Just a real quickie for anybody who cares.
First night of new Raid ID's. Three Hours.
1) Heroic Sartharion + 1 Drake (Tenebron) progression attempt. One Shot. Cool as hell, added a bunch of complexity. Pets are so squishy in this fight, Princess Vespa was dead or at my side for much of the fight. /cry Hopefully we'll try 2 Drakes next week.
2) Heroic Malygos second kill attempt. A few shots, but dead dragon in the end. Several players in the raid who weren't part of the progression kill, so should be pretty close to farmable now that they've seen it top to bottom.
3) Heroic Naxxramas - Spider Wing and Plague Wing Cleared. Most importantly: Heroic Safety Dance Achieved with zero deaths on Heigan the Unclean!!!!!!!
Collectively, the DPS was up quite a bit, and nearly all boss kills were Guild records for speed.
Speed through trash was also much improved. That's a good thing, but unfortunately, it may build bad habits over time. Its good because I dislike wasting time unnecessarily. Its bad because we can just sorta pull entire rooms now (through gear and familiarity). With only half the raid, and the other half still standing by a corpse figuring out what to do with the stuff in the corpse's pockets.
Actually, strangely enough, it might be building even stronger need for skill, because clearing 4 or 5 packs of spiders in a single swoop requires you to be a bit on your toes, rather than sitting down, setting up, and just mindlessly AoE'ing small groups at a time.
The goal for the week is to clear everything in two nights.
To do that, Thursday night would need to be Naxx Construct Wing, Military Wing, Sapphiron, Kel'Thuzad, and then fly on over to Wintergrasp to take down Archavon.
Given the pace we moved at on Tuesday, seems pretty reasonable, especially with the two iffy ones out of the way (Sarth+Drake and repeat Malygos kill).
That is all.
Showing posts with label Malygos. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Malygos. Show all posts
Thursday, December 18, 2008
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Tips for DPS'ing Heroic Malygos
See, I can write a title like that, because on saturday night, one month after the release of WotLK, our second night working on Heroic Malygos, we killed that stinkin dragon! Not even close to world, server, or whatever first. But its our first and it feels pretty cool.
Its a sweet fight, and being the only one that really gave us any trouble, a sweet kill.
A Hunter who's seen way way more TBC raid content than I ever did said this is the most fun fight he's seen, perhaps second only to Kil'Jaeden, the final boss in Sunwell Plateau, which gives a little perspective on the coolness factor.
Normally we like to use WWS toepeen analyze our performance. WWS looks all f'ed up for this fight. I think the kill is listed as two separate attempts, with only 6 of our players even showing up in the log for the killing attempt.
So no WWS results, no ego boosting screen shot to share. But, just between you and me, for the killing attempt, Recount showed somebody we all know and love (and are all getting a big sick of hearing about his leet dps skillz) up on top. Boo-ya!
All preening and stroking aside, here's some concrete things that will help Hunters DPS'ing on Heroic Malygos.
Note that the Malygos fight is three distinct phases. Phase 1 and 2 involve doing DPS pretty normally like you would do in any fight, and Phase 3 involves discarding all your normal stuff and using the abilities of a stupid dragon vehicle.
In case you're only interested in Phase 3, jump there. Its the most unorthodox phase, and might have you wondering more than the first two.
Phase 1 is normal pew pew against a single target. Granted, that single target is one massive dragon with one massive hit box.
As a Hunter, I find his hit box to be annoying, as I have to back up further than is intuitive based on where your arrows are striking. Your arrows appear to aim for his face, and If you stand behind him (which you better because his frontal cone breath is lethal) that impact point looks like it is 30 yards away from you. But you might still be too close to shoot. So back up a step.
Power Sparks are your friend. Effective management of the sparks requires good coordination by the whole raid. Assigned players need to ensure that the sparks die on top of eachother. The rest of the DPS needs to then ensure that they're always standing on a dead spark for a 50% damage boost.
In our killing attempt, we were consistently standing on two sparks, and had a brief span with three sparks, stacking an additional 50% for each spark which was just a wonderful job by the spark handling guys.
