Al'ar

[Clavina]

Right this guy is driving me nuts.. Well actually he isn't, stupid people burning to death in flame patches is driving me nuts.

We can down vashj reliably now and yet spend a whole night wiping on this guy. We have the tactics sorted, tanking is fine, ad's are picked up fine. The thing that gets us every single time is people dying to flame patches.

The biggest excuse is that they can't see the fire (how they miss the GIANT BLUE WRITING in the middle of the screen is beyond me). So my question is this.. how do you get people to move out of the fire reliably?

[rottentomato]

just make sure that people are spread out...most players can only survive three ticks of the patch, and having more than one person in the patch is costly. also hunters pets should NOT be anywhere near him during phase two. just making sure to keep mobile is a good strategy.


also you should be using this for a group

5 Tanks. You need 4 minimum. 5 tanks are recommended. They can be any class: druid, warrior, and paladins are all fine. However, I recommend that paladin tanks don't tank Al'ar for Phase One. Feral Charge and Intercept are needed after a Fire Quill (4 tanks is all you need for Phase 1, by the way. 5 tanks is pretty much necessary for Phase 2, however, though I'm sure some guilds will disagree).

8 Healers. 7-8 healers is good (Phase one is really easy to heal - five healers could probably do it. It's Phase Two that you really need to pump out a ton of healing in).

12 DPS. Four melee DPS, eight ranged DPS, ideally





another note is that this isnt really a gear check more than its a check of communication...wherever its breaking down, you should sort those people out of the bunch and fix it.

[Twoflower]

it aint a gear check, it is a concentration test. if people keep dieing in the flames, kick them out of the raid, simple as that. maybe they will concentrate next week, or otherwise too bad for them. If they cannot see the fire, turn up the graphic details and the spell detail levels. Install a boss mod. This excuse is just not tolerable.

my guild leader is rather harsch, i must admitt, but it keeps the raid on its toes. you do stupid stuff a few ID's in a row, you may even get a gkick. There is just no room for slackers.

[Clavina]

just make sure that people are spread out...most players can only survive three ticks of the patch, and having more than one person in the patch is costly. also hunters pets should NOT be anywhere near him during phase two. just making sure to keep mobile is a good strategy.


also you should be using this for a group

5 Tanks. You need 4 minimum. 5 tanks are recommended. They can be any class: druid, warrior, and paladins are all fine. However, I recommend that paladin tanks don't tank Al'ar for Phase One. Feral Charge and Intercept are needed after a Fire Quill (4 tanks is all you need for Phase 1, by the way. 5 tanks is pretty much necessary for Phase 2, however, though I'm sure some guilds will disagree).

8 Healers. 7-8 healers is good (Phase one is really easy to heal - five healers could probably do it. It's Phase Two that you really need to pump out a ton of healing in).

12 DPS. Four melee DPS, eight ranged DPS, ideally

another note is that this isnt really a gear check more than its a check of communication...wherever its breaking down, you should sort those people out of the bunch and fix it.

This is exactly what we are doing or trying to anyway. P1 is fine, all us tanks know what we are doing. Noone is dying to the quill, he is occasionally getting off 1 flame buffet after a quill but this is no biggy imo. The ads are picked up and tanked with no issues and we are saving 4-5 ads for P2.

Once P2 arrives he is picked up fine, the ads are picked up fine. He is taunted when melt armour is applied. But things just go wrong, someone dies with pretty much every flame patch, its unbelievable and would make baby Jesus cry. :undecided:

[rottentomato]

if its the same people that keep going down... then /raidkick and replace. find someone more competent for running away from a HUGE flame than a couple moths

[Navhead]

There's a lot of random aoe like that coming up in later fights, if they can't handle it on Al'ar they won't be able to handle it later. Just don't be a carebear if it's the same people doing it over and over.

[Aerath]

Install a penalty.

Every time you die due to a flame patch, you pay the guild bank.
10g first time, 25g second time, 50g third time.

