Berms

I'm not sure if all of our ranged are doing this, but I start dotting the East pillar and move my way to the west while maintaining dots on all three. Ranged should be finishing off whatever's left behind by melee. If the third pillar is near death by the time the melee reach it, ranged should finish it off while melee take advantage of being able to run in a little early. (Assumption is that South is killed first. Depending on positioning.)

Ladies and Gents: If you use Fire Nova on this fight, I will stab you. It's bad. It's so bad that it's probably just a little better than Unleash Elements. (P.S. If you're using Unleash Elements, you're doing it wrong.) How to do some heavy lifting on HYorsahj as ele: 1) Go respec and reglyph. You are pretty much required to have a spec with BOTH Earthquake and Totemic Focus. Earthquake - Naturally you only use this on the adds. I will get into more specific details as to how to best use this. Totemic Focus - You want this talent for one reason only: Fire Elemental. This is your freight train. Use it. This talent will bump a 2mins stick to 2:48mins. His aoe is monstrous and so is his single target. As a bonus, should he be dead, you can use Magma Totem to continue to rape the adds. Glyphs: Prime: Flame Shock, Unleashed Lightning (More than enough movement to justify it.), and Fire Elemental (The fight is long enough that you will get two full length FEs out of it.). Major - Elemental Mastery (You'll need this during add phases since you'll probably be tanking at least one.), Chain Lightning (There's more than enough adds to milk this glyph.), and Lightning Shield (Obviously) I can't post a spec from work, but basically, if anyone's able to view my secondary spec (I should be specced for HUltraxion), move the 1 point out of Improved Shields to Earthquake and fix the glyphs. Perhaps someone else could quickly do that in wowhead and post a link before I respec later on. Now for the how to dps: Standar Opener: Pre-Pot+Racial+EM > LB>FS>LvB. Watch your spell power and int procs. Once they're as high as they're going to be before losing power Torrent (since this tends to proc almost immediately), drop your first FE. (Ensure that your FE is tied to EE in a call. It's free dps. If you use a global to drop EE on its own, you lost dps.) EM will be up just in time for the first slime phase or shortly into it. I'm sure you can handle the rest of the fight until the adds. So you know you got Black and the adds will be spawning shortly. Drop EQ as you see the first 1-2 adds spawn. (Not when they're running it, but spawning.) Do NOT cast EQ while you have EM up. (DPS loss) Only refresh EQ if you're getting another fresh set of adds. (Ie: Double Black phase) Once EQ is down, hit EM and spam only CL. Do not cast any other spell other than CL. You can refresh FS if EM is about to fall off. Until you have 2-3 adds left, you will cast CL and only CL. Nothing else matters. If your FE is down, swap to Magma Totem. Once the adds are gone, switch back to Searing until you can get your 2nd FE out. If you got a double black phase, use SWG and pick an add that's closely grouped with others and CL off of that until you reach the slime. Then CL off the slime all the way back or until there's not enough adds to be worth it. If you got a Blue/Black phase, pre-cast EQ as your mana is being drained. Do NOT TS and then EQ. You'll cripple yourself. Once you've pre-cast EQ, TS once you're out of mana, and spam the shit out of CL. The other casters will be stuck with their thumbs up their ass. Time for you to do some heavy lifting. So basically, you would've cast 1 EQ per set of adds you get. You can cast another EQ if you think the adds will last the full duration, but more likely than not, they won't. The 1 point in Improved Shields won't do more damage than those few EQs you dropped. If you have questions, hit me up in the shoutbox or come find me on Eredar. I'm not too hard to find. Edit: Aside from the pull, use EM only during the few seconds after the slimes have hit the boss. You might want to double check if your racials will be up. I think they were, but I didn't pay much attention to mine. Edit2: Spec: http://www.wowhead.com/talent#hhGMGRfkzGobZbhb:crmszoM

WTB HRag!...

PvE MMR. Hilarity. The masses would scream if that was publicly implemented. I'm all for it though. LFR - Ultraxion - Don't click the button. It's a dps loss. Healers should be able to handle it.

