Unleashed

Our summary of faction champions for all fights: Link - 14 Attempts: 39:40 Combat Time

Successful Log 1: Link - 1 Fight: 6:31 Combat Time

Successful Log 2: Link - 1 Fight: 7:19 Combat Time

Successful Log 3: Link - 1 Fight: 6:28 Combat Time

Successful Log 4: Link - 1 Fight: 6:40 Combat Time

Looking through our logs compared to these successful ones, there are a number of things to look at.

Question 1: Blame the healers?

No, I think our healers were doing a great job. Their healing per second was actually higher than all of these successful kill logs. Some might think the reason we were unsuccessful was dispels. We had 911 dispels over 40 minutes. This gives us 22.8 dispels per minute. These successful kill logs had 50, 30, 31, and 24 dispels per minute. So we see these other guilds were definitely dispelling a lot more while the first guild (50 dispels per minute) was WAY above ours (22.8 per minute). Improving on dispels as a whole could help.

Question 2: Blame the DPS?

The four successful logs showed a raid DPS between 65-75K. Our average for all attempts was roughly 42K. Maybe bump it up to 45-50K due to DPS stopping when we call a wipe but even then we are still looking to be roughly 15K raid DPS below the average which I am sure would make a big difference in getting the mobs down quickly.

Question 3: Are rogues with FoK spam the only way to do this?

Our entire combat log for the entire night, all 14 attempts, shows 277 interrupts. In Successful Log 1, which is a single encounter, you see 316 total interrupts. 284 of those 316 are coming from Rogues FoK spam. So it would seem like we weren't interrupting enough, right? However, in looking at a LOT of combat logs, it seems Successful Log 2 and Successful Log 3 are just as prevalent in the successful kill report population as a whole. In looking at these, you see a mere 24 interrupts in Successful Log 2 and 34 interrupts in Successful Log 3. None of those interrupts were from rogues using FoK. Successful Log 4 is another example showing 264 interrupts on a single fight with 243 of the 264 interrupts coming from Rogue FoK. So while Rogues using FoK interrupt is certainly a viable option as shown in log 1, there is also a number of guilds that are successfully completing this with using barely any interrupts at all.

Question 4: So how are these guilds doing it if they aren't using FoK spam?

If a guild is not utilizing dual-rogue FoK interrupt spamming, CC needs to be very solid. To determine how our CC matches up against successful guilds who did not use dual-rogues (Logs 2 and 3) we see:

In looking at our total attempts last night, here are polymorph summaries:

Aeriana - 4 Polymorphs Link
Sandraa - 43 Polymorphs Link
Mxy - 95 Polymorphs Link

So the first question this asks is why was Aeriana not polymorphing at all last night?

Successful Log 2 shows a total of 14+2 = 16 total polymorphs on a single fight.

Successful Log 3 shows a total of 10+5 = 15 total polymorphs.

So we had 40 minutes of combat time. We averaged 3.55 polymorphs per minute (142/40). These successful kills were roughly 7 minutes long and average 2.15 polymorphs per minute (15/7). So the successful kills weren't necessarily using more sheeping than we were. What I do see from this, however, is Mxy doing the most damage over all fights while also doing 67% of the polymorphs. Moreover, it isn't the number of sheeps but the effectiveness. Even if we were using a comparable amount of total sheeps, if Mxy was the only one doing them practically that means the other two sheep targets were basically given free reign to do whatever they wanted. Sandy was roughly around where he should've been as well but Aeriana was clearly not sheeping at all. This meant that Aeriana's target was able to walk around doing whatever it wanted to without recourse.

There are lots of other forms of CC that are used too, obviously. I just picked the mages out as an example but we have Banishes, Howl of Terror, Freezing Arrow Traps, Freezing Traps, Cyclone, Hex, etc. etc.

To put it plainly, in terms of sheer numbers, it does not appear that successful kills were not using MORE crowd control than we were. It does, however, seem to be much more spread out on other combat logs (ie- everybody was helping out/doing their part to help)

Final: So what the fuck do we do?

