Tortos - Frost Spec, advice and tips needed

[Malfecto]

Ok, so... after the second night on this guy, we are still having issues. We got him to about 8%, but we didn't know about the double turtle spawn and everything went to poop. After that attempt, we never came back around to that.

Anyway!

I hate this fight. Even as frost, being able to pick up FoF procs and having FFB procs to use on the move, I just feel like I have no time to do anything. Stop to cast? Nope, turtle. Stop to refresh invo (yes, I'm going to try incanter's Sunday), nope, rockfall. I dunno, I just feel like venting.

I do have specific points to query about. I try to use Ice Barrier and save it for Quake. Would TempShield be better?

Then rock fall happens and I'm pressed between trying to get dps on the turtles and staying far enough away from the rockfalls to minimize raid damage. However, sometimes I get 0-1 rockfalls, and sometimes I get 5 or 6 in one area, and the extra-impact (outside the circle) damage usually stacks enough that a turtle comes zooming in and next thing I know I'm in Cauterize.

We have 2 melee dps, our tanks on the bats, and still have issues with bats not going down, but at the same time, we can rarely spare range dps from the turtles.

Finally, here are the logs. I'm done being proud, and I'm already sick of this boss. The few attempts past the initial good attempt are my fault since I said to spread out, and everyone spread WAY out, and heals went to shit.

http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/r...pes&boss=67977

Thanks for any help.

[Muphrid]

Are your turtles consistently slowed? Fast turtles make the fight way more hectic. Slow turtles make it pretty manageable and less panicky.

Temporal Shield is quite powerful for quake; I dare say this fight is something TS is ideal for, as it quickly means you're under no threat of dying.

You really shouldn't be in much danger of being hit by Whirl Turtles. I was not hit at all on our kill shot, and I'm the kicker.

Rockfalls give plenty of time to do things. You can certainly refresh Invocation even if a Rockfall spawns while you're channeling. Remember Rockfalls are only targeted onto people. While all spreading out may be suboptimal, keeping a clean separation between melee in the front of the room and ranged further back makes it easier to spread the Rockfalls out.

I notice over all your wipes that you personally are responsible for nearly 40% of all damage on Whirl Turtles; you carry much more of this load than your other ranged DPS. This could be significant. The warlock and hunter combined do less than you do. Honestly, the warlock is just low period. The hunter, at least, is helping kill bats.

Consider dropping a Flamestrike on the bats to give some intermittent help. Frost Bomb is a viable alternative to Nether Tempest, as you can throw it on a bat and then pet Freeze all the bats to get a substantially higher number of crits.

Are you usually getting a turtle kicked onto the bats to help with damage on them?

[Saegno]

I would DEF recommend taking temporal shield and IW.
You pop both right before the Quake and will not only proc the full 30% damage boost from IW but also have a nice HoT making your healers lives easier.

With the bats, make sure you are using frost orb on them and not the turtles. You will be swimming in procs and can cleave the shit out of them easy. Also, make sure you are using pet freeze on them for 2 more FoF procs.

As for the rockfalls, The splash damage, assuming you and your raid aren't derping and standing in the middle of one, should not be anywhere near enough to kill you if your healers are competent. What with the time they give you to react+blink, those should be a non-issue.

[reflection]

I'm kicking the turtles in our raid, so gladly I'm not supposed to do maximum DPS. We killed Tortos the second night yesterday. The only thing that's important for range DPS is: Kill the turtles before the next turtles spawn. At least in our raid group we are completely fine with this strategy. If I manage to kick the turtle through the bats melee DPS (we have 2) have more then enough time to damage the boss. You will also notice that if you did the fight a few times, you have some time between the turtles to DPS the boss.

[nimryas]

Killed it last night on 10man in about after about 7 wipes, it's not really that difficult. I had evo talent but I guess IW would be a better fit What I did was keep watch on the timers, and pop my frozen orb a couple of seconds before the turtles would come through and i would just dot em up with NT and frozen orb + NT hits would grant me FoF and Brain Freeze procs so I could just basicly keep on moving and dpsing the turtles, also got talent ice floes to be able to cast 2 frostbolts while moving, in the meantime i would also get some more procs

Bats died pretty quick so i didnt really bother saving up my frozen orb for that part. Frozen orb doesnt line up perfectly with the turtles tho, but it worked ok for me

[Malfecto]

@Nimryas: This is what I was doing (orb into spawning turtles) to slow them and also to try to keep procs for movement. I can't manage ice flows for some reason, I just don't have enough practice I guess. I'll look at it though.

@reflection: We were doing fine when we lusted in the opener for the first turtles, then we decided to save lust for when he double spawns the turtles at 20%? We actually have to have the melee help with first turtle with no lust, and after that it is really tight. I'm usually finishing the turtles, helping finish bats before next quake, and by then marking the new spawn and dodging the rockfalls.

