This is one of the most unforgiving encounters I’ve seen (I didn’t see a lot of H-LK but I assume it’s up there) which is made that much more unforgiving with the plague of high latency and the seemingly unended lag that oceanic servers seem to face on a regular basis.

In my opinion the fight comes down to two critical aspects;

1. Interrupts – Which has, for whatever reason been an ongoing issue for Bizarro in any encounter that relies heavily on this mechanic (Ulduar General is a great example)
2. DPS/Mana Check – By this I mean, it’s such a healing intensive encounter that sooner or later your healers will be oom, so do you have the DPS to kill the purty dragon before he rips your tanks a new one?

So this is a 3 phase fight, with each phase having some interesting mechanics within them (personally although I feel I’ve been grinding my testicles in a blender for 60+ attempts, I think it’s a cool fight is that healthy?)

Phase 1

Basically a  tank and spank in this phase with some OMGWTFWASTHAT abilities that you need to be aware of. Both Ony and Nef will be in the game and need to be tanks

Children of Deathwing (buff) – This will increase the attack speed of both bosses by 100%, this is easy enough to avoid by tanking the bosses on opposite sides of the area.

Our Phase our positioning is as shown below;

Onyxia is cross and Nef is Skull

Electrocute - This goes off every 10% of Nefs health that goes down and does a HUGE amount of unavoidable raid damage. It is important that leading up to a 10% health lot all raiders are topped off. It is also very important that you time your dps so that this ability wont go off with any other high damage abilities. It is for this ability that ranged and heals are stacked in the middle of the room to share AOE Heals like Healing Rain and Eff.

Ideally you will go through 2 Electrocutes in Phase 1 while Ony is being DPS’d down by your Ranged DPS (with a handful switching to Nef as required too). You should have Ony to about 10-15% as the second Electrocute goes off, once that’s done all DPS switch and finish off Ony to Trigger Phase 2. You should also keep an eye on Ony energy if she gets to 100% then SQUISHRAIDDEADED

Other abilities of note;

Onyxia – Electric Discharge – This done massive amounts of AOE damage to the raid (and gives your healers heart attacks) but is easily avoided by turning the boss so she’s facing the wall just prior and turning back after the Discharge is completed. WARNING – We found that sometimes the discharge stopped and then started again so get used to how long the ability goes for and make sure you dont turn her back too soon.

Onyxia – Tail Lash – Basically tough luck, you will get hit by this sometimes, it’s just gonna happen while the tank is stopping Discharge from hitting the entire raid

Nefarian – Hail of Bones – This ability will be cast 6 times and will spawn an Animated Bone Warrior each time, these should be picked up and tanks off to the side. As long as they are kept away from the dragons fire they will eventually run out of energy and die (they will be re-spawned in Phase 3 so this is why we want them off to the side so they are easily managed then.

Phase 2

Once Ony is killed Phase 2 starts, Nef takes off and everyone should get to their allocated Pillar. Ideally each pillar will have;

• 2 Healers
• 2 Melee Interrupters
• 1 Backup Ranged Interrupter (we use a floating, if someone is lagging etc then our ele sham goes to that pillar).
• Even spread of other DPS.

The floor will drop and you will be standing in lava, you need to get to the top and get onto the pillar in as little time as possible. I found with US latency I was getting up with 4-5 stacks, others seemed to be 5-6 and the bads were 7-10. Basically the more stacks you get the more damage you take by the abilities once you get up there.

Pro Tip: I struggled to get onto the pillar when just hitting space to jump up out of the lava, float up slower and wait for the platform to drop completely then do a single swim up and out onto the pillar. Also do not stand against the pillar, stand 5 yards away otherwise you’ll get trapped under the pillar lid thingymejiggy. It WILL take some practice but eventually everyone will get it.

