Sadly, after defeating the Iron Juggernaut, my client crashed (I was trying to access Atlasloot to see if there was anything worth rolling for, and I think my poor, 4-year old computer just had a brain fart.) Anyway, while DC'd and rebooting my computer, I got kicked, so while I was able to get a new group afterward, they were already on General Nazgrim with two stacks of determination. Sadly, therefore, I can't really comment much on the Dark Shaman, and I didn't even get to do much storming of Orgrimmar proper (though I did see that Garrosh had all the warlock trainers executed. What a dick!)
Once again, this is told from a Protection Paladin's perspective. Later this week I hope to get that of a Frost DK, and hopefully I'll actually be able to talk about the Dark Shaman.
Trash Before Galakras:
This is actually pretty simple, and on LFR, you'll be able to pretty much zerg your way through as you clear the cannons, allowing Vereesa, Varian and Jaina to show up and help you. (On Horde I believe Lor'themar, Sylvanas, and... someone else will aid you.)
You'll need to make your way down the beach, killing trash and then detonating all the cannons. When all eight (I think) are gone, you'll be able to engage the boss. The Bonecrackers, Banner holders, and Tidal Shamans here also show up during the boss fight, so it's a nice little preview.
Galakras:
This is going to be tough, because in LFR you always have some jerk who starts the fight early.
You'll want to dedicate one tank, one or two healers, and about six or seven dps to be on the "tower team." The rest of the raid needs to be down in the road, intercepting adds as they come. The major NPCs will help damage the enemies, but you also need to keep them alive or the fight resets.
When the fight starts, Zaela will send waves of enemies against you. The key here is to kill war banners and healing totems, and also to focus down any bonecrackers who fixate on one of the three main NPCs. Jaina will call down a blizzard to damage enemies inside, which I recommend you take advantage of.
After a certain amount of time, your Gnomish demolitionists will break open the doors to the towers. Now, I was probably doing this wrong, so I think you want to wait before you enter them. Instead, you first need to kill a Demolisher that will attack the tower, stunning everyone inside and doing lots of damage. With the Demolisher dead, your tower team should go up into the South tower (it's the one that opens first.)
Only two adds need to be tanked in the tower, a Grunt at the bottom, and a mini-boss at the top. This mini-boss has an arcing smash that you need to get out of the way of, or it will damage you and knock you back. When all the adds are dead, you'll gain control of the tower. I believe you should leave behind a dps player to man the gun.
When the Northern tower opens up, you repeat the process. The miniboss here has different mechanics, but honestly she died so quickly that I didn't have a chance to work them out.
With both towers under your control, put another person in control of the northern gun and then have both fire at the same time. This will dismount Zaela (killing her, I guess) and bringing Galakras down.
From here, it's pretty simple. Mop up any remaining adds and face the boss away from the raid. Have melee stack behind it and dps/heals stack a little farther back. By stacking, you make it far more likely that the fireballs Galakras shoots will get dissipated several times before they land.
Other than a simple tank swap, this phase is very simple, and when it is complete, you'll be done with the fight.
Iron Juggernaut:
There does not seem to be any trash between Galakras and the Iron Juggernaut.
Juggernaut is actually a pretty simple fight, but its sheer power is what will make this hard.
There are many bad things in the ground and bad things to run away from, but ultimately, it boils down to two simple phases:
Assault Mode will require tanks to switch off. Make sure that the tanks do not stand together, as the tank debuff has a cone-area effect. Meanwhile, there will be oil patches on the ground and lasers that chase random players. Don't drag the laser into the oil or it will ignite. There will also be some shockwaves traveling through the ground that you should avoid.
Finally, crawler mines will run out and plant themselves in the ground. If you have decent health, you should right-click these to mount them, taking a big blast of damage but protecting the raid from their detonation. Theoretically, the inactive tank should do this, but on LFR the damage is low enough that you can have anyone with a decent amount of remaining health handle it.
When the Juggernaut goes into Siege Mode, it will no longer need to be tanked, but instead it will do an earthquake-like damage pulse constantly. It will also send out static pulses, which will knock everyone far away. Try to put a fence or other object behind you so you don't get thrown too far. Crawler mines will continue to come out during this phase.
It's not a terrible difficult fight in terms of mechanics, but there is a lot of damage that goes around.
Dark Shaman:
File missing? To be filled in later.
General Nazgrim:
This is one of those fights that should be very easy once people learn how to actually do it. As it stands now, however, it's a pain.
The central mechanic here is Rage. Nazgrim will gain rage by attacking, but also through other means.
He also cycles through stances. Battle Stance is his standard one, where he will gain Rage at a modest rate. In Berserker Stance, I believe he gains more rage, but he also takes more damage. In Defensive Stance, he gains rage from attacks against him.
What this boils down to is: DON'T ATTACK HIM WHILE HE'S IN DEFENSIVE STANCE. The one exception here is the current tank, who will need to attack to keep up active mitigation.
Nazgrim will use a rage-based ability at regular intervals. The lower the rage he has to spend, the less dangerous his ability will be. I believe the cheapest is Heroic Thunderclap, where he'll leap at a random raid member and do some mild AoE. At over 25 rage, he'll put up a War Banner, which increases his and his adds' damage. At over 50 rage, he'll do War Song, which I believe causes his adds' attacks to grant him rage (it's possible I've mixed up War Song and War Banner.) And at 75+, he'll throw a Ravager, which will go toward a random player and just spin there until the fight is over.
Periodically, Nazgrim will summon adds (I believe one add for every 25% of his health you take off.) War Shamans summon healing totems that must be burned down quickly. Arcweavers do ranged damage to random people. Assassins will try to backstab their current target, if the target is facing away from them. They'll also fixate on random raid members, so if you're fixated, make sure you're facing the assassin. Finally, Ironblades will do Ironstorm, which is basically Bladestorm.
The trick to this fight is knowing when to dps what. Generally, you want to kill adds whenever they're up. You also definitely want to avoid attacking Nazgrim while he's in defensive stance.
Meanwhile, Nazgrim also uses a Sunder Armor tank debuff, so tanks will need to run back and forth from the boss to the adds to switch. War Shamans and Arcweavers don't really need to be tanked, and Assassins will quickly fixate, so tanks should worry mainly about Ironblades.
There's a lot of damage tossed around here, especially if people are being careless and DPSing him while in Defenisve Stance. But with great care, or a whole bunch of determination stacks, you'll have him down and be ready to go into the Underhold.
No comments:
Post a Comment