Clearing trash went very smoothly...even when an extra set of dragonhawks was pulled as we were finishing the first set and soon enough we were staring at the Void Reaver. All in all, we had a couple of wipes and a few restarts before we finally downed him.
Other than being better geared than we were in September, we did have our melee wear a bit of arcane resist gear/flasks (100-150 resist) so they could stay in and do damage as well as having their own personal chain healer to take care of them. We also had one of our members call out the names of those who got orbs and had the tanks all stay on one side so the VR wasn't spinning about.
The loot we plundered was Pauldrons of the Vanquished Champion that went to Swiftlight, Pauldrons of the Vanquished Defender to Slashappy, and Void Reaver Greaves that went to Hellvama.
And....best quote of the night....
I didn't think he'd get so mad with me casting so many chain heals right there on his foot.
15 points to whoever can name that Shaman! I'll give you non-guildies a hint...I've mentioned him in a recent post as my favorite Innervatee.
After killing the Void Reaver, we took a bit of a break then began work on Al'ar. First off, I have to say that he is the prettiest boss ever. I really think Blizzard did an awesome job on him. Anyway, it was my job to tank adds. Thankfully, I got to tank something. Lately, it seems I'm always in kitty form. So, it's my job to tank the adds, which wasn't too difficult. We were able to make it through phase 1 pretty consistently, but kept falling apart in phase 2. We continued to work on him until repops, but then decided to call it a night.
Well, gonna have to keep this one short. I need to get a move on today. bleh. I'd much prefer to stay home, box up the Christmas decorations that are still out, and do another blog post or two that's much more interesting than what I've had time to write lately. Ah well, you all will just have to bear with me for the time being. (pun intended)
8 comments:
Nice work on Void Reaver. They didn't have you in bear form for him? He's a great fight for a druid tank, as we gen threat w/o aggro so much better than a prot warrior.
Al'ar's phase 1 is a snoozefest, but phase 2 is really chaotic. It's difficult to keep people out of flame patches, I find.
Are you guys saving all of the phase one adds until the start of phase two? If not, you're missing out on a free 20% damage to the bird. You'll be able to hold them all without trouble.... just have your dps on the adds stop at 20%, and then try not to kill any yourself (which can get tricky!)
No, they have me DPSing on this fight. I guess when they have to chose between a prot warrior and a feral druid doing DPS, they pick the druid. But, I have ever so subtley complained, so hopefully I'll be getting some more tank time soon.
Yes, the flame patches were taking out a lot of people. I'm not sure why either, it's rather obvious when you're in one. LOL
I let them know about saving the adds. Our GM said he thought about that strat, but as we were 'learning' he didn't want to throw an extra element in yet, but then said we'd do it that way next time.
Also, I haven't forgotten about your Leo tips! Procrastination FTW!!! O.o
My guild is having issues with VR, do you have the melee dps running in and out or do they just weather the pummels? Our biggest problem seems to be keeping our meleers alive, since they're most of the dps.
It's crazy you not tanking VR. I'll tank the sucker for a good 70% of the fight, including knockbacks, and me running out to innervate/brez someone. If you don't have bear threat gen, your DPS is going to get gimped when they have to stop DPSing.
Question for you on the Al'ar adds - how do you get them to come down to you? Our guild didn't get far on him, and the adds just kept running to the next tank on the top instead of coming down to the bottom.
@ Esarhaddon
Our melee dps stayed in and weathered the pummels. But, we used resist flasks and resist gear (100-145). We also had a shaman standing near us to chain heal us...which he said was the easiest healing asignment ever.
@ Lypi
Only occasionally did we have an add stay up top. If that happened, one of the add tanks would run up, hit it and then jump down. The add would then swoop down the ramp to the tank.
I'm going to have to go with lypi on this one. Ferals are absolute beasts when it comes to tanking VR. My best fight on VR I held him from 97% until 6%. The threat gap was such that even after 3 knockbacks I held aggro (the 4th dumped and switched). During that fight one of the healers actually said "I'm getting tired of healing you..." over ventrilo.
I'm not sure why anyone needs AR on that fight. Tanks should absolutely never have AR beyond racials as this is designed to give tanks rage when not being pounded on. A single shaman should be able to keep up the melee until they're oom. Also, keeping a feral in the dps group allows iLotP to supplement the healing to the melee. Rogues should be using CoS every time its up as well. Healers should consider the melee healing part of this fight training for Naj'entus.
Something to note about the KB and VR's hitbox. The obvious is hat his hitbox is HUGE. What isn't so obvious is that the KB typically kicks you out into ranged threat levels. This means that aggro gain is +30% over the current tank. If someone else is above that VR switches to the next tank (or dumb bastard) The next tank is not always the highest on threat though.
About Embers and buff no-nos:
First, do not thorns the Al'ar tanks. If an ember hits them it will continue to attack them. Second, when the embers spawn the tank on the spot is the first one on its threat table, so it attacks and follow that tank (again why thorns is bad). Ember tanks need to be very aggressive when picking them up. this means going up the ramp and fetching them if not corrently tanking one, being mindful of Fire Quill while doing so. One hit by an ember tank has their full attention. If you can manage it keep the last ember alive during the phase transition. Never kill an ember when the tank has more than 2 buffets and/or flame patch debuff.
/wall
Oh boy! FB points! It's Ledde!
Great story, I didn't get it at first but now I get it..lol
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