Raging Spirits are bastards
I was watching Week 3 of Big Crits (words can not express how much I love this show) and a moment that really stuck out to me was when they were working on the Lich King and their tank was having issues with the Raging Spirits. My sympathy goes to that guy, cause boy howdy those Spirits are huge pains in the butt.
They spawn during the transition phases, immediately knocking down whoever they are cloned from and if not quickly picked up they’ll murder someone in close range. This makes transitions something of a panic time for me. I’m watching DXE to tell me when a new Raging Spirit has been cast, the name of the target (though that seldom helps since I don’t know where these people were standing), and then frantically searching the screen for the Spirit to appear.
I’ve found that the threat plates addon I have is immensely helpful, because as the Spirits appear and grow larger the bar is huge, easy to click on, and easy to grab. Which, then of course brings up the second issue: threat.
My dps are great but they can be very trigger happy. Like, they could beat Dick Cheney in a “shoot a rich guy in the face” contest. So to speak. Anyway, we had several occasions where as soon as the Raging Spirit came up they immediately went to town. I get parried, suddenly fall behind in threat in that crucial first three seconds, and the Spirit manages to disintegrate one of them. On another occasion or two, someone at range would end up out-threating me in that initial window, the mob would turn and then nuke a whole column of the raid. Not pretty.
The best solution I can think of is to force the dps to count to three before they open fire. That seemed to work well in the latter part of the raid night.
Anyway, don’t mind me, I’m just a man-obsessed right now. I am so ridiculously pumped to get back on the Frozen Throne next Wednesday and finally put this to bed.
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But Rhi…how can you expect our dps to count to three? To COUNT!?!?!? You know our dps can’t count :-P Also, I will get a vent recording of you admitting your fault on a wipe one of these days…you mark my words, lol
@Rhidach
28 May 2010 at 2:07 pm #
I’m going to start communicating when it’s my fault through interpretive in-game dance. YOU WILL NEVER CATCH ME.
Oh yes I will…you will say it at some point…you will slip up
maybe it helps: i have righteous defense binded on 1 of my mouse buttons in clique so I just need to know who will get Spirit, and click on it on grid.
We had the very same issue. This is how we fixed it and we’ve had very few issues since.
Impress upon your DPS the importance of not dying; by this I mean they need to be watching for the spawn and getting away from it. If they stand beside the spirit and die, it is their fault, period. Also, if you have the raid composition, set up a tricks/MD rotation.
Second, the way the spawn works, the spirits have an aggro table as grow and it resets when they activate. Timing here is everything; your best bet is to throw out a taunt in the second or so between them no longer growing and them activating. This way even though the threat table resets, the fixate on them is still in effect, giving you enough time to hit them with a judgement or avenger’s shield.
Basically what we figured out is that two Paladin tanks is a terrible composition for this particular phase of the fight. We have no gap closer (Charge/Death Grip) and we can’t drop Death and Decay on the spawn points to gain initial aggro. But, nonetheless, it can be done with some perseverance, so keep at it!
Best of luck! The first kill is an amazing feeling on that fight, just because of the scope of the fight itself. So, so epic.
@Anafielle
30 May 2010 at 11:25 am #
“the way the spawn works, the spirits have an aggro table as grow and it resets when they activate. Timing here is everything; your best bet is to throw out a taunt in the second or so between them no longer growing and them activating. This way even though the threat table resets, the fixate on them is still in effect, giving you enough time to hit them with a judgement or avenger’s shield.”
Yes. I noticed this too and I can’t believe I didn’t see it sooner. I used to taunt as they spawned, and they’d be happily aggro’d on me as they grew, and then as soon as they activated they’d be big and red and I’d have to blow another taunt. Then I was out of taunts when the DPS pulled off me a second later. I was definitely out of taunts a lot in that phase and I know it’s because I was taunting at the wrong time (too early).
The positioning people have mentioned (getting your ass away from the spawning spirit if you’re a dps, etc) might help if we have not been doing that.
We pallys may not have a gap closer, but DBM does call out the target so I can run my ass over there if it’s ranged. :) We don’t need no gap closer! LEGWORK!
