So, we've had quite a few more or less good attempts on the Firelord Ragnaros during the last weeks with our Horde raid. The raid has enough good gear for a first kill, and neither fire resistance nor potions are a problem. We can take down Ragnaros pre-sons to about 40% of his hitpoints, which should be enough to take him down after the sons phase is over.

The problem is basically the sons phase, which conists of 3 phases:

- incoming sons
- fighting the sons
- Ragnaros emerges again

During these phases we just lose too much people and mana (mana-burn from the sons), mainly because either the tanks/rogues lose aggro of the sons, the sons come out too quick from a warlock ban, or frost novas fail too often to keep the sons at bay (-> mana-burn). The result is basically a chaotic situation where the sons can fire-damage and mana-burn the raid like hell.

So, what does your raid do exactly during the 3 sons phases? How do you keep the sons at bay and the chaos under control? Is it just practicing, or is there a proven "fool-proof" method to make these 3 sons phases as painless as possible, so that about 80% of the raid still stands with enough mana post-sons to finallly take Ragnaros down?

If anyone here could post or link to a detailed guide, I'd be very grateful

Sons are a matter of positioning, initially. From the Ragnaros positioning (nicely spaced preferably with walls to your backs) you need to fall back to a single point in a controlled manner so that the warriors and rogues pick up all the sons and keep them at a distance from the casters.

Our, simplified, rag positioning (ignore the party stuff, I couldn't find a clean minimap ss)



Our, ideal, collapse positioning,


Our collapse is pretty drastic. In a perfect world, the rogues and dps warriors tag any sons heading for the hunters/paladins/mages/warlocks and the MTs cover the primary healers as they retreat.

Warlocks can banish the "second wave" of sons that cross from the far side of rag's pool as it's incoming.

Really, if you're losing too many people, you might be a bit low on FR. A big part of it is also getting your rogues to stop playing like rogues and go all out. Sons have very little life, but they hit like trucks. However, they do all fire damage. With decent resists + FR aura, mitigation shouldn't be a problem.

The guide we used while learning the fight.

Let you hunters lay down some slowing frost traps.
And mana burn can be avoided by using a fire protection potion.

And you might try a challenging shout rotation. (A tank in full fire resist gear, can tank quite a few sons.)

We collapse before Rag submerges. Feral druids go bear, traps are dropped and the warlocks are prepared to banish. Warriors line up and get ready to tank.

If I'm not MT/ST for Rag I have my two hander out and tank quite a few with WW, cleave and shouts. Last Rag attempt I was melee dps I ended up tanking four sons with Yuen and Ramala (Quark) helping me to wftpwn them.

Though I should point out that I have 315FR buffed even with my two hander.

If you have prepaired for this fight right you should have at least 4 to 6 warriors with over 200 fire resistance. This should NOT have been left up to them unless they are armorsmiths and you gave them the mats to make their own gear. All those firey cores and DI ore that got picked up during raids should be given to smiths and your warriors should get gifts from them in the mail.

For the actual strategy first let me say I think rogues being used as a pickup for sons is a bad idea unless you have just had a lot of luck putting fire resist and stamina on them or your guild hasn't been able to recruit enough warriors. Second I bet your problem is the same one my guild had: tunnel vision healers. After healing the MT for about 5 minutes they had trouble switching to healing the 5 or so people picking up sons. So even though the damage they were taking was maybe that of a UBRS boss they died. This sent the sons they had picked up running for the target second on the hate list: the people who were AOEing. Since they stand near to the healers the healers died. This caused quite a few nasty wipes before we cleared it up and put Rags on a regular farm status.

I can't vouch for the other Rogues, but I tank sons. One my FR hit 200 unbuffed (before our first Rag kill) I started tanking them, and I haven't stopped. Your Rogues should be loading up FR almost equal to any warrior not a Main Tank.

Typically I'll tank one or two sons that I see break free, drag them back, then either a warrior will taunt off or it'll die and I'll switch to pure DPSing.

