The Mage solo thread, because who needs a DK ?

[isaac2314]

Nice! I tried Skorpyron back one or two months ago kiting him and avoiding his cleaves with Blink, but I didn't have enough damage to deal with the adds effectively. And I probably wouldn't have met the DPS check anyway.
Out of curiosity, how do you pull all the small scorpions? I've tried standing still where they spawn, but it takes time for all of them to aggro and become targettable, while I generally just die to all the melee hits/debuffs before that can happen. Else, surely more Living Bomb damage helps meet the DPS check assuming that you still need only 1 Bomb, 1 DS and 1 Flamestrike to deal with all the small scorpions?

PS: Do you plan on trying Krosus? Right now I am wondering if you can use Blazing Soul for him - if Krosus' melee range is less than 8 yards (and I suspect it might be, 8 yards is actually pretty far), then you can stand there and comfortably outheal his AoE hits. It definitely helps that they're physical damage and therefore reduced against Blazing Barrier.
(I'm also wondering if that can work against Garothi Worldbreaker, but a cursory arithmetical check suggest not yet even assuming boss can't hit you from ~8 yards)
If that doesn't work, maybe Eonar or kiting Trillax/High Botanist/etc. in Nighthold assuming they move slow enough?

PPS: Also, does anyone know exactly how fast Varimathras moves? I was thinking that if he moves slowly enough and if his tank swap ability has a range and if you have enough mana regeneration, you can kill him as Arcane by kiting him and constantly re-applying Prismatic Barrier after each Alone in the Dark hit (at normal it would be enough to cover it if you get a relic or two that boosts PB amount). Extremely long-shot, but I was wondering. Videoes online seem to suggest he moves too fast for this, but I wasn't sure.

[Deleted]

PS: Do you plan on trying Krosus? Right now I am wondering if you can use Blazing Soul for him - if Krosus' melee range is less than 8 yards (and I suspect it might be, 8 yards is actually pretty far), then you can stand there and comfortably outheal his AoE hits. It definitely helps that they're physical damage and therefore reduced against Blazing Barrier.

Krosus keeps stacking his tank debuff even at range :/

[isaac2314]

Krosus keeps stacking his tank debuff even at range :/

Damn. Well, at least I don't have to clear all that trash just to know now.

[Araitik]

Damn enrage timers



Totally survivable (with 18% Leech, both defensive legendaries and a healer trinket, but still) but the 9min enrage timer got me

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Well, as it turns out, when a boss enrages on you, just throw more DPS at him !

Swapped both trinkets for DPS ones, lost 4% Leech in the process but that granted my a rather easy kill



Video soon, going to attempt Aluriel before.

Fun side note : I attempted Gul'dan, P1 is easy, P2 is Gul'dan hitting for 1.2M per hit + all the other damage. Yeaaaah not right now.

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Aluriel, pull 1 : Annihilate lives up to its name.

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Trilliax Normal



Enjoy

[isaac2314]

A new video showed that you can outrange most of boss' abilities on (at least) one spot on Garothi Worldbreaker (except Annihilation/Decimation).
I suspect it should be possible for Frost (or Warlocks, or anyone with ranged pets) to do the same? Pets should achieve nearly 100% uptime given the AoE DR on them and that they can hit from afar. Of course, you'd need some level of self-sustain, but without ever needing to move away from that spot Chest/Neck legendaries should hopefully suffice.
.....Well, you'll also need maybe ~10 hours? If anyone really has too much time to burn.

[isaac2314]

A minor update of some sorts on the new health of old raid bosses for MoP (all at highest difficulty):

Amber-Shaper Un'sok was pretty annoying, but it's doable at ~960 ilvl.

Dark Animus pretty much follows the same strategy as what Araitik used earlier, although when I tried today half the small golems died to god knows what. Didn't log and didn't have time to wipe to check again. Should be easy anyway with Flame Patch/AoE Trinkets/Meteor.

For Ra-den, well, we can now survive all the way to first Murderous Strike since we can't die to Anima Explosions now. It's rather impractical to lower your health enough so that you can outheal it, although I didn't try if you can Ice Block it. Even if you can't, the DPS check is generous (at ~960 ilvl.) Entering P2 means you've won.

Sha of Pride is maybe about as hard as Amber-Shaper?

Lastly, Thok was actually pretty easy - I went with Frost for pet damage and Ice Lances, but presumably you can do it as any spec since his Roars don't hurt even at arbitrarily high stacks.

