Vortex pinnacle Heroic

[pyrile]

What's the best way people have found to do the sphinx pulls? (The ones inside the grounding pyramids.) So far I've only run it on regular (as dps), and those two pulls seem to give our groups the biggest problems.

I will LOS the group on that top ledge, everyone needs to be out of LOS or they will just aggro to the idiot who just stands there dpsing them, I kill the executor first since he is the annoying stun master, if your group has a mage/shaman I usually will have them poly/hex pull the runcasters, or ministers, once the executor is down I go after the healer.

I also do the same for the next group except I have everyone go LOS behind and around the big pillar at the top of the stairs.

[Talima]

At some point they have changed Asaad's chain lightning to chain no matter how much you spread as far as I can tell.

Also note that allowing static cling to hit you then using HoF is actually beneficial if you have the talent Pursuit of Justice since you get HP from it, which was very helpful to me in the situation I'll describe below.

I managed to solo Asaad from somewhere above 50% after the rest of the group died in the first two AOEs (healer didn't dispel static cling). Had to use seal of insight and spam WoG at 3 HP, and spam flash of light during grounding field. Also had to rotate CDs for the chain lightnings.

Ended up doing 96% of the total healing (3.2k HPS) and 62% of the total damage (3k dps), and the fight took 16 minutes. Now sure I could have just died and redone the boss faster with the full group but where's the fun in that?

[Saler]

Vortex is my least favourite heroic with the group I normally run with (DK, Boomkin, Warlock, Holy Pala Healer). Only having one CC on the sphinxes makes the pulls before the last boss an exercise in frustration

[PsiVen]

Why? All you really need to do is CC one Adept and kill the other one. They're not particularly nasty pulls compared to similar situations you'll get with only 1 CC available, not to mention you could use roots and seduce if you really wanted.

[Saler]

Why? All you really need to do is CC one Adept and kill the other one. They're not particularly nasty pulls compared to similar situations you'll get with only 1 CC available, not to mention you could use roots and seduce if you really wanted.

The warlock in my regular dungeon group said she could only do fear for CC. Not knowing how locks had changed I figured the succubus had gone.

As for the why, four times I've died on the initial flurry of damage. I took to hitting cooldowns (other than just DP which I use on most pulls) as they got to me just to be sure i'd survive the initial hits. And thats with 140k health and 11/12/40% avoidances. My healer said he has to dispel the shock off of me rather than heal their initial hits he'd read it would kill me if not dispelled.

Evidently i've been given some bad information.

[Solare]

This is a question about Grounding Field, and specifically, if other classes are unable to use their ranged interrupts to, say, bring a Minister of Air out of chain casting while he's in the Grounding Field, why can Avenger Shield do so? I mean, it's technically a spell, yes? Or a strange hybrid spell (which means we can't use it while silenced) that's actually a physical attack (because it uses the melee attack table) that does spell damage? -_- Thought, comments? I got into an argument with a pug the other day about it when someone face-pulled before I was finished marking and told the shaman healer to get the minister.

[KysenMurrin]

I think it's treated as a ranged attack for the hit table, which must be why it works in the grounding field.

[majiben]

Another option on the grounding field pulls is to have your ranged CCers pull aggro on their target, run back far enough for the mob to run out of the field and then CC while the tank controls the rest of the mobs. That is my preferred method of pulling those packs.

Just as a side note, since I did not learn this till many, many runs of H VP, you can jump to avoid the static cling.

[econ21]

What did Blizzard intend to be the proper way to handle the first boss (the Grand Vizier Ertan)? I've never quite understood it. Parties I am in all just stay in (for AOE heals) and nuke, regardless of what the cyclones are doing. That crude (but effective) tactic must be ignoring the intended fight mechanics. The next patch is going to change the fight so he knocks away people too close to him when he retracts the cyclone shield. I accidentally touched a cyclone while running to pull the boss and got horribly slowed, so is the intended mechanic to avoid touching the individual cyclones when you move away from the boss as he retracts the shield?

