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View Full Version : Of offspec healers and threat (Shadow Labs)



Vyndree
01-21-2008, 03:34 PM
So, from 69-70 I've been pushing my characters through Shadow Labs for my Kara attunement key. Suvega and I both hit the mind control boss ("TIME for FUN!") and I proceeded to wipe while he solo'ed the guy down with his uber geared priest and prot warrior.

This is where I learned one key thing: Shaman vs Shaman is ROUGH.



Step 1: Try it by yourself

At 69, I was running with my 70 prot paladin and 4x69 elemental (41/0/19) shaman. I was guaranteed to lose one, if not all shaman, after the VERY FIRST mind control. They would literally stand on top of each other, melee, and take turns chain lightning'ing each other (with lightning overload, earth shocking each others' heals, etc). Meanwhile, the pally would blow all her mana on max rank consecrates, max rank holy lights, etc.

I would end up with 1 or 2 shaman left with almost no health, and a oom paladin who is blowing every mana pot cooldown trying to rebuild her threat. And, of course, since she's taking damage, the heals from the elemental shaman on the tank or themselves would pull aggro. Total wipefest.

I tried everything. De-equiping my weapons. Laying stoneclaw totems (that helped, fyi. It was hilarious). Using earth elementals after MC phases to pick up aggro. Potting. Judgement of wisdom. Rank1 Holy Shield/Righteousness when oom. Grounding totem (FYI, doesn't work -- totems turn red during MC). Blessing of Wis. Salv. Kings. High burst ASAP. High regen/longevity. My shaman would get pwned every single time.



Step 2: Bring a friend

After the massacre which took me to 0% durability not once, but twice... I decided to beg Suvega for help. I was sure my prot pally was not generating enough threat due to being oom, and having a warrior tank would be better. Nada. The shaman obliterated each other once more during the first MC, and while the warrior was tanking admirably, the shaman would go oom on heals and eventually die during MC phases.

So we grabbed Suvega's priest and warrior, with my 3 shaman for dps (after all, I just needed to get past this one boss). Most of the shaman still died, but the dps during the MC phase wasn't as bad with 3 dps, 1 healer, 1 tank rather than 4 dps, 1 tank. I ended up losing a shaman during the MC, but we completed the boss and moved on. I then proceeded to wipe on Vorpil. I left the instance to train my 70 skills (HEROISM!!) thinking that the extra burst from heroism/bloodlust would help me kill him. When I got back in the instance, everything had respawned. >.<



Step 3: Be stubborn as hell

So come Sunday, got a loan from Suvega for the last bit of gold to buy flying mounts (I earned it all back within 2 days from dailies/daily pre-quests) and I'm looking at Shadow Labs again. Suvega had offered to bring his warrior and priest in again to clear the MC boss, but I was stubborn. I had xfered my main 70 resto shaman to a 6th account (I wanted to rotate out the dps shaman in instances, and she had been sharing the tanking pally's account) and I decided to try her out.

My concern? Earth shield. I needed mana BADLY on the MC boss fight and from what I remembered, paladins did not get mana through spiritual attunement with Earth Shield because ES heals counted as the paladin healing herself, not as the shaman healing the paladin. Good for threat, bad for mana efficiency. I made myself a dps-esque set with lower defense and mitigation and the sporeggar lichen shield and swapped out some defensive trinkets for spelldmg. I scoured the maintankadin ('http://maintankadin.failsafedesign.com/') site and eventually (i.e. it took FOREVER) found a post from Sept that confirmed that ES/Lifebloom/ProM had been fixed to give pally tanks mana when it heals.

So, after totally obliterating my resto shaman's keybindings and macros, I had her set up and ready to take over healing, and I had set up the ele shaman to cease healing as long as the resto shaman was in the party. (i.e. /stopmacro [combat,target=velani,help,nodead] preceding each healing macro -- velani is my resto shaman)

The moment I started pulling trash I was astonished. My shaman had been riding my pally's ASS in threat ever since the mid-60's. I had assumed it was because the shammies had high spell damage and my pally was losing some +spelldmg gear for mitigation (480 def so far, 160 +spelldmg in mitigation gear). My paladin was now doubling the shaman's threat even when I wasn't consecrating/judging. I put my mitigation set back on, and she was still uber high on omen. The only difference between this run and previous runs was earth shield and the elemental shaman not stopping to heal. The resto shaman had points in the -threat on healing spells in the resto tree, plus with the improved restorative totems (26? mp2 on mana spring totem)...

