Monday, October 15, 2012

Resto Druid 10m Heroic Stone Guardian Strategy

First of all, I hate this fight. We cleared it, but it felt 5 hours late, since we got under 10% 3 times before actually getting the kill. We got the kill with a pug healer healing 30k hps... so as you can tell, this fight isn't that healer dependent as long as your healers can sum up to 170k hps (maybe less if you have good pretrifications).  So basically, if your group is not suiciding or killing each other, and tanks tank properly, and dps high enough to not hit berserk, it's a kill. Yea, yea, to have all those conditions align is a miracle for a lot of guilds. The worst thing about this fight is if a healer dies at all before final phase, even w/ combat rez, the fight becomes hard to recover from + if a tank dies, combat rez will not save the raid, the dogs will usually just go explosion chain and instant death everyone. So yeah, hope you only get 1 to 2 dumb dpses who die, instead of tank or bad healer.

O yeah, so 10m version has the retarded RNG depending on the guardians up and running around. We got Jasper, Cobalt, Jade.
Glyphs: Lifebloom, Rejuvenation, Wild Growth
Spirit: I cleared this fight w/ 7.2k spirit. Didn't really go oom, but pretty close, as in can pretty much can only cast lifeblooms and nourish when we got the kill. So if you want to go higher or lower is up to you.
Talents: Only ones that matter is SotF vs. Incarnation and HotW vs. NV. I did this fight with Tree, since during the transition and a little bit pre-transition, that extra bit of healing/life bloom/mana save is just so nice. HotW is not useful for this fight really, since I wasn't ever dpsing, though the extra 6% int/stam passive is always good. I would imagine that NV is just as useful, if not more, but I just preferred always having the 6% int + 1 less button to think about.
Symbosis: Hunter is my favorite, Druid gets Deterrence = cobalt mine clearing & Hunter gets sprint = faster to light up titles
Healing strat: 3 healers. Druids are meh for this fight, well only in the sense that monks have about the same raid heal + decent good tank healing, paladins are super good tank healers, shamans have good healing cooldowns (spirit link + mana tide + healing tide!!!) and disc priests with infinite spirit + damage buff is godly.
3 Phases, they're not really phases, it's more just when the dogs hits 75% hp, 50% hp, and 25%, the tiles will reset, and hence happy 80% spirit boost does away. So suddenly mana goes down faster, and dpses are scrambling to get tiles lit up again, running w/ jasper chains improperly sometimes, and not always in range or line of sight anymore. Just messy.
During the fight, no matter how much I want ranged to stack, it felt like a lost cause, since you have ranged running tiles in the beginning of each phase and afterwards they get linked and refuse to move from where they were standing. So mushrooms, you can plant if you're free or super pro casting and planting at the same time, but don't expect that much use.

Handling doggy abilities:
Clearing cobalts as druid during cobalt phase is pretty easy (since our attempt had no Amherst dog, I don't even bother shapeshifting out unless I get Jasper linked). However, clearing cobalts during non-cobalt phase is best done with deterrence, running in without deterrence during Jade pretrification with full hp and barkskin will allow you to survive w/ ~5% hp, but if you happen to get chained or if it's not during Jade, good luck surviving, basically just don't do it!
Jasper chains, break only during Jasper phase, the phases aren't completely RNG but that's your tanks' issue. Otherwise, running healing for druid is still doable, but hopefully you're lucky and get chained to other healers and not a shadowstepping rogue (omg, that's just death... tell your rogues, no shadowstep talent! switch it to anything but that). Just don't step into mines when you're running. As a side note, I think deterrence does not stop Jasper chain damage (I died once to chain damage while I cast it and I saw the cooldown go off, thought i had deterrence up, but I could be wrong and deterrence didn't actually go up when I died).
Jade AoE raid damage, this is painful, since rejuvs are not enough to cover the damage during non-Jade petrification. So to conserve mana, I'd cast nourish when everyone's rejuved, wild growth is on cooldown, but if that's not enough, a few regrowths must be used.

Cooldown: Tranquility is popped only during phase transitions. O yeah, best to wait for a new cobalt mine to spawn before channeling, otherwise, having a cobalt mine spawn under you during your channel, you have to run out if it's not cobalt phase and end channeling. For our group, I popped it 1st transition and cooldown is up for 3rd transition, but not 2nd, so if you need cooldown timing info, that's the gist. Innervate on cooldown in case that wasn't obvious.


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