Our voidreaver run

We’re dropping voidreaver fairly consistently these days – not every day and time, but close enough… I’m going to admit I think it’s one of the EASIEST raidheal bosses there is assuming everyone does their job. I”m going to discuss the way we do it, knowing there are other ways, so that you can see why.

Now, first you need to know about the fight. Basically, you’ve got a HUGE circle of a room. (using my casting distance as a measure, I’d say it’s close to 200 yards diameter. Anyway…) You’ve got one mob – a ‘special’ fel reaver called Void Reaver. He’s got two special attacks that matter – one for the close and one for the far. No, let me correct that, he’s got a third special just for the tanks.

For close, he’s got Pounding. 18 yard radius AoE arcane blast centered on the VR – a lot like the Shade of Aran’s arcane explosion, except it’s a 3-second channel that does ~2K (plus or minus a few hundred) damage per one-second tick. Yes, it’s resistable. But still…. 6K in 3 seconds with a 12 second cooldown.

For far, he’s got the ORBs. think of them as Arcane Blast Bubbles that he launches the same way an engineer throws a bomb. He targets someone, launches, and it hits where that person is standing. Or where he WAS standing – you can move out of the impact area. Every. three. seconds. In addition to the blast, the darn thing silences anything it hits. 6K damage, 6 second silence.

And finally, there’s his knockback which is reserved for the tank. Every thirty seconds, Fling – and drop aggro.

So here’s our general plan of action. If you’re melee, you stay in there and trust the healers to keep up with the damage. We use AT LEAST 3 tanks, all fighting to top the aggro (intentionally), so that when one is tossed the VR stays right where he is. And all the ranged type stay at max cast range. And all the healers move in to, well, as close as necessary to keep healing melee. We like to have one dedicated healer per tank, and three more healers who are dedicated to ALL melee to include the tanks. (Tanks are getting not just the pounding but the regular attacks as well – and they are not love taps.) And… we don’t heal anyone else.

Instead, we surround VR in a big circle, but in small groups with enough space between the groups that the adjacent are outside blast range of the orbs. When an orb targets you and your group, you all back up. Literally, as backing is quite fast enough to be outside the range of the orb when it hits. (I called them bubbles for a reason). Sometimes you get targeted repetitively – just run back for two, and if it’s a third run stop, wait for the second to go Boom, and run forward — you’ll be out of range still. And if you, the caster, get hit anyway… that’s what bandages are for.

And unless people get stupid about moving, it’s just an overgrown tank and spank with movement.

The big thing, though, is that you’re on a timer. Ten minutes after the fight begins, VR enrages. We killed him, once, 15-20 seconds after he enraged. It was… ugly, but we were all alive when he did and everyone was still hammering away. We only lost about half the raid in that enrage zone. I can only give you impressions, but the IMPRESSION was that the cooldowns reduced (a lot) at the same time the damage per attack went up (a lot, again). Oh, and the bubbles were a bit faster.

Your raid has to be able to sustain – with moving around – 8000 dps to drop him. Because of all the movement, plan (till you get your own feeling) on everyone doing about 2/3 their normal max. (Some classes will do close to max, some will move so much they contribute a LOT less – just use this as a guide).

We down him fairly well, now. Getting there is a challenge with those frigging birds (the rest of the trash is cake, but accidentally getting two birds is still usually a wipe). But the Reaver is just short of being farm for us.

~ by Kirk on November 28, 2007.