In the trash pulls, it was very easy to pace myself. Instead of reactively healing myself and going through spurts of oom ness with bursts of mana when the ele shammies landed big heals, I set the resto shaman to spam rank1 healing wave on myself to proc ancestral healing/healing wave and earth shield was covering the rest minus some spot heals on big pulls. The earth shield procs were keeping me topped off on easy trash and I never had any mana problems.

Insert MC boss. The ele shammies survived three MC's before succumbing to the inevitable shammy vs shammy death. Between earth shield, low threat heals, restorative totems (mana spring), rebuffing blessing of wis instead of kings mid-fight, 2 mana tide's, and 4 mana pots, the resto shaman and the paladin were able to solo him down. Blackheart the Inciter was defeated. Similarly, Vorpil was downed with a 1-way hallway kite, drop fire elementals during the teleport, then quick burst to down him while FS/Earthbinding the blueberries near the platform. Cleared Murmur's room, booted the resto shammy, and summoned in the ele shammies to finish off Murmur and get my kara keys on the 4 ele shammies and prot pally.



Moral of the story

MC sucks. Bigtime. When you bring 4 dps classes, it doesn't matter if they can heal themselves. They won't. They'll obliterate each other. High burst damage is bad. Swap in some regen gear so it slows down your damage, spec one healing for the high regen and low healing threat, and take it slow and easy. IMO, don't bother blowing heroism - the heroism lasts long enough that you're going to have 5 heroism'ed characters going at it during the MC phase. If they heroism during the MC, only one will have the haste buff rather than 5. Hope that they earth shock the dps spells. Hope that they don't earth shock the heals. If worse comes to worse, duo it tank & healer.

And if you're having threat problems with a 1 pally 4x shaman group, try a specced healer. Ele shammy heals are not mana efficient and add to the already high elemental threat. Earth shield alone will make a huge difference in pally threat since they get both healing and mana on earth shield procs. It's like thorns. Every little bit helps.

Last but not least, bring pots. Alot of pots. Bandages too (go train first aid!).

yarr
01-21-2008, 07:29 PM
really nice summary. I enjoyed reading. That's one of the few encounters that scales with your gear, ive wiped it with great-geared parties (in the non-multiboxing context) simply because we killed each other so fast.

Were you using grounding totems, if so, were they helping at all?

thinus
01-21-2008, 07:36 PM
I am hoping that my blood elves all pop their arcane torrents and silence each other. They will try to melee or wand and they have no melee skill points and no wanding points. Muhahahaha. The mage and the warlock will probably end up 1-shotting the priest while the hunter will pop bestial wrath and lay down some serious hurt.

Monkofdoom
01-21-2008, 07:39 PM
Posts like this are absolutely great ! The really help with getting to grips with problems you don't even know exist until you get there.

Grats on 70 btw (as I hadn't said it yet) and keep up the good posts !

Ughmahedhurtz
01-21-2008, 08:13 PM
The threat issues you observed vis-a-vis healing with unspecced healers sounds a LOT like what I saw with my shadow priests playing with my pally buddy. Fade was the only thing keeping me alive some fights.

raylion
01-21-2008, 08:38 PM
That 'Time for Fun' boss is a killer. The best way I've found for shammies to get past him relatively easily is to blow all your cooldowns except for Earth Elementals (use your fire elementals on the earlier groups in that room). Get behind the boss by the doors you need to go through, set your totems and Earth elementals and gulp down a nature protection potion. You can still wipe but that extra nature protection does help loads.

Vyndree
01-21-2008, 10:53 PM
Were you using grounding totems, if so, were they helping at all?

Nope. None of the totems help, and your fire ele/searing will turn against you. See below.



