Bastion of Twilight Strategy Notepad

[Kulldam]

About that time to put some of our ideas down on paper as we're about to get back into a full-time raiding schedule.

Notes on Halfus Wyrmbreaker:

Considering the confusion (myself included) around all the various abilities/buffs/debuffs that can be present at various stages of the fight, I decided it was finally time to determine once and for all everything present in this fight and how it relates to the various drakes.

Drake Active/Passive System

It seems each Drake (whelps heretofore qualify as a Drake) has both one passive buff and one active buff.

Passive (De)Buff: Always present throughout the entirety of the fight, from start to finish, regardless of the status of the Drake (inactive, active, dead, etc.).
Active (De)Buff: Present the moment the Drake becomes activated and remains until Halfus dies.

Storm Rider
Passive: Activates Shadow Wrapped on Halfus, giving him the ability to cast Shadow Nova. Source
Active: Casts Cyclone Winds on Halfus, causing the cast time of Shadow Nova to increase from 0.25 sec to 1.5 sec. Source

Slate Dragon
Passive: Activates Malevolent Strikes on Halfus, allowing him to stack the 6% Healing Reduction on the current tank to a maximum of 15 stacks. Source
Active: Casts Stone Touch on Halfus, causing him to become afflicted by Paralysis every 35 seconds, stunning him for 12 seconds. Source

Orphaned Emerald Whelp
Passive: Activates Superheated Breath on Proto-Behemoth, allowing him to cast Scorching Breath throughout the fight. Source
Active: Casts Atrophic Poison on Proto-Behemoth, one stack per Whelp, for a total of 8 stacks, reducing all damage dealt by the Proto-Behemoth by 6000 for the remainder of the encounter. Source

Time Warden
Passive: Activates Dancing Flames on Proto-Behemoth, allowing him to cast Fireball Barrage, which sends a stream of Fireball Barrage onto the ground, identical to the singular versions cast by his normal Fireball spell. Source
Active: Casts Time Dilation on Proto-Behemoth, causing him to cast his Fireball ability at half the speed as normal (3 sec instead of 1.5), making it possible/easier to dodge the effect. Source (Note the cast time change after Time Dilation is activated)

Nether Scion
Passive: Activates Frenzied Assault on Halfus, increasing his attack speed by 100% for the duration of the encounter. Source
Active: Casts Nether Blindness on Halfus, slowing his attack speed, reducing his damage, and lowering his change to hit by 25%. Source

Proto-Behemoth
A special-case addition, his abilities also change based on the other Drakes, but he has one consistent ability no matter the setup, which is Fireball. When cast, it produces a Fireball Barrage effect on the targeted player, hitting anyone within 4 yards of that target location for 30,000 average fire damage.Source

If Whelps are Active, all Proto-Behemoth attacks are reduced by 6000 damage base (before resists) via 8 stacks of Atrophic Poison. Source (Note the difference in damage after the Atrophic Poison stacks are applied.)

[Kulldam]

Notes on Twilight Ascendant Council:

Some interesting things of note if we look at a typical log of the fight during one of our better attempts (3-8% wipes): http://worldoflogs.com/reports/52aus...?s=8748&e=9124

Damage By Spell

The first big thing that jumps out is the "Damage Taken by Spell" chart from that Dashboard view:

Ability	Damage	Percent
Electric Instability	4 147 990	34 %
Melee	2 622 934	21.5 %
Rising Flames	826 321	6.8 %
Flame Torrent	794 945	6.5 %
Glaciate	431 730	3.5 %
Gravity Well	410 003	3.4 %
Liquid Ice	389 361	3.2 %
Lightning Blast	386 890	3.2 %
Chain Lightning	257 528	2.1 %
Eruption	254 452	2.1 %
Heart of Ice	253 996	2.1 %
Inferno Rush	208 561	1.7 %
Lava Plume	202 381	1.7 %
Hydro Lance	152 569	1.2 %
Soul Link	142 875	1.2 %
Lashing Winds	139 721	1.1 %
Water Bomb	137 740	1.1 %
Gravity Crush	131 780	1.1 %
Quake	106 999	0.9 %
Inferno Leap	88 752	0.7 %
Burning Blood	51 000	0.4 %
Hand of Sacrifice	45 388	0.4 %
Cauterize	14 217	0.1 %
Thundershock	11 834

Look at how insane Electric Instability is, which is the big chain lightning effect cast by the Elementium Monstrosity. 4.15 million damage, and the entire phase is only 1:40 in total duration from his spawn to our final death, compared to the full fight which is ~6:15. In fact, totaling up ALL the other abilities and damage taken therein, excluding Melee, we get a total of 5,439,043 damage. This means Electric Instability, one ability used in the last 25% of the total fight, did 73% of the damage dealt by all other abilities combined!

