Who are the PVE 10Boxers? - Call to arms :) - 3 Bosses Down

[Mercurio]

Thanks for all the strategies and stories of success. They motivated me to finally put my toons together into solo 10 man raids. Here are the results:

VoA - couple of wipes figuring things out, but finished it... twice. I have 20 level 80s and once I was successful with one group I figured I'd try the less geared one. They downed him as well. Too bad 2 rogue pieces dropped - DKs and rogues are the only classes not represented in my teams.

Patch (Naxx) - Downed him on the 4th attempt. Setting up all the healing macros and getting things set up took a while. In the last two attempts he killed both tanks at his <5% enrage, then started after my healers/DPSers. The first time he took them out, the 2nd time I took him out with four toons left standing.

Noth (Naxx) - 1st attempt got him to 28% so I figured it would be easy. Took 5 more attempts to actually get him down. Ended up switching out my OT and adding another DPS. Makes it busy as the MT maintainng agro on everything but overall it is less complex.

Heigan (Naxx) - Spent the day wiping on this guy. Strafing is definitely the way to go when dancing - follow has way too much lag to have a chance. My big problem wasn't the disease or dancing, it was trying to do the slow dance with my tank while staying between 25 feet and 35 feet (or so - whatever that narrow band is between "out of range to heal, so dead" and "too close, heals take 3X as long, so dead"). The transitions between fast and slow dancing are a bit tough as well, but the hard part is staying in the "healing band". Those of you who have done it, any tips for this? I'm playing with 2 priest healers, so they are keeping up renew and PW: Shield, but those alone don't do it.

Haven't tried anything else yet. Would like to get Heigan down so I can do the easier boss with better loot (Loetheb).

Again, thanks for the encouragement and stories of success. I'm pumped at getting VoA and two Naxx bosses down, even if I have spent over 1K on repairs :P

[puppychow]

for heigan have your casters stay on the platform and your melee slow dance at 30 yards during phase1. When he teleports you have about 5 seconds for your tank to head to the start of the room and your casters to do the same (you can follow and hope they make it in time, throw off some COHs, holy novas, etc to heal everyone up), get into strafe spot, and then start strafe dancing during the fast phase. rinse and repeat, shouldn't hopefully have to go through more than 2 or 3 dances.

[Mercurio]

for heigan have your casters stay on the platform and your melee slow dance at 30 yards during phase1. When he teleports you have about 5 seconds for your tank to head to the start of the room and your casters to do the same (you can follow and hope they make it in time, throw off some COHs, holy novas, etc to heal everyone up), get into strafe spot, and then start strafe dancing during the fast phase. rinse and repeat, shouldn't hopefully have to go through more than 2 or 3 dances.

Thanks for the reply puppychow. I understand the mechanics very well (after doing it like 12 times playing one toon in Naxx raids - never died in all those dance phases after the very first time). My problem is during phase 1 - keeping the tank in the "healing zone".
Too close = healer casting speed debuff = no heals = dead tank. Too far = heals don't land b/c tank is too far = dead tank. That's what causes me to fail. Is this not a problem for other people?

[puppychow]

his aura is 30 yards, so yeah you need to judge the distance pretty well since heal max is usually around 35-40 yards -- some of the healing spells with 30 yard ranges will be worthless during phase1. Usually you'll want your caster pit in the middle of the platform, and then your tank/melee about 15-20 yards away from the platform. I don't have any pics of his room but once you find that sweet spot its pretty easy to keep that distance always.

There IS another strat, especially if you have a druid healer. Remember, the debuff only causes 300% casting speed for mpm=instants. So you use only instant heals and tank and DPS him on the platform - the damage taken on the platform is minimal, especially if you have disease totem/cleansing. If most of your DPS is melee this is great, if most of your DPS is casters this won't work. You still need to dance in phase2 either way. Also remember in phase2 there is no aura debuff, so you don't have to maintain 30 yard distance from him - just remember his platform erupts as well so you can't stay on it.

[Mercurio]

I set up from the beginning to have only ranged DPS, so other than my hunter autoshots and a random dot from a druid, shammy, or lock, this would be a very slow process. With only priests to heal the best I can do is Renews, PW: Shields, and Prayers of Mending. Guess I could throw in a binding heal or 3 and even CoH or Holy Nova, but mana wouldn't last long.

Then again, I could add in two balance druid's HoTs and that would probably keep me up till the healers ran out of mana. It would give me lots and lots of time to practice dancing and the transitions and I suppose he'd eventually go down after 30 mins or so - depending on the healer's mana.

A halfway technique that would take the whole healing distance thing from wiping me would be to go ahead and dance in phase 1 as normal, make the druids solely HoT, use only instants on the priests, and attack with everyone else. If I got too close it would mean less DPS but staying alive. Well, off to try some of this stuff out...

[Poetry]

I tried Sartharian instead of spider wing last night. Got 2 drakes down, but the one that goes immune caused a few problem. I think it's doable, its just a matter of positioning and control.

We run this with 3 drivers so not quite your shoes, but I have one healer perma-spamming on the MT, and the other perma-spamming on the off tank. My MT healer is a paladin so I just have her keep beacon up on herself so if I miss moving out of a void zone while fiddling on the other side of the portal it's not fatal. Everyone else goes through the portal. All assists set to the OT. The add inside is pretty squishy and will go down fast. By putting the follow and assist on the OT you can more easily get everyone facing the right way on either side of the portal and hitting the right target. At least this system works well for our setup.

[Bigfish]

Instructor Razuvius down. Will post strat tomorrow.

[Bigfish]

Interesting obeservation on Razuvius: if you have a DK or warrior as a controller, you can't have a macro that uses /cast Blood Strike or /cast Taunt, as it tries to use the class ability instead of the pet one. Also, apparently the controller can still take action while controling (I think), so I may have to look in to putting in some ranged classes as controllers to see about upping my DPS.


Instructor Razuvius

For this fight, I had to write some specific /castsequences for my controllers.

Paladin MT macro

/target i
/castsequence reset=combat Bone Barrier,taunt,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
/cast Blood Strike

DK OT macro

/target i
/castsequence reset=combat ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,bone barrier,taunt,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
/click PetActionBar4

Fight starts with the MT taking control of an understudy. Takes position in green circle. OT taunts the other understudy, because the orb tries to take control of the nearest one, which is a REALLY stupid mechanic. Once the two understudies are under control, they begin their taunt dance, refreshing the control orb every 2 taunts. At this point, its just a matter of DPSing down the boss and hoping nothing goes wrong, spot healing as necesary.

[Bigfish]

Many can be gimmicked - for example on Gothik you actually can keep everyone on one side (put everyone in the corner near Gothik, top left as you enter room) and everything runs to you from both live and dead. Of course you really need geared tanks, healers, and DPS to do this strat. for 10 man 4h you can make 2 "pits" of bosses instead of 4, one containing the melee bosses and one the caster bosses, and just swap sides that way (still a lot of coordination!).

I tried this last night. Killed several waves on live side, and mobs just piled up on dead. Next thing I knew, gate opens and I had 20 angry ghosts Arcane Explosioning my Raid.

[Tight]

Ok, i took the plunge yesterday to 10 boxing.
But im currently RAFing so it will take some time i guess before i make my first raid.
Anyway, I dont have much ells to do when the wife is working then to play wow waiting for summer to come so i can spend some time on the beach.