[25] Yogg+3 - what are we doing wrong?

[knaughty]

We have completed (25-man)
• XT
• Hodir
• Thorim
• Freya + 2 (no sunbeams)
• Steelbreaker

10-man, only things left are YS+0 and Algy (working on him now, had him to about 40% second night in).

We just spent four hours wiping to [25]YS+3 (No Hodir), yet again, this time trying to get someone their legendary healy mace (completed shard collection yesterday).

No joy. We can sometimes make it to P3, but usually not, and P3 we just end up having all the melee gradually picked off.

Goes like this:
• Immortal guardian spawns either on melee or inside Yog.
• Melee does AE move
• Melee gets tentacle raped
• Tank taunts

Note that we have zero issues if a IG spawns on healers (which is where they run normally anyway).

P1/P2 failures are easy to deal with as they have a clear, fixable, cause. Melee getting eaten before I can taunt off them is harder to fix - I can't get any quicker. Especially in the cases where the mob kill the damn melee person before it even bothers to climb out of Yogg's mouth. We had one go pretty well, but fail to enrage timer (3 brain phases - but lost a few DPS in P2/3).

Questions:

1: What method do people use to target Immortal Guardians in P3?
2: What positioning do people use? We're running melee+tanks at YS, ranged in a clump at ~33 yards.
3: Which is the easiest buff to lose? Our raid leader thinks Hodir, but I disagree. Mim/Freya both seem easier to me. A couple of our P3 wipes were to tank deaths. Have done YS+1 in 10-man with just Thorim up - sanity issues are easy to deal with there.

[Seloei]

We solved that 'problem' by having me take all spawns that spawn behind the boss. I just turned my camera around 180* and targeted him as soon as he spawned when he 'about' reached yogg saron i would hit taunt. Usually they were running to a healer but if it was a melee i taunted early. That however forced me to often go forward and back to get him in front of me.
We did +3 with mimiron out of the picture, the brainroom was a bit slower and took a while to learn that we have to shieldwall tank the crusher while melee is downstairs.

We have the raid like you do, melee+tanks near yogg and ranged/healers in one tight group infront of the tanks. Except we have the hunters standing on the side of yogg and shooting the adds full time without turning. Theres a sweet spot where casters can stand to do the job so. If you imagine yogg as an circle then around at 330* and 30* from the spot where tanks are you can dps the ones which melee is hitting. If only i knew how to draw decent pictures, it's a lot harder to say then to show ;(

The main reason why you are wiping is not tank failure it is MELEE stupidity failure. If they hit an aoe spell the moment a new add runs through, ofcourse they will get agro on it and get twated in the face. I usually give melee a bit of a leevay since it is damn hard to see wtf is going on with a gigantic mob right smack in your face but...

You can do +3 with hodir out still tho, just tell the melee to learn to time their attacks so that they wont hit an aoe attack the same moment as a new add is running through. They have no passive abilities that generate more threat than a healer healing a tank.

[fafhrd]

Goes like this:
• Immortal guardian spawns either on melee or inside Yog.
• Melee does AE move
• Melee gets tentacle raped
• Tank taunts

None of that seems to be a problem without the "• Melee does AE move" step, so can't you just make them not do it. Make the fury warriors go arms, make the DKs ... no do whatever DKs aoe with, make the pallies not cons or DS without looking around first. Or are you intentionally using melee aoe to wear down guardians?

We haven't seriously done it on 25 yet, but the one attempt the night we finished shard collection ended when we found out none of the healers actually knew he was going to be silencing them in P3... melee seemed ok before that killed off the tanks.

Also, what's making this a problem for you in Yogg+3 and not in Yogg+4?

[theckhd]

I'll echo the "turn my camera around" method. I usually pan my camera around so I can target the next guardian immediately as it spawns and taunt it as soon as it gets within 20 yards of a player. I also tend to do a quick spin+exorcism or AS to get some aggro on it if it's behind me.

