Blade Lord Ta'yak

[Peelyon 416]

How many Unseen Strikes should we be keeping to before P2 on normal mode? 5 or so? Think we are going into P2 with about 14 stacks is that too high?

[Vlad 411]

About 5-7 Unseen Strikes during Phase One seems normal. If you're going into Phase Two with 14 stacks it means you've spent 14 minutes during Phase One. While it's possible that the boss doesn't enrage at all during Phase One, spending 14 minutes there seems... unlikely. And if it's true, you have some horrendous DPS issues.

[Peelyon 416]

About 5-7 Unseen Strikes during Phase One seems normal. If you're going into Phase Two with 14 stacks it means you've spent 14 minutes during Phase One. While it's possible that the boss doesn't enrage at all during Phase One, spending 14 minutes there seems... unlikely. And if it's true, you have some horrendous DPS issues.

Hmm must have got those numbers wrong, but yeah we are about 5-6 unseen strikes (which wouldnt make the 14 stacks of Intensity make sense anyway)! Ta

[JvChequer 43]

Its 8:15 the Berserk not 8min

[Guest Asular]

After a few heroic attempts, we figured out how exactly to control the direction of the Unseen Strike damage cone/knockback.

When the boss disapears for Unseen, that is his hidden location. when he selects a player for unseen picture an arrow going from that hidden location, to the player. The boss will use his slam in that direction when he re-appears.

It's kind of hard to describe with just text, but what we do is have a setup something like this:

[Tank(s)] [boss] [Melee]

Ranged is spread out around that pile. When the boss vanishes, the raid stacks up like this:

[boss's Vanish Spot] [unseen Target] [Raid] -----> Direction of knockback

The goal is to keep the direction of knockback free of tornados, and it lets us use the knockback to reposition the boss without extra movement if necessary.

[Guest Alomare]

Hi, your strategy is currently incorrect in a couple of ways. one of which just needs to revisisted. first of all deterence does work in a sense. It will reduce the damage taken by unseen strike by 50% which is huge and helps tremendously if u have the bleed debuff on you.

Also, and this is huge. YES you can aim where you are all hit. what i do is put a star on me and everyone stack right on me/cm behind me. he will then aim towards the target person and blast them. You can do this and aim your group into walls to reduce knock back. I'm the GM of B E E R. msg me on shattered hand anytime,

[Vlad 411]

Hi, your strategy is currently incorrect in a couple of ways. one of which just needs to revisisted. first of all deterence does work in a sense. It will reduce the damage taken by unseen strike by 50% which is huge and helps tremendously if u have the bleed debuff on you.

Also, and this is huge. YES you can aim where you are all hit. what i do is put a star on me and everyone stack right on me/cm behind me. he will then aim towards the target person and blast them. You can do this and aim your group into walls to reduce knock back. I'm the GM of B E E R. msg me on shattered hand anytime,

Hey. Thank you for your post, but I feel that the statement that "strategy is incorrect" is a bit unsubstantiated. First of all, in the guide we claim that you cannot use Deterrence to stand away from the raid if targeted by Unseen Strike, and survive its damage. This is true. The fact that Deterrence also acts as a minor damage-reduction cooldown for Hunters, which can help them take less damage when soaking Unseen Strikes with the rest of the raid is besides the point and has very little bearing on the strategy as a whole.

Regarding the direction of Blade Lord Ta'yak's attacks, while we agree that it seems likely that it is not random, we cannot say that we have been able to confirm one way or another for how you can determine where he will attack from. Your post also does not clarify this. We would appreciate it if you could expand on how you can "aim" exactly.

[Manoj 1]

like to add something which i figured while doing this boss on my paladin , during phase 2 after you gain control , if you are engineer , bubble+nitroboosts+speed of light = at boss in 4secs . you can head on with all tornadoes and u will be immune :).. all my raid teammates got shocked when i reach the boss in 4secs lol ..even our tank with only nitroboosts was left behind me ..

[Guest Finn]

has there been any success with Leap of faith (or other such cheezes) after the boss has stunned his victim to have no one take the dmg?

[Vlad 411]

has there been any success with Leap of faith (or other such cheezes) after the boss has stunned his victim to have no one take the dmg?

Not to my knowledge, and I doubt it would work, but anyone is free to prove me wrong.

[Cohumulone 3]

After a few heroic attempts, we figured out how exactly to control the direction of the Unseen Strike damage cone/knockback.

When the boss disapears for Unseen, that is his hidden location. when he selects a player for unseen picture an arrow going from that hidden location, to the player. The boss will use his slam in that direction when he re-appears.

