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Heroic Black Morass - swirly - 05-12-2007

The basics as I understand them.
  • An area is cleared around Medivh and where the portals spawn for room to fight.<>
  • Must protect Medivh's shield from dropping to 0<>
  • Each mob attacking the shield drops it 1% every 5 seconds<>
  • 18 portals that need to be closed<>
  • Rift Lord - mob that needs to be killed to close a portal. May be a mage, warlock, or one of two melee types.<>
  • Beacons - Each player gets one beacon that can be dropped to summon a dragon to help fight<>
  • Infinite Executioner - One of the add mobs. On heroic it's HP increases by 1000 after each portal.<>
    [st]
    Portals
    1. Rift Lord with spawning adds<>
    2. Rift Lord with spawning adds<>
    3. Rift Lord with spawning adds<>
    4. Rift Lord with spawning adds<>
    5. Rift Lord with spawning adds<>
    6. Chrono Lord Deja with spawning adds<>
    7. Rift Lord with spawning adds<>
    8. Rift Lord with spawning adds<>
    9. Rift Lord with spawning adds<>
    10. Rift Lord with spawning adds<>
    11. Rift Lord with spawning adds<>
    12. Temporus with spawning adds<>
    13. Rift Lord with spawning adds<>
    14. Rift Lord with spawning adds<>
    15. Rift Lord with spawning adds<>
    16. Rift Lord with spawning adds<>
    17. Rift Lord with spawning adds<>
    18. Aeonus and all adds stop spawning<>
      [st]
      Group Composition

      Is a Secondary Healer required? A group obviously needs a Main Tank(MT) and a Main Healer(MH). A group probably also has a Primary DPS(PD) spot. After those three spots you need an Add Hander(AH). That leaves one spot left which could be either a Secondary Healer(SH) or a Add Assist(AA) class which dps's the Rift Lords mainly, but assists on adds when necessary.

      I'm really unsure whether a SH is good or bad. On the one hand you have more healing power which will be of great help on the bosses. On the other hand you probably have lower dps which will make keeping up with the portals tougher. I guess it all depends on if a MH can heal through the bosses or not without a SH. I'm really unsure about this.

      Tactics

      In normal the tactics are pretty simple. The AH takes care of the adds except on portal 12 where we use a beacon to clean them up after the boss is dead. Depending on how good the AH is sometimes the AA will help and sometimes not.

      In heroic BM this doesn't seem to be as possible. The Executioners get too much life for the AH to handle alone and so the AA starts having to assist full time. This means the Rift Lords die slower and even with the AH and AA taking care of the adds, I'm unsure they would be able to keep up. Now some of this is as simple as gearing. Better gear means more dps and less healing needed on the MT. I'm not sure it's all gearing though. Are there strategies that can be implemented to better handle the adds since they seem to get to the point where it's not enough to just have the AH and AA handle them?