Also, as Tal mentioned, Druids. They have a unique role in this fight -> when in bear form, they can take more hits and they don't have mana. Use that to your advantage

Yeah, my tank has 315+ buffed FR, anymore, I'm usually MT or ST on Rag, and I'll lock up a loose son and call DPS on him, and the ranged will kick in and take him down. FR is key here, raidwide. Sons eat raids that don't have enough It's chaotic, but they're usually gone within a minute, and it's time to get back to pwnage of the big flamer himself.

As far as I know, Pacifist, an alliance guild on my server, has the definative guide to Ragnaros.

Collecting the vulnerable mana users in one area is vital. Moving the warriors and rogues infront of that spot before he goes down, or atleast well on their way is a fantastic idea. They all need 200 or so FR.

GFPP does not save your mana, IIRC. I'm pretty sure it will protect you from the damage part of having your mana burnt, but not the actual mana burn. That's going to be the killer - trying to start phase 3 without any healer mana.

You can have your second tank off tank the last son while the raid reassembles. If you can handle the sons in 1 min or so, it is an excellent time for the healers to huddle around a mana tide totem before finishing him. We don't like banishes for this because off tanking gives us more control over exactly when to kill him and where he is.

MT healing druids innervate MT healers and then go bear and collapse slowly, using Demoralizing Roar to try and pick up aggro on the Sons that are heading for the raid. Then join in killing the Sons, don't try to taunt them off if they're on a warrior.

The innervate is a big help for MT healing priests that might be running dry, and certainly are going to get mana-drained by any loose Sons.

a lot of things have been mentioned already, I think I can add some:


Get warriors and rogues in position at the 20 second sons warning.


While 40% is by no means bad, try to improve your dps even more


Set up a dps warrior/rogue as main assist. The whole raid puts dps on that target, as sons go down fast (has been mentioned. Less time sons are up = less time they can hurt your raid.


Don't kill the last sone before the timer gets close to Rags getting back. In our third and fourth Ragnaros kill we killed the last son way before the 15sec warning and lost positioning time. We all were very well aware that Rags would spawn the instant the last son dies, but the raid was in too much of a killing mood.


If you have a very healthy son up after Ragnaros reemerges, keep it banished and focus on Rags again right away. It will die with the firelord.


Avoid having MT or OT on the last two or so sons. They need to be in position to resume tanking right at the reemerge. We had a warrior tanking Ragnaros and a son at the same time. We took him (Ragnaros, not our tank ) down, but it makes things harder and can easily avoided with less headless chickeness than us.


DPS is king. Get more damage dealers and take less helaing. We did it with two priests and one druid and about seven shaman. If melee are careful, the raid should not need "that" much healing.


hope some helped
take care
Nuurabsaal/Tarabulus

Thanks for all the helpful tips and guides. I'll study them and let you know about our progress

This is just my own personal tidbit, but I never use any mana during the sons' invasion. I just regen, wand, and let the melee burn things down. There's plenty of melee DPS, usually, to handle the sons before rag re-emerges, and you're trying to maximize the amount you can do when he re-emerges, without having to 'pace' yourself because of less mana..

Ragnaros reemerges when either one of two things happen: 1) All the sons die or 2) A certain amount of time passes (90 seconds?). If you get to the point where you can kill all the sons early, it helps to keep one of them banished, preferably after damaging it for a little bit. This gives your mana users some time to regen mana. Then, when Ragnaros comes up again, the remaining son can be quickly burned down by the ranged dps and the normal fight with Ragnaros can recommence.

Edit pending in-game confirmation

Biggest key is having an MA and everyone religiously following it. Sons drop fast if they are focused on one at a time.

Before Rags submerged, hunters should be feigning and laying frost drops, warriors should be disengaging (except for the MT/OT of course, who must stay until he submerges) and everyone else should be moving to your collapse point.

Sons do all fire damage, so if you are having difficulty, use a greater fire protection pot just before the sons come. This will help immensely! This also means your priests can just sit back and regen during this phase, so they are ready to go when Rags comes back up again.

Warriors with high FR should be using challenging shout here, the cooldown wont be an issue if you wipe anyways. They'll likely only be grabbing 3 or 4 anyways, since a one or two should be ice trapped, another banished, etc.

IMHO though, it's all about the MA.

