CoTF - Tower of Rot - Lord Kyle Bayle

[Furro]

Fallen Guard Adds

As you know, these come into play from 25% onward and are both percent based and timed.

We have two main problems with in this stage currently related to these adds:

• Fallen guards are not dying fast enough.
• The advisor type casts a VIRAL MANA and ENDURANCE Drain.  It lasts 90 seconds and drains 2000 Mana / endurance per tick.  There's no cure for it.

These fallen guards must die FAST (they should die in 10 seconds or less).

We also need you to REACT when an advsior targets you with the Viral mana/endurance drain: Shadow of the Fallen - VIRAL 30k DoT and DoT 2000 MANA and ENDURANCE Drain per TICK - Lasts 90 seconds.

Trigger added below.


Viral Trigger Pattern - ALL Mandatory Setup

From fallen advisor adds.  You can be targeted by a VIRAL Mana/Endurance drain which lasts 90s and will drain all your mana/endurance.  You don't want to spread it to others.  When your trigger fires, move to one of the lower level inlets/cubbies which are located on either side of the ramp that connects upper/lower. 

Basically, you don't want to be near others when you have this, which infects them, drains their mana/endurance and renders them useless.

GTT File: cotf-tor-lord-kyle-bayle-advisor-viral.gtt

Pattern effect on you: You succumb to viral decay
Action: Move away from other players, or designated spot(s).

[Maglor]

Now I admit I have missed one or two ROT's, especially the one where we actually succeeded, but it was my impression that we were trying to deal with all of the royal vicars and royal evokers because they could be so deadly.  Instead all we do is offtank them and they are around to do their thing (vicar's heal) when we get Bayle down to 10% or even 5%.  No longer any attempt to clean them out and replace them with Myrmidons and Rogues who are much less dangerous.  Those vicars are healing everything and the evokers are doing nasty damage at the worst times.

Also, it looks to me as if we do not do anything about the viral dot.  The times I tanked a mob and got the dot, I was forced to stand there and keep tanking it.

[Furro]

Now I admit I have missed one or two ROT's, especially the one where we actually succeeded, but it was my impression that we were trying to deal with all of the royal vicars and royal evokers because they could be so deadly.  Instead all we do is offtank them and they are around to do their thing (vicar's heal) when we get Bayle down to 10% or even 5%.  No longer any attempt to clean them out and replace them with Myrmidons and Rogues who are much less dangerous.  Those vicars are healing everything and the evokers are doing nasty damage at the worst times.

Also, it looks to me as if we do not do anything about the viral dot.  The times I tanked a mob and got the dot, I was forced to stand there and keep tanking it.

The vicars cast the viral dot and we'll always have those up given the mix of mobs without cycling which is a waste of time.  The myrims are far worse to tank because of their debuff they cast which ends up on the tank (reduces your mitigation by 20%).  Scouts and Vicars are actually the easiest to tank really.  Evokers have the frontal DD which can get spikey but their hits are not too bad.

Btw, the Vicars do heal, but we're easily overcoming it.  They're also stunnable if I recall?  Helps.

At any rate, we're adjusting our tactics next run.  We'll see how it plays out going forward.

[Zaknaffein]

The problem with charming is partly due to the nature of charm itself. It is unreliable in the sense it can randomly break before the full duration of charm wears off, then add in the penalties for using charm on this event which further compounds the problems with using charm and our usual raid setup (lack of un-boxxed enchanters and bards). So we have mobs that are randomly going to be loose, and the first things they agro will either be the bayle tanks, or other add tanks. Because we are charming the myrmodins, that means time to bleed debuff is being put on multiple tanks and the bayle MT, which is one of the worst things to have happen for this event. Continually having to deal with respawns of royals running loose and the charm breaks doing the same usually ends up causing more trouble then what the benefits of have a charmed pet gives us on this event. Also by not having to kill off royals continually we don't have multiple assists going off at the same time adding to chaos/confusion, and can then focus our dps more easily on the fallen when they start to spawn.

The only reason I die on this event is because I get time to bleed debuff, or the royal respawns/charm breaks and the Fallen spawns add on the Bayle tank and aren't picked off fast enough/ever.
By not charming we can at least take one of those problems out of the equation.

