ICC Strategy, Tactics, and Observations
#1
If you have suggestions or observations on the fights in ICC, you can post them here.

-Jaba
Have Mana Tide, Will Travel
Reply
#2
I watched the stratfu.com Live Videos of Marrowgar, and I thought of one or three things.

1. Healers should be spread out from each other, as well as Ranged (I noticed a couple healers following me around). Healers in particular, when two are assigned to a tank, they should almost be on opposite sides of the "arc" that we are positioned so that there is less of a chance for a gap in healing during movement from the Cold Flame. Just a thought, not sure if it would help or not.

2. Bone Spikes appear to be and "absolute priority" when they happen. In the video I noticed that the Bone spikes were only up for a couple seconds because Melee and Ranged had shifted their priorities from Marrowgar to victims. This appears to make a huge difference.

3. After the Bone storm it gets a bit uncomfortable on my part as Kosath (or the main tank) is attempting to pick up Marrowgar. It seems a bit chaotic when players are shifting around all the time. Perhaps the Tanks should sit back for the first part of the Bone storm, and near the end...approach Marrowgar together in order to ensure the the damage from Saber Lash is split accordingly, while of course, ALL DPS stops and moves away from Marrowgar, for the pickup. Again just a thought.

Also I noticed that threat was bouncing from tank to tank on occasion. I am assuming that Phase 1 should be played similar to Patchwerk where the offtanks should remain below the main tank but above the rest of the raid in threat. This really is to ensure that the healers are not constantly shifting their healing targets, and potentially getting confused.

I have yet to look up the Lady but will do so in the event of our success on Marrowgar.

-Eru
Reply
#3
Since I have healed this in Donalzon's 10 man (and we lived!) and read over WoW.com's healing guide I suppose I will add a few of my thoughts.

1. Depends on what you mean by "spread out". Wow.com suggest 2 tank healers, 4 raid healers. Park 2 healers on the left, 2 in the center, 2 on the right. We shouldn't be sharing our electric blankets, but we do need to be able to be in range of each other and as much of the raid as we can. The movement from cold flame should not interrupt your healing for that long, really. Just a quick strafe left or right. Of course who we have and what we're doing may deviate from this general thing, but I believe we cans tick to the outline.

Even if the majority of the healers were stuck in it we have enough hots and instant casts and bubbles rolling where all of 4 seconds of not healing shouldn't spell doom. Not that this is ideal, of course, but it's not the end of the world.

Mercini, myself, and our cute other shammy healer weren't terribly spread out and we did just fine. Situational awareness >>>>>>> being spread like an even coat of paint.

2. I 100% agree that spiked people need to be freed faster.

3. During the WW phase the tanks need to make sure they stick together. If this fails to happen, however, all healers need to be ready with their defensive cd's ready. Mostly Eru and I with with PS and GS as they have a larger effect on preventing tanks from tasting the cold dirty floor.

<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.wow.com/2009/12/08/raid-rx-healing-lord-marrowgar/">http://www.wow.com/2009/12/08/raid-rx-h ... marrowgar/</a><!-- m -->

Tl;DR I believe our issue is less of a healing nature and more of an awareness one. Can't sleep through this one, and it's a good warm up for the fight that comes after.
Reply
#4
Nothing I've seen indicates there is an enrage timer this fight. As such ALL DPS should be on the spikes. As for the tank... The mechanic is based entirely on proximity. At the end of bonestorm when he resets threat I think that all tanks should fight for aggro as hard as they can. Whoever gets him drags him to position and Kosath or whoever the MT happens to be taunts him. From the attempts I have seen he always moves 4 times before coming out of bonestorm so no timer should be necessary. The damage during bonestorm isn't so great that tanks need to worry moving in a little early.
-Donalzon

“He lives not long who battles with the immortals, nor do his children prattle about his knees when he has come back from battle and the dead fray.”

Homer, The Iliad
Reply
#5
Situational awareness is definitely important, I can completely agree with that. My comment was an attempt at covering and gaps that may occur, as I have had to move for more than a few seconds because one cold flame came right next to another that required me to move twice in a row. But yes, coverage is important and we will have to work out what we can get away with our next attempt.

I am glad to see that I am not the only one that has noticed and realized that Bone Spikes should be priority.

Donalzon, I believe in 25 man, Marrowgar is immune to Taunt (from what I have read and Kosath's own words). So if the tanks fight over it, the winner is going to have to take him. If this is an inevitability then it would be important to call the "on the fly" healing assignments over vent.
Reply
#6
I suggest a new strategy, Jabadue. Let the wookie win.

and...

