MoP LFR Tips: Heart of Fear

Welcome to my continuing post on LFR tips for the new raid finder encounters in MoP, today I will provide some quick tips for the Heart of Fear.

I am too lazy to open up a new tab to research what the names of the bosses are so just bear with me.

Imperial Vizier Vorlok

It could be Zorlok. He consists of 2 phases, with phase 1 being a "preview" of each of his cool abilities, and the 2nd phase being an amalgamation of all the abilities until he is dead.

• Attenuation: If the boss flies to the left side of the room first, he will cast spirals of DEATH that you must dodge or you will DIE. Well you only take 50k damage in LFR mode but don't touch them for good practise. A nice trick we've noticed is that these shoot out in a spiral so you can just run around the empty spots. Or dodge!
• Verve and Swerve: This may or may not be called that, but if he flies to the RIGHT side of the room, STAND UNDER THE SHELLS that he summons to reduce his yelling ability's damage by 40%. Last time I caught 5/6 healers standing outside on the brink of death. DO NOT wipe the raid and waste everyone's time.
• MC: His last ability occurs when he flies to the top of the room and will MC random people. DPS them to 50%.

Blade Lord Tayak

This boss is much easier than his real counterpart and can be done with a couple healers and five sane DPS left alive. You'll see what I mean.

For this boss you want to spread out around him as he'll throw out tornadoes and also "hit" random person with a debuff that ticks for high damage every 3 seconds. If you get hit and you are near someone, they get debuffed as well.

His most important ability is when he disappears and a magic arrow appears on someone's head. At this point, as this is raid finder I recommend stacking onto the TANK and melee as he'll do a huge cleave that does split damage to everyone in the cleave. Most likely you'll have a lot of people die to this since his cleave is hard to control anyways.

Once he hits 20%, you get to have fun with tornadoes. I recommend that at 11%, most DPS should slip into the slip stream that has formed and blast to the other end of the room to await the boss's demise.

Garalon

This either goes great, or not so great.

1. Assign at least 2 people to be the Pheramone bitches. One person, preferrably ranged will pull the boss, and EVERYONE must be patient. They have to wait for this ranged person, who should run up real close to the boss to receive a debuff, and this person should kite the boss slowly around the outside ring of the room.

If an impatient warrior charges in on pull, he will most likely get the debuff and spread it to everyone wiping the raid.

 Everyone else should stay near the middle, away from the person who is kiting. Once this person has 20 stacks of debuff, the 2nd person should pick up the debuff by "touching" the debuffed person. Hence why everyone should be away from the original kiter, in case pheramone jumps. That's peramones, and most likely some people are familiar with this but are too lazy to do the kiting. Though I'm not sure if LFR stacks the debuff any higher than 20. If so, only one person needs to kite unless you really want to reset stacks.

Pheramones do I think 10k damage every 2 seconds to the entire raid, with increasing damage every stack that the kiter has. So if 4 people accidentally get pheramoned, you have 4 x damage going out. Dead.

2. Everyone DPS his legs. If possible, try to stand within the little circle around his leg to get a damage buff against his legs. This does the leg's total health in damage to the boss and slows him down to save the kiters.

3. If all the legs are dead, hit his body.

4. STAY OUT FROM UNDER HIM. This is denoted by a purple circle. If you touch his no-no spot he will cast Crush which does huge damage to the entire raid and stuns everyone.

Wind Lord Mekalajak

Who the hell knows what his name is. This boss is rather simple. Pick up the spears around his room and on the initial pull, CC one of each type of add that he has. 

Now burn down the healer add.

Then burn down the other add.

And burn down the 3rd kind of add.

Do not use any external CC's other than the ones provided by the mechanic.

Burn the boss. Collect your gold and complain.

Amber Shaper Unsok

The reason amber shaper unsok can potentially be a difficult encounter is that it puts the onus of keeping everyone alive, and doing things right to so many people. Here's a quick list of priorities for your success.

