Hivemind without DK

[GringoD]

On sunday we spent a few hours on Hivemind after killing Maut. It became apparent fast that tons of guilds only kill that boss with a Blood DK. There was quite the ruckus in comms, questioning whether we should go to Shad'har instead.

That evening we tried our best to stack up when the drones spawn and pull bosses towards one flier while trying to knockback another into melee.
We couldn't ever fully kill the second drone wave during Ka'zir control and wiped on the second banelings.

So, I have a few questions for you guys:

1. Should we go Shad'har first if we don't have a DK?
2. Does a crappy alt DK as third tank make sense? If yes, how crappy are we talking?
3. Any tips for the fight if you don't have DK?

[Chonar]

I have no advice for you yet, but I'll add my voice to the chorus; We've experienced the same. The fight becomes infinitely more finnickey/hard without a blood DK.

This is where I'd say "So much for bring the player not the class eh Blizz" but that mantra hasnt been applied for years.

[Emerald Archer]

On sunday we spent a few hours on Hivemind after killing Maut. It became apparent fast that tons of guilds only kill that boss with a Blood DK. There was quite the ruckus in comms, questioning whether we should go to Shad'har instead.

That evening we tried our best to stack up when the drones spawn and pull bosses towards one flier while trying to knockback another into melee.
We couldn't ever fully kill the second drone wave during Ka'zir control and wiped on the second banelings.

So, I have a few questions for you guys:

1. Should we go Shad'har first if we don't have a DK?
2. Does a crappy alt DK as third tank make sense? If yes, how crappy are we talking?
3. Any tips for the fight if you don't have DK?

You should absolutely not have a need for DKs for drones.
BDKs usually use their grips on darters, which you don't actually NEED a dk for, if you just have people switch. We killed it very early on with 1 dps DK, so 1 single grip for 1 of the 3 darters.
Sounds like you need better dps, which shouldn't be an issue with the cloak upgrade, if you have a BM hunter make sure they use rapid reload, should make a pretty significant dps difference.
Shad'har is also fine but if you've started hivemind prog you may as well finish it. Do you have any logs?

[dreamdaddy]

Yes, you should start gearing out the B DK alt during next week's heroic run.

Pretty much every raid tier for the past several years has had fights where a B DK made the fight much, much easier, like Mistress in Tomb of Sargeras and Mannoroth in HFC (though dps DKs had gorefiend's during WoD - you still wanted 2, preferably 3).

[bullseyed]

This is where I'd say "So much for bring the player not the class eh Blizz" but that mantra hasnt been applied for years.

That's never been a thing, and the out of context quote it was invented from came from a person who hasn't worked for Blizzard since 2013.

[Hellobolis]

the ground mobs you don't need a DK for, just proper positioning and meme beams. (healers can get memebeam too now)
the flying ones it's nice for but at the end of the day a grip is just another CC/slow/stun.

a DK is nice, and a shitty geared one will do as long as they don't get one shot by stuff, but ultimately this fight is 90% about respecting the mechanics and switching to the correct target.

oh, playing over 40 corruption is also a bad idea most of the time, grand delusion very dangerous if you get a no heal or baneling debuff. you can start worrying about dps once you get 6-7 minutes into the fight.

[Eapoe]

DKs aren’t necessary, but a BDK with Conflict & Strife makes a huge difference in how easy it is to kill the adds. There is absolutely no denying that fact.
That said, Shad is a very easy fight but also a big check in dps and healing. Inquisitor is also pretty easy but I strongly recommend the addons that help with the orb path and to start cycling people thru now on your heroic or normal kills so they get used to it to save time as some of the orbs on mythic require some pretty accurate shots.

[Frostyfire14]

Druids can sleep them for the full duration, and your guild can mow them down 1 by 1, but might take some more coordination than usual. (not breaking CC)

[psyquest]

On sunday we spent a few hours on Hivemind after killing Maut. It became apparent fast that tons of guilds only kill that boss with a Blood DK. There was quite the ruckus in comms, questioning whether we should go to Shad'har instead.

That evening we tried our best to stack up when the drones spawn and pull bosses towards one flier while trying to knockback another into melee.
We couldn't ever fully kill the second drone wave during Ka'zir control and wiped on the second banelings.

So, I have a few questions for you guys:

1. Should we go Shad'har first if we don't have a DK?
2. Does a crappy alt DK as third tank make sense? If yes, how crappy are we talking?
3. Any tips for the fight if you don't have DK?

No need for a DK.

People need to stack for the small adds since they fixate players. Wait for them to gather > destroy them
Darter need to be killed one by one. Just stun when two are close together. Tank boss centre for those.

At the end, remember you can CC the darters that spawn around the end and just kill the boss.