      Here is one idea I have had on the matter. For the first 9 portals or so you have the AH and AA handle the adds like normal. Probably having them dps on Deja and use a beacon to clear up the adds on that portal. If you have a SH you could have them play as a AA during this time, though I'm thinking a AA is really better than a SH with this idea because the dps will be important. After the 9th portal you start ignoring adds. Have all 5 people dps the Rift Lords down. The added dps of the AH and AA should make the Rift Lords drop faster and so hopefully not too many adds will get on the shield. Then one of the party members periodically uses a beacon to clean up the adds so that it doesn't get to the point where the shield is dropping too fast. This goes on till about the 15th portal when eveyrbody stops killing Rift Lords and starts only killing adds. This continues through the 16th and 17th. On the 17th you use the last beacon to help keep the portal clear since there will be adds coming from three portals at once. When the 18th portal opens it will be Aeonus. I've read that all adds stop spawning when he comes and so at this point you should be clear of adds and be able to focus on him. I don't know what happens with the Rift Lords you didn't kill, but hopefully they go away when Aeonus dies. So here is a list showing an approximation of what this all entails.
      1. AH on adds, rest on Rift Lords<>
      2. AH on adds, rest on Rift Lords<>
      3. AH on adds, rest on Rift Lords<>
      4. AH on adds, rest on Rift Lords<>
      5. AH on adds, rest on Rift Lords<>
      6. Everybody on Chrono Lord Deja, use a beacon at the end to clean things up.<>
      7. AH on adds, rest on Rift Lords<>
      8. AH on adds, rest on Rift Lords<>
      9. AH on adds, rest on Rift Lords<>
      10. Everybody on the Rift Lord, ignoring adds<>
      11. Everybody on the Rift Lord, use a beacon after the Rift Lord is dead to clear all the adds<>
      12. Everybody on Temporus, use a beacon to clear up the adds<>
      13. Everybody on the Rift Lord, ignoring adds<>
      14. Everybody on the Rift Lord, use a beacon after the Rift Lord is dead to clear all the adds<>
      15. Everybody on adds, ignoring the Rift Lords<>
      16. Everybody on adds, ignoring the Rift Lords<>
      17. Everybody on adds, ignoring the Rift Lords, use the last beacon to help keep the shield clear.<>
      18. Everybody on Aeonus, should be no more adds.<>
        [st]
        I don't really have a clue if this will work. It's just an idea I've been playing with in my head. So I'm looking for feedback on it and other ideas for how best to handle heroic BM. One idea I have heard when I briefly mentioned some of this in guild is that instead of ignoring all adds maybe it would be good to just ignore the Executioners. That would keep the shields more clear and the AH could probably handle the others by themselves. This may make the portal 15-17 plan not necessary which could be good cause I have no idea how that particular idea will actually work out.

        So any thoughts, ideas, other strategies for Heroic Black Morass?


Heroic Black Morass - LochnarITB - 05-12-2007

If you are leaving adds or lords from one portal to another, doesn't that mean you will stay in combat? If your DPSers are mana users, I think they will have used all their sources and be OOM long before you get to a break. Wand DPS isn't gonna cut it.

Heroic Black Morass - Watto44 - 05-12-2007

Maybe I'm confused, but if you stop killing Rift Lords, how are you going to close the portals?

Ignoring the single adds sounds like a good idea, particularly if you have a beacon left to mop them all up before Aeonus.

I really don't know though, I'm not exactly Mr. Experience when it comes to PvE.:)

Heroic Black Morass - Watto44 - 05-12-2007

Quote:If you are leaving adds or lords from one portal to another, doesn't that mean you will stay in combat? If your DPSers are mana users, I think they will have used all their sources and be OOM long before you get to a break. Wand DPS isn't gonna cut it.
It might have been fixed since I was last in there, but my mage was actually able to get out of combat by running away from the Rift Lord.

Heroic Black Morass - swirly - 05-12-2007

Quote:If you are leaving adds or lords from one portal to another, doesn't that mean you will stay in combat? If your DPSers are mana users, I think they will have used all their sources and be OOM long before you get to a break. Wand DPS isn't gonna cut it.

As far as I know, the adds don't put you into combat if you completely ignore them. Its only when somebody is fighting them that they put you into combat.

Heroic Black Morass - swirly - 05-12-2007

Quote:Maybe I'm confused, but if you stop killing Rift Lords, how are you going to close the portals?

Ignoring the single adds sounds like a good idea, particularly if you have a beacon left to mop them all up before Aeonus.

I really don't know though, I'm not exactly Mr. Experience when it comes to PvE.:)

You won't be closing those portals, but the other portals will open since they do it on a timer. Usually this is bad because you just keep getting more and more portals till you can't handle the adds. Portal 18 is the last one though and summons a boss. I've heard that when he is summoned, all portals stop summoning adds. So thus you should never have to close those portals with the rift lords that you didn't kill. You just have to survive long enough for portal 18 to open. So the question becomes, can you survive just killing adds for three portals? If you have 5 people killing them then I am fairly sure you can do it for two portals being open. With three open it could be tougher, but thats why I left a beacon to help on the third one. Then Aeonus comes and it shouldn't matter how many other portals are open.

edit: I am a little worried about getting out of combat for this part of it though. If you aggro Aeonus right as you kill the last of the adds that previously spawned you end up with no time to drink or prepare. It may be easy to avoid that or it may not. Being all theory so far its hard to tell.

Heroic Black Morass - Skandranon - 05-12-2007

Quote:I've heard that when he is summoned, all portals stop summoning adds.

