The RRU Rough Guide to Barad Guldur

[Raedwulf]

The Hardest Raid Ever Devised!

Well, that's what Turbine claim, anyway. We'll see. New content is always exciting. Alas, often enough, it's disappointing because you realise there's a simple trick to it. Or it's bugged or otherwise flawed. But, so far... {Evil Grin}

Guldur is a high radiance raid. Even with the new cower mechanics, you still require a bare minimum of 55 equipment radiance plus dp hope to not be auto-cowering. Frankly, that isn't enough, and you won't be taken, except out of sheer desperation, if you've less than 85 equipment radiance. There's ample opportunity via the DG Instances to acquire radiance, so no real excuse for not making it to 100, even if it is a bit of a bloody grind.

[Raedwulf]

Will you walk into my parlour,
Said the spider to the fly...

Didn't warn you about the two dirty great big bouncers on the parlour door, did she! They're less scary than their Nemesis looks suggest. Pull one into each pocket beside the door, kill each in turn. They each have a rather vicious AoE attack, which is why you want to keep them apart. Get hit with both in quick succession & people will be dying. Keep them apart, kill the Shadow-mace first, kill the Flame-axe second. The Flame-has a big, fiery, floor glyph AoE aatack; he also explodes on death (that's why we kill him last). Non-melee types stick to the red carpet as much possible. Partly because you're mostly out of the way of both; mostly because there's no point in unnecessarily annoying the Nazgul by increasing his cleaning bill when you bleed... ;)

Then comes the gauntlet. This is new, different, intense, and... interesting! You have to get upstairs. With reinforcements coming down from above, up from below, and out from the doors at the sides! Niiiiice...

There are three mob-types here; Uruks, Wargs, and Gobbo's. The Gobbo's are a nuisance. Therefore ignore them as much as possible. They think they're ranged, so they have that irritating habit of slowing you & running off somewhere; plus it's difficult to drag them into one big group since they run away from you if you move too far too fast, as per usual.

Wargs are nastier - they howl, and that howl buffs all enemy damage. A lot. So kill them quick & kill them first (generally speaking). Unless there's a good reason to be killing an Uruk.

A good reason for killing an Uruk is when a second one turns up. Two Uruks is not good; three is really bad news. They have a Raging Blades style all-round AoE attack for a start. It does a lot of damage, and if you have the warg howls on you at the same time... You're in trouble.

Calling incoming reinforcements is dead simple - "Mob type x direction". Direction is either "Front" (always where you are going to) or "Behind" (where you've come from). Don't call left or right, you don't know which way people are facing or which way they are going to look; don't call up or down, much of it is flat! So "Uruk front", "Two wargs behind", and so on, says everything everyone needs to know.

Apart from those basics, it really is a case of playing Follow Your Leader. Your basic targetting instructions are above. So far, we've tried this with two Main Tanks (i.e. GDN / WDN), and the two designated Main's have been the Raid Assists. You follow the RAT. If the Raid Leader calls a different target, then Main Two switches to that & you all follow it (and Main Two - you should never be beating up a goblin unless you've been told to!). Main One always grabs the first Uruk that turns up, & if they can snag a second, should it arrive, so much the better. After that, it's down to the Raid Leader to judge when to fight, when to move, and when to clean up the damn goblins.

How do I do that? Well, so far it runs roughly like this... The stairs, landings, & corridors turn a great deal. Rule 1 is the bulk of the raid should always fight from the corners for maximum line of sight. Rule 2 - always keep the Uruk(s) away from the non-melee portion of the raid. Rule 3 - never worry about goblins unless there's more than 2 & nothing else left to kill. Rule 4 - if there's no Uruks or Wargs, then move to the next corner, unless Rule 3 has been breached. That's the basis of it, the rest is pure ad-hoc judgement. Is it better to have a brief out of combat pause? When was the last Uruk? Is moving now likely to mean we run into him between corners, with maybe a second on the way? That kind of thing. You only need to worry about this if you reckon on leading a run; otherwise just do as yer told! ;)

Eventually, you come to the top of the stairs, where there are two guards, very similar in style to the initial two door wardens, only these are a black-sword and a black-mace. They are weaker versions, but the reinforcements do not stop spawning lower down until they are both dead. On the plus side, no Uruks spawn once you have engaged them. However, triggering them will not de-spawn an Uruk already on the way up. Fighting these two plus an Uruk? Not something you want to be doing! Worse, it is possible to get to the top just as Uruks come out from between them, which will aggro both guards. The way to avoid this one is for everyone bar the Raid Leader to pause at the lower landing; the RL (or his nominated representative) can then make sure he makes it safely to the top of the stairs without that happening.

