Firelands Update: Baleroc

Right, let me start off for apologising for two weeks of radio silence. RL got in the way for a bit, then my raid leader lost the plot and decided to spend a week raiding about 16 hours, as opposed to our usual 4 (fun, but left me with no free time), then more RL. But I’m back, and today we’re going to take a look at Baleroc, one of the first 5 bosses in the Firelands. This is the third boss our guild took down, we’ve had him on farm for weeks now, and yet he still obstinately refuses to drop my shoulders. Much like Atramedes. I got 15 odd kills on the damn blind dragon and yet he still refuses to drop shoulders. It’s absurd. I still do him every week out of principal, and will till he drops them. Then I’m going to put them in my bank, as a souvenir. But I ramble on. From a DPS perspective, this fight is a walk in the park on normal mode. It’s the Chimaeron of this tier, designed to put the healers through their paces, and for us mages, it’s as close as you’re going to get to a patchwork fight in Firelands. Let’s get straight into the post shall we?

If you’re looking for a detailed fight explanation for this one, I’m afraid you’ll have to go elsewhere; because here tactics and abilities are near enough irrelevant to mages. The fight can be one or two tanked, and two or 3 healed (although 2 healers is a stretch to put it lightly). On 10man there are going to be 2 shards (on 25man there are more, but the tactic doesn’t differ wildly, so I’ll give the gist of the idea for 10man and leave the specifics up to whoever is leading your raid). Basically you are going to have 2-3 people manning a shard. The shard channels a stacking dot onto the target. The healers heal the target, when the stacks get too high, you swap out, and get a debuff increasing shadow damage taken and reducing healing done for 40 seconds. Thus, only DPS are going to be handling the shards (tanks can’t really because the boss also does shadow damage), and you can take a shard once your debuff is off. When we do it, we have 2 people per shard, because the more stacks of the shard you take, the better it is for the healers (it increases their healing on the tank when they heal you, basically). Thus we have a rotating set of 4 people (for us 2 hunters, a boomkin and a dk, but your setup may vary), which means that we have 2 dps who just stand there and nuke the boss (love this fight on arcane, generally manage a decent 25-27k, unless I have to step in to take a shard. Damage reducing cooldowns do work, so Iceblock will allow you to soak the damage, and the healers will still get buffed for healing you, but unless the shard disappears before the block wears off, or you pop it at 6 or 7 stacks (essentially a waste) you’ll die when it drops off because your health will drop like a brick when you have 15-17 stacks. Who the shards spawn on seems to be random; if there is a pattern we’re missing it. There will be a DBM warning, and then a purple ring will appear on the ground, from which you need to run unless it’s your turn to soak. The shard will stack on the nearest person, so stay away from them unless you’re supposed to be taking over. If no one is nearby they will pulse a lot of AOE and wipe your raid within a few seconds, which is bad. For mages that’s pretty much all there is to it.

Like I said, It’s a good fight for arcane if you’re not soaking the shards, because you can pretty much stand still and turret the boss. Even if you are soaking, run in, blink out, movement is very minimal, although you will have to focus when it’s time to swap around, and the stacks mount very fast, so watch out for that. You should be using mage ward and mana shield at higher stacks of the debuff, so incanter’s absorption might be a good talent here. Frost is nice for soaking as well, although you should swap to mage armour for the resistance buff, and pop ice barrier and mana shield as it stacks up. Cold snap will also be able to refresh ice block, and you can ice block and soak the shard even if you have the debuff if there is no other choice, but you will die soon afterwards if you are not relieved before ice block breaks, and the debuff will be refreshed. Fire has no real advantage, but on a movement light fight like this, where arcane is so powerful, you’re unlikely to be in fire unless you’re doing it on principle (/cry). There is no burn phase; hero will likely be popped near the start so you can pop all your cooldowns then. The enrage on 10man is quite lenient, although you might hit it on your first few attempts. Be prepared to spend some time wiping on this fight while the healers figure out what to do. Quick tip, if you’re 10manning it, it may seem counterintuitive, but it’s easier to heal with only one healer on the tank at a time, so if you’re having problems be sure to mention it.

