Heroic Arcatraz - OUCH

[swaldman]

The subject probably summarises this... tried this for the first time today, and gave up after 15g of repairs on trash... now a lot of it was stupid mistakes, but then we reached the Eredar Deathbringers - which do 750dps shadow damage to the whole group by an aura.

Any way to deal with these apart from shadow res gear? Is the damage LoS only? (didn't get a chance to try this)
As a paladin I don't have the luxury of group heals...

Same with the first boss really. I can just about conceive that it *might* be possible without high shadow res if nobody makes any mistake and nobody is unlucky with seed of corruption & shadow nova at the same time....... but is this a realistic prospect?

[Zalath]

Skip the first boss.


I guess shadow protection/aura can help a little, but special gear? Nah, just kill him. If you're having problems on them you likely need to gear up in general.

[WatcherZero]

First boss is hard, not tried him since the heroic nerfs but we always skipped him. SD aura mobs you have to nuke them down fast, might have a range on it too, something like 20/30 yards, cant remember

[Twoflower]

Same with the first boss really. I can just about conceive that it *might* be possible without high shadow res if nobody makes any mistake

is that so unrealistic ? then maybee this is the wrong place for you...

anyway, we never used shadow resist gear on the mobs you named, even before the heroic nerf patch. burn them down fast and heal the group while doing so. and no, it is not a LoS issue and the range is too big. you can not cheat around it :)

[swaldman]

is that so unrealistic ? then maybee this is the wrong place for you... (this is re first boss)

Possibly. But I can't think of a single fight anywhere up to and including all of Kara that would be so unforgiving of one non-tank making a single positioning mistake - being out of LoS of every shadow nova and being away from the group for Seed of Corruption. And there would still be a significant element of luck in not getting both at once.


anyway, we never used shadow resist gear on the mobs you named, even before the heroic nerf patch. burn them down fast and heal the group while doing so. and no, it is not a LoS issue and the range is too big. you can not cheat around it :)

Hmm. Has anybody here done this with a paladin as main healer? Without group heals or HoTs this is gonna be tricky...... maybe it's just me :-(

Re "gearing up in general"... I'm in about 1/3 kara epics, and the rest good blues... I'd have thought that the idea of heroics was that non-raiders could do something hard... but I guess there is an argument that one should have all the other heroic rewards one can get before going into arc. *shrug*

[moopy]

Same with the first boss really. I can just about conceive that it *might* be possible without high shadow res if nobody makes any mistake and nobody is unlucky with seed of corruption & shadow nova at the same time....... but is this a realistic prospect?

Well, similar to the first boss in heroic mana tombs, really. Conventional wisdom says the tank should have 200+ shadow resist. Last time we killed him, the tank had no shadow resist at all. The boss hits for 3-3.5k shadow damage in melee (odd, huh?). I just relied on the tank having lots of HP, and kept the heals coming, and it was all good.

Same with the first boss in Arcatraz. Keep the tank topped off. If he gets a damage spike, it shouldn't be enough to kill him, giving you time to stabilise him by cranking the healing up a notch. Because the tank has a lot of HP, you can spare some healing time for the rest of the party. Because you don't have a multi-target heal as a pally, I guess you need to spam fast heals like a crazy. Make sure everyone has a healthstone/healing pot etc before the fight, and tell them not to be shy about bandaging, to make your life easier.

Personally, I prefer not to do heroics with a tank on less than 12k HP (for a warrior) and more for a druid, or it all becomes a little luck-based. My regular heroic tanks have about 15.5k buffed (warriors, all of them), and that makes stuff like this a walk in the park- as they don't need constant attention on all but the nastiest bosses.


Possibly. But I can't think of a single fight anywhere up to and including all of Kara that would be so unforgiving of one non-tank making a single positioning mistake - being out of LoS of every shadow nova and being away from the group for Seed of Corruption. And there would still be a significant element of luck in not getting both at once.


I can, the Prince. Once someone is enfeebled, one touch from the Prince's shadow-nova-thingy or the infernals' AoE will kill them. Heck, someone moving during Aran's flame wreath will also wipe half the raid in one go, also.

[swaldman]

I can, the Prince. Once someone is enfeebled, one touch from the Prince's shadow-nova-thingy or the infernals' AoE will kill them. Heck, someone moving during Aran's flame wreath will also wipe half the raid in one go, also.

True, to both. Hmm. Well I guess next time I go back there I wait until I have a tank with shadow resist... and perhaps better gear myself as well. Ain't never gonna be easy with only direct heals, but I guess heroics aren't supposed to be ;-)

[Twoflower]

well, there are easy heroics. but arcatraz is the hardest 5 man instance anyway, so the heroic version is supposed to be a real challenge.

pre nerf it was much worse, even. We only got trough it pre nerf whit our best people, all in karazhan and gruul epics.

[moopy]

True, to both. Hmm. Well I guess next time I go back there I wait until I have a tank with shadow resist... and perhaps better gear myself as well. Ain't never gonna be easy with only direct heals, but I guess heroics aren't supposed to be ;-)

You said it, not supposed to be a CAEKwalk :) They are supposed to bite back a little bit, that's why they're fun. It does extend the longevity of the 5 man instances which would otherwise be of no interest to raiders, I guess. I know that the easier heroics get boring, so it's nice to have a few harder ones to spice things up a bit.