Wait at the top of the stairs until the next Uruk appears; kill it; kill any wargs; then, on the Raid Leader's call, engage the guards, one tank on each. Crowd control should keep their eyes on the stairs, because wargs & goblins will still appear. Keep them out of action if you can, especially wargs. Kill the guards, kill any remaining reinforcements. Congratulations! You've just made it to the end of an intense 30+ minute fight & you're ready... for a bio break frankly. ;) After that, it's the first boss...

[Raedwulf]

Durchest

Is a right bastard so far. Most important thing to note about this fight so far is if / when you wipe, retreating takes you all the way back to the BG entrance, and the gauntlet will have reset! Which is a right pain. There is apparently some argument over whether this is what is supposed to happen; allegedly the dev responsible has said that it is, but that they will probably change it soon so that it doesn't. It makes dying a particularly painful experience though!

We have downed Durchest in Easy Mode; we haven't tried HM yet; and, as usual with Turbine first big bosses, he drops the boots gem.

To be continued...

[Raedwulf]

Is also a bit nasty & a work in progress. Briefly, you get several wargs (mostly) in stealth, capable of one-shotting most classes from ambush (Guardians should survive; dual wielding champions have been knwon to die); a slightly dandom assortment of spectral guards (i.e. the black -axe -mace -sword variety); one room full of weird Wights (slow, but hard-hitting random target mobs, who can speed up); and Umbarrim Sorcerers, who are a doddle on their own, but also capable of wiping the whole raid. When you've eliminated everything (as we have), the door to the second bosses will open. Ooooo! Now are they scary!! (Well, so far...)

In progress...

[BSili IronMight]

The Twins

Some thoughts for all >>

*Purple eye - remove with fear pot, if on cooldown say in TS.. your friendly Captain will Muster Courage to save you :)

*Blue eyes on yer head - Try to notice this asap! Very Important take yourself to the side (or wherever you have been designated to take your pools), wait in place till the eye goes then walk away, moving too early will bring the pool closer to group and it wont be in the right place.. moving too late may mean you take the pool damage twice.. so be on the ball :D

*Pool Placement advanced - If your on the ball.. notice the eye move to wall and side step till you hit the pool to the left (or right) then step where you came from to be out of the pool by one step and drop the pool. By the same token when theres already a row etc.. you can move up close till you see the pool debuff affect you then step back.. wait till pool is dropped then move away. Not sure everyone is realising this.. partly to do with being in a panic and partly to do with not noticing straight away when they have an eye so they have less time which then also makes them panic.

*If you get the green eye in the melee group take yourself to the side away from everyone with back to wall, wait till you fly and lose the eye before returning to your usual place. Green eye is an aoe damage/knock back/threat wipe all rolled into one so important to not get anyone else with it.

*If your in the melee aggro rotation group.. and you currently have aggro on the boss and you get an eye.. its not a good idea to go to the wall the furthest away from the healers to drop the eye.. because you have the aggro your also going to be taking alot of damage so in this scenario the pool should be dropped at the sides of the boss. However if your in melee group and currently don't have aggro you can go furthest away etc.. Also if you currently have aggro you can't wander off more than 2 big squares (unless away from group) cause you will move the boss.


Main Tactic for defeating Twins (Variations) >>>

The idea of Variation A is to minimise the amount of time everyone has to suffer with both sets of eyes as well as the amount of time having to suffer with the dread increase. So this tactic should be better for those with less radiance as we should suffer less resists for a longer period (till Fire Boss goes past 230k).

1. Bring both bosses to ~300K (Eyes start at 230K)
2a. Steadily DPS Shadow down to 230k, once eyes appear we are switching to total DPS mode, use all available skills etc that increase the damage given to the Shadow Boss as well as the usual things that are keeping us alive (corruption removal, debuffs etc.), important to not go silly and start dying but also important to DPS hard. So as example we have Captains rotating the use of oathbreakers, Burglar using counter defence etc.. think of what you can do to increase the damage on the boss for everyone and yourself.
2b. During that time our Fire Melee group is steadily doing their thing DPS'ing Fire making sure to get aggro when they should but not to excessively damage if possible past 230k (when eyes start) till Shadow is close to 50k.
3. DPS main focus is on the Shadow till down to 50K.
4a. Switch DPS focus to the Fire and DPS to 20k, as before with all things you can do to increase everyones damage and your own while doing the things that are keeping us alive (corruption removal, debuffs etc.)
4b. During this time Shadow Tank is steadily doing their DPS making sure to wait at 10k if reached first.. till DPS has caught up to 10k on the Fire.
5. DPS Fire & Shadow down to 10k then slow down splitting damage on both again.
6. Kill either Shadow or Fire first followed up with swift killing of the 2nd.
7. Rejoice in the Hard Mode twins victory :) Beware the after fight death! ;)

