Gort,

I'd recommend some thorough encounter analysis. Was anyone capturing the combat log? You can analyze things such as:

1) How many fireballs and frostbolts did Aran get off? 100% interrupts is impossible, but you want it to be as high as possible. Fireballs and frostbolts are much harder to heal through than Arcane Missiles (which is very easy to heal through if you're watching who Aran is targetting).

2) How much Blizzard damage is the raid taking? Getting caught by Blizzard due to a Flame Wreath is no excuse; ranged players should be chasing the "back" end of a Blizzard to ensure that doesn't happen.

3) Are people setting off Flame Wreaths? Ultimately if someone is setting them off over and over, they may just need to sit out. It's harsh, but there's not much else you can do, really. If it's a different person setting them off each time, some kind of system to help stop that from happening is necessary. Again, to get our first kill, I had to shout "STOP MOVING" over Teamspeak each time a Flame Wreath was coming. We didn't have the chant back then.

4) Anyone dying to the Arcane Explosion? Unless they were conflagged or "ice shackled" and not dispelled, see #3.

5) While some swear by the "control" strategy, allowing Aran to polymorph the raid before 40% so that he can't do it while the elementals are out, I despise it. The longer the fight runs, the greater the chance that Something Goes Wrong™ and someone screws up. (We saw this in full force last night during Prince attempts - with low DPS, phase 2 lasts longer and longer, and eventually the MT's going to get creamed by something.) If he's polymorphing the raid while elementals are out, either there's not enough dps, the interrupting is poor (remember, if fireballs and frostbolts are interrupted, he's not burning his mana on them), or people were dying earlier. We go for the "burn the bastard" strategy, trying to kill him before the polymorph. Only actually been successful at that once; even when we're not, by the time he polymorphs, the elementals are long gone and he's near death.

6) You said you have a hunter - is he using snake traps? These confuse the heck out of Aran and he'll waste shots on the snakes. Okay, apparently you can't use these now after the patch, since they'll set off flame wreaths, but just checking if it is/was part of the strategy.

7) How long do your interruptors let him cast a fireball or frostbolt before interrupting it? The longer, the better, accounting for latency and such.

8) When elementals are out, who are they going after? Typically it's your healers who will get reamed at this point, dooming you. If 3 or more elementals decide to hit one healer, they can self-heal all they like but it won't save them; the damage is too high. You have one warlock, so we can assume that 2 elementals are being taken care of. What do you do about the other 2? Does the warlock raid-mark his 2 elementals so he can track the feared one easily?

9) How many healers are you using? If you're going for letting him polymorph before 40%, try 4 healers. If you want to burn him down, there should be no more than 3 or you won't have enough DPS.

10) Is Aran ever moving? Aran moving from his central spot and going to the outside of the ring will often wipe you, since he loves to run over into one of his blizzards where the melee can't follow. If Aran is moving, he's getting interrupted too much and someone in ranged has aggro. This is, of course, a problem. Let him use Arcane Missiles, it's a cinch to heal through.

11) Healers should go ZOMG spam-heal-happy when elementals are out. Too many people tend to be taking too much damage in too many different ways to use long-cast heals like you can when the elementals aren't around. Mana be damned; if you come out of the elementals with 10 people alive, you're going to win, period.

Ultimately: who's dying first? If it's healers - likely during the elementals stage; need to find a better way to handle elementals to protect the healers. I know early on I'd get killed sometimes trying to save others caught in Blizzards, leading to me getting caught in Blizzards myself because I can't move while I'm healing. Sometimes you have to let go; it's not your fault they die. If it's non-healers dying first, either the raid needs to interrupt more, the healers need to be more predictive of incoming damage, or people aren't watching blizzards/flame wreaths/arcane explosions and need to pay better attention.

For future wipes, I'd suggest not attempting Aran again until it's determined why the last attempt failed. Else, you're just throwing yourselves at him over and over and over, hoping you'll get lucky one time and he dies. As long as people have cool heads and don't take things personally, identifying what the problem was and who is causing it so that they are less likely to do it again should pay off. Else, you get nowhere because nobody learns anything. This is tricky because people rarely want to admit they may have made a mistake or that their character isn't geared enough.

