The Curator!!!

[rgirty]

Ok, so after the big bad wolf its on to the curator.

We didn't actually get to him as last night was a short raid night for us. We only wanted to raid for about an hour or 1.5 hours at most so after the opera we cleared some philanthropists for loot then called it a night.

The plan for the curator is.

Two tanks on the curator.

Warlock with 250 AR and 13k hp soaks bolts.

The other 7 spread out with the healers at max range to avoid damage from adds.

All dps on adds until they are down, heroism/curse of doom etc timed for when curator is on evocation.

Would everyone be so kind as to give me some tips and tricks as they have in other threads? I believe we can down the curator too. Everyone helped a tremendous amount in other threads with tips and suggestions, I am hoping for the same here. Thanks again all, for the tips/tricks in other threads.

[Stigg]

What is the rest of yoru raid's make-up, and grats!

[rgirty]

Thanks stigg, it breaks down like this.

Prot warrior
Prot warrior
Holy Priest (me)
Holy Paladin
Resto Druid
10/48/3 Fire Mage
Affliction Lock (bolt soaker)
Arcane spec mage/hunter (probably will be the mage)
Rogue
Shaman (Elemental)

[earindur]

no need for the lock to be a bolt soaker. the off tank should be able to do it.

[rgirty]

Our thoughts were since the lock uses mostly dots and has near as much if not more hp than the offtank why not have the lock do it? AR gear is also much easier for us to obtain for the lock. All the arcanoweave among other things will give him about 250ar. 3-4k bolts won't put a dent in his hp.

Is there anyway to ensure for 100% who will be the bolt soaker?

[liquidicem]

no need for the lock to be a bolt soaker. the off tank should be able to do it.

Agreed. With 2 prot warriors it would be best to keep them both on the curator with the lock helping with flares. (Still have them toss up a curse of doom 55 sec before evo or so. They will love that damage!)

Just make sure the soaker tank gets their HP topped off often so they actually do the soaking.

Our thoughts were since the lock uses mostly dots and has near as much if not more hp than the offtank why not have the lock do it? AR gear is also much easier for us to obtain for the lock. All the arcanoweave among other things will give him about 250ar. 3-4k bolts won't put a dent in his hp.

Is there anyway to ensure for 100% who will be the bolt soaker?

If you really want the lock to soak then you can, but then put the other warrior in DPS gear on flares.

The flares are a little goofy. They hit the person on the threat list who has the highest HP and is not #1 on threat. So as long as the healers (and the lock him/her self) keep the locks HP full it shouldn't be a problem.

If you do decide to have both tanks on Curator, have you fire mages just spam scorch on the flares and the lock spam searing pain. These short cast time spell are interrupted less and have less wasted cast time if the flares are dropping quickly.

[Stigg]

My post on this will get buried with peole that are a bit more quailified, but eh...

First off, you have very very little mana regen for this fight, and you will be running through mana very quickly. Make sure everybody and their mother has a load of mana pots. Have your shaman drop his mana totem at all times.

Have the lock put a CoD on him at about 55 seconds until the Evo. Have your mages keep their scorch stacked to 5 at all times. It will conserve a lot of mana. When there is about 5 seconds until evo have your mages pop everything and pyroblast.

We have tried two methods on him. I liked this one:

Tank him against a wall about half way down the hall. Have all ranged DPS stand off to the left side. have one tank tank him and have the other attempt to hold aggro on all the spawns. DPS down the adds, except for the last one before the spawn. Have the tank and melee dps take them out.

Then unleash hell.

[Twoflower]

Notes on Hateful Bolt

The 'Hateful Bolt' mechanic is similar to the Patchwerk Hateful Strike mechanic. It will hit the person who is second to the main tank on aggro, with the most health. It will never hit the main tank as long as he has aggro on the boss. This is best explained by example, below is an example of a possible "Hateful Bolt" scenario:

Hateful Bolt 1
Player - Threat - Current Health - Hateful Bolt Hits Player?
Main Tank - 10,000 - 15,000 - No
Soaker - 6,000 - 12,000 - Yes
AWarlock - 7,000 - 10,000 - No
ARogue - 6,800 - 9,500 - No

Why does Hateful Bolt hit the Soaker in the above example?
The Soaker's Hit points are higher than anyone else's currently, and he has more threat than anyone else with the same amount of health, except the main tank, which is irrelevant, he will never be hit by the Hateful Bolt so long as he has aggro.

