Trial of the Crusader Strategy Notepad

[Rofldat]

Just found this on mmo-champ
# The Val'kyr Twins will now heal for more in Heroic difficulties and ignore any heal dampening effects.
# Koralon now pauses after casting Blazing Embers before casting Burning Breath.

So Kinzie can stop using Wound Poison now

And Koralon will stop "lol fire spit + breath" insta-gib random ranged DPS

[Kulldam]

Notes for Heroic Anub'arak:

• We need to utilize Misdirection for Burrower spawns. I'm tired of killing/nearly killing Wild every other spawn because I'm snared in frost and/or can't target beyond Anub's giant model and/or sucking donkey nuts. I always Skull raid mark the first target so I can distinguish between the Skull (my focus) and the unmarked Burrower (my target) and get cast bars for both to see when either starts casting shadow step bullshit. Therefore, we can just have Guide target the unmarked Burrower as it's coming in and Misdirect a few shots on it to me. It would also allow me to avoid moving around like a floppy dildo trying to agro, which inevitably puts my back to one or both Burrowers and drops my avoidance a good 50%, so my incoming damage/debuff stack spikes fast. I'm fairly certain we could've won our first attempt of Anub Wednesday evening if I hadn't let Wild die early on, which would've been a 46 attempt remaining victory, so anything to help that will be a big boon.
• That is all.

[Guide]

Noted.

[Kulldam]

Notes on Faction Champions:

Just want to have a permanent place to keep track of our tactics for various NPC makeups and what we found does (not) work.

Team 1 - Single-Target Burst of Doom

• Healers: Shaman & Paladin
• Ranged: Hunter & Mage
• Melee: Warrior & Death Knight

Winning Strategy

Healers: Kheelan, Khrashdin, Wildhide
Rofldat: Full-time on Shaman to Interrupt heals/Hex; also /cast [target=focus] Chains of Ice macro on the Death Knight.
Kulldam: Full-time on Paladin as Protection to Interrupt heals.
Kilwenn: Sheep rotation between Mage and Hunter.
Huggeybear: Cyclone rotation between Mage and Hunter, offset from Kilwenn's sheep obviously.
Kinzie: Wound poison full-time on DPS target in case of missed heals.

Engagement: Raid stands at opposite end of the room from NPC spawn. Kilwenn in center of room engages with Water Elemental's AE root which forces all NPC trinkets. Rofldat Death Grips the kill target toward the raid, then double-knockbacks are used on the other 5 NPCs (from Huggeybear and Ugra) to buy some time and distance. Ugra immediately Bloodlusts and DPS focuses kill target. Guidon also drops a Frost Trap in the center to get melee NPCs snared to start.

Kill order: Warrior > Hunter > Mage > Death Knight > Shaman > Paladin

Issues

Tons of issues with this NPC Team. The Hunter and Mage are by far the two highest DPS ranged of any NPCs and that combined with the MS and Bladestorm from Warrior means burst DPS potential is huge. Without a Priest or Druid healer, both the Shaman and Paladin must be full-time interrupted as Fear/Sheep proved too unreliable -- even a handful of heals, especially from the Paladin, is a huge HP gain on the kill target.

With NPCs favoring targets that use strong debuffs, we found issues with using Kinzie as a Rogue to interrupt the healers. Rofldat and Kulldam are much more survivable if they get focused.

Heroism should be purged ASAP from all six NPCs by Ugra as soon as they cast, but especially from the Mage and Hunter as the Mage can frequently throw out 11-13k Arcane Blasts every 2ish seconds while hasted.

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Team 2 - Sneaky Dispel

• Healers: Priest & Druid
• Ranged: Mage & Shadow Priest
• Melee: Shaman & Rogue

Winning Strategy

Healers: Kheelan, Khrashdin, Wildhide
Kulldam: Full-time on Mage to stop most burst DPS.
Kilwenn: Sheep rotation between Priest and Shadow Priest.
Rofldat: Full-time DPS on kill target with /cast [target=focus] Chains of Ice macro on the Shaman.
Ugra: Full-time Purge spam on kill-target to negate 80% of the healing from this Team, allowing us to nearly ignore the healers. Purge Heroism from Priest/Shadow Priest/Shaman when cast.