We can take it further even by choosing what royals we want to be off tanked or kited by killing off what we don't want. I suggest we kill off any myrmodins that spawn at 50% until none are up. The myrmodins and scouts put out the most DPS and the vicars/evokers the least from the parses I ran during our first few runs at this when I tanked them. For the tanks off-tanking the evokers you can set up the enchanters to Rune/Spray/Aleander them continually to help offset the spell damage intake. Depending on how many scouts we get, we could do a bit of a kite on the mobs too when tanks aren't snared down below, not reliable depending on what spawns though, IE if we get a bunch of evokers we don't want to kite those. I also suggest that at a certain %, that off-tanks start to dps thier mobs down so when we are set to kill all of the royals it will take that much less time to do so. Also I would minimize the use of paladins as off-tanks if possible so they can focus more on just Splashing and healing. We should be able to use all SK's for royals with our army of them. We could test out having one SK tank two royals each. By minimizing the damage spread on 8 different tanks, localizing it to half of that should help healers to focus more instead of being spread too thin.

For the Fallen adds, I would suggest that we do the Following:

• Assign 4 tanks to them, Two tanks for the % adds, and two for the Timed adds.
• Make audio/timer triggers for the Timed adds.
• Warriors use Stormwheel blade THE MOMENT the Fallen go live. There is a short delay from when they spawn until they go live, so don't blow your load before they activate and go live.
• Once you have the fallen as your target, use Warlords grasp to move them to a Designated corner for the raid to kill them. ( If you keep your target empty when you hit stormwheel, the fallen should instantly pop up as your target after you hit stormwheel making it a bit easier/faster to then pop them with warlords grasp)
• Tanks set up in designated locations at 25% to maximize the effectiveness of useing stormwheel as your means to agro on spawn. Near the NE and SE corners of the room.

• Bayle tanked in the SW corner.
• Raid set up in the NW corner.
• One set of fallen adds spawn location is in the NE corner next to the stained glass window (the first set always spawns here, these may be the % spawn location)
• another fallen spawn location is SE corner, next to the stained glass window (these may be the timed spawn location)
• another fallen spawn location is next to the one mentioned above in the SE corner, behind the Chair. (These may be the timed spawn location)
• I have not seen any fallen spawn on the west side of the room, only in the NE and SE areas.
• Suggest the middle of the room as the kill spot.
• Tanks can position themselves halfway between the spawn locations and the middle of the room on the east side, then drag them to the middle once agroed.

[Padraigg]

Do we have some dps or a grp that stays on Bayle at all times?  Just based off what I saw last night, there were a number of instances that we had fallen adds spawn, and then once they died, bayle still had to be brought down the 5% to spawn the next set and then because of the time it took, we were getting the timed adds again before we get get the next % adds.  As a result we stalled out and stuck in a holding pattern dealing with timed adds only.  This also could have been due to fallen adds not really dieing fast enough, but it seemed also that it was taking too long to get bayle down to next % threshold after adds were down.

[Furro]

Do we have some dps or a grp that stays on Bayle at all times?  Just based off what I saw last night, there were a number of instances that we had fallen adds spawn, and then once they died, bayle still had to be brought down the 5% to spawn the next set and then because of the time it took, we were getting the timed adds again before we get get the next % adds.  As a result we stalled out and stuck in a holding pattern dealing with timed adds only.  This also could have been due to fallen adds not really dieing fast enough, but it seemed also that it was taking too long to get bayle down to next % threshold after adds were down.

Minisca is charged with delegating silent dps on Bayle and the Minibosses. 

Ideally, this is how we want 25% stage to go:

25%, 2x fallen adds kill.  Silent dps whittling Bayle down to 20%.
20%, 2x fallen adds kill.  Silent dps whittling Bayle down to 17% and HOLD for our FIRST set of TIMED ADDS.

Kill timed adds here.  Now we're good for another 75s on timed adds.

15%, 2x fallen adds kill.  Silent dps whittling Bayle down to 10%
10%, 2x fallen adds kill.  Silent dps whittling Bayle down to 7% and HOLD for our SECOND set of TIMED ADDS.

Kill timed adds here.  Now we're good for another 75s on timed adds.

5%, 2x fallen adds kill.  All DPS on royals to kill them off to unlock Bayle HP.

Basically, we can do TWO sets of percent based adds before the timed pop.  Fallen take less then 10s to kill each.

