Monday, July 18, 2011

Beth'tilac, The Red Widow

Sorry for the unannounced hiatus everyone, went camping out in eastern Oregon for a few days, but now I'm back! And now that I'm back, let's talk about Beth'tilac, the second boss that we've managed to kill in firelands thus far. As always I'll gloss over much of the fight and concentrate mostly on healer issues, but I'll try to pay tribute to some of the more important mechanics.

Red Spider On Red Web With Red Fire Abilities!


The pull isn't especially bad, however there is a fair amount of predictable raid damage, the first time the boss is hit she will retreat above to her web and lava will begin to spill down from the ceiling. This sucks, so you need to get your above team to get up on her web with her. It's important that the small "Cinderweb Spinners" that spawn above on her web be taunted down by anyone with a taunt mechanic immediately, this not only produces the web strands that your above team will use to climb up and stop Beth'tilac from vomiting fire down onto the raid, but the spinners themselves have a fairly nasty fire damage ability that seems to be random target, so we had a raid member assigned to bringing them down from the webs whenever they spawned throughout the encounter so they could be killed quickly, as that random fireball nuke they have hits a little too hard to be allowed to stay on the field for any real amount of time.

I use Power Word: Barrier on the pull as the only other time during the encounter that I will need it will be near the end when we're cycling raid cooldowns, but I'll talk about that later. Once we've pulled and gotten our above team onto their silk strands, we continue killing the smaller spiders that spawn on the web until another type of spider spawns.  The smaller "Cinderweb Spiderlings" are dealt with solely by our Hunter, while the rest of our DPS on the ground is free to concentrate on keeping the number of living Spinners low, and DPS'ing the final type of add, the "Cinderweb Drone"  the drone should be picked up and tanked by your  Below Teams tank, dps should be on it for a considerable portion of the fight, as if they don't die within a set amount of time they will climb the web to Beth'tilac and cause her to Transition phases more quickly, giving your above team less time to damage her before the final phase.

During most of the fight you're just keeping your below tank up from the constant damage he will be taking from the drone, I took this job simply because I was able to smite heal the drone for a considerable portion of the encounter while whoever was helping me heal the bottom took care of the random damage people were taking from the Cinderweb Spinnners lava bolts. The extra dps also helps ensure that the drone dies before his allotted time and is not given the chance to engage the final phase prematurely.

I had the chance to heal the above team for several tries, and there really isn't much to say honestly, make sure your above tank takes the first silk strand, as whoever ends up there first is going to be the melee target for Beth'tilac, and she hits like a raid boss should. Once you're up however it's simply a matter of dodging slow moving meteors that constantly bombard the upper web, burning holes in it wherever they hit (these are actual holes, you WILL fall through to the lower chamber if you walk over one and you will likely die to fall damage if you do so). I found the healing up there slightly too high for just smite healing though, but easily manageable through traditional healing methods (boooooring), so to maximize efficiency we let our Holy Paladin deal with the above section now.

The above team is only able to stay up on the web for a certain amount of time, this is denoted by an energy bar on Beth'tilac herself, which slowly depletes, when it reaches zero she will cast a Fire AOE spell that will kill anyone left on the above platform, so the 3 or 4 people you have up there fighting her  will need to hop down through the large hole in the middle of her web, doing so will prevent fall damage, though if you're a Mage or some other class with a slowfall feel free to use a closer hole burned by a meteor if you want. Once she casts the AOE it's right back up to the web for the above team to continue damaging her, this AOE occurs 3 times before Beth'tilac will decide that she has had enough and will descend to the ground floor. We found that if no drones were allowed to climb up the web and siphon her energy (that's how they cause her to cast her AOE more quickly), we would always have one final group of Cinderweb Spiderlings spawn, these have to be killed IMMEDIATELY, as they heal any of the bigger spiders that they come within range of, and when Beth comes down from her upper web, she will land right next to this final group of Spiderlings. Assuming you manage to kill all of them, and  your above team did a fair amount of damage to Beth, the fight becomes fairly simple. Everyone but your tanks just stacks on her rear and she will begin to pulse an initially weak fire AOE that will gain damage as time goes on. As the damage becomes less manageable, the raid leader should begin to call out and coordinate raid cool-downs as your healers need them. The tanks also have to swap as she will de-buff one, however the mechanic seemed fairly simple. Just keep the AOE heals up during the final burn phase and pray your dps is hot enough to kill her before your healers either run out of mana or the fire AOE kills your raid completely.

Well that was a little long winded, lets just pretend it makes up for the few days I was gone :] til next time folks

2 comments:

  1. Awesome! I played WoW for quite a while but switched back to Starcraft 2.
    +followed

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  2. I have played many games in my life time... I guess Im a little late for this one. Do you think, if I enter and play it, will be fun for me?

    I like your blog, it looks well done and organized, I ll be following you.

    ReplyDelete