Kara before Heroics?

[Whilson]

So I'm going to post to get everyone's opinion here. I've been lurking a lot and I love reading this section of the forums for strategies on bosses and whatnot.

Anyway, my issue is with my guild and the newly reformed Kara teams.

A new team is forming and our guild is offering to help people with instance runs to get their kara keys.

I'm wondering if we're "setting the bar too low" but just asking for them to have their key to get into Kara? I look at most of these people and they've never run a heroic. They don't have their heroic keys at all!!

I would think this is an issue, not only for getting an idea about 70+ elite mobs, but other strategies like focus fire, aggro/healing mediation and threat management but also gear.

To be fair, some of these people "epic'd out" but its PVP gear. Can their PVP gear compensate for the drops in Kara? Can you get those who think they can tank anything into the "group mentality" quickly? I don't think Kara is the place to teach basic 5-man tactics, but then again that's why I'm posting here.

I definitely welcome any/all opinions people have. If you can make the argument regarding PVP gear > Kara drops, that's fine too. Then I have one less thing to worry about.

Thanks for any/all opinions.

-W

[bubkusjones]

Try it out. Worst thing that can happen is you waste some time, get a repair bill and learn something.


Just make sure everyone knows their roles and review videos of other guilds downing the bosses. Don't shoot too far, though, take it one boss at a time. Remember, you have a full week to do it (provided you start on reset day).

If you are that concerned, bring it up to whomever's in charge. Suggest that you run some 5-mans first.

[Beruen]

It's worth doing. Either it will work or it won't, and if it doesn't, then there's a chance that people might realize that they need to do more than get the key to be ready for Kara. My guild just started Kara a week ago. We have just about no heroic gear, and little PvP gear. Our tanks and healers take their gear seriously, with the least amount of bonus healing among the healers being over 1200, and two having over 1500. The quality of our DPSers varies greatly, with the best DPSers doing twice the damage of the others.

In our first trip into Kara, gear was not our issue. Our issues were:
1) keeping everyone focused on reaching the boss. Our first try on Attumen failed at least in part because one of the spectral horses respawned just about the time we pulled Midnight (too many afks and similar delays). You need to keep everyone focused from the time you start clearing the trash until you kill the boss that controls the trash respawn in question.
2) keeping everyone focused on functioning as a group. One of our near-wipes was because of a rogue who couldn't resist the urge to explore ahead of the group while the group was mana'ing up.
3) knowing the ins and outs of the bosses themselves. This will just come with practice. Reading strategy guides before going into the fight helps, but rereading them after you've actually been in the fight will help quite a bit more. Before the fight, we thought that garrote would be the worst part of the Moroes fight, but after wiping several times, not once because of deaths to garrote, we're now looking at the other things that are causing us problems.
4) knowing the ins and outs of our classes in respect to the fights. After wiping about 6 times on Moroes, we've done a good bit of brainstorming and have come up with things that we can't believe we didn't think of at the time (and a few other ideas that came up here), and almost every one of the tricks involve specific class abilities that we've never needed to use in the specific way we're thinking of (not that it wouldn't have been useful to have tried these in 5-mans, but they weren't as necessary).

As far as PvP gear goes, that depends much on the class/spec/slot. The vindicator neck pieces tend to be very good for any caster that is getting ready for kara, and not bad for melee classes. The weapons tend to be good for just about any non-tanking class, though they can be a big MP5 loss for healers. The feral Vengeful gear is pretty good tanking gear compared to other things you can get in prep for Kara, and decent DPS gear at the same time.

On the other hand, both my warlock and priest are in epic tailored items or best (or near best) quested rewards for all their armor slots, and the actual Vengeful armor would be a step down in healing or spell damage in almost every slot (the priest has one slot where Vengeful would be an upgrade). Filling in a few spots with PvP gear can help a squishy cloth wearer more likely to survive incidental damage, but they're still going to go down if something starts beating on them and isn't dealt with immediately. Having less than 6K health can hurt if Attumen charges you, though properly played, that won't be an issue.

So, for the PvP gear, it is really an evaluation that would need to be made for every slot of every character separately. There's not a single character in our Kara group that wouldn't benefit from a few select upgrades, but also probably not many characters in the same group for which every piece would be an upgrade, and those only among the poorly geared DPSers.

[Geboran]

Basement boss, Attumen, and Moroes should be easily enough done with even a moderately geared group.

Once you get to Curator, gear becomes more important.

