Whew, another weekend of raiding down!
Friday we were missing Log, Grom, and Kisara – in other words, all our melee and the offtank. I’d already covered Log’s spot by inviting Squishi to raid this weekend, so we had tanks, so I looked around the guild and ended up inviting Bocat and another guildie. Bocat wrote up her account of coming with us, so check it out.
We got Shannox down with a little trouble, I wanted to two heal it and while that was a valid strategy we just were really pushing it in the final phase for cooldowns. I want to say, our second two healing attempt, I stepped on a fire trap and died. Kerick kept the raid up until I got a battle rez and could regen mana and we went all the way to the end of that fight. After two wipes though we went back to three heals and crushed Shannox. He dropped shoulders for me…. which means I’ve had amazing FL loot luck, sorry Kerick. I’m sure those plate drops will happen!
Another Ryolith kill. One wipe there, due to him walking into lava. I blame the driver ;-p
Then we went to Beth’tilac. Again, one wipe, then a kill. Ado is really pro at managing her adds and makes that fight pretty straightforward to us – but everyone who taunts down adds fast makes a big difference.
Then we went and worked on Alysrazor. Friday night’s attempts were…. let’s not really talk about it. Unpleasant to say the least, we died halfway through Phase 1 most of the time.
Saturday night, Grom and Kisara were back, so we started on Baleroc and killed him dead. Grom is really key to our strategy on Baleroc, he takes almost the whole first crystal and lets Kerick build awesome stacks. We could do the fight without him but since we knew he’d be there Saturday we saved that fight.
Then back to the firebird. Saturday was almost immediately better and we started getting a lot farther. Still, our two healer strategy is very unforgiving, one mistake and a healer or tank dies and it’s over. But we definitely started getting the hang of it.
After about two hours we had our third healer switch back from dps and rearranged the heals a bit. The difference was noticable right away; we just had a lot better survivability. Yeah, our dps was too low, but at least we were getting through the first phase cleanly.
It was getting late, and we had a good attempt, got through a whole cycle and mostly a second. We were tempted to call it but…. we’re progression raiders, and at some point we have to act like it, so we called for one last good attempt.
Someone died just before the tornados, but when I saw everyone else was alive, I rezzed him, did my mana regen thing, we did the next phase, then the next. For the first time we actually got through three cycles.
Then we wiped because she was at 20% and we couldn’t kill her fast enough.
We have a lot to tweak. I think we’re going to have to two heal it, but not til we’re consistent about getting through cycles. We need everyone to take the burn phases seriously. Maybe try to get a little more dps from everyone, even the healers (I spammed Moonfire to regen mana but I really should have been keeping Moonfire up and using Wrath).
But like I said…. that wipe felt like a kill, to me. We can get this kill, it’s just a matter of time. We’ve learned to dance.
I hope everyone watches a Staghelm vid this week…
I think if we use our hero’ at the better time and everyone uses there cooldowns to max effect we can get her a lot lower, even with 3 heals. I think at least 10% lower should not be had. If we hit a DPS wall with her below 10% we might try going back to 3 healing it.
Yup. We’ll need a few attempts next week to get back to where we were end of the night Saturday, so we’ll definitely start with three heals.
Yeah, getting the mechanics down is the hard part. From there it’s just tweaking. We could still use a bit more deeps on the hatchlings, and we can try some things on the burn phase. Maybe everyone can use a potion there. I can dig Inquisition out of my spellbook … might be able to move some points around or change a glyph to get more damage out of Exorcism.
With the safety buffer provided by 3 heals we might have the tanks reforge to raise their DPS. hmm….
If you don’t want to reforge, you could always swap out gear. I know for that fight, I replace my neck, rings, a trinket and either my belt or bracers.
Good idea. I have been trinket swapping but I will have to see if there is anything else I can reasonably swap.
Smite and Holy Fire > Exorcism 😛
Exorcism is all I have to regen my mana in that phase. That’s really all I use it for, I never cast it any other time. They tried to put dps abilities into all healers’ toolboxes, but it didn’t really work that well for paladins. I don’t have HoTs, or Earth Shield, or a nuke that also heals … dammit. Hold that thought I have to go to lunch. OMG it’s 12:30 alreaedy? ARGH
Can’t you holy shock and do damage?
Yes. That wasn’t the point … the point is, priests are *designed* to do damage while healing. Paladins are not.
I forsee a kill on her for you guys soon. As Rep said, it is all about getting the mechanics down. If you end up going through 2 1/2 cycles then you go through 2 1/2 cycles. Since everyone’s mana regens in phase 3 it is possible to just keep going (assuming everyone lives). If you have a good flyer (who am I kidding you guys have Slice up there :-p) then if she is around 10-15% they should be able to take her down by phase 2.
BTW Domo is _fun_ >.<
The time we hit the 3rd ‘landed’ cycle I know I had zero tanking cooldowns ready. I am not sure about the other tank. Next time we will do better to have some when we need them and will last longer in that phase.
I honestly thought we woulda had it lol. I was like woot!
But yes defintely a kill shot next time. Save lust for the 2nd burn phase and should have it. Group DPS needs to burn down adds ASAP and help tanks as approp if they can afford to do so.. Ranged that can, should shoot her as she is cleaving by. The 3rd healer should also be ready to nuke as well.
Once the field is cleared a bit (i.e.) one worm down on each side. incidental fire dmg should be less, 3rd healer prob can afford to DoT and nuke it up.
DPS who can dodge and DPS can attempt to shoot Aly during the tornado phase, I know I was hitting her up with LB, Scorch and 1 sec pyros lol.
One thing I need to try to do better is to apply my FFF debuff to her as she goes by on the first cleave pass. That should be worth something.
hope everyone watches a Staghelm vid this week…
Staghelm is all about the DPS needed to down him fast, and also the cooldowns to allow the raid to survive.Its quite fun. 🙂
Looking forward to getting this kill. But I wonder on Bael, if I could bubble after the other three things, and soak up the whole first crystal. Probably not, but it might be interesting to try 🙂