This wasn't true the last time I did heroic BM.

You've got the basic strategy correct. You need an Add Handler who's geared enough to do waves 1-5 on their own and 7-11 with only minimal help. Without a doubt, your composition needs to be tank, healer, dps x3 (although you can hand one slot to a well-geared Elemental shaman if you have one). Your most fragile DPS class is on the Rift Lord/Keeper, the toughest one is on add handling. The one left over helps bring down Lords/Keepers quickly, and helps keep the add handler from being overwhelmed. It's important that nothing makes it through from 1-5 and 7-11, because you need to squeeze as much out of that shield as you can get.

On the first boss, ignore adds and bring him down. Once he's down, don't waste a beacon - after every boss there's a long pause of about 5 minutes - far longer than you will need to kill all the adds on the shield, rebuff, resurrect, med up to full, etc. Finish off the adds yourself - they'll be mostly beating on the shield, and you can pick them off a couple at a time in manageable chunks and take them out quick (this is why you save the shield between waves).

Same for 7-11. Have your third DPS class help occasionally, but focus on burning down those Lords/Keepers. Nothing makes it through if you can help it. Again on Temporus, the same as Deja - ignore all adds, finish the boss, and then clear out the mess manually after Temporus is dead (the shield will likely be pretty low at this point, but so long as it's 1% or better when the last add dies here, you should be fine).

Having saved all your beacons to this point, drop one on each of waves 13-17. These waves open subsequent portals after very short intervals, the adds are more numerous and hit harder. Just drop a beacon and trivialize all of them. Then when wave 18 rolls around, it's just you and Aeonus, no adds, nothing else to complicate the fight. He's not too hard on his own.

Heroic Black Morass - swirly - 05-12-2007

Quote:This wasn't true the last time I did heroic BM.

I'm going to go ahead and take your word on this one. I figure you are a much more trustworthly source than "some random site I read it on and can't remember anymore." : )

Going to chop up your post a bit and rearrange it some. Hope you don't mind the reordering.

Quote:On the first boss, ignore adds and bring him down. Once he's down, don't waste a beacon - Finish off the adds yourself

This seems perfectly reasonable to me and the beacon will be useful later on so going to work that plan in for sure.

Quote:It's important that nothing makes it through from 1-5 and 7-11, because you need to squeeze as much out of that shield as you can get.

Again on Temporus, the same as Deja - ignore all adds, finish the boss, and then clear out the mess manually after Temporus is dead (the shield will likely be pretty low at this point, but so long as it's 1% or better when the last add dies here, you should be fine).

