Yet another Will of the Emperor Heroic soaking question - ;_; [10man]

[snorecb]

Hey guys.

My guild recently started with WOTE heroic, 10 man. Our current roster is as follows:

Tanks:

Guardian/Blood DK

Healers:

Paladin/Discipline Priest/Restoration Shaman (Backup it seems)

DPS:

Hunter/Shadow Priest/Elemental Shaman/Warrior/Balance Druid/Warlock/Mage/Retribution Paladin/Rogue

I have read a lot about the Rogue tactics, but the issue is the Rogue often has work commitments and is sometimes late for raids because of work. We have had a number attempts on the boss, haven't had much luck though. Due to the missing rogue, we are considering trying the 3 man tank strategy, the Balance druid will tank on a Paladin and the DK will stay Blood with DPS gear and handle the Rage sparks and mass grip etc. How does the CC of the Rage adds work exactly? For example, which waves should be cc'ed etc. Would using immunities such pally bubble etc. be useful if we cc about 2 waves, kill it and then let the pally soak them etc. Or would it be more advisable just to kill the Rages when they spawn and let the DK take them immediately?

I just wanted to find out though how the handling of the other adds would work. Would the Blood DK have to pick up the add that does the AOE stun? Or should another melee dps pick it up?

Additionally, what would be the best way to handle the other sparks if 3 tanks are used? (From the strength and courage)

Or would it be better to stick with 2 tanks and just use a hunter etc.

Sorry, just wanted to get some clarity on the different tactics.

Also don't have any WOL reports to link, sigh.

Thanks in advance for any help.

[Isotope]

Having a rogue just really helps out soaking random sparks more than anything. You can still kill this fight w/out a rogue but there is less room for error.

Now I'm not sure if I read this right but are you 3 healing the fight. If so that's one problem. This is a two heal fight hands down.

As for soaking the best thing to do is set up a soaking order. Hunter/shadow/boomkin (either dispersion or deterrence,) those are going to be your main soakers. You can have your warlock and mage soak (with blink and cauterize.)

The three tank method is a waste. Have your ret paladin tank the strengths. The mage would probably be best at blinking through the sparks on the strength.

[Zubacz]

We did this fight without a rogue. The soaking rotation was a bit tricky but you just have to find your own. We had a priest with dispersion, a hunter with deterance and a resto druid with deterance from symbiosis soak the rage sparks. The courage sparks were soaked by a retri pally, with his cds and a PW:shield. The Strength was soaked by a feral druid, in bear. That feral druid could also soak a stray rage spark if another soaker failed.
I can think of no class that cannot soak at least 1 spark with their cds and a PW:Shield.
I know it might seem complicated, but just calculate the amount of soaking you will need and assign people to it. Also have a contingency plan, if it fails. Like in our case the feral druid or anyone with Pain Suppression and Shield.

Edit: And yeah, don't use 3 tanks or 3 healers. Unless you are very overgeared for this, you might get overrun and even if not, you want the adds to die fast, to keep control.

[Deleted]

I would have thought mages are better than rogues for taking sparks if no one else is available as they have a 15 second "avoid all dmg but still take the spark button"

Anyone can take the strengths as long as they avoid the circles.

Remember that you can take the sparks with mechanics other than cooldowns to absorb/immune damage, (Druids - Displacer beast, Warlocks - Demonic portal, Mages - Blink (as stated above))

[snorecb]

Ah forgot to mention, we are 2 healing the fight.

Would the main soakers soak the 2 rage sparks immediately? (No waves get CC'd, 3 wave rotation etc.)

Thanks for the reply.

[Deleted]

We have the tanks take the 1st 2 sets of rages, although in your case that's not really possible so I can't be sure..

[Zubacz]

Would the main soakers soak the 2 rage sparks immediately?

If they died far from their focus target, they might be high in the air, which means you have to wait a few seconds.

Sparks before the bosses appear can just be killed off.

[Isotope]

Ah forgot to mention, we are 2 healing the fight.

Would the main soakers soak the 2 rage sparks immediately? (No waves get CC'd, 3 wave rotation etc.)