Note:
*It'll need constant watching during the fight so things may change during but this is the basic outline of what we are trying to do. It's important to do whats asked during this stage as we only have 10 seconds to play with between their defeats.
*It's important that the one we arn't focusing on at the time.. has stuff on it that helps people in other ways.. like anything to do with healing them and taking less damage. I think also to be safe Captains can keep the Mark that heals attackers all the way through, i'm sure with this type of focused DPS switching that we wont miss the incoming damage mark too badly..

Some of the ideas outlined in the following class sections are to help the Melee group by keeping the big fire dot down and to never get the green damage/knock back/threat wipe eye by having efficient swapping of aggro.


Class Specific Sections (Using spoiler tags to not flood the whole thread with block of text, not sure if theres another way to do it :P) >>

Burglar >>>

Things to look to use on top of usual stuff:

*Traiting - Anything that helps with dropping pools.. so Fidelity would help with the shadow one, I presume also this kind of damage is classed as Tactical so a bit of -tactical damage should also help here. Apart from that whatever you think is helpful, can reply to this thread with ideas.

*Armour - Anything that helps with the said damage types (Shadow & Fire) also can help when dropping pools.

*Aid the Melee group with swapping of Aggro. What you'll notice is that currently we have a 3 way rotation on the melee group with the Fire Boss. One thing that will help with making sure aggro is swapped quickly is the use of Provoke. You should have target of target on in the UI so you can see who the Fire Boss currently has targetted. Usually there will be a call for aggro swap its up to the incoming melee to firstly use their taunt skill, this will buy you some time to use Provoke at least twice while the Forced Taunt is in effect. So what your noticing here is when the force taunt has worked and the aggro has changed to the new Melee person, then use Provoke.. don't use provoke if the aggro hasn't changed as it will put more aggro on the one we don't want more aggro on currently. Only use provoke the length of time that the force taunt is active, this is just to aid with the swapping and will help the Melees greatly by making sure the dot on them isn't too big. Ignore using Provoke if the target of the boss doesn't change to the person who we want to be the main aggro. You can then go back to using tricks etc. until its time to swap aggro again.

*You are able to use tricks on the bosses as well as removing corruptions on the melee boss mainly and also adding to the dps on that boss. When using a trick on the Shadow boss you have to be very careful, I believe its possible to run in and while moving hit the trick and keep moving so that the shadow boss doesn't get chance to Nova and kill you.

*As to what trick to use i'm not totally sure, Disable's -15% incoming melee damage is no good as there isn't any to note of.. also not sure if -15% attack duration affects the type of skills these bosses do... and Dust in the Eyes not sure if the skills they use can miss and we dont need them to run slower.. it maybe the case that only Counter Defence is useful to use as much as possible so that we can dps faster and get more damage in. It's probably worth trying Disable (for the attack duration) till we get to the 220k morale dread/eye stage then switching to counter defence for helping with the DPS on which ever boss we dps first.. this sounds like it should be effective.

*Maybe keeping addle on the boss as much as possible maybe of some benefit but not sure if any of their skills are classed as having inductions.. won't harm to put it on :D

*Also remember you cannot block, parry or evade anything as no melee or ranged damage coming in so use of any skills that boost that won't help. Plus you shouldn't be getting aggro anyways :D

*Other than that the usual from behind dps, revealing mark etc to help with DPS and anything else I missed :P



Captain >>>

*To Be Completed*



Champion >>>

On top of usual stuff:

*Traiting you'll want to do exactly the same as the Guardians, Trait for -tactical damage (-melee damage is of no use in this fight at all), and wound resistance may help with the fire dot pips (though not sure on that one), also Fidelity will help when dropping shadow pools if you have a space. Last time out I got my -tactical damage up to 14.9%... it helps alot. As for class traiting were doing as much damage as possible on the fire twin so anything that helps with that.

