My raid team has been struggling with this fight for a few nights now. 90% of the wipes are due to one of the following:

 

1. Enrage Timer

2. Too slow on little adds and guy in the red pool gets clobbered

 

#2 only happens occasionally so I'm not that worried about it. But we're consistently hitting enrage usually below 10% health on the boss. Then he burrows and pretty much one-shots everybody. Our DPS'ers are putting out between 2300 and 2700 depending on the attempt so while that's not fantastic it seems like it ought to be enough. We were able to kill Styrak HM consistently before we started NiM TFB.

 

We do not have an assassin tank which can be used to trivialize the dps part of the fight. I'm just wondering if we're not using our DPS team properly or we're focusing on the wrong targets.

 

We have 2 Marauders and hence 2 blood thirsts, a sorcerer, and a sniper. Everybody is in full 72 level gear. We blood thirst right away back-to-back and then again as soon as it's available. When the jealous male appears this is our strat:

 

1. All dps stays on boss while tank picks up the jealous male and gets his back up against a wall.

2. Once tank is in position both marauders jump to the jealous male - sniper puts armor reduction debuff on jealous male at the same time.

3. Little adds appear - either a healer or ranged dps stands in the pool and both ranged dps AOE little adds until dead

4. Melee dps stay on jealous male until dead

5. Ranged dps swap back to boss after little adds die

6. Once jealous male dies melee dps switches back to boss

 

 

We do not have the option to get an assassin tank so either we're doing something wrong or our dps players just aren't good enough. Does anybody have any helpful suggestions (besides dumb stuff like "suck less") that maybe we're missing here?

 

Thanks!!

Some stuff that we do is that we have all DPS on boss until he moves and then everyone moves over to the jealous male, it's also very important that the adds are nuked down fast with pre-casted orbitals and continued lightning storms. I think that in general, your DPS is slightly low and at least the sniper should be able to get above 3k DPS, on my gunslinger I get at 3.5k+ at each try. Marauders should also be able to get above 2.8k, I remember when we were progressing on this boss when Nightmare mode came and I was able to get to around 3k DPS with saber throw on adds with full 72 gear.

 

If you are having people with unoptimized gear, do some Hardmodes to fix this issus and then come back and see if you can get around it, if it is the enrage timer that is the issue, your DPS is to low. So either work on rotations or get more gear =)

if u are hitting enrage, you should have a mara stay on the boss the whole time, if not both of them. the sniper and sorc can handle the adds with their aoe and the sniper should be able to kill the male after the adds are down (with help form sorc). try not to have maras get in the red.

 

just ideas i think might help

I am not sure what you have your sniper doing. But you can nuke the adds a bit faster in a few ways:

 

1) If he is not, Orbital should be saved for the adds only.

2) Snipers have an AoE Grenade that hits 5 Targets.

3) If the Sniper is not, it can switch to any spec but Marksmen and get another AoE ability.

 

Your Sorc Can:

 

1) If madness make sure the Death Field is used on the group.

2) Lightning Storm should be laid on to it till adds are dead.

3) If Lightning, Make sure the proc'ed AoE is used on add group.

 

 

These are ways to maximize your AoE DPS and get your two ranged back on boss. When everything is said and done, the problem lies with your damage dealers not doing their job right. Another small note, this fight is about 4 and a half minutes...You will only get the use of one Blood Thirst per Mara if done right. Once the boss dips into its soft enrage is when I would have them use it or right off the bat with ALL offensive CD's on ALL dps going (Tanks may complain about threat, risky move if they can not hold it).

for 8 man, i would disagree with Above post ^ on the orbital... use your orbital on boss always to buff the dps... on this kind of fights there are two ways of doing it, doing it "right" for you to kill the boss, or Overcomplicating it And / Or Buffing numbers (Aka Saving AoEs like orbital on adds)...

 

To do it right: first of all small adds should never, or almost never, even reach the red pool... you want all 4 dps on boss (including all orbitals).. male spawns, tank swap, tank gets aggro get to a wall and hold.. all Dps stay on boss, as soon as add spawn, everyone swap to adds (2 marauders assuming both carnage, with a gore window + DST smash Sweeping is like 75% of its hp) sniper grenade + sorc either chain lightning (if proced) or Death field (if adds are not close to dieing, since its a big buff dmg on boss) then swap right away and kill male.