Once you’re up, this whole phase is really about interupts. Again you are trying to get 2 Electrocutes, you may need to stop DPS on adds towards the end on 1 of the pillars but while all this healing and interrupting is going on range should be burning Nef as much as possible to push him through the 10% brackets.

Use your cooldowns, health pots, bandages, health stones, survival abilities, ANYTHING in this phase ESPECIALLY if interrupts are failing.

Interrupters need to get a rotation sorted and make calls over voice when they stuff it up so someone else can pick it up. If you have feral/balance druids get a rotation for Tranq going after Electrocutes. The ability you need to be killing is Blast Nova

So at the end of this Phase Nef will be around 60% hopefully.. enter Phase 3

Phase 3

Basically this Phase is now all about DPS and whether you can get the boss down before the Add tank(s) get overwhelmed or your healers go oom. We have 1 tank pick up the spawning adds and kite them along the path shown below with the Add Tank Healers tracking behind the tank (that means the tank is kiting the adds towards the healers not the other way around), while the other tank picks up Nef and moves him over to the side. We have dps and heals stack up out of the way as much as possible.

The kiting path is to avoid Shadowblaze, this will energise the adds and spread very quickly if it’s being touched by anyone.

If the adds get energy back at any stage then we have our trusty (hate them) mages to run out and freeze the adds in place to give our healers and tanks a little break.

So that’s the encounter and a run down of our strategy, for healers you really need to get your mana management perfect to pull this off. My strategy is;

1. Get an early Innervate off, ensure that you’re not clipping your buff though (i.e. you dont hit 100% too early or it’s wasting the regen)
2. We had 2 shams for most of last night so they were dropping Mana Tide on a rotation, this made it much easier but you want to ensure that your innervate is off and finished with enough time for you to use a bit of mana before tide goes off. Again about maximising your regen potential for the encounter. This is where communication is good, have your shams add a macro to let you know in your healing channel that Tide is being used. This will with practice allow you to get the most from Innervate.
3. With these two things you should pretty much be heading into Phase 2 with near full mana, by the first Electrocute you should have your Innervate back up again so pop it as soon as it’s available.
4. If you’re lucky enough to be on a pillar with a sham you may get another Mana Tide, if not you shouldn’t NEED it anyways
5. Pop your mana pot when again you can get the most out of it (you can probably leave this till about half mana), if mana is looking ok then save it for Phase 3
6. Phase 3 you will probably be healing pretty full on especially on Electrocutes, get mana back where you can and keep an eye on innervate you may get a 3rd one towards the end of this phase too

That should get you through the encounter, pretty much healing 100% if you’re smart with what you’re using Enjoy this fight, it’s pretty amazing in terms of using all your healing tools to their best

The fight can be basically broken down into 2 phases

Phase 1

This can be essentially labelled as the ‘stay alive till phase 2 phase’

Things to look out for:

Pillar of flame – Magmaw will summon a lava patch under someone in the raid after a few seconds this will explode and anyone still on the patch will get chucked into the air doing considerable damage + fall damage when they land. We had someone call this over mumble but odds on if you hadn’t started moving by the time the call was made it’s going to be too late. Once the pillar goes off it will also spawn lava parasites which need to be AOE’d down asap and it’s very important not to let them hit you. We had an OT tank them but you can also use frost traps and earthbind totems if your AOE is good enough.

Mangle – The boss will put this on the current tank and once it’s duration runs out the boss will gobble the tank up and do massive damage to the tank. The tank will need heavy healing as well as CD’s being used.

Ignition – About half the room will get covered in steam when this happens everyone need to get out of that half because the boss is about to slam himself there and most likely kill you.

The boss also does a heavy raid aoe as well as random lavaspits, both are unavoidable.

Dealing with this Phase is relatively easy if you execute the strat properly. We had the range dps stack on one side of the room every time a pillar spawned under us we would move to the opposite side, staying stacked up. By the time we had made it to the other side our OT had picked all the parasites and we go ballistic on the adds. This just repeats until phase 2.