It is hard to say how we fix this. It really shouldn't be this hard it seems. In looking through different logs, however, there is one thing I can say for absolute certain. There is no single way to do this fight. There was no pattern whatsoever on what order the NPCs were killed in. I saw a decent amount of logs that actually showed the Shadow Priest being killed first while dedicated interrupters were put on the other two healers and hots/shields getting purged/dispel'd like crazy off the Shadow Priest.

So, in the end, basically we just need to play better. It is kind of a shitty answer but a fight like this is very different from a typical PVE fight. PVE fights are generally controlled, with few variables aside from the ever-present RNG. This fight features enemies that act like human players and react to what we are doing. This is not usual and requires everybody to react on the fly. We can't just come up with a definite strategy and predict how the fight will turn out because we don't have control. What we can do is pick a kill order, determine an approach on how we will stop their healing, and assign CC targets. At that point, it is just a matter of good DPS, Healing, Dispelling, and execution.

I am thinking we will maybe start tonight with having Sandy's Rogue and Cattman both spec'd into the Improved FoK and see if we do any better with FoK interrupt spam going on constantly. This is more of a zerging approach but should hopefully reduce spells cast by the SPriest and Warlock in addition to freeing me up to keep the Warrior and Death Knight better controlled as I would not need to be locking down the Paladin.


Feel free to offer any of your own ideas/insights/strategies:

I haven't seen this fight but the points Iks makes regarding mages and sheeping are to be seriously considered since sheeping is indeed the primordial form of CC and the one that can be renewed at will, so it should be the most reliable one. I'll work with the mages tonight to see what is happening with polymorph and how we can back it up with other classes (sheep in a trap and such).
As for counterspelling, it's just a last recourse when it comes to reliable interrupts with such a long cooldown and the range of it being smaller than the rest of our spells. But if we need to be CSing as backup I'll set an order for mages tonight along with macros that say in /ra if someone shot a CS.

With our beginning approach of using dual rogues with FoK, there should be very little interrupting necessary from anybody aside from the rogues spamming FoK.

Same goes for CC... really the only CC that will be used will be on the Warrior, DK, or Shaman if they are away from the pile of melee/healers/etc.

I don't know if this helps but I read that some guilds are teaming up on cc's since there is a diminishing return on them. As a example, Mini and Mxy team up; Mxy sheep say square and Mini sheeps triangle. Each do this until they can not anymore, call it out and then switch. The other thing I read over and over on the WoW forums was that this was not a burn fight. Since there is so much dodgeing, kiting, cc'ing, and intrupting the dps can't just go balls out at first, it is more of a take them down little by little. I saw one guy say his guild took 14 mins! They just slowly ticked away at them, and that was their second attempt.

This I do not know unfortunately. It was just something I read that many guilds were doing. I assume that since they were accomplishing it and being successful at it that it does work. Whether it has to do with A mage doing a sheep, and B mage doing say a turtle probably should be looked at. I did not find this strat on tankspot or any other start guides just postings on the forums.

Remember that unbroken, polymorph lasts 30 seconds, therefore negating the diminishing return if allowed to be "sheeped" for more than 20 seconds. This is the way I see it could work, but if it's being broken then you just need perma spam of it so the mob never actually moves.
But from our worm disconnections we never get diminishing returns with all mages spamming sheep on a target, we override one another's poly all the time.

What may work pretty well is to make druid/mage teams. This would work best on melee targets so that druids can use roots as well as cyclone and bash. I know Edd was doing pretty well at locking down one guy and I could keep one of the melee pretty busy for a long time as well it seemed.

Also if we decide to go with the FoK approach roots and cyclone are still valid CC because they are not immediately broken by damage. Could help keep the melee busy while we rape the casters.

{deleted post} Minimage wrote:

Remember that unbroken, polymorph lasts 30 seconds, therefore negating the diminishing return if allowed to be "sheeped" for more than 20 seconds. This is the way I see it could work, but if it's being broken then you just need perma spam of it so the mob never actually moves.
But from our worm disconnections we never get diminishing returns with all mages spamming sheep on a target, we override one another's poly all the time.