Watch your buffs. You might think there are two sparks stacked, but maybe you're only standing in one of them. You really can't tell from the visual effect on the ground, you have to examine your buffs to see the additional one or two sparks.
Don't be too conservative, but you might want to save some of your cooldowns for when sparks are stacked the most. You won't get to two or three sparks until a little later in the fight, so pay attention during learning attempts to get a feel for when your spark handlers generally get the most stacks up.
During the killing attempt, the brief period of 3x Power Spark plus Bestial Wrath, Rapid Fire, and my Attack Power trinket....it was one of the coolest things I've seen in the game.
Pet Management during Phase 1
As I've mentioned in the past...recall your pet after each and every Vortex. Pets definitely bug out on the encounter.
Also, during the normal pew pew part of phase 1, look at your pet from time to time. If she's somehow migrated towards the front, recall and then reattack to get her in back.
Pay attention to power spark location. You might squeeze out a little more damage if you recall your pet and have her reattack if there is a spark directly behind the boss. However, if she's not dangerously near the frontal cone, but she is off to the side and standing in a spark, try to leave here there if you can because those sparks are awesome.
Ok, so phase 2 is a blur. During learning attempts, I was a fail hunter and died more often than I'd like during this phase. But I did get the hang of it, so I've got that going for me. Which is nice.
For this phase, Malygos himself cant be fired upon, and you are fighting a bunch of adds. Some adds are on the ground. Some adds are on hover discs in the air.
Throughout the phase, massive damage is being rained down from the sky, and you have to position yourself under randomly located protective shells.
Maybe my repair bill will save you some grief....
1) Survive - you do no dps when you're a spectator. Our raid had a single person calling out when to move from one shield to the next. This was massively helpful as I could focus more attention on dealing damage, and less (but not zero) attention on shields and mobility. Make sure you are under a shield at all times, other than when your coordinator indicates that you should move. Also, thank your healers again and again because they'll save your ass during this phase.
2) Focus Fire - the raid needs to have a Main Assist. Brass serves as our MA, so my macro /assist Brass gets spammed continuously during P2. The MA should focus first on the ground guys (Lords) and then on the flying guys (Scions). Make sure you allow your tanks sufficient time to pick up all the Lords when the phase begins (/fail when I pulled aggro instantly during a learning attempt and got oneshot for 25k damage)
3) Take your time - when first attempting this encounter, I had a royally difficult time targeting the Scions that fly around in P2. Well, to be correct, I could target them just fine with my assist macro, but I couldnt figure out which direction to point my toon so I could fire at them. Its a really visually complex environment with lots of very nasty, very neon colored stuff happening all at the same time.
My problem was that I wanted to get into my shot rotation too quickly and wasn't taking a heartbeat to actually look around and find my target. To locate the current DPS target, I found the following things to be helpful:
Main Assist - our MA is a hunter. He picks a target that he's typically aimed at and firing upon. Look for his arrows or bullets tracing a path through the sky.
Mind Flay - that's right, if you've got a Shadow Priest pointed in the right direction, flay will show you the way.
Steady Shot - once you actually find the target, casting Steady Shot will automatically rotate your toon as the Scion moves through the air. Great for maintaining aim once you lock on to the target.
4) Survive - I can't express how frustrating it was watching this phase of the fight on the attempts where I was a dead hunter.
Once P2 is done, the floor disintegrates and you fall really far and land onto a saddle on a flying dragon. That landing must really hurt, if you think about it. But I digress.
Some things that really helped me during P3:
1) Aces High! - Yes, it is a really annoying daily quest. And the rotation you do during the quest is a little different than the rotation you do during the raid. In the quest you have to heal yourself and also dps. In the raid, you'll either heal -or- dps. But the daily quest does give you a feel for movement on the dragon, a feel for the basics of the attacks, and also a good feel for shielding from his burst effect. Fight through the pain and do the daily.
