Heroic 25 faction champions

[BrontesGM]

Respond with ideas about strats and execution.

One big thing to improve is to get our heroic team in there. Lot of our most-geared and practiced players were missing. Our dps train on the main target was much weaker than it should be.


A few comments to start the discussion:

DPS scaling

If a target is receiving heals, an increase in the dps on that target benefits very strongly. For example, if we are attacking the priest at 60k raid dps, and 60k heals per second are coming in, it takes infinitely long to kill him. Either shutting down the healing or increasing dps results in a HUGE non-linear reduction in the time required to kill. time = (hit points) / (dps - hps).

10% more dps (or 10% fewer heals getting through) would let us make the first kill much much faster, get the second kill going while we still have bloodlust and good cc, etc.

I think overall we need to slim down our "dedicated cc" like prot warriors and dks (still want 2+ dks, though), beef up our caster cc team (which need not take all dps off main target to cc), and slim down our dispel team to two disc priests. Optimally I think it would look a bit like:

2 disc priests (mostly dispell, off healers)
4 main healers
2 grip-specced dks with hc
1 dps dk for jerking next target (not critical)
3+ rogues
3+ warlocks
2+ mages
2+ hunters
3 Shamans

Warriors and paladins (other than healers) seem only marginally useful due to lack of cc or reliable interrupts, though they have the benefit of being able to survive an assist train.

Enemy Ranged

Every 5-10 seconds, several enemy dps (3-4) focusfire a new target. For example, hunter + rogue + warrior might decide to kill gerik, and they will work as a unit to do so. Although most of the burst damage comes from the melee, the kill is probably not possible until the target is already low from ranged. So we should not ignore ranged dps. Certainly the hunters aimed shots are 12k; that combined with anything else is a death.

Melee

Of the melee the warrior and rogue are the two melee that have gap-closing abilities. As a protection warrior, I felt fairly ineffective against these two. I run after spamming hamstring, but eventually they get to our main raid group. I disarm, I stun, dr or trinket, someone dies. I feel that two dks are really the only effective way to deal with these.

I believe that for the dk and shaman, non-feral druids are by far the most effective cc other than a dk (and we won't have spare dks for the purpose). A protection warrior is ok, but mostly we're just hamstringing, and with aoe slows available from our hunters and shamans, hamstring isn't useful. Cyclone + root >>>> short stun. Further, a prot warrior is doing no damage while a balance druid can be nailing the main target while alternating roots and cyclone on the focus target. Adding the occasional warlock fear as they get close will make up for any slips on the roots and cyclone.

Enemy healers

It seems to me that a rogue with mindnumbing is by far the best bet on the paladin, priest, or shaman. Definitely wear a pvp trinket. Warlock is very effective on the druid.

Kill order

There are many possible kill orders and each can work. Sometimes it's best to push ahead with what you know. We were close to killing two healers, so let's kill two healers first. I think it is dangerous to kill melee because they target our melee and boom. So let's kill a ranged third. Very open to discussion on this point, and others!


What I really think about this fight

http://files1.guildlaunch.net/guild/library/36961/ScreenShot_102909_222917.jpeg

[No Bubs]

[troginator]

are you sure?

[Treetrunks]

i have read alot about how the pets are supposed to be the #1 heal target because of there low hp. alot of guilds put one person on the pet (rogue/affliction lock dots) and the healers will sit there and spam the pet until the kill target reaches below the pets hp (200k~). If thats the case, then thats pretty much cc'ing all the healers and opens up burning down dps which in turn would increase our survivability alot, and free up healer cc'ers for burning down the kill targets until the 200k mark. i say we give it a shot and see how it works out.

one of the sources
http://maintankadin.failsafedesign.com/forum/index.php?f=36&t=26419&rb_v=viewtopic

[Palatinus]

Heal hard! Hilarious you've got a screenshot!

[Maraj/Bonemachine]

Well its not much to add, but having personally done it a number of times, I can say that shutting down the pally with rogue + MN poison is extremely easy. Of course it will still get cleanses and other instant casts off, but as long as I'm not cc'ed (and yes I have a trinket), I can stop every single cast that the pally tries, between kick, stun and gouge, with blind thrown in there just in case. So as long as we can spare the dps, I will happily lock down that pally.