You don't pay up, you get kicked out of the raid and replaced.

I can promise you people suddenly start to pay attention when it's costing them 85g a night.

Note that it's 'cheap'-ish the first time. Accidents can happen - Al'ar can charge someone or they get hit by the whirlwind and they get one-shotted when a flame patch spawned beneath 'em. Maybe they're dodging a flame patch to get bumped into it by an exploding add they overlooked...

None of those are excuses, but excreta occurs, as the saying goes.

//edit: On a sidenote, I can't think of a single good reason to save adds.
Your melee is going to be useless in the first phase anyway - have 'em kill the adds and it'll be a lot easier on your tanks and your healers.
There's plenty of DPS to go round in the second phase without saving adds.

[WatcherZero]

For a lot of people, if their less than max health two ticks might well kill them and you will almost always get two ticks getting out. So instant reactions are required.

[Clavina]

Well maybe I spoke too soon, he went down tonight :)

[Twoflower]

nice, gratulations :D

[Clavina]

nice, gratulations :D

Thanks twoflower! Just Kael left now... we really want to get into Hyjal & BT before 2.4

[YamahaGuy]

Gratz Clavina!

[Xmcdaniel]

I have a few questions on Al'ar. We are currently 5/6 SSC and 2/4 TK and we're having some issue with him.

The issue mainly come up in the 2nd phase, naturally.

The first issue is picking up the adds. We have a protadin tanking the adds in the little corner by the door, and all ranged DPS assisting off the protadin. Where we're running into issues is when Al'ar divebombs into an area far away from this spot. We have a druid tank picking them up and bringing them over to the protadin. Is this the correct method, or should we have a hunter misdirect rotation for these? It always seems like it takes FOREVER to get control of the adds with aggro to the protadin in time to get them down quickly.

My second issue is with tanks. I'm ranged DPS so I'm having a hard time reconciling their issues. It seems like we're always having to soul stone and battle rez multiple tanks during the fight because they got spike damage from A'lar with melt armor. The other problem that we're having is with the tanks picking up A'lar quickly after he dive bombs. I'm hoping someone can impart some wisdom here. It seems like the tanks are slow to taunt A'lar off the melt armor tank, or maybe that they don't have a sufficient taunt rotations.

BTW, we got him down to 550hp the other night and wiped! How frustrating, I'm going to pull my hair out!

[rgirty]

We used a MD rotation for the adds and we used two feral druids to tank them. One on each add, when the adds got low health melee ran out to avoid the blast.

We used 3 tanks on alar and called out melt armor rotation over vent.

We also used 8 healers.

5 tanks, 8 healers 2 shadow priest and 10 other dps classes worked for us. I must admit tho, he was enraged when we downed him.

[Baboon]

I usually focus on the floor while pressing SS and SnD in a not so efficient matter after being yelled at a lot. It seems that staying alive is a lot more important then dps here ;)

[Xmcdaniel]

I usually focus on the floor while pressing SS and SnD in a not so efficient matter after being yelled at a lot. It seems that staying alive is a lot more important then dps here ;)

LOL yes we have our share of people that don't seem to understand the concepts of "jump down during flame quill" and "don't stand in the flame patch", resulting in wasted SS's and battle rez's.

The more I think about it, the more I'm convinced that this is a tank communication problem. Not quick enough with the taunts, etc. He melts armor on his main target every 60 secs so one of the 3 should have their damn taunt up I would guess.

I read a strat that suggested we save a bunch of adds that have been brought to low health during Phase 1 and AOE them after the transition to Phase 2, giving the offtank responsible for them an SS because he would most certainly die from this. At the same time, if you AOE 5 or 6 adds and kill them simultaneously during Phase 2 that's instant 15 to 18% health off of Al'ar.

I've also read that indeed our druid should be the one tanking the adds during phase 2, with the pally healing a lifetapping warlock at first, and a second offtank taunting them off the pally and bringing them to the druid offtank. We may put this into practice but it sounds a bit complicated. As usual, hunters are fairly unreliable haha so I'm hesitant to suggest an MD rotation to get the adds to the offtank.

