The Spirit Kings (51 replies to this topic)

Some tidbits from our attempts on Heroic Spirit Kings this weekend:
1 tank
3 heals
6 DPS

Qiang:
1) Raid stay on the tank, stay in melee range to make avoiding hte annihilate easier.
2) Timers are all fixed and reliable, such that after a few attempts you will get the rhythm of the phase down and can neatly anticipate each ability in sequence.
3) Have one person, easiest is the tank of course, call the direction to move for flanking order WELL in advance. We had more wipes to this than anything else.
4) Having subetai activate during or just before a flanking orders can be quite disruptive and cause deaths, we found it beneficial to await the next flanking orders when he was below 40% health, then burn Qiang hard using DPS CDs
5) The shield is no big deal, DPS just need to watch for teh cast bar, de-target for a  half second while the priest or whomever pre-casts a mass dispel.
6) Based on all attempts so far, this transition appears to be the hardest by a good margin.

Subetai:
1) Dont screw of rain of arrows - easy not to, very bad if you do.
2) Watch the rain of arrows target closely, he will frequently target that person with Volley ~5 secs after, making it hard to break them out in time via DPS. Pallies should save their HoP for this circumstance.
3) Stun him at the end of the sleight of hand cast - classes with fast attacks will frequently get on in if you wait to stun him until after the cast is finished, and will be debuffed. AS a general rule, your DPS to hold off for a GCD at the end of his cast, and at the end of his buff, since it can be hard to stun him for the final second due to DR.
4) Aside from being a twat with Rain/Volley combos, he's really not that bad. We didnt bother waiting at the 30% mark for any reason.

Zian:
1) His shield has 5 charges, so have anyone in the raid that can knock a stack off pre-casting during his cast. With 2 priests and a shaman we were able to have the shield off very quickly. If you want, have a pally pre-cast Devotion Aura just in case, we had a couple of explosions go off accidentally during our attempts and were able to recover with that CD + some quick heals.
2) The skulls have just over a million life and dont last very long, and also constitute a notable DPS loss on the boss. If you are facing difficulties with the berserk, I recommend simply kiting these until they die, unless they are on one of your melee. This is particularly helpful during the  <30% phase when you are dealing with Zian and Meng and want Zian down fast.
3) We used heroism <30% on Zian, since Meng's maddening shout is extremely problematic on it's own and hardly needs further complication from Zian's shield and skulls.

Meng:
1) Handle as you would on normal mode for the most part. I recommend standing by with healthstones or personal CDs just after a meddening shout.
2) DPS should be careful not to kill themselves via DPSing while he has cowardice, this actually hurts (finally.. ) on Heroic.

Fun fight, seems quite training/practice oriented.

Good luck!

Auracle, on 11 December 2012 - 02:26 AM, said:

Thanks a lot! There is a lot of useful information there, which I'll be sure to add to the guide.

Can you tell me about the boss order that you experienced? Was it always Q > S > Z > M?

Vlad, on 12 December 2012 - 10:32 AM, said:

I just finish killing it on 25 man heroic, 2 tanks 5 healers, and I can say that yes, it is always Q > S > Z > M.

Another useful bit of information is when I was trying to make Weak Auars for the fight I found that I could designate Qiang as boss1, Subetai as boss2, Zian as boss3 and Meng and boss4 when selecting "Specific Unit".

Example for Qiang's shield that needs to be mass dispelled off:

dCdNcaGAfjTEiQDbrETIiZfjMTOUPIk3Ms2jsAVKDJy)Qu(PkvgMsQFlPbRenCPYbvu1rvK4ykvNdQYcfjFdQyXqy5umorQNcEmuEUQoSctfstwIPt1fve1vvc9mvQ66QyJkbldQ0MfX2vkNw4Rkk9zP03vKAAQKtIuJwkgVIGlPi0TuuCnLKZlvDzuBdQQ)sPw7cvqiGM4SjzGXuOXQKNY8iIC492ZomMOASHMGZL5gVZMEbVGDKUqchKslWsqrqrOckXp1dbZJnwPe4MOTLncvW3X5mDraE4Ix60coeEJjUGXXRcopBFiHRucWoVxTSBIclWdlUi48S93X5mDrPeqgw8lurDxaTvhB2I65VTeAcoxKl47ySijWwKeUae1)3fCiHlWITqWg5csQexWKZBlsFB5cvIlOHJ2gxuVwjixhfHk48S9hiZcHGZZ2eEJncHGZZ2ixjSqiWuZSqfyDYEiu5Yf8bYSqfyDYEiubotukb(0mX7tInwPKlxUGs8D5rp4dSj9cMyNad3gvcAFhliWQebJsj8OsgzB3eTTS5fQCbrrWuIbP92sOj4CrWeUlj5zxuNbx8tly6O4nI61kb93LK8SRfWFhpCVUW5(R17RwJtA8vYmxReqowOMOTLnVOUlOeFxE0tJvjcOjoBsgymfASk5PixWqOcOT6yZwup)TLqtW5IaAIZMKbgtHgRsEkZJiYH3Bp7WyIQXgAcoxMB8oB6Llytu3VwVwUea

Edit: if you are responsible for doing the actual dispelling, I would not recommend this.  I would recommend making sure you watch the cast bar and timers for when he is going to do it or make an aura for the timer.  This small Icon is mainly for the non priests who want to have a quick reference for if the shield is still up and when they can resume attacking.

