Tuesday, April 1, 2008

It was bound to happen sooner or later, I just wish it was later

I knew that our current run of downing a new boss in Kara each new night we went would sadly eventually end. Well it happened last night. We took the same group we had Sunday night to try our hand at Maiden. We called it after probably 6 wipes or so with the best attempt with Maiden down to 50%. It was really really difficult with two healers, 3 rogues, and a kitty druid. Suzzy and Wut were busy trying to dispel the magic holy fire thing she does, but often lost people before they could get it up. With 3238-3762 dmg upfront and 1750 dmg every 2 seconds for 12 seconds... if it goes up on a clothie, poof, that clothie is dust. I don't know, we may have to bring in another healer and more ranged dps to get this done. Has anyone been successful at Maiden with so much melee dps?

7 comments:

  1. I think you may be better off going straight to Opera when you have that much melee DPS in your group....Maiden is going to be extremely hard. The most we have done it with is 1 tank, 1 off tank and 2 melee DPS in the consecration.

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  2. So much melee is probably difficult at your gear level, but depending on how much damage your tank is taking, there's a couple of things you can try. Since you're prot pally is useless here, have him put on holy gear and try to have him handle the dispells mainly on his own.

    When we learned it, we usually ran in towards the edge of the consecration when we got the debuff to ensure we were in reach and line of sight for dispell.

    The point is to free up the priest as much as possible so,

    a) you keep the melee alive with hots and the priest focuses on the tank.

    b) you heal the tank, while the priest uses circle of healing on the melee.

    I'd go with option b, since CoH has limited use at that level, and having the spirit buff will probably benefit you more at that level.

    Anyway, just some suggestions. I'm no RL though, so what do I know :P

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  3. The key here is to have three magic dispellers, such as paladins or priests. Have them positioned at 3, 9 and 12 o'clock, where the entrance of Maiden is 6 o'clock.

    Download Decursive if your dispellers haven't done so. This is really where this mod shines.

    Maiden is probably the shortest fight in Kara. Mana conservation is less important than keeping people up. dispel, quick heals ... Aim to down her in less than 4 minutes.

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  4. There are three tricks to making Maiden an easy fight, even if you're heavy on melee DPS, however it requires certain classes.

    1) If you have a mage, have him cast Dampen Magic on everyone who'll be in melee range. It will reduce the consecration damage to near negligible amounts.

    2) The biggest thing that makes this fight a joke is a holy paladin. Have him heal the MT, and cast Blessing of Sacrifice on the MT right before the repentance cooldown is up (use BigWigs or DBM). The damage from BoS will keep him unstunned and able to keep the main tank alive.

    3) Have a healer doing nothing but Holy Fire duty. Ideally they should be able to dispell as well. They should have BigWigs (or DBM) and they just target whoever got Holy Fire, dispell it, then toss them a quick heal.

    You said you were going in there with only two healers. If you're relatively new to Kara, I would highly recommend you go with three healers instead, it makes a lot of the fights significantly easier.

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  5. Our group is also usually melee heavy: 3 melee dps, 1 druid off tank. The only difference is that we have 3 healers. One thing that we emphasis in our group on Maiden's fight is that melee dps is responsible for their own health, with the exception of damage due to debuff. During our first encounters, when we were not quite as well geared, we try to rotate meleers so that the number of melee-ers standing close together at a given time is limited to 2 (3 including MT). When they are not in the middle, they will take their times recovering their health through bandage and pot. Our OT druid, (since our MT is a warrior) when standing behind, he usually throws in some HoTs as well.

    Additional healer or additional dispeller that is not a healer is definitely useful to bring to this fight. And as the commenter above me said, Decursive is golden for this fight.

    I remember also that during our first fights with Maiden, we brought in some holy protection pots. They are not extremely helpful, but I always think that every little bit counts :)

    I hope this helps, and don't give up :)

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  6. I'm sure it's possible, but I've never done Maiden with more than 1 or 2 melee, and they were usually fairly self-sufficient. Tank and Holy Fire targets are always first priority for healers, so the melee DPS know to use pots and bandages when necessary to ease the healing strain (just remember to run OUT of Consecration before trying to bandage).

    Having an off-spec'd pally on dispel duty can really help, even if they can't contribute much to healing. Just make sure that everyone is in range of a dispeller.

    Read the strategies posted online and keep at it, eventually you'll get it. It may require some tweaking your group, or just waiting a few weeks till people are geared more from other bosses. But you'll get there.

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  7. Decursive = win for Maiden. Have your dispellers download it. If you're short on "traditional" dispellers, a warlock can have his felpuppy devour the holy fire. Yeah, the upfront damage sucks, but as long as the decurser is paying attention to her/his mod, the debuff won't tick more than once, and 5.5k total damage isn't enough damage to kill someone who's ready for Kara.

    It's definitely not impossible with all that melee DPS as well. Have them work on keeping themselves alive. The consecration damage is constant, but predictable. If they're getting low on health, they can pop a pot or a healthstone. If it's later in the fight, they can step out of the consecrate and bandage (or just wait until the healer gets to them to heal).

    The farther you guys push into endgame content, the more fights you will encounter that do damage to random members of the raid and not just the tank. If DPS gets in the habit early of watching their own health bars and acting accordingly, life will be wayyyyy easier for them in the future.

    Good luck getting the big lady down!

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