Tactics out of the way, let’s have a look at some loot! Baleroc drops a few magey pieces, some better than others.

Molten Scream: Offhand DPS piece. From my experience, most mages seem to be lugging staffs around this Tier, likely because they are so readily available (there’s one off trash, one off Beth, and ofc the legendary stage one) so likely you won’t be needing this. If you are carrying around a volcanospike (good on you, that model is my favourite sword model, I don’t think I’m ever going to have a different looking mainhand after 4.3 drops) this thing has crit and hit. Decent for most specs, for arcane you’re going to be reforging to mastery, frost and fire will likely leave it as is. It’s an offhand, so meh, I really can’t make myself care about these ever, I get more excited over my ranged slot. Throw on the 50int enchant and never think about it again.

Necromantic Focus: Right, DPS trinket with 383 intellect. So far so good. But the effect is where everything kicks off. It gives you a stacking mastery buff up to +390 mastery (lasts 10 seconds), but there’s a rub, it stacks off periodic damage. So, for starters, the effect is useless for arcane. Frost and fire on the other hand should be drooling over this one. For fire, it’s a flat 320 mastery, since it’s always going to be up (if it’s not, you’re doing it wrong), so it’s a marginal (just under 5%) increase on dot damage, which is always nice. For frost, you SHOULD have this up most, if not all the time, from FFB’s glyphed DOT. This should be very easy to keep up with the 30% BF chance you get with 4p T12, and for frost it’s mastery, which we love (big hug extra frost damage). So yeah, nice for frost and fire, for arcane you’re going to have to check whether the intellect is worth it for whatever trinket you’re dropping, and no, I calculated it, it’s not worth it to interrupt your rotation to put dots on the target to keep the mastery buff up, not to mention annoying and prone to failure. If you have this as fire, wait with combustion till you have your 10 stacks of the buff up.

Mantle of Closed Doors: Cloth DPS offset shoulders, with a yellow intellect socket, Crit and mastery. Chuck in a red gem, the Therazane enchant, and reforge crit to hit/haste if arcane, mastery to hit if frost, and mastery to haste/hit if fire. Done. Now all I need is the drop. Sigh *shakes fist*.

That’s it for Baleroc. Fairly simple fight for caster DPS, but get ready for a night of wiping while you wait on the healers.

Firelands Update: Beth'tilac

Welcome back mages, and other hangers-on. For this instalment, we’ll be taking a look at Beth’tilac. I’ve had this one on farm for a few weeks now, and I believe its time to impart some of the lessons I’ve learnt. This big spider is loosely allied with Ragnaros’ forces, although her brood seem to be spending a lot of time fighting with them. Odd. Regardless, she’s there, she’s a spider and she wants to kill us all and set her brood loose on Azeroth to wreak destruction and kill your wives and children. And if that’s not enough reason to kill her, or if the idea of that much fiery destruction and suffering makes you want to clap your hands with glee (I wouldn’t blame you to be honest), then she drops shiny purples. Regardless, she’s often the second boss you’ll take down once you hit the Firelands with your raid. This boss is a step up from Shannox in terms of requirements. The soft enrage of phase 2 is absolutely brutal, prepare for a fair bit of wiping. Let’s have a look at her abilities:

For starters, you will be dealing with 3 types of adds: Cinderweb Drones, Cinderweb Spinners and Cinderweb Spiderlings. The drones spawn throughout phase one, as do the Spiderlings, whereas the spinners spawn in 3 waves during phase one. The fight is split into 2 levels, the ground level, and the web level. At the start of the fight, Beth’tilac will climb up to the web level, and spinners will descend (the first wave). When killed or taunted down, they drop a web, which can be used (like getting into a vehicle) to climb to the web level. A tank healers and 1-2/5-6 (10/25 man) dps will be sent up to the web level, while everyone else will remain on the floor. I will deal with the floor first, and then the web.

