Pillars of Alra raid: Light

[joks]

Hello!

My guild is currently working on the Pillars of Alra raid. We seem to have the three other trials locked down, but Light is giving us problems. Our biggest problem at the moment appears to be adds piling up. On our last attempt, we managed to kill about 8, but we had more than two up multiple times. Mostly the adds jump either the tanks or the healers, and we can't really afford to lose either of them - soon as the first one goes, it goes downhill fast.

I read somewhere that the adds would stop spawning at some point, but so far we haven't seen it - they just keep spawning, and our melees are reporting terrible dps on them. Our casters have been needed in arcane to damage the crystal, and the chanters have been in arcane too to cover the mez requirements, so we haven't had the resources to try AE stunning the blinding lights and focus the dps on the Herald/Harbinger.

Anyone have any thoughts they would like to share on the subject without giving too much away? Or maybe just a nod that light is a real pain in the ass - or a sigh of disbelief because light is supposed to be real easy

[shiftie]

Light is the most crucial side. If you fail that side you will eventually end up with a huge PITA mana drain on the boss that will likely make you fail anyways.

We used paladins to tank the named and warriors to pick up the adds. Bards have a huge dps modification on all sides of this raid but since others do poorly they work out pretty well here.

Clerics get an aggro modification here and produce more aggro than normal. If your clerics are spamming group heals to keep the tanks alive it is likely the reason they are getting jacked. Have your paladins cast marrs salavation ont he clerics and that should help them produce less aggro from healing.

If you use paladins to tank the named make sure they are also not casting group heals. This will cause them to get aggro on the adds when they spawn.

The named that is not vulnerable has huge ae ramp damage, make sure your dps are switching as soon as the named switch.

The adds can be both stunned and blinded. If you find yourself unable to deal with them you can try this but I wouldn't recommend it. You will get 2 adds every 60 seconds for the first 5 minutes. The adds are the main priority and your raid force should be focusing on burning them down. The named don't have a ton of HP so 2 bards and maybe one other melee dps should be able to bring their HP down to the appropriate HP lock sans cure.

Paladins get a pretty big healing bonus on this side. Make sure your paladins are coordinating first spire so that they aren't overlapping. When the fight begins both paladins should tag their mob, undivided, projection and deflect. When deflection fades (assuming you have the 2 tic bp focus) paladin 1 hits first spire making sure to target the other paladin (this requires that you are far enough away from each other so the named don't ae but close enough that spire will land) [make sure you have tgb turned on]. This will give both paladins first spire. From there they will hit honorific mantle and epic - this is all happening just as deflection fades btw. After first spire fades from the first paladin, pal #2 will hit their spire exactly as described above, and at this time epic should be fading, so stack armor of the inquisitor. When honorific fades hit armor of zeal, when this disc runs out all the adds should be dead and the healers can focus all their healing to the paladins. I usually hit a glyph after this.

Things you can do to help, put both the paladins in the same group, once the adds are dead spamming group heals is ok. Penitence/contrition are not on the same timers so keep them both up as quick saves. Forceful rejuvination refreshes both penitence/contrition don't be afraid to use it. Make sure to always have shining armor on. Ask a necro for RB just before porting up as it is likely he won't be on your side, but since you don't actually zone it should stay on you and aid in healing as you cast aggro spells. Make sure the important people on that side all have DI including clerics and other healers. Shaman are great assist healers on this side as they also get a healing bonus.

It is imperative that you DO NOT fail the cures. So keep that in mind when assigning people to this side. If you put someone over there that fails emotes a lot it is going to screw you.
That's all I can think of for now.

[Daldaen]

Shiftee touched on most everything of importance in this trial.

It is the #1 trial you absolutely have to win 100% of the time if you want to beat the boss at the end.


He mentioned lots of great tips for keeping paladins alive / tanking, but I figured I'd weigh in a bit for group setups.


