The Mage solo thread, because who needs a DK ?

[isaac2314]

Probably the last kills before Emerald Nightmare releases: Heroic Highmaul 4/7

Nothing of note much - the strategies are all the same from normal.

Also, at long last:



849, 1.7% Leech, all consumables.

It's honestly not worth the hassle since it'll be much easier when EN comes out. Use ST trinkets - Mythic Horn is obviously the best choice, but if not any of the other ST direct damage ones can work too, although I would not recommend the EoA mastery trinket, Infernal Writ or Moonlight Prism - you'd either need to delay your burst (and frankly you don't have the time to delay your burst) or your trinkets will simply be nonentities during your burst, and the fight is all about doing 16M damage during your Combustion.

Also, pull from max range. At least in my case, he walked over rather than hooked me in. It's a few more precious seconds you're not getting cleaved or pummeled.

[isaac2314]

Newest kills from BRF: Gruul and Flamebender Ka'graz

There isn't much to speak about, other than using Cold Snap for maximum immunity. Still working on Iron Maidens/Mythic Oregorger/Mythic Kromog.

EDIT:

Mythic Siege: Malkorok, Spoils and Blackfuse.

None of the three really needs much explanation. Sometimes on Malkorok (well, actually often) the white orbs will spawn right under you, so if you don't move you'll get your shield dispelled. I personally just stood there and bursted the boss down.

[Araitik]

Well.



Fun fact : taking this screenshot was easier than killing Hans'gar and Franzok (and the other 8 bosses combined).

Seriously, everything died in 1 try except HG + FZ, Maidens and BH. I have a video of everything but will probably do a "normal brf solo mage" video instead of 10 separate because that would be completely uninsteresting.

My prediction :

Heroic Hans'gar and Franzok will be extremely hard but only because they randomly reset and have fucked up timers
Heroic Gruul, Maidens, Blackhand will be extremely hard.
Nothing but Mythic Oregorger, Kromog and maybe Darmac should be possible without very high ilvl.

Btw, I have not given up on this post or soloing and will do a complete rewrite of the OP very soon

As always, enjoy

[isaac2314]

That's very impressive - I would be very interested to watch that video, since it seemed to me that those bosses couldn't die that fast even at your ilvl.
Still, nice!

[Araitik]

That's very impressive - I would be very interested to watch that video, since it seemed to me that those bosses couldn't die that fast even at your ilvl.
Still, nice!

Here you go

Blackrock Foundry Normal

[isaac2314]

That strategy with Iron Maidens is good - I only ever tried to burn one of the maidens to avoid ship phase, but it never occurred to me to try and use the ship phase to avoid the heavy damage in p2 - ah, well, I should have experimented more. That definitely makes the boss much more doable.

Two questions:
First, how do you usually choose between Shimmer and Cold Snap?
Second, how didn't you get reset at the second Suplex on Hans/Franz?

[Araitik]

That strategy with Iron Maidens is good - I only ever tried to burn one of the maidens to avoid ship phase, but it never occurred to me to try and use the ship phase to avoid the heavy damage in p2 - ah, well, I should have experimented more. That definitely makes the boss much more doable.

That was my first strat as well, and then I got shredded in P2 so I changed my mind

Two questions:
First, how do you usually choose between Shimmer and Cold Snap?
Second, how didn't you get reset at the second Suplex on Hans/Franz?

1: Shimmer first, if it fails then Cold Snap. To me, the "new" Cold Snap is a disappointment, because the old on use effect had an embedded heal on top of the old Regenerative Ice. They got rid of half the healing, and Cauterizing Blink is so awesome I'm using it as much as I can.
2: I am not 100% sur on how this boss works, but I noticed that if you get grab while there is only 1 boss, or if they transition while you're grabbed, then they do not reset. That's why I do not burst at the beginning, instead I'm making the first transition happen before I get grabbed (80%, Hans'gar), then I use all CDs and the second transition (50%, Franzok) and the third (25%, Hans'gar) happen while I'm getting grabbed. This boss is a mess.

Btw, something went wrong with the encoding (love you, Sony Vegas), I'm going to remake the video today.

Enjoy

[isaac2314]

First step into Tier 18: 4/13 Normal HFC
Health and time permitting, there will be more, and soon.

HFA: It's intuitive but also easy to forget - the priority is to grab everything's aggro. Kill things that can't be tanked (the vehicles), kill things that are problematic (Berserkers and Engineers), and time your ammo runs so that you don't miss getting aggro on new arrivals.

Iron Reaver: Completely trivial on normal.

Kormrok: Easy on normal, although as health, damage and tank debuff goes up it can get messy.

Hellfire High Council: You can naturally out-range Dia's invulnerability aura by simply standing far away enough. When she's casting Void Bolts, she'll be too far to cover the other two. Save Blink to drag the two bosses away right after Nightmare Visage. Alternatively, go Frost and have your Elemental tank Dia, although it might not survive for long enough before your Summon CD is over.

