Jen’s Guide to Healing Nef

My brain is pretty fried when it comes to spitting out words, so I continue to abuse my awesome guildies for guest posts.  Here’s the latest from Jen, who also writes over at Pots ‘n Kettles.

Because we had dedicated this week primarily to Nef, I went and head and respecced to this: http://www.wowhead.com/talent#hhZbh0bZfGbMsbcosd:dbMcmr

Nef isn’t that complex for heals (especially compared to Cho’gall or the RNG clusterfuck that is Al’Akir), but there is a ton of damage going around. Also, thanks to massive dragon noms at the tanks and raid wide damage from electrocute, this is one of the two fights (Chim being the other) where shaman resto mastery really shines.

This is a bit of a longer fight (our kill took just over 7 minutes), so you can use longer cooldowns (like spirit link and mana tide totems) in phase one and have them up again for phase three.

Phase One – Ony and Nef and Adds!

We had an Ony tank, a Nef tank, and a BM turtle-noms-adds tank. Your dragon tanks need to be on opposite sides of the pit (if they’re too close to each other, they get a buff that essentially rips your tanks into bits). Ony and Nef need to be parallel to each other sideways to the raid. While they are chewing on your tanks, they’ll also do standard dragon breath and tail swipes.

This means that your healers do want to coordinate who’s going to focus on which tank, because you can’t reach them both without running back and forth. Ranged can help out heals a bunch by staying near each other in the middle.

Ony, while lying dead in a puddle of lava, has grown lightning globes on her sides. When they start glowing, the tank needs to turn her tail into the raid, or she’ll shoot lightning at the raid instead (and your healers will curse you emphatically). More likely than not, the raid will get hit with a tail lash, which knocks us all over for very minor damage and stuns us for two seconds. Once the lightning is done, kindly turn her tail back out of the raid.

Ony is apparently very squishy for a dragon, and when they had her down to about 40ish%, our melee went and chewed on Nef. Every time you get 10% of Nef’s health down, he will do a raid wide electrocute for 100k. It really helps to know when these are coming, because I had a few seconds to drop a rain puddle and start casting chain heals. The first electrocute is also a good opportunity to drop Spirit Link Totem, and it’ll be off cooldown for phase three. After the first electrocute, I tried to drop a glyphed stoneclaw totem each time for a little extra resistance – any damage reducing abilities are good for these.

While the dragons are chewing on their respective tanks, you also get to deal with adds!  \o/

Our BM hunter MD’ed all the adds to Donatello, and rolling riptides, gift of the naaru, and GHWs kept the little turtle up. You can build up heals as more adds spawn, and there were a few scary moments when they were all up, but then once they start dying off, you can help out with the tanks more. Our hunter helped me out a ton by keeping him near the middle, so that the turtle would get the benefit of aoe heals as well. (Once the adds were all dead, the hunter switched to a dps pet for the remainder of the fight.)

We pushed for two electrocutes in phase one (three made us go smush, mainly because each one ups Ony’s enrage mechanic – you have to kill her before her meter reaches 100) and then finished off Ony (and made her go smush instead).

Once Ony dies, the room fills will lava and you transition into:

Phase two – Nef and Adds!

There are three pillars around the room, and our raid was split up to have a healer on each (you can’t reach the other pillars), along with at least one ranged dps and one melee interrupter. You’ll need to run to your pillar as soon as Ony dies, and swim up as the lava fills the room. The pillars have an obnoxious-as-hell overhanging lip, so you need to jump straight up and then over, or you’ll get stuck on the lip.

Each pillar will have one add. They don’t have an aggro table – they just stand there and continuously try to cast a shadow AoE that will pretty much nuke everyone on the pillar. Their casts HAVE to be interrupted. Our ranged dps nuked away at Nef while melee killed and interrupted the adds. We controlled the health of one of the adds so that we could get Nef down through two more electrocutes. Healers need to make sure that their pillar is topped off before the electrocute hits, and be ready to heal people back up after it.

During all of this, Nef hovers in the middle of the room and casts shadow blasts at random raid members, so you’ll have plenty of healing to top off. It really helps for people to use their self heals or damage reduction abilities (if they aren’t major ones that they need for electrocutes).

This phase ends once all three adds die – the lava will drain back out of the room, Nef will descend back onto the ground, and you can jump back off the pillars.

Phase Three – Nef and (you guessed it) MOAR Adds!

One tank will pick up Nef, and the other will get to run around and collect, then kite, adds (someone should probably follow your add tank around to heal, too). The rest of the raid should group up next to Nef’s side. Purple fire will spawn at the most inconvenient places possible, which everyone needs to avoid until it disappears.