2) 1-1-2 - For DPS during P3, our raid used a 1-1-2 rotation. Gain two combo points via the attack mapped to stupid dragon vehicle action button one, and then hit action button two to do the finishing move and start the DoT. Always, hit #1 twice to build up combo points. Wait for energy. Then hit #2. No matter how much movement or shielding you end up doing, make sure to keep doing this again and again. Every time you convert combo points, you get another stack on your DoT. By the end of the fight we had a couple of raiders with upwards of 20 stacks. 1-1-2. 1-1-2. Say it with me. 1-1-2.
3) Look at your Mini-Map - During early attempts, I totally ignored my mini-map. During the killing attempt, my eyes were 50% on my dragon/battle view, and 50% on my mini-map. Visually, the battle field is totally disorienting and there are no reference points. Keep glancing at your mini-map.
4) Move out of the fire - When a static field shows up, get out of it. /duh. Pre-coordinate your movements. We planned on keeping the raid stacked on top of eachother. Looking at the mini-map, we started the fight all at the directly south (6 o'clock) position of the mini-map. When a static ball hit us, the coordinator (and ONLY the coordinator) instructed the raid to move. Each time he says "move", you move 90 degrees counterclockwise.
If you look at your battle field while moving, you get vertigo and probably die. If you look at your minimap while moving, you successfully get into position and resume attack.
5) Shield - You gotta pop your #5 command to shield when you get targeted with Arcane Surge. If you are doing 1-1-2 rotation, you should nearly always have 2 combo points up, just waiting for enough energy to fire #2. When DBM indicates you are targeted, wait for Malygos's cast bar to complete and the spell is just about to start channeling. If you shield too early, you die.
Note: Because of this fight, I uninstalled BigWigs and installed DBM. BigWigs was not working for me on this fight and DBM was totally correct and easy to understand.
6) 1-1-2 - You will be moving. You will be shielding. By only using 1-1-2 instead of the Wiki-recommended 1-1-1-1-1-2 rotation, you will not have a large amount of time to waste when moving or shielding before reapplying your DoT.
Do not let your DoT expire. By the end of the fight, the difference between most players having 15 stacks of DoT versus having 3 or 4 stacks of DoT is just ridiculous. This is a DPS race and the bigger your stacks of DoTs, the better your chance is. Aces High will only let you practice getting stacks up to about 4 or maybe 5. I've seen stacks as big as 27 during Phase 3.
Still reading?
With the kill, Conquest has successfully downed all available 25-person raid bosses.
The next move is obviously to keep farming the current content, but also to work on Obsidian Sanctum. Sartharion has three drakes that we've been killing before initiating the boss event. It gets progressively harder as you keep one or more drakes alive. This week's OS run will feature at least one, perhaps two drakes up, which should be an interesting twist on a now familiar encounter.
Additionally, keep pushing for a variety of achievements and other tweaks here and there to improve clear-time, eliminate wipes, and reduce individual deaths.
Any idea when the next raids will be released?
Its a sweet fight, and being the only one that really gave us any trouble, a sweet kill.
A Hunter who's seen way way more TBC raid content than I ever did said this is the most fun fight he's seen, perhaps second only to Kil'Jaeden, the final boss in Sunwell Plateau, which gives a little perspective on the coolness factor.
WWS all wonky
Normally we like to use WWS to
So no WWS results, no ego boosting screen shot to share. But, just between you and me, for the killing attempt, Recount showed somebody we all know and love (and are all getting a big sick of hearing about his leet dps skillz) up on top. Boo-ya!
All preening and stroking aside, here's some concrete things that will help Hunters DPS'ing on Heroic Malygos.
Note that the Malygos fight is three distinct phases. Phase 1 and 2 involve doing DPS pretty normally like you would do in any fight, and Phase 3 involves discarding all your normal stuff and using the abilities of a stupid dragon vehicle.
Quickie Linkie
In case you're only interested in Phase 3, jump there. Its the most unorthodox phase, and might have you wondering more than the first two.
DPS during Phase 1
Phase 1 is normal pew pew against a single target. Granted, that single target is one massive dragon with one massive hit box.
As a Hunter, I find his hit box to be annoying, as I have to back up further than is intuitive based on where your arrows are striking. Your arrows appear to aim for his face, and If you stand behind him (which you better because his frontal cone breath is lethal) that impact point looks like it is 30 yards away from you. But you might still be too close to shoot. So back up a step.
