Wednesday, April 24, 2013

Pinnacle of Storms For Real This Time

Yesterday I was able to do the full Pinnacle of Storms (and was crazy lucky with loot - tier shoulders and helmet as well as the shield off Lei Shen!) and not only was I able to see the first two bosses but I also got a much better handle on the Lei Shen fight (which is still nutbags.)

Trash before Iron Quon:

The trash leading up to Iron Quon is pretty simple - mostly pack of things that just need to be AoE'd down. There are two elite quilen trainers that I imagine require some degree of strategy on normal, but you can pull them and kill them easily enough. Each of these guys has a huge group of untrained quillen that will have similar abilities to their trainers, but are more of an AoE burn fest.

Iron Quon:

This guy seems a lot more complicated than he is, and is actually possibly the simplest fight in the raid (save Jin'rokh, perhaps.) Iron Quon (or maybe just Qon?) rides on a different quillen mount for the first three phases. Essentially, for each of these, there is a tank swap mechanic and a similar ability for each of these phases where he throws his spear, creating lines of damaging fire/frost/electricity. Each of these lines has different effects, but the basic premise is that you should not stand in them.

The first phase, I don't remember exactly what the special ability is, but in the second phase, you need to take the boss out of the big windstorm in the center of the arena, dodging whirlwinds that will stun you. In the third phase, he will occasionally shield two of his sides - left, right, back and front, requiring you to reposition yourself to hit him where he's vulnerable (he does not turn during this time, so tanks can do so too.)

Once his three mounts are dead, you fight him, bringing back the various spear abilities and the whirlwinds, and possibly some other abilities. Frankly, I didn't pay huge attention to it, as few of these are all that threatening.

Trash before Twin Mogu:

The trash before the twin mogu is pretty simple, involving just a couple of somewhat tough elite mogu mobs. You may be able to use some of the celestial powers here, but as a tank, I could not really tell you much about them.

Twin Mogu:

This fight was actually not too hard, but involves a fair amount of raid damage. In phase one, you'll be fighting Lu'en, the who represents the night. The tank-swap mechanic here is fairly unusual, in that an add gets summoned, fixated on the current tank. Only that tank can damage it, and any healing on them will do bad things, so the other tank needs to take the boss while tank one kills off his or her add.

During the night phase, Su'en (I could totally have the name wrong, but it starts with an S) will blast people with fire damage and zip around leaving fire on the ground. When Lu'en (again, not sure on the name, but think "lunar" as in the moon, as in night) gets down to a certain percentage, she'll switch out, and Su'en becomes the active boss. The tank swap here is simpler - a standard stacking dot. Lu'en will similarly jump in to toss abilities at the raid, mainly by throwing comets, which stick in the ground and possibly radiate frost damage. Tanking Su'en near the comet will melt it, so do that.

Eventually, both bosses will come out. Have one tank on each, and I think it's generally easier to kill Su'en first, as her raid damage is much higher. Once one is dead, kill the other, and Bob's your uncle.

The one really weird mechanic in this fight that I never got to use is calling the celestials. For a limited number of times, you can have one raid member enter some kind of other phase, where there will be a bunch of stars floating in the room. By making a certain pattern in those stars, you will call on one of the four celestials. I know Xuen slows down time (presumably slowing down the bosses' attacks) and that Chi-ji summons a flock of cranes that damage anything hostile that's in the room. I don't really know when to use each ability, but I think they can make a big difference.

Trash before Lei Shen:

The trash here is two pulls of a Mogu sorcerer and a Mogu warrior. I did not tank the sorcerer, but it seems the warrior has the far more dangerous abilities. His shield will cause any strike against him to cause damage to anyone near the person who attacked (plus that person) and he also slams the ground in front of him, also doing a lot of damage.

Lei Shen:

I won't go through all of this, because I've already done it and it's insanely complicated. The main thing I wanted to add was what the four pillars do.

The eastern pillar will cast chain lightning on the raid, growing in intensity with each new target, so spread out. The other reason to spread out? Every time the lightning jumps after the first target, a new add will spawn, which needs to be tanked and killed. Save a raid! Spread the hell out! This, like the western pillar, is an easily avoidably complication, and a good candidate for the first pillar to get destroyed.

The southern pillar (and I could have this confused with the north) causes Static Discharge. A random player will be singled out for massive nature damage after a set amount of time. However, this damage is split between anyone within 8 yards, so stack up on the target and share the love.

The western pillar will do Bouncing Bolts. Little swirls will appear where the bolt is going to land. Intercepting it will cause some damage to you, but if you do not intercept it, an add (much tougher than the ones from the eastern pillar) will spawn, and the bolt will continue bouncing. The only reason you might keep this pillar up instead of the eastern one is that it's actually a little easier to catch the bolts than to spread out, at least in 25-man (on 10 man, the reverse could be true.)

The northern pillar causes overload. Like Static Discharge, this singles out a random person for Overcharge, who will grow in size. After a few seconds, they'll erupt, causing a ring of electricity to emanate from them, stunning and damaging anyone it hits. The good news is that the target and anyone stacked on them will not get hit by the ring. On its own, this is not too difficult to deal with, but during the transition phases, when multiple people are targeted, the ring can overlap between the quadrants of the fight. So if you get overcharged, run to the corner.

There - more freaking Lei Shen.

The guy's nutbags, I tell you. Nutbags!

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