[moopy]

My second issue is with tanks. I'm ranged DPS so I'm having a hard time reconciling their issues. It seems like we're always having to soul stone and battle rez multiple tanks during the fight because they got spike damage from A'lar with melt armor. The other problem that we're having is with the tanks picking up A'lar quickly after he dive bombs. I'm hoping someone can impart some wisdom here. It seems like the tanks are slow to taunt A'lar off the melt armor tank, or maybe that they don't have a sufficient taunt rotations.

This one is generally down to tanks getting the taunt rotations right. You can't heal through much damage on a melt armour tank. Taunt it, or wipe, really :)

[YamahaGuy]

Im going to be facing this guy fairly soon, some questions if you would.

Does he always go 1, 2, 3, 4 (clockwise) unless a quill? After a quill, he can go to 4. Where would he go after 4... back to 1, right?

Adds always come down the ramps near the door, yes? Is it all that tough for the OT to grab the add from that area? Especially if you know which ramp its gonna come down? Or do they... fly down randomly o.o

What kind of healing setup are people using as far as quantity, jobs, classes? That always helps alot.

Yeah, we plan to save adds for PH2 as well.

Why does OT2 taunt off OT1 then drag the add away? Cant the OT who grabbed it do that and other other OT just get the next one?

Are fury-prots feasible for add tanking in this fight? We've been using them to make SSC more transitionable from fight to fight

Thanks :D

[Xmcdaniel]

Why does OT2 taunt off OT1 then drag the add away? Cant the OT who grabbed it do that and other other OT just get the next one?



We've been doing that and it's a little disorderly because of the unpredictable location in which Al'ar will dive bomb. He divebombs every 30 secs so it's important to get the adds to the appropriate spot quickly and get DPS on them ASAP. If he divebombs on the other side of the room it takes forever for our druid to get the adds into place, which eventually overwhelms the OT and the raid DPS.

One other note, make absolutely sure that you aren't killing adds when he goes to the top and prepares for meteor, as killing them will not take HP away from Al'ar.

[YamahaGuy]

Your talking about PH2 divebombs + ads right? I kinda meant in phase 1 when they run down the ramps.

Spot? So when he dives and makes an add (huh) you have to drag the add to the spot stead of just having people move away from the add?

[Twoflower]

we have 2 offtanks hang around in the middle of the room and pick up the adds in P2 and drag them to whatever wall is closest to their position. ranged DD's follow them. Fixed positions are for raids that dont trust every memeber to have to overview over the fight.

[moopy]

Im going to be facing this guy fairly soon, some questions if you would.

Does he always go 1, 2, 3, 4 (clockwise) unless a quill? After a quill, he can go to 4. Where would he go after 4... back to 1, right?


He mostly goes clockwise, but not always. Sometimes he will stay on four rather than go to one, or stay on one tank for a bit. You just get used to dealing with it.


Adds always come down the ramps near the door, yes? Is it all that tough for the OT to grab the add from that area? Especially if you know which ramp its gonna come down? Or do they... fly down randomly o.o


They come down the ramps, Sometimes the adds get stuck on tanks, and need a DPS to aggro them down. This is especially true if you're using a tankadin.



What kind of healing setup are people using as far as quantity, jobs, classes? That always helps alot.


It's a really easy fight to heal. Seven healers should be plenty. Phase one, you could put some on the add killers, but mostly they FFA. Phase two, you put some on the add killing dps and offtanks, and some on the MTs. One each on the add offtanks in the second phase is plenty, maybe one or two on the DPS, rest on the MTs.

An important thing about p2 is that people need to keep themselves alive, by not standing in flame patches. Don't expect your healers to fix this- make people simply wake up and avoid damage. Also, when the meteor is about to come, just have people run around the room like nublets, this minimises chances of being hit.




Yeah, we plan to save adds for PH2 as well.


