[10/25] Ruby Sanctum - Halion

[pfunkmort]

ember damage can be blocked and resisted...don't forget the possibility of a block libram, and a resist enchant or two.

I usually go AS > HotR > RD on a holy paladin with RF going > HoR > sac on the pally if necessary until my taunts are back up...with command running...when I tank embers (albeit we haven't killed it), and it is annoying but it works. It would get frustrating doing that with two sets of adds at once, I think.

[Meloree]

Tricks is good, helpful, and advised. If you don't have tricks, you're in for a pretty hellish P3. Just pick up as much as possible as early as possible, and try not to let the healers get more than 1-2 at a time on them, and they'll probably live.

Also, a few more questions for the players from guilds who have killed it:
- How do guilds deal with the ember/living inferno combo? split dps? burn living inferno then embers? burn embers first?
- Which healing setup are you using in the fire realm. It feels like there is no damage for a while, and then there comes a burst (when adds spawn).
- When tanking the adds, I can use sind trinket, DP, but that's pretty much it. Salv feels dangerous, and DG is only 6 secs long (and I'm always scared to use it). The healer's CDs are going to the MT who is a warrior. Any ideas what can help?
- How many waves of adds are you seeing in phase 1? is pushing in two waves really important?
- How many waves are you seeing in phase 3?

- Mages, Boomkin AoE little adds. Rogue trickses then goes back on boss. Hunter MDs big add, then stays on it. Afflocks and SPs multidot Halion and big add. Elemental shaman stays on inferno until it dies. Boomkin keeps E&M up on big add, since it's usually out of range of unholy DK tank.
- We typically have 4 healers in fire - Holy Paladin, Resto Shaman, Holy Priest, Resto Druid.
- For little adds, make sure fire resist aura is up, and maybe use a resist flask. As far as I remember, it's all fire damage from the little guys. Armor gear isn't useful, avoidance gear still is.
- We've always seen 2 waves in P1. We saw a third once, and I shamed the DPS into not sucking. Other people have suggested that 3 waves make the enrage timer hard to hit, I can't comment there, I've always considered the enrage timer to not be in play at all. I actually didn't believe the fight had an enrage timer for a long time.
- No idea how many waves we see in P3, I've never counted. We never really got around to trying to figure out any benchmarks for P3, it basically just amounts to "stay in control and win".

[baff]

@inthedrops - Unfortunately (or fortunately ) you have listed my thoughts exactly. I don't understand the reasoning at all. He says that "I'm not removing a dpser from the shadow realm", and when I suggested switching him with another, I was met with a harsh "NO". If it makes you feel better, I'm probably more disturbed from this than you.

@pfunkmort - I have been using a block libram. I also found that picking up two sets of adds is very difficult (especially with the AoE cap on consecrate V. starfall).

[Vesc]

Tricks don't help with picking up the adds, you just have to taunt one, triple taunt another pack, AD some guys and pick up the rest with judgement and/Or HotR if you have lucky spawns near by.(RF holy paladin is always sexy)
even so I have a rogue or two with me in the normal realm, so that the moonkins and locks can AE earlier.

basically your GM shouldn't bother to use more dds in one phase than in another, halion isn't even close on hitting any enragetimer, so just control the adds, ae, burn the boss, watch the little %bar and don't get grilled form lazer beams ---> ??? ---> win.

[Arianne]

So we finally made it to the enrage timer today with 8 healers (4 per realm).... Now we need to figure out what we need to actually do to push a kill. Anyone have tips on increasing DPS? We're currently getting to about 80% before the 3rd meteor strike in phase 1. We'll probably drop a healer from fire/physical now that people have more of a clue I guess as well. Do you hold adds and burn at any point in time?

[Solitatis]

[20:14:48.125] Zillis Blood Corruption Halion Parry
[20:14:51.046] Zillis Blood Corruption Halion Parry
[20:15:07.718] Zillis Blood Corruption Halion Parry
[20:15:37.156] Zillis Blood Corruption Halion Parry
[20:15:39.953] Zillis Blood Corruption Halion Parry
[20:15:41.046] Zillis Shield of Righteousness Halion Parry
[20:15:57.375] Zillis Blood Corruption Halion Parry
[20:16:00.828] Zillis Blood Corruption Halion Parry
[20:16:01.890] Zillis Blood Corruption Halion Parry
[20:16:05.343] Zillis Blood Corruption Halion Parry

So can anyone explain to me how a dot can cause parry? or if this is just a bug in the WoL.