Moreover, as was fairly evident from our experience last night, the damage from Electric Instability is increasing fairly rapidly as the phase progresses, as we can see here: http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/5...&s=9015&e=9125

Now, at first glance, it may seem like melee are not taking significantly more damage than ranged during this phase, if you look here: http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/5...?s=9024&e=9126

But, the key is that for two melee (myself and Ansum), we were dead for the last 30% or so of this phase, so really the comparison numbers are found here: http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/5...?s=9024&e=9096

If we take off ~150k from Ansum from being hit by melee and also getting Gravity Crush (a random event that can occur on anyone and not specific to melee), that puts Ansum's total around the other melee at about 450k. However, that's still 33% more than the next closest person, a non-melee, who is at 340k, and it gets worse from there, as simply one more person down the list is 250k, 45% lower than the melee average!

What we're left with is absurb situations like this, a snippet from the log of that fight leading up to my death:

[20:58:52.530] Elementium Monstrosity Electric Instability Kulldon 9825
[20:58:52.530] Elementium Monstrosity Electric Instability Kulldon 9890
[20:58:53.331] Elementium Monstrosity Electric Instability Kulldon 8998
[20:58:53.331] Elementium Monstrosity Electric Instability Kulldon 9881
[20:58:54.500] Elementium Monstrosity Electric Instability Kulldon 9775
[20:58:55.330] Elementium Monstrosity Electric Instability Kulldon 9025
[20:58:55.330] Elementium Monstrosity Electric Instability Kulldon 8986
[20:58:55.330] Elementium Monstrosity Electric Instability Kulldon 6566 (O: 2589)

Check out the timestamps on that -- in 2.8 seconds, 8 hits of, as far as I can tell, completely unavoidable damage, totaling 75,535 damage. And I'm a tank spec, so I take 6% less spell damage than most people, so really that would be just over 80,000 damage in under 3 seconds. That's absurd!

Here's another good example, from the same attempt, for Ansum:

[20:58:52.179] Elementium Monstrosity Electric Instability Ansum 10476
[20:58:52.179] Elementium Monstrosity Electric Instability Ansum 9426
[20:58:52.897] Elementium Monstrosity Electric Instability Ansum 9684
[20:58:52.897] Elementium Monstrosity Electric Instability Ansum 10017
[20:58:54.160] Elementium Monstrosity Electric Instability Ansum 10176
[20:58:54.912] Elementium Monstrosity Electric Instability Ansum 9526
[20:58:54.912] Elementium Monstrosity Electric Instability Ansum 10241
[20:58:54.984] Elementium Monstrosity Electric Instability Ansum 10134
[20:58:56.143] Elementium Monstrosity Electric Instability Ansum 6997
[20:58:56.143] Elementium Monstrosity Electric Instability Ansum 7311
[20:58:57.154] Elementium Monstrosity Electric Instability Ansum 5218 (O: 1753)

100,959 damage in under 5 seconds (and we can clearly see Ansum blew a survival cooldown before the last 3 hits to help mitigate and reduce the damage by 30%).

So the big question is: Can we reduce this damage, or are we expected to up our Raid DPS to defeat the encounter before this level of danger occurs?

From what I can gather, it has to be the latter; that we need to pump out more DPS, and treat it more like Saurfang, where there is a "timestamp" point into Phase 3 that cannot be reached or we break the danger plateau.

Option 1 -- Improve personal DPS. Here is our DPS on the Monstrosity: http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/5...?s=9025&e=9125

Clearly we see a huge deviance between the upper tier and lower tier people, as Guide and Harkle are miles ahead of the rest of the pack. Even if we cut the fight to just the portion before any deaths, we still have issues: http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/5...?s=9025&e=9096

Melee DPS should be a great deal higher, as there is no reason to every be out of melee range of our target, no swapping, and all DPS cooldowns are used. Bauser isn't bad, but Ansum is particularly low with for no discernible reason.

Ansum and Bauser can feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but based on the incoming damage logs from above, your damage from Liquid Ice (the frost rings) is quite low, and I suspect this is causing you to move out of the puddles and thus out of attack range of the boss regularly. While it is normally good practice to avoid unnecessary damage, in this particular case, I think we can safely engage the practice of more damage early is better regardless of incoming harm -- Liquid Ice only hits for about 3000 on average a tick. If I am correct and this is in fact the issue for low damage, especially for Ansum, then be sure to focus on high boss DPS rather than avoiding ice puddles, and let Vikrum dictate the position (and whether you're in or out of a puddle). Even standing directly in a puddle full-time is only ~3000 DPS incoming, which is a pittance compared to the 20-25k DPS incoming from late-stage Electric Instability bursts. Therefore, the more damage we can put out early, the better.