You can kill them in p1 too, just be careful with them exploding, and sure people keep away from the walls. Know when to stop killing them, though. Phase one is quite easy, apart fromt he tanks needing to be in the right place, and remembering to jump. You can't pull boss aggro in this phase, it should be quite quick. Warlocks in particular can build up amazing aggro in this phase. A nice trick is to have them wait until a tank taunts to get above them at the start of p2, then soulshatter, giving the tank a head start.



Why does OT2 taunt off OT1 then drag the add away? Cant the OT who grabbed it do that and other other OT just get the next one?


Yes, they can, it's how I am used to seeing it done. It just needs the OTs not to be slackers.


Are fury-prots feasible for add tanking in this fight? We've been using them to make SSC more transitionable from fight to fight


Possibly, though you'd need to make sure they had more healing, and maybe got away from the adds a bit for the killing blow from ranged.

[Clavina]

Im going to be facing this guy fairly soon, some questions if you would.

Does he always go 1, 2, 3, 4 (clockwise) unless a quill? After a quill, he can go to 4. Where would he go after 4... back to 1, right?

Adds always come down the ramps near the door, yes? Is it all that tough for the OT to grab the add from that area? Especially if you know which ramp its gonna come down? Or do they... fly down randomly o.o

What kind of healing setup are people using as far as quantity, jobs, classes? That always helps alot.

Yeah, we plan to save adds for PH2 as well.

Why does OT2 taunt off OT1 then drag the add away? Cant the OT who grabbed it do that and other other OT just get the next one?

Are fury-prots feasible for add tanking in this fight? We've been using them to make SSC more transitionable from fight to fight

Thanks :D

1. He always moves clockwise around the platforms, however he doesn't always move. He can either move platform, stay at the current platform or quill. After a quill he will either go to platform 1 or 4.

2. When an ad spawns he is going to be going for a healer 9 times out of 10. They will always fly down one of the ramps. We use pala tanks for this mainly and get a ranged taunt/avengers shield to pick them up. A consecrate at the bottom of the ramp seems to work as well. They don't hit very hard though so a rogue or even an enh shaman can pick them up and pull them to a tank if needed

3. Not so sure on healing assignments, not my area.

4. Tanking in P2 is simple in theory. Typicially you will have 5 tanks for the fight. We have 2 tanks on the boss and 3 on the ads, if one of the main boss tanks die then the 'spare' tank steps up.

The melt armour taunting is simple, tanks that can't manage it fail hard. Melt armour is shown as a timer when using La vendetta Boss mods and will paint a skull on the tank who gets it. Taunt as soon as melt armour is applied be ready to challenging shout/mocking blow if it gets resisted.

The ad tanks pick up the ads themselves, as we use paladins it is fairly easy for them to get the ads. Misdirects will work, as will the 'spare' tank dragging the ads to the off-tanks, just try out the different options until you get one that suits you.

The only other thing I can think of mentioning is that Al'ar will do a giant knockback every time he does his meteor. Intercepting in is the best way to pick him up to prevent him getting a flame buffet in. I don't ususally bother though as you can also just time your run correctly.

5. Fury OT's should be OK on the ads.

[YamahaGuy]

Well 3 tanks up top. 1, 2 and 4. When he leaves 1, that tank moves to 1---->3. If he goes to 4 after a quill, that tank should go to 3--->1.

Adds in phase 1 come down ramps; I thought two tanks one for each side grabbing them. Melee back off when its about to die. OTS can put back to wall near end of ramp (outside wall) when blows up.

I read somewhere, cant recall, that quill affects the bottom of the ramp too though? Hum

At 30% of phase one, just dont finish them off... let the tanks collect for extra damage in phase 2.

Phase 2, three offtanks in a triangle pattern, with two MT's.

Feasible?

[rgirty]

Well 3 tanks up top. 1, 2 and 4. When he leaves 1, that tank moves to 1---->3. If he goes to 4 after a quill, that tank should go to 3--->1.

