Nef - 10 man, advice?

[Deleted]

Hey!
We are banging our heads against nef at the moment. We do p1 pretty much perfect with 2 crackles. Occasionally we get unlucky with a tank death or so but most of the time we consistently get to p2.

However, on p2, we have serious issues. The healers(I'm one of them) have a really hard time keeping people up. We suspect that this might be due to having no holy paladin. We run hpriest, rdruid and rshaman. But me and the restoshaman have duohealed chogall so think we should be able to.

Do you have any tips for p2? How far away are you from killing nef once you've "mastered" p2 and only got p3 left?

[eternalwhitemoon]

P2 is actually the worst of it imo. You need strong, efficient group healing to keep everyone up. Don't be afraid to blow healing cooldowns during this phase, even though you only have a handful of people to heal.

[Deleted]

you can do 3 crackles in p1 when you kill ony right when nef drops to 70%

concerning p2 everybody should use defensive stuff such as selfhealing/raptorstrike glyph aso. + hybrid healing can help a lot (for example shadow holy nova or POM aso)

[kynd]

Once you get out of phase 2 properly, the only thing you have to learn in phase 3 is really how to kite the adds properly to keep them out of fire, and your nef tank will have to get used to rotating the boss in adjustment to the add tank, fairly straight forward stuff. Understand that in phase 3, if all things are going according to plan, the ONLY dmg that goes out is going to be on your tanks, and then the crackles every 10% on the raid. If anyone not a tank is taking dmg outside of 10% crackles, they fail.

During your first kill, and pretty much everyones first especially on 10 man, 1 crackle during air phase is enough. I am assuming you are having zero interrupts missed. If you are missing interrupts, the healers cant really do much there. You might want to have your Hpriest switch to disc. Barriers can be very good during crackle. Every single player should be hitting a defensive CD during crackle. If your guild is determined enough, the resist trinkets out of TolBarad reduce the crackle dmg by roughly 50%. Another thing that can cause healers a great deal of headache is the stupidity of DPS coming out of lava. Its a stack debuff, you suck at getting out of lava and you are putting a huge burden on your healers to keep you up for the duration of that debuff. Make sure people arent sucking at that. Really its straight forward, get out of lava fast, hit survivability CD's when you get up on the platform for the duration of the debuff, and CD's during crackle.

[Marrel]

you can do 3 crackles in p1 when you kill ony right when nef drops to 70%

concerning p2 everybody should use defensive stuff such as selfhealing/raptorstrike glyph aso. + hybrid healing can help a lot (for example shadow holy nova or POM aso)

In order to push 3 crackles you have to kill ony within a 3 second window of time if I'm not mistaken, if your dps is that controlled then gratz

Edit: and have your Hpriest switch to Disc for that fight if they can, barrier + absorb shield is very very helpful for crackle

[masterprtzl]

Try and push him to 61% in p2, get stabilized, have everyone use defensive CDs / healthstones / potions if needed. You REALLY need to push that 3rd crackle or last phase is gonna be one big prayer to the RNG gods :/

[cleotaurus]

i'm not sure what the healing problem is in p2, perhaps your raid isn't assisting in using survivability cooldowns, healthstones, etc? I do it as a resto druid and lifebloom on 1 player with wg,rejuv with sm, and occassional healing touch to top someone off is enough to get through. I only do treeform simply for the sake of efficiency with 3 lifebloom stacks.

Then again I am always on the platform with only 3 people

[Blacksen]

You can get 3 crackles in phase 1 if you really want it. We do it every week in 25man because we feel like it leads to a "safer" kill in phase 3. In reality, it's completely up to you. If you are going to go for 3 crackles, know that if the 3rd crackle goes off while Onyxia is alive, the raid wipes to Onyxia exploding. There is no way to avoid this. The "secret" to this strategy is killing Onyxia in the 5-second window between the crackle emote and actual crackle. It's very doable with disciplined DPS and tanks, especially if you have some sort of short raid cooldown (like Tranquility).

The reality is that you must get a crackle in phase 2 regardless of what you do in phase 1. Saving time in phase 1 by getting the extra crackle really only translates to less time in phase 3. Having that said, I would advise not to change your phase 1 strategy and start focusing on phase 2. Phase 2 isn't going to be any different.

I doubt its your healer configuration. Here are a few things you should check:
- Is Blast Nova ever going off? If yes, this is a huge problem. Check recount / worldoflogs to see if anyone takes damage from "Blast Nova."
- Is everyone using all defensive cooldowns at the p2 crackle? Druids should be barkskinning. Warlocks should soul link. Mages should Ice Block. Priests should bubble themselves (or, for shadow, Dispersion). Warriors should shield wall. Death Knights should AMS. Rogues should Feint. Hunters should deterrence (to negate any last-minute fireballs). The only class that doesn't have a defensive cooldown is Shamans. If any other class gets hit by the "full blast" of crackle, they're doing something wrong.

