The Stone Guard

[Guest Morgh]

Regarding the heroic version.

Crystals do quite a lot of damage - would it be possible to just use the crystal belonging to the currently petrifying boss? Also - can a single crystal be multi-clicked by more then one person, or is it one crystal-one person...

[Guest Chuck]

Done, added heroic mode to the guide. Thank you for your compliments

Thanks again for adding this, it's very helpful!

[Vlad 411]

Regarding the heroic version.

Crystals do quite a lot of damage - would it be possible to just use the crystal belonging to the currently petrifying boss? Also - can a single crystal be multi-clicked by more then one person, or is it one crystal-one person...

The crystal damage may indeed be high, but it's just something you need to deal with, and you absolutely can't wait to just use the crystal of the petrifying boss. You should get the energizing done in 20 seconds or so, so you can then focus on actually DPSIng the boss with the buff up.

I'm almost certain that more than one person can take the same crystal at once - it certainly felt that way but I didn't look in too much detail. Will confirm when I can.

[Krazyito 521]

The crystal damage may indeed be high, but it's just something you need to deal with, and you absolutely can't wait to just use the crystal of the petrifying boss. You should get the energizing done in 20 seconds or so, so you can then focus on actually DPSIng the boss with the buff up.

I'm almost certain that more than one person can take the same crystal at once - it certainly felt that way but I didn't look in too much detail. Will confirm when I can.

I tanked this fight last night, So I didn't actually see what happened with the crystals, but it is to my understanding that all crystals are active as soon as the boss steps off the platform that they are on and the crystals stay active for the entire duration of the fight. So you can actually click the crystal when ever you want and anyone can click the same crystal. So yes, you should be clicking the petrifying boss crystal every time.

On a side note: Warlock Demonic gates are INSANELY helpful. When the player clicks the crystal, they can step right into a portal and as they fly through the air, their crystal debuff will expend onto the tile. I'm not sure how it works for multiple people going through the portal, but it seemed to work very well for dispensing the buff.

If for some reason, you did not lose all your stacks using the portal, you should have plenty of other options to drop the stacks at the end of the gateway. Jsut make sure the portals are on the side of the room where no one will accidentally walk through.

Edited October 17, 2012 by krazyito65

[MichaelTheys 10]

when you read in the herioc mode you start talking about solid stone the link there to the item isn't the ability but the item that you get from mining :)

[Vlad 411]

when you read in the herioc mode you start talking about solid stone the link there to the item isn't the ability but the item that you get from mining

Thanks! Fixing it now :)

[Krazyito 521]

There is no energy degradation in heroic. Not sure if the guide mentioned that, but i know it say there is in normal.

[Sneakyferret 12]

@ Krazyito65

Its posted at the end of 9.1.2. New Mechanics

Finally, the energy of Guardians appears to no longer slowly decrease when they have the Solid Stone effect active.

[Krazyito 521]

Oh, my bad.

[Guest Necroshammy]

There may be enrage at 8:30 ... they turn red and bigger and do more dmg ...

We seen something like this last week ... is it correct?

[Vlad 411]

There may be enrage at 8:30 ... they turn red and bigger and do more dmg ...

We seen something like this last week ... is it correct?

I honestly don't know, I haven't had any way of confirming this. If anyone else can, I'd be happy to add it to the guide.

[Stoove 347]

I honestly don't know, I haven't had any way of confirming this. If anyone else can, I'd be happy to add it to the guide.

Confirmed, my raid group has hit it a few times on our best survivability attempts.

[Vlad 411]

Confirmed, my raid group has hit it a few times on our best survivability attempts.

Thanks. I've updated it, should show up in a little while, together with heroic Feng ;)

[hutch 1]

We tried the 33%, 66%, 99% and stack the bosses strat tonight (10 man normal) with sucess tonight.

1st kill of the expansion. We seemed to have very little luck with the standard strat.

Thanks guys!

[vyxaryx 0]

We've killed Stone Guard 10 man Heroic tonight and I wish to add some info:

1) we've witnessed 4 pairs of jasper chains (guide mentions 3 in 10 man).

2) EU setup this week (jasper, amethyst, jade) is basically unhealable with 3 healers, so we've used 4 (holy paladin and restoration shaman for tanks, holy priest and restoration druid for raid), and it was very tightly balanced dps race, but it is absolutely doable

3) each extra point of guards energy counts, so it is easier to play with 1 taunt (cross taunt is harder to manage and actually it generates more energy while guards moving due to proximity)

4) it is doable without breaking jasper chains at all (and I recommend to do it so), but very intense communication is required:

- healers linked with dps (heal follows dps, even melee; announce for supporting heal while moving; could possibly lighten floor tiles after reset)

- healers linked with healers (move together; no extra actions)

- dps linked with dps (ranged follows melee; should lighten floor tiles after reset)

5) because tanks are not restricted by chains they should lighten floor tiles just after reset and further (if they can)

[Guest Katrist]

I think it's kinda crap that 25 has all 4 and is forced to 3 tank in lower levels of gear. 10 man has to deal with 1/4th things then us and use a normal comp =/

I think you need to check your math. 10 man has 3/4 Guardians active, making that 3/4 of what 25 man has to "deal with" with more than half again as many players-you have 15 more players to deal with that one extra guardian on 25 man than 10 man to help compensate for the extra damage and extra boss. It is attuned according to raid size. Also, how is 25 man suffering from "lower levels of gear" than 10 man? I don't understand that part of what you are saying. We all have access to the same gear; there is just less of it dropping on 10 man.