Remember this is "Arena Duration and Diminishing Returns effects"... The CC does not function how it would in a raid instance you are used to. The initial polymorph will not last longer than 3-4 seconds most likely and after the third cast at it, it will probably be immune to the polymorph... the duration will be something like 5 secs/3 secs/1 second or 8/5/3.

{deleted post} Pheral wrote:

What may work pretty well is to make druid/mage teams. This would work best on melee targets so that druids can use roots as well as cyclone and bash. I know Edd was doing pretty well at locking down one guy and I could keep one of the melee pretty busy for a long time as well it seemed.

Also if we decide to go with the FoK approach roots and cyclone are still valid CC because they are not immediately broken by damage. Could help keep the melee busy while we rape the casters.

I think Cyclone-use should be promoted for sure, especially paired with the mages. For example, after 5-10 seconds or so we could call for Cyclones and then back to mages afterwards or something like that.

This is a fun fight that i enjoyed last night. I noticed alot of thigns going on. The biggest thing was people seemed a bit overwhelmed with all that was going on. Yes i know there is 500t higns happening in this fight. It is just like pvp. So thigns can be different every pull. Iks pointed out alot of things that we could try or implement into the fight.

But to me bottom line is we need to do less sucking. It may sound harsh but thats the biggest thing from what I noticed from the raid last night. And it wasnt just from that fight. If we wana win we are all gona have to do our part 100% of the time not just when you feel like it.

Q u o t e:


So basically you didn't even do the fight, and you're talking out of your rear.

Diminishing returns makes any particular CC from a player useless after the 3rd cast. Most of them are 5/3/1 second effectiveness, or 8/5/3 seconds.



Mage sheeping caster. Ready, watch this:

Sheep 1.... sheep 2.... sheep 3.... counter first spell.... chill for 10 seconds.... start sheep cycle again.

Awesome!

Non-caster sheep cycles, just have a druid cyclone after the third sheep. This fight is all about control. Communicate in vent effectively with your CCs, make sure all dps is on the same page, and GOD DAMN IT GET THE RESTO SHAMAN DOWN FIRST. The first 2-3 mobs are the hardest to go down, but after that, it's cake.

Q u o t e:


Quote:

So basically you didn't even do the fight, and you're talking out of your rear.

Diminishing returns makes any particular CC from a player useless after the 3rd cast. Most of them are 5/3/1 second effectiveness, or 8/5/3 seconds.



No. A warlock can lock down a tree druid 100% of the fight.









Q u o t e:


I'm talking about the 3rd cast of banish. The tree was immune.



Yes, after that you singlefear the tree until banish comes off dr.

Q U O T E:

Even if you get 3 healers, it's still very easy to keep them locked out. Our raid had DPS on the shaman, Warlocks banish the druid until DR's made her immune then fear her, and I (Prot warrior) was on the Paladin. It's very fun to do, because anything can happen in this fight, and it's funny to watch moonkin NPCs walking around spamming moonfire since their nature school got locked out. Stunlocks are cool too.

The single most dangerous mobs are those that can Dispel your CC, as CC is obviously a critical part of this fight. Since the healing priest (but not the Shadow Priest) has Mass Dispel, he is the default kill first target. If you get a Shaman, he should be second, followed by the remaining healers. The healers heal for an extraordinary amount in this fight and should be kept CC'd if they are not being killed as much as possible. Because this fight uses PVP CC mechanics (which is absolutely necessary or this fight would be a total joke), I suggest you do a little research and familiarize yourself with CC Diminishing Returns mechanics:
http://www.wowwiki.com/Diminishing_Returns

So, set a kill order for the healers and assign people to CC healers who are not being killed. Using Focus along with a Focus macro is essential here. We found the Rogue to be dangerous enough to assign a single DK to lock him down as much as possible using Chains of Ice, while keeping DG off CD to allow easy peels off of our ranged (this especially includes healers). Healers and ranged were told to watch for loose melee coming for them, and either CC them or run away from them. Anyone who has a CC but wasn't part of a CC assignment was given "free reign" to use their CC when necessary (this includes Shaman due to their long Hex CD). Fear bombs from Shadow Priests and Warriors were used when enemy melee grouped up.

