I’ve seen a deluge of folks on the WoW forums complaining about how hard Heroic Halls of Reflection is, how it needs to be nerfed, how it killed their father, etc. My buddy Palehoof apparently had three different tanks quit on him in one H HoR run yesterday. Eep. Personally–and I don’t mean this in a elitist jerkish sort of way–I didn’t find the place that difficult at all.
Honestly, the first gauntlet portion (which I suppose is the part most are having trouble with) is very easy to tank!
Park your party in Falric’s alcove (see image) around the corner in that tight spot. Mobs will instinctively aggro onto your healer and, because they can’t see her, run into the alcove. Then, just pick them up one by one. Keep consecrates down to nab everyone as they flood in. For those pesky casters use Avenger’s Shield to silence and force them to get closer.
The escape portion of the dungeon isn’t much more difficult, just use Holy Wrath liberally and consecrate once you’re got large packs settled in one spot. HotR like your life depends on it.
Anyone here having trouble with this place?
I tanked it on my paladin alt and, after just a few wipes we finally managed using basically that strategy. The other big part is to make sure your DPS is focus firing on the correct mobs. But as far as tanking goes, this is definitely not for the timid. Definitely a good instance for a tank to hone their skills on and make sure they are using all of their buttons.
Surprisingly, the actual bosses are pretty easy.
Last night I actually had a tank refuse to tank the instance via this method as “it’s not the way it’s supposed to be done.” Needless to say, our group wiped three times to the first three or four waves of trash before he agreed to try this method. Once that happened we had no problem clearing the place.
Healed normal and Heroic. Not looking forward to tanking it as I still need to be quicker with taunts & such.
I would say the most difficult part of this encounter, and the LFG tool in general, is that I am usually double the next person in DPS. Come on peeps its AoE fest, have at it. I know I tweeted this, but I figured I would get it down here for all your readers:
SoComm Is your friend. While I understand that most people don’t have dual tank spec (i know im sick) but I used my Anub HM tanking spec with SoComm and Glyphed Holy Wrath and I was pulling 6.5k dps for that boss fight. AoE aggro when you use this strat is no problem if you respec…
Healer agro- my consecrate ticks must have been timed wrong but this priest kept getting NAILED and I have no idea how to fix it…
I tried this yesterday, and after a few tries it worked. The best tank for this encounter is without a doubt a paladin as they can just keep consecration up continously, I had a warrior tank and for some reason the mobs kept killing me (enhancement shaman) and the healer (holy paladin) as he counldn
Trouble tanking it? no, not in the group we set up to run it. But my buddy sure had a hell of a time trying to heal it, and while dpsing a PUG the warrior had a hell of a time (though I don’t think he was the greatest tank). And most of the healers quit after a few wipes every time it came up as a random dungeon.
It does need to be nerfed. It is 10 very difficult pulls with mobs that do very large amounts of damage to the entire party, with varying abilities designed to make the fight difficult. All of that is fine to deal with, but there is absolutely NO room for error at all on anyone’s part is the problem. Tank a moment slow on catching a mob? someone probably dies. Healer stunned by the shadowstepping mercenary? someone posibly dies. Someone pulls aggro in the aoefest? good chance of death. Thats fine, thats standard. But once a death happens, any death, it’s over. Any group with people that need gear from the instance can’t 4 man the bosses or usually even most of the trash waves, and there’s not enough time to rez in betwen waves, you get put in combat too soon and the door closes so you can’t run back in.
It’s tough, I like that, it feels epic, but virtually every time it’s come up as a random dungeon the group can’t handle it, and it doesn’t give any better loot than the much MUCH easier forge or pit dungeons, and indeed the lich king event in the same dungeon is nowhere near as difficult. Really, all it needs is a bit more time between waves or the ability to fly back in if the group lives long enough for you to make it
I just did my first shot at this last night as a paladin tank. We smoked through the place. I didn’t have any troubles at all tanking the mobs in the main room and I even did it at the entrance. The biggest thing was just tossing a consecrate down and having all the mobs run over it then throwing an avengers shield on the casters to pull them in. If healer got any aggro off the start I did not then I just taunted off of them onto the consecrate and away we went.