I don't really have a problem with any of this, but I'm wondering if its possible to change things up a little bit to maybe mitigate the gear/dps check some. I know that by its very nature BM is a gear/dps check and so that can't be gotten rid of, but I'm just wondering about lowering it. First off here is the plan you laid out which seems fine to me with a group that has the dps to make it work.
  1. AH kills adds, rest on Rift Lord<>
  2. AH kills adds, rest on Rift Lord<>
  3. AH kills adds, rest on Rift Lord<>
  4. AH kills adds, rest on Rift Lord<>
  5. AH kills adds, rest on Rift Lord<>
  6. All on Deja, kill the adds during the break afterwards<>
  7. AH kills adds with AA helping, rest on Rift Lord<>
  8. AH kills adds with AA helping, rest on Rift Lord<>
  9. AH kills adds with AA helping, rest on Rift Lord<>
  10. AH kills adds with AA helping, rest on Rift Lord<>
  11. AH kills adds with AA helping, rest on Rift Lord<>
  12. All on Temporus, kill the adds during the break afterwards<>
  13. Beacon for adds, all on Rift Lord<>
  14. Beacon for adds, all on Rift Lord<>
  15. Beacon for adds, all on Rift Lord<>
  16. Beacon for adds, all on Rift Lord<>
  17. Beacon for adds, all on Rift Lord<>
  18. All on Aeonus<>
    [st]
    The main time I've tried Heroic BM (yes my experience in the heroic version is limited) we had pretty much the best geared dps, tank, and healer in the guild and we ended up wiping around portal 9-10. Now some of this could be because we didn't know about the Executioner life scaling and so were learning as we went. I figure that with better knowledge ahead of time the group could possible make it through, though it certainly may be that we don't have the gear yet. So I'm looking at how to adjust things so that a group that can make it to portal 10 on heroic can bridge the gap to go the rest of the way. My thinking on this is that by using a beacon to clear the adds after Temporus, enough shield might be saved to allow for Executioners to be allowed through on other portals. I'll list what I'm thinking out in more detail.
    1. AH kills adds, rest on Rift Lord<>
    2. AH kills adds, rest on Rift Lord<>
    3. AH kills adds, rest on Rift Lord<>
    4. AH kills adds, rest on Rift Lord<>
    5. AH kills adds, rest on Rift Lord<>
    6. All on Deja, kill the adds during the break afterwards<>
    7. AH kills adds with AA helping, rest on Rift Lord<>
    8. AH kills adds with AA helping, rest on Rift Lord<>
    9. AH kills adds with AA helping, rest on Rift Lord<>
    10. AH kills adds except for Executioners, rest on Rift Lord<>
    11. AH kills adds except for Executioners, rest on Rift Lord, drop a beacon to clear up the Executioners.<>
    12. All on Temporus, drop a beacon to clear the adds afterwards<>
    13. AH kills adds except for Executioners, rest on Rift Lord<>
    14. AH kills adds except for Executioners, rest on Rift Lord, drop a beacon to clear up the Executioners.<>
    15. AH kills adds except for Executioners, rest on Rift Lord<>
    16. AH kills adds except for Executioners, rest on Rift Lord, drop a beacon to clear up the Executioners.<>
    17. Beacon for adds, all on Rift Lord<>
    18. All on Aeonus<>
      [st]
      My assumption here is that dropping a beacon after Temporus will save enough shield to allow Executioners through on three portals to be cleared up by a beacon on the following one. This may simply kill the shield and not work at all. It is very dependent on how often the Executioners spawn (which I don't know) and how fast we kill the Rift Lords. Your strategy is much simpler (which I like alot), but I'm wondering if the added complexity of mine could make up for a little less gearing. In your experience does it seem completely impossible or is there a chance of it working?


Heroic Black Morass - Skandranon - 05-12-2007

Quote:My assumption here is that dropping a beacon after Temporus will save enough shield to allow Executioners through on three portals to be cleared up by a beacon on the following one. This may simply kill the shield and not work at all. It is very dependent on how often the Executioners spawn (which I don't know) and how fast we kill the Rift Lords. Your strategy is much simpler (which I like alot), but I'm wondering if the added complexity of mine could make up for a little less gearing. In your experience does it seem completely impossible or is there a chance of it working?

If your add handler can't do 10-11 with minimal help, 13-17 are going to be very rough without a beacon on each one. I do think it's doable the way you describe, but I don't really see how it really mitigates the DPS check any. Beacons are good, but they aren't magic - they only work really well in combination with players. Leaving one to clean up executioners will probably result in it despawning before the executioners are all dead. You could clean them up after all the portals are closed and Aeonus is out, but that's putting a lot of pressure on your healer.

Basically: doable, but probably the same difficulty or even a little harder.

Heroic Black Morass - swirly - 05-12-2007

Quote:Beacons are good, but they aren't magic - they only work really well in combination with players. Leaving one to clean up executioners will probably result in it despawning before the executioners are all dead.

Ahh see, thats something I didn't really know. I had assumed the Beacon could clean up the Executioners on it's own. Don't really have any experience with how effective Beacons are in Heroic. So that is good knowledge to have. It's possible that on the portals where I have it scheduled for a beacon to be dropped that the group can help clear up the Executioners. There is generally a slight pause after a Rift Lord spawns before adds start coming out. So may be a little time to help clear then. All this will make it even harder for the MH to drink though.

Overall I am leaning towards the option you gave. My option I feel like might work, but that so much is going on in it that its more likely to cause issues than really help things. So the best bet is to just look into gear upgrades for Add Handlers and focus on trying to make it through Temporus. That seems to be the main key. If you can make it through Temporus then the rest should be doable.

This has been helpful though in that I've got a basic working strategy and learned a few things (beacon effectiveness etc).