Let's continue the example, and assume that "The Soaker" doesn't get a heal to bring him back up to full or near full health, and let's assume that the Hateful Bolt hit for 4,000 damage even, and let's also assume that no damage was taken by any of the other players and that the threat is fixed at the same values.

Hateful Bolt 2
Player - Threat - Current Health - Hateful Bolt Hits Player?
Main Tank - 10,000 - 15,000 - No
Soaker - 6,000 - 8,000 - No
AWarlock - 7,000 - 10,000 - Yes
ARogue - 6,800 - 9,500 - No

Notice now, that the next highest on both health and aggro is "AWarlock", and they will receive the next Hateful Bolt, instead of the soaker.

For this reason, it is recommended to have your off tank/soaker's health topped off or very near topped off after each Hateful Bolt. A feral druid or DPS warrior is a good choice for the "soaker" or "off-tank" duty, as they tend to have a lot of health. It helps if the soaker has arcane resistance gear to mitigate some of the damage; however, it is not absolutely required. This can be done by any class which has a large amount of hit points, and can withstand repeated hits, examples would include (but are not limited to) a rogue, warlock, warrior or druid.

flares :

The flares will pick a random target as they spawn, and go directly towards it. once it reaches the target, it gets normal agro mechanics, so it is possible to pull them off the healers quickly once they reached the healers.

positioning :

http://www.bosskillers.com/pix/bbguild/feature/curator-positioning.png

soooo, after the technical mumbo jumbo, some notes :)

you will find this fight harder than what you encountered before in karazhan, specialy for mana classes. I was always oom when we first learned the fight.

We dont use a soaker at all, just heal trough the arcane blast on whoever it hits.

there are 2 tactics to deal whit the evocation phase :

1 : you kill off the last add even during the evocation phase and go to damage him only of all adds are dead.

2 : you ignore all adds during the evocation phase and kill them afterwards.

tactic 1 works whit a more healing orientated group setup. you will probably have 3 evocation phases. Tactis 2 works whit a raid who has alot of damage but less heal. you will probably have only 2 evocation phases.

the important thing about this encounter is that EVERYONE kills the flares AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. specialy whit tactic 1 where you kill the flare even during the evocation, the focusing must be realy realy quick. The flares should NEVER last more than 5-8 seconds.

edit : the hatefull bolt mechanics part was copied from a site which i cannot link to.

pps : why would you have 2 prot tanks on the curator and a warlock taking the hatefull bolts ? That s 3 tanks where only 2 are needed. if you realy bring a second tank, he should take the bolts and the warlock should do flares.

[blessedfool]

You're probably better off only using 1 tank on Curator. The second tank wont do anything, other than soak hateful bolts. And to be honest, those can be pretty much ignored as long as your healers can keep your raid group topped off with 5k health minimum.

The only challenge in the Curator fight is downing each add before the next one spawns. If you can succesfully do this, you aren't going to have a problem. Have your 2nd tank throw on his DPS gear for this one.

It will make a world of a difference.

[Aerath]

Skip arcane resistance and silly things like that.

You want as much DPS as possible and resistance will be cutting into your DPS output.

I'd really not take a second prot warrior either if I could help it, a Feral Druid or a MS or Fury warrior make better choices as off-tank. A prot warrior deals next to no damage normally.

It's a fairly straight forward fight. Kill all adds before the next one spawns, if there's no add around, nuke boss.

Keep the paladin on your tank (he should easily be able to keep him standing) and the other two healers on the raid (including the paladin). The curator doesn't deal all that much damage until he enrages, but at that point there won't be any adds around anyway so the other two healers are free to join in on the tank.

[bloodyjudas]

We only ever use one tank focused on the curator. If we have a 2nd tank in the group he'll go on the flares.

