Hagara the Stormbinder Heroic

[Squirrel]

Difficulty 25-man Heroic
Hagara 155M
Ice Tomb 1.9M
Binding Crystal 6.97M
Bound Lightning Elemental 3.9M


http://www.icy-veins.com/hagara-the-stor...d-strategy

Melee Arms Warrior POV (This is how Lightning Phase Should look)


Range MM Hunter


Range Boomkin POV


Healer Holy priest


Healer Holy paladin


The Heroic version of the fight with Hagara is extremely similar to the normal version of the fight. Each of the 3 phases has exactly one difference with the Normal mode, in addition to all abilities doing more damage and all units having more health.

Dealing with Ice Lance in the Main Phase

In the Main Phase, the missiles from Ice Lance now apply a stacking debuff that increases Frost damage taken by 10%. The debuff lasts 3 seconds, so anyone stacking Ice Lance missiles will end up taking +150% Frost damage.

By itself, this debuff does not prevent a player from soaking all 15 Ice Lance missiles, as they only deal 15,000 damage each. The problem comes from a player taking +150% increased Frost damage and being targeted by Shattered Ice, which deals about 100,000 Frost damage in Heroic mode.

Therefore, you need to have two players on each Ice Lance. By alternating every 4 or 5 seconds, they enable to debuff to drop, thus making the damage from Shattered Ice manageable if they are damaged by it.

Dealing with Frostflake in the Ice Phase

In the Ice Phase, Hagara will target a random player with Frostflake. This debuff does no damage but it slows down the targeted player and stacks every seconds, meaning that the player will eventually come to an almost complete stop. When dispelled, the debuff leaves a Frostflake Snare on the ground. Every player standing in this 10-yard radius frost area is slowed down by 50%. Exiting the frost area removes the movement speed reduction.

The problem with this debuff is that, during the Ice Phase, raid players keep moving together to attack the Frozen Binding Crystals and avoid the Ice Waves. Therefore, dispelling the debuff immediately is not recommended, as this runs the risk that players get slowed and subsequently caught by the Ice Wave.

One possible strategy is to have targeted players enter the Watery Entrenchment and be dispelled there. They will take a few ticks of damage, but this should be manageable and the Frostflake Snare will be out of everyone's way. Another possible strategy is that targeted players move to the edges of the platform to be dispelled, though this means that other players need to be careful and stay away from the edge.

Dealing with Storm Pillars in the Lightning Phase

In the Lightning Phase, Hagara will regularly summon Storm Pillars. These pillars have a visual effect that looks like a ring. 3 seconds after they have spawned, they explode and deal 35,000 Nature damage to all players within 5 yards.

The idea is to circumvent these pillars when making a lightning chain between the conductors. It is also perfectly viable to ignore them, provided that you can heal the damage, which increases as Lightning Storm stacks build up.

Beating the Enrage Timer

To beat the enrage timer, you will need to spend as little time as possible in the Ice Phase and the Lightning Phase, where the boss is immune to damage.

Ice Phase

Below, you will find a list of tips to shorten the duration of the Ice Phase.

2 or 3 seconds before the Ice Phase starts, have the tank bring Hagara to the location where a Crystal will spawn. This will save you precious seconds traveling from Hagara to the first Crystal when the Ice Phase begins
Use movement speed buffs, such as Drums of Speed, Stampeding Roar (Bear Form), or Stampeding Roar (Cat Form), so that your melee players can rapidly switch from one Crystal to the other.
If the melee DPS are at full health, they should keep attacking the Crystal, even if an Icicle is going to fall on them.
To destroy all the crystals, your raid will normally need to go around the platform twice (although you should manage to destroy the first crystal during the first pass). To speed up this process, you should do as much damage as possible on the 3rd and 4th crystal. Then, while the bulk of the raid goes for a second pass to finish off the 1st and 2nd crystal, a few DPS players should be left to finish off the 3rd and 4th crystal. The idea is the 3rd and the 4th crystals should be destroyed at around the same time as the 2nd crystal.

