Ferret, here’s what we do for Marrowgar:
1.) Everyone stacks inside his hitbox. Basically, you click to target him, then everyone stands inside the red circle on the ground that shows he’s your target. (This is smaller than his hitbox, but it’s a good visual cue.) Hunters stay as close as they can without going into their dead zone. Everyone needs to make sure to stay firmly in the back 180, or they’ll risk taking Lashes meant for the tanks.
2.) This means that all or almost all of the flames are going to be heading straight at your tanks. They are going to have to move a lot. I mean literally every few seconds, and sometimes even more frequently (I’ve had times where I’ve moved to the side, only to have a new line of flame spawn where I’ve just moved, so I have to move again). So be sure they know how to strafe. They don’t need to move that far–just a couple of steps–but they need to do it fast. The tanks should also agree ahead of time which way they’ll be moving first, then alternate directions (e.g., left, right, left, right, left, right).
3.) However, this also means that all of your bone spikes will be right in the middle of where the DPS and healers are already standing. Target switching should be trivially easy, since the melee won’t need to move, and no one will ever be out of range of the healers.
4.) Everyone scatters for the WW phase, so he’s hitting a minimum number of people. Scattering is more important for Cloth than for Plate.
5.) A couple of seconds before WW ends, all DPS stops. This should be called out by the RL.
6.) The tanks pick Marrowgar up where he’s landed, face him toward a wall, and you start over at #1.
They’re expensive. If there’s no consequence for not using them, people won’t. What they don’t think about is that wiping repeatedly will cost them much more than just buying the damned flask. IMO your RL needs to grow a pair and tell people that if they don’t have a flask buff, they’re not raiding. Even if it means calling the raid.
If it comes down to it, you could just supply flasks from the gbank. Have “farming parties” where people with Herbalism compete to see who can bring in the most herbs in, say, an hour, with fun prizes like vanity pets, clothes, etc. This also works for other mats, gold, etc. Then your guild’s Elixir Masters could convert those to flasks, which the RL could bring to raids. They could be free, or they could be available for purchase (required if you didn’t bring your own) for a rate discounted from what you’d pay at the AH.
Again, if there are no consequences, people won’t bother. Fish Feasts are great 'cause they’ve sped it up (and made it cheaper), but they’ve also made people lazy. It might work well to keep a few stacks of Fish Feast in the gbank, so that the RL can hearth out and get some if it comes to that.
Not AFAIK, but there’s no reason you couldn’t ask the RL to mark your tank for you. (Or do it yourself, if you have assist.) Don’t forget that you can /focus your primary target, too–which you should probably be doing anyway, if you’re assigned to be a tank healer for a specific person.
Yeah, I think it’s something like, the bone spike hits the person targeted AND anyone in LOS between Marrowgar and the target.
Yeah, he’s more or less (sometimes less) pointed at the way we came in after he’s picked up again.
But we did pick up a couple of new folks via pugs – I hope that they both decide to stick around as we really could use good tanks. I’m kind of bummed atm since part of the reason is that our retention rate bites due to the fact that ours is an extremely quiet guild – there’s often less than 5 people on at any given time. /sigh I hope this improves.
He also keep pulling additional adds during fights