Healers -- You can and should help DPS early in Phase 3.

Again, think of Saurfang in ICC, where the more DPS early was a direct translation into the less healing required later. If you look at the graph above showing the increase in Instability damage over time, we can clearly see a line progressing upward as it gets more and more difficult to sustain.

Therefore, if you have the mana (and by all accounts from Phase 2 damage, you should have quite a bit of mana at this time), you should begin Phase 3 helping to DPS the Monstrosity. It won't be much, but even an average of 500 DPS over the course of the Phase adds up to a good half a percent of his health, and when we're seeing wipes of 2-3%, that could be the difference.

Consumables -- I hate to go down this road as we discussed in last night's raid, but if popping a 1200 AGI or 1200 STR potion just after Bloodlust is enough to boost our DPS to give us a kill, it will be worth it once a week and I'll look into making up some of those.

Option 2 -- Use 2 (or 2.5) Healers. Again, going on the principle that higher DPS early is better, if we can find a way to manage the rest of the fight, we may benefit from dropping down to 2 healers (or 2.5, in that the healer DPSing can swap to healer mode for the last few seconds of Phase 3 if needed).

The numbers on this are far too obscure to even guess at, so really it will be about opinions from the healer team and testing. I would certainly prefer not to drop down to 2 healers, as once we get the first kill, we'll have no trouble with subsequent kills, but it is something to consider.

[Vikrum]

Yeah I think there is a reason the best guild in the world took out their melee and subbed in more range classes to get the heroic kill for this fight. Obviously that is not an option but this fight is very range friendly and penalizes the melee hard strictly due to Electric Instability.

[Bauser]

I know I moved out of the puddles as much as I could, putting me out of melee range quite often. I will use Pots this time and not worry as much about the puddles and see how that plays out...

[Guide]

I know I moved out of the puddles as much as I could, putting me out of melee range quite often. I will use Pots this time and not worry as much about the puddles and see how that plays out...

I can't recall what spec you are Bauser, but what about Anti Magic Zone for this fight?

[Vikrum]

For the Cho'gall fight I tried to think of some ways to improve the Worship interrupting, starting with myself.

Vikrum

• Avenger's Shield. Now this has a 15 sec CD but I have a talent that can sometimes reset the CD so I in fact have it up pretty often. In all honesty I was saving it last night and am able to get almost every single Worship CD.
  The only problems that arise are: during the Fury of Cho'gall when Kull and I have to tank swap -- sometimes these two abilities clash, but this is rare; when the people are spread out and shield only hits one person; when the adds get really close to the group the shield can choose one of the adds to hit; and last but not least when a Shaman is charmed it hits a totem. I do believe I can improve on my accuracy. I installed tidy plates add-ons and this will allow me to pan my camera to the side and physically click on a charmed person's bar the second they are charmed and shield them as apposed to tabbing.
• Stomp
  

Harkle

• Howl of Terror will work miracles. You can glyph it to reduce the cd from 40 to 32. And of course any other fears will work for single target.

Bunny

• Psychic Scream

That is all I can think of off the top of my head. Others please feel free to add. I would also like to point out that I am in now way insinuating that Harkle or Bunny do not know how to play, know their moves, etc. I am just simply going off of classes that I have personal experience with.

[Bunny]

Yar I was doing psychic scream if it was up. tragically it has a 30 second cooldown. >:[ also, its an aoe from where i am standing, so its only effective when we are clumped (kitty litter!)

[Vikrum]

Yar I was doing psychic scream if it was up. tragically it has a 30 second cooldown. >:[ also, its an aoe from where i am standing, so its only effective when we are clumped (kitty litter!)

Yeah I figured you were.

If I am not mistaken our range/heals stacking seems to really work well for me. If I recall once we went to that we didn't have many issues with it because of Avenger's Shield. The only time there was a problem was that instance where you were near the boss and you and Duux had gotten charmed. I saw that Duux was a target, shielded him, and then you said you were near the boss. Now I tried to target you and hit you with Hammer of Justice but got Cho'gall instead.

I am only speaking for myself, ranged, and heals however.

[Harkle]

Howl of Terror isn't an instant cast so I would have to be perfect with it or It's going to be late or early, but I can try! =)

[Vikrum]

Howl of Terror isn't an instant cast so I would have to be perfect with it or It's going to be late or early, but I can try! =)

Don't give me excuses Hark! Every fight in Cata can be trivialized via Warlock hax. Get on it!