The Stone Guard heroic is a fun fight, purely for the disco floor. It was a while coming, but it was great to be back into heroic modes again, where a failure to execute can really mess you up.
The tank swapping is the same as normal, only if you fail, you all die. For normal modes, we had been running a strategy where one tank permanently had two puppies. It worked quite well to have vengeance stacked up in once place, and keeping the DPS focused on one tanks movement. For heroic, we changed that up so that the tank tanking one puppy would taunt when his puppy lit up.
Some of our DPS volunteered to paint the floor, and others had to be pressed into service when our volunteers were out of commission (either dead or dealing with Jasper Chains). There were a number of deaths to painters with the combination of damage from painting, damage from the rest of the encounter and range to healers (potentially because having range on tanks and the raid while dealing with Jasper Chains is problematic). So the painters got special attention (particularly if they volunteered or were a healer’s favourite) and we aimed for around 100 stacks to increase damage and mana regen.
We had quite a few (slightly prolonged) discussions about which puppies were the hardest to deal with. Here’s our consensus:
Jasper. Jasper Chains were the worst! In all of our kills on heroic, unfortunately we didn’t get to try it without Jasper Chains. Aside for the awkwardness of dealing with the other mechanics while also being tethered to another raider, and aside form the damage, the biggest issue with Jasper Chains was the impact on painting the floor. In the end we decided that unless the chained pairs were particularly keen, that once you were chained, you STOPPED painting. One of the other DPS or heals could pick up painting duty, or we could go with fewer stacks for a while.
Cobalt. Cobalt Mines really hurt on heroic, and were responsible for many deaths. They are harder to negotiate than Amethyst puddles, and add to the difficulty of dealing with Jasper Chains.
Amethyst. Yes, they hurt, but small puddles are small.
Jade. Jade is consistent extra raid damage. The kind that is well covered with HoTs (assuming they don’t all land as overheals).
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