group Sunday with a ret paladin sword/boarding and picking up all the adds and simply tanking them so they all die next to each other in p1. We had a Resto Druid on him as well as my beacon, and I healed the nef tank while a shaman healed the ony tank. I also did this initially when we were first doing 10 man on my fury warrior, just using sword/board/defensive stance and using shield block and shieldwall when i had them all picked up.

I do this as a ret pally, if you need them to die in a tighter group have the holy pally use holy wrath to aoe stun them. The only time I really take any damage from the adds in phase 1 is if I get caught in a tail swipe and even then I can stay alive if the healers are paying attention and I pop my pally shield wall.