Hyjal Tactics - Tsunami

[fjwow]

Credit goes to Qrwix

RAGE WINTERCHILL:


- Melee: ~3k on plate
- Frost Nova: ~3k damage plus 6 sec AoE freeze, dispellable
- Frost Armor: Exactly like a mages Frost Armor reduces movement and melee attack speed after melee hits
- Icebolt: instant cast, random target, 4250-5750 frost damage plus freeze debuff which also deals 2500 DPS
-Death and Decay: 10 seconds, 20 yard AoE centered on the ground at a random target, dealing 15% of max health as damage per second to each player in range
-Enrage: 10 minutes enrage timer

The tacitis is following:

Look at the MH Boss Tips for general tips. Only one tank is needed. If available raid members should equip a PvP trinket, no other special gear or buffs required. Most NPC die rather quickly from Death and Decay, so it's safer not to risk Jaina (if she dies the event is reset).
Ice Bolt:

This is probably Rage Winterchills most dangerous ability, Ice Bolt victims die quickly (usually within 2-3 seconds) from the DoT. It cannot be dispelled, but it can be removed by using a PvP trinket, a Paladin's bubble, a hunter's The Beast Within or a mages Blink.

Healing through the Ice Bolt damage is possible, but needs very quick reactions and/or coordination. One priest and one other healer can be put on "Ice Bolt duty". The priest uses Power Word: Shield (which buys 1-2 seconds), while the other healer casts a normal heal.

Death and Decay:

Since this is stationary on the ground, the only difficulty is to take notice of it. Turn up spell details (in the graphics settings of the game configuration) to maximum - it's a rather faint red pattern on the ground. Everybody needs to move out of it quickly.

ANETHERON:


- Melee: 3-6k on plate
- Carrion Swarm: 60-yard range; random direction cone-shaped AoE, 3-6k shadow damage plus 15 sec debuff which reduces healing done by 75%; cast about every 15 seconds
-Sleep: 55-yard range; A 10 second stun on 3 targets. WoTF, tremor totem, and the PvP trinket do not work on this ability.
-Vampiric Aura: heals himself for 300% of the damage that he deals in melee
-Inferno: every 60 seconds he targets a random raid member, stuns them for 2 sec and summons a Towering Infernal on them
- Berserk: 10 minutes enrage

Towering Infernal

Immolation: 8 yard AoE for 3-4 k fire damage every two seconds
Vampiric Aura: The Infernals profit from Anetherons Vampiric Aura if they're close enough to him
Immune to taunt
Are immuine to banish


the tacic is following:

Look at the MH Boss Tips for general information. It is particularly important to distribute the healers accordingly in order that as few of them are hit by Carrion Swarm at the same time. Two tanks are needed — one for Anetheron and one for the Towering Infernals. Fire resistance gear helps on the Infernal tank (but is not mandatory).

The Infernal tank healers can set up far away from the boss to outrange the Carrion Swarm (staying inside healing range of the Infernal tank ofc). The shadow protection buff from priests on the raid can be casted before / during wave 8, and a small amount of shadow resist gear can be worn by healers to resist the carrion swarm damage and debuff.

Rogues should keep Wound Poison active on the boss at all times, to reduce the effect of his Vampiric Aura. This can be replaced by a warrior's Mortal Strike

Towering Infernals

The boss himself is rather straightforward tank and spank. The only tricky problem is control of the Infernals. They spawn on random people, therefore a paladin is a good choice, because of quick range pulling with Exorcism and Avenger's Shield. A good tanking spot for the Towering Infernals is near Jaina Proudmore, so that she helps killing them. Warrior Infernal tanks can make their job easier with an Intervene macro. Hunters should misdirect the Infernals on the tank as soon as they spawn.

In all cases, it helps if raid members about to receive an Infernal run towards the tanking position. It's also imperative that everybody (particularly the person who just spawned the Infernal) stays outside the fire AoE. Only ranged DPS should kill Infernals. Alternatively, when the raid has high total DPS, the Infernal tank can wear full fire resistance gear and just keep all Infernals tanked. DPS does not change target but stays on the boss the whole time. This makes the fight much faster, the Infernals despawn when the boss dies.


