Al'ar Add Tanking

[Eneroth]

Okay so last night we tried a different strat with me just killing the adds. This was fine till about the 7th metor or 8th hit, and I had 14 or 16 birds on me. Thing started to get a bit rough. Fully buffed, drinking a flask and eatting, I had a little over 16k hp. Didnt have a warlock or a warrior in my group, so didn't get the extra hp from them. I had a hunter and two warriors pulling mobs to me, and I was picking them up with consecration.

The first problem is I was not able to see the fire patchs on the ground, because my screen was filled with birds. I think I can fix that if I zoom out and have the screen faceing my toon from the front.

I think I was doing rather well, wasn't taking that much damage to be honest, just with those many mobs on me I think I may have been hit by a flame patch and have seen it.

When we wiped it was either around the 7th or 8th metor, and Al'ar was only at 53%. So I was wondering what the problem was. Was the raid dps up to par, to where Al'ar should be health wise with the amount of metors hit with the dps focusing on Al'ar himself? I had two healers on me during this, two paladins. Not sure if it was my gear was sup par or what the problem was. Was wondering once I had around 10 adds on me if the raid should start to take a few mobs away from me and kill them.

This was just one of the starts I saw, I know that when you kill the adds it does damage to Al'ar, but we figured with me having the adds on me, we could focus the raid dps on Al'ar and not the adds. Thanks.

[fiorina]

Just kill the adds, all of them. As you see offtanking strat is pretty stressful and prone to errors which lead to wipe in most of cases.

[Dreamcrusher]

Also, if you had 14 birds on you, Al'ar would have been in execute range if you had killed them instead of tanking.

It's what, 3% per bird death? Could be 2 I suppose.

[Worldie]

It's 3% per add but.... tanking that ton of adds isnt the best way, better killing them, maybe DPS should start "ignoring" them when he's near to die.

[Dreamcrusher]

Another thing that might help is offtanking the adds in p1 instead of p2.

What we do is have a warrior grab every single add that spawns in p1 and then have melee get them down to 10-20% before backing off.

When Al'ar goes into p2 we aoe the rest of the birds down and have the warrior shield wall through the explosions. This usually takes Al'ar down at least 10% sometimes 20% depending on how long p1 takes.

[Coldaan]

I don't have the exact numbers now, but as far as I can remember Al'ar has around 2,6 mio. HP in each phase, so 3% would be ~78k HP.
That's the amount health he loses when an add dies (unless he is just in the air preparing for a meteor, I heard he doesn't lose HP then).

An Add has something like 70k Health. So the difference is ~8k HP, which I find not very impressing.

Isn't that the reason why this "just tank the adds until the big bird is dead" strategy came up in the first place?

And I'm talking about Phase 2 right now.

If you tank all the adds with 1 or 2 Tanks until Al'ar dies:
- DPS only has to focus on the big bird.
- DPS doesn't have to wait for the Tank to get aggro from the Adds.
- Melee DPS doesn't have to run away from their target, like they would have to when killing the adds.
- No explosion damage from the adds during the fight.

In my opinion (and I am constantly defending this strategy in my raid as well) the fight gets a lot easier if you simply tank the adds. Probably have to put a little more Block Value on and assign another Tank to "share" the adds with me, but 4 Tanks are recommended anyway.

[Dreamcrusher]

If you tank all the adds with 1 or 2 Tanks until Al'ar dies:
- DPS only has to focus on the big bird.
- DPS doesn't have to wait for the Tank to get aggro from the Adds.
- Melee DPS doesn't have to run away from their target, like they would have to when killing the adds.
- No explosion damage from the adds during the fight.

The solution to all of these is that melee dps stays on Al'ar the entire time. Ranged dps kills the birds once threat is established (they can stay on Al'ar after the birds spawn, then switch over once it's called for) and the only people taking damage are tanks, which is far less than if you tanked all of the birds throughout the entire fight.


The plus side to this is that it it's a lot easier to heal, al'ar dies faster (8k damage virtually gained per bird or so, as you noted) and the chances of the raid wiping because the tank died (or dc'd or any other random factor) and 10+ birds running around killing healers is eliminated.

[Rhaenys]

I have also heard that the amount of health Al'ar loses is 2% (or 3%) relative health. Meaning that a bird killed when he is 100% health is more beneficial than when he is at 30% health.

We are going to be attempting him on Mon, and have been trying to hash out a solid strat. I think the original plan was to frost nova, AoE them and blow me up, but since someone has said they cant be frost nova'd, that is out the window.

[Dreamcrusher]

I have also heard that the amount of health Al'ar loses is 2% (or 3%) relative health. Meaning that a bird killed when he is 100% health is more beneficial than when he is at 30% health.

I'm pretty sure it's 3% total hp, not current.

[Dorvan]

Another point that's somewhat minor but worth mentioning is that the adds are level 70 whereas Al'ar is level 73, and that will have an effect of your relative DPS between the two.

There are many possible add strats, but for what ti's worth my guild just got our first Al'ar kill this week. We killed adds in phase 1 and 2. In both phases the melee would do most of the damage with hunters finishing them off. In phase 2 I'd gather up the adds while a druid tank would taunt them off one by one for dps'ing. YMMV

[matchbox]

they changed it in a patch so the adds affected his current health instead of his overall health

[Dorvan]

they changed it in a patch so the adds affected his current health instead of his overall health

Interesting, do you have any links/other evidence of this?

[PsiVen]

Just kill the adds, all of them. As you see offtanking strat is pretty stressful and prone to errors which lead to wipe in most of cases.

I disagree; killing adds is much more prone to errors. With one other person helping pick up adds for me to taunt, I have never had trouble holding tons of birds. I just pop my Autoblocker / Colossus later on (usually when Al'ar is in execute range) and make sure to put my camera where I can see flame patches.

A common misconception is that killing the adds increases your raid's effective DPS. It most certainly does the opposite, unless you use a strategy of building up a bunch and then spamming AoE. In phase one killing the adds is a good idea because it's difficult and risky for melee to be on Al'ar, but in phase two it's even less risky to not have to deal with explosions and simply load a tank full of HoTs.

[Rhaenys]

Another thing that might help is offtanking the adds in p1 instead of p2.

What we do is have a warrior grab every single add that spawns in p1 and then have melee get them down to 10-20% before backing off.

When Al'ar goes into p2 we aoe the rest of the birds down and have the warrior shield wall through the explosions. This usually takes Al'ar down at least 10% sometimes 20% depending on how long p1 takes.

We were doin this strat last night with me (adds to about 8%),blowing me up, had a SS on me to pop back up. Took Al'ar to about 75% immediately. But then ignoring the adds in P2 gets a little rough near the end, had a 4% wipe.

I think tonight we will kill the adds till about 50% or so, then ignore them.

[Dragonzbane]

So the fight was changed and the phase 1 adds no longer do damage if killed in phase 2.

We had our second night of attempts on him last night, only got 3 attempts in on him Sunday.

On about our 5th attempt we were able to get him down to just over 60k hitpoint before the last of us fell.

We just have to get the Ranged DPS and healers to realize:
Standing in Fire = Bad