Guild run of Vortex Pinnacle last night: Muz (tank), Keyne (heals), Makig, Yeti, and Rahuul DPSing.
Best heroic run I’ve had - but Muz is probably the most well-equipped tank I’ve had to heal, so that helped. We didn’t have too much trouble except a couple of wipes on a particularly bad group of trash near the end.
Ertan: Good lord, this was an easy fight to heal. Direct heals on the tank until we all collapse in the middle, then AoE. Repeat. I finished this fight with almost all my mana, which never happens on boss fights. Someone said he’s getting buffed soon.
Altairus: We wiped the first time - I (the healer) was knocked off the platform very early and one-shotted. The second fight was epic – two of the DPS were killed early on, so we essentially three-manned the boss. Believe it or not, this may have made it a little easier because there were fewer targets for me to heal and it was easier to avoid the cyclones without so many people running around. It did take a long time, though, and it seemed that no matter where I was standing or moving the boss would turn to me to do his Frost Breath. Someone said that Rahuul at one point was down to 80 HP during the fight, and I got really low too. Hit by a few cyclones but fortunately I was thrown against the walls and not knocked off the platform again. Wow that was a great fight.
Assad: Everyone stood in the safe zone when they were supposed to, which again made this fight pretty easy.Nice run guys!
Makig, I think, not Rahuul. God, that fight was just exhausting; it helped a lot when I realized that I could melee the boss from halfway across the platform instead of needing to keep right up close to him. I do remember seeing Makig with no sliver of green; my rune tap had just come off cooldown and I slammed it for a bit of safety margin for him & you.
On the frost breath, I think he picks a target at random and turns towards him; I tried to anti-magic aura some of the damage off of me when I was “it”; but I think the only thing you can do to mitigate it is to spread out so only one guy gets slammed each time.
Also, you left out our misadventures with that last trash pack before Assad (not counting the stars). We knew pretty solidly what to do, but since we had to do our cc’s on the fly as the trash ran towards us, we had some problems with people breaking CC and so on. Also, I didn’t communicate clearly enough that if a healer breaks cc, they need to be burned down immediately. And I was not hitting my interrupts well; I was pretty tired after our ten-minute epic with Altairus. I think that pack took us 3 tries:
1 - wipe after I break CC on one of the priests with overenthusiastic AOE;
2 - wipe after knocking down two of the 3 non-healers when the cc on the healers wore off;
3 - finally took them down.
Oops, I think you’re right about Making. The problem with spreading out for the breath is that everyone is trying to be upwind at the same time too. But I’m glad to know about the random targeting; I kept trying to get behind/beside him when the breath was coming and then he’d TURN TO ME and breathe! I finally figured out it was a lot easier to position correctly (upwind) and get out of the breath cone if I stayed close to him, instead of near the edges, and I was also less likely to get tossed overboard if hit by a cyclone.
IIRC the healers in those late trash packs give themselves a buff that make their heals ridiculously fast and big. If you don’t have enough CC or your CC breaks, being able to dispel/purge (or steal, if you’re a mage) the buff makes a huge difference as well.
[QUOTE=Skammer]
Altairus: We wiped the first time - I (the healer) was knocked off the platform very early and one-shotted. The second fight was epic – two of the DPS were killed early on, so we essentially three-manned the boss. Believe it or not, this may have made it a little easier because there were fewer targets for me to heal and it was easier to avoid the cyclones without so many people running around. It did take a long time, though, and it seemed that no matter where I was standing or moving the boss would turn to me to do his Frost Breath. Someone said that Rahuul at one point was down to 80 HP during the fight, and I got really low too. Hit by a few cyclones but fortunately I was thrown against the walls and not knocked off the platform again. Wow that was a great fight.
[/QUOTE]
There’s a way you can do it without worrying about the tornados. As you face the boss, on the stairway you enter from the tank will tank the boss on the left side of the stairway, hugging the wall. The ranged/healers will be on the right side, hugging the wall. Melee just have to play dodge the tornado.
The last two times I used this method nobody was hit by a tornado. Yeah you don’t always have the haste buff but it’s a lot safer imho than to just run around willy nilly.
That’s probably a pretty good strategy especially for my priest, who has a few more instant spells (CoH, PoM, Renew) then my pally does and won’t be as affected by the wind debuff. Really the cyclones weren’t that bad to avoid after a while (and we had lots of time to get used to avoiding them – I wish I had noted how long that fight lasted). Although the wall did save me at least once.
Yes, that was me in on the veeeeerrry long fight. Also veeeerrry frustrating as a hunter - the dragon could be halfway across the platform and nearly off screen and I would still get ‘target too close’ messages on my shots. At least my wife was decently amused by sour grumbling.
The tip to change camera angles was a huge help avoiding tornadoes. I kept wondering how I was goofing up and still taking huge damage - reading the thread I guess it was the frost breath; I’m glad to know it might not have been my fault. I still felt like I was having trouble IDing the current wind direction and finding a clear upwind route. Nonetheless, I almost pulled the same damage done as Muzungu (you did a great job on the whole run, btw).
Wowwiki (which I don’t fully trust at this stage) says he seems to turn towards whoever has the lowest health. Which, if true, means that the healer shouldn’t fully top off the tank.
Ah! That’s very interesting, if true. There’s not a ton of damage in that fight if people are staying out of the cyclones – most of the damage comes from the breath cone itself. If you keep the tank around 100k and the DPS stays out of trouble that strategy could work – assuming also that the boss will stay on the tank and not turn if the tank is the one with the lowest health.
At present if the tank taunts in the first .5 - 1 second of the cast then although the graphic will still look like it’s splashing over the chosen target all the damage will be taken by the tank. I imagine this is something that will be patched, but this was certainly the case when I last tanked it a couple of days ago. If the taunt is too late in the cast it will hit as normal.
Finally hit 525 LW today on Panzera and got him to honored on Monday night, so the guild is down to just needing JC/Inscription maxed out on an honored toon.
I’m working on the JC…at 513, send me some rare gems that you need cut and request the design…I can buy two more designs with my tokens if you don’t see what you need on my toon. Gonna do Fire Prism every day from here on out, so at the max…11 more days (haven’t done it yet today).
Hey Yeti, am I right in that a fire prism takes: 3 of 6 different kind of gems? (allcite, hessonite, etc)? Because if that’s true, a shaodwspirit diamond takes the same amount of mats for an Alchemist, and it procs 2 minimum, which you can use to create meta gems. So until 520, you might be better off getting diamonds from me (or any of our max alchys). It’s 2 points for you, to your 1 (and 2 metas!). That is, until 520, when meta’s go green and Fire Prism is still yellow (or even red - not sure).
From all the prospecting you did, I should have enough for some diamonds to send you (minus nightstones, damn those things are hard to get, maybe I’ll send you another stack of ore)
Or are the gems that come out of the prism worth more than the diamonds?
As for Heroic Vortex…had a blast there. Only second time there, and the first was on normal. Learned that my Repent does not work on elementals, but does work on the 4 legged tigermen. I was the one who mentioned that Makig was down to 88 HP and Kene was below 5k at one point…that close to another wipe. Once I died I zoomed my view all the way out to watch you guys go 3 on 1 and tried to make sense of the tornado patterns and the wind and frost breath. After reading the last few posts, I think I can stay alive a little bit longer…maybe a lot longer!
Fire Prism is only worthwhile as a skillup. The gems that you get out of it by and large are worth much less than the mats you used to create it. The sole exception, IIRC, is the Chimera’s Eye, and that doesn’t show up often enough to balance out the other losses. Thanks for another useless CD, Blizz!