It's kind of hard to describe with just text, but what we do is have a setup something like this:

[Tank(s)] [boss] [Melee]

Ranged is spread out around that pile. When the boss vanishes, the raid stacks up like this:

[boss's Vanish Spot] [unseen Target] [Raid] -----> Direction of knockback

The goal is to keep the direction of knockback free of tornados, and it lets us use the knockback to reposition the boss without extra movement if necessary.

I'm really interested in this predictable cone. Are you saying that whatever straight line exists between the boss and the player at the time they are chosen is the direction of the cone?

Also, in general: We're really having a hard time with the 2nd OA some of the time. Yes, I understand the "you have to use a cd..." That's a given. What I don't understand is why it is that the 2nd OA hits like a wet noodle sometimes and then with only an additional stack of intensify later, the 2nd OA hits for over 800k. But it doesn't always do this, which is the irritating part.

[Guest Asular]

Yeah, draw an arrow from the Ta'yak's vanish location to the chosen player. When they get stunned, that will be the direction of the cone.

Whats important to note is that I have seen the graphic not line up with this(very very rare), but the actual knockback and damage component still follow my theory in this case.

In regard to your general question, I've never had OA hit me for that much, even when I forget to cooldown, or I'm late on my CD. I know that doesn't really help answer your question, but for the most part, later on in the fight I get hit for around 550-600k before mitigation (I try to keep a 60 rage barrier in addition to my cooldown). How many stacks of intensity are we talking here, something strange must be going on for it to vary so wildly from one hit to another. It should do 200% weapon damage (which is influenced by intensity) on your first OA, then roughly double that for the second assuming he doesn't gain a stack of intensify between the first OA and the second.

[Cohumulone 3]

I actually had some maths done on that big OA hit. Looks like the general issue is my co-tank may be a bit undergeared (I recently asked him to switch to DK from Warrior for better Symbiosis options) and his unmitigated baseline hit is well above what mine is. My 160k hit is a 220k hit for him. I'm a bear and he's a DK so I know armor has a lot to do with that. We'll see if it's any better tonight.

Thanks for confirmation on lining up the cone. Definitely putting that into play tonight.

Edited December 19, 2012 by Cohumulone

[Guest Sazda]

Yeah, draw an arrow from the Ta'yak's vanish location to the chosen player. When they get stunned, that will be the direction of the cone.

This!

Which means:

You can aim exactly where you want to get knocked back to. If you stand in an absolute straight line from vanish location, to stunned player - you will get knocked straight back. If there is a tornado in that path, simply move a little bit to the side (while still inside the cone behind the stunned player) and you will get knocked slightly side ways.

I can also confirm that the graphic is not always in the correct spot. However, I have never missed a knockback this way.

If anyone needs further explanation, find me on US-Eredar - Sazda.

[Vlad 411]

Yeah, draw an arrow from the Ta'yak's vanish location to the chosen player. When they get stunned, that will be the direction of the cone.

Whats important to note is that I have seen the graphic not line up with this(very very rare), but the actual knockback and damage component still follow my theory in this case.

In regard to your general question, I've never had OA hit me for that much, even when I forget to cooldown, or I'm late on my CD. I know that doesn't really help answer your question, but for the most part, later on in the fight I get hit for around 550-600k before mitigation (I try to keep a 60 rage barrier in addition to my cooldown). How many stacks of intensity are we talking here, something strange must be going on for it to vary so wildly from one hit to another. It should do 200% weapon damage (which is influenced by intensity) on your first OA, then roughly double that for the second assuming he doesn't gain a stack of intensify between the first OA and the second.

Hey. Not to doubt your explanations or anything, and what you (and others) are saying does make sense, but do you happen to have a video of a kill (or wipe, I suppose) where this happens and is observable repeatedly? Because in all the kills I've studied, all I got were conflicting and honestly quite erratic behaviours of the mechanic. And I'd really love to be able to narrow it down to a single one.

Thanks :)

[Guest Eiren @ Ravenholdt]

I don't see why it wouldn't, but can anyone confirm that the bleed from Wind Step can be removed by the dwarven racial Stoneform?

[Fel 42]

Notes after our heroic kill this past weekend..

