Post by Revolutions on Dec 3, 2005 20:51:02 GMT -5
1) The Main Tank (MT) must be very well equipped and as well as knowledgeable about each encounter, his actions alone can make or break a fight.
2) Curses and magical effects must be dispelled rapidly and without delay, to do otherwise will unnecessarily cause the raid to suffer excess damage.
3) All raid members must clearly understand each boss fight; in certain fights one mistake can cause a dozen deaths.
4) Use of programs outside of WoW is very helpful, such items are CT Raid, Ventrillo or TeamsSpeak, as well as macros.
5) One leader and one leader alone must make decisions that everyone must follow without question, democracies do not work during battle, they are great beforehand but one leader must have a voice above other.
6) Do not underestimate the value of consumables; this does not include just potions and sharpening stones but also health stones, trinkets, and other items that can be utilized.
Group Setup:
A variety of group setups are possible for MC, no set group is necessary as long as all classes are fairly well represented (at least three of each class, obviously more of certain classes like healers). This will become more obvious as a raid progresses through the dungeon and begins to speed through the first eight bosses in 6 hours, then 5, then 4. A minimum of 10 healers should be used (priests and druids), a master tank that is protection specialized is essential, and preferably another three tanks that are well equipped for tanking adds. On top of this for different fights other classes will be required, such as against Garr where at least four warlocks are required. Even more, classes should try to get as much fire resist as possible, this helps throughout numerous fights in MC. Do NOT underestimate how much a high fire resist (and defense on the MT) will help against bosses. When we defeated Ragnaros our MT had around 350 fire resist and over eight thousand hit-points.
First Encounter
For the most part this guide will not discuss regular mobs, they are fairly easy to defeat once you start learning what is required from the raid. The first boss is Lucifron and for those of you that were WC3 fans you will recognize they brought back their best soundtrack for the first boss fight of MC. At this point you should have already defeated numerous giants, elementals, dogs and core hound packs. However a few points should be made that should be practiced against early mobs. Practicing these will aid your raid in defeating the toughest of MC bosses. First is when fighting core hounds the MT can make the entire fight easier by turning the dog around so its back faces the majority of the raid. This makes it so when the dog casts area of effect spells it does not affect the majority of the raid. This is a very important strategy for numerous bosses, which requires the MT to manipulate the boss. Another is just the general concept of dealing with two to three mobs at once and the use of crowd control properly. While fighting both fire lords and lava elementals the use of dealing with spawns and banishing of elementals is essential for quick clean fights to occur. These same strategies will be instrumental toward defeating bosses in MC.
Pulling is another crucial task that will cause a boss fight to result in victory or defeat. Regardless of which class originally pulls the mob or boss in question (hunters are most effective with feign death, but mages can also do the task) it is essential they do so directly toward the tank that will be tanking that mob. This is important so that the tank can establish agro immediately without the mob wandering about beating on priests. Last errors and problems always occur in MC, your raid MUST get used to dealing with things going wrong. Heals don’t go off, lag occurs, your master tank dies, someone disconnects. These things all happen, what must be done is a proper sequence of sets that solve all of these situations. This is where experience comes in, just as in any form of competitive team oriented environment. When a tank dies he must be immediately battle resurrected. When a main tanks priests mana is depleted Innervate must be used. Proper use of soul stones must be done. Countless amounts of these kinds of situations exist and I could not even being to list all the errors that have occurred in the few months I have done MC, they just have to be adapted to, and quickly at that. Just as in Warcraft 3 situations occur that are unexpected and unpredictable, what matters is what you do at that moment of crisis that makes you a hero or a goat. At this point we skip ahead to Lucifron.
Lucifron
Physical attacks, shadow effects (IE use of shadow resist), mind control.
A little background about this boss before we go into an in-depth detail of the fight. Basically it is him and two of his guards that you must fight at the same time. He casts a very nasty curse, which increases the mana cost of spells by double. This requires druids and mages to be on the top of their game. He also casts a very nasty damage-over-time (DOT), which also must be dispelled by priests, or paladins if you are on alliance. Also during the encounter mind controls will be tossed around, this is especially annoying on the main tank. To my best knowledge this spell is not dispellable, the best situations is to quickly polymorph (or root if melee) the mind-controlled player. However once again Alliance may have a slight advantage here as Hammer of Justice by Paladins can provide a quick fix to the mind control. By the time the stun wears off the mind control should have too. On top of this his adds must be defeated quickly so that the raid can concentrate on Lucifron before mana becomes short.
