To recap: I’ve been having difficulty in filling the roster lately. Mostly due to people having other commitments during the summer. Between one thing and another last week was the first time we were able to put a solid two hours on Shannox, and he went down.
This week Log had already told me he’d be out so I needed another tank. Thursday I got online, looked around, and hooked up with a tank who has run with us a few times, another bear tank named Squishi. He’s friends with multiple people in our raid, and solid, so I was happy.
Friday morning Log called me to say…. his drill weekend turned out to be NEXT weekend and he could raid tonight if I wanted.
Well, having already asked someone else for that slot I told him he was on standby.
Raid time comes. We group up, we kill trash, Shannox spawns, and Jhudora, my third healer, dc’s. I get a message that she lost power and doesn’t know when it’ll be back. After a while, we decide to go on without her. We finally settle on Logarithm coming in to tank and Reversion going heals.
We work out assignments and start learning the fight. It takes about four tries to really feel like we’re back in the groove, then a couple below 30% wipes, then boom, he’s dead. Not quite farm status, not when a new tank has to learn the fight, but we’re very confident of him.
With an hour of raid time left we go knock out Bastion real fast.
Saturday night we come back to Firelands. After a little discussion we decide to head to Baleroc. I’ve got Kerick and Sharelore the druid as my heals team – two druids and a paladin. Kerick’s done the fight as a paladin already so I’m hoping that will help the learning curve.
To make a long story short I really like this fight. It seemed to have something for everyone to learn and we had to communicate well. Early on we were getting a lot of early Decimation Blades that killed Rev because he didn’t have enough health and the healer on him at that point (me) had no stacks at all. Rev swapped out his trinkets for one with a bit more stamina to help his health pool get high faster and started popping Tol’vir potions; he could usually dodge about 50% of Decimation Blade swings which was a huge help. We adjusted our healing strategy slightly to get someone with stacks on Rev a bit sooner, we had two people calling out different things, one managing the list of dps to get hit by the crystal, one telling the healers to switch. Near the end I got some help to figure out when to hit the crystal target with a single heal to get me some stacks, then back on Reversion until it was officially my time to swap off. I need to do more research on this fight myself.
We got a 8% wipe and then it was close to quitting time. We feasted up for our last pull of the night – and then got a Decimation Blade right off the bat and wiped. Came back, had time for another try – same thing happened. But someone survived the wipe, mass rezzed, and even though Rev and I pointed out that it was now well past quitting time, someone pointed out that the feast was still there and everyone agreed. One more try.
This time we survived the initial phase of the fight where the healer on Reversion had no stacks. We swapped off tank and raid healing duty cleanly. The dps all did their part perfectly. And then, almost surprising me when he finally went down, Baleroc was dead.
2/7, with our second kill following tight on the heels of our first! I was so proud of our raid. It took us 25 attempts to down him. No one complained about repair costs, that this was taking all night, that wiping isn’t fun. Everyone learned their jobs and performed well.
To me, this is progression raiding. I don’t think of progression in terms of keeping up with the Joneses or Paragons, but of pushing your own raid group to achieve more and more every time. And we are! That makes all my headaches as I try to work out who is raiding every week, worthwhile.
Now you have all week to study Beth’tilac and Lord Rhyolith! 😛
Congratulations! I never knew you could do Baleroc without downing the first four bosses. I always thought that we could do any of Shannox/Rhyolith/Alyrazor/Beth’tilac, but thought you couldn’t do any after that until all four died. I may suggest that our raid at least go and try Baleroc to mix it up some. Can you go to Majordomo after Baleroc, or is that where you are required to down all the other bosses?
I don’t actually know the answer to that question. I will have to find out, my suspicion is that you have to kill the other guys first.
I don’t know if you can do Baleroc before Shannox, but I wouldn’t recommend trying seeing how Shannox pats. But the other three can just be left alone while you go play with the gatekeeper.
You can do any of the first 5 bosses in any order you want. It might not be logical to go to Rhyolith (or Balroc or Alyrazor) before Shannox but it can be done.
You will have to kill all 5 of the first bosses before you can go to Majordomo.
Baleroc is a bit of a dps check to beat the enrage timer, so when Firelands first landed many people went to other bosses first, who test you more on your coordination and how well you can adapt to mechanics.
Grats on your kill guys!!
I think Balroc is shaping up to be my favorite fight too. I especially love it when it is my turn to be left out of the crystal rotation. 😀
Yeah, it really was a good raid fight. I felt like we all had to work as a team to get it done.
