Ward of Elements needs to be toned WAY DOWN!

I never said that fabled pre-DoF were common, I only mentioned 3 items that I got leveling up. My first and only master I remember seeing pre DoF was from a random mob in Runnyeye. That is a total of 4 metal chests leveling up to the original cap in the first few months. And I had a solid group that killed alot of mobs regularly (Heck, leveling without the "adventure xp" was hard work, and I remember being inside Ruins of Varsoon CAMPING that golem room for 3 hours and only coming out with 3/4 of a level... yep, that was "fast" leveling for us.
World Epics dropped 1 fabled and alot of treasured every time you killed them. The only epics that didn't do this, were from many of the instances. I remember doing spirits of the lost, and getting tons and tons of treasured rewards.. don't remember seeing a master drop from them, and the last guy ALWAYS dropped a metal chest. Sub-bosses pre DoF weren't known for always dropping fabled, but bosses always did. Seeing a fully fabled "anyone' was hard, but it was there and doable.
My point is, Master spells were certainly very rare to find... in fact, I would wager to say rarer than items, because while fabled were guaranteed drop from boss mobs, master spells seemed to be 1/10,000 reguardless of what you were killing. A raiding guild pre-dof was getting 6-10 fabled items per week if they had the mobs on farm status. All the zones that updated the prismatics, for example, were almost guaranteed a fabled, and these zones were "easy"... ussually 1 boss mob to kill. Longest prismatic quest zone was Darathar's Island.

Freliant wrote:

The three Drakota you needed to kill for Fire and Ice, to get the items used to talk to Vox, had less than a 1% chance to drop anything other than treasured.
All x2 contested mobs had a chance to drop treasured, but x4 dropped a guarenteed fabled item (barring a few bugs). Masters in T5 were common enough from raids, with 2 - 4 drops being normal for each daily run of the smaller instances, and up to 6 dropping per run of SotL. Most x4 contested also dropped a master spell.

We're working our way through this zone. First try was 4 Apr 09 and we took down the first 3 nameds and have been farming them ever since. We recently added Digg to our rotation and have killed him the last two times in there. Now that we have Digg down, we've started on Dayakara, the fire elemental. So far we've gotten him to fifty something percent but then we get overwhelmed by adds (they spawn really, really fast). We tried splitting the DPS with multiple combinations of who was killing adds and who was killing the named:

• tank only on named, raid on adds
• two DPS on adds, raid on named
• everybody on named, tank grabs everything

After trying multiple different strats on this guy, it's looking like this fight is all about DPS with a tad of aggro thrown in (just grabbing the adds as they spawn is what I mean, not that it's hard to keep aggro once you have it). If we had higher DPS, we could just burn down the named while keeping everything on the tank. We got the furthest with this approach but there are just too many adds spawning way too quick. We just didn't seem to have what we needed when we tried him last night.
So my question is, for those that have actually killed this guy, what was your raid DPS on this fight?
Thanks

Decimatr@Kithicor wrote:

here's a suggestion to help out towards the end of that encounter: have your priests rotate their blue deagro ability. each priest has a control effect attatched to it(short duration, but it all helps) to help a little with damage.

Decimatr@Kithicor wrote:

We did it with aroudn 32k dps, and 4 healers on the MT. We had a ton of adds, we wiped after the named died, but still got our loot.

Decimatr@Kithicor wrote:

The following is the most common way we kill it that *should* be viable for your raid force:
Group 1 needs to have a good single target tank to fight Dayakara. He'll need 2 good healers with him, this is usually formed up similar to our raid MT group. Guard, temp, defiler, dirge, coercer, swash. You can vary here, but you need a solid tank and heals.
Group 2 needs to have a good aoe tank. We use a Pally or a Zerker most commonly. For you guys, your probably going to want 2 healers in that group as well.
We place ranged dps on the railing to the stairs on the righthand side as you walk into the room. We place healers at the base of the stairs on the railing on the same side.
We place the OT in front of the middle of the stairs.
MT tanks Dayakara at the table on the left side by the stairs with mob's back to the ranged dps.
At this point, its a BURN BURN BURN fight. All dps on the named and just burn it like mad. You need to push over 30k dps to get it burned down before your OT is overwelmed.
The OT is simply getting aggro on the adds as they spawn and keeping them off the healers/dps. He needs fast cures and solid heals, but the detrimental easily does as much or more damage than the auto attack from all the grimlens.
Now, alternatively, we've done this with a single tank stacking more dps. A single SK can trivially hold aggro on the named and an infiniate number of adds. So he can just tank the entire encounter while you burn the name down. We've also had success using just a zerker in the same role. The trick here was to place the zerker and dps such that the adds had to funnel past the MT to get to the heals/dps. If you've got an SK, going the single tank method might be best, otherwise read what I posted and adapt.
Lastly, remember you can do these mobs out of order. I personally find Dayakara the hardest encounter in the zone since Aiden can be overcome by just making more people place boulders. Others will of course not agree with that statement.