Adds in phase 1 come down ramps; I thought two tanks one for each side grabbing them. Melee back off when its about to die. OTS can put back to wall near end of ramp (outside wall) when blows up.

I read somewhere, cant recall, that quill affects the bottom of the ramp too though? Hum

At 30% of phase one, just dont finish them off... let the tanks collect for extra damage in phase 2.

Phase 2, three offtanks in a triangle pattern, with two MT's.

Feasible?

We ran 3 tanks and 2 off tanks.

1 OT for each add. We would dps the adds down asap then all dps on alar.

3 tank rotating melt armor means that you have some slack there, which really helped us with this fight.

We 8 healed it that made it much easier as well. You can keep people alive that make mistakes, and even if you have a tank die to melt armor you can manage with 2.

If you have bears tanking the adds, and one bear dies you can tank adds with 1 bear.

IF you have enough healing.

Thats how we did it.

[Xmcdaniel]

Your talking about PH2 divebombs + ads right? I kinda meant in phase 1 when they run down the ramps.

Spot? So when he dives and makes an add (huh) you have to drag the add to the spot stead of just having people move away from the add?

Yes, I'm talking about Phase 2. Phase 1 is ridiculously easy if the tanks are paying attention.

In phase 2 he divebombs every 30 seconds and when he lands 2 adds are created. They need to get to the OT in the corner by the door somehow, someway. Since our OT is a Protadin I'm thinking we'll have the druid OT responsible for bringing the adds to him get quick initial aggro on them and then have the Protadin use Righteous Defense to pull the adds to his spot. This, of course, would require that the druid have the adds within a 40 yard range of the Protadin.

[YamahaGuy]

The only other thing I can think of mentioning is that Al'ar will do a giant knockback every time he does his meteor. Intercepting in is the best way to pick him up to prevent him getting a flame buffet in. I don't ususally bother though as you can also just time your run correctly.

Timing correctly meaning like, running back in after being knocked back asap? Or meaning, dont run in until the knockback occurs, then step in?

Any hint where divebomb will occur? a shadow on ground or anything? Or were talking about tanks picking up ads spawning from a completly random dive spot in that giganctic room? *gulp*

[moopy]

T
Any hint where divebomb will occur? a shadow on ground or anything? Or were talking about tanks picking up ads spawning from a completly random dive spot in that giganctic room? *gulp*

It's random. You have the whole raid run about like fools, it helps avoid problems.. Generally it will be inside the transparent circle. The adds don't move too fast, and won't one-shot most folks. The add offtanks should be able to pick them up easily enough- it sounds harder than it is.

[Clavina]

Timing correctly meaning like, running back in after being knocked back asap? Or meaning, dont run in until the knockback occurs, then step in?

Any hint where divebomb will occur? a shadow on ground or anything? Or were talking about tanks picking up ads spawning from a completly random dive spot in that giganctic room? *gulp*

There is a brief 'lightning bolt' type effect that is supposed to indicate where the meteor will land. Even though I have seen the effect it never seems to correspond to where he lands though. However, the length of time it takes for the meteor animation to fall, the 2 ads to spawn, al'ar to spawn and do his knockback is plenty to run from one side of the room to the other. When learning the fight I used my PvP boots with boars speed enchant to make it easier. If you start running as soon as you see the meteor fall you will be fine.

If you are miles and miles away from where he lands then an intercept after the knockback is the only option. However i've rarely had to do that. There is a brief delay of a couple of seconds between the knockback and the first flame buffet which means you can run to just outside knock-back range then run into melee range before flame buffets.

The animation of the knockback is a smoke ring effect that radiates from him when he spawns. The animation does not represent the effect.. ie the knock back is over and done with long before the animation has completed.

[Baboon]

We move a bit around in a group in the divebomb fase. When all the fire stuff is SW for example, we move to NW. After that, usually to NE etc. The raidleaders tells where to move. This is to prevent people getting out of range for heals I think. Not sure if it has any effect on where the bombs drop, but they tend to drop pretty on top of us. This is almost never a problem, we only have people die if they are too slow to get out of the fire (or they didn't group up with us and died to something).

