Firelands Raid first impressions & Hunting Shannox

So far we’ve spent 1 Sunday and 1 Thursday in the Firelands raid and have successfully killed the 1st boss, Shannox, twice. Before I go into that, lets talk about the new raid instance.

The Firelands is an outdoor raid (you can mount up), which is at the south of Mount Hyjal and features Ragnaros as the end boss. The area inside actually looks pretty cool, if you’ve been to the new daily Molten Front area, you’ll be quite familiar with the theme.

One thing that immediately stands out is the amount of Mobs. There are a LOT. They don’t pose too much of a challenge though, other than a time sink. In most new raids we usually wipe more times on the trash than the first bosses but in this case I don’t think we’ve wiped even once yet. The only thing to be wary of is pulling more than 1 pack – an increased risk with the level of mobs around.

With this in mind, make sure you have MD up on a Rogue so you can blame any pulls on him! Stupid Rogues.

When you kill enough Mobs the first boss, Shannox is summoned….

Boss 1: Shannox

Shannox is a weird firey naga hunter that comes along with 2 dogs as pets. Unlike us pro hunters, he can trap his own pets! What a noob! He does shout out our MM “Go for the Throat” talent though, which is a bit cooler than us.

I’m still working on perfecting the strategy but I can safely say this isn’t a good hunter fight. Lots of movement and targets getting into/out of your deadzone and in/out of your range. I suspect this might be a better fight for SV over MM as DoTs would help out a lot. This is backed up by the top 10 classes on this boss being Locks, S.Priests or a Boomkin.

Phase 1: Kill Rageface

Rageface, one of Shannox’s pets, is your first target, who you’ll nuke until he dies. Simples?

Things to bear in mind:

• Blow your CDs here if you’re not being “Face Raged”
• Don’t stand in traps (they arm after 2 seconds of landing)
• Don’t stand in the rings of fire (you can stand between the rings)
• Stand away from everyone else as this will reduce your DPS downtime through targets running into/out of your deadzone.
• Try and time your movements to when you’re not shooting steady shot (try to keep in range of the target and healer at all times). You’ll probably want to move all the time this happens to maximise your coverage.
• When the dog runs into a trap, don’t stand there thinking “Hmm, i’m lagging, my shot’s aren’t working” – which I have done a few times – quickly switch targets to the iceblock to break it.
• When targeted with “Face Rage”, feign death or deterrence. The dog will stick to you until someone hits it with a 30k+ crit. Again, more DPS down time as he is in your deadzone.

Once dead, you’ll move over to dog 2…

Phase 2: Kill Riplimb

Same as before but he won’t “Face Rage”. He will however move around a lot, quite annoyingly, so make sure you’ve kept your distance from everyone else (but in healer range). If Rapid Fire comes back up, save it for P3.

The key to Phase 2 is that Riplimb needs to die when Shannox is at 35% so be prepared to target switch.

Phase 3: Kill Shannox

He will be on 35% and you want to be close to the other DPS so you can benefit from some AoE healing but don’t get in too close as the tanks have a tendency to move the boss around and you don’t want deadzone issues.

You’ll want to use your CDs here but try and use them as soon as heroism ends (if you have it) as it’s likely to be used at the start of P3. I believe there is a greater benefit to not stack these two haste buffs.

As in the previous phases, don’t stand in stuff and it should be job done!

Loot

While Shannox is a hunter, he drops mainly plate, which makes me wonder what he’s up to. He drop a hunter helm, the Scalp of the Bandit Prince. It’s probably best to ignore the socket bonus on this and to reforge the mastery off but for most of us (myself included) it will be a nice upgrade.

He does drop 2 AGI daggers (2? WTF!) but we benefit more from an AGI 2 hander so it’s best to pass on this if someone else needs it. We’ll get our weapon some other time!

So far we’ve done this boss on both visits to Firelands and no helm for me yet 😦

Next up is Beth’tilac, so stay tuned!

