T16 Warlock Style - Heroic & Mythic

[Zagam 1,982]

Paragons (from what I can see) is mostly an endurance fight with spurts of DPS needed.  We did about 20 pulls before the holidays (your Siegecrafter = my Paragons in terms of should have had it but didn't) and here's what I learned...

 

When fight starts, have 1-2 of your DPS lightly hit Rikkal (or just tanks) and force Skeer to summon the bloods on Rikkal.  As soon as the bloods are spawned, burn the living daylights out of Skeer.  Killing him with cooldowns (no Bloodlust) before the next set of bloods is imperative.

 

While dealing with Skeer, some people will become scorpions.  In Heroic mode, if you don't use the eat scorpion option, that person will die.  TELL ALL OF YOUR PLAYERS TO USE THE #4 BUTTON TO EAT A SCORPION!  Your pro players can snag two of the parasites if they get the first one within a second or two.  DPS focus should be Rikkal.  While dealing with Rikkal and Skeer, Hisek will do Aim.  Aim MUST be soaked by 7-10 players who do NOT stack within 3 yards of one another.  Anyone stacking will cause deaths.  This was our biggest area of fuck ups.  Hisek also does this quick shot attack that sprays a barrage of bullets in 3 waves.  They are easy to dodge if you are paying attention and VERY easy to die to if you neglect them.

 

After Rikkal goes down, your DPS focus should have melee on Korven and ranged on Hisek.  Hisek needs to be brought to 50% just as Korven is brought to 51-55%.  This will force Korven to use the Amber on Hisek.  At this point, all DPS burns Korven before the next Amber.  REMEMBER TO CONTINUE TO DEAL WITH AIM AND MULTISHOT!

 

After Korven goes down, burn Hisek.  During this phase, one of your tanks should have clicked Korven to pick up his Amber ability.  The next person who gets Aim needs to have that tank use the Amber ability on that player.  Amber will protect them from all damage (other immunities DO NOT WORK).  Burn Hisek, stay spread out, use raid cooldowns to deal with the Fire lines (red lines between players does lots of damage in Heroic).  Once Hisek is dead, you'll Bloodlust and burn Karoz or Kaztik, I don't remember.  One of them is a dick and you Bloodlust to burn him.  If you get that one down and Iyyokuk with everyone alive, the fight is over (so I hear).  My group made it to 3 Paragons in 8 pulls and 4 Paragons in 15 pulls.  On the 18th or 19th pull, we almost got the Bloodlust Paragon down (5th), but something destroyed our faces.  As I (hopefully) learn more soon, I'll share more. 

[Liquidsteel 279]

To continue from where Zagam let off, with the strategy my guild employed.

 

After Hisek dies you lust and burn down Xaril the Poisoned mind. Hopefully one of your raid members picked up the Hisek buff and used snipe on Xaril for extra damages. Just continue as normal dodging amber and fire lines, with one addition.

 

Xaril will do his choose catalyst ability, except this time you have a much higher chance of being picked, and the reactions are far more deadly. I'm going to assume you know how Red/Yellow/Blue translate into Orange/Green/Purple.

 

Orange - Every raid member with Red/Yellow catalyst will explode with a slow moving pulse 360 degrees around them, kind of like a Priest's Halo ability. You can't see your own, but any which touch you will do a fair amount of damage. What you need to happen is for people to get out to the edge of the room, and if they find themselves surrounded, to only run through ONE halo, taking damage from that but not from any others.

 

Green - Every raid member with Blue/Yellow will drop a green pool at their feet that moves around slowly for the rest of the fight, dealing damage to anyone who touches it. After it deals damage 3 times it will disappear. These are to be avoided.

 

Purple - Perhaps the trickiest. Anyone with Red/Blue will have their character run uncontrollably forward for around 15-20 seconds (not 100% sure on timers) dropping a trail of purple fire as they go. The caveat is that you don't take damage from your own fire, at least not until you gain control of your character. People who get this catalyst need to basically run in as tight a circle as possible, minimising the amount of room they fill with fire. Once they regain control they run away, and after some time the fire despawns.

 

Once Xaril is dead you either kill Iyyokuk the Lucid or Kaz'tik the Manipulator. You will continue to dodge amber/whirling whilst this is up, along with the final casts of Insane Calculations (fire lines). You will also have to deal with Hungry Kunchongs. These are by far the most rage inducing aspect of the fight and you will grow to loathe your fellow raiders because of it. They will cast mesmerize, which causes a player to walk uncontrollably towards them. You should be using priest grips as well as Korven's Amber ability to prevent people getting eaten. If they get eaten they die and spawn a kunchong. The second mesmerise will always be the same kunchong as the one before it, and it will inevitably fill its energy bar and become a mature kunchong. This can either be kited by a hunter etc or stuck on your tank for extra vengeance. Just don't go anywhere near it because it's cleave attack will one shot you.

 

As a warlock put your portal down near the middle in case you get targetted and use it smartly to get further away. 