Power Sparks are your friend. Effective management of the sparks requires good coordination by the whole raid. Assigned players need to ensure that the sparks die on top of eachother. The rest of the DPS needs to then ensure that they're always standing on a dead spark for a 50% damage boost.
In our killing attempt, we were consistently standing on two sparks, and had a brief span with three sparks, stacking an additional 50% for each spark which was just a wonderful job by the spark handling guys.
Watch your buffs. You might think there are two sparks stacked, but maybe you're only standing in one of them. You really can't tell from the visual effect on the ground, you have to examine your buffs to see the additional one or two sparks.
Don't be too conservative, but you might want to save some of your cooldowns for when sparks are stacked the most. You won't get to two or three sparks until a little later in the fight, so pay attention during learning attempts to get a feel for when your spark handlers generally get the most stacks up.
During the killing attempt, the brief period of 3x Power Spark plus Bestial Wrath, Rapid Fire, and my Attack Power trinket....it was one of the coolest things I've seen in the game.
Pet Management during Phase 1
As I've mentioned in the past...recall your pet after each and every Vortex. Pets definitely bug out on the encounter.
Also, during the normal pew pew part of phase 1, look at your pet from time to time. If she's somehow migrated towards the front, recall and then reattack to get her in back.
Pay attention to power spark location. You might squeeze out a little more damage if you recall your pet and have her reattack if there is a spark directly behind the boss. However, if she's not dangerously near the frontal cone, but she is off to the side and standing in a spark, try to leave here there if you can because those sparks are awesome.
DPS during Phase 2
Ok, so phase 2 is a blur. During learning attempts, I was a fail hunter and died more often than I'd like during this phase. But I did get the hang of it, so I've got that going for me. Which is nice.
For this phase, Malygos himself cant be fired upon, and you are fighting a bunch of adds. Some adds are on the ground. Some adds are on hover discs in the air.
Throughout the phase, massive damage is being rained down from the sky, and you have to position yourself under randomly located protective shells.
Maybe my repair bill will save you some grief....
1) Survive - you do no dps when you're a spectator. Our raid had a single person calling out when to move from one shield to the next. This was massively helpful as I could focus more attention on dealing damage, and less (but not zero) attention on shields and mobility. Make sure you are under a shield at all times, other than when your coordinator indicates that you should move. Also, thank your healers again and again because they'll save your ass during this phase.
2) Focus Fire - the raid needs to have a Main Assist. Brass serves as our MA, so my macro /assist Brass gets spammed continuously during P2. The MA should focus first on the ground guys (Lords) and then on the flying guys (Scions). Make sure you allow your tanks sufficient time to pick up all the Lords when the phase begins (/fail when I pulled aggro instantly during a learning attempt and got oneshot for 25k damage)
3) Take your time - when first attempting this encounter, I had a royally difficult time targeting the Scions that fly around in P2. Well, to be correct, I could target them just fine with my assist macro, but I couldnt figure out which direction to point my toon so I could fire at them. Its a really visually complex environment with lots of very nasty, very neon colored stuff happening all at the same time.
My problem was that I wanted to get into my shot rotation too quickly and wasn't taking a heartbeat to actually look around and find my target. To locate the current DPS target, I found the following things to be helpful:
Main Assist - our MA is a hunter. He picks a target that he's typically aimed at and firing upon. Look for his arrows or bullets tracing a path through the sky.
Mind Flay - that's right, if you've got a Shadow Priest pointed in the right direction, flay will show you the way.
Steady Shot - once you actually find the target, casting Steady Shot will automatically rotate your toon as the Scion moves through the air. Great for maintaining aim once you lock on to the target.
4) Survive - I can't express how frustrating it was watching this phase of the fight on the attempts where I was a dead hunter.
DPS during Phase 3
Once P2 is done, the floor disintegrates and you fall really far and land onto a saddle on a flying dragon. That landing must really hurt, if you think about it. But I digress.
