Cata - Heroic Vortex Pinnacle

[Kicksome]

Ok, I know there are a few threads about Vortext, but I didn't see any about heroic specifically.

http://kicksome.com/vortexfinal.jpg

Ok, I cleared this with 1x druid, 3x ele, and 1x resto shaman

ok, for the LAST boss here's the TRICK.

When you see him cast STATIC CLING or whatever, SPAM JUMP!!! I avoided this on all my guys about 4 times. And it made this so easy. All my guys were clumped together, chain lightning wasn't a problem.

For the trash leading to the last boss, you will need to Hex/CC the healers they are a pain, I wiped on trash at least 10 times.

For the SECOND boss. I put all my shamans against the walls in each corner and it made it 100x easier, I was able to one shot him. I didn't worry about the wind position. Someone mentioned this on the forum, I couldn't find your name, so THANK YOU, that was a massive help. I tanked in the center of the room - it was a piece of cake.

[Teslah]

That's great stuff. Congratulations. It only gets easier for you now.

I have it down (sloppy), but the second boss is a little iffy. I've been putting them in the corner and just tanking and avoiding the tornados. The team never gets hit, but I do once in a while lol. I tried looking straight down today and that made a world of difference.

Nice job and congrats again.

[Enoah35]

I don't get it... For the second boss you state to put it in each coerner. the tornado still hits my team and well they get breathed every now and then. Since they are on each corner most of the time its out of healer's range. If You refer to dodge all the tornados while tanking then its another thing. Well doing a few more times before bed I guess... Still don't get the positioning right.

P.S. After 14 wipes, found more or less the right spot to tank and dps. I put all my slaves on the right bottom corner where any sort of tornado won't make my toons to start flying all over the place. Its quite hard to avoid with tank but found it was the best place for me. The hard part is to heal through the slaves cause 8 out of 10 breaths are going to go to the group. If the wind is in your favour it will be np, but when you are against, I had to use some cooldowns, healthstones to mitigate the damage when their health were low. Fight took around 3min and 30 seconds. Guess it will get better when I improve my dps. Bit low it seems on the shaman... 10k for warlock, 9k for mage, 7.2k for shaman. Paladin did 5.4k dps. all in all healer mana was OK, after using shadowfiend and hymm of hope, but still was hectic when I had to top the toons back up from the cone aoe.

P.S.2. After the nightmare of the 2nd boss... the last boss was damn easy. Yes It is most likely cause I have a priest healer. But man... made me look like an idiot wiping non stop on the 2nd boss.

Kill screen shot
http://img191.imageshack.us/i/wowscrnshot122510060151.jpg/
http://img191.imageshack.us/i/wowscrnshot122510060151.jpg
http://img191.imageshack.us/img191

[Toned]

I position down in the crack of the stairs all 4... I use stoneclaw (glyphed) when I don't have the haste and get breathed, and run 4 healing stream totems. Obviously if your group makeup is diff it might not work for you. I basically just spam chain heal on the resto shaman while the other shams pewpew (without buff), with the upwind buff is when i top the tank off and chain heal the group to full.

The dps have more of a mana issue than the healer, but in the end with about 11k dps it's not a bad fight.

[Enoah35]

I agree that the 4 shaman+tank build has a little advantage on some of the fights but I suppose it could be fixed with gear (I hope..). Will try to continue doing this heroic aswell as SFK heroic since it seems its not as horrible as Halls of Origination where there is no way I can pass the first boss at this moment.

P.S. Not sure if I was lucky but he went down on first go today. Guess I adapted to the mechanism and did some thing right... (like top off everyone's hp while you got the wind buff, use cooldown to reduce damage while not etc). Although I am just so pissed about the trash mobs after him... appart the fact that it does insane damage, if you can't CC the healers you are doomed.

[Toned]

I agree that the 4 shaman+tank build has a little advantage on some of the fights but I suppose it could be fixed with gear (I hope..). Will try to continue doing this heroic aswell as SFK heroic since it seems its not as horrible as Halls of Origination where there is no way I can pass the first boss at this moment.