[Juicybebe]

I don't have a lot of time to type right now so I'll quickly summarize my thoughts on it.

10 DPS is our magical number that we need to actually be full on dpsing the kill target. (This does not include dps/cc who are only half dpsing) Last night, we were running with about 8 full time dps and getting meh results.

We need to cut off some CC fat and get them dpsing.
DKs are by far the most powerful and effective CC over all the other tank/CC classes and they should be on the mele. We need at least 2, but I think 3 will push us over the top. 2DKs on the rogue to totally take him out of the picture. The rogue is too dangerous and was the one who would kill at least 1-2 players with each shadowstep. We need to 100% take him out of the picture if we want to have a chance to down this. We just can't allow him to wear down our raid like he did yesterday. 2 CC on him will be worth the use of DKs.
The other DK on the Warrior. The Warrior is only dangerous when he Bladestorms, which nobody can do anything about. But when he finishes that Bladestorm, it's important to have a Grip ready to pull him out of our raid group.

I always said that the Mele (in order of deadliest to weakest) are the Rogue, Warrior, DK, Ret Paladin, and Enhance Shaman. The DK, Ret, and Shaman can all be locked down sufficiently by two Boomkins or Resto Druids. I think having Lauren, Jaedon, Ley and even Tree in pvp spec will do well for us. So let's make that change.

The Warlock is not deadly at all except when he hellfires. Just have two players keep a focus on him and be ready to CS/Interrupt when he channels.

Shadow Priest is annoying with dots, fear bombs, and dispells, but we can heal through it and deal with it.

The Hunter is powerful and does contribute to the initial burst on the focus target. I think he can be controlled with a Sheep or Hex/Fear combo.

Paladin should have a Rogue on it with Mind-numbing. Allowing 8-10k HPS is acceptable. Anything above that is not.

Kill order
It's possible that eliminating the Druid first with lust and with our DPS/CC focused off the grip is the way to go. The priest goes down easily even without lust. However, that would cause us to lose an extra dps to stick onto the priest till we got their. Something to think about...

Kill should go Priest, Druid, Warlock, Spriest, Hunter, Paladin, Shaman, DK, Warrior, Rogue. I think we should strive to get the easiest targets out of the picture first. The more that we can get down, the better our odds of success for the overall fight.

Healers
Most strats seem to use 4 dedicated healers on the raid and 2 dedicated Priests on Mass Dispells. The thinking is that well, only 1-2 targets are actually getting assist trained at a time. If the healers focus their heals on those players, a few of them should be able to keep them up.
Now last night, we had a lot of people taking unnecessary damage. (i.e. Warrior Bladestorms into a group and people just stand their until their HP bars are at half, then they try to run out) That adds strain on our healers that they don't need so don't do it.
Having a dedicted healer assigned to raid dispells I feel is a waste. As a ret, I can easily throw out dispells to people as I'm kiting the mele on me, running back to the Skull from a fear bomb, or while I'm dpsing. We had 3 Ret's in the raid last night, let's step up our game.

Raid Composition

Ideally I'd like to see this:
-3DKs all for mele CC
-1-2 Warrior DPS (1 Fury spec for interrupts/DPS and other Arms for backup MS/dps on the focus target)
-1-2 Ret Paladins (Brings our 3% damage buff and Raid Dispells. Both of these players should be Specced for Aura Mastery or Divine Sacrifice. Our Ret's need to change their spec)
-2 Rogues (1 for Paladin CC and 1 for Wound/Kicks on the focus target)
-2 Locks (1 as primary CC on Druid and another as backup)
-2 Mages (Incredible burst damage on the focus, Sheeps, spot Counterspells on the NPC lock)
-2 Boomkins (Both CCing mele NPC's and dpsing focus)
-1 Enhance Shaman and 1 Elemental Shaman (Brings our raid buffs and both will be chain Purging/dpsing the focus) With two, at least if one dies, we still have someone purging the Hots.
-1 Kitty is fine if it's Leinie!
-2 Hunters are fine for slowing traps and good sustained damage on focus.
-2 Disc Priests (Heals/Mass Dispells)
-1 or 2 Druids, 1 Paladin, and 1 or 2 Shamans (Total of 4 Healing)

Overall, I want us to minimize the amount of cloth we bring to this fight. They are just too damn squishy. If we just have a handful, the healers will always know who to watch.

