[10] Yogg-Saron

Work in Progress, I'm gonna do the text first and try and get diagrams up asap.

Group Makeup

Our group makeup was the following:

Prot Paladin
Feral Druid (I believe in a mix of dps and tank gear)
Holy Paladin
Resto Druid
Elemental Shaman
Demo Warlock
Frostfire Mage
Rogue
Unholy DK
Shadow Priest

Basically you need 2 tanks and 2 healers with at least one hybrid healer (moonkin/ele shaman/shadow priest), with at least 4 ranged dps. I can not stress enough the importance of ranged dps on phase 1 yogg, we went from 3 to 4 and proceded to down him within 2 attempts. The second tank tank is needed in both phase 1 and phase 3, so having a dk tank or a feral helps alot b/c they can dps in phase 2.

Watchers

They are a very important part of the fight so I'm going to go over what each does, and as you read this realize that each level of the hard mode removes one of them. Just the thought of this makes me dread the hard mode of yogg.

Freya: Freya gives the entire raid this buff http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=62670, which increases all damage done by 10% and all healing received by 20%. Also Freya puts giant green pillars of light in the corners of the room, by standing in these beams you gain 20 sanity a second but do reduced damage.

Hodir: Hodir gives the entire raid http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=62650, which increases all damage done by 10% and reduces all damage taken by 20%. Also Hodir will encase a member of the raid in an ice block to save them from a blow that would have killed them. After he does this he must "rest" for ~30 seconds before he can save them again.

Everyone in the raid needs to make the following macro and use it when you get encased to break yourself free or your stuck in the ice block for the entire duration. (On a side note if you have the "Fail mod" it counts these saves as missing the Hodir flash freeze ability)
/cancelaura Flash Freeze

Thorim: Thorim grants the entire raid http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=62702, which increases damage by 10% and health by 20%. Also during phase 3 Thorim will throw his hammer at the adds that spawn. This is important b/c when these adds get to 1% they go immune to all damage and the only way to kill them is to have Thorim kill them.

Mimron: Mimiron gives the entire raid this http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=62671, which increases damage by 10% and increases run speed by 20%. The second effect from Mimiron is a curse-of-tongues effect on the Corruptor Tentacles, reducing their cast speed by about 300%. The effect seems to occasionally drop out for a second here and there, allowing some casts to occur full speed (most likely a bug)*.

Sanity

The key to this fight is managing your sanity. As the fight starts you have 100 sanity, and as the fight starts yogg will start using different abilities which will reduce your ammount of sanity. You can get your sanity back by standing in the green pillars of light in the corners of the room.

Phase 1

As you look into the room notice a few things. First notice in the middle of the room is the woman that's been annoying you with her constant screaming, Sara. She is friendly and can not be attacked. The second thing to look at are the swirling clouds around her. Third are the pillars of green light around the room.

First I'm going to go over the clouds. If you touch any of the clouds they make the clouds form a swirling giant green orb, after ~10 seconds a guardian of Yogg-Saron spawns. These clouds are on 5 concentric circles each further out from sara in the middle. There is one cloud on each cirlce and they will move either clockwise or counterclockwise.

Diagram of Gas Clouds

The adds will spawn randomly form one of the green gas clouds that are rotating around the center. The mob needs to be dps'd down at some point (we used a spot in the 3-5 rings so melee wouldn't have to dodge the explosions) and then brought in. Basically its a kind of frogger for the tank to get to the middle or another good way to think of how this works is the lockpicking mini-game from the pc version of Mass Effect.

Second is the adds that spawn, they are called Guardians of Yogg-Saron. They form from the green clouds that cirlce Sara, they start slow at first and will speed up as the fight goes on. They are pretty basic and have one abilbity, which is dark volley. Dark volley is a casted spell (that can be interrupted) that casues a 25% mortal strike debuff on everyone it hits, this is a large area too if I had to guess I would say 30 yards. Also when they die they blow up for ~16-17k damage.

Finally you need to be aware of a debuff that sara will cast on random party members. It's called Sara's Fervor (http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=63138) and will increase damage taken by 100% so its important that you try not to tank when you have this. It will eventually become unavoidable near the end of p1 so just save a shield wall for when you need to blow up your guardian.

The point of this phase is to kill Sara by blowing up Guradians on top of her. Two tanks seems like a waste at the start of this phase but is very important near the end when they start spawning faster than you can kill them. There are two very important rules;
1) Never touch a cloud, you will get overwhelmed or will be forced to blow a lust
2) Never kill a Guardian until it gets to her, because missing an early guardian forces you to kill a late one which will leave give you at least 1 if not 2 guardians to deal with at the end of the phase 1.

We found it best for melee to stay on the outside of the pool where Sara is standing, the point of this is melee can't be in the middle when the guardians explode. Having your melee move in and out of the center is just asking for either dps to clip a cloud or to have to sit on their hands as they make there way through the clouds.
While ranged focuses on blowing up the add that is in the center, and moves back to the next guardian during times where there is no guardian in the center. It is very important that you interrupt the Dark volley's because they will make this phase incredibly hard on your healers near the end.