Prince and Nightbane are considered "gear check" encounters.

There are some decent PvP items that will supplement your gear for Kara raiding, so I wouldn't discourage working towards pieces to that end. Just be sure that the Healadin is taking the healing PvP items, for example.

Don't confirm raiders to raid in Karahzan if they aren't working on procuring gear from Heroics and/or crafted gear outside of raiding. They NEED to learn how to operate in a 5-person setting in order to learn how to play their class effectively.

[Beruen]

Yes, agreed with Geboran, even if it doesn't sound like it. I expect us with a little practice to be able to deal with the first few bosses (I'll put Maiden on that list, we didn't do too bad on her on our first attemt, just didn't have time to make a second attempt), but when it comes to the bosses of a more normal difficulty, we'll probably be picking the attendies according to how well they've performed on the first few bosses. I just don't see us benching a DPSer that puts out 700-1000 DPS for a 450 DPS one without a very good reason, and no, wanting loot from a boss isn't good enough. Those that have put work into being good are going to see more of the later bosses.

[clevins]

Class dependent, but you can go into Kara in all blues or blues and a couple of greens and do fine. No heroics needed.

BUT

You should not expect to do well if most people have dinged 70, been run through the attunement process and not done any gear upgrades. HOW you do those upgrades is up to you, but in general the gear people will have on dinging 70 is not going to cut it in Kara.

My rogue upgraded everything to blues by grabbing some blue level BoE crafted pieces, doing a few quests and running some normal instances. That took a couple of weeks after hitting 70 and no heroics. At that point I was ready to get into Kara AND to pull my weight in there.

[teck21]

My guild is a small one comprising nothing but rl friends and f-of-f's. We have Kara on farm and are farming it for a while before we seriously head for ZA ( we wiped at Nalorakk on first real try, so I think we should be ZA ready soon).

We will almost certainly never see 25-man content and I'm fine with that. More 10s and maybe a 15 might be nice though.

Anyway we have some new members only just reached 70, or getting there soon. I know they're excited about Kara and heroics. They have no idea what Kara or heroics are like, but they can sense they're somewhat exciting.

Problem is, they are getting plenty of free guild runs through normal instances. Runs from players seriously overgeared for normal instances, and so experienced with heroics that they're generally not much of a challenge anymore either.

This is worrying to me. All they did was level to 70 by grinding and questing, and we all know you don't even need to roll your face across the keyboard to get there, you just slump over it will do.

All of them need to l2p. That day my guild were running Kara leaving the newbies behind, and I missed Kara having logged on late. They wanted to doa run, and I was very happy to help them with a normal SV run.

But NOT on my prot pally who can pretty much pull the whole instance in one go. S0 I took my severely undergeared, badly prot-specced warrior to tank. And I hadn't even used this war for anything other than dailies for 6 months.

For the first time ever, these enwbies got to do a proper run instead of having free blues handed to them for simply being on follow and pretending to do whatever their class is supposed to do.

Disaster on some trash pulls - sheeper not experienced enough to keep sheep sheeped, hunter getting into all sorts of trouble with trap, healer standing right in the middle of fray to heal. Basically everything done wrong because they never had to do it properly.

Coordinationa nd awareness? Non-existent. Multiple wipes on lightning boss - no one watching clouds, or at the very least their own health bar in order to move away quick. Steamrigger - not watching for adds. Kalithresh - don't remember how many attempts before they finally manged to start killing tanks before the chanelling was done.

Absolutely none of these I will take into Kara or heroics. Not that we will wipe, we can comfortably carry a couple through at any one time.

Simply because they will never learn to play their class, and thereby actually enjoy playing their class because they're good at it.

Hasn't come to that yet, but if any of them are invited to Kara at their current level of skill and gear, I will speak out. Especially since we have healer friends with dps alts who have been bringing their healers simply because they're needed when they'd rather bring their dps classes.

To bring a newbie dps who does not know his or her class over their heads is not something I will be strongly against.

PS It's not just their class they need to learn, only from doing proper 5mans will they learn about other classes at all, and that's just as important. I am sure there are many of us who don't play every class, but know a fair bit abuot every class from experience.

Yeah, in my case, I think every new totally fresh 70 should be running plenty of normal instances first.