Some things that really helped me during P3:
1) Aces High! - Yes, it is a really annoying daily quest. And the rotation you do during the quest is a little different than the rotation you do during the raid. In the quest you have to heal yourself and also dps. In the raid, you'll either heal -or- dps. But the daily quest does give you a feel for movement on the dragon, a feel for the basics of the attacks, and also a good feel for shielding from his burst effect. Fight through the pain and do the daily.
2) 1-1-2 - For DPS during P3, our raid used a 1-1-2 rotation. Gain two combo points via the attack mapped to stupid dragon vehicle action button one, and then hit action button two to do the finishing move and start the DoT. Always, hit #1 twice to build up combo points. Wait for energy. Then hit #2. No matter how much movement or shielding you end up doing, make sure to keep doing this again and again. Every time you convert combo points, you get another stack on your DoT. By the end of the fight we had a couple of raiders with upwards of 20 stacks. 1-1-2. 1-1-2. Say it with me. 1-1-2.
3) Look at your Mini-Map - During early attempts, I totally ignored my mini-map. During the killing attempt, my eyes were 50% on my dragon/battle view, and 50% on my mini-map. Visually, the battle field is totally disorienting and there are no reference points. Keep glancing at your mini-map.
4) Move out of the fire - When a static field shows up, get out of it. /duh. Pre-coordinate your movements. We planned on keeping the raid stacked on top of eachother. Looking at the mini-map, we started the fight all at the directly south (6 o'clock) position of the mini-map. When a static ball hit us, the coordinator (and ONLY the coordinator) instructed the raid to move. Each time he says "move", you move 90 degrees counterclockwise.
If you look at your battle field while moving, you get vertigo and probably die. If you look at your minimap while moving, you successfully get into position and resume attack.
5) Shield - You gotta pop your #5 command to shield when you get targeted with Arcane Surge. If you are doing 1-1-2 rotation, you should nearly always have 2 combo points up, just waiting for enough energy to fire #2. When DBM indicates you are targeted, wait for Malygos's cast bar to complete and the spell is just about to start channeling. If you shield too early, you die.
Note: Because of this fight, I uninstalled BigWigs and installed DBM. BigWigs was not working for me on this fight and DBM was totally correct and easy to understand.
6) 1-1-2 - You will be moving. You will be shielding. By only using 1-1-2 instead of the Wiki-recommended 1-1-1-1-1-2 rotation, you will not have a large amount of time to waste when moving or shielding before reapplying your DoT.
Do not let your DoT expire. By the end of the fight, the difference between most players having 15 stacks of DoT versus having 3 or 4 stacks of DoT is just ridiculous. This is a DPS race and the bigger your stacks of DoTs, the better your chance is. Aces High will only let you practice getting stacks up to about 4 or maybe 5. I've seen stacks as big as 27 during Phase 3.
Still reading?
What's next?
With the kill, Conquest has successfully downed all available 25-person raid bosses.
The next move is obviously to keep farming the current content, but also to work on Obsidian Sanctum. Sartharion has three drakes that we've been killing before initiating the boss event. It gets progressively harder as you keep one or more drakes alive. This week's OS run will feature at least one, perhaps two drakes up, which should be an interesting twist on a now familiar encounter.
Additionally, keep pushing for a variety of achievements and other tweaks here and there to improve clear-time, eliminate wipes, and reduce individual deaths.
Any idea when the next raids will be released?
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
San da'floor, pain ta'house, wax on wax off, wipe a'raid
Having cleared out Naxx-25 with one raid night left in our weekly schedule, Conquest set our sights on Malygos.
And, with the clear of Naxx being relatively straight forward, not quite easy, but also not quite hard, we walk into Maly with uncertain expectations.
The Wiki and Bosskillers guides are both lengthy and wordy. I learn best by doing, and not so much by reading, so this was confusing as hell. Even the available videos left me confused. But, lets zone on in and give it a whirl, and see what big boy raiding is all about.
3 hours. 20 attempts.
That might seem like beating your head against the wall, and it kinda was, but with each attempt, we get a little better and a little better.