We popped heroism as soon as everyone was in place, and nuked the hell out of Nef. You’ll get electrocutes fairly close together, so raiders want to make sure to use damage reduction abilities, and healers need to get people topped off quickly. Both tanks will take lots of big hits, especially if the adds get too close or play in the fire.

Burn everything you have, and profit! ^^

Cho’gall: DPS Edition

I’m going to break these up into Melee and Ranged, because we do have slightly different jobs for phase one.

Melee Phase One:
Be prepared to rage at tiny hit boxes.

The way we handle this in 10s, both melee peel off the boss to follow the add tank. You’re worried about two things here: 1) interrupting Depravity (OMG IMPORTANT) and 2) not accidentally killing the add before the tank drags him back to the doors.  Once the add is dead, run back to the boss and DPS as normal.

Be sure to keep an eye out for people who are worshipped so that you can give them a good whack as you go by.  With an interrupt, mind you, no matter how tempting it is to do otherwise.  Sometimes your fellow melee will get worshipped on the way back and stand there worshipping away because no one is paying any fucking attention to shit behind them.

While on the boss, there’s really nothing special to consider except interrupting worshippers when you can. Oh and not standing in things. But really, should I have to include things like “don’t stand in fire and dark puddles on the ground” at this stage?

Ranged Phase One:
When the adds die up by the door, the dark puddles they drop on the floor will spawn oozes.  The oozes need to die.  The melee should, ideally, never even know they exist!  Otherwise pay no attention to the ugly adds that SPAWN the oozes–that’s the melee’s job. If there are no oozes up, DPS the boss.

Interrupt any and all people worshipping when you can. 

Don’t stand in things on the floor.

Phase Two, Both:
Kill all the stalks and interrupt their casts.  Once they are dead, flail wildly at the boss until there’s more stalks.

This is a good time to blow Army and other tasty cooldowns.

If you have corruption sickness, do try not to vomit on people, they don’t appreciate that.

Cho’gall: Tank Editon

Rather than doing one big post with all sections of the strat, I’m going to try to break this up into thirds. Besides, if I post one part then guilt will compel me to finish the rest.

This post is brought to you by Fuzzbutt, who has actually tanked this more than once (unlike me). I did edit it to my heart’s content, however.

General Notes

Cho’gall is a 2 tank fight. The first tank to grab Cho’gall will end up being the add tank. The second tank will kite Cho’gall himself.

(/slaps wordpress and reclaims her image)

Abilities You Need To Pay Attention To

Fury of Cho’gall – aka AMG LASERS – 3 giant frickin laser beams shoot out of Cho’galls heads and give the active tank 2 debuffs. One increases melee damage taken by 20%, and the other increases shadow damage taken by 20%. It stacks. 
This is your cue to swap tanks.
When it comes time to swap back, you will still have roughly 10 seconds left on your own debuff… that’s normal. Deal with it and pray for no worship stacks.

Summon Corrupting Adherent – This should (theoretically) happen AFTER the taunt swap. He spawns an adherent at one of two portals on either side of the room. I’ll go into more details of the Adherent’s later.

Shadow’s Orders/Empowered Shadows – This will empower Cho’gall’s weapon to do an aoe shadow burst every time the tank is hit. This is a good place for your avoidance trinkets, to cut down on the raid-wide damage.

Flame’s Orders/Empowered Fire – This will empower Cho’gall’s weapon, causing his melee swings to deal fire damage instead of physical damage. This is the heavy-hitting portion of your tank swap, so feel free to use minor, short duration cooldowns (barkskin, anti-magic shell, etc) to help mitigate this. Also, every time he hits you during this time, he will spawn a patch of flame on a random spot on the floor. They will invariably end up in the least convenient places ever.

Also Going On During All That Shit

Cho’gall will cast “Conversion”, MCing 2 (3 in 25 man) raid members and causing them to buff Cho’gall. This adds 10% more damage each stack. The rest of the raid should be handling this, but feel free to throw out a death grip/avenger’s shield/what have you to interrupt them as well. This is a raid-wiping mechanic if it’s not handled properly–the tanks will just take too much damage. If he gets more than 2 stacks of worship, blow a major cooldown (shield wall, icebound fortitude, etc), ESPECIALLY if he has Flame’s Orders up at the time.
(Been there, died during it, OW.)

Back To Those Adherents – Adherent Tank, This Is For You!

The Corrupting Adherent will need to be kited to a predetermined point to die (in our strat, this is the door–see image above). When he dies, he will leave a pool of blood behind, which will in turn summon 5 miniature adds. Those are for the ranged to play with.

While you’re kiting the son of a bitch, he has two abilities that he’ll be using:

Corrupting Crash – Will target one raid member and do AoE shadow damage where it lands. Has about a 3 second travel time. Causes 10 corruption.  Hey guess what! The damage area is bigger than the graphic. Surprise surprise. If he’s really being a prick he’ll target the other tank with it repeatedly.

