H Ashvane horribly tuned for small raids

[Chuupag]

So we finally killed H Ashvane last night after about 60 wipes spread out over 6 weeks. Orgozoa went down 20 min later after effectively 2 pulls. After the first 10 pulls or so I knew this fight was going to be a fight against Blizzard's awful tuning and not just the boss itself.

So Ashvane's mechanics don't change with raid size. You always get 3 corals spawning, 3 bubbles on people, and 3 pairs of lasers. This HEAVILY penalizes small raid sizes, especially the laser. During the only time you can actually do damage to the boss, with 2 tanks, 3 heals, and 5-7 dps that we were running for most of the pulls, you always have half or more of your dps unable to pew pew for long stretches of time while they are running lasers out to kill corals.

Most of our dps are fairly good, we have 1-2 who don't really pull their weight but when you have 2 in the 30 percentiles and 5 in the 70 or better it tends to balance out. But not this boss. It was painfully obvious when our best cleaver would be in a bubble, or when all our melee were targeted with lasers.

The last 2 nights on her I just said fuck it and pugged up to 15. 1st pull get her to 5%, a best, and say something along the lines of "alright that was close let's clean that up and not have 2 people dead going into burn phase and we'll have her" top 2 pugs leave. /headdesk Several pulls later it was quitting time. Next night, a fresh run, I pug up to 17 assuming some will leave before Ashvane. Our healers are gripping at me 3 healing 17. I end up kicking a fire mage pulling 7 percentiles and we pull Ashvane with 16, 2/3/11. 1 shot her.

It's fights like these that make it hard to keep up a happy face while raid leading. It doesn't matter if the strategy is good or my players are (mostly) good, blizz screws up some balancing and it's just a big "pull 100 percents or get fucked" to small raid groups. I'm anticipating us gwtting AotC here in a few weeks but damn that boss felt unnecessarily difficult.

[potis]

No, Ashvane isnt one of those fights where raid size is a problem sorry, as someone that has complained about this extensively since in the majority we are 10-12 people also and have had problems before, Ashvane isnt one of those, see is just a mini-patchwerk, everything is solved with DPS.

What you are having issue with is people that cant pull their weight in combination with overall what seems to be bad call outs.

Are you pulling her into Briny Bubbles if you are having DPS issues to not waste all that cleave DPS? Assuming you gather the bubbles together near the tank/ahead of her, especially during the breakout phase.

Are people popping immunities to have more cleavers if you have DPS issues instead of getting trapped in the bubble?

Why are you even running the beams in the second break phase, she has to die before the 3rd bubble or its a wipe for HC, ignore beams and nuke the shit out of her, just dont line them up on each other like bads to get hit for 300k in total.

Why are you soaking rippling wave leftover bubbles if her shield is down and getting the dot on your players? Let it reach her and explode, there is no shield to refresh.

How do you even have dead players in HC? Upsurge death? Kick.

There is no random damage to kill anyone, healing is 100% controllable in this fight.

Do you bloodlust when shield breaks or are you doing dumbassery BL on pull?

The only actual tuning she has is her DPS check, she seems specifically tuned to block people that dont farm AP or can pull their weight as intended.

[quite an expert in wow]

or just replace the shitty people / get them to know how to learn their class and do mechanics

that sounds like the core issue to me, not the mechanics being slightly more difficult with fewer people

if you need 3 healers for ashvane it sounds like people are taking way too much damage. i 2 healed it with my 410 geared alt

[Chuupag]

No, Ashvane isnt one of those fights where raid size is a problem sorry, as someone that has complained about this extensively since in the majority we are 10-12 people also and has had problems before, Ashvane isnt one of those, see is just a mini-patchwerk, everything is solved with DPS.

What you are having issue with is people that cant pull their weight in combination with overall what seems to be bad call outs.

Are you pulling her into Briny Bubbles if you are having DPS issues to not waste all that cleave DPS? Assuming you gather the bubbles together near the tank/ahead of her.

Are people popping immunities to have more cleavers if you have DPS issues instead of getting trapped in the bubble?

Why are you even running the beams in the second break phase, she has to die before the 3rd bubble or its a wipe for HC, ignore beams and nuke the shit out of her, just dont line them up on each other like bads to get hit for 300k in total.

Why are you soaking rippling wave leftover bubbles if her shield is down and getting the dot on your players? Let it reach her and explode, there is no shield to refresh.

How do you even have dead players in HC? Upsurge death? Kick.

There is no random damage to kill anyone, healing is 100% controllable in this fight.

Do you bloodlust when shield breaks or are you doing dumbassery BL on pull?