[YamahaGuy]

This fight is real touchy, seriously

If I choose to shield block when he comes to my platform instead of... slam maybe, he flame buffets.

Sometimes its "QUILL!" and we jump down and someones on the ground and take quill damage -.-

Molten armor? is like... 123meltarmorloldead

If I am at 2, with a tank who moved to 3.. and a tank at four.. he will quill. Its hard as balls to run to 1, even intercepting, and not flame buffet the raid once

PoM and lifebloom on tanks, fun fun. We get like, a mascot that hangs out at the platform with us while tanking alar ;p

Hunters hit the add before it comes down the ramp? lol pickup fun

Oh and my personal favorite; when the hunters pop the add and send the tank flying into the air, during a quill.

Woo hoo!

Wait, maybe my favorite is someone yelling "QUILL!" when theres no quill so all the tanks jump down and yea.... dead raid. lolol

[rgirty]

This fight is real touchy, seriously

If I choose to shield block when he comes to my platform instead of... slam maybe, he flame buffets.

Sometimes its "QUILL!" and we jump down and someones on the ground and take quill damage -.-

Molten armor? is like... 123meltarmorloldead

If I am at 2, with a tank who moved to 3.. and a tank at four.. he will quill. Its hard as balls to run to 1, even intercepting, and not flame buffet the raid once

PoM and lifebloom on tanks, fun fun. We get like, a mascot that hangs out at the platform with us while tanking alar ;p

Hunters hit the add before it comes down the ramp? lol pickup fun

Oh and my personal favorite; when the hunters pop the add and send the tank flying into the air, during a quill.

Woo hoo!

Wait, maybe my favorite is someone yelling "QUILL!" when theres no quill so all the tanks jump down and yea.... dead raid. lolol

It is a very difficult fight IMO we had a lot of trouble with it. We got down to 15% on vashj last night and I think we'll get her down in the next few attempts.

Maybe we were undergeared for alar but I think our attmempts on alar are going to be greater than our attempts on vashj once it is all over.

I think we've almost got vashj mastered, we made it to phase 3 with everyone alive for the first time, saw the bat action for the first time and a few people had issues. Now that we've seen it I think we can do it.

We used 5 tanks for alar and 8 healers. That seemed to help us.

[YamahaGuy]

Really? We used 6 healers.

Nothing is like, a lot of damage "if done right" yea

When I was tanking up top, I was just shield block... heroic strike... take bite of sandwich with other hand...sip drink..watching the timer so I know how many seconds I have before I gotta move, or jump. lol.

But when tanks accidentally fall off a platform or hunters pop adds during a quill and kill teh tank or someone yells quill and we all jumped for no reason.

Just lololol sigh sigh sigh

It is a very difficult fight IMO we had a lot of trouble with it. We got down to 15% on vashj last night and I think we'll get her down in the next few attempts.


Yeah when we did that on LV (13%) we took almost the exact same group the next raid day and got it. Only like 1-2 ppl different

Our second kill (thursday) had 7 diff people (4 practiced, 3 fresh) for vials, and still got it. Much messier, but a wins a win and it was only 2 attempts

[Twoflower]

Wait, maybe my favorite is someone yelling "QUILL!" when theres no quill so all the tanks jump down and yea.... dead raid. lolol

haha priceless :)

anyway, the fireb loom shouldnt be that much of a problem. ( that is the one the entire raid gets when he is not tanked, right ? ) The raid should get trough 2 ticks of it whibout people dying. maybe 3 ticks even.

[moopy]

Wait, maybe my favorite is someone yelling "QUILL!" when theres no quill so all the tanks jump down and yea.... dead raid. lolol

Your threads never fail to deliver- really worth helping you with our dumbass comments, as your commentaries always amuse. So very true, all of it.