At the end of phase 1 the boss will become mountable by 2 people, we picked 2 melee to do this. Once on the boss you gain an ability called constricting chains which you have to throw onto the spike to impale the boss which will induce phase 2.

Phase 2

Phase 2 is very much like the heart phase in ulduar for the XT-002 deconstructer’s heart phase. Once the boss is impaled the exposed head of magmaw will become targetable and the boss will take extra damage, this is what you want to save lust/time warp for. Eventually the boss will pull himself off the spike and phase 1 will start over.

Essentially this fight becomes a lot easier the better you control phase 1.

Phase 1

• 3 tanks are needed although only one needs to actually tank him
• 5 healers seem to be enough, with little spike damage going on it’s easy mode
• Move from ice
• Spread Out as much as possible but make sure healers are spread evenly to cover people who are spiked
• DPS to burn down spikes, focus on healers. If DPS are doing their jobs properly you can have ranged focus of ranged spiked victims and melee focussing on theirs.

Phase 2

• The PTR this hurt, but live he does little damage and moves around a lot quicker.
• Avoid whirlwind and ice
• We have our tanks pick up boss where he stops and takes him to the nearest wall. No need to take him back to the middle
• DPS watch yourself as their is a threat reset

That’s about it /loot

So this is the worst upcoming surprise in wow right now haha the ‘surprise’ boss is the final col boss and from my data mining abilities I’ve come up with the following details

LK will come back and break the coliseum floor dropping us in Anub’s Lair.

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSW37mmTZI0

Key points:

1. You will need permofrost down, DPS should be assigned to keep these stacks up on the ground by shooting frost orbs down. Permaforst prevents boss from doing certain abilities because he is also affected by the debuff. Permofrost doesnt seem to affect cast/attack speed just movement.

2. MT will tank the boss while 1-2 OTS will pick up the adds and group them up for AOE, if the adds are still up when Anub goes under ground ALL dps will switch to focus on them.

3. Boss has a frontal cone ability so MT will tank away from raid.

4. Boss hits hard so healers will need to be aware and ready (rotation for cooldowns to be worked out, wings etc)

5. Phase 1 and 2 seem pretty simple as long as enough permofrost is down and you are all standing on it.

6. About 30% Phase 3 starts, no more adds will spawn and its a real burn down. Phase 3 looks like a lot of raid damage going on so it may be worthwile to attempt this with 7 healers to start.

Fight looks pretty long so its gonna be a fight against healers mana.

Summary of strat:

Phase 1
- 2-3 DPS will be focussing on killing frost
- Boss will be tanked on the frost with melee able to get onto frost too
- OT will pick up adds (take it in turns?) and bring them to melee
- Ranged DPS will focus down 1 or 2 of the adds and jump back onto boss (to try make Phase 2 shorter)
- EVERYONE SHOULD BE STANDING ON FROST

Phase 2
- Anub goes underground
- ALL dps to jump onto remaining 1 or 2 adds and finish them off.
- Anub will target one person (hunters mark icon showed on my Grid) this person must make sure they are not standing on frost and kite the boss away from the raid but so Anub burrows UNDER frost!.

This is repeated till 30% when Phase 3 will start. If all goes well we should get him to 30 in two cycles.

Phase 3
- Swarm does 10% of victims health in damage while leaching a percentage back to Anub, this means raid must be maintained at around 30% to make sure anub does auto full health Only tanks should be kept topped up
- No more adds!
- Burn down the boss
- Raid healers may be switched to help on tank heals or they may even be asked to dps

OVERVIEW
- 2 Bosses – Fjola Lightbane (Light) and Edyis Darkbane (Dark-Shadow)
- There are 2 light portals and 2 dark portals one at each corner of the room.
- Clicking on a light/dark portal will give you the corresponding aura giving you a 100% Damage buff on your opposite boss. I.e. if you have Light Aura you’re killing Dark Boss.
- Bosses have a shared health pool so will be killed at the same time.