 

there are two mistakes in your set up, first is thinking marauders have no kind of AoE, which is false, annihilation have less, but still can do some... and second is splitting dps, splitting dps NEVER gives you better DPS results, you have to see.. what do you want to achieve? avoid enrage on boss? ok this means you need more dps, how do you increase your dps?: 1) killing small adds faster = less heal = more heal dps... 4 dps destroying male in 5-10 secs = 3 classes with Executes to kill faster AND adds tank dps (which should be around 700-800 i guess for you) more time on the boss.

 

in other words, fights are simple, if you make them simple, when you add "more" stuff for people to do: "Male spawn.. mdps on male.. rdps on adds, healers splitting heals on 3 different people, wasting heavy hitter (Death field OR orbital) on something thats not your enrage problem ( adds)... then having sniper wasting time multi targeting male ++ shatter shot, to swap then to boss... you are adding like 5 more stuff to worry about than you should, making heals harder, and encouraging people to do more stuff that cause them to make more mistakes.

 

fight rotation: Start orbitals pre casting, your tank has 3-4 available taunts on start before male shows up, no tank swap required, should not lose aggro --- male spawn, dps stay on boss... adds spawn, rdps on pool or healer 4dps burn adds quick + instantly swap to male, burn both things quick, back on boss... repeat 3 times. Save heavy hitter (orbital or Death field) for boss.... Cleanse RIGHT away, dont worry about "moving" the dot hits for like 6k tick on you, the yellow circle hits for like 1.5k if u stand on it, you dont need to "move" or group will die, you see it, you cleanse it right away, people move, less healing = more healer dps. = no enrage

post above me has some good points but also some things I would disagree with. Annihiliation/Watchman have very little AOE damage and is a gigantic waste of DPS if they are running to the small adds, they can easily just throw 50% of their aoe damage (twin saber throw) on the small adds while they are moving to the jealous male. I do agree that cleansing people in their spots right away rather than running to a wall/edge will help keep DPS on the boss.

 

When my group was first doing this we would have similar problems (enrage @ 5%). I'm assuming all your DPS use attack adrenals? That would be #1. Another way we found to keep DPS on the boss is that the first red pool only has 5 adds (compared to I believe 10 for 2nd and 3rd red pool). So we would have a healer go in the first pool and only ONE range dps on the small adds while the other range dps stayed on the boss all the way until the 2nd red pool. For 2nd and 3rd red pool we would have a range dps in the pool and both RDPS would kill the small adds while MDPS killed male as normal. This was enough to push us over the edge and beat the enrage.

 

Also you might want to consider having your 2nd mara/sent wait to use blood/inspiration until he pops back up from his first burrow as there is really no way that 2nd mara/sent is gonna be able to use bloodthirst/inspiration a 2nd time.

A few points to consider. Most important one is last.

 

- You didn't mention what class your tanks are, but if they are juggs, don't bother burdening your sniper with putting out his armor debuff. The juggs will take care of it.

 

- Make sure your sniper is using orbital strike on the 3rd set of adds, and probably the 2nd set as well. For the first set it matters less because there are fewer adds so OS's limitless targets is less of an advantage. If you an operative healer, have them orbital the first set of adds, while the healing is still relatively tame.

 

- Make sure the sniper takes a turn in the pool. When it is his turn, have him entrench, and bring the male over near the pool to share in the AoE.

 

- Consider having the maras stay on the boss the entire time. Let the ranged DPS switch to the male after the adds are dead. All that matters is the male dies before the next one spawns, and they should be able to accomplish that.

 

And most important: How are you dealing with slime? My guess is you are doing the HM strat of having ranged DPS and healers run to the walls before cleansing. If so, don't, you are losing a ton of DPS time by running around. Have ranged DPS and healers group loosely in the middle, and just cleanse them where they are. This way, everyone just has to move a short distance out of the yellow circles. You can still overlap them though. Depending on my health, when I have slime I will take a walk through the yellow circle to drop them on top of each other.

Edited August 29, 2013 by NoFishing

Our tanks are a Jugg and PT. We cleanse the slime by having the person move very slightly to the side while everybody else generally stays stacked.

 

Thanks for all of the suggestions - much of it makes a lot of sense. We'll be trying these changes out Thursday.

