1. #1

    Heroic Stone Guard - Are we doing something fundamentally wrong?

    Our 10m guild did heroic stone guard for the first time this week. To provide some context, we're 6/6 MV and 2/6 HOF, however we've only just started HMs since we are behind on progression since we're a new guild as of this expansion. It takes us ~1hr15m to clear MV on normal.

    This week the pattern was jade, jasper, cobalt. After nearly 40 attempts, we got him to 3% on our best attempt.

    The biggest problem we faced was all of us getting chained early, with no jasper petrification. This seems to RNG into this problem a *lot*. Which in turn meant:
    * Cobalt mines started filling up the room, since it's harder to break mines while chained (with deterrence or during cobalt petrification)
    * Tiles stop getting painted, or painting slows down significantly ( less DPS and healer mana begins to get soaked up)

    Now, I'm not saying SG is unbeatable if RNGed into this position, but it makes the encounter a great deal harder.

    So, it leads me to the question... are there any tips for this combination?

    On a similar note, is there any way to control petrifications? AFAIK, there isn't, but if there was it would trivialize some of the fight.

    Thanks!

  2. #2
    another thing you can do is have a 3rd tank who only deals with lighting up tiles.
    they will never get chains and just make sure they click on the crystal that's petrifying to reduce damage

  3. #3
    Deleted
    We spent much longer than we wanted to on this fight and it basically boiled down to communication being key. We essentially left the jasper petrification and stayed chained the whole fight. We found it much easier to just communicate with whoever you're chained with and move as one. It means you don't have to bother with worrying about breaking off the chains when jasper comes.

    If 2 ranged are chained, it can be as simple as saying 'move left if we get mines (insert name here)'.

    If you have mobile healers like a druid with Symbiosis on a shaman, then it makes the tiles a bit easier.

  4. #4
    Quote Originally Posted by Aroxi View Post
    If 2 ranged are chained, it can be as simple as saying 'move left if we get mines (insert name here)'.
    This helped our group a lot, generally we would have the two people chained run off in different directions but once you get used to the pace of the fight its easier to call out, if we get purple/blue shit you person X we move right.

    Also breaking chains where you can helps, specially with melee, try not to have your general plan as we won't break chains because you need (or at least should need) to break them to run tiles
    Originally Posted by Zarhym (Blue Tracker)

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  5. #5
    Whats you setup ? do you have more then 2 melee dps ? do you have any Paladin in Raid (HoF is wery usefull to clean Cobalt mines)? how much stack of buff are you geting (80+/60+/60+ is most valiable in my opinion)?

    and for info witch you give
    +Ther is no way to control Putrification
    +3 chains ( 6 perssons with them) is something normal on this fight thats why more then 2 melee make it hard fight
    +1 Range DPS with out cahins shoud be focused on stacking buff ( elemental mag lock are best for it)

  6. #6
    I'll edit this into the main post:

    80-120 stacks... we used to get 120/120/80, and then toned it back to doing "as much as we can" up to 85% and 55%, since 120 stacks got us to a point where the tiles were about to disappear before we could utilize that many stacks.

    Our Setup is as follows, with * representing 'main' painters, and + representing backup painters.

    Blood DK
    Prot Warrior

    Holy Pally
    Resto Druid
    Resto Shaman

    WW Monk+
    Mage+
    Lock*
    Hunter*
    Shadow Priest*

    Maybe we are getting to many stacks, that's true... and in turn, why the jasper chain RNGing us, is hurting us even more since we're more focused on stacks then just pulling through into the next stage.

  7. #7
    Quote Originally Posted by Mehdi View Post
    we got him to 3% on our best attempt.
    If you managed to get him to 3% you are doing nothing wrong just keep going with whatever you did to get them to 3%

  8. #8
    I really appreciate the great responses. I think Axelond sums it up well, I think it comes down to a couple factors that point to us just needing more practice at this.

    I'm going to chalk it up to doing HM Stone Guard for the first time, with probably the toughest combo ( though amesthyst, jasper, cobalt may rival it, i kinda feel the removal of AOE raid damage would make it easier... not that I've tried it).

    Thanks all!

  9. #9
    Deleted
    Quote Originally Posted by Axelond View Post
    If you managed to get him to 3% you are doing nothing wrong just keep going with whatever you did to get them to 3%
    Terrible terrible statement, just because you get a boss to low HP or even kill it, does not mean you shouldn't try to improve your strategy.

    OP make some WoL. Regarding Jasper Chains, just because you are chained does not mean you cannot move together as a couple. If you're fine on the enrage, the extra tank suggestion above is a good one.