Read the abilities here
http://www.wowwiki.com/Twin_Val%27kyr

KEY ABILITIES ETC

One of the following abilities are cast every minute (meaning only one special ability per minute, not each spell cast once a minute).

BALLS
Balls like Saronite will be floating around, dark and white.

If you touch one with the same color as you’re auro you gain stacks of a buff and a speed bonus. When your stacks hit 100 you get 100% damage for 20s.

If you touch one with the opposite color it will explode causing 5k damage to all within 5 yards.

The boss can also collect their balls and get the stack/bonus, if the boss gets 100 then fail.

hehe balls

These were nuts, no real way to avoid but they also did very little damage as far as I saw.

SURGE OF LIGHT/DARK

Cast once a minute by one of the bosses and does AoE damage to anyone with the opposite Aura.

All people with opposite color will need to switch (i.e. Run to the portal where your boss is being tanked, click, run back to your starting position and click (once cast is finished).

SHIELD OF DARKNESS/LIGHTS
Again cast by one of the bosses every minute, and puts a 250k HP Shield on the opposite boss.

All ranged at this point will focus on the shielded boss (this means switching colors too). The shield is attackeable by either color, so dps can just switch to the shield and burn it down.

After 15 secs he will cast a heal, this NEEDS to be interupted (after sheild is down) (i’m assuming it’s the shielded boss will be casting this but I could be wrong).

TOUCH OF DARKNESS/LIGHT
If it can be dispelled do it asap
Not sure the range but afflicted person should run out and heals must be quick with big heals.

VIDEOS
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUkXzu7rsOM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91gSuvZfHIg

STRAT
- Ranged,Melee and Healers will be split into 2 ‘colours’ and will be focussed on the opposite boss. I chose to have group 1 and 3 attacking Dark Boss (meaning they needed Light Aura), 2 and 4 attacking Light Boss (meaning they had Dark Aura), Group 5 was split up (these are healers)
- Bosses will be tanked near the ‘portal’ that is the same color as them as to make it easier with ranged setup on top of the portal they will be clicking at the start, I am thinking tanking in the middle of 2 of the portals will make it easier, ranged will need to move to click their opposite portal (where their boss is being tanked)
- A designated Ranged will try to pick up the Same color Orbs as they move around and A Melee on each side will be assigned to pick up orbs if it gets to close to its same colored boss. (this wasnt really doable)
- Ranged and Melee must try to avoid their opposite colored orbs. (if you can)
- On Surge of the Light/Dark a call of “SWITCH LIGHT/DARK” is made and the opposite group will need to switch within 5 seconds or we fail, once the casting is finished switch back to your original colour. (see diagram below)
- On Shield  a call of “DPS LIGHT/DARK” is made and Ranged DPS will all switch to the opposite of the shielded and dps that shield down. We’ve got 15 secs or the heal will get off.

POSITIONING
This is completely re-written

1. People assigned to Dark Boss (Light Aura) will start the fight a position A (this includes tanks for the pull), likewise (but opposite) people assigned to Light Boss (Dark Aura) will start at B
2. Bosses are tanked where DARK/LIGHT text is
   
3. Lets use Surge of Light as an example; DPS on Light Boss will run into light portal and click as shown by the red dotted line (D), then make their way back to their original position (B) and click the Dark Portal once casting is finished.
   

This is a guest post from the RL for the night Thanks GT

What we had:
Death Knight: Tyrius Duskblade
Druid (Heal): Melador Valestrider
Hunter: Alyssia Moonstalker and cat
Paladin (Heal): Velanaa
Priest (Heal): Anthar Forgemender
Priest (Shadow): Brienna Nightfell
Rogue: Irieth Shadowstep
Shaman (Melee): Shaabad
Warlock: Serissa Grimdabbler and felhunter
Warrior: Shocuul

You must have
Mortal Strike Warrior, its needed and they have to keep MS on the target.
A pvp mindset, this is not a normal pvp fight but they will focus fire people so be ready to kite, run, aoe fear, fade for priests(will drop target for the duration), anything to keep stuff off you or to let you take as little damage as possible.
Plate dps taunting, it will save a healer.
A way to remove Immunity’s.

