Forged Alliance

Replying to a couple posts here:DioniaYou have some leeway to be a Diva here IMHO.  I've grouped with you on 100's of instances over the past year and you kick ass in a major way.  Additionally you do have some raiding priest experience and could have valuable insight, so dont sell yourself short.  I wont pretend to know about healing rotations, etc. -- but I do know that in my raiding guild that's precisely what they did.  Granted you're managing 40 people and it makes it obvious that you need to plan on who should heal whom.  Obviously everything is encounter dependant for setup, but generally we had people who focused solely on healing the MT, some designated for cleanup -- some designated elsewhere depending on what the encounter dictated.  In the Curator encounter, we have MT taking consistant damage (hopefully!), the hateful bolt taker consistant but spiked damage, and the rest of the raid sporadic damage ... HardwiggI agree with you in principle but it's difficult to call last night, at least in analyzing the options I had.  I think the additional high dps of Drumble on the flares made alot of difference on our attempts.  The times I saw Mahnalor drop I could attribute to dps getting behind on the flares -- resolving in healers distracted with cleanup.  ... and the inevitable fluke first couple hits before the rhythm of the fight starts -- his first blow could be crushing.   At the heart of it -- one of us (Chuunks/Mahnalor) should probably be a more DPS spec.  That way a big health bucket will DEFINATELY get the hateful bolts, and we can still kick the shit out of the Curator during evocations.   IMHO - Mahnalor's gear is great, the only differences being about 500 hp.  If he swaps out that helm enchant for the Keepers of Time enchant (after 1-2 BM runs for revered rep.) - maybe a lucky Mechanar for the Jade Skull Breastplate, or gets off his butt (affectionately ) and levels blacksmithing to craft the Breastplate of Kings -- that gap is bridged.  Also, while I'm looking your page - there's a Netherstorm quest for a blocking trinket - Dimensios the All-Devouring.  +30 defense, a 2 minute use to increase blocking +125 (sadly not for Shield Bashing) -- a good pair for your Adamantite Figurine, the use is better IMHO to not get the damage rather than waiting for the right instance to give/lose 900 health.Rambling ... anyways, as much as it saddens me to say so -- when we run together, perhaps Chuunks should focus on DPS spec (with obvious choices in protection)?  Opinions?

After staring at a few options on the talent calculators.  I'm going to stay protection until absolutely necessary to change -- and at this point it really only seems like the Curator fight, Gathgor I think adopted a DPS spec and I know he's gathered a good Arcane Resist set, he might be the obvious choice actually -- keeps Drumble as DPS.  The hateful bolts have the mechanics that they get applied to the person with the second highest threat, but with mechanics based on your current health -- for example, he would skip over the off-tank at 4000/12000  - and hit a healer with 7000/8000.  Similarly when we were using a rogue, if he wasn't topped off - the bolt was going to Fargol or elsewhere.  But a tank could rest at 8000/12000 and still get them over a healer/Fargol 7000/8000.

Another thought is this: did we have enough DPS classes in the raid?  I wholeheartedly agree we needed Drumble's DPS and Mahnalor tanking, but do we have too many healers?  Could 2 healers manage the entire raid if we had an additional DPS class helping to get those flares down faster?  But as a counterpoint to that: would having 2 healers spread them too thing as far as mana is concerned?Thoughts: 1) We need a shaman on DPS with a mana spring totem and some AoE totems for the adds and 2) We had the Curator down to 36% after only TWO evocations last night.  We did pretty damn well.  We're just falling a hair short somewhere and need to figure out what it is.  As a side note, I personally didn't notice any difference between the attempts where I had 63 Arcane Resist and used the AR pots and the attempts where I wore my normal gear, i.e. no Arcane Resist and used health pots instead of AR pots.