1. Ranged focus on amber slime adds. Make sure the entire area is clean of them and kill them when they spawn.

2. Everyone focused on MC'd people. Mind controlled people in this encounter turn into Amber Monsters, you will see these yellow golem like people running around. DPS them to 20% to free them since once they run out of "control", they die.

Now the important part.

Anyone who is transformed has 2 important roles. If you are in Phase 1, stack your "1" ability on Amber Shaper, this does 250k damage to him and stacks a +10% damage taken debuff on the boss so he'll die faster.

Also, pay attention to where your cast bar is. Occasionally the controlled people will "explode" hit your "2" button to stop it.

That's it.

In Phase 2, the boss goes IMMUNE, so anyone who is controlled should stack their "1" button on the giant amber monstrosity. You can't miss it.

Also if you are running out of control and no one is DPSIng you, go use "3" to eat a slime pool. You gain back 2M damage but it may delay your death.

Once the monstrosity is dead, continue to kill adds and stack the "1" button on the boss who is active again.

Grand Empress Shek'zeer

She is quite simple (phew) luckily. Tank and spank. Tank and spank her adds, then dispel anyone who is running in fear in P3. No seriously, that's about it.

For healers if you want to be picky, you can track her wind bombs and prepare any cooldowns for when their energy is running low since they explode for moderately high damage.

Feel free to ask for clarification or additional tips that I have missed.

Truny the Impatient

MoP LFR Tips: Mogu'shan Vaults

Now now calm down, I know I said I'd stop writing tips and reviews but let's face it, the more knowledge we have out there the better it is for all. In order to facilitate a smooth run where everyone can get their gold, item (yeah right), and VP as quickly as possible and never see each other again I am going to provide my Quick Tips for LFR.

And honestly you should not be wiping in LFR. That is just sad.

First off is Mogu'shan Vaults (MV).

Stone Guards

This is the first boss in MV and consists of 3 random dogs with varying abilities. From what I've seen in raid finder, the tanks just hold them all together and everyone just AOE's them down while the healers heal through everything. With that said, here are the abilities to take note of to save your healers some stress.

• Cobalt Mines: Activates with the cobalt guardian and is a crystal that will deal damage and root you when it explodes. Move out of the blue circle.
• Jasper Chains: If you are chained to someone, run close to them or you will burn to death. Ideally ranged would run to melee so the melee can keep poking.
• Amethyst Pools: Stay out of shit.

Feng the Accursed

The second boss has 3 main abilities that I would like to highlight.

• Earthquake: I think it's called something else but it's an earthquake. Stack up to heal through it if the tanks don't know how to use a shield. Make sure to spread out in case the boss casts a lightning fist onto the ground.
• Wildfire Spark: In P2, just keep doing what you are doing but pay attention to Wildfire Spark. If you get this debuff, run out of the group and will drop some fire onto the ground. DO NOT drop a pool of fire into the melee or ranged groups. Most likely people won't see this and you'll kill them.
• Arcane Resonance: This is probably the most important ability which occurs at P3. If you get a debuff on you and you start pulsating arcane energy, run away from everyone so no one is inside that little circle. For every person in that circle the damage increases. So if you are in melee with EVERYONE...yeah.

Garajal the Spiritbinder

This is the last boss of the 1st half of MV and probably the easiest.

• Healers take note of anyone with Voodoo doll debuff on them. They take damage with the tank.
• DPS make sure to click the totems around the room which are spawned periodically and go into the spirit realm to kill spirits, they do damage to players in the real world. ALSO click the special button you see once you are done to come back to the real world or else you die. You ALSO get a nice damage debuff aftewards. Healers can also go in to refill all their mana when they come back out.

Spirit Kings

The first boss of the 2nd half of MV. He consists of 4 "phases", which get more and more "complex" as the fight goes on.

