Mar'li the spider ate us up and crapped us out (zg 9/20)

[Sol]

We went back to ZG Monday night. Fiercely confident because we'd beat the bat boss and the snake boss the night before... Our target? Mar'li the spider priest.

Well, she destroyed us 2x and it had taken us a bit of time to get to her, so we had to log.

HAWC group attendees:

tanks:
bloodeagle (HLS)
kigora (HE)
kulgar (HE)
merc (HLS)
Sol (HLS)

Rogues:
Wump (HLS)
Rawz (AAF)
Despicable (HLS)

shaman:
ralphus (HE)
potpie (HLS)
kokopuffs (CC)

Mage:
Mak (HE)

Priests:
Soy (HLS)
Nightengale (HLS)

druid:
Duerdon (HLS)

hunter:
thwak (HLS)

Warlocks:
jabber (HE)
Cynic (HE)
Myrcinstatos (HLS)
Unka (HLS)

We were a little short on healing for the boss fight I think. Our tactics need to evolve a bit. what happens is pretty brutal.

the priest shifts between troll and huge spider. when in priest mode she summons mean non-elite spiders (4) i saw 2-3 waves of those. When in spider mode, she AE webs and dumps aggro on all melee around her. so you have to have a tank split off to protect ranged DPS and healers.

We did all this, but i think our healers were overloaded. my health bar got owned when the spider was munching on me, and then the spider would dump agg and go try to munch on a cloth caster, but i think merc was good at picking up aggro before that happened. The fight would be challenging but winnable if it wasn't for the packs of 4 spiders spawning and going on a rampage that can only be beat by AOE damage.

So i think our challenge is to figure out how to make this a really fast fight, because the spider spawns will destroy our casters mana.

Thanks to all who attended. I'm not running another ZG run this week. Timers should all be reset for folks who attended by End of day Wednesday ... The frist timer started Sunday night at like 9pm.

[Sol]

http://www.wowguru.com/movies/author/Pombe/

[Myrkris]

Jeezus, long video and nasty fight!

Shaman poison cleansing totems will really help in that fight, though.

[Kul]

Observations:


NPE’s: Priest and Mjarl.
4 spiders spawn upon first attack. They grow to full size status and can deal 500 dmg per hit within 15 seconds.
Mjarl in caster form has a nature damage aoe radius of ~25-28 yards.
Mjarl transforms into spider form at 75-85% then caster form ~30 seconds after transformation.
Spider form immediately nets players around her and targets highest threat, generally squishies due to healing or dps while meat shields trapped.
Spider aoe range ~10 yards and single target damage 500-2500.
Near 50% four elite spiders spawn.
Lifetaps soon as she transforms from spider to caster…debate if it can be silenced.
All AoE seem to use little to no mana, avoid mana leeching.
Healed after any player's death.




At work so cant watch the video so thoughts prior to watching that:


Tactics:
Hunter pulls Mjarl to the roadway for MT. MT then pulls her to the east, meanwhile DPS group moves near the alter to manage the spider spawns and the squishy group moves to the west end of the roadway keeping 35-40 yards in range of Mjarl with two tanks at 30-35 yards acting as point guards. Once the spiders are dispatched two rogues move in to assist MT with DPS while Mjarl is in caster form while the mage regenerates mana and tank of dps group heals up for next spider spawn. Rogues fallback after 15-20 seconds to prepare for spider spawn and to avoid Mjarl’s melee spider form.

Once Mjarl transforms to a spider, all DPS stops, MT gets rooted, so tank two moves to grab agro and pull Mjarl back to the MT as she charges for our casters. Tank three is back up should Tank two lose agro…both tanks then work her back to MT. Once she transforms back to caster all DPS begins again. All tanks should have a stockpile of free action potions to quickly regain agro in between the traps and return the boss to the tanking spot.

Fighting her in the spider spawn area became a risk factor since it left our casters open to quick attack by the spider group. Having our dps group camping this area will clear our casters to use their mana to dps Mjarl in Troll (caster) form and heal the tank. The mage in the DPS group will only need to use frost nova and perhaps CoC then toss up ice barrier, the warrior will perform threat generation & taunt, while the 3 rogs work dps. The only assistance they will need is when the 4 elite spiders spawn.