What we did:
The idea we had going into this fight was to control the healers, with a lock on the druid to banish and fear CC and our prot warrior keeping the the holy pally locked down and interrupted, our DK tank was in charge of keeping the warrior and rogue off our squishiess and our prot pally went ret and kept the enemy DK on lock down, we started with our rogue sapping the enemy rogue we used all dps cool downs at the start and went in to kill the healing priest first.

With our prot warrior and lock keeping the other healers in control and our warrior keeping MS on the boss he went down in very little time, interrupt every cast you can and purge every hot he gets. Know that they will get some heals so MS has to be on at all times he will use AoE fear and the pally will Hand of Protection him at about 25% remove it kill him.

We hit the druid second, the same idea try and stop all casts and keep MS up, the druid will cast cyclone and use bark skin (it will cast thorns on others and should asap) purge its hots they will heal for around 50,000 per tick, if you cant keep this target controlled at the start you might be better off killing it first, at 25% the pally will once again cast HoP remove it and kill the druid, 1 healer to go.

Last was the holy pally, quiet easy, interrupt the casts and be ready she will Divine Shield remove it (a warrior’s shattering throw wont miss as a priest’s mass dispel might), kill her and now the fight is to burn them down before they kill your raid.

Through out the fight we have had some players set up to keep targets off healers and cloth dps they should keep doing this until there targets are down, our hunter’s had gorillas out in this fight for the pummel and kept them on the warlock to keep his cast time low not needed but did help the order doesn’t mater to much we went Rogue, Hunter, Shaman, Warrior, DK, Warlock, Shadow Priest.

The rogue has poisons all shaman should keep Cleansing totem down and try to dispel what you can while healing. She will use Evasion and Cloak of Shadows.

The Hunter drops Frost traps, will use Disengage and Deterrence other then that focus her down. Next is the shaman, He will cast Heroism on the alliance get it removed asap, mass dispel is the best for it. Through out the fight he will drop totems have someone ready to kill them the range have a easy time doing it then the melee you can no longer make target macro’s to take them out but the person doing it should be killing Healing Stream then Windfury above all else(the windfury totem is the old totem, 2 attack’s at a extra attack power) a melee can 1shot a squishy with a windfury proc.

The warrior can be moved to a sooner kill if you are haveing problems with him, He has MS, Intimidating shout, Blade Storm and Retaliation. When he Blade storms anyone close to him RUN other then that keep him disarmed and have melee get off him when he uses Retaliation. Next step for us was the DK, wasnt to hard make sure your dispelling the diseases and she will use Death grip, not to sure what else i didn’t see her summon anything.

At this point you have 2 left, The warlock is soft interrupt its spells once again, one spell his hellfire will hit for about 7k a tick you want to move away from him or interupt him during the start of the fight. The shadow Priest we left for last, easy to dispel dot’s, she will cast mana burn so if you having problem with you mana you might want to kill her sooner she will aoe fear finish her off, loot your epics and bask in the glory of the horde!

Well we had our first look at Lord Jaraxxus and I think this fight is all about Add Management, we all had a chuckle as the little gnome (who appears to be immune to all sorts of hunter traps haha) was smashed by Jaraxxus.