[Krazyito 521]

When I said lower levels of gear I did not mean that 25 man was having more gear problems then 10 man. At the time I posted that was around the first week of raids and everyone in general was having low gear levels.

And as I posted later on that page, I was being very ambiguous with that first post and have learned not to make such statements from my cell phone ever again.

[Tova 6]

I mention in the guide that this cannot happen, but I assume you are asking for independent confirmation. Well, it's not really independent if it's coming from me, but I'll re-state that I haven't seen this happen ever. If someone else has (and are sure of it), feel free to post

I can confirm that this doesn't happen. In every case it has been one of the other three in our 25 and on of the other two in our 10 heroic.

[Krazyito 521]

I can confirm that this doesn't happen. In every case it has been one of the other three in our 25 and on of the other two in our 10 heroic.

If the same one would petrify two times in a row, then it would require that another guardian overload (or have some really well timed taunts) which would hurt quite a bit. It would also make people wipe due to PURE RNG, which I don't think blizzard would want that as part of a mechanic. At least not so blatant..lol

[nicocba 5]

On the loot guide is missing the agility mail chest http://www.wowhead.com/item=89766

[Stoove 347]

May I make the recommendation that you emphasize in the guide that the fight absolutely relies on your tanks being able to decide for themselves when to taunt? Having stand-in tanks ruined our progress on Stone Guard (killed tonight on 10N after 60 total wipes).

[Guest Lighttouched]

Reasonable points. Of course it's always whatever works best for your group. My suggestion was more for 10 man, our group has only one melee ( and the unlucky person chained to him ), and the ranged are never in the area between the two tanks so there's really not much for them to avoid as they move from one tank to the other. But it definitely shifts a lot of the coordination required from the tanks to whatever melee you have.

With a permanent MT and the double swap method, we were having issues with the swaps not being smooth and the three bosses getting jumbled up and having lots more time where all 3 bosses were gaining energy which meant more overloads, and we were occasionally getting bad explosions and stressing the healers. It just got simpler with only one taunter per swap and fewer swaps. We weren't too worried about tank dps as both do similar 2 target dps. They may not get to rank on World of Logs... we get one at 50k and one at 40 instead of one at 95 and one at 8 or whatever, but for us having slightly lower total dps and a slightly longer fight was offset by the much smoother energy management and no bad overloads.

I would like to point a couple things out with this. First, Vlad, I know the guide is infering both strategies, but I would like to say a few things about the one tank, 2 adds, strategy. While true, doing the one taunt strategy makes taunting significantly easier and have better control over the bosses energy bar, you also need to think about if one of your tanks can do significantly more damage then the other in a normal tanking situation. (Warriors/DKs in particular).

Here are a couple advantages to having ONE tank with both adds for the duration of the fight.

• Vengeance: When one tank has both adds for the whole fight, his vengeance is always high and never goes down too much. When you have tanks switching between 1-2 adds each, the vengeance spreads between the 2 of them and has ramp up time each time they begin tanking 2 adds. Having one tank keeping high vengeance especially the tank that knows how to do a lot of damage while tanking, will do more damage then having the vengeance spread between the two tanks.

• DPS movement: When you force your DPS to move back and forth (mainly melee) between the two tanks, then its an overall loss of DPS. Having to move will sometimes mess up rotations or slip up, which could be avoided by them only having to move because of the other mechanics the boss is throwing out. A product of this is also you will have more room to avoid the various boss abilities

Lastly, both these strategies work. Some work better for some groups then others, which means you should pick one, try it, and if it works keep it. I just want to point out that having only one tank with both bosses the whole fight, is not necessarily a bad thing. And IMO, it is much easier to coordinate two people taunting (or in my case three) then having all our melee (up to 7-9 people) to move around 3 points in the room and I also trust our Warrior/Pally tank to do more damage then my inexperienced self.

My 10-man team has found this strategy to make a ton more sense. It allows the warrior (2boss) tank to really ramp up the damage, the pally (1boss) tank to use SoR and self healing to support the healers. It greatly simplified the movement for everyone else. On our first attempts, this change moved us from just beating the enrage time to clearing it with lots of room to spare and a battle rez needed. Perfection was no longer required to progress.

Other notes:

- We never break the chains. Ranged dps follow the healers. Whoever is chained to our rogue follows him. We just talk it out.

- We detonate ice bombs during the appropriate overload. Hand of Freedom allows a tank to just run through an entire string of them, take effectively no damage, and not get rooted. Typically, I am using Hand of Freedom on the warrior tank as there is usually more "stuff" on the ground on his side of the room.

- Lighttouched, Lightbringer

[Tova 6]

There's no reason not to break chains, especially with your rogue, when Jasper is active. You take 90% less fire damage and you can easily break chains without risk of dying.

[Guest Lighttouched]

There's no reason not to break chains, especially with your rogue, when Jasper is active. You take 90% less fire damage and you can easily break chains without risk of dying.

We do not break the chains because they are quickly reapplied. By not breaking the chains, we avoid the scramble of pairing back up again.

- Lighttouched, Lightbringer

[Vlad 411]

Regarding the taunt strategies mentioned, I would much prefer to leave the guide as it is now, and leave these comments here as a testament for the ways in which it can be executed in practice. This is because it seems that for every person who finds one way of doing things better, another finds another way to be better.

At the end of the day, our guides can't run the raid for you, just (hopefully!) provide you with the information and starting points needed to execute a kill.

But of course, if anyone can suggest improvements, please do so. I'm always reading this thread.