[Ash Housewares]

I wouldn't mind extra healers on this fight, when people die is when they get hit with a second flame patch and haven't been topped off, always nice to yell at your locks til you can get 3x healthstones too :thumbsup:

but then I get pissy when I have to unshift and heal myself on a fight where I'm always top3 in damage because nobody heals me

[YamahaGuy]

Your threads never fail to deliver- really worth helping you with our dumbass comments, as your commentaries always amuse. So very true, all of it.


Heh heh heh ^_^

OK well alar dead this time. I find it rather fun getting molten armor, because then I get to play 'fireman' and spell reflect the fire patches and they blow up.

Sadly yea... we had to SS the tanks. But the top tanks are fine. Its the offtanks when adds blow up >.< sigh

Lastly I seen some people blatently stand in fire casting spells until they die. But I will give them some understanding because, the fire is real tough to see when its on the center glass. I turned my spell detail max but it didnt really change that. Only the sparkly ball in the middle is somewhat visible

After a meteor, even if I am not "current tank" alar usually picks me and comes for me. Maybe cuz I had melt armor? I dont know. 90% of the time alar picked me. But dont dare ever assume it will pick me, because then it will decide to pick a DPS and fly to them and kill them.

One time our alar kinda bugged; I mean he was at platform 1. Spawned an add, but never changed platforms. Stayed at 1 a couple more times. Did a quill, went back to 1. Spawned an add, stayed at 1. That was a real boring attempt. I had plenty time to emote others in the raid and dance in my broken outfit.

Note, we are all sad we had to give up the ashtongue cowl to complete the quest. =(

Anyhow.

[Baboon]

Lastly I seen some people blatently stand in fire casting spells until they die. But I will give them some understanding because, the fire is real tough to see when its on the center glass. I turned my spell detail max but it didnt really change that. Only the sparkly ball in the middle is somewhat visible


Anyhow.

Make sure you yell at them and call them names, because you'll get more and more 'do not stand in stuff' fights. Check that guide Moopy linked about T6 content.

For Al'ar it helps to zoom out a lot. And I only focus on the floor, I let my dps slip a bit. We have one guy who checks with Recap how many fire ticks people get, if we do well we get a cookie.

[Mirinda]

We've had one good swipe at Al'ar with many not so good. Our main problem is tank coordination. They have to get the timing right for jumping down then moving back into position. I saw one tank jump down from the platform, hit the floor and die. WTF? Was rather amusing to see.

Tanks have to learn to stay in line-of-sight with healers, not so easy. Can easily fall off the edge too. But I'd say the biggest problem is picking up Al'ar fast enough to avoid multiple flame buffets. If we get two, somebody's dead.

Somebody told me to run to the doorway to avoid meteor, then somebody else pulled adds over there, and yet another somebody seeded them. I went kaboom.

Especially funny to see another mage standing next to an add pewpewing away, only to have it blow up in his face.

Al'ar is a great learning experience for moving and awareness of the 360 situation.

[rgirty]

We've had one good swipe at Al'ar with many not so good. Our main problem is tank coordination. They have to get the timing right for jumping down then moving back into position. I saw one tank jump down from the platform, hit the floor and die. WTF? Was rather amusing to see.

Tanks have to learn to stay in line-of-sight with healers, not so easy. Can easily fall off the edge too. But I'd say the biggest problem is picking up Al'ar fast enough to avoid multiple flame buffets. If we get two, somebody's dead.

Somebody told me to run to the doorway to avoid meteor, then somebody else pulled adds over there, and yet another somebody seeded them. I went kaboom.

Especially funny to see another mage standing next to an add pewpewing away, only to have it blow up in his face.

Al'ar is a great learning experience for moving and awareness of the 360 situation.

It really is a training fight for vashj IMO.

All of the things learned there are used, with the strider kiting thrown in for good measure.

The two fights are very alike, from the flame patches exploding adds and all.