[moduspwnens]

This is a tougher situation than it appears to be to other raid members (like dodging clouds while performing tank duties in phase 1), which sucks when you're learning the fight. You also have the added suckage in that you're making it to P3 and then effectively "causing" the wipe, which must feel terrible. I know I had a similar situation in learning Steelbreaker Last and I didn't like it at all.

For 25, we used to tank the guardians close to Yogg so that melee could get a few swipes in after the adds are down. We later decided to switch to tanks staying with where your ranged seem to be, about 30 or so yards from Yogg. This is because his silence isn't the typical ~infinite range, it actually has a set range of 50 yards. Note that 50 yards starts from the center of Yogg, so that's about 30 yards from being able to melee him (where your ranged are). Practically, it's about halfway from Yogg to the wall in the middle parts. I wish I had a screenshot for you.

First I'd like to point out that there are no Immortal Guardians that spawn on Yogg or in melee in P3. Their spawn points are only on the outside of Yogg, probably 10 yards from his actual body. What you are likely seeing are ones that spawned on the far side of Yogg running directly through Yogg to get to your healers. This leads me to believe that your main problem is your camera angle. You need to be sure you've used the camera distance maximizing macro and that you're facing away from Yogg (naturally). If you're zoomed all the way out, you should be able to see all possible spawn points, with the ones on the far edges being fairly close calls on seeing them (you'll see the blip and maybe a leg). This will make pickup a heck of a lot easier, because even in the worst case scenario which I see from time to time (you see a mob spawning on the far side but can't click to target it before it's running through Yogg), you can sacrifice some Sanity if necessary to face Yogg, run in close, spam tab-target until it clicks onto the new Guardian and taunt before that Ret Paladin blissfully hits Divine Storm and gets one-shot.

One thing you'll want to get used to for harder modes (and possibly this one, too) is, well, let me lay out the situation:

You have fairly low Sanity (less than 30), so you don't want to be facing Yogg much at all. Unlike any non-tank, if you screw up (at >2%), it's a guaranteed wipe.
Yogg's Lunatic Gaze does have a cooldown, but the cast is not easily predictable to less than 10 seconds of accuracy.
There are mobs coming usually from behind you, and you need to pick them up (no problem, since HoReck and RD don't require you be facing them).
It isn't always easy to target them immediately (running through Yogg).

But here come the hard parts:
These mobs hit hard, so you want them not hitting you in the back.
You need reasonable threat on these mobs to keep melee from pulling aggro.
You need both of those things pretty quickly because these mobs continue spawning.

This is tough to explain to someone who hasn't tanked the encounter, so you'll have to accept that we here will probably be the only ones to understand the dilemma. Somehow you need to be able to grab mobs from behind you and MacGyver them in front of you very quickly, especially if you're still tanking another. These mobs have somewhat of the odd hitbox/movement issues that the Sartharion Drakes (and Mimiron pre-nerf) had in that they'll sometimes move around in ways that aren't quite intuitive. The kind of flow chart I generally follow is:

Did it spawn in front of you (in or near the raid)? If so, just grab it. These are the easy ones, although they require you to be on your toes and not silenced.

Did it spawn at the side of Yogg? If so, it's going for a healer until you taunt it. Wait til the mob is approximately 1-2 steps behind you, then taunt. Be ready to hit your backup taunt if it fails (happened to me personally only once). What this does is, well, aside from scaring your healers a little, is grab the mob when he's actually just past you server-side. By taunting a little early of him being in front of you, you're accounting for the lag between the server and your client and now he's right in front of you without you having to turn to grab him.

