Question about boxing Shadow Lab

[SaltyPoison]

I'm currently boxing Slabs with my prot pally, fire mage, destro lock and a holy priest while a friend brings his rogue. While the trash is no problem, I'm hitting a brick wall with the first 2 bosses. Does anyone have any tips for recovering quickly from and/or avoiding the AOE fear and MC?

The only tactic I've been slighty successful with is very slow dps on the first boss while moving the healer/dps in and out of the AOE fear range. As for the second boss, lol, it usually ends up being an epic battle between the pally and priest.

Any suggestions would be much appreciated.

[ElectronDF]

Just theorycrafting, sorry, but are all your chars at range except tank and rogue? If so, one bubble and clear bubble off you should stop one fear. One dispel from priest should stop one if you get lucky. One fear ward should stop a fear. And one free action potion should stop a fear I think. Just let the rogue wander around if you have enough DPS already.

For the mind control, can you dispel it (priest)? Can you free action potion it? You can't bubble out of it, probably cause of loss of control of your char. But can the rogue stun lock you? Vanish, cheap, gouge, wait....kidney. That should be 3 points easy (even if he doesn't do any special moves). Would that be enough time to give you time for it to wear off? What about the lock fearing you? In ST Jammal will MC someone, find out what people do there. In SFK, Argul will MC someone, what helped in there. If MC is a shadow spell (go to Thottbot.com and check boss, then check spells he uses and then check spell to see if physical or shadow), you might use priest shadow resist thingy and maybe a shadow resist potion and/or just a shadow resist ring or neck to try to resist it.

If you have a lock, you can summon into instances, you might substitute out the rogue and get a shammy for tremor totem or grounding totem. Just one fight and then you can summon the rogue back in.

[SaltyPoison]

Just theorycrafting, sorry, but are all your chars at range except tank and rogue? If so, one bubble and clear bubble off you should stop one fear. One dispel from priest should stop one if you get lucky. One fear ward should stop a fear. And one free action potion should stop a fear I think. Just let the rogue wander around if you have enough DPS already. Well, from what i have read on wowwiki, the AOE fear has a range of 40m. So I pick a spot to tank him, back the healer up to ~39m with the mage right next (41m range for Fireball) and the lock ~4m in front of them. Then I fear ward the pally, pull and nuke, and move the dps back when i think he is going to fear. When i see the rogue get feared i move em back up and attempt to repeat.

Problem is, the fear is fairly unpredictable, and when i don't move soon enough heals and ranged dps get feared, and bam, healer is out of range of tank, dps is facing the wrong way, tank is dying. And the best part is, by the time i can get them all in range again, he usually drops another fear. I hadn't considered trying the free action potion, I will definently make some of those up. I will also make a few macros for the priest to dispel tank/dps. Thanks for the tips!


For the mind control, can you dispel it (priest)? Can you free action potion it? You can't bubble out of it, probably cause of loss of control of your char. But can the rogue stun lock you? Vanish, cheap, gouge, wait....kidney. That should be 3 points easy (even if he doesn't do any special moves). Would that be enough time to give you time for it to wear off? What about the lock fearing you? In ST Jammal will MC someone, find out what people do there. In SFK, Argul will MC someone, what helped in there. If MC is a shadow spell (go to Thottbot.com and check boss, then check spells he uses and then check spell to see if physical or shadow), you might use priest shadow resist thingy and maybe a shadow resist potion and/or just a shadow resist ring or neck to try to resist it. As for the mind control, he MC's all 5 toons at once and make them fight each other. The only ways I know of to minimize damage is for the mage to iceblock right before it happens (5 min cooldown), and for the lock to have the succy out because there is a good chance it will just seduce someone. The issue with this fight isn't so much staying alive, its just getting back in range and setup quick enough to dps before the next MC (I believe it is on a 45 second cycle). The boss himself hits like a wet noodle and even a clothie can take a few hits without too much worry.

As far as resistances, I do not think that it can be resisted at all, its just part of the encounter.

[Ghallo]

I am looking at doing this fight tonight. I have a Pally/Lock/Priest and 2xMages.

The first fight seems like it could actually be easier than you are making it. Just do it like most people do in PuGs - run him into the back hallway all the way to the wall (have your toons set on follow). Drop follow as you get close to the end of the hallway, and then turn him away from your group. He will fear you... all of your toons will get feared... but they won't be able to run far because the hallway is narrow. Simply hit Follow/Break follow fast (to get them facing the right way) and continue DPS. This usually leaves the healer close enough to get a couple heals off even without changing their facing.

For the Inciter fight ... I am not looking forward to it :P

A couple of times I went in there with some friends that were "helping out" ... full epics 1.2k spell damage ... all that. OMG was that fight impossible. We finally completed it by simply having 1 DPser (a mage), the tank and the healer. Everyone else went into the other room and stayed there. We ran to the back of the platform - and no one attacked until the Pally had him to the wall in that back room (because of his knockback). DPS was really slow ... and the fight took FOREVER... but we got through it. Wand DPS is a real winner on this fight. Going OOM is actually good for everyone but the healer and tank. Seriously. Blow all your CD's right in the opening as soon as the pally has threat.



Hope that helps, let me know what works... I'll be in your shoes shortly :)

[Fleecy]

The First Boss: Having 5 x Tremor totems in the group made it easy - too easy. Unfortunately the only advise I can offer for this fight is DPS hard and fast and when feared try to pickup the group asap.

