Serious problems with H: Stoneguards

[Grimbold of Skullcrusher]

Hello,

so this week, we tried heroic stoneguards(jasper,jade,cobalt) and wiped exactly 99 times, then just cleared the rest on normal mode. We currently have no clue how to do this fight. Usually what happens that at 75%, when tiles are deactivated for the first time, we have cobalt mines everywhere, jasper chains on everyone and we cannot just light up the next set. Seems everyone can avoid shit properly now, but at 75% everything falls apart...

Our setup is: Warrior tank, Monk tank, Ret paladin, Surv Hunter, Affli warlock, Resto druid, Mistweaver monk, resto shaman, doomkin, shadow priest.


Also sometimes we wiped cos their energy ran out of controll. In the beginning we let 2 of the adds get like 40-50 energy and then the other tank with single dog taunts off the one which is currently doing petrification. But it happens(and kinda often) that they build up 20-30 energy before they choose new petrification. Anyone expirienced this as well?

Thank you very much.

[Deleted]

One popular tactic is to use 3rd "tank" so you have 2 people free of chains for the whole fight. Cobalt mines should be really easy with decent RNG, just destroy all of them while Cobalt is petrifying. With bad RNG you can still soak those with personal cooldowns. What comes to energy controll, general rule is to always have highest and lowest at the same.

[Grimbold of Skullcrusher]

That 3rd tank is supposed to tank? Cos that would put dot on 3 ppl and would put a lot more stress to healers...

[Deleted]

That 3rd tank is supposed to tank? Cos that would put dot on 3 ppl and would put a lot more stress to healers...

No. That 3rd tank just deals with the tiles (no chains during whole fight) and does as much dps as possible in tank spec.

[Kesandri]

As the above poster says, we have been trying HC stoneguard this week also and after about 20 wipes of no better than 60% we reverted to using a '3rd' tank who did the painting alone by himself as he cannot be chained.
We have yet to still kill them however the majority of our wipes after were at approx 30% with a few closer ones including a 0.7% wipe by hitting enrage (lost a dps 20 secs earlier, was very frustrating!)

Try the 3rd tank tactic if you can, I am sure we will kill it on tues using this idea

[Obsession]

It sounds like you aren't clearing chains/mines while jasper/cobalt are petrifying, respectively. The paladin can bubble + speed of light or the spreist can disperse, to clear them if you have bad luck, if you have standard luck he can freedom the warlock and the warlock can use burning rush to clear a bunch.

[Summer]

Yeah, have the ret in tank spec and doing nothing but running around lighting the tiles up. He won't get chains and the rest of the dps can relax and pew pew, no tank gear is needed. Less crowded in melee as well altho I guess you only had one melee anyways.

Alternatively try four healing it maybe.

Also don't break chains when you don't have to since they'll just be recast anyways and cause confusion.

[Deleted]

Hello,

so this week, we tried heroic stoneguards(jasper,jade,cobalt) and wiped exactly 99 times, then just cleared the rest on normal mode. We currently have no clue how to do this fight. Usually what happens that at 75%, when tiles are deactivated for the first time, we have cobalt mines everywhere, jasper chains on everyone and we cannot just light up the next set. Seems everyone can avoid shit properly now, but at 75% everything falls apart...

Our setup is: Warrior tank, Monk tank, Ret paladin, Surv Hunter, Affli warlock, Resto druid, Mistweaver monk, resto shaman, doomkin, shadow priest.


Also sometimes we wiped cos their energy ran out of controll. In the beginning we let 2 of the adds get like 40-50 energy and then the other tank with single dog taunts off the one which is currently doing petrification. But it happens(and kinda often) that they build up 20-30 energy before they choose new petrification. Anyone expirienced this as well?

Thank you very much.

You have a bit of bad luck for trying H: stoneguard for the first time. You have the worst possible combo up.

If cobalt mines are everywhere and you just don't seem to get cobalt petrification, you can always have your paladin run through as many as possible with bubble up, hunter with deterrence up, or spriest with dispersion to clear some away.

Don't reset jasper chains. That way you won't get new chains as you are lighting up tiles, since 3 chains is the max at any one time. You MIGHT wanna reset them if a melee gets tied to a range, but it shouldn't be much of a problem

While stone guard isn't a hard boss, this combo is like 10 times worse than any other imo. Next week should be jasper, cobalt, amethyst I think.

[Seriss]

Also don't break chains when you don't have to since they'll just be recast anyways and cause confusion.

Also, don't break chains when healers are chained together. You can't get any better rng than having one set of chains occupied by a pair of healers as they just need to communicate a bit in regards to moving out of crap but are otherwise unhindered by chains.

