Leotheras Transitions

[Tiandelin]

My guild recently cleared out most of SSC and just started making attempts on Leotheras late last week with me as the MT. We've only had a few tries on him so far, but aside from the occasion problem of our demon phase tank dying horribly due to bad luck on resists, we have most of the fight down. Our prot warriors and healers are starting to kill their demons consistently. The only issue we're having now is the phase transitions.

Picking up Leo after a whirlwind is pretty much a non-issue unless AS misses. Even then, it's not too hard to get him since we have a ton of shamans who drop searing totems all over the place, and Leo just loves those things. The real problem I have is picking him up after he changes back into elf form. Granted, we have a bunch of trigger-happy mages and warlocks, but I've even had healers pull aggro. My usual method is to ready SoR before he changes, hit consecrate, hit holy shield, then wait and judge immediately when he switches. This works about half the time, but the other half he just starts running around and kills 1-2 people before I pick him up.

I'm wondering if I should use AS to pick him up on the transition (risking a late pickup on the first whirlwind), or if the problem is just that I need more spell damage. I've been tanking him with about 450, but I can get more from a shaman or flask. I did notice that the first night, when our ret pally was in the raid and in my group, I didn't have nearly as much trouble, which makes me suspect it might be a spell damage issue. Do I just need more than 450, or is it "safe" to use AS on the transition?

[Bendekar]

Honestly, the problem is your raid needs to stop DPS on each transition.

Including DoTs.

Including heals and HoTs, actually.

Each transition is an aggro reset. Remind your raiders that they are supposed to wait for tank aggro when a boss is first pulled, and they also need to wait when a boss resets aggro.

Your strat for the demon-normal transition is the same I use, you have about the same spell damage I have, and it works fine for me. Until my raid learned to wait 3 secs on transitions, I saw the same problems... a mage trying to sneak that last fireball in, or a warlock who didn't let their dots fall off, etc.

[Lore]

What you're doing sounds fine. Your DPS just needs to stop doing things, like Bendekar said. If he runs off and kills someone else, that means they screwed up.

[Cimzar]

I actually healed for that fight, and while Del did a great job picking him back up, healers are not able to choose when they heal a lot of the time. That 3 seconds of waiting could mean the tank drops, which is what happened to our drood that night on at least one occasion.

Would Blessing of Protection be good in this circumstance, or was he too far out of range? It would only protect a single person, but the aggro snap may be enough.

[Mortehl]

Something else to consider is how much spell damage you're wearing for the fight. Leo hits like a wet noodle or a Blood Elf (:P), so I wear my max threat gear (5/5 T4, Mag eye, spell damage bracers, boots, and belts et cetera). It puts me at roughly 600 spell damage with my own buffs, 790 with JoTC on him, which he has for the entire battle.

I'm on him like white on rice during the switch to humanoid, with 3 seconds left to transition I have a consecrate down, and with .2 left I'm already moving the finger to the Judgment button. Works like a charm.

You really want to save your Avenger's Shield for the whirlwind pickup. Those whirlwinds transitions are the only really dangerous moments of this entire fight. Tell your Prot warriors to just equip DPS gear so they can actually survive the demons.

[Lore]

Healing is somewhat unavoidable, though you can take caution to try and not let a big heal land immediately after the transition. Healers also don't generate an unmanageable amount of threat. If he's running off after healers reliably, you'll want to try for some more spell damage. If he's running off after DPS, tell them to stop.

[Tiandelin]

Something else to consider is how much spell damage you're wearing for the fight. Leo hits like a wet noodle or a Blood Elf (:P), so I wear my max threat gear (5/5 T4, Mag eye, spell damage bracers, boots, and belts et cetera). It puts me at roughly 600 spell damage with my own buffs, 790 with JoTC on him, which he has for the entire battle.

Ah, that's a good point. I'd forgotten about JotC, which our ret pally has talented and always keeps up when he's there. I'm in the habit of just tossing JoW around for the benefit of myself and the casters. Thanks for the reminder.

Though if others are managing to hold aggro with similar spell damage, it sounds like I need to keep stressing the need for dps to stop early. Healers (Cim, actually) only pulled aggro once on transition, so I'm guessing that he probably landed a huge healing crit on our demon phase tank that time.

[Cimzar]

I may have even had RF up on that attempt. I don't think I did, but it is such second-nature to me by now that it very well was possible. Either way he smacked me down so quick I didn't even get my bubble off. I feel like Vaelestraz when I have healing plate on...start out at 30% health every fight...