[Dr420]

My guild has been working on 10 nef for about 2 weeks now on 10 man and P2 reall is the worst part. Were a 25 man guild 10/12, we have had 50 wipes over 3 nights of attempts ( after 25 man or on weekend ) and our best attempt was 5%. The third crackle has been something were talking about but have not implimented yet. We do 2 crackles in P1, 0 in P2, and 6 in P3. Like a previous poster said, in P3 the only damage is on tanks and on crackle so the healers should have little difficuliy keeping up your 2 tanks and aoe every 10%. Our raid dps is kind of high i would say, about 90k since its really a stand and nuke fight, so that is one way we get through it.

But as far as P2 goes, i as boomkin spec into solarbeam just for this fight so i can throw it when the add spawns and get the first 2 casts while our mele interrupter gets into position. Any ranged interupt for the first cast to let the mele get into ranged helps a ton, its not needed but gives a larger margin of error at the start. And as several ppl have said, hybrids healing is not a bad thing, i throw my lifebloom on teh healer by me then regrowth / rejuve the other 2 on my platform, then go to dpsing the add. You have 3 minutes to kill the adds and we usually finish in about 1:15 on teh timer, so there as absolutely no rush to killing the adds.

Crackle in P2 in my ecperience is nothing but trouble, at least for us. It usually kills 1-2 people and thats if everyone is topped off, which if youve ever done the fight, means you know is not the case. Just push 2 crackles in P1, 0 in P2 and learn P3. If your wiping at 40% every time, then a 3rd crackle wouldnt make a difference. Learn the fight then start changing what you need to.

[eternalwhitemoon]

- Is everyone using all defensive cooldowns at the p2 crackle? Druids should be barkskinning. Warlocks should soul link. Mages should Ice Block. Priests should bubble themselves (or, for shadow, Dispersion). Warriors should shield wall. Death Knights should AMS. Rogues should Feint. Hunters should deterrence (to negate any last-minute fireballs). The only class that doesn't have a defensive cooldown is Shamans. If any other class gets hit by the "full blast" of crackle, they're doing something wrong.

Paladins should Divine Protection. Glyphed, it's 40% Crackle damage reduction, unglyphed it's still 20%, and it's only a minute cooldown for most specs (Holy can make it 40 seconds). It no longer gives Forbearance, so tell them not to be shy with it.

[Velenei]

In my experience, phase two is won or lost in the first few seconds. Your raid may have people taking too many stacks of the lava debuff, which makes it hell to catch up on the healing. Any classes that can clear the debuff with immunity effects helps a ton. Mages should iceblock, pallys should bubble, rogues cloak etc. The other thing is you cannot have any blast novas go off if you plan on pushing a crackle in that phase, someone will likely die or a healer will oom(resulting in more deaths).

A thing that really helped my guild during progression on this, was to put our healer who is most capable in that phase on the platform with 4 people. If you notice a specific healer having trouble in this phase, try sticking dps or a tank that is self sustaining with them. For example, our resto druid couldn't hande that phase at first, so we stuck our blood dk and aff lock with her, and she made it through fine because of how strong their self healing is. Just be wary of the dps changes this may cause, as to not prolong the phase.

[Deleted]

Ok thanks for all the tips. Why is it we need to have few crackles as possible in p3? As I've understood it the fire slowly disappears and resets? Would it be possible to do p3 with only taking 2 crackles in phase 1?

[Deleted]

Yes. 2 in p1 and 2 in p2 are fine enough.

He shoots the fire more often as P3 continues so it's a soft enrage.

[Jurwi]

Try and push him to 61% in p2, get stabilized, have everyone use defensive CDs / healthstones / potions if needed. You REALLY need to push that 3rd crackle or last phase is gonna be one big prayer to the RNG gods :/

Nah, you don't. We're doing it fine with 2 in phase1, 0 in phase2.

But yea about surviving phase:2

- Make sure every single Blast Nova is interrupted. There's enough healing to be done already without useless shit interrupting.
- Spread out nicely on the pillars (The shadow crap is tiny aoe isn't it?)
- Use def. cooldowns and selfheals as much as possible
- Innervate the bad healers, it's easy to run OOM in p2 if not managing mana well
- Hybrids can help with hymns and shit, but in general you're better off just getting through the shit as fast as possible so they should still focus 99% on DPS.

