Thread: acid t2 1:40 strat

Hi, me and my raid buds (not kin) have nearly etched out a challenge kill a few times when we went into acid t2 against Iorweth. We're trying to build a working strat to maximize dps. I was hoping for supplemental advice from those who have done it, and fill in any gaps I have in my strategy.

Our group setup consists of:

2 tank
2 healer
2 captain
1 champ
1 hunt
4 burg

Timeline
-10 seconds, champ(s) pop continuous blood rage
-5 seconds, hunter lays trap to snare one avanc, group spreads out in semi-circle around boss.
0 seconds guard challenge(traited) and turn.
0-5 seconds dps start, burgs reveal weakness &counter defense up. Captains to arms & Strength of will.
5 seconds captains time of need -> war cry.
10 seconds Guard hit engage.
15 seconds champs ebb, minstrels song of aid, Captain OB # 1.
15-25 seconds DPS frontload damage. Guard pledge, minstrels hit dps skills, everyone hit big crit skills.
35 seconds guard challenge.
45 seconds guard challenge the darkness, minis pop fellowships heart
49 seconds minis fear trolls
burgs mez dragonets
50 seconds burgs and minis back to dps/heal QUICKLY.
offtank grabs left avanc and all subsequent ads, starting with trolls, and kites.
2 diseases pop on different people, make them run out and pot, then IMMEDIATELY COME BACK to dps.
1 min guard challenge
1 min 10 seconds captains pop in harms way + last stand, guard engage
1 min 15 seconds champs ebb
1 min 20 seconds captain OB #2, guard use any more survival skills
1 min 20-30 seconds EVERYONE (except kiter) dps.
1 min 30-40 seconds Kitchen Sink!!!


Any advice appreciated.

Couple of ideas:

Go with 1 tank and 1 healer to load up a bit more on dps, get an extra champ/hunter and maybe a burg, with 5 burgs your dps will be insane. You can mez most of the adds with all those burgs and whatever else is left the mini can kite with FH up after add pop. Use hunter traps to the side to keep trolls away from the group if needed. Once mezzes wear off, have the captain in the minis group hit make haste and then LS IHW when FH wears off, mini can keep the tank alive with on the move heals while kiting the adds. Everyone else should stay healed up from the captain mark on the boss.

Also, have your champs pop CBR well in advance of the fight so that their damage bonus is maxed.

Be sure to have combat analysis going so you can epeen, thats whats most important

so with 1 kiting mini.....

fellowship's heart + heals to tank should be enough to establish aggro to kite ads?

Originally Posted by mrfigglesworth

so with 1 kiting mini.....

fellowship's heart + heals to tank should be enough to establish aggro to kite ads?

yeeee...nah

0-5 seconds dps start, burgs reveal weakness &counter defense up. Captains to arms & Strength of will.
5 seconds captains time of need -> war cry.

I would suggest captains pop To Arms and war cry immediately before engaging the boss, as the skills will reset. It's basically free damage.


Also, if any of your captains has the PvMP command set, it's kind of amazing for DPS races in PvE.

Originally Posted by mrfigglesworth

Our group setup consists of:

2 tank
2 healer
2 captain
1 champ
1 hunt
4 burg

Change 1 Tank to 1 Hunter, let the Hunters kill the Dragons - each Melee 1 Target (2 for the Trolls)

it's pretty easy to kill him without 1:40 (easier than Lightning imho if you have a few good dds)

Originally Posted by mrfigglesworth

so with 1 kiting mini.....

fellowship's heart + heals to tank should be enough to establish aggro to kite ads?

Originally Posted by Thorebane

yeeee...nah

Why not? Whatever isn't mezzed or grabbed by any of the boss tanks aoes is not going to be attacked by anything...so the mini ends up kiting a few or most of the adds. What else is going to establish aggro on these adds that are completely untouched or only mezzed? Unless your dps'ers are aoe'ing in a ST fight it shouldnt be a problem. Once the mezzes wear off, the mezzed adds are aggroed on the mini...because nothing else has been hitting them and cc doesnt get you that much aggro. I guess I don't understand your skepticism. I have healed this solo on mini and its very doable, you can average over 2k hps for the fight...with the kiting. I might be able to drum up some SS of me solo healing this, and I know I have an SS in my bio with just one healer in the group.


Oh and +1 to beasts comment about the sure strike buff. Captains are the new burgs heh.

Originally Posted by Melmadoc

Change 1 Tank to 1 Hunter, let the Hunters kill the Dragons - each Melee 1 Target (2 for the Trolls)

it's pretty easy to kill him without 1:40 (easier than Lightning imho if you have a few good dds)

I appreciate the input

but

i am hoping for help with the speed strat. I'm sure your way is very doable, i just want to ezmode it. Avoiding geysers is not my definition of fun.

Originally Posted by mrfigglesworth

I appreciate the input

but

i am hoping for help with the speed strat. I'm sure your way is very doable, i just want to ezmode it. Avoiding geysers is not my definition of fun.

you can run and jump against the wall left of the Door behind the boss (as near to the corner as possible) - you wouldn't get any geysers - ohnly the tank has to avoid them because one hit from the boss in your direction kills a lot of people

I second the switch to 1 tank and 1 healer. We initially won the dps strat using 2 healers but dropping it to just one minstrel healing made the fight easier and less dependent on burgs - you can win with just 3 instead of having to worry about 4 or 5, bringing in other classes so they can be involved too. If you want to bring that 2nd healer, have them trait red and yellow to dps and buff (if mins) or dps rk when you get to the boss (we've had both fire and lightning rk's, either works). If you want to bring 2 healers and have them both heal, make sure any minstrels are traited 4 yellow and keeping up bow/prowess to maximize dps.