Not sure about WoD bosses yet since haven't checked, but going by my kill of Mythic Mannoroth today it'll probably have to be "re-progressed", so to speak. They should all be doable at the end of the tier (even Mythic Furnace, hopefully), but honestly I'm not sure I'll be interested in trying them all again. Most of them except for bosses with tight timers like Furnace, Butcher, etc. should still be possible right now anyway.

But yeah, I've no idea why they're making bosses that are barely killable at ~ilvl 880 now barely killable at ~ilvl 960. I'd rather they make it a choice or revert it. They're not truly unkillable (for everyone), I guess, but Blizzard is almost certainly making many people who could have and might have wanted to kill boss during end-of-expansion downtime not able to do so.


Note 1: Boss health should be the same for everyone at max level regardless of ilvl. At least it was for my characters.
Note 2: If you want to see guides for MoP/WoD bosses, just search for their names in this thread. Someone almost certainly wrote something about it already.
Note 3: Mythic Archimonde has ~444M health, as an example. MoP bosses are generally in the 100M~200M range. It's really somewhat weird, to say the least.
Note 4: MoP loot was group loot from HoF to SoO, without me having done anything like making a group and adjusting loot rules. It's something, I guess. Mythic HFC was personal loot, though.

[Deiae]

I spent the evening soloing too and at 960 equipped as arcane only butcher took several attempts. Everything else in terrace (heroic), SoO(mythic), HoF(heroic), highmaul(mythic), ToT(heroic) still dies, some still dies during arcane power. Atleast those instances are all just as trivial as before, it might take slightly longer.

[Araitik]

I just gave Heroic Nythendra exactly 1 pull.

[Araitik]

Here are the latest kills !

Nythendra Heroic




Elerethe Renferal Heroic



Enjoy

[denisgsv]

hmm, was wondering at what ilevel does WOD becomes solable ? HFC and Blackrock mythic

[Araitik]

Latest video

Il'gynoth Heroic



Maybe more to come with the upgraded weapon !

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And with the 126 traits, some boss become feasible !

I present you ...

Dragons of Nightmare Heroic



Cenarius Heroic



Enjoy

[isaac2314]

Congratulations! Good to see mages being back in business. I'll admit, I'm personally more looking forwards to trying out the harder Legion bosses once we're in BfA (since I basically sat out Antorus and suspected I wouldn't be able to try anything cutting-edge.) I do wonder if we'll be able to do so many BfA bosses as we did Legion ones, though, but even if we can't I'm sure I'll have fun doing Legion bosses anyway.
Hope I'd be getting back to the boss-killing game by September.

PS: do you intend to try Eonar? I admit I never could muster the spirit to find a lockout and try the boss, so I don't truly know how hard it'll be.

[Araitik]

I've been trying some bosses the last couple of days, here are my observations :

Xavius (normal) : Too much damage, cannot be kited. Infinite DoT stacks too fast and cannot be reset. Melee hits for 650k+, not counting adds. Best is 58% but using absolutely everything, including Dream. I deem this one 95% impossible.

Ursoc : Tank debuff oneshots you, cannot be kited.

Garothi Worldbreaker : Surviving is relatively easy, even through berserk (Decimation is the only spell that reaches you and it's not affected by berserk), however actually dealing damage to the boss is another story : if you come close enough to DPS, you instantly get hit by Carnage and Fel Bombardment, both leading to death under berserk if you stay in the area for more than a couple seconds. I tried letting the Frost pet to the job, it works until berserk when the pet gets wiped out in a matter of seconds.

Eonar : This one might be possible, but the big adds at the beginning hit for a ton of damage and kill Eonar too quickly.

I need to try some Nighthold, will keep you posted.

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Aluriel: Too much damage, no way to reset anything.

Elisande : Too much damage, no way to reset anything.

[isaac2314]

Garothi Worldbreaker : Surviving is relatively easy, even through berserk (Decimation is the only spell that reaches you and it's not affected by berserk), however actually dealing damage to the boss is another story : if you come close enough to DPS, you instantly get hit by Carnage and Fel Bombardment, both leading to death under berserk if you stay in the area for more than a couple seconds. I tried letting the Frost pet to the job, it works until berserk when the pet gets wiped out in a matter of seconds.

Ah, that is unfortunate. I was hoping the pet would be somehow survive through the damage; I probably shouldn't have given pets are supposed to be only highly resistant but not immune to AoE, but I admit I don't really know enough about pets in general.
If only healing frostbolts still exist! Then again, range would be a problem and you probably can't heal that fast anyway.