KAZ'ROGAL


-Melee: 3-6k on plate.
-Cleave: 7-8k on plate to all melee in a frontal arc, divided up among targets. Instant spell, doesn't replace his melee swing.
-War Stomp: 15 yard AoE, 1700-2500 damage plus 5 sec stun.
-Cripple: 20 yard range. Increases time between attacks by 75% and movement by 75%, in addition to reducing Strength by 75%. Lasts 12 sec.
-Mark of Kaz'rogal: A debuff inflicted on all mana users in the raid. Drains 600 mana per second for 5 sec. If mana is reduced to zero by the debuff, the debuff is removed and the target does 10,213 to 11,287 shadow damage to himself and all nearby allies. Resistible but not Dispellable.


See the MH Boss Tips for general info, only one tank required. It may be possible for Tauren player characters to melee Kaz'rogal from outside the range of his warstomp, due to their slightly larger melee range.

All mana users should wear some epic Shadow resistance gear, because the Mark of Kaz'rogal and all of its effects can be resisted. The whole raid should have the Shadow Protection buff from priests. Due to their low mana, protection paladins should take extra care not to hurt others when they AoE from the Mark emptying their mana pool.


If Thrall and his NPCs, particularly the tauren warriors, are all up they can do about 15% damage on their own. This can be very important near the end of the fight - there are reports of Kaz'rogal first kills with only one surviving raid member watching while the NPCs brought down the last 7% or so.

In order to speed things up its possible to have the MT kite Kaz'rogal through the two groups of NPCs, but it's just as feasible to wait until they enter the fight by themselves (which they usually do in any case). Kiting is detrimental to raid DPS, so it should be done only if the NPCs do more damage by their early entry than is lost due to aggro problems by the raid.


Mana users need to do anything they can to keep their mana up. Blessing of Wisdom, Flask of Mighty Restoration and Blackened Sporefish as well as Superior Mana Oil should all be in effect. Shadowfiends, Evocation, Mana Tide Totem, Innervate, Shamanistic Rage, etc must all be available. Paladins should set up a Judgement of Wisdom rotation to keep it up as much as possible. Mages may use Ice Block and Paladins may use Divine Shield before (or immediately after) being afflicted by Kaz'rogal's Mark, thus avoiding one completely. Heroism/Bloodlust can be used early (but not too early, watch aggro) so that the high mana cost can be recovered before the first mark, or can be used late, when death is inevitable anyways. Resto Druids can shift to cat or bear forms in order to avoid death from the mark. Innervates should best be used on Shadow Priest(s). Warlocks with Demonic Sacrifice can sacrifice their Felhunter for a significant MP5 bonus. Life Tap should be avoided as much as possible in order to avoid additional strain on raid healers' mana. Hunter's can switch to Aspect of the Viper during the debuff which will keep the mana loss to a minimum. Toward the end of the fight when the debuff is cast more often [around every 15 seconds or so], many hunters choose to leave it on Viper until Kaz'rogal dies. When a mana user runs low, it's a good idea to burn the last mana quickly, and then move to a safe spot, not to harm others.

Battle rezzes (Soulstone, Ankh etc.) are only of limited usefulness because raid members are rezzed without buffs and less than a full mana bar, therefore they usually die again on the next Mark. Nonetheless, if used right after a Mark, a rez can mean one-half mana bar of nukes (or heals on the melee group), which can make the difference in a tight fight.


The first Mark of Kaz'rogal is cast after 45 seconds. The time until the next Mark is cast is reduced by 5 seconds each time, so that the 2nd mark happens at 1:25, the 3rd at 2:00 and so on. In the end, it's cast every 10 seconds. This works in effect like a soft enrage, after about four minutes mana users inevitably start to die. After some time all healers are dead, the last surviving raid members are usually rogues or DPS warriors, who must stay out of melee range and hope the NPCs bring the boss down.



AZGALOR

-Melee: 6000 to 9000 on plate; cannot crush.
-Rain of Fire: 15-yard AoE cast on a random target within 30 yards. Lasts 10 seconds and deals 1619-1881 fire damage every 2 seconds. Targets inside the AoE for more than 2 seconds receive the debuff Unquenchable Flames which deals 1250 resistible fire damage every second for 5 seconds.
-Howl of Azgalor: 5 second zone-wide AoE silence with 15 second cooldown. Can be resisted with shadow resistance.
-Cleave: Frontal Cleave ability, hitting up to 5 targets for his melee damage plus 2000.
-Doom: Cast on a random target within 100 yards every 45 seconds. The target dies after 20 seconds and spawns a Lesser Doomguard. Cannot be resisted or removed.
-Enrage: 10 minute enrage timer.