The only actual tuning she has is her DPS check.

Awful lot of assumptions here...all of which are wrong. 2 phasing the boss, cds on softshell phases, lusting on 2nd softshell, ignoring lasers in 2nd softshell, everyone with immunities using them for bubbles, stacking bubbles on the warrior tank who just zerker rages out of it.

How about not just assuming everyone is retarded.

[Popastique]

It doesn't matter if the strategy is good or my players are (mostly) good, blizz screws up some balancing and it's just a big "pull 100 percents or get fucked" to small raid groups.

It does matter, and you could just provide a link to your warcraftlogs which could prove a lot of things.

[Loveliest]

Yeah, we had a bit of an issue for our first kill as well. What I did to work around that was overlap the crap on the floor - when my offtank or myself would get the smash, we'd run over the already existing crap. That way, even if it takes forever and it's a bit of a chaos in the last phase, you have clean space to work the proper mechanics and not die. Not sure if that was the case for you, but that was the case for us - people were just dying in the last phase and we couldn't get her down with the ones that were still alive.

- - - Updated - - -

How about not just assuming everyone is retarded.

Don't be upset, the remarks are probably there because people tend to forget not everyone is very geared. My guild pulls very bad numbers, some people are slow, some people don't use CDs right, but because we are geared (430-440) Ashvane just becomes a joke even in 10-12 people.

[Turtel]

I'm quite sure you get more corals with larger raid groups, you also get way more Upheaval swirls; I can't remember if the number of Briny Bubble increases though. My guild usually has about 10-13 people in our raids, and I remember joining a pug group for Ashvane which managed to get the full 30 man group going and being amazed at how many more corals spawned each time, and what a complete mess it was (due to how many Rippling Waves and Upheaval swirls were going out).

I don't think your success was purely due to increasing raid size, but rather increasing your ratio of DPS to healers: you kept the same number of healers (3 healers) but literally more than doubled the number of DPS you had (from 5 DPS in your 10-man to 11 DPS in your 17 man group) which is going to significantly speed up how fast you can break the shield and kill her. Ashvane is a DPS race: the longer you take to break her shield, the more corals you'll spawn, which increases the number of Rippling Waves, so the damage you take is constantly ramping up over time.

Regarding the DPS loss due to having to run out with Arcing Azerite (to clear the corals): if you're aiming to kill her before her third shield (which you should), then this becomes a non-issue. You only need to break corals after the first shield breaks then you can ignore the corals for the rest of the fight. When you break the second shield, everyone who gets targetted by the Arcing Azerite can just keep damaging the boss; you don't need to destroy the corals because Ashvane will be dead before the third shield and you don't take damage from the Rippling Waves if you let them reach her while her shield is down.

[quite an expert in wow]

Awful lot of assumptions here...all of which are wrong. 2 phasing the boss, cds on softshell phases, lusting on 2nd softshell, ignoring lasers in 2nd softshell, everyone with immunities using them for bubbles, stacking bubbles on the warrior tank who just zerker rages out of it.

How about not just assuming everyone is retarded.

honestly not saying he's retarded but if you're 3 healing it in a small group where 2 players are apparently getting carried, should there really be complaints about the size? i think not

[JustaWarlock]

This guy is correct about it being more difficult for small raid sizes. My heroic guild spent 3 times as many pulls killing H ashvane than we did on either H zakul or azshara. We are always at 10 or 11 people, and we 2 heal everything, with everyone pulling decent numbers.

Mechanically Ashvane is just harder due to the mechanics not changing between 10 people or 30. It's a fact.

That's not to say OP doesn't have other issues if he has people in the 30th percentile or is 3 healing it, but still it's definitely poorly tuned for 10 people.

[bullseyed]

or just replace the shitty people / get them to know how to learn their class and do mechanics

that sounds like the core issue to me, not the mechanics being slightly more difficult with fewer people

if you need 3 healers for ashvane it sounds like people are taking way too much damage. i 2 healed it with my 410 geared alt

That doesn't sound right. This trash-tier player is probably just super good at boss design and is correct for saying it sucks.


In case the /s is too hard to read: Ashvane is tuned fine, guilds that aren't AOTC by now are not good.

[potis]

Awful lot of assumptions here...all of which are wrong. 2 phasing the boss, cds on softshell phases, lusting on 2nd softshell, ignoring lasers in 2nd softshell, everyone with immunities using them for bubbles, stacking bubbles on the warrior tank who just zerker rages out of it.

How about not just assuming everyone is retarded.

Yeah my guild is retarded for my standards, and they still manage to down her with 70% of the raid on alts and only one actually hard-carrying because he is bored and joins us, so instead of having the relog on mains, i let them try ashvane on their alts.

