Baleroc 25 Man

[ellybelle]

This is a healer intensive fight. 1-2 tanks, lots of healers, the rest dps.

The tank's health pool will continuously rise during the fight, giving him a health pool up to 4 million due to a boss skill Blaze of Glory (which also effects the boss's health). And the boss will sometimes do a decimation blade on the tank which does damage equal to 90% of the tank's health. It is essential to tank swap after the decimation blade for approximately 15 seconds. Once the blade is gone the MT takes the boss back. The guide suggests you can even use a rogue or hunter at range to hold the boss these 15 seconds.

Baleroc summons crystals that need to be tanked by dps'ers. The guide suggests that dps who don't have a torment debuff should form a line just outside range of the crystal and each go in and tank the crystal until it gives him 10 stacks of torment, then another steps in. It's important to coordinate this on vent. Torment is the debuff you get from tanking the crystal, it deals shadow damage, you should only have a maximum of 10 stacks. When you have 10 stacks you are 'Tormented' meaning you cannot tank another crystal for 1 minute. Tormented players should not stack or line up with other players but need to be spread out. Tormented players also get a 75% reduction in healing taken, so it's very important that they're never tanked by a tank.


Healers get a buff called vital spark when they heal people who are tormented. Vital spark increases the healing you do on the main tank. It is therefore recommended that nobody is a dedicated healer, but that all healers heal torments and tank, in order to assure all healers are buffed and have the ability to heal the amount of damage the tank will take.

Edit to add video - http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... Y_5CUqdp0Q

[ellybelle]

Matt Low writing for wow insider says 'Baleroc is a tough encounter, serving as a healing check.'

Right so when you heal someone who has the crystal feeding on them you get one (de)buff vital spark.

Vital sparks continue to stack throughout the entire fight.

The only time you do not gain vital spark stacks is when you have the vital flame buff.

Vital flame happens when you heal the tank, it lasts for 15s. If you heal the tank again just after the 15s you keep your vital flame at the same level.

It is vital to have periods of not healing the tank, if healers are constantly under vital flame (because they've healed a tank in the last 15s), then they don't get additional stacks of vital spark. It is the number of vital sparks you have while under vital flame that give you big heals.

vital spark and vital flame are both red, vital spark will have a number overwritten on top of the buff, flame will not have a number.

healing for this fight http://wow.joystiq.com/tag/vital-spark/
http://wow.joystiq.com/2011/07/15/raid- ... o-baleroc/

[ellybelle]

Some bits from these articles in case you haven't time to read them in full:

One important note is that Vital Flame doesn't ignite until after you've healed the tank once, so your first heal is unaffected. When switching to tank healing, use a quick Holy Shock or Word of Glory to ignite the Flame so that your next Divine Lights are fully effective.

My guild kept one healer on the tank at all times (we rotated through the position), two healers on the tank during Inferno Blade, and all three healers on the tank for Decimation Blade. (this is 10m with a total of three healers)

Every healer needs to focus on healing the tank during Decimation Blade, which forces everyone to stop collecting Sparks.

We started the night with a two-tank setup. One tank would predominantly take the main hits, while the other tank would eat the Decimation Blade as they came. Healers were put into two teams of four. One set of healers was placed on the tanks, while the other team spent its time building up stacks as needed. When a switch was called, the teams would shift their focus and heal the other assignments until another switch was called. (this is 25m with 8 healers)

One problem we ran into early on is when the Torment targets and crystals ended up being too far. We solved this issue by placing two raid markers on either side of Baleroc. No player could cross those icons at all, because doing so meant they would run risk of not having a healer to pick them back up while eating a Torment.

We split the healers into three teams of two. Each team would start on its assigned targets. With two crystals up, there will always be a crystal within range of the melee group and a crystal within range of a ranged group. The DPS players in both groups rotate so that a different player is closest to the crystal and gets Torment each time; it's up to the healers who are on the assigned groups at the time to heal the player currently under the effect of Torment. As a raid leader, I placed all the melee players taking Torment in group 2 and all the ranged players taking Torment in group 3. There isn't much overall raid healing that needs to be done, as those three players end up taking the full brunt of the attacks. (This is 25m with 6 healers with the way Larry tried to set it up last night. Please note that if we try this tactic you need to be very precise with who is getting spark and when as you'll have to put them in the groups accordingly, see below)~~~

Have tank cooldowns up your sleeve for Decimation Blade. In fact, I went as far as having a defensive cooldown ready every time a Decimation Blade occurred.

