Paladin Blog - World of Warcraft: Mythic HFC

Showing posts with label Mythic HFC. Show all posts

Friday, 15 January 2016

Mythic HFC Talents and Trinkets

i notice in my guild that different players have different objectives when farming contents.

1) some enjoy going for speed kills
2) some like to min-max to achieve better dps ranking
3) some prefer to gear their alts during farming
4) a few wanted to perform better execution and strategy

since my guild have a mix of all these players, although we are in the same raid, we each have our own ways to play, hue hue hue

but when we started to wipe too often, all of us eventually align our thoughts towards (4) better execution just to kill the boss first, and leave out the desires for "next week"

while progressing mythic HFC, i remember i rarely use LOV other than iron reaver, fel lord and tyrant, because when raid overall dps is slow, a lot of hard target switching is necessary. but once we enter farming mode, i find that i don't really need to perform hard target switch that often and LOV is doing great for a lot more bosses now.

every guild progress differently. for example, my guild is slow at killing doomlord and infernals during progression. the raid leader always request everybody to hard switch, and it is also common for the doomlord/infernals to be out-of-range from boss. it takes around 1 month of farming before LOV can be use comfortably. therefore, the heirloom trinket is actually pretty good for both mythic mannoroth and archimonde.

Mythic Archimonde

Seal of Righteousness

Long Arm of the Law - handle shackles and dance
Unbreakable Spirit
Sanctified Wrath
Execution Sentence
Final Verdict

Libram of Vindication
Empty Drinking Horn

Tuesday, 22 December 2015

Warcraftlogs All Star World Ranking

when 6.2.3 first came out, everyone is still trying to figure out how to make full use of our upgraded gears. some boss fights are shorten significantly and because of new timing and new strategy, every guild can produce new dps record, therefore world ranking have become very unstable during the first couple weeks.

it has been one month since then, perhaps everything have become more or less stable now, or not?

anyways as i am writing this, my current standing is at world rank 17.

world number 17 ret pally? i have never expected that i could get up to such a high ranking. could be many reasons:

1) maybe people can't be bothered to log their kills anymore, because they don't care about farming mode?

2) maybe there are many top guilds who have already stop raids before the 6.2.3 valor upgrade, especially if they already got the mythic mount for all their raiders by now.

3) or ret pally players are more focus on doing mechanics correctly instead of meter-padding, probably not, right? lol

4) or HFC have been on-going for far too long and players have switch to other games already

5) or maybe RNG simply favors me at the moment, but of course, i am definitely doing my best as i can too :)

however, i doubt i can go any higher because this is not my focus anyways and my guild is more keen to keep to a "1 night" raiding per week schedule too. that means we probably won't be trying out new strategy and timing at the moment. but the good thing is that we can use the spare time for rated battlegrounds, doing achievements, PVP and mythic progression with alts, etc.

Thursday, 17 December 2015

HFC Speed Farming Progression

after getting mythic archimonde and all HFC achievements for everyone, many guilds out there are currently still farming mythic HFC actively, my guild included.

why do we farm mythic HFC? first of all, we like to get mythic archimonde mount, Felsteel Annihilator, for every mythic raiders if possible. our rooster strength is around 26, and we only have 5 mounts now, so we still need another 20 weeks of farming.

secondly, farming can get boring, so we decided to spice things up, cut down healers, doing speed kills, going for higher individual rankings in warcraftlogs, etc. during farming mode, many things changes, fight length is reduced for each boss, sometimes strategy & legendary ring usage is also different. we have also reduce from 3 raid night per week to 1 raid night per week.

you can also think of speed farming as another kind of progression. cutting down healers can be risky, because mistakes will be more fatal, but it is necessary. speed farming is quite fun, however a few wipes is necessary to re-learn new timing and strategy.

Hellfire Assault

there are simply not enough mobs for everyone to dps in this fight. mobs die ridiculously fast and the majority of the time are idle-ing around, doing nothing, and the fight length cannot be reduced, so we can't rank this fight at all.

the only way is to ask half the raiders to afk this week so that the other half can rank.

Iron Reaver

dps is strong enough to down the boss with 0 air phase now. progression for this boss had gone from 2 air phase to 1 air phase to 0 air phase.

the top parses are using 0 heal or 0 tank and they actually reduce iron reaver into a 30-60 seconds fight. that means our 3 charges of AW must be squeeze inside the short fight and we will need to use a cancel macro in order to fully utilized our wings of liberty buff.

this is the cancer macro *ahem, i mean cancel macro

/cancelaura avenging wrath
/cast avenging wrath
/cast seraphim

Kromrok

to get the highest dps for this boss, you want to end the fight swiftly right after the dragging hands aoe, because that is when our dps burst is at the highest. 1st dragging hand came at around 30 seconds after pull, which is too soon for consideration.

we can try planning for the 2nd or 3rd dragging hand, both timing should be great for ranking. but if we use 2 healers, we probably be able to kill the boss by the 2nd dragging hand.

Council

during progression, we always focus on gurtogg as first priority to reduce raid damage and debuff stacks. we can't do that now because gurtogg will die too fast. to rank well on this fight, you will like to have gurtogg Fel Rage on you. it would be ideal if we allow gurtogg to be alive long enough to get 2 fel rage.

anyways, our dps is high enough that we can bring down both jubei and gurtogg together at the same time and killing both of them before the first storm phase come.

Kilrogg

nowadays, raid dps is so high, by the time the first vision team came out, the boss is already dying, or closed to dead.

we have to take turns to rank, 2 dps every week. the only way to rank for this fight, is to have the whole raid stop dps when boss is around 50% hp and wait until the 2 minute mark. when the 2 dps exit the vision room, their superman dps will kill the boss quickly.

Gorefiend

speed kill is the best way to rank on this boss. the kill timing can be lower from 3 soul feast to 2 soul feast to 1 soul feast. for 1 soul feast, it means dps does not need to waste time soaking the souls any more, and focus on boss dps for the entire soul feast duration, which will yield a much higher dps rank.

Iskar

previously, we use legendary ring is avilable for each phantasamal / add phase. now we finish the ground phase fast enough that legendary ring will never be available at the 2nd add phase.

our current strat is not top-tier:

1st add - legendary ring
2nd add - bloodlust
3rd add - legendary ring

the top parses for this boss has a very different strategy. the range continue to dps the boss in air, while the melee take down the adds on ground, and the boss actually went into another add phase while still in the air! my guild probably won't be trying this strategy for now.

1st add - legendary ring, explode on boss in the air

Scorethar

during progression, we always use 2 legendary ring for 2 dominator. for speed kill, there will only be 1 dominator in the whole fight so the best is using the ring on pull and again around 2 min. this should reduce the fight length significantly.

AW1 - ring on pull
AW2 - immediate after AW1
AW3 - after dominator is dead, ES and AW on boss
AW4 - ring at 2 min

Fel Lord Zakuun

ranking depends totally on speed kill too. cut down to 1 or 2 healer and the boss won't even have the chance to enter phase 2. there will only be 1 seed to handle in the whole fight. we don't even need melee to soak the puddles anymore and i don't have to enter the soul cleave phase either. i just simply AW 3 times in a row and the boss is dead. everything became so easy.

