[10H] Majordomo Staghelm

[timoseewho]

My guild will be working on heroic Majordomo Staghelm on 10-man starting next week and I just want to gather as much intel as I possibly can prior to the raid. As far as I know, the only change on heroic is http://www.wowhead.com/spell=98229. From what I understand, this 'buff' seems to be to help guilds with killing the boss in time before he wreaks havoc on us all. However, I don't see anything we can do to utilize this besides the first scorpion phase where his Fury stacks isn't high yet AND we can afford to have some DPS or maybe healers stack outside of the raid, and MAYBE even the second scorpion phase. I can see some players getting enough concentration during cat phases from good RNG but it seems impossible to plan out. So first off, what do you guys do to fully take advantage of this mechanic?

Since my guild pretty much wings the phase changes on regular and just do it by feel (usually 7-9 stacks for scorpion and 5-7 stacks for cat, and slowly going lower as fight goes on, and killing the boss during the first Burning Orbs), I'm guessing that it's a lot harder to wing on heroic and requires good raid CD management and such for phase changes? So how does your guild manage it with CD's and how often do you do phase changes?

Are there any clever mechanics we can use to make this difficult sounding fight a tad easier?

The composition we roll with is (looking to 1T/3H/6DPS this):
Protection Paladin
Feral/Balance Druid
Enhancement Shaman
Unholy/Frost Death Knight
Hunter (prefer Marksmanship, but can play any)
Mage (prefer Arcane, but can play any)
Warlock (prefer Affliction, but can play any)
Holy/Discipline Priest (can go DPS, but 2H sounds ><)
Restoration Shaman
Holy Paladin

I've seen a few videos already, but if you feel that you have some REALLY awesome videos that depicts what to do, link me up!:)

[fafhrd]

Concentration builds quickly - as soon as a cat phase starts, everyone will be up to 100 within 20-30s or so, and will only get reset when a cat leaps on them or they tank an orb. And on 10 you can spread out enough to make sure only 1 person gets hit by each leap. And even during the Scorp phases, you often get above the 50% mark before a Flame Scythe resets it.

Guilds usually have a dps or two stay out on some of the scorpion phases to burn him down quickly. We went with an MM hunter and Arc mage for the first one, since both do extremely high dps at the start of fights (for this, both were reliably 60-70k for the first phase), then have just the mage stay out for the 2nd scorp (hunter has better damage reduction via raptor striking, and hunter's main DPS boost is the boss being about 90%, which isn't the case for the 2nd scorp), and had everyone come in and soak for all subsequent scorps.

I believe our planned # of slashes each scorp phase was 11-6-6-3, with about 7 leaps each cat phase between them. DPS never seemed an issue, most of the night's wipes were to someone randomly dying during a slash (sometimes a tank), usually to a missing cooldown.

We had to rotate coolodown to survive the slashes though, I think we had SLTotem, Aura mastery, whatever the priest cooldown is (I think he was disc), and AntiMagicZone.

Mechanics-wise it's mostly normal mode, but with some early phases having fewer people soaking, and much much more damage to heal though. Pets appear to soak flamescythe damage too so you can pull them to the front of the boss if things are getting iffy, but we didn't do this unless someone was dead (you tend to wipe quickly if anyone is dead during a scorpion phase).

[Kerriodos]

For 25 man we decided to change things up a little. The DPS check on 25 man is pretty tight, so we take only one slash during each Scorpion phase, and we do it with maximum three people soaking. The first, third, and fifth we soak with two Dispersioned Shadow Priests, combined with a tank that has Shield Wall, glyphed Divine Prot, and the Mirror up. Two, four, and six, however, we eat using only Ardent Defender.

We do 7 leaps during each cat phase, which at least on my normal 10 man alt run, seemed feasible. The orbs in cat phase despawn after 5 leaps, which is about the only thing that makes this possible. This gives up a little more than a minute and a half between each slash, which means the 3 minute CDs will be back up the next time they're needed.

Obviously the strategy can't directly translate without two shadow priests (though one may cut it on ten man, I'm unsure), but if you did decide to use the 1-7-1-7 strategy--though, to warn you, I'm not 100% sure it's viable on 10 man--you could likely push DPS a fair bit higher. It really depends on how well your raid can handle cat phase, and how quickly they move from leap, which toward the end will kill you in 3 ticks.

I imagine for 10 man, the best bet would be to soak the first slash with the whole raid, second with AD, third with raid, fourth with AD, etc. It's less efficient at keeping them Concentration buff stacked, but you'd have it up on more people, especially melee, for a longer period of time. If the DPS check is doable on 10 man without this kind of thing, it would ease it immensely.

[timoseewho]

Does Majordomo Staghelm's Flame Scythe in scorpion form hit for a ton harder on heroic? I'm asking this because on regular, I already see the raid getting pretty low at around 8 Adrenaline stack, and that's also with all 10 people stacking! However, we don't exactly chain CD's wisely, so maybe that's why?

[Metherlance]

Does Majordomo Staghelm's Flame Scythe in scorpion form hit for a ton harder on heroic? I'm asking this because on regular, I already see the raid getting pretty low at around 8 Adrenaline stack, and that's also with all 10 people stacking! However, we don't exactly chain CD's wisely, so maybe that's why?

750k -> 900k, it's fire damage, so the real numbers are of course lower because of (partial) resists.

