10R Horridon help

[hatchetman240]

Sadly, I have only one night of our worst performance to show. Horridon has been weeks of disappointment for us. We only raid 2x a week for 3 hours each, and this boss is killing us.

Last week, our best attempt got us through all 4 doors, wiping on horridon at 4%. This week we struggled to get through door 3 (and sometimes 1 and 2). Door 1 was fine once we got the replacement tank (the pally) to do the slow backup routine to keep the melee out of the sand. Door 2 was horrible anytime any of us missed an interrupt on the priests.

We've stopped using army on door 3 because of how it stopped the MDPS from getting involved due to badguy AOE spam on the army stack. I'm thinking we need to go back to using it. After army died a ton of adds were still up anyway, and the tank gave them the slow walk back to door 4, which caused a ton of frost bomb AOE in/around door 4. To resolve this I've asked the tank begin handling the door 3 adds on the area where horridon spawns between doors 2&3 to buy ourselves some kite space.

Door 4 (when we reach it, which has only been a couple of times) has been an absolute mob scene of too many adds to handle. I've read suggestions about army here, and we do have two armies to burn.

The two times we got to the post door phase our healers were OOMish (but we had healed through poison stacks there, which ate a lot of mana).

You'll probably suggest having a priest go shadow, but the one disc priest we have with shadow experience doesn't do much more DPS as shadow than in atonement, and I figure 2x disc atonement = 1 dps anyway.

What can you suggest?

http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/tgem8x1fhsufxetg/

[pld]

You seem to have a strat down for your raid make-up so unless it's not being executed properly, that's probably not the issue. The biggest problem appears to be low dps. Taking too long on doors is contributing to healers going OOM and the raid getting overwhelmed by adds towards the end.

To give you an idea of dps, your top dps did ~93k dps. Our top dps did nearly double that at ~190k (warrior).

[hatchetman240]

Is that accounting for the fact that we're not getting to the DPS goldmine that is the final phase where you actually DPS a boss with a damage taken increase on him? Your warrior pulls 193k through the door AOE phase? I would strongly speculate that your warriors DPS over time has a hefty increase when he is finally able to execute on horridon under 20%, with a 200% damage bonus.

[Colmadero]

What our guild does is the following (25 man comp)

We have horridon tanked FAR away from raid with a healer designated to that tank ALONE.

We pew pew through gates normally but on gate 3 we blow out ALL of our cd's (except for hero) and we make sure that by the time the 2nd and 3rd warlord drop the first one is already dead. By the time we get to the 4th door, we have a few mobs but nothing which is a big deal.

Also, every time Horridon charges, we BoP the designated tank to drop stacks.

Hope it helps

Also, you want to cast all of your defensive CD's during the 3rd door. If frozen orbs were interruptable like the 2nd door Horridon would be a breeze

[hatchetman240]

What our guild does is the following (25 man comp)

We have horridon tanked FAR away from raid with a healer designated to that tank ALONE.

So essentially we'd need to send one of our priests over to dedicate as heals for that tank? We have 2 priests and a paladin, and losing the paladins cleanse for door 2 would be a lot of pain. Or do you swap heals on a door by door basis to swing the advantage?

[ih8GC]

I was looking over our logs from last night and I think it's going to be very difficult to do Horridon with your numbers across the board. We had 3 dps over 180k and 1 over 215k. I, as a disc priest, would have been 3rd on your dps meters and your losing that much more dps by 3 healing a fight that should not be 3 healed in 10 man.

Have 1 priest go shadow and use VE when needed. Have the other priest attone off of the boss for the extra healing and then you should be able to 2 heal the fight and benefit from the extra dps needed to get through the add phases.

[clevin]

Honestly, the dps feels a bit low but overall DPS isn't an accurate guage since DPS skyrockets on Horridon at the end. Our DPS in our first kill was double yours but the curve is vastly distorted by the end phase.

really, read the other threads here on this. It's going to be more of the same. In browsing your logs there are deaths to sandtrap, Sunlight, etc. Stay out of those. Make sure the add tank can gather the adds (lots of deaths to the mobs themselves). If DPS pulls an add off the add tank they need to either drop aggro, kite it until dead or get it back to the tank. Pulling aggro and standing there dying isn't OK.

Is your DPS AOEing? Because you don't want to and it feels like you might be. As I've said elsewhere here, this fight is all about

1) Having the gear so you can reliably kill elite adds quickly enough. Once you have that it's DPS executing their rotations well enough.
2) Focusing the elite adds down. I like burning shorter (2 min and under) CDs on the first Wastewalker so you are ensured that you will get past him.
3) Interrupting the elite add casts as much as possible even at the sacrifice of some DPS. Focusing on "MUST DO MORE DPS" can lead to amindset where DPS tunnels and doesn't interrupt. Don't do that.
4) Dispell debuffs when interrupts are missed.