P.S. Not sure if I was lucky but he went down on first go today. Guess I adapted to the mechanism and did some thing right... (like top off everyone's hp while you got the wind buff, use cooldown to reduce damage while not etc). Although I am just so pissed about the trash mobs after him... appart the fact that it does insane damage, if you can't CC the healers you are doomed.

Your group has 3 cc's you should be fine.

[daanji]

Another tip is have the tank taunt each time he does the breath.

The boss will still turn and appear as though he hit your slave, but the tank takes all the damage.


My team (paladin + 4 shamans) are undergeared and I was easily able to do this.

All 4 slaves were parked in the same crack in the stairs (no tornadoes every go there) and I tanked the boss in the middle.
Each time he did a breath, I taunted and the tank took the damage. About 1/2 way, my healer and dps ran out of mana. I was still able to do it fine, just have to use thunderstorm, mana tide, and mana spring to regen slowly...took a while go got him down.

[Enoah35]

After many days of farming this place I think I got the tactic for every trash mob without wiping. Well... sometimes crap happens and I wipe horribly but its happening less often. I use only 2 CCs now even if I can use all 3 of them. First pack of 4, I just CC the closest with hex, and the healer with my mage.

2nd pack with the patroing and the vortex field, I simply hex and sheep the 2 healers with the tank bodypulling when the patrol is on the north part of the force field using my 50% damage reduction (otherwise she gets toast real fast). Thus, 2 healers are sheeped, I put my team inside the vortex field and deal with the 3 mobs that are not CCed, which usualy is the caster mob and 2 melee mobs. The caster mob usualy is aggroing the healer but since she is on the force field you can forget about it. Then take 1 by 1, refreshing the CC on my mage.

Shooting star pack got their damage nerfed I think? and now I simply heal through maybe using power word barrier when its up but not much of an issue. Next pack the same as the previous one. CC the 2 healers and deal with the 3 melees (usualy 3 melees).

The last pack which are inside the forcefield, I put my team on the stairs, and pull with my paladin and hit bubble. The healers could be eighther 1 or 2, but they will stop casting and come to melee range. When they are close enough, I cc the 2 healers and repeat the process.

Note: There were times when I had broke a CC of the healer and when that happens its usually a wipe. Sometimes the stupid shaman type mob thunderstorms sending my tank back to the entrance which is not good at all. But usualy this method resulted 80% of the time a success. Not sure if it was needed to post but wanted to share for those who may have difficulties on the packs. Of course my team is VERY CC heavy so it may not be that usefull for some teams.

[Longshot17]

What is meant by 'crack of the stairs'? for boss #2

[balderrdash]

When you're looking at the boss straight on, you're coming up a set of stairs. If you look to the right the stairs have a little ledge where they line up with the platform the boss fight is on. I just wedge them in there back to the wall and side to the ledge. Mind you, I haven't succeeded yet but the shammies aren't taking any damage from the cyclones any more. I just can't keep my tank out of the stupid things yet.

[balderrdash]

Yeah I went back last night, backed them up in that wedge and kept the tank out of most of the cyclones and he went down like a champ. I did chug the resist potion on all five before the fight because I knew I was going to miss a few taunts on the breath and it also seemed to lighten my load. It took me probably five tries on the very last guy before I got used to his patterns. I ended up going into ISboxer and making the space button transparent instead of Ctr+space like I normally use and made it go to all five instead of just my off screen four and that made a huge difference. When DBM shows the countdown to the root ability I just started jumping three seconds early and keep going until it landed to account for lag. My DPS suffered but the rest of his damage was pretty trivial. I didn't have much of any problem on the trash, four hexes man is the way to go because I only had one running loose in most situations.

[olibri1]

Cleared this for the first time last night. Wow that trash was brutal. I clearly need to work on my CC macros.

One comment that I don't think has been mentioned yet: On Ertan, if you stack on top of the boss you don't get the slow debuff from the tornadoes. If you are a little bit out, you'll get the slow debuff causing your cast times to go way up. I can't think of any downside from stacking on the boss permanently unless you are a hunter.

[Toned]

I stand on top of the first boss and make sure a shaman is facing in every direction. It works great.

