Naxxramas Military Wing - Gothik and 4 Horsemen

[Bigfish]

As is apparently customary after a night of "lets see how this works" wiping, I'm here, starting a thread looking for tips on Gothik and the 4 Horsemen.

So far on Gothik, I'm having issues with dealing with the live and dead side aspect of the fight. If I go in and keep the whole group on one side, the mobs build up on the other, leading the gates to prematurely open and drop 4 dozen mobs on top of me, so unless there is a magic cheese position, I'm going to have to do this the old fashioned way.

Not that the old fashioned way is bad mind you, I just have issues selecting targets on two focus characters. I'm thinking if I insert some target priority in to a macro for this fight, I should be ok.

4 Horsemen I haven't been able to attempt yet, but my plan is to send the offtank and off healer to the point between Rivendare and the boss on that side, burn down the Thane, move the OT and off healer to the other side, take down Rivendare. Switch again to take down back right boss, and then finish off the last one. At 15-17k DPS, I should be getting 2-3 marks per boss, 4 if I go slow, but that should still be manageable.

Of course, I haven't actually been able to observe their behavior, so that plan may fall by the way side. If anyone has any pointers or insight in to these fights, I'd love to hear it.

[Mercurio]

On 4 Horse the "front" two bosses are melee and will follow you around. The "back" two are casters that stand in their corners and cast on anyone with the highest threat that is in their corners. Of course, as you know, if no one is in the back corners (or within a reasonable distance of the front two) for a few seconds, there will be a judgement that kills everyone instantly. Also, the front left boss will drop a meteor on someone within 30 yards that splits its damage across everyone within 5 yards. It does like 35K damage, so this will wipe any toon or most pairs of toons standing by themselves.

So the basic strategy is have seven characters (in 10-man) standing stacked up on the front left and use everything they have to burn down that boss before they get too many stacks. A self healing, high armor class tanks the front right boss solo and another healer stands in the back and heals both himself and another character standing in the back on the other side. When the first boss goes down, everyone swithces. Front left 7 go to front right, front right goes to right back, and back left and right swap positions. From there everyone switches till the bosses are down, making sure there is a tanking class on the front right till he goes down (since he is melee). So that's the basics (which you may have already known, but it was quick to type up).

In thinking about solo boxing this, if you have a priest available the back portion of the fight should be easier. If the two back characters stand fairly close to each other just behind the raised platform (about 30 yards away from their bosses and less than 30 yards away from each other), then prayer of mending is fabulous. Cast it once and it constantly bounces back and forth, doing most of the healing you need on the back two all by itself. Keep casting it when it's timer is up and it makes the healing on the back two much easier. You would probably also need two macros to heal the healer and the other back character that you need to alternate casting while the front boss is being burned down since prayer of mending probably won't keep those two up all by itself. All in all, though, pretty simple. The only issue with this is that the back left boss drops those nasty black void zones wherever the back left character is standing. So this requires some movement to get out of and the area in this boss's corner behind the platform but close enough to get heals from the back right healer will quickly get filled with void zones, so they'll eventually have to move either so far away from the boss towards the healer that everyone gets wiped by the judgement or so close to the boss that they are out of healing range of the back right healer. I haven't figured out how you'd get past the void zone issue with only one healer in the back.

The other thing is that after the front left boss is burned down (and basically for every transition), you have to have four sets of characters changing boss corners almost simultaneously. In the back maybe you could have a button on both toons that targeted each other and autofollowed, then hit autorun, then hit stop after they pass each other and switch zones.

As for Gothik, it seems like splitting up your party into two teams, stacking each in a corner, and setting up most of simple /assist <tank> macro, then random tab targeting with ample use of almost random taunts should get you through the waves. It would basically be how I do Noth - one tank, stacked heals and DPS in a corner with everyone assisting the tank and the tank keeping everything on him because they basically have to run through him to get to anyone else. The only real complication is that you'd be splitting up your team and doing it x2 at once. Since the dead side is harder, I would either put my best tank, heals, and DPS on the dead side and watch that tank for taunting/tab-targeting (hoping the live side party takes care of itself with the randomly timed targetting/taunts), or stick 6 toons on dead side, four on live and taunt/target based on whats going on on the live side. Some sweet spot combination of toon split and which party is getting your attention should work. The Gothik waves only get intensive on the live side at the end, and only for about 20 secs. On the dead side there is perhaps a minute of truly difficult waves.

Anyway, there are some really basic thoughts, maybe they'll help you a bit. I'd love to see you do these, as your successes give me confidence (and proven strategies) to try these fights myself.

[Dorffo]

priority macros for your dps so you don't have to worry about whats being nuked makes Gothik a lot easier if you split sides.