[Furro]

The problem with charming is partly due to the nature of charm itself. It is unreliable in the sense it can randomly break before the full duration of charm wears off, then add in the penalties for using charm on this event which further compounds the problems with using charm and our usual raid setup (lack of un-boxxed enchanters and bards). So we have mobs that are randomly going to be loose, and the first things they agro will either be the bayle tanks, or other add tanks. Because we are charming the myrmodins, that means time to bleed debuff is being put on multiple tanks and the bayle MT, which is one of the worst things to have happen for this event. Continually having to deal with respawns of royals running loose and the charm breaks doing the same usually ends up causing more trouble then what the benefits of have a charmed pet gives us on this event. Also by not having to kill off royals continually we don't have multiple assists going off at the same time adding to chaos/confusion, and can then focus our dps more easily on the fallen when they start to spawn.

Bards were not properly tashing their mob and as a result it was breaking early.  We've had a Necro on a prior occasion charm their mob with it properly debuffed and having charm last 1 min+ (full duration in there with the reduction timer penalty).  Bards know now to debuff first with tash Orb etc.

One bard didn't know that all mob types were mezzable, so he wasn't mezzing his mob when charm broke.  Instead, waiting for his penalty buff to be removed when the royal died.

Confusion comes into play when Charmers are tasked with picking a Myrim, if none available, take a scout.  As soon as the mob is charmed the ETW shifts.  This confuses tanks.  On prior runs (not last night), we've had charm break and the royal being killed CHARMED.  Not the same mob that broke charm, but a completely different mob... Total confusion because now the tank assigned to the royal being killed has no mob, he has to look around for a royal to kill.. We addressed this somewhat in the recent run, but it's still confusing with the ETW shifting.  Brenlaven had a good idea with OTs taking the first wave of 4x, on the 2nd wave of 4x charmers take whatever is available there (I think from the bottom up or w/e, forget atm).  We never got it implemented though.

Charm works providing a) mob debuffed properly b) same mob charmed when broken c) mob isn't taken from an OT and/or the current royal being killed.  If one or more occurs, it's a CF.  As soon as we have an errant royal on another OT and/or Bayle MT, it's a CF and we end up losing one or the other or both.

We can OT all 8 Royals.  But it's entirely not the point here.  We can't tailor a strategy around having 13 Tanks in the raid.  We don't always have that many.  This is why you see things like our hybrids tanking the minibosses.  By the same token, we don't always have a form of charming, however it's more flexible and utilizes less resources (tanks/healing).  It's all about resources.  Bards, Enchanters, Necros can charm.  Rangers and Druids can Root.  We always have those classes, we don't always have the ability to OT 8x royals + 2x fallen + Boss and the potential for 2x extra fallen in the event of bad timing.  This is where I'm getting my 13 tank number from by the way.  3x tanks for Bayle, 2x for fallen, 8x for royals (with the OT royal technique).  Don't get me wrong by the way, we'll do OT 8x royals.  But really I don't think people grasp the ridiculous tanking and healing requirements for this raid and take into account the times we don't have those resources available.  This is why we always try and develop repeatable tactics that don't hinge on a single class being present.

This event, by design gives us every option to CC from Roots, Snares, Mez and Charms, but with caveats:  We have to kill x royal every xx seconds in order to remove the penalty and maintain our CC efforts.  And of course, every tick there's a 25% chance the mob will dispel themselves via Tower's Aid.

Post raid, in our CC channel, some other ideas were tossed around that we're going to explore.  Things like Rooting the royals in the Diedre Harath cubby and killing sw/nw royals to maintain it.  This frees up most of the off-tanks (and healing support), and we should be able to utilize Druids to Vinelash and not lose their ability to heal others.  We can explore this option with Mez also, although we don't always have Enchanters, so the root option is more logical if it can work.  Mez is the most appealing because it would stop royals from casting things like Nife/DDs.  When the 5% stage comes into play, the current SK assigned to killing sw/nw goes down to the cubby, HA's a rooted mob out, raid kills it, rinse/repeat.

The only reason I die on this event is because I get time to bleed debuff, or the royal respawns/charm breaks and the Fallen spawns add on the Bayle tank and aren't picked off fast enough/ever.
By not charming we can at least take one of those problems out of the equation.

