Baleroc tips

[Beav]

Great help AeneasBK (and all the others). Will convey this info to our healers.

[Deleted]

We use all 5 dps in rotation - call for a swap at 6 stacks, aim to take the beam off at 9 - keeps healing easy and smooth, and so long as no-one dies or cocks up the beams it's easy. Healer rotation as above, and max of 9 stacks means you're using mana-light healing, so well-geared healers seem to come out of the healing the dps with more mana than they went in - 11+ stacks hurts so much more, it's not worth it. Just have everyone macro "/rw <name of next dps> take the beam" and hit it at 6 stacks.

That's how we rock it every week

[Beav]

Also ^^ this

Although I'll be honest our best was a 4% wipe without a S.priest (on 25 at least). Having said that we had 7 healers that night the night we killed him had only 5. If you properly order your healing targets so its not a free for all you could probably 2 person heal it in 10 man...

But is it really just a gimmick? Imagine the senario of a 2 dps switch on the first shard. DPS 1 moves out at 12 stacks. DPS 2 moves in. Doesnt the gap between the switch mean that Vital Spark isnt stacking till DPS2 has at least 3 stacks on every switch?

Surely me having all the stacks is going to mean much faster and higher stacking rate of the Sparks on the healers?

[Deleted]

He's talking about normal mode

Our guild is starting to work on Baleroc now we have the first 4 normal mode bosses on farm.

Including Baleroc, I guess. So my guess is that he's talking about HM.

[Mattsaque]

Our SP does this without the trinket.

He gets a hand of sacrifice at ~12 stacks then disperses at ~19 stacks.

This is what I do every 2 minutes, and if I don't get a hand of sacrifice ( I have no idea what the cd on it is) they give me some other kind of cd since I'll have dispersion up.

[Raugnaut]

@OP,
If you are going to use the SP dispersion gimmick for the fight, I would strongly suggest you take the Mirror. It is essentially a 30% magic damage reduction cooldown on a 1 min CD, and should be used once you hit 10 stacks.

In terms of Vital Spark stacking, its freaking amazing. If you take the first crystal all by yourself, healers can have an easy 100-150 stacks by the end of it. The mechanic is that direct healing generates 1 stack vital spark per 3 stacks Tormented, and if you get over 15 stacks of tormented, healers generate 10 stacks per 3 secs, increasing (More if they can hit the GCD cap), thus allowing them to easily generated an extra 40-50 stacks during the first shard. Of course, this depends on your healers knowledge of the mechnic too, but, generally, for this, Druids go into tree, spam Regrowth/swiftmend, Dpriests, use 20% casting cooldown, spam Flash/Penance, HPriests, spam flash/serenity, Shamans, surge/riptide/ELW, and Paladins, Flash/Shock/WoG with speed CD. I wonder, does Beacon count as a direct heal for mechanics? if so, a Hpaladin can beacon Spriest, generating double the amount of stacks, and easily solo heal tank for the first 2 mins, allowing other healers to generate a huge amount of stacks.

[EventHorizon]

I'm surprised you guys use such complex setups for Baleroc.

We run with 4 ranged which I guess helps us for crystal positioning.

Shadow Priest/Warlock/Hunter/Mage.

We separate the Warlock and Priest on 2 crystals to soak the majority (15+) stacks of it (up to 1 full crystal if done well and healers are on the ball).

Our usual composition is:

- 1 Pally solo tanking the boss
- druid/paladin (or priest) and Shaman healers
- 4 ranged dps and (you guessed it) 2 melee

Fight usually goes as follows:

- Pop Volcanic/(temporary stat boosting pot) before the pull to not be afflicted by in-combat potion usage (resulting in getting another one usually when Bale is at 50% or something)

DPS wise

- SP or Warlock take first crystal (usually 16-18 stacks or the full thing poping respective CD to avoid... well not being alive after)
-- mage/hunter takes last few stacks or just doesn't do anything crystally for that part
--- use team B on second crystal or have team C for third crystal which is Mage/hunter (remnants of unused ranged - First crystal person will be available at this point - dispersion will not be however)
---- at this point, communication is key... you MUST use vent or a macro or something that lets your fellow dps know that you're taking it. ELSE this happen:
"someone take the crystal!!!" "we all have the debuff because we herp'd derp'd in the beam instead of paying attention" "wipe it".