The rest is basic raiding. Don't stand in shit. Target Dinomancer, dps to 50%, get orb.

If your Disc priest is just doing atonement and no other healing make him go shadow. If he can't do more than 55k as shadow, he sucks (our spriest easily doubles that). This isn't a healing intensive fight unless the DPS and tanks make it so by a) standing in shit or b) missing interrupts a lot. Yes, the tanks are taking damage a lot at the end, but at that point the DPS should be almost damage free (after Jalak dies at least).

[Colmadero]

So essentially we'd need to send one of our priests over to dedicate as heals for that tank? We have 2 priests and a paladin, and losing the paladins cleanse for door 2 would be a lot of pain. Or do you swap heals on a door by door basis to swing the advantage?

You don't have to send the paladin to heal, it could be the priest. Those 10 seconds when Horridon charges, make sure your pally (prot,holy,ret) BoP's the tank real quick and specs into clemency. As a ret pally, it is my duty to BoP the designated tank during doors 3 AND 4. Clemency lets us use our BoPs twice before incurring a CD so it is quite useful.

[clevin]

I was looking over our logs from last night and I think it's going to be very difficult to do Horridon with your numbers across the board. We had 3 dps over 180k and 1 over 215k. I, as a disc priest, would have been 3rd on your dps meters and your losing that much more dps by 3 healing a fight that should not be 3 healed in 10 man.

Again, overall encounter DPS is distorted by the endphase. Our DPS now is also far higher than the OP's but a lot of that is that we're more familiar with the fight and routinely 1-2 shot it and so we get to the end phase which makes our overall DPS look far better than theirs.


For example, here are two links to the night of our first kill:

A 5:20 wipe (about the same length as OP's best attempt): http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/8...?s=3738&e=4059

The long and rather messy kill: http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/8...?s=5342&e=6030

Note that everyone's DPS in the kill is way higher... but look at the graph and note how it tails up: http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/8...?s=5342&e=6030

Here's a recent kill (have your mage look at ours since I think they're both Frost and ours is doing quite well here): http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/7...?s=2251&e=2869

This is all about focus firing the elite adds, cleaning up the rest and avoiding bad things both bad stuff on the ground and casts of bad things by the elites. Oh and Double Swipe. Do that and win.

Now, don't take from my comments that DPS isn't important. It is. But if you have the gear and your DPS can execute rotations (using things on CD, etc), then it's not about raw DPS but about DPSing the right things at the right time and doing non-DPS things well (moving out of avoidable damage, interrupting, etc). If your DPS is routinely low for the class/spec/gear combination that they have then you have a different issue to deal with.

[hatchetman240]

Is your DPS AOEing?

Yes, all of us. All respecced and glyphed for more AOE really thinking it was the answer. AOE time is now over.

Everyone will now revert to single target setups. I'm going to have the DPS guys make an assist macro for two DPS people (should one of them die, it reverts to the other). Everyone will be on the same target. We were already killing one venom priest with our single target DPS in under ~12 seconds so I know we have a good chance of this working if we just stick to single target methodology. Do you prioritize venomous effusions over the venom priests when they're out?

[clevin]

Yes, all of us. All respecced and glyphed for more AOE really thinking it was the answer. AOE time is now over.

Everyone will now revert to single target setups. I'm going to have the DPS guys make an assist macro for two DPS people (should one of them die, it reverts to the other). Everyone will be on the same target. We were already killing one venom priest with our single target DPS in under ~12 seconds so I know we have a good chance of this working if we just stick to single target methodology. Do you prioritize venomous effusions over the venom priests when they're out?

Yeah, AOE is tempting, but the wrong tactic here. And no, we kill venom priests ASAP. We're ranged heavy so kiting effusions is easy for us.

In case you missed it (it's a bit buried above), blow short CDs on the first waste walker and maybe the first venom priest. REmember, the elite adds all come in the same patter... Elite #1..... then elites 2 and 3 at once. You want elite #1 dead or very close to dead by time the pair enters the fight and using short CDs (2 min or under) on the first Wastewalker almost guarantees that he's dead by time the pair spawns. That means you start out right vs being a bit behind. As you get better you can change that, but I think starting out ahead of the curve is really useful as you get the first kills. Also, people sometimes worry too much about the Dinomancer... the key is to dps him asap to 50% so a) he moves to dino form and doesn't heal Horridon again and B) drops the orb. Use the Orb ASAP so the gate is crashed and adds stop coming in.

This is, at your gear level, about a 10 min fight. Don't try to zerg it... t here's a rhythm to it. Some small adds... one elite.... more small adds... two elites.... dino... small adds. Rinse and repeat. Just know that things happen in an order and you need to deal with them.

[hatchetman240]

we're going to also try the opposite door tanking method. At least for the first two doors while the opposite side is clear of AOE it should make things much easier.