I tried everything. De-equiping my weapons. Laying stoneclaw totems (that helped, fyi. It was hilarious). Using earth elementals after MC phases to pick up aggro. Potting. Judgement of wisdom. Rank1 Holy Shield/Righteousness when oom. Grounding totem (FYI, doesn't work -- totems turn red during MC). Blessing of Wis. Salv. Kings. High burst ASAP. High regen/longevity. My shaman would get pwned every single time.



That 'Time for Fun' boss is a killer. The best way I've found for shammies to get past him relatively easily is to blow all your cooldowns except for Earth Elementals (use your fire elementals on the earlier groups in that room).

Speaking of fire ele, not once in my bajillion tries did they ever pop an elemental. They popped heroism, but I didn't see them lay a totem once. This may be a mechanic of the MC - since the MC "knows" that the totems will turn red (see above) and turn against you, there is no reason for the MC artificial intelligence to drop ANY totem as they provide zero buffs.

thinus
01-21-2008, 11:05 PM
Slightly off-topic but regarding MC mechanics:

I noticed on my rogue that whenever I get MCed by an NPC the AI seems to give priority to abilities with a cooldown. Cloak of Shadows is on a cooldown. Cloak of Shadows removes many of the MC effects for instance the final boss in Mech. My theory has always been that when the AI MCs the rogue it suddenly realizes ZOMG! it is a rogue! its going to pwn me hard! quickly dispel my own MC!!!!

The pessimist might be thinking that the AI pops MC on the rogue and goes, throw? You gotta be kidding me, let me run over there. OMG, what do you mean I have to be behind my target! I AM behind my target stoopid game engine!! What do you mean I need to be in stealth for that ability, I popped vanish goddammit!!! Why do I hit like a little girl against plate? Why can't I backstab them in the face!?!??!! This sucks ass, just Cloak of Shadows and put me out of my misery.

/derail off

marvein
01-22-2008, 12:01 PM
Slightly off-topic but regarding MC mechanics:

I noticed on my rogue that whenever I get MCed by an NPC the AI seems to give priority to abilities with a cooldown. Cloak of Shadows is on a cooldown. Cloak of Shadows removes many of the MC effects for instance the final boss in Mech. My theory has always been that when the AI MCs the rogue it suddenly realizes ZOMG! it is a rogue! its going to pwn me hard! quickly dispel my own MC!!!!

The pessimist might be thinking that the AI pops MC on the rogue and goes, throw? You gotta be kidding me, let me run over there. OMG, what do you mean I have to be behind my target! I AM behind my target stoopid game engine!! What do you mean I need to be in stealth for that ability, I popped vanish goddammit!!! Why do I hit like a little girl against plate? Why can't I backstab them in the face!?!??!! This sucks ass, just Cloak of Shadows and put me out of my misery.

/derail offI can also atest to this having done slabs quite a bit to get the sonic spear on my hunter it would often start with the longest cooldowns you have and blow them all so the idea was to blow as many as you could (atleast the damaging offensive ones) at the start of the fight (this includes trinkets) and hope that when you get MCed all you do is some minor pewpewing. The catch of course with shamans is chain lightning, which my brother (70 ele shaman) has killed many a party members with in this instance for that same reason. I also did this instance once with 3 hunters and it was very, very funny when we got MC'd

raylion
01-22-2008, 12:59 PM
MC uses the highest cooldown ability (except elementals, thank dog)
Ahh! Learnt something new today!!!

I didn't realise it went for the highest cooldown ability, I always went on the side of caution with this boss because a little bit of bad luck meant a wipe which would probably mean waiting for the CD on the earth elementals before giving him another go. Having said that, I've got into the habit of using the fire elementals on the 5 man pulls just before (and subsequently having them ready for the 3rd boss) so I'd almost always have them on CD anyway.

Will soon have a pally to join my shammies so I can give up my elemental dependancy! :)

Vyndree
01-22-2008, 04:07 PM
I'm surprised you had problems with this boss Vyndree? I was able to take him down first try (I was 70, but not sure if that helped or hindered though).

I had trouble until I swapped one of my 4 elemental shaman for a resto shaman. ;) You mentioned earth shield -- I didn't have that my first few tries.



The burst from 4 elemental shaman > mind control phase. The burst from 3 elemental shaman + resto shaman and you just might survive.

thinus
01-22-2008, 06:16 PM
I thought this was a known bug and was already fixed by blizzard?

