My Ops group is on the hardmode fight in EC for Firebrand/Stormcaller. We use a ranged dps on the ground instead of a healer because we found with our current group of players that works better and there is less of a loss. We consistently get far in the fight but are hitting the enrage timer. We hit it on our second to last pull the other night and we hit it on our last pull as well (although with that pull we actually got Stormcaller down and had Firebrand to 7%). Have people had success using this strategy and, if so, any recommendations for that last 7 percent??

Have a healer be on the ground instead of a dps. If they are moving around alot then they arn't dpsing to their potential.

 

Get a combat log and find out who isn't pulling their weight.

Edited February 23, 2013 by LordOfTheBees

Put a healer on the ground, so your DPS can DPS and not have to move as much. (Operative/Merc(mirror classes) are good).

As others have said, put your Firebrand healer on the ground. Firebrand puts out very little damage. I have this job in our raid, and I can easily heal the group place the yellow and blue circles, and add in a bit of dps. Using a ranged dps is inefficient because the constant movement hurts their dps.

 

About the enrage: are you hitting the hard enrage (with both tanks up), or are you getting the soft enrage that occurs when one tank dies? I just want to make sure you arent confuing the two.

Just run with the healer on the ground in SM if they're afeared. The only difference from HM is the cleasing which I personally think makes it easier. Healing on the ground is easy, but there is a learning curve. Absorb these tips and you're pretty much over the curve:

 

1. Keep moving as much as you can. If you're standing stock still when the lightning goes out you're liable to lose a good chunk of health -which I'd imagine your poor DPS was doing trying to eke out what he could on the ground. A healer on the ground moving as much as possible takes much less damage.

 

2. Don't stand in front of either tank's nose. The first times I did the ground on HM I died a few times derping around in front of Firebrand. My favorite spot to jog around is in between the tanks, though Fire's DPS must stand on the inside on the off-chance they need heals. I usually end up helping the Stormcaller healer with his tank. It's boring.

 

I've once had my healing partner say my job looked super hard, but having done both I have to disagree. The secret to ground healing is simply moving and knowing what cleanse is. Guy on Stormcaller actually has to heal stuff!

We run two different strats for different groups.

 

Group 1 uses a pyro merc for the "rabbit" and he dpses firebrand. They stack heavy dps on stormcaller to avoid getting two double distructions. Once they hit 10%, one of the dps changes to firebrand and makes up the difference. (Healer and dps eat DD) Then at 5-8% evens then out and takes them down together

 

Group 2 uses a op healer (me) on stormcaller. I choose stormcaller because I've always done that side and am comfortable with it. It's hectic ao I can understand someone running firebrand instead. We keep the dps even on both sides be burn them down evenly.

We have always run the tanks with a ranged DPS on the group.

 

We usually have 1 melee on firebrand (shadow if im dpsing, but usually the weaker sentinel) and 1 ranged dps on firebrand doing the kiting (usually our balance sage), then we have the other two dps on stormcaller. We make sure the stormcaller dps'ers are the best ones as they need to hit the transitions first to avoid having a lightning spike land on the tank.

 

I've analysed all of our HM kills for the guild and these are our rough guides for our DPS'ers:

 

1) Kiter averages 920dps

 

2) Other 3 dps average 1250dps or so

 

This should be fairly easy to hit and also fairly easy to measure through parsing. Firebrand has less than armour than stormcaller so it is worth putting kinetic / energy based classes on firebrand and force based classes on stormcaller.

 

Finally, as a comparison, I had to do the kiting in a storymode tanks fight as a balance shadow. I got 778dps during the fight from only using 2 dots, force in balance and then killing the adds when they spawn. A proper ranged DPS should easily beat this as you get quite a bit of time to avoid the attacks. DoT based ranged DPS works best. parse

This point has been discussed to death more than enough; the person kiting should be one of the healers (logically the Firebrand healer, although on HM it's perfectly possibly to heal Stormcaller as the solo ground kiter as well).

 

It's beyond ridiculous to put a DPS on the ground.

Healer on the ground, less headache

 

I have healed and dps both sides. Know nothing of tanking, but I am pretty sure the easiest role in the particular boss fight is healing on Firebrand kiting the lightning. Once you are use to it there is a very specific pattern to it, so once you get use to it, it is very easy to get off some big heals. When in doubt, I just pop defensive screen. Easy to keep HoTs and Kolto Cloud on the tank and DPS on firebrand and then under shield to top everyone in your group off and maintain the the tank kiting the lightning during that phase. About the only difficult part is making sure you cleanse yourself and not the tank by mistake. Also if the tank has taken huge damage (usually on a tank swap) and you have to get off a big heal, hit adrenal, relic and defensive screen and don't worry about the lightning, it isn't that big a hit with defensive screen up and if it is use a medpac. From what I have seen, it is easier for a Sawbone/Operative, but I have seen Sages and Commandos have no trouble with this.

Edited February 25, 2013 by mikebevo

If you are going to persist with your strategy you have your kill order wrong Firebrand must die first. Stormcaller's soft enrage, ultimate destruction, isn't too horrible to deal with and its hard enrage is the same. If you had killed firebrand first you should have been able to cover the 7% on Stormcaller to bring him down before he wiped you.

There really is no reason to fear having a healer on the ground, seeing how little damage Firebrand does. We have a scoundrel healer do it and even on nightmare mode he is so bored (or A.D.D) that he tries to trace shapes on the ground with the patches. Edited February 26, 2013 by Olostur

We have always run the tanks with a ranged DPS on the group.

 

We usually have 1 melee on firebrand (shadow if im dpsing, but usually the weaker sentinel) and 1 ranged dps on firebrand doing the kiting (usually our balance sage), then we have the other two dps on stormcaller. We make sure the stormcaller dps'ers are the best ones as they need to hit the transitions first to avoid having a lightning spike land on the tank.

 

I've analysed all of our HM kills for the guild and these are our rough guides for our DPS'ers:

 

1) Kiter averages 920dps

 

2) Other 3 dps average 1250dps or so

 

Healer on the ground is obviously the optimal strat when it comes to getting the most out of everybody. When you don't have to worry about the enrage timers (which the OP does, they need a ground healer), sure a DPS on the ground is viable. But I still have to ask... why? What benefit does a DPS on the ground provide for your group? Or does your healer just irrationally hate the ground (or your DPS irrationally love it)?

Aside from all that, you want to DPS them down as evenly as possible. If one is at 7% and the other is almost dead - switch your DPS to the one at 7% to catch it up. Kill one with the other that high and it'll be more difficult.

Normally I tank this and our Commando DPS kites on the ground but I've healed SC side from the ground, its really not that hard to heal from there as long as you pay attention to whats going on. That said, healing FB is like childs play by comparison. The biggest issue I had on the fight was the damn tank running out of LOS and range while kiting because he was afraid of stopping.

 

Ultimately though, as others have said, if you're having DPS issues, have a healer kite and take down FB first. The soft (and stacked soft/hard) enrage on Stormcaller is really easy to deal with since its applies a DoT. Have one tank taunt then AoE taunt when it wears off, then have the other tank do the same. You'll get about 25s out of this but lose both tanks. After that he'll just go down the DPS applying the DoT but he should be dead by then. FB on the other hand just does raid wide AoE and if you hide in the shield you do next to no damage to him.