The mantra for tanking the guardians is "It is better to go slow and take the long way around than to chance hitting a cloud". I can't stress this enough, the spawn range seems to be slightly bigger than the cloud graphic so be advised, also don't try to cut b/w two clouds going opposite directions just wait on the inner one to be clear before you go.

During this phase Sara will also mind control people, this is a magic buff that can be removed and needs to be removed. We have had wipes b/c the holy paladin wasn't dispelled fast enough and he ended up being dispelled int he middle of two clouds.

Sara has 160K life, and requires 9 guardians to die on top of her (it may be 8 I didn't count b/c of how hectic it gets near the end), after she "dies" she reveals her true form as the god of death.

Now the fun starts.

Phase 2
Phase 2 has two parts; inside his mind and outside. As a tank you will more than likely never go down into his mind, but I'll go over what I know about the mind.

Outside
First on top of yogg-saron is sara in the vrykul angel form, just /kiss her for a quick and easy achievement.
Ok now that's out of the way lets go over the 3 types of tentacles outside that you have to deal with.

Crusher: The crusher's hit for ~16K (14K with 2k blocked for me), so they need to be tanked by an actual tank. In 10 man there is generally only 1 crusher up at a time unless your dps is slow, in which case your more then likely wiping. These need to be tanked b/c if there is no one attacking it in melee range it channels a debuff that reduces all damage everyone causes by 20%, and this will stack.

Constricting: The constricting tentacles will grab a person and start doing damage to them. Not a significant damage but if you get a brain link with one of these it can get dicey. They don't have much health and can only be attacked by the person in the constricting tentacles grasp if they can cast. You need to get people out of these asap.

Corrupting: the corrupting tentacle will constantly cast effects on the raid; there is a poison, curse of doom,
a magic debuff that snares, and I "think" a disease. These need to die fast, also there effects need to be removed fast.

Next lets go over the abilities that Yogg-saron uses on the outside.

Mind Control: http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=63042 This is like phase 1 and needs to be dispelled, its -2 Sanity
Brain-Link: http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=63802 Think of this as a reverse of the Mother Shaz fight from bt. This links 2 raid members that take 3000 shadow damage a second and loose 2 sanity a second when the two are further than 20 yards apart. People just need to get close to each other, other than that this is easy to avoid. Also going into a portal while brain linked will remove the brain link, so do not worry if your mind crew gets a brain link.
Death Coil: He also has a single target horrify. This combined with a brain link can cause many problems, the worst situation would be a horrify with a person who is brain linked to someone that is constricted. But if your healers are good this should not be a huge issue.
Lasers: Like I said Sara is still on top of Yogg, now she will start using a laser ability that has 4 beams. They are very small and are easy to avoid, even if you can't avoid one completely they do not do that much damage and can easily be healed through.

The kill order on the outside during p2 is Constrictor, Corrupter, Crusher (this may change if you choose to do it without mimron). We had the paladin on me and the resto druid decursing/raid healing and this was more than enough. The actual damage on the outside is very small, on some of the wipes it took me 2 minutes to die as long as your not standing in melee range of a crusher.

People should be responsible for their own sanity, if they need to up to the green beams of light and regen it if needed. Though it should be pointed out that when the inside team is attacking the brain down below the mobs up top are stunned and none will spawn during this time. As long as your dps is not slacking you should get a short downtime with which to regen sanity.

Yogg's Mind

FIrst of all to get below during phase 2 Yogg will occasionally spawn 4 portals around him. Each portal can only be taken once so this means at most four people down below. We did this with our feral, rogue, unholydk, and elemental shaman.
While in Yogg's mind you will be taking constant 1500 a second damage until you reveal his brain. This also reduces sanity by 2 a second, so do not go down unless you have at least 80% sanity and when you get back up go imediatly to the beams and get sanity back. A caster dps that can also heal helps keep everyone alive down here.

When all the tentacles in a vision are killed his brain will spawn along with a portal. When his brain spawns it will start casting induce madness which after 60 seconds will make everyone inside his mind go insane. Everyone HAS to be out before he casts this.
There are 3 visions (I have only seen the Arthas one myself so I have the most info on this one):
Arthas: 3 packs of 3 acolytes that when hit turn into tentacles. The first pack is in front of you by arthas, the other two are on your left and right. These have 8k life and die very quickly. After they are all dead his brain spawns and you have 60 seconds before he uses induce madness.
Stormwind: There are suits of armor that you attack and they turn into tentacles.
Dragon Sanctuary: Not sure what turns into tentacles but I know there are alot of them and aoeing them makes it easy.

I was told that having classes that have cleave like abilities will run through the tentacles quickly.
After the brain gets to 50% (I need to confirm this, sorry after I knew I wasn't going below I only focused on the top, I'll get a confirmation on this asap).

Phase 3

Now Yogg looses the shield around him and it's time to dps him down. He does not get tanked, but he will spawn more adds that need to be tanked.