So you have 2 melee and 2 ranged.

 

I'd advise the following:

 

- 1 melee on boss non-stop: should be your highest melee DPS.

- Ranged deal with the babies, then with the male.

- 1 melee on jealous male *as soon as it spawns*.

- Make sure that no male spawns as you enter the last phase. This means that you *have* to burn the boss as soon as a male + baby set of adds dies (somewhere around 20%).

 

Also, the DPS should be able to put out more than 2500 DPS. 2300 DPS is, imo, low. There should not be a reason to have DPS that low, especially NOT for range DPS and also not for melee. If they do between 2300 and 2700 DPS that means their DPS is just low, because they get the chance to AOE adds (which should bring their numbers to around 3000). Please consider this.

 

Also, is your team of DPS optimized? If not, you have an answer.

for 8 man, i would disagree with Above post ^ on the orbital... use your orbital on boss always to buff the dps... on this kind of fights there are two ways of doing it, doing it "right" for you to kill the boss, or Overcomplicating it And / Or Buffing numbers (Aka Saving AoEs like orbital on adds)...

 

To do it right: first of all small adds should never, or almost never, even reach the red pool... you want all 4 dps on boss (including all orbitals).. male spawns, tank swap, tank gets aggro get to a wall and hold.. all Dps stay on boss, as soon as add spawn, everyone swap to adds (2 marauders assuming both carnage, with a gore window + DST smash Sweeping is like 75% of its hp) sniper grenade + sorc either chain lightning (if proced) or Death field (if adds are not close to dieing, since its a big buff dmg on boss) then swap right away and kill male.

there are two mistakes in your set up, first is thinking marauders have no kind of AoE, which is false, annihilation have less, but still can do some... and second is splitting dps, splitting dps NEVER gives you better DPS results, you have to see.. what do you want to achieve? avoid enrage on boss? ok this means you need more dps, how do you increase your dps?: 1) killing small adds faster = less heal = more heal dps... 4 dps destroying male in 5-10 secs = 3 classes with Executes to kill faster AND adds tank dps (which should be around 700-800 i guess for you) more time on the boss.

 

in other words, fights are simple, if you make them simple, when you add "more" stuff for people to do: "Male spawn.. mdps on male.. rdps on adds, healers splitting heals on 3 different people, wasting heavy hitter (Death field OR orbital) on something thats not your enrage problem ( adds)... then having sniper wasting time multi targeting male ++ shatter shot, to swap then to boss... you are adding like 5 more stuff to worry about than you should, making heals harder, and encouraging people to do more stuff that cause them to make more mistakes.

fight rotation: Start orbitals pre casting, your tank has 3-4 available taunts on start before male shows up, no tank swap required, should not lose aggro --- male spawn, dps stay on boss... adds spawn, rdps on pool or healer 4dps burn adds quick + instantly swap to male, burn both things quick, back on boss... repeat 3 times. Save heavy hitter (orbital or Death field) for boss.... Cleanse RIGHT away, dont worry about "moving" the dot hits for like 6k tick on you, the yellow circle hits for like 1.5k if u stand on it, you dont need to "move" or group will die, you see it, you cleanse it right away, people move, less healing = more healer dps. = no enrage

 

Really? I can't help but feel something passive aggressive nature in that. Your points actually function better in 16 then 8; since we have more then enough Orbitals and will loose tics on our damage. In 8 man, you do not (or at least should not).

 

This method may put out a significant amount of "fast" damage. However, if a dps has to spend time moving and not triggering the GCD they loose damage. Since maras that are not Rage have only 1 gap closer...they will be walking and loosing damage just to activate 1 Smash and then be useless on the adds (Since Saber throw can be done from range).

 

Wrong. First, all classes have AoE....just certain ones have more effective single target. Why hold back valuable single target build up and damage to do mediocre (at best) AoE (This is what good melee do to pad their numbers, not effectively kill something). Second, splitting dps is ALWAYS more effective unless you are fighting timed and triggered phases. If I play a spec that has a long wind up time to deal damage and I switch to a burn target I will get half way through my rotation when it dies. I will just have lost the value of my time and GCD since my damage never finished. You state that to avoid enrage, you must kill the adds faster. You do that with Orbital. It comes of CD every 60 seconds and the adds come up every 60 (give or take ~5). It will do the MOST damage to the adds.

