Progress in BWL

[PsychoMoggieBagpuss]

Well after dropping Chrom last week we had a few hours of attempts at Nefarion before the reset. 52% was best record (mainly due to people still learning the tactics, as you can see below).

http://home.btconnect.com/b.t.j.k/wow/dodgeclasscall.jpg

This Sunday we got Chrom down on first attempt and then went straight to Nef.
Adds were Black Dracaonids on left and Bronze Dracanoids on right.
We mastered phase 1 pretty good, phase 2 we gradually progressed and then hit phase 3 on our 4tm attempt.
We were completely unprepared for the amount of mobs that would spawn so got wtfpwned by them.

Fifth attempt we were ready though and that oversized lizard got dropped.
http://home.btconnect.com/b.t.j.k/wow/nef_down.jpg


Two bloody shaman chests dropped though ! (boo, hiss!)

Go go Injustice! (http://www.injustice-wow.com)

[Boom]

Nice!!!

I'm still workin on razorgore. I think we got him down to about 5 eggs last attempt. I think our tanks are trying out different strategies for when they have to switch controllers or something.

I dunno, I just stab the orc mages till we are all dead.

[spyder913]

congrats!

we got razergore down for the first time last week, and then we got vael to 10% on our 2nd set of attempts, so we're still a ways off from the fun of Nef =)

[Grundy]

Gratz!

On DragonBlight we got Razorgorez down Friday. Seems like at the start we were still completely sucking and then lil by lil we changed the strats after each attempt and maybe after like 5 attempts we got it.

Then moved onto Vael for a few attempts down to 21%. First one everyone died in about 10 secs. Pretty funny.

I need that Chrome Temp Sword so I can be more slashy.

[spyder913]

we got vael down last weds and tried broodlord on saturday -- 20% was our best of 3 attempts. That supression room is annoying after you've already been through it once =(

[Noleader]

My first BWL raid and we killed Nef in one night :D

Then again I am just kinda riding the wave and taking notes incase the wave breaks on the shore :D

[spyder913]

My first BWL raid and we killed Nef in one night :D

Then again I am just kinda riding the wave and taking notes incase the wave breaks on the shore :DYeah it doesn't really count when you're joining a BWL farming guild =P

[YarrThePirate]

my guild killed Nefarion a few weeks back. I left the guild the day they did the kill though.

Raiding in WoW is god damn horrible. I use to go crazy doing Dynamis raids in FFXI (they last 3 hours max) because they lasted so long. At least Dynamis was a race to kill as many mobs in the time allowed. In wow its like, ok everyone lets sit here for 20 minutes talking about how we are going to kill this then spend 2 minutes killing it.

[spyder913]

woo we downed broodlord on our first try saturday and then tried firemaw for a while and killed him =)

[Grundy]

Not sure what the deal is but we arnt progressing in BWL at all. Some weeks only 35 show up and other weeks the lag makes it too hard to even finish the first boss. So we have good leadership but its really the commitment from the grunts. People actually complain on a regular basis about repair bills and I really hope thats the not the reason they dont show. So cheesey.

We are still trying to fgure out Vael.

[Figtoria]

I hope not either, Grundles.

I love the new challenge, yeah it's expensive, but sheesh.

I suspect it's just the busy summer season. I bet the fall will see a change and more commitment to the BWL attempts.

[Murrie]

grundy - the first boss in bwl is actually easier the more the server lags... its vael the 2nd boss that is impossible with lag :(

[spyder913]

yeah we didn't beat vael this week. it's a combination of core people who are moving and unavailable, calling in nice weather (it's summer, i can't complain!) and school starting up again.

how many days a week do you guys raid? We do wed night and saturday afternoon so that keeps us from getting too much progression in a week, especially when we are still having consistancy problems with vael.

[Boom]

We do MC (full run) on Friday night and BWL on Sat night. Sometimes we mix it up. Sometimes the officers think people are skipping BWL because its hard and frustrating, and showing up for MC because we have it on easymode farm status. So if they last minute switch from MC to BWL on Friday it stops people from wimping out on BWL. Personally I am so gung ho for more BWL, I would be willing to skip doing MC a few weeks for extra BWL practice days.