Just a couple things to add for Marrowgar.
When the ranged spreads out, it needs to be an arc around the boss, not a straight line. There were a few people hanging out in the boonies and it's much harder to break you out of the bone spike if no one is in the same zip code.

Ranged should prioritize breaking out ranged, and let melee prioritize breaking out melee (with breaking people out being priority over dpsing boss, in general). If I have to run 30 yards back and forth to break someone out every time, that's a long time of me doing almost 0 dps, especially if it causes me to lose my DoT stack and have to re-ramp up my damage on the boss. I did read a wowhead comment that his enrage is at 10 minutes.

Ranged needs to not get behind the tank. The coldflame prefers to target ranged and it can screw the tanks up to have to dodge that while simultaneously remaining stacked.

When I was doing this with DOn on 10 man mode, after the whirlwind I wouldn't rely on Don getting in the first hit to regain aggro. I went ahead and smacked him with Avenger's Shield too, just to make sure a tank got him. After that I let Don be top princess on the threat meter.
[Image: IST_Noodle2_sm.jpg]
Reply
#7
Trash Talk...I found this on WoW.com and thought this might be an iteresting tidbit of information regarding Trash

Quote:Trash

Immediately when you step into ICC, you'll find the new T10 gear vendors. Feel free to drool over the new set, and then move on to taking out the trash between yourself and the first boss. Most of it is pretty standard stuff, although there is one specific rogue-only tip I can provide. There are a pair of traps in each of the starting rooms, that are visible while you are stealthed and can be disarmed. These traps will trigger a frost/slowing aura on your raid and will summon a giant skeleton add to come attack your group if they are triggered.

While you can safely disarm them from 20y away while in Stealth, remember that by skipping the mobs, you will lose out on 75 reputation with the Ashen Verdict for each one you skip. For this reason, I suggest you simply mark the trap with a flare or other notification, so that you can trigger it on your own. This will net you some extra reputation, which can be key as you work your way up the food chain towards the very awesome Ashen Verdict exalted rings. Once exalted, and on farm runs later, your raid leader will probably ask for these traps to be disarmed instead of activated.

With that said, we have never really had an issue with the trash in particular. Even on a botched pull we managed to avoid downtime while the dead released and flew back into the instance.
Reply
#8
More interesting stuff, pulled this from MMO-Champion.com:

Quote:Quote from: Bornakk (Source)
Listed below are recent fixes we have applied to the game. Keep in mind that some of these changes may not be active until after the realm has been restarted.

12/16/09

* Lord Marrowgar is now tauntable.
Reply
#9
And apparently Saurfang was too easy...

Quote:Deathbringer Saurfang's Rune of Blood has been modified to heal 10 times the amount of damage dealt instead of 5 times the damage. This will make the encounter more difficult if you try to tank Saurfang with just one character. The tooltip does not reflect this change, but it will in a future patch.

Which makes me feel like a nub. We couldn't even beat him using the strategy that fix was designed to prevent.
[Image: IST_Noodle2_sm.jpg]
Reply
#10
Heres some more interesting news from MMO-Champion:

Quote:Listed below are recent fixes we have applied to the game. Keep in mind that some of these changes may not be active until after the realm has been restarted.

To review previous in-game fixes, please visit: <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=21723843880&sid=1">http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/threa ... 3880&sid=1</a><!-- m -->

1/5/10

* The Lady Deathwhisper encounter has seen the following changes in the 25 player normal version: mana pool has been reduced, the health on all adds has been reduced, and Adherents will wait a little longer after spawning before they start casting.
Reply
#11
Festergut Strategy Ideas
Fester is a huge DPS check (and a huge tub of greasy, gassy, gopher guts), but even if we have the dps to kill him, we will never make it through the fight if everyone isn't working with the mechanics to ensure they stay alive.

This is something I've put together after having seen this fight in several different raids. As always, Sbin is the raid leader. If anything in this guide runs counter to his experience or ideas, I defer to him for the final execution in the raid. This guide involves using a static rally point to which all ranged must run during spores; it's also valid to have everyone run wherever the spore pops in the ranged group. Right now, I can't remember which one we've been doing. Smile

Also, please help me correct anything I have misstated or made unclear, or that you would like to add. Writing out the Spore Movement Priority System™ makes it look very confusing, but it's more just being aware of what your own role is and who else has the spores at any given time. Oh, and apologies for wall o' text.


General Stuff
It's a cyclical 1-phase fight with a 5 minute enrage timer. There really are not that many things you need to watch, but it's imperative that you do pay attention to those things.

