More tanks on Archimonde

So we did a bunch of attempts last night on Arch and those added to the ones we got in last week bring us up to 30 attempts total.

My RL insists on only having us do stamina buffs and having everyone focus on staying alive. It's an interesting philosophy but it seems to be failing because people keep dying early.

His goal is for us to make it through 4 fears without a death and we've only been able to hit that mark a handful of times. We did have a couple of semi-serious attempts, not fully potted but we actually buffed and tried to DPS and we got him down to 23%.

My question is:
Are they any tips for helping to keep people alive?

Most of our issues tend to be tied to people DIAF.
Every once in a while we'll get something weird like a person hitting Tear and getting dropped into Doomfire but those are not the norm.


I personally, don't really understand why it's so hard. /shrug
We've done 30 attempts and I only died once before a wipe was called.
That was our first attempt where I got Air Bursted into a tree, couldn't judge the ground properly and didn't get the Tear off in time.
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Well, what kind of positioning/strat are you using for dealing with the doomfires?
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The keys to keeping people alive on Archimonde:

1. Make sure everyone knows how to use their tears correctly. If there's a problem with this, they can always practice jumping off the cliff at the Night Elf camp.

2. Make sure you're decursing effectively. Have decursers spread evenly throughout the raid, and make sure they know what they're doing.

3. Handle doomfires effectively.

Number 3 is obviously the most important (and most difficult) part of this fight to master.

The first part of dealing with doomfires is that they follow people, some times for their full duration. If you have a doomfire chasing you, run STRAIGHT BACK away from the raid. Don't change directions or loop around until you're absolutely sure that the fire isn't following you around anymore. If you turn back too early you can surround people with fire... which is bad, as it makes the second part of dealing with doomfires much more difficult.

The second part of dealing with doomfires is knowing when fear is about to happen. Have DBM or BigWigs installed. They'll tell you when the fear cooldown is up. When the CD is up, you should be as far away from any doomfires as possible. If you're close enough to a doomfire when the CD is up to possibly get feared into it, you'd better make sure that your trinket/WotF cooldown is up. Remember, not dying is priority #1. DPS is priority #2. I've been through Archimonde fights where I haven't even needed to trinket because I always positioned myself intelligently for the fears. (Keep in mind that when positioning yourself for fear that you shouldn't move out of range of your decursers. Grip + no decurser = dead.

The final part of dealing with doomfire is simply paying attention to your surroundings. Zoom all the way out... ALL THE WAY. There's a keyboard command to set your max zoom range farther than the original settings. Use it. Knowing what's going on 20-30 yards around me in all directions has saved my life on more occasions than one.

If you just play smart and everyone focuses on survival, Archimonde will die eventually. Enjoy the sick loot table.

Sorry for the essay.
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Obnauticus/Warlock/Altar of Storms (main)
5/5 MH and 9/9 BT

Oldtuna/Paladin/Nordrassil (alt)
7/10 Kara 2/2 GL LOL

One thing our guild found useful was indicating that its about group survival since we use the 4 point strat.

Our raid runs with 9 healers for Archi. I know its a little excessive but it works for us and since its a survival fight rather then DPS why not?

For the 4 point strat our group makeups kinda look like this

1 Decurser, 1 MT healer and 1 group healer for each point group
for the melee group we have a druid (healer and decruser) and try to bring our enhance Shammy.

We have 4 MT healers and if the groups are fine we get the druid and priests to put HoTs up all the time if they arent running from fires. Our MT healers all have mics and call out when they are out of healing from fires or air bursts. This help the other healers know when they have to pick it up a bit. They also call when they are back in so people know when they are "sort of" relax.

We also have 1 person call out when the fear CD is almost done. "Fear CD in 5" for example. This indicates to the raid that its time to watch fires more closely or move away from them altogether and for shammies to renew their totems. Also there is 1 melee leader to call out fires that are getting very close to the melee group.

It may sound like its alot of chatter on vent for a simple fight but tbh it works for us and it keeps us focused on what we need to do.

Another aspect is to force your guild to get the 2 min CD pvp trinket. You would not believe how handy this thing is for this fight.

This
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http://wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Azjol-Nerub&n=Strydaris

Despite having a berserk timer, Archimonde is not a dps race. You have plenty of time to kill him even if you spend half of it running around like headless chickens. If you have dps dying from being feared into doomfires, feel free to smack them silly. It's not an excuse.

