Al'ar

[Enesch]

Our guild just got our first Al'ar kill this week. After trying several variations of add killing\saving and killing\ignoring, our successful attempt went thusly:

Phase 1: a bear-form feral and I patrolled the room and one of us would pick up an add as it spawned, depending on our location and whether we were still working on killing one or not. The bear would usually taunt my ember off and tuck himself under the lip of the ramp with the melee DPS group, who would back off at the last moment while the bear blew up. We had an add or two left over that survived into phase 2.

Phase 2: Quickly killed the leftover adds from phase one, once Al'ar respawned. I AS'd the first meteor's adds, and after that the feral gathered them up and brought them to me, standing in my consecrate until I had aggro if my taunt missed.

I would keep holy shield up and occasionally consecrate, while sealing/judging light. The stats in my sig are outdated...I was almost 18k hp buffed and 400 spell damage, but only running 350 BV, so after awhile the birds started to hurt. The healing on me went from just a holy pally to the holy pally plus a tree, then also a priest...then another priest also chipping in. The commented later that even though my health was constantly ticking away it really wasn't that big a deal keeping me (and everyone else) alive, even when one of my adds would detonate (which happened once or twice. I was under the ramp lip though, so no major knockback).

Another big help was that we had several warriors that would spell-reflect the flame patches away, eliminating much of the need for the raid to be mobile. On previous attempts we lost several healers\dps to badly timed\missed flame patches. With less flame patches we had more people alive to DPS and heal. After battle rezzes\soulstones we only lost one or two people.

DPS focused exclusively on Al'ar, and s\he was down in 10 minutes.

From reading this thread and others, it seems very clear that many different strategies can work for you, depending on group makeup and raid mentality.

[thejuice]

What I do is stand by the door, and we usually have a fury warrior taunt the phoenix to them, then bring them down to me. i usually have one or 2 dedicated healers, and i never have mana problems. the only problem that i've run into is that my tanking kills the adds (HS, cons) and i get blown across the room, and the adds break out and kill everyone, but that's easily solved by having the dps bring them down to only like ~40%.

i've realized that i have a special role in this fight. i've realized that if you are tanking the adds, you ARE going to die when they die. so i just sit back and watch phase 2, taking comfort in the fact that i have done my job.

[Ashmadai]

I don't think you have to die to have the adds die on P2 of this fight. My guild downed Al'ar for the first time last night, and I tanked the adds and I never came close to dying. All of our ranged dps that were on adds focused on one of our Hunter's target.

I made sure the healers knew when one was going to die so they could keep me healed, and it was golden. We had like one death that fight, from a healer standing in a flame patch.

[Snake-Aes]

i've realized that i have a special role in this fight. i've realized that if you are tanking the adds, you ARE going to die when they die. so i just sit back and watch phase 2, taking comfort in the fact that i have done my job.

No.
My successful experiences on Al'ar involved killing adds as they were positioned with the tank near a ramp(to avoid knockback). No one has to die at all with this method, even if you have 2-3 adds on you when one of them die.

[thejuice]

i've realized that i have a special role in this fight. i've realized that if you are tanking the adds, you ARE going to die when they die. so i just sit back and watch phase 2, taking comfort in the fact that i have done my job.

No.
My successful experiences on Al'ar involved killing adds as they were positioned with the tank near a ramp(to avoid knockback). No one has to die at all with this method, even if you have 2-3 adds on you when one of them die.

Well we try to have me tank them all and then aoe kill them all at once. I'd like to see 4-6 7k blasts in the span of ~2 secs get healed through.

[Snake-Aes]

Don't aoe? Dps them down as they are positioned, with only 1 meleer left to focus on it(usually a cloaked rogue).

[thejuice]

well the reason we keep them all alive is so that we can do the thing at the beginning of phase 2 where you kill them all at once and blow off a large chunk of al'ar's HP.

[Snake-Aes]

well the reason we keep them all alive is so that we can do the thing at the beginning of phase 2 where you kill them all at once and blow off a large chunk of al'ar's HP.

Ah, I see. Our dps always handled him well without that So I can't tell.

[Ilara]

Having a problem at the moment with the adds.

Add spawns, I get its attention, it starts to move down to me, and then completely ignores me and goes to the current Al'ar tank.

taunts, shield throws, misdirections, exploiting cons up the wall from below, I'm trying every trick in the book at the moment and can't seem to find a proper solution here. I eventually get thier attention but not before in some cases we have two or more adds up, and its rather embarrasing.

I'm thinking maybe an evade bug as I run to the ramp to intercept it? Theres no way a tank with no aggro on it can beat what I'm throwing at it. Anyone else noticed this?

[inthedrops]

Having a problem at the moment with the adds.

Add spawns, I get its attention, it starts to move down to me, and then completely ignores me and goes to the current Al'ar tank.

taunts, shield throws, misdirections, exploiting cons up the wall from below, I'm trying every trick in the book at the moment and can't seem to find a proper solution here. I eventually get thier attention but not before in some cases we have two or more adds up, and its rather embarrasing.

I'm thinking maybe an evade bug as I run to the ramp to intercept it? Theres no way a tank with no aggro on it can beat what I'm throwing at it. Anyone else noticed this?

Even if it were an evade bug they should be agro'ing on a healer who is actually generating some significant global threat and not the main tank. The other tank on A'Lar isn't a paladin that's consecrating by any chance is it? Or are the hunters possibly sending MD's to the wrong tank?

This all sounds suspicious to me.

[Dorvan]

Having a problem at the moment with the adds.

Add spawns, I get its attention, it starts to move down to me, and then completely ignores me and goes to the current Al'ar tank.

taunts, shield throws, misdirections, exploiting cons up the wall from below, I'm trying every trick in the book at the moment and can't seem to find a proper solution here. I eventually get thier attention but not before in some cases we have two or more adds up, and its rather embarrasing.

I'm thinking maybe an evade bug as I run to the ramp to intercept it? Theres no way a tank with no aggro on it can beat what I'm throwing at it. Anyone else noticed this?

Occasionally I had an add be stubborn about leaving a tank (I'm assuming this is phase 1 you're talking about). Don't worry about it: if an MD doesn't bring them down to you, just have a ranged DPS attack it until they pull aggro, then once the add is near you ranged taunt it off the DPS.

[Hoops]

I normally wait for the adds to target a healer, then AS and taunt if needed, then melee dps + 1 range dps takes down the add. Works pretty well but we keep having our tanks be too slow up the ramp/not intercepting. Im forcing them to buy swiftness pots

[Snake-Aes]

Unless you have GREAT latency(as in, 100-), taunting after shooting AS renders AS useless.

[Brenna]

Yeah for some reason the adds just seem to love our bear tanking up on the platform, no idea why.

[Snake-Aes]

Because..they spawn up there? >.<