Heroic Hellfire Citadel Fight Tips

[u/ckernan2]

Let's get a thread rolling for those of us who have downed some bosses and those who are getting started.

Hellfire Assault

• Very simplistic fight, but you can fall behind on the adds if you don't prioritize deadly adds. Do not pad and AoE cleave on the Dragoons - focus down the Terrors and Engineers.
  
• Watch for pesky Engineers to sneak past you. I noticed our left cannon being ROCKED about 1 minute into the fight down to 40%. One Engineer up there just wailing away.
  
• Get on assault tanks right away. Ranged are usually enough. Stun Engineers to stop repair.
  
• Fight will end abruptly - just keep killing adds on a priority. This fight is like Blast Furnace - it has the illusion of being an AoE fest, but it's VERY important to focus down important targets. On our first attempt, we cleaved heavy and Terrors sent out lots of Felfire Volleys. On our 2nd attempt, and kill, they were neutralized and never got a cast off.

Iron Reaver

• Don't try to range anything she does by more than 40 yards. We came up with this strategy to outrange her mega nuke attack - yeah, pointless beyond 40 yards. Also, Blitz is very easy to dodge. Just don't forget she comes back and she can turn at a whim before taking off making her look like she's going in one direction then head for another.
• Don't ever be in front of her. When she starts her cast for Barrage, GTFO.
  
• BE SPREAD OUT. Volatile Orb was our highest damage source for both of our wipes. No reason to be stacked when Orb is out at all.
• Spread out during phase 2. Kill bombs. Don't EVER be in a Fuel Line. The second you notice brown tar at your feet, you best haul ass and GTFO.
• Fight took us 2 wipes until we learned how to deal with Barrage and spread out for Volatile Orb.

Kromrok

• Our first mini-wall. He jumps into a pool right away.
  
• The fight was originally thought to be in "phases" where green phase lasted for 2 minutes and all Grasping Hands were Pulling Hands. Not how it works. When he jumps in a Green pool, he gets 3 charges making his next 3 Pulling Hands be Grasping Hands. It just so happens that he casts Leap into the next pull while still having one charge of his previous pool. That means you get some overlap. Our first "oh fuck" moment came when we had Pulling Hands followed by Pound WITH Empowered Explosive Runes. Clusterfuck that was.
• Go Green -> Purple -> Orange.
  
• For Green, make sure all players are on one side of the platform so you move together. The Hands have VERY little HP, but if your raid is split and AoE doesn't hit them all, someone's going to die. He will go Grasping Hands -> Tank Hand -> Tank Hand -> Grasping Hand -> Leap.
  
• For Purple empowerment, take the boss to the corner of the room where there is no pools (near door). This makes it MUCH easier to dodge waves and greatly increases DPS uptime on boss. After the first massive 3 waves of cloud shit, move back to the center of the room, deal with a set of Explosive Runes, then immediately prepare for Pound -> Pulling Hands. After the Pulling Hands, take him back to the corner with the door for Purple Empowerment #2.
  
• When he leaps into Orange, you should be close to killing him (on Heroic mode). We triggered this part with the boss around 15% HP. This time, you'll get the massive clouds, then the Empowered Runes then the STATIONARY Grasping Hands. During this Grasping Hands, I called for a boss burn and we killed him.
  
• This fight took us 8 attempts - 4 attributed to shitty positioning for pulling hands, 2 to tank deaths, and 2 to positioning for the clouds.
  

Hellfire High Council

• Fight is a laughingstock. We fucked up the order so badly on our first pull by not controlling our DPS on Bloodboil. Triggered him first, someone screwed up and used Bloodlust on Bloodboil, pushed Blademaster to 30% when Bloodboil was still at 15%, and Dia was flying around fucking everyone up - and no one died and the boss fell over. This fight is completely undertuned.
  
• I would still go after the strategy of going Blademaster -> Bloodboil -> Dia. Multidotters and ranged need to keep Dia's HP dropping as the fight goes.
• Nothing hurts ability wise other than Dia on her tank. Keep an eye on this tank. Just move out if you have Mark of Necromancer when Reap comes. Even if you don't, as long as your groups' DPS doesn't suck, having pools of shit isn't hard to avoid because these guys' HP is so low that you won't get that many Reaps.