Depravity – 3 second cast, will hit any raid member in the room with shadow damage and give them 10 corruption. MUST BE INTERRUPTED. In my experience, he always does a depravity right after a corrupting crash. The melee should be following you and helping you interrupt, but he has a tiny ass hit box and they may be worshipped, so be prepared to do any interrupts you can do yourself.

You have roughly 45 seconds to kite the add to the door and kill him before Cho’gall casts Fester Blood. If the adherent isn’t dead by then he’ll do a Shadow AoE and…well…we don’t want that.  He’ll cast roughly 4 Corrupting Crashes and 3 depravitys along the way.

Don’t stand in the black puddles on the ground from previous adherents, they give you more corruption points. These black puddles don’t vanish until phase 2 and are part of why you try to kite everything to this nice, out of the way spot.

Phase 2 – < 25% .

Any adherents still alive will melt away–if you know you’re close to phase 2 you can ignore your final adherent. Whoever has Cho’gall near phase change puts Cho’gall against a wall beforehand, to make it easier for the raid to kill the stalks.

This is a strict burn phase. There’s no more Empowered Shadow/Fire, no more adherent summons, no more fester blood, and no more conversion. He will still do Fury of Cho’gall, so keep an eye on that for taunt swapping. If you’re not tanking the boss then you get to go play with eyeball stalks. They have only one ability, Debilitating Beam. It is teh suck and should be interrupted (stalks can be stunned). Army of the dead is win, etc. Hopefully Cho’gall falls over dead before you do!

BoT: Ascendant Council

First off, the trash before this boss is complete ass.  Expect to wipe on it as much as you wipe on the god damned boss. 

Secondly, there’s a lot of shit going down in this fight (o hai, WELCOME TO CATA) so I’ll break it down as best I can without confusing myself.  I’ve also only had a few attempts on this fight so feel free to correct anything you see wrong in the comments! 

Important note: the elemental monstrosity of the final phase appears with the combined health of all 4 bosses, which is why it’s important that each pair of bosses be DPS’d as close to equally as you can manage.  The phase changes at 25%. 

Phase 1:

The bosses in this phase are Feludious and Ignacious.  From here on out they shall be called Water Boss and Fire Boss.

Tanks
If you’re the water boss tank, interrupting hydrolance is key.   You will also wish to tank him away from everyone else because Glaciate damages everyone around him and sucks balls.

If you’re the fire boss tank, be prepared to help the DPS interrupt rising flames after his fiery shield is down.  Don’t position him too far away from the fire he’ll periodically leave on the ground because the melee will need quick access to it.  Speaking of said fire, every so often the boss will charge off, but he’ll charge right back, trailing the fire behind him.

Healers
Heart of Ice and Burning Blood will be two debuffs put on the raid.  While you do want to cleanse these you don’t want to do it immediately, as a few ticks can provide a DPS buff.

Hydrolance should be renamed Hydropunchtotheface.

Melee
You will be on the fire boss.  This phase is cake for you compared to the next one.  If you get Waterlogged, briefly step into the fire.  Try to not cross in front of the boss while getting to said fire because he also does a frontal cone of fire and, well, your healers like their mana.

After the fire shield (which needs to be DPS’d down ASAP) you need to interrupt the hurty flamey thing he’s channeling, Rising Flames. 

If you get the Burning Blood debuff and a ranged you like is near enough for a hug,  go ahead and g ive them one because it will increase their DPS on the water boss.  I wouldn’t run halfway across the room for it, though.

Ranged
You will mostly be on the water boss, though the two bosses should be kept as near in health as possible.*  One of you should probably be designated to switch if necessary.

If you get the Heart of Ice debuff, run and give the melee a hug.  Yes, that’s right–if you get that DEBUFF, run and give your guildies a hug.  It’ll increase their DPS on the fire boss.

If you get waterlogged, dart through the fire that the other boss is leaving on the ground.  If you don’t the water boss will freeze the blood in your veins and well, that just doesn’t sound very pleasant.  Your healers will probably let you die for your fail.

Phase 2:

A few words about gravity wells and cyclones, as these apply to everyone:
The air boss summons a cyclone you’re going to want to find it.  Yes, run TO the cyclone, those things you avoided on every other boss encounter ever.  Yeah.  It’ll give you a levitate buff that you need to not get gibbed by earthquake.

After earthquake, you need to run to a gravity well so that you get lose the levitatey thing so that you don’t get thundershocked to death. 

Each of these much-needed buffs will probably be all the way across the room from where you are.  Or on top of each other.

Also:  if you get lightning rod, get away from everyone else.

Tanks
The earth boss tank should try to keep an eye out for Harden Skin to interrupt it.  Your melee will be doing this as well, but with everyone running around willy-nilly, it’s best to keep all eyes on it.