Engagement: Raid stands at opposite end of the room from NPC spawn. Kilwenn in center of room engages with Water Elemental's AE root which forces all NPC trinkets. Rofldat Death Grips the kill target toward the raid, then double-knockbacks are used on the other 5 NPCs (from Huggeybear and Ugra) to buy some time and distance. Ugra immediately Bloodlusts and DPS focuses kill target. Guidon drops a Frost Trap in the center to get melee NPCs snared to start.

Kill order: Rogue > Shaman > Mage > Shadow Priest > Priest > Druid

Issues

One of the easier makeups due to the reliance on HoT-based healing for their team. If we can get rid of the Rogue quickly and control the Mage's burst, it's very difficult for this team to then get a kill on any of our players as their burst is much lower. Most of the Shadow Priest's damage can be dispelled by Khrashdin once the Rogue dies.

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Team 3 - Grip Burst

• Healers: Paladin & Druid
• Ranged: Hunter & Druid
• Melee: Shaman & Death Knight

Winning Strategy

Healers: Kheelan, Khrashdin, Wildhide
Kulldam: Full-time on Paladin to interrupt heals.
Kilwenn: Sheep rotation between Hunter and Balance Druid.
Rofldat: Full-time DPS on kill target with /cast [target=focus] Chains of Ice macro on the Death Knight.
Ugra: Full-time Purge spam on kill-target to negate 80% of the healing from the Druid. Purge Heroism from Hunter/Balance Druid/Death Knight when cast.

Engagement: Raid stands at opposite end of the room from NPC spawn. Kilwenn in center of room engages with Water Elemental's AE root which forces all NPC trinkets. Rofldat Death Grips the kill target toward the raid, then double-knockbacks are used on the other 5 NPCs (from Huggeybear and Ugra) to buy some time and distance. Ugra immediately Bloodlusts and DPS focuses kill target. Guidon drops a Frost Trap in the center to get melee NPCs snared to start.

Kill order: Shaman > Hunter > Death Knight > Balance Druid > Paladin > Druid

Issues

A very common makeup for us to face, not overly challenging but can get bursty if the Hunter and Death Knight swap to the same target simultaneously and use Death Grip. Balance Druid's burst is much lower than Mage, so other than occasional Cyclone from Huggeybear/Wildhide, he is largely ignored. While the Enhancement Shaman doesn't deal huge DPS, because he has virtually no escape mechanisms and he provides numerous buffs through totems, we found it best to kill him first. Once he drops, we move on to the Hunter to try to remove the Death Grip > Hunter burst combo.

All ranged DPS and healers must carefully watch positioning relative to both the Shaman and Death Knight to keep their distance at all times, as a quick turn will drop most cloth/leather wearers in 3-4 seconds. Keeping Rejuvenation on as many ranged/healers as possible proved very useful to land a Swiftmend upon a fast target swap by the NPCs.

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Team 4 - Your Crowd Control Is Futile

• Healers: Paladin & Priest
• Ranged: Warlock & Hunter
• Melee: Shaman & Rogue

Winning Strategy

Healers: Kheelan, Khrashdin, Wildhide
Kulldam: Full-time on Paladin to interrupt heals.
Kilwenn: Sheep rotation between Priest and Hunter.
Rofldat: Full-time DPS on kill target with /cast [target=focus] Chains of Ice macro on the Shaman.
Ugra: Full-time Purge spam on kill-target to negate 80% of the healing from the Priest. Purge Heroism from Hunter/Warlock/Priest when cast.

Engagement: Raid stands at opposite end of the room from NPC spawn. Kilwenn in center of room engages with Water Elemental's AE root which forces all NPC trinkets. Rofldat Death Grips the kill target toward the raid, then double-knockbacks are used on the other 5 NPCs (from Huggeybear and Ugra) to buy some time and distance. Ugra immediately Bloodlusts and DPS focuses kill target. Guidon drops a Frost Trap in the center to get melee NPCs snared to start.

Kill order: Rogue > Hunter > Shaman > Warlock > Priest > Paladin

Issues

This was one of the first makeups that gave us issues even after we discovered the power of Purge, because between the Paladin/Priest/Felhunter/Tremor Totem, we could not keep a Sheep/Fear going for more than a couple seconds.

