[25] I Choose You, Steelbreaker

[Splug]

I used an ironshield potion (or whatever they're called at 80, I can never remember - indestructible?) but that's about it for special consumables. I sit at 38k and change for unbuffed health.

Cooldown rotation was: IBF -> AMS -> explode, soulstone, Divine Protection -> Hand of Salvation + (external) Hand of Sacrifice -> explode -> IBF + Guardian Spirit -> AotD -> Guardian Spirit + Hand of Sacrifice + AMS

-Splug

[Falibard]

Thanks Splug.

Having a good idea going in as to how we need to chain cooldowns will be a big help. I always forget that AotD is a pretty potent cooldown too.

[PsiVen]

Nailed it tonight. I know I mentioned at some point that it was three meltdowns to kill him, and I was wrong: the 4th tank phase is very much doable, and I assume that many of the guilds killing him without pet tanks have done it this way -- the nerf from 25 to 30 sec phases makes it possible to have maybe one raid death during the final phase, or with a little more DPS we could have burned him down in 3. Each tanking phase after the first will see 2 fusion punches that must be cooldowned and dispelled instantly. The first phase lasts longer because there is some time between the full-heal and the first Overwhelming Power cast. As long as the punches are dispelled quickly, there is no need for any cooldowns at all here.

After some clutch <10% wipes due to raid deaths, we got it with two tanks, myself and our DK Gdp (with two battlerezzes). Here was our setup:

1st phase - Paladin, no cooldowns used
2nd phase - Deathknight, AMS, IBF
3rd phase - Paladin, DP, Salv + external Bubble+Sac
4th phase - Deathknight, burning every personal cooldown on melee damage and taking GS and PS for Fusion Punches, Imp LoH buff

It worked out similarly with 3 tanks, and if you have them available I recommend learning with them because you will burn through fewer soulstones/rebirths. It also makes the first phase a little safer as an unholy DK leading off can use his CDs twice. Unglyphed Shield Wall is an advantage here.


As for phases 1 & 2: We killed Runemaster first for a few reasons. As mentioned a while ago, the rune of power is a very dangerous thing to try and stack people in for DPS when Steelbreaker is chucking his lightning death around. Even trying Runemaster second but ignoring runes altogether, Death Runes caused far more problems than Lightning Whirl did. Our P3 positioning ended up with everyone except 5 healers and any hunters hugging his arse. Hunters got beacons, and the healers soaked with glyphed PoH spam through the last minute. The tanks stood at opposing corners of a triangle with the raid, taunting at <5 seconds remaining to keep Steelbreaker from drifting while we back away to die.

Enjoy this NSFW vid from our resident kitty DPS: http://www.wegame.com/watch/Heroic_I_ch ... elbreaker/

[Varmin]

I know in 10m it's possible to have a warrior with the 37/0/34 spec tank, then when he receives the buff he just goes completely ape s*** on the boss to help with dps. Can you do something similar in 25m or does he hit like a freight truck on a warrior giving up that much in the prot tree?

He hits significantly harder in 25man. The 10m version is really much easier than the 25man version.

Though our guild has very exceptional DPS, our current strat is taking 3tanks, with 1 brezzed to make the DPS requirement much easier.

[cordelia]

Does anyone know if tank hearthing has been nerfed?

[Falibard]

Does anyone know if tank hearthing has been nerfed?

Yes.

[Joanadark]

We actually only us two tanks, with 1 rez. This week we killed him 10-seconds before the third meltdown exploded, allowing our tanks to scream like a tribal warrior in vent and chase people to blow them up.
With the duration nerf the DPS requirement is nowhere near what it was.

[cordelia]

Reports from my 10-man group are coming back, and they are saying that when the tank dies from Meltdown, he was not getting healed via Electrical Charge. They say he still gained the +damage debuff, but not the heal.

Has anyone else seen this? Or were they all just blind and missed the heal?

Has anyone done 25 recently and seen similar behavior?

[Joanadark]

Havn't seen anything like that, no.
Could be a glitch. Or your DPS is just really good and it looked like there wasnt a heal. The heal is only 15% now remember, and that gets halfed by MS/wound poison.

[cordelia]

None of them had a recount or combatlog to show me. I'm going to chalk it up to not paying attention.

Doing the math on 4 tanks over 120 seconds, with 3 heals, you need a raid dps of 102k to kill him. Assuming 2 tanks, 5 heals, that comes out to 5,700 average DPS. I'm unconvinced our guild can pull this off without a Rune of Power.