[Raiderjim]

Well, I'm relatively new, but I did do some research on it and a lot of people reference the Tank Spot Method http://www.tankspot.com/forums/f206/55232-coliseum-faction-champions-hard-mode.html. I think we were on the right track, just need to fine tune. More communication when melee targets and proper kiting when they do focus. I notice they make their initial pull with a DK, which might be something to consider as the DK can drop hungering cold right away and then chains on his melee target. From what I've saw last night I think we are very close.

For some reason the link is not working properly, here is the youtube link and in the side box is a link to tank spot. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jiICw5HsSY0

[Leinie!]

[BrontesGM]

I am not convinced cloth is squishy. I am convinced cloth is not specced correctly.

Mages should be in a heavy frost build, no questions asked, and running ice armor, with barrier and mage shield up all the time. Frost nova on the four melee is something we haven't made good use of -- it's as good as hungering cold if we are paying attention and on a 24-second cooldown.

Warlocks really need soul-link and I lean towards voidwalkers, keeping a voidshield up all the time. That costs us some counterspells and purges, but 1 purge every x seconds is not a mass dispell, and warlock cs is on a huge cd (vs rogue, shaman, warrior, etc).

Warlocks and mages prepared like that will be less squishy than any plate, because their shields and cds protect against magic and bleed damage, whereas plate will only take off 15-20% of pure physical hits. Further, each has far far better escapes against being trained. It's all about preparation.

On top of that I believe anyone with less than 19k hp unbuffed should strongly consider wearing the 251 pvp gloves, or some other top pvp piece, socketed with stamina.

I did notice that many people assigned to cc were doing 50% or less of their usual damage, even on the first kill. I do not think this is inevitable. In 10s, Neutrality and Jaedon drop to about 80% of their damage if they are swapping cc on two targets. This is all about macroing and glancing at the screen while your bolt is casting, deciding the next move, doing it without having to run around wildly trying to target something, and then casting again.

[Raiderjim]

Well, having tried to control the melee as both a warrior and a dk I can say that dk is far easier than warrior. I watched that video and it kind of confirmed my suspicions about the most effective way of tanking the melee and that is skirting the edge and death gripping the melee out of the group. Using chains of ice, hungering cold, and death grip is what we bring for cc'ing the melee, but I think it's also important to have those that are targeted to run from the melee until they switch targets. Maybe I'm wrong, but from what I remember most people were dying from either the rogue or the warrior. No matter who is tanking the melee, they cannot be controlled 100% of the time so if you are targeted you need to run. I also like the idea of a 3rd dk pulling the next target within range of our dps, but even without that it appears that avoiding the melee is key to this fight.
Just my two cents for what it's worth.

[auriela7]

I'm sure everyone has read this from several Faction Champion 25(H) strats, but no one has brought it here yet so:

[BrontesGM]

A few have suggested the idea of working on a pet to draw healer attention. We've tried this -- I didn't notice much effect. Maybe it's helpful, but if we're actually managing to lock down the healers (which is our goal), then that's just drawing our dps off the main target.

[Nayeli]

I think for the DPS, especially the ranged clothies, it's particularly about surviving. If you live long enough, you get the damage done. People may have been spoiled a bit by the regular mode or 10s where healers can you heal through anything, even when the CCs were all screwed up and mobs were running everywhere.

We don't have that leisure in heroic 25, and as shown in the screenshot, we had 3 healers and well... they had to heal hard. My method was simply if I see something red and it is moving in my direction, I don't care who it is target, I don't care whose name was called out in vent, I ran... far far away. If they are actually targeting you, run them through a hunter trap and they'll be easily kiteable. I was able to survive almost every attempt last week this way. As a great counter example, in a case where I wasn't paying attention and allowed the DK to get close behind me, I died really quickly even though it was chasing someone else initially.

[snip3190]

on the focus firing comment something i found useful was that fade and i am asuming fade like abilities do work. at least on regular mode that has saved me in the pass if you play a class that it is viable i was able to go most encounters with reciving vry little Focus Fire thanks to fade.