...to 93%. Oh sure, I'm sure there were some guilds somewhere out there that killed him. We just weren't one of those guilds.It's taken awhile to build the guild back up and gear everyone up again. In fact, I believe it was September the last time we were actually in Mag's Lair. We officially have Gruul's Lair on farm status and have been downing them for over a month, so it's time we move on to something else. It still seems like there's a pretty big debate out there as to which boss you should take on after Gruul. It sounds like Mag, Lurker, and Loot Reaver are all pretty much on the same level. If you can kill one, you can kill them all.
My idea was to get Mag down so that we can do Gruul and Mag in one night and leave other nights available for SSC, and throwing Loot Reaver somewhere in there as well. And don't forget the fun times we have in ZA as well. :)
So... the last time we were in there (only once, mind you), it was a pretty big challenge. We decided to try it, kind of on a last minute decision. Nobody had really been in there. The raid leader that was running the raid had only 1/2 read or skimmed the strategy guides out there. Our first major obstacle was the trash. They cast a shadow volley, and we all just assumed that we had to split them up or that the rogues would somehow magically have this roundhouse kick that would interrupt everyone. For whatever reason, us mages didn't think to interrupt, and nobody told us to either. Then when we actually got the the chamber, we had our uber druid tank tanking 2 Channelers, because that's what we read in the strategies. But since it was only 1/2 read, it wasn't understood that one of those Channelers needed to be taken down first; we left those two for last. A number of the other raid leaders had tried to correct him at the time, but it was more a militaristic style back then, and he kind of ignored us. (I wasn't the GM at the time, and he's no longer raiding with us.)
Fast forward to last night. We had interrupts assigned to all the trash pulls. No issues there, and we ran right through. Took awhile to explain and answer questions (even though everyone should have read the strategies that we had posted on the forums). We had 5 tanks and everyone had their assignments for healing, tanking, DPS'ing and cube clicking. Before Mag was awake and active, we easily killed 3 of the Channelers. Then the trouble began.
I had forgotten to explain the earthquake. Okay, my bad there. But then after that, we had some healing issues. Those got resolved. We were progressing, each step, we got a little closer and did a little better. And then we got to our first official Blast Wave (where main tanks where still alive). I'm guessing that 6 people in 2 waves died because they held on to the cubes for too long. I think we got one Blast Wave interrupt but only after it has pulsed a couple times. We, as a group, just weren't getting it. But hey... it's new to most of us. We did better each time. And now we only have 63% to go until we get him to phase 3. :)
We'll probably be out of Kara again very soon. Last night's Kara group killed Maiden in 1:50, and Prince on the first shot in under 5. There's still a few upgrades for people here and there, but it's mostly just a collection of badges for primals at this point. Oh, and we're looking for Holy Paladins again if anyone knows one. Heh.
4 comments:
The loot from VR and Lurker can be a boon to future Mag attempts, but I really believe that you're correct in making sure you get Magtheridon down. The raid experience and group cooperation training that the fight provides is priceless. Don't give up!
Oh and are you making sure your clickers are waiting until they see the actual cast bar of blast nova before they click instead of waiting for a raid announcement? I find that helps avoid any early (or late) clicks resulting in clickers having to hold on too long and dying. On the same token, clickers should have their sound on so they can hear Mag yell "Not again!" That means it's safe to release. Also having a dedicated raid healer to watch the clickers can help immensely. You might already be doing these things, but if not they can help. Good luck. It's incredibly satisfying once you finally get that big bastard down.
:)
All good suggestions on the cubes. Didn't know about the "Not again"... just figured when the casting bar got interrupted, it was time to stop.
Hopefully we can give it another shot after Gruul tonight.
One more tip. I noticed in an earlier post that you said you need 3-4 warlocks for Mag. I suggest upping that range to 4-5 locks. Having five warlocks for the encounter is optimal for a number of reasons:
1: You have an extra player or two to handle banishing/fearing abyssals in phase one so they don't overrun your squishies.
2: You can assign one lock to each channeler to ensure that curse of tongues is always up. CoT can be the difference between a channeler going down quickly before Mag spawns or getting that last-second heal off and surviving too long.
3: Locks make excellent cube clickers because of their (generally) large health pools compared to other ranged DPS classes. They can also put DoTs on Mag before they move to the cubes, so their DPS doesn't suffer quite as much as mages/hunters while on cube duty.
4: Handing out cube assignments for locks is easy. Just have them click the same cube that the channeler they're assigned to CoT is on.
If you have the people to do it, try bringing 5 locks (or at least 4) to your next Mag raid and see if it makes a difference.
The problem is that we don't have 5 warlocks that are geared like the rest of our DPS is. We had 3 Warlocks and 2 Hunters; that took care of 8 of them. The Infernals weren't really much of a problem. We actually got through them pretty quick once we figured out our best configuration of who should be healing whom. You do have a good point about the cube clicking, but I think it's more of a raid coordination thing than a health pool thing.
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