Did it spawn behind Yogg? If so, it's going for a healer now, but your melee are in danger of pulling with a bad cleave or something. These are the ones that really call for some quick on-your-feet thinking, so here's the "flow chart" I follow (basically) from here:

Is Lunatic Gaze still on cooldown? DBM has a timer bar, so if I can see it, this isn't too bad. There's no danger in losing Sanity, so I turn around, tab-target to the Guardian, give it a quick shield throw and/or Exorcism, and I've got it. You still have to MacGyver him to be in front of you after you turn around, but the hardest part is over. Generally I run five or so yards away from Yogg, wait til the mob reaches me, then jump backwards through the mob until he's on the other side. This isn't trivial, though, due to the movement mechanics mentioned earlier.

If not, do I have plenty (>~24) of Sanity? I usually don't. But if I do, I'll usually risk it to grab the mob, knowing that a tick of Lunatic Gaze costs only 4 sanity and I'll probably be able to grab him in one tick (sometimes two).

Is Lunatic Gaze incoming at any second and I don't have plenty of Sanity? This is where it gets iffy. If I have less than 10 sanity, I mentally disable my right mouse button (no turning). I use Pitbull, so raid frames usually turn red when someone has aggro on something. This means I can RD them for a quick taunt while it runs through melee, then hopefully HoReck it (since I should now be able to click-target it) so that it stays on me after RD's effect wears off. By the time it reaches me, I can now hit Judgement and Consecration to get at least a small threat lead over whoever I taunted it from and pull the MacGyver back-jumping move mentioned above so I can get some reasonable threat and avoidance.

Also, what's making this a problem for you in Yogg+3 and not in Yogg+4?

Also, this. All you should be losing is 20% DR, Hodir's save effect, and 10% damage. Well, and you're dealing with the silence. My guess is that Hodir's save effect was what was keeping your melee from going splat previously.

Dang, didn't mean to write you a dissertation, but hope it helps with your problems here and progression into fewer keepers. We had another thread where we discussed which should be dropped, I'll find you a link.

EDIT: Here it is.

[kanst]

We had issues with pickups originally, what we do now is I do all the work. We have 2 tanks, I stand there and pick up every single add that spawns, I am constantly spinning my camera and tab targeting. The warrior tanks the adds off me 1 at a time and puts threat on them. This way I dont have to both hold a mob and pick up one, the threat from exorcism+holy shield+cons+SoR is normally enough to keep them on me until they are kill target. Since threat isnt an issue it leaves me way freer to be finding and taunting mobs.

[Splug]

Modus's explaination on how to handle spawns is basically how I manage it as well. This week at the behest of a few people, we had two tanks alternate picking up spawns instead and had the advantage of being able to move the tanks around a bit more while trying to grab adds. It costs a bit more sanity, but you're able to contend with the ones that are going to run through Yogg. We run with ranged on the boss, melee on adds - so we actually see more deaths as a result of living bomb or warlock self-healing ticks. Having the holydin(s) use Righteous Defense to help gravitate adds to the healer pile helps a bit as well. The largest point far and away though was the camera zoom; I recorded a few runs from this week / last week, but I haven't obtained any encoding / editting software yet. I'll try to get a tank PoV film together at some point.

-Splug

[moduspwnens]

We had issues with pickups originally, what we do now is I do all the work. We have 2 tanks, I stand there and pick up every single add that spawns, I am constantly spinning my camera and tab targeting. The warrior tanks the adds off me 1 at a time and puts threat on them. This way I dont have to both hold a mob and pick up one, the threat from exorcism+holy shield+cons+SoR is normally enough to keep them on me until they are kill target. Since threat isnt an issue it leaves me way freer to be finding and taunting mobs.

That's an interesting idea I hadn't thought of. I bet you could get away with only one tank for that phase if you had a Holy Paladin trained to taunt adds that don't spawn in the raid, and the one other tank just taunting off of him as they run to him. /ponder

[Splug]

We had issues with pickups originally, what we do now is I do all the work. We have 2 tanks, I stand there and pick up every single add that spawns, I am constantly spinning my camera and tab targeting. The warrior tanks the adds off me 1 at a time and puts threat on them. This way I dont have to both hold a mob and pick up one, the threat from exorcism+holy shield+cons+SoR is normally enough to keep them on me until they are kill target. Since threat isnt an issue it leaves me way freer to be finding and taunting mobs.