• Qiang: PLEASE stack with the tank in FRONT of the boss to absorb his huge cleave attack, then run through the boss for his huge smash attack (denoted by a very obvious animation)
• Xian: Kite shadows and kill them as necessary.
• Meng: Group up to lightly AOE each other, and when he starts running away he will stack a debuff on himself that will slowly reflect more and more damage going from 0 to 100%. This is when you will see lots of people die.
• Subetai: Dodge his volley and free anyone stuck under his pinning arrows.

Elegon

Elegon would make a nice mount. He also deserves a real paragraph.

In P1, everyone will be inside the celestialy looking area for a 50% damage and healing received buff and pew pew pew. Elegon will spawn an add that should be nuked down.

Elegon will then begin to "Draw Power". This part is crucial. Once he is finished casting, he will send 6 orbs to the various pillars around his platform. The raid should split up and make sure each orb gets killed before it reaches the pillar. For each successful wave of orbs dead, Elegon receives a +% damage received buff, which is great for burning him down faster in P3.

IF THE ORBS don't get killed, PAY ATTENTION. If an orb reaches a pillar, you will see a pillar pop up and this is your queue to get out of the middle since the floor will completely disappear and you will fall to your death and people will call you very mean things.

Once the pillars are up, kill the pillars, stay out of lightning pools and kill the adds.

That's it. Rinse and repeat until he does this a 2nd time. After the 2nd time, stack on Elegon and burn him down.

Will of the Emperor

This is the final encounter in MV and has a lot of tank dancing and add control. I will provide tips for individual roles.

• Tanks: Your only goal here is to survive and also dodge the giant construct's "combos". They will either slash to their left or right, or do a smash. When you see them winding up to slash left, dodge right and you get a buff. If you see them raise their leg, they are about to stomp, so move back. Each time you dodge you gain a buff and once this buff reaches 5 points you get a special "opportunistic strike" ability that hits for 500k. This should be a steady source of damage for the raid since...
• DPS: Your main goal is to kill all the adds before even touching the big emperor constructs. CC rages, keep Strengths out of the raid as they stomp, and burn down Courages from behind. You are allowed to DPS the boss only when ALL the adds are dead.

Ideally, you will know if your group is good or a fail by telling how many adds are up by the time Titan Gas, a mass AOE damage phase, hits. If only one mob is just dying as this phase hits, you should be good as long as everyone is consistent. Also, anyone comfortable in melee, including hunters or healers can also deal with opportunistic strikes.

So that's my short run-down of MV.

Truny the Impatient

Time To Induce Change!

Instead of bitching and moaning like an old person about doing dailies, I have decided to enrich my own experience along with anyone else who cares.

When I do dailies on my warlock, who does them either with guildies or solo, I like to help anyone else, be it horde or ally to kill their mobs. Why? Because we are so damn efficient and seeing those poor souls kill so slowly makes me anxious. I've received many a cheer/bow/thanks.

Thus, the next time I do dailies, and everytime I do so onwards, I will send a quick message into general chat saying:

"Starting an open group for [Reputation] dailies, send me a tell and feel free to join and leave as you please, we just want our rep and VP so let's get these done faster!"

The group won't do dailies "together" but will be "grouped up" "together" with a similar goal, regardless of our progress. This may take a while to work out some kinks, but essentially my goal is to do this consistently enough that perhaps other people will start adopting the same thing: Guild Wars 2 style questing. This also might not work on the warlock since she's usually done any given hub in 3 minutes, perhaps even before the other party members arrive on scene for the slaughter.

The overall sense is that you show up, kill something/do something and you contribute to your own progress and maybe even someone else's progress. The only downfall is that there is a 5 person limit to this and depending on how spread out we are this could get weird.

But it's a start! This is also a really good way to alleviate the woes of "Fatty Goat Steak"...right?

