Advices for M Blockade?

[Pikay]

Hey guys

Had our first night at M Blockade yesterday and it was quite messy - in 2 hours only made it out of P1 twice with everyone alive. I guess we will need to practice the correct stacking of the pools and other sh*t - some of us are a bit slow when it comes to dodging stuff Since we're already late in the Patch, our DPS was high enough that we did not have to interrupt the casts (first was interrupted by the switch, the other by death).

Do you have any advice for us or information you would have gladly known the time you were progressing the fight? Any tip is highly appreciated.

Pikay

[Atharaxie]

P1 is about stacking seaswell (even if it means facetanking Voltaic Flash) and balancing DPS on Kath/Joseph.
You can spread seaswell freezing pools but it's a good practice to just step in any previous freezing pool just before seaswell. Damage is healable and freezing pools are contained.

P2 is about add management and soaking pools.
Switch instantly on Sirens but cleave as much as possible on multiple Energised Storm and boss.
A monk (and some other tanks, at least DK) can solo soak the bumping ppols as long as they face the right direction while the other tank solo the boss.
Sea swell must be spread as thinly as possible with pixel perfect stacking of ranged (and melee) DPS.

[Crysake]

P1 is about stacking seaswell (even if it means facetanking Voltaic Flash) and balancing DPS on Kath/Joseph.
You can spread seaswell freezing pools but it's a good practice to just step in any previous freezing pool just before seaswell. Damage is healable and freezing pools are contained.

P2 is about add management and soaking pools.
Switch instantly on Sirens but cleave as much as possible on multiple Energised Storm and boss.
A monk (and some other tanks, at least DK) can solo soak the bumping ppols as long as they face the right direction while the other tank solo the boss.
Sea swell must be spread as thinly as possible with pixel perfect stacking of ranged (and melee) DPS.

Which part of the fight requires “pixel perfect stacking”? Can’t recall any difficulties in phase 2.

[Zantera]

Do you hero in p1 or save it for p2? We used it on boat to make that phase easier because for us that phase was definitely harder to get down.

P1: Biggest hurdle is to get the stacking down because the whole boat phase plays out like a choreographed dance almost. There's a great weakaura that will help if everyone in the raid has, I forget the name but what it does is once sea swell is about to come in, you get a warning counting down and you hear a phone ringing. It really helps because when the phone rings you know to stack up (on a marker) and once you see the swirl animations everyone runs out. Sirens should die in ~2-3 seconds, just make it priority to go on them.

P2: Stacking is still really important, I think it was one of our biggest problems because some ranged kept moving too soon and it messed it up. Kill sirens fast because the longer they stay up the more of a headache it becomes. Soaking is important, hopefully you have a tank with some mobility OR people to provide it for him. In our case we had a blood DK soaking so we had to provide some external mobility like monk's giving tiger's lust when he called out for it. Also help if you have a few backups like paladins who can soak with immunities in case tank can't get there. Make sure whoever is cleaning the platform gets to the back of the room to drop the adds because the more space you get the easier it is. A warlock portal helps. Have a few assigned players attack the add and slow it (if you have a frost mage thats nice) and if add gets to close to boss then have everyone go on it.

I think if you get the stacking for the sea swell down, killing sirens fast and getting the soaking part right, the fight will get a lot easier. People have a tendency to panic in the last ~30% because you're getting close to a kill and people start overlooking mechanics. This is one of those fights where if you keep your cool, you will get it. There's also a mark you need to hit towards the end where you stop attacking adds and just go on boss. He will start his oneshot cast but you can kill him before it hopefully. And it goes without saying the better you execute p1 the more time it will earn you in p2 if the boss is lower on energy when you transition.

Good luck!

[quez]

Atharaxie and Zantera covered most of it, I'll try and fill in some other points.

Here's a weakaura i made for sea swell if you don't have one, but there are most likely better made ones out there. https://wago.io/x57UKF_qS It has some words in Swedish but the most useful feature is the audio queue, one sound a few seconds before and another sound when you should move.

P1 is in my opinion the hard phase. Use everything to keep people alive, healing cds, personals, healthstones&pots. The healing requirement for p2 is far lower.

Gateways are super useful in p2, one from the middle of the platform back towards mekka to help with the first soak debuff and one along the left or right side where your ranged players stack.

We had two players marked, one ranged and one melee who everyone else stacked on (except tanks and frost mage). When reaching the platform everybody stacked together at the edge of the boss hitbox so the first round of sea swells spawned in the same location, then the person who got the soak debuff waited for them to land and cleared before using the gateway.

Ranged players stacked up far back along the left edge and inched forwards after each sea swell, while melee started front left and moved right. We had a DH who picked up the orb, dashed once through the melee pools then again through the pools left by ranged before running as far back as possible.

The players who are in charge of deciding where to stack should pay attention to the sea swell timer and communicate where to move. For example lets say your ranged camp started back left and are now halfway down the platform and the orb carrier just cleared up everything behind them, he/she should decide if there's enough time before the next sea swell for the group to move back to the starting position or not. A gateway could also be used here to quickly get back to the starting position.

This is how we (and many other guilds) did it anyway, here's a video of our kill https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHRvxHqPRDI (the WA i linked isn't used in the povs shown here)

Good luck!

[Fuqup]

audio cue for end of Sea Swell cast
audio cue for end of Sea Swell cast
audio cue for end of Sea Swell cast

deaths to sea swell are a huge drain on progression and should basically never happen if you have a dbm/bigwigs countdown + some weakaura that chimes when the sea swell cast is completed. train yourselves to respond to the audio cues, don't try cute shit like finishing casts before moving, the risk/reward is just not there for the vast majority of players.

aggressively use defensives/raid cds/healthstones/health pots in p1, particularly while fighting katherine, but joseph can easily kill an inattentive player too. it is way more important to get into p2 with your brez than it is to hold healthstone for some hypothetical scary moment deep into p2.

quickly identify people who do not stack properly for sea swell, or who cheat ahead. look at wcl replays or use eyes

for the sake of simplicity, you can have your frost mage dps the storm elementals full-time in p2 so they stay permaslowed. if that player gets targeted by a siren and doesn't have a way out (i think invis/block both work? idk) they need to call it on voice comms so that someone else can maintain the slow until their siren gets killed.

don't kill storms any sooner than you have to, killing a storm early is wasted boss dps. make sure your orb runners know what's going on, wiping because orbs stay on the ground is really stupid. you don't have to kill them with frame-perfect timing or anything, just don't kill them when they're halfway to the boss

there is a point around 4:00 where you have 2x storm adds that overlap with siren spawns, and another one around 6:00 i think. it's worth it to delay cds a little to nuke the sirens. good time to plan on dps potting

never ignore sirens unless you are in some really serious shit or the boss is going to die in like 10 seconds

the boss is still killable as long as its energy is under 100, no matter how badly you fuck up in p1. it's perfectly possible to get through p2 with 0 energy

micromanaging tank dispels isn't as important as it used to be. it's obv worth doing, but don't worry about it when you're starting p2 progression