The Second Bos: Oh how I hate him! The higher your DPS the quicker you wipe :( when I attempt this guy I used to remove some +dmg gear so I wouldn't kill myself. If I survived the first MC I'd have him dead before the second one. The key was to dumb down your DPS because your are essentially fighting yourself.

[Pent]

The First Boss: Having 5 x Tremor totems in the group made it easy - too easy. Unfortunately the only advise I can offer for this fight is DPS hard and fast and when feared try to pickup the group asap.

The Second Bos: Oh how I hate him! The higher your DPS the quicker you wipe :( when I attempt this guy I used to remove some +dmg gear so I wouldn't kill myself. If I survived the first MC I'd have him dead before the second one. The key was to dumb down your DPS because your are essentially fighting yourself.Try using fear ward on your tank for the first boss, and maybe a pvp trinket as well.

For the second boss before it hits you can iceblock with your mage, pull out succubus on your warlock and usually she will auto seduce someone, priest can shield and renew before it hits, got nothing on pally other then consecration is annoying...tell your rogue friend to remove his weapons before it hits (I think there is a timer on it because my shaman DPS him down before he does it)

[SaltyPoison]

Thanks for the tips everyone! I have kind of given up on this instance for now (200+ gold on repairs after a night of wipes tends to break the spirit a bit :P ), and am focusing on getting my pally to uncrushable for heroics. But I will give it another shot this week with some of the advice given and report back.

[Raskaz]

Regarding the Inciter, make sure you arrange your DPS with some distance to each other.

I usually run with 3 Shammies, Prot Pally and a healing class.

I place two of my shammies on each of those mounts at the far back and one in that small alcove to the right side of the platform.

When he starts mindcontrolling the party, your toons first need to get into melee range before they cause havoc. Having these spread apart buys you some time and minimize the damage from the first 'chaos',

I usually tank him in the middle and make sure that everyone is in range and then go all dps. After the first chaos realign your toons quickly, burn him down and hope for the best.

The fight is annyoing as hell and I stopped counting how often the Inciter bugged out by regaining all his health. *sigh*

[SaltyPoison]

Well, thanks to the tips here I was finally able to full clear Shadow Labs last night.

On the first boss, we just waited until he walked to the end of the hall, put up fear ward on the pally, and went all out till the first fear, making sure to keep him facing away from the dps. By the time the first fear was up, I had enough threat build to go all out with the dps for the rest of the fight. As far as recovering from the fear, the first priority was getting the healer back on the tank. After that I would try and reposition the dps as quickly as possible to get them back on the boss. A few times, as I was getting the second dps on him, he feared again, but I was always able to get at least one dps on him. I think my guildy playing the rogue died, but otherwise it was pretty smooth.

For Blackheart, less is more. I only took my pally, priest, and lock to the fight. For the lock (destro), I just sacced the succy for the buff and then went all out on the boss till the first MC. Got out, picked up aggro on the tank, and ran the lock out of mana by second MC. Then, when we came out of MC, I would life tap the lock to get enough mana to dps for a bit, but be OOM by the next MC. This worked well since my priest and pally combined can't kill a fly, and the lock was always OOM during the MC. Took a bit longer, but he went down eventually.

Next boss is cake. Just the standard kite south then north strat.

Murmur was a pain, but just requires watching the others and making sure to get them back in position after being sucked in the middle. I also found it easier to just heal the pally through the Sonic Boom rather than run out and back in. And the rogue died on this fight too, but hey, he's a rogue... he deserves it :D

[Anozireth]

..., and am focusing on getting my pally to uncrushable for heroics. ...Just a quick note, you don't need to worry about getting crushed in heroics. Only mobs 3 or more levels higher can crush (raid bosses count as 73), but all heroic mobs and bosses are 72 or lower. That said, you still need to make sure you have 485 defense to avoid getting crit.

[blast3r]

I am looking at doing this fight tonight. I have a Pally/Lock/Priest and 2xMages.

The first fight seems like it could actually be easier than you are making it. Just do it like most people do in PuGs - run him into the back hallway all the way to the wall (have your toons set on follow). Drop follow as you get close to the end of the hallway, and then turn him away from your group. He will fear you... all of your toons will get feared... but they won't be able to run far because the hallway is narrow. Simply hit Follow/Break follow fast (to get them facing the right way) and continue DPS. This usually leaves the healer close enough to get a couple heals off even without changing their facing.

For the Inciter fight ... I am not looking forward to it :P

A couple of times I went in there with some friends that were "helping out" ... full epics 1.2k spell damage ... all that. OMG was that fight impossible. We finally completed it by simply having 1 DPser (a mage), the tank and the healer. Everyone else went into the other room and stayed there. We ran to the back of the platform - and no one attacked until the Pally had him to the wall in that back room (because of his knockback). DPS was really slow ... and the fight took FOREVER... but we got through it. Wand DPS is a real winner on this fight. Going OOM is actually good for everyone but the healer and tank. Seriously. Blow all your CD's right in the opening as soon as the pally has threat.



Hope that helps, let me know what works... I'll be in your shoes shortly :)

Yea, that second boss is VERY hard to beat. There are a lot of strategy guides out there. His mind control games are the hard ones to work around. I don't look forward to that fight by myself!