@Saegno: I'm definitely going to swap to IW and TS. I would also try my best to put orb into the bats, but often times I was across the room chasing a turtle on the far side. That's another issue we are having, trying to keep them from zipping past to the very back or very left and right.

@Muphrid: I'm trying to get our DK to take chillblains, and I know our hunter certainly needs to do better with his traps. I'll look into how snares are being managed. I will talk to the other ranged and see where their priority is. I know the lock is our main kicker, but I'm having issue with the fact that he can move and cast and is still low. The hunter should only be MD'ing the bats, so if he is high on bats, I'm going to have to talk to him about understanding simple directions ><

How we handle turtles is we use one for the first breath, then save 2, use one for the next breath, so that leaves us with 3. Then we try to keep a stock of 2, one for the bats and one for the breath.

This has given me a lot to think about. Thanks for putting fresh eyes on the logs Murph and for everyone else's input. I'll try to put some of this into practice Sunday.

---------- Post added 2013-03-22 at 02:21 PM ----------

Ok, I dug into the logs a bit more on overall and the longer attempts, and I definitely have some bones to pick ><

[Akraen]

I don't use Ice Floes.

This fight is just managed chaos.

NT whirling turtles, orb bats.
CoC whirling turtles when they spawn.
CoC bats (mouse turn).
Keep frostbolt debuff & NT on Tortos himself.

Blazing speed to position yourself in good spots, greater invis for when damage gets a little crazy.

It's tough to explain this fight, but you can watch how I did it here:
http://www.twitch.tv/akraenstormrage/b/379828034 go to 1 hour 55 min, sorry for screen flashing and meh stream quality, I'm new to twitch and xsplit.

[Malfecto]

Thanks Akraen, I'll check it out!

I haven't been CoCing the bats because I don't want to slow them as the tank takes them to the melee, and I don't want to impede that. Then I'm usually too far away to do anything but Freeze them when they arrive for procs.

There is just no way I have time to maintain the frostbolt debuff on Tortos. NT yes, but I really almost never stop casting on turtles.

I guess I need to stake out a position closer to him and more to the middle so I can more easily access the incoming turtles, the arrived bats, and such.

[Malfecto]

Got him after only 2 attempts last night! (First wipe doesn't count... I uh... ahem... forgot to move my marking macro back, and spent the last 15 seconds of attempt one trying to sheep the turtles.)

http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/r...?s=1348&e=1787

What we changed, for those interested:

First, we made sure that ranged stayed on turtles and melee on bats. We didn't even let the hunter misdirect so he wouldn't get distracted and forget to swap back to turtles. Then we made sure melee killed the bats before being back on the boss.

We saved lust for 25%. With 3 focused ranged, the first turtle went down in time for first breath. YMMV, if not have a melee help on the first turtle. Mainly though, this is due to our third and most important change.

SLOWING THE TURTLES. We stopped kiting all over the place. We had our DK tank (on the boss) put down glyphed DnD, then our dps DK put another DnD just past his, then a hunter trap. This kept them pretty well slowed in the middle (chillblains going out from both DK as well), and I saved Frozen orb for bats OR when the turtles got out of hand and there wasn't a ready trap or DnD available. I also used CoC on cooldown whenever they were near me, and of course the marked one being burnt usually always had frostbolt and/or FFB snare on it. We thought about having our lock go affliction and use Soul burn on curse of exhaustion, but it turned out we didn't need it.

Also what smoothed out things was the lock keeping better track of RoF for ember gen, and everyone staying closer to the middle of the room to keep the turtles in the snares which makes them super easy to dodge even in close quarters.

We are still a little helter skelter with the rockfalls. I'm arguing that they land on people, and that we should all be on the one side for quake, then move to the other, leaving rockfall trailing behind us, but that got downvoted.

Um, what else? I think that's it. Once we got under 25% we lusted after his next breath, ignored the turtles, kept 2 or 3 shells for kicking breath and killed bats and burned the boss.

Thanks to everyone for their input and help!

[Hasufer]

Quick recap of what I do on Tortos heroic:

Glyphs: CoC, lance, IV.

Talents:

Ice floes (nice nice nice for moving when u have to - combined with procs and refresh nt on w/e, and afterall theres a "lot" of random movement due to rockfall)
Ice Ward (macro to tank and enjoy another CoC crit for 125k on all bats,
Cauterize (always decent)
NT - yer, it's NT = win,
Invocation (found IV to be less optimal than what ppl believe in this thread - I thought to myself on forehand that it would be good, but was not satisfied in combat)

Keep fb and nt on Tortos throughout.
Eventually save procs for turtle spawn (2x fof/1bf) + coc them for slow/dmg. Really depends on what u got available, your task, and what kinda raidsynergy and setup u got.
When bats spawn, dot a few with nt as tank pics them up and moves towards Tortos. FS as they approach the designated "kill-spot" in front of Tortos - this can be combined with a pet freeze and coc just before the Fs cast hits, granting u 100% crit on both fs/coc, works wonders for ya burst. then use nova + arc exp, arc exp a few times, ice ward tank, coc the frozen adds again.
Frost orb on the adds whenever possible (each second time the bats spawn usually) - when orb is up, enjoy fof over arc exp and perhaps fs, but keep using the freeze/war - coc combo, as it's quite win.