[Yelena]

Normal and Heroic 10m, you can take the first Scorpion phase up to at least 13 (even with 3 people out in Heroic). The main thing is proper cooldown mapping, getting through 6-7 Flame Scythes before starting a raid cooldown rotation is entirely possible. Subsequent Scorpion phases you don't want to remotely take that high for obvious reasons, but the first is fine. Healers will pretty much be on fumes by the end of the first Scorpion, but with max Concentration, they regenerate it pretty quick during the Cat phase.

Code: Select all

[19:43:44.018] Majordomo Staghelm gains Adrenaline (13) from Majordomo Staghelm
[19:43:44.084] Majordomo Staghelm Flame Scythe Shiros 90978 (A: 6737, R: 25714)
[19:43:44.084] Majordomo Staghelm Flame Scythe Fangroth 38198 (A: 38944, R: 51429)
[19:43:44.084] Majordomo Staghelm Flame Scythe Messengër 45161 (A: 6268, R: 25714)
[19:43:44.115] Majordomo Staghelm Flame Scythe Yelena 28928 (R: 64286)
[19:43:44.115] Majordomo Staghelm Flame Scythe Nimali 102858 (R: 25714)
[19:43:44.115] Majordomo Staghelm Flame Scythe Crackerjacks 102857 (R: 25714)
[19:43:44.115] Majordomo Staghelm Flame Scythe Urgonnadie 23405 (A: 24938, R: 64286)
[19:43:47.021] Majordomo Staghelm's Adrenaline fades from Majordomo Staghelm

For reference: Restoration Shaman, Restoration Druid, Discipline Priest.

[timoseewho]

Ah alright, I've actually heard of some guilds purposely stay in scorpion phase for a very little amount of time and as a result have more phases (still pushing the cat to 7 every time). By little, I mean around 4-5 Adrenaline stacks. What this does is allow for more cat phases and since concentration isn't really building up when the scorpion keeps cleaving. Does anyone think this is a better idea? I mean, when he goes from 6-13 or whatnot during scorpion doesn't take long anyways, so would cutting scorpion short be a huge DPS boost?

[Yelena]

It's only the first Scorpion phase that you draw out, and saving raid cooldowns for the higher stacks of Adrenaline means they'll typically cover two Flame Scythes each. The point behind doing this is to keep the overall number of times Domo shifts to a minimum, which comparatively keeps his damage manageable later in the fight. Keeping an Arcane Mage and Shadow Priest (or whatever else is available) out that long still amounts to a healthy chunk of damage done to the boss.

For the second Scorpion phase, which you should probably only take to around six stacks, just keep the Arcane Mage out the entire time. Everyone else will need to be stacked up so you don't run below the minimum number of people (as they run out to detonate their seeds) which would prematurely force another shift.

[Brosterr]

I had a couple questions about this fight, i will be putting in first attempts this week, although i have put a lot of thought into it already.

So to start, i plan on taking a mele heavy comp in for this fight. The idea would be that for the first scorp i would have select ranged with heavy burst step out and push to roughly 10 stacks (mage and hunter). After this we would go cat and stack the maximum amount on the inside (6 right - so 4 mele, 1 tank and one ranged). Next scorp phase i was going to just have everyone stack up again and push max scorp phase. I would assume we could get a good burn on the boss during cat phase, having 4 mele plus our mage on the inside should be a ton of damage.

I am also not sure why we could not two heal this, we have two very good healers that two heal every other fight. If we did i would just say each scorp we take 8 stacks with all stacked, rotating raid cd's in an order where we have an even amount for all scorp phases. Cat phase is a joke for healers so its not like they would oom. I dont get why more dont do this, having people stand out and making scorp phases harder for more dps seems less efficient than having two healers heal less swipes but having one more 25k dps.

Please tell me what i was wrong or right about.

No need to tell me to take the first scorp swing with AD up, i know this, just did not put it in.

[Belloc]

I've heard that Staghelm can target ranged players that are stacked in melee for jumps during the cat phase. If that is the case, you'd need to keep your ranged out.

[Fetzie]

I think it is the age old "if less than x players are out at range, I will kill a melee instead of a ranged" mechanic.

[fafhrd]

There are people that 2heal it afaik so that should be fine Broster. People want to extend scorpion phases because they're nice predictable times - you either have the healing and cooldowns to survive a certain number of scythes or you don't. Cat phases have people at higher concentration, but there's also more movement, and 1 (or more if you do enough transitions) cat phase with flame orbs up is also rough - not only do you have ~4 people constantly at 0 concentration from rotating or orbs, you have to deal with things like leaps on one or both of the people soaking an orb.

As for why 3 heal instead of 2, it probably depends on the guild. The enrage isn't a problem on 10 even 3 healing and sitting in long scorpion phases so I guess we at least prefer to just have lots of healing and cooldowns available for stable scorpion phases.

[Belloc]

I think it is the age old "if less than x players are out at range, I will kill a melee instead of a ranged" mechanic.

I have heard that he specifically targets players using a ranged spec instead of that mechanic.


Also, Army of the Dead will taunt him.

[Herrbjorn]

We tested this on normal mode and he will jump on healers and ranged in melee range. I assume they do a spec check.

[Kitmajere]

We tested this on normal mode and he will jump on healers and ranged in melee range. I assume they do a spec check.

This. He definitely will jump on ranged in melee regardless of the number in/out.