[Beruen]

Yeah, we've got that problem too, but not in the people that want to run Kara, for the most part. We've been having quite a few discussions in the guild about what to do about lowbies that want to go into instances. We don't have enough people below 60 to run an instance with level appropriate people most of the time, so we either drag them through with an overpowered group, or don't run the instance. Either way, they hit lvl 60 not knowing how to group for the most part. Even then, we never have both a lvl 60ish tank and a lvl 60is healer to help them get through Ramparts or Blood Furnace, so someone in the group winds up being overpowered.

This isn't saying that our kara raiders are all highly competent, knowledgeable players, but they've at least got a handle on most of their class functions. Then again, I'm sure some of these people were as bad as the ones you're talking about when they were freshly dinged 70s. Heck, even our better players, every time we run SL or Shattered Halls, comments on "remember when we used to wipe a lot doing this place?" Heck, our first runs of both of those instances ended in abject failure. Then again, my guild didn't even see all the lvl 60 5-mans before the expansion came out, as most of us had just been playing for a few months at the time, so lvl 70 was the first time we had stopped leveling long enough to get comfortable with the characters. So I wouldn't write off all of them, but yeah, don't take them until they've shown some interest in learning to play.

[Twoflower]

Heck, even our better players, every time we run SL or Shattered Halls, comments on "remember when we used to wipe a lot doing this place?" Heck, our first runs of both of those instances ended in abject failure.

that is because gear was much harder to get when BC was fresh out, and the instances were nerfed to hell and back since then. You cannot compare these instances with the ones back then, not in the slightest. It has the same name, taht s about it.

[dwarfenhelm]

i remeber spending a week every day doing sv till we got in farm and sl took maybe a little longer. we wiped for hours on vorpal and though omg how the hell do we do kara like this. but only a few people on the server had felsteel gear to tank with or any bop epics. last feb we had just hit 70 we had no ah economy to use, very few players had managed to max out trade skills to craft gear. but the biggest problem was the dungeons where just harder then than a heroic is today. and a lot of mobs have been removed as well as pat paths changed.
nowadays a player has no excuse for not wearing good gear, and if they need dragging through all the kara attunment quests without actually working at getting geared up for kara. personaly i would rather not run with players who cant put the effort in to gear up as they are also likley to be players that use your guild to get a certain gear level and then go hey im better than you lot now and rush of tojoin a guild 2 or 3 boss's infront of your progression

[SirBazturd]

Kara and heroics should go hand and hand. You need to start running kara so your guild will understand that kara isn't like when you first stepped into ubrs.

Like a lot of others have said, gear is easier to get...new badge gear, arena weapons available for honor (all your melee dps should have these), and heroics can now be completed with pugs.


Edit. I also forgot that it is now easier to get into heroics to start getting better loot.

[Beruen]

that is because gear was much harder to get when BC was fresh out, and the instances were nerfed to hell and back since then. You cannot compare these instances with the ones back then, not in the slightest. It has the same name, taht s about it.

I thought about both of those factors, but the truth of the matter is, my hunter's gear has barely improved since he hit 70. I've got the worst luck with drops in instances on him (he's not wearing a single instance drop), and he's not my favorite character, so I haven't spent much time gearing him up. For rather silly reasons, he's not a leatherworker, so he hasn't been able to improve his gear that way either. Still, just by knowing how to play him better, his DPS has gone up by better than 20%. I have played him enough that his trapping abilities have improved (a skill that wasn't needed much in pre-expansion instances) since then as well.

As for the instances getting nerfed, we never tried shattered halls pre-nerf. We knew it was hard, so didn't even try it until after the nerfs. And still, we never made it close to the first boss. The first 5-pull past the room where the mobs respawn if you don't get all 5 down was beyond our limited skill set. the tank wasn't holding aggro as well, the DPSers weren't getting out enough damage, etc.

Since most of my guild never saw anything harder than the existing version of Sholo before hitting the Outlands, we hadn't been pushed hard enough to really learn our classes. Now that most of us have been at 70 for several months though, we really do play better than when we were freshly dinged lvl 70s. This is probably true of most freshly dinged 70s that I've seen that aren't alts. If you didn't sit at 60 for a while before the expansion, lvl 70 was the first time you had to start playing better rather than just getting another level to overcome obstacles. Sure, a decent player who's still leveling won't do something stupid most of the time, but even they haven't been pushed to improve their play yet.

Yes, gear upgrades are probably part of the reason that SL is no longer the wipefest it was for us over the summer even after the nerf, but a large part of the reason really is that we've learned to play better, we've got more experience with the instances, etc. We've learned shot rotations, focus macros for CC, etc.

