[WoW] Fourteen Naxx Bosses Down in One Day - 10 Boxing is Fun!

[Mercurio]

I took off early from work today and decided to see what I could accomplish in Naxx after the reset.

I've been messing with Naxx for the last few weeks and building up my abilities with different bosses. It seems like I 10 box like I water ski. It took me like 40 tries to get up on the skis the first time I tried skiiing. Yeah, I know, pretty sad. But once I got up the very first time, I never again failed to get right up out of the water in over 15 years.

In Naxx, I tend to wipe for a solid 2-3 hours on each new boss I try. Trying new strategies, different positioning, basically just getting a feel for them. However, I've had great success at downing them consistently once they go down the first time.

I have two teams of 10, each of which with 5 fairly well geared toons that ran a number of heroics and 5 not so geared toons that have done like 1-2 heroic runs.
Team 1: Prot pallyx2, Resto shaman, Holy priest, Elemental Shamanx2, Hunter, Boomkin, Demo Warlock, Fire Mage
Team 2: Prot Pally, Warrior, Resto shaman, Holy priest, Elemental Shaman, Hunterx2, Boomkin, Demo Warlockx2

At this point I have the following bosses on farm on both teams:
Patch
Noth
Heigan
Loatheb
Instructor Razuvious
Anub'Rekhan
Grand Widow Faerlina

Some observations:
- The learning curve is pretty steep and it is expensive to wipe as much as I did starting out. It got pretty frustrating on the 14th attempt on Instructor Razuvious on Monday before the reset. You know you are doing badly if you have to re-clear trash.
- It has taken a lot of time to get here. Leveling, grinding for cash, gearing up a bit, getting mounts, etc.
- It is a TON easier to gear toons up in Naxx than running all those heroics. Two epic drops every boss sure beats the one epic drop in 3-5 bosses in heroics.
- It is really nice to be able to be in coomplete control of the loot. No rolls, no drama, and plenty of time to decide if any of my toons could possibly benefit from each drop before disenchanting.
- Having a mixed team is definitely worthwhile. Whole sections of the loot tables would be wasted if I didn't have a nice mix of classes.
- I got 14 epic upgrades today (not counting off-spec drops I kept). I can't imagine that happening any other way.
- A couple upgrades came from Emblem of Heroism purchases that I got from Naxx bosses. The rate of emblem drop is probably about the same as the easier heroics (about twice as long to get to and kill a boss, but 10 emblems instead of 5).
- I ended up with three epic drops from trash today. That's more than I've typically been seeing, but I'm averaging about one "bonus" epic per run.
- I still have 49 potential upgrades from these bosses for team 1 and 47 for team 2. If I never figure out how to kill a new boss in Naxx and just farm these seven, I have many weeks (if not months) of getting upgrades ahead of me.
- Holy priests are amazing healers.

Overall, I'm having lots of fun, and there are plenty of challenges still out there. Currently I'm blocked by Maexxna, Grobullus, and Gothik. If I ever get up the courage and gear, I may try Ulduar. They may not be possible, but a few weeks ago I was thinking Heigan and Instructor weren't possible.

If anyone is thinking about making the plunge and upgrading from 5 accounts to 10, I would definitley recommend it.

[Zal]

Make video!!!

[Khatovar]

Make video!!!

/agree!!

And nice work, congrats! :thumbup:

[Deekhay]

Gratz Mercurio!

How do you handle Heigan?

Thanks for sharing,
Deekhay

[daviddoran]

I just HAVE to see a video of you doing Heigan.... I mean damn, i have a tough time dual boxing him... Usually its a race to see how far we can get him down before the first fast dance to make it easier when we 3-4 man it.... I can't begin to imagine the keybinds you have...

And congrats!

I am a bit curious, why have 2 teams that are so similar in makeup? Did you level them as fewer classes at a time, then merge 2 groups, swapping the classes around?

And once you cant really get upgrades from naxx anymore, you should be incredibly well geared, and can try the harder content. Hell i bet a fully geared group could 10 man, or close to it a 25 man OS...

