Raid Strategy

Heroic Sartharion 3D Conquered

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matts-drake

It is done. Approximately 24 hours since the experience and epiphany I had last night, it all paid off.

Sarth and his 3 drakes are down.

Twilight Drake

A big thank you goes to everyone in the guild. Without their efforts of them, the assistance of the Plus Heal Community, and the various bloggers who’ve written about their experiences, this post would not be here right now.

The handling of the Drake was flattering. The officers and an overwhelming majority of the guild felt that I should have gotten the first one.

Needless to say, I double checked to make sure.

The last thing I want on my hands is a riot because the GM gets awarded the first Drake. I’m not one for mounts. Even though I made a Flying Carpet, I still ride on my purple Gryphon. But I guess the Gryphon will get rested for a while.

Subsequent mount drops will be handled with interested members rolling instead of the loot master doing a raid roll. This gives players a measure of control and it allows players who don’t care about the mount to opt out of rolling for the ones that do.

My hands were shaking once we got that Shadron down. It was the first time we hit that plateau and after that, it just felt like smooth sailing from there.

Total time spent: ~8 hours on just 3 Drakes alone
Time of death: 7:04 PM PST, January 28

  • Worked on the pull
  • Worked on the Drake positioning
  • Worked on Whelp and Elemental tanking (We used a Death Knight)
  • Worked on healing the ad tanks and the Drake tanks
  • Worked on surviving Fissures and Firewalls
  • Worked on timing Main Tank “saves” (Pain Suppression, Barksin + Survival Instincts combo, and Guardian Spirit)

Extra things

These points may be minor, but they might help you. We increased the healing from 6 to 7. This gave us 2 Paladins. The fight took slightly longer, but it paid off.

Now what these Paladins did was they spent 17 points into Protection to pick up Divine Guardian.

The moment I used my Pain Suppression on the first breath, I’d pick one Paladin and tell them to bubble. Since a majority of the raid members are standing together, this helps mitigate raid damage during that period. On the second save, the Druid tank on Sarth popped his Barksin and Survival Instincts to outlive that breath hit. At this point, if it goes off, I alert the Holy Priest to get into position because his Guardian Spirit is up next.

Reader Rivendael brought up a great comment that I wanted to reiterate:

Hi Matt, I’m surprised that you have to watch the animations at all :)

It’s very responsible of you, considering that most healers need to/are very used to watching mainly health bars, but in the end, I’d say that the job of watching for breath cooldowns should in fact fall on the tank.

As my guild’s druid tank on Sarth (we’ve downed 3D), even before the fight, I establish player orders for the cooldowns we’re using. When Vesp lands, I call for the first cd-user to “prep” (usually all my healing pallies and priests). When I see the breath animation, I call for the prepped player to use his cd. Then I call for the next player to prepare. And so forth.

My healers just need to macro their cd to me and be in range, that’s all, and I take the burden off them so they can -visually- focus on their heals, while dodging lava walls and void zones. As the one player facing Sarth’s bigass head all the time, it’s the least I can do. Since your Sarth tank obviously has a mic, why not suggest that he do the same?

The answer to that is we both do it. The Sarth tank and I are able to watch for his head. As a healer, I like to use IceHUD so that I can see the health bar of my target, the health bar of myself, and the action that’s going around. This goes hand in hand with my heads up technique of healing.

The “double affirmative” from the Sarth tank and myself strengthens our judgment. It’s better to have two pairs of eyes on it if possible. It helps confirm that it is the right time to use a save when two players are saying the same thing. While there’s nothing wrong with allowing Sarth’s tank to call out when to use the save, I prefer keeping my head up instead of relying on reflexes to hit the tank.

Either we’re both right or we’re both wrong.

I do have a video from a DPS perspective. Just need to find a suitable host. Any ideas of a Youtube or Filefront alternatives?

Also: Ner’Zhul is ridiculously PvE competitive. We’re in the top 20 of guilds that have successfully killed Sarth 3D.

10 Seconds with Sartharion 3 Drakes

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I’m the type of player that likes to relentlessly playback previous events (or wipes) in my head. I try to see if there’s anything I can do better from my perspective or anything I should have done differently. Here’s a 10 second mentally recalled highlight reel moment of a time that happened all too often.

We run a 6 healer setup and I’m the only one on the Sarth tank.