[clevin]

I've not done that... it sounds interesting. If you revert to tanking him near the door remember that near doesn't mean AT. We face him perpendicular to the door (so he's not facing it but at 90 degrees to it). If he's near the door it's really key that whoever has Charge runs out toward the tank so that Horridon doesn't all of a suddent charge the raid and DOuble Swipe people.

Oh and I've not mentioned this but make sure everyone has DBM/Bigwigs, etc so that they have alerts about things.

[Lumiair]

So looking at your longest encounter against Horridon only

I'm going to have to agree with the others that have posted here in that it looks like you're lacking DPS to finish Horridon off. Two of the DPS are below your Pally tank (I know tanks can pull a lot with vengeance and AOE) which just shouldn't be the case. Two healing it really is the way to go, though when we originally killed him it was three, so it's doable without them going shadow don't give up!

Our Disc Priest really just atonement heals, and I fistweave towards the end since that damage buff makes the healing trivial. Heals can contribute quite a bit for that final burn. I was doing 106k, priest doing 63k (Usually she's a lot higher though.) If you're getting into those last few percentages to a kill any little bit helps.

This is our log last night in case you want to take a gander - http://worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-5k...ne/?s=45&e=521

EDIT: Also to keep from OOM'ing from healing through the poisons assign the tank to interrupt the first venom priest while you burn it down, then mark the other two that come out and assign DPS to each one for interrupts. In the perfect world you end up with none of the casts going out which helps immensely. Usually we end up with just one that goes off. Just have the dps save some CD's so they go down quick enough.

[Cirque]

Additionally to everything said here and in other threads, note that a lot of guilds use heroism on a door, often the fourth, sometimes the third. Heroism is really not needed in the burn phase of horridon and the godguy, not heroic and especially not on normal, so it may really help you out.

Good luck!

[Rokadok]

You can check out miymroka on YouTube to see how we do the kills. I think I have 6 boss kills up there. Haven't posted our recent downs yet. What I see you guys doing is that you need better add control on the doors and use your big raid CDs on door 3. We like to lust as soon as the 3 big elites come out then I kite heading to door 4. The video perspective is me doing door 1 and 3. By no means are we perfect but horridon had been killed 7 times.

[Lefty12]

I really disagree with everyone saying it's a DPS issue. Obviously more DPS makes it easier but it's not essential. Here's logs for our 2nd Horridon kill and our tank is the top DPS with only ~160k and we 3 heal it.

Here's Death logs for a few of your attempts

Attempt #1

Harrbinger [18:59:46.740] Farraki Wastewalker Blazing Sunlight Harrbinger 40000
[18:59:47.752] Farraki Wastewalker Blazing Sunlight Harrbinger 40000
[18:59:48.733] Farraki Wastewalker Blazing Sunlight Harrbinger 32778 (O: 7222) (more)

Orthogonal [18:59:50.225] Farraki Wastewalker Blazing Sunlight Orthogonal 40000
[18:59:51.211] Farraki Wastewalker Blazing Sunlight Orthogonal 40000
[18:59:52.241] Farraki Wastewalker Blazing Sunlight Orthogonal 23096 (O: 16904) (more)

- The dots are ticking for 40k a second... that's 4 stacks if i'm not mistaken. You're 3 healing so you have 3 dispells. No reason ppl should have 4 stacks.

Attempt #3

Blyleven [19:27:58.648] Farraki Wastewalker Blazing Sunlight Blyleven 18000
[19:27:59.411] Horridon hits Blyleven 187613
[19:27:59.643] Farraki Wastewalker Blazing Sunlight Blyleven 432 (O: 17568) (more)

Again your tank dies with 2 stacks of Blazing Sunlight

Attempt #4

Andîe [19:34:57.635] Living Poison Living Poison Andîe 66649
[19:34:57.635] Living Poison Living Poison Andîe 70942
[19:34:57.673] Living Poison Living Poison Andîe 618 (O: 72591) (more)

This guy stands in poison and dies

Attempt #5

Kyliejoy [19:45:46.526] Kyliejoy Cauterize Kyliejoy 47023
[19:45:48.034] Zandalari Dinomancer hits Kyliejoy 61330
[19:45:48.034] Kyliejoy Cauterize Kyliejoy 47022 (more)

Sôdage [19:47:12.336] Drakkari Frozen Warlord hits Sôdage 114997
[19:47:13.813] Risen Drakkari Warrior hits Sôdage 19323
[19:47:14.326] Drakkari Frozen Warlord hits Sôdage 39135 (O: 68382) (more)

Zolvinus [19:47:17.074] Horridon Double Swipe Zolvinus 224371
[19:47:17.074] Risen Drakkari Champion hits Zolvinus 31287
[19:47:17.214] Risen Drakkari Champion Deadly Plague Zolvinus 63112 (more)