 

The worst part about the kunchongs is that if anyone walks into one, they die, and spawn a Mature Kunchong anyway. Also the kunchongs are small, oh and they move. On our first kill I swear we spawned about 6 or 7 of these mother fuckers and its amazing we even killed it at all. Literally 4 or 5 people couldn't focus and got eaten when they weren't even mesmerized.

 

With Iyyokuk and Kaztik dead the fight is basically over (it was over after Xaril tbh). Just make sure that people spread out because Death from Above will even one shot warlocks and it's an extremely fast aoe attack. Reave feels undertuned so dont worry about that. Just make sure you are super vigilant about amber because with so many stacks it's almost a one shot mechanic. Oh and the Kunchongs don't actually despawn so keep watching out for them.

Edited January 6, 2014 by Liquidsteel

[mediocregatsby 18]

thanks to you both for those detailed writeups, really appreciate it. xaril sounds fun as fuck.

[Liquidsteel 279]

Save everything for Xaril. Do not spam SB on hisek. You want to kill him before he gets off his second cast of choose catalyst.

[Muoric 3]

Your pro players can snag two of the parasites if they get the first one within a second or two.

There's not that much else going on at this point so everyone needs to be vocal about which parasite they're going to eat and how many they can get. The tank tanking Rikkal can choose how many parasites spawn, so he needs to know it also. There's also no rush at this point, so if you have 4 parasites alive just wait till next mutates come and eat them that way. The parasite eat ability can and should be interrupted, left unchecked it can and will destroy you (=cc parasites).

Amber will protect them from all damage (other immunities DO NOT WORK).

Has this been changed? Our locks solo soaked them with db + ur combo and our mages ice blocked them also. Iirc vanish makes this not to cast also, but not sure atm. Anyway there at least used to be quite a few classes able to solo this making less need for soaking.

Also 4 people with cds (hunters + rogues) should be enough to soak.

[Zagam 1,982]

There's not that much else going on at this point so everyone needs to be vocal about which parasite they're going to eat and how many they can get.

This can be confusing for a 25 man raid in particular.  You should just eat the closest one, period.  As long as a couple of people get 2, then you're in business.  No need to add clutter to Mumble/Vent over parasites.

 

 

Has this been changed? Our locks solo soaked them with db + ur combo and our mages ice blocked them also. Iirc vanish makes this not to cast also, but not sure atm. Anyway there at least used to be quite a few classes able to solo this making less need for soaking.

Also 4 people with cds (hunters + rogues) should be enough to soak.

Warlocks can eat it with DB + UR, but they require being BOMBED with heals.  Aim hits for 4.7M + 8% per stack on Hisek.  At its core, 4.7M absorbed by Dark Bargain would return 2.3M damage over 8 seconds, or 300k damage per second.  That's a pretty hefty tick.  UR would reduce it to 170k per tick, but that's still painful.  My armor reduction is like 25ish percent, so the overall damage would be 3.5M broken down to 1.75M over 8 seconds, down to about 125k per second with UR.  The problem is you can only do this once per 3 minutes which makes it extremely unpredictible and undependable.  Moving to absorb Aim should be less chaotic and problematic than blowing your entire defensive load to survive something other people should be able to handle in terms of mechanics. 

 

Mages CANNOT Iceblock it at all.  Rogues and Mages can Vanish/Invis out of it, so that's promising.  You're going to need more than 4 in 25 man.  4 people splitting 4.7M damage is just over 1M each.  When he gets to 5+ stacks, you're looking at splitting over 7M damage.  This just isn't feasible.  You need more than 4.

[mediocregatsby 18]

got through skeer and rikkal pretty easily on our first night of attempts.

 

found it very useful to howl of terror the parasites if they're munching on someone close by. i was consciously positioning myself away from anyone's incidental cleave so i could do this without the fear breaking. 

 

q: are any of the dead klaxxi abilities particularly good to use as a warlock?

Edited January 7, 2014 by mediocregatsby

[Zagam 1,982]

If no one else is, you should pick up Hisek for his Aim ability to slap on Xaril during the burn.  I only say this because I trust Warlocks more than anyone else.  You just need someone trustworthy to pick this up because it's a 10 second 15% damage buff for your raid.

[JvChequer 43]

Hello guys, any tips for Bfuse 10H ?

[Zagam 1,982]

Don't take damage. 

[Typecast 16]

Hello guys, any tips for Bfuse 10H ?

 

Disengage. Levitate. Gateway. EMP Generator. All OP.

[mediocregatsby 18]

the EMP belt especially is insanely OP for that fight. almost made me switch to engineering.

[Twona 1]

Any advantages to playing destro over affliction for H Paragons? Got 6 of them dead on our second night of attempts as affliction, but will switch to destro today if there is a reason to.

[Zagam 1,982]

Multi-dotting as Affliction is worthless padding.

Multi-dotting as Destruction is a DPS boost.

 

Affliction requires Grimoire of Supremacy with Sac Pact giving you a smaller shield for Aim absorption.

Destruction utilizes Grimoire of Sacrifice with Sac Pact giving a huge shield to neglect Aim damage.

 

Affliction's "OH SHIT" survival button includes a Healthstone or Unending Resolve.

