Grim Batol HC, 3rd boss

[Deleted]

Well, i want to find out if someone else is also having trouble with this boss?

Drahga Shadowburner, we went with 4/5 from the guild.
we know the normal dungeons and read about the tacts on HC.

Now, the first 2 bosses were simple. No wipes and mana management wasn't a problem for me.
Ended both fights with more then enough mana.

Now, the 3rd boss comes and we start wiping. DPS takes a hit from that flame, i keep taking dmg from the wand.

Even tho no-one takes dmg from the breath the 4th try, im still going OOM halfway the dragon.
I used a Potion and Manatide totem at 70% ( so i might use it again in the fight).

Eventually, we ragequit the dungeon. Out of safety for health and PC

Anyone else?

[DuckieMage]

What was your group comp at the time?

Another thing you need to stress is constant movement. Your tank needs to stay out of the purple lava, your dps need to stay out of the breath as much as possible. You also need to kite the elementals, when they touch their target they blow up and thats massive damage that needs to be healed. Kiting the elemental and killing it reduces damage being thrown out.

[Asrialol]

Easy boss, in my opinion. Once the adds spawns, slow, kite and kill. Moving away from fire should be easy, specially if people try to stay close to the boss. Can't remember what else there was.. But I had absolutely no mana issues what-so-ever when healing it (inb4 Paladin lol), my mana bar barely dropped..

Don't know what this wand thing is, probably because I tunnel vision too much. But I find it a simple fight.. Tell dps that fire=bad

[Deleted]

Use survivability abilities to keep people alive.

[Deleted]

The Fire Elemental WILL one-shot anyone it reaches on heroic mode. It can be slowed and stunned. Melee should help killing it as well, as it only explodes when reaching its target.

The Devouring Breath from Valiona covers a 180 degree cone in front of her, so everyone needs to be aware of this.

Valiona also drops some AoE on the ground below the tank now and then, it will slow and damage anyone entering. Tell people not to stand in the AoE.


EDIT: The boss will continue suing Shadowbolts the entire fight

[windfurybot]

You can also skip this boss and complete the dungeon for your JP/VP + gold. Felt I should point that out if you're having issues with him. But there is a lot of avoidable damage in that fight, so if people aren't avoiding it, you'll have mana issues. if they do, you have plenty of time to use wind shear on the boss, frost shock/earthbind adds, maybe even help dps the elemental if you've got TC.

[deneweth]

I tell dps to save cooldowns for the dragon phase. I think people just habitually burn cooldowns off the bat, but you need to think more about when to use burst dps and burn phases. Other than avoid damage and speed up the fight there isn't much that the group can do to help with mana.

As a healer when I'm low on mana or know mana will be tight on a fight I like to "encourage" people to use their survivability cooldowns and avoid damage by letting them sit at 50-70% I really hate when I use mana to top the group off only to have someone die to 1-shot mechanics. I like to wait until after them to top off survivors when its possible.

I would never suggest purposefully endangering people but as a shaman it might be in your benefit to let HP drop a bit to get more out of mastery if there's no immediate danger. "Raid damage" comes at very regular intervals in this fight and does not need to be healed immediately. A slower, more efficient style might help you save mana but get them near topped off before the next breath.

[Deleted]

I also find healing this boss to be incredibly challenging at times and I believe the reason is that the Burning Shadowbolts Drahga uses when he is on Valiona are not as random as they are supposed to be. From what I have read these abilities are not supposed to follow a preset preference however he seems to enjoy giving healers an even harder time than is necessary.

After a particularly tense kill of him two days ago I checked the Damage Taken for the fight and found that I was relatively close behind our tank and well above the DPS. Further parsing revealed this was not poor playing (Out of my party I took the least damage from Valiona's breath) yet sustained 450,000 damage over the course of the fight from Burning Shadowbolt. For comparative purposes the tank took less than 300,00 damage from this source whilst our DPS had to contend with only 100,000 or less for the entire fight.

Such numbers are rather quite worrying and Dragha's high desire to punish healers coupled with the other events in the fight (all of which are RNG wrapped in RNG) lead to a very tough fight. I've wiped on Drahga for hours with guild groups due to poor add spawn points, unlucky Burning Shadowbolt chains and Valiona's breath coming at just the wrong moment and facing just the wrong direction and I've also downed him whilst being above 70% mana for almost the entire fight in PuGs, even with adds not being dealt with correctly.

Good luck with the fight but it is incredibly random as to how easy the fight will be with the numbers expressed above leading me to believe that the fight may be bugged in some capacity currently, perhaps with Drahga having an aggro table during phase 2?

[Damntastic]

It's like the easiest encounter in this dungeon...

[Deleted]

It's like the easiest encounter in this dungeon...

TBH, the first 2 bosses are WAY easier on Heroic then the 3rd boss.


our group consisted out of:
Shaman - Healer
Warrior - Tank
Warlock
Mage
DK


the first phase is piss easy. I usually end it with 98%+ mana.
Then the 2nd phase starts and the adds that spawn, will be frost shocked by me.
Following up by the burn from the DPS.

Now, the dragon is going to breath and a few ppl take some dmg. about 30%. This also goes for me, since i had to top of the Tank before i was going to walk. Now, this was fairly simple so far. Now he starts to wand me, this is a huge dmg income. Glyphed Healing Stream Totem was up and i was healing myself more then the tank or any other. They tried to interrupt most of the wand action.

Now, the boss is at 2500K HP and im running OOM. If i see the breath comming in and a DPS takes dmg. Im not healing it, since it might be wassted mana.