I think there are two choices here - killing either Jubei'thos or Gurtogg first. Gurtogg does heavy damage and tank debuff, but also gives you Fel Rage (during which you are practically invincible). For this kill I off'ed Gurtogg and brought Jubei'thos ~30% during Fel Rage. Use Ice Block for 2nd Nightmare Visage. If everything goes alright, it should be easy.

[isaac2314]

Part two of HFC: 8/13 (Kilrogg, Socrethar, Xhul'horac, Mannoroth)

Kilrogg: I personally used Cold Snap - both Shred Armor and Heartseeker stack and hurt at high stacks. Spread out your Ice Blocks over two minutes, and kill him with your second burst.

Socrethar: Use all cooldowns except Time Warp (pre-pot if you wish) on pull, kick Socrethar out (I find the Reverberating Blow stacks too much to survive for long), don't bother with the robot. Use one or two GCD to deal with the spirits - make sure they never reach you or the robot (you'll probably have to be picky about where you kill it, since it won't be moving for the entire p2). If all goes well, Socrethar should be dead either at 2min mark or before.

Xhul'horac: Again, Cold Snap. Ice Blocks de-stack the Annihilation debuff (which will accumulate, and quickly). Use everything on pull, spread your de-stacking efforts through two minutes and kill him on 2nd burst, as usual.

Mannoroth: Use everything on p2 start - if he successfully get a Glaive Combo off during p2, restart. Ideally, he should only ever have 1 Glaive Combo during p2+p3. 2nd Glaive Combo should happen in p4, when the debuff from the 1st Combo has worn off. Ice Block the first Combo (to remove debuff and heal yourself) and the 3rd Combo (because you'll die if you don't.)
The timing for burst in p4 is tricky - I personally chose to do it after 3rd Combo, but I suppose you can do it during Shadowforce or even earlier during 2nd Combo, if you drag out p3 for longer. It's rather hard to experiment, though, when Ice Block have a 5-minute non-resetting cooldown.


Other bosses:

Gorefiend: Simply undoable unless you kill it in 3 GCDs (or Blizzard nerf Shadow of Death)
Iskar: Should be doable in the near future. The Eye does escalating damage, and can only be reset once - by picking it up. If we can somehow heal through the massive damage from the Eye and the blasts, it would be an easy kill.
Zakuun: Need more damage to push him into p2 right on pull, assuming that doing that actually prevents him from using Soul Cleave. If not - well, it will be undoable for a while.
Velhari: I think we need far more healing than what we have now, but I just spent 1 pull on her, so I'm not certain.
Archimonde: Frankly, I didn't even try. 50M health and Nether Banish at 33% seem very formidable, though.



PS: I almost forgot - all thanks go to enak101 for providing spiritual support and Upper Citadel/Mannoroth bypasses.

[enak101]

Oh you did get manno nice one. Archimonde has a fair bit of damage but I feel like on normal you might be able to just burst your way through the last 33% (or mirror images for the reset perhaps?)

[Araitik]

Well, I was expecting a few bosses to fall quickly in Normal, but maybe not as many

Great job as usual, I will have to step up with Heroic !

Updated the spreadsheet

[isaac2314]

With that the latter half of Siege from Nazgrim onwards is done. Truth to be told, Siege wasn't hard even at Mythic at this point.

Thok: DPS race. I'd suggest Pyromaniac-Living Bomb-Kindling, although Cinderstorm might be better, depending on how much you can get out of 2nd Combustion and how early you can get it. If you can fit a Cinderstorm or Fireball between his Roars, do it. Otherwise, Scorch and instant-casts. Be thankful you're Fire, and not Arcane or Frost.

Paragons: Sadly trivial. Just remember to kill Rik'kal (his transformation is certain death after it expires - well, at least I couldn't find any bug to consume), Iyyokuk (percentage attack), Kaz'rok and Kil'ruk (Mutilate stuns indefinitely, I think. You can Ice Block it though) fast enough.

Garrosh: He no longer Mind Controls, which is the entire reason this is even doable. Use Combustion once after 1st transition, stop all DPS at around 7 seconds before Empowered Whirling Corruption, use Dragon's Breath to oneshot all adds (don't apply anything. Any difference in add healthpoints will result in your death), save second and greater burst (Potion and Time Warp) after you get into p4.

[Araitik]

I 2shot Mannoroth and got a few attempts out of Archimonde.

Surviving until P3 with all cooldowns up is a challenge in itself, the damage is constant and quite high. Once P3 start the clock ticks but killing him before Banish is unrealistic. Will try something with MI.