Tyrant

during progression, we used to timed the legendary ring strategically during p2. now that everyone is so geared, it doesn't matter anymore, we just simply use the ring on cooldown. this is very good for me too, since i don't have to estimate how much i need to delay my seraphim to sync with the ring.

for dps ranking, i believe the best is to keep all our AW padding for p3

AW1 - p1 ring on pull
AW2 - p2 ring on CD
AW3 - immediate after AW2
AW4 - immediate after AW3
AW5 - ring on CD if boss still alive

Xhul'horac

same as tyrant during progression, we used to delay the legendary ring for the last phase to burn down the boss asap. for better ranking and speed kill, we should use the legendary ring whenever it is up. and also pray that the boss don't choose you for fel surge too often.

Mannoroth

it quite dangerous to speed kill this boss unless we plan ahead in advance. for example, if we transit to a new phase while a doom lord is spawning, it can easily lead to a wipe. so it takes a bit of trial and error to determine whether it can be done before we push through it, sometimes we have to hold dps, which can be quite annoying because i still need to maintain 3 LOV stacks while holding dps.

during progression, i timed my AW around 5 doomlord but now we only have 3 doomlord so i can re-plan my AW usage.

AW1 - ring 1 on mannoroth, explode on 1st doomlord
AW2 - for 2nd doomlord
AW3 - ring 2
AW4 - for 3rd doomlord
AW5 - ring 3

as for ranking, i may consider planning my AW on the imps instead.

Archimonde

last month, we have 2 doomfire, 5 deathcaller, 4 infernal. this month, we have cut down to 1 doomfire, 4 deathcaller, 3 infernal. since we can kill the adds faster now, there will be lesser mechanics that overlap one another, making things much easier to handle.

Monday, 23 November 2015

Mythic Archimonde Kill - Realm First

yes, we finally kill mythic archimonde. when a demon died inside the twisting nether, he is dead for good! another good news is that we are also realm first :)

Spec: Final Verdict vs Seraphim

i believe Final Verdict is a better choice for progression because there are many high priority targets that need to die asap and we must prepare to use AW immediately once they are spawned.

for example:
during phase 1, doomfire must die in 10 seconds.
during phase 3, infernals must die in 10 seconds.

doomfire spawn every 50 seconds so it's not going to be efficient for seraphim timing.

infernal spawn every 60 seconds but there are many things happening during the last phase. i think it's too challenging to do a perfect seraphim for this phase. besides, 3 to 5 infernals spawn together, and is very good for final verdict to cleave once.

Spec: Hand of Purity vs Unbreakable Spirit vs Clemency

during the first 2 weeks, i was using Hand of Purity because we have to soak 3 doomfires. eventually our dps reach the point where we can clear phase 1 with only 2 doomfires, our healers are capable of soaking the doomfire within themselves.

so i switch to Unbreakable Spirit in order to have more CD for survival. the fight will take around 9-10 minutes for first kill, which means 3 Divine Shield, 2 Lay on Hands, and Divine Protection for every Wrought Chaos and every infernal drop. our damage taken for this boss is always significantly lower than the other raiders.

although the tank also need my Hand of Sacrifice, we have enough external CD which does not need me to spec for clemency.

DPS Priority

phase 1: doomfire > archimonde > cleave deathcaller

doomfire must die in 10 seconds otherwise there will be too much fire to soak. ideally, we want our soakers to take around 12 stacks or less so that our healers won't be so stressed throughout phase 1 and phase 2.

phase 2: deathcaller > overfiend > archimonde

this is the hardest phase, most chaotic, and there are many deathstalkers in phase 2 which i can cleave on them as well.

phase 3: infernals > void stars > source of chaos > archimonde

all the dps priority, especially infernals, has to be killed very quickly here and target switching needs to be fast.

/cleartarget
/tar doom
/stopmacro [nodead, harm]
/tar hellfire
/stopmacro [nodead, harm]
/tar felborne
/stopmacro [nodead, harm]
/tar infernal
/stopmacro [nodead, harm]
/tar source
/stopmacro [nodead, harm]
/tar void
/stopmacro [nodead, harm]
/tar archi

this is my target priority macro. it help save a lot of time to perform target switching throughout the fight.

Hardest Phase 2

i think the hardest part of the fight is during phase 2. it is very important to recognize the sequence of events that is going to happen and always plan ahead where to move.

wrought chaos - look at addon to position myself

shackle - happen after wrought chaos, move out immediately.

deathcaller - legend ring and burst it down or (hand of purity if you are assigned)

wrought chaos - looking at addon to position myself

shackle - happen during wrought chaos, plan ahead which direction to run

deathcaller - focus and cleave off him or (hand of purity if you are assigned)

shackle - all 3 players must break these shackles before the next wrought chaos so everyone has to move out ASAP, in the shortest direction possible!

wrought chaos - immediately after the previous shackle, have to be more careful of positioning because everyone is running back into the boss again.

deathcaller - focus and cleave off him or (hand of purity if you are assigned)

shackle - we do not break this one, instead we push boss into the final phase.

AW Planning

AW planning depends on guild strategy. for my guild, we plan for 2 doom fire in phase 1. priority targets are extremely dangerous for this fight so i need to plan all my Avenging Wrath for them.

1st AW + 1st Ring = when archimonde is pulled, 1st doom fire will die in a few seconds
2nd AW = when 2nd doom fire spawn
3rd AW + 2nd Ring = when our ring is ready and a deathcaller is spawned

then i save up my AW until the last phase...

4th AW + 3rd Ring = 1st set of infernals
5th AW + 4th Ring = 3rd set of infernals
6th AW = 4th set of infernals
7th AW = immediately after 6th AW

by the end of 7th AW, archimonde should be almost dead already.

Trinkets: Empty Drinking Horn & Gronntooth War Horn

i believe when archimonde is on farm, EDH and libram should be the best combo.

but for progression, i am much more comfortable using the heirloom trinket because of all the targets switching. heirloom trinket uptime is as good as unending hunger and in addition, it also came with a 10% buff when hitting demon.

Thursday, 19 November 2015

Progressing Mythic Archimonde

this is the beginning of the 3rd week progression and we are coming close to a 100 wipes on mythic archimonde.

Changing Strategy

during the first week, we are planning for 3 doomfires in phase1 because most guild did 3 doomfires for their first kill too. due to our current gears and legend ring, we need to stop dps at 86% hp, then wait for the shadowfel burst, and push below 85% so that archimonde will use 2nd desecrate instead and further delay the 2nd doomfire. we practise this 3 doomfires strategy for the whole week and managed to progress into phase2.

during the second week, we decided to plan for 2 doomfires because we feel that dps have improved after 1 more week of farming, in addition, we also cut 1 healer (down to 3 healers now), and using bloodlust on pull, we wanted to push the boss to phase2 before the 3rd doomfire appear. this new strategy was quite unstable because sometimes we managed to push, and sometimes we fail, making no progress for the week.

