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/th...p=1#post165500