First Impressions In Magtheridon’s Lair
Eternal Force had Magtheridon’s Lair on the calendar for last night. We only had about a dozen signups and a handful of people who showed up on time. But, with some persistence and some luck, the officers and some of the more senior members were able to swing enough people to fill the 25-man raid. We ended up entering the instance about 90 minutes after the scheduled raid time.
I’d been reviewing the fight for the previous several hours, and had some idea of what to expect. The best video I watched was Last Resort’s first kill (third overall kill in the world) from a Mage’s point of view. Their effort was very clean, very professional, and undoubtedly the product of careful preparations.
The first trash pull of three Hellfire Warders was pretty chaotic…the good news is that all 25 of the raid members survived. Each of the mobs was doing a Shadow Bolt Volley, which made the pull feel very chaotic, because everyone was constantly being barraged by shadow damage. I tried to keep Shadow Ward up, but it would be quickly consumed by the large amounts of shadow damage.
The second trash pull was made versus the patrol of three Hellfire Warders…the tanks fought them on the ramp, which I didn’t think was a good idea. As a ranged caster I immediately had line of sight issues and had to run into the fight. By this time, some of the melee people had been feared…right into the next group of Hellfire Warders at the base of the ramp. We had a pretty quick 25-man wipe because of this. Note that Tremor Totems are ineffective against Hellfire Warder fear spells.
After we came back, we managed to clear the remaining trash (4 packs of 3 Hellfire Warders in all) with only a few deaths. All of the trash mobs must be cleared prior to engaging Magtheridon and the channelers, otherwise they too will oin the fight. We then waited for Marluce, our raid leader, to begin making assignments for the fight.
Our five tanks were assigned to the five Hellfire Channelers. Five healers were assigned to cover those five tanks, and the remaining healers were assigned to raid duty. Two people were assigned to each of the Manticron Cubes…we didn’t assign an emergency cube-clicker to the cubes, which was a little surprising. But as it turned out, we wouldn’t need to think that far ahead just yet. I knew I would be busy banishing and fearing some of the Burning Abyssals that would appear.
We had an unofficial first attempt, because one of the guild hunters inexplicably fired on a Hellfire Channeler, starting the encounter. It must have been an accident of some sort, and he promptly apologized. It took a bit of time to once again get everyone into place, from graveyard to Magtheridon’s room. It took about 42 seconds for the full wipe, so I figured we couldn’t do any worse than that.
Our official first attempt wasn’t good. The full wipe took place in about 2 minutes, 29 seconds. By the time Magtheridon had broken free, we had none of the Hellfire Channelers down, as opposed to the recommended three. The initial target managing to heal himself at least five times was definitely not helping the matter. I noticed that there were a lot more demons on the loose than I thought there would be.
Our second attempt was a lot better. We downed the first two Hellfire Channelers, and were working on the third when Magtheridon broke free. Unfortunately, Marluce is our main tank and he tanks the third Hellfire Channeler in the kill order…so it makes the transition a bit awkward in this type of scenario. The bottom line is our DPS needs to be a lot heavier than it was.
Again the loose demons were causing issues. I think Warlocks and Hunters (we had brought 7 in all) need to be a lot more proactive about getting those demons under control…I believe to the point of almost ignoring the Hellfire Channelers. Between banishing, fearing, and ice trapping, most strategy guides say that’s enough to have them under control. I spent about half-and-half of my time DPSing the Hellfire Channelers and running around to control the demons…I may have to work on full-time Abyssals duty. I can’t imagine how ineffective our DPS against the Hellfire Channelers will then seem.
I was assigned click duty for one of the far cubes, but we would never live long enough for Magtheridon to begin attempting his first Blast Nova. Our second attempt lasted about the same length of time…I died after 1 minute, 55 seconds, and Magtheridon emerged shortly thereafter to wipe the raid. But we had shown some definite improvement. It was at about this time, some of the members began dropping from the raid, and the raid was called.
It seems like it’s going to be a while before we have this fight down. And since the raid broke, the problems about the loose Abyssals and the low DPS against the Hellfire Channelers are running around in my brain.