<Fidelity>

TL;DR. Check out this flash animation Whipshamazin produced for us to illustrate a great strategy for the lightning phase.

Heroic Hagara presented some interesting challenges, and although mechanically similar to the normal verison, the effects of the mechanics take a step up in the order of the difference between raid finder and normal modes.

For the initial phase, we tanked Hagara on the portal, and divided ranged and healers into three groups to intercept ice lance. The main advantage of this strategy is that only Dambrath is getting hit with shattered ice, rather than someone soaking ice lances. We didn’t have many problems cleaving the ice tombs, although we found it useful to stack up just a little bit back from the boss to avoid line of sight issues.

In the ice phase, we had healers and ranged entrenched, while melee ran around whacking at crystals and getting dispelled just inside the water. It took a reasonable amount of time to perfect the execution of the phase, and learning to balance defensive and mobility abilities to get maximum DPS time on the crystals was a fun challenge.

We originally tried the lightning phase with a strategy that involved everyone chaining, and several secondary chains that needed to be completed. We would get close, but the damage from chaining, lightning storm and range issues was too great. Then Whipshamazin came to the rescue after finding this alternative strategy where 7 of the 8 crystal conductors are overloaded immediately. Whippy when went above and beyond to produce this flash animation, complete with labels for the core team. I can’t really overstate how excited I was to see all our little dots moving over the hagara encounter map. An important aspect of this strategy is not just overloading the crystals, but avoiding unnecessary chains after overloading is complete. The best part of the strategy however, is that little orange dot in the middle, and having our own dancing tree, Jondayla right in the middle of it all.

Lastly, on our kill… we managed to get the boss to less than 2% before the ice phase hit. It was really great to see everyone focus and execute a whole extra phase before finishing off the boss. Dancing around melting crystals with the boss about to collapse makes this one of my favourite progression boss kills ever.

The Dragon Soul nerf got bumped to 15%, and we hit heroic Zon’ozz like a truck. We had switched our focus to heroic Hagara, but since we had a full guild group, we decided to get give Zon’ozz another try.

Our first attempt was very positive, and we added a couple of tweaks to the strategy. Whipshamzin has a knack for jumping up and down in ghostwolf form just exactly where flares need to be placed, and we nudged the ranged stack point backwards a little to give the ball a little more flight time during the regular phase. I managed to put my flare marker on the furthest flail, and we relieved Estadoug of flail duty, since it was vapourising as it spawned.

On our second pull, we lined up and dispatched Zon’ozz a little quicker than expected, thanks to a hefty 60k DPS from Moordenar who was wielding brand new legendary daggers. We didn’t get to resolve the debate of which adds to leave up for the fourth black phase, since we put our heads down and powered through with herosim from over 20% and killed the boss as the phase was starting.

We still owe both Moordenar (Fangs of the Father) and Bioderm (Dragonwrath, Tarecgosa’s Rest) a post each for their legendary weapons, so we’ll get to that soon(tm).

Heroic Yor’sahj was a nice step up in challenge after Morchok, even as we cringed at the 5% nerf that came so early. We used one tank (thanks again, Hagrim) only two heals and seven DPS. Dragon Soul has proven to be a little offspec heavy, and while Borg is used to donning his orange jumpsuit (thanks for the ‘mog gear Whip), we pressed Kalus’ shadow spec into service.

The four ooze heroic mode provided a nice change of pace. We endured many a pull of Red, Black, Yellow before switching to Red, Black, Purple. I highly recommend this strategy, since disciplined healing can cover the extra damage from red with the purple ooze up. That just leaves Red, Yellow, Black for when you kill Green with that combination. If you find your healers are getting ganked, ask your DPS not to drop threat on the second lot of black mobs.

Heroism and tank cooldowns are fantastic for the Red, Yellow, Black combination as there is a LOT of damage going out.

We left Moordenar (combat rogue) on the boss full time to assist with beating the enrage timer, which worked nicely.

Lastly I was super impressed by our DPS ability to kill the Blue mana void with the correct timing. On our first mana void, we’d blow an external mana cooldown, usually Kal’s Hymn of Hope and leave the mana void alive. On the following combinations with blue, we’d kill off the original mana void *just* after the next one popped, giving our healers plenty of mana to work with. It wasn’t always flawlessly executed while learning the fight, so prepare for a well deserved healer tyrade if you get that wrong.

The following week we one shot heroic Yor’sahj, so once you can sucessfully execute a strategy for each combination, unless you get paricularly bad strings of colour combinations, it’s rinse and repeat.