Overview of the fight:
Phase 1
Pew pew. Frontal cone is deadly, so stay out of it. Periodically, Power Sparks fly towards Malygos. Kill the sparks before they hit him. When you kill a spark, there will be an aura on the ground in the spot the spark died. Stand in that aura for 50% additional damage output. Effect can stack.
Periodically, Vortex will pick everybody up in the air like a tornado and scramble you all over the map and then drop you in a pile.
Phase 2
At 50% health, Phase 2 begins, so get ready for the fun. Here's my take on Phase 2....grab your ankles and prey your healers are awesomesauce. Along the way, make sure you stand inside the Magic Shell shields. Don't forget that they fade very quickly, so you're constantly running to a new Magic Shell.
You're not fighting Malygos in this phase, you're fighting adds. One type of adds is on the ground. Kill them first. The other type of adds is up in the air on flying discs. Kill them second. When a disc guy gets killed, his disc falls to the ground and can then be used by a member of your team.
Phase 3
After all the adds are dead, you head into Phase 3, arguably the most annoying phase. The ground falls out from under you and you land on a dragon vehicle. So you're not using your normal toon's capabilities, you're using stupid fireballs with stupid DoTs from your stupid dragon vehicle, or stupid heals with stupid HoTs from your stupid dragon vehicle. Randomly, he'll blast 3 players, and your stupid dragon vehicle has a stupid shield effect you need to activate. And periodically, there will be a cloud of nasty static energy that you need to move out of (move out of the fire, so to speak). The cloud isn't stupid, its just nasty.
Honestly, not a big fan of Phase 3. Visually, you have no reference points with which to determine your positioning and range. In addition to Malygos, any of the dragon vehicle quests or daily quests with dragon vehicles just feel so random. Your camera can't zoom out far enough to really see the battlefield, random laser beam effects hit you from random directions, the flight movement is kludgy, the game mechanics are unfamiliar and not in a fun/original way, but rather in an annoying/hacky way. But I digress.
Progress
In case you couldn't tell, we did actually make it to Phase 3, which is pretty sweet. Maybe 7 out of 20 times, made it to P3. Our best attempt had him at about 23% health when he enraged.
Despite my stupid attitude towards the dragon vehicle, the overall fight and the overall experience of progressing steadily through learning P1, then learning P2, and pushing into P3 was incredible. Had to run a heroic dungeon just to calm down before bed.
Some key things I/we learned....
1) P1 Coordination - Its vital to coordinate the positioning of where dead sparks will land. It is possible to stack the dead sparks resulting in 50% increased damage output, PER SPARK. The times we had 2xSpark Buff, the team delivered incredible damage. The enrage timer is aggressive, and this is clutch. Also, save your DPS cooldowns for when you've got 2 spark buffs.
2) P1 Pet Glitches - More on this in another post, but suffice it to say...Hunters, recall your pet after each and every Vortex. You can send her back into battle immediately, but make sure you remember to recall after Vortecies.
3) P2 Magic Shell - The shields decay quickly and new ones pop up. You will be moving quite a bit during this phase. You need to also be delivering damage to lots of chaotic moving targets. This phase took tremendous focus and concentration to just survive, let alone kill the adds. Use a Main Assist to ensure focused fire through the chaos.
Visually, this phase is overwhelming, the screen is flashing, neon stuff is spraying all over the screen, and your toon is barely visible through the Magic Shell. Take some happy pills, IRL, before heading into P2.
4) P3 Daily Quest - Word on the street is that Blizzard gave us the ability to practice for P3 outside of a raid environment. There's supposedly a daily quest called Aces High! near the Nexus that has you riding the exact same stupid dragon vehicle as the one in P3. Will have to investigate further.
23%
We're so ready to kill this guy. Need more practice as a team stacking up the sparks to burn through P1 faster. Need more practice as individuals keeping concentration through P2. And everybody needs to do that daily to figure out WTF is up with those dragons.
And, with the clear of Naxx being relatively straight forward, not quite easy, but also not quite hard, we walk into Maly with uncertain expectations.
The Wiki and Bosskillers guides are both lengthy and wordy. I learn best by doing, and not so much by reading, so this was confusing as hell. Even the available videos left me confused. But, lets zone on in and give it a whirl, and see what big boy raiding is all about.