(yesterday) during the third week, valor upgrade arrives, we decided to upgrade our legend ring and farm all the LFR raids in highmaul, blackrock, hellfire as a guild. it was boring but bosses die in a few seconds and we managed to clear all the LFR within 1.5 hours. we earn around 1250 valor points so i use it to upgrade my mythic weapon and also my mythic EDH trinket. after that, we extend the raid lockout and try to progress on mythic archimonde again. to our surprise, the valor upgrades help a great deal and we are able to do the 2 doomfires strategy in a much stable way. this give us a lot of opportunity to practise p2.

Sequence of Events

for progression on a very difficult boss with over 100 wipes, i will usually memorise all the sequence of events in my brain. consistency is very important because always doing the same thing in the same way will makes one better at doing it. this means using the same CD at the same time, being in the same position each time, eventually all these will become a part of me. practise makes perfect and when everything is already in my muscle memory, my dps rotation will improve, target switching will be fast, environment awareness will be good, etc.

writing it down can be another way help me remember too.

Phase One

on pull - potions, light hammer, ring, avenging wrath, trinket

doomfire - continue focus on boss, only rogues and hunters switch

deathcaller - continue focus on boss, cleave using FV divine storm

desecration - avoid getting hit but stay close to an orb for the buff

shadowfel burst - this mechanics is only for range, but as melee, when i see these 3 purple swirling circles on the floor, i can mentally prepare myself to avoid getting hit by the next desecration.

desecration - if this happen, we made the dps check for 85%

doomfire - everyone must switch and kill it asap, i'll also use avenging wrath for this doomfire

deathcaller - use light's hammer, refresh orb buff, then push archimonde down to 71%, and kill this deathcaller

doomfire - if this doom fire happens, we fail the 2 doomfire strategy and have to wipe

Phase Two

wrought chaos - minimize movement to achieve good position, and use divine protection if in a bad positioning with low hp

shackle - forget about dps and run out in the shortest direction asap

doomfire soak - run to the hunter i am assigned to and cast hand of purity

deathcaller - ring, avenging wrath, potions, trinket, kill it very fast

wrought chaos & shackle - very deadly combo, divine shield may be needed here, in addition there are also many dreadstalkers running around at this time, while wrought chaos is going on in this very chaotic situation, i must already plan ahead for the direction to run out from shackle by looking at the addon.

doomfire soak - run to the hunter i am assigned to and cast hand of purity

wrought chaos - trying to get back to boss carefully

shackle - this one kill me a few times because i always feel a bit dis-oriented due to running back and fro

doomfire soak - run to the hunter i am assigned to and cast hand of purity

wrought chaos & shackle & doomfire soak - this is a killer combo, and our strategy to avoid this is by pushing archimonde to 40% asap

Phase Three

we only reach p3 a couple times, not enough practise yet

Thursday, 12 November 2015

Mythic Mannoroth - Retribution Paladin

yup, we are 12/13M now and this is the 2nd week we down mythic mannoroth.
based on the boss mod statistic, our first kill took us 168 wipes.
surprisingly, the second kill took us only 7 wipes.

Spec: Final Verdict vs Seraphim

Final Verdict is definitely the better choice because for mythic mannoroth, imps continue to spawn throughout the fight. since the imps have to die within a couple GCD, in a way it is very similiar to kromrok dragging hands. for such situation, a FVDS (or FVEDS proc) is the best way to dps.

Spec: Unbreakable Spirit vs Clemency

Unbreakable Spirit is great because everyone will take a lot of damage from this boss. the fight will take around 7-9 minutes, which means 3 Divine Shield, 2 Lay on Hands, and Divine Protection for every imps / Shadowforce. when i can use our defensive CD so often, my damage taken for this boss is always significantly lower than the other raiders.

although the tank also need my Hand of Sacrifice for the Glaive Combo, we have enough external CD to go through it.

DPS Assignment

doom lord > mannoroth and cleave imps

this is the dps priority for the majority of us.

for consistent purpose, our guild prefer to appoint specific classes such as warlocks and warriors to focus AOE on the imps, while the rest of us focus on the doom lord and mannoroth. the main reason is to push the boss to 65% hp before the 4th doom lord, or even better if we push before the 4th set of imps.

Wrath of Gul'dan

Wrath of Gul'dan only happen 2 times in the whole fight because it will happen during phase transitions and there are only 2 phase transitions. and for each phase transition, 5 random players will be selected for wrath. it is always 2 melee-dps, 2 range-dps, 1 healer.

our guild decided that we should only deal with the 1st wrath and it is easier to ignore players who got the 2nd wrath.

for the 1st wrath, the raid leader addon will assign 5 icons on the 5 wrath players. 1 special icon (we use skull) is assigned to a player who will stand alone at the skull marker where both our tanks will then take turns to soak the player's wrath. the other 4 icon players will stand at their own pre-assigned markers forming a square shape. there, we assign 2 mages to take turns and soak up all the wrath of the 4 players by standing in the middle of the square shape formation and using iceblock.

for the 2nd wrath, we decided to ask all the players to stand outside the raid, each on their own. the most dangerous thing in this phase is the Empowered Shadowforce and the whole raid will be cluster at the center lane so that everybody can survive the empowered shadowforce by running against it in a straight line. straight line running is the only way we can survive without falling off the platform. however wrath players who are standing outside the raid means that our pivot direction from the boss will not be a straight line, and we will definitely fall out the platform during empowered shadowforce. as a paladin, we don't have blinks, leap jump, charge, etc but we are still able to survive the first empowered shadowforce using divine shield because there is one pillar remaining in the last phase. this pillar has a very strong electric AOE that can kill us in a few seconds but if we can stay inside the pillar with divine shield, we will be able to survive the first empowered shadowforce without falling off the platform. due to our guild choice of strategy, there is unfortunately no way for me to survive the second shadowforce except to cheat death by stacking up with the rest of the raid, but i'll only consider that if all our healers are alive and the raid looks healthy.

just for example,
during my first kill, i am only 58 percentile because i got the 2nd wrath.
during my second kill, i became 91 percentile because i didn't have the 2nd wrath.

AW Planning

since our role is to focus on doom lord, i decided to plan all my Avenging Wrath around the 5 doom lord.

1st AW + 1st Ring = when mannoroth is pulled
2nd AW = when second doom lord spawn
3rd AW + 2nd Ring = when 3rd imps spawn
4th AW = when fourth doom lord spawn
5th AW + 3rd Ring + Bloodlust + Potion = after clearing the mark from fifth doom lord

6th AW = if i have 2nd wrath, i will use it after the first empowered shadowforce because im probably going to die in the second empowered shadowforce. otherwise, we can save it to be used together with the 4th Ring.

1st Ring is used to dps mannoroth at the beginning and explode on the doom lord shortly after it is spawned.