[Grimbold of Skullcrusher]

Hmm we will try it with the 3rd tank just doing the tiles, thats a good idea. What tank should do it? Warrior, monk or paladin? I think Monk should be ideal because of his mobility, right?

[Falcula]

There are basically two stages to tanking it: The pull, and the rest.

The pull: Tank A takes the two on one side, tank B takes the one on the other side.
If tank B's single dog starts to overload, they immediately taunt one of Tank A's dogs (Tank B now has two dogs). Tank A will then taunt the overloading dog when it reaches ~45 energy, so tank A has two dogs again.
Conversely, if one of tank A's dogs is the first to overload, they do nothing, and Tank B taunts the overloading dog over at ~45 energy (tank B now has two dogs).

The rest of the fight: The tank with two dogs is on easy street and doesn't need to worry about taunts. The tank with one dog just keeps track of which dog is currently overloading, and taunts that one if their single dog is the next one to overload. If their single dog is not the next one to overload, neither tank does anything. Example: I currently have Cobalt, the other tank has Jasper and Amethyst. Jasper is currently overloading. I know if my Cobalt lights up next, I need to taunt Jasper. Otherwise, neither tank taunts anything (that would mean Amethyst was chosen to overload next).

The only time the RNG can hurt you is if the tank with two dogs ends up having those same two overload over and over a half a dozen times or more. If you aren't crisp with the taunts each time one is needed, this will eventually build up their energy and cause an unmitigated explosion. It's rare but it gets us every now and then.

The rest of the problems caused by the RNG just take some practice. Make sure everyone is running through Cobalt mines whenever the Cobat dog is overloading, and Jasper chains are being broken any time Jasper is overloading. If you get some bad luck and Cobalt doesn't overload for an extended period of time, have your Ret bubble and run as many mines down as he can before it expires - or hunter/Deterrence or priest/Dispersion. Whoever is available. The chains can cause some bad RNG, but find out what your people are comfortable with. Some of our ranged/heals like to just stay together for the rest of the fight if they get chained. They could break it, but may end up getting chained to a melee later, which causes more problems.

Practice the taunt rotation. It's pretty simple/fluid when it "clicks" and you see how it works. The is no need for a third tank. You have the same combo we had this week. It was a pain with the the litter on the floor, but we got no unmitigated explosions at any point.

Edit 2: It was also beneficial to have all eight non-tanks grab a crystal on the pull and plow 80 tiles before anything bad starts happening. Gets you off to a good start. We would light up about 100-110 in P1 and P2, then maybe 50-60 in P3 and just Lust.

[Grimbold of Skullcrusher]

Thanks for all the advices, I am sure it will be most helpful :-) Hopefully we'll clear HoF in 2 days and have some time to progress hc's in MSV

[Williee]

Its a fight I still hate up to now
Had over 100 wipes the first time we killed it >.<

[Grimbold of Skullcrusher]

Its a fight I still hate up to now
Had over 100 wipes the first time we killed it >.<

At least we are not the only one :-D

[thegempolice]

My guild wiped more on Heroic Stone Guard than Feng and Gara'jal combined. I just think it's a really hard fight on certain combinations.

[Deleted]

We used 4 tankes on the fight monk and a paladin dk warrior (DK and warrior where tanking bosses). They were painting the floor all of the time so we would have 140+ stacks. When we had blue up ppl would stand in traps to clear tham. If not our pally would use booble and clear traps around tanks if it was needed. Be shure bosses are 40+ energy apart so . Boss A = 0 , B = 40 ,C = 80 (its can go up and down but by little). Be shure to use only 1 tant since 2 taunts are not needed.

[Darkfrosty]

Thanks for all the advices, I am sure it will be most helpful :-) Hopefully we'll clear HoF in 2 days and have some time to progress hc's in MSV

Um if you are just now working on HM Stone guards I would not go into HOF expecting to clear it in 2 days. I for see Garlalon and Empress being some very interesting fights on normal.

[cyqu]

Have every dps just do the first set of tiles, will give you like 60 or 80, pop hero, we never break chains, and everyone breaks a cobalt mine when petrifications happens. After that assign a set of dps to do the tiles that are chained.

Tanks taunt faster.

[Deleted]

in the beginning of the fight let everyone (including tanks if you can afford it) activate 10 tiles with raidcooldowns. 5 people on each side, so you will have 1 side gaining extra dmg. but you can counter it with revival for example. this way you will have 100 activated (maybe 80 w/o tanks) after ~15 sec. after that you won't have to activate more till 75%. you will notice a significant dps boost and this gets you 45 sec maybe 1 minute more time left for 75-0. so you don't have to panic @ 75% or 40% cause you want to activate that tiles too fast because of enragetimer