First the raid must be separated into roughly two groups, one which will tank Lucifron, another which will kill his adds then move onto Lucifron. The Lucifron group will consist of approximately ten to twelve people including the MT’s group as well as a backup tanks group. The other 28-30 members of the raid with at least two tanks will quickly eliminate Lucifron’s guards. Due to the nature of this fight the strategy to defeat this boss will be created in a time line nature. This basically means exactly what you are reading should be the way the fight should progress.
For this article we will make the assumption that the MT’s group will be group 1 and that it will consist of a warrior, priest, druid, warlock, and paladin (shaman). Group 2 will be help group on Lucifron and will consist of pretty much the same setup except a mage instead of a warlock. This is done so that plenty of de-cursing is available. On top of this another mage or druid and priest can be stationed from another group in the raid to help heal the MT and de-curse / dispel. All of this will be done around the area with the stalagmites and the ledge. The idea behind this is that while Lucifron is being tanked and his adds are being eliminated the rest of the raid (approx 30 people) will not be getting affected by his DOT’s and curse. For this to be done properly the MT must receive the monster after the pull (preferably from a hunter or a paladin divine shielding) immediately and pull him to this area. Once this positioning is done the mages and druids will be de-cursing the MT first and then other members of these two groups. Healing and damage is secondary to de-cursing. The priests and hybrids should be healing the MT to ensure he does not die. If he does die the secondary tank should immediately take agro and the MT should be battle resurrected and once again put into place to tank Lucifron. While this is being done the rest of the raid is handling Lucifron’s friends.
The other thirty members or so of the raid will be eliminating the other two adds that come with Lucifron. This is done by them also being pulled (by hunters) toward two other waiting warriors in the raid. It does not matter which is defeated first but all should be assisting a Main Assist (MA) to defeat one quickly and then the second. While this is going on magical and curse effects should be removed if they are cast on any raid member. These things are the only difficult part of this fight, and if properly handled the encounter is a joke. After the adds are eliminated the add group should move onto Lucifron and finish him off.
There is nothing else to this fight, however as a quick recap on things of importance.
Warriors –Make sure you control aggression and you stay alive by using shield walls, last stands and other abilities.
Paladins – Dispel and heal primarily, you are not damage dealers through almost all of Molten core.
Shamans – Also heal and utilize totems effectively.
Rogues – Make sure you do damage but if you pull aggression do not attempt to feint the monster off, immediately vanish and then continue attacking, it is essential the tanks do not lose agro off mobs.
Druids / Mages – Mainly de-curse healing and damage are secondary. Druids however should maintain heal-over-times (HOT’s) on all tanks because of their efficiency and constant heal. Innervate and battle resurrects are also crucial towards winning and losing.
Priests – Utilize HOT’s and absorbs shields in an attempt to be efficient with mana, also dispel as much as possible.
Warlock – Make sure the imp stays alive if you are in a tanks group because the extra 420 hit points are very useful. Utilize Curse of Dooms in any situation where a monster is not being primarily attacked.
Hunter – Always feint death whenever you are even close to pulling agro, use of marks and proper pulling to designated tanks can be influential in winning or losing.
All classes should have First Aid and plenty of rune cloth bandages. These should be used to conserve healer’s mana when it is not necessary that you be healed. A good example of this is if the DOT from Lucifron is not dispelled you should bandage yourself (assuming you are not being attacked).
Three keys to victory
1) Proper pulling and position of adds and Lucifron
2) Dispelling and De-Cursing
3) Efficient use of mana through bandage use and step #2 being followed.
Magmadar
Physical attacks, fire attacks (make sure auras are up)
Magmadar is a fairly easy and simple fight. Essentially as long as the MT is kept up with fear wards or other abilities that stop him from running like a girl the raid will do fine. Magmadar also has a handful of other abilities, other than the AE fear, such as DOT’s, fire blasts, and ground based DOT’s. Most of these do not do much damage, as long as the raid pays attention to their position the damage is minimal. Conflagrations do however hurt quite a bit, especially if you are feared and cannot heal yourself. This is where the PVP trinkets come in very handy, but all healers should be watching out for players with this DOT on them. Yet the real problem is properly dealing with the fears, this can essentially be done by utilizing a trinket early on as the charge is made and then having a Dwarven Priest or Shaman make sure fear wards stay on the main tank.