[rodos]

What did Blizzard intend to be the proper way to handle the first boss (the Grand Vizier Ertan)? I've never quite understood it. Parties I am in all just stay in (for AOE heals) and nuke, regardless of what the cyclones are doing. That crude (but effective) tactic must be ignoring the intended fight mechanics. The next patch is going to change the fight so he knocks away people too close to him when he retracts the cyclone shield. I accidentally touched a cyclone while running to pull the boss and got horribly slowed, so is the intended mechanic to avoid touching the individual cyclones when you move away from the boss as he retracts the shield?

Yes.

[Astronomic]

If blizz fixes that to make it so you can't ignore tornadoes any amount of latency will spell certain doom.

[yappo]

If blizz fixes that to make it so you can't ignore tornadoes any amount of latency will spell certain doom.

I predict insane wipe-fests on the LFD after the patch here. But that might just me being prejudiced.

[Hokahey]

If blizz fixes that to make it so you can't ignore tornadoes any amount of latency will spell certain doom.

I predict insane wipe-fests on the LFD after the patch here. But that might just me being prejudiced.

Perhaps, but he's not difficult at all even when you don't stand and burn. Mostly, it'll just be those who would have wiped horribly later in the instance, anyhow.

Heroic VP is still a great starter heroic. The second boss' tornado spam seems overwhelming and daunting, until you realize that the chief damaging ability is his breath, not the tornadoes or fall damage. Having healed it a couple of times, more than 2 people getting breathed on is far more worrisome than having people get tossed around by the tornadoes. Also, the lightning bolt that hits people tossed off the platform has only nailed me once in the 3 times I've been tossed. I wonder if LoS or range affects it, somehow?

None of the boss mechanics there include a soft enrage issue like adds or healing, so I think its a good place for DPS and healers to get started, too.

[yappo]

If blizz fixes that to make it so you can't ignore tornadoes any amount of latency will spell certain doom.

I predict insane wipe-fests on the LFD after the patch here. But that might just me being prejudiced.

Perhaps, but he's not difficult at all even when you don't stand and burn. Mostly, it'll just be those who would have wiped horribly later in the instance, anyhow.

Heroic VP is still a great starter heroic. The second boss' tornado spam seems overwhelming and daunting, until you realize that the chief damaging ability is his breath, not the tornadoes or fall damage. Having healed it a couple of times, more than 2 people getting breathed on is far more worrisome than having people get tossed around by the tornadoes. Also, the lightning bolt that hits people tossed off the platform has only nailed me once in the 3 times I've been tossed. I wonder if LoS or range affects it, somehow?

None of the boss mechanics there include a soft enrage issue like adds or healing, so I think its a good place for DPS and healers to get started, too.

Agreed. After all, if I leave the first boss (post 4.0.6) with five persons alive, then I won't have to two-man the second after all three dps are dead.

Even really, really, bad groups seem to be able to stand inside a triangle, so the last boss is moot. It usually boils down to grind your way through the two last trash-pulls. In a bad group this translates to a few wipes where I allow dps to die while making certain SOMETING actually reaches my position after the LOS-pull, each wipe seeing one mob going down.

Anyway, the wipe-fests are likely to happen because most people "KNOW" that stacking on the boss is the correct way to handle number one. I'm not counting on the gang I get in LFD to read patch-notes (or take my word for a post-patch change before I pull)

[econ21]

Anyone tried this instance since patch 4.0.6? I went with a friend's guild and we just could not get past the first boss. The damage output to the party seemed incredibly high and our healer, who was decent, could not cope. Looking at why people were dying in recount, there were 3 damage sources: lightning bolts; cycle shields; and a third one I did not understand, I think it called something like edge of the storm. Anyone know what was going on with the latter? I think I understand the bolts are direct attacks (possibly random) and the shield damage is from bumping into the shield. But what is the third kind of damage? I suspect it is something to do with positioning - "edge of storm"; were we too far away from the boss? (We backed off when the cyclone shields came in.)

Until I figure out this fight, it has gone from the easierst to the hardest heroic for me.