[Deleted]

It would seem kinda odd that you oom on this one boss. If you do not oom on the 2nd boss - I wonder how you cannot manage mana on this one I found the 3rd boss the easiest when we entered GB heroic the first three days of cataclysm release -Priest.

[Shamslam]

The one thing that ranged has such a hard time doing is sticking close to the boss. It's infinitely easier if the group stays within a couple yards of the boss and just moves when the ele spawns. Like a ton of the bosses in cata heroics, that 3rd boss is just hit or miss. Just like the 3rd boss in SFK...either 1 shot them or we wipe 5 or 6 times. I wonder if it's the shadowflame cone...seems to be the gimmick in fights that make them seem really easy or really hard.

What I don't understand is what 93 said. Our healer is always struggling on the 2nd boss with mana but rarely has problems on the 3rd boss with going OOM. I'd assume it would be even harder considering you run 2 clothies.

[Deleted]

Everyone was avoiding damage.. when he took his shield out, we grouped up behind him and i lay down a healingrain. WHen we all lost some health i did a chainheal, but other then that it was a Healing wave spam.

We kited him around propperly and with dualblades, i guess our position was just right.


Our strategie on the 3rd boss, was that the ranged would be spread out during this fight. That may be our problem...
The plus side of this, is that we reduce the chance of taking dmg from his breath attack. the downside is that we need more add management from the flame adds. I guess this shouldn't be a big deal tho.

I think we need to try it some more...

[Deleted]

TBH, the first 2 bosses are WAY easier on Heroic then the 3rd boss.

I totally agree - if you're in a pug!

I agree that the fight can be pretty mana intense, if the DPS/Tank is not moving. If you're doing what you're supposed to do (moving etc) I suggest you tell your DPS to blow big cooldowns after a breath (you'll most likely have a few seconds to all out nuke before the next fire elemental spawns) once Valinoa hits ~ 20% (?) it's a free kill. Saving cooldowns for the dragon phase is a must - in a pug atleast

[Cernunnos]

Fire Elemental one shots people if he gets to them
It will pick a new target if it is kited long enough and not killed. (It can even target the tank when it picks it's second victim)
He can summon a new one while the first one is still up, if you haven't killed it in sufficient time.
The add can be slowed by almost all abilities, chains of ice, hamstring, etc.

The cloud on the ground in addition to slowing you also damage you.
The front breath hurts, get behind it if you can.

Melee DPS, or anyone with an interrupt should be interrupting the shadow bolts.

[killzwitch]

Tank should move from zones, DPS shouldn't stand in said zones either, No.1 Priority is the add, if the add hits it's target - /rage at people.
Don't have all ranged hugging on one side since the direction the boss breath will knack ya....or skip it

[Makatafinger]

i cant do that boss without skype and 4 other guild members. we sometimes skip that boss even in guild run too. i find that fight very luck based and dont wanna waste time there wiping.

[fesoj]

i did this boss 2 times now and indeed found him to be the easiest of the whole instance.
I did him first as DPS, and second as tank, so i kinda know what damage is taken and from where.

As tank, you need to move out from the AoE that the boss puts on the ground. It does damage, though it's not something that worried me much. Still , out of habit ( and to preserve my own rule as RL " avoid all possible damage" ) i move out of it ASAP. Dont know if it was the late hour that i tanked this, but it seems the AoE area on the ground grows the longer you stand in it, so it's harder to move out of it.

As DPS, a valuable tip i learned the hard way. The elementals that spawn are the biggest source of damage to avoid. From my experience in the first run i did there ( 2 melee in the group) the elemental explosion cause by the add reaching its target is AoE. it will not hit only the reached player but the ppl near him as well ( small radius though). The biggest problem we had here was ppl preparing to DPS the elemental as soon as the fire pool appeared on the ground( moving closer) . This is very bad because the link to the player that needs to kite sets in place only after the elemental spawns, and if 3 ppl are close to it, you have high chances that one fo those 3 will get hit by it:P Stay away from the pool until the elem spanws, then nuke it, while the person targeted kites it arround. If you have all possible DPS focus on this, killing them is a piece of cake( 77K HP or so).

the breath damage is manageable, in the last run i did, ppl werent even avoiding it, just continuing with their boss nuke.

All in all if ppl avoid the elementals and tank avoids the AoE, it's a pretty easy fight. ofc, the damage is big, but nothing compared to 2nd boss, its nothing that can cause this much trouble.

P.S: healer running out of mana to me usually means one of 2 things: ppl arent avoiding easy avoidable damage, or your DPS is too low. and by DPS i mean overall damage output per time. You can see mages doing 15K DPS on fights but damage output puts them behind ppl doing 8K DPS. That's cause they have a huge burst of damage, but they spend a lot less time DPSign the boss then others( this is to be take into account if you can heal through the boss breath thing).

[Kaysha]

As a healer and talking about GB HC, I find the second boss (the Forgemaster) to be much harder than this one. The first and the last boss are laughably easy.

The first, unmounted phase is easy, it's the second phase (and longest phase) that is the interesting part. You can see where the Elemental will spawn as a puddle of boiling flames on the floor. Everyone (including the tank) should move away from it. Have someone with a snare ability ready to snare the elemental as soon as it spawns, then DPS it down as fast as possible, with the person being tagged by the elemental moving away from it to avoid contact.

Move away from the AoE puddle on the floor. You can see when the Drake is starting its breath attack; purple sparkles appear in the direction from the Drake in which it will launch its breath attack. Everyone should move BEHIND the Drake, relative to the purple sparkles and damage from the breath will be minimum.

Position is really key in this fight, to avoid damage. The only sources of truely unavoidable damage, as far as I can see, are the bolts the boss is throwing around from the Drake's back, and the melee damage on the tank.