Ultraxion - No Fading Light mechanic? Warmaster - Of the adds you saw on the deck, was there one called "Twilight Sapper"? Warmaster - During Phase 1, there are the purple swirls that the raid is supposed to stack in. During Phase 2, the drake in the air puts down void circles you're not supposed to stand in. Can you confirm which of these were in play? Spine - Please clarify the blood globule pick up mechanic. I didn't understand that one. In normal, you have one tank tank all the bloods and excess amagamations, while the other tank holds an amalgamation against the plate and dps taunt over bloods to kill at that one. At 9 stacks, it blows up. How did this mechanic change? Did the tentacles stun random people and were people required to dps the tentacle to break the stun? Did you ever have more than one amalgamation up? Madness - In normal there are several types of adds/targets. Can you confirm which of these were present? Platform kill targets: Claw, Giant Tentacle on other end of the platform, Elementium Bolt, Bloods, and Small Tentacles which spawn behind the claw. If the small tentacles were present, did they have the significant cleave/aoe damage reduction? In normal, if you have an ability which does x damage per target, it will do x to the one you are targetting and the rest will take much less damage. Almost requires you to single target them down unless you have an OP cleave. (CL) If we're looking into the swirling void in the middle, what was the kill order used? (I didn't pay attention to drakes last week.) If you look at the middle and count the platforms as 1-4, was the kill order 3,2,1,4? (Zoning in on 3.) Were you required to spread out for the giant tentacle due to the flail damage? (Assuming this add was present.) On Phase 2 - Did you get all of the buffs back? (Extra button returns in this phase on normal.) Did any adds spawn during this phase? Did those adds cast "Shrapnel"? Can't think of more questions at the moment.

Spine - Blood requirement to initiate explosion or no? Madness - Any elementium bolts? Tentacles? Other adds? I assume you lose buffs as you go along. Warmaster - Void circles? How was shockwave damage?

Grats, mate! At long last!

In theory, you can hit 1s LvBs with BL. Even under the effects of BL, you'd still want to use EM (damage buff), so you will go below 1s LvBs, but the damage gain is worth it. You're right. Nobody cares if LvB goes below 1s since LB is the bread and butter spell. 4pc T12 just gives the LvB glyph the edge over the LB glyph. Ele AoE has always been bad. EQ isn't really that great. I have it for HRag, but that's about it. If the other big hitters are doing their job, you won't need to use it. Supposedly EQ will be intended to be part of our AoE in the next tier. At which point we're supposedly just doing CL/EQ. Not sure if throwing in ES will be worth it. For small packs that will die too fast. If they're dying before you can get a CL off, then they're not worth dealing with. Magma totem's nice, but I really don't use it often. I'll use it on the bigger trash pulls in FL just to see if I can pad the meter, but then again everyone else is going all out, so I think I'm doing worse.

Didn't realize there were posts here. I don't know for sure if AMS/Cloak prevent the application. I only heard about it in vent, but didn't bother to ask. Your holy pallies/mages/hunters shouldn't use their cooldowns to prevent seed damage for the sake of their concentration. They'll need it to tank orbs. (Depending on strat.)

http://www.learntoraid.com/2011/07/11/shannox-video-strategy-guide-25-heroic/ Alternate writeup and video.

Depending on dps and your strat, here's some things to consider: When we were first able to down this, we were lusting right after the 3rd Spark died. This would allow the ranged that were dealing with fragments to mop them up quickly and the rest of us would already be hammering on the boss. Depending on volcanos, we'd either continue to drive him or spin him around. This is a gamble as you can get another set of fragments during this push and we would actually ignore them. If done correctly, he will go into Phase 2 and all the adds would despawn. We used hunters to lay traps in the path of the liquid obsidians. Earthbind as needed. Knockbacks were used if Rhyolith was turned into the path of a lot of obsidians or when he stops to stomp to clear out obsidians which were getting too close. Knockbacks are key before the transition. (Note: Fragments can be pushed back too, so be mindful of that.) Lava Lines are annoying throughout the encounter, so maybe 1 person who can give the general direction of which volcano is doing that might help too. Consider a cooldown rotation for the stomps in phase 2. You may have to cooldown hard for the first stomp of phase 2 if the raid is a bit low. Edit: Sparks/Fragments - We have some ranged with specific assignments such as Spark>Legs and others with Fragments>Legs. If you're not in those groups, you're on Legs. Pull the Spark out of the raid asap. That aoe is a killer. With regards to the fragments, if you are able to tank them on the legs, then the aoe is bonus damage to the legs. If not, aoe them on the healers since missed fragments will find their way to them. (We used to have a Boomkin dotting everything, so that added dps also softened up obsidians enough that they'd be virtually dead by the time they reach the boss. http://www.learntoraid.com/2011/08/02/lord-rhyolith-video-strategy-guide-25-heroic/ Alternate write up and video.