In the chase section I just stood up front of everyone facing the liche king and when the ghouls would all bound they would do so right onto me I would have a consecrate down right away and once they all landed I just did holy wrath and hammer of righteous.
Mind you it really does help when you have dps that are all doing over 3.5k in the group. Lately I am seeing some people in these new heroics hardly pulling their own weight and I even out dps’d a dk in all epics last night while tanking forge of souls.
So it turns out there’s one realm in our battlegroup that often fields players with subpar output. My overall experiences have varied up and down. There are some pleasant surprises to be had, certainly, such as when a guildie found himself grouped with a 63kHP bear tank and rolled through all 3 in a Ret spec instead of Holy.
The tactic of using Falric’s alcove to manage the pulls does work very well, particularly on the caster mobs. As Holy, I turned on RF, sat in the front corner, and spammed some Flashes onto the MT. Hunters and Mages wanted love on me up close. As long as the melee mobs were picked up cleanly, we didn’t have much problem. My Ret/Holy friend pulled a bit too much aggro and died to 2 or 3 hits in less than 1 second. He was almost yelling at me to stop RF over Vent after that, but the warr tank was handling the melee mobs just fine. When things looked a little scary I’d drop Holy Wrath. That, right there, is one of the best spells in any paladin’s book.
@Joe Ego: Agreed on Holy Wrath, there is nothing like running into a huge group of Undead, dropping a consecrate and then firing off a Holy Wrath. Instant aggro on just about everything there. I don’t think my warrior co-tank has yet had aggro on the pre-Marrowgar trash. ;)
Hi Rhidach,
Interesting how you also felt compelled to write about this instance. You can have the view of a holy paladin on my blog :P
http://atouchofarcane.blogspot.com/2009/12/healing-through-halls-of-reflexion.html
I’ll give you my experiences on the two “techniques” I’ve seen used.
One is the one you’re saying, perfect for holy paladins and probably dks. Why ? You have a static aoe aggro tool (consecration / dk red circle on the ground), you have tools to make casters come to you.
Second one is to stay in the entrance corridor, let the tank go pick-up the casters and ranged and dps them once they’re nearby. I’ve found this technique preferred by warriors and druids who can charge ranged, stun/aggro them and charge back near you (healer) if you get aggroed.
What I’ve found very hard with the first “alcove” technique, is that the healer automatically get aggro on the mobs before they arrive. If the tank is not super quick to grab them when they come nearby you’ll get whacked by 3 mobs at once, and die in an instant (it happened to me several times). Consecration is a clear winner here, yay for paladin tanks.
On another view, with the corridor technique, you’ll have to try moving from let to right often, to los casters, and you’ll get hit way more than the first tech when the tank can keep all mobs on him.
From my point of view, the gauntlet part of this instance is a tank/healer test, while the running part is a dps test.
Hey Dreaming, that’s a great point. I noticed that when I’ve tanked this that mobs always spawn with a full hate bar directed at the healer and basically I spend the first few seconds of every wave keeping the healer alive. Probably the reason why I’m advocating the alcove method is, like you said, pallies have such limited mobility. It’s easier when we can make the mobs come to us.
Always great to get a healadin’s perspective around these parts!
I tanked it the first day in the middle of the room with no issues. We had a ret pally and he just cc’ed any casters. If there was more than one casters i just carried the melee over to the non cc’ed one. Once you get the mobs around just holy wrath…then concercate then Avengers shield. Worst comes to worst just tab through the mobs and spam your taunts. They don’t hit that hard and if you don’t know how to hold aggro over casters by this point go dps.
Having tanked this on my druid, I definitely prefer the corridor method, but I will agree that if I had consecrate or D&D I would probably use the other method. I don’t think I would have been able to use the corridor method, however, if we didn’t have a shadow priest in our group to shackle one of the ranged.