The air boss tank should…tank the air boss.  He teleports around the room just to piss you off.

Healers
There’s a lot of damage being tossed around.  You should heal that.
(Do you have people in your guild who state the obvious like that?  We do.  Do you want to slap them?  I do.) 

The only thing of note that I recall for this phase is the Lightning Blast that is thrown at the air tank after the boss teleports.

Melee
Find your way to the earth boss.  Don’t forget to pull out your razors as you go, because this phase blows (see here). 

Try to interrupt Hardened Skin.  You know, during all that time you’re not running around looking for a cyclone or gravity well. 

Every so often the boss will cast Eruption, shoving spikes through the floor around him.  Try to not be standing there.

Ranged
You will mostly be on the air boss.  He teleports around like a dick.  If the earth boss tank/melee miss a Hardened Skin interrupt, you should help those scrubs DPS through it.

Phase 3:

Tanks
The one of you that can do the best gimped DPS while in tank gear should try to do that, because this is a 1 tank, DPS race phase.  The tank-tank should drag the boss out of puddles (think blue defile).

Healers
Quote from Kotakh, SiB Resto Druid: “omfg all that damage incoming wtf heal heal heal heal oom /dies fuck that noise”

So, in essence: don’t stand in puddles, heal the fuck out of people lifted off the ground in Gravity Crush, and flail madly at your healing buttons.  Remember, let your least favorite people die first!

Melee
Don’t stand in puddles.  Don’t stand on things that look like flares.  Blow any self-heal or damage reduction abilities that you have.  DPS the fuck out of shit.   Use any major DPS abilities (heroism, army, etc) in this phase as well.  DPS the fuck out of shit HARDER.  BEFORE YOU ALL DIE.  If you get lifted up in gravity crush, I hope you bribed your healers well.

Ranged
Spread out to minimize damage from lightning.  For the rest, you can actually see the melee section above.

BWD: The Elevator Boss

Don’t mock me for writing this strat.  The Elevator Boss has claimed many lives, including several members of SiB.  It may have even claimed some of them more than once.

Tips and Tricks:

As I discovered personally, the engineer’s habit of reaching for his parachute in times of crisis will not serve you well here.  While it’s true you will not splatter on the ground, you will slowly…casually…glide right into the lava.  Where you will die.  And you will not be able to be rezzed by a snickering guildie and you will have to run your arse right back into the instance to brave the elevator again.  I can only imagine that levitate or slowfall will have the same result without perfect timing.

Trying to heroic leap off the elevator early to show off how awesome you are will, more often than not, result in you making an awesome blood smear.  Right Pix?

For the highest chance of not dying, stop on the edge of the elevator platform and wait patiently.  Do not tab out–this is not a dawdling elevator.  By the time you belatedly look over from your 2nd monitor and 4chan to realize that it’s there, you will wander off the edge only to find that it has already left.  Wait and run onto the platform as soon as you see it, especially if you’re laggy.

Levitating someone else to make them float into the lava pit/splatter is cruel.  Hilarious, but cruel.  Lifegrip can also be abused in amusing ways, proving that priests are OP and need to be nerfed.

Someone else with more forethought than I was kind enough to provide images for this tough boss encounter!  You can find them here.  Or here, here, and here if the WoW forums are blocked but you can see imageshack.

Remember, avoiding higher repair bills can be as good as loot!

Bastion of Twilight: Valiona and Theralion

Bastion of Twilight: Valiona and Theralion
Twilight Sparkle Party, Cata Edition?

While my guild has downed this boss I wasn’t there, so I’m flying by the seat of my pants once more!  I also didn’t  Tank/DPS/Healify it becuase…um…that method can get terribly unweildy at times.

Basic Concepts:

• Don’t stand in bad.
• Collapse!
• Spread out!
• Collapse!
• Shake it all about!  (…don’t look at me that way.) 

General Notes:
The dragons share a their HP pool and threat.  There is a hard enrage timer of 10 minutes.  The theme of “oh my god so much going on” continues.

Strategy:

Phase One: Val Grounded
Valiona is on the ground first with Theralion in the air.  The spread out part for this is Ther’s Twilight Blasts, but you want to group up for Val’s Blackout.  If I had to guess (and I do) I’d say this is a “watch raid warnings and channel your LK skills” type fight. 

When Valiona casts Devouring Flames, your best bet is to run behind her so that you’re…well…not getting breathed on.  If for some reason you tabbed out in a bad spot and don’t think you can make it behind her in time, your second best bet is to run the fuck away.  The closer you are to her the more damage you take from it.

After two blackouts…

Transition:
Prior to transition Ther will cast Dazzling Destruction (really, Blizz?).  Don’t stand in swirly bad shit.