Lesser Doomguard

-Health: ~145k HP
-Melee: ~2.5k on plate
-Thrash: Chance on successful melee hit to gain two extra attacks.
-Cripple: Debuff slowing movement and attack speed by 50%,
-Warstomp: short range AoE dealing 1250 damage plus 2 sec stun, ~15 sec cooldown,


The MH Boss Tips apply as usual. There should be one tank for the boss and at least one more for the Lesser Doomguards (two is better, in case one of them gets Doom). The Doomguard tanks need two healers, the Azgalor tank three. The other healers should keep up the raid.

Casters should wear some epic shadow resistance gear and the Shadow Protection buff as well, to resist the silence. Fire resistance potions can increase survivability; the melee group can wear some fire resistance gear if available. All Warlocks should have a Soulstone available, but not pre-cast.

The boss can be tanked next to Thrall or at the Taruen camp which is the best method if you have a hunter in your raid. It would also help to try to get as much help as possible from the NPCs during the waves,(try to keep the pats alive). Thrall won't die from the rain of fire. The other NPCs probably won't make it through the fight, but they still do decent DPS while alive.


Rain of Fire

The first priority for everyone is to avoid Rain of Fire — move out of it fast. Beyond that, the periodic silence makes it challenging to keep the tank up. The tank should have as many HoTs as possible at all times, and (like everybody else) be generally at top health, so that there's a good chance to survive 5 seconds without a heal. It's also possible to stop all melee attacks during silence, so that the Boss doesn't get the increased swing speed from parries.

It is possible for many ranged dps classes to not be targeted by rain of fire by simply staying out of its 30 yd range. I believe the only ranged dps class that can't do this without severely lowering their dps is shadow priests, as their mind flay ability has a short range. If a dps class that can't out-range the rain of fire is dpsing near other longer range dps, the rain of fire can hit the longer range dps simply because of its 15 yard radius. This being the case, keeping the ranged dps that can't out-range the rain of fire separate from the longer range dpsers will minimize damage taken by the raid.


Lesser Doomguards

When receiving the Doom debuff, players should run to the predetermined Lesser Doomguard tanking spot. At that place, the melee DDs and the NPCs should kill them. The easiest setup without a hunter misdirect is to tank them at the Tauren camp, while tanking Azgalor next to Thrall. If there is a hunter in your group the best method is to tank Azgalor at the Tauren camp, and let Thrall and his camp fight the Lesser Doomguards. Thrall and his camp alone are perfectly capable of dealing with the Doomguard and keeping no more than 1-2 Doomguards up at a time. At the end of the fight, the tanks should have a total of about 3-4 Lesser Doomguards on them which the raid must kill after Azgalor is dead.

Warlocks should have their soulstones at the ready, but unassigned. When a vital player (e.g. a healer) is Doomed, they should assign the soulstone. Set up a rotation so that the warlocks are clear on who should hand out the first, second, etc. Soulstones and battle rezzes should be used early and often in order to maximize DPS on the boss and bring him down quickly.

Note: There is a known bug (as of 2.4) that Doomguard tanks may be unable to get loot because they are not on the aggro table of the boss. It is highly recommended for Doomguard tanks and healer to go in range and do a couple ranged attacks on the boss before going to the Doomguard tanking spot. Healing or bandaging someone who is on the bosses aggro table also should work. A small domed clay oven is present at the Tauren warrior camp that is terrain bugged — if players with Doom die on top of it, the resulting Lesser Doomguard will spawn in the middle of the raid, causing a wipe.


Positioning

If your raid has high ranged DPS, it is possible to completely avoid the Rain of Fire through careful positioning. The raid should be split into camps according to roles (ranged, melee, healers). The melee should stand at the designated Lesser Doomguard tanking position and help take down these ads. The ranged dps should stand in a semicircle in front of Azgalor at absolute max range (30 yds). As his Rain of Fire is cast on a person rather than a spot on the ground, having the raid outrange his ability causes him to cast it rarely if at all. Healers should stand off to one side where they are in range of the main body of the raid, but able to run to the Doomguard tanking position if Doom is cast. At the Lesser Doomguard tank spot, there should be a healer and 2 tanks. If you are having trouble, add one more healer or tank as you see fit. There is no need for a Lesser Doomguard group if you tank Azgalor at the tauren camp as explained above. A few dpses can be moved to Lesser Doomguard duty if it makes you feel better.