Kiting with fh, bubble and FD, it's really not a challenge, you aren't kiting for long. We prioritize CC on the trolls and dragonets, an avanc or two is usually free but fear works just fine to buy time. I think since switching to one healer I've been blown up once while kiting, the raid just laughed at me and won the fight 3 seconds later (jerks).

Also, you should coordinate your OB with your To Arms to maximize dps. We toss the first To Arms/OB combo about 10 seconds into the fight, then toss the 2nd OB when To Arms is off CD.

Originally Posted by Melmadoc

you can run and jump against the wall left of the Door behind the boss (as near to the corner as possible) - you wouldn't get any geysers - ohnly the tank has to avoid them because one hit from the boss in your direction kills a lot of people

I'm not arguing that your way is not approachable. The question I posed was completely ignored by you twice, which is "can you help me revise and streamline the speed strat i have for acid t2 challenge". Look above and below you for posters who have contributed to that conversation, and i thank them.


Can Someone who has kited with the mini help give an idea of what they did in terms of skills they used whilst kiting and healing and running? I've no experience on minstrel skills, but I do know our minstrels hold their own and are well-geared.

As mentioned above, drop the second tank.
We carry 1 Guardian, 2 Cappies (both red-line), 2 healers (Mins preferred), 1 LM and all else DPS with as many Burgs as we can get (have done it with as few as 4). We do seem to struggle when trying to include Hunters. I think our best time is around 1:28.

We have theorized that carrying a second tank would reduce the need for Burgs because for us, aggro issues are a big reason Burgs are preferable (in addition to RW and CD). To mitigate that, 2 tanks could effectively keep the boss force-taunted for most of the fight with Engage filling in the gaps. Would possibly allow fewer Burgs so long as their replacements have godly DPS. But we have the Burgs use both HiPSes at predetermined points in the fight (the tank needs to know when his aggro is at its most sketchy).

We solely use FH for add control and that's the main reason we carry 2 Mins, though an RK pre-rez is also nice to put on that Hunt or Champ who can't find the aggro threshold.... but that makes add-work a bit more putzy. Every second counts in this fight and the more players you have doing add management, the less DPS you're doing. Our better Burgs can hit 3K DPS in this fight. You don't want that kind of DPS pulling off to mezz stuff.

Have the Mins run the adds to the back of the room and have the LM double root them. Done. Even if adds aren't dealt with 100% as desired, you can still win. We've still killed him in under 100s with significant add control failure.

We make sure the first 2 Diseases are run out of group and then we pop IHW/LS when the second ones hit and don't run them out anymore.

I don't want to describe the whole process because figuring something like this out is actually pretty fun and gets people to know the more intimate details of classes they don't play. It's about the max in class synergy that we've seen and I'm glad someone discovered this strat. Needless to say, we do start (as others mentioned) by using a lot of skills that will reset when the fight starts. I think you're basically on the right track, just start by dropping that 2nd tank and remember that every second of DPS can make or break.

The quick burg-zerg dps way is certainly the easiest way to complete challenge. However if you do not have an arsenal of burgs at your disposal or for whatever reason want to experience the entire fight then you can always kill the adds. There is less room for error but once your dpsers fully understand when exactly to kill each add then it isn't too bad. The jumping phase is annoying but as long as nobody falls asleep it isn't too much of a problem.

We do this very regularly with 2 burgs and an LM. I don't think we've had 3 burgs for this in a month now. Burg stacking is by no means required. We do use 2 healers, and either 1 or 2 captains. 1 tank, then 2 champs and 2 hunters. One extra champ or hunter if we only have 1 captain.

Honestly, if your DPS can DPS well, then you can be very flexible with what you bring. Of the 4 DPS classes, they're all capable of doing the DPS you need to get this done with only 6 of them assuming at least 2 are burgs.

Question on captain set: the 5-set bonus states 5% incoming damage but the picture linked shows +10% incoming damage...soo is it really 5% or 10% incoming damage for sure-strike?

It is affected by the telling mark legacy as well, so it gets an additional 5%.

Originally Posted by nolins12

The quick burg-zerg dps way is certainly the easiest way to complete challenge. However if you do not have an arsenal of burgs at your disposal or for whatever reason want to experience the entire fight then you can always kill the adds. There is less room for error but once your dpsers fully understand when exactly to kill each add then it isn't too bad. The jumping phase is annoying but as long as nobody falls asleep it isn't too much of a problem.

I didn't know you got the challenge. Grats.

Originally Posted by nolins12

The quick burg-zerg dps way is certainly the easiest way to complete challenge. However if you do not have an arsenal of burgs at your disposal or for whatever reason want to experience the entire fight then you can always kill the adds. There is less room for error but once your dpsers fully understand when exactly to kill each add then it isn't too bad. The jumping phase is annoying but as long as nobody falls asleep it isn't too much of a problem.

the bad thing is - there is even more room for errors if you try to kill him without adds...

you don't have to plan the Adds just 1 DD per Add - the time is long enough to get the cm if the dds are fast with target-switching...

ok, so...suggestions so far:

1 fewer tank, maybe 1 fewer healer.
hit cd skills ( such as controlled burn for champs) before starting, they will reset for the fight.
captains should have pvp bonus for imp sure strike (not likely to happen for a while)
Have one mini traited red for buffs and dps
Make sure to coordinate OB and to arms at same time
When ads come fellowships heart should be enough to grab aggro and kite. have lm root ads once or twice.
Captains IHW/LS through second set of diseases.

Anything else?