I really hate tanking parts of these instances on my druid because there is literally nothing you can do to convince a caster to come closer to you. Line of sight is not a real substitute for gag order/strangulate/death grip/cap’t america silence.
That being said, please don’t nerf this! It’s a heck of alot more fun than ToC ever was!
I’ve done it near this place (the tanks usually stay near the boss, Im dps) and it’s much easier. My strategy is CC mage and the hunter, kill the priest ASAP then rogue and for last the warrior. No wipes this way.
…now do it without consecrate or DnD, and with your only effective AoE threat generation tools on a cooldown.
Four mobs bent on gibbing your squishies, all arriving at different times, and some of them intent on nuking them from range, and you without a constant AoE threat is *not* a fun way to spend an evening. I’ve managed it, but it definitely requires a warrior tank to be on his toes. Help from the party in managing all of the required CC is definitely useful, but given that the mobs are undead, your options are a little more limited. (Shackle, repentance, freezing trap, or pet or plate DPS offtank if worst comes to worst.)
As a warrior tank, this place does pretty much suck. I’m thinking that you pallys got it easier here.
We did it the other night and the alcove method wasn’t working for us. We tried it in the starting corridor and after an epic battle we won.
Something my guild tried last night, and worked fairly well, was having someone offtank some of the mobs to mitigate some of the massive healing that needed doing. Warrior tank, pally off. Full disclosure though, I was healing as a holy priest and was really not geared well enough for that instance. I did fairly well up to that point, even with the failpacks at the end of Pit of Saron. Just that part of HoR is scary. I don’t think it needs a nerf tho. I think it’s a great gear check. You must be THIS geared to come close to the endgame.
@Wraithanne: “…must be THIS geared…” Ha! Great description, that’s basically it. It’s the best gear you can get from a heroic, you need to work for it.
@Mego: I think you’re right, we tend to always have an easier time with undead mobs (you can’t beat Holy Wrath spam).
@MyName: There is something to be said for how enjoyable chaos can be.
Healer agro- I’ve only healed this instance (tree), and I take some hits every wave even with the best tanks. I just take this for granted now, and preemptively hot and spam heal myself at the start of each wave. It’s only a problem for me once the dps start to get aggro, and since pugs never seem to mark kill targets that pretty much happens every time. (Of course the dps will blame the tank for it.)
As a healer, the only problem I have is the SECOND, like literally THE second my heals crit on the tank….I’m either dead, or close to it as the mob will hunt me down and gang-rape me, despite the tank’s best efforts (and despite the fact that I’m hiding in a corner).
The rogue seems to gank me the most…I usually survive by poppin Barkskin and then Nature’s Grasp to root and run….but the second I go around the corner, I’m frostbolted by the mage :(
But, in all, this strategy does seem to work a lot more than the other method which consisted of standing in the entrance and taking the hits one by one.
The hardest part of tanking with this strategy is when your healer decides to run to the other side as the wave is running in, and the DPS like to run out to meet the mobs. ‘Stack’ and ‘line of sight’ seem to be difficult concepts.
@ajpursell: I noticed that too. I need to make a /rw macro that shouts “Back in the damn corner!”
@aramis/Oleander: I feel for you guys. I usually focus my healer and watch them like a hawk. The rogue especially likes to drop aggro on me and go for the gank, so I’m always on the lookout for a quick taunt or BoP.
I really, really hate this strategy, I’ve had no troubles as a DPS just standing in the center, bust out a freezing trap to keep the mage or dwarf contained, and keep it up.
LoS means a few things, if you aren’t an AoE tank you’re probably going to kill your healer and DPS, which is what often happens, even if you are LoSing it’s a small space and the healer/DPS are going to get knockback and interrupts, it’s grisly.
Every time a tank wants to LoS my whole body clenches up, it’s nerve wracking, chaotic, and often fatal for the party.