That's an interesting idea I hadn't thought of. I bet you could get away with only one tank for that phase if you had a Holy Paladin trained to taunt adds that don't spawn in the raid, and the one other tank just taunting off of him as they run to him. /ponder

We tried something like this last week, and it caused more taunt DR trouble than it was worth. It proved easier to just have one tank pick everything up and the other go to damage. However, we didn't pursue it very far; it'd probably be more reasonable with some tuning/practice.

-Splug

[loeni]

We had issues with pickups originally, what we do now is I do all the work. We have 2 tanks, I stand there and pick up every single add that spawns, I am constantly spinning my camera and tab targeting. The warrior tanks the adds off me 1 at a time and puts threat on them. This way I dont have to both hold a mob and pick up one, the threat from exorcism+holy shield+cons+SoR is normally enough to keep them on me until they are kill target. Since threat isnt an issue it leaves me way freer to be finding and taunting mobs.

That's an interesting idea I hadn't thought of. I bet you could get away with only one tank for that phase if you had a Holy Paladin trained to taunt adds that don't spawn in the raid, and the one other tank just taunting off of him as they run to him. /ponder

We tried something like this last week, and it caused more taunt DR trouble than it was worth. It proved easier to just have one tank pick everything up and the other go to damage. However, we didn't pursue it very far; it'd probably be more reasonable with some tuning/practice.

-Splug

Might be worth trying that strat with the old healing with Righteous Fury trick rather than taunting, as that would eliminate the DR problem.

[Splug]

That's an interesting idea I hadn't thought of. I bet you could get away with only one tank for that phase if you had a Holy Paladin trained to taunt adds that don't spawn in the raid, and the one other tank just taunting off of him as they run to him. /ponder

We tried something like this last week, and it caused more taunt DR trouble than it was worth. It proved easier to just have one tank pick everything up and the other go to damage. However, we didn't pursue it very far; it'd probably be more reasonable with some tuning/practice.

-Splug

Might be worth trying that strat with the old healing with Righteous Fury trick rather than taunting, as that would eliminate the DR problem.

The problem with this is that by the time a new add spawns, the previous one is dead or nearly dead and hitting for <3000. There's nothing for the holydin to drop bombs on to pull reliable threat with, though I suppose exorcism would work for every other one if they have time to tab over and find it. We've determined that problem removes itself if Thorim is not present..!

-Splug

[Threatco]

You need to do +3 yogg to make your legendary mace? What a kick in the nuts. Was bad enough when I thought it was normal 25 man yogg I had to do.

I been farming ther first 9/14 bosses of Uld 25 with my guild for a 4 weeks now I am at 10/30 shards. (Pretty unlucky I would say)

I have doubts we will be able to down yogg easy mode before i collect 30 shards.

Anyone else in this boat? Do you have to work out something with a more hardcore guild on your server to take you to one of their Yogg kills?

[Dorvan]

My guess is that that may be your best bet. I know my guild has certainly thought about the idea of selling spots in Yogg kills for mace completion.

As for your rate of collection of the shards, it looks like you're actually getting pretty lucky. It took us 12 weeks to complete our first mace, and the last 4 weeks were full clears.

[fafhrd]

There's no way in hell 10 shards in 4 weeks (that's... 4 resets) of just 9 bosses is at all unlucky >.<

[Kishandra]

I run a pug ulduar raid. Half are alts of my guild, half are found in LFM or friends and such.

We usually down 10-11 bosses a reset (gotten Vezax a couple of times, but the 4-5 hour time limit of a single day crunches us before we can give him some solid tries, usually).

I have 12 fragments after about 110 boss kills

You suck.
(so do my guild main healers. 47 fragments already ...)