[Rhiannon]

Copypasta as that question seems to come up fairly frequently.

It's been known for a long time that the DoT application/refresh that occurs with each swing when you have seal of vengeance also has to go through its own roll on the melee hit table to determine if it connects or not. See this thread for more.

[Solitatis]

Copypasta as that question seems to come up fairly frequently.

It's been known for a long time that the DoT application/refresh that occurs with each swing when you have seal of vengeance also has to go through its own roll on the melee hit table to determine if it connects or not. See this thread for more.

Yes i see. well it has to be more than just that. For me to get that amount of parry, the DoT also have to ignore my experties, else some of them would be parryed i guess.

So use other zeal for tanking halion in HM or just off tank adds I guess? Sucks monkeys balls either way. or use toc gear to hit hardcap. will prolly be going for the last option.

[Rhiannon]

Why's it got to be more than that? I use an expertise hard capped set for tanking Halion twilight side and I get no parries. If I use the wrong food and am no longer hard capped, parries come back on all my abilities, not just the DoT application.

Edit:

Looking at the log in question: http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-p ... type+%3D+8

Does seem like an extraordinarily high number of parries off just that one ability ¬_¬.

Edit:

looking at some more of your logs, it looks like you just lost RNG on those tries. On your recent Saurfang and Sindragosa kills for example, the parry rate on the blood corruption application seems nothing out of the ordinary compared to the parry rate on your white swings for example.

[inthedrops]

So we finally made it to the enrage timer today with 8 healers (4 per realm).... Now we need to figure out what we need to actually do to push a kill. Anyone have tips on increasing DPS? We're currently getting to about 80% before the 3rd meteor strike in phase 1. We'll probably drop a healer from fire/physical now that people have more of a clue I guess as well. Do you hold adds and burn at any point in time?

* Try and get her to 75% before a 3rd wave gets to spawn.
* Once you're consistently getting to P2 with only two add spawns, start focusing on getting to P3 as quickly as possible.
* Once you're consistently getting to P3, start paying attention to dps balance between the realms. A sign that balance is off is when no one is dead but one side is forced to slow down.

So long as people are dying, you can't effectively work on any of those bullet points. So focus on individual mistakes before anything else. Stating the obvious no doubt

I see a trend where a lot of people in progressed guilds incorrectly assume that DPS in comparably progressed guilds will be about the same, and it's just NOT true. You may or may not have to consider the enrage timer for your guild.

Even on our second kill this week we were only about 40 seconds from enrage. Better, but still not something to be completely ignored.

[Blitzago]

So we finally made it to the enrage timer today with 8 healers (4 per realm).... Now we need to figure out what we need to actually do to push a kill. Anyone have tips on increasing DPS? We're currently getting to about 80% before the 3rd meteor strike in phase 1. We'll probably drop a healer from fire/physical now that people have more of a clue I guess as well. Do you hold adds and burn at any point in time?

* Try and get her to 75% before a 3rd wave gets to spawn.
* Once you're consistently getting to P2 with only two add spawns, start focusing on getting to P3 as quickly as possible.
* Once you're consistently getting to P3, start paying attention to dps balance between the realms. A sign that balance is off is when no one is dead but one side is forced to slow down.

So long as people are dying, you can't effectively work on any of those bullet points. So focus on individual mistakes before anything else. Stating the obvious no doubt

I see a trend where a lot of people in progressed guilds incorrectly assume that DPS in comparably progressed guilds will be about the same, and it's just NOT true. You may or may not have to consider the enrage timer for your guild.

Even on our second kill this week we were only about 40 seconds from enrage. Better, but still not something to be completely ignored.

Pretty much we do the same as this, I think we are running with 7 healers, 3 fire with 4 in shadow. Don't have a problem with enrage timers, infact I dont even know what the enrage timer is on this boss.

We use heroism to get him to 75% before the 3rd meteor.

