I just wanted to decompress some of my thoughts on the fight after our attempts tonight so figured this was the place for it.
First off, here is the link for the video of the fight:
Fatboss VideoI watched through most of it during my first break here at work to freshen up whats supposed to happen vs our attempts. I also used it make sure that I had a complete understanding of what is going on (which I apparently still didn't understand it all).
Our phase 1 sequence seems fine except for the ranged (myself included here) kept popping mines. This is a 2 fold problem in that the raid wide damage occurs as well as it debuffing the person popping which causes a stun whenever they take arcane damage. While all of this we can deal with, it's draining our healers which need to get through this phase without burning much mana. Another take away I got from the video is they had a couple of ranged (they used hunters) to bounce the branded debuff back and forth in order to better control it. While we didn't do bad with this during this phase, we could have controlled it better.
Phase 2 is where we had a lot of issues even though we were able to push through it. The tanks appeared to be handling there assignments well from what I could tell. Again the issues here were with the ranged group (myself included). Same issues with the mines which is worse in this phase because they get bigger. The Branded debuff became more of a problem here as well due to it limiting its targets movement range. In the video it seemed to be conrolled much better again with having 2 assinged to "bounce" it. We did not manage this well and seemed to take a large amount of unnecessary damage from it. I believe we can manage this better by following the instruction in the video and having the group shift over as it is applied (which we did not do well at all). I think the majority of this can be done much easier with better communication from the ranged/healer group which we did not do well either. The rest of the mechanics of this phase I think we handled well (the force wave and the add) so that is good
The intermission we handled decently but again I think can be done better. From the strat in the Video I think we will be a bit better off if we have 1 DPS assigned to stay on the Anomallies during the transition so that the raid wide damage from their explosions is better controlled and go off during the intermission vice during phase 3. I believe this will work better with a melee assigned to it so that the travel time from boss to Warmages is cut out and they can focus that time on the Anomallies instead of just lost DPS for the time period.
Phase 3 is where we appeared to shit the bed as a whole. The last couple of attempts seemed to go better with the tank swapping and movement required by Mark of Chaos and I think we have this part down pretty well. As a ranged I did have issues on placement here due to the strat change of having to move the boss (required) and poor communication from ranged/healers on where to be. Much more damage here all around from the higher health add and the multiple force waves here so we really need to refine this phase in order for us to succeed.
This was the extent of where I was able to make it to before dropping off for work so unsure if the group was able to push past this.
My biggest takeaway from the night was that we need better communication from the ranged/healer group in our movement patterns. This is not meant to be a finger pointing at anyone (as I was just as bad as everyone else, lol) but more of how I viewed our attempts and what I think we can do to get better. I think a couple of minor strat changes may help (dedicated Branded targets to bounce it and an assigned Anomally killer during transition vice after) as well but that is my opinion after re-reading strats and video. As I am sure everyone else wants, I want our next attempts here to go better and I just think some communication about it will help all of us involved.
Thoughts?
-Corey (Kanibal/Redruum)