If you are on the floor, you will be dealing with the adds. Your first priority should be any spinners left dangling from the upper web, because they do raid damage. Spinners on the ground are probably the least important (unless your raid leader says otherwise). You will probably be assigned to either spiderlings or drones. The spiderlings will spawn in packs, and head straight for the nearest drone. They have to be AOE’d down (they have no aggro table) because if the reach the drone, each spiderling will be consumed, healing the drone for 20% health and a damage boost. If you are on the drone, it has to be burned down before its energy bar hits 0. If it does, the drone will go to the upper level, and start to siphon energy off Beth’tilac (which is bad). Try to stay stacked (unless you have to spam arcane explosion) for AOE heals. Eventually the boss will descend from her web. At this point, all spiderlings must be dead, because the boss will consume them for 10% of her health, which will probably constitute a wipe.

If you are on the web, you will need to go up on a spinner web. You should only go up once the tank and all healers have already gone up, or you will wipe the raid. Your job is simple: stand there and nuke the boss. She will be casting a constant pulsing AOE fire damage. There will be patches of fire spawning on the floor, you must absolutely avoid these, because they will hurt, and cause you to fall through the floor, off the web (if this happens, remember to slow fall). Jumping through the hole in the middle of the web will also cause you to fall down, but without fall damage. When the boss reaches 0 energy (which happens faster if there are drones siphoning energy off her (hence the need to kill them before they can go up top) she will cast shouldering devastation, which will kill anyone still on the web after 8 seconds (even if you’re ice blocked), so you need to jump through the central hole if this happens. I haven’t tested it, but I suppose cauterise will allow you to survive it, but this would leave you alone with the boss without a tank or healer, which is probably fatal). After smouldering devastation, the next wave of spinners will spawn, and you rinse and repeat. You will have 3 cycles before the boss descends, and every ounce of damage you do during this time will make phase 2 easier. I usually go up on my own for our raid group, and the boss is on 80% when phase 2 starts, which is enough for us to get the kill, but we have very good healers. With two dps up there you should be aiming for a minimum of 70%. When no one is on the web, the boss will do AOE damage to the raid.

Phase 2 will start after Beth’tilac casts smouldering devastation for the third time. The web team will descend, and at this point the priority is to kill and remaining spiderlings IMMEDIATLY. All dps should swap to this task. Any remaining drones and spinners should then be nuked down. The boss will now start to deal increasing AOE fire damage do the raid, as well as apply a de-buff to her main threat target which requires a tank swap to deal with. You should pop all cooldowns and nuke the boss down before she wipes the raid.

As a mage, there are several things to do during this fight, depending on your task. If you are on the floor, you will be tasked to a dps target. If on the drones, lucky you, it’s a simple Patchwork style rotation, same with the spinners. Just keep an eye out on how many smouldering devastations have been cast, so you have your main cooldowns ready for phase 2. If you are on the spinners, you are on AOE duty. Fire mages shine here, using blast wave to slow the adds, flamestrike, and of course spreading ignite through impact. Arcane mages will be using arcane explosion, while keeping their arcane blast stacks up by hitting the drone. If you’re in frost, use blizzard for the slow. Frost nova should be used by all three specs to lock the adds in place if they are nearing the drone, and ring of frost is your ‘oh s*** the spiderlings have almost hit the drone’ button. Again, any spinners still hanging from the web should be top priority, unless directed otherwise, because they deal a lot of damage when up there. If you’re in arcane, take care with casting evocation, because if you are at the point where no-one is on the web, the AOE damage from the boss will cause pushback which might lose you a tick or two. The same is true if you have a spinner aggro’d on you. Take care if AOEing the spinners as arcane that you don’t run out of healer range. If you’re on the web, you have a few things to worry about. Again, I’ll reiterate the importance of not standing in the fire patches. Aside from the poop, and the pushback from the AOE, you can run a standard rotation in fire and frost. If you’re in frost keep in mind you may be lacking your elemental (I haven’t tried it myself, but I’d imagine it’s the case). As arcane, this fight is rather annoying. Unless you have arcane power up, you will struggle to get through an entire burn phase. I usually pop arcane power and my mastery trinket when I first get up there, and do a burn phase without using mana gem. I will evocate when I get down, and make sure I have full mana when I go back up. If you need to use a mana gem to achieve this because you didn’t get a full evocation off, wait till you go back up there. For the second round on the web, I will have a small burn phase, use the mana gem, and then do a conservation rotation. I have a full burn phase for the third round on the web, and evocate when I get back down, so that i’m full mana for phase 2. Fire mages should remember to refresh dots before jumping down for smouldering devastation, and get as many combustions off as possible. For phase 2, you have pushback from the pulsing AOE to deal with, which gets rather annoying. If you have to evocate, wait until after a pulse, and put up mage ward and mana shield. Be ready to pull out all the stops for phase 2, the increasing damage is brutal on your healers. If you’re specced for incanter’s absorption, it’s a definite boon in this fight, there is a lot of damage to absorb, and your healers will thank you. Frost and fire mages may want to swap to mage armor for the end of the fight to help with a bit of damage mitigation as raid damage starts to build up.