Speaking of gear, how many hit points do people have? You really want to get everyone over at least 8,000 hit points, using whatever consumables can make it happen. On our early attempts, that meant Elixir of Mastery, Rumsey Rum, and food buffs for me, along with plenty of gear enchants. This allows a character to have a decent chance of surviving 2 direct blasts from Aran in a row, not to mention absorbing a post-polymorph pyroblast better.

-Bolty

/agree

5 minutes spent discussing improvements to make is a better use of your time than an extra wipe usually. Just don't let it devolve into the blame game.

[quote]Gort,

I'd recommend some thorough encounter analysis. Was anyone capturing the combat log? You can analyze things such as:

1) How many fireballs and frostbolts did Aran get off? 100% interrupts is impossible, but you want it to be as high as possible. Fireballs and frostbolts are much harder to heal through than Arcane Missiles (which is very easy to heal through if you're watching who Aran is targetting).[/quote]

I used to think we were doing good enough on interupts until I learned two things last night. First, we had one attempt that seemed like our interupts where really on, Aran was at 45% HP and 75% mana. This is much better than usual for us. So if we can do it one time we should do it every time. Second, our healers are burning through mana a lot faster than I've heard they should, and people are still dieing. So that just mean the raid is taking too much damage. Some from fireballs/frostbolts, some from blizzards.

[quote]2) How much Blizzard damage is the raid taking? Getting caught by Blizzard due to a Flame Wreath is no excuse; ranged players should be chasing the "back" end of a Blizzard to ensure that doesn't happen.[/quote]

That is what is really getting us at times. If we just have a blizzard we seem to be doing good. But when half way through the blizzard we get a Flame Wreath I'll see 2-3 people have to stop and get hit by the blizzard.

[quote]3) Are people setting off Flame Wreaths? Ultimately if someone is setting them off over and over, they may just need to sit out. It's harsh, but there's not much else you can do, really. If it's a different person setting them off each time, some kind of system to help stop that from happening is necessary. Again, to get our first kill, I had to shout "STOP MOVING" over Teamspeak each time a Flame Wreath was coming. We didn't have the chant back then. [/quote]

While we have had a lot of wipes from someone setting of Flame Wreaths our last 4-5 attempts last night not a single one went off, so I think everyone is getting this down better.

[quote]4) Anyone dying to the Arcane Explosion? Unless they were conflagged or "ice shackled" and not dispelled, see #3.[/quote]

The only time I've seen people die from this is usually during the elemental part. The elemental phase is hard because not only do people have to react to them, they still really have to focus on Aran still.

[quote]5) While some swear by the "control" strategy, allowing Aran to polymorph the raid before 40% so that he can't do it while the elementals are out, I despise it. The longer the fight runs, the greater the chance that Something Goes Wrong™ and someone screws up. (We saw this in full force last night during Prince attempts - with low DPS, phase 2 lasts longer and longer, and eventually the MT's going to get creamed by something.) If he's polymorphing the raid while elementals are out, either there's not enough dps, the interrupting is poor (remember, if fireballs and frostbolts are interrupted, he's not burning his mana on them), or people were dying earlier. We go for the "burn the bastard" strategy, trying to kill him before the polymorph. Only actually been successful at that once; even when we're not, by the time he polymorphs, the elementals are long gone and he's near death.[/quote]

On our "good" attempts we are on pace to get through the elementals before the poly/pyro happens. On our "non good" attempts... well we've got other things we need to do better.

[quote]6) You said you have a hunter - is he using snake traps? These confuse the heck out of Aran and he'll waste shots on the snakes. Okay, apparently you can't use these now after the patch, since they'll set off flame wreaths, but just checking if it is/was part of the strategy.[/quote]

We really only thought about the snake traps this week, now that we can't use them.