Several DPS classes can be left on the 3rd and 4th crystal, thanks to their ability to avoid or reduce the damage from the Ice Waves and/or Watery Entrenchment, though any player can easily survive the 2 or 3 ticks of Watery Entrenchment that it takes to avoid an Ice Wave:

Mages with Ice Block, Blink, and Mage Ward, or even Cauterize for Fire Mages;
Rogues with Sprint and Feint;
Paladins with Divine Shield;
Death Knights with Anti-Magic Shell;
Shadow Priests with Dispersion.

Lightning Phase

During the Lightning Phase, you will want to overload all the Crystal Conductors within a few seconds of the death of the Bound Lightning Elemental. To achieve this, the chains of players from one Conductor to another will be pre-established and each player will have a pre-determined location to go to. The add will also always be killed on the same Conductor, so that you can assign melee players a position close to this Conductor, while DPS players will be assigned positions that are further away. Each player should try to reach their position at the moment the add dies (depending on how far it is, they might have to start moving long before the add dies).

In 25-man difficulty, 6 players are required to conductor lightning from one Conductor to the other and you only need to make 3 chains. In 10-man difficulty, you need 2 players for each chain and you have to make 7 of them (there are 8 conductors), which means that some players will need to move to a second location as soon as their first chain has overloaded a Conductor.

Note that from a single Crystal Conductor, you can propagate lightning to several other Crystal Conductors.

Finally, you should ignore the Storm Pillars when they spawn in the path of one of the chain of players and heal through the damage that they deal.

[xnskzzxnvs]

Their lightning is amazing; ours is... subpar. I was also pretty dissatisfied with the healer positioning for our lines. It should be something like:

Code:

.+          +
.|          |
h|          |h
h|          |h
.|          |
.+----------+
m     hh
      o

h = healer
m = mob
+ = lightning rods
o = entrance portal

But what we actually had was:

Code:

.+          +
.|          |
?|          |
?|          |h dist
.|          |h kipp
.+----------+
m  h      hh
   ^      ^^
   |      |plare
   |      alyse
   squirrel

? = I was too far away to see where the healers were on the opposite side, but Jack and Conio were there somewhere.

[xnskzzxnvs]

Also we don't actually need any melee to be part of a chain, do we? We need 18 players for all the chains together, and 6 of them can be healers, and I think we actually have 12 range, so we can just have range dot or instant the mobs and then run to their spots (and continue dps if they are in range), let the melee finish, and then the melee can run around spreading lightning if our lines aren't quite sufficient? Yesterday I kept on seeing some melee just standing around, but I was as inattentive as anyone else, so maybe mis-saw something.

[spence]

looks easy

[jackslammer]

Therefore, you need to have two players on each Ice Lance. By alternating every 4 or 5 seconds, they enable to debuff to drop, thus making the damage from Shattered Ice manageable if they are damaged by it.

So the ice lances randomly target three players, do those initial players just run away? Do we only assign three more players to alternate with those who were targeted? Or do we assign three pairs (six players) to coordinate which ice lance to soak like the video had?

I think having three vocal soakers just calling out the name of one of the ice lance targets and alternating with them where it spawns allows the location to be easily determined.

One possible strategy is to have targeted players enter the Watery Entrenchment and be dispelled there. They will take a few ticks of damage, but this should be manageable and the Frostflake Snare will be out of everyone's way. Another possible strategy is that targeted players move to the edges of the platform to be dispelled, though this means that other players need to be careful and stay away from the edge.

This is the mechanic which I consider most intimidating in this encounter. I've seen guilds handle it several different ways and it may take us some time to discover what works best for us. It should be noted that most debuff and/or movement speed reduction removing abilities will drop be treated as a dispell, so people need to be careful. I mentioned last night that casters maintain a path around a ring most nearby the center bubble and melee maintain a path near the perimeter.

Lightning PhaseTo achieve this, the chains of players from one Conductor to another will be pre-established and each player will have a pre-determined location to go to. Each player should try to reach their position at the moment the add dies (depending on how far it is, they might have to start moving long before the add dies).

This was probably the one mechanic causing the most confusion last night.

Also this guild is full of Street Fighter IV players or something because these videos make it look fucking easy, their raid damage taken is so minimal their healers are often DPSing, their iceblocks are broken nearly immediately, I'm sure they spent hours if not days wiping to this and I'd rather see those videos. Anyhow thanks for posting this and this thread will be the place to develop and refine a strategy.