Now for a look at the loot. Again, Beth’tilac drops a few nice pieces for mages:

·         Funeral Pyre: Caster DPS staff with a red socket (10 intellect bonus, put a +40 intellect gem in here), crit and mastery. This is excellent for arcane mages, fire will want to reforge the mastery to haste or hit, frost can keep it as is.

·         Robes of Smouldering Devastation: Caster DPS chest with a red and a blue socket (20 intellect socket bonus, you will want a +40 intellect gem and a purple gem of choice in here), haste and mastery. An arcane mage will want to take off the haste for crit or hit, while a fire will take off the mastery for crit, and frost will want to take one of the two off for crit if below the 33% soft cap. This slot will eventually be replaced by your tier chest. Since the non-tier leggings don’t drop till Alysrazor, and the non-tier hands are off Ragnaros (or the crafted option, but those are monstrously expensive and in very short supply) you will probably want to take this, and nab your tier chest after your tier legs, so you get the most use out of this.

That’s it for Beth’tilac, if I’ve missed anything drop a comment and I’ll be sure to add it in. Good luck, this boss will really put you to the test.

Firelands Update: Shannox

Hello again. Today I’m going to start the first of several posts, detailing the various bosses in Firelands, and particularly, how to approach them from a mage’s standpoint. To start with, I’m dealing with Shannox. My groups had this guy on farm for a couple of weeks now, and so far I've found it to be an incredibly fun fight. This guy calls himself the ‘ultimate hunter’, but seeing as mages are better than hunters, that shouldn’t be a problem. I usually play arcane for this fight; although with 3 targets fire might not be amiss here if you can multi-dot, however with the dogs constantly running around, there won’t be many chances to spread them around through impact. Without further ado, let’s get straight into the tactics of the fight. If you’re already familiar, feel free to skip to the next section.

This is likely to be the first boss you tackle going into Firelands. Unusually, he doesn’t spawn immediately; instead, you first have to kill a crap-ton of trash. Once he spawns, he will begin to patrol in a circle around the road leading through the raid.

There are 3 mobs to deal with in this encounter: Shannox, Rageface, and Riplimb. Riplimb and Shannox both have an aggro table, and will have to be tanked (but cannot be taunted), whereas Rageface runs around randomly targeting players. Shannox has several abilities:

·         Immolation Trap: Metal circle with a flame in it. It will appear, and then become armed after two seconds. Don’t stand in it, it hurts. If you can drag Rageface over them, do, but not at risk of getting hit yourself. Riplimb should be kept away from them

·         Crystal Prison Trap: Metal circle with a purple crystal in it. It will appear, and then become armed after two seconds. These should DEFINATELY not be stood in. If you do, you will become encased in a block, which stops line of sight, and has to be DPS’d down by the raid.

·         Hurl Spear: Shannox throws his spear; big red circle appears on the ground. Don’t stand in the circle (that probably goes without saying). The spear will land there, and blow up the circle, and kill you, which is bad. A spiral line of fire will spread out from the location. Stand between the lines, and you won’t get hurt when they explode shortly afterward.

·         Magma Rupture: Shannox rams his spear into the ground at his feet instead of throwing it once Riplimb is dead. Same as before with the line of fire, but also applies a stacking de-buff increasing fire damage taken by 40%. This constitutes the soft enrage of the fight.

