[10N] Will of the Emperors

[Auracle]

Figure I'll start this one off and let the community know what we discovered while learning this fight.

Comp:
2 tanks
3 heals
5 DPS (1 melee, 4 ranged)

This fight was much easier for us to down than Elegon, took less than half the attempts.

Controlling the adds correctly was the key to getting it down for us. We found that the fight revolved around DPS windows denoted by the instances of Titan Gas.

For reference, the fight has a fairly linear and predicatble progression, with really only one ongoing phase and a soft enrage timer at around 11 mins (may be off by ~30 secs there).

Add waves - Consist of 2Rage 1Str, 2Rage 1Courage, 2 Rage 1 Str.
Titan Gas - Occurs first at the ~3:40 mark, and roughly every ~2 - 2.5 mins thereafter. Always occurs towards the end of the latest wave of adds.
From start to finish, the progression of mechanics goes:
Add wave 1
Add Wave 1 going down: Add Wave 2 + bosses
Add Wave 2 going down: Titan Gas 1
Titan Gas 1 dissipating: Add wave 3
Addwave 3 going down: Titan Gas 2
Titan Gas 2 dissipating: Add wave 4
Addwave 4 going down: Titan Gas 3
Titan Gas 3 dissipating: Add wave 5
Addwave 5 going down: Titan Gas 4 + soft Enrage.

The Soft enrage mechanic consists of the Titan Gas not dissipating, and the adds continuing to spawn during the gas.

I believe 3 key things got the kill for us.
1) Tanks learning to dance, and fast. It's critical they not get hit often, or at all if they can manage.
2) Having a DPS off-tank the Strength.
3) Correctly distributing DPs across the add priority list we laid out.

The Strength add has ONLY the smash mechanic, no melee attacks. Consequently it can be tanked by anyone capable of dodging that one mechanics, making it's only real threat it's health pool. We had a retribution paladin tank it with RF on, which worked very well.

One the strength was sorted, we killed adds in the following priority:
Courage
Rage
Strength

Rages represent a threat to your overall DPS output if they reach the group and should be slowed/snared/controlled each time they appear while your ranged DPS nuke them down. We had no hunter, but found that ring of frost, ele sham totems, resto druid roots, various pally stuns, and so forth, were enough to manage.

We handled the courages by having 1 mage get behind them at the time of spawn and instantly slow them, then DPS them down on his own until the courage reached the halfway mark (meaning that our ranged could now DPS it from behind without having to move). This is obviously highly comp specific but I figured I'd mention it.

We found that we would usually have a couple of rages and a strength up when the gas spawned, but that the rages would die in the first 10 secs of the gas. We then had ranged DPS switch to the bosses, leaving the ret pally to solo down whatever health remained on the strength.

By the time the 4th and final Titan gas spawned we had the bosses to around 20% health, and were able to hard CC (poly, repentance, hex) the next 4 rage spawns while CD rotating through the damage (tank and raid CDs). This final phase must have lasted us 45 - 60 seconds.


Overall this was a ton of fun to practice, though it feels perhaps a touch undertuned. Biggest tip I can give is, if you feel like you're behind on DPS: DONT GIVE UP. We were shocked at how far we got into the soft enrage the first time we saw it and weren't expecting it, and got it down no more than 2 attempts later.

Happy hunting Maintank community!,
Auracle

[Hespherus]

We actually 2 healed this. I guess just making it harder for ourselves. It was really hectic at the end, but we managed to pull it off. Tank damage is really high on this fight especially when you fail with the dance even if its few times only. I wonder if they reset if you bubble.

[PsiVen]

As we quickly learned, you can 2-heal this iff you have a holy paladin.

This is a really fun fight to tank, though it is pretty damn hard to tell how the raid is doing. We struggled to keep up until we moved the bosses towards the stairs, planted the raid near the center and added a 3rd healer. Your advice was spot on, Auracle -- thanks!

I'm not sure if bubble will reset the sunders, but you CAN bubble off the Courage snare, and if it's during a combo you can keep DS up while dodging unfettered for a bit. The only caveat is that this causes the boss to give the next closest person magnetic plating, which could be dangerous, but I don't think it did anything but scare our warlock.

[Kishandra]

Try using a pet to (off) tank the strengths since they don't actually melee - all they do is spam their frontal aoe. One on one, a pet never gets hit because the pet automatically runs behind the mob and so the aoe doesn't get him. Even if the pet does get hit, it takes 90% less aoe damage.

In theory, you could have a pet offtank any reasonable number of strengths and ignore them for the entire fight. Haven't actually attempted that but there's no reason it wouldn't work.

[Treck]

Pet tanking was fixed from Beta, they seem to reset threat completely after each attack.

[Kishandra]

Perhaps so, but it didn't prevent us from killing the emps with pet tanks on both strength spawns with no noticeable aggro issues. Growl/glyph of md too strong?

[Auracle]

We wanted to try pet tanking too but didn't have access to a hunter or warlock

Our hunter should be gd to go this weekend however, so we might give it a shot to see how it works, since if they could be perpetually OT'd it would make the fight hugely simpler. Seems a bit of a cheese-y though, but I'm still keen to see if it's possible.

Definitely going to try and switch this to a two heal and see if it's manageable, I'm our team's holy paladin and I went into the final Titan Gas with ~60% mana on our kill attempt, so I'm thinking with an extra DPS this should be quite doable.

Off-topic: Light's Hammer - badass spell effect AND completely awesome utility for all three specs, SO happy with this new talent XD

[PsiVen]

Pet tanking Strengths was noted as a fix in today's patch notes.

[Juugimus]

There should be a leaderboard for Opportunistic Strikes on these guys. My best so far is 10.


Post those high scores!

[Creel]

As we quickly learned, you can 2-heal this iff you have a holy paladin.

Just wanted to see if you could elaborate on this a bit please- what does a holy pally bring that makes them so strong on this fight ie making it 2 healable?

[Juugimus]

As we quickly learned, you can 2-heal this iff you have a holy paladin.

Just wanted to see if you could elaborate on this a bit please- what does a holy pally bring that makes them so strong on this fight ie making it 2 healable?

Bacon (beacon)

[Hespherus]

We 2 healed with a monk and druid. I admit the tanks suffered a lot, but we 3 shotted it.

[PsiVen]

Interesting. I'm not too familiar with Monk healing yet.

There should be a leaderboard for Opportunistic Strikes on these guys. My best so far is 10.


Post those high scores!

I had 14 last week and 17 last night in our 11:40ish kill... unfortunately we weren't logging that time

[Brokenone]

I missed 2 in our kill last week (I think that put me at 12 total out of 14)..but I'm wrecking the damage! I find this leader-board hilarious:

[Pinupgirl_Madoran]

http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-wwiy6vk5o0zxb0gg/

I have no clue what we're doing differently or wrong here, but, we can't figure out why our tanks are spiking constantly on damage taken, whereas tons of successful kills we're browsing on WoL kinda just wobble the whole fight without spiking...