Basically;

• We have a single tank on Lord Jaraxxus and 2 tanks picking up the adds. One focussing on the Mistresses and the other on the Infernals.
• Melee are divided into two groups (if too many we will have 3), one on each leg, we then have our Mistress tank bring them to the boss where they would have the extra damage from melee aoe.
• Ranged and healers were spread out all around the boss (use all the space as he doesnt have any abilities that affect his frontal cone).
• Mistress – DPS will focus when she’s up (this includes Melee), BL will be taken on first mistress.
• Infernals – single person will be responsible for marking up and then all ranged dps in the area to focus. Locks are to Banish the non-focussed Infernal

Be aware of the following ability;

Legion Flame – this is a lovely green flame, while you have the debuff you will drop flame too, so you must move quickly out of the initial flame and make sure you dont track flame all over people. We decided that ranged would run to the wall and track along until the debuff disappears.

Enjoy

Updated to our new strat (without CC of Infernals)

So we had our first look at Colliseum: Beasts last night. As I said earlier it was my first go at Raid Leading (even though I have been Healing Lead for a while it’s still a big step up for me haha)

I wont go through all the abilities but I will talk about how we did it

Phase 1 – Gormak

1. 2 Tanks, 6 Healers should be enough
2. Spread out around the boss prior to the pull
3. Tank in the middle of the colliseum
4. All ranged focus on Snobold Vassal (/target Snobold Vassal is your friend)
5. Tanks switch after every 3rd Impale
6. Dont stand in fire ya nub

Heal Assigns

Boss Tank (will be switching) – Pally 1,Druid 1
Tank Cleanup (after they have switched out) – Priest 1 (then on boss tank)
Melee – Priest 2
Raid – Shammy 1, Druid 2

So basically we have 2 MT healers who will always be on the current tank, as the tank switch is called, the 2 healers will switch with a Third tank healer cleaning up on that tank (while debuff is still active) and then moves back to the new MT.

Phase 2 – Acidmaw & Dreadscale

On the transition from Phase 1 to 2 the tank with the least Impale debuffs will be tanking the ‘Above Ground Boss’ (now known as AGB. I believe for us the starting AGB was Dreadscale every time.

1. Main Tank taunted the AGB while a Ranged Tank (we used a Lock) held aggro on the other boss.
2. Ranged should keep spread out and away from the front of the bosses to avoid issues where Burning Bile victims are blowing each other up.
3. All DPS on AGB!!
4. Main Tank kited the AGB clockwise
5. Paralytic Toxins are called (MT,Ranged,Melee)
6. Burning Biles are called and single person is chosen each time to run to the Toxin victims, DPS being the first choice.
7. Acidmaw must be killed first otherwise their is no way to cleanse the Toxin victims
8. Make sure you set a backup ranged tank (or two)
9. Note that when the bosses switch you can see a cloud of dust, this is where the boss will come back up again.

Ideal Setup

I know I know I’m not gonna win any awards for my picture

A: Above Ground Boss and direction to be faced
B: Below Ground Boss and direction to be faced
C: Kite Path
D: Ranged Location – should be spreadout and move around as the boss is kited.

Healing Assigns

AGB Tank – Pally,Druid 1
Below Ground Tank – Priest 1, Druid 2
Raid – Everyone Else

Phase 3 – Icehowl

1. Tanked in the middle
2. Ranged spread out around boss, preference is to be away from the back of him
3. When he casts Massive Crash he will knock everyone to the wall and then emote that he’s targetting a victim. He will then backup to the opposite side of the Colliseum and everybody should run (with the speed buff no excuses for getting hit really) to the sides.
4. He’s then stunned for 15secs or so, this is when you should be called for Blood Lust as he seems to take extra damage.
5. Hunters assigned to Tranq Shot boss if he enrages.

Healing Assigns

Boss Tank – Pally,Druid 1,Priest 1
Raid – All Else

That’s it for now Enjoy the new content

Our healing makeup was not ideal for the night, we ended up not only running with 6 heals but 2 of them were offspec heals too. The class breakdown was as follows:

2 Pally Healers
2 Holy Priests
1 Shaman
1 Tree (that’s me!!)

Phase 1

Overview

We have the following setup for Phase 1

• Melee stand just inside the door while ranged will stand outside the yogg (sara zone)
• Tanks will rotate picking up the Guardians, and bringing them to melee where they will be dps’d down to 20%.
• At this point the tank will take the Guardians to Sara, Ranged will burn them down and blow them up on Sara and away from the raid.