Tips

-DPS Cooldowns: Should be used early but not too early (watch aggro).
-Cleave will not be cast if the Main Tank is the only target in front of Azgalor. With careful positioning of NPCs, and leaving pets to DPS the Lesser Doomguards, the amount of spike damage from Cleaves can be significantly reduced. Since the change to pets that keeps them behind a stationary target, if Azgalor is held still pets will likely not trigger cleaves.
-Hearthing will remove the Doom effect. This can be used productively later in the fight when no further combat rezzes are available. It will not remove the person from the loot table, though the bug regarding Doomguard tanks may still apply. Improved -Concentration Aura: Creating a healer group with a Paladin specced into this will reduce the chance of the tank dying to spike damage during the silence, as the healers have an additional 1.5 seconds (assuming 3/3) to recover from the silence (this group should be made up of the MT healers).
-Curse of Recklessness: CoR makes Azgalor hit significantly harder than normal. Use a different curse.



color=#dd2423]
ARCHIMONDE
[/color]

-Melee: 9000-10000 on a full T5 tank, never deals crushing blows.
-Air Burst: 6 sec cooldown, used randomly. 1500 nature damage 15 yard AoE centered on a random target. All affected players are tossed very high in the air (over 100% fall damage).
-Fear: 8 sec AoE fear (entire raid), 40 sec cooldown, 1.5 sec cast time. Never used while players are still airborne from Air Burst.
-Grip of the Legion: 2500 damage per 2 sec for 5 minutes, curse, dispellable, 60 yard range.
-Doomfire: A trail of fire moving on the ground away from Archimonde. Players entering it get a non-dispellable debuff which deals initially 2400 fire damage every 3 seconds, which is reduced by 150 per tick. As long as the player remains in the trail of fire, the debuff is renewed, and ticks for the full 2400 fire damage every second. Can be removed with Cloak of Shadows.
-Soul Charge: When any raid member dies, Archimonde gains a Soul Charge which he can use once at a random time (with an animation looking like the Shaman Lightning Shield ability). Depending on which character class created the Soul Charge, the following effects apply to the entire raid on its use:

Priest, Mage, Warlock: ~4500 fire damage plus 4 sec silence.
Warrior, Rogue, Paladin: ~4500 physical damage plus 4 sec damage taken increased by 50% debuff.
Druids, Shamans, Hunters: ~4500 nature damage over 8 seconds plus 2250 mana burn.

-Finger of Death: 30,000 shadow damage, single target, only used if no targets are in melee range.
-Hand of Death: 100k shadow damage to everyone in the raid, used 9 minutes after Archimonde is engaged or if he reaches Nordrassil.


Raid Composition:

1 Tank
4 or more Decursers (mages or druids)
6-10 Healers
3-5 Melee DPS
7-10 Ranged DPS

Each raid member must acquire a [Tears of the Goddess] from Tyrande Whisperwind in the camp. The tears expire after two hours, so remember to get new ones in time. All raid members should have one (three if possible) Healthstones and a few Super Healing Potions (even healers). Wearing extra Stamina gear is recommended for all raid members (a good idea is to use the High Warlord Naj'entus gear). No other special gear is required, the fire damage in this fight cannot be reduced with resistance. However, Fire Protection potions do help.

Everybody should turn off their vanity meters, and forget about them. Damage and healing done are of no interest - this fight is about individual player survival and nothing else. Think Shade of Aran, but much worse.


There are various approaches to positioning. As everybody needs to move around to avoid the Doomfires, a fixed order is hard to maintain. All players should keep the following in mind:

Spread out to minimize the collateral damage from the Air Burst AoE
Keep at least 15 yards away from all Doomfires
Stay within range of at least one decurser
Stay inside healer range

It's a good idea to give raid icons to decursers and to assign groups to them which stay inside their range. Prior to some patch Doomfire spread out in front of Archimonde only, therefore it was very good to tank him faced towards the mountain, and spread the raid in a semi-circle behind him. This is not true any more, therefore he can be tanked anywhere. The logs in the central area offer some protection from Doomfire, the flames cannot move through them, but still can circle around.


Survival

The key to this fight is individual player survival. When learning the encounter, it's a good idea to focus exclusively on raid survival first. Soul Charges must be avoided at all costs, because usage of a Soul Charge usually leads to another player death (and thus to the next Soul Charge).



Doomfire

Raid members must avoid to get Doomfire under all circumstances, avoiding it is more important than anything else. It may be possible to heal through a doomfire. The problem is that healers are very busy getting Feared, Air Bursted and avoiding Doomfires themselves, so there's not a lot of extra healing capacity available beyond keeping the tank up and healing through Air Burst damage.