Destruction's "OH SHIT" survival button is a 400k+ heal that costs one Burning Ember.  Considering there are only two DPS burns in the fight, surviving can take precedence over a Chaos Bolt.

 

Affliction must Life Tap.

Destruction doesn't know mana exists.

[Liquidsteel 279]

I'd definitely go with Destruction for progress.

 

Way more survivability and a lot more 'faceroll', allowing you to focus on the bazillion mechanics this fight has. Glyph of Havoc is really nice in giving you a huge ember spike when you need it, and I also found that with all the shit going on that on progress it was easy to forget about when on the usual 30s cooldown. It's personal preference though.

 

I will say that Affliction is completely viable as a spec. I played it 2 weeks ago (i think, unfortunately I dc'd on the pull prior and thus didnt manage to log the kill) and did very competitive dps without any padding apart from swapping dots from a dying paragon ready to be reswapped to the next kill target (to save shard and keep agony at 10 stacks). 

 

I was running 18k haste at the time which is super nice for pure single target.

[Niittipyssy 1]

Found this out myself today:

 

If have your Demonic Circle up (like you should), jump on a Crawler Mine and immediately after hitting your Demonic Circle: Teleport will remove and you will not take any damage.

EDIT: According to a friend of mine, this has been already posted on OwnedCore.

Edited January 17, 2014 by Niittipyssy

[Khaos 5]

Paragons are a bitch.

people can't move from shit AT ALL.

 

also i got a super opener for paragons , all the warlocks are doing 25m+ damage on skeer since i told them how to , it's so good. :P

[Zagam 1,982]

Paragons are a bitch.

people can't move from shit AT ALL.

 

also i got a super opener for paragons , all the warlocks are doing 25m+ damage on skeer since i told them how to , it's so good.

No, people are the bitches.  Paragons is a neuron check with two small DPS checks. 

 

Does this opener involve hitting Rikkal with a glyphed Havoc and opening over 1M every time?  It's pretty well documented by now lol

[Khaos 5]

hadn't researched anything , came up with it on my own! >=(

 

my opener includes dotting everything , pop cds, 2x conflag , havoc(glyphed) , 4x incin 3/4 chaos bolt, conflagrate to get 3 backdraft and another chaos bolt. so much damage.

Edited January 21, 2014 by Khaos

[mediocregatsby 18]

for heroic paragons, is it possible to use personal teleport during the hungry kunchong mesmerize? i know it's not possible to place a new personal portal after the mesmerize starts, but was wondering if i can teleport to an existing personal portal if i happen to get mesmerized.

[Liquidsteel 279]

Yes you can.

 

I also tried Unbound Will but sadly that didn't work. It does, however, break you out of Whirling if you happen to get caught as well as removing the DoT component.

 

You can argue you shouldn't be hit but with so much going on I actually relied on this as a get out of jail free card every now and then during progress.

 

Burning rush wasn't really needed due to the entire raid standing in 1 corner of the room until Hisek was dead.

[menace97 2]

just wanted to ask a question i have seen remnants of answers in various places, but nothing really definitive (my apologies if i have missed it), but i have had a very annoying situation come up a few times when taking on the the Sha of Pride. jerks & know-it-alls have made it very clear *rolls eyes* that i am not placing the demonic gateway in the ideal spot.

 

so i've come here looking for the answer because i cannot seem to get an answer out of these experts - they have the time to insult, but no time to inform/educate/help - where should i be placing a demonic gateway for the sha of pride fight?

 

thank you very much. i appreciate all your great help in the warlock community, and i'm sure you'll be able to help me out so i don't keep making this mistake.

 

*salutes*

[Lockybalboa 618]

From the group stack point to right behind the farthest Rune thingy that unlocks people.

 

If they don't like where you put it, ask them where they want it, drop it there, and then leave it on them. I've said a few times to a few raid leaders "if you don't like it, dont use it." 

[menace97 2]

thank you Lockybalboa, now i apologize, but i just want to make absolutely sure i know exactly where you mean. i had players yelling at me and telling me two things if i remember correctly.

 

• it should be between the 2 locations where players get imprisoned (kitty-corner)
• somewhere between where the raid stacks and where the manifestation of pride spawns -to- behind the sha of pride, somewhere in the direction where we came into the room from nourishen

since there are two runes/prisons behind the sha of pride, where would you put the second/end point of the gateway?

 

i like your idea of asking them to stand exactly where they want it, and i'll place it on top of them, so there is no misunderstanding. it's funny how some people just don't want to take the time to do something so simple. or even to click the location on the mini-map. *sighs*

 

thank you so much. any help is much appreciated.  

Edited January 26, 2014 by menace97

[Lockybalboa 618]

How I normally kill it is the raid stacks up on the axe in the ground, directly across the room from where you come in. I place my portal from there to behind the far left runes (far left as you're facing the boss in the stack point). This is how *my* raid kills it, I've also seen people stack in other places in the room and if you're in 25m you can use two strats, either stacking all together or stacking in two groups. No matter what, the relative placement for the portal doesn't really change. It's still from *your* stack point to the farthest rune from the stack point.