I hate to be rude, I see people telling you to stack on the tank a lot, and to stack on him is absolutely stupid, a tank did LoS and did an excellent job, he told us not to stack on him “because that’s stupid, you’ll die”, he told us to stack on the OTHER side of the alcove! It worked really well, we didn’t get one-shotted, no knockbacks, and he had a complete handle on what was aggroing who, it went off without a hitch.
I recommend this for LoS, not one-stacking, because you’re going to get your healers and DPS one-shotted that way, or that’s been my experience four or five times in a row now.
I’ve healed this instance multiple times on two toons (resto shaman, disc priest). With pallies, I’ve had no trouble at all, we’d just blow through it. With a DK tank… dear god… wipefest city. Staying out of LoS made no difference whatsoever.
this dungeon can go either way. from what it looked like to me is that the mobs would aggro on whomever they can see. so if a hunter is sitting out there looking smart then the mage will stop and pew pew at the hunter.
some people just refuse to listen.
Also, if there is a rifleman standing out in the middle shooting, how do i round him up? avengers shield doesn’t silence his trigger finger. I’ve been throwing a hammer of justice and everything else to aoe when i can.
thanks!
@sunshine: If I can’t trick him into running closer with LOS, I use Hand of Reckoning to keep him focused on me as much as possible, and then run out melee him and slowly drag him back into the alcove while staying in melee.
Lots of great talk about how to tank this on a pally tank (concecration FTW)… What about warrior tanks??
I know this is a pally blog, so obviously the advice here isn’t specifically helpful for any warrior tanks how came here from WoW.com looking for advice. I’d like to offer some.
The waves are tougher to tank as a warrior — a lot tougher — but doable if you and your group are on point. Someone above mentioned AoE DPS. AoE DPS is NOT your friend here. You can’t treat this group like regular heroic trash; AoE DPS is just going to make holding aggro impossible. Your group needs to control this fight. That means:
1. Have DPS focus on one mob at a time instead of AoE. It seems counter-intuitive to what we’re used to in Wrath, but it’s the most efficient way for warriors to tank this. DPS should be expected to adapt their strategy to different encounters and not just AoE the sh– out of everything in the game, then blame you for not holding aggro.
2. Establish a kill order before you start. I like priest -> rogue -> mage -> warrior -> hunter, but you can mix it up. Just make sure everyone is on the same page about the order.
3. Mark on the fly if you can. Set up a macro and hot-key it to skull-mark the current target in the kill order. Don’t expect your party to assume that whichever mob you’re currently targeting is the current mob in the kill order; you’ll be tab-targeting like bananas to spread those cleaves around and to taunt if necessary.
4. Use crowd control if possible. Again, we’re spoiled by Wrath and not used to using CC anymore, but it can help a great deal here. You won’t have a lot of time to do it since those mobs will be charging at you one by one and you won’t know exactly from where, but even if you have, say, a pally who can quickly Repent just one mob, any mob, before they get to your group, it’ll make things a lot easier on you.
5. Be aware of the ranged mobs. Even if you use the “Falric’s Alcove” trick (and you should, even though it can create chaos and make it difficult to see what’s going on), some of the ranged might not end of LOSed if not everyone’s perfectly positioned. Keep in mind that the hunters don’t hit that hard. If they start pelting your healer instead of you, it’s not that much of an emergency; a geared healer can take a couple of bullets. The mages will be your priority over the hunters as the mages do a lot more damage.
6. Obviously, Challenging Shout is your only AoE direct taunt (although I’ve found that many players don’t know this, and think you’re able as a warrior to just constantly AoE-taunt the whole group), and since it’s on a three-minute cooldown, you can’t spam it (which, again, plenty of nubs don’t seem to know). That means you’re going to want to save it for the last wave before each boss. You’ll be tempted to use it before that, but trust me, you’ll need it for that last wave. It gets dicey.