0:00

Vent call: Firewall, move!

*Casts Shield, Renew, and dives narrowly avoiding a wall*

0:02

Vent call: Vesperon landing!

*Casts Penance*

0:04

Sarth tank: I have the debuff!

*Casts Flash Heal*

0:06

*Casts another Flash Heal*

0:08

His attack animation stopped and he’s raising his head.

WAIT! HIS HEAD IS RAIS-!

0:10

Sarth tank: I’m down!

Reflections

Thankfully, that was just earlier on in the night. After I settled in more and got into the groove, I was able to get my timing down perfectly. The problem with me was that I ended up being off in my timing.

The timing was off enough to get our tank 1 shot.

But I managed to fix it. I figured that I was zoomed in too close on my character that I had to adjust my camera more to keep my sights on Sarth. That took up precious time and added increased risk.

I managed to solve it by maxing out my camera distance so that no matter where I ran, I’d still be able to keep an eye on his head.

FYI

I use his head as an indicator for when he’s about to breathe. When he tilts back, that’s the time to use the Pain Suppression.

What’s killing us

We lose 1 or 2 people to void zones in the beginning or to a Firewall. There is a bit of inconsistency. Some attempts, the raid group is able to blast through the first drake with no problem. In other cases, people are just getting sloppy or we have bad lag luck (like a player dying to a void even though they’re 15 yards away from it).

The second problem occurs when the third drake lands. Players are killing themselves. Going to see if that can be fixed by having Paladins “tactically bubble” at certain times to lessen the overall raid damage with that Shield talent thingy.

As for me, the 10 attempts where the raid lived long enough for Vesperon to touch down, I was able to squeeze off Pain Suppression fast enough for 7 of them.

That’s a 70% save percentage.

Not good enough Matt. Not good enough.

Achievement Tips: Arachnophobia

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Players are slowly turning towards Achievements to see where and how well they rank compared to other guilds around them. With that in mind, I wanted to offer a few tips on how to get the them. Most of these tips are applicable to normal or heroic modes.

Achievement Objective: Kill Maexxna in Naxxramas within 20 minutes of Anub’Rekhan’s death on Heroic Difficulty.

In other words, you have 20 minutes to clear out the entire Spider wing. So how do you make your raid leaner in terms of time?

Loot decisions

The clock starts ticking the moment Anub’Rekhan’s carcass hits the floor. Assuming you have 1 tank and 1 healer who do not need loot, they can jet out the door and start clearing the next set of trash. Ideally, players won’t need loot from Anub’Rekhan or Faerlina at all and the loot master can wire all items to the disenchanter so everyone can move on.

But that’s unlikely.

Faerlina

Have a Priest start blowing up the Worshippers. Yes, before she enrages. If you have every healer tasked to the main tank, then they should stay up. By blowing up Worshippers, you can save yourself precious seconds of DPS time.

Heroisms/Bloodlust

If you have two Shamans, you get access to 3 Heroisms. If you’re really good at timing, you can squeeze off one on Faerlina, one on the trash pull to Maexxna, and one on Maexxna herself.

Trash Pulls

There are a few pulls that you can skip. I know there are a pack of spiders that patrol up to the ramp that lead to Maexxna’s chamber. Time it right and you won’t have to deal with them. But if you have to take them out, try to slowly drag them up the ramp and kill them there.

Cooldowns

Speed is of the essence. Every trinket you have, blown. Every cooldown, used. Every nuke, critted. I spot the highest caster DPS on my active Recount and throw them a Power Infusion as soon as it is up.

If you can focus and channel your efforts, this will be an easy achievement to attain. Chain pulls are the order of the day.

Healing Naxxramas – Sapphiron (10 man)

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sapphiron-banner

You’re almost there. Get through Sapphiron, and Kel’Thuzad is next. I’ll walk you through what’s relevant and what’s not.

The position

As you run in for the first time, make a mental note to keep your camera trained on the animation sequence. There isn’t quite another boss in the game which has a similar or haunting experience.

Your tank should immediately run straight through Sapphiron and set up shop on the side opposite the entrance that you came in from.

I personally position my raid on one side. Pick Sapphiron’s left or right. For the purposes of this explanation, we’ll set up on the right (or north).

Phase one

Frost Aura – Everyone in the room takes ~1200 Frost damage per second.