Allurana wrote:

I agree a game that force too much the composition of casual raid is going in the wrong direction. We cleared all WOE but the last monster with a t2 raiding force and no mythical but this was when i was in a wannabee raiding guild. Sure we were efficient in raids but the guild was extremelly unfriendly. In my former casul guild (that i left because some morronic historical co leader came back and stated to suck) we never passed the third boss.
The players of my casual guild were probably as good or even better than the ones of the raid. The huge difference in the possibilities of the raid was simply induced by the composition.
Is it because nobody knew how to set up a raid in my casual guild ? Not at all, our ideal raiding force was more or less exaclty what the wannabee raider team composition.
So basically our casual guild failed because we could not bring a raiding force that would succeed.
Raiding is 90% about having the right raid setting (and gear), figuring out strategy and what is the good raid force is trival. The main difficulty is to get the 24 (or 12) classes you wany on-line at a given time. It's almost impossible to achieve in a friendly guild.

Atan@Unrest wrote:

Sounds overly complicated. As a Paladin, I've run WoE a bunch of times as the only tank. For Dayakara, I just pull him to the bridge, turn and burn. Everyone stacks up right behind him, I punch Concescrate and Holy Ground if one of the adds gets out of line. Mob dies, we loot. Next. It's a trivial fight if you have a Crusader tanking.

Filthi@Venekor wrote:

Just to point out, if you have either a Paladin or Shadowknight, that's all you really need; an OT group build is completely superfluous, and actually can be detrimental because you're not maximizing your raid DPS. There are no fights in WoE that would require a Crusader to have an off-tank to help him.

Noaani wrote:

I agree.....the zone is easy enough as it is.

Decimatr@Kithicor wrote:

This fight doesn't require high dps or really more than a 2-3 good healers. Now that add spawn number have been nerfed (~ 1 month ago) this fight is extremely trivial. It is easily doable with one tank (I've put warlock on tanking adds several times) but you'll need two tanks for aiden (in case one gets ported) so might as well brign two tanks.
You can trivialize the curing and healing by having range dps on named (HINT look at bosses buffs) and melee dps on adds. Tank near one portal and have adds tanked in middle / opposite side. This setup the only person getting the elemental dot is the MT. You can range the elemental aoe at about 10 m. At 30% the adds seem to speed up... have all dps switch to the named and ignore th adds at 30%. Crusader is best on boss (b/c of boss's damage shield) but it really doesn't matter.
This is one of about two fights in the whole game that having a warden helps on. But since most wardens seem to forget they have an elemental ward that will absorb 100% of his aoe's and his damage shield they will often need a gentle reminder. Use ACT and if a warden isn't getting a huge heal credit for 'ward of the untamed' feel free to ridicule them for sucking.
You can burn/heal/cure through almost any script... but if you're having issues the above is the easiest way to kill him imo. Once you understand how the fight works and kill it you'll no longer thing it need to be 'toned down'.

Enoa@Kithicor wrote:

Nope. Aiden will not port a player that is at the top of his hate list. Persuming your tank is not out to lunch, he will never get ported to harvest rocks. Two tanks is by no means needed for Aiden.

one tank and omg its a guard

Enoa@Kithicor wrote:

First off, let me clear something up. *I* was never asking to have this zone 'toned down'. I'm clarifying that since it's kind of an old thread, and my response was the only one quoted. I was just asking what kind of DPS those taking the guy at the time (pre-nerf) were pumping out so we would know what to shoot for. We don't always have the best setup since we run it in guild and don't always have the right classes online. It's kinda fun to see what we can pull off sometimes though. We took Digg one week with 16k dps. lol. We're killing Dayakara regularly now and just started working on Captain Grush but have only had a few pulls on him.
As you said, you can burn/heal/cure through almost any script. The downside to that is that you end up with plenty of messages out here on the boards talking about how simple a given encounter is. Usually this is coming from people with a lot of really nice gear who head in there with a good raid setup and just burn through it. It's kind of like playing that carnival game where you knock over the three stacked up milk bottles but instead of throwing baseballs, you use medicine balls.
We take a bit of a different approach. We take whoever signs up within the guild and if we have a tank, 3 healers, and some dps, we head in since we can take the first 4 named with that. May even be able to take Dayakara with that now that we've figured him out. We, however, realize that this isn't the optimal setup and aren't asking for things to be toned down just because we're not going in with the right classes. If the zone can be cleared with the target level of gear if you just set up the raid right and get the strat down, it's where it should be. Glad they nerfed Dayakara's adds spawn rate though. lol

Odys@Storms wrote:

The third named (Khost Alur) has some tricks to it that will help substantially.
The Main Tank should be wearing a water breathing item or have a Shaman cast water breathing on the group. That deals with the curse (you start drowning). If every member of the raid is Curing Arcane every 16-18 seconds, then the healers can focus on keeping the Main Tank up.
Any Assassin or Ranger in your raid MUST be casting Noxious Enfeeblement as often as it is up and keep it on the mob. That reduces the Crit ability of the mob by 10%. Really, every TSo fight should see Predators constantly casting this.
Pull the mob to one of the towers that is illuminated and make sure the tank has their back to one of the pillars so he/she doesn't get knocked across the room out of healer range.
Rest is DPS and heal. Any kind of Interrupts that people can cast will help immensely.

