Vladvin: Working on Kael Part 2

After clearing SSC on Wed and Thurs, then the first 3 bosses in TK on Sat, we spent all day on Kael yesterday.  We are now firmly into Phase 4.  We got Phase 1 down last week but couldn’t figure out the DPS on the weapons.  This week we replaced a healer with another DPS (6 healers instead of 7) and we made sure raid consumables were used; our RL decided not to make flasks/food mandatory last week on the Kael attempts, his decision… whatevs.  I really felt the difference in the DPS, everything in Phase 1 and 2 felt really squishy.  Here’s a rundown of our stragety as we have it nailed down (all right/left references are with your back to the doors, facing the platform Kael and the others are standing on):

• Phase 1, The Darkener: he has a Big Bad Wolf-like mechanic.  Whoever he has his “Gaze” on tries to run him around the perimeter of the room and we try to get him to die towards the back in the middle.
• Phase 1, Sanguinar:  warrior tank picks him up near the front and walks him back to the right, ending up near the right door.  Warrior tank is almose necessary for stance-dancing to avoid the fear.  Since I was the only Priest, I had to put a Fear Ward up while the tank was running him back since she can’t stance-dance and run at the same time.
• Phase 1, Caster Chick (I can’t remember her name):  ‘Lock tanked at the very back, between the doors, hunter misdirects to the ‘Lock and raid waits for at least 10k threat before opening up.  We had 3 or 4 tanks outside of the blast range, but inside Conflagration range to eat up the Conflagrations and all ranged outside that (30 yards so no MF on her)
• Phase 1, Engineer: Warrior tanked just to the left of the platform, pay attention to who gets the stun debuff, if one of the tanks for the next phase gets it stop DPS and wait until it fades so all tanks are available to pick up weapons.
• Phase 2: Hunter tank on Bow it is killed first by ranged.  Warrior tank on Staff and Mace, melee on Mace interrupting heals and Staff is killed by range second.  Pally tank on Daggers, Sword and Shield.  Bear tank on Axe.  We used a combination of AOE and focused fire.  We had 3 warlocks spamming Seed and everyone else followed a kill order; Bow, Staff, Dagger, Sword, Shield for ranged and Mace, Dagger, Sword, Shield for Melee.  With the bear tank keeping the Axe in AOE range to catch the Seeds but not close enough to hurt anyone it was down to about 30% and we kill it in Phase 3.  I talked to the RL about it and I’m going to start on the Staff or the Daggers and ignore what the other ranged do.  A SPriest needs a single target to blast away at for a while to be a good mana battery (not to your party, they like everything they can get, but to mana-battery yourself is quite dificult).
• Phase 3:  For the most part, all the weapons except the Axe and the Shield are down when Phase 3 starts.  I have to make sure that the tank on Sanguinar has a Fear Ward at the begining.  Melee goes to the Engineer and ranged kill The Darkener, then Caster Chick, then Sanguinar.  Like the weapons, I’m sticking to Sanguinar the whole time.
• Phase 4:  Pally tank picks up Kael, Bear tanks the Phoenixes.  Melee on Kael and ranged on Phoenix Eggs except to take down shield.  Warrior tank with a Dagger to Intercept/Hamstring MC’ed players.  Again, I’m on Kael the whole time.

We spent a lot of time saying “Wow, we’re in the next phase… what do we do now?” then wipe.  I think that’s inevitable with a complex fight like this one.  Each Phase is so different and the transitions are the hard part.  You can have a plan for each phase but your raid will never remember instructions for 5 phases until they see each of them.  You get Phase 1 mastered and Phase 2 goes all chaotic and wipes you, “Ok, next time tanks get to X position and pick up Y mob; DPS go do Z”  Once you get that, Phase 3 will wipe you.  Then figure out how to transition into Phase 3 and so on, until you get to the end of the fight.  You have to take progression fights one step at a time!

As a side note… expect a lot of repair $$ for progression content.  We worked on Kael from 4:15 until 8:45 (I think) when the servers died and I spent about 40g on repairs… and I wear cloth!

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