Following our break, which included a one night clear of Dragon Soul, we opened up on heroic Morchok. The boss spliting into two, and introducing Kohcrom poses an interesting challenge for 10 man guilds where fights are generally designed for 3 healers. Our attempts with groups consisting of 1 Tank / 1 Heals / 1 Melee / 2 Ranged and 1 Tank / 2 Heals / 1 Melee / 1 Ranged were very close to a kill, but for our kill we had the opportunity to use four healers which made a big difference to the overall stability of the raid’s health.

The most troubling mechanic was the “second closest character to the boss gets double stomp damage”. We’re still not quite sure where exaclty in or around the boss this is measured from, so we resorted to the melee or healer soaking the extra stomp damage standing right on top of the tank. Between the positioning requirement, running back and fourth to the crystals and using precious GCDs for damage reduction abilities, heroic Morchock is not a melee friendly fight on 10 man.

The enrage timer was reasonably tight with four healers. I wasn’t quite sure how tight until I looked at the DBM warning in the [placeholder] screenshot above, letting us know we had 10 seconds left until enrage.

Thanks also to Hagrim for coming in and helping out for the kill.

We had a strange raiding week this week. After getting so excruiatingly close to a Madness kill the previous full raiding week, we were keen finish off Madness in a couple of nights, since the regular Sunday raid fell on Christmas Day.

We started out well, with a quick trip into Baradin Hold, and smashing the first three bosses in Dragon Soul into itty bitty pieces. We wandered to Hagara and BAM! disconnect. As someone would reconnect, another would go offline. Foolishly, I persisted and assumed that as long as too many people didn’t disconnect at once, the boss would go down easily enough. After a couple disconnect riddled attempts, I was livid, and guildies came back with widespread reports of mass disconnects in Dragon Soul, and especially on Hagara.

So, we jumped back into Firelands for a full steam ahead clear. Bioderm was collecting the last of his Smouldering Essences, and grabbed [Heart of Flame] from Ragnaros to complete his legendary staff (post on that soon!) On the way through we managed to kill Staghelm in a single scorpion phase, burning cooldowns at the end just for the fun of it, further illustrating just how silly the nerfs made that fight.

The following night, and a ticket (or many) and server restarts later, Blizzard had again provided us with a stable Dragon Soul to raid in. We 9 manned Hagara who was surprised at just how efficiently we could dispatch her without any random disconnects. A big thanks to Ianthee for coming in for Ultraxion, Blackhorn and Spine, the momentum we were able to maintain with you in the raid allowed us to get to Madness in plenty of time for a kill.

So with time for three pulls on Madness, we were at full strength and ready to go. We changed our strategy from previous attempts by using only one tank rather than two. Having the DPS to kill each corruption in one impale rather than two gave us a big head start on the overall enrage timer, and allowed us to leave the second heroism until the final phase of the fight.

My favourite aspect of the one tank strategy is the timing of the Regenerative Blood spawns relative to having to burn down the Blistering Tentacles with single target DPS on platforms after Alexstrasza’s. With two tanks, we were often holding onto the bloods for quite a while while the DPS set to work on the tentacles. With only one tank, the extra DPS means you can deal the the tentacles before the bloods spawn, so you can then burn them down at your leisure.

On the final platform (we used Kalecgos) we would DPS the corruption (all of Moordenar (rogue), Estadoug (enh shaman) and Borgthor (arms warrior)) would stay on it as the bolt appeared. In order to have Dambrath’s Ardent Defender available in case of a second impale (after Nozdormu you lose the 20% haste buff (which apprently is a big deal to some DPS classes)) Kalus would throw up a Guardian Spirit on a previous platform. Once the corruption was dead, the bolt obliterated, it was business as usual until phase two.

In phase two with 6 DPS, we only dealt with the one set of adds and then burned down Deathwing’s head from about 15% with heroism. We used our dual paladins and some over zealous DPS to trade agro on the elementium terrors to great effect with Dambrath’s stacks of Tenatus only hitting 3. Everyone had practise with the Dream ability, so the shrapnel was handled well on our kill.

Despite the frustrations with disconnects, clearing Firelands and Dragonsoul with a legendary weapon completed in two nights of raiding was a fantastic effort going into our holiday break.

Finally, in an attempt to sync up our screenshots, we present an action shot on the last plate of the Spine of Deathwing encounter. Of all the enounters in Cataclysm, the gruesome flavour of what we’re trying to achieve has attracted alot of attention. We all get that Deathwing needs to be dealth with, there’s just something sinister about how we get the job done. The screenshot is apt, showing us brutally severing a tendon still clinging desperately to the armor. We’re not just killing a boss, we’re ripping him apart, plate by plate.

We used two tanks for Spine, allowing much finer control of the Amalgamation and rate of blood absorbtion. It also put the fire in the collective belly of our DPS, making the task of hacking through the Burning Tendon in a single nuclear blast that much more difficult. Overall though the fight is about control, as we recently 9 manned the encounter taking two blasts to kill each tendon except for the last with heroism.