Shade (the current Bane of WoL)

Ok, Twice (well three times because I joined a different group in there on one of our off weeks) and twice (we killed him in the other group) we have failed to take him down.

Why?
Because we are doing it wrong. Here is what I've read and the strategy seems sound because we always wipe (barring any mistakes) just after we get sheeped.

The strategy is to always keep his HP lower then his mana. We can do this a number of ways.

1. DPS the heck outta him
   
2. He casts several spells but only a few can be stopped to prevent him from using mana.
   Spells He casts and if they should be interrupted:
   1. Arcane Missles - Do NOT interrupt this spell. It does the least damage of all of the spells and the mana to cast it gets used right away.
   2. Fireball - Interrupt this one!! It costs him alot of mana to cast it and does hefty damage
   3. Frostbolt - Interrupt this one!! It alot costs him alot of mana to cast and does only slightly less damage then the fireball
   4. Blizzard - CANNOT be interrupted
   5. Ice Chains - This is a root that can be easily dispelled (and should or most likely be killed by the blizzard)
   6. Arcane Explosion - Need I say anything about this one?
   7. Slow - What you get hit with right before the Arcane Explosion.
   8. Flame Wreath - CANNOT be interrupted and DONT MOVE
   9. Dragons Breath - Single target and can be deadly if not healed thru. (Divine Shield, Ice Block, etc can remove the DoT immediately)
   10. Counterspell - Will target anyone within melee range (casters stand back)
   11. Mass Polymorph - If we are not at 100% health at this point you are most likely dead.
   12. Pyroblast - He casts this right after the Mass Polymorph and does about 5000+ damage.
   13. Conjure Water - Casts this while you are polymorphed
   14. Conjure Water Elementals - Uninterruptable and he casts at 40% health
   15. Enrage - Casts this after 15 minutes of fight and WILL wipe the raid.
   
3. He only Sheeps/Pyroblasts if he runs out of mana. So, by keeping his HP below his Mana you can delay sheep/Pyroblast for as long as possible because we'll probably lose a few people on the pyroblast unless everyone is topped off before the sheep.
   

   Quote :

   Note from me: I did notice one thing before one of the wipes we had after the sheep/pyroblast. Daak did NOT sheep along with the rest of us. I'm assuming this is because he had a grounding totem out and it took the polymorph instead of Daak. This give me an idea that if a shammy ground the sheep spell THEY can top as many people off with heals and quick heals as they can before the shade is finished drinking and begins the pyroblast. Reason being is, if you attack the shade while he is drinking he will just stand up, quaff a mana potion and cast pyroblast anyhow. So, why not use that downtime to heal people in preparation for the enviable? Just an idea now back to my notes

   
   
4. Once the Water Elementals are cast they, unlike the Shade, have a aggro table and will aggro casters and healers FIRST since they are the closest and have a sizable threat. The following is an except of a strategy to deal with the elementals:
   

   Quote :

   There are multiple strategies that can be used to overcome the elementals. I would suggest to have a tank stop attacking Aran and go pick up the adds (preferably a druid if there is a feral one on DPS since they will be in feral gear anyway, but a warrior works fine too). If there are any warlocks, they should Banish and fear one each. Burn all fears on these adds while the tank picks up any of them that are not being crowd controlled. All DPS besides the one tank that will be picking up the water elementals should remain on Aran and kill him quickly since the summon water elementals ability costs quite a bit of his mana, and he can not run out of mana or your raid will most likely wipe.

   Here are some tips for Pally's and Shaman (since we seem to always have one or the other or BOTH with us:
   

   Quote :

   
   Paladins should buff with whatever buffs will help to bring Aran down fastest and, since there is no real aggro list on Aran, Blessing of Salvation's only use in this fight would be to help keep aggro off the healers when Aran summons his water elementals. If you feel it neccasary, you may cast this on your healers right before Aran reaches 40% and summons them, however it is not entirely vital since you should have a tank picking up the elementals. Paladins should use Frost or Fire resistance Aura depending on whichever you may think is best, however, it is best to use Frost Aura since Aran's Fireball only hits for about 1,000 more damage than his Frostbolt and, whereas if someone is caught in Blizzard it is possible to get out and survive, if they activate Flame Wreath it will most likely result in a wipe. Also, when Aran summons his Water Elementals the Frost Resistance Aura will be a major help. Shamans should use any Resistance Totems they feel best and anything to help whatever DPS class is in their group as, again, DPS is the key to this fight.

   
   Now just a word about the ENRAGE. If Shade gets to this point we are dead. Esentually he gets bored with the fight and summons 4 mirror images of himself which float in through the bookcases and begin to spam frostbolt and fireball to all raid members until the wipe occurs.
   
   In other words this fight has a 15 minute timer on it.