As a mage, i never use my arcane res set here - its way too much damage lost for little benefit. We usually all pop an arcane res pot though, and wait for the 2 min CD for mana pots.

Only tip not mentioned already is melee dps chasing the flares. It can get awkward if melee dps gets too close to the cloth healers, and catch them with the chain lightning. But even thats ok to heal through if you have a pally.

It is a long fight, so i always take a mana pot early, and use another when its off CD. Also, i macro the flares with a "target then scorch" macro, helps speed things up.

[Leonavice]

Get 1 of the tanks to be dps since you don't need 2 prot tanks. Priority is the flares, no exceptions.

As for the hateful bolt lock, I can say that it certainly works cos I myself am playing that role as sponge. Basically if you want to stay behind the tank in aggro, simply use searing pain on the flares, put dots on curator, Curse of doom when curator hits 40k mana. Go after the flares ASAP.

[Jlor]

Well with that party make up.

Two tanks on boss, 2nd MT being the hateful bolt soaker, and staying at seond on agro. He could wear his DPS gear while doing this (depends on his HP)

Ranged dps at max range, spread out (use Deadly boss mods for this), nuke all flares that spawn (should die in 5 seconds if all dps does dmg to them.)

Rogue will be the evaison tanking the adds, well nuking them down and getting toped up with HoTs all going well.

Evocation phase, nuke add then nuke boss, will take three evocations.

Mage if adds die in 5 seconds, tab targets and place a scorch up on boss.

Do not use resistence gear, gimps both HP and dps way too much.

Reward = T4 gloves.

[earindur]

rgirty

considering your progress thus far, curator will be a walk in the park after the first few wipes.

mana pot early and its easy.

[moopy]

It's worth noting that with the raid arranged in a "U" or horseshoe shape, ranged/healers can be quite far forwards. Deadly boss mods gives you a distance frame which some folks find useful to know if they're spread far enough from others.

Essentially, the fight hinges on the DPS having the discipline to focus on the flares while they're up, and not be tempted to sneak some shots in on the curator. If people kill the flares slower than they spawn, the raid starts taking loads of damage and the healers OOM. If people nuke them down in a timely fashion, it's calm water all the way. The only exception is having your locks drop a curse of doom on the curator just under a minute before the evocation, so it will detonate for silly numbers, which helps the fight go a lot faster.

Personally, I hate melee DPS in this fight (though not as much as on Gruul!). If they chase flares down on top of healers, they do more harm than good- they need to be briefed to leave flares alone if they slip away, and let people kill them with ranged. While you're learning the fight, the fewer melee dps you have, the better. Once the fight is second nature, all the rogues, enhancement shammies and other strange creatures can be swinging away.. At least an enhancement shammy or feral druid can put healing gear on and help out- though you still want a lot of dps to nuke the curator with. It's perfectly doable with a couple of melee dps in the raid, just makes it a bit more tedious while you're learning :)

[bloodyjudas]

Personally, I hate melee DPS in this fight (though not as much as on Gruul!). If they chase flares down on top of healers, they do more harm than good- they need to be briefed to leave flares alone if they slip away, and let people kill them with ranged.

/agree

What i was trying to say, but much better. Its happened a few times to us were the fury warrior and rogue have run around after flares, and got a healer killed. With mages / locks around its not needed.

Thinking about it, Curator has to be one of the easier fights in Kara - once a guild downs him the first time and everyone knows the tactics for future. There's no scope for nasty surprises or bad luck scenarios like on some of the other bosses.

Worst case is healer OOM and the tank goes down. At least its one of the few places were DI and SS can be used when learning it.

[rgirty]

Our raid group took friday/saturday night off as we are a family oriented guild and the majority of our raiders enjoy their weekends with the family. We got back to it last night and started with the curator.

The curator first attempt: 24%

The curator second attempt: down

Group makeup:

Prot Warrior (MT)
Prot Warrior (OT, had dps gear on)
Fire mage 10/48/3 (#1 on the meter 99% of our raids and 5 mans)
3 minute mage
Lock (affliction)
Hunter
Shaman (elemental)
Paladin (holy)
Druid (retro)
Priest (holy, myself)

How we did it.