2nd Ring can be used for dps padding on the 3rd set of imps and then explode on the 3rd doom lord when it is spawned. this explosion should instantly kill the doom lord.

3rd Ring is delayed a little bit, until the mark of doom is cleared and everybody is ready to dps push the boss to the final phase.

4th Ring is probably the end, the boss should be death pretty soon. use it as soon as it is available.

Trinkets: Empty Drinking Horn & Discordant Chorus

i believe the highest dps trinket is EDS + Libram and pray that you never get chosen for mechanics because mark of doom can easily put you out of range and remove the 3 LOV stacks. otherwise, a wrath + shadowforce combo can also push you out of range to maintain 3 LOV stacks.

for personal preference, i prefer to use EDH and DC, understand they may not be the best choice, but it definitely make my life easier, and allow me to focus on the dps targets, dps rotation or reacting to the mechanics correctly.

Edit: in case you were wondering, i did not have unending hunger or heirloom trinket (introduced later in 6.2.3) during our mythic mannoroth progression.

Friday, 6 November 2015

HFC Paladin Raiding Macro

using macro will give a player a slight advantage because you can react faster and with lesser mistake. below are some of the macros i frequently used in HFC.

Hellfire Assault

/cast [@tankname] hand of sacrifice

i usually keep an eye on the tank stacking debuff when the hulking berserker is alive for a long duration. HOS will be needed at 3-5 stacks because that's when tank hp start to dip down fast.

/cleartarget
/tar gorebound terror
/stopmacro [nodead, harm]
/targetenemy

this macro will help me target the nearest gorebound terror. when Gorebound Felcaster is at low health, they transformed into gorebound terror (the highest priority target).

Iron Reaver

/cast [@longlasting] hand of freedom

during the air phase, the boss will splash oil covering a large area. stepping into the oil will slow you down a lot and a hand of freedom macro can be very useful.

Kormrok

/cast [@tankname] hand of sacrifice

tank sometimes take heavy damage during grasping hand. we don't worry about the 1st hand because it is destroyed by the legendary ring. we only need to use HOS for the 2nd and 3rd grasping hand.

/cast [@focus,exists,nodead,harm] [] crusader strike

while changing target to dps the grasping hand, we have to maintain our 3 LOV stacks by doing a focus macro of crusader strike on the boss.

/cast seal of righteousness
/cast seal of truth

this is the best macro for switching between SOR and SOT.

Hellfire Council

/cast seal of righteousness
/cast seal of truth

this is the best macro for switching between SOR and SOT. SOR is good for the beginning when we have 2 targets available. after gurtogg is dead, we can switch to SOT.

/cast [@focus,exists,nodead,harm] [] crusader strike

at the beginning, we can focus macro crusader strike on jubei and attack gurtogg as the main target. when gurtogg is dead, we can continue 3 stacks of LOV on jubei.

Gorefiend

/cast [@longlasting] hand of freedom

there are times when the torture essence come out and AOE slow everyone, hand of freedom is especially important when you are required to deal with Shared Fate or Touch of Doom at the moment.

/cleartarget
/tar gorebound
/stopmacro [nodead, harm]
/tar gorefiend
/stopmacro [nodead, harm]
/targetenemy

this macro will help me target the nearest gorebound construct/essence/spirit, otherwise it will target boss gorefiend himself.

Shadow-Lord Iskar

/cleartarget
/tar corrupted talon
/stopmacro [nodead, harm]
/tar fel raven
/stopmacro [nodead, harm]
/tar shadowfel
/stopmacro [nodead, harm]
/tar shadow-lord

i use a different version for mythic mode but this is the priority kill order for heroic mode. it help save time with a macro to choose the next priority kill target

/click ExtraActionButton1
/targetlasttarget

i prefer to use this macro instead of the iskar assist addon because the addon can easily cause mistakes to happen.

/cast seal of righteousness
/cast seal of truth

best macro for switching between SOR and SOT

Scorethar

/cast [@longlasting] hand of freedom

hand of freedom will be mainly for p1 when the boss use fel charge. it leave behind a line of fire which slow down your walking speed. with a hand of freedom, you can walk over it safely.

/cleartarget
/tar sargerei dominator
/stopmacro [nodead, harm]
/tar soul of socrethar
/stopmacro [nodead, harm]
/targetenemy

help me target the dominator when it spawn, otherwise it will target the boss.

Xhul'horac

/cleartarget
/tar wild pyromaniac
/stopmacro [nodead, harm]
/tar vanguard akkelion
/stopmacro [nodead, harm]
/tar omnus
/stopmacro [nodead, harm]
/tar xhul

it save time having a macro that choose targets for me.

/cast [@tankname] hand of sacrifice

the tank always need to use some CD (whether internal or external) for every Fel Strike

Tyrant Velhari

/tar ancient harbinger
/focus
/targetlasttarget

during p2, melee has to focus dps on the boss and at the same time we also need to interrupt the p2 add. to do this, i use this macro when the p2 add is spawned and it will put the p2 add as my focus target.

/cast [@focus,exists,nodead,harm] [] rebuke

i can go full dps on the boss and use this macro to interrupt the p2 add, which is already my focus target now.

/cast [@tankname] hand of sacrifice

HOS is needed mainly for p3 where tank death is the most common wipe because of the stacking debuff.

/cast seal of righteousness
/cast seal of truth

best macro for switching between SOR and SOT.

Mannoroth

/cast [@tankname] hand of sacrifice

wait for tank to call for HOS when mannoroth is about to do his Glaives Combo

/cleartarget
/tar doom lord
/stopmacro [nodead, harm]
/tar mannoroth

this macro to help me target the doom lord when it is spawned. if there's no doom lord alive, boss mannoroth is selected.

Archimonde

/cleartarget
/tar doomfire spirit
/stopmacro [nodead, harm]
/tar hellfire
/stopmacro [nodead, harm]
/tar felborne
/stopmacro [nodead, harm]
/tar infernal
/stopmacro [nodead, harm]
/tar archimonde

macro the priority kill order to make my life easier.

/cast seal of righteousness
/cast seal of truth

best macro for switching between SOR and SOT.

Tuesday, 20 October 2015

Hellfire Citadel Talents & Trinkets

Friday, 16 October 2015

Mythic Xhul'horac - Retribution Paladin

my guild is still progressing at 11/13M at the moment and this is the 2nd week we down mythic xhul. statistic is 97 wipes and 2 kills so far.

Spec: Final Verdict vs Seraphim

i don't have enough test to confirm which spec is better since both specs have been proven by top players to achieve good results. although i am using Seraphim for both of my kills, it seems like the spec doesn't really matter much here. what matters a great deal is the number of times the boss decided to choose you for Fel Surge lol

if you are very concern with your dps ranking, you will hate this boss because you have no control when you will be getting Fel Surge. and when you get it, you have to drop whatever you are doing and run out from the raid asap, plus it always happen when the imps are about to spawn, losing the opportunity to dps them and making things worse.

