Bored, bored, bored. Servers should be up. *twitch*

But there's a video.

http://www.mmo-champion.com/index.php?page=895

StratFu has a good writeup on this one. The details of the fight are pretty straight forward for once... the trick will be in the execution.

Also any boss strategy which features the line, "Since the Ranged DPS will need to be biting each other," is okay with me.

One thing I found indispensable last night in our 10s kill was Grid. The second fear and my needing to bite someone overlapped, but I just clicked on kinch (bitee), pointed myself towards him (camera turn + autorun), and spammed 1 as the fear broke & I autoran towards him. Worked like a charm.

Oh! I also learned these things (<---slow learner):

1. When the shadows coalesce around you, you're going to start dropping fire like in Jaraxxus. Time to run in circles.

2. When you get Darkfall Pact, you gotta run to The Spot to make the painful burning go away (like brain link on Yogg, but it goes away when you get to the other person). You have to stand right, exactly, on top of them, and sit there for a minute for all the lags to catch up with each other afore it goes away.

3. Standing on healers during Phase 2/post-fear is a Bad Idea. You'll asplode them. Well, you'll asplode anyone, but healers don't seem to be able to move much once they've kicked the fear. Something about a gazillion incoming raid damage. Y'know.

4. Calling out who you're going to bite, in 10s, doesn't suck.

Not an extremely difficult fight, though it's a logistical nightmare.

The biggest hurdle scaling to 25s will be finding an uninfected person to bite. I think people will likely have to install a raid debuff monitor (grid comes to mind) so uninfected people can be easily identified. The number of infected people doubles every cycle, so 1 -> 2 -> 4 -> 8 (we shouldn't have to go any further). The first three cycles should be easy, the last will take a fair amount of communication on vent. As soon as the 8 are known they should start calling out their bite target. To keep vent somewhat clear, I'd suggest having people call out in the order they were bitten. So, the initial victim first, his first bitten 2nd, the next two bitten, etc.

Another issue is her aoe fear at the start of P2. It is conveniently timed to coincide with the expiration of the infection debuff. While we sort of brute forced it last night, a priest or priests with fear ward can mass dispell the fear and make the transition much easier.

As for Dark pact, Wynn is correct. A spot must be designated and the victims must run and stand there for a few seconds. Run to the spot, not the person.

Fear ward. Mass dispell. Vast quantities of aoe damage. This fight is made to make healing priests shine. Or, maybe that's just Gabron's bald spot.

Anyhow, ditto to Lhank's comments. I need to think more about how we do the third group of bites in 25-man. There has to be an easier way to do 8 (eight!) bites other than having 8 people shouting on vent.

I was thinking about this a bit. Even though I will end up being one of the last to be biten as a tank, a list of raid names sitting next to me on the desk and a handy pen to do a quick scratch out may help. Though that then takes you hands off the Keyboard so I am not sure how helpful that is. I know folks have to spread out but perhaps the "unbiten" all stand in one location and the "biten" in another and then you play Red Rover? Just rambling thoughts before my coffee this morning.

BTW, as the number of bitten grows exponentially (1, 2, 4, in 10's I would hope it is even possible to get her down by the third iteration as you are out of potential "victims".

Grid + grid raid status debuff, or setting it up yourself, would track it easier I think. The problem is how to pick targets. Even if everyone knows who has it and who doesn't, two folks going for the same target is bad if they don't get to their second choice fast enough.

You could have bites arranged by groups - everyone in Group 1 makes sure their group is bitten, then on to 2, and so on. The last bite will still be hectic - it might be no better than everyone collapsing for a second and spamming buttons on grid squares that don't have the debuff yet.

Arranging bites by groups actually makes it very very easy.

Person 1 gets bite from random group. That person then bites a lead person from Group 1. (unless they are themselves from Group 1)

Then Player 1 bites lead from Group 2 (again, unless they are in that group and move on from there). Lead from Group 1 bites lead from group 3. At this stage you have 4 players bitten who will be the initial target plus leads from the other 3 groups. From that point on all bites are done inside of the group (lead bites person 2, then they bite 3 and 4 on the next pass). Thats 16 people and the next one will bone you over anyway, so no need to really go out beyond that.

