Tuesday, March 25, 2008

I'll have the R&J with Sauteed Curator, and a side of Shade

Mmmmm, Kara.

Walk in there to get back in the saddle and tell Romulo and Julienne what they can do with their little star-crossed love.

Our first time running into the pair on wednesday was pretty sloppy, but then again, the whole night was sloppy, so I won't hold it against the bosses.

Sunday night was pay back night.

Start off the fight, nearly a minute into it, the warlock pulls aggro, gets one-shot, and we limp along.

Substitute player (druid) doesn't have the voice on because "its raining here down in south america". No joke, that was his actual reason for not having his voice chat turned on.

So I call out on voice for a combat rez of the dead warlock, since he's a big enough contribution to our total DPS that without him, we're pretty much up the creek.

Well, a minute goes by, no combat rez and I remember the guy doesn't have voice, so I fire out a /rw and warlock gets rezed, too late, and helaers are out of mana, and we die.

Grrrrrr. Not the note I wanted to start the night on.

Try again.

Ding.

Just by the skin of our teeth, the main tank died about 10 seconds before the two bosses died, so Julie ran around untanked one-shotting a couple folks before she died.

But they're dead, and we've successfully beaten each of the three Opera events.

Curator...pew pew pew, break 1000 DPS again, felling pretty good. Rogue T4 gloves drop, so he was feeling very good.

After I ran the WWS report, it was very cool to see we killed him in 5 minutes 9 seconds, which is substantially faster than the 8 minutes it took us the first time we killed him. That means the team is targeting the flares faster, and just in general, improving their damage output.

Clear to shade. Time to try this boss event again, and see if we can't have a more favorable outcome.

Its been decided that all ranged players (dps or healers) will stand behind the tables, which MIGHT keep you safe from Blizzard damage.

Nope, I was getting hammered by the Blizzard. We did OK on this attempt, but just couldn't handle it once the Elementals spawned.

Second try....nearly immediately Flame Wreath is cast and somebody moves. The Raid Blew Up. Instantly.

Third try, similar to the first, we did OK but just couldn't do it.

By this time it was late, so we called it a night.


So anybody with some experience who's still reading the article? You there, the guy with the green shirt, in the back...speak up, eh?

How do you position your ranged players, both healers and ranged DPS?

Do you stand out in the mid-floor and run in a circle when Blizzard shows up and run to the outside when the Arcane Explosion is coming?

Or do you find a safe spot and just stand there and pew pew pew?

I really want this guy dead. We're heading back in monday night.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

We've taken down Aran a few times, and we ALWAYS run across the room to avoid the blizzard. it's easy to spot coming, and easy to avoid. Don't stand in one place, anywhere in the room - you can't avoid it that way.

Aran is a pretty easy fight, when broken down to 3 immutable rules:

1) When he casts the wreath, NO ONE MOVE. Don't even turn. This is an especially hard thing for melee dps to pay attention to, but moving at all will wipe your raid.

2) When he casts the arcane fire, everyone run to the edge of the room asap.

3) When he casts blizzard, wait until it's near you, and cut across the center of the room to the other side. Rinse and repeat if necessary.

Other than that, it's just a pewpewpew fight.

Prince, on the other hand....

--Mithiah (John)

Chorius said...

Our group always moves for the blizzard. As a hunter the aoe silence doesn't effect you, so I usually just move closer to Aran during the blizzard, pewpew, and move back out when it's done. The other casters just have to run around the circle for the blizzard.
Some casters cut through the middle, but most of our healers don't.

It's really important for the fireball and icebolt to be interrupted by the melee, we usually let the arcane missles go, they usually hit multiple people for a little each instead of all on one person, so it's much easier for the healers to pop a HoT on you and then heal others.

We always bring a warlock with us for Aran, so when the Ele's come out we have the lock banish one and chain fear the other while we dps the other 2 down, dps the fear, and return to Aran, the banish just gets rebanished until it despawns. When dpsing the 2 free ele's, we have a hunter mark one so that everyone is dpsing the same target, it helps get them down much faster so they do less damage to the raid and you can get back to dpsing Aran.


I just noticed this tidbit on wowwiki:

"All of Aran's basic spells have infinite range (even through walls—they hit anywhere in the instance) and are randomly targeted. Pets are valid targets for these spells, including the snakes from Snake Traps."

I'll have to drop some Snake Traps on him next time we're in and see if the extra targets help cut down some of the damage to the rest of the raid...

Chorius said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
dnatheory said...

Our whole raid moves during Blizzard. We usually have someone calling out over Vent what is being cast, so those of us (like me) who aren't paying attention are alerted to the fact that we need to move. Sometimes we mark the main tank with a diamond so that newbs (like me) can follow him. Otherwise, if you run to Aran during the blizzard you should be okay. Then just run out again when it ends.
This is a very movement-heavy fight for our raid, but we very rarely wipe on him. Again, the key thing for us is to have someone yell out on vent when the different phases happen, and our main tank actually has a "Flame Wreath--don't move!!!" macro that spams in the /rw. (This is less annoying than you would expect, and helps even the 10,000th time you kill Aran.)
When the elementals come, you can send your pet after them and have her dps the crap out of them. It's very very helpful to have a hunter shooting at elementals, because we can do this while Flame Wreath is up, and they really don't have that many hit points. You can also trap them, although getting them into your traps is sometimes difficult.
--Alastren and Ruth, Dark Exile, Skullcrusher