You may find it difficult to manage all of these things in the middle of the fight, but sticking to these tips as best you can, even if it’s not perfect, will make the fight more manageable. Again, stress to your party that these waves are not just everyday dungeon trash, and they can’t expect you to round up all the mobs in a pretty little box while the DPS AoEs them down as if they WERE everyday trash. If they refuse to adjust to the encounter and the type of tank that they have, then by all means leave the group and let them find a pally instead. There are players out there who know how to play, can adjust to different encounters, and will work with you.
PM Zubbo, thank you for sharing those tips!
I’ve tried both strategies and both have their downsides. The one thing I hate about going into that corner is the funky camera angle and can be hard to see. Big tauren asses really get in the way. As long as the group knows the instance and you have a priest humble enough to actually cc and shackle a mage or hunter if you get one in the wave, or another pally that knows what turn evil is, tanking this is relatively simple.
I have had success with the alcove method and I have had success with the middle method. I’m a disc healer. I think the alcove method works better for DKs and pallys but even then you need fairly high dps to get the waves of adds down in time. The amount of damage put out by the later pulls is intense, especially when the mage starts aoeing. For a less than 232 geared group, I think it’s going to be rough no matter what. If you run with a guild group that isn’t overgeared, I’d even suggest … ccing (shocking) if you have it.
As a paladin healer, I much prefer the entrance method. From my experience, the alcove method is murder on my healing because A) overlapping Flamestrikes deal a lot of damage to everyone stacked in the alcove, and B) I get Shield Bashed too much by Spectral Footmen.
I tanked this on my pally the first day it came out, and hated it. Ended up getting yelled at by my husband, because he would WW (dps warrior) and I would lose aggro to him, causing us to wipe. I refused to do it again until last night. We did it just fine, using the LoS pull. He waited and counted to 5 before WW, and we didn’t wipe at all.
Another Prot pally who thinks b/c it’s easy for him it should be easy for every tank class. Fyi, it’s not you it’s your class. Prot pallies can output more constant AoE and mitigate/avoid more multi-mob dmg than any other tank class, making this fight significantly easier for them. The rest of us actually have to think and work at it.
Thanks Zubbo for the more thorough fight analysis. To add a few things:
1. Teach your dps how to use a focus macro:
a. set focus:
/focus [target=target]
or
/focus [target=mouseover,nodead,help]
b. assist focus
/tar [target=focus]
/assist
Make sure they set the tank to the focus and use that macro during the fight to focus fire the tank’s target. That may not work for Wars who have to tab-target strike spam, though; marking will be necessary there.
2. Marking: At the start of each wave, there are a few seconds where you can angle the camera out in such a way that you can see the spawns popup in their start positions and mark them b/f they run to the alcove. Check out Tankspot’s Guide to Situational Awareness and Camera Control if you’ve never seen it (google it).
3. Explain the problem of AoE to your dps: no matter how little health a mob has, it still does 100% of it’s dps. So if it takes 20s to AoE down a pack of 5 mobs, and 30s to focus-fire them one by one, focus-firing still reduces dmg on the tank faster than AoE (by 20% every ~6s).
The name of this game is reducing incoming dmg on the tank as fast as possible, by both CC and focus-fire. Shackle, Repent, roots, whatever works, then focus-fire them down in a valid kill order.
I find alot of dps just doesn’t get that till I explain it. Wrath spoiled em.
4. Stay in the Alcove to LoS the mobs into range, but disperse once they into to the tank’s aoe range. As Elishana mentions above, a Cleave, an uninterupted Flame Strike, etc. can wreck havoc even if the tank has aggro on all mobs.
@Kurtosis: I never said it should be easy for every class. I write this blog for other prot pallies and, surprise, I was saying it should be easy for prot pallies. Check the attitude at the door buddy, it has no place here. That “x tank requires more skill than y tank” nonsense can stay on the WoW tanking forums.
People saying this needs to be nerfed are just bad. As a hunter I misdirect and volley on top of us. If the tank is any good he can grab any stragglers and then it’s just a matter of focus firing. It’s also helpful to CC casters. I use freezing arrow on the mage or hunter. If you have a reasonably competent group this is a pretty easy instance.
