Waycrest Manor

[RedSorc]

To try and stimulate some discussion of trinity comp strategies, here are my notes from my initial Mythic +0 run of Waycrest manor. I use a blood dk/resto druid/BM Hunterx3 composition.

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Probably the easiest dungeon to multibox with a wide variety of compositions. No trash problems anywhere, though the devouring maggots before Raal are annoying and need focusing down and interrupting.


Heartsbane Triad: Easy. One of the only bosses where being a multiboxer might help rather than hinder, as everybody always attacks the correct target. When mind controlled, BM hunters tend to use aspect of the turtle, meaning they can't be dpsed down, but don't pump out any damage themselves. Possibly want to use turtle before the pull to put it on cooldown to stop this. There's no particular reason to stack other than for heals, so you can spread out the party to deal with Unstable Rune Mark before the pull and just turret the bosses.

EDIT: Having run this encounter with my second team who were much earlier in the gearing process, I reevaluate this fight slightly. When undergeared, its a much harder fight, both because of the high healing requirements during Malady's phase and the lack of DPS to push through the phases quickly. It feels like there's a critical mass of gear that turns this fight from the easiest fight in the dungeon to the hardest. Still not an overly hard fight in terms of multiboxing. Personal damage reduction cooldowns or, even better, immunities help mitigate the huge damage from Runic mark (even when spread correctly). Its important to be mobile through the entire phase to mitigate aura of dread.


Soulbound Goliath: My strategy was to have the team on follow and run around most of the time, basically executing the fight normally otherwise. Kill the soul thorns as a priority, though they don't take much damage. The damage to the group when you trigger wildfire is quite high, and you have to run away from the boss at the same time to avoid the Burning Souls.This makes the Resto Druid incredibly valuable on this fight: healers that have to stand to group heal will have to use a different strategy.


Raal: Straightforward. Tank stands in melee with the boss,the rest of the team stacks somewhere in the middle of the room and side steps as one when Rotten Expulsion is cast. Use follow all when he begins Tenderize and weave between the casts: the damage is not immediately lethal, so the phase is forgiving of a couple of mistakes. The fight gives you a generous amount of time to deal with Call Servant, and stuns and roots can extend this.


Lord and Lady Waycrest: Fight revolves around managing Virulent Pathogen. I start having the team follow the tank and hover roughly in the middle of the fight area. This position is chosen so that when Virulent Pathogen triggers, the team can spread without having problems with LoS or running into edges and not having space. After the pathogen triggers, I hit follow the tank again quickly as Discordant Cadenza follows swiftly after: the tank charges around to pull the team out of the swirlies then the fight repeats. When Lady Waycrest joins the fight, I focus down Lord Waycrest so that I don't have to deal with the pathogen anymore, then the fight is basically over.


Gorak Tul: Incredibly straightforward end boss. With no particular reason that everybody can't stack if you interrupt correctly, I park the ranged stack somewhere and have the tank move freely. The tank grabs the potion vials, the team focusses down the adds and burn them. Make sure interrupt the bosses casts. A very easy to execute and very controlled fight. Dread Essence does not hit hard: not sure it'll even be a problem on high keys.

[CMKCot]

My experience is on a 5x prot pala team, haven't tried switching one to healing, could help on Goliath, but over gearing might be a better idea.

Waycrest :

Trash: easy, might want to slow pull once you are getting close to the last bosses.

- Sisters

when you pull, use guardian of ancient kings right way. otherwise when she MCs an alt, he will do it and it will be hard to end the MC.

star spread to avoid the aoe splash. and constantly interrupt the active sister. dealing with both the aoe damage and the single target damage is the killer here. easy enough to get to the point where healing offsets incoming damage, low risk of dying here even at low gear levels. (unless you are not stacking judgement trait... and you should ALWAYS get those judgement heals, regardless of ilvl.)

- Goliath

clear the whole area, and use all cds. with any luck you'll get it. just remember that at times it might be better to have him on fire and hardcast heals rather than have him beating on you.


taunt cycle is the way to go here, he hits WAY too hard. doable at low gear levels, could be hard on tyrannical. but you can reset him by running out so keep that in mind.

- Pig dude

ignore all mechanics. if you try to do them you'll die.

position yourself as close as you can on the left side, stack everyone. this way you can ignore the bile patches. those are the real killer here. if you are lucky none will spawn under your team. every other mechanic can be easily healed trough. ignore the servants, its just 20% damage.

if a bile patch spawns under you run out to reset the fight, you could try to recover, but remember that if you wipe, its a long run.

-Lord and lady.