My rogue has been retired for quite a while now.

Vyndree
01-29-2008, 01:21 AM
We decided to run Shadow Labs again. went up to 2nd boss, started the event... all is going well.. MC Phase hits.... BOOM! Resto Shaman is "one shotted" by 3x Elemental Shaman. 8| WTF, Over. (they were all at 100% health prior to MC Phase, it looked like all 3 used some shock on the healer, effectively blowing him up).

Sounds familiar, except my shammies only have ~7k health and are EASILY killable by each other. The only way I could get them to live (I had to do this instance again with my holy priest) was to put them in high stam / low spelldmg gear, and they lasted through that for 3-4 MC's. The problem I have is when the pally goes oom and I have to wait for decent threat buildup before I can continue DPS.


I proceeded to use ressurect to get the healer back up, then chain heal + mana tide totem to get some mana back (think I'm gona respec to get that 20% health / mana on ressurection talent!),

Yea, you take the imp selfrez for the health/mana on rez, not for the decreased cooldown. Very handy for raiding where there's alot of AoE that could one-shot you after you selfrez.


then we proceeded to burn the boss down. The rest of Shadow Labs is cake (3rd boss, stand in one place and go all out, dies before teleport aoe thing, then last boss is just a long fight.. tank and spank again).

The MC boss sucks. Badly.

So I'm starting to guess that the 2nd boss has a large luck factor involved. My 1st attempt they all went into melee combat, which was laughable. 2nd attempt they went into elemental combat and wtfpwned the healer.[/quote]

Toned
02-14-2008, 09:02 PM
This guy really isn't that hard I just barely dinged 70 and was able to do him with no problems everytime. Line up by the door drop all your totems pop hero + 5x earth ele and blast away. I get him to about 20-30% before first MC, and then kill him after MC (pop another heroism). I usually don't lose anyone but once in awhile 1 shaman will go down in the first MC.

Vyndree
02-14-2008, 09:13 PM
This guy really isn't that hard I just barely got 70 and was able to do him with no problems everytime. Line up by the door drop all your totems pop hero + 5x earth ele and blast away. I get him to about 20-30% before first MC, and then kill him after MC (pop another heroism). I usually don't lose anyone but once in awhile 1 shaman will go down in the first MC.

You don't get heroism at level 69, and I don't have 5 shammies. ;)

Kyudo
02-14-2008, 09:15 PM
I just barely got 70
I think he means he just turned 70.

Vyndree
02-14-2008, 09:24 PM
I just barely got 70
I think he means he just turned 70.

I know, I was saying that, when this thing was written, I was 69 and playing with 4 ele shammies and a prot pally. So I wouldn't have heroism to pop, and I don't have as much dps since i'm running 4 dps/1 tank rather than 5 dps.

sanix
02-14-2008, 09:41 PM
One trick I used on this fight is to use Major Dreamless Sleep Potion when he emote so my character slept for 12s and dont attack or waste mana.
Not sure if it can help for multiboxing (don't see why not) but it was very usefull for me on my priest when my gear was so so (bad regen + holy nova spam = oom very fast)

raylion
02-15-2008, 06:33 AM
I do find it quite interesting how different setups handle this boss. With my 5 shammies this boss is a quite straight forward (mostly), drop earth elementals and just keep nuking...bish bash bosh...one dead boss. Now that I've levelled a pally to help in heroics (only about 20%xp to go before hitting 70), have tried this boss again with 1 prot pally, 3 ele shammies and a resto shammy and have a much better appreciation of what an utter pain in the neck this boss can be and what Vyndree was going through. I've only had a few attempts so far and have got him to about 10-15% but he is a real bugger.

Have resisted the temptation to swap the pally for the 5th Shammy as I'm sure it's just practice that's required (and less epics!) but the realisation is dawning that a good 5 boxing team probably consists of at least 6 or more characters to mix and match! ;)

Tonuss
02-15-2008, 10:06 AM
If you have 5 level 70 shamans dropping earth elementals and popping heroism/bloodlust to start, I imagine the fight is much, much easier. Because you should be able to DPS as hard/fast as you can without aggro concerns and minimize the number of MC phases you deal with. Any setup that is aggro sensitive (to coin a phrase) will have a much harder time with him.