[Zaelar]

The first boss in ulduar isn't very gear dependent, you're in vehicles. You do need some gear since the vehicle HP is determined by the ilvl of the gear that you use, but you don't need to have full epics to make it work. In 10-man, two characters do some out-of-vehicle fighting, but the gear requirement there isn't too much and the combat is easilly macorable to just spam one button (/target whatevertheturretiscalled, /cast dps). After that you have a choice of 3 bosses. One of them is definitely doable, one of them I'd be very impressed if someone solos it but it's probably not too bad if you have a couple people helping, and the third I haven't done yet but from what I read it looks like there's a little too much going on at once to solo it. Beating the enrage timers is also something that you need to consider, you can't let your dps have downtime.

[Bigfish]

Grats on your kills! Best of luck to you.

[Zaelar]

How the heck did you pull off Grobbulus? :D

tldr much?

[Mercurio]

Make video!!!

I have no idea what software is needed to do this. Maybe I'll do some research this week and will be able to make some vids after Naxx resets next Tuesday....

[Mercurio]

Wow, impressive!

How the heck did you pull off Grobbulus?

As I stated above, Grobbulous is one of the three standing in the way of my progression right now. I haven't downed him - haven't even attempted him. I think I'll need to pull in Zaelar and some other Mag horde folks to have a chance at him, but we'll see.

[Bigfish]

Wow, impressive!

How the heck did you pull off Grobbulus? :D

He didn't down Grobbulus. He killed 7 bosses, Naxx reset, and he killed them again.

Or, after reading that again, he killed the same 7 bosses, once on each team.

But still, that's an impressive list. Heigan, Anub'Rehkan, and Razuvious are all bitches to box.

[Mercurio]

Heigan was a bear. Stealthy and Zaelar on these boards helped me the first couple of weeks I did him by tanking for me while I 9-boxed the healing and DPS. But I figured they wouldn't always be on, and since they didn't need gear from him and were just doing it to be helpful that I needed to figure him out solo.

The basic strategy is to run in with everyone following the tank, drop cleansing totems a few yards in front of the platform, taunt and make the rest of the team run onto the platform while the tank stays back, spin everyone 180 degrees so they can start to DPS, and then just run the tank around for phase 1. I put my group on the platform facing zone 2 since that is where the phase transitions happen. Since my casters will be under the major spell cast speed debuff at various times (especially during the transitions), I use instas and fast heals only on the tank. I'm not really worried about the cast speed debuff or my DPS speed since dying isn't really a threat anymore. Slow and steady wins the race. At the transitions, I just line my tank up in front of the platform, put everyone on follow, and strafe through phase 2. Rinse and repeat.

In fact, on one of my teams this week I got one of those rare keyclone bugs where a button is held down even after releasing it. It stays that way until you hit the button again. The bad thing was it was strafe right and it is not a button I typically use for the team - only during phase 2. So it took me a while to figure out what was going on as my toons were all running literally all over the place, then trying to figure out which strafe button it was, panicing because Heigan was like at 20% by then and it was all going to hell, and spamming follow because that was the only thing keeping my toons close to my tank and out of the lava. Looking back, it was quite hilarious - especially because I ended up overcoming it in the end, downed Heigan, and didn't even lose a toon.

[Mercurio]

But still, that's an impressive list. Heigan, Anub'Rehkan, and Razuvious are all bitches to box.

Thanks, Bigfish. Your posts on these boards about your hard-fought victories in Naxx were a major inspiration.

[Enndo]

Very nice!

[Talonluck]

Congrats! Quite an impressive feat.

[puppychow]

gratz man thats awesome! I can't even imagine how long it took you to level 20 characters to 80, be careful, Sam may put out a hit on you! :)

You should DEFINITELY step into Ulduar this week. oo, except the vehicles have reticular targeting instead of target-by-mob, that may be difficult to multibox due to needing to use the mouse to target more or less, at least for trash clearing. Dunno you'll have to try it out and see how hard it is to multibox.