[daanji]

Yeah I went back last night, backed them up in that wedge and kept the tank out of most of the cyclones and he went down like a champ. I did chug the resist potion on all five before the fight because I knew I was going to miss a few taunts on the breath and it also seemed to lighten my load. It took me probably five tries on the very last guy before I got used to his patterns. I ended up going into ISboxer and making the space button transparent instead of Ctr+space like I normally use and made it go to all five instead of just my off screen four and that made a huge difference. When DBM shows the countdown to the root ability I just started jumping three seconds early and keep going until it landed to account for lag. My DPS suffered but the rest of his damage was pretty trivial. I didn't have much of any problem on the trash, four hexes man is the way to go because I only had one running loose in most situations.

I had to do the same thing for the last boss.

In Isboxer, I changed the space (jump) to go to all clients. I also changed it to trigger on a press and release. That way when I spam it, it gets double spammed in game.

Once I see him do a chain lightning, I start spamming away. Works everytime now :)

[daanji]

I stand on top of the first boss and make sure a shaman is facing in every direction. It works great.

I do the same thing. Basically, I run all toons directly on top of the boss, use my diamond formation macro to spread the slaves out, then use my IWT key to turn the around to attack the boss.

The result? Each toon is now facing a different direction and the whole area is covered. The lurking vortexes are not even a problem.

[Toned]

I do the same thing. Basically, I run all toons directly on top of the boss, use my diamond formation macro to spread the slaves out, then use my IWT key to turn the around to attack the boss.

The result? Each toon is now facing a different direction and the whole area is covered. The lurking vortexes are not even a problem.

Identical to what i do

[Longshot17]

For #2, if I'm thinking of the right place (crack in the stairs) you have to tank the dragon fairly close to those stairs to prevent any LOS issues, correct?

[Pallarfo]

You can run pretty far on the platform with the tank, just give it a shot with riptide or something else to see when you're getting the LOS message. Downed the 2nd boss today without any issue.

[Longshot17]

Stumped on #2 boss positioning :(

I found a spot where i don't get knocked around but LOS'd out of 2/3's of the platform... i just go to the right pillar before going up the stairs... there is a little nook there. NOt sure if this is the spot.

[Kruschpakx4]

For the SECOND boss. I put all my shamans against the walls in each corner and it made it 100x easier, I was able to one shot him. I didn't worry about the wind position. Someone mentioned this on the forum, I couldn't find your name, so THANK YOU, that was a massive help. I tanked in the center of the room - it was a piece of cake.

there is another trick, when he casts his lightning breath on you toons, taunt him so the tank gets the damage

[Longshot17]

I finally did #2 boss, just stacked my team against the pillar on top of the second level of stairs on the left. Tanked in the middle...

Keys to the fight...

- watch the boss casting bar and spam taunt when he's about to breath, mentioned before on this thread... very good tip, makes a big difference
- avoid the tornadoes on your tank!! lol, sounds easy, but it makes it way easier if you can do this.

Thanks for all the tips... gonna try the final boss tonight... ran out of time last night, but got some practice in on the 5-packs (with the dual healers)

[killkat]

Boss #2 was the most troublesome for me, not sure if it's lag or not, but my tank keeps getting hit by tornado and get out of range of the healer, took me 3 tries to down him. What I finally did was, park my tank in the stair crack on the opposite side of the rest of the team, still able to get LOS and not worry much about the tornado, the rest was cake.

Boss #1 and #3 was both easy, got them down on 1st try. Guess I must been a bit lagging, on #3 even though I paid very close attention to his Static Cling, still got hit by it every time :( but quick dispell worked just as well, plenty of time left to run to the grounding field.

[Tyval]

So, I've just started tackling heroic mobs, and started with the first one in this zone. The only issue I really have is with the trash right before him. The two Cloud princes.

I've tried killing the adds first, I've Tried focusing on a prince. Neither way works for me, I wiped several times each time I've been in.

About the only thing I found that kind of works is to blow all my cool downs (heroism) pain suppression, all the Prot tank cool downs.

If I dont' do this it seems I can't keep up with the dmg ( even am healing about with my 2x shaman )

Am i missing something here? No one has mentioned the two cloud princes so I'm thinking maybe I'm being dense and missing something obvious.

[Klesh]

So, I've just started tackling heroic mobs, and started with the first one in this zone. The only issue I really have is with the trash right before him. The two Cloud princes.