Turny the Fat Goat

Weekly Progress and Ranting: Squish More Bugs

Welcome folks and folkettes,

Monday was a good day. Monday was the day where we killed Blade Lord Tayak. His tornadoes are really annoying. We changed up our moving strategy to spread around him while we tanked him in the middle, and switch to the various sides of the room rather than physically move him each time he did his thingamabob. This made stacking easier and also tornado avoidance. 25 VP and no upgrades. Yay.

Tuesday is always a good day for us, Tuesday is the day where we do our full clear of MV and then fly on over to squish some bugs. This is it for the good news by the way. If you're familiar with my humble abode, this is about the time where I begin my ranting.

So. The good news was that we downed 7 bosses in 90 minutes. 150 VP. The bad? 0 upgrades for the 2nd week in a row. I sort of lie, I did win an Offhand that I can not use as I have not run LFR for a chance at the main hand yet, and the Wills don't seem to want to drop anything useful for anyone.

LFR? Do I need LFR? Oh god this question again. Well, not really. MV has gotten to the point where I can go back to healing while not really paying full attention to anything. Am I being entitled to loot? Should one feel that after three weeks of raiding that they should see an upgrade? Maybe not. Perhaps we're supposed to be in our heroic 463s and even the crappy 458 JP gear has held us through for this long. Perhaps the kill is the real reward and upgrades are just icing on the cake...as it should be!

I will still refuse to do LFR on my druid until my warlock has capped off VP for everyone to receive the bonus. Yes, a good plan indeed.

I know it all boils down to RNG and luck, but seriously? My heals are definitely not lacking but....well you know what I mean right? Double gold. Double gold!!

On the other hand, my off-off spec, yes not even my off spec, but the spec in which I am attempting to work on, kitty, has more upgrades than my main spec. All 496s. Wtf? This shows you how many items are dropping that no one needs and yes I am looking at YOU spirit plate. /growl

Yes yes, the extra 2% stats isn't going to REALLY make or break the game, and perhaps this is a secret message that is being sent out. A message that is meant to erase the wrongdoings of the past, more specifically the Loot Rain of T9. You don't "need" gear to succeed (beyond a certain threshold of course), but just go in and have fun, and that is totally working! (And pay attention, make sure you are prepared, pay attention, and also maximize your spells, but that is standard practise)

Also I now feel compelled, not feeling forced, to start doing Shado-Pan dailies on my druid. At the very get-go I refused to do anything but raid, and this proved to be a tough situation to augment any off-pieces that won't drop in raid (aka all pieces, every week). Had I felt "forced" to do Shado-Pan perhaps I'd already have bought 2 pieces off of them and won't be as frustrated from the lack of upgrades.

Blame the Warlock

This is one point that I am going to hit home everytime. I blame the changes to the Warlock class. We are just so good.

When you have a toon who can mow down entire quest hubs in mere seconds, playing anything else just feels slow and tedious.

We have a demon who can tank and has excellent threat and rarely needs mending, and also enough burst to eviscerate regular mobs in one or two spells.

Compare this to a boomkin who has to apply both dots then stand around and nuke for 10 seconds.

Ok fine, 10 seconds is not THAT bad, but over the long run. But compare this to 3.

Or a hunter, who has to cast like what.....50 arcane shots to kill a mob? It's gotten better since my hunter has replaced all his slots with heroics gear, but...is it just me or do hunters not have that OOMPH anymore?

Turny the Angry Tree

Which Sha's Face is This?

Sha of Rage!

My lucky charms have proven once again that they only work on my warlock!

I was peeking around the loot tables of the bosses in Heart of Fear and saw the Warlock T14 lookalike helm and HAD to use it! A chance to look sha-like before the actual helm is released with the Terrace!

I queued up for Garalon the giant bug, the 3rd boss in HoF and won this helm with my token along with some gold. The fight itself is pretty simple, stand in his leg circles and pew pew, otherwise stay out of his face!

Pretty cool stuff, alas, the T14 shoulders or its lookalike are not available yet!

Truny the Sha Face