Once this is done healers and ranged should stay at max range and do their jobs. On top of this if you are on alliance three or four paladins (if not all) should stay out of range so that when the AOE fear is casted they can immediately start dispelling the fear. This can most effectively be done by using a rather simple timer system. Magmadar AOE fear works very simply, once it is casted he cannot cast it again for thirty seconds. This means as soon as the fear is casted a timer should be set and announced when it is at twenty-five seconds. This allows those that are not needed, IE healers, mages, to back away from the fight and move out of fear range then move back in after the fear is casted in five to ten seconds. Other than this healers should be healing the main tank and others that get hit by AOEs, ranged should be nuking, other melee should be hitting but not pulling agro, and hunters should be tranquilizing shot Magmadar anytime he into berserk mode. Having three to four hunters with tranquilizing shot helps however it can probably be done with one or two, assuming they don’t miss. Once again three quick tips that will allow for a simple and easy victory:
1) MT is in proper position and holds agro while having anti-fear maintained on him
2) Tranquilizing shots are used whenever Magmadar goes into a frenzy
3) Raid members watch their positions to make sure they are not in DOT’s and also healers move out of fear range to ensure the MT stays alive.
Gehennas
Physical attacks, fire attacks, shadow attacks (Use fire resist but have priests can shadow resist on all raid members).
This boss is basically Lucifron on crack. The general idea in how to fight Gehennas is similar, as is what is necessary to win. First of all just like Lucifron he has two adds that must be defeated which requires the raid to be separated into basically two fights in two areas. On top of this he has a very nasty curse that decreases healing by 75%. Lastly he has a nasty area of effect that must be paid attention to, like Magmadar, and shadow bolts that randomly like to pulverize unsuspecting people. Basically for this boss to be defeated elements of the first two boss fights must be combined and executed. First off the main tank group and a backup tank should be maneuvered away from his spawn point and back to the left (facing him). This should provide adequate area for him to AOE to his hearts content without hitting the larger half of the raid. Additionally the two adds should be pulled and tanked to the right creating more space.
Group 1 – Ten to twelve people consisting of two healers in each group, two warriors well equipped for tanking, and at least three de-cursers. It is essential that the de-cursers immediately remove Ghennas’s anti healing curse. On top of this they most constantly be moving out of his rain of fire area of effect. If this is done and proper healing is applied to the main tank without the tank losing agro the fight is not terribly difficult.
Group 2 – Thirty to Twenty Eight people should consist of at least two warriors as well as a large amount of DPS. The idea is to tank the two adds and eliminate one then the other just like Lucifron. The adds are not terribly difficult, the most annoying thing they do is a stun called Hand of Ragnaros. This can cause a tank to momentarily lose agro but since their damage is not terribly high the two adds should be defeated with minimal losses. Once this is done this segment of the raid moves toward Gehennas and defeats him as well.
1) Most important thing about Gehennas is that the pull is executed correctly with hunters pulling the adds and Gehennas to their respective tanks. If this is done correctly Ghenennas won’t area of effect the entire raid and blast them with a nasty curse. If done incorrectly it can be one hell of a mess.
2) Proper de-curse prioritizing and execution. Tanks must be de-cursed immediately as well as other crucial classes like healers due to Rain of Fire and Shadow Bolts.
3) Efficient use of healing by utilizing bandages and having non-essential classes move out of range and heal themselves. This makes for more efficient use of healing on tanks. Additionally rain of fire should be avoided by all raid members to maintain efficient use of mana.
Garr
Physical attacks, as well as fire damage from exploding mobs (utilize fire resist auras and totems)
Garr is a rather challenging fight in appearance, but once the fight is understood can be one of the easiest. (Note this does not take into consideration changes made during 1.5, which are still not yet fully understood). Garr is basically a giant elemental that does a rather limited amount of damage and takes a lot of damage to kill. His greatest weapon is a slow effect (which can be dispelled), as well as a massive de-buff effect. The real challenge in his fight are the EIGHT adds that attack you along with him. These by themselves are relatively easy to defeat if pulled and crowd controlled correctly. They also do a rather limited amount of damage but do explode for quite a bit of damage when they die. The key to this fight is fought before the fight is even started, through proper targeting and execution of tanking and banishing. Four Warlocks are extremely useful during this fight. It can probably be done with less it will require additional warriors. Banishes however are far better than warriors due to the nature of the banished adds not doing damage. This is a mixed blessing though for as they come out of banish they have a tendency to stomp healers, especially when resisting the new banish. This means that having more than four warlocks may be a hindrance if suddenly six adds become un-banished and rampage for even two to three seconds.