I've stolen this from someone else who stole it from their previous guild: When looking at the diagram, that 3 and 4 should actually be up against the wall. So when you go to spread out from him, you run along the length of the wall to force him to transition. If you're at positions 3 and 4, never run towards the middle to force him to shift to cat. You'll risk orbs in really crappy places. By running along the walls, you force the orbs to be relatively close to those walls. Stampeding Roar to get the raid through them quickly to the other side. Mages and hunters will then use their cooldowns appropriately and tank ALL of the orbs. That way we only have maybe 4 people per orb rotation who have lost their stacks. So as you read in the strat from Snuggel, pallies can clear seeds from themselves. I believe rogues might be able to cloak it off and DKs can AMS it. (Don't quote me on that. Just don't stand in the melee to test that.) Due to the nature of the mechanics, the melee will be doing the bulk of the dps. Cleaving down adds and maintaining 100% concentration for nearly the entire fight. As ranged, don't go chasing Domo when he jumps away from you. Maintain max range since you'll need the space once he's jumped enough. He always jumps at 100, so keep an eye on his energy bar. We use a prot pally to eat a cleave when he can. So we start the pull, lust at 100 concentration, eat the first cleave, let the energy build and spread at 70ish-80 energy. Do cat phase normally. Next scorpion, we stack until 70ish-80 energy and spread. http://www.learntoraid.com/2011/08/20/majordomo-staghelm-video-strategy-guide-25-heroic/ Alternate write up and video.

Added comment: Riplimb can be slowed. During the kiting phase, we have a shadowpriest mindflay him until the spear has been returned. This will buy the tanks additional time.