[RWGreen]

My guild got bosses #5 and #6 in SSC last week, and we're now moving on to The Eye to get some more gear before attempting Vashj. I have a couple questions which haven't been answered by any of the strategies here, the descriptions I've read, and the video's I've watched. Here goes...

#1 - Al'ar always travels clockwise, but can go back to either platform 1 or platform 4 after his quills. If he comes back to platform 4 after quills, does "moving clockwise" mean he goes all the way around to platform 1 next? Or does he do quills again?

#2 - In stage 1, does the melee kill the embers? If so, how do they avoid taking explosion damage when they die? Run out and have the tank or a ranged finish them? At what percentage is it a good idea to stop killing the embers and start saving them for stage 2?

#3 - How much of the damage to Al'ar is done by killing the embers vs. DPSing him? Is there a critical mass of embers that the tanks can keep hold of before it becomes too many? How many embers are usually up at the end?

#4 - I watched one video where the whole raid collapsed every time a meteor was incoming. I'm assuming this was so the tanks could easily pick up the embers. What are the positives and negatives of doing this?

[YamahaGuy]

#1 He can fly from 4 to 1, or he can quill again. Quill is random. Sometimes it happens alot in an attempt, other times once or twice.

#2 Yes but they gotta run out at like 20% so they dont get popped when the ad explodes. We have two hunters (take your pick) on adds as well. Be certain they dont stop DPS for the melees to get out. The melees should know to do it on their own. Stopping DPS might mean the adds not dead before a quill happens and your OT gets killed

#3 Each ember is 3% of alars health.

#4 In theory works, but the consquence would be, entire raid hit by meteor or a fire spawned under them?

Suppose theres a lot of tricks to picking up those adds but we keep it real simple.

Off tanks grab adds. Drag to outside ring of glass. Not too far away cuz DPS cant reach them. Not inside the glass or near the MT.

We have one unsalved MT healer using righteous fury. Just as a "prefered pick" for the adds to travel towards. She doesnt even pay attention to the ads or what their doing. She just has it turned on.

jumping down then moving back into position. I saw one tank jump down from the platform, hit the floor and die. WTF? Was rather amusing to see.

Quill, is designed stupid. If your body is half way in the air (jumping down) or, on this "particular area thats on the ground near the door" you still take the quill damage. So, if your slow on the jump, you take the damage mid air, or even a couple feet off the ground. Think of it like, "delayed reaction"

Yes, a huge portion of this fight comes down to tanks. Theres a whole list of mistakes we can make. From LOS to falling down, quill screwups, not hitting alar so he flame buffets, or being to close when alar rebirths and thrown across the room.

But hey. I cant even keep track of how many DPS have died in a fire ring while they continue to cast. Like its not there. =) lol

I'll admit. Its harder to see pink fire on pink glass than on gray stone.

[Ash Housewares]

as a dpser on this fight, I really thought the tanks had a rough job, theres alot of movement and dire consequences if you fail

but... after tanking it, its really not that bad, if your tanks communicate and your dps keeps from burning, its a simple fight

first t5 level content I tanked and it was pretty easy to pick up, but then we had a pretty experienced raid, just people on alts in different roles than they were used

[Aerath]

#2 Yes but they gotta run out at like 20% so they dont get popped when the ad explodes. We have two hunters (take your pick) on adds as well. Be certain they dont stop DPS for the melees to get out. The melees should know to do it on their own. Stopping DPS might mean the adds not dead before a quill happens and your OT gets killed

False. If your OT dies, he positioned wrong. Nothing more to it.

[YamahaGuy]

If your going to correct, then say "why".

If you kill a bird during quill, your OT goes flying into the air and dies from quill.

There is however a glitch by the vertical shapes around the door, if you wedge yourself in, it can keep the OT from being launched.

You dont have to mind either if you just kill the add before platform change / quill.

[Aerath]

Then he should position himself so he doesn't get knocked back.

Try looking at the niches near the door maybe. That's not a glitch - that's the way the room was designed. On purpose.