Nighthold on a Stick!
- ryanjepson8
- Feb 9, 2017
- 7 min read
It's been a little while since my last World of WoW post, and I haven't quit or anything! Just a mixture of laziness and real life stuff happening. It's weird, I missed Tuesday's raid due to my wedding anniversary (went to an amazing French restaurant called Avert), and when I logged in on Wednesday, it felt like I haven't played in forever. I guess it's because it's the first raid I've missed in a rather long time. The guild also had a few new recruits in the Tuesday run, along with another mage, and it looks like they're doing fairly decent on the numbers front, so that's good. At least we may not have a shortage or anything when Mythic time arrives. Which is actually sooner than you'd think. But before that, how have things been on the Nighthold front for the last week and a half? Firstly, I need to remember where I left off... Oh yes! Were were getting our asses kicked by:
Grand Magistrix Ellisande
Well, we had to get through the rest of Heroic before we could try Eliisande again actually, but none of it really presented a problem. The occasional wipe now and then, but it's safe to say that up to this point is on farm status.
So, as it turns out, we were doing the fight all wrong. I went over the abilities in the last post, but we managed to overlook one small, but extremely important thing: the moves that Ellisande uses echo in subsequent phases. For example, let's say you get 3 ring phases in the 1st phase, with the adds spawning in certain locations and then you push her into the 2nd phase. Well, in the 2nd phase, this will happen in exactly the same way with the exact same timing and locations. With this in mind, here is how the boss is actually meant to be fought:
On 1st phase, pop Heroism when the first add comes out.
DPS as hard as possible to push the boss into the 2nd phase while only getting two ring phases.
This will simplify the fight enormously for the next two phases as they will play out almost identically to the first.
For 2nd phase, you still need to catch the orbs that fall from the sky.
She'll also still fire the beams from herself, but aside from that, it's the same as the first phase.
3rd phase combines the 1st and 2nd phase and adds some debuffs that get thrown onto players. Honestly not too much to worry about here. At least from my perspective. They do some heavyish damage, but nothing that bothered the healers too much.
And that's it. It only took us two attempts to get her down once we were aware of the echoing mechanic, as opposed to the 15 tries from last time. What a difference knowing the mechanics of the fight can make!
Gul'dan
The first time we'd gotten got Gul'dan Heroic, it was at the end of the night after running through the rest of the raid, but based on how easy we were able to get Ellisande down this time, we were pretty hyped up about getting Gul'dan down. Turns out, this fight is a tad bit harder and longer than Ellisande. Seriously, the Gul'dan fight from start to finish is like 11 minutes! It's certainly one of the longer boss encounters that I've come across. We got 5 attempts on the Tuesday night raid in, though none of them went particularly well. On Thursday though, feeling refreshed, we managed to get the bastard down after another 6 attempts! A pretty damn brutal fight, but it felt really rewarding considering the length of it, as well as the amount of mechanics that go into it. Another 3 phase fight here, so there's a lot to cover. I'll try to recall most of them:
Firstly, you'll notice that as a DPS, you have a heroism button. Time this between felfire casts and such. It lined up really well with my CD's as a mage.
1st phase, adds will spawn. You need to take these down in a certain order and watch out for beams that do heavy damage from the boss. I forget the order. Eye guy first and then the other two I think.
Once the adds are down, 2nd phase begins. This is the longest phase of the fight.
You can now directly DPS Gul'dan, but on occasion, a large add will spawn and cast Carrion Swarm. This needs to be interrupted 100% of the time. Also, focus the add as soon as it pops.
Small eye adds also spawn on occasion, and these need to be killed ASAP.
Gul'dan will cast Bonds of Fel, which the player will need to run out of, but not by themselves (unless you're a tank). Have a few players join and run out with them.
Sometimes the Bonds or Eyes will be empowered, meaning they hit a hell of a lot harder. In these cases, it's imperative that people pay attention to when this happens, as strats change slightly. Bonds requires more people. Eyes need to be killed much faster.
Gul'dan still casts felfire stuff, so make sure you're not wasting those heroism casts.