We got the kill last night in our first night of attempts. Two tanks, seven healers in three groups. At all times there are two groups of healers on the tanks. When not on the tanks you were assigned either melee or ranged. During the rotation you were always healing the same two people taking stacks from the crystal (two dpsers per crystal). The 7th healer (me, a druid) stayed on the crystal each time. (25m simple tactic with 7 healers)

Heal group 1 starts on the crystal folks, group 2 and 3 on the tanks. At the swap, group 1 swaps to tanks, group 2 to dps, group 3 still on tanks. 3rd swap, group 3 goes to tanks, groups 1 and 2 on tanks.

got about 4-5 attemps with 3 group assign ( tank > ranged > melee and repeat] and it didnt work well for us at all

switched to 2 groups and he go down on second attempt , would say this one was hell less confusing , just remember to point prio on healers currently healing torments target ( ie 1 melee, 1 ranged 1 helping)


~~~If you want to have healing set up in groups as last night, you need to properly set up the raid. You need 6 people only on sparks from melee and six only from ranged and you'll need to do something like set up so that in party 2 has both melee taking the 1st (4th, 7th, etc) sparks as well as the melee taking the 3rd (6th, 9th, etc) sparks. That's 4 people, nobody outside party two should ever take these sparks in melee range. Party 3 should have ranged groups taking the 1st and 2nd sparks, all 4 of those people should be in party three, party 3 should always handle spark in full 1,2, 4,5, 7,8, etc. Party 4 should have the melee taking the second spark and the ranged taking the third (melee taking the 5th and 8th and ranged taking the 6th and 9th). Then assign as larry did, two healers to each group and when nobody in your party has spark, you heal tank.

Of all the methods this seems most complex and you cannot have someone take the wrong spark or it messes up the entire thing. However if preformed perfectly it would mean an almost even number of stacks for each healer (not convinced that matters).

Healing party 2 would heal - melee on first spark, tank on 2nd, melee on 3rd, melee on 4th, tank on 5th, melee on 6th, etc.

Healing Party 3 would heal - Ranged on 1st, ranged on 2nd, tank, ranged on 4th ranged on 5th, tank, etc

Healing Party 4 would heal - tank on 1st, melee on 2nd, ranged on 3rd, tank on 4th, melee on 5th, ranged on 6th, etc.

[Paul]

No idea what your talking about but I look forward to Mjol reading this out before the pull.

[Mjöl]

Name: Baleroc
Phases: 1
Setup: 2 Tanks, 5/6 Healers 17-18 Dps
Enrage Timer: 6 Minutes
Hitpoints: Baleroc has in 25man normal 133 Mil
General:
Its a 1 Phase fight, there are no adds.
It will constantly increase the Hp of the main aggro target, while also increasing own damage done. The boss has 2 categories of abilites, 1 will do massive damage along with buffing the tank, the other will buff the healers to be able to heal. Overall Baleroc is considered as one of the easist encounters in Firelands.

Abilites:
Blaze of Glory: around all 10 seconds Baleroc increases the tanks max hp by 20% as well as their physical dmg taken by 20%. This is a stacking debuff. The buff stays also after death, so tanks can be bressed.
Incdendiary Soul: Each time Baleroc casts Blaze of Glory, he buffs himself with this, increasing fire dmg done by 20%, stacking.
Inferno Blade: all 60 Seconds the bosses weapon will infuse for 15 seconds, leading to him not doing melee attacks, but using inferno Strike, causign 100000 Dmg.
Decimation Blade: All 60 Seconds, the bosses weapon will infuse for 15 seconds, leading to him not doing melee attacks, but using Decimating Strike, dealing 90% of the tanks Hp, but at least 250.000, which cant be mitigated. While decimation blade baleroc will have 50% slower attack speed.
Shards of Torment: roughly all 30 seconds, Baleroc summons 2 Shard of Torment. Existing Shards despawn around 5 seconds before new Shards are cast. The Shards are Stationary and not attackable. They cast Torment on a player nearest within 15 yards, and does 4000 dmg every second, and stacks also each second. The debuff is undispellable.
Tormented: A debuff applied to a palyer whose stacks of torment wore off. It increases shadowdmg taken by 250%, redueces healing done by 50% for 60 seconds.
Wave of Torment: Raid wide aoe dmg if nobody is within 15 yards to the shards of Torment and wipes the raid.
