Freya 25 Hard

[Palin]

I started writing this up in the "Recent Accomplishments Thread" to all the people talkin about how their guild was getting stuck on Knock x3, but it ended up being really long, so I figured it was easier to just make a post about it.

Freya's definitely the hardest HM left. Yogg is really dependent on how good your DPS is; but not in the situational awareness/survivability kind of way, just at maximizing DPS. It's a different kind of "good player" needed for the two fights, like black and white.

Freya is all about maximizing survivability. If you haven't already, make sure everyone (and I mean everyone, even 30k health Warriors and DKs) are using Stoneblood Flasks for your first couple of kills. Your melee will argue that they don't need it to live, but the fact is that the more buffer every person in the raid has against gibs, the less your healers have to panic to save someone in an "oh shit" situation, and end up losing someone else.

Roots have to die quick. Every DPS needs to make them first priority 99.9% of the time, including melee. Make everyone have target macros, and switch to them the second they come out. Have your RLs call when Roots are coming soon, so people are ready for them. They do 8k damgae per tick x3. That's 8k more raid DPS your healers have to keep up with, and are very much part of what causes the gibs.

Make sure you're AoEing roots whenever you can. Have everyone stack up tight on Elemental so that if anyone gets Rooted, they're in range of a Blizzard/Mind Sear off Freya. This means everyone, including Healers, needs to be within 5-10 yards of Freya on that phase, BUT NOT STACKED UP. That's another thing with this fight, never ever ever have everyone on top of each other. Even on Lasher phase, spread around an entire DnD circle under her fully. If everyone's on top of each other, and a Sunbeam targets someone, thats 9k damage x20 people as opposed to 9k damage x2-3 if people are more spread in a 5 yard radius. Same goes with Brightleaf Beams, if 20 peopel are all on top of each other, thats 20 ticks of Unstable Energy.

Going back to Elemental, have your Spriests glyph for Mind Sear, and Mind Sear off Freya to hit all 3 Elementals. Your mages (make sure they're not specced Frostbite, but are specced Magic Absorbtion and Permafrost) and Locks (Shadowfury and Soul Link spec) should be hepling on Snaplasher, but when roots pop, they all quickly do a RoF and Blizzard on top of Freya. This will hit all 3 of the Elementals and the 3 new roots (if everyone was in range like they should have been), causing them to die immediately. Make sure your Hunter is kiting Snap in a 10 yard radius of Freya too, so it gets hit by the AoE. Have your Locks use Shadowfury on everything just as Tremor is casting in order to minimize a Lightning Lash gib immediately after. Use one when they first spawn as well so Snap doesn't wreck a Retadin.

Lashers are the usual taunt/root/aoe thing, pretty basic. The best tip I can give to you here is to make sure there is NO damage going out that is not a full-AoE effect. This means no white hits, no single targetting, no Chain Lightnings, no Cleave, no Whirlwinds, no Divine Storms. Melee just auto attack Freya and do Fan of Knives, Thunderclap, Magma totem, etc. The reason for this is you don't want to have 4-5 Lashers that are 10-15% lower than the others, because if you don't stop when they get to 10% or so, they'll blow up and kill your raid. On the other hand, if you stop when the low ones are at 15%, and the rest are at 35%, your AoE will not be able to finish them off before all the Roots/Stuns DR or break, and you'll waste the phase. There's plenty of time in the Lasher phase to play it safe and tell people not do anything thats not a full AoE.

Conservators are rough but actually the easiest once you get used to them. First of all, plan to blow your Bloodlust + full CDs on the first one, and then your full CDs + Potions (speed/wild magic) on the second. Make sure all your Pallies are specced into Aura Mastery for the first few weeks, and chain Aura Mastery/Conc Aura to remove the pacify for your healers. DPS still want to get under shrooms for the damage buff, but it makes moving out from under them not as big of a deal. Healing wise, make sure all healers are bombing people with Fury, its 9k/tick, and is another part of the big gib on this fight.

Healing setup and assignments are paramount. Make sure every ranged group has 2 healers that are responsible for keeping that group alive through any Fury/Roots and after Tremors. Put a raid mark on each group's primary healer, and tell people in that group to make sure they're never more than 15 yards from that mark. Make sure every healer has a secondary and tertiary role. Cross healing is so important on this fight, but prioritization of roles is as well. An example of something we did:

Group 3: Cptn (Resto Sham) + Ettoo (Resto Druid)
Group 4: Night (Holy Priest) + Aelin (Holy Pally)
Group 5: Zepp (Resto Druid) + Facts (Disc Priest)

In group 3, Ettoo would be primarily responsible for healing Group 3, secondary healing anyone in range of him who gets Roots or Fury. Cptn would primarily be responsible for healing the melee, secondary Roots/Fury healing, tertiary Tank healing.