Now I'm getting the itch to start leveling my shammy group so I can try this. :o

Bollwerk
02-16-2008, 07:09 PM
Well, after downing him once before last week, I haven't been able to kill Blackheart again. I just spent about an hour wiping to him over and over. I don't get it. I just have gotten really lucky the last time I killed him. I am so frustrated right now, I had to stop playing before I end up breaking something. I've tried every strat I can think of and have read of. Heroism, elementals (both types), stamina gear, resto spec, etc. Nothing has helped. I guess I'll be farming Setthek Halls now for Lower City rep.

Bollwerk
02-16-2008, 07:10 PM
One trick I used on this fight is to use Major Dreamless Sleep Potion when he emote so my character slept for 12s and dont attack or waste mana.
Not sure if it can help for multiboxing (don't see why not) but it was very usefull for me on my priest when my gear was so so (bad regen + holy nova spam = oom very fast)
I read that this doesn't work anymore.

Vyndree
02-16-2008, 07:49 PM
Well, after downing him once before last week, I haven't been able to kill Blackheart again. I just spent about an hour wiping to him over and over. I don't get it. I just have gotten really lucky the last time I killed him. I am so frustrated right now, I had to stop playing before I end up breaking something. I've tried every strat I can think of and have read of. Heroism, elementals (both types), stamina gear, resto spec, etc. Nothing has helped. I guess I'll be farming Setthek Halls now for Lower City rep.

For LC rep, it's very easy to do the 1st boss in Slabs and the trash in Blackheart's room, run out and reset. Rinse repeat. You don't have to kill all the bosses if you're just looking for rep :)

raylion
02-16-2008, 08:12 PM
Well, after downing him once before last week, I haven't been able to kill Blackheart again. I just spent about an hour wiping to him over and over. I don't get it. I just have gotten really lucky the last time I killed him. I am so frustrated right now, I had to stop playing before I end up breaking something. I've tried every strat I can think of and have read of. Heroism, elementals (both types), stamina gear, resto spec, etc. Nothing has helped. I guess I'll be farming Setthek Halls now for Lower City rep.


I've adopted a slightly different tactic for this boss which is very similar to what I did with my 5 x ele shammy team(except the bit with fire elementals - see a little later in the message). I'm using a prot pally, 1 resto shammy and 3 ele shammies. Rather than tank with the pally, send in the Earth elementals, giving the pally some healing gear and have him spam heal the boss's target (use a macro like this '/cast [target=targettarget] holy light'). The shammies (including resto) go full out DPS to down him. What you want to do is aim to drop the fire elementals after the 2nd MC and do your best to down him with the extra DPS they bring (this means waiting 20 seconds or so after you summon the earth elementals so the CD is up ready to summon the fire ele). Obviously, if you can't down him by the 3rd MC you're toast (pun intended! ;) ) but you'll probably won't be in great shape by that time anyway. It's worked about 75% of the time for me so far...could use some refinement and does tie you in to the elemental 20 min cooldown.

Looking at your setup you could do something similar with your druid although I have no idea how good feral is at healing in +heal gear plus you have one less elemental. I use this tactic for Murmur too which has worked everytime I've got to him. Obviously, do anything you can do to boost mana/mitigate damage and also use nature protection potions. There's probably an easier way to do this boss but this is working for me so far...good luck and I hope it works for you should you try.

EDIT: After some more practice I've used the above tactic four times today and downed him each time with minimal deaths (two at most). No idea if this will work in heroics but this tactic seems to keep things controllable and far less manic.

Bollwerk
02-17-2008, 02:12 PM
For LC rep, it's very easy to do the 1st boss in Slabs and the trash in Blackheart's room, run out and reset. Rinse repeat. You don't have to kill all the bosses if you're just looking for rep :) Not sure why I didn't think of this. Good idea. =)

Yamakasi
11-07-2008, 11:47 PM
Hi,

I think they nerfed the instance too much now, just cleared it at lvl 70 with normal blue gear on my 5 elemental shams > juste one loss at the first two bosses > vorpil didnt had the change to perform his teleportation move ether.

Grtz