 

Once the adds are dead, your ranged can make the decision to go back to the boss or switch to the Jealous male. This decision will be based upon how much health it has left and what the wind up time is of the rDPS's spec.

 

What you are not understanding is that even though Death Field and Orbital are heavy hitters...they will do more damage on a group then single target. The more damage on the group in the shortest amount of GCD's = More GCD's on Boss or Jealous Male.

 

NiM is about forcing each person to play perfect and handle more. If you are looking for anything else...there is HM and SM.

 

Just about the only thing here that makes sense (I covered the rest in the stuff above) is to cleanse and then move vs. move and then cleanse. However, the reason is wrong. Its function is not to lessen the heal load so the healers can dps. The function is to allow the dps more time on the boss and less GCD's wasted. If a dps has to take 10 seconds to run out and back in he has lost almost 7 GCD's......those 7 abilities will do far more damage then a healer trying to dps (remember, healers do not have 100% accuracy).

 

 

The TL;DR version of this is that you have given advice that may help them understand the fight better BUT it will reduce dps. To maximize dps you need to be triggering the GCD as much as possible AND hitting as many targets with damage in the shortest window possible.

 

Some math:

 

 

really hard to read the few purple/blue stuff, but everyone gave their own opinion, he can decide who / which one works better for their team, i gave him what mine does, my marauder doesnt waste GCD running for adds, thats the skill of doing it,... but then again your points are valid, but dont work for "everyone" as u can see in his dps numbers, hes dps is not the highest, so the more you complicate it the harder it is for people.

 

everything you say, all the numbers everything sounds find, for your severity gaming group, and my group, but its not so easy for all groups, my guild has 4 different from beyond groups, 2 different Dragonslayers 8 man, all of them followed my strategy up there , i just go with what i am used to from our experience doing it, with variety of successful groups / Setups .... majority to not say all the time we recruit someone new or bring a different strat, its just way more complicated and doesnt help at all, the easier / simple you keep the fight, the easier it is, thats our theory and it works for us , we did the same theory in 16 man last week, they didnt even make it half way to the pool.. 3 orbitals wasted for nothing there, the fastest prob hit once, no reason wasting 6-9k dmg that could be hitting boss ... after all it depends on the group, they will be able to try all this different options and work whatever is the best for them

Edited August 29, 2013 by Carlenux

Your group DPS seems low. If your DPS is around 2.3 - 2.7k, you are going to have very bad time in NiM.

Yep, your dps needs to improve, thats the harsh truth. You can try maximizing tactics and probably kill it, but that will be the only boss you are going to kill. A group doing 2.3k-2.7k dps on TWH is nowhere near the requirements for NiM. In comparison, I did >3.4k dps on my last kill there on my marauder. Sit down with your dps and try to figure out whats keeping them back. Stacking crit? Bad rotation? Wrong usage of aoe abilities against adds?

really hard to read the few purple/blue stuff, but everyone gave their own opinion, he can decide who / which one works better for their team, i gave him what mine does, my marauder doesnt waste GCD running for adds, thats the skill of doing it,... but then again your points are valid, but dont work for "everyone" as u can see in his dps numbers, hes dps is not the highest, so the more you complicate it the harder it is for people.

 

everything you say, all the numbers everything sounds find, for your severity gaming group, and my group, but its not so easy for all groups, my guild has 4 different from beyond groups, 2 different Dragonslayers 8 man, all of them followed my strategy up there , i just go with what i am used to from our experience doing it, with variety of successful groups / Setups .... majority to not say all the time we recruit someone new or bring a different strat, its just way more complicated and doesnt help at all, the easier / simple you keep the fight, the easier it is, thats our theory and it works for us , we did the same theory in 16 man last week, they didnt even make it half way to the pool.. 3 orbitals wasted for nothing there, the fastest prob hit once, no reason wasting 6-9k dmg that could be hitting boss ... after all it depends on the group, they will be able to try all this different options and work whatever is the best for them

 

He's not saying your strategy doesn't work, obviously it does. But this thread is about maximising DPS because they are having trouble beating the enrage timer.

This is done by having maximum amount of aoe damage on the adds with minimum amount of wasted damage as well as minimum amount of single target damage on the adds.