[Gomelus]

It helps a lot to have a DK, even better if it's blood, because then you can easily pull the darters into the melee deathball and they get cleaved down rather fast. You gain damage on the bosses this way as well. Otherwise, you can knockback them in the direction of the melees and hope for the best. Once they're in melee, they should be permastuned, any kinda of hard cc works, as long as you interrupt their cast. They move away once the cast is done, so you can disorient, poly, hex, whatever is available, not only stuns.
And please, don't root them, it screws knockbacks and grips.

[Marrilaife]

Imo Shad'har is easier tactics wise and since this week people have cloak proc upgrades it could be good moment to try it instead.

Xanesh is a coordination check 99% of wipes will be from failed ball or failed interrupt so that's two opposite bosses, one is mechanic easy but dps / hps check, other is dps / hps easy but strict mechanic check.

Hivemind is a bit of both, people need to be disciplined to prio adds, you can do it without dk but people need to know which adds to target specially during Kazir control then they heal at low hp. They also need to be good at dodging the rolling beetles, I'd say most wipes will be because people died from them and you didn't have enough dps / healing after several deaths and fell behind. You can move one of the bosses closer to a darter to cleave, you can also get ranged who can dps adds even if these are spread (if you have such classes).

[Kief]

Yes, you should start gearing out the B DK alt during next week's heroic run.

Pretty much every raid tier for the past several years has had fights where a B DK made the fight much, much easier, like Mistress in Tomb of Sargeras and Mannoroth in HFC (though dps DKs had gorefiend's during WoD - you still wanted 2, preferably 3).

Ironically this is the first tier where you would even remotely consider using a Blood DK in this expansion outside of Mekkatorque in BoD though, so that statement is absolutely a massive lie.

On sunday we spent a few hours on Hivemind after killing Maut. It became apparent fast that tons of guilds only kill that boss with a Blood DK. There was quite the ruckus in comms, questioning whether we should go to Shad'har instead.

That evening we tried our best to stack up when the drones spawn and pull bosses towards one flier while trying to knockback another into melee.
We couldn't ever fully kill the second drone wave during Ka'zir control and wiped on the second banelings.

So, I have a few questions for you guys:

1. Should we go Shad'har first if we don't have a DK?
2. Does a crappy alt DK as third tank make sense? If yes, how crappy are we talking?
3. Any tips for the fight if you don't have DK?

If you could provide som logs of the attempts it would be much easier to assess what's going wrong for you, but mostly it sounds like people are just not trying to damage the correct targets.

To answer your questions though.
1: No, you don't need a DK for Hivemind. I have never pulled Hivemind mythic with a DK in the raid and it took 11 attempts on progression to kill it and is now an easy oneshot every reset.
2: The only boss worth 3-tanking in this instance is Vexiona to make add tanking & last phase easier.
3: Have the raid use their eyes. Single-target stun Darters and nuke them down, you ALWAYS hard-swap to Ravagers & Drones (they are never up at the same time unless you have bad damage). Have your raiders actually use their spells to knock the darters into better positions, Typhoon, Thunderstorm, Shining Force, Ring of Peace will give you PLENTY of displacement for the Darters. Also move the bosses to darters so effectively cleave them down. If you struggle with Drones and not darters, I am honestly not sure what you're doing on that fight, they die in seconds if your raid knows what to do.

Have you set up a good healing cooldown rotation for the Hivemind swaps & the drones exploding? (you never kill the exploding drones, just use a raid cooldown for it blowing up).
Do your raiders ACTUALLY know the strategy of the fight or are you throwing yourselves blind at the boss? (Dodging all the ground effects, attacking the correct targets at the right time, interrupting every cast on Kaz'ir, etc..)

Hivemind should without a doubt be the 4th boss that you kill in this raid, and I'll give you the reasons why:
- If you struggle to kill Hivemind because of coordination you stand no chance against Xanesh rituals/interrupts or Shad'har feeding/freedom/spreading.
- If you struggle to kill Hivemind because you lack healing then first of all there is no setback to 5-healing the fight. If you are already 5-healing and you struggle to keep everyone alive, then you will stand no chance at Shad'har healing (which is also typically a 5-heal boss on progression).
- If you struggle with 4 healers then you might struggle with healing Xanesh in the later stages of the fight if you damage is lacking a lot.
- If you struggle to kill Hivemind because you lack damage on priority targets then you stand no chance killing the interrupt adds in a timely manner on Xanesh which means you get too little uptime and will have to do more rituals than neccessary.
- If you struggle to kill Hivemind because people are dying to their own mistakes. Then Shad'har will be just as difficult in the first phase.

