I’ve got a legitimate question/discussion to present to the classic forums this morning. I know these are a rarity these days amid the AV threads and “classic is dying” threads, so play nice.
My guild started BWL last night, and after 3 fairly easy bosses, we hit a wall on Firemaw. My raid leader instructed everyone, all 40 people, to equip their Onyxia Scale Cloaks because it “might” save us if we get breathed on. Okay, sound logic I suppose. Gives us some insurance in case something goes wrong.
However, one one or two of our wipes, the raid DID get breathed on, and nearly everyone got one shot. Myself and several others voiced concerns that the cloak is useless if we are getting one shot anyway, and we should use our throughput cloaks instead. But we were shot down and told to keep them on.
Is this right? This seems like we are needlessly gimping our raid for no added benefit.
https://classic.wowhead.com/spell=22539/shadow-flame
Inflicts 3938 to 5062 Shadow Damage
https://classic.wowhead.com/spell=22682/shadow-flame
Inflicts 1750 to 2250 damage every second for 10 seconds
The Onyxia Scale Cloak does not shield you from the first effect (3938 to 5062 Shadow Damage) but prevents the DoT from being applied.
In short, if anyone does get breathed on without a cloak they are going to have a 2k/sec dot on them for 10 seconds. Simply put, guaranteed death if you’re not already being healed.
So the cloak will at least give you a chance at living, but taking the initial 5k damage is not a happy situation no matter how you slice it. Shadow Resist gear would obviously help with that, but FR for Firemaw is naturally going to be prioritized.
The cloak does prevent a wipe, but you still need to have enough hp to survive the hit. Thats why you have your melee flask (at least on progression), use stam alcohol, and elixir of fortitute to get above 5k hp. Someone pulled on ebonroc on my run, and it hit half the raid and it chunked them down to 10% hp, but no one died.
I think your raid leader was just hoping that wearing the cloak might result in some people still living (Due to shadow resists/higher HP classes/etc) if they got hit. I would side with him in that wearing the cloak at least gives people with >5k health a chance at living. Without the cloak, guaranteed death.
Pretty much the exact situation Wzda just shared w/Ebonroc.
Yes, the cloak is useless if you dont have the health to survive the shadowflame initial hit.
It is less useless if the whole raid pre-emptively drinks a shadow protection potion to soak the majority of the shadowflame.
But in general, the raid eating a shadowflame on firemaw is a wipe, cloak or not…
Unless you all also have drank a shadow protection potion, then the cloak may save you (but honestly probably not, because positioning is the hard part if that fight, and him facing the raid typically means that he will be moving out of the correct spot).
One cloaks worth of stats isn’t going to make or break your raid.
Preventing the dot from wiping the survivors could, if enough people are up to finish the boss. If your whole guild is too squishy to survive a breath, then you either need to swap gear to give yourself more margin for error, or improve your execution so you don’t get breathed on in the first place, or burned up by the debuff.
The first is simple if you have the gear on hand somewhere. Tier gear will do this for most people even though it has less dps than BIS. You do 0 dps dead. This may be the best option because it’s safe and can let your raid practice execution AND get bosses down.
The second option takes repetition and practice. You will wipe a lot. That’s why I prefer option one, gear swap. That way you are downing bosses while you learn and can eventually swap to method two for faster clears once your execution is up to snuff. Firemaw is an execution fight. Your raid has to watch its positioning and not stack up the debuff to the point that it is unhealable.
P.S. The number one rule is to follow your raid leaders instructions. If you want to say anything, say it in tells to officers/raid leader. Don’t do it over voice or in public chats. Displays like that can sink a raid’s morale very quickly, when it is already suffering from repeated wipes.
Remember: A bad plan well executed will often succeed when a good plan poorly executed will fail.
People have gotten spoiled and complacent from MC … they’ve forgotten that fire resist was a big deal in vanilla for a reason, and Firemaw is making them pay for thinking otherwise.
Fire resist makes Firemaw a joke. If your raids stacks it, you can faceroll him. You dont NEED to, but stacking fire resist is idiot-proof.
DPS need to wear FR and not push stacks past 5 unless you’ve got a ton of healing. It’s not a dps race. Most common cause of deaths is people pushing dps too hard an not letting their stacks drop.
Aside from the FR, Ony cloak does nothing unless you’re a tank. Raid should never be getting breathed on
Yes exactly. Fr not only means you take less damage per flame buffet, you also have a chance to resist a stack completely (that’s why tanks with high FR can lose stacks altogether without ducking) allowing dps to stay in longer.
Do you have like the best cloak ever imagined or something? I don’t see how you think swapping 1 peice of gear (especially a small stat peice) is going to change anything or is worth arguing with your raid leader over.
The mechanic is you wear the cloak, your healers need to get their poop together, and call out Garbo dps that don’t understand stacks…if people would understand bwl is not a race in a lot of fights, they might survive.
For real though, practice, people been doing this for years. Aq and naxx step it up more. Aq gonna be a 4night thing for some guilds…and they may not still kill cthun. The hardest thing ever is retaining 40 people for the next year and a half, raiding turn over is real for a lot of newer guilds.