Im kinda surprised you guys are having trouble with Shade... As long as you honestly keep kicking, pummleing, counterspelling, and sheildbashing him during his frost and fire spells, he rarly runs out of mana for the fight.

And of course just listen to the guy yelling don't move... move... watch the blizzard.

This is a very easy fight, as long as you pay attention... you being everyone in the raid.

The worst thing to do in a raid.. as raid leader... is explain what everyone has to do. People don't care they want loots.. instead explain what each person needs to do. Like, shamen, heal for this, rogues, use your kicks, warriors... ect. It simplifies things and makes sure that people are still awake when the fight begins.. trust me I know that one.

Explaining the nuances of what each class, or each stage of the boss makes the know it all's feel important.. but rarly does it help anyone untill everyone wipes and looks at why they did. Avoid long speeches, and give the players a job to do. That is what they are there for.

You might find things work then.

- Atherial

Atherial wrote:

Im kinda surprised you guys are having trouble with Shade... As long as you honestly keep kicking, pummleing, counterspelling, and sheildbashing him during his frost and fire spells, he rarly runs out of mana for the fight.

And of course just listen to the guy yelling don't move... move... watch the blizzard.

This is a very easy fight, as long as you pay attention... you being everyone in the raid.

The worst thing to do in a raid.. as raid leader... is explain what everyone has to do. People don't care they want loots.. instead explain what each person needs to do. Like, shamen, heal for this, rogues, use your kicks, warriors... ect. It simplifies things and makes sure that people are still awake when the fight begins.. trust me I know that one.

Explaining the nuances of what each class, or each stage of the boss makes the know it all's feel important.. but rarly does it help anyone untill everyone wipes and looks at why they did. Avoid long speeches, and give the players a job to do. That is what they are there for.

You might find things work then.

- Atherial

Ath,

It wasn't shade Himself that was a problem. It was the Elementals that spawn at 40% HP that were chewing thru us like no tomorrow. And it seemed like 60-90 seconds after the elementals spawned he sheeped us. which didn't help our over all health seeing that the elementals are doing 1400-2600 points per hit and mostly targeting the healers which left us sheeped with about 2-3k of health left and with Shade's 4-6k pyroblast after he's done drinking means dead healers which means raid wipe soon to follow. As for Shade not being hard I beg to differ. I took shade down in a PUG that was running Kara with 3 under geared people and the other 6 people were Mt. Hyjal and BT geared and even THEY said it was a hard fight. And we wiped once.

This fight is all about timing, healing, aggro management, and DPS. And if we don't have that then we have a wipe. So perhaps we didn't have the correct makeup or our DPS wasn't high enough? I don't know which it was but without you actually being there I can't see how you can make an informed opinion of how easy or hard shade was?

Silvenori, Ath can make a pretty good "guesstimate" as to how the fight goes or went because he's run it many times with most everyone. With the exception of possibly 3 people, he's done the run with us all. That, and you did a pretty good job describing where in the fight we ran into problems.

I think we've had trouble with Shade because raid leaders haven't read up on the fight, and quite possibly, don't remember all of what each class can do to counter many of the abilities Shade will try to use against us. I for one have never really paid much attention to the boss battles as I've always been concerned with everyone's life totals. Only recently have I started to watch more what goes on to try and cover things before the fights begin.

Another area of concern is indeed our DPS. Sure, our guild as a whole normally starts out with Plan B: DPS until the cows come home, but with the loss of Tyranis and no Mage or Warlock in the group, our DPS and/or AoE totals have dropped. Now don't get me wrong, Rhalem, Ghaalrock, Dobber and Druidclaw are great at dealing out the DPS... but they don't have any AoE DPS to use against multiple targets. Also, we haven't had a Rogue in the mix for some time, which means there's no "kick" or "stun" attacks to use. The Main Tank holds Shade and the others have to pick up all the spawns, which is where it's starting to come apart.

I attribute much of our "frustration" to the mix of classes we have going into Kara. For the most part it doesn't matter who goes because all the fights are mobs, not requiring anything specific to handle them. It becomes an issue once a boss fight is about to start. Many bosses have weaknesses or at least weak spots with respect to certain classes, and more often than not we do have those classes... but they're alts of one or more players who already have crucial characters in the group.

Many other guilds have Kara on "farm" status and don't have problems doing the bosses, all very true. What they also have is an abundance of classes to make the right mix and go in with everything needed to handle all the situations. we, on the other hand, go in with whomever signs up or we can scrounge up to fill 10 slots. We have to make do with what we get. And the fact that we can make it up to bosses like Shade or Ilhoof not using a premade group should be testament to our calibre of players. Every tim ewe do a run, we test ourselves to see how far we can go or with what handicap we can be successful.

