Just finished our weekly guild run of the current raid. Tonight we’re fielding 14 players (we had more earlier in the xpac but they burned out during Heroic BoD and I nearly joined them).
For the Azshara fight, as near as I could tell, we were executing keeping wards powered properly. Every member had at least 6 stacks of the debuff, and the tanks would hold 2-3.
And then we would run into a problem. We couldn’t safely soak anymore. And so we couldn’t make it through phase 2. The wards would depower and the damage would kill us. Or people would take extra stacks and damage would kill them, making the problem even worse.
We ended up pugging in about 6 people. And magically, the wards were no longer an issue. We cleared phase 1 and 2 with ease and, even with never having progressed past it before, were able to get to phase 4 before we stopped for the night.
There has to be someway to scale this mechanic so small raid sizes can do this fight, right? Perhaps having fewer power cells drained, or reducing the amount of health reduction so we can take more stacks? As it is we literally can’t do it as we are. If the raid isn’t meant for small groups, though, can you please just come out and say that so we can stop struggling against the impossible?