Al'Akir 10

[Tebin]

Hey guys, our group is getting to p3 of al'akir quite stably, but we've got problems with raid members getting confused and going all over the place...how did everyone handle getting the group to go to one place? Is there any way of making the transition smooth?

[Chicken]

Agree to meet all meet somewhere (Either top or bottom usually works), and have someone marked with something (triangle works well and is easily visible) as an initial 'cluster point'.

[Epimer]

We settled on the top rather than the bottom, because you can't go too far (you press space until you hit the ceiling of the instance); you can go too far down at the bottom, though, so there's a few more ways in which things can go wrong.

[PsiVen]

We always used the bottom, and the other 10-man always used the top... They had a much easier time of it, and now I see why:

If you go all the way to the top, you can just keep going until you hit the ceiling. And if you're moving down out of storms, the wind bursts knock you away from them. If you go all the way to the bottom, it's not clear right away how far you can go without clipping storms. When moving up, wind bursts will knock you downwards and throw you into storms if you're too close. Moving up seems easier because most people have Jump bound but many unbind Sit, so they can press one key to move upwards -- this encourages them not to mouselook around, but unless you mouselook for parallax it's very difficult to work out exactly where you are in a 3D space in WoW.

But the most important thing that I didn't appreciate until we were working on Heroic is that reference points on Al'Akir make it much easier to get everyone on the same page. Start behind the head. If you go down and alternate dropping off storms at the top and bottom, head to the bottom of his cape.

[Shoju]

The stormling tank in P2....


Does it need to be a "tank" or can it be a Plate DPS?

[Hrobertgar]

The stormling tank in P2....


Does it need to be a "tank" or can it be a Plate DPS?

On the other thread someone linked a video of using a hunter-tank pet for the stormlings, and it lokoed good.

I've only done this fight twice for basic acheivements for people. But we had the MT hold them and held all stormlings w/o killing them till the 3rd spawned. Then we killed the first and continued to kill them prior to debuff wearing off. We seem to drop stormlings slightly more quickly than they spawn so this helped us maintain the stacks on the boss w/o dropping them (Sort of like the achieve for the last boss in H--Lost City). However, having 3 stormlings up WAS definitely noticeable dmg, eventhough it was only briefly now and again. But then, towards the end your healers are going to be struggling with the high acid rain stacks anyways.

The hunter pet method seems to alleviate several issues. The raid should be out of range of the stormlings, and the tank doesn't have to worry as much about manuevering while lightning is on him dodging the tornadoes. Note, I haven't actually tried this method, but based on my two kills, it does look good.

[Gab]

The stormling tank in P2....


Does it need to be a "tank" or can it be a Plate DPS?

The stormling tank can be a dps, we use a DPS DK on heroic and it works fine. However on normal it's not all that difficult to have the Al'akir tank pick up the stormlings. As mentioned above you will only have 3 for a short time, it's not too much extra damage.

[Epimer]

The stormling tank in P2....


Does it need to be a "tank" or can it be a Plate DPS?

We've had a warrior (well, two different warriors on different occasions) as the stormling "tank" from our first kill up until the present day. It's not at all difficult to heal through.

[Shoju]

Ok. I'm just trying to make plans for the raid tonight. My Co for the evening is a Druid who doesn't have a dps spec. My options were either to

1.) I Main Tank, he DPS's in Tank spec (about 11k dps) and tanks adds during P2.
2.) He Main Tanks, and I go DW Frost and Smash Faces and then off tank the adds in my frost spec.

Now, the next question;
Can A DPS warrior go all out on the stormlings as they pop up? or will I run the risk of killing them?

[Nikachelle]

We've used two tanks for all of our kills.

The tank handling the adds is usually able to kill the first stormling by themselves... so I'm pretty sure a dps warrior would pretty much decimate the add too quickly if he went all out.

[Forgrim]

I'm usually the only tank, and i just tank every add + Al'akir.

The damage input doesn't seem bad, even with 3 adds + Al'akir, just put CD's if needed, and clear stacks at 9-10. And with one more dps, and tank aoe going out, add control isn't really that bad, just stand away from the group slightly so the add aoe doesn't hit everyone.

[Shoju]

Big problem is, we don't have a Paladin tank. Druid + DK. I have read that I can clear with well timed AMS, but that is going to take some planning to do it right from what I understand.

[Rhiannon]

We've used two tanks for all of our kills.

The tank handling the adds is usually able to kill the first stormling by themselves... so I'm pretty sure a dps warrior would pretty much decimate the add too quickly if he went all out.

No we haven't . (When you were away I let Mini have a break from tanking on that one and took the adds myself.)

A somewhat durable DPS who's able to get aggro fast without running all over the place is sufficient to handle the adds, I often do it as a frost dk, and have a boomkin do it for another group I run with. The Al'Akir tank can also take the adds themselves without too much issue, though it means one person has a fairly complex role rather than two people having fairly narrow roles to concentrate on.

As far as single tanking, DK's probably the best suited class for it, between being able to trivialise the stacking buff as well as having death grip for errant adds. It's perfectly doable on all four classes though.

[Nikachelle]

We've used two tanks for all of our kills.

The tank handling the adds is usually able to kill the first stormling by themselves... so I'm pretty sure a dps warrior would pretty much decimate the add too quickly if he went all out.

No we haven't . (When you were away I let Mini have a break from tanking on that one.)

Gah!

[fafhrd]

Big problem is, we don't have a Paladin tank. Druid + DK. I have read that I can clear with well timed AMS, but that is going to take some planning to do it right from what I understand.

We have just a druid tanking on heroic 10, with a dps dk picking up stormlings, seems to be OK without the MT resetting anything.

There's no particular planning needed to drop stacks as a DK afaik, other than presumably trying to do it somewhere in the middle of the phase so you don't ever have it stacked too high. AMS doesn't remove your stacks, but it prevents a new stack being applied, which is what refreshes your existing stacks. The stack refresh is on a reliable timer built into probably any decent boss mod. When your stacks are decently high, it should be fine to just AMS before the next one is applied.