If we had a pool of say 300 players (not 300 characters) we would be able to pick & choose the optimal group to be 100% successful. But we don't have that luxury, and so we do the impossible each time we get a group together: succeed with a substandard party mix. This goes to show that our players know their 'toons, know their abilities and can take whatever comes at them at a moments notice.

One other thing to keep in mind, we still have many raiders who need gear upgrades. We've had a fair turn-over in the past while, and many members who've recently come into level 70 want to go on the raids, but don't have their initial raiding gear yet, and so wind up taking a severe beating or else dying from a "one-shot."

We get our people geared... and by our people I mean the ones who aren't going to just take off once they are geared... and we too will be able to farm Kara.

Sincerely,

-Foddermike

Fodder,

It isn't that you cannot guess what happened. It's the tone of the post above. I'm sure others were as frustrated as we all were that night in taking out Shade. To have someone said "I'm surprised that you are having trouble." and "This is a very easy fight..as long as you pay attention."

The fact that it is not an easy fight (even said by a group that farms Kara) and we were paying attention.

There is a reason I joined The Wrath but that reason is also our curse. I joined it because we don't care what build you are we will make it work and we WILL raid. At the same time it is a curse that we need certain classes in order to take certain mobs. (ie Kick, stun, etc..)

Now, that said I'd agree with Ath that IF we had the correct classes then it may have been easy but with a hodge podge group that we usually go into Kara with things are never that easy.

It is very upsetting to someone who really thought we were trying as hard as we could to come on the forums and read "This is a very easy fight" and "I'm surprised that you are having trouble..". It might in fact be an easy fight with the correct make up group, it might be easy for a group dressed in PvE Purples, but it isn't easy, and isn't suppose to be easy for a group trying to achieve that level of gear or a group that doesn't have the correct classes to complete certain bosses.

Maybe I'm just being me again which is someone who reads too into posts but my take on it is one shouldn't comment on how easy or not easy something is because what is easy for one person may not be easy for another. After all we are all at different skill levels. Some people are great at PvP and some people suck for instance(like me ). but I digress. I just made this tread to supply as much information as I can about the Shade fight so people understand what happens at all phases and what would be a good idea given everything that Shade does and supplied the reasons why I felt that was a good idea.

See you all in game.

Hey now Im not trying to rock the boat, but i stand by what i said.

People can look at every single stra for every single boss.. and know everything the boss is gonna do by heart... and that's great. But if you don't pay attention your gonna die.

That isn't directed to anyone in particular, it's how some bosses are desinged. Shade AI is pretty standerd.. and unique at the same time.. infact if you look at all the AI's of all the bosses, you gonna find alot of similarities between not one.. but all.

Now.. once again I am not slamming anyone, the critique's i give is never ment to feel like shit. But I still hear who is raiding.. I know the abilitties of the players involved.. so when I am surprised, it is because I AM...

This guild is based on alot of things.. for the most part Cpt and Fodder have worked hard witht he time they can dedicate to the game to keep everyone raiding, but as what Fodder said, leading is kinda new, and face it.. it's not easy being a raid leader.

People think that as long as you get 10-25 people that will listen, and know the bosses... that a guild can raid... i simply laugh at them. But I do so not to hurt anyones feelings, or bruise ego's or even "gloat over people with my ego, or wow brain".. but because if anyone who has ever raided with a dream team and has had it gone south knows.. it's about DPS, and people paying attention.

Raiding is half hearding cats, and half chasing angry retards on fire, (pray your the cat, LOL). No one can control a raid 100% sucessfully, people do what they want. The "hardcore" guilds get so far because they are "hardcore". You say Do this.. you had better have 24 guys screaming "YES SIR". That is the only thing that really matters.

I have been accused of many things... most of them not polite.. but as anyone who trully knows what my leadership ability, or just me in person, knows that when I lead a raid, magically shit happends. HEH.. good or bad

I can take a crappy geared tank, some crappy geared DPS'ers, and various other classes and seem to pull off the impossible.. ask Ghaal, Rhalem, Fodder, Cpt, ect. But that is because in a raid people tend to listen to me.. and I take note of the peoples playing styles.. I AM THE FIRST one to admit I am not the end all and be all in raiding. But people listen to me,a nd I expect people to ask them selves "What can I do better?" When in a raid with me. I encourage people to do what the raid needs, do what is needed to take something down, and not just how much damage, healing, blah blah blah can I do.

I also try to encourage people to understand that "Yes we can 3 man this LV 70 instance", doesn't mean im full of shit... It's because I know what can be done with the people. Like what Ghaalrock sasy all the time, when he smack's down a Tier 6 Tauren with his Teir 4-5 Geared Warrior, it's 1 part gear, 1 Part skill, and 2 parts heart.