CHANGE YOUR LOOT SPEC TO HOLY TO GET THE TRINK! yes its good to have once you have a lot and can be used as a healing set.

dont use CDS. this is not a race.

when he casts his plague do a star spread and position your main so that everyone will run to you avoiding the circles, then cleanse. its a bit tricky at first, and warrants some "practice only pulls". once you get it its fine. Really fun fight.

two things to remember, you have two reset buttons on magic bubble and regular bubble. (but its better to save them) and its better to get hit by her AOE rather than fucking up your plague dispel.

as soon as lady does her last transfer and joins the fight, blow all cds and get rid of him. personally i would say use bubble here so you can focus on damage. once shes alone its a joke.

- Gorak

the easiest boss this expansion. if you are up for it leave the adds alive and do it like men do. brute force it.

otherwise just nuke them as soon as they spawn and use your main to pick the fire and use it on the corpse.

he does practically no damage if you interrupt (hard not to as a prot pala team ) and the adds are pathetically weak.

[Ellay]

Ilvl is a bit low at 300 on a Resto Shaman / 4x BM hunter combo but a heroic Soulbound Goliath is rough due to no controllable tank to move him into the fire. They do have a "moveto" abilitiy but currently trying to get it working. Method was to run behind a fire, and then pull the pets towards me but by that time depending on how far away the fire was, it goes out before the boss gets on top of it.
It seems like this composition may have too many shortcomings to be worth it this expansion and a true trinity layout or 5x tank is the only viable option. Still working on the logistics.

[Toned]

Ilvl is a bit low at 300 on a Resto Shaman / 4x BM hunter combo but a heroic Soulbound Goliath is rough due to no controllable tank to move him into the fire. They do have a "moveto" abilitiy but currently trying to get it working. Method was to run behind a fire, and then pull the pets towards me but by that time depending on how far away the fire was, it goes out before the boss gets on top of it.
It seems like this composition may have too many shortcomings to be worth it this expansion and a true trinity layout or 5x tank is the only viable option. Still working on the logistics.

Drop the 4th BM Hunter and swap in a DK... Blizzard needs to make a chain wearing tank. So you could be all chain for passing loot around :P

[Ellay]

Went back at this place on Mythic and granted my ilvl is low but Raal the Tenderizer got a pretty big buff it seems. There seems to be quite a bit of unavoidable damage happening during the fight, as well as they increased his hp and tenderize ability goes off all the time.
Would be interested to hear if its still just an ilvl thing or if people have issues with him.

[RedSorc]

I would rate him as a fair boss, rather than an easy boss like he was before. The problem with him before was that he died before he did anything interesting: now you have to actually perform the mechanics a little. I actually kind of prefer it now, as he uses Rotten Expulsion less which makes the fight more predictable and a little less chaotic, with less adds to boot.

For my money, Heartsbane Coven is the boss I find hardest in the dungeon on difficulties you don't over gear.

[sorrowharvester]

For my money, Heartsbane Coven is the boss I find hardest in the dungeon on difficulties you don't over gear.

I was mowing through these encounters until I went to Heroic.
The Sisters handed my ass to me.
I think I just need to practice my star spread more, but, damn, it takes me out quick.
At about an iLVL 311 average across paladin and 4 DKs

[RedSorc]

I actually remembered to record a run: Here's a +6 run of Waycrest Manor done last week (Fortified, Sanguine). I commentate throughout and try to explain what I'm doing and what I'm thinking about as I run through the dungeons.

Its not a perfect run, but it demonstrates some of the strategies. Its a shame, because I did a nearly flawless +5 run just before this that I didn't think to record. I'm beginning to grow wary of Raal; I still reckon Heartsbane is the harder boss but Raal is clearly also going to be a block on Tyrannical progress. I need a more robust strategy for him, as I discuss in the video.

[z0k]

I watched this before doing +4 this week (same affixes). Was super helpful. The trash count is definitely something to keep in mind for this dungeon. I had to run back up to the cellar and kill 1 more trash mob, and I by no means was trying to skip through or go quickly. Quite the opposite. Was taking my time and making sure I didn't mess things up.

This might be my easiest dungeon. The triad is the only thing that really poses a challenge. 2 reasons: 1) not much in the way of strong AoE healing. 2) Hunters instantly turtle in mind control. It's infuriating. For anyone doing this for the first time, for triad, I recommend slowing dps down during the third witch and making sure your group is topped off before going to the first two again.

Witch 1: Burn, hope you don't get mind control
Witch 2: Burn harder, spam heals, hope you don't die
Witch 3: Slow down and recover, get ready to burst the mind control out

[Ellay]

The video was extremely informative and helps clarify a lot of concerns/issues I had and shows me that it's more of a gear thing that I am struggling with as opposed to mechanics. Thanks for that - would watch more of them!