This was the point we dropped the Warlock and went back to using a Protection Warrior full-time, as I could generally interrupt the Paladin heals and also time my 8-10 seconds of stun +2-4 seconds of silence to coincide with Kilwenn's sheep on the Priest, which prevented the Paladin from dispelling it immediately and therefore left only the Felhunter to choose that particular spell to remove. Usually we'd get at least one full-duration Sheep out of it every 30 sec DR rotation, which gave us enough time to DPS the kill-target Rogue such that the Priest's single-target healing couldn't keep up. As with the Druid healer teams, Purge helps a great deal to remove HoT effects from the Priest.

This makeup also forces Khrashdin, as our sole magic dispeller, to be very picky about the debuffs he cures and only remove Sheep, Fear, and Hex, otherwise ignoring any curable debuffs in favor of healing through the damage.

[Kulldam]

Question to Healers regarding Faction Champions:

What if we assigned 1 healer to each non-targeted DPS NPC and had them heal the target-of-target player for that NPC?

I thought of this as I was writing up our tactics above, but it seems like it may be a sound theory. In essence, take our most recent NPC makeup (the highest DPS makeup we can face save maybe swapping a Rogue for the Death Knight).

DPS are killing the Warrior, so ignore that, but we have 3 other DPS NPCs: Mage, Hunter, and Death Knight.

What if each healer /focuses or targets a different NPC and always heals the player that NPC is targeting?

e.g.:

Khrashdin /focuses Mage
Kheelan /focuses Death Knight
Wildhide /focuses Hunter

So Khrashdin's (for example) Unit Frames on his screen would look something like this:

†Khrash's Focus Box†     †Focus' Target Box†
    MageName|100%              Ugra|85%

Now Khrashdin can see the Mage is attacking Ugra and immediately start spamming heals on him, even theoretically before the damage takes place. As soon as the Mage changes targets, even while Khrash is mid-cast on Holy Light to Ugra as the previous target, he'll immediately know who's going to take the next burst of damage:

†Khrash's Focus Box†     †Focus' Target Box†
    MageName|100%             Kinzie|85%

For Khrash and Wild at least (who both use Clique I believe, not sure what Khee uses these days), this would allow them to simply heal from the actual Focus' Target unit frame in their Pitbull or whatever, which means only clicking elsewhere to throw a heal on another random person or dispel.

As we know from experience, it's extremely uncommon for a lone NPC to kill any one player from full to dead, but instead to assist other DPS NPCs. By that token, if healers utilize the NPC's target frame to always be spamming the NPCs current target, even when two or all three DPS NPCs focus a single player, all three healers will then be spamming that person.

If any NPC gets CCed (say via Sheep), that drops the NPCs target so this would indicate to the healer a CC is taking place and to spot heal/dispel/whatever in the meantime.

†Khrash's Focus Box†     †Focus' Target Box†
    MageName|100%             [No Box]

Thoughts?

[Khrash]

I have created my Focus's Target in Pitbull.

It all seems reasonable to me.

[Wildhide]

That sounds good.

I would already do this with the mage (or any other high threat target). It gave me a good idea of who was going to get hit in the face with a 12k arcane blast or what not.

I suppose this should work, but we may run in to complications when a healer gets interrupted/cc'ed/gayed. Also, depending on MS effects and what class is getting hit, it may be difficult for one healer to keep someone alive by themselves. That is just something we'll have to change depending on the make-up we get.

Also, I don't use clique (not even sure what that addon does). I just use grid and a few plugins to track the duration of my hots. Like I said, I already use a focus frame on a dps to see what it's doing, so I should have no trouble adapting to this healing strat.

[Khrash]

Clique allows you to bind any spell to any Mouse combination.

Example:

Left Mouse = Flash of Light
Right Mouse = Holy Light
Third Mouse = Holy Shock

I cant imagine you getting more efficient, but I know this addon makes most healers about 20-50% more efficient. Id recommend you try it out man. Works awesomely with Grid... Clickclickclickclickclick!

