[10H] Baleroc

[Fetzie]

It's fine for the boss to enrage at 5% or even a bit higher however; he'll still die if your dps pull off enough clutch evasions, deterrencex2/fd, mirror images, etc.

If you can draw the fight out 30 seconds beyond Berserk you only need 23700 dps per dps (@7 dds) and 13000 from the tank. 69900000/390 seconds = 179000 rDPS as opposed to 192000.

[Paoanii]

Hello, so my guild gave it 1-2 hours of attempts on this buddy again last night with our best attempts hovering around 70%. Our wipes were usually because the tank just wasn't kept up and died (was usually blamed for not dodging enough) or soakers would die at 11-13 stacks. We're using 2 soak groups, one with a destruction/shadow(hunter backup) and the other with a frost Death Knight/balance(enhancement/arcane backup). We switched to a regular 3 soak rotation when a healer got tormented via Countdown and just had him heal the soakers.

We start the fight with the shadow soaking the whole first shard via CD's like Hand of Sacrifice, Aura Mastery, Divine Guardian, and Dispersion. During that first shard, when Torment hits around 9 on the guy, both healers pretty much switch to healing him full time to stack Vital Sparks with the protection Paladin surviving off his CD's like Holy Shield and Guardian of Ancient Kings. Our healers are a holy Paladin and a restoration Shaman.

In the beginning, we were having the tank dying before the first guy was done soaking, but we fixed that. However, the tank just doesn't seem to be able to survive consistently after the first shard. The main complaints were that the tank wasn't dodging enough and Greater Healing Wave spamming just didn't cut it. Another complaint was that doing a 2-soak just required TOO much mana. How are your healers doing this? And what's your setup? Are our healers or tank just not geared/skilled enough for this? If you heal this fight with any of these healing classes, can you please outline how you go abouts doing it (like the whole taking turns healing rotation)? Our healers have ilvl around 374.

We used a similar but more flexible strat for this fight when we downed it last night (on a related note, 3% enrages give me a heart attack). We used a rotation of 5 people taking crystals with 2 people on backup. We usually had our spriest soak the entire first crystal with both healers spamming their fastest heals on him to build stacks while I rotate CDs so I can survive the first crystal without heals. This usually lands both healers at 110-125 stacks after the first crystal and from that point healing is trivial with a 3-person per crystal rotation. Our rotation usually is as follows: spriest-dk-warrior-warrior-warlock with our hunter and mage as backups to fill in when someone gets torment. If a healer gets torment when it is their turn to heal the tank we call it on vent and swap tank/torment healers for the duration. I'm noticing that with the healers at 100+ stacks that early it really doesnt matter if i get an unlucky streak of hits or not because at that point a holy light/nourish is healing for 45-50% of my health. The only thing to watch for with this strat is that after the healing buff falls off, it takes 1 spell to reactivate it and that spell will not be buffed which could lead to some irritating wipes to decimation blades if your healers aren't careful.

I'll link logs from our kill so you can see what you want: http://worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-0l48yhp1h4kzmtk2/dashboard/?s=3139&e=3498

[timoseewho]

Thanks for the reply! I was under the impression that on heroic, it was pretty much necessary to have a 2-soaker (3 backups) rotation:[, so I guess the 3-soaker (2 backups) rotation still works as long as the healers get a good Vital Spark stack going up front.

[Belloc]

Jeez, the enrage on this fight is brutal when you're 3-healing

[Lieris]

Does anyone play a holy paladin on this fight? Ours could do with some pointers.

Logs: http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-m ... boss=53494

[Arianne]

What type of gear are people using for this? Block capped? Reforged to avoidance? Stamina at all?

[Belloc]

What type of gear are people using for this? Block capped? Reforged to avoidance? Stamina at all?

If block-capping works on this fight at all, it requires more than 102.4% total avoidance/block.

Our tank found that using a strength flask was a better idea for him. Less damage to heal up on the decimating strike and more threat/damage.

Personally, I get the impression that avoidance is really strong on this fight. If you can avoid a decimating strike, your healers instantly have a much easier job for a few seconds.

[Hrobertgar]

Decimate Blades CANNOT be blocked or mitigated in anyway whatsoever per the Blizz dungeon guide. You can avoid any Blade strike, but if Decimation Blade hits you it deals the greater of 250k or 90% health. Period.