We can take it further even by choosing what royals we want to be off tanked or kited by killing off what we don't want. I suggest we kill off any myrmodins that spawn at 50% until none are up. The myrmodins and scouts put out the most DPS and the vicars/evokers the least from the parses I ran during our first few runs at this when I tanked them. For the tanks off-tanking the evokers you can set up the enchanters to Rune/Spray/Aleander them continually to help offset the spell damage intake. Depending on how many scouts we get, we could do a bit of a kite on the mobs too when tanks aren't snared down below, not reliable depending on what spawns though, IE if we get a bunch of evokers we don't want to kite those. I also suggest that at a certain %, that off-tanks start to dps thier mobs down so when we are set to kill all of the royals it will take that much less time to do so. Also I would minimize the use of paladins as off-tanks if possible so they can focus more on just Splashing and healing. We should be able to use all SK's for royals with our army of them. We could test out having one SK tank two royals each. By minimizing the damage spread on 8 different tanks, localizing it to half of that should help healers to focus more instead of being spread too thin.

Cycling royals to get the ones we want was done a couple months ago.  It takes too long because we're playing the RNG game, whereby it's 25% odds to get the mob we want.  We can be there a long ass time cycling mobs having to OT them all in the meantime OT'ing Bayle.  The longer we delay the greater the risk to losing someone.

Off-tanks are dpsing their royal.  It's only new tanks that have to be reminded that it's okay to tap/dps their royal to help offset the damage and
have the royal low health for when it is time to kill it.  In addition, some tanks are not meleeing all the time due to Nife not being cured.

Forget about kiting.  100% of the time at this stage we have snare on and it doesn't take more then a SINGLE Scout to do it.  Here's the snare they cast constantly:
Vineswell - SNARE Target AE (1000', area 40', max 6 targets).  Snares again if cured (Virulent Vines).

Splash and RC AA curing exacerbates the snare.  These two abilities are being used to cure Nife which is cast by vicars.

Evokers may hit for less, but they make up for it with the following:

Fire Beam - 120k DD FRONTAL AE
Telekaria - 92k DD + Stun, Target AE (1000' range, 40' area around max 12 targets).

Enchanters can rune evoker OT's sure, but it doesn't help other tanks or healers hit by Telekaria who end up stunned and take collateral damage.


The stage from Bayle 50% to 0% is extremely quick.  It takes us under a minute to get Bayle from 50% to 25% for example, and only minutes to take it further to 5%.  I didn't parse out the duration on the win, but it was quick, I would estimate 3-5 minutes if that.  It's like a mad dash stage, whereby there is zero margin for error from 50% to 0% that we can't suffer any tank deaths.  Couple this with the luck factor of the first 25% pop being a fallen advisor that targets a player with a mana drain and it just makes it 10x worse (this happens often btw).  On our win, we didn't have an advisor early pop I don't think.  A week or so back we added the viral run away trig with run-to spots on each side of the ramp (central areas due to 100% snare factor).  But of course, if someone doesn't move, viral spreads and oom healers.  Hard to heal with no mana.  Fun stuff.

I'm optimistic we'll flesh out a working strategy in this area.  We have several good ideas for our next run.

For the Fallen adds, I would suggest that we do the Following:

• Assign 4 tanks to them, Two tanks for the % adds, and two for the Timed adds.
• Make audio/timer triggers for the Timed adds.
• Warriors use Stormwheel blade THE MOMENT the Fallen go live. There is a short delay from when they spawn until they go live, so don't blow your load before they activate and go live.
• Once you have the fallen as your target, use Warlords grasp to move them to a Designated corner for the raid to kill them. ( If you keep your target empty when you hit stormwheel, the fallen should instantly pop up as your target after you hit stormwheel making it a bit easier/faster to then pop them with warlords grasp)
• Tanks set up in designated locations at 25% to maximize the effectiveness of useing stormwheel as your means to agro on spawn. Near the NE and SE corners of the room.

• Bayle tanked in the SW corner.
• Raid set up in the NW corner.
• One set of fallen adds spawn location is in the NE corner next to the stained glass window (the first set always spawns here, these may be the % spawn location)
• another fallen spawn location is SE corner, next to the stained glass window (these may be the timed spawn location)
• another fallen spawn location is next to the one mentioned above in the SE corner, behind the Chair. (These may be the timed spawn location)
• I have not seen any fallen spawn on the west side of the room, only in the NE and SE areas.
• Suggest the middle of the room as the kill spot.
• Tanks can position themselves halfway between the spawn locations and the middle of the room on the east side, then drag them to the middle once agroed.

Re: Assign 4 tanks to them, Two tanks for the % adds, and two for the Timed adds.

You're a funny guy.  Only two tanks were available for fallen initially, later attempts two more appeared to compliment our setup.  We must deal with what we have available and make it work.

Re: Make audio/timer triggers for the Timed adds.

