Monday, October 09, 2017

Ahead of the Curve: Kil'jaeden

My guild defeated Heroic Kil'jaeden last night. Our first attempt of the night was a 9% wipe, and then we were all over the map for a bit. But we did have another 4% wipe a few attempts before we got the kill.

We did end up wiping more on Fallen Avatar, but I think that fight just hits all our weaknesses more.

For Kil'jaeden, the fight overall is pretty good. It has a lot of mechanics, though, and you have to wonder if all those mechanics were really necessary. Perhaps it would have been a better fight if the dark phase had been skipped, but the last phase lasted longer. We never really had trouble with the dark phase. We either died in the phase before or after.

Not much more to say about the fight. Healing it is pretty normal. Deaths come from doing mechanics improperly, and failing mechanics usually ends in a total wipe. We did have several attempts with tank deaths to Felclaws. But I think those were more due to the tanks letting active mitigation drop at the wrong time.

Oh well, our goal of beating the raid before the next one comes out has been met. I'm looking forward to a couple of weeks of regular farming. (Well, let's hope the second kill goes smoothly!)

14 comments:

  1. Congrats! Curious as to what tanks you're using. I'm running Prot Paladin and we're doing H KJ next week and I am terrified because our AM is suuuuper spiky.

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    1. We ran with a Warrior (less-geared) and a Paladin. I think you'll be okay so long as you keep Shield of the Righteous up for as much of Felclaws as you can, especially the latter half.

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    2. Funnily enough, on reflection, Felclaws doesn't scare me. Armageddon does, since I literally cannot use my AM for soaking. No melee target. Hate having to rely on external cooldowns.

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    3. Hmm, we use a rotation of dps soakers for Armaggeddon. Hunters, mages, demon hunters, paladins, Blessing of Protection in a pinch. Our tanks only soak during the intermission when he flies around. You should be able to save bubble or your BoP for that one intermission soak.

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    4. Our raid is only 11 people, so tanks pretty much have to do all the big swirlie soaks. Not enough immunities to go around. KJ is painful with small raids.

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  2. Dark phase looks like it was designed just to prolong learning process (first tries will always have some deaths from falling down due to speed increase + darkness).

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    1. Heh, we didn't really have a speed increase, so no one fell off. I think we did all our learning of dark phase in Normal.

      But still, if you compare Kil'jaeden to Maiden, I like Maiden better. Maiden had fewer mechanics that felt more connected and organic. On the other hand, Maiden was much easier, so maybe the extra mechanics were needed.

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    2. I meant exactly prolonging the learning of Normal encounter. And, of course, for the usual "stress the healers out"-type Glory achievement.

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  3. Grats! We got our first kill last night too. Took us way more attempts from the sounds of it.

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    1. Congrats! We have been working on the fight for a few weeks though. About 55 attempts in total. Avatar took us something like 80 attempts.

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    2. 80 attempts on Avatar? I felt bad we took 20 attempts. Though Maiden took like 35 for us, but thankfully most of those were over in 2 minutes or less, hah.

      I've never really raided outside the one I run though so I have no basis for comparison for average number of wipes before a first kill.

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    3. Maiden for us was fairly straightforward. Just practising to get used to the timing. Avatar just hit all our weak spots. We're very bad at fights which requires spread out positioning and movement. Mistress also gave us a lot of trouble.

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  4. Well done!
    We killed KJ heroic for first time 2 weeks ago and last week we one shot every boss. Personally feeling finished in ToS

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    1. Thanks! Grats on the one-shots. We surprisingly one-shot Avatar this week, but had a lot of trouble with Maiden and Mistress for some reason.

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