One person can post what they want on the forums silvenori.. but if no one else reads it.. now one has the heart to care.. and that is what the real problem is raiding. Not the leadership.. but the people not paying attention.

- Atherial

Well I'm ready to take Shade down tonight. I've been working on gear. still not the best but it'll have to do for now. I was able to up my +heal by another 100 over the week and am about 4 points shy of +1k heal (unbuffed). I still need a few things to push that higher but I'm working on it.

I only have a few more items from SILVENORI'S WISH LIST that I need to have all pre-kara gear.

I think over the next week I'll be trying to run Steam Vaults as much as possible for my staff. That will be a BIG thing that will help is the Staff This will increase my mana regen, mana pool, and increase my +heal by 33 (by 38 in treeform) Which will put me over +1k heal.

"Welcome to the guild! You're free to spec however you want, we don't tell you how to play!"

Yeah, it's our biggest selling point and our biggest curse. Allowing people to choose however they want to spec means we *HAVE* to work with what we've got. Now, that doesn't mean we're short on classes, not in the slightest, but we are short on "builds" of classes. This is one of the shortfalls we have to work around.

Not paying attention in a raid is a common problem for everyone, regardless of what guild you're in. It's not so much that people don't know the fights or know what their 'toon can do, it's more the fact that they *DO* know it all and aren't keeping track of everything like they did when they first ran the instance. If you're too over confident, you don't pay attention as fully as someone who feels like they're going to wipe and tries to watch for everything so as to avoid pitfalls and stupid mistakes. Also, we tend to run our raids at a later time than other guilds due to our trying to respect people's real life schedules. Starting later means we run later, which also means that players will get tired. If someone is trying to raid while they're tired... they definitely aren't paying full attention to everything on screen and will for certain miss something, causing the death of a guildie or even a wipe.

There are times that I, Foddermike, have seen guildies die because I knew the fight, knew it was *easy* and didn't put much thought into what was happening around me. I've replied to whispers from people outside of raids/runs and whatnot... only to look up and see a guildie go down dead.

Did they need to die? No. Was it going to happen? Not if I was paying attention.

The point is, many of us feel like we've been doing Kara for so long, we should be able to breeze past Moroes, Maiden, Curator and Shade. Honestly, we should be able to. But, there will always be some kind of distraction or force outside our control, that interferes with a "perfect run." We just have to try to make sure we can avoid those interferences as much as possible.

Unless you are level 70 and taking on mobs/bosses that are 15 levels below you, there's no such thing as an "easy fight." Anything can happen and usually does. Like Ath mentioned, he was surprised we had a difficult time with Shade because he knows what all the classes can do and has run with pretty much everyone that have done the last few raids in Kara. If anyone knows how difficult it is to lead a raid full of 'toons that don't meet the "exact specs" under the control of tired & wired players, Ath does. Consider Ath to be the old geezer in the back corner, full of advice to give to those who'll listen... whether they want to hear it or not

Because the other boss fights are understood and pretty much everyone now knows them, we should be able to run through them very quickly and get to Shade in a faster time than we have done so before. Getting to Shade sooner means we can run through the areas more efficiently (not necessarily *clear* all the areas) and concentrate on pushing us beyond what we've been doing in the past.We should be able to reach Shade in 4hrs, not just say the back door (only an example).

Oh, and one more point Ath has made which I do agree with. Unless people care, it won't matter how much we talk things over, either in these forums or in game chat. The fact that you, Silvenori, voice your thoughts and sometimes feel like our posts are attacking you shows that you care about what's happening in the game and more specifically in the guild. We don't have a large number of members that feel the same, but there are a few. The ones who've been here a long time and complain about the lack of participation in any guild events are the ones who actually care about this guild and want to see it succeed and be a part of that success. It is this group of players which this guild tries the hardest to look after, because they do make up the guild. But enough of that, such is the topic for an entirely different rant altogether

Fodder will be in Kara tonight, barring any RL issues. We'll do the run, blow through the first 3 bosses and then focus our attentions on Shade and kick in in the nards. We'll rip off his partidge and shove it up his pear tree. We'll rip open his wrapping and toss it in the fire. We'll treat him like an angry mob treats the complaint desk clerk on Boxing Day. BOO-YA! Thank you Sarge from Red vs Blue (love that character).

Sincerely,

-Foddermike, secretly wishing to be more like Sarge

lol.. just pointing out that we took Shade down tonight, granted it took us a try or two.. but we did it..

Keep the faith people!

- Atherial

I'm by no means an expert in Kara. But this guide mentions taking out two elemnetals (seems the time when we wipe the most) then healing throught the rest as they despawn in 90secs. Just some added info.

http://www.almostgaming.com/wowguides/shade-aran-karazhan-strategies