It either needs nerfing or it needs to not be an option for random dungeons, one or the other. There’s apparently a tank shortage in randoms on my server when it comes to this place (I wonder why), and every time it’s tossed me in there we couldn’t finish and I ate a massive repair bill. The first time it tossed in a mage only capable of doing ~1500 dps, which was just plain not enough (and later on I got a random DK who could barely hit 1000 in the Pit), the second time the DPS bitched me out for constantly losing threat when they were merrily shooting everything in sight from the center back of the alcove. “u just drop consecrate see”
I can do this with my guild, fine. They actually understand kill order, cc, and communication. Then it’s kind of exciting. But my gear and threat-gen are just not epic enough to handle these randoms.
As a paladin tank, the only heroic I have ever enjoyed tanking is Halls of Reflection. Done the normal way (Righteous Defense-Consecration-Holy Wrath) first night of the patch and succeeded, but the LoS pulls made me feel more comfortable on second run.
I went on my bear tank the other night and it was very hard to keep aggro on everything. Especially with a warlock casting SoC every time I finally got them near one another. Once I stopped thinking of the warlock as a DPS and started thinking of him as an off-tank it became a lot easier. I just kept things off the healer and the warlock was VERY motivated to switch to single-target DPS once something came running at him :P
This applies to most instances as well, but more specifically with this instance (and warrior tanks, i have a tank of all classes except druids), if you tank on a laptop, don’t use your track pad. It makes it really hard to target mobs that you lost aggro on in the gauntlet. Make sure everybody stacks on the tank, and have everybody stand still, and holy nova from the preist helps if they have high spell power and mp5, for the healing and AoE damage. This is just my personal experience.
for you healers out there that are reading this, and the tanks that are trying to hold aggro – i have healed this on a druid, a pally, and a priest – each one has their challenges
pally is perhaps the easiest – just use the los trick for every spawn, trust your tank to get them before you do. you’ll be fine through a hit or two, don’t panic. Holy Shock yourself and get to work.
druid – use the los! towards the end of each spawn, quit using hots. don’t hot during the breaks. if no hots are running, your aggro will be much less. use barkskin as they come
priest – use los, use fade. every spawn, as you go into combat (you can’t see anything from that corner) hit your fade and your tank will love you
and for all healers – drink in the breaks!
and for the guy that won’t do the los thing – i actually did manage to successfully do this from the middle, but the entire group was geared at 245+ ilvl. if you even suggest this method in a less geared group, i’m out. not worth the repair bill.
Honestly? We’ve been able do the fight from the entrance with little to no issue, and we’re talking barely Ulduar 10 geared folks. Just gotta remember to keep the ranged dps mobs under control, CC where possible, interrupt repeatedly and yer golden. *shrug* I don’t mean to sound arrogant, but if you put your healers in the back of the corridor (right as you enter the instance) and somehow someone actually gets to them, SOMEONE isn’t doing their job right. *shrug*
While I agree that this is likely the most difficult 5man in game right now, I disagree that it should be nerfed. We have all gotten used to being massively overgeared for other heroics. I am actually happy to have a challenging 5man again to run. As more and more frost/triumph badge gear is passed out and as people become more familiar with the instance it will naturally get easier. Hopefully they leave it alone.
Sorry for the warrior talk on a paladin blog but I just wanted to drop some tips in here, pretty sure a few bits will apply to other classes as well.
As a warrior tank that has done this a few times now I have to say that it is possible, just not a face roll like we’ve come to expect with wotlk heroics. Some good suggestions in other places especially about kill order.
My main tip is to pick up the melee mobs first with thunderclap, they can one shot your clothies so need to be your initial focus. After that a quick silence with a shield bash or heroic throw on any mages and you should be ok to group them up with the melee. The hunters can be left for a while and have the other mobs dragged over to them once you have rounded them all up. Just keep an eye out for shadow stepping mercenaries. Save your first shockwave until you have at least 3 mobs in front of you, the aggro lead it gives you isn’t worth wasting on less than 3 mobs.