I'm not aware of an emote that fires for the timed fallen adds.  If you know it, please post it.  One could do it manually with a pattern to another channel which fires an overlay for 75s.  Hit the hotkey at 25% stage when the timer starts.  When the timed adds spawn, hit the key again to refresh it.  Maybe a certain Warrior who has "No time to Bleed" debuff while tanking Bayle can co-ordinate this effort. /grin.  Funny aside, in a related post I covered % and timed based adds without any timers.

Edit: Mildaria posted the related emote, so that's helpful.

Re: Warriors snagging fallen properly.

I agree.  Discussion among tanks in this area needs to take place.  We have occurrences where a Warrior was tanking fallen in Bayles Emote/AE radius.  This could have very well been due to Bayle not being at the corner at the time, or Bayle in a corner where fallen spawned.  I'm not sure of the exact context because unfortunately I'm in lower area dealing with royals.

To start here though, based on your above descriptions, we have:

Fallen adds spawning in the NE and SE corners, and none west.

I'm fine with Bayle in SW and Raid in NW if the above information is accurate and the 100' Bayle AE isn't catching anyone in the fallen kill area.

[Mildaria]

Add spawn map:

Download towerofrot_1.txt

If you want to edit your map file instead, these are the points:

     P 96.0865, -43.1925, 809.1362,  120, 0, 240,  3,  champion
     P 95.0478, -19.9707, 809.1362,  120, 0, 240,  3,  crusader
     P 95.9330, -7.9443, 809.1362,  120, 0, 240,  3,  disciple
     P 95.6007, 6.6186, 809.1362,  120, 0, 240,  3,  blackguard
     P 95.0177, 19.6677, 809.1362,  120, 0, 240,  3,  beguiler
     P 97.3469, 45.2030, 809.1362,  120, 0, 240,  3,  convoker
     P 120.9317, -54.2213, 809.1362,  240, 0, 0,  3,  F1_(HP)
     P 150.5358, -30.9169, 809.1362,  240, 0, 0,  3,  F2_(HP)
     P 149.6646, 27.9547, 809.1362,  240, 0, 0,  3,  F3_(timed)
     P 119.4299, 53.1413, 809.1362,  240, 0, 0,  3,  F4_(timed)

Royals (these were posted already):

     P 112.2268, -18.0208, 809.1362,  0, 120, 240,  3,  R1
     P 131.2249, -17.7712, 809.1361,  0, 120, 240,  3,  R2
     P 130.1266, 19.9042, 809.1362,  0, 120, 240,  3,  R4
     P 110.9197, 19.0084, 809.1362,  0, 120, 240,  3,  R3
     P 130.9579, -48.4089, 809.1362,  0, 120, 240,  3,  R6
     P 108.4918, -46.5952, 809.1362,  0, 120, 240,  3,  R5
     P 108.3013, 49.2547, 809.1362,  0, 120, 240,  3,  R7
     P 132.1429, 48.1676, 809.1362,  0, 120, 240,  3,  R8

Add timers:

GINA add timers download

The triggers I've included are as follows:

The undying remains of Kyle's royal guards materialize around the table.
     - At 90%, 4 royals spawn around the table

The spirits of Lord Kyle's most trusted advisors take form.
     - At 75%, the 3 minibosses spawn

a royal {s} has been slain
     - If a royal is killed, a 45s respawn timer starts

The undying remains of the rest of Kyle's royal guards materialize around the table.
     - At 50%, 8 royals spawn

The tower shakes with sinister purpose as the restless souls of Kyle's fallen soldiers are reanimated.
     - At 25%, a 75s repeating timer starts to indicate when fallen will spawn (this one is the most important)

[Furro]

 
Thanks for the spawn location post Mildaria.  I figured you'd have the locations as I always put you on Bayle MTO healing for this event /grin.  I clearly missed the emote for fallen timed spawns (although you have it listed as 90s, I think it's 75s?, if it's 90, I'll change the OP).

[Zaknaffein]

Charm works providing a) mob debuffed properly b) same mob charmed when broken c) mob isn't taken from an OT and/or the current royal being killed.  If one or more occurs, it's a CF.  As soon as we have an errant royal on another OT and/or Bayle MT, it's a CF and we end up losing one or the other or both.