Thanks for the reply.

The sparks have like a 3-5sec window before they do anything so if you try to soak them right (and I mean right as they pop up,) you're going to fail at it. Another good tip is to get the two people they focus on heading towards each other. This will make the soakers job a lot easier.


The reason rogues are "the best" soakers is because they can cloak a set of two and they can feint every orb which is like a 50-60% reduction. Since feint doesn't have a CD and it's called out a healer can just pop a quick heal on him and he can go. A mage has to wait for blinks CD to come up and it might work sometimes but a lot of time there is a random spark floating around.

[snorecb]

Hmmm... so the 3 tank would be unnecessary basically?

Guess we just have to get a rotation down. We were thinking the the mass grip would make things a bit easier for the adds. But we only have a tank DK.

[Serani]

Our guild had a lot easier time having 3 tanks, a warrior on one boss, a monk on the other, and had a guardian druid absorb ALL the sparks, due to the fact that they passively take 25%(?) less magic damage, so that with decent gear and, if needed, a few modifications to enchants or gems, had enough health that he could soak one, be healed to full and take the next one each time. We 2 healed it as well and had myself (ret pally) tanking the Strengths. Kill order was Courage > Rage > Strength > Bosses.

We had about 30 attempts with a normal strat of rotation soakers and our best attempt was 60-70%, however when changing to the above strat within the first 4 tries, we were getting extremely further, and finally netting ourselves a kill 8 attempts in.

Logs from fight:
http://worldoflogs.com/reports/dsubv7i6u6dcl43r/

[snorecb]

Perhaps it would be more beneficial to have the Guardian on the sparks then and then have the pally and DK tank the bosses.

So the druid will take the rage, courage, and strength sparks?

[Serani]

Pretty much, if you find you're getting overwhelmed by sparks at any points (slow heals or killing adds too fast), you can always just ask another class to pick up a stray spark here or there. The entire fight is pretty much about communication, a silent VOIP is likely to lead to you wiping more than anything.

Another thing to note is that the Courage's pick the furthest target from where they spawn, so long as they are tank spec'd which means if you time it right and know which side the Courage is spawning from, you can have your guardian position himself further away from it than the two tanks on the bosses and thus save them any hassle of slow DPS, just be sure to move your raid out of any path the Courage might be walking in.

[Raqu]

We had tanks soaking courage sparks, rogue/spriest/Hpally/hunter soaking the rages' sparks and a monk taking the sparks that spawn from the strenghts (he also "tanked" them and killed them alone). Rogues are so good to have on this fight, they can almost always take every other sparks.

[snorecb]

Thanks for the replies guys, seems there is a lot of different ways to handle it.

@Serani, how intense was the healing needed during the fight in terms of keeping the Guardian soaking up, raid and the tanks? Or was the raid topped up most of the time, how was the healers mana etc. Hmm.. your Guardian's DPS seems pretty decent considering he was soaking all the sparks, any idea what he mainly focussed on when DPSing?

[Serani]

I honestly can't remember how their mana was, but as for healing, it wasn't too difficult, except that one of the tanks on the bosses was an off spec tank and was pretty badly ungeared in terms of prot, and his Combo dodging, but once we got it under control, it felt quite easy, and I personally only used GotN and LoH on myself once each, so it couldn't have been that bad.

Druid was going for Rage > Strength and either trying to get the Courage's attention (by being the furthest away from it's spawning loc) or just ignoring, but if the Courage focused one of the boss tanks, we had a mage usually take the spark.

Another thing to note is that the Rages, when stunned will pick a new target, so if for example, your DPS is focusing a Courage and one ortwo decide to take on your Strength tank (happened several times to me) or someone else who doesn't exactly have the means to deal with it quickly, a quick stun followed by ignoring it will have it picking a new target without any damage to you.

We used almost no CC aside from temp stuns to get it down, our burn times were occasionally short, but our DPS is good and the few seconds didn't matter quite too much. On our kill we had it to 10% after a burn phase, and while several people wanted to just tunnel boss and CC, we played it safe and just kept up the normal strat till the boss fell a minute or so later.