It appears your tank didn't pick up the dinomancer and it killed your mage. You go on w/o him (b/c you already use your battle rez on your priest who stood in living poison) and ~80 seconds later on door 3 your tanks don't pick up adds again and they kill your mage... 3 seconds after that your priest stands in a double swipe. (To be fair he may have been trying wipe it up after 2 people where dead)

Attempt #6

Holymiahia [20:09:54.141] Farraki Wastewalker hits Holymiahia 43052
[20:09:54.745] Horridon Double Swipe Holymiahia 169533
[20:09:55.549] Horridon Double Swipe Holymiahia 141908 (O: 20909, A: 1992) (more)

Zolvinus [20:10:42.939] Farraki Wastewalker Blazing Sunlight Zolvinus 20000
[20:10:43.964] Farraki Wastewalker Blazing Sunlight Zolvinus 20000
[20:10:45.872] Horridon Double Swipe Zolvinus 149340 (O: 57030, A: 16825) (more)

Sôdage [20:10:47.969] Farraki Wastewalker hits Sôdage 81229
[20:10:48.183] Farraki Wastewalker Blazing Sunlight Sôdage 20000
[20:10:48.453] Farraki Wastewalker hits Sôdage 27030 (O: 20525) (more)

Tank dies to double swipe (really should never ever happen) and uses your b-rez. Preist then dies to double swipe.... and 2 seconds later your shaman gets killed by an add (who also has 2 stacks of blazing sunlight on him btw).


It's really tough to pinpoint your problem when you seem to have so many....

- No one should get hit by double swipe ever
- Dispells on first door are really lacking (maybe download decursive?)
- Tanks are letting ppl die to adds, either they need to be better or DPS needs to cool it and let them gain agro
- You cannot stand in sandtraps, poinson, orbs or lightning totems.... If this is really tough for people maybe recomend an addon called "GTFO" (i've never tried it but it was recomended to some in my guild who had trouble recognizing orbs floating around. It may be helpful, I'm not sure)

You've gotten to 4% so i'm sure your kill is close. Keep it up you'll get it!

[hatchetman240]

We got him, thanks to a number of corrections posted by you guys and thanks to some additional tweaks.

http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/o...ses&boss=68476

5 attempts, 4 of which we got to/past the 4th door with amazing consistency. After a frank discussion about everything posted here (which can be uncomfortable, because it's essentially calling people out) everything suddenly clicked. On try #2 we got past door 4 pretty cleanly and had a shot to down him, except we fell apart because we had reached the promised land and realized we hadn't exactly planned out everything properly. A couple of final phase wipes later we essentially stacked the 9 people not tanking horridon on his shoulder for AOE heals and tanked the wargod right there. Double Disc afforded us 2 barriers on the shoulder stack, and we got off chained pain suppressions on the tank during horridons soft enrage, followed by tank cooldowns.

It was nice having it all come together. Our degree of success is such that now people won't be scared of resetting the lock next week.

One additional tweak was having everyone get an assist macro for me and I called out "new target" every time we were supposed to switch. I did this because of the fact that there are times, especially every dinomancer, where the priorities change mid cast and people were having trouble targeting a new guy in a timely manner. DPSing the dinomancer to 50% and then swapping back to the caster type adds before cleaning up the dino saved us a lot of damage, you could see it on the healers numbers and damage taken. Healers who were previously OOM before door 3&4 were now finishing the fight with 75% mana remaining.

@Lunasta: Now able to compare a kill log to a kill log, we are lagging badly in DPS on a number of our guys but most of our guys are >10ilvls behind yours. OTOH I feel great because I was able to edge out your shammy, but everything else makes me wonder how we actually got a kill with our numbers. Thanks for your help!

[clevin]

We got him, thanks to a number of corrections posted by you guys and thanks to some additional tweaks.

http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/o...ses&boss=68476

5 attempts, 4 of which we got to/past the 4th door with amazing consistency. After a frank discussion about everything posted here (which can be uncomfortable, because it's essentially calling people out) everything suddenly clicked. O

excellent, grats. And the last part is true - it's uncomfortable, but if you're doing it from the perspective of improving vs blame and things come together, then hopefully people see the benefit in talking frankly about what's not working.

@Lunasta: Now able to compare a kill log to a kill log, we are lagging badly in DPS on a number of our guys but most of our guys are >10ilvls behind yours. OTOH I feel great because I was able to edge out your shammy, but everything else makes me wonder how we actually got a kill with our numbers. Thanks for your help!

As long as you can kill the elites reasonably quickly this really isn't a DPS fight. Yes, there are minimums, but they're less figures than "can you kill the elites and clean up the adds before the next door". And it's very deceptive to compare full fight dps with partial fight DPS since the last phase gives you so much higher burst.