DPS can help by thinking a bit less about their dps and a bit more about any cc skills they have or misdirects etc. That can really help your tank out a lot.
A couple of talent points in imp spell reflect can do wonders here to but that’s not that common in a lot of builds.
I don’t think this is an attempt by Blizzard to make tanking difficult. I think it is an opportunity for dps to step it up a notch. Tanking and healing all three of the new ICC 5 mans is SO much easier when you have dps that know how to use their moves that don’t do damage (they usually forget about those). Shackle and Ice trap make a world of difference on falric and marwin mobs. Not to mention a well played Death Grip is like heaven to me when i’m taking. Windhshear, Counterspell, Kick etc. Even using slow on the casters helps reduce the damage they do a lot.
From my experience it is of paramount importance to wait until the tank has the entire wave in melee range before opening dps. I would order my group into the corner, as far as they can squeeze into it, and not to spread out or open dps until I say so, which will not be until I have hit each and every mob with SoR, AV, judgment, consecrate or all of the above. This will only take a few seconds, if I’m standing my back to the wall in that corner. Generally, unless you have a hunter in your group, nobody would ever have to move an inch during the entire event, until the boss comes out. With a hunter, I asked her to stay where I’m standing until I have the mages, and then scooch back along the wall, staying at minimal range. We did wipe miserably with a group where the healer just had to move away from the corner and expose herself to incoming mages on every wave. On successful runs I had the healer standing in the corner facing the wall the whole time. Once the tank has sufficiently pissed off the mobs, it becomes an AoE fest. It is a very healing intensive fight, though, so be sure to praise your healer when you’re done, he deserves it!
I dunno if any of these posts actually talked to their healer to make it a little easier on them. Getting the mobs pissed off is easy enough, but idenitifying the problem points and solving it with your group is key to making this fight a little easier on the healer.
I find that stacking up in the corner is probably the worst due to the flamestrike attack from the mage, the frost from the hunter, and the aoe from the priest hitting everyone.
We also noticed the footman, when he hits, hits for about 13k every few seconds. One he is disarmed or disabled (dead) this fight is really a lot easier. We went from having problems keeping everyone up, to everyone staying at full health for the most part.
Also any melee in this fight, make sure the tank has aggro on the footman (he will be gathering up the ranged and might not be able to re-target maybe as quickly. But if he gets on you, he his really hard. Disarming, stunning or whatever the footman was the biggest problem. Staying out the mage flamestrike, and the ranged keeping back will help a lot here. Single target kills are important here as AOE forces the healer to keep you and everyone up a lot longer in full dmg.
I personally haven’t healed it on heroic, but my healer is very honest with me and I try to make it as easy as possible for him, as after getting aggro, thats my most important priority.
For all tanks that have difficulties with this instance (and I completely understand it’s much harder for warriors and druids than for paladins), try to find a good disc priest as a healer and it will be a cake walk. Why ? Simply because the priest can shield the whole group before each wave, which mean 0 aggro for him for about 10s as he’s not healing at all, and plenty of time for you to get threat while still having a full life group.
I did try it on my disc priest yesterday with a warrior tank and it was way way easier than on my holy pally, even with slightly less gear.
Only difficulty for the priest is the rogue poisons, but once again shields prevent damage, which counters the bad healing reducing poison as you have less healing to do in the end.
When threat is a problem damage reduction wins by a long shot.
I’m at my wit’s end with this heroic. I’m a Pally tank, and have tried every strategy posted, from LoS to Setting up a secondary tanking spec that includes SoComm. I still have not passed it, and cannot fo the life of me figure out why. My threat meters say I have all the threat, yet the DPS keeps getting killed off. Last time i tanked this I was holding off 3 waves at once, then good ol’ Falric decided to jump in the fray. Is it bad luck with DPS? Is it me?