We also do AQ20 on Sunday (haven't cleared it yet, but got the first 4 bosses on farm). And we do ZG on tues/wed. Kinda funny that MC takes one night and ZG takes two nights, but people don't want to stay up too late on weeknights. We have ZG on full clear too, we have had Hakkar on farm for a while but Jindo was giving us trouble till about a month ago.

I think Figgy is right about the summer thing hurting us. Also, we had some of our best players (two of our top geared/experienced warriors, our pally leader, and our top geared/experienced priest) taking breaks due to having babies and taking vacations.

Luckily, Aasimantank wasn't on vacation and he is the best at kiting those orcs, so we were still able to beat Razorgore a few times despite not having those other core players. But on some nights we had horrible lag, were short on numbers, and missing those four players so it was just impossible.

A little lag might be nice for Razorgore, but the whole server freezing for well over 30 seconds and coming back to show us all dead was too much. We had like 2 weeks in a row where that happened.

But I think we back on track again. Last BWL run showed a lot of progress. Razorgore went down easier than usual and we got Vael to 7% which is waaaay better than any previous attempt.

[Figtoria]

Boom, you forgot to tell them I was the puller for the WHOLE MC last week!

And I hardly figged it up at all!!!!

And I got the last piece for my Tier 1 8/8 that night too!!!

[Boom]

Yeah, Figgy is crazy ublar now. :)

[Stickybuns]

She's always been UBLAR!! :hump:

[Figtoria]

Yay Me!!!!

[spyder913]

hehe congrats on 8/8 fig

boom -- you guys don't have problems with the fact that your runs chew up both weekend nights? We can rarely even run UBRS on friday nights because so many people are out RLing it up.

[Riddick]

:uhoh:


I started playing with a bud at work on a different server, leveled a Warlock to 60 real quick. When I joined the guild (bud is an officer) was just starting BWL. Got it and everything else on farm, working on Naxx and the last boss in AQ40 now (C'Thun)

C'Thun is a very crazy, fun fight.

Miss playing with you guys but its fun playing with someone you know IRL... Would probably still be taking a break from it otherwise.

[PsychoMoggieBagpuss]

If you're having problems with Vael make sure you have minimum of 6 priests and 6 rogues.

Can't remember if your alliance or horde, but our typical group setup for vael is

Gr 1
Warlock
Shaman
Warrior
Warrior
Warrior

Gr 2
Warlock
Shaman
Warrior
Warrior
Warrior (if you have 6 rogues you shouldn't need a 6th tank so this could be another druid/lock or mage, we take 6 warriors for BWL as we usually clear it on the one night if the server stays up and you need 6 warriors for Nef).

Gr 3 (main tank healers)
Druid
Druid
Druid
Priest
Shaman

Gr 4
Rogue
Rogue
Rogue
Shaman
Priest

Gr 5
Rogue
Rogue
Rogue
Shaman
Priest

Gr 6
Mage
Mage
Mage
Mage
Priest

Gr 7
Mage
Warlock
Warlock
Hunter
Priest

Gr 8
Hunter
Hunter
Hunter
Hunter
Priest

Priests heal their group by spamming holy nova (as it's no agro). They should also shield all in their group before the first tank talks to Vael. Also all groups that have priests can get away with only a little fire rez (I usually just wear my onxyia scale cloak and the tidal loop ring from the MC quest line for FR) as the holy nova spam should more than compensate for the fire damage.