Seven to eight people must remain at range. This does not mean absolute maximum range, it just means out of melee, plus give it a safety distance. These people will be targets of Vile Gas, causing disorientation and damage. They must be spread out 8-10 yards apart to prevent the gas from spreading to other players. If a healer must be in this group, make it a raid healer, not a tank healer.

Everyone else can smash in behind Fester. He has a very small hitbox, but has no frontal aoe damage abilities like Cleave.

Healing Issues: The cycle of damage

The room-wide [spell]Gaseous Blight[/spell] starts out around 4500 damage every 2 seconds to the whole raid. When Fester does his first [spell]Inhaled Blight[/spell], the raid-wide damage drops to 3000, but he is now hitting the tank 30% faster and 30% harder. Second inhale, raid damage drops again to 2000 per tick, and he starts hitting the tank 60% faster and harder. Third inhale, raid damage is now only 1500 but he's hitting the tank 90% harder and faster. Raid healers should slowly shift to tank healing as the inhales go up. ((Damage per tick of Gaseous Blight may not be correct, as there's disagreement from various sources, but the proportions should be close))

Note that raid damage will spike for 6 seconds during [spell]Gas Spore[/spell], as (hopefully) everyone will have the [spell]Blighted Spores[/spell] DoT, and will spike for 2-3 people at other times due to Vile Gas.

The tank stuck facing Fester at +90% damage needs to blow cooldowns at this point. Shields, paladin talents and anything else someone can do to mitigate tank damage is really necessary here. Tanks will know what their options are much more than I. This tank-smashing phase lasts around 30 seconds.

30 seconds after the third inhale, Festergut will "equalize" and release all that gas back out in [spell]Pungent Blight[/spell]. This will hit the whole raid for a ton of shadow damage. You will die if you do not have at least 1 stack of [spell]Inoculated[/spell] plus at least 38000 hp, and you'll probably die to Gaseous Blight right afterward if you don't have at least 2. 3 stacks is the ideal for 25 man. If you only have 2 stacks, be ready to bubble, iceblock, AMS, or use any other damage-mitigating ability you have during the 3 second cast in order to live through it. Gaseous Blight now starts up again at 4500 per tick, and the cycle repeats.

Gas Spores. Great News, Everyone! This Will Only Sting A Little!

Every 25 seconds or so Fester will cast three Gas Spores randomly on three raid members. With the mods most of us are running, this should put a symbol over the targeted players' heads. EVERYONE must collapse on top of someone with a spore. You HAVE to watch for this ability and get yourself to the spore, which lasts 12 seconds. There's only about a 5 yard range on the spore debuff, so you need to be very close to the person with it. After 12 seconds, the spore will explode and give you a DoT, [spell]Blighted Spores[/spell], which lasts 6 seconds, doing damage every second. After the DoT wears off, you will have a stack of [spell]Inoculated[/spell]. Three stacks of Inoculated later, Pungent Blight goes off and the process begins again.

Vile Gas is not cast during this portion, so ranged may safely clump up until they get the DoT. After you get the DoT, move immediately back to your original spot.

Warning: if two spores are close together, everyone in range of both will get a double stack of the dot. It's not an immediate wipe, but raid healers have quite enough to do without adding a sizable chunk of completely avoidable damage.

The only slightly tricky thing is when two or three spores spawn in melee, or all three spores spawn at range. All that is needed is a tiny bit of common sense here. Lemme break it down.

• 3 spores in melee. If one is on the tank, that is the melee spore. ALL melee group MUST move forward under Fester's legs in order to be in range of the spore. He won't hit you. Just get close to the tank. The other 2 melee spores must move immediately out of the group. If you are a healer, just get out of melee range. Any ranged folks near you can move to you. If you are DPS, shake a leg immediately to the ranged rally point, say, the door. All ranged collapse on the door. When the spore explodes and DoT icon comes up, move immediately back to your assigned positions. If for some reason 2 healers get the spores in melee, raid healers move to rally point, tank healer just gets out of range of everyone else. If the tank is not a spore, Skull stays, X hits the rally point, Square moves out and stands alone. Just know who you are and what your role is, and it's easy to get it done.

• 3 spores at range. Square moves directly under Festergut's, um, distinct lack of naughty bits. Melee squishes in close. Skull goes to rally point. X stays put unless you're too close, then just move away a bit. Ranged collapse on rally point, or whichever spore happens to be closest to you. Wait for DoT, then immediately return to positions. Do not cut through the melee group at this time, or you may lose the minimum number required to be at range. If Vile Gas hits the melee stack, we wipe.

