Saturday Night LK Review

With Saturday being the first time most of us have ever seen the LK fight in person, I think we handled what we had in front of us well. This is just an overview of what we did well on, what went alright, and things we need to improve on. These items are in no particular order.

Infest
Infest was handled very well by Daedalis and was a non-issue during the fight (except when things went south, obviously). Just make sure that everyone stays topped off to the best of the healers abilities and it will continue to be a non-issue during the entire encounter.

Necrotic Plague
There were times where this was handled extremely well and other times that it was handled very poorly. The times that it was handled well, people got over to the adds, and it was cleansed promptly. When it was not handled correctly is where we had issues. Necrotic Plague was the number one cause of player death, and this was simply because it did not get cleansed or it was cleansed and bounced to another player where it went un-noticed. When are about ready to push the transition, no adds should be up and the plague will bounce to Birall, then be cleansed gotten rid of if no one is within 5 yards of him. I have included a picture for how we should be setting up positioning for this.



Drudge Ghouls and Shambling Horrors
With these adds we did them kind of right and kind of wrong. We were right in that people who had the plague got over to the adds and put the plague onto them. What we did wrong was that people were AoEing down the Drudge Ghouls (or pin-pointing them in some cases) and Shambling Horrors were not being switched to when it was called out, causing the LK to push the transition phase with it still up. With better handling of the adds Phase 1 and the transition will go a lot smoother.

Phase 1 Transition
We were never able to handle this phase cleanly so there are things we can improve on. Positioning is the first problem that we need to overcome. Instead of having tanks on the outer sides, tanks are going to be in the middle. This will keep us from having to drag the Raging Spirits through a non-tank group, and will make it easier to have them faced away from the raid. The next thing is the ice orbs. Those were handled well, but when they are not up whoever is ranging them needs to switch to raging spirits. In the first transition there are 3 total, coming every 20 seconds. Having one is guaranteed going into Phase 2, having two up however is very bad. Pain and Suffering is the last thing to cover in the transition. When this hits someone, it will put a debuff on then that lasts for 3 seconds. Under no circumstances should spells be wasted to cleanse this, since the damage the dot ticks for is very low and the stack of the dot should never go higher than 2 or 3 since Pain and Suffering will be jumping between the three groups.

I think we did very well on our first attempt. We have the group make up to do this, we just need more practice. I have been doing a bit of research to try to hone my own performance during this fight. There are a few things I can do better:

1. Necrotic Plague: Even one death from this is unacceptable, especially when it is a melee deeps, such as Jeina. I have five seconds to remove this from a player, in theory. In practice, due to lag, the GCD, having to move my mouse (etc.) I usually only have a couple second window. This means that I am going to remove it as soon as I can, even if the the person with the disease is not in an ideal position. Whenever I try to wait, people die (sorry). There were a couple times when the plague bounced around a bit, but only once or twice did this really create a problem. This is my baby and I will get it streamlined to no deaths after some practice. Do try to move ASAP if you are ranged (i.e., do not finish casting or wait for someone to call your name), as I have a lot to watch in this fight and a bouncing plague is a pain in the arse to deal with.

2. Infest: So long as the plague isn't bouncing around too much, I am able to keep this off of everyone but the tanks. During the transition and second phase things become trickier since raid dmg spikes, taking down my shields. I also start throwing out more penances and flash heals during this time. I will try to focus a bit more on shielding during these phases.

3. Pain and Suffering: I was dispelling this as a priority. After looking up the spell and talking to Mena, this seems like a waste of a GCD. I do have a couple questions about this spell though. The first is when it stacks. Is there a point where this is too much? Will it always jump and fall off? Or can it stack if positioning is bad? One thing I noticed it that it was on Birail a few times when his health was dangerously low. I guess a heal or shield at this point is still more useful than a dispel?

4. PW:S Downranking: One strategy for Disc priests on this fight is to downrank PW:S. The rank you change to depends on the ICC buff and your current SP, but basically you want to have your shield fall off from Infest, but still absorb it. This is designed to maintain Infest protection, while giving the Disc priest a steady flow on mana (we get mana when our shields get knocked off). This fight is the most mana intensive I have played as a disc priest, and I suspect I will have to do this at some point, but so far things should hold up at least until phase three.

Any suggestion or comments would be appreciated. Thanks

In response to questions 3 and 4 Oki.

On Pain and Suffering: The debuff stacking only occurs if it hits the same group twice. The initial dot will deal 1500 damage over 3 seconds, second stack will deal 3000 damage over 3 seconds and so on until five stacks. It stacking to two or in some rare cases three should not be an issue. The debuff clears after the 3 seconds and will start a new stack after that. This is the primary reason why we spread out into three groups; allowing the debuff to stack only a couple of times as it bounces between groups. A heal on a person of low health is always going to take priority over a dispell on a person with low health, since infest is the other major cause of raid damage during the tranitions.

On downranking your PW:Shield: I guess this will only work if you know exactly what rank you can go down to and still get the effect of negating Infest, AND if the mana gain is worth it. Given that we are now at a 25% buff in ICC this could be feasible, but it would need to be researched.

A quick change to what my understanding was: The Soul Shriek that the Raging Spirits do is a magic effect which silences for 5 seconds, this should be dispelled as a next down priority if no one is in immediate need of healing.