Your primary source of DPS on Vael is the rogues. Thats why you want to make sure you have 6 of them spread across two groups with one primary and one backup healer in each group.
Also you need good tanks with lots of fire rez. The whole idea is that every 15 seconds the guy with the highest agro (the one tanking) gets BA'd, at that point the next tank (who should be #2 on agro gets ready to spin vael around when the MT explodes (our warriors setup their macros for this, i.e /rs NEXT TANK KRAVICA so everyone knows who needs to get the next heals). If your tanks are dieing before they get burning adrenaline then your main heal group (the druids) is cocking up. Also warriors need to ensure that they are all landing sunders at the same time (the last warrior to tank is usually the one who has a macro setup with "/rs SUNDER" so all your warriors are landing it at the same time). Your main tank should be able to tank vael for around 10% health. DPS usually starts about 2 seconds after the MT starts. We also found that it can sometimes help having your best tanks as the 3rd/4th tank (when there will be less heals). It can also help having a druid tank first as this means that you have that extra warrior landing full rage executes at the end.
If any person overagro's any of the warriors then you are wiping. Rogues usually have to vanish around about the time the third tank gets BA'd. If you're not using KLH Threat Meter addon I would recommend all of your guild do use it, its very helpful to see if a rogue is about to pull agro (or if one of your warriors isn't pulling his weight).
Vael is still about luck as well, if your first couple of random BA's happen to be priests then you're going to wipe. It can be avoided if you have a good raid leader who moves people to different groups if their main healer (priest) gets a BA and also good communication.
I can't stress enough though about taking enough rogues for Vael. We've wiped for over an hour on Vael before with 4 rogues. Two more came online and then we downed him scarily quick (just make sure they all bring their daggers, even if they're combat specced as backstab is your primary damage dealer here).

Can't reallly show our positioning in here, but I'll try


THRONE
MT
GROUP 3 /\
(on ledge) G1/G2|VAEL|
G4/G5 G6/G7



G8


So your main heal group (druids) is standing on the ledge on the far side of the room.
Your offtanks and their shaman/pally/priests are standing under the ledge ready to run to engage Vael on his left side as soon as the MT talks to him. Druid should be able to easily reach all of the warriors.

Groups 6 and 7 just stay in a group dps from range. Rogues should also start here as well and then run in two seconds after MT agro's Vael and stab him in the but.
Hunters (group 8) have their back to the wall behind vael and shoot him (again in the butt). Hunters should probalby bust all trinkets/cooldowns (I use badge of the swarmguard and Earthstrike, but zandalr should do) at the start then feign after their first 9/10 second cycle.
DPS pots help a hell of a lot here, so get your mongoose/spell power/brilliant wizard oil, etc if the dps isn't working out and that should make the difference.
Hope this helps.

[spyder913]

thanks for the info, though a lot of it is either not applicable or not doable. We don't have enough people who are really geared for BWL who are on for every raid so we end up bringing noobs to fill out the ranks, and that is part of the problem.

Basically, we have a strat, and our tanks just have to get the aggro right (if tank 3 is being a fucktard and not just spamming sunder, they're going to go out of order) and our paladins (/cry) have to heal the tank they're supposed to heal.

[Bearabald]

http://shaunconnery.dmusic.com/

check out the 1st two

[Grundy]

Important breakthru on Dragonblight!

- Took down Razorgore on first attempt of the night
- Took down Veal for the first time evah
- Took down Broodload to 19%.

[Riddick]

Here's my Warlock that I play with some RL friends on Turalyon in the room right after Broodlord in fact. Check out the Soulfire crit ;)

[Grundy]

On Dragonblight we decided to go 2 days on BWL and really made some nice progress:

Added new bosses Firemaw, Ebonroc, Flamegor and then finished with 40% on Chromaggus.

[spyder913]

congrats! Is your progress linked to my guild's as well? My guild finally got a good portion of our regulars to log on last weds so we did Razor-Firemaw, then they went back (I was working) on saturday and did Ebonroc/Flamegor and got Chromagg to ~50% -- with Time Lapse and Ignite Flesh =X

[Grundy]

Yes that exactly what we did except we had Incinerate rather than Ingite Flesh.

[Boom]

Time lapse was sooo cool!!

FREEZE FRAME!!!!

[spyder913]

I'm sad I didn't get to see it =(

[Figtoria]

I can't believe how well we've done - after we got Razorgore and Vaeley out of the way that is. Lag messed us up a lot on Razorgore while we were learning the strat, but now that the lag is gone, we seem to have no trouble with the first two at all. The Broodlord was a pussy. Firemaw was a little annoying, but not a bad one, and Ebonroc/Flamgor were just like trash mobs in MC. Chrom was FUN....even though I don't think we ever got him down farther than about 40%...

