[Twin Valkyrie] Preparation for Boss #4

[Florisia]

We have tanked the twins right on top of each other from day one, to maximize dps. As for the orbs and the coordination, we stack the group with all one color minus four people to "soak" the opposite color. If you are not stacking the twins on top of each other, you are missing out on a lot of splash damage.

Also even with the damage penalty of being the same color essence as the mob that you are hitting, you should have no problem doing a good deal of damage. We dont swap colors in HM and still can beat through 1.2 million during the cast with ease.

Finally the damage bonus from twins pact is not even noticeable any more for me, but that may be because I like avoidance.

Glad to know my thinking isn't crazy. I looked around for a lot of ideas for this, but stacking them on top of each other just seemed to be the best idea. You go from dealing 150% to damage to 200% in splash damage(Because of shared health pools), and even as we were doing it last night, I didn't even notice they had power of the twins until I stopped and looked at the buffs during the pact.

I think we're gonna aim to do this one come friday. Or group composition is a (Heals) Shaman, Druid, and Priest, with me(Prot Pally) and a Druid tanking, with a hunter, mage, warlock, DK and a rogue on full time DPS, so I think we're fairly well balanced. All three of our healers offspec DPS and are fairly well geared for it, so we may even be able to devote one of them to DPS considering we'll all be in close quarters, as opposed to being 60+ yards away.

[Joanadark]

Does anyone know how much less damage someone does to one of the twins when they have their own color? I can't seem to find it anywhere.

As far as I know, it's 50% less damage, while being of the opposite color is 50% more damage, both as applied to your base damage. So that makes it 50% damage when the same color, and 150% damage when the opposite color.

Thanks. That's a huge help.

Our guild just got to this encounter, and we were working on a strategy. It seems there's no major reason to keep the twins apart, as far as I can tell. The buffs they get aren't constant, and even so, they're not even that serious. A good healer can easily heal a tank through an additional 20% damage done.

I was thinking because they have a shared health pool, classes that have abilities that normally do damage to adjacent targets, or with high-powered AOEs might be able to cause a significant amount of damage if the two were close enough. Example: Consecration does 300 damage against a normal target per tick. It would do 450 against one valkyr, and 150 against another valkyr, totalling 600 damage a tick to their total health pool. Hammer of Righteousness would do 1.5k on a normal target(Not really sure how much I do off hand with it). With both Val'kyrs near by, it would cause 2,250 to one, and 750 to the other, totaling 3k damage, so on a so forth.

If tanked in between two of the portal things that are close to each other, it should still allow people to swap quickly for vortexes, and would even promote a much more rapid response to Twin Pact. Can anyone see any major problems with this idea that I could be overlooking?

Vortexes are zone wide, so there's no additional risk that's there that wasn't already there.
Spheres would have people of both colors near by to absorb. If done right, it would actually reduce the number of people grabbing the wrong ones.
The damage bonus during twin pact doesn't seem significant enough to really worry about the two val'kyr's distance from each other.

Any ideas?

Many cleave abilities like Blade Flurry and Sweeping Strikes actually deal FULL damage to the wrong color add if your initial attacks are done to the correct color add.
So, for example, a combat rogue attuned dark can burn a shield on the dark add for 100% damage instead of 50% by simply attacking the Light add and using Blade Flurry.

[fafhrd]

Many cleave abilities like Blade Flurry and Sweeping Strikes actually deal FULL damage to the wrong color add if your initial attacks are done to the correct color add.
So, for example, a combat rogue attuned dark can burn a shield on the dark add for 100% damage instead of 50% by simply attacking the Light add and using Blade Flurry.

This was the case initially, but quite a lot of logs have been posted showing the blade flurried damage now hitting for reduced damage.

There's still a LOT of people claiming both sides of the issue though, so I'd recommend you get your own logs and check for yourself if you're having issues with breaking shields.

[Florisia]

Part of the reason why I want to tank them togeather is so that all of the DPS can rapidly switch to break shields. I don't think we had hat many problems with it when we tried it last, it's just that I'd rather them break the shield, DPS her hard, and then go back to what they were doing more quickly.

[Chicken]

Finally the damage bonus from twins pact is not even noticeable any more for me, but that may be because I like avoidance.

They only get the buff from it these days when the other one is casting a heal anyway, so you can easily counter it with cooldowns.

[Dane]

Here's one for you guys...in 10 man, we all take the light essence, and focus on Darkbane, except for the other tank, who tanks Lightbane, and of course, goes dark. We only switch if Darkbane casts Dark Vortex, in which case, everyone but Darkbane's tank (me) switches to Dark Essence, and dps's Lightbane.

Thus, only heals from the target currently being dps'd get interrupted. If it's the non-dps target, we just ignore them, and the fight lasts a bit longer. We've never come up on the enrage timer.

Now, we got to the 25 man last night, and it just doesn't seem like it's a very viable strategy. I'm thinking we should split the raid up? We did only make two attempts, so it might just be people adjusting. (We also had a pug trying to claim that the shields were colorblind, which reading here has countered.)

Thoughts?

[fafhrd]

On 25 you can generally only afford to let a heal get off if it's the first special (so you basically only lose 25% damage done, but get to save your cooldowns for later specials). I think we pulled it off once with it being the 2nd special too, and getting really lucky with subsequent specials.