Yes in theory if it's properly de-buffed and charm lasts the full duration but even then it will still break, we will still have royals re-spawning from the need to continually have to kill royals. I don't know what's confusing the tanks or the CC teams but it isn't getting handled amid the confusion/chaos with this method. Every single attempt so far royals and fallen end up on the Bayle tank. I would be curious to see how rooting would work.

We can OT all 8 Royals.  But it's entirely not the point here.  We can't tailor a strategy around having 13 Tanks in the raid.  We don't always have that many.  This is why you see things like our hybrids tanking the minibosses.  By the same token, we don't always have a form of charming, however it's more flexible and utilizes less resources (tanks/healing).  It's all about resources.  Bards, Enchanters, Necros can charm.  Rangers and Druids can Root.  We always have those classes, we don't always have the ability to OT 8x royals + 2x fallen + Boss and the potential for 2x extra fallen in the event of bad timing.  This is where I'm getting my 13 tank number from by the way.  3x tanks for Bayle, 2x for fallen, 8x for royals (with the OT royal technique).

Freelance raids are stacked with tanks. Most raiding guilds don't come close to what we average for tanks. Even with the recent lowered numbers for raids we still manage to get at least 10 tanks. Now of course we aren't going to always get the amount of desired classes for a given raid wether it's a tank/healing heavy raid, or a DPS requirement, you know that you work with what you got. Ideally we would want 6 warriors at least, 2 per mini boss,  4 on bayle for Def rotation, and two for the fallen adds. Reason I suggested 4 tanks for the fallen spawns is we always end up getting the %adds to spawn while the timed adds are up, or vice versa. If we can better control our dps then only two are needed(hell only one really with Defensive if they die fast enough like they should be) If we have less than that you can stretch out the warriors on the minis, we almost always end up tanking them w/out Defensive on anyways so you could even just do a two man tank rotation for them if we are that low on tanks. Even with a 3 warrior rotation there will still be a 1:30 min gap between Defensive refresh at the end of the cycle.  As for amounts needed to OT 8 royals, how difficult would it be for a SK to OT 2x Royals at a time? I have no idea how much healing is required down there/how tough they are so I am curious if we really need 8 tanks, one for each royal.

Cycling royals to get the ones we want was done a couple months ago.  It takes too long because we're playing the RNG game, whereby it's 25% odds to get the mob we want.  We can be there a long ass time cycling mobs having to OT them all in the meantime OT'ing Bayle.  The longer we delay the greater the risk to losing someone.

I remember doing this. I think part of the problem was nobody really knew what we were doing so most were probably twiddling thier thumbs. Time to bleed de-buff is the bane of my existence in this raid. If I don't have multiple royals guards and some fallen beating on me, then the only other reason I die is because of this de-buff. I'd almost suggest that tanks Swap if they get it while tanking a mini boss or Bayle. Obviously if we get screwed and have 4+ spawn at 50% then ya we wouldn't want to mess around having to kill each one and hope it doesn't respawn again as a myrmodin. But if we get one or two, it may be worthwhile to kill them. As for the kiting, that's more of a play it by ear, IE. if you are below and aren't snared, or aren't tanking an evoker, then you could get away with kiting perhaps. Though if you do have it all the time then obviously won't work so great, I just know the only time I get snared is on the innitial spawns if it's a scout will I be snared up top.

As far as the fallen go, we make this more difficult then it needs to be really. If we can manage to not get both spawns up at the same time, be able to snipe them quickly (warriors just stand in between the two spawn locations, depending on which set is about to spawn, and pop Stormwheel the moment you see them move, or you can even pre target them if that's better/easier for you. Whatever gets the job done really) and kill them fast enough like we should be able to do it really shouldn't be too difficult. The only problem arises with the fallen is basically the luck factor on when/if an Advisor spawns.

I tried to find the map for that room but couldn't find it. But Mild did! and posted the exact locations for the spawns. Always was the brains behind creatively making write-ups with images ~ I never was good with that. Just have warrior(s) settup shop between the two red dots, depending on which spawns are due, and agro them/Pull to the middle to burn/kill. She also has the triggers for the timed Fallen there too which I highly recommend tanks use.

As far as group makeups: I know we won't always have these available, but ideal tank group makeups

Bayle/Captain tank group:
Warrior
Warrior
Warrior
Cleric
Cleric
Pally
-Something-

AM and HP/Fallen Warrior tank groups x2:
Warrior
Warrior
Cleric
Druid
Pally
-Something-

Royal OT groups x2(or Various combination if 1sk per royal of multiple groups, or just lump 4xsk and healers into 2 groups!)
Cleric
druid
SK
SK
Chanter
-Something-

Bards: I'd rather have them with DPS groups for this raid than with tank groups/cc groups.