This allows a focusing of bite responsibilty onto just a few people - mostly the group leads since they need to track who got the debuff initially, and whoever gets that first debuff. Even tighter focusing since the initial bite is controllable (or at least not completely random - highest nontank threat is what I've heard). Each group needs a contingency plan for order if one of their members is the initial bite, but that will be simple, and can be coordinated in party chat. Lastly, that leaves 9 spots free who don't get bitten to be taken by healers and tanks.

This was mentioned a few times in the 10s, and I think it needs to be stressed, and acted upon. This is a pure dps race. We saw how devastating the aoe fear during the buff expiration could be for folks trying to find their bite target.

This really should focus on dps output, and go accordingly. The more damage we can output, the less likely we'll run into that 2nd fear chaos. And I don't really buy the 'this group has more ranged / melee synergy' because we have excellent dps in both camps, who can do impressive damage with or without the raid synergy.

I really think we should look at consistent overall output, and go that way. No matter how we do this, there will be some people getting bit last. Maximizing our ability to get the boss down seems like a goal the group should be oriented towards.

We did pretty well with a list in 10s, and while we'll be dealing with 15 more people, it still shouldn't be that hard to know who you're supposed to bite, and a backup if that person isn't available.

Example of my scheme in practice.
Notation is (group)-(# inside of group)

First bite goes out on A1 (for sake of discussion)

First timer
A1 -> B1

Second timer
A1 -> C1
B1 -> D1

Third timer
A1 -> A2
B1 -> B2
C1 -> C2
D1 -> D2

Fourth timer
A1 -> A3, A2 -> A4
B1 -> B3, B2 -> B4
C1 -> C3, C2 -> C4
D1 -> D3, D2 -> D4


As an example of what it would look like if someone else was bitten unexpectedly. Say... C4

C4 -> B1

B1 -> D1
C4 -> A1

A1 -> A2
B1 -> B2
C4 -> C1
D1 -> D2

A1 -> A3, A2 -> A4
B1 -> B3, B2 -> B4
C1 -> C3, C4 -> C2
D1 -> D3, D2 -> D4

So only a handful of the bites change in this scheme. It is essentially the list system where you have a bite and a backup, except that you can predict the backup well ahead of time. (and given the DPS race, people missing out of the sequence hurts us hard enough in other ways that it would be a wipe anyway). And if we hit the last bite round and your target is dead, the only time it might be survivable, just go nibble on a healer or tank.

We are going to be visiting with vampire chickie on Thursday, so review strats! I'll be running this mod, which will auto-assign bite targets based on DPS (higest first). Yay.

Just adding in a few observations from the 25m kills I've been in.

- While at first glance the fight seems like a huge DPS race, it really isn't. If anything, this fight is another one that rides pretty heavily on how good the healers are. As long as everyone is alive and bite priority is more or less followed, the enrage timer shouldn't be an issue. If a non-vamp DPS dies then things get tighter on the enrage. If a single vamp dies (typically above 25%) then it's best to just wipe it because you'll never kill her before she murders everyone.

- As noted already, bite priorities are awesome. However, the first air phase also tends to coincide with bite timers. If all else fails and you can't reach your bite buddy, just bite whoever. A lower-DPSing vamp is recoverable, while an insane vamp is not.

- Going along with the above for the bite timer/air phase overlap, know who you are supposed to be biting in advance. Watch for them. If you have a fear break, use it and follow your feared bite buddy around, then position near them during the spread out phase. There should be about 3-4s remaining on the timer after the bloodbolt whirl ends, and if you're standing near the person you won't need more than 1s.

Are we going to try and control who first bite goes to? (Tankspot claims it is highest threat non-tank).

Well, I'm not sure we need to if we use the mod. You want to without a mod, so you can maintain a preset order. The one thing I HAVE read is that it's better if she bites a melee first, but that could be hard to manage with our badass ranged folks.