2 tanks

3 heals

5 DPS

Key Stuff for us

Unseen strike - Had everyone but the Wind Step target stacked. Unless you nub it up, there is only 1 Wind Step active at any given time. All players MUST stack for this, or you may suffer RNG deaths. We used a raid flare on which the entire raid (minus the Wind Stepped guy/gal) would collapse. What made this easy for us was having everyone collapse ahead of the strike. DBM timers are NOT accurate after the first one, each is delayed by around 5 - 10 seconds after the timer, but it is still easily possible to have everyone monitor the Tempest Slash timer and collapse (or just get close) on the raid flare after that tornado goes out.

Blade Tempest - The farther away you are when he casts, the less time you have to run out when you reach him. The pull also seems stronger the closer you are. Bottom line, if you are further than ~ 15 yards and dont have a strong class mechanic to escape, you will die. Solution: be close when the cast is coming, it's very simple to do. Side note: if you're a lock, Demonic teleport makes this mechanic irrelevant, just make sure it isnt out of range, and that you have enough mana to cast it.

Wind Step - Hand of Protection makes this much easier to deal with. It will vary depending on your comp, but we found Wind Step to be most threatening when in conjunction with Blade Tempest, not Unseen strike (since they were just standing outside). Consequently, we used Hand of protection on Wind Stepped targets just before Blade Tempest wherever possible.

Phase 2 - Handled just like normal mode, we stopped just after being dropped from the tornadoes and used a high HPS raid CD to get people to 80% + life, then had everyone run down. So long as your guys are smart about defensive CDs and dont get tornado'd, all should be well. Very group dependent, having a lock helps a lot (rocks, Demonic Gateway) as does a run and gun style healer.

Went into the fight afraid of phase 2, and had that perspective completely reversed, with the majority of our wipes on phase 1 to Wind Step or poor stacking for unseen strikes. We had 3 phase 2's before we downed it, two of which we had only 2 healers left alive (kill included) and were just fine. Downed him with 7 alive when reaching the first end (1 healer, 1 tank and 1 dps dead) and were very comfortable on the enrage/healing for the rest of the phase. Definitely dont give up on phase 2 if you lose a couple of people, we could have probably downed it with only 5 alive :D

Good Luck!

[Guest Psilocin]

After a few heroic attempts, we figured out how exactly to control the direction of the Unseen Strike damage cone/knockback.

When the boss disapears for Unseen, that is his hidden location. when he selects a player for unseen picture an arrow going from that hidden location, to the player. The boss will use his slam in that direction when he re-appears.

It's kind of hard to describe with just text, but what we do is have a setup something like this:

[Tank(s)] [boss] [Melee]

Ranged is spread out around that pile. When the boss vanishes, the raid stacks up like this:

[boss's Vanish Spot] [unseen Target] [Raid] -----> Direction of knockback

The goal is to keep the direction of knockback free of tornados, and it lets us use the knockback to reposition the boss without extra movement if necessary.

After a few heroic attempts, we figured out how exactly to control the direction of the Unseen Strike damage cone/knockback.

When the boss disapears for Unseen, that is his hidden location. when he selects a player for unseen picture an arrow going from that hidden location, to the player. The boss will use his slam in that direction when he re-appears.

It's kind of hard to describe with just text, but what we do is have a setup something like this:

[Tank(s)] [boss] [Melee]

Ranged is spread out around that pile. When the boss vanishes, the raid stacks up like this:

[boss's Vanish Spot] [unseen Target] [Raid] -----> Direction of knockback

The goal is to keep the direction of knockback free of tornados, and it lets us use the knockback to reposition the boss without extra movement if necessary.

While it's true that you can direct his knockback, I think you have the mechanic a little wrong. I've done some research live and watching many vids and think I have it down, take it for what it's worth if you want, and please comment if you have seen something different:

1. The main mechanic to think about in this fight is that he wants to hit you from behind and towards where you are facing, this will play a major role in how you direct where he knocks you to.

2. He will always swing "at your back." If you are in a certain range of him when it is cast, he stays stationary and pivots in place. If you are far enough away from him (but still close enough to cause him to stay stationary) and are facing him, he will just swings at your front (still aiming at your back though). This is most evident when a tank is targetted and stands still. Melee can do this too. In fact, if there are no tornado's behind melee (assuming you are behind the boss), they can actually just stand still and take the hit in the face, otherwise, it is best to run straight through him a few yards and keep your back to him, directing the swing to where you are facing/running. Do not try to spin around and face him, the one thing I cannot figure out is when exactly he locks on where he is swinging, but it looks like it is some time before the "stun." I can tell you as melee I've run through him and tried to spin around and it affects his aim. It's best to position yourself before the strike to where there are no tornadoes either in front of you or behind you and only move forward or backward, without turning.

http://youtu.be/BkP07BtIUKI?t=3m51s Melee is targetted behind Ta'yak, stands still, group up on him and they are hit opposite from where he was facing.