*You'll also want to use items and armour that help with this fight.. pocket item with -tactical damage is good and any armour that has Fire Defence (should have this armour from doing DG instances) on helps alot. In terms of a Guardian wearing their version of the armour.. each lot of fire damage is reduced by around 10% and that is huge.

*The above 2 things aid the healers alot and in turn that aids the group as healers will be able to add their other skills that help us in their healing rotation.

*When entering to melee boss on a aggro rotation initially use your forced taunt, this helps switch aggro off the person it was on previously and helps give you time to keep aggro, so you'll want to do as much stuff during the aggro taunt period to make sure you keep aggro when the forced taunt wears off.

*The use of Rising Ire should be used to help switch aggro as quick as possible (use it during the forced taunt whether taunt resisted or not), if we have a DPS class engaging the Fire Boss from the start (whos not in the melee rotation) you'll want to use this skill on them.. or use it on the groups main healer. Try not to use it on the Guardians or anyone else in the melee aggro rotation because thats making it harder for them when its time for them to come in and swap the aggro. You'll want to use it once during the force taunt period, when that wears off if you have aggro stuck to you then no need to do it a 2nd time, if aggro switches from you then use it a 2nd time etc.

*Just so its clear.. if the taunt resists do what you can to incrase your damage and threat in order to snap back aggro asap. This includes Rising Ire.

*Ebbing Ire can also be used if the person in melee rotation is finding it hard to get aggro from you, you'll want to dump it on them because you don't want that fire dot on you to get big! Be careful of this skills use as it transfers 10% more than you can gain from one Rising, although this can be rectified by using Rising two or three times on your next aggro swap. Probably best to use it by noticing if the melee aggro that went in after you keeps aggro after taunt wearing off, if not you can use it. Also if the melee that went in after you has their taunt resisted so the aggro is still on you say 8-10 secs after coming out.. use it then also.

*Use feral strikes as much as possible when your in with the boss as main aggro (or attempting to be main aggro). The less corruptions the less damage we take from the Fire Boss.

*Also remember you cannot block, parry or evade anything as no melee or ranged damage coming in so use of any skills that boost that won't help.

*Other than all that do your usual stuff and anything else thats useful that I missed :P



Guardian >>>

On top of the usual stuff:

*Traiting you'll want to Trait for -tactical damage (-melee damage is of no use in this fight at all), and wound resistance may help with the fire dot pips (though not sure on that one), also Fidelity will help when dropping shadow pools if you have a space.. Last time out I got my -tactical damage up to 14.9%... it helps alot. As for class traiting while were doing as much damage as possible on the fire twin we want to maintain survivability so I tend to stick with Fighter of Shadow line instead of going DPS traits. We can do a fair amount of damage in Overpower without retraiting and we are never in long enough for power to be an issue.

*You'll also want to use items and armour that helps with this fight.. pocket item with -tactical damage is good and any armour that has Fire Defence (should have this armour from doing DG instances) on helps alot. In terms of a Guardian wearing their version of the armour.. each lot of fire damage is reduced by around 10% and that is huge. If you can afford to have the -tactical damage scroll on your belt then do so, although I got up to 14.9% without it.

*The above 2 things aid the healers alot and in turn that aids the group as healers will be able to add their other skills in that help us in their healing rotation.

*When entering to melee boss on a aggro rotation initially use your forced taunt, this helps switch aggro off the person it was on previously and helps give you time to keep aggro, so you'll want to do as much stuff during the aggro taunt period to make sure you keep aggro when the forced taunt wears off. This includes using Engage so that if it works you instantly have aggro once the taunt wears off, if you notice it resist or something that causes it not to work you still have time to hit the boss hard. One thing thats helpful is I slot Guardians Threat Legednary here, if Engage fails you can always switch this on to catch up with the aggro quicker, once you have the aggro keep it on for 8secs while damaging and then switch it off so it should stick to you then. Important to activate it as soon as realised Engage failed. And definately make sure its switched off a few secs after its switched to you.. and extremely important to remember to switch it off when someone else trying to swap aggro with you :P

*You'll want to stick sting on as much as possible in order to help with corruption removals.

*Also remember you cannot block, parry or evade anything as no melee or ranged damage coming in so use of any skills that boost that won't help.

*Other than all that do your usual stuff bleeds, stagger, keeping up ward gives you more armour so will help a bit with this fight etc.. and anything else thats useful that I missed :P