Personally as holy paladin I find it easy to heal the platform with 4 people without any aid. Beacon 1, shocks & holy lights on other 2. I'll get healed by the loltalent on the side. When I was away, resto druid healed the 4 people platform easily as well, so can't say you need a holydin for it.

---------- Post added 2011-02-22 at 10:44 AM ----------

Ok thanks for all the tips. Why is it we need to have few crackles as possible in p3? As I've understood it the fire slowly disappears and resets? Would it be possible to do p3 with only taking 2 crackles in phase 1?

It's completely doable with only the 2 crackles, don't worry. Worked for us much better than fucking around with phase 2 crackles, they are very hard to handle really if you dont have some crazy cooldowns to prevent the raid dmg. MUCH harder than surviving phase3 for another 20 seconds or w/e.

[Deleted]

However, on p2, we have serious issues. The healers(I'm one of them) have a really hard time keeping people up. We suspect that this might be due to having no holy paladin. We run hpriest, rdruid and rshaman.

No it's not because of your classes, it's because of your playstyle.

We have the exact same healer lineup (me as rshaman) and nefarian p2 was easymode after some trys, all of you just need to know how to heal properly in this phase.

I can't help the priest & druid, but i can give you some advice about the rshaman.

As soon as you get on the pattern drop Healing stream totem, put earth shield on one raidmember and spam healing wave & riptide. Before the electrocute hits just top everyone off with Healing Surge and keep mana shield up.

And yeah shaman can heal the 4 player pillar without problems

Shaman should have no problems with mana in this phase, but our druid has no mana left after p2, so just lay down the mana tide & hymn at beginning of p3

[Mordoran]

Contrary to popular belief it is just fine with 2 crackles in p1, and none in p2.
As for your question, a holy pally would certainly make it easier, but i emagin that you have none (we don't either).

We brought 2 priests and a shammy i believe to our first kill, and 2 priest and a druid for our second. Both worked fairly well.

The trick with p2 is that you spread out propperly on the platform to avoid getting multiple targets hit by the shadow missile thing he does, and pop cooldowns. Whatever people can use of personal defence cooldowns obiously helps (mana shield, bubbles, cloak, health pots etc.) and force people to use the lolwell

If people are positioned properly and you got good interupts, it should work out with a bit of practice.

Good luck and have fun on Nefarian

[Kiea]

We did it with doing 2 crackles in p1, and zero in p2 cause our healers were having a hard time topping everyone, all intterupts went perfect, and we entered phase 3 with him at 72%, we used bloodlust at 30%, we had a prot pala tank the boss and a prot pala kite (me), had a druid healer follow me around and the Hpala and priest healed the maintank and the raid. If kiting goes good and the maintank can rotate the boss properly, then that phase will be easy enough and simply a matter of time before the add tank runs out of space to move in (I did so at 5% health left on the boss, at which point i got killed and we managed to zerg him down with 2 people remaining alive.

[Painne]

first time we downed nef, we had:

2 healers, 2 tanks, and a dps on one platform
1 healer, 2 dps on another
and on the final platform we had an enh sham(me) and a boomkin.

The boomkin healed me and himself the majority of the time while I also healed here and there while dpsing/interrupting the add. This basically allowed it so our healers had a less strenuous time healing in p2 and could conserve more mana for p3. Granted I don't know what classes you're working with so this might not be helpful at all :/.

[Deleted]

I am a holy paladin but still i dont get whats so hard about phase 2? i start phase 2 with 20k mana and at the end of it i have 90k, really whats hard about healing in phase 2? maybe its my pillar grup, DK tank i dont heal him , hunter becon on him and i kind of dps the add for mana and use LOD and some holy shocks if ppl drop to 80%

The resto druid in my guild is the same has me has low mana but at the end he has full mana, our holy preist is wtf dude you have 0 mana ?!!!!o.O Inervate the bitch!!!

[Deleted]

Oh didn't know about the spreading out on the pillars. We assumed that everyone got hit by the shadow missiles. Think this will help us a great deal.

---------- Post added 2011-02-22 at 10:04 AM ----------

We did it with doing 2 crackles in p1, and zero in p2 cause our healers were having a hard time topping everyone, all intterupts went perfect, and we entered phase 3 with him at 72%, we used bloodlust at 30%, we had a prot pala tank the boss and a prot pala kite (me), had a druid healer follow me around and the Hpala and priest healed the maintank and the raid. If kiting goes good and the maintank can rotate the boss properly, then that phase will be easy enough and simply a matter of time before the add tank runs out of space to move in (I did so at 5% health left on the boss, at which point i got killed and we managed to zerg him down with 2 people remaining alive.

Hmm what do you mean with rotating the boss properly? Thought you just tanked nef stationary in p3?