[Furro]

Charm works providing a) mob debuffed properly b) same mob charmed when broken c) mob isn't taken from an OT and/or the current royal being killed.  If one or more occurs, it's a CF.  As soon as we have an errant royal on another OT and/or Bayle MT, it's a CF and we end up losing one or the other or both.

Yes in theory if it's properly de-buffed and charm lasts the full duration but even then it will still break, we will still have royals re-spawning from the need to continually have to kill royals. I don't know what's confusing the tanks or the CC teams but it isn't getting handled amid the confusion/chaos with this method. Every single attempt so far royals and fallen end up on the Bayle tank. I would be curious to see how rooting would work.

I'm curious to see how rooting will work as well.  Worth attempting.

I'm not saying charm is flawless or without risk.  Main reason we went for it was to reduce our overhead though.  Unfortunately with the aforementioned issues it's just not easy to flesh out a system to make it work correctly.

We can OT all 8 Royals.  But it's entirely not the point here.  We can't tailor a strategy around having 13 Tanks in the raid.  We don't always have that many.  This is why you see things like our hybrids tanking the minibosses.  By the same token, we don't always have a form of charming, however it's more flexible and utilizes less resources (tanks/healing).  It's all about resources.  Bards, Enchanters, Necros can charm.  Rangers and Druids can Root.  We always have those classes, we don't always have the ability to OT 8x royals + 2x fallen + Boss and the potential for 2x extra fallen in the event of bad timing.  This is where I'm getting my 13 tank number from by the way.  3x tanks for Bayle, 2x for fallen, 8x for royals (with the OT royal technique).

Freelance raids are stacked with tanks. Most raiding guilds don't come close to what we average for tanks. Even with the recent lowered numbers for raids we still manage to get at least 10 tanks. Now of course we aren't going to always get the amount of desired classes for a given raid wether it's a tank/healing heavy raid, or a DPS requirement, you know that you work with what you got. Ideally we would want 6 warriors at least, 2 per mini boss,  4 on bayle for Def rotation, and two for the fallen adds. Reason I suggested 4 tanks for the fallen spawns is we always end up getting the %adds to spawn while the timed adds are up, or vice versa. If we can better control our dps then only two are needed(hell only one really with Defensive if they die fast enough like they should be) If we have less than that you can stretch out the warriors on the minis, we almost always end up tanking them w/out Defensive on anyways so you could even just do a two man tank rotation for them if we are that low on tanks. Even with a 3 warrior rotation there will still be a 1:30 min gap between Defensive refresh at the end of the cycle.  As for amounts needed to OT 8 royals, how difficult would it be for a SK to OT 2x Royals at a time? I have no idea how much healing is required down there/how tough they are so I am curious if we really need 8 tanks, one for each royal.

This is really just a timing issue with regards to badly timed fallen spawning.

We've had OT's take on 2-3 royals (not by choice).  It's by no means a sure thing keeping them up, nor worth the risk if avoidable.  In fact, I'd rather go thin on fallen 2x (2 tanks, and have 8x tanks for OT8x tactic) and reduce the risk of losing tanks to royals, because fallen die in 10s, royals don't until 5% stage.  In other words, we can fix the timing on fallen and make due with the short life span of fallen as opposed to cascading on royals when we lose a tank handling 2-3 of them.

Cycling royals to get the ones we want was done a couple months ago.  It takes too long because we're playing the RNG game, whereby it's 25% odds to get the mob we want.  We can be there a long ass time cycling mobs having to OT them all in the meantime OT'ing Bayle.  The longer we delay the greater the risk to losing someone.

I remember doing this. I think part of the problem was nobody really knew what we were doing so most were probably twiddling thier thumbs. Time to bleed de-buff is the bane of my existence in this raid. If I don't have multiple royals guards and some fallen beating on me, then the only other reason I die is because of this de-buff. I'd almost suggest that tanks Swap if they get it while tanking a mini boss or Bayle. Obviously if we get screwed and have 4+ spawn at 50% then ya we wouldn't want to mess around having to kill each one and hope it doesn't respawn again as a myrmodin. But if we get one or two, it may be worthwhile to kill them. As for the kiting, that's more of a play it by ear, IE. if you are below and aren't snared, or aren't tanking an evoker, then you could get away with kiting perhaps. Though if you do have it all the time then obviously won't work so great, I just know the only time I get snared is on the innitial spawns if it's a scout will I be snared up top.