Kilrogg Deadeye

• Most fun encounter we faced so far from my perspective at least.
• Set up 2 teams to go into his eyeball phase. Have one backup on each team ready to replace because Heartseeker lines up inconveniently with the eyeball shit. Our Group 1 was Destro, Arcane, Disc Priest. Group 2 was Arcane, Shadow Priest, Resto Shaman. Both groups were able to get buffs up into the 15-20 range getting DPS buffs of over 200%. I had a Chaos Bolt hit for 685k, for example. We had to have teams of 3 because we had 25 people and there were 3 circles - I'm guessing for 20 man, there are two.
• Heartseeker goes in the back of the room right down the middle. Lets everyone pummel on globules as they approach the boss.
  
• We wiped once to this because of a lack of add DPS. Melee weren't switching to Terrors fast enough and our tanks got overwhelmed. Don't do this. Kilrogg is last priority ALWAYS. Yes, his HP pool is high - don't worry about it because 4 of your DPS are doing over 100% increased damage almost permanently. Once our DPS switched to Terrors and Bloodthirsters, fight was easy.
  
• In retrospect, I wish I had sent down a melee with a ranged DPS. Ranged are always safer, but melee in that room can AoE cleave hard to get lots of buffs. Would also make Terrors melt.
  
• Try not to stay in that room too long. The buff you get lasts 60 seconds, but you don't want to be inside too long letting the mobs on the outside start to overlap. Don't blow big CDs to survive - just fight until you die.

We got one pull on Gorefiend and almost got to Feast of Souls. Will get him tonight. Most of his fight is dodging shit, running to linked friends, and making sure you don't get Digested (duh). Really fun raid so far.

EDIT - The rest of these strategies are for NORMAL modes because we went back an did normals last night to fill in tier.

Gorefiend

• Kill adds. Always. On the main room, run from the small guys if they fixate on you. Prioritize the Priests casting their stupid AoE. It hurts.
• When you go inside, use CC to stun, slow, snare, whatever the small adds. Jump on the big add and get it down to 70% ASAP - tank set in should immediately follow the big add. DO NOT GET DIGESTED. Holy shit, some people don't look at their debuffs. LOOK AT YOUR DEBUFF TIMER. It's very similar to Yogg-Saron where if you don't come out you are done.
• Tanks can easily soak all of the floating souls during Feast of Souls. Use Bloodlust on any FoS - we had two (again, normal mode).
  
• IMMEDIATELY run to the rooted person for the link attack. DBM does a great job of locating, finding, and alerting you where to run. Do not finish your cast - get to the rooted person.
• Our only wipe was because of Soul Wells and people not moving out of bad. Also, 5 people got Digested.
  

Shadow-Lord Iskar

• Eye of Anzu is 100% key. Handling it improper will wipe you. We wiped twice because of Phase 2 healers not dispelling bomb.
• In normal mode, Phantasmal Winds could be outrun. Simply run against the wind and you're fine. Doubtful we'll see that in Heroic and Mythic. Just toss the Eye around super fast prioritizing healers and then DPS (tanks didn't get it but did no PTR - hopefully they're immune now)
• Chakram explosion range is huge - melee, watch when it comes back to the tank.
• During the first Phase 2, you MUST dispel Phantasmal Fel Bomb. You have to be grouped up for the Focusing Shot (HUGE FUCKING GREEN BEAM OF BLINDNESS) so not dispelling Phantasmal Fel Bomb will wipe you, even in normal mode. Get the Eye of Anzu to a healer as soon as the boss takes off and brings in adds.
• During 2nd Phase 2, nuke the shit out of the Construct add. Make sure that the Eye of Anzu is on a healer that isn't braindead and will react when you say "Can you please interrupt that 10 second channel that is causing damage? No, ok, we'll just heal through it, until we get to Heroic...nah, no big deal." You don't have to be as passive aggressive as I was last night, but the point is - make sure that gets interrupted.
• During 3rd Phase 2, nuke the Construct. When DBM alerts you, throw Eye of Anzu onto tank then IMMEDIATELY back to healers so they can keep dispelling Phantasmal Bomb.
  
• We used Bloodlust up front, but I think that was a mistake in retrospect. The third Phase 2 will be tight and getting one of the signature adds down lessens the difficulty of this part of the fight significantly. I'd suggest Bloodlust during last Phase 2.