I've tried killing the adds first, I've Tried focusing on a prince. Neither way works for me, I wiped several times each time I've been in.

About the only thing I found that kind of works is to blow all my cool downs (heroism) pain suppression, all the Prot tank cool downs.

If I dont' do this it seems I can't keep up with the dmg ( even am healing about with my 2x shaman )

Am i missing something here? No one has mentioned the two cloud princes so I'm thinking maybe I'm being dense and missing something obvious.

Do you try to move out of their Starfall type AoE? It really hurts, especially when you've just started with heroics. Early on, my (single) healer was struggling to keep my tank alive too, running out of mana at the end of the fight.
I've never killed the adds, I've focused on the Cloud Princes and tried to avoid their AoE. Sometimes you are still taking a beating cause they daze too, making it harder to escape their Starfall dmg. Things get easier with better gear.

[Tyval]

Thanks for the tip!

I haven't really been actively avoiding the star fall, will try that. Mana wise I've been ok, just damage spiking I can't keep up with healing. Maybe the star fall dmg is pushing things past what I can heal through.

I'll try again tonight!

[Multibocks]

Makes me mad to see you beat this instance when my tank is overgeared comparatively(from screenshot) and my team has trouble with trash =(

I need to get better at boxing=D

[Multibocks]

Errm did they buff the first boss? My group is taking massive damage, I've tried hugging the boss for the whole time and then I tried moving them out midway so they only take tornado damage for a bit and it just seems that I can't keep the group alive. Even the tank starts getting beat on heavily.

I just noticed the guys outside the tornadoes, are they new? They are tossing out lightning damage like mad. And the boss spams lightning faster the longer the fight is =(

edit: wow I just realized that the first time I beat it I accidentally did it right, lol. So you need to be facing in all directions so the adds will feign death haha. Man...

[Pallarfo]

Haha, the guys outside the tornados are there from the start.
Make sure you face them all, so they stay down and hide.
Works for me to run through the boss with the tank, and leave the group on the otherside of the boss.
This way you'd be facing every lurker, and they should stay down and cause you no trouble.

T -> B <- G (tank, boss-group)

[Pallarfo]

Since I was killing him right after my post:
http://img687.imageshack.us/img687/8564/wowscrnshot012011200340.th.jpg (http://img687.imageshack.us/i/wowscrnshot012011200340.jpg/)
Hope you can see my slaves in all the dust.

[Multibocks]

ya and I finally beat the second boss in and epic battle between it, my tank and healer. Have you ever dps'd something down from 40% to dead with a tank? Ya I almost fell asleep, lol.

[remanz]

should get better when 4.0.6 hits, the wind will only blow you straight up, vertically instead of horizontally. VP is worth farming. volatile air, and this dragon boss drops mount, + a super easy end boss for 1 chaos orb.

[Multibocks]

That end boss is getting a buff, not sure if it will make a difference though.

[Mercurio]

Big news in VP from the patch notes is that Ertan (1st boss) is getting a big buff - his tornado shield will now knock your toons all around when it comes into contact with them. Not looking forward to this one :(

[Multibocks]

Aw jeez how lame is that.

[Pallarfo]

Last boss aswell, he will get help from those star thingies, if I'm not mistaken.
:(

[Multibocks]

Lol I hope it isn't like the 10 pack of those. That + boss will be tough.

[Tyval]

Bummer,

Hmm I best get what I need from VP before the patch (just started heroics, and going to start on 2nd and 3rd named). As I doubt I could kill the first named with those changes.

[Multibocks]

Since I am working on my all melee team, dont suppose anyone has beaten this on heroic with all melee? I can see major issues with 2nd boss already (ugh tornadoes) not to mention the inability to CC the healers of the trash.

[Toned]

Since I am working on my all melee team, dont suppose anyone has beaten this on heroic with all melee? I can see major issues with 2nd boss already (ugh tornadoes) not to mention the inability to CC the healers of the trash.
I haven't got my all melee team going yet, but only thing I could think of would be to turn off IWT
Park all the melee in the corner on the stairs like other teams do(the boss has a fairly large hit box).

Have the tank face him away from your group and just go to town. When he goes to breath taunt with your tank to take the breath dmg.

Again this is hypothetical I have not tested it.