First things first, the targeting, this can most effectively be done by utilizing hunters mark and priests mind vision. Basically each add is targeted with a mark or mind vision and warlocks or warriors assist that person’s target so that all eight are targeted. Once this is done the main tank group will have a hunter pull Garr towards the main tank so it can be tanked on the left side of the room. Basically one group can handle Garr since he does not do much damage, but if mana in this group comes up short an additional healer or two can be sent towards that group. The rest of the groups will be having mages or hunters pull the adds towards their respective tanks or warlocks. This will result in x number of adds being banished (for this situation we will say four), and x number be tanking by warriors (once again we will assume four). The four banished adds will continue to be banished while the warriors will tank the other four and eliminate those one at a time. The elimination process should start with the weakest tank (in terms of tanking). For this to be done this one mob should be pulled back towards the rear end of this chamber allowing for people to have easy sight of the mob before it explodes. This area is referred to as the kill zone. Before this mob dies (at about 10%) all melee should move off this add and onto the next add in line. The tank of this add should stand still and take the blast of the dying add. Ranged will produce almost all of this last 10% of the damage. This process will be repeated up to six times until just two are left banished. Once two adds and Garr are left the entire raid will concentrate on killing Garr then the final two adds. This is done because Garr can become quite nasty once all his friends die and this can be avoided (once again may of changed with 1.5). If he does get nasty watch out for exploding adds and a larger amount of damage output by Garr. This still can be defeated however with proper healing on the main tank. Once again the three essential steps toward defeating Garr are:
1) Proper targeting and pulling of adds toward their respective controlling characters (warriors / warlocks)
2) Proper dispelling at the very start of the fight before Garr is pulled towards the side, this allows warriors to get to their adds before healers start getting stomped.
3) Proper recognition of the killing zone and adds life. If this is not done correctly one add can blow up eight or more raid members, which without being said will sufficiently make the raid more difficult.
Baron Geddon
Lots of fire resist (attempt to get as much as you can on all classes, especially the main tank).
The Baron is a rather difficult fight, mainly due to his annoying nature of attacks and spells. Horde also have a significantly harder time fighting this (as well as other bosses that utilize a lot of magical effects). The Baron mainly has three forms of attacks: First he turns random players into living bombs that explode after about six to eight seconds in this form. Players must recognize where they move to avoid blowing up their entire group. Second he fires off a rather nasty health and mana burn, however only if the character has mana. Last he does an area of effect centered on himself at intervals, but will not move. These three forms of attack make the fight a pretty big chaos and one or two slipups and the fight is over, with Geddon victorious.
What must be done to win is first the fight must take place in Garr’s room. What the raid wants to do is set itself up in a circular fashion of an octagon with the eight groups spaced evenly around in a circle. However the raid must not be against the wall, rather they must be in about 10 yards from the wall. This gives the living bombs proper space to go detonate themselves without eliminating their entire group. Once this circle is formed the Baron will be pulled into the center of the circle (with a gap near the tunnel that is not occupied by one last group). Once he is in the center the last group will swing into position closing the circle (or they would be run over as Geddon is moved into the circle).
Now that the Baron is in the center of the circle all melee are to attack him. Generally after a short amount of time the Geddon will start his AE blast where he does not move. This basically just means everyone runs away, however keep in mind anticipation is far greater than reaction. Most melee should move out of this blast before it occurs to make efficient use of mana. After this area of effect attack he will fire off his dispellable mana burn effect. All non-mana classes can ignore this effect however priests must very quickly dispel this off themselves, mages, druids, warlocks, and hunters. If this is not done quickly the raid will be left with little mana.
This is why Horde have a tougher time with this fight than Alliance. Paladins can take care of the dispelling easily with cleanse, leaving the priests free to heal other members of the raid. For this reason Horde MUST have at least six priests if not more to successfully win this fight. On top of this other classes must be more careful about his AE and allow the priests to conserve mana. Use of bandages will be heavy during this fight for Horde while Alliance can be far less careful. Additionally Paladins can also divine shield themselves out of the living bomb, and should do so immediately. Other classes should attempt to notify a priest and get an absorb shield so they will survive the explosion. If however they are not being able to be helped it is best for one to die and others to live to win the fight. If just this wasn’t enough players must understand their section of the circle. This means knowing their group and the two groups to their right and left.
This means they will really only be watching out for about 15-18 players rather than 40. This is because over half the raid will be out of range of all their spells. Finally one last section must be created near the stalagmites where no groups are. This gives melee fighters an area to detonate themselves without killing an entire group.
1) Proper creation of the circle so that melee can run to their groups, bombs can detonate safely, and magical effects dispelled properly.
2) Proper dispelling of mana burn effects on proper classes, as well as efficient use of mana.
3) Main Tank not running if he is the living bomb but rather taking the hit and properly being healed by the raid.
More Information as I learn Check back!
Not trying to crack down on ya for the good guides rev, but some sites would be nice.