[emesis]

I think Gothik would be reasonably straightforward with some custom macros/keybinds. Easy for me to say, since the most I've brought to Naxx is 3 toons.

The phase 1 mobs come to the group, so I'd put each group back against a corner and you should be able to not move anyone until the very end of the fight when the gate opens.

I think your idea of a targetting macro is spot-on, I would also want to be able to throttle down the live side dps if needed. So, a single keybind for the tanking macros but splitting the dps keybind onto a live and dead key. Stardard assist macros on the dps, for the tanks I would try a preface on the tanking macro like:

Live side tank:

/target Unrelenting Trainee
/target Unrelenting Rider
/target Unrelenting Death Knight

Dead side tank:

/target Spectral Trainee
/target Spectral Horse
/target Spectral Rider
/target Spectral Deathknight

I do think using random tab targetting is more likely to get you in trouble as you might end up neglecting the melee-heavy elites for a few seconds, who will make quick work of your squishies.

4H, wow. I will be very very impressed if you can pull this off 10 boxing. I think your plan is right, it's just the number of different things that need to happen after the initial Thane burst-down boggle my mind. You've got to do a switch in the rear, take the front right OT off Rivendare (actuallly, you may be able to simply let this tank die), while keeping up heals and strafing the left rear toon out of void zones.

[Poetry]

As far as funny little gimmicks go, one thing we do for Gothic is place each group in adjacent corners and then place the holy priest (I believe you run with one) on the live side but in the same raid group as the dead side. Prayer of Healing will work through the divider. When mobs get past the live tank we have CoH and PoM and when they start to AoE on the dead side we have PoH. The only down side is that we sometimes get healing aggro on the opposite side...dead mobs running to the live side mostly. Maybe a little cheesy but this little trick greatly simplified healing making it easier to watch the tanking.

[Bigfish]

Dead side tank:

/target Spectral Trainee
/target Spectral Horse
/target Spectral Rider
/target Spectral Deathknight

This is pretty much how I envisioned it, though I'll probably put the horses as my priority since my caster group typically handles dead side, and the AOE stomp just rapes them.

As far as funny little gimmicks go, one thing we do for Gothic is place each group in adjacent corners and then place the holy priest (I believe you run with one) on the live side but in the same raid group as the dead side. Prayer of Healing will work through the divider. When mobs get past the live tank we have CoH and PoM and when they start to AoE on the dead side we have PoH. The only down side is that we sometimes get healing aggro on the opposite side...dead mobs running to the live side mostly. Maybe a little cheesy but this little trick greatly simplified healing making it easier to watch the tanking.

I saw something like that when I was practicing last night. I'm not sure if I want to juggle healing aggro like that, though it does make a good case for maybe dropping just an OT on one side and relying on Circle of Healing, Wild Growth, and Prayer of Mending to keep them up while the mobs get aggro and move to the side that can kill them quickly.

[Bigfish]

The Circle of Healing "gimmick" - I wound tend to call that an exploit more than anything else.

The encounters mechanic is to separate raid members and thier abilities. By using a priest, your "getting around" that mechanic. Personally, I would stay away from this.

Well, outside of a moderate curiosity of whether that's unique to certain encounters or if CoH, Wild Growth and the like don't factor LOS. Not that I intend to try it or become reliant on it. Such strategies tend to quickly get whacked with the nerf bat, and the last thing I want is to clear content and not be able to do so again.

[Poetry]

To my knowledge CoH has never worked around LoS, just PoH and it's been like that since launch. Most recently I heard of a group that finished Violet Hold with the priest accidentally locked out of the room using PoH exclusively and this ability is fairly well known. However I respect the opinions expressed. I certainly had no intention of suggesting an exploit.

[Bigfish]

Of course, you know it would be nice if they fixed that particular issue. Seems like a double standard to say "don't exploit fights" when the exact bugs can potentially get you killed as well. Of course, there's a large difference between that and say, the Heigan "Safe Spot" (which doesn't exist any more). Just an observation.

[Poetry]

That's when you get back into the discussion of what is a "creative solution" to a fight vs an exploit. Like voidwalker tanks on Sartharion and kiting Eregos with green drakes. Regardless, now you've all made me feel squirmy about healing through the wall and I'll have to do it the hard way next time lol. Maybe I just need to level a second holy priest :P

Now to put the thread back on track: I noticed that the guys who dual 5 manned horsemen tanked two at once. Thane and Blaumeaux together, Rivendaire and Zeliek together. This would give you a bit less to concentrate on. That said, my group hasn't made this method work (or any other for that matter) but it's worth a shot.