·         Riplimb and Shannox apply a stacking bleed de-buff to the tanks, Shannox with his spear, and Riplimb with his attacks.

·         Rageface casts Face Rage on a random target, and tries to chew their face off. This is broken when you hit him for 30/45k (10/25 man), but he has an additional 50% chance to get critted while casting this, so this shouldn’t be a problem.

·         When a dog dies, Shannox gains a 30% enrage, when Shannox drops below 30% health, any remaining dogs massively enrage, and will wipe the raid fairly shortly afterwards.

The tactic is fairly simple. There are several variations, but the one we used is as follows: Burn down Rageface, Nuke Shannox to 35% health, burn down Riplimb, then kill Shannox. When Shannox hurls his spear, the Riplimb tank traps him, allowing time for the bleed to drop off on both tanks. Time Warp is used after both dogs have died.

For a mage, the fight is fairly simple. Pick a spot between where Riplimb is being tanked, and where Shannox is being tanked. Stand there, and nuke your dps target. Move out of the various types of poop. This is easier if you have your camera fairly close in, and even tipped slightly towards the floor. There isn’t a huge amount of significant movement in this fight, only slight sidesteps off traps and away from the lines of fire on the floor. If you are the current target of Riplimb, pop Frost Armour for the 15% damage reduction (very nice, your healers will hug you). It might even be worth glyphing for the mana regen on frost armour for this fight, if you can afford that (and remember to reset your normal glyphs afterwards) for those periods when you are being attacked.  The BurningSoul talent is a huge boon here. Depending on how your raids DPS is, you will have time for several burn phases, but it is important that you have all your cooldowns ready for when the last dog drops. I normally also drop a burn phase at the start, when we nuke down Riplimb, however if your raid uses different DPS orders, you might want to save it for some other point. Blink is very useful for getting away from traps, but take care you don’t end up blinking out of one trap and into another. Since traps spawn on players, it is a good idea to keep a bit of distance from anyone nearby, to avoid getting too many traps near you. If called upon, you might be required to slow riplimb when re runs back to Shannox, to help out the tanks. This will always be after Shannox hurls his spear. If you're arcane, this is a walk in the park, especially if you have slow talented to be applied by arcane blast. If not, cast it manually, and remember to offer this service if your raid leader overlooks it. That’s basically it from a mage’s point of view; most of the complexity in this fight is for the tank on Riplimb, who is responsible for dragging the dog through traps. Don’t stand in fire (or traps), DPS the right target, take care with aggro (if you’re starting on Riplimb, it’s usually worth it to pop Mirror image at the start, to make sure you don’t overaggro the tank, and if you see yourself creeping up the threat table don’t hesitate to pop invisibility, because they are all immune to taunts (if you draw aggro you are knee deep in s***).

A quick look at loot before we go (because we all love loot, it’s what helps us to be not-a-splat-on-the-floor, and do more of that sweet sweet damage. For a mage, Shannox drops several sexy pieces:

·         Crystal Prison Band: DPS ring with crit and mastery. Very nice for an arcane mage, you can reforge off a bit of crit to hit if need be, or leave it as is. For a fire mage, the mastery will have to come off, for haste or hit, and if you’re raiding frost (good on you), same as for arcane, the crit can be taken off for hit, or haste if you’re above the 33.3% soft crit cap.

·         Coalwalker Sandals: DPS feet with a yellow socket (+ 10 crit bonus, you probably just want to pass that up for a 40 intellect gem) crit and haste. Excellent for fire mages and frost mages, for arcane you’re going to want to get that haste off for mastery. Since they are BOE, you will probably be required to equip them immediately.

·         Goblet of Anger: This is the spirit off hand, unless you’re upgrading from a 346 piece you probably shouldn’t be taking this. Anyway, there’s a much better 356 drop from the Firelands dailies if you’re that desperate. Only nab it if you’re the only one who could possibly want it, and take the spirit off for mastery (arcane) or crit (fire and frost if below the 33% soft cap), or hit if below the 17% cap. This is a truly terrible item for arcane by the way (haste and spirit, our two most useless stats).

Thats all for today folks, don't stand in poop, and remember: dead mages do crap DPS.