Spec: Unbreakable Spirit vs Clemency

i was requested to spec for Clemency because my guild only want 3 healers for this fight so having 2 Hand of Sacrifice on the tank will help. usually, the tank will call for my hand of sacrifice when a Fel Strike is coming.

DPS Priority

Wild Pyromaniac to Vanguard Akkelion to Omnus to Xhul'horac

wild pyromaniac are the imps that spawn frequently throughout the fight. once the imps are spawned, they will began to cast Fel Orb and the most difficult DPS check is to interrupt, chain knock back and kill the imps without letting a single cast off. allowing a single cast off could easily result in a Shadowfel Annihilation and wipe the raid.

when the imps are dead, we can focus on the main bosses in the following order:- Akkelion to Omnus to Xhul'horac. we can simply focus on Xhul'horac since the 3 share the same health pool but i believe it is better to switch accordingly because Akkelion will reach 35% hp faster than Omnus is to Xhul'horac, thus giving you more chances to use Hammer of Wrath

Unstable Voidfiend is very dangerous too but our range DPS will kite it away and kill it.

Fel Surge

Fel Surge came every 30 seconds, xhul will randomly target 5 nearby players with this debuff and all 5 players has a few seconds to react. when the fel surge debuff is over, a fire will be spawn under the player. this fire will start to spread very quickly like a wildfire in the forest!

to slow down the rate of fire spreading, our guild put a triangle icon at a corner of the room. during fel surge, the 5 players have to try and stack on top of each other, releasing our fire at the triangle icon together. once in a while, a player with the purple debuff can run to this area and clear the fire. this will help to control the fire from spreading too fast in the room.

Maximize DPS

the best time to maximize your DPS is at the first half of the fight when the 2 big adds are alive. you will have the most number of targets at this point because there will be 1 boss, 2 big adds and 4-5 imps. this is the DPS check and also the hardest part of the fight in my opinion so you should use all your 3 charges of Avenging Wrath here. however, make sure you wait for the boss to cast fel surge each time before you use Avenging Wrath

1st AW + 1st Ring = use on pull
2nd AW + LH = after fel surge
3rd AW = after fel surge
4th AW + 2nd Ring + LH = exactly 2:00 minute
5th AW + 3rd Ring = when boss is 20% hp, this should be around 4-5 minutes.

Trinkets: Empty Drinking Horn & Discordant Chorus

these 2 trinkets are the best choices and i believe there are no other trinkets worth mentioning. the battle is very similar to hellfire citadel assault, xhul is also a very cleave/AOE intensive fight due to all the imps.

Friday, 25 September 2015

Mythic Tyrant - Retribution Paladin

this boss is definitely a bitch. she feels like the next wall block (after gorefiend nerf) that most guild will be facing in mythic HFC progression.

Spec: Final Verdict vs Seraphim

the first half of the fight is perfect for FV cleaving. however, the second half of the fight is much more critical because we need to single-target burst the boss to p3, and also single-target burst the p3 add, so i will choose seraphim instead of FV.

towards the ending, we will get aura of malice, which will put a stacking damage buff for us. whenever there is a multiplier effect, seraphim will shine!

Spec: Unbreakable Spirit vs Clemency

i prefer unbreakable spirit because divine protection save my life very often here.

p1 tempest is usually a killer because it forced the entire raid to move at the same time, taking heavy damage. healers are moving too so they won't have time to heal either.

p2 font is very dangerous because it will (always) happen together with edict. to make things worse, p1 aura of oppression will still be around in p2 mythic difficulty.

p3 transition during the time when everybody max hp is extremely low due to p2 aura of contempt. we will become very fragile and p3 has a lot of movement and damage taken from despoiled ground & bulwark. there's also 2 edict at this phase that can easily 1 shot us.

DPS Priority

phase 1
we ignore the p1 add. it is not dangerous and we just cleave it down naturally. it should die around the time when p2 add arrives.

phase 2
we ignore the p2 add too. we save our heroism, legend ring, major CD to burst the boss because we want to end this phase as quickly as we can. the p2 debuff is too dangerous, the shorter p2 is, the better it is for us to survive p3.

phase 3
kill the p2 add during the beginning of p3. then continue dps the boss until the p3 add spawn. p3 add is the top priority, he is the most dangerous add in my opinion because tank death is the most common cause of wipe at this stage. of course, he also shield the boss and prolong the fight. the longer the fight goes, the higher debuff stacks on the tank, and the harder it is to heal them. we save our legend ring, major CD, potions for the p3 add.

Interrupt Rotation

for the p2 add, we use 3 teams of interrupts. 2 melee and 1 range interrupts for each team. melee often have difficulties with the p2 add positioning because both the boss and the p2 add has very small hit-box. our tanks tried their best to position the p2 add together with the boss, so that everyone (even those people who are stacking up for the font) is able to interrupt.

sometimes a small movement from our tank could result in the boss running out of position, easily resulting in a wipe. we can only hope that blizzard will adjust the hit-box of this boss.

AW Planning

my guild dps allow us to enter p2 around 2:00 minutes+ and the p2 add will come around 2:40 minutes mark. having these info, we decided to use legend ring and heroism exactly at 3:00 minutes to sync with some classes major CD.

1st AW + 1st Ring = use on pull
2nd AW = together with ES
3th AW + 2nd Ring = exactly 3:00
4th AW + Sera = phase 3
5th AW + 3rd Ring + 6th AW = exactly 5:00

note: our p3 add comes around 4:45 minutes during our current kill

Trinkets: Empty Drinking Horn & Libram of Vindication

for now, libram is probably my best choice here since i can maintain 3 stacks LOV on the boss and the p3 add, for the duration of the legend ring at the 3:00 minute and 5:00 minute.

i know these timing may change in the future when we get better gears, i may consider vial of convulsive shadows or mythic discordant chorus if there are difficulties in keeping 3 stacks LOV during the legend ring.

Wednesday, 23 September 2015

Mythic Zakuun - Retribution Paladin

the most difficult part of this fight is to handle the seeds correctly. in p2 and p3, the boss will throw seed of destruction on 5 players, and all 5 players must run and spread out evenly within 5 seconds. it is very tough to execute this correctly because the timing is very tight.

our raid leader uses an addon that will put 5 raid icons on each of the 5 players, a druid will stampede roar and these 5 players must react quickly, fast enough to explode their seed at their correct matching raid icons.

Spec: Final Verdict vs Seraphim

seraphim is much stronger than FV, hands down, very straight forward single-target fight like iron reaver.

Trinkets: Empty Drinking Horn & Libram of Vindication

there's only 1 target the entire fight, no need to consider any other trinkets.