So yes, either split the raid somewhat (we found just having 3 hunters and 3 rogues being the opposite color the whole fight was sufficient to easily break all shields without anyone switching colors through the fight), or if you want everyone to remain one color, make sure people save all cooldowns for breaking the same-color shields, and are on the target already dpsing before any specials that may be a same-color shield - they are quite hard to break on 25 when all your DPS are doing 50% reduced damage.

Or you could learn one of the IMO harder to execute but more robust strategies where people switch colors often.

[Dane]

So, for progression (yes...we're behind), would you suggest that we split up the raid, and in the event of a shield, does the dps that's on the other twin switch polarity AND target? Or just target, and do 50% less damage?

Keep in mind, we've got a fair number of pugs, so we just want to drop them before people get impatient...real strat learning can wait for when we have a full guild group.

Thanks!

[Belloc]

So, for progression (yes...we're behind), would you suggest that we split up the raid, and in the event of a shield, does the dps that's on the other twin switch polarity AND target? Or just target, and do 50% less damage?

Keep in mind, we've got a fair number of pugs, so we just want to drop them before people get impatient...real strat learning can wait for when we have a full guild group.

Thanks!

If your raid's DPS is split in half between the colors, there is absolutely no need to switch polarities. Simply have everyone DPS the shielded target and, assuming you had enough DPS to clear to the Twin Val'kyr, the shield will fade with time to spare.

We usually have melee one color and casters the other... but last time we tried that, the split wasn't even. We wiped and added a paladin to the caster group and that balanced it out.

[Dane]

Well, that strat was going fine last night...we got the shields down without people switching polarities and everything.

What ended up killing us was the vortexes. At first, we thought people weren't switching, but after a little research, I'm wondering if it might have been Unleashed Light/Dark that was nuking us down? What's the solution there? Heavy raid heals on the people switching polarities? Is it possible that that's even our problem, or am I grasping at straws?

Unfortunately, even though I log all raids, I didn't get last night. Looks like my log was full. I've cleared it for future attempts now though.

[Meloree]

Well, that strat was going fine last night...we got the shields down without people switching polarities and everything.

What ended up killing us was the vortexes. At first, we thought people weren't switching, but after a little research, I'm wondering if it might have been Unleashed Light/Dark that was nuking us down? What's the solution there? Heavy raid heals on the people switching polarities? Is it possible that that's even our problem, or am I grasping at straws?

Unfortunately, even though I log all raids, I didn't get last night. Looks like my log was full. I've cleared it for future attempts now though.

We DSac and opposite colour aura mastery all vortexes. So, Dark Vortex gets a DSac, and a Fire Resistance aura mastery. Light Vortex gets a DSac and a Shadow Resistance aura mastery. We found that during vortexes, while soakers/catchers/half the dps and healers are running around switching colours we were at our most vulnerable, and the DSac/Aura Mastery significantly reduces the danger. It's one of the things that really stabilized the fight for us.

[Belloc]

Well, that strat was going fine last night...we got the shields down without people switching polarities and everything.

What ended up killing us was the vortexes. At first, we thought people weren't switching, but after a little research, I'm wondering if it might have been Unleashed Light/Dark that was nuking us down? What's the solution there? Heavy raid heals on the people switching polarities? Is it possible that that's even our problem, or am I grasping at straws?

Unfortunately, even though I log all raids, I didn't get last night. Looks like my log was full. I've cleared it for future attempts now though.

In other words, they're getting hit by orbs.

I've only done the fight a few times in a non-tank capacity, but it's amazing how easy it actually is to not get hit by orbs. I think the biggest problem is that players only consider themselves when avoiding orbs. What they need to do, however, is consider the other people around them. If someone else pops an orb, it can still hit you.

So, anyway, feel free to pop an aura mastery or a divine sac on vortex... but the raid definitely needs to stop running into orbs.

[Dane]

Is the Unleashed Light/Dark damage the AoE from the orbs? I wasn't able to find the source on Wowwiki, and thought it might be from switching polarities...like if you've been absorbing light balls, and have to switch to dark to avoid a vortex, you take damage from the energy you've absorbed. Like I said...it was a desperate theory. I didn't have the logs, and I was looking for any reason why those who switch for Vortex are going down pretty much RIGHT as they switch.

I don't think anyone had fire/shadow aura up either. We'll have to try that for the next attempt.

This is SO much easier on 10 man, but either way, it's fun fight.

[Belloc]

Is the Unleashed Light/Dark damage the AoE from the orbs? I wasn't able to find the source on Wowwiki, and thought it might be from switching polarities...like if you've been absorbing light balls, and have to switch to dark to avoid a vortex, you take damage from the energy you've absorbed. Like I said...it was a desperate theory. I didn't have the logs, and I was looking for any reason why those who switch for Vortex are going down pretty much RIGHT as they switch.

I don't think anyone had fire/shadow aura up either. We'll have to try that for the next attempt.

This is SO much easier on 10 man, but either way, it's fun fight.

It's the orbs. Switching polarities will not cause you any harm.

[Dane]

Hmmm, it wasn't Unleashed Light/Dark that was killing us then. I watched people drop dead who definately weren't getting hit.

I'm thinking raid heals just needed to step it up. People still take damage in Vortex, even if they're attuned...just not as much.

One last thing. People didn't like my stacking strat, because they said the balls home in on the group. Is that accurate, or do they spawn, and travel on a straight-line vector?