BHA Raids 08.09 - 08.15 Tues/Thurs/Sun Posted *UPDATED AGAIN*

Ok, the rules for this evening:

Down a boss: Take a drink
Down a trash pull: Take a drink
Grinds dies: Laugh. Take 2 drinks.

oilypenguin wrote:

Ok, the rules for this evening:

Down a boss: Take a drink
Down a trash pull: Take a drink
Grinds dies: Laugh. Take 2 drinks.

I can get on board with this

I'm glad that a) I'm still barely awake and b) I decided to check this before I went to bed, because otherwise I would have had no idea I was supposed to raid tonight and probably would have slept right through it.

Now if you'll excuse me, apparently Grinds expects me to be putting out somewhat decent DPS numbers tonight, so I need to go make sure I'm ready for some facemelting instead of faceplanting.

oilypenguin wrote:

Ok, the rules for this evening:

Down a boss: Take a drink
Down a trash pull: Take a drink
Grinds dies: Laugh. Take 2 drinks.

o man i m totally up for this. i will talk when i m drunk, then yall will put me on mute from then on, thats how it always works.

I was thinking about bringing my shammy for the raid achivment tonight, would that be ok? or since rant is there to dps I should go on something like a mage? >.>

Youko wrote:

I was thinking about bringing my shammy for the raid achivment tonight, would that be ok? or since rant is there to dps I should go on something like a mage? >.>

I said in the OP wrote:

Bring whatever toon you please

Just remember that you will be awarded VP for the kills and have a shot at 2-3 tier pieces on the Hunter.

ELewis17 wrote:
Youko wrote:

I was thinking about bringing my shammy for the raid achivment tonight, would that be ok? or since rant is there to dps I should go on something like a mage? >.>

I said in the OP wrote:

Bring whatever toon you please

Just remember that you will be awarded VP for the kills and have a shot at 2-3 tier pieces on the Hunter.

Just remember we have alot to finish up tonight and if it becomes a wipefest because we don't have enough geared folks, it will be less than enjoyable, and you'll make the lazr chicken angry. Bring geared alts. Or maybe I just need to have some extra drinks on hand.

tundra wrote:

Bring geared alts.

I think the shaman was geared....she just didn't have the achievement yet.

Just a FYI- I'll bring holy and disc specs on Sunday so if we want to try me tank healing on Beth'tiliac as disc that will be an option.

So, am I still supposed to fill in for Rantin either tonight or on Sunday? Just wanna know how to plan my evenings.

I need to get a few hours of work done at 9 EST (earliest I can do it).

Should I show up and start only to take off or can you guys find an alt for the whole time?

Nope, sorry. I got it both nights. Though I almost had to cancel tonight because of work.

see below.

Still at work at ~7:30pm EST, hoping to get out of here shortly. Might be a little tardy. Will update if there's problems.

Landshrk83 wrote:

Just a FYI- I'll bring holy and disc specs on Sunday so if we want to try me tank healing on Beth'tiliac as disc that will be an option.

As an update to this- I set my disc spec up for extreme tank healing, skipping most of the talents that would be decent for raid healing or floating, figuring I would be the only healer going up during Beth, or the one staying there. If this assumption is incorrect, let me know and I'll switch toward a more Smite based spec for better raid healing as disc.

Some talking points after discussing Beth'tilac with a friend whose guild has been downing her for the past few weeks, in addition to doing some reading online. My friend's guild has a very similar makeup to ours (identical, in fact, except they usually have a holy pally instead of a second resto shaman). The way he described the fight to me was as follows:

Phase 1:
-Taunt down and kill 3 spinners, send up tank, healer, and 1 DPS (they send up a rogue). Healer is usually the priest (as disc) but sometimes is a holy pally.
-Rest of raid stays on the ground. Shadow priest is dedicated to spinners as they spawn (they are NOT taunted down except for the 3 whose web strands are needed by the top group). This is something I don't think that we were doing last night. Some reading confirms that the spinners continue to spew acid bolts at random raid members even on the ground, so bringing them down only increases their damage (melee+acid bolt). The only reason they should be taunted down is if their web is needed by the top group. SPriest kills 3 of them, then takes the next 3 down to ~25%.
-Rest of raid focuses on spiderlings (AoE) and drone. Shadow priest DPSes drone if there are no spinners to DPS.
-When top group jumps down, the 3 spinners remaining up on the web are taunted down, killed, and then those web strands are used by the tank/healer/DPS go back up, bottom group repeats the cycle downstairs.

Phase 2:
-Nothing of note except that Beth cannot be at 100% entering this phase, so she needs the DPS up top as well as not consuming any spiders once the phase transition happens.

Unless I'm missing something important, this should actually slightly decrease the healing requirement downstairs (since spinners are not melee'ing anyone). The important part would just be that the rDPS assigned to spinners is keeping them under control or calling for help if needed. His guild is slightly better geared than ours just due to a few weeks killing Firelands bosses, but they were at a comparable or lower average ilvl when they first started killing Beth.