Life Drain – A curse that will drain players for ~2400 health (Shadow damage). Sapphiron then gains about 5000 health every 3 seconds. 2 random players will get affected by it every so often.

Chill – Looks like a big Blizzard. A really powerful one. If you’re caught, you’ll take some big damage and your movement speed will be slowed.

Phase two

As you enter this phase, Sapphiron will start flying up into the air. Several things will happen:

Ice Bolt – He’ll fire off two Ice Bolts at two different players. Those players will turn into blocks of ice and become immobile. Any players within 5 yards of the Ice block will take significant damage.

Frost Breath – After the Ice Bolts are fired off, he’s going to drop a nuke that will deal lots and lots of damage.

sapphiron-iceblock

Wait until both bolts are fired before you move and start hiding behind them. Remember the Ice Bolt deals AoE damage upon impact. You don’t want to start grouping up together only to have the second bolt impale you and your cohorts, right?

Position yourself in such a way that the frozen player is between you and Sapphiron. Hide behind the block to avoid the insta gib that you’re about to take.

WoWScrnShot_092908_233810

Sapphiron will then land, and it’s back to phase one.

Rinse and repeat!

Execution

During phase one, your best friend is Prayer of Mending. Ensure that you’re firing these off as soon as you can. This is where the 2-piece Faith set really comes in handy due to the bonus (Your Prayer of Mending bounces an additional time). This will help against the whole Frost Aura crap that your raiders have to endure.

Against the Life Drains, task any player that can Decurse. This includes your Mages, Druids, and Resto Shamans. That curse has to fall off or else it will slow the kill down. This fight is a matter of endurance.

Keep an eye on the Chills that float around the room. Be liberal with your Power Word: Shield.

As you enter phase two, Sapphiron starts flapping his wings and flying. This is when you want to start falling back and spreading out. Top off as many players as you can. Wait for both bolts to land, then pick the one closest to you and hide behind it. Don’t stick around and wait. Use your instant spells to try and catch as many players as you can.

For the Holy Priests, slam your Circle of Healing. For the Discipline ones, Penance and Flash as much as possible.

Once the blocks shatter, resume phase one. Keep up what you’re doing, and you’ll end up in the clear.

Extra tips

Remember to Shadow Protect your raid.

Consider crafting around 2 Frost Resist sets if your healers are undergeared (or underperforming) to buy more time.

Potential exploit: I don’t know if this is intended or not and I’m not sure if it’s been fixed. But I’m saying it here so that I can raise awareness. During phase 2, players can run toward the back of the room onto the grated area. By standing there, you can avoid the Frost Breath that lands. Don’t even have to worry about using the blocks to line of sight.

sapphiron-grate

Recommended Requirements for Naxxramas (Normal and Heroic)

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Your requests have been heard and I am here to deliver. I’ve received repeated emails for minimum Naxx requirements for both 10s and 25s. Unlike the Kara or ZA guides I wrote, this one will be much more brief. I won’t be able to give precise numbers for stats or anything like before due to radical buff changes in raiding. I spent a lot of time writing, re-writing and scrapping this post repeatedly because it’s extremely difficult to pen this. Here’s what you should shoot for.

Before you even read the numbers, you should consult Anna’s blog: Am I Ready to Heal Naxx?

Note: These numbers are good for both Naxx 10 and 25.

Note 2: Your mileage may very. Experiment with different raid combinations to find out what works best.

Tanks

Health: 25000 unbuffed
Defense: 540 (Crit immunity)

Note: Druids will have a higher health pool. 30000 health is a good number to aim for.

Melee DPS

Hit: 9%
DPS output on average: 2000 DPS

Obviously the more the merrier.

Caster DPS

Hit: 17%
DPS output on average: 2000 DPS

Note: Both percentages assume you are completely naked and lacking in hit-increasing buffs. You can find your hit percentage by mousing over the hit rating on your character screen.

Healers

Spellpower: 1550
Mana regeneration: 700 (is what I was able to get away with)

Paladins mana regeneration: around 200 with 25% crit is a good start

Shamans may have slightly lower mana regen.

Treat these as guidelines! Use your discretion. If you can handle a few heroics under your belt, then you’re ready to give Naxx a shot! Don’t expect to be killing Kel’Thuzad or anything right away. Know your limits.