Phase Two: Theralion Grounded
The new group hug mechanic is Twilight Meteroite.  The new GTFO is Fabulous Flames.  Oh, and Deep Breath.  Oh, ALSO, if you have Engulfing Magic you need to run away from the raid.  Unless you’re targeted by Meteroite, because then you still need hugs.  Just uh, don’t do anything but stand there and look cute while you have EM if that’s the case, because otherwise you will kill everyone who is being nice and giving you hugs, and that’s just rude.  Got it?  No?  Don’t worry, you’ll figure it out eventually.  Or die a lot, one of the two.

There’s various methods to handling Ther’s ground phase.  The one that sounds the easiest is to split into melee and ranged groups, so you can loosely stay together for TM while running away from flames.

After to Engulfing Magics, Valiona will deep breath the shit out of the room.  Just move out of it all three times, and then she’ll land and the first phase will begin again.

Bastion of Twilight: Halfus Wyrmbreaker

Bastion of Twilight: Halfus Wyrmbreaker
King of the If-Thens
or Omnomitron, with Dragons

“Amber,” you’re probably wondering, “What is with the ‘King of the If-Thens’ thing?” 

He’s the King of the If-Thens because while reading strats my head started to hurt.  So much so that I doubt this will be as funny as usual, I don’t have cheap opportunities for penis jokes.

Like Nef of old, every week is different due to the random combination of drakes that can be freed.  This means a lot of headdesking for everyone involved at first.  I have only attempted this boss a few times, so if there’s errors, just let me know and I’ll try to fix them.  Expect a lot of repeated info from section to section because, OMG, so much shit.

General Overview

This is a two tank fight.  The proto drake that is present does not need to tanked, it’ll just sometimes chuck things at you (Thanks buddy!).  Instead you’ll have one tank on Halfus and one on the released drake(s).

When you walk into the room, two drakes will have cartoon-like seeing stars effects over their heads.  These will be the drakes that are NOT active that week.  You can walk over to the drakes you plan on releasing without aggroing the boss.  How many drakes you release depends on who is up–we were releasing two, thanks to the fucked up combo we got (Nether + Slate + Storm, FUUUUUCK), but the video I watched showed only one.  YMMV.

Berserk timer: 6 minutes.

I just wanted to draw a dragon. This one may be considering eating you.

Tanks
If the Slate Dragon is up, Halfus will gain Malevolent Strikes.  This applies a stacking healing debuff, and will require the tanks to swap to drop the stacks.  When this drake is released, the boss will periodically be stunned for 12 seconds (I presume this is long enough for the debuff to drop, perhaps negating the need to swap tanks once Slate is released).

If the Nether Scion is up, Halfus’ attack speed will double.  When released, he will cast a debuff that will reduce his chance to hit, attack speed, and damage done by 25%. 
Note: when we had both Nether and Slate up at once, the MS stacked absurdly fast, so releasing the Scion seemed to make a huge difference. 

If the Storm Rider is up, Halfus gains a shadow nova.  It does roughly 30k shadow damage and knocks everyone back.  Needless to say this ability is an ABSOLUTE BITCH, because until you release the drake, interrupting the nova is well nigh impossible.  Once the Storm Rider is released, however, the cast time is slowed and you can (and need to!) interrupt.   The tank may need to pitch in with interrupts here and there.
When we attempted this fight, two of us (DPS DK and warrior) stayed on Halfus to cover interrupts, because our interrupts were on too long of a CD to handle it with only one.  The first shadow nova seems to make it off regardless, so be aware of that and use what cooldowns you can.

If the Emerald Whelps are up, then the proto drake gains scorching breath.  I have a hunch this means you should not stand in front of him.  If you release the whelps, then they case a stacking poision that reduces the proto drake’s damage done.   You should probably still not stand in front of him, though. 
Note: I watched a video and this may well be unavoidable damage.  Fuck if I know for sure. 

If the Time Warden is up, then the proto drake will spit random fireballs at people.  Thanks, asshole!  At least if you release him he slows down the cast rate. 

Other things: Below 50% Halfus will periodically cast Furious Roar, which will deal ~10k damage and knock everyone down.

Healer
If the Slate Dragon is up, Halfus will gain Malevolent Strikes.  This applies a stacking healing debuff, and will require the tanks to swap to drop the stacks.  When this drake is released, the boss will periodically be stunned for 12 seconds (I presume this is long enough for the debuff to drop, perhaps negating the need to swap tanks once Slate is released).

This will probably make you cry, so prepare to kiss your mana goodbye and be ready to cover switching tanks.

If the Nether Scion is up, Halfus’ attack speed will double.  When released, he will cast a debuff that will reduce his chance to hit, attack speed, and damage done by 25%. 
Note: when we had both Nether and Slate up at once, the MS stacked absurdly fast, so releasing the Scion seemed to make a huge difference. 

