[10] Alone In The Darkness

[Splug]

We finished this last week (first pull being a p1 wipe to connection fail + clouds = bad, second being a stable finish). We basically did the same thing Psiven did: deathknight tank pile, feral druid taunts one out during the beacon. We kept them a safe distance from Yogg and had the rogues spam FoK to interrupt.

I recorded a tank PoV, but I don't have any software to turn the 15 GB of raw video into something presentable. Also, I'm trying to be sure I don't infringe on anyone's copyright/trademarking if I stick some music in the background...

-Splug

[trellian]

Virtualdub comes to mind as the easiest free software to compress video.

[Seloei]

Post 3.2 and the major block value change, is it worth it to go in there with a mostly block value set or should you roll with your usual avoidance set to mitigate those few huge hits at the start?

[Joanadark]

You would stack avoidance as a tank for this.

[Seloei]

After doing it tonight, i was considering using block value gear to 'mitigate' a lot of the damage but the biggest source of damage was the 'spike' when the adds healed up to 30% but by countering with a cooldown it was survivable.
First empower - nothing, Second empower - dual trinkets, Third empower - PS, Fourth - Divine Prot, Fifth - DG + trinkets.

The worst fight to tank so far for your nerves. It's so nerve wrecking and complex. If you do too little dps on the new add, dps will pull it off you and die. If you forget to consecrate you lose agro to the aoe dps. If you are too slow at taunting the healers will die. If you are positioned wrong yogg heals or you go insane or the adds will be behind you.

At the start of phase3, place the healers behind you near the door so they get healing agro so you never have to dance around with the adds. Ideally you have a holy pala turn on righteous fury when phase2 or 3 starts and he will get agro on almost all of them. Except the first 3-4. Use a cooldown or trinket to survive the empowering shadows.

Phase3 actually post "nerf" is not as hard as it seems. You can use a macro to taunt the add out without even having to target him and then taunt him back when it blows up. The harder part is reaching phase3 consistently

[Motaro]

Our group did all the hard modes in 10man except Algalon now (where we spent only 2 hours so far). The thing is, we don't have a single rogue in our group, so is Alone even worth trying, or should we concentrate on farming the other hard modes for gear (most of us don't do 25man raids) until Trial of the Crusader heroic becomes available? How can you interrupt all the life drains toward the end without a rogue?

[Belloc]

Our group did all the hard modes in 10man except Algalon now (where we spent only 2 hours so far). The thing is, we don't have a single rogue in our group, so is Alone even worth trying, or should we concentrate on farming the other hard modes for gear (most of us don't do 25man raids) until Trial of the Crusader heroic becomes available? How can you interrupt all the life drains toward the end without a rogue?

Do you have a warrior? A hunter? Both of them provide a healing debuff. If you're pulling the mobs out of the pack (as you should be), then you don't need the healing debuff on every single thing... just those two. A quick aimed shot and MS and you're good.

[Splug]

The problem is the drain life, which is normally interrupted by Fan of Knives (the damage and global wound poison are just icing on the cake), not the empowering darkness. The 10-man version of the encounter is tuned a bit loosely, and you might be able to manage it. But it will drastically increase the difficulty, as the raid damage intake will increase by a wide margin. Additionally, if your tank is a paladin they're likely full-blocking most of the 0% health adds anyway, so the time they spend channelling doesn't even save you tank damage.

It may be doable, but I strongly recommend finding someone to sit for a rogue.

-Splug

[Motaro]

The problem is the drain life, which is normally interrupted by Fan of Knives (the damage and global wound poison are just icing on the cake), not the empowering darkness. The 10-man version of the encounter is tuned a bit loosely, and you might be able to manage it. But it will drastically increase the difficulty, as the raid damage intake will increase by a wide margin. Additionally, if your tank is a paladin they're likely full-blocking most of the 0% health adds anyway, so the time they spend channelling doesn't even save you tank damage.

It may be doable, but I strongly recommend finding someone to sit for a rogue.

-Splug

Thanks.
I just remembered... didn't they already change FoK (removed AE interrupt)? Or will they do it in 3.2.2?

I guess we'll concentrate on Trial heroic and Algalon from now on anyway, we'll probably try this when we cleared Trial heroic (assuming it's a joke like non-heroic and half of the ulduar hard modes).

[Seloei]

If you are using 2 pullers, theres almost no need for any aoe interupts just a fast shaman who can target the nametab and interupt.
There really aren't that many drain lifes going around and since you have atleast a few classes who can interupt (unless you run with 6x warlocks) it is not really a problem until very late in the fight and then you can pop cooldowns to survive the big adds until aoe damage brings em back down.
It is possible without a FoK rogue and we brought in one rogue who doesn't raid 10's usually just to finish it but later when he was busy we did it with 2x hunters pulling the marked adds out with Aimed Shot and having them dps them back lower after the taunt wore off.