It was a very interesting fight. The degree of raid coordination was huge. At the end we had 4 different people calling out stuff in vent. Each calling something different but useful and important. If I recall right we had:
-A DPS calling who’s turn it was on the crystal and who was ‘on deck’ to be next. This was important for fast clean swaps. Even a small delay and the crystal target would go down.
-Another DPSer calling out the healing swap order. This was important because the healing alternation was complicated and critical. If two healers thought it was their turn to switch of the tank at the same time, even for a moment, it was a wipe. This also helped me, the boss tank, know what my incoming heals would be like. Tank cooldown use was VERY critical in this fight. Wasting one at the wrong time was often a wipe. Knowing I had just gotten a fresh healer with more stacks meant I could resist the urge to burn another tank cooldown. Having those swaps called out in vent was very helpful for me.
-Someone, I think a healer, calling when to ‘snipe heal’. That was when the crystal target had nearly max stacks. If a tank healer shot just one good heal at the crystal tank then they would get a meaningful boost to their stacks. For the cost of one occasional heal we got our healers all up to very high stacks.
-The MT calling out when the Decimate swings were and if I had dodged one. This I thought was useful. Because, as a bear, I was dodging a lot of the swings I figured it was not always clear when I was about to lose 90% of my health. Because I could watch the swings I knew exactly when that was going to happen. No one told me if it helped at all… but I started calling when the decimate swings were about to go so that the healers would have fair warning.
Four ‘raid callers’ and tight coordination for everyone in the raid (except that one)… this is fun little fight.
Yep, I actually learned over the course of the night to watch his swings myself, and by the end of the night I could also tell exactly when he was going to swing on those Decimating Strikes. I was cheering inside when you dodged all three in a row on that final pull, but I had a finger poised over LoH in anticipation.
Learning when you can snipe some stacks when you are tank healing is critical and somewhat confusing. If you’re one of those power aura type people, you should make something to tell you when your Vital Flame is falling off, because you can only acquire stacks in between that being active. I am not, so I just have to watch my own buffs very carefully. Also, I’ve made the mistake more than once as I was learning the fight of tossing out a Divine Light after a Decimating Strike and having it be in the time where my Flame became a Spark again and it didn’t even move the tank’s health bar. lol. Yeah, I totally admit to causing wipes as I’ve learned, even after killing him more than twice.
I am learning I have to get a lot better at watching my DEbuffs on the target. Having one of those drop of was really noticable. I might even have to get something that will tattle for me when other classes debuffs drop off. A boss like that we need all the debuffing we can get.
I was the one calling out snipe for Ana when she was on tank duty to start as she had no stacks. I think getting those stacks helped with the tank heals before we had a high stack healer take over.
[…] are crazy at work, and Ana has already given out the details better than I could, so head over to Looking For More for the text wall. I’ll just provide my usual kill shot […]
its definitely an interesting little fight for sure. Just having a different composition can make the fight a little different. from healing comp to tank usage. To even having a DPS that can soak a lot of stacks of the debuff.
Grats all! 🙂
Congratulations!
Hooray! Congratulations on the kill!
Bethtilac is probably the easiest of the bosses you have yet to kill, followed by Rhyolith and then Alysrazor. (Alysrazor feels like a big step up in difficulty to our raid group at least.) Rhyolith would be easiest except that his driving mechanic is a pain in the ass and it takes a while to get the hang of it.
We originally thought that we had to kill the first four bosses in order to get to Baleroc, which I think slowed down our progression a bit. We spent two frustrating weeks on Alysrazor when we could have gone to Baleroc instead. 😦
The RNG factor of where the volcanos spawn is definitely annoying on Rhyolith. BUT, since Sorak transferred his rogue, we’ll have the same person ‘driving’ that has driven him in our SR kills, so I’m thinking that will reduce the learning curve part of it.
We killed Baleroc for the first time last night as well, with three seconds left on the enrage timer. High five. 🙂
A tight as hell coordination check for sure, which makes it fun. Rhyolith, who we spent a couple nights on but haven’t downed yet, is RNG hell in contrast.
That was a fun night, and a blast of a fight! And a lot of fun with the paceline of dps’ers lining up on the crystal. Grats to the team on the kill!
Beth will be a piece of cake compared to the learning curve on Bael.
DPS has be to be very coordinated for Ryo, quick turns are essential.
We have to keep up that progression attitude, we’ll be tested for sure on the phoenix.
Ugh firebird…dancing….sigh