I’ll sink some more attempts in Tuesday if I get 4pc. If that’s not enough to reliably burn the egg down then I’m not sure what will, given that’s my last real spike in power.
The raid trinket Mad Queen’s Mandate may help significantly with the egg if you’re lucky enough to get it, and will be up every 60 seconds, so every other egg. If you have 1 minute bursts, you could use this for the eggs where burst is down.
Weapon ilvl isn’t nothing, nor us fully gemming enchanting and socketing gear (When the items are likely to be more permanent).
Actual DPS raw damage numbers on the egg is only half the problem as melee.
The major problem is general consistency in killing them over and over, while avoiding his attacks at the same time. They are up every 35-40 seconds.
At any time you can pop all your cooldowns to beat one egg. I can even live through his roar aoe and just stay on it. The problem? 40 seconds later, here comes another.
He casts about 3 times during the time it is up. This includes everything from aoe cones (often on the egg or near it), health regen that needs interrupting and so on. You run over, interrupt, run back to the egg and that sort of thing. And he will immediately cast something else. Next he might cast an AoE cone on the egg. Countless other simple things will screw with the attempt to kill it.
Burst DPS gives more leeway since you don’t have to stay on the egg as long, but it’s not a direct solution to a lot of what goes on.
One of the reasons we saw a Warrior clear was because of the ability to reflect for massive damage in phase 2. In doing so he simply deals with less eggs to start with.
In the same way, more burst on the egg means you need less luck, since you only need to stay on it for X amount of GCDs instead of Y amount. It decreases the amount of time you have in which he can screw you over.
I have gotten to phase 2 multiple times and got the fight down pretty well. At this point I feel there’s less “skill issues” in my wipes. It’s the RNG dice rolls to see if something screws you. Increasing DPS increases your RNG chances somewhat but you still must rely on luck.
tldr:
There is a severe amount of RNG in the fight screwing you over. Increasing damage ultimately reduces the RNG somewhat but doesn’t actually fix the reliance on it.
I stopped making attempts on the fight for a while. I got to phase 2 multiple times but I am still just rolling dice hoping for good egg positioning etc.
Why do some classes have Brann hold aggro while others don’t? It makes no sense. I watched Xaryu do this, and Brann held aggro the whole time, making it a joke, but when I go in on my DH, Brann never has aggro, and I’m getting hit for 1/3 of my health every melee, plus the add does another 1/3 when it up.
This was ages ago. Brann has since been changed.
Rogue can Tricks him, but his health bar is basically just a placeholder at this point. If he gets melee’d, he drops almost instantly. At least the AoE’s aren’t killing him instantly now.
That being said, there’s actually a small chance he’ll somehow get hooked by Angler’s Web or whatever it was, which oneshots him immediately from 100 to 0. And then you die of course, assuming you’re a dps and he’s a healer
I think I have a strat down for Warrior if it doesn’t get nerfed. You’ll probably want 4 set bonus and i619 gear.
I can consistently get eggs to 20% to dead at i610, by rationing cooldowns across 3 eggs. By egg 4 the first cooldown is back and the process can repeat.
The bad luck screw over is there but the chances are pretty decent that if you keep attempting without skill mistakes, you’d get a clean kill in an hour or so at i619ish.
I have i610 and my best attempt had him at like 35%. It’s too tight of a DPS window to consistently do at i610 but its close. I’d like to confirm it for sure by actually doing it, then post a lot more on it.
Gearing past 610 is slower though so it might take a while for me.
The following might help if any other Warriors are attempting, or other classes too:
Just beat it on Shadow Priest.
Just beat it with a 595 ilvl Paladin. Pretty intense stuff.
managed to get to p2 as ele, but its such slow going that I’ll probably wait til I have 4 set and ~5ish more ilvls before I try again. I can almost consistently pop eggs, but sometime rng in egg spawns or the boss critting gets in the way.
skillz and strats or rnged?
Or/and, 615+ ilvl?
They’re all mostly gear checks, that’s really it. Even mage tower, where some amount of skill was involved, still required a certain threshold of gear to be met or you couldn’t complete it, either. Take me trying to do it on my undergeared hunter at the time: it doesn’t matter how good you are at kiting, trapping, or multitasking, at the end of the day if you don’t have the stats you will not succeed.
There are very few pure skill checks in this game.
That said: Brann is awful in every possible way.
I completed a 10 the other day on my MM hunter (ilevel 595 at the moment), through creative use of traps, pet tanking, and even Brann tanking in his healer spec (feign death dump to the healer ftw). I haven’t tried an 11, because I’m pretty sure my pet will get immediately killed. I might give it a go if I hit 605+ ilevel.
Anyway… POINT BEING:
I tried Zekvir on tier ? and he killed my pet in ~20 seconds, even with rolling the potion stack to maintain 4 and using mend pet on cooldown. Brann was dead next after a feign dump. Revive pet = instantly dead pet again, and by that time the cocoon drops and it’s all over. I don’t know how much better it’s going to get between my 595 and ten ilevels from now, so we’ll see… Granted, I think the in game recommendation for tier 10 is like ilevel 623+ or something, and tier 11 just says “Tremendous difficulty”.
That said, I suppose Zekvir is the season 1 endboss and the season will likely conclude sometime in January? Or middle of Spring? Later? Anyway, there’s a lot of time to try to catch up to beat the final boss of the first season, considering that we’re less than a month in right now.
I can last up until he casts the first egg as a tank and even if I save all of my cool downs to burst the egg guy, I cannot kill it before he spawns the add, and then I die every single time.
Sounds like you did Zekvir ?
Oops, my bad. That’s what I get for not reading the thread proper.
Zekvir “?” Is tuned for roughly 600 ilvl.
Zekvir “??” Is tuned for roughly 615, but is also supposed to be a significantly harder challenge.
Delvers will cap out their ilvl at roughly 620, so there’s also room to overgear the fight a little to compensate.
I think maybe they changed Zekvir “?”, then. I know there were people who cleared it before the changes and it’s supposedly much more difficult than it was. I don’t know the exact adjustments that were made. I do know, however, that I tried it as a 595 hunter yesterday and he absolutely annihilated my pet.
Personally I’d suggest just not trying to force him onto your pet / brann and instead letting brann heal you, then topping yourself off with his potions. Do hunters still have the thing where disengage removes slows? If so try to hold kick for when an add spawns if you can’t kill the egg in time and disengage off the debuff when he casts spittle if brann didn’t dispel it for you.
I’ve done it with 600 or so on alts this week. And “??” At 615 on my main.