In group 4, Night would be primarily responsible for healing Group 4, and secondary healing anyone in range of him who gets Roots or Fury. Aelin would be primarily responsible for tank healing, secondary Roots/Fury healing, tertiary melee healing.

In group 5, Zepp would be primarily responsible for healing Group 5, secondary healing anyone in range of him who gets Roots or Fury, tertiary Tank healing. . Facts would be primarily responsible for Shielding the raid before Tremors, and secondary Tank healing, tertiary Roots/Fury healing.

That's all I can think of for now, if you have any questions feel free to ask and I"ll try to help.

[Gulkeeva]

Yeah the guild i'm with is doing most of all that but what gets crazy is... apparently...

Healers are getting low/oom by about wave 3-4 spam healing like mad.

"Very" first wave of exploding plants is ok... but when the 2nd comes.. even if no ones dead yet, it just goes all crazy and people die all over tha place by that point. Presuming mana outage/possibly spread out from shrooms causing exploding plants wondering everywhere draining even more mana.

Someone always dies to the beams (on the aoe spam flower pull) something about 1fps failure... >.>

everyone in raids atleast 27K hp, but people tend to die to something usually like... root + beam rape.


I had one fun death... it was... water elemental charge -> while flying sunbeam + chain lightning, and flying dead body for about 10y. got all 3 hits in under .05 seconds according to recount

[Dezzimal]

I disagree, conservator phase is the phase you're most likely to lose people on. Fury is evil when combimed with the grip/mushroom randomness. Three add phase is easy, we do what you mentioned with aoe, and we've had a lot of practice with lashers and challenging shouting them out of the raid when they're low.

Nobody can screw an attempt over quite like conservator. Fury on two healers is really bad if neither of them can get an unoccupied shroom. Too many melee furies is just nasty raid damage that might line up with a tremor before the fury moves out. Moral of the story here is stack resto druids, swiftmend is godly for saving people who are still rooted during tremor or otherwise about to die.

[Palin]

Yea, that's actually a deceptive statement in retrospect. I suppose our Conservator phases just feel better now because we screamed and yelled at our healers to heal bomb the living shit out of people with Fury. We also chain Aura Mastery for at least 20 seconds usually, so its smooth things out a bit. It definitely was our worst phase learning wise, but now it feels more stable, but that's probably because we blow Bloodlust and cooldowns.

Two things I forgot to mention. Make sure your Rogues are specced into Throwing Spec for Elementals and Lashers, and maybe even glyph of FoK. And make sure your helaers have Iron Roots and Nature's Fury added to their Grid/raid frames.

"Very" first wave of exploding plants is ok... but when the 2nd comes.. even if no ones dead yet, it just goes all crazy and people die all over tha place by that point.

Sounds like the call to restack on Freya is coming too slow, or you stlil have things alive from the previous phase, in which case your DPS is too slow.

Healers oom

Shouldn't be possible... Do your Spirit-based helaers have Spark of Hope. Do you guys farm 10 mans for stuff like Sif's Promise? I just don't see how its possible for healers with decent gear to go oom with smart playstyle, unless they're way undegeared. Discs get amazing Rapture returns, Resto Shams get amazing Water Shield procs, Druids are hax and should never go oom, and Pallies are the same. Only class I could maybe see an issue is HolY Priests, and that's overcome with smart gearing and Holy Concentration usage.

[Gulkeeva]

Nooo idea how they are getting so low on mana.

Conservator usually isn't a problem... as long as he's the only thing up, he dies before the next adds wave even if he's wave 2-3 without bloodlust/pots etc.

and yeah dps soorta seems to not survive to adds by wave 4. seems to just get slower and slower and start falling behind by about wave 3

randomly dam the rogues... doing like 23,000+ dps with their aoe's ;/

[aurik]

thanks for this, very interesting. even if my guild will never 25man freya!

[Dezzimal]

Discs get amazing Rapture returns

I actually switched to disc to make room for a new shadow priest to help fill up our raid roster since recruiting healing priests is apparently impossible on Shattered Hand. I did go OOM on our kill last night, but it was when we were on freya herself which I suppose is acceptable. I threw out 114 power word shields over the duration of the fight, among other spells of course.