Shaphat: like many people have noted in this forum before, there are a lot of tricks that can make this encounter easier, if the group doesn’t have the brute force to just aoe them all. First of all, what’s your gear level? I have done it with mostly lvl 226 gear, with some 232/245 and a couple of lvl200 epics, with every possible food buff/scroll/flask I could put on myself, and I think I’m on the low end of acceptable gear combination. I’d say you need to have a minimum of 40-42k buffed hp, about 26k armor and over 45% avoidance to pull it off. Judging by the fact that you were falling behind on the waves, you really had a low dps issue. I’d say each dpser must produce at least 2.7k focused dps (that’s an average over all the encounters, I didn’t measure the dps during the event, but I would imagine it must have been over 3k each). Combined with your own 2.5k dps it should do the trick of killing the waves rapidly and providing 10-15 sec pauses in between. Also, you may have an issue with overpowered or trigger-happy dps, or dpsers not hiding out of LoS in the beginning of each wave. They may (and, depending on how much abuse your healer can take, should) fan out later. Basically, if anyone but you pulls the initial aggro on any of the mobs, the chance of a wipe increases tremendously. Of course, a strong healer can make all the difference. I’ve done it with priest and druid healers, I’d imagine a shammy will shine in this fight also. Probably a pally healer is at a bit of a disadvantage here, due to the large amount of aoe damage. Cleansing is important; if you have a druid or shammy (or pally) healer who’s on the ball with cleanses, you’re good. If you see a poison ticking for more that a few seconds, burn a gcd to cleanse it yourself, at least from yourself. Last but not least, your threat meter only shows threat on one target. Xperl unitframes provide better visualization of who’s being an aggro target and who’s taking dot damage.
What ever happened to CC…..Crowd control for those of you that never raided at 70. Its actually possible to immobilize mobs so you can kill the rest of them and then focus 1 or 2 quickly afterwards. Just check yous spellbook I promise there are abilities in there that will do just this. And yes it does even make a difference when they come in waves like this instance. I know it sounds foreign but it really works!
As a paladin tank, I can honestly say I’ve never heard of crowd control.
THANK YOU to all tanks that talk about Crowd Control. As a pre-BC built mage and also now Holy/Prot Pally, I am so freaking tired of people asking me why I am silencing the priest(on my mage) and Holy Wrathing after the tank has hold of stuff or Hammer of Justicing the priest or mage everytime I see them the CD is up when I am healing. I also turn evil like a fool. I have been sucessful with druids, warriors and paladins, and I have died with them too. This isn’t soly about the tank so don’t knock yourselves- Post BC built players were cheated out of gamesmanship and at least in the 5 man perspective, this is the one place to bring it all back. All the gear in the world and the best tank on the planet cannot save your group if you are not intent on team work in the first ten waves of this instance. You can take that back to the graveyard with you folks. From the tanks perspective, take a few moments to go over strategy with your group even in randoms. We are now so overgeared and chain running all the other heroics that this place is a wake up call. Do what you need to do. Have your priests shackle, your hunters trap (did you ever wonder what that skill was for- Post BC guys?) Just slow the faceroll down. That is crowd control. And for god’s sake, mark the target with the macro so they have something to focus on. I rely on tank target on both my toons for judgements and DPS unless I have a kill order. Basically learn to work with strangers. =-) That is gamesmanship!
I came looking because my buddy is having a hard time with her Prot pally in this instance. She decided to do a dual prot spec with more emphasis on the AOE right down the the glyphs with the extension of Consecrate, etc. I hate to say that I bubble from the start just to ensure she’s got it under control because the interrupts of the alcove method are certain death for me and my group. I am that healer that has to get out of the corner, so to all the rest of you… sorry. They are coming after me anyway so at least you get a chance to get between them and me and the DPS can see them coming at me. I will not personally tank this instance yet because my gear is like tinfoil atm as my focus has been holy.