Heroic Raid Lockouts

[Deafmetalman 0]

I realise this isn't warlock related, but this seems to be the only place with any sort of traffic...

 

Anyway... I'm a little confused on how the lockouts work now...

 

The incident - Wednesday night - My 25 man guild uses an extended raid lockout to skip directly to Norushen, we've finally decided to attempt a few heroics... The night goes okay, not great, but better than expected.

 

Thursday night - We're about to attempt heroic Norushen again, and I realise in my raid Info that I'm now lockedout from the first two bosses.

 

Now, in the past I'm sure that (on normal), we could use a lockout to skip to a certain point, and not get saved if we didn't actually defeat any bosses, normal Garrosh for example... Am I wrong in this? Or is this due to heroic attempts?

 

Now, I realise this is a minor issue, certainly where my 25 man is concerned. But this may become an issue in the future where my 10 man is concerned, especially considering the early heroics will likely be the easiest to down and my 25 man is unlikely to get a whole lot down.

 

If anyone could shed some light on this, I'd appreciate it a lot.

[Liquidsteel 279]

When you enter a Normal raid that has a killed a boss, it asks you to accept the lockout, but informs you that you don't get SAVED until you actually kill a boss.

 

When you enter a Heroic raid that has killed a boss, it warns you that you have 60 seconds to leave or you will be automatically SAVED regardless of killing any bosses. 

 

Regardless, don't waste time extending to Norushen. For something like Paragons/Garrosh yeah ok. But the first two bosses drop shed loads of gear which is basically free heroic items considering how easy they are.

[Deafmetalman 0]

Ahh, I see... We entered on normal, then switched to heroic... And I understand it's pointless extending to the third, but to be honest, the 25 man group I'm in really doesn't have much of a chance, still 20% off getting heroic Norushen =/...

[Deafmetalman 0]

Thanks for the quick response by the way, greatly appreciated.

[Desos 18]

Try Immerseus hc, your int dps will thank you for a chance on hc PBI or even hc wf ;)
On 25 man Immerseus is a "glorified trash mob" and mostly the same as nhc.

[Deafmetalman 0]

Yeah, we've given it a go before and it wasn't pretty. We figured the boss with no mechanic changes would probably be our best plan.

[Deafmetalman 0]

Hmm, any immediate tips for H Norushen? My guild is raiding right now 25 man and we're having mixed results...

 

We're 5 healing, and sending in 3 dps at a time. Tanks soaking with groups yet to go in soaking as well.

[Zagam 1,982]

Hmm, any immediate tips for H Norushen? My guild is raiding right now 25 man and we're having mixed results...

 

We're 5 healing, and sending in 3 dps at a time. Tanks soaking with groups yet to go in soaking as well.

You should be doing Heroic Immerseus and Heroic Protectors first.  When those two are comfortable, move onto Norushen.  However, if you're convinced to be working on Norushen...

 

There are 3 ways to wipe to Norushen.

 

1 - Low DPS.  Make sure your best DPS go down first.  This is where egos need to be kept in check.  If your raid leader lets people whine saying "but my DPS is better than so-and-so" then you'll have a shitfest where people start blabbing about pointless shit.  Assign your best DPS to go down first and your results will be better.

 

2 - Lack of Discipline.  Getting your DPS to not tunnel on the boss and kill/interrupt adds is like pulling teeth for some guilds.  If you don't kill the adds, the boss deals more AoE damage, more tank damage, and the add damage piles up to overwhelm the healers.  Adds are ALWAYS the priority.  Call out your DPS that aren't there to contribute to a kill.

 

3 - Low healing and misassigned healing CDs.  The last 50% of Norushen includes a ramping up AoE mechanic called Icy Fear.  This will eventually overwhelm you if your DPS is low.  Rotate healing CDs with the inclusion of Bloodlust/Heroism when the boss gets to about 30%.

 

Have high DPS get purified first, kill adds, keep people alive.  This is how you win.

[Deafmetalman 0]

Yeah, that's essentially what we're doing. We do have some... Well, stinker dps... And I always attribute our problems to that... Just lazy dps really that don't listen and have no interest in improving...

[Desos 18]

Try to get some new players in your raid and test them. For farm raids, which should be every boss on nhc, your members can switch around if they need a particular item. For progression, don´t make some foul compromise to take players with you that don´t want to put the same effort into the fight as you. 
Communicate the new Strategy to your raid group to make sure everyone gets it. Don´t be an elitist or act like you never make something wrong, but you want the progression. Observe improvement and actual playstyle on farm raids the same style like you would on a progress night to give the maybe previously lazy people a chance.

[Deafmetalman 0]

Okay... And just worked out you're unable to swap to 10 man heroic after wiping in 25 man heroic... Wonderful.

[Soulzar 42]

I realise this isn't warlock related, but this seems to be the only place with any sort of traffic...

 

 

 

Yeah that will happen....

[Belloc 6]

You should be doing Heroic Immerseus and Heroic Protectors first.  When those two are comfortable, move onto Norushen.  However, if you're convinced to be working on Norushen...

 

There are 3 ways to wipe to Norushen.