Soul Cleave

if you are being appointed to enter into soul cleave, you will be spending around 10 seconds soaking the rumbling earth, followed by another 30 seconds idle inside the nether world.

in the nether world, all you need to do is to wait for the 1st pulse wave and avoid getting hit by it. simply jump over the pulse wave as it passes by. after that, the 5 of you should gather together at the pre-assign destination, wait until the final 1-3 seconds before you teleport outside.

it is necessary to use immunity CD like divine shield around the last 1-3 seconds because each of you will unleash the wave of destruction when you teleport outside. the 5 of you should stack properly so that all 5 wave of destruction overlap one another and disappear immediately. all 5 players must use their own immunity CD so that nobody die and no waves will reach the raid or hit the pillars.

Maximize DPS

ideally, i can use AW with every ES if i am not involved with the soul cleave teams. but i cannot maximize my dps for this boss because i am involved in the 2nd soul cleave team. anyways, given what i can do, this is how i plan my AW and seraphim usage.

0:00 AW1 + ES + Sera + Ring1
0:40 Sera (before soaking rumbling earth)
1:00 ES (before entering soul cleave)
1:30 Sera
2:00 AW2 + ES + Sera + Ring2
2:30 AW3 + Sera
3:00 AW4 + ES + Sera
4:00 AW5 + ES + Sera + Ring3

the boss should die shortly after this timing.

Tuesday, 22 September 2015

Mythic Socrethar - Retribution Paladin

this fight focus a lot on interrupting the boss, in a way it reminds me of mythic oregorger where missing 1 interrupt will shorten the duration we can dps the boss. for socrethar, we set up 3 teams of interrupters and keep rotating among us because missing 2 interrupts will end p2 and no guild will want to repeat p1.

Spec: Unbreakable Spirit vs Clemency

i would prefer unbreakable spirit because both overwhelming power and apocalyptic felburst hurt a great deal in mythic. for survival purpose, it is necessary to use divine protection for every apocalyptic felburst in p1.

p2 is not that dangerous but we can also use divine protection for every apocalypse. besides, tank don't really need our hand of sacrifice in this fight.

Spec: Final Verdict vs Seraphim

both specs should perform equally good. FV is strong because we spend the majority of the time in p2 where there are opportunity to cleave the shadowcallers with the boss.

for equal dps, i'll still choose seraphim over FV because seraphim has the ability to burst dps. dominator must be killed asap and ret paladin is the king of burst dps. no other class (only hunters came close to us) can burst down the dominator as fast as we can.

DPS Priority

dominator > shadowcallers > socrethar

dominator will cast a shield on socrethar which prevent us from interrupting extert dominance. if socrethar managed to cast extert dominance 2 times in a row, the construct will be dead and it is a wipe. the entire raid must zerg down the dominator in a few seconds and quickly interrupt socrethar.

shadowcallers cast painful DOT and AOE on the raid. to make our healers life easier, we try to kill shadowcallers whenever it is near the boss.

Trinkets: Empty Drinking Horn & Discordant Chorus

vial of convulsive shadows is a dps loss because you will never be able to sync with the legend ring.

libram is still a very strong choice but i find it quite annoying to use because you'll need to change targets a few times. and the legend ring will always be use on the dominator, which is a fresh target, thus reseting your LOV stacks when you needed it most.

discordant chorus offer us consistent dps via cleaving and there are quite a few targets to cleave in p2.

unending hunger has good potential but it hasn't drop for me yet.

Additional Notes

phase 1
fel prison - avoid green circle on the floor
volatile fel orb - range mechanic
fellbaze charge - quickly back face towards the desired position your guild has planned for melee
reverberating blow - avoid standing in front of the boss at all times
apocalyptic felburst - use divine protection
overwhelming power - pray that healers top you up
voracious soulstalker - keep a distance away when it is going to spawn, then range will kite this mob away, into a prison trap

phase 2
gift of manari - avoid standing inside players with the yellow circle
haunting soul - don't let any of them touch you, range dps will take care of them

AW Planning

1st AW - during pull
2nd AW + 1st Ring = 1st dominator
3rd AW = shortly after 2nd AW
4th AW + 2nd Ring = 2nd dominator
5th AW = shortly after 4th AW

for the initial pull, build up 5 holy power first before popping avenging wrath and seraphim.

Friday, 18 September 2015

Mythic Iskar - Retribution Paladin

having heal this very often in heroic, i definitely understand how difficult it is for healer to top up the raid in the adds phase and managing the mechanics on-time. however for dps, this is a very simple fight and everything can be easily planned & predicted.

Spec: Final Verdict vs Seraphim

seraphim is stronger than final verdict due to our tier 18 set and legendary ring, in both single-target and AOE. the fight simply alternate between single-target and AOE.

DPS Priority

phantasmal > corrupted talonpriest > shadowfel warden > fel raven

our guild is not interested to deal with the mythic mechanics. if we can kill the phantasmal add within 20 seconds, we can skip the new mythic mechanics entirely. to do this, we actually tank the phantasmal apart from the rest of the adds. we also use our legend ring and have everybody single-target the phantasmal until it is dead before we switch over to the rest of the adds.

corrupted talonpriest is the next priority because he cast the fel bomb. killing this add simplify the passing of eye of anzu between the healers, freeing the raid concentration from having to track of the fel bomb timing.

Trinkets: Empty Drinking Horn & Discordant Chorus

vial of convulsive shadows would be my top choice if we can AOE all the adds together with the legend ring. but my guild prefer to separate the phantasamal and use all our major CD to single-target it down instead. if vial could not be sync with our legend ring & major CD, it is a dps loss as compared to discordant chorus

libram is a bad choice because you will be changing targets very often, around 10+ times in the fight.

discordant chorus is very powerful because half the battle is AOE and fel cleave provides a lot of damage.

unending hunger may potentially be stronger but it hasn't drop for me yet.

Maximize DPS

1st AW = use after first chakram
2nd AW + 1st Ring = during 1st add phase
3rd AW + 2nd Ring + 4th AW = during 2nd add phase
5th AW + 3rd Ring + 6th AW = during 3rd add phase

for the initial pull, build up 5 holy power first and wait for the first chakram to happen before popping avenging wrath and seraphim.

plan the rest of the avenging wrath during the add phase when the dps requirement is at the highest.

be very alert of the tank positioning because there are quite a few times when my light's hammer went to waste due to re-positioning of the adds.

Mythic Gorefiend - Retribution Paladin

this is a very heavy mechanics boss which means your guild strategy is going to affect your playing style and you have to spec accordingly to suit the guild strategy.

Spec: Final Verdict vs Seraphim

as previously mentioned, the playing style for this boss totally depends on your guild strategy. for my guild, we assign 1 rogue, 1 warrior, 1 death knight to be the main soul killer and everybody else is supposed to go pure single-target spec. totally no cleaving, no aoe, just pure single-target. in this case, seraphim is the only choice for me.

of course if you are allowed to cleave dps the souls, final verdict will be a lot stronger.

DPS Priority

1) gorebound essence
most dangerous add. if they are not killed quickly, they will cast non-stop AOE and SLOW on the entire raid. healers won't be able to keep up with the aoe damage. and the constant movement reduction will cause more people to make mistakes or fail mechanics such as slow to clear shared fate, dying to crushing darkness, unable to place doom well at the desired location, gorebound construct chasing and explode on players, etc.