[Multibocks]

That's a good point I should set up a dps key that doesn't use IWT

[remanz]

Ya. we've done VP as melees. 1 trick for the 2nd boss (dragon), on the side of the stairs, there is a little narrow ledge that you can stand on it. put all your slaves on it. The wind will never hit you. Take a look at the place and put all your slaves onto that ledge before you pull the boss. (edit: Not really a ledge, more like a handrail for the stairs on the side.)

As Toned said, the hit box is large for the boss, so move the boss over and you can hit him. The problem with this, is that your team will be eating the breath every time. So just heal up before the breath. You should be fine.

only DKs don't have CC. Enhance/Paladin have CCs. So that's how I beat it. I think with strangulate, you should be able to zerg that group. Put both healers on focus, strangulate both of them for the kill.

[Toned]

. The problem with this, is that your team will be eating the breath every time. So just heal up before the breath. You should be fine.


Taunt when he goes to cast breath your tank will eat them all and your dps will take little to no dmg all fight long.

[Nighthawk38]

I finally managed to clear this instance today . :) Thanks to everyone for all the tips on how to get those bosses down. I wouldn't go so far as to say I have this on "farm" status, but for now , looking at that first Chaos Orb in the bank is good enough.

Now on to bigger challenges. I still can't get past the first boss in SFK, but I'll be sure and post when I manage to get some other bosses down.

[Janus]

Was anyone able to bring down the first boss after the buffs he got ?

Taken from the patch notes:


He now knocks away players standing too close to him when he retracts his Cyclone Shield, which now inflicts Nature damage if it touches players.

Any ideas?

[Klesh]

Not too hard for tank and 4 casters: Place your DPS around the boss, as far away as possible without touching the circling tornados. When he calls them in, move your tank out. Repeat. Loot.

[dancook]

Killed him too with ~329 gear.

Slow and steady with four resto shaman :D

[Pallarfo]

Killed him in 2nd try, average 346-350 ilvl.(prot pala/resto shamman/3x ele shammie)
First I was wtf is this.
2nd try, keep slaves stacked and walk out backwards when he is going to retract his shields.
Tank also out, make sure you do keep the lurkers down or that you can heal through them.
Even got him down in my own recordkill,2m22 instead of 3m7s.

Regarding the 2nd boss.
What a joke he has become.
His cyclones throw you in the air, vertically. You land slowly, no damage done as far as I could tell.
When there is another cyclone hittig you within a few sec, you won't be launched by that one.
It really is a tank&spank now.

Onwards to the 3rd boss now.

[Janus]

Not too hard for tank and 4 casters: Place your DPS around the boss, as far away as possible without touching the circling tornados. When he calls them in, move your tank out. Repeat. Loot.

I have 4 casters too. I was putting them right outside the circle around him. So you're saying keep them even farther. I used to use the diamond formation at the beginning of the fight and then just leave them there. Did you have to micromanage their positioning ? Or the cyclones just passed by them?

Thanks for the tips

[Janus]

Killed him in 2nd try, average 346-350 ilvl.(prot pala/resto shamman/3x ele shammie)
First I was wtf is this.
2nd try, keep slaves stacked and walk out backwards when he is going to retract his shields.
Tank also out, make sure you do keep the lurkers down or that you can heal through them.
Even got him down in my own recordkill,2m22 instead of 3m7s.



Yes I thought of doing that with the slaves stacked but it was too late in the night. how did you manage the lurker just moved your tank to face them as he was tanking the boss ? or just healed through the damage? Another question about the lurker, do they appear at random times and if you do ignore them and heal through it do they keep pop up one at a time and disappear or keep popping up ?

[Pallarfo]

Lurkers appear random it seems.
I moved the tank around quickly so he would face them for a short time, and healed through the damage I couldn't avoid.

[Pallarfo]

Killed the last boss aswell.
His 'buff' is really minor, there were some stars doing something, but not much.
Not so annoying like those huge groups elsewhere in the instance.

[Janus]

Lurkers appear random it seems.
I moved the tank around quickly so he would face them for a short time, and healed through the damage I couldn't avoid.