Every group should have a designated decurser, either a mage or a druid. That person's primary and absolute top priority should be to decurse their group. If they have to cancel a heal or fireball with 0.2 seconds remaining, so be it. If someone gets grip and then air bursted, that person is probably going to die and wipe your raid. Decursing grip immediately is key to this fight.

Everyone should have some sort of timer for fears. When a fear is due, everyone needs to move away from doomfires. Heck, they shouldn't be anywhere near them in the first place. Ranged damage dealers should just back away a bit just in case a doomfire spawns on their side at the same time that fear goes off.

Melee are pretty much screwed on this fight and will probably need extra attention. At the very least, they should have a tremor totem.

Honestly, I have no idea why people die on this fight aside from sheer carelessness. I have yet to die (healing) before anyone else in the raid does, and divine shield has only saved me a couple times.
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We're Paladins. We survive like cockroaches. It's what we do best.

Of course we never understand why people have a hard time surviving this fight.
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Aye I just heal here in prot spec. Well at least done it 1 evening on our confirm kill that took 8 tries Avoiding fires is the general bitch here. At least u got divine shield and loh as last saver besides the fear trinket.

We made the fear trinket a must have to come to this boss. It saves dozens of runs into the doomfires when u just get feared in a straight line towards the fire. 30 yards is nothing

But imagine a shadowpriest that has nothing to get rid of a doomfire debuff. If he runs into 1 he is sure to die unless he receives healing.

Another half rading session against Arch in the books with nothing but ~35g in repair bills to show for it.

The RL still insists on doing "non-buffed" runs until we can get a couple 3-4 fear attempts in a row down. Which actually got to pot up but not flask for the last couple attempts but people starting dying early again. :-/

Got him to 54% on a short attempt but people started getting aggreviated and frustrated with the early deaths.

I just don't know what to do or suggest, I still have not died since our first attempt. Our Shadow Priests and Druids seem to be the worst doomfire offenders. Some of it's random bad luck like getting teared into a doomfire but some of it is just... /shrug

We had a couple attempts with really strange doomfire behavior, ie lots of target switching, raid circling or just criss-crossing through the melee.
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Well, for whatever reason, maybe it was our Rogue class leader bitchin people out Sunday, maybe it was that we had a few of the Core Raiders back who were away last week, maybe it was that we only had 1 shaman in the raid so we couldn't slack off and take the easy way out or maybe it was that people just actually got their heads out of their asses but whatever it was we sealed the deal.

We went in after downing Sharaz for the second time and started fully buffed last night.

1st Attempt:
The RL just gets done talking about how people miss timing their Tears is not an excuse and they need to get their acts together, when he get Bursted and misclicks and dies.
Karma.

2nd Attempt:
The Rogue CL who was bitchin people out Sunday for Doomfires, ends up eating one and dies.
Karma.
We survived the charge, kept going and ended up dropping Arch.

Double Vanquisher
Cat's Edge to our Ret Paladin
Antonidas's Aegis to me for half price because it's considered off-spec.
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Nothing short of awesome.

Grats on the kill and the shield. I'm after that one myself, has yet to drop.
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Depending on what comp we want the rest of the raid to have, we usually keep in more than the MT for single-tank fights, like Archi. There's usually a feral druid in cat form, slumming it with the rogues, and there's another prot warrior who'll be on debuff duty so the MT has more rage for threat.

if I'm in, I'll either be in my healing gear, or I'll be in tanking gear keeping JoW up with my nightfall
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Nephili, Blackrock, US

I'm actually hoping to tank this big demon once but currently our warrior MT is just in every raid and he doesn't want me tanking it because I need the fearwards from the holy and shadowpriests then. Totally negating the fact that I can actually dispel a healer or 2 when the fear occurs.
I'd think that if I had 3 priests in the raid it would actually be worth to try it but he feels it like an experiment and since we have a hard time killing him, average like 10 tries before he drops down atm, that it's not justified.

I don't mind sitting out for a healer on this fight when it's a fresh night instead of attempts after the first 4 bosses, but when u're considered a MT as well it gets kinda stupid when u sit out every night there's an archi kill.

I'd wish my fellow raiders stopped dieing stupidly in doomfires and mistimed tear use