[Kulldam]

Notes on Resilience Will Fix It:

Everyone please read to understand your responsibilities

• Obviously should be done in Normal mode.
• With our setup, our best bet is probably to do this when we are not facing a Resto Druid makeup, as we obviously don't have the consistent CC available to prevent his instant heals from getting out.
• Consequently, our likely best-bet strategy is similar to strategy for the Team 1 - Single-Target Burst of Doom makeup written above -- that is, put Rofl and me each on a healer while we split DPS among the 4 DPS:

Healers: Kheelan, Khrashdin, Wildhide

Rofldat: Full-time on Priest/Shaman to Interrupt; also /cast [target=focus] Chains of Ice macro on the weaker melee DPS.

Kulldam: Full-time on Shaman/Paladin to Interrupt.

Kilwenn: Frost Spec with full snare talents (Frostbite, Shattered Barrier, Permafrost); Full-time DPS on most dangerous melee DPS. With maxed survival/snare talents, Frostbolt spam + misc casts should keep the melee snared near full-time. If Paladin is in NPC makeup, Spell Steal Hand of Freedom asap and reapply a Chill effect.

Ugra: Full-time DPS on secondary melee DPS target, keeping Frost Shock up as secondary snare in case Chains of Ice drops/is dispelled. /cast [target=focus] Frost Shock macro is ideal so tab-target Purge of Heroism is simple when they cast it. Also make use of Earthbind's root effect when melee NPC gets near you or another nearby ranged/healer target.

Guidon: Full-time DPS on secondary ranged DPS target (Hunter, Boomkin, or Shadow Priest). Keep Frost Trap down in central location full-time to assist melee DPS kiters plus Aimed Shot on target to reduce incidental heals.

Kinzie: Full-time DPS on most dangerous caster DPS NPC (Mage else Boomkin else Shadow Priest) keeping Wound up in case of occasional heal. Can mitigate some damage via interrupts while DPSing as necessary.

Huggeybear: Rotational DPS -- since we don't have a Warlock/Shadow Priest, Huggey has by far the best DoT DPS of our ranged and while not ideal, can swap targets without losing too much DPS at the end of an Eclipse proc. Start the fight by choosing one of the melee DPS to target and assist the assigned raid member in DPSing. Get Improved Faerie Fire up immediately and normal DPS rotation, using a /focus on the other melee DPS to see health levels. Once Huggey's target gets 15-20% lower than the other melee DPS, he can wait for an Eclipse to end, reload DoTs on his current target, then swap to the second melee target and restart the rotation.

Theoretically, Kinzie and Guidon will get their targets low health first, as they will either have lower health/defenses (Mage, Warlock, Shadow Priest), or at least will not require much movement on the part of Kinzie/Guidon. Further, they both have Wound effects so misc heals will be further reduced. Therefore, with Huggey swapping between melee DPS as needed, we *should* be able to get all four DPS NPCs to low health around the same time, obviously communicating in Vent when our targets are getting low and backing off/helping others as needed.

As your NPC target gets low on health, be careful of DoTs and any possible procs that would do a huge burst and kill your target before we're ready.

Once all four DPS are around 10% health (~40k health), we'll call for Ugra's Bloodlust, all incidental pets/cooldowns will be blown (Water Elemental, Treants, Army of the Dead, trinkets, etc. should not be used prior to this point) and we'll quickly finish off the four DPS NPCs and kill off the healers (who will likely be full health or maybe 85% at best since Rofl will deal some damage between interrupts). This would also be the best time to use misc AoE effects that do not affect your normal single-target DPS rotation, such as Starfall or Death and Decay, as even though they take 75% less AE, it would all help at this point.

We'll need to burn through about 800k health for both healers (or 700k if one is a Priest) within 60 seconds, which is only 13,333 Raid DPS, or 2,222 DPS per DPS member. Obviously Wild/Khee/Khrash/myself will help nuke them down, so really the DPS requirement is incredibly low (under 2k) at this point. With pets and Lust going for half the duration, it should be a simple cleanup at this point.

Any additional notes or ideas are appreciated -- We can't do it this week, but I'd like to get this one done next week if possible (and NPC makeup is right).

[Rofldat]

instead of DnD, it's better for me to use Howling Blast, since the frost fever it applies does not get reduced by the 75% buff