I don't know how much more you could stress to stop DPS, though. Spike was yelling it before, during, and after every transition as it is.

That is a good idea to go with the most threat gear you can manage, though it was much easier healing you than our drood tank with the gear you were wearing.

[Eneroth]

The best way to avoid this is use Vent or any other voice program and make it a MUST everyone uses this. And have someone in the raid who knows what they are doing, to call DPS IN and OUT. This should help some people, and if some people keep doing this, you need to call them out. Leo is a fun fight, but if you loose to many folks to WW, well then your pretty much done.

[Arianne]

Anyone have a better way to keep aggro on him during whirlwind? Also, does he have the increased penalty to miss due to dual wielding? (My tests on this seem to say no because I used a gear set with 4% crushing left and got crushed a couple times on one attempt.)

[Tiandelin]

Anyone have a better way to keep aggro on him during whirlwind? Also, does he have the increased penalty to miss due to dual wielding? (My tests on this seem to say no because I used a gear set with 4% crushing left and got crushed a couple times on one attempt.)

The 15% crush rate takes priority over regular hits, so as long as the boss has at least a 15% chance to hit you, his crush rate won't change. Leo does seem to miss more often than most bosses, since he only hits me about 40% of the time and I'm definitely not wearing avoidance gear for the fight.

You can't keep aggro on him during the whirlwind. He randomly spins toward people and tries to kill them, so everyone just has to avoid him. He wipes aggro at the end, so be in range and start casting AS a second before he stops whirlwinding. If it hits, he will forget about everyone else and head straight for you.

[neokai]

Considering i'm tanking him week-in-week-out, i've tried several variations on skills to pull aggro and find the following work well. I'm sitting on 471 spell damage btw.

1) WW transition - Use the AS and if u're alliance, try to stack SoV on him before the ww and refresh it during (it's kinda iffy but every little bit of threat after aggro reset helps). With 2.2 patch, the SoV will def last the full duration of WW unless it was already half gone.

2) Demon/Elf transition - Max rank consecrate, judgement of right or vengeance, if need be put JotC on the boss about 8-10sec prior to judging. I also apply my HS abt 3 sec before transition so that i can get at least 1 block off before an early fireball hits him. You really do not want to use AS for 2 reasons; 1, it will majorly screw up ur cd for WW transition later and 2, if u gain aggro thru consecrate, he will rape u as u wind up ur throw. I recall getting hit for 6k crushing 3x in a row attempting that stunt once.

3) Phase 3 - Demon and Elf spawn at the exact same spot. On top of that, his WW time is slightly scrambled (i've seen it pop immediately and i've seen a 15 sec delay before he WWs). Your lock tank will not have the benefit of a preplanned threat lead (our locks normally time their CoD to proc immediately after p2 starts) so you cannot use consecrate. Tell all dps to hold off till you can reposition the Elf form (which should take 2-3 sec at most if you have aggro). Other than the initial separation of his 2 forms (you really do not want to tank the demon, stack of 3 chaos blast = 10k fireball), he acts exactly as his p1, just that u have to juggle hammer of wrath as well as AS cd to pull aggro back after every WW. 2.2 makes it easier as well with a 0.5 sec cast HoW.

[Arianne]

Hmm, thanks for the tips. I was finding that my AS was on cooldown too frequently. We do have two paladin tanks so maybe having one of us concentrate on doing the WW transitions with AS and the other concentrate on doing the form transitions would be helpful.

Here's our WWS from last night: http://www.lossendil.com/wws/?report=of3yunkxi22hm if anyone wants to look at my rotation, etc to see what I could be doing better. Try 5 we got him down to about 6%, but we got a bit too disorganized to actually pull it through (and I miscommunicated with my team what we were doing).

[Deimosfobos]

Leo hits like a girl for a boss, try using more SD.

Aside gear with SD, you can get oil and a SD flask... if your raid stills pulls agro, tell them they are retarded, since its probably true anyways.

[Tiandelin]

Thanks for the advice! Finally tried him again last night, and things went much more smoothly. 800 spell damage with flask, wrath of air, and JoCr does wonders for aggro. It also lets me save my wings and SD trinket for the demon->elf transitions for even more ridiculous numbers. Picking him up became a complete non-issue. Once we get our dps to keep focus at 15%, we should have him.

One more question, though... is it better to have everyone go full dps when he splits or to have them back off? It seems like half the time, someone pulls aggro from me (since I can't consecrate or holy shield), and the other half he starts whirlwinding while melee is still in and the bleed effect kills a ton of people.