Just more ow for your tanks.

If the Storm Rider is up, Halfus gains a shadow nova.  It does roughly 30k shadow damage and knocks everyone back.  Although the drake should be released shortly so that it can be interrupted, it seems like the first shadow goes off regardless, so be aware of that and use what cooldowns you can.

If the Emerald Whelps are up, then the proto drake gains scorching breath.  I have a hunch this means you should not stand in front of him.  If you release the whelps, then they case a stacking poision that reduces the proto drake’s damage done.   (Note: having watched a video with this active, it may be unavoidable damage)

Oh look more shit for you to heal through!

If the Time Warden is up, then the proto drake will spit random fireballs at people.  Thanks, asshole!  At least if you release him he slows down the cast rate. 

…even MORE shit to heal through!

Other things: Below 50% Halfus will periodically cast Furious Roar, which will deal ~10k damage and knock everyone down.  Do I need to say it?

DPS
If the Slate Dragon is up, Halfus will gain Malevolent Strikes.  This MS-like ability will mean that your tanks will be switching, so you might want to watch your aggro a litle more closely.
When this drake is released, the boss will periodically be stunned for 12 seconds\ (I presume this is long enough for the debuff to drop, perhaps negating the need to swap tanks once Slate is released).  Enjoy the easy DPS time!

If the Nether Scion is up, things will happen that you don’t really care about.  Next!

If the Storm Rider is up, Halfus gains a shadow nova.  It does roughly 30k shadow damage and knocks everyone back.  Needless to say this ability is an ABSOLUTE BITCH, because until you release the drake, interrupting the nova is well nigh impossible.  Once the Storm Rider is released, however, the cast time is slowed and you can (and need to!) interrupt.  
When we attempted this fight, two of us (DPS DK and warrior) stayed on Halfus to cover interrupts, because our interrupts were on too long of a CD to handle it with only one.  The first shadow nova seems to make it off regardless, so be aware of that and use what cooldowns you can.  If you’re an interrupt bitch do not leave Halfus ever OMG.

If the Emerald Whelps are up, then you will have fire breathed on you.  Damn.

If the Time Warden is up, then you will have random fireballs spit at you.  Ow.

Other things: Below 50% Halfus will periodically cast Furious Roar, which will deal ~10k damage and knock everyone down.  Fuck being knocked down oh my god.

Blackwing Descent: Omnomnomitron

Basic Concepts:

• Council boss
• Don’t stand in bad things
• Stand in good things
• Don’t confuse the two above things

Tanks
Two of the four golems will be active at any given time.  The active golems can be stacked for making the most of splash/cleave/AoE damage.  They do not cleave themselves, thank the Light.   A stream from the back wall to the golems will show you which ones are about to activate.

Arcanotron:
Pull him out of the “cyan-magenta*” whirlpool, but not so far away that your melee can’t stand in it.  You wouldn’t want to make their epeens smaller.
Arcane Annihilator: your healers will thank you for interrupting this.
Power Conversion: IS NOT FOR HITTINGS.

Electron:
If you get Lightning Conductor, laugh at all the melee DPS who are not paying enough attention to run away from you.
For electrical discharge, you…do nothing again.  You’re the tank, it’s the DPS’s job to suck it up and deal.  You probably like this robot a lot, don’t you.
Unstable Shield: IS NOT FOR HITTINGS.

Magmatron:
Incineration Security Measure – MANY FIRES, HANDLE THEM.  Tanks, stay put.  No really.  Don’t move the boss for this.  This will move the fires, and make everyone sad.
Aquiring Target – A red beam will point out the target of incoming flaming buttfuckery.  You do not want to be near this target–and yes, it can be one of you, tanks!
Barrier – IS NOT FOR HITTINGS.

Toxitron:
Poison Cloud – This is the reverse of the whirlpools.  You and your melee buddies want to GTFO, but standing the boss in it = win.
Poison Protocol – Summons friends for your ranged DPS to play with.  They are not tauntable.
Poison Soaked Shell – IS NOT FOR–wait.  When you hit Toxitron with shell up, it does put a stacking dot on you.  Buuuuut when you attack with said dot, you deal nature damage.   Oh wait, you’re a tank.  Just make your healers happy and don’t hit it (unless your DPS are really pressing their luck and threat becomes an issue).

Heals
Arcanotron:
His whirlpool boosts mana regen. Omnomnom.
Power Conversion: IS NOT FOR HITTINGS.  Want to know why I’m telling the healers this?  Look at your pallys.  Yes you, judging pallys.  You.  NOT FOR HITTINGS.

Electron:
You’ll want to spread out for this golem because of electrical discharge.
Lightning Conductor: yell at anyone who has this and stands around near other people stroking their epeen.  If you get it, run the fuck away.
Unstable Shield: IS NOT FOR HITTINGS.