I also think we did great.  I agree with Hardwigg that we are just a hair short on getting this guy down.  I think a full out frontal assault is necessary to get this guy down as we dont have enough mana to last the extra evocates.  Have an innervate at that point would help out alot.  On a couple of wipes where we surviived more than 4 evocates, Dionia had run out of mana.  So if we can get this guy down in 4 or less evocates we should be fine on mana. A shaman would be great but as of now we dont have one high enough in the guild so we would have to pug it.  I get going on the suggestions Chuunks made but am not averse to switching to DPS either.  But on the other hand, I believe Gathgor has already made the switch.I have found some tips that refer to using Shadow Fiend for Priests and Curse of Doom Timing for the Warlock. (Roughly 50% mana). http://www.wowhead.com/?npc=15691 (I found other links but this one seemed the most complete to me)Anyway, it appears that the only one needing AR gear is the person soaking up the hateful bolts.  Any additional thoughts?Chuunks - checking out your recommendations and as far as the Breastplate of Kings, I should have it in a couple of days with the help of some guildees and Primal Might transmute

I also some some footage about spreading out and  I see how there was a formation pretty much like this: (some variation of this type, with a rounded bow on the last row)                                                          Tank                Melee                                Melee                         MeleeRanged/Healer                   Ranged                       Ranged                   Ranged/HealerAfter each ball went down, I saw them returning exactly to their original location ready for the next ball.  If they didnt and a ball spawned on the opposite side its on, the melee have to run alot further.  We also need to make sure that we are backing out of the chained lightning if its hitting us and get just out of range.  Just additional thoughts...

More interesting links with other tactics:http://www.wowhead.com/?npc=15691#z0zht ... _id=33Also, someone mentioned creating a macro.. this should be a must:/tar AstralThis puts in a position to save a sec or 2 in targeting the Astral Flare...

Having people either bunched together or spread out but in a predictable location would greatly help melee.  We could spend a lot more time hitting the flare instead of running after it... They are pretty fast and not easy to catch up to.  The chain lightning can only hit a max of three people, so I don't think we need to be as concerned about being close together as just getting the flares to follow a predictable pattern.  I also agree that AR should only be necessary on the soak.  My Attack Power went down from 1800 to 1000 in AR gear.  Since cloth AR gear seems to be the most readily available, lets plan on helping Fargol if he needs primals or anything.  Krikor I think can make the arcane armor kits too, but they are expensive, like 4 or 6 primal manas.  Fargol should be able to keep up on the agro list with just dots too, and keep his HP up with draining life if needed.  Also, on the attempt we got him to 36%, I don't think a curse of doom landed during either evocate.  Those should hit for around 5% of his total health, so imagine an extra 10% off him, he would have been to 26....

Hey guys I noticed the formation Manny posted and thought I would like to offer a suggestion.  Placing a healer in the middle (we use a pally) allows for flash healing across the raid, but most importantly seperates the healers into three unique groups capable of supporting one another no matter where the adds go.  This is one of those fights where assigned healing doesn't apply..... ie no, "ok so you're healing MT, and pally support the group" type stuff.  All healers should be healing everyone including the MT.  Another thing... it's best if only melee is attacking the adds.  Casters focus on burning Curiator down otherwise you run the risk of healers running out of mana.  Well that's my two cents.                                                      Tank                                  Melee            Melee            Melee                                                      HealerRanged/Healer                                                                         Ranged/HealerRanged                                                                                            Ranged

Good insight -- and as you've had the experience of stepping over his corpse, it's applied knowledge we should put to use.I especially like the idea of ranged DPS switching to the Curator immediately, that's seconds saved vs. having a melee class run back.  Paying attention to our positioning and the arcane flares chain effect should be minimized.   So essentially we're doing exactly what we did on our most successful attempt, except having melee stick with the last flare (and the hateful bolt soaker get over to it immediately to pull that aggro when it's free) while having ranged DPS immediately switch to Curator after flare #9 is down.This method would require melee DPS to probably have a little more arcane resist?

"This method would require melee DPS to probably have a little more arcane resist?"The more AR the less dps you have to bring down the adds.  Just muster as much dps as you can melee and nuke em.  Anyways, Fargol tells me you downed him for the first time last night.  Congrats everyone! 

Thanks man   Felt good to finally do it right.I think we could have probably gotten him the last time we were there, but it was late and everyone was burnt and out of consumables so we were making goofy mistakes. (Something costly when you have 4 attempts or so ..)The key was definately full DPS.  Fargol soaking the hateful bolts worked well as he was finally able to time those Doom curses.  Also, we were just up from beating the Oz Opera event, so we definately had the confidence.  I'd consider it a one-shot -- the first attempt Mahnalor decided to unplug his modem.