We initially used the strat where tanks swapped the guardians to take them to Sara but we found this introduced issues for us. We found the rotation method, while increasing the risk for running through clouds made the Phase 1 a walk in the park

Important Note: Remember to watch your dots (yes I’m look at you nasty locks) when the Guardian is getting low, I would expect no dots after 35% or so, if you want to risk it prepare to feel the rage of your fellow raiders

Healing

We effectively have 2 healers that stands with ranged and the other 4 stand with the melee group.

The assigns look like this for the phase;

With Ranged
Middle Tank Heals = Pally1
Dispels\Raid Heals = Priest1

With Melee
Melee Tank Heals = Pally2
Raid Heals = Tree, Shaman, Priest2

This means that tank healers do not have a specific tank they are healing (as is usually the go) they will heal the tanks as they come into range while rotating adds to Sara. Ideally the tank healers will be positioned in such a way that there is little area that is not covered (i.e. a tank should go no more than a second without getting a heal from one of them). This allows for healers to not be concerned too much with following tanks etc, instead they just need to manage who they are healing

Raid healers have to manage the ongoing raid damage, especially when interrupts are missed for whatever reason, but this should be really manageable with 4 raid healers at this stage.

If all works well you will not have any deaths in this phase unless somebody has pulled

Phase 2

Overview

For phase 2 we have used the following sheet to assign portals to the melee group going into the brain, we have a single person for calling when portals are incoming and prior to the attempts each melee (and healer) is given a number

We also have a ranged person marked for both following around the round (I like to say follow the nipple in raid chat as often as possible) and also to add to the tank frames for people to follow the priority targets. This ensures that the right targets are being taken out as quickly as possible, having a roll on effect of helping out the healers of dispels.

Healing

From a healing perspective we assign a single person to heal in the brain room (our local OP shaman in this case), as the more dps the quicker you can get to Phase 3.

The amount of damage outside is easily managed by a single raid healer as long as everybody is pulling their weight on dispels, as the majority of damage is from curses and poisons while mind control needs to be cleansed quickly for a number of reasons including; allowing the person to get back to their assigned role but also minimise the need for people to replenish sanity.

Our assigns look like this;

Shaman going into portals, Priest2 (backup) – PORTAL 6 (this also gets announced to /raid haha)
Raid Heals (focus) – Priest1
Dispels (focus) – All Else

What I mean by focus is that if your ‘focus’ assign is fine then you can assist on other areas of the healing (i.e. on dispel but can help of heals when all is ok).

We found that 3-4 brain phases are manageable from outside and doable inside without getting too overwhelmed with adds.

Phase 3

Overview

Prepare to get to Phase 3 and wipe a few times, in the end our kill happened when the following works out;

1. A large percentage of tentacles were burned down prior to phase 3
2. We got the portals and brain killing sorted
3. Dispels were working clean and easy

At this point the raid will group up, ranged will generally focus on Yogg while melee will handle the adds.

Tanks will pick up the spawning Guardians and it’s really just a matter of holding it all together, their should be little need to move in this phase so it really just comes down to hanging in their and watching Yogg’s health

Healing

For healing this phase we revert back to assigning specific healers to tanks, so for us that looked like this;

Tank 1 = Pally1 (BOL Tank 2)
Tank 2 = Pally2 (BOL Tank 1)
Tank 3 = Priest2, Tree (hots)
Raid Heals = Shaman, Priest1 (MC focus)
Dispels (focus) = Tree

All in all we were bloody happy with our kill last night, as you could imagine, and while I think our strat has a bit of tweaking to come, it seems to be a great starting point

How has this strat differed from your own? Let me know

Ignis the Furnace Master
Prior to the nerfs this fight was pretty tough, we now tank Ignis in the water and the adds are tanked off to the sides and the raid stacks up behind Ignis. The priority here is on speed and timing. We usually have 2 Pally’s and myself on the Main Tank spamming, the hits get very hard towards the end (30K each) so be on your toes.