Hunter 1 : taunts + disengages and uses aimed shot
Hunter 2 : waits for the first add to move then uses his.

After they've pulled em out and they explode they feign and help them go back to 50% or less. All the adds are tanked quite close to the melee so all the aoe effects there help them bring em down to less than 20% when they become a no threat. A DK + prot pala are full time on the new adds, was enough to keep it under control. Everyone else besides the hunters are on boss unless an add blows up in the group. Then everyone changes to aoe mode. I started using a trinket / divine prot / pain sup rotation near the end for the last 4 empowers when we had 2 hunters instead. It took a lot longer but it was not impossible.

Getting to phase3 is a lot harder than finising it, once you can iron out all the other mistakes and small 'oopsies' you are ready to start the hard part of the fight and if by then you haven't found a rogue willing to spec Imp FoK to get the achievement or 2 hunters / mortal strike classes... Phase1 and 2 took us a lot longer than phase3 ever did once we had a solid way of dealing with it.

P.S. 0% health adds hit for a whooping 1.1k in 10man, even if you dont full block it it's almost nothing

[fafhrd]

SO, finally had people interested enough to attempt this last week, and while we only got a decent attempt on P3 once, that spawned a couple of questions:

- we seem to be down to 1 hunter for 10 mans now, and were planning on having our pally tank go ret and taunt out one of the beacons as empowering goes off. Think the idea is for the warrior to then taunt it back before she gets gibbed. I know that this isn't optimal, but it should still be workable for 10, right? Or is it massively easier with 2 hunters?

- what exactly are the timers on adds getting marked, then the heal going off? I noticed that if I distracting shotted and ran as soon as an immortal became a marked immortal, the fixate from DS would wear off sooner than the heal seemed to go off. I assume I'm supposed to wait a bit before taunting, so the immortal is still outside when it heals? I wish we'd gotten a second try to see, but I managed to go insane while watching for the 2nd empowering, which pretty much killed that attempt. I seem to remember seeing something arcing through the air like a shadow crash, is that empowering shadows, and does the crash hitting an immortal signal the start of the heal countdown starting?

- how much sanity do people usually go into p3 with? I'm not terrible at sanity management usually, that attempt I went into p3 with around 25 sanity, which seems really low compared to Yogg+1. Was getting especially screwed in p2 with brain+link + malady combos.

[Belloc]

Unless I am mistaken, it is 10 seconds from mark to heal. So just wait 4 seconds and then hit your shot.

Also, taunting is fine, assuming your tank taunts it back when the heal goes off. The adds don't hit all that hard if they are at 1% health. Especially considering that a ret can just flash of light himself (or divine protection) until the tank taunts it back.

[Joanadark]

Important point to remember:
If the mob that gets marked is a new one, and the tank is picking up new mobs using taunt, the mob will be on partial DR and your DS will not last as long as normally. Plan for this.

[fafhrd]

good lord, that sounds horrible...

[Seloei]

The beacons happen every 45s, that time he marks 1-2 in 10man with a "purple" hunters mark and those will blow up and aoe heal anyone nearby in 10 seconds.
You can either taunt both out or have 2 dedicated AOE dps on them at all times (rogue+dk) and the tank uses cooldowns to survive the later empowering beacons that way it is just you who has to pull one out at the right time. After he says "yogg saron prepares to unleash empowering shadows" count to 5, hit the taunt, disengage and he will blow up at about half-way to you, more than enough from the others.
The Heal itself lasts 20s.

We solved it by having 1 ret taunt one add out and the rest were tanked a bit away from the boss. The healers stood "near" the door, but in range of me so that any add that spawned went for the healers and i never had to turn / maneuver. As soon as the add was near me taunting made him clump up in front and never behind (unless he was going for a overzealous dps).
At around the 3. empower i started using cooldowns and external cooldowns, with pain suppression, new ardent defender and DP it is possible to survive quite well until the 7. or 8. empower with the adds healing after that 1 / 3 empowers you have to call out for FULL aoe dps on the adds so the tank doesn't die to the increased damage.

Sanity going into p3. Melee usually have 50-60, ranged more, unless they were bad at avoiding the malady and brain links. Noone should ever be under 40 sanity due to the malady / psychosis hotfix they added a bit before. Unless they go to less than 40 and then get hit for a long brain link