During this phase Yogg will use http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=64163, which will cause damage and sanity loss to all that look at him. The raid needs to be on top of this and not look at him when he starts shooting purple lightning at your raid. As a tank you really never need to face him just turn the camera around and taunt it and just position yourself so you can look at him without looking at yogg himself. The adds need to be dps'd down (as long as your have thorim helping) and thorim will kill them off for you. One idea we had was to have the tank tank the mob behind the ranged so when they turn around from attacking yogg they can burn down the adds.

Really this phase is pretty simple as long as you have watcher help. People still need to watch sanity and go regen it if need be. This phase can be rough on healers if the raid is bad at turning around fast. We got a kill the first time we got to this phase so I may have missed some of the details, I'll update as I get more information.

Markoh wrote:Mimron: Mimiron gives the entire raid this http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=62671, which increases damage by 10% and increases run speed by 20%. Since all the other watchers do a second ability I assume he does too, but at this point I have no clue what it is.

The second effect from Mimiron is a curse-of-tongues effect on the Corruptor Tentacles, reducing their cast speed by about 300%. The effect seems to occasionally drop out for a second here and there, allowing some casts to occur full speed (most likely a bug).

-Splug

Thanks I'll add it in.

Ya during phase 2 I'm just tanking crushers and cleansing so I didn't even notice the cot effect. I definitely think he is the first watcher to not have and then maybe hodir next.

though be warned they can and will randomly change directions.

I dont think thats correct. The clouds as far as ive seen always go the same direction (a cloud going clockwise will always go clockwise).

also it takes 8 adds blowing up to get to p2

I talked to our holy pally that was coordinating the non tanks in the raid on movement and he said they don't change. I guess I was going off an early idea we had.

Are you sure its 8 b/c the achievement is 9 of them to die in 12 sec so I figured it was at least 9 of them.

yeah its always 8, each one is around 14%

Also about p1 portals the damage inside isnt constant, the skull things (looks like the icon above you when you get feared) do the same gaze yogg does in p3. So have your dps turn their backs to the skulls and they take no damage or sanity loss. You can go into a portal @ 100% and come out at 100% if you do it right.

On 10 man in portals the tentacles can basically be 2shot by any dps so sending classes with aoe attacks like warriors or ret paladins is preferred.

P2 starts @30% damage done to the brain is 1:1 to yogg so you can check how close you are uptop too.

Ya I mentioned the cleave like abilities. But I didn't know the skull thing and ya I couldn't remember the % thanks.

There is no mind control in phase 2, unless someone goes insane or you still have an add from phase 1 running around.

My group spent about an hour on Yogg last night and got to phase 2 a couple times. There is a lot of chaos going on up top... what should people be focusing on first and foremost? Crushers? Constrictors? Have you assigned people to certain targets? As a tank it seems like Crushers should be the focus but everything seems to be a problem = /.

Constrictors are number one b/c they effectively take one person out of the fight. One side note we learned that if you bop a person in a constrictor it "kills" the constrictor. It seems that after the person thats constricted is freed and the constrictor despawns and doesn't pick another person. I don't know if this is intended or not but its really useful in particular if there is a brain link person constricted.

Second should crushers with corruptors being lowest priority. After you learn this fight it becomes a steamroll really quickly. We did this in 10 man after our 25 man raid spent the night working on yogg and we just crushed him (very satisfying btw) and had ~35-40 seconds of stun time. This is the key of the fight; getting to the brain asap and having the top stunned as long as possible makes it easier.

On a side note I need to do some major updates I'll try and get them done in the next couple days. We've been working on hard modes for 10 man so I haven't really had a chance to sit down and fix what needs to be fixed.

The hardest part imho, is getting past1 consitently, without someone "accidentaly" poping an extra add.

We had major chaos also on our first night on yogi bear at the start of phase2. It's just takes time for them to figure out what their supposed to do and how. Theres a REALLY nice video about what melee should be doing on warcraftmovies that all of them should watch.

Basicly, as soon as p2 pops you should have 2-4 adds up at the most, preferably less. Finish them off and go on the crushers ASAP. Any constrictors that are up still are taken care of the melee. They also dps a corrupter if theres no constrictor up. As soon as portals are about to pop, they get in ranged of yogi and go in. Do the insanity phases just like in the vid ( had some nice pictures where adds spawn and who goes where ). Once our melee sorted out wtf they are doing, the time the adds uptop stunned went from 10s to 40s.

He also stops spawning adds while they are stunned, so it's key melee stun the boss as soon as possible to make it easier uptop. If their too slow, the top will get swamped.

The ranged need to focus down the Crushers, any constrictor near them takes prio, but just 100k health doesn't take long. As a tank, you are going to be either dpsing the constrictors or running in/out to reset the dimishing power or tanking a new crusher that spawned way far away from the raid. Ask for one dedicated healer per tank, rest on raid cleanse/heal/decurse.

The only way to solve the "Chaos" is to get to p2 often and try it, raid mobility test, wotlk style

Very informative. Thank you.

You might add this to P1:

p2 - can some1 make a pic with portals.. in 25ver al of them spawns in the same place.. what about 10man version?