Just doing this brief write up for my ATR family: (Written in August 2011) I’m assuming you know some of the basics as I’ll gloss over some areas. I’ll probably revisit other areas in the future to flesh them out more. Talents: Most people tend to run the standard 34/7/0 set up, but there’s a few floater talents in there depending on the fight, your gear, and your preferences. Personally, I view the mana reduction and Earthquake as optional talents. As such, I’ve moved those points into Elemental Warding since most heroics will have a lot of spell damage hitting the raid and it offers small bit of protection in case I stand in something I shouldn’t. The reason why I dropped the mana conservation is because we crit so often thanks to Lava Burst and with enough Mastery, you’ll have more than enough Rolling Thunder procs to top yourself up. Earthquake currently does very poor damage for such a mana hungry spell with a comparatively long cast time. There aren’t enough fights that it’ll get much use. (At least that’s my view.) Reverberation is not optional. While it doesn’t seem like a dps increase, it actually is because you’re now less likely to lock yourself out of your shocks. (More on this later on in “Rotation”.) Glyphs: Prime: For Tier 12, the following glyphs are pretty much mandatory: Flame Shock (Highest Damage Per Cast), Lava Burst, and Unleashed Lightning (Casting on the move). Lightning Bolt has actually moved out of the top three due to the amount of movement required in Firelands and in some of the Tier 11 fights. Once you try Unleashed Lightning, you’ll find it hard to drop it. We’ve gone from being the least mobile caster to the most mobile caster with 4pc Tier 12. For Tier 13: Movement Fights with Tier 12 Set: Flame Shock, Unleashed Lightning, Fire Elemental (This only applies if you have at least 2pc.) Stationary Fights with Tier 12 Set: Flame Shock, Lava Burst, Fire Elemental (This only applies if you have the full 4pc.) Flame Shock, Lightning Bolt, Fire Elemental (This only applies if you have 2pc, but not the full 4pc.) Movement Fights with Full 4pc Tier 13 Set: Flame Shock, Unleashed Lightning, Lightning Bolt Stationary Fights with Full 4pc Tier 13 Set: Flame Shock, Lightning Bolt, Lava Burst Fire Elemental falls out of favour once we break our 2pc bonus. The reason for the FE glyph was that we had the opportunity to use the FE twice per boss. It's great for progression attempts too. Major: Lightning Shield is the only mandatory glyph here. It’s not so much of a dps increase, but prevents a loss in dps. If you get hit when you have only three charges, you’ll remain at three and not have to make up the deficit from being at two. (Lightning Bolt surpasses Unleashed Lightning only if you never have to move or if you can guarantee a feather for Big Bird. You know which boss I’m talking about.) The other strong contenders are: Stoneclaw (Nice if you find that you’re in a situation where that small personal cooldown could help you.), Fire Nova (Good if mobs tend to be spread out. Refer to Infinite Flame Shock under Rotation.), Chain Lightning (Good if you have more than three targets and can cleave often. Think Heroic Halfus or Rhyolith.),and Thunderstorm (Useful for a few fights in Firelands. Rag/Rhyolith). Personally I run Lightning Shield, Thunderstorm, and Fire Nova. (I’ll swap depending on the fight and my mood.) Minor: Renewed Life is pretty much the only required one, but even then it’s more of a convenience. I like Water Walking for convenience as well, but also to kill sneaky mages trying to invis and avoid repair bills. (Spam a buff on a mage as they invis and you’ll eventually pull them back into combat. Doesn’t seem to work for hunters and rogues.) Gemming: There were two schools of thoughts prior to the recent (August 2011) buff to Shamanism. Some would stack Int and ignore socket bonuses. Others would match the bonuses. In the end, the advantage was very slight towards stacking Int. Thanks to the recent buff, stacking Int is the way to go. You’ll want +40 Int gems in every socket unless the socket bonus is +20 Int or +30 of a good secondary stat. The exception to this rule is items with two sockets and the bonus is +20 Int. In this case, the total Int you’ll want with the bonus is 80. If gems plus bonus doesn’t equal 80 Int, ignore it. (Refer to Tier 12 legs. Two blue sockets with a bonus of +20 Int.) [Note: This logic has been superceded with the November 2011 update.] If you have to match a socket bonus, you’ll want either Int/Haste or Int/Spirit. Update: (November 2011) If the socket bonus is int +10 or better per gem required to obtain it, you're better off going for it. Apparently there's exceptions, but I don't know what they are yet. Reforging: Recent stat weights puts our stats as follows: Hit>Haste>Mastery>Crit Naturally, we’ll want to be hit capped since a good chunk of our dps revolves around spells with cooldowns. Haste at the moment is a bit better than Mastery, so you’ll want to reforge for Haste first after getting to the hit cap. This is how I handle my reforges: (Note: I actually plug my reforges into a spreadsheet I created for myself.) If an item has Crit with either Haste or Mastery, I’ll reforge the Crit to Spirit. Once I’ve gone through all those types of items, I’ll look at items with really large reforge values. Eg: Darkmoon Card: Volcano and Fiery Quintessence (Firelands Rep) Items like this don’t have any Haste on them, but the amount of Haste we can get out of them is so much, that I personally forge these directly to Haste and then figure out my hit cap around these items. The final step is to then juggle my excess Spirit (if any) and Mastery. If I have too much Spirit, I’ll reforge out to Haste or Mastery. If I need more Spirit, I’ll take it out of Mastery. If plugging your gear into a spreadsheet to figure out your reforges isn’t your type of thing, just head over to askmrrobot.com. It’ll do a good enough job. (It sometimes has a tendency to put you under hit cap, so be careful with that.) Tip: If you’re struggling to get hit capped and you have an item with Spirit/Crit. You can always double dip on that item and reforge the Crit to Hit. Enchants: This is pretty straightforward, and you shouldn’t have any issues here, but I’ll just mention a few things: If your chest is epic, don’t be cheap. +20 stats is worth it. If your wrists are epic, don’t be cheap. +50 Int is worth it. If your gloves are epic, don’t be cheap. +65 Mastery is worth it. (Yes, +65 Mastery is worth more dps than +50 Haste. I’m sad too.) If your weapon is epic, don’t be cheap. Power Torrent is most definitely worth it. Moral of the story: If it’s epic, don’t be cheap. (Unless you’re about to replace that gear very soon.) Rotation: Now we’re getting to the meat and potatoes! Like every other class, we don’t use a rotation anymore. We’re on a priority system. Aside from the obvious things like having totems down, Flametongue on your weapon, and Lightning Shield up, the priority goes like this: ES9>FS>LvB>LB 4pc T12 = FS>LvB>ES9>LB (Change documented below.) Now to explain the above and expand a bit on this. You’ll want to Earth Shock when you have a 9 stack of Lightning Shield. There’s only one time when you do it with less and that’s if you have 7-8 charges of Lightning Shield and 6.5-5 seconds left on Flame Shock. The reason being is that you’ll cut down on potentially wasted Rolling Thunder procs while you’re locked out of your shocks after refreshing Flame Shock. Hence, why we took those points in Reverberation. Less time locked out of our shocks. (Indirect dps increase.) The rest of the priority is self-explanatory. You’ll want to refresh Flame Shock just as it comes off and cast Lava Burst as quickly as you can after it comes off of cooldown. Lightning Bolt is our filler spell. 