[Sol]

niiice strats and i love the diagram too. good stuff.

the only strat i'd mod a little bit-- have the squishy DPS resume attacking on mar'li while she is in spider form after 5-10 seconds of letting MT go at it with spider. The spider form did suck for 1 tank too... i was definitely getting more DPS than Heals per second. I cried on vent for a tank to come ping pong the spider off me... MT 3 or MT 4 should hvae that role in their mind!

on the HLS listserv we came to some similar conclusions about having rogue squad (grp 2 last night) manage the spider spawnage.

[Shaidarharan]

sorry i missed out on the fun, i forgot i had a prior engagement monday night :(

[Beagle]

Yar, I think ping-ponging her makes a lot of sense for this one since she gains life whenever we die. If we just go down the list of tanks, each picking up agg as the previous tank dies one by one, we get weaker as she gets stronger. Just a matter of coordination methinks, and we'll squash this bug but good.

[Kul]

I gotta get vent going, been complacent with TS. Sorry for missing your berserk cry. But once the MT and MT2 went it was just a snowball effect since she went for the persian rugs immediately. She hits helluva hard and it will be extremely difficult for one MT only on her. The damage needs to be mitigated across 2-3 tanks for longer duration in this event. Perhaps a triangle should be made from 3 tanks to ping pong her, with the back up for MT(1) placed infront of our dirty laundry for when she converts to the ugliness.

[Cynic]

One thing I've noticed so far, after the initial spider spawn of 4, it appears she spits out 1 at a time until she makes the change from spider back to priestess, then it's another wave of 4. the spawns will go directly to healers/dps unless somebody tags them, this is not necessarily a bad thing. if we tank the wench away from the bulk of casters so we're not destroyed by her aoe, deal with the spiders when they come for us by mass ae burn, bandage/mana up(locks) then move back in to start doing the dirty work.

From the video and the exerience last night, the most effective damage dealing happens when she's in spider form. The challange thus becomes keeping her from healing and us from dieing when she's a troll. If her drain is interruptable/lockable then all we should have in her range besides folks stepping in to kill the drain are tanks, their healers, and a healer assigned to the healers who stays out of range. People able to apply dots should do so to chisel away at her. When she pops spider, use the ping-pong tanking and unload dps.

This would be a fairly long battle of attrition, but ae'ing spiders at the start of each troll stage, keeping her from healing/us from dieing needlessly, dps'ing spider form and repeating seems like it could work from what I saw last night...if the drain's stoppable.

[Sol]

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?fn=wow-dungeons&t=165500&p=1&tmp=1#post165500

[Potpie]

This is a good post out of there:

lemme see if I can draw you a picture...

M T
X

|
|
|
30 Yards
M A
G

MT Main Tank
X Boss
MA 2nd Tank
G Everyone else

Shamans with poison totems in melee groups and Warlocks. Locks get up little closer to her and drain all her mana. When she is in caster form go full DPS, Ranged/Melee/Cast..whatever you got. Spider form, refer to picture above. Noone but MT attacks, just heal, NO DPS. She nets MT, heads for group, MA picks her up and moves her back to original position, and MT goes to MA's original position. FULL DPS in caster form. Very easy battle this way. Kick, Bash, Spell interupt her heals. Might take a couple extra minutes to burn her down, but we do it with 0 deaths. Just AOE/Melee the adds at the G spot. If they don't come straight to you, just range them off the MT and they will come. Basically G spot should look like 1 person, stack yourselves ontop of each other.

[Darkkwing]

We have hit a wall. It's like after Magamdar the 3rd or 4th boss in MC is the wall. Well this is your ZG Wall. Once there it gets harder or easier depending on the skill of your raid. If I was doing the Spider Boss yeah I wouldn't mind swapping off. A good idea also to have your PvP trinkets on and use it if it's dire. I myeslf wouldn't mind holding aggo or catching it. So it's going to take 4-6 ZG Runs to perfect both of em. It sounds like you guys perfected Snake boss last nite so now focus your engery on those two for awhile and things will run smooth.