We never use a specific order after the first 2-3 crystals and this has not failed us once... (as opposed to failing the 2-3 times we tried a specific order)

NB Melee can help when the crystal is close to Bale's rear end

The rest is just dps as usual and don't stand in the crystal when you have the debuff or someone just took it... you'll mess up the debuff management and break synergy.

TANKING wise

- solo paladin tank taking all the fun blades to the face. proper use of cooldowns on infernal blades and not wasting them on decimation blades (as it has a set value and is not avoidable/reducible/etc...)

Edit: Correction You can DODGE Decimation blades

- Paladin tank helps in "oh crap" situations due to LoH but it is doable with all tanks (never tested with DK ourselves)

HEALING wise

- Proper building of stacks, alternating heals on tank exclusive to tormented exclusive and not letting the buff expire. That's something healers or raid leaders should establish, make sure you have at least 1 power healer or 2 less powerful healers at once on the tank. alternate if your best healer can cover the tank solo by putting the 2 others on the tormented at once...

For specific healer classes well... I just know about mine so:

- Penance counts as 3 heals, not one
- PW:S heal counts and also increases haste resulting in more FH or reg heals being launched on the tormented,
- POM heal also counts
- Not sure if Renew counts. (probably as holy with the improved renew element, can't confirm for disc yet).

That's about all I can think off right now... the fight is a Charlie Foxtrot. As long as it remains a controlled CF... it's ok, the moment your dudes decide to not talk to each other or look at each other's debuffs... you'll wipe.

Good luck!

[Beav]

Including Baleroc, I guess. So my guess is that he's talking about HM.

Im talking about normal. Our first 4 bosses are Shannox, Beth'tilac, Lord Ryo and Alysrazor

[Veiled]

I think there's wayyyyy too much discussion about this.

If you want to win and cheese the fight, disperse at 19, don't use the trinket.

In Heroic mode, use your trinket. Ezpz.

[Azithrom]

Penance counts as 3 heals, not one

This is straight up wrong, Penance will proc the spark three times, at a third amount that it will normally give, with a minimum of 1 spark per Penance ball. At low torment stacks it is the best stacker because it will give you 3 sparks regardless of torment stack number, but at higher ones it will give the proper amount.

[Deleted]

If you do the fight with 2 dps per crystal you hardly lose dps.. In fact you'll probably gain over the priest using Disperson. When we assign 2 players, A and B to a crystal they do the following: crystal spawns, everyone but A and B moves to the other leg. A stands closest, B stands next to him on the other side. When A has about 11-12 stacks he runs to the rest of the raid. B doesn't move. The only dps time lost is A moving for 2-3 seconds at a predictable time. If a priest uses Dispersion then he loses 6 seconds where he can't cast anything. Having to heal 2 players per crystal as a healer isn't an issue. IT's pretty easy to see when someone has changed crystal so you'll not gain 1 stack max.

(OP is referring to normal modes, on HC, well .. haven't tried yet )

If you need extra dps just go 2 healers ..
We used this tactic for the first time last night in our alt run(1 wipe to learn)
Assign 2 dps per crystal. Try avoding choosing the 2 highest dps. assign 1 dps as backup in case someone fails.
The key to doing it with 2 healers is using cd's at the start to make sure the tank doesn't die without healing basically because the 2 healers BOTH spam the person affected by the crystal to get stacks up fast.
Our setup was 7 dps, 1 prot pally tank, 1 resto druid and me, 1 holy pally.

As said, we popped Hero at the start and every single haste cd I had (Divine Favor) to spam the first 2 ppl taking the crystal. By using beacon on the tank, him popping his big 50% reduction cd and me also using Hand of Sac on him, he wasn't close to dying without any active heals. When the Crystal stopped I switched to healing him (having about 50 stacks alrdy). From then on it's just timing your switches and hope your tank dodges many decimation blades . LoH from the Prot Pally or me can heal him to full in 1 time so that really helps. With 7 dps'ers racing down the boss the fight is very short and you can use an extra healing cd every decimation blade if needed.

[MagicSN]

MagicSN - Regarding your 2 teams of 2 DPS. Thats what we were trying, but doesnt the huge amount of stacks on a ShP mean that the healers would get a major Vital Spark Buff or does it not matter?