He also suggested that we can try Rhyolith, but noted it has a steep learning curve.

I wasn't on the bottom with you guys, so I'm not sure how far this strat deviates from what you were actually doing, but I don't think we handled the spinners in the same manner- please correct me if I'm wrong. Any thoughts?

From my less than good memory, they did stop spewing madness when they were brought down. The issue is when we have multiple ones up hitting for 20k to the raid. That hurts and burns healer mana.

Some reading confirms that the spinners continue to spew acid bolts at random raid members even on the ground, so bringing them down only increases their damage (melee+acid bolt). The only reason they should be taunted down is if their web is needed by the top group. SPriest kills 3 of them, then takes the next 3 down to ~25%.
-Rest of raid focuses on spiderlings (AoE) and drone. Shadow priest DPSes drone if there are no spinners to DPS.

Maybe that's on heroic? I'm about 95% certain that they do stop spitting when we bring them down.

(I could easily be wrong, though. Happens more than I'd like to admit. :P)

zeroKFE wrote:
Some reading confirms that the spinners continue to spew acid bolts at random raid members even on the ground, so bringing them down only increases their damage (melee+acid bolt). The only reason they should be taunted down is if their web is needed by the top group. SPriest kills 3 of them, then takes the next 3 down to ~25%.
-Rest of raid focuses on spiderlings (AoE) and drone. Shadow priest DPSes drone if there are no spinners to DPS.

Maybe that's on heroic? I'm about 95% certain that they do stop spitting when we bring them down.

(I could easily be wrong, though. Happens more than I'd like to admit. :P)

There seems to be conflicting reporting about whether the spitting keeps going or stops. However, most seem to say they keep firing when down on the ground (and they seem fairly confident about that fact - not so much for the people that think otherwise). If that is the case the taunt issue becomes a non issue as we only need to taunt 2-3 per round.

In any case, leaving spinners up (2 or three) seems like something to try between transitions. Anything to tighten the phase transitions should save more mana.

The alternative is to prioritize the spinners. Was anyone killing them first last night? Or was it drone->spinners?

After a few tries, Open suggested I stay on spinners until they were all down then switch to the drone rather than get the drone as soon as it came out....it was about the time we started hitting phase two....so I think it helped. I had set TK as my assist and focused the spinners down...once the drones came out, ppl focused on it and I was the spinners punching bag while keeping them off the healers. Also during breaks in action, I was trying to help the healing by popping out prayer of mending and was constantly bubbling myself.

I'm not sure why the spriest is better for spinners though cuz Mind Spike ain't all that fast and ramping up takes forever when you gotta do it on 3 mobs right that second....when TK and I were locked in on the same target though, the spinners just disintegrated....maybe cuz TK's just that badass

Don't give TK a big head... the baddies pick him out enough as it is.

Gannon wrote:

I'm not sure why the spriest is better for spinners though cuz Mind Spike ain't all that fast and ramping up takes forever when you gotta do it on 3 mobs right that second....when TK and I were locked in on the same target though, the spinners just disintegrated....maybe cuz TK's just that badass :P

I don't think sPriest is necessarily the best class for the job, but just the best suited class in that particular comp for the job.

tundra wrote:

From my less than good memory, they did stop spewing madness when they were brought down. The issue is when we have multiple ones up hitting for 20k to the raid. That hurts and burns healer mana.

They don't hit the raid, they acid bolt a single target. From WoWHead's description of the ability:

Burning Acid
80 yd range
2 sec cooldown
Inflicts 32987 to 37012 Fire damage to an enemy

Beth is the one that does raid damage, which stops when the spinners are brought down and someone engages her up top. This is the ability (again, from WoWHead's description):

Ember Flare
Deals 17400 to 22600 Fire damage to all enemies.

And one more, from a user question that was answered 3 days ago on WoWHead:

Q: do they continue to cast burning acid when they're brought down?
A: Yes, they certainly do. They will continue to do so until killed (rest of post left off)

I realize random people on the internet may not be the most reliable source (the ability descriptions are not from random people, and I do think are reliable), but multiple sources, including that user comment, do seem to indicate the same thing.

If someone was running a combat logger last night we can easily confirm or deny this.

EDIT: There's not necessarily anything wrong with taunting the Spinners down as they appear if it makes them or other targets easier to kill. With strong single target rDPS in our group (Shadow Priest), this would seem to me not to be the case, if the hunters could be instead focusing solely on DPSing down the spiderlings and the drone. In that case one person (with last night's comp, Gannon) prioritizes Spinners->Drone, everyone else prioritizes Spiderlings->Drone.