Here is something else we used:

As a 25 man raid, everyone had differing opinions on which was was the best way to handle Flanking orders and which direction to move.  We had our Priest healing raid leader stand in the center of the room and avoid the Flanking orders himself.  Doing this gave him a very clear vantage point of the entire room and which direction the Flanking Orders will go.  We then set up 3 markers on one side of the room approximately denoted by this picture I just made.



We started on the center dot and when flanking orders happened, our preist healer in the center would tell us towards which color marker we should head to not get hit by flanking.  Sometimes it would require going back and forth between two markers.  The only problem we had (and this was one time) was when both lines of flanking order spawned right behind us and we all kind of scrambled to get around it.  We see this as an acceptable downside because of the low chances of something like that happening again.  We also saved heroism for 30% of Qiangs HP so we could kill him off before Subetai used pinning arrows.

Here is a link to a stream we had during the kill.  It starts on 3 hours 7 minutes.
http://www.twitch.tv...oda/b/347292078

Edited by krazyito65, 12 December 2012 - 12:50 PM.

krazyito65, on 12 December 2012 - 12:18 PM, said:

Nice Krazy

@ Vlad: Yes our order was always Q>S>Z>M for our 10man heroic attempts, and it was Q>S>M>Z when we switched to normal so we could move on for the week.

-A

I would just like to add that on our last two attempts on Normal we had Q>S>M>Z initally then our next attempt was Q>S>Z>M. So the statement on each section "X is always the third boss." isn't completely accurate.

Heroic verison is just as easy as normal I say. All the difference really that I see is dont stand in shit and dont attack when you shouldn't xD overal one of my favorite heroic fight in the game right at the moment including Emp and Galeron. Still not the "WOW" that I got from Uld back in wrath but still fun

Updates after kill:

Qiang:
Yes, very very much just handle the frakking transition. I recommend a raid CD or two plus ALL personal defensive CDs AND a tank-saver (Ardent defender if he's a pally, Guardian Spirit from an Hpriest if available, etc). There is no reason NOT to blow all your defensive CDs here as you really aren't going to need them again until Meng, and any baboonery from your raiders can mean a dead tank or a dead player.

Subetai/Zian:
Boring, handle mechanics and you'll have nothing else to do here.

Meng:
Maddening shouts are your only threat, just be smart and watch where he is on his crazyness when they occur. High insanity during his regular phase: tank blow a major CD until healers can get back to healing him. high insanity during his cowardice phase: stop DPSing until everyone's broken out and topped off.
Recommend an HPS-style raid CD for each one if available, you should get 3 or 4 tops, and the first one shouldnt need a CD as it's easy to stack and break without chaos.

We 1 tank, 2 healed this in the end. I strongly reocmmend 2-heal unless your healers are completely terrified. It will give you tons of leeway on the enrage timer and there is arguably not a single instance in the fight where people are at risk of death that can be prevented via the added HPS of a 3rd healer. As detailed above, raid CDs should more than cover those (limited) instances, and the added DPS will help you burn those <30% life phases that much quicker.

Have fun!

Apologies if this has been covered, but our experience in 10-man regular and LFR is that the order of the bosses is not set in stone. We did 10 or so attempts at Spirit Kings the other night and the order was the same for all of them, except the last one, where Meng came out third, so it seems the order isn't even set by raid ID. In LFR tonight, we got Meng third as well. Not sure if this is a bug or working as intended from Blizz's point of view. Another reference - http://us.battle.net...opic/7320452050

We had different order on bosses last week. The first 2 always the same, but the last two switched -- sometimes add first, sometimes maddening shout first. Just FYI, the guide states they always come  in a predetermined order -- they don't. (Normal 10-man)

I think we have mentioned in this forum already that on normal that the last two tend to switch.

It is only on heroic where the order is ALWAYS the same.

Edited by krazyito65, 06 January 2013 - 03:12 AM.

This is for the hardmode section of the guide. There is a typo, should be are instead of is

"We also feel that it is important to note that none of these abilities is retained by the bosses after they are defeated."

Does anyone know if auto attacks trigger the shield effects that 3 of the guys put up? Everyone wants to say "let's be safe", but I'm pretty sure it would make things a lot simpler to learn if I could confirm that auto attacks won't blow us up.