[25] Hard mode faction champion

[Lisson]

Any specific strat being used here? with the immunity to taunt now, is there a reason to keep tanks prot spec or just go all out dps.

also, what are people focusing on first? we went with lock>spriest>rogue but wondering what others are doing.

[Ruull]

Prot warriors aren't too bad with all their stuns/silences/interrupts as far as prot palies go its better to just dust of the ret or holy gear.

[Belloc]

While I will certainly be ret when we get to champions on heroic, I must point out that Seal of Justice is an excellent tool in this fight, along with Avenger's Shield and Hammer of Justice.

[Splug]

Faction champions strategy:

1) Roll face on keyboard.
2) Look up. Are they all dead? (if YES, go to 5)
3) Are they chasing you? (if NO: go to 1)
4) Do a lap around the frost trap, then go to 1.
5) Complain about loot.

-Splug

[fafhrd]

Going to need you to rewrite that iteratively or procedurally slug, gotos are bad.

[Splug]

Code: Select all

while(!dead)
  if(!targetted)
    roll_face();
  else
    gtfo();
whine(loot);

[fafhrd]

See, now isn't that much easier to read and maintain?

[Koatanga]

We have been using "the cat strat" with some success. By putting our pets on their cat, we can get the healers to waste time healing the cat. It doesn't work well enough to burn down a DPS first, but it helps.

However, that's not what I'm posting about. I ran accross an odd thing last night, and I would like to know if anyone else has had the same experience. We start the fight by 2 rogues sapping, then I go Captain America on the warrior and pretend to keep him busy while he transforms into cuisinart of doom.

Since I seal and judge Justice for the fight, mana has been an issue. So last night, I used my healing sword and shield to increase my mana pool. On the pull, I had 6-7 things on me from the start that didn't leave me for about 30 seconds. I kited my little entourage around the room well away form the raid.

Is this just a function of the first person to hit them, or is there maybe something to the gear I was using that might have caused the AI to target me as a healer? I haven't noticed such dedicated following from them previously.

Casters I can understand, since they seem to random target regardless of who they are facing, but I had the warrior with me the whole time, completely uninterested in charging anyone else or causing his typical havoc.

[Niinbob]

I posted this in the Faction Champions sticky post, but here it is again

Just something my guild noticed, and we have been using the past several weeks, is the adds always seem to focus the lowest % health person in the raid so I put on 2 stam trinkets to get as much hp as I can, about 63k fully buffed, and charge in first.

The healers try and keep me between 40-60% hp for the duration of the fight, and every champion focuses me.

Like clockwork as soon as I hit 100%hp, they all leave me and the fight turns into kiting again, but if you can manage keeping a tank around 40-60%hp they will continue to try and kill him

I think we manage (while chaining cooldowns) to get the first 2-3 of them dead before they stop attacking me because none of the DPS have to kite, they can just stand and DPS until I am topped off

I take all my gear off and requip it before I pull, so I start at like 40%hp when I charge, altho I am not sure that part is required

[kanst]

We just hand out lots of CC targets. We ALWAYS kill a healer first, normally a shaman or a priest. If there is a druid, thats good your warlock controls him, if there is a pally put a rogue on him to interrupt. After first healer dies we switch to something that hurts, like a ret pally or a hunter. We have a rogue controlling their warrior, a DK controlling there DK, and we set up a few pairs of people to cyclone and sheep alternating. If you take the time to set up jobs for people the fight becomes easy. Its one of the easiest fights in there for us.

[Belloc]

We got our first two kills by relying almost entirely on slowed adds and pet strat... but that screwed us on our third and fourth reset, so we had to change things up.

Huge helps: A DK can remove a melee mob from the fight. Two DKs can remove two melee mobs from the fight. We stuck a DK on the DK and a DK on the Rogue. Death Grip + Chains of Ice = those two mobs never killed anyone.

Also, I told everyone in the raid to focus target one of the melee mobs if they didn't already have a focus target. The melee mobs tend to all target the same person, so if one of them is chasing you, all of them are probably chasing you. We assigned a person to each individual melee mob (usually the people controlling them... the DKs) to call out who they were targeting. I called out the warrior and we burned down the Enhance shaman first. If the melee kill target focused on anyone, they still had to run... even plate DPS. With my ret DPS + all the pets on the cat, all of the heals went to the cat. We still kept interrupts on the paladin and priest healers (we let the druid HoT up the cat all he wanted).

We also had a mage assigned to sheep, sheep, sheep, counter spell the shadow priest. We'll also assign a mage to fully control the hunter if we have enough mages.

If people can actually run away from the melee mobs when they get loose, then no one will die and you'll have a kill.

Our kill order was, as far as I remember, Enhance, Shadow Priest (frees up our priest healers entirely), Warrior, Rogue (fight was won at this point), Hunter, Warlock, healer, healer, healer, DK.


edit: Oh, also... if you have a hunter and a warlock, their pets will almost always assist each other. One pet usually isn't enough to kill people, assuming good healing, but both pets will cause major damage. I am always taunting the cat back to me, but the felhunter tends to run rampant. Banishing it simply results in it focusing on that warlock after diminishing returns... and that sucks for that warlock. Consider burning down the felhunter early on.

[Dalithe]

If you somehow managed to kill the warlock or hunter pet can they be Instant Summoned back again?

[Belloc]

If you somehow managed to kill the warlock or hunter pet can they be Instant Summoned back again?

I've never seen a pet be resummoned.

[Koatanga]

I've seen pets die, and yes they get resummoned provided the summoner is still there.

However...

It's not generally instant, and if you are using a pet strat, then their healers are free (not pet CC'd) while the pet is down.

[guillex]

We just hand out lots of CC targets. We ALWAYS kill a healer first, normally a shaman or a priest. If there is a druid, thats good your warlock controls him, if there is a pally put a rogue on him to interrupt. After first healer dies we switch to something that hurts, like a ret pally or a hunter. We have a rogue controlling their warrior, a DK controlling there DK, and we set up a few pairs of people to cyclone and sheep alternating. If you take the time to set up jobs for people the fight becomes easy. Its one of the easiest fights in there for us.

I'm pretty sure that we have a DK on the warrior, so that he can Grip if the warrior's getting too close to the raid.

Flavour and personal preference, I suppose!