Magmatron:
Incineration Security Measure – Many fires, not for standing in. 
Aquiring Target – A red beam will point out the target of incoming flaming buttfuckery.  You do not want to be near this target.  You do, however, want to heal this target.  A lot.
Barrier – IS NOT FOR HITTINGS.

Toxitron:
Poison Cloud – Not for standing in.  Yell at anyone who does.
Poison Protocol – If they target you, run the fuck away.
Poison Soaked Shell – Just don’t, pallys.  Just don’t.

DPS
When another golem is activated, the previous one will aquire a shield.  Hint: swap targets.

Arcanotron:
The tank will pull him out of his whirlpool thingy, but you should go stand in it.  It has cookies.
Arcane Annihilator: your healers will thank you for interrupting this. 
Power Conversion: When he has this, you don’t want to hit him.  No, really, you don’t.  Mages can steal this buff.

Electron:
You’ll want to spread out for this golem because of electrical discharge.  Unless, of course, you’re standing in Arc’s whirlpool.  OMNOM MORE DPS.
If you get Lightning Conductor, run away from everyone else.  They do not want your staticy hugs.  If the tank gets it, also run away!
Unstable Shield: IS NOT FOR HITTINGS.

Magmatron:
Incineration Security Measure – Fires are not for standing in.  They are not whirlpools, they do not do kind things for your meter standings.
Aquiring Target – A red beam will point out the target of incoming flaming buttfuckery.  You do not want to be near this target.  If it is you, well, I hope you bribe your healers well.  Use damage reducing cooldowns, etc.
Barrier – IS NOT FOR HITTINGS.

Toxitron:
Poison Cloud – The tank will try to stand the boss in this.  You should try not to stand in it yourself.  If this means scooting around to the sides, I really suggest you do that.
Poison Protocol – Summons slime friends for your ranged DPS to play with.  They are not tauntable, but they are slowable.  If they target you, kite them.  If any target the tank, those slimes are your first priority.  Dear melee: do not play with slimes.  Not your own slime, not anyone elses slimes.  We thought that attacking another’s slimes might be fine, but this resulted in me and our DPS warrior eating the floor a lot when they exploded into puddles of death. 
Poison Soaked Shell – IS NOT FOR–wait.  When you hit Toxitron with shell up, it does put a stacking dot on you.  Buuuuut when you attack with said dot, you deal nature damage.   Until you know how much “spare” mana your healers will have, however, you probably don’t want to risk their ire fucking around with this mechanic.  I’ve yet to be able to experiment with this myself becuase my healers cleanse ALL the things. 

*Cyan-magenta, wowwikki?  Really?  WTF.

BWD: Magmaw

Blackwing “Wait Didn’t I Kill Nef Already?” Descent: Magmaw

Note:
I have now done this fight!  We have even killed him!  You can check out my “lol instructional video” here.  Done with captions because I am a nub with a  broken mic.  ETA: Apparently that vid spazzes out at one point, showing a still until the kiting segment.  I have no idea why, as all I did to make our plain kill video was remove the captions and the kiting part and kill video works fine, but I’ll see about fixing it.  In the meantime, the link to the less fubar’d, but non-captioned, video is here.

Basic Concepts:

• Don’t stand in bad (pst, fire is bad)
• GROUP HUG
• Multiple phases
• AAADDS!  AAADDS!

Tank
Guess what!  The boss doesn’t move.  Stand there and mock your kiter during the first part.   Of course, during the transition, the boss is eating you, so…yeah.  After a few stacks of mangle you might want to pop a cool down.  And not mock the kiter so much.

At the end of phase 2, threat is wiped, so you want to reestablish that quickly before your melee does something stupid like tank it for you.

Healer
Hug your ranged DPS and fill green bars.  Move with the group away from pillar of fire.  Weep at the AoE damage.   When the tank is being OMNOMNOM’d during the transition, toss him some extra heals.

DPS
One of you is going to be the kite bitch.  Hunters are naturally pro at this, but DKs with Chillblains are a popular choice right now as well.  Any class that can slow/knock back/teleport/get really fucking creative can pull this off as well.  See: kite bitch section below.

The rest of you (sans melee) will be basically shuffling from one designated spot to another as the boss tosses down a pillar of burning badness every 30 seconds.  If you’re slow you’ll get knocked in the air by the pilalr so don’t be fucking slow.

Killing the adds seems to be the preferred method, so ranged DPS should burn those down.  Just make sure all DPS (and cooldowns are blown) are on the boss when he’s impaled, which is phase 2.

There is a boss ability named ignition.  It covers half the room and looks like steam jets, so don’t stand in it.  Duh.