I saw one person complaining about UA from the Warlock. I find it necessary to let people know that between myself and our Pally healer we dispelled ~160 debuffs throughout the course of the fight. With all of our healers, we were well over 200 dispels. Since some raid members were reporting 5k ticks from the enemy Shadow Priest, I see having good Dispellers as essential.

I think the reason many people struggle with fights like this is because it requires you to use abilities that you normally don't use in PVE. For example, I spammed Grounding Totem every cooldown in this fight. We used Freezing Traps to help our ranged kite melee attackers. Although Shaman don't have any, other classes used defensive cooldowns when they were targetted. Wyrvern Sting, Scare Beast, Spell Reflect, Hammer of Justice, Wind Shear, Counterspell, Hamstring, Purge, Ice Block, Warlock teleport thingy. This fight requires that you know the full breadth and abilities of your class, which is even more true if you are one of the undergeared QQers in this thread, hence Blizzard's new philosophy of "Bring the player, not the class".

While eddi did do a great job of keeping one cycloned if you notice his dispells were very very low, like I was saying last night that posion rapes. I can do my best to keep something cycloned heal and dispel, but something will suffer.

ya my healing suffered the minute I started focusing more on using my hex, using frost shock on melee mobs, and rotating totems after fears, and purging. Then of course I had to spend time moving which nerfs my heals since I have 1 heal that's instant .

Having enh shaman's with Frozen Power talent for this fight might make kiting easier as well. Frost shock has 4sec CD, 25yd range and slows movement by 50%.

Frozen Power: 2/2 Increases damage done by your lightning Bolt, Chain Lightning, Lavalash, and Shock spells by 10% on targets afflicted by your Frostbrand Attack effect, and your Frost Shock has a 100% chance to root the target in Ice for 5secs when used on targets at or further then 15yards from you.

For movement slowing debuffs, it seems they should be more than covered with a hunter frost trap and warriors' piercing howl ideally.

I actually was speaking with Salad regarding the healing in this fight and the utility of a 6th healer. I noticed exactly what you noticed on the logs: the dispels just weren't getting around. I think we have healers that are great at putting out EHPS and a 6th healer would be redundant in this case; however, I think the 6th healer is more necessary to increase the number of dispels we have. A balance between dispels and hps is definitely critical. I often found myself prioritizing quick, emergency heals over dispels and an additional healer would help that. I noticed a 6th healer was pretty much universal on all the logs you linked.

I also found myself silenced a couple times from UA because of the Grid formatting I've been using. I'm currently looking for a way to give certain debuffs (UA) priority on my grid screen so I don't accidentally silence myself.

Beyond that I would further recommend the 6th healer simply because there were one or two attempts where I was chain CCed (or silenced from UA) and had to watch people drop.

I agree with you Bag's to a extent. If we are bringing in another healers to mainly dispel then we need to figure out what exactly isn't getting dispelled. Meaning if it is only the poisons as a example that are slacking then the option would obviously be to bring in another tree druid, but we didn't have one. If Eddi could have maybe not had to cyclone as much and could dispel those more maybe we wouldn't have had a issues, or another thought is that if we did have to have a cyclone then Alk should have done it since he can do it in boom form whereas Eddi had to get out of tree form to do it. Or even Alk help dispel more. Long and short I think we need to just figure out what needs to be dispelled that isn't getting covered and look at who in the raid class wise can do it and either determine why they are not either because they just aren't or they are busy doing something else before we bring in another healer just to dispel.

Edit: Sorry if I am being over redundant about the poisons it is just something that I can dispel so I use it as a example alot

Just to note that if you plan to use the fok strat to do interrupts, know that the interrupt will be nerfed (taken out completely) for the next patch.