 

Nefarian 10 Man Progression

Nefarian is the final boss of 10 man normal Blackwing Decent and is the hardest boss we’ve come across in cataclysm so far (we haven’t tried Al’Akir yet so I can’t say he is the hardest).

We’ve been trying Nefarian for about 3 nights now (2 hours per night ish) and the best we’ve done is to get him down to 20%. Phase 3 seems to be our problem but we’ve got some fresh ideas to try out tomorrow, which will hopefully be enough to down him!

I’m not 100% sure what the optimal tactics are for this fight but here’s my run down as a hunter:

Phase 1:

Once Onyxia is placed by the tank, open fire! Don’t blow your CDs, just nuke until Nefarian comes down. When Nefarian lands, send your pet in on him (reduced travel time as he is in the middle of the room at this point and your pet won’t pull aggro) and continue nuking Onyxia but be aware of the adds spawning around you.

Depending on your set up, you’ll probably be one of the ones who needs to CC an add. I worked with our priests and between 2 shackles, roots and an Ice Trap, we left only a couple adds free who were kited between the DPS.

As soon as the adds run out of energy (fall down) switch to Nefarian and blow your CDs – nuke him to the ground! You should be able to get a full double rapid fire in here with the use of a readiness. Make sure you’re listening out to your healers / raid leader as you’ll want to make sure you don’t push Nefarian into the next crackle before everyone is healed up.

Other than that, wait for the call that Onyxia is about to die (you might need to help out with killing her) and then get to your appointed pillar to start phase 2.

Phase 2

As the lava comes up, hold space bar so you swim to the surface and then spam it so you jump up onto the platform. I think a reasonable aim is to get up with 3 stacks of the lava debuff and you gain stacks based on how long you are in the lava (more stacks = bigger ticks from the lava debuff). Hopefully you will be topped up on HP before this phase or the following can happen:

As you get up on the pillar, try to interrupt the add’s cast as this is the most likely one to be missed by the melee/tank. If you’re MM you’ll have a 20sec CD on silencing shot, at which point you can interrupt every other cast but SV/BM will have to ignore this. Interrupting isn’t our job here so just make sure the add dies fast and then switch to DPSing Nefarian (and watch the Rogues just stand there wishing they were hunters) but make sure you’re listening to your raid leader to manage Nefarian’s health as you don’t want another uncalled for crackle.

Phase 3

Keep out of the fire and nuke Nefarian. If you used your CDs correctly in P1, they should be off CD now so you can use them again 🙂 I’m not sure about SV/BM but as MM you’ll more than likely get heroism around this point, try not to stack it with your CDs. Hopefully This will kill Nef!

Tip

Remember that other aspect we have, Aspect of the Wild, well on Nefarian it actually comes in use! Make sure you have it activated for all of the Electrocutes, as it will resist 10k+ damage per character that is within 30 yards of you. This doesn’t stack with the Shaman’s Nature resist but there is no guarantee that their will be a shaman or that their totem will be in range. Just make sure you swap back to Aspect of the Dragon Hawk straight after crackle as you don’t want to be losing DPS, no sir!

During Phase 1, if you’re trying to get the attention of an add, be careful what you hit him with. If you hit him with Chimera, Aimed or Steadyshot, you’ll have a chance of putting a DoT on them and making them untrappable. The odds of this happening are raised they will more than likely be above 80% HP and in Careful Aim range. I would recommend just using Arcane Shot and Distracting shot to get this job done – it should be enough if they aren’t being hit by a tank!

When on a pillar in Phase 2, don’t have your pet attack the add, as he’ll stand in the lava to do so (and will die). It’s a DPS loss but with the new manual positioning ability in cataclysm, stick him/her on “passive” and move him to the middle of the platform. You’ll need his DPS more in P3 and you don’t want to wait around casting “raise pet”. If he does die in P2, use the transition to P3 to cast that ability, it might just fit in.

I’ll give an update once we get him down if I can refine the hunter strat anymore (our upcoming new ideas will involve trapping adds on the edge of the arena or in the centre) but until then, wish us luck……hic!

Our best attempt so far (20% wipe)

A 25% wipe on the following day