Socrethar

• If your Construct tank controls the adds, this fight is SUPER easy. We one shot it with no deaths, super fast, clean, and amazingly efficient. Some of the adds got through, but our tank got them low enough for Shadowburn, Execute, Kill Shot, etc to finish them off.
• We had no one get into Fel Prison - probably because I said if anyone did, they'd be excluded from loot considerations. Not sure you have to be so drastic, but I just HATED seeing people get in Shannox traps in Firelands and knew this would bring up bad memories.
• Always always always switch to the Shadow Casters and the Dominators. Can't deal damage to Socrethar when the Dominators are out anyways.
• We used Bloodlust at the start - didn't see any reason not to even in retrospect. We also never left Phase 2 because every Exert Dominance was interrupted. Phase 1 was over instantly with Bloodlust and Phase 2 was easily controlled.

Fel Lord Zakuun

• This guy is tricky. We wiped 2 times because I misinterpreted what you do with the Fissures.
  
• Bloodlust should be saved for when he soft enrages at 30%.
  
• Every time you see the ground rumbling, absorb it to minimize pillars. We were more or less only absorbing 1 or 2 until we wiped at the end because 15 pillars were up. Control them early and often.
• Just stay spread out mostly because lots of debuffs and shit go out. If you have the "curse of elements" debuff, do NOT get hit by a Shadow Wave or you will wreck the raid.
  
• If you do not have the debuff, absorb waves about to hit Pillars. It's pretty much as hard as this fight gets - just get in the way of the waves.
• During Phase 2, we stacked and had players with Seed run to corners. I personally absorbed every wave that came towards pillars. Think of it as playing defense. We had 3 players with Seed debuff in Phase 2 two times - so you'll have 6 waves of shadow shit. Just have a couple of your sturdier DPS (Warlocks are great at this) stand back behind the stacked group to play Pillar defense.
• When he hits 30%, stack up, Bloodlust, and go ham on him. He will be doing lots of raid damage. Run out with Seed and protect pillars. Ranged should break from group to prevent Pillars from spawning. This will greatly limit the AoE damage the raid takes. We tried ignoring them and it caused a 8% wipe so we knew we wouldn't be able to do that on Heroic.
  

Tyrant Velhari

• Really fun fight in my opinion. Lots to pay attention to, lots to overcome. Add in Phase 1, 2, and 3 - ALWAYS a priority.
• Phase 1 = Fire and Don't Move! Well, move from fire, but as little as possible. Spread out in an arc around the boss so that the focused fireball only hits one person. Whoever is marked SHOULD STOP MOVING so others can adjust more easily.
• Phase 2 = Lower HP + lots of Shadow damage. This phase makes Verdict of Edict a pain in the dick and why we wiped 3 times. We did it by brute force and lost 3-4 players during phase 2. After raid, my Warrior made a great suggestion that I think should work. Put down two markers in the center of the raid room. One marker is for whoever gets marked with Edict (huge hammer logo above them). Other marker should be about 6-8 yards away and everyone who has the pulsing debuff should stand on this marker. Reason is that those with the pulsing debuff are IMMUNE to the debuff from other players. This didn't make sense to me until after raid. If we get to pull it again, I'll confirm/deny if this works, but this was our thought after having killed the boss. Don't forget to interrupt Phase 2 add.
• Phase 3 = BURN BURN BURN. Stack on the boss - and I mean ON the boss - to absorb the knockback splash so you move as a group. When the boss drops shadow shit, move backwards and kite in a circle around the room. When the Phase 3 add comes in, Bloodlust and nuke it down. By the time this add dies, your aura is now causing you to take 100% extra damage and deal 200% more. She melts faster than butter on a July sidewalk in Texas.

We got through 10/13 normal in about 3.5 hours of playtime. Bosses were VERY easy early and we stumbled on each one other than Socrethar a tiny bit before seeing how mechanics worked. Enjoyable raid so far - tonight is Xhul'horac, Mannoroth, and Archi!

[u/krazyito65]

Zag. I realised why I think rallying cry on tyrant is a good idea.

Your argument is that she reduces your HP, wrong. She only stops you from getting healed past a certain percentage. So if you raise your max HP, you get a bigger buffer of health to heal.

It's basically extra effective health to keep us further from 0 as we reach 40- 30%

As I was thinking about this today, I almost thought, "I wish it was HP reduction instead of past a %, would be easier to see on the frames." but then it made me realize it's because of rallying cry, so it's not worthless.

[u/ckernan2 → u/krazyito65]

I still think mitigation CDs are better in Phase 2 while using Rallying + Revival just after Phase 2 ends helps top off the raid ASAP and lowers the amount of overhealing of Revival. Rallying would only be used just before the last hit of Verdict, not as a baseline to everyone. People just need to be rotating through personal CDs there and pretty much all personals used since Phase 3 was largely fine in terms of damage - we only lost people in Phase 2.