Next week we'll do it.

And then AQ40! Wooot!

[Riddick]

Knowing Timelapse and making sure people do curse/cure cleansing is the key to chrom, if you got those then its just a tank and spank.

[Riddick]

And then AQ40! Wooot!

AQ 40 is fun for a bit but after you get a ways in it becomes the worst dungeon... the trash is harder then the bosses.

[Murrie]

grats guys! just in time for the expansion!

AQ40 is alot of fun, other than the long ass runs though that place to recover :(

[spyder913]

woot, my guild dropped Chromy on pull #2! Nef here we come!

[spyder913]

nef down!

[Grundy]

Woot gratz.

We downed Chromy last night for first time and got a couple tries on Nef.

[Boom]

Grats! We got Chrommy down last night for the first time too. I think it was our second try. We didn't get past stage one of nef though, we had two attempts and it was getting late so the leaders wanted to down onyxia before people went to sleep.

I bet we get him next week. We took too much time on Chrommy, our first attempt didnt start till almost an hour late. Then there was a long set-up time for the second attempt because everyone was nervous about time lapse. I think only one of us had even seen Nef's lair before so we were all doing a lot of "ooo" and "ahhh" at the view over searing george. :D

So how did you handle stage 1? Pull all mobs to middle for mass aoe, or grab them right at the doors? We tried both ways, but had problems with both.

[Komrade]

What we do is to split the raid into 2 groups. split the single target dps (rogue/hunter/warrior) and AOE dps (Mage/Warlock) between the two doors. Burn them down quick.

Oh yaeh and if you don't have one yet get an ony cloak. They are invaluable for nef's initial breath attack.

Over on windrunner. PUG 2.0 has been downing him for about 2 months now. We're up to fangkriss in AQ40.. That bitch is HARD

[spyder913]

Last night: full clear in 4:15! One shot everything but Vael! (he's a jerk and asploded all our healers the first try)

For nef, what they figured out in the few tries last saturday was the best way for us to do phase one is to stand on the throne with tanks/traps down closer to the door and rogues backed up a little bit to catch anything that gets through. The best part about this is all the bodies are stacked, so at 22% we wait for a good class call and burn down to 20% with all our AoE stacked on the bodies so they can take them down in a few seconds. BoP is helpful here if you've got enough paladins.

[spyder913]

Then there was a long set-up time for the second attempt because everyone was nervous about time lapse.Congrats on Chromag! Of our 3 weeks fighting him, we had time lapse the first week (I didn't see it) and haven't had it the last two times. We don't suicide to find out colors so we just have a group designated to run inside his room (with druid/paladin for cures) who would stay out of sight basically the whole fight. If we don't get time lapse, they just do what they would normally. So far that hasn't been tested with a real time lapse, but we'll see soon enough I'm sure.

[Murrie]

Once your TL group and the TL tanks get it down its pretty easy... really depends on the tanks being ready to pick it up when the MT loses agro - which will happen after the 5th or so TL

when we ran it everyone stayed out like normal, if TL came up we played it from the normal fighting side and then the TL group went in

and Vael will always be killing you, even when you can do those 4 hour clears he will throw you bad pulls where all your healers get BA first or the wrong tank gets agro and a buncha folks get breathed on

and as for the ony cloak, your basically worthless on nef without one... your pretty much dead the minute he lands without

[Grundy]

Some good progress on Nef for Dragonblight asgardians. I think we got most bosses on 1 attempt across 2 nights in BWL. After 4 or 5 attempts on Nef our best was that we got him down to 65% but that was basically at half strength. Seems like everyone knows what to do now and we have to work on fewer deaths coming into Phase 2.

[Boom]

Nef is totally going down next week. :)

[spyder913]

woo =) good luck this week guys!

hope for some Transcendence for me! I get next shoulders or robe that drop!