Cept from that, keep dots on turtles and nuke em when u aint got bats and/or needs to kill em before new ones spawn.
Dps Tortos.

[Deleted]

On the normal mode i use Frostbomb.

At the end of longer Tries (25 nhc) I had aboud 230k ø dps (up to 270k).

Frostbomb, deepfreeze, lance glyphes and always look for the frostbomb target being frozen at the moment it deturns.

[Hasufer]

On the normal mode i use Frostbomb.

At the end of longer Tries (25 nhc) I had aboud 230k ø dps (up to 270k).

Frostbomb, deepfreeze, lance glyphes and always look for the frostbomb target being frozen at the moment it deturns.

U dont need frost bomb to make 270k dps - I hit 320k on some attempts on heroic (bat dps included ofc) and never below 150-200k on a fair try.
What's frostbomb worth when u have no bats up - compared to NT?
Triple nt on turtle are surely a lot more win (proccing bf on a more frequentrate than fb). NT also cleaves when eventually close to one another, fb does this too, but the loss is greater if it doens't happen, which it mostly wont due to their random movement.

[Deleted]

U dont need frost bomb to make 270k dps - I hit 320k on some attempts on heroic (bat dps included ofc) and never below 150-200k on a fair try.
What's frostbomb worth when u have no bats up - compared to NT?
Triple nt on turtle are surely a lot more win (proccing bf on a more frequentrate than fb). NT also cleaves when eventually close to one another, fb does this too, but the loss is greater if it doens't happen, which it mostly wont due to their random movement.

Asking for help for tortoros fight (easy fight both normal and heroic) means you arent really the person able to play class / spec optimal. Hence another aspect to Hausufer:s argument about picking NT over FrostBomb would be the fact that is instant cast, which leaves you room to fail on some aspects of the game and not stay remotely stationary.

[Akraen]

Asking for help for tortoros fight (easy fight both normal and heroic) means you arent really the person able to play class / spec optimal. Hence another aspect to Hausufer:s argument about picking NT over FrostBomb would be the fact that is instant cast, which leaves you room to fail on some aspects of the game and not stay remotely stationary.

Not the nicest reply but the latter half of your statement is correct.

That's a fight where the last thing you want is another non-instant cast.

[Hasufer]

which leaves you room to fail on some aspects of the game and not stay remotely stationary.

exactly - and generally not fond of being "stationary" when u have pro movement options available, which does not only up your dps, but increase your survivability and makinh your gameplay more fluently overall (and fun!)

That's a fight where the last thing you want is another non-instant cast.

Coudn't have said it better!

[Deleted]

makinh your gameplay more fluently overall (and fun!)

Fluent fun gameplay, gogo Tortos hc as firespec XD there we have fun (though OT).

[Hasufer]

Killed it tonight as frost, was fun and turned out quite fine ;D

http://worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-858f2er1txhw43ao/

check the nt/frozen orb and coc dmg - it's so win!

[Malfecto]

Nice. I will play more with trying to deliver CoC and Frozen orb to include bats, but for our first kill, I was just focused on my turtles. Melee got their bats down pretty well at any rate. I'm definitely liking frost this tier over the other specs.

Hasufer, do you multi-dot Bats too?

[Libretto]

On our 25m heroic kill I played frost and mostly ignored bats while focusing solely on turtles and boss damage. We just kited the bats the entire fight so damage on them was relatively useless, though our unholy DK did about 700K DPS from having diseases rolling on 80+ bats towards the end.

Frost was vastly better than fire for turtle damage IMO. You can combust off the boss onto turtles as they come in, but you need the RNG to have a decent ignite for it to be worth it. Ice lance cleave and glyphed CoC make frost work a bit better on turtles than fire.

[Saegno]

U dont need frost bomb to make 270k dps - I hit 320k on some attempts on heroic (bat dps included ofc) and never below 150-200k on a fair try.
What's frostbomb worth when u have no bats up - compared to NT?
Triple nt on turtle are surely a lot more win (proccing bf on a more frequentrate than fb). NT also cleaves when eventually close to one another, fb does this too, but the loss is greater if it doens't happen, which it mostly wont due to their random movement.

BF only counts the last placed mage bomb when figuring procs.