Make sure you have a RaidDebuff mod (i use a plugin for Grid for this: http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/grid-status-raid-debuff.aspx )

Primary Abilities
Scorch – Where we tank him this is not a big problem but just make sure you arent staying in it if the tank looses control of Ignis for some reason.

Flame Jets – Big Stomp basically, causing a debuff for 2600/sec. Your raid healers should be able to easily get everybody up during the debuff. Be sure to not be interupted as you will be spell locked for 8 seconds. I’ve been on Tank Heals, and have been saving my Swiftmend for Flame Jets, so when Flame Jet cooldown is getting close I cast (or top up) the Rejuv on the tank, while in the air cast Swiftmend.

Slag Pot – Have at least 1 dedicated healer who prioritises the Slag Pot victim, with other healers helping out when they can. Important that people in the slag pot help themself too, if you’ve got heals, health pots or a health stone use them!

Kologarn
Kologarn is really an awareness fight, be ready to move quickly from Eyebeams. For healers face the door, no need to face the boss at all. We position ourselves one person per square with healers given priority to squares closest the door.

Primary Abilities
Stone Grib – Randomly pick up 3 raiders, make sure you have people focussed on keeping them up.

Focussed Eyebeam – Randomly targets a raider and tried to blow the hell out of them, kite the beam out of the door, try not to run through the raid, and other raiders be sure to move off your square to allow the victim through.

Auriaya
This is an interesting fight but difficult to explain, once the sentries are down we basically stack on the boss unless the Feral Defender is low, stun it and then move the boss around to avoid the Seeping Feral Essence (Void Zone). Rinse and Repeat 4-5 times depending on your dps. Key is to move prior to the Essence spawning otherwise you will die.

Keep your hots up on the tank and max heals especially on the pull as all tanks will take big hits from Pounce.

Freya
All about add management, make sure you make the kill order very clear to your dps. Dots should be used carefully as to not kill the adds you dont want killed. Be aware the lashers have no threat table so you ARE going to get hit, they do little damage unless your unlucky (like I was a couple of times) and get 5-6 on you.

In Phase 2 mushrooms will spawn, it’s important to get under them or you will be spell locked.

Their is a lot going on and no doubt it will take you a few attempts to get this fight right but once you’ve got it it’s easy enough. From a healing point of view, nothing too much to worry about, just stick to your assigns and keep your hots up on the tanks

Hodir
This is another awareness fight, in a nut shell you should keep moving through as much of the fight as possible as to avoid Biting Cold debuff.

Avoid Icicles falling and when Freeze is called jump onto the large white circles that formed from the larger falling iceicles. If you’re too slow you will need to be freed by your dps.

You should jump once on the white area as i’ve heard reports that running in will not always recognise that you are ON the area.

Thorim
This is a real prick of a boss, basically two seperate fights where one group will stay in arena and the other will run a gauntlet. I’ve only healed arena so can only really comment on that, basically a shed load of adds will form, we group up in the middle circle (avoiding chain lightnight from towers) and tanks pick up the adds outside of the circle. My role has been to keep hots up on our 3 tanks, mana can be an issue for rest assured that Phase 2 where Hodir comes down is pretty easy.

Their will be a lot of adds, if they start coming into the main group then just avoid the big guys, they cast a whirlwind that will clean us healer types up.

Phase 2 is pretty simple, throughout the fight you will see a chain of lighting coming from the towers to Thorim, move away from the chain as it will explode (wider than the original chain) and kill most people caught in it. The width of the explosion is directly related to the distance thorim is from the tower, so tank him in the middle

I expect this week to have Mimiron down so will post details when we do