[quote]7) How long do your interruptors let him cast a fireball or frostbolt before interrupting it? The longer, the better, accounting for latency and such.[/quote]

I really just try to interupt when I can, with lag and reaction time it's usually in the last half of the cast.

[quote]8) When elementals are out, who are they going after? Typically it's your healers who will get reamed at this point, dooming you. If 3 or more elementals decide to hit one healer, they can self-heal all they like but it won't save them; the damage is too high. You have one warlock, so we can assume that 2 elementals are being taken care of. What do you do about the other 2? Does the warlock raid-mark his 2 elementals so he can track the feared one easily?[/quote]

We rarely get to the elementals with everyone up. If we do have everyone up we seems to be doing ok on them. I can't really say any better than if we have less than 10 people when we get to the elementals we are toast.

[quote]9) How many healers are you using? If you're going for letting him polymorph before 40%, try 4 healers. If you want to burn him down, there should be no more than 3 or you won't have enough DPS.[/quote]

We've been going the last few times with 3 holy spec healers, and gort in his DPS gear with with a 2H and earth shocking.

[quote]10) Is Aran ever moving? Aran moving from his central spot and going to the outside of the ring will often wipe you, since he loves to run over into one of his blizzards where the melee can't follow. If Aran is moving, he's getting interrupted too much and someone in ranged has aggro. This is, of course, a problem. Let him use Arcane Missiles, it's a cinch to heal through.[/quote]

We have had a few times where he runs around, but that has only happened on 2-3 attempts.

[quote]11) Healers should go ZOMG spam-heal-happy when elementals are out. Too many people tend to be taking too much damage in too many different ways to use long-cast heals like you can when the elementals aren't around. Mana be damned; if you come out of the elementals with 10 people alive, you're going to win, period.[/quote]

We just need to get with the elementals with 10 people alive.

[quote]Ultimately: who's dying first? If it's healers - likely during the elementals stage; need to find a better way to handle elementals to protect the healers. I know early on I'd get killed sometimes trying to save others caught in Blizzards, leading to me getting caught in Blizzards myself because I can't move while I'm healing. Sometimes you have to let go; it's not your fault they die. If it's non-healers dying first, either the raid needs to interrupt more, the healers need to be more predictive of incoming damage, or people aren't watching blizzards/flame wreaths/arcane explosions and need to pay better attention.

For future wipes, I'd suggest not attempting Aran again until it's determined why the last attempt failed. Else, you're just throwing yourselves at him over and over and over, hoping you'll get lucky one time and he dies. As long as people have cool heads and don't take things personally, identifying what the problem was and who is causing it so that they are less likely to do it again should pay off. Else, you get nowhere because nobody learns anything. This is tricky because people rarely want to admit they may have made a mistake or that their character isn't geared enough.

Speaking of gear, how many hit points do people have? You really want to get everyone over at least 8,000 hit points, using whatever consumables can make it happen. On our early attempts, that meant Elixir of Mastery, Rumsey Rum, and food buffs for me, along with plenty of gear enchants. This allows a character to have a decent chance of surviving 2 direct blasts from Aran in a row, not to mention absorbing a post-polymorph pyroblast better.

-Bolty
[/quote]

In addition to that, all the mana cost on Missles is frontloaded. If he casts even one Arcane missle, he's already spent all the mana he will on it and the only point to interrupting it is if he's beating on someone who can't take the pounding. Focus your interrupts on Fireball/Frostbolt, as the mana is taken from him just before the spell completes. That way he wastes the cast time and doesn't get the spell/mana loss.

Thought of some other things that may help.

1) Where are the ranged standing? Standing at max range from Aran is a mistake; ideally, you want to be standing only 10-15 yards away from Aran to stay just outside his counterspell range. Why? Mobility. Geometry shows that you can circle around the room much faster to avoid Blizzards if your distance from Aran is smaller. If you're against a wall and a Blizzard is forming right over your head, you're boned, since the distance you have to run to get out of it is much longer than if you were a mere 15 yards away from Aran. Hunters should stand at minimum range to shoot and no further.