Two DPS will have to chain the poss during the transition phase.  Jump on his head and use Constricting Chains.  Don’t have your best add burners do this as they’ll still need to be killing those damn worms.  If you’re breaking the chains you’re fucking it up so…uh…don’t do…whatever you’re doing.

At the end of phase two the boss drops threat.  Don’t be stupid.

Kite Bitch
Worms spawn from the pillar of flame.  Grab them and run around like a headless chicken.   MANY WORMS, HANDLE THEM.  No I don’t know why this really got its own section either.  I felt like it, okay?

Ice Cream Social: Sindy the Chain Smoker

Disclaimer: I have now seen this boss…once.  Er.  Yeah.

General Notes
2 tanks, 3 healers

Like with many dragons, there’s both a ground and an air phase.  Typical cleave/tail whip rules apply, so several of you will die while tanks are positioning the boss for the first few wipes because you forgot how to Ony already.

Icy Grip.  Do you remember Aran?  …no?  Noob.  Anyway, Aran pulled everyone into the middle of the room, and if you didn’t run the fuck away, you got blown the fuck up.  Same principle applies here.  Just don’t run too far beyond the 25 yards required because spreading out too much will still make the healers hate you.  If you are a keyboard turning nub like me, pray to god you don’t lag or try to mouse turn without confusing yourself.  Or just run straight and end up on the opposite side from everyone and say FUCK really loudly like I did. 

When Sindy goes into air phase, two players will have blue arrows appear over their heads and seconds later will end up entombed in ice.   If you see someone near you get the blue arrow things, get the fuck away from them, because apparently it’s contagious (10 yds).   You don’t want it, trust me.  As with Sapph, you hide behind the ice cubes, although this time you’re hiding from ice bombs.  The point of impact will show up as a blue circle with swirling ice around it, so stand on the opposite side of the cubes from these circles.  Don’t just stand behind it and assume you’re safe, you will actually have to move to another side sometimes.  There will be 4 of these bombs in an air phase.  The ice tombs are attackable and you might as well hack away at them while waiting, but you don’t want to destroy them until all 4 bombs have been dropped because then you’ll have nothing to stand behind, dumbass.  They should be destroyed before Sindy lands again. 

At 35% she gains another ability called magical mystical buffet.  Mystical buffet is bad, but is also broken my LoS.  This is where hiding behind ice tombs comes into handy again.  Designate an easily reachable spot for frost tomb targets to run to for this phase.  Once the tomb target has reached the spot and been frozen, everyone hides behind them to drop the stacks.  You should do this at least every other tomb. 

ON THE PROPER PRONOUNCATION OF BUFFET:
Okay look, guys (or gals, especially you narrating the tankspot video): if you’re pronouncing it buh-fey, you’re DOING IT WRONG.  Are you being served dinner, or being attacked by mystical forces?   SINDY IS NOT FEEDING YOU.  So let’s get it right: buhf-it. 

Tanks
Cleave + Frost Breath = this boss doesn’t tickle.  Don’t be shy about using cool downs in conjunction with Frost Breath, especially if you’re not using FR.

During the < 35% health phase, tanks will switch out to drop the mystical buffet stacks behind the tomb.

DPS
Dear melee: if you let permeating chill stack to high you will die.  You cannot DPS while dead.  Got it?

Casters:  You are not immune from debuff fuckery.   Sindy also casts something called  Unchained Magic.  Casting spells during Unchained Magic may cause you to gain stacks of Instability.  Don’t let it stack above 5 or your healers will shank you with their little caster daggers, assuming the damage spike doesn’t kill you first.  By the way, you drop it by not casting for 8 whoooole seconds.

In the 35% phase, you never want more than 1 tomb up at any given time, so be sure to DPS them down.  Just not, you know, TOO quickly.

Healers
While on the ground, Sindy has a frost aura that does damage to the raid just like Sapph.  You will probably hate it, just like Sapph.

Permeating Chill will stack on the melee, doing MORE frost damage.  If it’s too much damage for the healers to handle then they need to stop DPS until the stacks drop off, but we all know how that will go.   Casters have their own version.  Read the note to casters about Unchained Magic above and know that if you die from it you have no one to blame but yourself.

HoTs work to heal the cubed people. 

Bubbles can help negate the debuff so that they can stack higher, but I’m not one to encourage DPS to be reckless.  Instead, either spoil your favorite DPS buddies or accept bribes.  If a mage or warlock has ever taken gear from you, fuck them,

Sindy does a deep breath frost breath.  It’s a frontal cone, but has a 1.5 cast time, so CDs can be popped by/for the tank.  If anyone else is in front of the dragon and isn’t doing the Shadowmourne quest line and bribing you properly, let them die.  Fuckers.

Alternate hiding behind the tombs in the 35% phase, because leaving your tanks without heals is bad.