Heroic Ragnaros 25: Molten Seeds and moving as a group?

[Dvorjak]

It's rather embarrassing to admit, but the problem our guild is having with H Rag 25 is the Molten Seed phase. We always have 2 or more straglers that are dying when the seeds spawn. Here's how we do it:

We all make a tight stack on the far left side of the platform, up near Ragnaros. When the timer on our boss mod (we are all using the latest DBM alpha) hits "0", we all move. Some of the raiders move late and die. I have heard that some people do not move on zero, but instead use their own countdown and leave around 1. That way, when the seeds are spawning, people are already on the move. How do people coordinate this? Do they have the raid leader counting down over vent, "3,2,1,MOVE"? How do you compensate for vent lag? Or do they all move when the timer hits 1? If so, doesn't that present the same problem as moving on 0?
Thanks!

[Unrully]

We run with someone calling "GO" at 2.5 seconds. Whoever is doing the calling has to compensate for vent lag themselves. If anyone else is moving slow and getting hit, it's their own fault.

[Brakthir]

We all use BigWigs as the timer used to be/still is more accurate than DBM and does a nice countdown. We all stack up and run at 2 seconds left on the meter. We also use mumble which I believe has less lag than vent.

[Deleted]

Yeah, if people are getting hit then it's best to run a couple of seconds early. Just have someone make the call on vent. Watch out if you have a stampeding roar for any waves, though, running early a couple of times we pretty much got to our opposite stack point before the seeds hit.

[Deleted]

If you go abit more to the corner (have your demo locks out ofc) you can start moving at 3-2 then you will be moving for the 1-0 and seeds should not hit anyone as your all moving. stack up >>> aoe and move back to the other side or get your face ripped off.

[Deleted]

Call out on vent, 3-2-1 Go, so everyone is moving before 0. Everyone has the same vent delay aside from the person calling it out who is usually about a second ahead, so just factor that in and you're good to go.

[Fiana]

First of all, do not rely on addons. Same version or not, addon is not accurate. His prediction can differ by 2 seconds between 2 different members.
Use vent communication.
Assign druids to to increase raid speed for every explosion.
Clearly set up running rules. If you run on 3-2-1, it means that when you hear "1" you should press run button. You should not run on 2, on 0 or on 1.5.
Make several tests out of fight. Teach players to run as one group.

Even with awful connection and big ping difference between raiders running from seeds is not a big deal.

In 25man seeds is not your biggest problem. p4 is

[Fiana]

Relying on addons is perfectly fine as long as you code it right. Seeds spawn 12 seconds after the first sulfuras smash in p2, then every minute (or whatever the base bigwigs timer is) afterwards.

I'm using bigwigs myself. I'm not running with main group because I'm feral druid. So I clearly see where and when MY seed spawn.
I record video of the fight all the time. There is difference between timers even on one player within one fight. Sometimes seeds spawn exactly on 0. Sometimes it takes up to 2 additional seconds to spawn. Several times I nearly died because it spawned somewhere near 0.5. It was just few times, but it happened.
I always run exactly on the same number. But seed spawns differently every time.

We used bigwigs timer in at start. We had a lot of dead people who said "But I started running on 2!" And provided videos where they actually did.
We started using voice countdown in ventrilo and we have no deaths on seeds phase since that.

[Ashrr]

^Any idea why the developers haven't done this themselves?

[Castnicke]

And that's exactly what I'm saying. The base bigwigs isn't accurate. You have to code it up manually in the .lua. It's not like this is extremely hard to do. And you have the data - 12 seconds after the first sulfuras smash.

Once it's coded right (you only need *one* person to do it then share it on megaupload/guild FTP or something) you can rely on the addon perfectly.

I think you are forgetting that the Seed lands faster depending on where you're standing on the platform. Closer to the edge, it spawns faster. Further away from the edge, the spawn is slightly delayed.

Either way, I do the countdown in my own guild. We run from one edge of the room to the other through the use of stampeeding roar. I start my countdown at 4.5s, I count 4.5s - 3, 3.5s - 2, 2.5s - 1, 1.5s - MOVE. We all move when I say move.

edit:

Let me rephrase that.. the actual spawn isn't delayed, but the landing of the seed is delayed depending on distance.

[Deleted]

Yeah, if people are getting hit then it's best to run a couple of seconds early. Just have someone make the call on vent. Watch out if you have a stampeding roar for any waves, though, running early a couple of times we pretty much got to our opposite stack point before the seeds hit.

There's no danger of this if you cast roar after the adds are launched - at least BigWigs gives an alert when this happens.

[Vyoh]

And that's exactly what I'm saying. The base bigwigs isn't accurate. You have to code it up manually in the .lua. It's not like this is extremely hard to do. And you have the data - 12 seconds after the first sulfuras smash.

Once it's coded right (you only need *one* person to do it then share it on megaupload/guild FTP or something) you can rely on the addon perfectly.

While this was true in the beginning, BigWigs authors fixed this when it was pointed out to them more than a few months ago. If you know anything about LUA coding then you can figure that out for yourself.