[Araitik]

Here we are, 45 minutes before 8.0. But before all of this goes away :

- Cauterizing Blink : 15%+ of our healing
- Scorched Earth : +25% movement speed at 5 stacks, an undeniable advantage to kite (hey, we still have Frenetic Speed ! yay)
- Belo'vir's final Stand : 20%+ of our healing, and
- Prydaz, Xavaric Magnum Opus : Another 20% of our healing (although the last 2 will not disappear until BfA)

I got myself a raid ID and went to see an old friend.



I was surprised to be able to get him so low (34%) quite easily. Kiting is not a problem, but meeting the DPS check is : I hit the 12 minutes enrage with basically the whole last phase left. Maybe it would have been possible with the enrage ignore strat (you can wait 30 minutes in P1 then enrage vanishes and you do the fight normally), but I didn't have the time (duh, 45 minutes) nor will to try it earlier.

To be quite honest, I see the future of mage soloing to be pretty dark in the near future, with all our self-healing being taken away at BfA, and a good chunk of it before that, our only resort to heal ourselves will be Leech and maybe Azerite traits, although the last time I checked those "underwhelming" was the least you could say about it.

Quick example (using the Gul'dan attempt above)

Total HPS : 391k.

This is distributed as follows :

- Leech : 33% (note : I had 15.5% Leech, which is insanely high, because I got really lucky on Leech pieces
- Legendary robe : 23%
- Legendary neck : 18%
- Cauterizing Blink : 17%
- Blazing Barrier : 5%
The remaining 4% is a bunch of smaller sources : artifact relics, Cauterize, healing potion.

Come 8.0, Cauterizing Blink is gone. Come BfA, legendaries are gone. We will lose 58% of our healing, which translates to a loss of 226k HPS.

Meaning that : Legion HPS = 391k, BfA HPS = 164k HPS (ignoring the stat squish)

I'm very displeased with this, to say the least. I hope we will still be able to do some nice soloing next expansion, but, more than ever, it's probably going to be reliant on pure, dumb, random, luck.

Thank your for reading.

[Farah]

Maybe it would have been possible with the enrage ignore strat (you can wait 30 minutes in P1 then enrage vanished and you do the fight normally), but I didn't have the time (duh, 45 minutes) nor will to try it earlier.

You don't do the fight normally, since the eyes gain berserk regardless. And while you could *maybe* handle the small ones with DB and some other burst AoE CD from a trinket or whatever (since they only have 5-6M health), the large eyes with +900% damage are probably going to kill you in 2-3 globals max, and they have 18M health.

[Araitik]

You don't do the fight normally, since the eyes gain berserk regardless. And while you could *maybe* handle the small ones with DB and some other burst AoE CD from a trinket or whatever (since they only have 5-6M health), the large eyes with +900% damage are probably going to kill you in 2-3 globals max, and they have 18M health.

Very good point. Eyes are actually difficult to handle as it is, so berserk is going to make this impossible for sure. No regrets !
I will try again now that 8.0 is here to see if something's changed, but my hopes are low

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I attempted Gul'dan again. Exact same gear as yesterday.

Quick reminder : just yesterday, I was able to survive the fight all the way to the enrage, for 12 minutes

The attempt I just did ? It lasted 52 seconds. I used Time Warp, Cauterize and Ice Block and wasn't even able to pass P1.

Great "scaling" as always. Soloing is dead until next month, unless they massively nerf everything.
I expected to be disappointed, but not to that extent.

[Araitik]

Update after yesterday's "old content" nerf by ~30% : I survived 3 minutes on Gul'dan.

Passing P1 is possible once again, but it is still way harder than before.
Loss of Scorched Earth means that kiting Gul'dan is essentialy impossible, the 30% from Frenetic Speed being not nearly enought to maintain him at bay.
Loss of Cauterizing Blink is also very noticeable, as is the Living Bomb + Conflagration combo, as is Phoenix Flames + Flame on.

I feel crippled, and it's not going to get better come BfA.

[rogoth]

Update after yesterday's "old content" nerf by ~30% : I survived 3 minutes on Gul'dan.

Passing P1 is possible once again, but it is still way harder than before.
Loss of Scorched Earth means that kiting Gul'dan is essentialy impossible, the 30% from Frenetic Speed being not nearly enought to maintain him at bay.
Loss of Cauterizing Blink is also very noticeable, as is the Living Bomb + Conflagration combo, as is Phoenix Flames + Flame on.

I feel crippled, and it's not going to get better come BfA.

welcome to the ion hazzikostas school of class design, class is in session and expected to last at least another 2 years minimum, get comfortable because this is a long haul.

[Thelxi]

That's sad.