Personally, I would skip Digg and go straight to Dayakara and see if you can get that down.
Have a single target tank keep Dayakara busy in the left alcove, facing away from the raid. Have your highest 2-3 DPS helping the MT kill Dayakara. Adds can get lost under the bridge, so I would not pull her where she stands.
Have an AoE tank keep the adds busy in the middle of the room. Have everyone else DPS through an MA. The MA will switch back and forth between Dayakara and the adds. Most tanks can handle up to 3 adds so you can focus more on Dayakara here. At 35%, the MA should focus on killing ALL the adds so there are no adds at all when you get to 30%, this is because Dayakara will start bringing twice as many adds. Everyone burn Miracles and Blessings to increase DPS and burn the adds and occasionally switch to Dayakara to nuke her down. Raid Leader might call 1-2 more DPS to switch from adds to burning down Dayakara.
We've killed Dayakara with T2 gear and 175 AAs and almost no Fabled gear (and only 2 mythicals in the raid). Strat > Brute Force.

When you have only Legendary gear, then the strat on Digg is very important. Once you are Mythicaled and Fabled, most folks just mow Digg down and don't even really notice much of the strat. If you have Legendary gear then Digg is very frustrating until you learn the exact positioning and retrieving and dropping statues.
You want a primary and backup runner for the statues. This is typically bards but doesn't have to be. If someone is especially small in size, they should use a petrified eye to change into a larger race. Smaller races will get stuck between the rocks trying to run up and down the bridges. You should not have to jump to traverse the bridges.
Learning Digg is a pain at first. You will die a LOT as you try to DPS when Badger is up (it reflects), and folks not being right on Digg's butt, and folks not being inside the orange dome when the AoE goes off, and folks being rezzed in front of Digg and dying immediately (have dirges, necros, and if need be healers turn their back on Digg before rezzing so the person rezzes BEHIND Digg). Digg's has a 180 degree frontal AoE that goes off all the time.
The Main Tank pulls Digg where he stands, carefully turning him a little bit to the left and right by taking a step left or step right depending on which statue runners need. Badger and Mushroom are ok with 1 runner. Snake needs could benefit from 2 runners. At 55%, burn miracles and blessings to crank up the DPS. When Snake is called, everyone should turn on melee autoattack as every hit has a chance to stop his healing. Every Snake drop is vitally important.
And one final info, if you have a ranger, then at 55%, they can take a few steps back so they can get all their arrow shots off as long as they are well behind Digg and as long as they get back inside the orange dome before the AoE goes off. That extra 2-5k dps a ranger brings when they are able to use arrows will be enough to push Digg down to 50% and below.
Last, at 25% or so, Digg will do some random calls, which might be Badger. Be prepared to stop DPS for this.
Obviously voice chat is essential for this fight if you are not geared.

feldon30 wrote:

All good advice except for this. There is no reason, *none* for the ranger not to be doing this the entire fight. Why should the ranger **** his DPS until Digg switches to the snake? /boggle

feldon30 wrote:

You dont need two runners for snake.... it wont be up enough for that. Look at buff bar... if the snake buff is fading it's time for the runner to grab another. One runner can and should be able to keep the proc buff up at all times.
For the elemental (badger) just have healers turn off melee and spam cure the stun. Everyone esle should still be dps'ing. You can ignore the mushroom but our dirge really enjoys this script for some reason so always grabs them all perfectly.

Kordran wrote:

I am pretty sure our tank got ported a few times when we were working this script initially. He was at top of agro list otherwise Aiden wouldn't have followed him over and reset. I suppose someone could have deagro'd it back to him but iirc it happened on several pulls so I just assumed they were possible port targets. I dont recall our MT being ported since we've been farming the zone so you are probably correct. Regardless two tanks makes a couple of the fights more manageable for guilds/ raids struggling with the zone.

Enoa@Kithicor wrote:

You can ignore mushrooms if you have good healers and enough of them. I've seen the mushroom tick kill some players. I'm not sure that was a reflection of thier gear or the healers ability.
All in all, its REALLY, REALLY simple to go pick up the mushroom, in a pug, I will still grab it unless I'm confident of the healers involved.

People could also just use a relic of stability? For the Stun? heh. I carry both a relic and a signet of stability for stuff like that. It works, try it.