All DPS on adds if there are any, until they are down then dps switches to the curator.

Both tanks on the curator.

I healed both tanks, the druid would stack a hot with me on occasion when possible. We used the paladin for what he does best and that was to FoL the other people in the raid. I also stacked downranked renews on our MA for adds.

We used a MA for the adds, meaning we targeted a dps player to assist so that we could focus fire all adds and we could focus heals on him. That seemed to work well.

He went down after the third evocate, our mage was hitting him for 12k+ with fireballs. That seemed to be a lot, but I'm not sure as we had never fought him before.

I must say, very little trash before you get to him short run back to him and he didn't really seem all that hard.

He was easier than anyone but attumen for our raid so far. Tier 4 priest/druid/warrior gloves dropped. They went to the resto shaman, he had only +800 heal when this raid week started so he needs the most help. I am yet to see a single piece of raid gear from kara and am well into revered rep. The rest of the raid has seen some great pieces when the playing field is more leveled in regards to gear things will start to filter out more evenly.

I'm pleased by the willingness of people in our guild to pass on items that even though they would be an upgrade for them, they allow others who would see a bigger upgrade to acquire the item.

I'm off to make a new thread called "Curator down, what now?!"


EDIT: for you priests out there, pom is great for this battle. It will jump 5 times for a total of 7-10k healing on the instant cast spell.

[moopy]

Congrats rg. Next the shade of Aran and Illhoof then?

BTW, what's a "retro druid"? I am thinking flares, gold medallion and aviator sunglasses.. :)

[rgirty]

retro, because of the gear he started with thats how i think of him.

He has the shard now, tier 4 gloves and leather pants from the opera event so he's doing quite a bit better. Still +500 heal behind me and I don't have any raid gear yet.

Our paladin and druid both still need a lot of gear. I routinely outheal them and outlast them in battles. From what I understand of the priest class vs druids/paladins that shouldn't be the case. Even with the druid using innervate on himself he went oom just as the fight was ending and I had 3k mana to spare. I hope the t4 gloves help him.

By the way, is the shade the next target after the chess event? Since he's untankable but his adds are tankable I think we can take him down. Its just a straight up single target dps/healing fight from what I have read so far.

[DraedynLei]

Grats on curator btw. Your raid is just chewing through it :)

[rgirty]

Thanks DraedynLei, coordination seems good we have several dps that switch in and out on different nights but I like to humor myself and think its because of some good healin' LOL

Grid+clique that frank the tank turned me on to has helped me tremendously.

Edit: yes deadly boss mods helps tons with people being too close, very good.

[Leonavice]

Glad to see your raid has that much discipline to take down Curator. Thumbs up!

BTW, Curse of doom with Ruin can hit curator in evocation for over 25k of damage.

Oh and have fun with Shade of Aran. You might have to tweak your current group for it though.

[earindur]

i dont think CoD can crit.

[Leonavice]

It can't? Then I must have used Amplify curse on it rather than ruin taking effect.

[Limpet]

Oh nice little tip for any SP out there... when the Curator is on his Evoc.. pop ya shadowfiend out and enjoy the +200% mana return YAY! Insta mana (i think its about that... well its high ;)).

[rgirty]

I'm holy I did that as well on evoc

[Shellar]

i dont think CoD can crit.
It can. And when it does, the warlock in question had better have his or her Soulshatter cooldownless. :wink:

[moopy]

It can. And when it does, the warlock in question had better have his or her Soulshatter cooldownless. :wink:

Luckily this isn't quite so much of a problem in the curator fight, warlocks have slightly too much fun to be quite healthy. Their glee is only matched by that of mages when fighting the demon boss in heroic ramparts- when they're told that they're tanking, and they're to open the fight.. with a pyroblast :)

[Telmar]

We got our first 1 evocation kill this week :) Had everyone group up on him and nuke the flares as soon as they spawn. HE was at ~75% by the time he did evocation, and then was at 10% after it, so enraged and we kill him. Easy pie :P