Razorscale will be a bit tough to multibox, but not impossible. You just have to be really, really good about moving out of puddles of fire on the ground, tanking/picking up all the adds, and firing harpoons at the right time. Will require some coordination. Can totally skip.

Ignis may be not worth it, its not a super hard fight but not really sure how you'd handle all the targeted-healing (flame pot), OT moving adds to specific spots, and 1 DPS taking care of adds. Could be doable but will be a lot of wiping, lots of trash too that takes a while to clear. Can totally skip.

xt02 will be relatively easy, you can single tank the boss up on the stairs, have everyone spread out a bit, not sure how you will deal with adds however - 4 shamans could theoretically take care of them all with magma/earthbind/flame nova totems, but you still have to deal with constructors and adds getting too close. gravity well is also an issue, but you can tab quickly and move away i'd think. The adds will be the hardest part of this fight, will need to figure out a strat to deal with them - fwiw I am able to kill all the (non constructor) adds as a mage in 10 man, but I have to move around a lot and thats all I really do.

Kolgarn may be hard, not sure. Its a relatively straightforward boss but need quite a bit of rapid-healing on random targets, and one person is constantly targeted by beams (ala grobbulus) and has to move. If you maybe DPS both arms down quickly you can make this an easy fight.

The rest of the bosses (Iron Council, Hodir, Thorim, etc) however I think are going to be insanely tough to multibox, there is just too much raid damage, movement, and tank swapping to easily single box them.

[Bigfish]

Front page. Nice.

[blast3r]

Nice work man! I'll be trying that myself in the distant future. :)

[Kicksome]

It's good to see people who keep pushing the limits of boxing. I'm sure a ton of people said you couldn't 10 box naxx when WOTLK came out. Now, 4-5 months later, wow!

[Gomotron]

Darn, it's posts like this that make me feel like a slacker for not wanting to level up another group to 10 box :)

Big congratulations, Mercurio! I told some coworkers about your Naxx runs and they couldn't believe it. Keep it up!

[heffner]

Awesome stuff! Thanks for sharing your experience. Would be awesome to watch you do this. Do you have any links to a description of your setup? I have enough problems getting decent macros for my five toons.

This definitely makes me want to push my team forward. Not sure I'd have it in me to 10-box Naxx, but going with another 5-boxer would be pretty awesome.

Please keep us updated on your progress!

[Youngceo]

My guild is just starting naxx now and upto 10man heigan at the moment so I been going in there with my 4 shammys as they are head dps of the raid so far so I need to be able to get them to survive for as long as possible.

I just cant seem to find a reliable way to get them through the lava each time, if I put them on follow its 50/50 chance if 1 or 2 get hit but I rarely get them out of phase 2 with all 4 left alive.

Ive tried stacking them on the one spot and just strafing which seems to be a easier method but somehow they seem to die when my dk leader doesnt (even though they are synced so all 5 move at the same time) maybe im just lagging each time or something. Would love to see a video how you manage it

The other problem I ran into with strafing method is if they arent all facing exactly to the front they tend to head towards the front or back more which is deadly when they almost end up on the platform near Heigan :P

[Zaelar]

If you're the only boxer there, just leave your shamans out(/try to use them but don't worry if they die). It'll become a longer fight but as long as you're avoiding explosions enough so that the healers don't go oom you can 2-man this fight. You could also try just having your shamans sit in one area(I recommend the second) and spam chain heal during the dance. I have no idea if this would work, but I have heard of someone healing a disconnected player through the dance to get the achievement before.

[Youngceo]

I tried about another 10 times on him this arvo, I managed to get him to 51% with just my 5 (tank dk, 3 ele and 1 shaman is dual spec resto so I just had him spam riptide and cleanse on me)

My problem is just the lag, i get through about 2-3 stages of phase 2 before i get a lag spike of like a second and it wipes all my guys. apart from that hes no problem though, with 5 more from the guild we should do him easy now.