2) Ranged should bunch up. Move around as a unit, and it's easier for people to figure out when and where they're going to move. Marking someone in the raid with high awareness of Blizzards is helpful, but there's also just that natural human reaction thing where if you're standing in a crowd and 2-3 people start running away, you'll notice it a lot better than if you're standing out by yourself somewhere and Blizzard's forming over your head. Those ranged players with slower reaction times/lag in your raid will benefit from being in a crowd, together. This of course doesn't apply to the elementals phase, since you'll need to split up some to handle them.

3) Curse of Tongues works on the elementals to slow their fire.

4) How are you handling interrupt rotations? There's two main ways: pick a school for a player to interrupt ("you got fire, I got frost"), or else take turns ("got him, you're next!"). Different ways will work better for different people; I could understand that it would be a little more difficult to see *which* spell he's casting before going to interrupt it, but with the other method, you'd need to know at all times if it's your "turn" to interrupt or not. Figure out which system works best with your group.

5) Druids should cast Tranquility immediately after a Polymorph.

6) Interruptors should do their thing as fast as possible after a Polymorph, or the first person targetted will die. Best role for this? Someone who can interrupt at range (Shaman, Mage), letting a melee interruptor take the second interrupt. By then, healers should have built enough of a buffer to survive damage output. If you are polymorphed while elementals are out, you've lost anyway.

7) One healer should immediately target whomever Aran targets coming out of a pyroblast and slam-heal them.

8) Having a unitframes mod that allows you to quickly and easily see who Aran is targetting and what Aran is casting at any moment really helps in the healing department. You want those heals landing as the spell is landing, not 3-4 seconds afterward, else you get behind in the healing and it's hard to catch up.

9) Priests can help with elementals via Psychic Scream. Consider them a target of opportunity; if you're near one, go for it. Theoretically you're healing people just by preventing some damage. Often I've gotten weird happenstances like Aran going for his Arcane Explosion, and as I'm running to the edge of the room I wind up near an elemental; I send it running to its momma for 8 seconds. I won't go out of my way to fear one, though, since people tend to ZOMGNEEDHEALINGNOW while elementals are out.

10) Hunters can help with elementals with Scatter Shot.

11) Mages can help with elementals with Counterspell.

12) You still want someone in melee with highest aggro to make sure Aran doesn't run to the sides of the room.

13) If ranged gets aggro, take him back to the center of the room. All other ranged obviously needs to get away to get out of counterspell range, especially healers.

14) If hit by Blizzard, u r nub. No, just kidding - try your damnedest to NOT get hit by Blizzard, because it's a lot worse than people realize. You take damage bigtime, and you occupy the healers who are busy trying to keep Aran's targets alive. Not good. But if you *are* hit by Blizzard, run to the center of the room. Don't try to run counterclockwise to "go through" the Blizzard, and God forbid you run clockwise, then you're just asking for death. Running to the center of the room gets you out of the Blizzard the fastest way possible, getting you to the opposite side of the room from where Blizzard is. This is somewhat counter to the ranged-player mentality, having to run right to the big bad boss.

Ok, out of thoughts for now, hopefully there's something in here that'll help.

-Bolty

As a general rule, if you're ranged and you get aggro, your mentality should be to run right to the big bad boss - typically, charging him increases the chance a tank can pull it off you, and if you're going to die, at least you won't take others with you by dragging the boss to them. The instinct is to run away, but for this and most other raid fights, you charge. Warlocks and mages should especially know this, since we usually leave our sense of self-preservation at the door.

Thing with Aran, you don't tank him as he normally doesn't move unless all his regular spells are interrupted. It's more for movement purposes to be close.

Something that Bolty may have left out, but I didn't see it mentioned. During the Elemental phase, if you just have one warlock, have everyone, but the Warlock and interruptors break off and kill the extra two elementals. The elementals have around 30k life so the remaining portion of the raid should be able to down one in about 10 to 15 seconds. This will help out immensly if you are down to dealing with three or even two elementals (and the Warlock should be able to handle the two elementals).