BigWigs scans for intermission end based on the yell on line 85:

self:Yell("IntermissionEnd", L["intermission_end_trigger1"], L["intermission_end_trigger2"], L["intermission_end_trigger3"])

the triggers are defined in the locals, on line 30 - 32:

L.intermission_end_trigger1 = "Sulfuras will be your end"
L.intermission_end_trigger2 = "Fall to your knees"
L.intermission_end_trigger3 = "I will finish this"

and it starts the Seed timer bar this triggers on line 222:

self:Bar(98498, "~"..moltenSeed, 15, 98498)

Our guild uses my own heavily customised lua file for Ragnaros since we first started progressing on it, so I've spent my fair time in the code. The problem was (and this has been true for many bosses in the past) is that the addon we used to create Transcripts for boss casts and abilities was neglecting UNIT_SPELL_CAST_SUCCEEDED due to an error of that addon's author. BW/DBM/DXE are all combat event driven addons so when a cast was deemed "undetectable" by SPELL_CAST_ a lot of hacks were needed to work around it. Basically we had to rely on things we COULD detect. BigWigs solved this with scheduling timers based on other events. One of those were someone taking damage from a seed landing (inaccurate, as this can be avoided completely as a lot of people know now) or a seed exploding. Since all seeds more or less explode at the same time and everyone takes damage from that it was "easy" enough. You just had to figure out how frequent the seeds land from that point. I do have to say that the BigWigs file had some shady timers going on because considering Caleb from Ensidia manages it I can't help but feel that it was perhaps on "purpose". From one of the earlier versions of our file:

seedsCD, infernoCD = 50, 60

Those were different by 2 seconds for BigWigs. Hence why on the second wave of seeds people had to run on 2.5 or whatever to compensate. With a slight adjustment our timers were completely accurate for every wave of seeds, so it feels weird to me it didn't get adjusted. It does depend a lot on where you stand on the platform. If you stand on the left you'll have to run earlier than a group that stands in the center since the seeds have a longer flightpath to the center.

That's it for some background. To eliminate further incertainties, the most recent BigWigs has reflected that UNIT_SPELL_CAST_SUCCEEDED does actually trigger on Molten Seeds and thus we finally have a trigger that we can use to accurately map out Seed casts. In the past you had to rely on scheduled timers who due to a limitation can have variations in accuracy. Now we just look for the combat event UNIT_SPELL_CAST_SUCCEEDED and WARN when that fires. If you run on that warning, described on line 328:

self:Message(98498, spellName, "Urgent", spellId, "Alarm")

Then you'll never get hit by the Seeds. No more running when the bar hits "0" or when it hits "2.5". Run when you see the message "Molten Seed" and you'll be perfectly fine. After that triggers once it's a piece of cake, next Seeds are 60 seconds later:

self:Bar(98498, spellName, 60, spellId)

Fairly long post, but I'm tired of seeing this misinformation so I wanted to clear it up.

[Deleted]

Timers or no timers, voice comms or not, if 24 other people start running like mad men it's probably a good sign that you should get your arse in gear and run as well .

[Callypso]

Timers or no timers, voice comms or not, if 24 other people start running like mad men it's probably a good sign that you should get your arse in gear and run as well .

The problem is that the raiders doing exactly this, will be the ones getting hit by the seeds from the other 24.

[Wilderness]

Make sure those people have the same boss addon, and the same version, that everyone else is using.

Have the raid leader count down - this is what we do, but we also use Mumble and don't have the lag that vent does.

Use stampeding roar each time. In a 25 man you should have at least 2 druids so there will always be one available.

[Pokty]

BigWigs is accurate enough.

[Eec003]

DXE is finished updating and timers havn't been wrong on our past 4 kills at all. Have everyone in your raid use the same addon, but i really dont think it matters anymore as everyone's timers should be very similiar anyway.

[Ashrr]

It looks like Vyoh is absolutely right about Big Wigs. My guild is still progressing on Rag HC and even though I'd pointed it out many times, we wiped a lot on seeds due to people running with different versions or even different boss mods. When they finally came around the hard way and used the latest version of Big Wigs, p2 almost magically fell into place.

The trick is to use the timer as nothing more than an indication that seeds will be coming your way soon. As long as everyone runs only at the warning message and not earlier or later, it should be clean as a whistle. Even when the timer hit 0, we had the raid stay put until the message came up. This worked very well for us, even without stampeding roar on one pull as someone forgot to use it :P

I'm not sure about how it is in DBM though.

[Mudkiper]

Everyone has BigWig's, everyone moves at the right time (we use 0 since the latest updates, before that we used 1.5 I think), never wipe in p2 and no one dies unless they have a brain fail.

[Deleted]

The current version of Bigwigs is 100% accurate, we had a few people in raid using DBM and even the latest DBM was slightly inaccurate every 10 attempts or so, Bigwigs however has been 100% accurate since the last time I updated it which was some weeks ago.

As far as the running strategy goes, you don't have to run when the timer reaches 0, you can run 1-2 seconds earlier and if you run in the same direction the seeds will still be stacked up together. I recommend you use someone who calls the timer out on vent/TS for you and everyone moves according to that.