25[HM] beth'tilac

[Darielle]

"Clever use of game mechanics" Smoldering Devastation isn't a key to anything about the fight.

Healing Venom Rain isn't really the hard part of the fight or the key part of learning the fight. "Most top guilds" certainly didn't do this to learn the fight, and I wouldn't really recommend relying on "clever use of game mechanics" to overcome a mechanic that you should be able to handle anyway.

[Treck]

We have never even tried a strat that involves anyone staying up during the explosion.
And the main reason for that is simply that its just not needed.
You gain very little by doing so, and its not without risk.
Id rather not even risk wiping there at all.
We usually play along the lines of "if it aint broke, dont fix it".

Thats what i mean with "its more trouble than its worth".
If youve killed it without it, i dont recommend trying the tactic out to much as its just not worth it.
If your progressing on it, you might wanna consider trying it out, but even if you can consistantly do it without any problems, youve still not gained much anyway, so i wouldnt consider it gamebreaking in any way.

Seems like its just more trouble than its worth, and from the looks of things, a lot of top guilds feel the same.

We took about 5-7 tries on the boss before she went down, so we obviously didnt explore every single way to do it eather.
We never even imagined that invisibility would ever work to avoid the aoe.
We were fully aware of having the tank stay up with AD/GS, but we skipped that idea as we would gain nothing on doing so really.
The only way it would really be worth it would be IF some dps'ers could stay up with him, and bring the boss lower before p2.
That wasnt possible, so we abandoned it during the PTR.
But like i said, the boss wasnt that hard, so we never thought about improving p1 (and the fire rain NEVER wiped us).
It would definately have turned out to be more wipes before our firstkill if WE would have tried this, results between guilds may differ.

Top guilds rarely find the perfect strategy for their firstkill, the "best" strat is usually developed on forums with input from lots and lots of different guilds communicating and sharing their experience.
The whole wow community with a few months of playing around is a lot more resourcefull than 25 tired raiders from a topguild during progress ^^

[baleogthefierce]

We considered playing with the Mage strat for the AoE but found the additional DPS downstairs more useful in getting the drones down more quickly since you can easily handle the healing (and there are always plenty of raid cooldowns to use in case of emergencies).

[Chronos]

I'm sure your holy paladins are rockin' Hand of Reckoning/Righteous Defense on CD for spinners, but do you ever have them turn on Righteous Fury?

[Treck]

I dont know if paladins using RF helps much tbh (with the recent change they should stick on the pallys like on glue), but they are also those who are taunting, and RD doesnt work if you have aggro on them allready.
If you got multiple paladins downstairs its fine as one of them will taunt down 3 atleast, and the other 2 with the other taunts, really only an smth to mention if you only got one paladin down.

Also to clarify on the "staying up to avoid AoE", the magestrat is very benefitial, has no real downside apart from the mage using images there rather than during the burn phase.
I was mainly refering to keeping the tank up there as not really worth much