Originally Posted by
Vulcanasm
Just did this, ilvl 501 (Thugra, US-Uther, with the Spirit shoulders). Unlike this "love it 'cause I beat it/hate it 'cause I didn't" dichotomy, I loathed this encounter. I hated every second of it. The only reason I even bothered was to say I killed him before they nerfed it. I think it's terrible.
Why, you ask? Because it encapsulates every single stupid, bad, childish, cater-to-the-neckbeard-Mongo-in-Mom's-basement design flaw that I hated about Vanilla (correctly, pre-2.1) raids:
-Mandatory talents (demonic sacrifice).
-Buff stacking (dispel protection).
-Mandatory obscure consumables (purification potion, are you fucking kidding me? I had to wait 3 days to even find Sorrowmoss on the Auction House! You think people on low-pop realms should have to level up herbalists?).
-RNG dependence (felhunter dispel, and demonic gateway is buggy)
-Requires multiple macros just for the one encounter.
Now, the encounter could've been fine. Difficulty was absolutely not the issue. The problem is that none of those things are necessary for a difficult fight. Look at Algalon: at-level, he was extraordinarily hard, and the fight used none of those. That Blizzard *chose* to reach for the low-hanging fruit *again* suggests many things about their creative design...all of them negative.
What I did Differently
(Anything not specified here was the standard strat. from the EU WoW forum)
* I didn't soak Chaos Bolts. I used Demonic Gateway to LOS. Demonic Portal (and Dark Bargain) were backups. Overall, that felt far more reliable than Sacrificial Pact -- no random blow-ups from self-damage. However, it's still imperfect: Demonic Gateway isn't that reliable either. Even without its debuff, and with no glyph, I sometimes clicked it and had nothing happen. Once, I spam clicked, and rather than teleport me, it ... God damn despawned. (I had no debuff, it had 5 min. left, it had 5 charges, ... oh, and the boss was at 5%).
* I stayed very close to my forward gate, as you'd expect.
* I didn't move the Pit Lord around at all. I mean, ever. I had him attack Kanrethad by the portal and charge him when I could. I never tried to have him tank Kanrethad out of LOS or any such silly things like that. He left Kanrethad to pick up Doomguards, that's it. He tanked both. [I set that up with Soulshatters and micromanagement. I found this far less annoying than relying on Fear/Banish chains.]
* I dealt with Felhunters by burning one (Conflag + Chaos Bolt), having the Pit Lord charge a 2nd, then Bane on 2nd, tab to 3rd, Conflag + Shadowfury, finish with a Chaos Bolt. I recast my buffs and Pit Lord went back on boss. This was the only reliable way I found to do it. I didn't burn (partial) GCDs or spam clicks on Curse of Elements. I also recast all buffs when after they died -- including Unending Breath. (Which, btw, they do eat
* Dark Bargain was my tier 3 talent, not Sacrificial Pact. I found it useful to re-enslave the Pit Lord. If you lose control of the Pit Lord with Felhunters up, pop Dark Bargain and burn the Felhunters. It's a great backup for Chaos Bolts, too, when Demonic Gateway inevitably opts to fuck itself.
* I didn't use Glyph of Healthstone or Glyph of Ember Tap.
* I used a Purification Potion after the 2nd doomguard was controlled. Kanrethad was just out of Shadowburn range when he went into "all imps all the time" mode -- around 25%.
* All I used to dispel myself was Singe Magic. Learning to time it precisely minimized Seed debuffs. I ate some, but was able to survive even the lethal Annoying Imp/Felhunter combination -- even on the kill. I found "not worrying" much more manageable than turning the Pit Lord's breath weapon on myself while taking heavy damage.
Macros Used:
#showtooltip
/cast Twilight Ward
/cast Demonic Siphon
(I spammed this)
#showtooltip
/target Kanrethad
/cast Charge
(Mandatory)
#showtooltip
/target Felhunter
/cast Charge
(Useful)
#showtooltip
/cast [target=self] Fel Flame Breath
(Just in case you really can't deal with a Seed debuff right that second. Not sure I actually used this on the kill.)
Total: Full repair probably ... 7 times. I don't remember. The first time I tried, I had bad insomnia and was just looking for a way to forget I couldn't sleep. Overall, that's between 40 and 50 tries, ~20 serious, ~10 unnecessary extras thanks to a couple of 5s lag spikes.