Archavon with 5 toons?

[spuik]

I'm a 5-boxer and haven't done any WotLK raids even singleboxing so I have no personal experience, but I keep hearing the raids are piss easy. Especially Archavon sounds like a real punching bag so I was wondering if anyone has tried 5-manning him (10-man mode of course)? Or if it would be possible? I really no nothing about it, maybe you need two tanks or something but I'm sure that could be done with some group compositions. Or just get a tank friend as a sixth player. I'm kind of feeling like trying this out even if it's stupid. I think I heard he has an enrage timer but I know some boxers have enough dps to match that of 6-8 newly dinged green geared dps kids, and those seem to be just fine for VoA.

[Bot]

he has a 5 min engrage timer. you need two tanks. its been done with 1 very geared healer. from wowwiki

On normal difficulty, with Archavon's health at 2,300,900 HP, the raid as a whole needs to output more than 7,670 DPS. As a good rule-of-thumb, with two tanks and two healers, the tanks should never go below 550 DPS and the remaining six members should stay above 1,100 DPS.

[spuik]

Well on my pally tank + four ele shammies group I have around 7000-7500 dps (including healing with all shammies) so if I added a friend as a second tank I think I could get there. And I'm sure other boxers have way better dps than that. Do you need two tanks for Archavon himself or the trash? I'm not even talking about the other bosses there (unless they are potentially 5-mannable aswell).

[glo]

Take 20 minutes to run the instance and you won't have to wonder ;)

You can clear the trash with your existing group. You need 2 tanks for the boss and a decent healer. Although this is by far the easiest raid instance I don't see it being 5 boxed unless you at least have an offtank and great gear on your dps.

[Bot]

its for him. he impales the mt so you have to taunt him with the ot so he doesnt just start killing dps. he does a charge that leaves behind a cloud that inflicts damage per second and reduces hit by 50% or so. also has an aoe stomp and a 5 yard radius random target rock shard attack. so basically if you can make 5 min of sustained 7.7k raid dps and have really good raid heals it may be possible. also the situational awareness to move your casters out of the cloud while maintaining the dps as well. im not gonna say its impossible im just gonna say youre gonna need some really geared toons to take a realistic shot at it i think.

but i could be full of shit cause personally ive never tried it with just 5 :)

[Bot]

wowwiki link ('http://www.wowwiki.com/Archavon') peruse at your leisure :)

[spuik]

Yeah I did some reading and apparently he won't do the random charging if everyone is at melee range, which would greatly help dpsing and reduce the amount healing needed because the poison clouds only come after the charges (right?).

I assume when he impales the tank he also switches targets? If so, is there a chance he could be kited until the tank is up again? Would be very hard with all the dps standing at his foot all the time. And if he keeps pounding on the tank just spam heal him on all four guys? I don't know, it really starts to sound super hard. At least I need better gear.

[Maxion]

Yeah I did some reading and apparently he won't do the random charging if everyone is at melee range, which would greatly help dpsing and reduce the amount healing needed because the poison clouds only come after the charges (right?).

I assume when he impales the tank he also switches targets? If so, is there a chance he could be kited until the tank is up again? Would be very hard with all the dps standing at his foot all the time. And if he keeps pounding on the tank just spam heal him on all four guys? I don't know, it really starts to sound super hard. At least I need better gear.
He will one-shot anyone but a tank, which is why ranged dps prefer to stay at range so the offtank will have at least a second or two to taunt when the main tank gets impaled.

[Bot]

also you couldnt cast while kiting if you could even do it through multiple impales making your raid dps target even higher than the number quoted earlier. my advice find two healers and a tank that you get a long with and 8 man him with your guys doing full dps. a dk tank would allow a little wiggle room from his 1k+ tank dps as well.

edit: raid dps would be unchanged. it would just be that youd need to be capable of higher individual dps on the kiting toon.

[puppychow]

there is a trick to doing this with just 1 tank, you need a 2nd person who has a taunt ability tho. the pattern is always the same -- he throws rock shards on someone, a few seconds later he leaps on someone, a few seconds later he throws rock shards on someone, and then 1-6 seconds later he will grab the current tank.

So you could have an OT DPSing and taunt right after the 2nd rock shard, and he will always get grabbed (he will only "tank" the boss for 1-5 seconds). Of course this person still needs heals and to reposition after getting thrown out of the hand.

I once tried 5 boxing it (pally+4 shamans), the trash was super easy but I couldn't do the boss since I didn't have a 2nd person to grab so he'd just kill 1 person at a time after each grab. I imagine if you could bring a friend who is either a real OT or who can taunt and has good gear you can probably do it.