3 hours. 20 attempts.
That might seem like beating your head against the wall, and it kinda was, but with each attempt, we get a little better and a little better.
Overview of the fight:
Phase 1
Pew pew. Frontal cone is deadly, so stay out of it. Periodically, Power Sparks fly towards Malygos. Kill the sparks before they hit him. When you kill a spark, there will be an aura on the ground in the spot the spark died. Stand in that aura for 50% additional damage output. Effect can stack.
Periodically, Vortex will pick everybody up in the air like a tornado and scramble you all over the map and then drop you in a pile.
Phase 2
At 50% health, Phase 2 begins, so get ready for the fun. Here's my take on Phase 2....grab your ankles and prey your healers are awesomesauce. Along the way, make sure you stand inside the Magic Shell shields. Don't forget that they fade very quickly, so you're constantly running to a new Magic Shell.
You're not fighting Malygos in this phase, you're fighting adds. One type of adds is on the ground. Kill them first. The other type of adds is up in the air on flying discs. Kill them second. When a disc guy gets killed, his disc falls to the ground and can then be used by a member of your team.
Phase 3
After all the adds are dead, you head into Phase 3, arguably the most annoying phase. The ground falls out from under you and you land on a dragon vehicle. So you're not using your normal toon's capabilities, you're using stupid fireballs with stupid DoTs from your stupid dragon vehicle, or stupid heals with stupid HoTs from your stupid dragon vehicle. Randomly, he'll blast 3 players, and your stupid dragon vehicle has a stupid shield effect you need to activate. And periodically, there will be a cloud of nasty static energy that you need to move out of (move out of the fire, so to speak). The cloud isn't stupid, its just nasty.
Honestly, not a big fan of Phase 3. Visually, you have no reference points with which to determine your positioning and range. In addition to Malygos, any of the dragon vehicle quests or daily quests with dragon vehicles just feel so random. Your camera can't zoom out far enough to really see the battlefield, random laser beam effects hit you from random directions, the flight movement is kludgy, the game mechanics are unfamiliar and not in a fun/original way, but rather in an annoying/hacky way. But I digress.
Progress
In case you couldn't tell, we did actually make it to Phase 3, which is pretty sweet. Maybe 7 out of 20 times, made it to P3. Our best attempt had him at about 23% health when he enraged.
Despite my stupid attitude towards the dragon vehicle, the overall fight and the overall experience of progressing steadily through learning P1, then learning P2, and pushing into P3 was incredible. Had to run a heroic dungeon just to calm down before bed.
Some key things I/we learned....
1) P1 Coordination - Its vital to coordinate the positioning of where dead sparks will land. It is possible to stack the dead sparks resulting in 50% increased damage output, PER SPARK. The times we had 2xSpark Buff, the team delivered incredible damage. The enrage timer is aggressive, and this is clutch. Also, save your DPS cooldowns for when you've got 2 spark buffs.
2) P1 Pet Glitches - More on this in another post, but suffice it to say...Hunters, recall your pet after each and every Vortex. You can send her back into battle immediately, but make sure you remember to recall after Vortecies.
3) P2 Magic Shell - The shields decay quickly and new ones pop up. You will be moving quite a bit during this phase. You need to also be delivering damage to lots of chaotic moving targets. This phase took tremendous focus and concentration to just survive, let alone kill the adds. Use a Main Assist to ensure focused fire through the chaos.
Visually, this phase is overwhelming, the screen is flashing, neon stuff is spraying all over the screen, and your toon is barely visible through the Magic Shell. Take some happy pills, IRL, before heading into P2.
4) P3 Daily Quest - Word on the street is that Blizzard gave us the ability to practice for P3 outside of a raid environment. There's supposedly a daily quest called Aces High! near the Nexus that has you riding the exact same stupid dragon vehicle as the one in P3. Will have to investigate further.
23%
We're so ready to kill this guy. Need more practice as a team stacking up the sparks to burn through P1 faster. Need more practice as individuals keeping concentration through P2. And everybody needs to do that daily to figure out WTF is up with those dragons.
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