Another Stab At Magtheridon
Following a short visit to Gruul’s lair to finish off Gruul this week, Eternal Force and a few others gathered up for an attempt on Magtheridon tonight. This would be only the second time Eternal Force has attempted Magtheridon. The first experience ended up being a lesson in how we weren’t yet ready for this encounter. Hopefully tonight things would be different.
Marluce (now with Prime) would be the main tank, with Rockstar, Sohelia (a pickup druid) and Thadril (an impromptu paladin tank) tanking the other channelers.
The first attempt ended with a quick wipe. DPS was only able to down one of the three clustered channelers…three channelers were clustered together and too many heals were getting off. They probably killed three channelers’ worth of health on the one guy. Hopefully this would be an icebreaker, a chance for those who had not yet been here to see how things work in the early phase.
The second attempt lasted 3 minutes, 57 seconds…four channelers were killed before Magtheridon got loose. A much better try. I was disappointed no one was calling out for deaths in the kill order…the off-tanks were supposed to rotate their targets clockwise to assist in bringing subsequent targets to the DPS group. (Quick positioning of the targets can speed the DPS). I ended up having to taunt an infernal off my healer, and dragging my target across the floor. The first Blast Wave ended up nuking about 20 out of the 25 people in the raid. That’s no good. The designated clickers were having trouble knowing when to report to their stations, and that would have to be addressed.
The third attempt lasted 3 minutes, 7 seconds. The big problem continued to be getting to the cubes on time…and then clicking and holding.
The fourth attempt was insane. We got him to 28% before a mistake was made on the cube clicking and the raid ate a Blast Wave. It ended up being pretty fatal. Marluce went down, and I had a chance to pickup Magtheridon and get him in place and do some tap-dancing on his face. That’s good practice for me, as I will possibly have the task of tanking him in weeks to come. The fourth attempt was 11 minutes, 10 seconds. Some of the raid wanted to go to bed (late on a Sunday night), but we decided to give it one more go.
The fifth attempt was great…it started similarly to the fourth. The fight is so long, you never know how things are going to turn out. The channelers were going down, and weren’t getting heals off. Magtheridon emerged, and Marluce took him. Finally the last channeler (mine) was killed, and I was quickly moved into place and switched to dual-wield and started hacking away at Magtheridon’s underbelly. The clicking was going smoothly. The Cave-In struck…I still think it’s tough to figure out where things are landing, it seems like the blocks are landing everywhere to me. Magtheridon’s body and large fires in the area weren’t really helping visibility. After 15 minutes and 45 seconds, Magtheridon was slain, and Marluce had tanked him the whole way. Everyone rejoiced, as this was our first kill of Magtheridon, and was truly an unprecedented kill. No one thought we were going to get further than a few minutes into the fight, much less actually slay him.
Magtheridon dropped the Girdle of the Endless Pit (won by Rockstar for offset), the Eredar Wand of Obliteration (won by Shria), Chestguard of the Fallen Defender (won by Elest), and a pair of Chestguard of the Fallen Hero (won by hunters Coydog and Zaroo). Magtheridon’s Head went to Shinryu, and the Pit Lord’s Satchel went to Shadowknives.
This run was one of the finer raids I’ve had since The Burning Crusade came out. It wasn’t necessarily smooth. During the fourth and fifth attempts, some of the leadership qualities of Marluce, Trivia, and the Eternal Force guild master Blackelement were really emerging. Warnings were being given. Clicking assignment were being clearly assigned. Contingencies were being addressed. The raid leaders were really on the same page and on top of their game, and that is going to take us deep into content. I’m looking forward to it.
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.