Feng the Accursed Down!

Feng the Accursed

Week two of raiding, and our second boss is down!  We really should have gotten him down on Monday when we had a couple of really heart-breaking 1% wipes.  But we finally got him on Tuesday after reset.

I don’t really have much to say about strategy for this boss.  Apparently the two extra abilities that the tanks get are channeled spells, which wasn’t immediately obvious and took a couple of attempts for the tanks to get used to.  The Shroud of Reversal ability seems particularly tricky to use to negate the Epicenter damage in phase 1, as I think it requires the tank using it to channel the spell on another player while the other player takes damage from Lightning Fists, and then reflecting the spell back at the boss at the right time, so it takes practice and good timing to get it right.  We had healer cooldowns at the ready to deal with any unmitigated Epicenters that got through.

In phase 2 it’s best to drop the Wildfire Spark in a specific spot, because when Feng casts Draw Flame the fire moves across the floor toward Feng, dealing damage to anyone standing in its path.  Having all the fire on one side also makes it easier for the tank using Nullification Barrier to absorb all the fire, as it only absorbs fire that actually hits the barrier.

The stacking/spreading out mechanic of phase 3 requires really good timing.  Generally Feng casts the Arcane Resonance debuff about 2 seconds before Arcane Velocity and then again immediately after Arcane Velocity.  So you need to wait until just before Arcane Velocity to stack up, and need to start spreading out about 2 seconds before it ends.  Arcane Resonance also lasts a surprisingly long time, so whoever has it is probably going to have to stand outside the stack through an entire Arcane Velocity period, meaning they will take a ton of damage.  This was definitely the most difficult phase, and we killed him with only a bubbled Prot Paladin still alive.  >.>  It was really agonizing to watch his health slowly drop as our Rogue was at about 10k health, the boss was at about 100k, then the boss was at about 20k, the Rogue died, our Pally bubbled and got the kill.  I really wish we had frapsed that, or that I had remembered to take a screenshot of everyone but the tank lying there dead.  LOL

Additional Notes About Stone Guard

This week there was a different combination of statues up: Jasper, Jade and Cobalt.  As I had feared, the strategy we used last week did not work with the Cobalt Mines, as the mines don’t disappear like the Amethyst Pools do.  So we had to re-do a bit of our progression learning to actually deal with the mechanics rather than cheesing them.  We still stayed loosely stacked behind the boss and moved around the room slowly, but we spread out to break the Jasper Chains during Jasper Overload and made sure to break as many Cobalt Mines as possible during Colbalt Overload.  It took a little bit of practice, but we got it down without too much trouble.  There was a bit less movement using this strategy, which made life easier for healers and caster DPS too.  I think this means we’ll be in pretty good shape for any statue combination now.

Gara’jal the Spiritbinder

We spent a couple hours working on the third boss last night, but didn’t get get a kill.  On our best attempt we got him to about 40% health… but we also ran right up against the enrage timer.  I don’t think we’ve figured out the best way to handle the DPS buff from the spirit world yet, but hopefully we will soon and this boss will go down for us too.