Ideally you would want all adds dieing at the exact same time on the last tick of any aoe, now this isn't realistically going to happen but that's what we're striving for.

 

There is no reason for the maras *not* to use saber throw on the adds since they dont have to move to do it, but do NOT put your maras on single target duty on the adds, it wont neccesarily lower their damage ouput (at least if they're not annihilation) but it will transform damage that *could* be aoe into single target thus wasting damage.

 

My advice would be keep maras on the male, make sure they saberthrow the adds becase again no reason at all not to and save orbitals for the adds. If you have a merc or operative healer make sure they throw down their aoe on the adds as well then have ranged finish it off.

 

Lastly you say "buffing numbers" by savign aoe on adds is a bad thing? What you have to realise is that the actual hp of the boss is boss hp + adds hp. There is no such thing as useless dps and this group is having enrage issues. Buffing numbers is *exactly* what they need to do right now a.k.a maximising their dps.

In your example you say its wasted to throw down orbitals on adds because you killed them before they got there, well what actually happened was you wasted all your aoe dps by single targetting the adds thus not being able to benefit from aoe (aoe > single target, on multiple targets, surely that is easy to understand)

After everything was said by more experienced people before me I can only add our experience as not a competitive guild from top tier but a social guild that only managed to get it's NiM progression running right now.

 

We had our first serious attempt last night and got a kill on 7th attempt. We gave one pull to dreadguards, so we know now we are nowhere near the requirements and then we went back to farming HM.

 

We had 3 ranged last night, but normally we would have 2, still we used same strategy we would use. Melee stay on boss. Ranged kill the adds, then switch and kill jelous male quickly. We had severe problems with making it alive to burn phase. It was healer resource management mostly and cleansing so they needed help. Everyone who could cleansed themselves (aparently I dicovered another thing bugged with resilience as it doesn't cleanse it) we had a gunnery commando help with cleansing as well. It appears my guardian co-tank needed a bit more gear then he had (he was taking quite a bit more damage after mitigation but before self-heals). Our sage healer is mostly optimised gearwise but a clicker, my shadow tank is optimised for this fight with 38800 HP after respec to high endurance without sacrificing mitigation and we have fully optimised sentinel. Everyone else is suboptimal but in full 72's except some set-bonus armorings, some have some suboptimal verpine or crafted implants or earpieces.

First time we managed it to enrage we got it at 0% and wiped at 20k HP on boss. Next one was a kill. Before that loosing a tank wiped us every time.

 

Our philosophy for this fight is to keep it as simple as possible for players so melee shouldn't be really switching targets as they might make mistake, jump to wrong thing and will loose GCD's. At the same time we needed to reduce incoming damage to the group so all strong AOEs were used on adds to absolutely destroy them instantly, same thing for the jelous male. Our dirty fighting slinger actualy respecced to sharpshooter for better switching capability. We do not split DPS to adds and jelous male at the same time also due to fact that overeager rDPS tend to hit the jelous male before tank can even get to it. And loosing aggro on jelous male is not fun. We start with pre-cast flybies from slingers and scoundrel healer, i open the fight on my shadow with power adrenal, AOE taunt after 3 GCD's and single taunt a bit later. I lost aggro once on our first try due to 3 consecutive misses and false GCD bug. Combat sentinel and best geared slinger were guarded.

 

Overall I think DPS check isn't that tight if our group was fully geared to begin with (which I insisted on but haven't got yet - I recon we are missing between 100-200 DPS per damage dealer due to gear) ) it would have been quite easy after learning the mechanics (stuff would die even quicker and that means less healing required).

We will proceed to farm HM with NIM 1st boss until everyone is fully geared. You guys can also do it.

Edited August 29, 2013 by AAAAzrael

When you have damage everything becomes easier. We lost a few people 1 month ago and had to replace. We also took the opportunity to BIS everyone in our raid team and then go nightmare. What a difference. We practically one shot TWH with our new group. We got to the dreadguards and on our first 5 pulls we got kelsara down to 50% before we all died. My advice, do not do nightmare if you do not have the gear, it will not cut it.

 

 

Some of my raid's damage last night on the TWH. I have still not found a way to prevent lag spikes when I stream and this shows on watchman as any delay in abilities drops your DPS significantly.