3rd phase starts when the boss gets to 40%. This phase can get extremely chaotic.
Gul'dan no longer casts Bonds of Fel in this phase, but instead, there's a lot of other shit to worry about.
Players will sporadically get a debuff called Flames of Sargeras. Run this the hell out of the raid, as it will drop large fire patches on the ground at 1 second intervals.
Empowered eyes appear still, so make sure these go down ASAP.
Make sure the souls from the Nightwell are absorbed accordingly, as if there's a lot in there when Gul'dan casts his Black Harvest, it'll hit insanely hard and result in a wipe.
When he does his storm thing, run to the other side of the room.
Phew. Eventually, after all of this, he'll finally die! The main things that were causing us wipes in the 3rd phase were being overwhelmed by the eyes, or forgetting to absorb enough souls to avoid the heavy Black Harvest damage. Very cool fight though. It's quite clear that blizzard put a lot of work into this one.
And, that's it! Heroic Nighthold down! Now we can relax until the next raid patch. Oh wait, there's that Mythic difficulty thing. Well, alright then...
Skorpyron
This fight again? Ugh. Actually though, we're a lot more prepared now than we were the first time we tried this guy. Quite a few people have their tier sets completed, with much better gear in general, so surely this fight shouldn't be too much of a problem now, right? Well, yes. It was very easy in fact. 3 attempts this time and we had it down. I already posted the mechanics when we first tried this fight, but here's a cheeky copy and paste from that post:
Pop hero and DPS boss.
The beam thing he fires has a lot quicker cast time and must be avoided. It's not a death if you get hit, but if it coincides with Shockwave and you get knocked back, it's a wipe.
Red shards now come off of the boss. If you're behind one, you need to move out as soon as Shockwave goes off, since the shard will explode and likely kill you.
Adds spawn at intervals. Try to let them get to the boss before AoEing them down.
Often, the beam and shockwave casts will be very close together, so positioning is important to make sure you can get behind a shard in time. Every 2nd shockwave or so.
Green phase thing happens, which means there's usually only one shard to shield from a shockwave and EVERYONE needs to get behind it. This shard seems to give you poison damage of some sort.
So yeah, after Heroic Gul'dan, this guy did seem like a bit of a joke. Sort of similar to Mythic Nyth from EN in terms of the easiness factor. I'd heard that the first 3 bosses of Mythic Nighthold were fairly easy compared to the rest. So, moving on, we decided to try the next one.
Chromatic Anomaly
This guy is definitely harder than Skorpyron. Actually, the trash that was surrounding Anomaly was harder than Skorpyron. No joke. We actually wiped a few times before we managed to down it! Now that we can pretty much cheese the Heroic version of Anomaly in less than 3 minutes by DPSing it down in the first phase, following mechanics on this fight has become somewhat of a foreign concept. I'm not entirely sure of all of the mechanics of the fight, since we couldn't down it, but here's what we experienced so far:
Split raid into two groups. This is for the add phases of the fight.
Pop hero at start for best DPS throughput and get the bosses health down as much as possible.
Adds will pop on opposite sides of the room. Here, the raid splits and takes them down.
Get back to boss as quickly as you can and kill any remaining adds.
If you have time bomb, be aware of the time changes, as it could explode earlier than you realise. When it's about to explode, take it away from the raid to minimise damage.
Make sure to dodge stuff on the ground, as well as the ring of orbs that comes from the middle of the room.
The same Power Overwhelming mechanic exists where he does raid wide damage until stopped by the tank, upon which time will either speed up or slow down. Don't let this damage get too high.
We couldn't seem to get past 50% on this fight and I'm not entirely sure why. I think it may have been a combination or too much incoming damage, as well as getting somewhat overwhelmed by having to split the raid in two for the adds and DPS the boss at the same time. Of course, it's entirely possible that we're just doing the fight incorrectly, like Ellisande! Either way, hopefully, we manage to get it down tonight.
Next time: Mythic continues! Let's go for 2/10 (I'll take 3/10 too...)!
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