[Echosnare]

Almost tempted to do a "in my day" rant but I'll pass on it.

I do have to say though, I got a lot more satisfaction out of playing my hunter when the blue instance sets were must have and relearning to play the class myself before every tom dick and harry brought out a "how to play at 70 guide*

My fondest memory is of destroying a MM hunter from one of the big guilds (fullt4) on my server in a 5man with i think 3 kara epics - the rest craftables or normal instance drops.

People always say, do heroics before you do kara. I'd say if you're reasonably competant skip heroics until you've got enough kara gear to cheese it. The first few bosses in kara are way easier than several heroics. Ofc if you're playing with people who obviously are inexperienced I'd refuse to help them in heroics till they've itemised better in 5mans.

[Ardani]

Kara and heroics should go hand and hand. You need to start running kara so your guild will understand that kara isn't like when you first stepped into ubrs.

What he said.

I think heroics and Kara should be practiced in tandem. Your players need to learn how to play their class in a 5-man environment and in a raid to truly get a feel for their role, and although it might be a lot to take in at once, I think it's better that they do those things at the same time. Also, Kara's a good way to stock up on badges and therefore get your gear up to par faster, even if drops aren't on your side.

[Justinledwards]

yes the heroics have been nerfed totally, the 2 champions in Slave Pens before the first boss, that you can't CC - almost unhealable without an off-healer when I first started running. Went back the other day after a few months being over SP, and I said I would off-heal (enhance shammy). Tank in blues and a couple of purples and an under-geared (i.e. few kara pieces) pally healer easily able to keep him up...

I would not go so far as to say, that if people have got to 70 and not l2p, that they will never l2p. I think, as dwarfenhelm says, they need to learn the ropes.

[Whilson]

Thanks for all the replies. I'm in the same general consensus regarding why I think people need to do a few heroics.

I appreciate your post - Teck21 because you covered a lot of my concerns regarding these new people.

I'm just a bit player in the raid group and its really not my place to say anything, but if they're not doing heroics it makes me wonder what they're doing in-between raids?

It seems like people show up just for the raids, but they don't do the small things during the time inbetween that could be the difference.

Things like farming for food buffs, elixirs or even getting their gear enchanted is a start. I think a lot of the gameplay has to be learned, but if they're not going to put the effort into doing heroics, then why should I offer to help them learn also?

I'm always down for advice, even if its more in the form of harsh criticism but this is a learning process and its that much sweeter when you down a boss with perfect execution of roles, strategies, etc but I'm just not getting that feeling from the group. Its more like "Oh, free epix!".

Anyways, continue on.

I'll just add 1 more thing (venting) -- going on a month now (Friday's attempt) and we still have yet to down Nightmare/Attumen. Take that for what its worth. :azn:

Its even more fun watching our newly attuned tank (quest greens, a few instance blues -- non-heroic) start attacking Nightmare when we were explaining the fight to him. You can guess what happened next, but I did get a laugh out of it. Too bad that was probably our "best attempt".

-W

[clevins]

Hold it... you can't kill Midnight/Attumen?? The first boss?? There's a reason for his name... if you can't kill him, your group shouldn't even zone in. Oh, a wipe or 2 while figuring out stuff is OK - the tank might need to see him spawn to get what happens, etc... but he's EASY.

You don't NEED to do heroics in between Karas, it somewhat depends on playtimes, etc, etc. But I'd imagine people who aren't geared out would WANT to for the badges.

Also this line "... or even getting their gear enchanted is a start. " is worrisome. Now, I currently don't have my newly 70 shadowpriest stuff enchanted, but that's because she got a lot of it on dinging and I was farming for primals to craft FSW. But as soon as you have a blue that's decent - it should be enchanted and socketed and mine will be. Since gold is tight (need flappy, tons of mats for crafted gear, etc) the gems are green quality not blue (5g vs 75g), but even though the difference is only 2 dmg... I'll put the blues in there as soon as I can. Why? Because I want the toon to be as capable as I can make her. If you have people who don't have gems/enchants and it's not for a reason like mine (farming for mats for great crafted gear)... they shouldn't be there.

[sugarzombie]

heroics are harder than kara.

anyone running heroics should have some kara gear (which, of course, makes running heroics less worthwhile... that's the enigma of heroics)

[teck21]

heroics are harder than kara.

anyone running heroics should have some kara gear (which, of course, makes running heroics less worthwhile... that's the enigma of heroics)

If a tank can start tanking the easier heroics and actually still have a green or two on, there is absolutely no reason why any other class should need any sort of Kara gear to do heroics.