[dreamdaddy]

Ironically this is the first tier where you would even remotely consider using a Blood DK in this expansion outside of Mekkatorque in BoD though, so that statement is absolutely a massive lie.

Hmm looks like B DK has actually been very popular in mythic for BFA

Uldir:


BoD:


EP:


Nylotha:

[Kief]

Hmm looks like B DK has actually been very popular in mythic for BFA

Uldir:


BoD:


EP:


Nylotha:

That's not what you said though. You talked about them being very useful for making parts of the fight much easier - not about representation/popularity. The difference between those two things is astronomical.


If you want to talk about representation, sure Blood DK has been popular throughout pretty much its introduction as being the tank spec (Cataclysm and onwards), but that doesn't change the fact that the tank meta for this expansion has been double monk on every fight in the expansion except for Mekkatorque where the meta was Monk+DK.

Ny'alotha is the first raid in which other tanks than Monks are considered the only really strong option in Cutting Edge raiding.

[Baleful]

Hmm looks like B DK has actually been very popular in mythic for BFA

Uldir:


BoD:


EP:


Nylotha:

BDK is always popular, it was popular even back in emerald nightmare when they where literally the worst tank in the game by such a big amount that they had to add icebound fortitude to them again. Taht doesn't mean they are good or needed by any means. I was playing BDK for years and finally rerolled to monk because i was tired of not being able to sustain as much damage or mechanics as the monk could do because of stagger or mobility, back in G'huun i was the third BDK to defeat G'huun (our guild was 69 world, meaning there was 137 other tanks not being BDK, most of them monks).
Yes, sometimes a fight gets easier if you bring mass grip or grips to it (mekatorque, hivemind, ilgynoth, vexiona), but generally speaking, BDK wasn't the best of the tanks across BFA, it was second on uldir, one of the worst uldir forward and now it's pulling to second again because of corruption and haste scaling + being good on some bosses.

[Marrilaife]

Ironically this is the first tier where you would even remotely consider using a Blood DK in this expansion outside of Mekkatorque in BoD though, so that statement is absolutely a massive lie.

Nah, in Uldir people wanted blood dk for mass grip adds on Zek'voz and Zul and to grip people out of MC on Mythrax. In current raid they want it for not only Hivemind, but also Vexiona and Ilgynoth.

BDK is always popular, it was popular even back in emerald nightmare when they where literally the worst tank in the game by such a big amount that they had to add icebound fortitude to them again. Taht doesn't mean they are good or needed by any means.

I wish I could find any proof about how blood dks aren't "good" or "needed", it's a bane of my existence, I like to play my dk as an alt and then face constant questions why don't I main it instead.

[Oneirophobia]

This is where I'd say "So much for bring the player not the class eh Blizz" but that mantra hasnt been applied for years.

They specifically said at the beginning of this expansion they wanted to do the opposite, probably due to the excitement Classic was generating.

If you don't have X required class for an encounter, someone in your group has to level X class and grind those essences.


Time will tell if this is a successful way to view things. I'm sure players love getting benched because they're playing a class they love and not a class they're voluntold to play, as if the game is a job with specific tasks that need to be completed - or else. But! Your mileage may vary, this last bit is just personal opinion.

[Tech614]

If you don't have X required class for an encounter, someone in your group has to level X class and grind those essences..

Any random DK alt with green essences works. Grind what lmao.

[Marrilaife]

They specifically said at the beginning of this expansion they wanted to do the opposite, probably due to the excitement Classic was generating.

Yep, Classic is very "exciting" when 30 out of 40 raid members are Warriors.

[LanToaster]

On sunday we spent a few hours on Hivemind after killing Maut. It became apparent fast that tons of guilds only kill that boss with a Blood DK. There was quite the ruckus in comms, questioning whether we should go to Shad'har instead.

That evening we tried our best to stack up when the drones spawn and pull bosses towards one flier while trying to knockback another into melee.
We couldn't ever fully kill the second drone wave during Ka'zir control and wiped on the second banelings.

So, I have a few questions for you guys:

1. Should we go Shad'har first if we don't have a DK?
2. Does a crappy alt DK as third tank make sense? If yes, how crappy are we talking?
3. Any tips for the fight if you don't have DK?

Well, I never have a DK Tank in my Raid, and while I can see the Upsides of having one, I dont think its Particular hard.

We basically Stacked behind the Bosses until Echoing Void, then Spread out and Stack again.
Drones were no Problem, they immediatly died in Cleave.

Ranged dealt with Wasps. We struggled for a few tries on the Acid Pools from the Drones, but we dealt with that, as we Stacked on the Other Boss when we tanked them apart.

If you die to the Banelings, no amount of Blook DKS will help you with that, have your members open their Eyes and Dodge them, its not that hard.