Thus, I've decided to try Storm > Rune > Steel for an hour or so to see if our healers and dps are smart enough to handle P2 with Runemaster up.

Does the following strategy sound viable?

Runemaster and Steelbreaker are initially tanked close together in the center of the room so that melee and tanks all stay in melee range of Steelbreaker, insuring no Static Disruption is cast on them.

All ranged and healers stay 10 yds apart from each other and 30 yds from melee, using dbm /distance meters, just in case. During Rune of Death, they run out and reposition elsewhere.

When Rune of Death is cast on melee, all melee move in the same direction, lengthwise along the room. A ret pally immediately bubble-sacrifices the raid. We can run 2 ret pallies, and this allows 2 runes to get cast on melee. The sacrifice allows melee to move as a group within melee range of Steelbreaker, avoiding Static Disruption.

When Runemaster hits 10%, DPS slow. Steelbreaker is positioned exactly 10 yds away from Runemaster, dps all collapse exactly on top of steelbreaker's position. Healers become Static Disruption soaker now. Bring Runemaster to 1% and all-stop.

On Rune of Power cast, the Tank pulls Steelbreaker towards Runemaster, insuring that he enters typical melee distance from the rest of the raid. Once the Rune of Power is down, ranged finishes off Runemaster, and melee immediately start in on Steelbreaker, swapping to Runemaster's old position if the Rune of Power is there.

Heroism and win.

Is phase 2 doable with this strategy? Why did so many early guilds have so many issues with Storm>Rune>Steel. It seems to me that with the normal Steel > Rune > Storm strategy we deal with phase 2 runemaster all the time. Now, instead of the occasional chain lightning and 1-2 ticks of lightning whirl, ranged has to deal with Static Disruption. Aura Mastery with Shadow Prot can also help instead of Bubble-Sacrifice for Rune of Death on melee.

Also, is Rune of Death player targeted or entirely randomly placed?






Rune of Death should be cast 3 times. If cast on ranged/healz in maxrange, they runout and reposition.

[Joanadark]

Doing the math on 4 tanks over 120 seconds, with 3 heals, you need a raid dps of 102k to kill him. Assuming 2 tanks, 5 heals, that comes out to 5,700 average DPS. I'm unconvinced our guild can pull this off without a Rune of Power.

Considering 40 of those 120 seconds will be 'Lusted with Shattering Throws up, either you are greatly underestimating your DPS, or they are utter crap and shouldn't be at that level of content until the L2P.

5.7k DPS sustained, without heroism, is low-end.

[Donahu]

Stopping at 1%...

God, I admire your raid if they can pull this off. It is a f'ing miracle to get my raid to stop DPS on Lashers for 4 seconds to reset stacks. Hell, even Yogg-Saron's adds - DPS stop call is made when they are at 300k, sometimes they still die before they make it to middle, but those are my problems .

P2 positioning and Rune of death movement. That seems really iffy here. I would imagine that you would get unlucky enough a few times that your Steelbreaker tank would get gibbed here. He still hits like a truck even during P2. Too much raid dmg going on or too much movement and it's very easy to get a gib here or make the tank waste a CD early on. These are just my thoughts (we're working on this but go with the Runemaster dying first currently).

Five healers for this one seems a little light too for the raid healing needed. Maybe I just need to work on our healers a bit more >.<.

I'm interested to see how it goes with your positioning though, let us know!

[Threatco]

Why is it a DPS race?

With Brez and Soulstones you can have a lot of tanks take the buff and blow up. Even with just 2 actual tanks.

[Donahu]

Each time someone dies, he gets healed up.

In addtion to that he gets a Damage buff that affects ALL his moves.

I'm not sure on the % right now as I am at work, but the tank would be getting one-shot by the fifth stack (He already is at 3/4 without cooldowns, 5 would be one shot with cooldowns).

That's not to mention his other moves, such as the consistant pulse damage (lots of raid dmg going on now) and the spark he sends out randomly targetting a ranged and increasing their Nature dmg received by 75% (which would be one shotting ranged at that point too I'm sure).

[Joanadark]

Why is it a DPS race?

With Brez and Soulstones you can have a lot of tanks take the buff and blow up. Even with just 2 actual tanks.

He gets a damage increase each time someone in the raid dies. This includes the tanks with Meltdown expiring. The 3 and 4th tanks are not going to survive without cooldowns of some sort running on them 100% of the time. The 5th is going to get 1-shotted through shield wall.