One thing I have noticed while tanking normal mode is that if the healers let me die to Decimation Blade and B-rez me, I do seem to keep my stacks per my debuff bar, but I get 1-shot by the next Decimation Blade that connects, although I did once avoid all 3 strikes. I am thinking this may be for lack of certain stam buffs, and that the encounter keeps track that prior to death my max health was x; after Brez health without buffs is less than x, and even less than 90% of x such that I get 1-shot, thats my theory anyways.

I would advise any tank to minmize excess stam for the encounter to make it easier on healers. So long as you can build enough stacks to survive Decimation Blade (3 stacks or 60% health buff available prior to 1st Blade ability) then you are fine. I think a goal should be for a Decimation tank to be around 280k or so with 3 stacks, for a little margin over the 250k min.

When I tank normal, I switch into my avoidance gear and pull dodge+parry = 30% last week, but prolly 32% this week. I suffer a massive loss of block, but again Blades abilities are the primary risk to the tank(s) for the encounter and Decimation at least cannot be blocked.

[Técaro]

Killed this last reset, I was blockcapped for the fight. Or well, I was a massive chunk over the blockcap by virtue of mirror+revered trinket but it did the trick. A strength flask seems to be the best option but it won't make or break the fight. The reason I'd advise blockcapping is because it lets you holy shield after every blade for a truckload of damage reduction. There's also something odd about the inferno blade, I repeatedly had blocked inferno blades, while I thought they were supposed to be fire damage. Although I could be delusional by virtue of anxiety attacks from watching my HP.
I've seen several people say you need another 5-6% to blockcap on Baleroc, so it may very well be accurate.

We tried 2tank-2healing it, but as our OT was a warrior we couldn't pull enough DPS, switched to 1tank-2healer and killed it a second after enrage. Using a holy pala and resto druid we let a SP take the entire first crystal with AM>DS>disperse. When the crystal spawned we herod and both healers spammed into the SP while I used cooldowns. If the first blade is a decimation, pala switched right away, otherwise I'd be fine. After that we let the druid heal the next 2 crystals, while the pala healed me. For the fourth and fifth crystal they switched. We used a 2people rotation for those first 5 crystals (and just a SP on the first). After those 5, your healers should have enough stacks for the rest of the fight, we then switched to 3 people/shard and two full time healers on the tank, with sporadic heals on shard tankers.

[Lieris]

I block cap here.

The normal melee hits are relentless and being able to remove "crushing blows" entirely is too strong to ignore. Inferno Blade is trivial. You WILL get hit by Decimation Blade sometimes and DR on avoidance is too great for you to stack it. Blade hits have a huge amount of time between them, you will almost never take all 3 and they can be absorbed. They really aren't very dangerous. I do have a disc priest so your mileage may vary.

[Paoanii]

Honestly, I don't see a reason not to block cap for this fight.

Most of the damage of the fight is coming from inferno blades+normal melee, and quite frankly unless your healers are seriously behind in stacks, those are alot more threatening than decimation blades. If you're at the point where you're tanking Heroic Baleroc, you're above 30% combined dodge/parry, more than enough for this fight. By virtue of quick reactions and a couple great healers, I have never died to a decimation blade, normal or heroic, but I have died many many times to both inferno blades and normal melee when I was gearing for avoidance for this fight. Between 2 good healers and Ardent Defender/Guardian Spirit/Lay on Hands/whatever else you can use in a pinch, decimation blades really aren't threatening at all to a tank.

[timoseewho]

How many soakers is everyone using for the shards and what rotation? I know this probably depends on RNG from Countdown and all, but in an ideal situation, how'd you set it up? Our DPS setup is currently enhancement, frost Death Knight, feral, shadow, destruction, arcane, and marksmanship, how do you reckon we split this up? Thanks.

[Belloc]

We use two soakers per shard, max. Our usual starting rotation is Shadow priest solo's shard, warlock (13-14 stacks) hunter (finishes), Rogue/warrior split, and just go from there. Other DPS serve as backups.

Basically, the biggest part is using the Shadow Priest to start. After that, it doesn't really matter who goes in what order. People with cooldowns use them whenever they can.

[Arianne]

This may be the wrong place to ask, but do holy paladins typically save Holy Shock to reactivate their Vital Flame buff ASAP? The only occasions I've died are when our holy paladin's VF drops off and he uses a HL to reactivate it and then I take too much damage between the next HL. Should a holy paladin with 175 stacks be able to keep up a tank mostly solo for the entire fight?

[timoseewho]

Hi! What cooldown is 'DS' short for? I was totally under the impression that decimation couldn't be mitigated meaning dodged/parried but it can? We'll finally start working on this guy again tomorrow, thanks for the tips!