Netherspite Down

Last night, downed Netherspite finally; Illhoof in two tries; and attempted Prince but still cannot drop him.

Illhoof was dropped in record time, once we made a few changes to our approach. We wiped on our first try, primarily because we were losing people to his sacrifice ability, and not removing chains fast enough. Everyone has to focus on those chains, to avoid losing the player; there are only perhaps ten seconds or so before a cloth or leather armored player will die. On our second try, we lost no one and dropped illhoof in just over four minutes. Our success this time was due primarily to the AOE casting by Sage, Eli and Berb; the damage on Eli's seed of corruption was amazing. The imps that add were never more than four or five standing, and Kil'rek was burned down by my the aoe, and Dom and I swiping him. Once he is down, Illhoof is 'weakened' to a point that we burned off 4% of his health every ten seconds, so in thirty seconds we had at least 12% off him and after he was down to 20% just burned him down.

Netherspite was the challenge for the night, and we finally succeeded! On this fight, we put one tank on red beam; one tank on green. We were used to the fight and you can find the beams by the colored portals on the wall, before they actually begin. The green beam never touched him, so he never healed throughout the fight.

As MT, I picked up red beam on the first round; the round lasts 90 seconds before his Banish phase, and you cannot stand in the beam the entire time or you die. Domainatra was on green beam for that round, and we alternated for the next 90 second portal phases. I moved off to the side, taking the red beam off myself for no more than eight seconds; then picking it back up. This way we avoided nether exhaustion and the health siphon that occurs if you are in the beam too long. During banish phase, some tried to continue to damage Nspite while he used netherbreath; I pulled back to heal, rebuff, and raise any players lost during the previous phase.

On second portal phase, I picked up green and stood in it; as a druid, you will lose all your mana and be unable to shift into form by the end of the 90 seconds so pick a form and stay in it after about 20. You will also have difficulty using pots to mana back up; I am not sure why, but it took several tries to get back to bear form twice during the fight. I changed to cat form as a new approach suggested by some; but once in cat, you stay in cat until your mana is returned in some fashion. We were able to damage him during banish phase; but he turns to face players and hits them with netherbreath, a significant risk if you are down any players.

A warlock (Eli) and Sori (hunter) took blue beam, and attempted to heal through it. The blue beam does enough damage we lost Sori; I rezzed her. On the blue beam the healing needs to stay constant; or you could assign teams to swap it out. However, the problem becomes that no one can pick that beam up and lose it; after 8 seconds, you are nether exhausted and the beam cannot be blocked. This was our primary problem during early runs, not realizing that the beams can be lost completely if you stay out too long; or someone blocks it even temporarily.

Stats on our Netherspite fight were:

Damage

Mindaika 690.9 dps
Eliminster 668
Sagemage 662
Berber 638
Sorilea 551
Thesandman 324

Healing

Nistagmus 677 hps
Tarian 579
Stonehearth 199