Spooncraft

It’s taken me a bit to write this segment of Ask the Spoon since I had to backtrack a bit and dig up stuff from the old memory bank (also I wanted to make sure I was answering your question correctly) I got an email from a reader the other day with a really good question about Karazhan.

Just a heads up, this won’t really be a How To guide on Karazhan and I won’t go point by point into serious detail but I will answer all his questions to the best of my ability. Since the email itself is long I’ll be breaking it down a little and just put my response in yellow bolded text. More after the cut.

Dear Spooner,
Loving the webpage - keep up the good work. Thanks brother, I enjoy the feedback I’m trying to improve this site every day no naked elves yet though I’m working on it.

I have a question about Karazhan and the 2.4 patch since it seems you guys have this on farm (we’re getting there, 6/8 farm, 7 with our pally tank on
Illhoof) We have warriors (not including my old one) but our MT is actually a Prot Paladin and he does an alright job for being a complete noob.
Basically, our first time downing Prince was the week before the 2.4 patch and we used the 2 notches on the left wall as safe zones from the infernals. After 2.4 though, it seems that the first 2/3/4 infernals would make a direct line for those spots, landing directly in the “safe spot”, yet nothing about this has been posted anywhere me or my guildies could find (they claim to have checked the forums, I can’t check from work and haven’t checked from home after they said it was a negative). Congrats on the kill for starters. I’ve never ever really seen any “safe-spots” to speak of. The whole thing feels like a luck based fight but there are many different ways to take the randomness out of the equation but I’ll get into that later. Yes there was a change in Patch 2.4 where Blizzard said that there will no longer be any specific safe zones during the Prince fight. For the life of me and to my eternal frustration I cannot find the exact quote. But it is safe to assume (even based on your own experiences) that there are no safe zones in the Prince fight where infernals will not drop.

We (last night) got him down using the “door” method, tanking just past the first notch on the right and running to the door during enfeeble, but even with that it took us 2 weeks at about 8 wipes per week to finally get it since the infernals always seem to make a direct shot at our healers either when Prince is at about 45% or 5% (always one of those 2). Thankfully our pally-tank brought healing gear and was a 4th healer for the fight leaving only our warrior and me (combat spec rogue) in melee range, and then 3 healers ran up past the infernal at 3% to keep us alive through an infernal landing on us. Positioning is a big part of the fight. We used to just have the tank crawl along the left wall (starting at the door) and the raid in the middle of the “room” and as infernals dropped we shifted left or right. Eventually this led to some boxing in and wipes and such but you overcome it. A good way (what we do now) is to have the tank on the right wall and your raid on the door, as the infernals drop we just shift or rotate down deeper into the room.
I’m just wondering if we have the worse luck ever on infernals, if it’s a bug or if it’s an undocumented change to the fight that you’re aware of. No bug that i can think of or find, but it is something I reckon Blizzard is aware of.

Raid composition will make a difference if you have tons of ranged DPS and next to nobody in melee range. First off the fight will go faster since DPS won’t have to move out of the shadow-nova range thus slowing DPS. That doesn’t mean go stack your raid with warlocks, mages, hunters and such, but keep in mind the mechanics when you attempt the fight.

Here are some pro-tips that I found make a very big difference and take the whole luck thing out of the fight.

• Your tank has to keep aggro 100% of the time. Misdirect and have salvation available to you. A good tank should have no problem with this. During phase 2 any attacks that Prince parries will cause him to get an extra attack and this can royally screw your tank.
• Your DPS should be going ABOVE & BEYOND with their output. Use your books (Torment of the Worgen, Wrath of the Titans) flasks, elixers, food buffs, drums of battle, heroism/bloodlust, haste potions, insane strength potions, trinkets, cooldowns, whatever you got throw it on and get ready for an all or nothing fight. I’ll tell you this much, the faster your DPS, the less infernals you’ll have to deal with. We’ve killed him with only 4 infernals dropping before, remember that in phase 3 he won’t enfeeble anymore.
• Keep it quite on vent! Something new I noticed is that infernals drop fast as shit. They don’t spawn faster they just land faster. It’s harder for your caller to spot them and give warning now because they do indeed fall much faster. Your fight leader (the guy who is calling out on vent) should be in the ranged group. Mark him so that everybody knows what max range is when they have to run from enfeebles. Having to call out stuff and move the camera when you’re melee and you’re up against that wall with the tank is damn frustrating and hard.
• Finally your healers should be kept in check. 3x healers for Kara is more than enough, we get by with two easily enough but right now it’s a gear thing. One healer should be on the tank only, a paladin or resto druid work great for this. Having a holy priest with circle of healing or prayer of mending healing the raid as well as the tank is awesome. Same with a resto shaman with chain heal. Two or three chain heals on the MT can top off your melee DPS and the same can be said for hitting your ranged cluster. Once you hit phase 2 your healers need to be keeping that tank up like mad and your DPS needs to go all out. If you take more than 2-3 minutes to get him to phase 3 once phase 2 starts then your DPS is slacking or needs more gear.

The last thing I’ll say on the topic is to be patient. Sometime even T5-6 guilds badge farming will get near a wipe or all out fail the fight because of stupid infernals. When you get a bad infernal the tank has to be told where to move, the healers need to be told where to move, moving means you can’t cast a heal unless it’s instant. if you get many bad drops at once you’re pretty much SOL, so don’t get too down. If you guys are wiping over and over you might want to look at what your raiders are doing through WWS or some other mod/program. It really is a DPS race because over time there will be just too many infernals out for your raid to effectively not die during the whole enfeeble thing. If you have people in greens, go hit Magister’s Terrace, go do heroics and get some of the dungeon 3 items. Badge loot should be playing a major role here.

Happy hunting!

If you have a question or comment or even just hate mail and santeria to send me check out the Contact Form. I look forward to naked pics and keyloggers.