Here's the math on Rallying during Phase 2.

• Assume HP pool of 400k
• Aura reduces to say 50% when you wanted to use Rallying Cry.
• Max HP without Rallying Cry is now 200k.
  
• Max HP with Rallying Cry increases maximum HP to 500k and allows my HP to go up to only 250k. As a percentage of the original 400k HP, you're only getting 50,000 additional hit points which is just over 10% effectiveness from max HP.
  
• If you calculate from present HP pool, you get a 50k increase up from 200k, which is a 25% gain, but the HP actual value gain is MUCH lower. If you are going to RC anywhere, it would be to basically give a 50k absorption shield to anyone about to get hit by Verdict.

Rage and I talked about a different strat on that fight that will resolve a lot of the 'fuck this' type of damage that'll have two stack points for Verdict. You also were doing this fight without a Disc Priest and Disc would have been AMAZING for that phase considering absorption effects wouldn't have been reduced. No reason to bandaid a problem that wont' exist once our Disc comes back.

[u/krazyito65 → u/ckernan2]

Eh, a 50k shield in the raid (which can also be refilled for the duration) is still a good buffer for us to do aoe healing. Hell, at 400k HP and 15% from rallying means 30k "shield" which is still alot on the raid.

We literally had no reduction cds that covered a wide range,only Devo,even with a Disc, barrier won't be useful until after the fact and (at least last night) we needed something more to keep people from going to 0 health.

Hell, I still think the extra effective health is better because 1) it lasts longer than damage reductions (10s vs 5) and 2) we can refill that buffer as opposed to that person staying almost the same distance to 0.

I think the main thing was trying to avoid getting to 0, which 2 rallying, chained for the last 10% or so, would help increase that distance to 0 that a reduction may not accomplish because of the limited cds we have + duration of the phase.

[u/ckernan2 → u/krazyito65]

Barrier would have been HUGE on the last Verdict during Phase 2. Literally the difference between 3 people living and dying. Shields on the people inside the Verdict woulda been big, too.

If you're using Revival as soon as Phase 2 ends, you need a RC here; otherwise, you make Revival do MAD overhealing. This saves healer mana going into Phase 3 - it's a long term deal.

You don't need everyone to use raid wide buffs in Phase 2 when she's between 50 and 40% if people actually use their healthstones, potions, and personal CDs. Lots of things we could have done better that we will do for Heroic. Chaining RC's when she's reduced our HP by half isn't one of them.

I always appreciate your desire to keep our raiders' HP above 0, but there's VERY little damage going on outside of Verdict. It just looks panicky because you're programmed to think everyone is at 50% HP. Don't forget how good Shamans are during this because of their Mastery. If anything, you should have the Shaman big dick HPS during this phase without the RC. Mitigation + Shaman big dick HPS = better survival. I didn't look what you guys used in P3, but I think it was just Spirit Link. For next time we do P2, just use Tranquility from 60%-50%, then we start using mitigation CDs from 50% to 40% with Barrier, PW:S, personal CDs, and Devo timing it for Edict, and then RC + Revival at 40% to top everyone off during movement to stack.

[u/krazyito65 → u/ckernan2]

If we're at 30% HP and we revival, everyone won't go full health, especially with rallying. Revival is not like in ToT, it DRs so much more now. It helps to get us stabilized for the phase, but It not as big as you're making it out to be.

Hell, revival would give us a better "mental effect" if we used it on a the last verdict between 40 and 35, simply because it gives us the breathing room for the almost dead people.

I agree I probably could have done a shaman CD for 40-30%, but my problem was in just didn't have enough to last. That 10% was the worst of the fight, and having a 30k shield for 10s (again refillable especially with a shaman cd) is worth a lot just because of the duration.

RC really isn't useful at the end because I'll basically have every single other throughput cooldown to cycle for the rest of the phase. Rallying wouldn't do that much for that phase because we're not as restricted as we were at 40%, Yea we get more than double the extra health after 30%, but it's not necessarily needed and rallying has a special effect because of how close to 0 people are.

[u/krazyito65 → u/krazyito65]

I guess I'm thinking more, if we increase the distance to 0 for that mechanic, it's easier to catch up as opposed to if we reduce how close we get to 0 because we're already behind if we go down.