Great job on Mythic SoO

[Rothex]

In soloing news, as of 7.1 Galakras is now officially soloable according to reports. I can see from the few posts above that SoO Mythic seems to be doable. Any specific talents or strategies for specific bosses? Or are there any bosses that aren't soloable yet/really difficult? I've only seen posts for a few of the Mythic SoO bosses being clear, but want to know if the whole place is soloable. I'd like to start farming for the Garrosh Mythic mount soon.

[isaac2314]

To answer your question on doableness, I will guess by experience that Iron Juggernaut/Dark Shamans will be hard. As in, even-tanks-are-finding-it-hard level of hard. At least, Normal/Heroic difficulty curves suggest they'll be hard, and posters in other solo threads have mentioned it being hard in 7.0/7.1.
Now, they probably won't be if you're 875+, but that's a terrible assumption.
So the short answer is, probably not until Nighthold.

To answer your question about guides, there are part 1 (search for nazgrim), part 2 and part 3, which are actually all on this page. If you look closer there are short paragraphs highlighting things you should note.

If you have trouble after reading those, then what you probably need is a DPS guide (or just more gear.) These are all DPS checks with little to no variation.

As for Immerseus to Dark Shaman - well, I'll post a guide when I actually get around to killing them. As I said Juggernaut and Shamans aren't easy so I'm not in a rush to try right now.

PS: It might also be helpful to search the thread and look for my posts on normal/heroic kills of these same bosses, or read their dungeon journals. I'll freely admit my notes are more for my own use (if I ever want to re-kill them), so I take it for granted that the reader knows how the boss works, if not inside out then at least pretty well.

[Veiled Shadow]

To answer your question on doableness, I will guess by experience that Iron Juggernaut/Dark Shamans will be hard. As in, even-tanks-are-finding-it-hard level of hard. At least, Normal/Heroic difficulty curves suggest they'll be hard, and posters in other solo threads have mentioned it being hard in 7.0/7.1.
Now, they probably won't be if you're 875+, but that's a terrible assumption.

They're actually quite straightforward for other classes, and both were soloable in WoD by tanks. Dark Shamans requires you to have a CD up for Iron Tombs, which is probably impractical as a mage, but you can probably kill it before the second one with some gear.

Iron Juggernaut doesn't deal very much incoming damage as long as you reset the laser stacks on every crawler mine spawn.

[isaac2314]

True, but I'm not entirely confident that hard-hitting bosses with ~38M health will be easy. I mean, the tanks who complained a few days ago might just not have been good, but I don't think they're in the minority either.
And WoD Monks are all kinds of crazy anyway, if it's monks soloing Siege you're talking about.

On potential strategies, I'd pick Cold Snap and survive the first two Iron Tombs. The problem is that the tank debuff stacks fast and are deadly. A non-issue if you can kill them in one round of burst, maybe.

Ice Blocks should also work on the laser debuff (at least, they did back in WoD) but they never worked on the tank debuff, so you'd need to use mines to reset, yes. Not sure if it's worthwhile to bother with Cold Snap if you're going to de-stack tank debuff with mines anyway.

[isaac2314]

There. 14/14 Mythic Siege of Orgrimmar. Would truly not recommend until Nighthold.

Immerseus: This was done back in WoD, but the strategy (which was in a post in this thread somewhere) remains the same. Alternatively, if you don't know how to play Frost or have no AP/Relic on Ebonchill, just DPS the boss, soak the central puddle in Adds phase to make adds stay up longer, kill adds, and hope you finish before enrage (It's actually not easy, even at 110.)

Fallen Protectors: I've no good strategy other than dodging fatal attacks/stuns and killing priority targets. There's probably an optimal cooldown usage but I didn't bother finding out.

Sha of Pride: A pain. You have ~40 seconds to push him into p2, before he casts Banishment. I hypothesized that a well-timed Meteor can instantly kill your image and thus teleport you back right away, but I didn't test that hypothesis. Feel free to stand outside melee range if you need that extra 5 seconds on Deadly Grace, although it can get fatal after ~30 seconds.

Galakras: Don't let NPCs die. For that, Bonecrushers and Grunts are your priority targets.

Iron Juggernaut: An even bigger pain. I used Kindling and managed to squeeze out a second burst, but Cinderstorm is almost certainly better at lower ilvls/shorter fight lengths, assuming this is possible at lower ilvls. I have Shard of the Exodar/870 ilvl, for the record. Cold Snap and Ice Block away the laser beams at vital intervals.
Also, can't seem to make destacking work - jumping on each mine makes me take ~400k "falling" damage, which is frankly too much to be worth it.

Dark Shamans: Pretty easy - I didn't even remember to take the 10% elemental damage reduction buff. Just keep hitting them, dodge things, and Ice Block away the Iron Tomb (you'll likely not see a second Iron Tomb expire, so Cold Snap isn't necessary.)

[Araitik]

Awesome job

I "greenified" the entire SoO section, I might do a video in the future but I will focus on WoD content instead

[Araitik]

Done, done and done !







Videos soon