Priority list for spore moving: DPS>Raid Heals>Tank Heals. If you are a DPS, look around and see who got the other spores. Likely you will be moving if there's another spore close to you. But it's a DPS race, you say? Dead tank = wipe, no matter how much DPS you put out in the 15 seconds you were able to stay on the boss instead of running out.
If 2 DPS have spores, lowest mark moves: i.e., Skull always stays, X moves if other is Skull, Square always moves. (We can also just split the raid into tanks and non-tanks, and go by Mark to determine who moves. I've just seen tanks die during this section because the healer had to run. This is probably more of an issue in 10 man.)

That's about the extent of it. As Phoronid pointed out, the average raid dps needs to be around 7200 in order to beat the enrage timer. You must bring your A-Game to this fight. It's not something you can be carried through with subpar gear, spec, game awareness, and button mashing skills.

Tips:

• Have the top ranged dps stand at the ranged spore rally point, so they can dps without stopping. Or if a tank healer must stay at range, have them be the rally point. Otherwise have any ranged healers line up on either side of the rally point, so they won't have to move far.

• If you are in the melee stack and don't know if you have the spore, move or strafe slightly every time a spore comes up in melee. If it moves with you, it's on you.

• Watch your debuffs for the purple icon Blighted Spores. This is the lead-in DoT to Inoculation. As soon as you see that icon, run back to your assigned position.

• Count your stacks of Inoculation. If the room is clear (no orange gas in it) and you only have 1 or 2 stacks, get ready to use your damage mitigation shortly.

• Mages can Iceblock and Shadow Priests can use Dispersion through Pungent Blight if they would prefer to completely ignore spores and not move. Vanish works too, if cast exactly as the Blight cast ends.

• Pally bubble and DK Anti-Magic Shield will pop the Blighted Spores dot, but you will NOT get the stack of Inoculation. Just let the DoT tick.

• Healers can /focus Festergut to see how many stacks of Inhaled Blight he has. Or watch your target of target window for buffs.

• Hand of Salvation on the tank switch, so the one with 8-9 stacks of Gastric Bloat doesn't pull aggro back and blow the raid up.

• Don't TotT or MD the tank to dump your threat without checking his Bloat stack first.

• Tanks should try to DPS as hard as possible when they are not tanking. +80% or more damage should help you out a bit at least.

• Can have a plate dps or a bear tank Fester on the pull to snag 1-2 stacks of Bloat, giving them increased damage for 100 seconds. Not sure how this would affect the timing of Bloat switching vs Pungent Blight, but I know it's done. Probably would just swap tanks 1-2 stacks early.

Sources: Bosskillers, Wowwiki, Wowhead, plus random Google search results and wins & wipes on two characters in two sizes of raid.
Nganga Nyeusi
He is fast and is the danger.
What's a dazzling urbanite like you doing in a rustic setting like this?
Reply
#12
Quote: That's about the extent of it. As Phoronid pointed out, the average raid dps needs to be around 7200 in order to beat the enrage timer. You must bring your A-Game to this fight. It's not something you can be carried through with subpar gear, spec, game awareness, and button mashing skills.

This write-up is fantastic, thanks.

Yes, the above number was scarily correct - the math is done for you in the comments on any major resource site: we need 7200 per DPS character, assuming 17/25 doing damage, just under 3k from 2 tanks, and 6/25 as healers doing no DPS.

I also would recommend that every class, especially DPS, take a look at their class forums and see if anyone has tips/tricks (or if not, go add some!).

We need everyone at their most efficient for this fight, and a few are honestly not reaching their gear potential.

Anyone who needs individual help, for gear gaps (any gear under level 232), spell/skill tactics (rotations, choices), talent trees, and the latest in awesome class-only secrets (like figuring out where the rogue and paladin "i win" button is hidden) - post in your class forum and I am sure help will be forthcoming!

- Phoronid.
Reply
#13
Thanks to both of you for valuable information.

-Jaba
Have Mana Tide, Will Travel
Reply
#14
On Festergut, couldn't the healers (who really shouldn't need to face the boss or worry about things like hitting the boss with anything, unless you're a paladin judging him for the haste buff and judgement debuff) just stand directly under the boss, where it's advised that you move to if the tank gets a spore?

EDIT: I was also under the impression that this is where the melee spore stood, to make sure the tank got the debuff, too.

Less movement = more healing, yeah?

So long as we don't get comfy and forget about moving if we get a spore, this could ease up healing by a fraction.

Sorry my first suggestion isn't anything monumental, but I feel that if anything that MIGHT help comes to mind, no matter how little, it should be brought up to see if it's worth trying. D:
Reply
#15
You could so long as you still maintain the required number of ranged so as to avoid the dread kablooey effect.
[Image: IST_Noodle2_sm.jpg]
Reply


Forum Jump:


Users browsing this thread: 1 Guest(s)