ToS Mythic+ as Balance

[tehealadin]

Hi all,

I recently attempted a +17 in ToS. Didn't go well, wasn't expecting it to, we got it, but not in time. Our first hurdle was the first boss, I never had this problem on lower keys, but on the first boss, I held off for the tank to pull the one without shield away a little and dotted him. Moonfire managed to clip the one with the shield. I was dead in seconds, maybe lasted 10-20 seconds. I did take some damage from another ability, can't remember which one, but the bulk of the damage taken was from lightning shield, it was obliterating me. I looked at details, it was moonfire and a purification protocol that hit the shielded one. This happened about 4 times, I held off for as long as I could with moonfire/sunfire, but the other one would always get tagged with at least one of them. The 4th time they downed the boss, but me and another dps whose cleave was doing the same had to watch from the floor.

Like I said, I've never had this on lower keys, my best timed is +14 for that dungeon, how do you guys deal with the first boss when booming? Do you have to avoid dots at higher keys and just take the hit to dps in order to live and do damage? Or does the tank need to get the other one really far from the shielded one?

[Malkiah]

this is a purely logistical issue, and it fascinates me that it isn't more commonly known. in fact, most people don't even know the lightning shield procs on cleaves.

simple solution: pull the melee boss to the base of the stairs.

the caster boss will stay where he's standing on pull completely out of range of cleaves, and when the shield switches the melee boss will just stand where you had him and spam an aoe the group can simply move away from.

[huth]

Stairs seems like overdoing it a bit, but yeah. Tank them apart or watch everybody with forced cleave die.

[NightZero88]

Hi all,

I recently attempted a +17 in ToS. Didn't go well, wasn't expecting it to, we got it, but not in time. Our first hurdle was the first boss, I never had this problem on lower keys, but on the first boss, I held off for the tank to pull the one without shield away a little and dotted him. Moonfire managed to clip the one with the shield. I was dead in seconds, maybe lasted 10-20 seconds. I did take some damage from another ability, can't remember which one, but the bulk of the damage taken was from lightning shield, it was obliterating me. I looked at details, it was moonfire and a purification protocol that hit the shielded one. This happened about 4 times, I held off for as long as I could with moonfire/sunfire, but the other one would always get tagged with at least one of them. The 4th time they downed the boss, but me and another dps whose cleave was doing the same had to watch from the floor.

Like I said, I've never had this on lower keys, my best timed is +14 for that dungeon, how do you guys deal with the first boss when booming? Do you have to avoid dots at higher keys and just take the hit to dps in order to live and do damage? Or does the tank need to get the other one really far from the shielded one?

On high key tyrannical weeks, this boss sucks for balance. All of our spells will kill us. Buffed wrath, lunar strike, initial application of both dots will all trigger the reflect and kill you. If your tank doesn't pull the bosses away you're as good as dead because you can't not cleave. If it's a pug, go bear and taunt the boss yourself far away from the other. As someone in the balance druid discord said, you're gonna die either way, may as well give it a shot.

[Malkiah]

Stairs seems like overdoing it a bit, but yeah. Tank them apart or watch everybody with forced cleave die.

well yeah not all the way to the stairs i just mean over to the part of the fight area that's by the stairs.

[Kikazz]

Hi all,

I recently attempted a +17 in ToS. Didn't go well, wasn't expecting it to, we got it, but not in time. Our first hurdle was the first boss, I never had this problem on lower keys, but on the first boss, I held off for the tank to pull the one without shield away a little and dotted him. Moonfire managed to clip the one with the shield. I was dead in seconds, maybe lasted 10-20 seconds. I did take some damage from another ability, can't remember which one, but the bulk of the damage taken was from lightning shield, it was obliterating me. I looked at details, it was moonfire and a purification protocol that hit the shielded one. This happened about 4 times, I held off for as long as I could with moonfire/sunfire, but the other one would always get tagged with at least one of them. The 4th time they downed the boss, but me and another dps whose cleave was doing the same had to watch from the floor.

Like I said, I've never had this on lower keys, my best timed is +14 for that dungeon, how do you guys deal with the first boss when booming? Do you have to avoid dots at higher keys and just take the hit to dps in order to live and do damage? Or does the tank need to get the other one really far from the shielded one?

easiest thing to do on that boss, is jsut spam wrath, and Moonfire,

do not Lunar Strike or Sunfire,

yes your dps will be trash, but remember a Dead dps does nothing.

so wrath and moonfire, watch the timers for when the shield will swap, and dont re-apply Moonfire, if it will clip into the new shield.

there is nothing we can do about it,

heaps of classes have this issue as some abilities auto cleave, like mages ignite and so on.

yes this can be alleviated by spreading them further apart,

OR

by you not using Cleave abilities to Do Amazing DPS.

and before anyone has a go,

i Main a Balance druid and do Keys as a Balance and resto druid.

not im not a 3k IO player, but have Keystone Master, and push keys when able.

[huth]

yes this can be alleviated by spreading them further apart,

OR

There's no "or". Spread them, everything else is a waste of time.

It's not just you who is affected by this. Any tank not splitting them up is essentially trying to get themself killed because they get hit by it to(pretty much every tank has mandatory AE in their rotation).

[oneclosetothesun]

Imho they did something with it, didn't used to proc from dot tick, but only the initial cast. I remember I used to anticipate the shield proc but then chill with having multidot. And now each dot tick proc shield. It's complete mental. You need to very politely ask tank to spread them, and it takes quite a range for Moonfire to not chain.

[Puri]

Well, there is only one solution: They need to be tanked far apart.

There have been several silent hotfixes to the encounter over the course of the xpac (for example the frost mage talent splitting ice talent is deactivated or rather the range is drastically reduced when fighting the bosses since somewhen after 8.1), yet there are still several abilities left that proc the shield on quite some distance (dual moonfire for example) - not even talking about low range cleaves.