[Myrkris]

We have hit a wall. It's like after Magamdar the 3rd or 4th boss in MC is the wall. Well this is your ZG Wall. Once there it gets harder or easier depending on the skill of your raid. If I was doing the Spider Boss yeah I wouldn't mind swapping off. A good idea also to have your PvP trinkets on and use it if it's dire. I myeslf wouldn't mind holding aggo or catching it. So it's going to take 4-6 ZG Runs to perfect both of em. It sounds like you guys perfected Snake boss last nite so now focus your engery on those two for awhile and things will run smooth.

Hmm, not sure I'd say we "perfected" the snake boss, but at least we only lost about a third of the raid. :)

It does look like the Bloodlord and Mar'li are a step up, but there are more to come. Fun zone, and nice that it's more accessible content than MC.

[Sol]

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?fn=wow-dungeons&t=254365&p=1&tmp=1#post254365


mar'li post

Well, I'll give my input, this forum has given me a lot of info so I'll try to give back :)

I run a late night ZG group on Eredar. We have some fairly steady people, from all guilds, and most of us aren't MC/BWL geared, some are, and we usually have a diverse group makeup as we have 25 - 27 people who go regularly in spurts.

Our group is usually the following:

4 warriors
2 Rogues
3 or 4 Mages
2 Warlocks
1 or 2 Shamans (we've done it with 1 and 2)
2 or 3 Druids
3 Priests (we've done it with 2)
2 Hunters

It's fairly random, we've even had 5 mages and 1 shaman before, so, you know, it's just kind of whoever shows up.

Here's what we do:

Group 1
4 x Warrior
1 x Shaman
(shaman drops poison cleanse and windfury for dps)

Group 2
3 mages
1 druid
1 warlock
(druid poison cleanses this group manually)

Group 3
3 priests
1 hunter
1 druid
(druid poison cleanses this group manually, hunter uses aspect of wild)

Group 4
2 Rogues
1 Hunter
1 warlock
1 druid or 1 more mage
(if druid, manually cleanses, if mage, other druids are cleansing the whole fight mostly and using their innervate when up)

Groups are semi random, this isn't set in stone.

Basically we split the middle of the road by the rock and setup like so:

Casters -----|R|---Spider
Hunters -----|O|---2 Warriors
2 Warriors---|A|---2 Rogues, 1 shaman
------------------|D|

Basically we pull the Spider boss with the MainTank, have offtank use AOE Taunt to grab the speaker + spiders and AoE them with Mages + Warlocks. During this time the priests are watching the MT and the Druids are watching the mages. This usually only takes a few seconds, and by that time our MT has 3 Sunders on the spider and we go all out on DPS. This is a key part, this fight is not an endurance fight, you need as much DPS on her as you can get.

We file back into our little group on the opposite end of the road and have everyone start DPS.

When she spits, druids depoison, priests keep eyes on maintank.

When she webs and runs, Off-Tank 1 Grabs her and pulls her back over, everyone stops attacking. Off-tank 1 trades aggro back to MT then runs back over. In the event OT1 has his Taunt resisted, OT2 grabs him.

I'm using a new line, this part is very important, priests NEED to keep their eyes on the offtanks when she webs, 9/10 times if even one of your offtanks dies, you're screwed if you can't recover fast. Once aggro is traded, eyes back to maintank, OT1 runs back to the caster group.

To deal with spiders we assign OT2 to the spiders as well as mages and hunters. Spiders die fast with 3 fireblasts and a few arrows.

One of the key parts to this fight is for the caster group to stay tight together so that if she charges any of you, you aren't out of range of the OT's.

We can do this pretty consistently without pots or 4 shamans. We've done it with 2 and 1, it's really not that bad once you learn the fight.

------------------

One thing I want to mention, this is what works for my group. We've been doing ZG quite a bit now, and without being a guild and not having super geared people ZG is very technical instance, everyone needs to be on top of their game. It's not a tank and spank like most MC bosses, which is why even a lot of guilds have trouble with the instance. The biggest thing again, this is what works for us, their are multiple ways to beat her, you just have to experiment and find out what works best for you.

Good Luck and hope all my jibberish was useful. Go hang a salami im a lasagna hoG
-palindrome ownage