4pc T12 Priority Change The reason for this priority is that we now have an instant cast LvB if we get a Lava Surge proc. (You can set up a Power Aura or whatever addon you prefer for this. The buff is called Volcano.) This doesn't mean that we should cancel whatever we were casting to capitalize on this instant LvB, it means that you want to use up that buff as quickly as possible so that you can free yourself up for another potential Lava Surge. (I've seen chain Lava Surges of as much as 7 in a row without being able to cast another spell in between.) If you interrupt whatever spell you were casting to fire off an instant LvB, you've effectively crippled your dps. By interrupting that spell part way through, you've effectively lengthened the amount of time attributed to that LvB by that much. (Interrupt spell after 0.5s with a 1s GCD, you've effectively made your LvB cast time equal to 1.5s. So don't do that.) Chain Lightning will join the priority before Lightning Bolt if there’s 2+ targets close enough. Infinite Flame Shock: Since I mentioned this earlier, I’ll explain it here. Fire Nova will 6 seconds to each active Flame Shock. Head on up to the target dummies and watch this in action. Cast Flame Shock on one target and wait for it to come off cooldown. Cast it on the next target and cast Fire Nova. You’ll notice that the duration just increased for both of them by about 12 seconds. Cast Flame Shock on a third target and repeat. You can keep Flame Shock rolling on all the targets forever with one global. The most common use of this is on Rhyolith. Cash Flame Shock on each leg and cast Fire Nova as often as you can. Those two flame shocks should last you till the end of the fight. The incidental AoE damage to the adds is a bonus. (Note: Not worth trying to do this without at least one other add.) Flame Shock and Fire Nova have their own quirks which I won’t expand on, but if you had two Flame Shocks up without any damage buffs and then popped Unleash Elements and/or Elemental Mastery, those Flame Shocks will now take on those properties gained from the Fire Nova. Vice versa is true that they’ll lose the damage buffs if you cast a non-buffed Fire Nova. Not really important or worth monitoring, but thought I’d include it anyway. Unleash Elements: For those of you that used to use this to fill globals on the move before picking up the Unleashed Lightning Glyph, you’ll find that you’ll rarely ever use this spell again. Elemental Mastery: As tempting as it is to fire off an instant Lava Burst, it’s actually more dps to use the instant cast portion of this buff on Lightning Bolt since that has a longer cast time than Lava Burst. The haste portion will only affect Flame Shock cast after you gain the EM buff. (Same thing applies when under the effect of Blood Lust.) Update: Since the EM section was poorly worded with regards to haste and Flame Shock, I'm adding a bit to this. Flame Shock's haste values are not actively updated. Ie: If you're under the effect of EM and BL and one or both are about to fall off, one of your last globals should be to refresh Flame Shock. Flame Shock will maintain the haste effect until it expires or is refreshed. Ie: More ticks = more dps. More ticks = more chances for lava surge procs. Fire Elemental: Figured this baby deserves its own mini-section. If you’re an Orc with 2pc T12, “Congratulations! You have the best racial!” (Best racial only because of the spell power buff. Command doesn’t affect the Fire Elemental.) When to drop your Fire Elemental is just as important as how to drop it and how do you get it to work. How do you get it to work? I’m sure you’ve noticed by now that if you try to drop a Fire Elemental down right at the start of the fight (3-4 global into the fight), he’ll probably just stand around and do nothing. The reason for this is thanks to Blizzard’s new Assist AI which doesn’t work very well. If you do enough damage to a target, it’ll get its butt into gear, but that’s wasted dps. To get him to attack immediately, start with Searing Totem down before the pull. (Searing won’t attack immediately either.) With Searing down prior to the pull, the FE will attack immediately. How to drop it? While this may seem like a silly topic, many elementals actually don’t know that you can use one of our calls to drop both the Fire Elemental and Earth Elemental together. Don’t waste a separate global for the EE. It’s as waste of dps. An EE will only do about 80k damage in its 2 minutes of life. You’re better off binding it to the FE for the bonus damage. When to drop it? I’m assuming you know when you want to drop it during the fight. This is more of a different “when”. Many elementals don’t know that the FE is classified as a guardian and not a pet. As such, it takes a snapshot of your stats when you drop it. (The only stats that matter the most are intellect and spellpower.) That means, you’ll want to line up the best possible buffs given your circumstances when you go to drop it. If you’re dropping it at the start of the pull and you’ve pre-potted, you’ll want to make sure the following buffs are present before dropping your FE. Totem Wrath, Volcanic Potion, Volcanic Destruction (trinket proc), Blood Fury (Orc Racial), Power Torrent, and any other buffs that you have which would affect your intellect or spellpower. (Fiery Quintessence trinket buff would be another to watch for.) Naturally later on in the fight, lining up these procs is virtually impossible, so you’ll most likely want to have Volcanic Destruction (trinket proc) and one other good buff together and let him go to town. Hopefully this hasn’t bored you too much and has given you a bit more insight to the spec. I might come back some time and tidy this up, but this has most of the relevant information. If you’re looking for more, head over to totemspot.com. I’m not an elemental guru, but I try to keep up with as much information as possible. If you have any questions/comments, please feel free to leave them here, catch me in the shoutbox when I’m lurking or find me on Berms on Eredar (Horde). Cheers! Edit: 9/15/11 - Small update for 4pc T12 rotation. Edit: 11/2/11 - Change in gemming logic. Edit: 11/10/11 - Update on Elemental Mastery and haste effects on Flame Shock. Edit: 11/30/11 - Glyphs changes for 4.3. (Prime)

