Thursday, January 8, 2009

Tanking Malygos



Last night, we killed him. Satisfying, and appropriately hard - the kill came in our 7th hour total on him. I think a great deal of our problems had to do with P3 and the Dragon's UI (with its various terribleness).

That said, I'd like to share some Tanking Tips for P1 & 2.


I followed Ciderhelm's guide from Tankspot (along with the 25-Man supplemental).

My biggest complaint about that guide - is that it makes it seem so easy. I think some people fail to separate that he isn't narrating the video as he's doing it, and end up with the impression that a tank can perform as needed, while carrying on an intelligent conversation. Anyway...

I found these additional things out through trial, error, error, and error. I'm hoping that you can benefit from some of them, and possibly escape a few extra repair bills.

--- Phase 1 ---

Click the orb yourself. Heroic Throw him as he moves down. Immediately start unloading on him - you don't need to worry about moving him before the first vortex (either the spark will have just spawned, or it will not have yet). This is where you need to start banking some serious threat. You won't get this good of an opportunity later.

Have a second tank (or anyone really, but a second Protection tank will find this the most useful way they can spent P1, as well as it preparing them well to do the actual tanking themself) on Spark-Spotting Duty. They need to...

- During Vortex, click the direction that the next spark is coming from on the minimap. Repeatedly, until vortex is over. This gives the raid indication of where to run upon landing, and you where to run away from.
- Spot the portals that sparks come from. While tanking, its easy to spot them if they spawn to your left or right - but portals directly behind you, or opposite side of you, are harder to catch.
- Put Marks on the Sparks. This lets you see them when they are on the other side of Malygos, for purpose of lining them up with existing glowy super-dps-aggro-zones allready on the ground.

When tanking him, do it around the edge off the inner circle. This does present two complications...

- Ranged need to be aware of where his front is, and while the cone isn't that huge, they do need to not be in front of him.
- DPS being off just a bit will let the spark go past where you want it, and right into him.

...However, this allows your melee DPS to stand in all the sparks, and keep DPSing. Which is worth it.

Consider saving Heroism for the last push when your transitioning into P2 (the time following a vortex, in which you don't anticipate getting to another vortex). As soon as he takes off, threat is not an issue for your DPS. Even if you are hopelessly behind in TPS approaching that, you can still keep him on you with Mocking Blow (6 Seconds), Taunt (3 Seconds), Challanging Shout (6 Seconds).

--- Phase 2 ---

Try to get someone tankish on each Nexus Lord as they land (have each tank mark one as they come down, to insure they are going to be picked up). Focus fire the first, and allow AoE once they are all decently held. 

Hit Shield Reflect (You do have 2/2 in it for this fight, right?) as much as possible. Each reflected bolt is 18,000+ damage to a Scion). 

Don't get on a platform. Melee first, then ranged DPS. Healers and Tanks can just run around the platform until p3.

--- Closing ---

The idea of taking a dragon, and walking him all over is potentially hard to get use to. Most Dragons (Ony, Vael, Nef, Nightbane, Netherspite, Kalecgos, Felmyst, Saphirion) are tanked in once place, with possibly some turning going on. If you've got it hardwired that dragons stay in once place, you'll need to get over it.

In the end, its a good feeling to execute it successfully. If you do it smooth enough, mabey the rest of the raid will think your as pro as Ciderhelm. ; D

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Other things we did that seemed to aid in speeding up phase 2 was that we only had 2 to 3 ranged dps on the Nexus Lords. The rest of us were doting up and dpsing the scions. This meant that there were a number of scions at half health by the time we got a few melee in the air. Since once all the Nexus Lords are dead, melee are just waiting for discs. By splitting up the damage (per a strat we read) we decreased the time it took to get to phase 3. At least I hope it did. :-)

As to wanting to tank him in one spot, yes, it's very tempting. Only way we could have managed that would have been to have two death knights gripping the sparks to the same location. The only frustrating thing about moving him, is if I had a spark rooted a little too close, at least once, turning him, turned him into the spark, and thus he ate it. Darn tail.