Honestly for all my whining about them they aren’t *that* bad. It’s not a phase of the fight that wipes us. But it should still be done much more cleanly and without silencing/cleaving the whole raid.
As much as I want the dps to lay off if we’re silenced, I also want them dead ASAP because there is nothing more annoying than dragging a live Raging Spirit around in phase 2. So anything to get & hold threat right helps so the dps can actually kill the damn things.
Generally, I rely on the rogue partnered to me to tricks while I taunt/AvSh/Judge and they move to me. That way I don’t have to worry about finicky positioning and cleaving the raid, nor do I have to worry overmuch about the trigger happy DPS (And boy are my DPS trigger happy… Good luck holding off a Shadow Priest pulling 13k with only a judgement!). Of course, if they’re nearby, Consecration helps a lot in grabbing initial aggro.
Having the DPS move will, I promise you, make things move much more smoothly. We went from losing people regularly to laggy aggro, or hits that simply should not have been possible, to it only happening when the DPS were dumb enough to stand around.
As irritating as it is to have to tank the Raging’s into Phase 2, it actually not a bad idea because it keeps your DPS in practice for when you have 1 or 2 up after the second transition. Keep those lazy DPS busy!
Ugg Raging Spirits! It took me a good hour of wiping before I figured out how to pick them up before they killed 3 people. Made me feel like such a bad tank (as if I didn’t feel like that enough!) until I noticed that it took most of our other tanks about as long to get good at snatching up spirits.
My co-tank made me use Glyph of Righteous Defense and of Avengers Shield for that fight, which helped A LOT.
From a healers’ point of view, it’s easy to see when a Spirit spawns near you and to put enough distance between you and it so that if you do get healing aggro, you can kite them until a tank secures them. I would assume it’s the same for dps.
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Call me crazy, but I thought being a paladin tank on this part of the fight made things easier. I was able to drop a consecrate underneath them while they were growing, and as long as I stood there with it, they aggro’d me immediately.
demand everyone waits for 5 sunders
As somebody who has never played a tank before I believe I can speak authoritatively on the matter.
Certain skills can be capped i.e. hit for casters that enable the individual to maximize the potential of their class.
If blizzard were to implement related skills to the tanking profession it might make certain frustrations a little less on all the raid members promised free loot and no effort.
Two skills might accomplish this:
The first might prevent your attacks from being parried to ensure a more predictable generation and retention of threat.
The second, related to THAC0 reduction, could guarantee that your attacks would hit, giving no quarter to the vindictive GMs, always watching and waiting as they load the RNG dice.
I have posted several suggestions in the Cataclysm forums that the developers make allowances for such stats to be tested and integrated into the game, perhaps on gear.
At the end of the day I am assured that whatever the stresses that reducing your effective health by maxing out these stats may give to the healers, that they will prove themselves worthy to the occasion.
A tactic that works great for my raiding community is to reverse the roles: the tanks stand in one spot, everyone else does the running. Tanks stand next to each other so each can handle a Spirit without blasting each other. Usually, we stand close to where the platform breaks off, with our backs towards LK. That way, we can simply take a few steps backward when he shatters the edge of the platform.
Whoever gets a Raging Spirit runs straight in front of the tanks (just about at judgement range). A taunt and avenger’s shield or judgement is then enough to pick up the Spirit and make it stick to you. No running, and a lot less hassle trying to look where the next Spirit will spawn.
And yeah, nameplates are absolute win on those bastards. :)
Our heroic raid comp had 1 rogue, and 2 hunters. What we did for raging spirits was have the rogue use Tricks on Spirits 1 and 3, and one designated hunter use MD on Spirits 2 (and 4). While the hunter was MDing, our elemental shaman helped cover the orbs, which is normally hunter-duty.
It’s helpful to assign the threat transfers, otherwise your rogues will tend to instinctively all tricks the first spirit, and leave the tank hanging on the second spirit.
The tank for said spirits also made every effort to do as much threat as possible, and melee minimized cleave for the first second or two after spawning.
Hope this helps, good luck.
I had a spirit eat my face last night and thought of you fondly, Rhidach. :P
I SWEAR I HADN’T TOUCHED IT.
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[...] the time I meant aggro on the Raging Spirits, whom I hate, as you know, but everyone took that more [...]