[Arianne]

So we killed him last week, but I really think that was a pretty lucky kill. Looking over my Fraps of the fight, I was at 185 life at one point and sub 5k many times during the fight. I'm just not sure what more I can do to improve my survivability. I'm using CDs on cooldown pretty much (Sindy trinket while the inferno is up, key trinket on cooldown, 4piece t10 on cooldown, divine protection and divine guardian on cooldown, stoneskin on cooldown) and drinking an armor pot. We're being good about the corporeality meter and it never goes to 30/70. I looked over the parses and I haven't gotten many parries (and neither have the other melee upstairs), so I doubt that it can be attributed to a huge parry-haste effect. I'm wearing the gear set that I usually do, should I make any changes?

[Meloree]

So we killed him last week, but I really think that was a pretty lucky kill. Looking over my Fraps of the fight, I was at 185 life at one point and sub 5k many times during the fight. I'm just not sure what more I can do to improve my survivability. I'm using CDs on cooldown pretty much (Sindy trinket while the inferno is up, key trinket on cooldown, 4piece t10 on cooldown, divine protection and divine guardian on cooldown, stoneskin on cooldown) and drinking an armor pot. We're being good about the corporeality meter and it never goes to 30/70. I looked over the parses and I haven't gotten many parries (and neither have the other melee upstairs), so I doubt that it can be attributed to a huge parry-haste effect. I'm wearing the gear set that I usually do, should I make any changes?

Obviously you have 15 stam too many, and should switch it to avoidance. But don't switch more than 15 stam, then you would have been dead.

More seriously, for the cooldown rotation, I use Salv, DG, and DP reactively, as needed. I use 4t10 as the meteor is called and the healers are moving on alternate meteors (it's up for 1 out of 2), and I use Sindy trinket for the alternate meteor waves/large fire adds. It's important to understand the danger points, though, and not waste cooldowns covering for scary-but-safe situations. For example: If you take two back to back hits, and are sitting on ~10k hp, but your healers are all standing and chanelling, don't panic, trust the healers. If your main tank healer has fiery combustion and has to run, plus you take a hit and get dropped to half-health, that's a good time for one of your reactive cooldowns. You can expect other healers to start covering, but it's a dangerous time. If the whole raid is moving for meteor, and you take a big swing, it's a good time for a cooldown. However, this is a fight where you have lots of time to react to danger situations. If AD is available, you can generally trust that for most bad situations, and only worry about your cooldowns if it's already procced. Your healers are only ever out of commission for a couple of seconds at a time, AD basically clears out the danger situation because your healers will have reacted and topped you up before the next swing. I kind of like avoidance here, in my gearset (I know, I know), because almost all of the situations that cause me to burn cooldowns are caused by taking a hit while healers are moving or pre-occupied. Reducing the frequency of that occurance makes my cooldowns last longer.

Also, give your healers tons of warning about cooldown coverage when you're out. "Next Meteor, need <insert cooldown here>" 10 seconds before the meteor will ensure that you get it - or can call for another one if it's been used and you didn't notice. Again, though, AD is very powerful, and you can cover ALL 3 meteors with cooldowns in between AD proccing, and AD coming back up. You'll rarely need an outside cooldown.

[inthedrops]

It's important to understand the danger points, though, and not waste cooldowns covering for scary-but-safe situations.

Quoted for emphasis. This is a very deadly tank fight. Try to overcome the instinct of using cooldowns just because your health is low. Trust your healers to keep you up during the non dangerous parts.

[Arianne]

Generally I'm not dying during meteor though (when the raid is moving). Generally I'm dying during the phase where the adds are being DPS'd and I'm tanking both Halion and the Inferno, particularly if a line of fire runs through the raid and causes some damage to the ranged.

I frequently get AD triggered immediately starting phase 3 - we have one paladin healer outside with me and even though he's chain-casting HL, my health won't stabilize unless I use DP or until the other healers get outside. So quite frequently I end up in phase 3 with both DP and AD blown within 10s of starting the phase. He tends to hit me for ~26k (with a 2k block and a 2-4k SS absorb, so a base 30-32k hit) at that point (with vindication up) at 60% corporeality. The Inferno hits me for ~20k plus a 6k ticking aura and I'm usually tanking him the entire time MS is counting down (so 25s). I've gotten hit multiple times for 70-80k in 2s when my health is only 59k.

I don't currently have the Salv glyph and I honestly really hate that glyph, but I'll go get it and swap to a divinity based spec for the next time we do the fight.