I just had to practice with my guys on follow, I use unholy on the dk in phase 2 so he moves quicker the shamans stop less, I tried the strafing method but they just died instantly everytime for me.

[Mercurio]

More successes to report....

I tried a few more bosses today - not solo, but with me 8-boxing and with Zaelar 2-boxing. The results....


Gothik... DOWN


Four Horseman... DOWN


Grobbulus... (Um.... not down, er... DOWN!... to 55% before we wiped)


Emalon... DOWN

:D

Much thanks to Zaelar - he is even more persistant than I am, is great to bounce innovative strategies off of (and comes up with a ton of them on his own), and is a very good boxer (not perfect... which is perfect, because if he never screwed up I'd be the lone source of all our wipes)

[Poetry]

Please share your 4-horsemen and Emalon strats. We have failed miserably at horsemen in the past and tried Emalon with very messy results yesterday. Any tips appreciated! :D

[Mercurio]

Poetry,

For 4 Horse Zaelar took care of the back with his resto shammy and DK. Basically kept Earth Shield up on the DK and healed his shammy. Did basically no damage, just survived.

For my 8-box I split into 2 groups - tank and healer on the front right boss, the rest on Thane. Pull Thane, burn thane, run my 2 off into the empty corner while the other 6 head to fornt right to engage that boss. We didn't kill him by the time we got four stacks, so switched again with my group of 2, running the six to the back to start on Lady. Ran them back to finish off front right as soon as the stacks dropped, running my other 2 off into the empty corner again. At that point I just played my group of 6 switching in the back with Zaelar until the back two dropped. I screwed something up at some point (not sure what) and 4 of my toons died as the 2nd boss died, so it took about 12 mins, but we downed them all. So even if you screw up a bit there is definitely some leeway.

It took Zaelar a few wipes to get his strategy correct (and me a number more than that) but he was golden after that. He did a great job of taking care of the back by himself. I actually moved my 2 group back for a bit to help heal his DK at one point, but that's just b/c they were just sitting there not doing anything - it really didn't help so I basically idled them and concentrated on my party of 6 through the last part of the fight.

For Emalon we used the /distance 10 command to make sure none of our guys were in range of anyone else. Took a while to get the positioning right, but it worked. Single tanked everything with 3 healers, 6 DPS. I was actually surprised that Emalon went down as easily as he did. Going to try to solo him tomorrow with my other team.

I hope that helps :)

[Poetry]

Wow, that's a wild Horsemen story. If all that can go on and you can still get them down, well...we'll see tomorrow! lol

We had toyed with the idea of single tanking Emalon but we weren't sure if it was possible and never tried. It sure would simplify things and give us one more dps! Sounds like a plan. Good luck with the solo attempt.

Thanks for sharing your experiences. Can't wait to have another try at these bosses.

[Mercurio]

Emalon down!!! Woot! Just soloed him with team 1.

So I have seven classes represented on the team. Two T8 or PvP items drop form the boss in 10-man. What's the chances I'll get nothing?

Well, I got two rogue drops :cursing:

I've got a minor in statistics, so I did the quick calc on it (not that you need more than 10th grade math for this calculation) - only a 9% chance that neither drop would yield anything my team could use.

Bad luck, but the good news is that next Tuesday I get another chance.

[Zaelar]

Next week we're downing every boss and I'm ninjaing repelling charge when it drops~

[XeR0X]

Hey, quick question on your emalon positioning. Umm how were your guys spread out? were they just spread in to a line 10 yards apart from each as your tank ran in?

is /distance 10 part of a addon?

[Deekhay]

Hey, quick question on your emalon positioning. Umm how were your guys spread out? were they just spread in to a line 10 yards apart from each as your tank ran in?

is /distance 10 part of a addon?I place them before the roundabaout (where you go straight away to old boss and turn right to new boss) and the marks on the floor are exactly 11y away from each other.
Turns out to be a pretty static fight where only the add tank move. Adds are so easy now after the 80k hp nerf...