Awesome work!

Sticky this thread. Don't let him edit it!

Awesome work! Hardmodes soon enough.

30 minute title. Must be alive when the fight ends. Seems like Memer lost out on it that time or had changed it off.

I think there needs to be a more solid plan on managing interrupts, such as an interrupt rotation or something. On fights like nef and maloriak, interrupts are absolutely critical and should be handled appropriately. Maloriak is especially tough on 25 as there are multiple things to interrupt on the same boss and the interrupt sequence will vary. For example: Interrupt 1 --> Dps 1 7 seconds later: Interrupt 2 --> DPS 2 11 Seconds Later: Interrupt 3 --> DPS 1 and 2 both interrupt 6 seconds later: Interrupt 4 --> DPS 1 and 2 are both on CD DPS will have to work together to ensure smooth interrupts and talk amongst themselves and this is not a challenge on 10man. Otherwise, this whole thing appears to be very well thought out by you Rebel!! Don't put too many interrupters on Maloriak. It'll lead to people interrupting casts that should've been let through. Pick your most reliable two people and assign them specific spells. Let the tanks/leads/whatever decide how many casts to let through for the adds. Seriously, this is one of those fights, you want people to just tunnel within reason. If they can't be trusted to interrupt, don't make them do it.

Only raid he'll show up for is BT.

At long last! About time to try to return to the 25 man scene. I don

Team Helmet strikes again!

Fantastic! Absolutely awesome! Good work, guys and gals!

Don't forget BH for rep as well. Shove those alts through there asap. People who do the dailies for gold can do the ones in Northrend on Sunday and then fill out their log with 25 completed Cata dailies. The weekly TB win (quest) gives guild rep as well. Burn those 15% guild banners on cooldown for those boss kills.

Whoo! Grats! Great work! Some of these fights are a bit harder on 10man, so great work!