You can always have some fun in some of the "middling" heroics meantime, like Botanica and Blood Furnace, and come back to Arcatraz when you're feeling more.. well, heroic. I am sure it won't be long :)

[Zalath]

Re "gearing up in general"... I'm in about 1/3 kara epics, and the rest good blues... I'd have thought that the idea of heroics was that non-raiders could do something hard... but I guess there is an argument that one should have all the other heroic rewards one can get before going into arc. *shrug*

Gear up through heroics then. There's a lot of heroic epics/badge rewards/rep rewards that complement the ones you get from easly raiding (read Karazhan), and they're much easier to get!

Sure, heroics can be considered light raiding, but raiding without getting good pre-raid gear in the first place will drain on the group, so I suggest your guild takes a few walks through the easier heroics for some badge rewards at least :)

[swaldman]

You said it, not supposed to be a CAEKwalk :) They are supposed to bite back a little bit, that's why they're fun. It does extend the longevity of the 5 man instances which would otherwise be of no interest to raiders, I guess. I know that the easier heroics get boring, so it's nice to have a few harder ones to spice things up a bit.

Very true. I guess I'll go back to running Slave Pens and Mech a few times until we can do those without wipes :-)
(and until we can do the Mech corridor encounter without "cheating" by running down the lift after each wave...)

Amusingly, we found out after the heroic arc attempt that our tank there had actually never done arc on normal (at least beyond the key fragment). This probably didn't help ;-)

[Twoflower]

Very true. I guess I'll go back to running Slave Pens and Mech a few times until we can do those without wipes :-)
(and until we can do the Mech corridor encounter without "cheating" by running down the lift after each wave...)

this shows that you are not ready yet :)

you realy should be able to finish meachanar whit no wipes whitin a hour. and no cheating on the waves either :)

[moopy]

You're braver than me, I always try and find out who in the group has done the instance on heroic if I don't know it well myself :)

[dwarfenhelm]

that corridor on mech is a pain best tactic ive found so far is to fear the mob as soon as its in range mark them up and freeze sheep and tank. bot is by far the easiest heroic to run and with 5 badges a run you soon build up a nice stock of them to get your gear

[swaldman]

that corridor on mech is a pain best tactic ive found so far is to fear the mob as soon as its in range mark them up and freeze sheep and tank. bot is by far the easiest heroic to run and with 5 badges a run you soon build up a nice stock of them to get your gear

Meh, Mech is easy too if you cheat on that corridor, and it's 5 badges with only two challenging bosses :-) I haven't tried heroic botanica yet though.

[swaldman]

You're braver than me, I always try and find out who in the group has done the instance on heroic if I don't know it well myself :)

It was a mostly-guild group, and we knew that none of us had tried it on heroic before. It was an exploratory mission :-)

We didn't realise until after that the tank had never even finished it on normal mode...:shocked:

[moopy]

Ah, you were on a mission to boldly split infinitives that no man had split before? Fairy nuff :)

Even so, with guildies, if it's people I don't play with regularly, I still have to ask sometimes. My memory is just awesome, you see...

[DrOsmius]

Same with the first boss in Arcatraz. Keep the tank topped off. If he gets a damage spike, it shouldn't be enough to kill him, giving you time to stabilise him by cranking the healing up a notch. Because the tank has a lot of HP, you can spare some healing time for the rest of the party. Because you don't have a multi-target heal as a pally, I guess you need to spam fast heals like a crazy. Make sure everyone has a healthstone/healing pot etc before the fight, and tell them not to be shy about bandaging, to make your life easier.


Not once on this boss have I ever had everyone bunched up enough for my priestly group-heal to hit more than two persons (prayer on melees or binding heal on me + one other). So it really isn't a matter of not having a group heal...though hots are nice. Tell the dps that they better plan on using a health potion and a bandage.

[moopy]

Not once on this boss have I ever had everyone bunched up enough for my priestly group-heal to hit more than two persons (prayer on melees or binding heal on me + one other). So it really isn't a matter of not having a group heal...though hots are nice. Tell the dps that they better plan on using a health potion and a bandage.

Hmm, with the radius on PoH boosted with ze talent, it should hit most of the time. You can get a mod to show you PoH range on the minimap- give it a try, it's pretty handy. I have been in groups where the priest has been spamming PoH to great effect here. I've also managed to hit all three DPS with chain heal as a shammy, which is even more limited (in that the secondary and tertiary targets need to be close to each other).

Sure, it won't work 100% of the time, but downranked PoH when you can spare the casting time can be a wonderful thing. You're right though, people should help the healer out whenever they can.

Oh, and having too much melee DPS is a massive disadvantage in most heroics and raids too- sad to say. They currently take way too much damage (even if they're awake) to be as useful as they were pre-tbc. Enhancement shammies, feral druids and retri pallies can be asked to offheal on particularly dangerous bosses- though of course in the case of the enhancement shammy and the feral druid, you're losing a chunk of useful DPS. Rogues and DPS warriors are kinda stuck- if they don't do DPS, they don't have a lot to do. Thus I cringe at you saying "melees"- I don't like taking more than one melee DPS into a heroic, just for the sake of their repair bill. When push comes to shove, the tank gets priority, and if I am busy healing her, it will mean that I let melee dps die- and that makes me sad, I hate letting people buy the farm.

[Mirinda]

It was a mostly-guild group, and we knew that none of us had tried it on heroic before. It was an exploratory mission :-)

We didn't realise until after that the tank had never even finished it on normal mode...:shocked:

How do you get heroic if you've never done normal?

[bwirum]

He's done the other ones?

[moopy]

How do you get heroic if you've never done normal?

You get Sha'tar rep in Botanica, Arcatraz and Mechanar. You need revered with Sha'tar to get the key which allows heroic mode in all three. He'd probably spent all his time in one or both of the others to get the rep.