Also, for you warlock, they could use the following macro:

/clearfocus [target=focus,dead]
/stopmacro [noharm]
/focus [target=focus,noexists]
/cast [target=focus] Banish

This will allow the warlock to banish their choosen elemental while keeping their fear target constantly targetted, all they have to do is be within range. Before the Aran fight occurs, just have the Warlock click on this macro several times to make sure the focus has been completely cleared as you do not want something being a focus during this fight. This macro makes the Warlock's life easier in this fight.

Yeah, I need to do a better job of interrupting while keeping full bore DPS on him. As long as he doesn't run away, we can usually shut him down pretty hard, but once he starts running off, either Seiki or I gets rooted, and can't interrupt. Latency was a bitch last night though. I'd have to start interrupting as soon as he casted, otherwise it'd be too late (there were several spells he casted even though the game said I interrupted them, grrr.) I'm thinking an order of interruption rather then schools of interruption. Tufty's interrupt mod would work wonders with an order. (I can just set it to watch for whoever is in front of me's interrupt, and know I'm next)

He's been running around even though we didn't interrupt *anything*. I know on one attempt last night, we didn't interrupt a single spell (deliberately), and he still started chasing Arathandir and Alamanda around the room. I'm wondering whether it is worth giving those two salvation (no paladin last night) and tranquil air totem to give seiki or me a chance at holding aggro.

If we could ever get to the elementals with all ten people up and no SS/battle rezzes used, I think we'd have him. I think Monday we should go for just burning him down, with Seiki devastate spamming while dual wielding. With enough aggro reduction on our lovable aggro whores, he should be able to hold aggro. <3 to our aggro whores though. Question though: what if he insists on using AM repeatedly? I want to say it was the last attempt last night (or one of the last), where he used about 7-8 AM in a row, burning through his mana like it was nobody's business. We still go for the burn or do we turn it into control at that point? I think he usually goes through 15% mana or so in the elementals phase, so we need to keep his life below his mana for the burn option. The other suggestion I heard was having our paladin heal with righteous fury up during the elemental phase, and getting all the aggro from the elementals.

Interesting, as we always keep damage on Aran rather than the Elementals. We'll have one or two warriors in the raid who can pick up the free elementals, while a warlock banishes one and fears another. The strat has always been just to deal with the elementals and burn Aran to the ground.

I use FocusFrame for this, it gives you a draggable focus box that looks just like the standard UI target box, complete with target of focus, cast bar, debuffs, lucky charm, etc. Set a keybind for "focus target" and focus aran before the fight to keep an eye on him while keeping your target slot free for healing.

Also handy for crowd control like Lissa above mentioned; I prefer to adjust my focus manually (w/ focus target & target focus keys) so i just have a

/cast [target=focus,harm,nodead,exists] Shackle Undead
/cast Shackle Undead

macro to shackle my focus, or shackle my target if my focus is invalid.

-- frink

Brought a Paladin tonight for the first time ever in our Kara group. Bam, down, dead Nightbane.

Lame. To say a Paladin simplifies the encounter is a big understatement.

-Bolty

We're working on Shade of Aran at the moment. On our better attempts we get to the elementals mostly intact, but things go pear-shaped quickly after that.

Re: Blizzard

On our early attempts we had people dying because they weren't certain where the Blizzard would start. (The tell is a single ice shard that falls in the damage zone before the blizzard starts). What seemed to work for us was telling the ranged DPS to move into the middle of the room (right next to Aran) until they could determine where the Blizzard was.

Re: The Elementals

I've heard that in addition to being banishable and fearable, they can also be stunned, so a rogue stunlocking one might be a viable strategy. Didn't know about Cuse of Tongues, but I will spam it liberally on all unbanished elementals from now on. (Obviously two warlocks in the raid makes this phase much easier but that's a luxury).

Re: Polymorph timing

Our other Karazhan group deliberately triggers the polymorph before the elementals. We haven't tried that yet, but I suspect the decision might come down to how effect the spell interrupters have been at their job.

Chris