I also seriously doubt your ele shamans do 7k dps sustained. Lust is only 35 seconds, the boss fight is longer than that :)

[spuik]

Well I think I'm putting this off until I have the best 5man gear and maybe then try to 6man it with a tank friend.

My shammies don't of course do 7k dps each. That's my current total dps from all five guys, and it's really very low but so is my gear. Also my setup isn't optimized for high dps because I really need to just stay alive and focus on utility. One day I will try Archavon though :rolleyes:

[David]

he has a 5 min engrage timer. you need two tanks. its been done with 1 very geared healer. from wowwiki I healed this single box with a half epic shaman. Ended with 70% mana and no mana refills used. Healing should be no problem at all in that place.

[Bot]

I healed this single box with a half epic shaman. Ended with 70% mana and no mana refills used. Healing should be no problem at all in that place. just to be clear were you the only healer in raid? im surely not saying it can be done only reason i said "very well geared" is because i read one story online and ive had one raid in game with only one healer and they both were just very well geared by default so i just said it to be safe.

[glo]

These instances have a 7 day reset so it isn't all that hard to get it done all your characters if you look for groups after WG ends. I have done it with single characters many times and I have done different combinations boxing like tank while healing or 2-4 dps, I've healed and run a couple dps as well. It's not a hard encounter, especially in the 25 man version where others can pick up your slack it's easy to run a few characters at a time. I have 8 dps characters at 80 and I can usually get all of them done in 2-3 runs and the tank and healer take another 1-2 runs.

I would say getting the practice on the encounter will get you closer to succesfully boxing it then gear upgrades(which you will get as well).

[spuik]

These instances have a 7 day reset so it isn't all that hard to get it done all your characters if you look for groups after WG ends. I have done it with single characters many times and I have done different combinations boxing like tank while healing or 2-4 dps, I've healed and run a couple dps as well. It's not a hard encounter, especially in the 25 man version where others can pick up your slack it's easy to run a few characters at a time. I have 8 dps characters at 80 and I can usually get all of them done in 2-3 runs and the tank and healer take another 1-2 runs.

I would say getting the practice on the encounter will get you closer to succesfully boxing it then gear upgrades(which you will get as well).Yeah I know but I really would like to play all my dudes and get as little outside help as possible. But yeah I probalby will need to get them t7.5 geared for this and then still need luck.

[puppychow]

Oh ok 7k dps across the team makes more sense :) of course it'll drop a bit if everyone is chain healing. I really do echo the above comment and suggest running each character in pugs solo. One of my shamans is in 2 pc t8.5 and another has one piece t8 (all have 4/5 t7.5), the new boss is very easy and many groups I've found just take any shaman for lust, they don't care so much about your gear. While of course it saves a ton of time running 3-4x in groups, you only get 1 chance at loot whereas running it 4-5x gives you 5x as many chances.

I do 5x 25 mans every tue after reset and spread out 10 man across the week, since I like to run WG on offense to collect tokens/quests it works out easy to just join a pug right after my side captures WG.

Archavon in 10 man btw has 2.3m hp and a 5 min enrage timer so you need 7666 raid dps to kill him, but the small gotchas like him leaping and the stone shard clouds (they reduce hit by 50% for whoever is in them) mean there are periods of lower raid DPS.

[Hachoo]

The bottom line is by the time you're geared enough to do it with 5 (if it were even possible), you wouldn't need any of the gear he drops anyway so why bother? :)

[spuik]

The bottom line is by the time you're geared enough to do it with 5 (if it were even possible), you wouldn't need any of the gear he drops anyway so why bother? :)Gear is for playing, not the other way round 8)

[Powerwar]

I tried it and it's possible with 4 shamans, but you need lots of DPS.

With the shamans use earth elementals as secondary tanks. Every time you expect him to get the tank, spawn one eath elemental if there is not one alive. One time the elemental taunted him before he caught the tank and oneshoted the elemental, then the fight continued as usual.
Usually by the time he drops the tank the elemental is dead anyways, except a rare occasions where the elemental dodges, blocks or whatever elementals do to avoid damage. if your elemental is still alive after he drops the tank, then heal him to 100% because he will be of use the next time he gets the tank in his hands.

I have found that is you make the tank run around like crazy he gets "busy" chasing the tank around the room and doesn't perform his special moves so often.

So far I have managed to get him to 900k before running out of elementals and/or shamans starting to die due to AoE and similar damage.

He is doable, but it's a real ace.

If you have a pala tank you can use the immunity bubble to get yourself out of his hands and cancel it a second later.

My shamans have 2.100 spell damage self buffed and 28% crit chance in combat (shaman 5% extra crit after another crit + pala 3% extra crit after judgement included)... this all without trinkets, heroism or burning cooldowns. I guess that with 2.700 spell power you could 5 box him before you run out of elementals.