Heroic Black Morass - dawnstrider - 05-18-2007

When I was on adds, I could handle everything but the executioners (as they grew bigger) on my own and the executioners don't spawn all the time. This being the case, I think a viable strategy would be to have all DPS switch to the executioners when an executioner spawns and dps the boss down when there are no executioners (with the add handler soloing the regular adds).

Heroic Black Morass - Artega - 05-19-2007

What about having the tank snag some of the adds as they come out? Assuming the healer can keep up with it, it would at least help with the later portals. It shouldn't be too hard with warriors using thunder clap and paladins using consecration. I'm not sure about bears.

Heroic Black Morass - Frag - 05-19-2007

Quote:What about having the tank snag some of the adds as they come out? Assuming the healer can keep up with it, it would at least help with the later portals. It shouldn't be too hard with warriors using thunder clap and paladins using consecration. I'm not sure about bears.
Thunderclap won't keep up with the heal aggro, due to how hard the elites each wave hit (excepting possibly a paladin MT healer, haven't tried that yet).

Cheers,
~Frag B)

Heroic Black Morass - Loche - 06-07-2007

Hey all,

Long time Lurker first time posting here since the age of D@:D. Just though I'd share my 2 cents. I was able to take down heroic BM last night. Last of the heroic instance that I had left to clear woot! Here are some things we learned during the fight.

Group

Feral Druid - Tank
MS Warrios - AH
Frost Mage - AA
Fire Mage - Rift Lord DPS
Holy Priest - Heals (me)

Our gear in general was is pretty good. Mix of lvl 70 blues, epic crafted items, and KZ gear. We were on vent to coordinate activities, and also used elixers to get some additional buffs.

Rifts 1-5 we had everyone on Rift Lord dps, until the adds started popping out. The MS warrior solo'ed the adds, w/ a bit of minor cleanup help while the group ran to the next portal. The mobs did not seem to hit harder than normal, healing on these 5 was minor. Prayer of Mending, renews, and the occational PoH if we got some shadowbolt spam. I was able to keep out some dots to help out on the RL, and was wand dpsing quite a bit because healing was so easy.

Deja: All dps on Deja, with our MS warrior only picking up whelp packs. Nuke down Deja, keep up the heals w/ Mending, Renew, GH and PoH (after the lightning bolt AE). Mage and Priest stay at max range, so they can peel the adds off Medivh ASAP after Deja goes down. AE fear, frost nova, etc just to interrupt, then tanks corral them and focus fire dps down.

Medih's shield was at 94% before the first break.

Drink/refresh buffs as needed.

Rifts 7-11 was pretty much the same as 1-5. The only change is that the MH only tagged executioners, while focusing on killing whelps and other elite adds. After the mages down'ed the RL, they help clean up the exec's while the priest/druid move on to the next portal.

We did have to use some mana pots during these waves, and the druid popped out to innnervate me as well.

Temporas. Basically the same strat as Deja. All dps on temporas. Avoidance gear on the druid, mages stealing the haste buff, AH only picking up whelps and dps on temporas. Healing was a bitch at times here, but I was able to keep him up.

By the time temporas died, and we ran back to clear the adds, the shield was at 74%.

Rifts 13-17 we used beacons. The key here was to send in our tank first, so that the beacon dropper didn't get agro and get pwnt before the dragon came to help. Focus fire on the Rift lord to close the portal asap, clean up any stragglers. Portals were poping very vast here. Even w/ the beacon help, the next portal would pop just before we finished the last one.

Aeonus - We had to drink/top off before we took him on, we also had two adds that slipped by us to clear before we engadged him. The shield was at 34% by the time we engaged him.

We had our MS warrior start tanking, in tank gear of course, I tried to keep him topped off, w/ renew on constantly and proactively PoM/Shield before the time stop. The warrior got close a few times, but he also used a preemptive Shield Wall which got us through a bad timestop. Eventualy the Druid pulled agro, happened after the 2nd time stop I believe.

Druid tanked, warrior went full dps. It was pretty easy after that, w/ me just keeping the druid topped off.

Anyways, that was our experience in Heroic BM. Thanks to everyone that posted here, the ideas and info helped us out a lot.

- Loche