You *should* (in my opinion) be sending 18 players into that trial. As it is the most important it should be the most stacked. Personally my guild sends:

Tank Group = 2 Clerics, 4-2 Paladins, 2-0 Warriors
DPS Groups x 2 = 1 Shaman, 1 Bard, 4 Monks, Zerkers, Rangers, Rogues, Beastlords

That trial has the following buffs by class:



Basically you want atleast 2 Bards in their because they get a huge DPS mod (they get more in Black, but that trials penalty for not winning is less severe). If you have atleast 2 bards in your roster they should be there. Having 1 bard who is smart enough to use GTT and cure, can handle all the emotes in there using 1 GTT line to tell him who got the debuff and needs cured.
You want to toss all your paladins available into the trial (IMO I know some guilds don't do this though). We have used 2 to tank the bosses and 2 to tank the adds -- perma stunning the adds makes tanking them easy + no blinds. So if you have 4 paladins to toss at it, try it out.
Your clerics do have a huge aggro modifier in there so silent casting to start may help out (unsure on stacking issue here). Giving paladins Shining Armor also will help out as those heals are modded by the heal bonus + stuns (on adds again is win) are more aggro even for the boss.
Necromancers are solid in there however it is also huge aggro so they need to FD twice as often. Giving RB to the tank group with paladins definitely does help but could cause aggro issues potentially if one paladin happens to get lucky and fire it 20 times while the other never fires it. We don't use necros in here that often but they are a solid choice.
Most melee DPS have really bad penalties in here with high aggro or low hit DMG modifiers, Berserker prolly being the best DPS class in there however again huge aggro + defensive penalty. Monks have a defensive bonus but aggro penalty and huge DPS penalty, so they can function as temporary tanks under disc but they aren't too reliable at it. Rangers... I'm not sure how the hit dmg mod works exactly but I *think*? their bowing is exempt + they don't have any aggro mod. Rogues have low aggro but lower damage in light.


Of the other classes not mentioned, reasons I don't use them in there:

SKs are needed in Shadow trial, no reason to put them here.
Druids are needed in Nature trial, they can replace a cleric if need be however.
Wizard/Mage are needed in Arcane trial, plus not many guilds are stacked on these to the point of having excess over 4-6 of them (which is roughly what the arcane trial will need to win, can be done with 3 though)
Enchanter are needed in Arcane trial since its event this expansion you really want more than 1 enchanter. Arguably Fumerak also but meh.

[joks]

Thanks for the detailed information. More than I had dared to hope for We've killed 8 adds a few times, so shouldn't be too far off. Will report on our progress

[joks]

Progress! We beat the waves of adds, but wiped to the nameds due to a curing accident. It seems we have a working setup, just need to get all the small things together to win this more regularly.

I did see that while the named was marked as (Vulnerable), it took almost no damage. When it switched back to normal, it started AE rampaging, but took normal damage. I assume this is a result of failed cures - the AE rampage getting out of sync with the vulnerable status.

I hear a popular theory is to just stay alive in the Black/shadow trial, but when the event fails, it says that one or more events scored a 5. Can someone confirm or deny that you actually need to make some sort of progress there in order to get past phase 1 of the event?

[joks]

So far so good - we've been getting better at killing the adds. Our main hurdle now is the nameds - they seem to regen big chunks, like their hp's are locked at some levels. Can anyone confirm if this is a curing issue, or are we doing something else wrong?

[shiftie]

The named HP lock. Curing unlocks their HP which is why you cannot miss the emotes/cures. If you successfully cure every time and bring their HP to the level of HP lock you should get to about 1:30 to 2:00 of time in which you have to burn both priests from 20% as the last emote goes out. I'm a little sketchy on the time from the last emote of final HP unlock and the end of the trial, but I know we finished it occasionally with time to sit down and med waiting on the other trials. The named have really low HP so burning after the final cure isn't all that hard, IIRC you can begin to burn when their HP are at or around 20-24% health.

[joks]

Thanks for clarifying! We got it down twice yesterday. We ended up with 4 necros in the trial for our dps - helps avoiding the nasty AE rampage, and they get a nice damage bonus there

[joks]

We did it! Took something like 30 attempts total, but it's in the books now Thanks everyone for tips and tricks!

[Elric]

Congrats!!!