3. This is where it can get tricky, because he is wants to hit you in your back, if you get too close to him but are in front of him, he will still hit you in the direction you were facing when running to him (at your back and assuming you don't do some crazy turning/spinning and are running in a straight line). Again, if you were to stop before getting too close, he will hit you in the face. What I have found that makes it squirrely, is if you are too close to him, he gets weird. I think it's best to stay either in front of him a a few yards out, or run through him a few yards.

http://youtu.be/BkP07BtIUKI?t=37s Check out how a player is targetted, the player runs towards Ta'yak and at some point Ta'yak picks where he wants to swing (in this case to the to the front of the player as he is running in), but because the player gets close enough to him, Ta'yak hits the group to where the player was facing while running because he wants to hit him in the back. However the animation shows it in the direction to where the player was targetted. My guess is because he picked that direction before the player got to him, but was then able to hit the player in the back. Had the player stop a few yards before getting to Ta'yak, Ta'yak would have knocked them back where the animation actually showed. Same thing at http://youtu.be/BkP07BtIUKI?t=10m45s

4. If you are out of a certain range (appears to be about 15-20 yrds) and you are targetted, he will disappear and jump behind you immediately and will hit you from behind to where you are facing... the weird thing is, if you then run back into his "pivot range," he goes back to his original position (this may be debatable but as far as I can tell, he does this. I've seen him jump behind someone, they run in, and he ends up back at the position where he would have just pivoted if the player was within his "pivot range"). It is not necessarily a bad thing to get him to jump behind you, because it still allows you to aim him in the direction you are facing and people can stand in front of you. I don't have good video of this, but have seen it live many times.

5. If you are "taking it in the face" you typically want people behind you, it is a cone and you are the starting point. If you are "taking it in the rear (back)" you want people in front of you. I think stacking on the tank is fine, typically most are still hit by the cone if they are anywhere near where everyone is stacking, but to be sure, you really need to be in the cone.

Anyway, again I find he gets really squirrely if you get in close with him, just seems easier to aim with positioning before the strike, keep a good enough distance from him, and run straight....

[Guest Psilocin]

Not sure what happened with those posts... if a moderator could clean them up by fixing the links and then deleting the duplicate, that would be fantastic.

[Fel 42]

Not sure what happened with those posts... if a moderator could clean them up by fixing the links and then deleting the duplicate, that would be fantastic.

Believe they're sorted now :D

[Fel 42]

On a fight related note...

There is a ton of debate about the mechanics of the Unseen Strike regarding how to ensure that it hits every player. Primary points of contention seem to revolve around which way his 'cone' will face and how to determine that so that the raid isnt accidentally mis-stacked, causing missed players and thus deaths.

What worked for my raid was to simply ignore all the hooplah about it and use a raid flare stack point. It is easily possible to have your raid stack early, since based on the timers you can wait for his final pre-Unseen ability to go off, then stack ahead of time (this buys you a couple of seconds at the very least.

In practice for us this meant that everyone was collapsing towards the raid flare already (usualy less than 10 yards out) by the time the Unseen Strike target appeared, leaving plenty of time (2 - 3 seconds) to cuddle up tight inside the raid flare. Once we mastered that strategy, we had very few missed players.

I guess this is just one strat among many, but if you are having a hard time determining from all the myriad info out there what exactly the unseen strike mechanic is, our strat above effectively negates the need to experiment or even know.

-A

[Bhart708 1]

Has anyone tried using Demonic Gateway/Portal in phase 2?

Yes actually I did. We had the reg version on farm and hadn't done heroic yet, so we were messing around. I dropped a gateway to begin the fight and our DK tank actually used it running up and managed to make it there before all of us. The only problem that lies in that is if a tornado is right there as you come through it. With good luck it can work though.

[Guest tharg]

In adition to the dmg reduction a rogue's feint works well . You can negate up to 70% of the dmg

[Guest Enkeli]

About Wind Step, does anyone know if melles are targets of it?

My group has 8 rangeds and 2 tanks. The pally holy could/should stack with the tanks?

[Krazyito 521]

About Wind Step, does anyone know if melles are targets of it?

My group has 8 rangeds and 2 tanks. The pally holy could/should stack with the tanks?

You could always try it. I know for sure melee should not be targeted it, Including Mistweavers, (unless there are too many melee). There might be a threshold for number of people stacked though.