  10. #10
    Deleted
    Quote Originally Posted by Aroxi View Post
    We spent much longer than we wanted to on this fight and it basically boiled down to communication being key. We essentially left the jasper petrification and stayed chained the whole fight. We found it much easier to just communicate with whoever you're chained with and move as one. It means you don't have to bother with worrying about breaking off the chains when jasper comes.

    If 2 ranged are chained, it can be as simple as saying 'move left if we get mines (insert name here)'.

    If you have mobile healers like a druid with Symbiosis on a shaman, then it makes the tiles a bit easier.
    This 100%.

    The only rng in this fight is having a melee chained to a healer, if that happens just wipe and start again.

    Treat this fight as if you cannot break the chains and simply work in pairs, the bulk of the work for re-applying tile buff should be done by your chained dps or chained dps and most mobile healer.

    When not re-applying tiles there will be very little movement required and the chains become a non-issue.

    We have 8 people click a crystal at the start to give us 80 stacks and then try to achieve 80 stacks again after the two tile resets

  11. #11
    Quote Originally Posted by Halaberiel View Post
    Terrible terrible statement, just because you get a boss to low HP or even kill it, does not mean you shouldn't try to improve your strategy.

    OP make some WoL. Regarding Jasper Chains, just because you are chained does not mean you cannot move together as a couple. If you're fine on the enrage, the extra tank suggestion above is a good one.
    Hmm, perhaps we can have our WW Monk do it. Definitely worth a try, thx!

    ---------- Post added 2012-11-12 at 11:22 AM ----------

    Quote Originally Posted by Bunnys View Post
    This 100%.

    The only rng in this fight is having a melee chained to a healer, if that happens just wipe and start again.

    Treat this fight as if you cannot break the chains and simply work in pairs, the bulk of the work for re-applying tile buff should be done by your chained dps or chained dps and most mobile healer.

    When not re-applying tiles there will be very little movement required and the chains become a non-issue.

    We have 8 people click a crystal at the start to give us 80 stacks and then try to achieve 80 stacks again after the two tile resets
    How do 8 people click the crystal? I was under the impression only one person can click it at a time?

  12. #12
    One tip to clear mines are that your resto druids gives your hunter symbiosis. Hunter gets dash to get tiles fast, and resto druid gets deterrence to clear mines with. You take 0 damage from the mines if you have deterrence on, whatever petrification.

  13. #13
    On this combo we had our tanks do the tiles whenever we had all of ranged chained and jasper petrification not cast yet. We also had healers breaking combalt mines and we sort of rotated dispells to ensure we clear the entire room of mines everytime it was cobalt petrification. Other than that it might cause you more trouble the more melee you have with this combo. In fact, any combo with jasper in it will make it harder exponentially harder with melee.
    Just remember that unlike normal mode, there isn't a set number of chains, so you can't say that you got a *good* chain, as in 2 melees together, and then keep that. You need to destroy those chains every chance you get.

    Hope it helps and good luck

  14. #14
    Just sounds like a communication problem tbh. Even tho ppl are chained together they should light up tiles at a fairly high pace. Just need to get used to running with eachother. What we did was if 2 healers are chained together, they stay chained together, thru out the fight. If a ranged dps and a healer was chained, the melee ran to the healer, letting the healer set the pace when getting back to the boss. Also if say 3 dps where chained to 3 healers then only one pair of dps would light up tiles, sounds sketchy but it worked for us.
    That situation occured for us in our first kill. Here's our first kill, with me and our shadow priest having to light up all tiles after the first reset.


    Now as you can see we didnt have Cobolt, we have killed it with Cobolt, Jasper and Jade after this tho. And you just need to make sure the chained ppl clear the mines together, waiting for eachother.
    Last edited by NoxxusKT; 2012-11-12 at 05:17 PM.

  15. #15
    It's really easy when Jade is down and Jasper is up, it's basically a 2 dog fight instead of 3, with virtually no raid healing required.

    Jasper = an ability you can just ignore.

    What we did was have our ret pally spec prot, and paint for 100% of the fight, that way he never gets chained (wont target tanks). Mage and Hunter paint for 1 row at the start and then just leave it to the pally for the rest of the fight.

    Since our ret was our only melee, all we have are ranged and healers getting chained together, which generally means we just ignore the chains and stack the pairs together for the whole fight.

    If you get a bad streak with no cobalt petrification, have a hunter with deterrence or a pally with bubble just pop them all.
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  16. #16
    The enrage timer is a joke so you can basically 3 tank and 4 heal that fight.

    We 3 tank/3 heal it easily, one tank dealing with lighting up tiles and disarming cobalt mines with his cooldowns. Makes fight a lot easier.
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