Thanks I will give that a try

[Bollwerk]

I can't seem to kill the last boss. I've tried about 20 times now and I'm on the verge of giving up as I write this. I can't seem to kill the Stars as fast as they spawn, still heal and jump at the right times. I end up doing so little DPS on the boss, I run OOM and wipe. I've also tried not bothering to kill the stars, but the damage from them starts becoming too much to handle. I've also tried putting /target Skyfall Star in my DPS macros, but that didn't seem to help much. One other frustration is that DBM doesn't warn before Static Cling and I have to be paying very close attention to the boss's cast bar to notice it, but this makes it harder to do other things like heal the group and run around and kill the Stars.
Help!!!

[Kjelle]

Working on this heroic atm with a mixed team (prot pally, resto shaman, 2x arcane mage and a dest warlock), got the first two bosses down and 5 whipes on the last one so far.

Solid suggestions on this thread imo, thanks for sharing.

First boss:
The suggested "trick" of placing a warlock pet (imp) at one of the pillars with the moved to command worked will, pet seemed to get LoS across the whole plattform keeping the lurkers in check.

I keept my slaves together dropping them from follow perhaps a little bit short of 1/3 of the distance from the circling tornados and the boss this to give me some time to manouver the slaves when he calls in his tornados and when they go out. I try to move them as little as possible, preferably just strafing a little bit. At the same time I back out the tank who I try to keep in line with the slaves. DBM addon helps you gauge if a tornado will hit your slaves or not when he is about to call them in.

I also found it helpful to zoom out and tilt up the camera so that I got a good topdown view, made it easier to see the pathing of the tornados realtive to my team.

Second boss:
Almost a tank and spank fight. Suggstion of placing toons in the corner at the right hand side of stairs at the pillar worked well for me, didnt notice them getting hit by any tornados. Tanked the boss on middle top portion of stais facing down the stairs. Key to succes is taunting every time boss does his cone AE else it will be healing intensive. Avoid tornados with your tank for good measure.

Last boss:
Work in progress, having a hard time timining the jump atm and ending up single target dispelling, loosing time and thus getting toasted.

[Kjelle]

Got the last boss down now, had to really focus on not missing jumping to avoid static cling, not getting rooted half the time made tons of difference :) Ignored the star thingys thruout the fight.

[Pallarfo]

When you have the resto shaman talented the improved cleanse spirit, you can use cleanse spirit to remove movement impairing effects (cling).
Make macros for all toons, and keybind all of those.
Relax press those keys when you're all clinged, and dps in the mean time.

[Kjelle]

Yea can dispell the cling with my team and use blink, hand of freedon etc to break it but still got pressed for time getting to the "safe zone" in time when having to do that. My micro management skills beeing far from top notch might have something to do with that thou :)

I could refine my dispell/cure/decurse setup for sure, atm I use grid/click and have a portion of the grid layout that goes to all toon and using ctrl + right click give the target a massive cure all so to say.

[Xraptorx]

Can a 4x DK team and 1x Holy Pally do this in Heroic Mode?
Everything I read appears to show that Casters are better as they can park in strategic locations and cast spells. But what about melee and does we need IWT on the melee? A walk through for melee would be awesome

[Khatovar]

Yes, it can be done with melee and yes IWT is required. However, as I said to you in one of your earlier posts, there's a lot of places where caster teams have things a lot easier than melee teams. There were a lot of places where I had to seriously outgear the dungeon content in order to be able to eat the damage. I also spent a lot of time wiping repeatedly practicing movement and timing.

Grand Vizier Ertan - bring everyone in right on top of him, and try to position so you're all facing different directions to keep the Lurking Tempests from attacking. As soon as he summons the tornadoes, stop DPS, make everyone follow and run out to avoid getting the tornado debuff. As soon as the tornadoes start to come back out, follow again and lead everyone back to the boss, again, making sure you have some facing different directions for the Lurking Tempests.

Altairus - Fight him in the center of his platform. Break your healer off before you engage and leave them a good distance from the rest of your team. Run in with DPS and Tank and turn the boss so your DPS and healer are behind or to the side of him. Use strafe to keep your DPS and healer Upwind. Try to dodge the tornadoes, and be ready to heal the Chilling Breath.

Asaad - easy for melee. Jump to avoid the static cling debuff. Get in the grounding field. Get free lewtz.