As far as the fallen go, we make this more difficult then it needs to be really. If we can manage to not get both spawns up at the same time, be able to snipe them quickly (warriors just stand in between the two spawn locations, depending on which set is about to spawn, and pop Stormwheel the moment you see them move, or you can even pre target them if that's better/easier for you. Whatever gets the job done really) and kill them fast enough like we should be able to do it really shouldn't be too difficult. The only problem arises with the fallen is basically the luck factor on when/if an Advisor spawns.

Yep, time to bleed sucks.  If we're handling royals properly, you shouldn't ever get bleed of course. 

I'm snared 100% of the time because I'm using RC AA to cure Nife from my royal OT(s).

Re: Fallen

It should be easy.  Informing fallen tanks where the adds spawn during prep and what they need to do will help them greatly.  Something I can add to a hotkey for tank channel and referencing the diagram Mildaria posted helps as well.  Ideally, another tank familiar with the spawn locations can point them out as well, or prior assigned fallen tanks in the know can pass that knowledge on to new tanks in that role.

I tried to find the map for that room but couldn't find it. But Mild did! and posted the exact locations for the spawns. Always was the brains behind creatively making write-ups with images ~ I never was good with that. Just have warrior(s) settup shop between the two red dots, depending on which spawns are due, and agro them/Pull to the middle to burn/kill. She also has the triggers for the timed Fallen there too which I highly recommend tanks use.

As far as group makeups: I know we won't always have these available, but ideal tank group makeups

Bayle/Captain tank group:
Warrior
Warrior
Warrior
Cleric
Cleric
Pally
-Something-

AM and HP/Fallen Warrior tank groups x2:
Warrior
Warrior
Cleric
Druid
Pally
-Something-

Royal OT groups x2(or Various combination if 1sk per royal of multiple groups, or just lump 4xsk and healers into 2 groups!)
Cleric
druid
SK
SK
Chanter
-Something-

Bards: I'd rather have them with DPS groups for this raid than with tank groups/cc groups.

I had written a long explanation of why the splits are done differently then how you posted above.  But it's not important at the moment.  Suffice it to say, it's done differently due to how we split for minibosses and certain groups to assignments are caster or melee oriented and more effective on certain minibosses due to their design/self buff weaknesses.  It also has to do with certain healers effectiveness to heal outside their own group, certain tanks having dedicated healers within their group for miniboss adds and so forth.  There's a method here to the madness really.

As for the bards.  We had four last night.  Two of which were boxes.  Two were in melee dps groups and one in a caster set up.  The fourth boxed one was placed in G1 due to our healing set up at the time.  It was more effective to have the bard enhance crits for heals then to give it to the caster group believe it or not.

By the time we finished the night we had the following:

4 Shaman (all boxed)
6 Clerics (1 of which boxed)
1 Druid

As for OT8x royal tactic.  It'll end up being two groups as follows:  1x Cleric, 4x Tanks, 1x Paladin.  Using group heals.  As stupid as that may sound, it's the only effective way to do it.  The more we spread out the OTs in an 8x tank/heal set up the worse it is single targeting them to cover.  Coupled with fallen 2x + Boss healing, it'll still be tight, but doable.

I'm still looking forward to how rooting will play out, because as I've mentioned before it'd sure open up some doors to handling that last leg of the event better.  At any rate, the fallback is OT8x.

[Gimamam]

I do not think that Time to Bleed is only cast on the tank that is tanking the myrmidon.  since it is 1000 range and single target, they can cast it on whomever they feel fit to screw.

On several attempts, i've been tanking a royal vicar in the pit, and no myrmidon ever had me as its primary target, but i still ended up with TtB on me.

On every attempt, i've chain lifetapped and burned every defensive disc/aa/clickie that i have had.... and that's usually tanking 1 with a few times here and there of taking on a stray.  tanking two for a duration is not feasible for self healing, and for the clerics mana.

i believe similarly as bren - set positions being charmed makes it easier for all. sucks if its a vicar or an evoker, but there is no tank losing their mob for cherry picking myrmidons. 

[Zaknaffein]

Posting up a link here to download a full set of GINA triggers for this raid in Preparation for the upcoming mandatory switch to GINA for our Audio and text triggers for raids. - These are not official triggers.

DOWNLOAD