 

1 - Low DPS.  Make sure your best DPS go down first.  This is where egos need to be kept in check.  If your raid leader lets people whine saying "but my DPS is better than so-and-so" then you'll have a shitfest where people start blabbing about pointless shit.  Assign your best DPS to go down first and your results will be better.

 

2 - Lack of Discipline.  Getting your DPS to not tunnel on the boss and kill/interrupt adds is like pulling teeth for some guilds.  If you don't kill the adds, the boss deals more AoE damage, more tank damage, and the add damage piles up to overwhelm the healers.  Adds are ALWAYS the priority.  Call out your DPS that aren't there to contribute to a kill.

 

3 - Low healing and misassigned healing CDs.  The last 50% of Norushen includes a ramping up AoE mechanic called Icy Fear.  This will eventually overwhelm you if your DPS is low.  Rotate healing CDs with the inclusion of Bloodlust/Heroism when the boss gets to about 30%.

 

Have high DPS get purified first, kill adds, keep people alive.  This is how you win.

You forgot bad tanking. When 3-4 Manifestations are spawning in a short amount of time, some tanks have trouble picking them all up, which gets ranged/healers killed.

[Kazistrasz 216]

You forgot bad tanking. When 3-4 Manifestations are spawning in a short amount of time, some tanks have trouble picking them all up, which gets ranged/healers killed.

 

This is a coordination thing. When I was doing 25-man, we never had more than 2-3 down at a time. For the first DPS going in, it's common to assign one to kill their big add first and one to kill their big add second so you don't get them all at once. After that, DPS end up staggered going down so that you don't have them all coming up together. Even when you do get multiple at once, there are two things I would expect: hunters and rogues should be paying attention so that if they see multiples spawning together they can MD/Tricks to the tank, and DPS should be turning immediately to nuke adds. If DPS switch properly to adds, quite often they don't live long enough to make it to the tank.

[Lockybalboa 618]

You forgot bad tanking. When 3-4 Manifestations are spawning in a short amount of time, some tanks have trouble picking them all up, which gets ranged/healers killed.

 

 

Have you tanked that fight? If DPS are going down en masse and they all send their big adds up at the same time, it becomes very hard for a tank to get that much snap aggro over multiple targets that are spread out and being laid in to by the remaining DPS.

 

Depending on MD/tricks, the tanks class, and how much the DPS are blowing the adds up, it might not be bad tanking. In that case it's bad DPS/heals for not planning their spawns better.

[Fouton 266]

Most tanks have about 2 ranged abilities now, it's extremely difficult to tank multiple ranged things, and then additionally it's hard to out-threat some people on AoE anyways. A good solution is to stun-lock them, especially when there are multiples. Deathgripping them in is helpful if it won't kill the DK, and MD's are useful but not always good enough.

[Zagam 1,982]

If more than 2 manifestations come up, it's a raid leader issue or an execution issue.

[mediocregatsby 18]

you guys dont do the balls out strat? we send 6 dps down on the pull with no coordination on who kills the big add when, then just nuke everything and hope the orbs get picked up. as soon as those 6 are done, we send 5 more down and repeat until everyone has done it. 60% of the time, it works every time! 

 

actually it works 100% of the time but it can still be kinda scary lol

[Liquidsteel 279]

On 10 man we send in 4 and 4 then lust.

[Belloc 6]

Have you tanked that fight? If DPS are going down en masse and they all send their big adds up at the same time, it becomes very hard for a tank to get that much snap aggro over multiple targets that are spread out and being laid in to by the remaining DPS.

 

Depending on MD/tricks, the tanks class, and how much the DPS are blowing the adds up, it might not be bad tanking. In that case it's bad DPS/heals for not planning their spawns better.

 

I have tanked it and it was an interesting and sometimes enjoyable challenge having to occasionally pick up 3-4 adds within seconds of each other. Fortunately, as a paladin, I was pretty well suited to the task

 

If more than 2 manifestations come up, it's a raid leader issue or an execution issue.

Or a DPS issue. It seems like a lot of posters here assume that we're talking strictly about 10-man and that we're talking about a group with above average DPS, but neither of these are safe assumptions... especially in a thread like this with an OP just starting on heroics. For situations like this, we should assume, instead, that the group has below-average DPS and might have to compensate by sending people down faster.

 

When my group first got to Norushen, we had a series of very low % wipes and ultimately concluded that it was because we weren't sending people down fast enough. Indeed, when we started sending down 4 DPS at a time, the Manifestation spawns ramped up, but so did the DPS. That one change allowed us to beat the enrage timer.

 

Yes, I realize that if you're sending 4 DPS down at a time, you instruct 2 of them to kill the big add first and the other 2 to kill it last. This will still often result in 3 adds spawning at once (due to the adds that spawn every 10% of the boss' health) and, sometimes, 4 (due to the differences in kill speed between the various classes).

 

Anyway, I just wanted to point out that not every group is created equal and that the tank consideration on this fight is a very important one. OP is in a 25-man group and they're apparently having DPS issues. Sending players down faster or more at a time is the obvious solution to that problem, but also creates another problem for the tanks and I felt the need to point that out, seeing as I've actually tanked this on 25h and had to up my game to compensate.

Edited April 29, 2014 by Belloc