Agreed. When we first started beating Ragnaros, we used two MA's. Odd groups assisting one, even groups assisting the other. Now, we pretty much banish and/or trap a few and just kill whatever's left, but that's a function of gear. The sons don't have much life, so they go down quickly.

The other key is making sure the sons stay well away from your healers, so they don't get mana burned. If a son or two penetrate to the inside of the group, I as a healer sometimes run to the outside to avoid being mana burned.

Pardon my ignorance, but what is an MA in WoW?

Main Assist. He (or she, I guess) who designates the next target for focus-fire killage.

Most groups will have macros setup to /assist <whoever is MA> so they can instantly get the target and unload on it.

Kv

Main assist.

Thanks, so the strategy with the sons is a bit like that with the 8 adds of Garr, where you ban them and kill one after the other (using a MA).

The trick lies in how quickly the individual sons die and in how many there are. You don't have time to assign targets, one getting loose in the casters is far more damaging than a Garr add, and they die very quickly (only ~15k hp).

Banishing all the sons is risky (and technically challenging). You still have to stay out of their auras, rag may repop before banish fades, and if a warlock dies attempting to continue the fight with Him, you've now got a very dangerous add loose with an AE mana drain.

The sons section in the guide dennis and I posted above is excellent.

Oh, yeah, absolutely. You don't want to permanently banish a son. The idea is that the warlocks banish a few targets so that the main raid has fewer targets to deal with. Then by the time the main raid kills the first batch of sons, the banishes will have expired and you can burn those sons down.

As I said before, we like to hurt the last son down to below half its life and then banish it (usually with a short duration banish) to prevent Ragnaros from coming up early, which gives our casters a chance to regen mana for 15-30 seconds and also gives our raid a chance to get in their positions for Rag. Once Rag comes up and the banish wears off, the ranged dps finishes off that son. I discussed this with Mirajj the other night and he's convinced it doesn't work. But since my guild had been doing this every week for months, I'm quite confident about it.

The sons tactics explained above (one MA, Druids in Bear form) worked perfectly with my Nightelf Druid's new Alliance MC raid. The young group has fairly mediocre equipment for MC, but the Lord of the Core just went down. Thanks again for the tips!

Now on to the Horde's first kill

Congratulations.

Funny how even textual exaltation transcends the language barrier.

So is it the same guild for alliance and horde? Or are you in two seperate guilds?

Two different guilds on the same RP server - "Nightring" for the Horde, and "Licht und Schatten" for the Alliance. But there are several real persons who play in both guilds, too

I think the key to beating the Sons of Flame is simple:

Don't Panic.

They move blindingly fast and that seems to freak people out.

We tell our warlocks to banish a son once. You don't want to banish more than that or they will still be there when Rag comes up.

We have a designated "collapse" area for the mana users to gather when the 20 second warning comes up, and a designated killing area. If we can gather a bunch of Sons close together, you can go to town with the AOE abilities like Blizzard, Whirlwind, Cleave, Sweeping Strikes, and Blade Flurry.

You can either DPS by main assist, or simply tab target to find a target on low health. As long as your casters avoid attacking an untanked target you should be fine.

You obviously didn't have too many problems killing them, and I think you'll find they're pretty easy to deal with.

Chris

gratz, the feeling is great, isn't it?


take care
Nuurabsaal/Tarabulus

Thanks. Yep, unfortunately it all becomes routine very quickly

Ragnaros down today with the Horde raid as well. Now on to Blackwing Lair!

have fun with Razorgore

I think it took us over 15 tries to get him down, when Twilight's Hammer's resident Horde pwn guild allegedly killed him on first try...


Vael kicked our green butts in about 15 seconds on the second "try", when somebody accidently aggroed him

take care
Nuurabsaal/Tarabulus

Nah, Vael's easy. My guild got him down to 30% on our first attempt!

What we do is at the 20s point, everyone moves to a common spot. We drop a grid of masterwork target dummies. Warriors then challenge and we drop them fast. I like your collapse strategy though.

Alright, seriously? Because if you're serious, I...

Are you recruiting?

Do the target dummies help in a noticable way? I mean, do they actually taunt and stay alive enough to give people a few extra seconds? Because if so, my guild is so going to do this.