2) gorebound construct
kill the construct before it reach a player

3) gorebound spirit
heavy tank damage and debuffs, melee need to constantly interrupt this mob too.

Digest Phase

it is very important to bring all the constructs down to around 35% rather than killing some of them and allowing some of them to come outside with full hp. because 35% is the hp range where most classes can use their execute abilities, thus the players outside can efficiently kill the construct. another reason is construct walk faster than players so a very high hp construct will be extremely dangerous because they will eventually out-run and explode on the victim.

i always use 1 seraphim inside the digest phase, since the CD is always up and the extra damage for 15 seconds is very powerful too.

Spec: Speed of Light

speed of light is a very useful due to many mechanics that requires you to run about.

- stomach phase, running from mobs to mobs
- touch of doom, running to the destination on time
- shared fate, reaching the player faster to clear it earlier
- soul feast, soaking a soul and return back to dps asap

additional note: hand of sacrifice is also very important, keep it on your hotkey and use it when you need to deal with mechanics under the slow effect caused by essence.

Trinkets: Empty Drinking Horn & Vial of Convulsive Shadows

unending hunger may potentially be stronger than the vial but it hasn't drop for me yet.

discordant chorus would be great at cleaving the souls, but i'm not the appointed soul killer.

libram is also a very good choice but it is difficult to stack up 3 LOV right before the legendary ring during soul feast because we usually have 1 or 2 adds alive during soul feast. once we kill the last add, my guild will not waste any more time on soul feast and use the ring immediately so we can start dps the boss. there is no chance to stack up 3 LOV unless we tunnel the boss while everyone is killing the last add, which is very bad behaviour.

vial of convulsive shadows is my only choice left because of the problem i've with the libram and the 2 minutes CD is good enough to be available for each soul feast + legend ring sync.

AW Planning

1st AW = use after first touch of death
2nd AW + 1st Ring + 3rd AW = during 1st soul feast
4th AW + 2nd Ring + 5th AW = during 2nd soul feast
6th AW + 3rd Ring + 7th AW = during 3rd soul feast

soul feast is the best time when we can dps the boss in peace, very straight forward.

Wednesday, 16 September 2015

Mythic Gorefiend - Holy Paladin

one of the most annoying fight, especially for healers, because the amount of healing is very intensive, both outside or inside the stomach. and there are a lot of movement required in handling the mechanics.

Spec: Unbreakable Spirit vs Clemency

Unbreakable Spirit will be so much better because i can use divine protection on myself whenever i have touch of doom, shared fate or to soak spirit. Hand of Sacrifice is not really important here because tank only take heavy damage for a short duration when the gorebound spirit is outside.

in addition, the fight will last very long (around 8-9 minutes) for guilds who are still progressing on this fight. having a 2nd Lay on Hands inside the stomach is really powerful.

Digest Phase

every normal phase, the boss will always choose 2 healers at the 20th seconds and another 2 healers at the 65th seconds. since our guild is 5 healing this, there is a chance that if i am not chosen at the 65th seconds, i can make a choice to either suicide into the stomach and help the last 2 essences or to stay outside and help stable the raid.

the main objective of the stomach digest phase is to top up 5 tortured essences inside the stomach. topping 5 essences sounds very easy but in reality, it is very difficult to do so because the 5 essences arrive at different timing. when you first enter the stomach, you will only see the first 2 essences. i usually use both my Avenging Wrath and Etheralus, the Eternal Reward together and top up the first 2 essences immediately. when legendary ring buff is gone, around the time when the 3rd essence came, i'll pop my Intuition's Gift trinket to further enhance my healing power for the remaining duration in the stomach.

the main problem is the last 2 essence, which will come very late, around the time when you have only 12 seconds left. in fact if your soul is return back too fast, you won't even see these 2 essences and this is also the main cause of all your wipes.

if the last 2 essences came out at very high hp, they will start to cast non-stop AOE damage the entire raid & also SLOW movement speed of everyone. the reduced movement speed will eventually cause everyone outside to make more mistakes and jeopardise all the mechanics (shared fate / doom well), leading to a wipe naturally. therefore, it is very important to let the healers remain inside the stomach until the final 1-4 seconds. this is to give the digested healers enough time to top up the last 2 essence. this is also the reason why some guild sacrifice their 5th healer around 10 seconds later into the stomach, following the previous 2 digested healer, just to deal with these 2 tortured essences.

holy paladin is extremely powerful at single-target healing and we are probably the only class who can solo top-up all 5 essences within the time frame. it is very useful to use my Lay on Hands on 1, and then focus on another.

Edit: mythic gorefiend is officially nerf on september 17, giving us an extra 5 seconds in the stomach, making the fight so much easier.

Touch of Doom

Touch of Doom explosion is a distance-based damage mechanic. the closer the player explode their doom, the more damage it is to the entire raid. a bad position explosion can easily result in a 500k raid damage or higher, depending how close the explosion is to the raid. considering that 2 healers should be inside the stomach, there are only 2 healers outside. therefore, a bad doom well explosion can easily cause your 2 healers to fall behind in healing and this is a very dangerous situation with people dying.

touch of doom always affect 3 players at a time and it is very important for these 3 players to run away from the raid as far as they can. sometimes 2 players may decided to run in the same direction due to rng, so everyone must learn how to split up separately on their own, and quickly!

we set up 4 drop-off location at the corners of the room. people with touch of doom must carefully lay the doom well on top of the previous doom well. this can be done by running to the assigned position, wait until the debuff has 1-2 seconds remaining, then use a damage-reduction CD and walk through the previous doom well. if done properly, your doom well should overlap the previous doom well. the reason we overlap is to save space as these 4 corners are the furthest point (least raid damage from explosion) and we don't want doom well getting closer and closer to the main raid.

Soul Feast

our guild use 5 healers and soul feast is a cake walk most of the time. our healing officers simply chain up all the major cooldown one after another, by alternating a damage-reduction and a healing-throughput cooldown. eg: Healing Tide Totem to Devotion Aura to Tranquility to Power Word: Barrier.

everybody will be stacked at the melee position for this phase. souls will start moving towards the boss, 2 souls at a time. every player must take turns to soak a soul and clear our debuff so that we can re-enter the stomach again. the raid leader will mention 2 names at a time and the 2 players will then run out from the raid to soak the soul. make sure to run out a bit further from the raid because when you soak the soul, it causes a small explosion and you don't want this explosion to hurt the entire raid.

the soul soaking must be done perfectly so that the soul feast can last an entire 1 minute.

Avenging Wrath

for my guild, i feel that our soul feast healing is already very solid because we are 5 healing it. so i find myself more beneficial to the raid when i channel my power on the torture essences instead.