Granted a couple of the more demanding ones really might be hard, if not outright impossible to do without some Kara gear at least, but heroics are as a rule, not harder than Kara.

[moopy]

Are there demanding heroics?

They used to be harder than kara in gear terms, but now they have been nerfed so hard that you can barely distinguish them from normals- barring extra boss abilities.

sugarzombie, I don't know what you're smoking- but you can walk through underbog or slave pens heroic with a tank wearing a bikini and a smile without coming to grief. That said, Karazhan has also been nerfed pretty hard now, but it's still potentially harder on gear than the majority of heroics.

Whilson,

Not downed Attumen? Excuse me? I recall killing him first attempt, first visit to KZ, with a raid in blues- quite a few nerfs ago. I suspect that this is a sign that you need to persuade your other members to do a few more 5-mans and learn a little bit about how to play in a group, and work on basic class skills :) Essentially this boss is a very gentle reality check, to see that your people can at least handle the basics and hit a very low minimum performance level. I suspect that you need to do a load of logging, look around you and work out what the heck is happening here- are the other people in the raid folks who just ground their way to 70 without instancing at all, and are playing their first toons? Do the healers have raid frames? Is everyone running Omen? Do the tanks know how to generate threat?

Send them to five mans, and don't let them come to KZ until they have lv 115 blues (or damn close) in every single slot- ones that fit their role. Make them gem and enchant their gear sensibly. Make them learn to play in groups. You deserve better than this :)

[teck21]

Are there demanding heroics?

They used to be harder than kara in gear terms, but now they have been nerfed so hard that you can barely distinguish them from normals- barring extra boss abilities.

That said, Karazhan has also been nerfed pretty hard now, but it's still potentially harder on gear than the majority of heroics.

BM for example is certainly still very very unforgiving in heroic mode. It is nothing like SP, UB, Mech, Ramps or any of the easier heroics.

Send them to five mans, and don't let them come to KZ until they have lv 115 blues (or damn close) in every single slot- ones that fit their role. Make them gem and enchant their gear sensibly. Make them learn to play in groups. You deserve better than this :)

Exactly. Old timers learnt to play from pugging appropriate instances at the appropriate level with the appropriate level gear. A lot of new players get rushed through this and that and never really learn their class, or the abilities of other classes, and all this can only come the hard way, ie wiping and figuring out what went wrong.

Running a normal 5 man with an overgeared tank and healer, new players learn nothing because they could pretty much be carried through the entire instance doing nothing.

A healer who does not have Scarab of the Infinite Cycle because he or she has run BM 10 times and had bad luck is fine to go Kara, one who does not because he or she has never even seen BM should not be headed to Kara anytime soon.

IMO, no first level 70 chars should be going to Kara, or to be even more of an a-hole, heroics if they're wearing low blues or greens they cannot account for.

[dwarfenhelm]

ive kicked players from raid group if they turn up to kara in greens and substandard blues. basically go run the odd heroic and learn that if you pull agro you get hit for 5-10k and end up dead. if you have players in the guild moaning they want kara and yet cant be arsed to run heroics and gear up with their own efforts arnt worth bothering with in my opinion

[Morollan]

I'll just add 1 more thing (venting) -- going on a month now (Friday's attempt) and we still have yet to down Nightmare/Attumen. Take that for what its worth. :azn:

Oh dear! Attumen is a play on attunement. He's a gear check, pure and simple. A check that your group is failing. There are no fancy strategies, no special stuff to look out for other than a tank grabbing Attumen when he spawns. If you* can't get him down after a month of trying then you need to back out and go run some heroics. A lot of heroics. Get everyone geared up a bit more then come back. If you still can't do it then there is something wrong with the group. My guild killed Attumen on their first night in Kara and I don't think any of our Kara groups, including alt runs, have ever failed to get him down withint 2 attempts.



*By you, I mean your group. Nothing personal!

[Epistemologist]

I just transfered servers and rerolled like 3 weeks ago, and our guild did tons of heroics together and got all the correct gear downed Prince first night in in 4 hours [rerollers of course], I don't suggest going in unprepared, you wont get past moroes probably but I guess if your a sub-par guild you might as well go for it.

Still standards are the foundation of any decent guild and your guild has low standards. No offense, I'd suggest they run atleast a few heroics and see how they handle them.

Yeah if you can't drop Attunmen then just leave theres no point on wasting your time in there, because theres no way in hell you'll get any further.