I saw others replied that question for you already ^^ Though actually we do it without dispersion stuff and let the SP move out at 12 stacks like others actually. But I think it is a cool option to have.

[derevka]

One thing that a lot of people forget about, which I've posted on PlusHeal, here, and HowtoPriest a few times is remember to 'cheat out' with your instants... this includes Glyph of PWS.

For example, if your raid has a SP soaking a full shard, use that Glyph to sneak one extra heal at 25 stacks-- since your cast time heals wont often land in time to get that 'one more'. The logic prevails on non SP soakers, to sneak out that one more heal for Spark Stacks before you switch targets. Obviously Holy Priests should defer that privilege to the Discs, but remember. When I am super stacking on SPs I usually just spam Penance up until 9, then swap to Flash Heal, PWS at 16 stacks, then again at 25. (w/ SOS making it even easier).

[Deleted]

We found it easier for the healers if one healer stays on the shard guys the first half of the fight, while the other two switch their targets.

Usually we run Disc Priest, Resto Shaman and either Holy Pally or Holy Priest (me being the Holy Priest). On a usual kill, the Disc Priest and the Holy both heal the shard guys, abusing their fast heals to quickly build up stacks. The Resto Shaman will then heal the tanks. Once the first blades hit the Holy will assist the Shaman, using his Vital Sparks to get the tanks up faster. After the blades are over the Resto Shaman will now assist the Disc Priest with the DPS, while the Holy stays on the tanks. For the second blade the Resto Shaman switches back to the tanks, assists the Holy and after that the Holy will now revert to the DPS. This game is played until the Disc has 100 stacks of Vital Spark, after which he will solely heal the tanks, while the Holy and the Shaman take care of the shard guys. The Disc than takes all remaining tank healing duty until the end of the fight.
If the Disc runs into mana issues or otherwise gets into serious trouble towards the end of the fight he is replaced with whoever has the most stacks (usually the Holy), but if everything runs according to plan there is no need to ever change the targets after the Disc has stacked Vital Spark to 100.

The only benefit Dispersion offers is that for the first Inferno Blades the Holy has a couple of stacks more, which will ease the mana consumption during the blades, but it's not required. It's especially not required to take a full round of Torment, stacking it up to 12 and then dispersing is usually more than enough to make the first Inferno Blades less stressful. After that you don't really notice the difference. If you can pull it off it's nice to have. If you are struggeling: don't bother, two teams of two taking the shards in turn is very, very doable.

[EventHorizon]

This is straight up wrong, Penance will proc the spark three times, at a third amount that it will normally give, with a minimum of 1 spark per Penance ball. At low torment stacks it is the best stacker because it will give you 3 sparks regardless of torment stack number, but at higher ones it will give the proper amount.

You are quite right. It remains however the best quick stack builder on first 2 crystals (gives you a head start on fellow healers).

Sorry for misguiding.

[YankeePhan1234]

I soak for our 25 Heroic kills and I use the following CDs:
1-8 Stacks nothing
9 pop TB trinket
10-18 Nothing but if a healer needs a CD on me they call it (usually Hand of Sac by one of our rets)
19 Disperse
20-25 Soak and disperse runs out right as the crystal disappears

This can be a bit tricky, you really have to watch your stacks like a hawk, I've miss timed my disperse by .5 second a few times and I get 1 shotted, just be aware and you'll be fine.

[Vargur]

I myself am taking a full shard for 25 man, and used to get to 18 stacks for 10 man. Was also healing myself (to be safe) at 13-14 stacks, until dispersion on 19 stacks, and was only PWS for the 10 man, because it's easier.
And no, I haven't grinded that stupid faction for that stupid trinket yet. Not going to.

[HeatM1ser]

Now my question is this. Is it possible for me to suck up 19 stacks then disperse without having the http://www.wowhead.com/?item=62471 - Tol Barad trinket (Mirror or Broken Images)?

Yes.
Pop dispersion when you get your 19th stack and make sure the healers know your soaking the entire crystal because you'll take alot of damage. last night, for example, at about the 19th stacks I dropped to about 2% health...but still survived...so they will need to give you major heals....but you don't need the mirror to survive....just a well-timed dispersion and good healing.