Vital Spark: Each time a healer heals a raid member affected by Torment, the healer gets a stack of Vital Spark. For every 3 stacks of torment on the target, the healer gets 1 stack vital spark. (for example a player with 12 torment stacks gives the ehaler 4 stacks vital spark) The buff has a 60 second duration, and is refreshed every time a new stack is gained
Vital Flame: When a Healer with stacks of Vital Spark heals a player (the tank) with Blaze of Glory, their stacks of vital sark turned into vital flame. That vital flame is a buff that lasts 15 secodns, icnreases healing done on players with blaze of glory (tank) by 5% for each stack of Vital Spark consumed. When the effect ends, the vital spark stacks are restored.


Strategy
The entire fight the hp and damage done to the tank will be increased. Due to that 2 tanks should be used.
To keep up with healing the tank, healers need to stack vital spark by healing players with torment. Healers need to take turns on healing that players, and need to switch then to healing the tank to use the Vital Flame. The rotation should be such that a healer with a higher Vital Spark stacks will always replace a tank healer, so that they can be healed through the increasing damage.
Because of the tormented debuff neither healers or tanks will EVER want to have the shard of torment buff. That should be only dps.

Basically there are 3 roles in this fight:
Tanks:
2 tanks, the idea is to have 1 tank take enough stacks of blaze of glory to survive decimation blade (more then 250.000 hp, which is 2-3 stacks). The other tank should take all remaining stacks.
So therefor, the decimation blade tank taunts the boss when the dec blade is cast, will only take 250.000 dmg, and for the rest of the time the other tank takes the boss.
Healers:
Never be targeted by Torment (50% healing reduction).
Build Vital Sparks contiously. Because one cannot gain new stacks of vital spark while vital flame is active (for 15 seconds after having healed a tank) healers need to rotate who is healing the tank and who is building stacks of vital spark.
Therfor, always 2 healers should be on the tank, and the rest of the healers on players affected by torment. The tank healer can only keep up with the tank dmg for a certain time, so he needs to be replaced idealy by a healer with the highest number of vital sparks. At this switch the previous tank healer should once the vital flame buff has dropped off heal players affected by torment to stack up again on vital spark. This contiues the entire encounter.
DPS:
Simply dps Baleroc the entire fight. Addign to that is the duty of soaking the damage from shard of torment. The duration of tormented is 1 minute, so that needs a proper roation, where the affected player will always be replaced by a dps without stacks of torment or tormented debuff. Players that know they will be next in line should be already in place, close enough to take over.
The soakers should aim to reach 12 stacks of torment before moving away. If low on hp, players should move away sooner, but also, with full hp, you can stay a bit longer, also damage reducing cds can be used like Anti-Magic Shell, Dispersion, or Barkskin.
Some rules for the Dps when soaking Torment:
Never should be no one within 15 yards to the shard or its a wipe
Never should a tank or healer be the closest player
Never get new torment stacks when you have still a tormented debuff







Learning the Fight

While Baleroc does have an enrage timer, which will require reasonable DPS to meet, when learning the fight we advise you to ignore DPSing the boss while making sure that a proper rotation of players taking Torment is established, and healers become accustomed to healing the tank.

Final Considerations

Baleroc is an extremely interesting healing encounter, and while it may take your raid several attempts to distill a proper strategy for your own raid, we have no doubt that your healers (and tanks) will have a great deal of fun in doing so.


Very Short recaps of all tasks:
Tank: Make sure 1 tank takes the decimation blade, the other one all other stacks. Make sure the blaze of glory stacks are applied even on both tanks
Healer: Make sure to have a working rotation of 2 healers healing tanks, others stacking vital spark buffs, and that this is switched corretly.
Dps: Dps down the boss, and make sure that the 2 shards of torment are rotaed through all dps in a correct order.