0:20 - shadow of death on first 2 healers
1:05 - shadow of death on next 2 healers

2:00 to 3:00 - soul feast soaking must be done perfectly so that it last almost 1 minute

3:20 - shadow of death on first 2 healers
4:05 - shadow of death on next 2 healers

5:00 to 6:00 - soul feast

6:20 - shadow of death on first 2 healers
7:05 - shadow of death on next 2 healers

8:00 to 9:00 - soul feast

it is necessary to use Glyph of Merciful Wrath so that AW is always ready inside the stomach.

Thursday, 10 September 2015

Mythic Kilrogg - Retribution Paladin

the 2 dps who enter the first vision of death will be the main dps power of this encounter. if you are the appointed one, this will be both a very challenging and fun fight for you as you definitely want to min-max your dps.

DPS Priority

1) blood globule & salivating bloodthirster
these 2 adds are the most dangerous. allowing the blood globlue to touch the boss or allowing a bloodthirster to touch the pool will easily cause a wipe. however, both adds are not efficient for melee-dps unless they came close to the boss. usually, range-dps should be enough to manage them unless the heart seeker runners screw up. raid always screw up towards the end when 2 heart seeker came at once.

2) hulking terror
hulking terror is the next priority but if you are assigned to interrupt hulking terror, then you should just tunnel dps on the hulking terror and focus on interrupts as your highest priority. it is very crucial not to miss any interrupt because the raid will take a lot of damage if a cast went off. it is necessary to assign at least 3 players to chain interrupt. another thing to remember is to run away from the hulking terror when it is about to die because they will explode with fel corruption. once they explode, melee-dps has to soak in the green pool until it is gone completely.

3) kilrogg deadeye
dps the boss when there is no near-by adds

Vision of Death

i find that righteous fury & seal of righteous is very helpful here.

as the mobs enter the room, righteous fury will help you to gather aggro and hold them near the entrance. this is very useful because when the large demon die, it will leave behind a powerful ground aoe damage pool. we definitely don't want the large demon to die in the middle of the room where your range-dps, healer and khadgar are standing. even if the range-dps and healer can avoid the pool, khadgar won't move at all and he will die very fast inside the pool. if khadgar died, the vision of death will end pre-maturely and we won't get 20 stacks. we must delay and survive long enough so that all 3 players has 20 stacks of undying.

another CD i would recommend is to use avenging wrath inside here. you may feel a little bit wasteful to spend 1 wing but i believe it is worth it because killing the first few mobs quickly really help me to get 20 stacks much easier.

Spec: Unbreakable Spirit vs Clemency

the benefit of unbreakable spirit is being able to use divine protection for every death throes. death throes is a strong raid-wide aoe damage which happen every 45 seconds. but this is probably not a strong reason to choose unbreakable spirit over clemency. i believe every raid leader will ask their paladin to choose clemency so that the raid can remove 1 more heart seeker debuff. of course, we are still able to use divine protection for every alternate death throes.

as a DPS, it is always better to wait for the healers or the raid leader to call out when to use our hand of protection or hand of sacrifice. using our hands at the correct moment is much more meaningful because the healers will know when they needed extra help. if people are too busy to call, maybe the best is to have assignment done pre-pull.

Spec: Final Verdict vs Seraphim

i've seen very good result from paladin using either final-verdict and seraphim spec.

final-verdict is always strong at cleaving and there are plenty of cleaving opportunity in this fight because the adds came in constantly.

seraphim will shine if you are being assigned to enter the vision of death and is even better if you have the privilege to be the legendary ring user, mainly due to the 200% damage increase multiplier effect from vision of death. i am usually assigned to went into the vision of death so i'll choose seraphim over final-verdict.

Trinkets: Empty Drinking Horn & Vial of Convulsive Shadows

vial of convulsive shadows is my choice because i am usually assigned into the vision of death. when i came out with 20 stacks, i can align all the 7 stars together, namely ES-wings of libery10, avenging wrath, seraphim, legendary ring, trinket, strength potion, blood lust and do insane dps for the next 20 seconds.

libram is quite annoying to use because i am assigned into the vision of death and my LOV stacks will drop off. when we came back outside, we use the legend ring almost immediately but i will not have time to rebuild 3 LOV stacks. i feel it can be a potential dps loss as compared to vial of convulsive shadows.

unending hunger may be stronger than the vial but it hasn't drop for me yet.

discordant chorus feels a bit lacking because we will only hit 2 targets at best.

AW Planning

1st AW + 1st Ring = use on start
2nd AW = inside vision of death
3rd AW + 2nd Ring = use after 1st vision of death
4th AW onwards = whenever ES is ready

my guild pop everything at the beginning together with the legendary ring. the first vision of death will come around 1:15 into the fight, remember to cast a ES before going inside.

seal of righteous = when inside vision of death

seal of truth = when outside boss room

Tuesday, 8 September 2015

Mythic Kilrogg - Holy Paladin

mechanics is almost the same in mythic, just that everything is more unforgiving now. the fight is significantly easier if the first and second vision of death is done properly too.

the most important mechanics for healer to react "immediately" is the heart seeker. it is very crucial to use a speed boost talent and run to the designated drop off position. this will give the range-dps enough time to kill the blood globe before it reach the boss.

Hand of Protection

the heart seeker debuff in mythic will cause a painful DOT on the player. in mythic, the DOT will stay permanently so as the fight goes on, more and more player will be getting this debuff, making it harder and harder to heal towards the end, which is also a soft enrage mechanic.

our hand of protection will help out healing a lot by removing the debuff. every paladin in the raid is capable of removing 1 or 2 heart seeker (depending on spec) and we have to use it wisely.

for example, it is not meaningful to use hand of protection on someone who is assigned to enter the vision of death because players with the debuff will be cleared when they enter the vision of death.

it is also not useful to use it early in the fight where healers can easily manage a few heart seekers using efficient spells. the best is to save it for the later part around 3+ minutes where there are too many heart seekers going on and healers being forced to use inefficient spells to top up players asap.

Hand of Purity

this is 1 of those rare fights where hand of purity can shine again. the damage reduction is quite strong but the trade off is having 1 less hand of protection. however, i did not have the chance to try hand of purity yet

Vision of Death

the first vision of death comes around 1:30 minute and each subsequent vision of death will be around 1:15 minute apart. we always assign 3 players into the vision, namely 1 melee-dps, 1 range-dps, 1 healer.

it is preferably that the melee-dps has some kind of aggro holding ability, such as paladin righteous fury, death-knight armies, etc. it is quite important to hold the mobs nearer the entrance because the larger demons will leave behind a ground-aoe damage when they died. if the large demons die near khadgar, the ground-aoe will kill khadgar and end the vision earlier than desired.

when we enter into the vision of death room, there will be a 5-10 seconds of free time where i can apply a beacon on myself and another on the range-dps. after which, i just need to spam heal non-stop on the melee-dps who should be getting hit most of the time. if my hp is in danger, i can always bubble myself.

Avenging Wrath

1st AW = after 1st heartseeker
2nd AW = after vision of death
3rd AW onwards = use whenever CD is up

it is a great time to use avenging wrath after vision of death because of the 20 stacks of healing buff.

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