[Poetry]

Emalon down!!! Woot! Just soloed him with team 1.

Congratulations! The loot drops sure are frustrating in Vault, though. I think in all the weeks we've killed Archavon we've only ever seen one drop that we needed. Hopefully with the ideas here we'll add one more boss who drops useless stuff! lol

[XeR0X]

wow how do you manage to kite him emalon that far back, my bubble shield runs out = ( even with swiftness potion i cant get em kited far enough.

[Maxion]

Hey, quick question on your emalon positioning. Umm how were your guys spread out? were they just spread in to a line 10 yards apart from each as your tank ran in?

is /distance 10 part of a addon?
I'm pretty sure /distance is part of Deadly Boss Mods (which is pretty handy for any raid content on any number of characters anyway)

[Deekhay]

Hey, quick question on your emalon positioning. Umm how were your guys spread out? were they just spread in to a line 10 yards apart from each as your tank ran in?

is /distance 10 part of a addon?If I'm not mistaken Blizzard's default /range does the same thing.

[Deekhay]

wow how do you manage to kite him emalon that far back, my bubble shield runs out = ( even with swiftness potion i cant get em kited far enough.Druid in Meowww form with Dash: Power Shield and Earth Shield for prevention but it works like a charm 100% of time. As soon as druid is arriving he changes to Bear and the fun begins.

If you have a hunter it works even better with Misdirection :).

[Tamu]

Mercurio, congrats on your great success in Naxx!! This is very inspirational!

[ciscokid454]

That's just amazing man, keep up the good work!

[Youngceo]

Its been awhile since I watched this guys 10box naxx videos and I dont even have the link anymore but could anyone explain the gluth video?

When I watched it he tanked gluth right ontop of the grate where you fall down and no zombies appeared somehow and didnt even seem to switch tanks (though I assume he had to) but the no zombies spawning really got me.

[Ruodhaid]

Its been awhile since I watched this guys 10box naxx videos and I dont even have the link anymore but could anyone explain the gluth video?

When I watched it he tanked gluth right ontop of the grate where you fall down and no zombies appeared somehow and didnt even seem to switch tanks (though I assume he had to) but the no zombies spawning really got me.

thay spwan and the dog eats them, he just ignores it and out dps the healing it gets from eating them

[Youngceo]

obvioulsly it works but wouldnt it be the same as letting every zombie reach the boss on decimate? or does the boss eating them instantly somehow slow down how fast they spawn or something?

[Team Myth]

rare keyclone bugs where a button is held down even after releasing it

Happens alot to me, very annoying when pulling a big group, but its kind of funny to see a prot pali with alot of NPCs and the healer running away.

[Mercurio]

Its been awhile since I watched this guys 10box naxx videos and I dont even have the link anymore but could anyone explain the gluth video?

Actually, it wasn't me who posted those videos of Naxx runs. But I found the link to his Flame Leviathan run and you can click on his other vids from there:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkvx4RVUfZM

As for Gluth, I have soloed him too using the "ignore the skellies" strategy. Really pretty simple - just have to have enough DPS to get him down while he's eating skellies before he enrages. If you keep him on the grate so he insta-eats the zombies he never casts decimate. And you do have to switch tanks once in a while to let the anti-healing debuff wear off.

[Tonuss]

Some observations:
- The learning curve is pretty steep and it is expensive to wipe as much as I did starting out. It got pretty frustrating on the 14th attempt on Instructor Razuvious on Monday before the reset. You know you are doing badly if you have to re-clear trash.
- It has taken a lot of time to get here. Leveling, grinding for cash, gearing up a bit, getting mounts, etc.This is the part that people never think about when they complain about how "OP" multiboxers are. "But they are farming Kara/Naxx/etc!!!!" They watched a video of someone beating a boss and figure that the person dinged 70/80 and then walked in and took the boss down on the first attempt after a perfect trash clear. I bet a lot of the complainers wouldn't bother to try those bosses even with a normal raid group if they knew they had to go through that much pain before finally taking them down.