We finally got enough healers in the raid to be able to spare 2 Priests on MC duty and still have adequate heals. It still took about 6 attempts before the priests got a hang of the tanking rotation. I think we had over 20 attempts in the last couple weeks but we finally got the kill.
We went on to Gothik the Harvester. This guy was one shotted every time we faced him in 10 man mode. The fight was much tougher in 25 man mode. I was tanking the “live” side by myself on the first two attempts. I could get to about the 4th wave before it got out of controll. We brought in a second tank for our side and we got a little further along but we still couldn’t keep control of all the adds and they eventually took down all our healers and dps. Adding a dps DK to off tank still didn’t get the jobe done.
These kind of fights are my worst nightmare, trying to hold aggro on 10+ mobs at a time. Skadi in Utgarde Pinnacle and the 3rd boss encounter in Halls of Stone are similar. No matter how geared out I get these fights are painful.
I’m open to any ideas anyone has on the Gothik fight. I switched out some of my tanking gear for more AP to make my Thunderclaps do more threat but that didn’t seem to make a difference.
Tankette's Rambles 
He can be a tough one. My first suggestion is to make sure that on both sides, have everyone but the tank kind of group up in one spot, so that when the adds come in you aren’t running around to all the healers yelling “ZOMG AGGRO!”
Second, if you’re issues lie on the live side, your DPS might need to step up its game. The fight should (emphasis on should) only be hard on the undead side. In my guild we split the DPS with ranged on live, melee on undead (with the 1 or 2 hunters on undead as well) which seems to split us pretty evenly. (You can do this either way I think, just make sure the DPS is evenly split, if you notice undead side is having no problems, steal one of their DPS for you side.)
Third, it kind of seems like a no brainer but make sure the DPS is focus firing things down. Having everyone attack something different will make you lose aggro and kill off your side very quickly. I’m not suggesting you mark each add as they come out, but definitely mention “[insert mob here] needs to go down first (usually the knights/riders)” and then kill the easy mode peasant dudes when the hard ones are over. It should only take 1-5 seconds to kill the first, easy mobs, and maybe 10 to kill the harder knights/riders (ideally speaking).
Comment by Fleischmann — January 8, 2009 @ 6:49 pm |
Pretty sure the DPS was using AOE. With so many mobs I’d think that would be the best strategy but I could be wrong. I guess we’ll try it that way tonight and see how it goes.
I think the healers were getting killed first. Not sure how to deal with that.
Comment by Tankette — January 8, 2009 @ 8:20 pm |
You might have already tried this but having the healers stand next to the tanks might be worth a try. Then you might be able to control all the adds better with AoE threat generation. Normally a no-no it might work here because it will be the new adds killing the healers not adds peeling off the tank.
A caveat though, i’ve never done Gothik but this works for the Tribunal boss fight in Halls of Stone and the first boss in Utgarde Keep.
Comment by BobTurkey — January 8, 2009 @ 10:40 pm |
Yeah that’s what I was going at on my first bullet. If they aren’t next to you, make sure they’re with everyone else. And I can confirm (as I did 10 man just a few hours ago) that we put melee on undead and ranged on live. With 25 you get more flexibility with how to distribute your DPS, but generally it’s melee on undead and ranged on live. Really the only other tip besides practice is to make sure you Thunder Clap, Shockwave, Demo Shout, Cleave, etc to grab it all. Anything that hits more than one target helps. Putting Vigilance on the healer in question (if only one is constantly getting threat) will give you a free taunt if they get hit which might help as well. Keep at it, once you get the hang of it, Gothik will soon become the easiest loot bag in Naxx 😉
Comment by Fleischmann — January 9, 2009 @ 9:09 am |
Forgot this in my last post but yes AE is good, but on the tough guys (knights/riders) some direct damage will be required to keep up. Also just thought of a positioning idea, of having all of your side stand by the gate in the middle and you stand in front of them. This way the adds have to run through you to get to them. That would eliminate strays and maybe allow an easier re-pick up if you lose one.
Comment by Fleischmann — January 9, 2009 @ 9:18 am |
o ¦ U
o ¦ X
o ¦ o
X ¦ oo
U ¦ oo
X = Tank
U = Raid
o = spawn
¦ = wall
a pally tank helps a lot on the live side.. warri should tank on the dead side since the frequency there makes it easier to hold agro. i hope this picture above about positioning can be read how i intended it. you would enter the encounter bottom left. ignore the small adds, only take care of the knights / riders.
Comment by Steele — January 9, 2009 @ 10:35 am |
I haven’t started raiding yet, but had this problem on Skadi as well. It’s a humbling experience as a tank for me. I anyone aware of a good post discussing this type of challenge we warriors face when tanking many mobs?
Comment by BillyWallace — January 9, 2009 @ 7:32 pm |
Gothik, Skadi, Tribunal. All of these have been humble pie for me and my tanking skills. LOL.
We got Gothik down last night finally. It took a lot of moving different people between sides before we got the balance right. I used vigilance on the best geared healer. We had the dps to single target and on the horse guys first, who I made sure I had aggro on 100% of the time. The fight still got hairy at the end and the DK we had as an extra OT had to pop army of the dead. LOL, the army of dead killed the mobs so fast that the other side got overwhelmed. We finally got practised enough that we could slow down on our kills towards the end so the dead side didn’t get overwhelmed.
Comment by Tankette — January 9, 2009 @ 8:55 pm |