Edited August 29, 2013 by Leafy_Bug

don't know why you are hitting enrage, my raidgroup did this boss in NiM first try with 2.8k DPS Operative, 2.7k DPS marauder, 2.1k dps marauder and 1.5k dps marauder, didnt even hit enrage.

don't know why you are hitting enrage, my raidgroup did this boss in NiM first try with 2.8k DPS Operative, 2.7k DPS marauder, 2.1k dps marauder and 1.5k dps marauder, didnt even hit enrage.

 

only way you didnt enrage with that dps is you would've had 2 sin tanks for no adds.....

don't know why you are hitting enrage, my raidgroup did this boss in NiM first try with 2.8k DPS Operative, 2.7k DPS marauder, 2.1k dps marauder and 1.5k dps marauder, didnt even hit enrage.

 

Riiiiiiight

in other words, fights are simple, if you make them simple, when you add "more" stuff for people to do: "Male spawn.. mdps on male.. rdps on adds, healers splitting heals on 3 different people, wasting heavy hitter (Death field OR orbital) on something thats not your enrage problem ( adds)... then having sniper wasting time multi targeting male ++ shatter shot, to swap then to boss... you are adding like 5 more stuff to worry about than you should, making heals harder, and encouraging people to do more stuff that cause them to make more mistakes.

 

If "cast an AOE one place, throw one attack on another target, and go back to dpsing your main focus" is too much for someone to handle, I'd hazard a guess they aren't ready for nightmare.

don't know why you are hitting enrage, my raidgroup did this boss in NiM first try with 2.8k DPS Operative, 2.7k DPS marauder, 2.1k dps marauder and 1.5k dps marauder, didnt even hit enrage.

 

As the dudes in Death & Taxes would say, that is mathematically impossible!!!

really hard to read the few purple/blue stuff, but everyone gave their own opinion, he can decide who / which one works better for their team, i gave him what mine does, my marauder doesnt waste GCD running for adds, thats the skill of doing it,... but then again your points are valid, but dont work for "everyone" as u can see in his dps numbers, hes dps is not the highest, so the more you complicate it the harder it is for people.

 

everything you say, all the numbers everything sounds find, for your severity gaming group, and my group, but its not so easy for all groups, my guild has 4 different from beyond groups, 2 different Dragonslayers 8 man, all of them followed my strategy up there , i just go with what i am used to from our experience doing it, with variety of successful groups / Setups .... majority to not say all the time we recruit someone new or bring a different strat, its just way more complicated and doesnt help at all, the easier / simple you keep the fight, the easier it is, thats our theory and it works for us , we did the same theory in 16 man last week, they didnt even make it half way to the pool.. 3 orbitals wasted for nothing there, the fastest prob hit once, no reason wasting 6-9k dmg that could be hitting boss ... after all it depends on the group, they will be able to try all this different options and work whatever is the best for them

 

gunte pretty much explained this for me. But to reiterate; their dps is the problem and that is what we need to address to help them get through. Your strat works and is simple, but does not maximize damage. I am also guess your guys are very good at their class and can sacrifice GCD's without dropping below 2.7k. The OP's obviously can not.

 

On a side note; your marauder DOES waste GCD's running to the adds. He can only close the cap in 1 GCD once. Not twice. So, somewhere in his target swapping he misses GCD's. If he wants to do more dps, he needs to eliminate that (not saying you guys need more dps; just that to maximize damage you need to do that. That is what the OP needs; to maximize his raids damage).

 

If "cast an AOE one place, throw one attack on another target, and go back to dpsing your main focus" is too much for someone to handle, I'd hazard a guess they aren't ready for nightmare.

 

You, get out of here. No one asked you to come in here. I saw it first (at least posted first)!

Knowing the mechanics and when everything is going to happen is the biggest part. Getting into pool a little slow can screw up people trying to aoe. We usually do adds, male, and back to boss. Keep melee on the boss if you can. Seriously have to wonder why dps with anything other than a slinger/sniper after tonight. There is such a huge dps difference.

All dps classes are good. We have an OPERATIVE that puts out 2.8-3k dps. Issue of L2P really.

All dps classes are good. We have an OPERATIVE that puts out 2.8-3k dps. Issue of L2P really.

 

Wanna do that fight with 2x shadow DPS (Mr.Wild-berry not being available)?