Therefore all players must keep a safe distance (best is about 20 yards) away from all doomfires. There's no excuse or justification - if doomfire gets anywhere close, everybody must run away. The only exception is the main tank, but it's still very important to leave the trail of fire as fast as possible. The targeting of doomfire is semi-random. It moves straight towards a raid member, but it may randomly change target (there are unverified claims that it likes to target players in the vicinity of its "head"). People should not run in circles, but rather in a straight line away from Archimonde.

This is probably the psychologically most difficult thing to learn in this fight, but remember - if there's a fire on one side of Archimonde, this means that there's no fire somewhere else. Smart players consider it to be a good thing that the fire is on their side, so that they can evade properly and make sure nobody dies, while the lesser members on the other side continue to DPS and heal.



Grip of the Legion:

This curse must be dispelled as quickly as possible. Decursers must be spread out well over the raid. One difficult situation occurs when the curse hits a raid member who is running away from doomfire or air bursted (and therefore out of decurse range). All members of the raid should have Purification Potions to remove the curse in this event, though it often fails. A wipe may indeed be inevitable (Archimonde is one of the bosses who is never truly "on farm"), but generally all players on the same side of Archimonde should move as a group.




Fear:

A frequent cause for wipes in this encounter are raid members feared into Doomfire. The main tank must stance dance to avoid the fear. Shamans should keep their Tremor Totems up. It's highly useful if everyone in the raid has a PvP trinket which they can use when finding themselves running towards a Doomfire while feared. Some guilds actually require their members to obtain the trinket before being allowed to join this fight. Priests should keep Fear Wards up on themselves. Mass Dispel can help too (but is rather mana intensive).

When Druids lack other means to break fear and find themselves running towards a fire, they can drop form. This randomly changes their run direction.




Air Burst:

Besides healing through the damage, it's all about using the Tears of the Goddess at the right time. About 30% of the wipes for new raids are caused by players using their Tears not at all or too late. Although they slow fall speed for only two seconds, they must not be used too late. A safe method is to wait until the highest point of the flight path is reached, then wait another three seconds, and then use the tears. This usually results in some falling damage because they expire before touching down, but nobody dies that way. It may be a good idea to do a few practise jumps from a cliff before the pull. Other means to slow falling (like Levitate and Slow Fall) can be used too. These abilities use the Global Cooldown, while the tears do not. Mages can also use Blink or Ice Block when they're near the ground.



Phase 2

At 10% health, the following things happen:

Archimonde gets attacked by Wisps, which kill him automatically after 60 seconds
Tyrande gives the raid a 60 second invulnerability (de-)buff (Protection of Elune)
Archimonde channels Nordrassil, the World Tree (just an animation, no other effect). He also spams Finger of Death to no effect

Since reaching Phase 2 is an automatic victory, the only thing the raid has to accomplish is to bring Archimonde down to 10% within 9 minutes. This means the raid has to deal 10% damage per minute, which is 500,000 damage in 60 seconds, or less than 10,000 DPS. Given 15 damage dealers, this means an average of 670 DPS per damage dealer, which is less than half of what players at this gear level should be able to sustain. Therefore, nobody should take any risk. Running away during the whole fight is perfectly ok (because it means that the people on the other side do their job unimpaired) - just don't die.

[Wamboye]

good luck explaining that to randoms : )

[Hartun]

good luck explaining that to randoms : )

Exactly, i bet they dont even understand english :D

[fjwow]

The "Tsunami" part kind of suggested a guild raid did it not? anyway, we've done all but 1 boss, with pretty much 0 wipes.

[Abwyz]

I don't really understand what's the reason of copying articles from

http://www.wowwiki.com/Kaz%27rogal

and naming them Tsunami tactics.

[Hartun]

I don't really understand what's the reason of copying articles from

http://www.wowwiki.com/Kaz%27rogal

and naming them Tsunami tactics.

*cough

[Wamboye]

The "Tsunami" part kind of suggested a guild raid did it not? anyway, we've done all but 1 boss, with pretty much 0 wipes.

Not bad! It did but in most cases guilds don't have 25 brained people online at the same time who are willing to do a raid, so they have to use a few randoms. Well good job.

By the way I think it's kinda unnecessary to write 20 lines about rage winterchill.
With high end gear the tactics just go:

get swp nob donor warlocks to ae the waves, use trinket for that shit ice spell from the boss and or have swp nob pro resto cow shamans outhealing any shit. avoid ae.

that's all. we did him with 20/25 randoms who didn't even understand english and people were focusing like 10 different targets during the waves. the other bosses are impossible with rnds though.

nice to see that finally someone is doing pve on smolder again. it's been around 1.5-2 years.
good luck and enjoy.