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...pe=damage-done

If the 15% loggers can kill her in second bubble, everyone can.

You can check the rest, since i had them relog to mains at Queen's Court instead of Ashvane this time, and you can check previous logs, the OP Warrior friend isnt needed, he just joins for the lulz when bored, allowing our other shitty friends/familiars to play their alts.

I dont have anything to hide, boss is a joke if people actually play and listen, which i stand by what i said, bad calls.

Conclave was horribly tuned for 10man, Mekkatorque was horribly tuned for 10man, Ashvane, isnt.

[Relapses]

It’s funny that we see threads like this then the same people who agree that Blizzard sucks at tuning will post in threads about making Mythic flex sized so it’s more accessible.

OT: Post logs. It’s fine to complain about raid difficulty but don’t be surprised if people assume things if you’re unwilling to provide evidence to back up your claims.

[ddsad2212]

Awful lot of assumptions here...all of which are wrong. 2 phasing the boss, cds on softshell phases, lusting on 2nd softshell, ignoring lasers in 2nd softshell, everyone with immunities using them for bubbles, stacking bubbles on the warrior tank who just zerker rages out of it.

How about not just assuming everyone is retarded.

I dont want to be rude, but if H Ashvane took your group 60 pulls to kill then the level of play needs to be called into question. I'm sure the boss is easier with 30 then 10 but the difficulty of the boss is over all very low and so it shouldn't really matter if its a bit easier as 30 , you should be killing the boss regardless.

[Stardrift]

My group has roughly the same amount of players as yours. It took us a few attempts but we eventually got her down. Much much sooner than 6 fucking weeks though.

I think your guild just has a severe case of the bad.

[rips]

Awful lot of assumptions here...all of which are wrong. 2 phasing the boss, cds on softshell phases, lusting on 2nd softshell, ignoring lasers in 2nd softshell, everyone with immunities using them for bubbles, stacking bubbles on the warrior tank who just zerker rages out of it.

How about not just assuming everyone is retarded.

but you kinda are ? sorry but if you post shit like " our dps are pretty good " when you kiled HEROIC ashvane after what.. 2months ?

how about you just invite a few randoms and kick them after ashvane again instead of trying to progress such an easy boss for 6 weeks ?

[Aresk]

I'd highly recommend swapping to two healers at your size. I raid in a comparable group (10-15 people depending on who makes it that week, usually around the 12 mark), and we two-heal all of the fights except court and Za'qul. As the group's flex healer, I really don't pull that great of DPS numbers (in the 30-40% for my spec), but even that small increase in DPS is a huge help on these fights. When learning a new fight, three-healing may be good to give longevity while learning mechanics, but once you can execute the fights, try having a healer swap specs.

Also, a little off-topic, but I didn't feel Za'qul was that bad for a small raid size. We have enough DPS/healers to soak two rounds of the Delirium's Descent (the only thing that seems to have a fixed number of targets), and we just generally moved as a raid between the portals for P4 to prevent having to worry about healer separation.

[TwentyTwelve]

Scaling might suck in the sense of how many corals spawn but the boss is still a joke and if you're legit struggling months into the expansion you can not be blaming blizzard.
You posted zero logs so you know this is a bait post too;
There's no way you have dps in the 70 percentile and struggle to meet checks.

Your healers moaning about 3 healing 17 in heroic also tells a lot about the level of players you are, in my mind anyway, post logs.

Also you have two chances to clear coral in p2, i'm betting you over cut on the first lasers with a small size, forcing people to move FAR from the boss, move the boss central in p2/close to corals near melee.

[Notdev]

Mythic 20 man is 2-3 healed
Why are you 3 healing heroic 10 man?

[Thrallinor]

I just checked your Ashvane kill

You have two DPS below the Tank
Two DPS at the level of a Tank
Three Healer (one is... well you know what i wanna say) for 16 People

Thats not a tuning problem.

[Tech614]

Also, a little off-topic, but I didn't feel Za'qul was that bad for a small raid size. We have enough DPS/healers to soak two rounds of the Delirium's Descent (the only thing that seems to have a fixed number of targets), and we just generally moved as a raid between the portals for P4 to prevent having to worry about healer separation.

The people that have a problem with Zaqul don't have it because of raid size. They either aren't lusting on first explosion to shorten fight, aren't sending the whole raid into shadow realm in last phase(no reason not to) or just have really bad dps and can't beat the shield checks. If you do all this the fight is a glorified zerg.

As for Ashvane, if you're 3 healing any boss with 10 people that's your problem, not your raid size.