A great way to know your rdy is if your wiping on the mobs, then your not ready. IF you can go through each mob for each boss without wiping then you can down the boss or with no more than 2 deaths. For instance our group had 4 deaths on the mobs before Curator our first week in and couldnt down Curator until the next week, perfect example [my old guild]. Before that we never had more than 2 deaths on any mobs and that was purely mistakes since none of us had been in the place before.

[Xmcdaniel]

If a tank can start tanking the easier heroics and actually still have a green or two on, there is absolutely no reason why any other class should need any sort of Kara gear to do heroics.

Granted a couple of the more demanding ones really might be hard, if not outright impossible to do without some Kara gear at least, but heroics are as a rule, not harder than Kara.

Why are people still talking about Kara? It's a glorified 10-man heroic now.

[clevins]

Why are people still talking about Kara? It's a glorified 10-man heroic now.

Because there are people new to the game who are just hitting it. Sadly arrogant jerks keep popping up asking silly questions like "why are people still talking about Kara?" and not actually providing anything of value.

[dwarfenhelm]

my old guild is still doing kara and dis enchanting 75% of drops and they are trying to run 3 groups through every week. needles to say i left the guild to actually progress in the game

[Morollan]

My guild still runs Kara several times a week to gear up people for SSC/TK. Just because many guilds have advanced to BT/Hyjal etc there are still many more who have not and to these guilds, Kara is still vital.

[Aresxx]

Yeah, sorry, our guild is slow (a lot of older people with jobs / kids etc), so we are just starting Kara. I am glad people are still talking about Kara. The more info I can get, the better for my guild.

[teck21]

Yeah, sorry, our guild is slow (a lot of older people with jobs / kids etc), so we are just starting Kara. I am glad people are still talking about Kara. The more info I can get, the better for my guild.

Same as with my guild. We are almost exclusively working adults with jobs, social and family lives and commitments etc and are exclusive rl friends, or friends of friends.

WE have almost cleared Kara with Netherspite the only boss not killed, and that's because everyone is scarred by our very first try and no one seems to care very much for Spite. Every other boss is down, and except for Nightbane, generally with very little difficulty. And the animal bosses which no one really cares about anyway.

We have recently started Zul Aman and have cleared the bear and the eagle boss which gives us a lot of satisfaction.

Glorified heroics? I don't care, I still have fun in them.

[Aerath]

WE have almost cleared Kara with Netherspite the only boss not killed, and that's because everyone is scarred by our very first try and no one seems to care very much for Spite. Every other boss is down, and except for Nightbane, generally with very little difficulty. And the animal bosses which no one really cares about anyway.

Go have another go at Netherspite.

Try the following:

2 tanks, they alternate between Red and Green beam. The one who is tanking takes red, the one who isn't takes green. Swap between them each portal phase.

4 non-morons on blue beams. (Don't start, with my guild we take a few alts and old-timers who didn't tag along to TBC raiding and even there's some people who don't grasp the concept of "stand in the blue beam" - I'm sure you can think of one or two in your own guild.)
For ease, 2 ranged and 2 melee dps, but that isn't required really.
DPS 1 stands in blue beam at a bit of range (even if you have it be a melee, Netherspite's got a huge hitbox, so that don't matter much). DPS 2 stands in front of him. Once DPS 1 gets about 17-19 debuffs, he moves out of the blue beam and DPS 2 automatically stands in it now.

Repeat in the next phase with DPS 3 and 4.

It can be done with 3 people, but makes swapping around a bit more complicated.

Whenever he's banished, get the hell away if yer not a tank. He'll still melee and 5k *hits* hurt.

Warlocks, Shadow Priests and Enhancement Shamans are especially useful in the blue beam (Lifedrain / Vampiric Embrace / Shamanistic Rage), but honestly any class can do the trick. Even a moonkin.

[Naolin]

Warlocks, Shadow Priests and Enhancement Shamans are especially useful in the blue beam (Lifedrain / Vampiric Embrace / Shamanistic Rage), but honestly any class can do the trick. Even a moonkin.

for shadow priest, don't use Shadow word death when your taking the beam, our shadow priests all seem to have suicided doing that once or twice :p

[Justinledwards]

Mmm SR in the blue beam - with a decent healer means I can tank the whole phase and do 15k windfuries.

Two strats on banish - run a long way away, or all crowd under and chase his tail. I've tried both and prefer tail-chasing.