I'll preface this by saying I couldn't really pay much attention to it but, didn't the hunters do fine on the spiderlings last night? If so, I would think it be more beneficial to have two ppl blowing up spinners in between drones, like me and TK last night. Then when the drone comes out, he goes back on it and I spike the spinners in the face.

It seemed that after that first drone went down, things got hectic with spinners....but no so much after the second drone died....I was even able to get in a couple mind sears on spiderlings.

Gannon wrote:

I'll preface this by saying I couldn't really pay much attention to it but, didn't the hunters do fine on the spiderlings last night? If so, I would think it be more beneficial to have two ppl blowing up spinners in between drones, like me and TK last night. Then when the drone comes out, he goes back on it and I spike the spinners in the face.

It seemed that after that first drone went down, things got hectic with spinners....but no so much after the second drone died....I was even able to get in a couple mind sears on spiderlings.

Right, we can tune it however we want for the group comp we have, etc...but time spent finding and taunting down spinners was a waste of time.

EDIT: Math was off a bit (used 20k instead of 30k for the spit dmg the first time).

I have the combat logs from last night on Act still- if you look at the damage taken by everyone from Spinners on our best attempt (the one where we got to P2), everyone on the ground group 200-300k dmg from the Spinner's spit (some more, some less, and the top group took some from when they were on the ground). Average it out to 250k, say...multiplied by 8 people is 2 million dmg. At 30k per spit, that about 70 spits, which are done every 2 seconds. I know we had times with no spinners on the web, some times with multiples, but if you average it out and say we had one spinner hanging from the web at a time, that's 3 minutes that spinners were hanging from the web (probably more like 4-5 minutes taking resists and the damage taken by the top group into account). I don't think our hunters were slow enough getting them down that we could have had them spitting 150 times if they only spit when hanging on the web.

I looked into this some too, although I hadn't gotten around to posting it yet. I think there are a few important things we can take away from all our time last night and our research.

a) The top of the web is unforgiving. Beth hits hard. More than half the wipes were our fault up top for one reason or another, whether missing a cooldown or not going up at the right time or having taunt not fire or having meteors in the wrong place.

b) Apparently spiderlings can be soloed by a properly-specced hunter or DK. We might want to look into that to free up one of our hunters to go do something else.

c) Spinners need to die. They might spit less on the ground, they might not, but they don't spit at all if they're dead. A hunter might be a better fit for soloing them than a shadow priest because they have less ramp-up time - SPriest seems a better fit for killing the drone since there's plenty of time to get those DoTs rolling.

d) Beth is the Patchwerk of Firelands. She's a gear and competency check. From what I've been reading every DPSer needs to be putting out in the 15k-17k range. Drones need to die, Spinners need to die, Spiderlings need to die, and all this without all the DPS on the bottom so Beth is taking damage in P1 too. Then Beth needs to die before she hits 40 stacks.

Maybe we just have people on the wrong jobs and we need to keep tweaking things until we find something that allows everyone to be more efficient. Maybe we just didn't have the sustained DPS throughput. I don't know. I know we sure could have used a battle rez at a few points last night, but we didn't have one. I don't know if druid/shaman would have been a better healing combo than shaman/shaman. I know we still have a lot of work to do to figure this fight out, but I also know a lot of guilds that aren't better geared than we are typically one-shot her, so it seems like there just has to be something that we're missing.

c) Spinners need to die. They might spit less on the ground, they might not, but they don't spit at all if they're dead. A hunter might be a better fit for soloing them than a shadow priest because they have less ramp-up time - SPriest seems a better fit for killing the drone since there's plenty of time to get those DoTs rolling.

As long as the spinners stay in the air, a hunter can deal with them just fine. If they (intentionally or accidentally) get to the ground, they will be a pain in the ass due to minimum range considerations.

zeroKFE wrote:
c) Spinners need to die. They might spit less on the ground, they might not, but they don't spit at all if they're dead. A hunter might be a better fit for soloing them than a shadow priest because they have less ramp-up time - SPriest seems a better fit for killing the drone since there's plenty of time to get those DoTs rolling.

As long as the spinners stay in the air, a hunter can deal with them just fine. If they (intentionally or accidentally) get to the ground, they will be a pain in the ass due to minimum range considerations.

Probably true with our raid comp. I think the big reason my friend's guild has their SPriest on spinners is that he's our Z so to speak (rockstar DPS). I haven't tried this as shadow, but another potential reason is that the SPriest can keep full DoTs rolling on the drone if Mind Spike and Mind Blast alone can keep the spinners under control.

Mages have no issue with range, and it even benefits us a little bit to get hit by some baddies...depending on spec...With that being said, Fin or myself could be on spinner duty without any issues...If we left 3 up, then the hunters could mess them up. That might be the most ideal given that the hunters will be doing most of the taunting for the second and third drones. I don't know the shadow priest that well, but it sounds like to get the most out of them they need to get all their stuffs on a baddie and sustain that...which ideally would be the drones on bottom.