Rift Raid tactics discussion thread

[Raedwulf]

Yes, I know we have the guides & very good they are too. But the guides tend to be geared toward a certain group balance. What happens if that balanced group isn't available? As many of you will know by know, I'm not a lover of standing around for an hour trying to find one more {whatever}. I'm a great believer that good players (& we all think we're good, right? ;) ) adapt to what they have at hand & do things differently if necessary. Admittedly that's a bit more difficult in the raid instances, but nevertheless!

The purpose of this thread is to provide a discussion area for alternate tactics for The Rift, & also to provide a space for people to ask "Why do we do this this way?" {I also believe that knowing why helps greatly with putting knowing what into action!} So ask questions, make suggestions. If someone knows why something won't work, they can explain why; if something hasn't been tried, there's something to experiment with if the circumstances demand it...

I'll start off with... Day two "requires" a Champion. We need the clobber skill to interrupt the fumaroles, & to stop Shadow Eater or Stone Biter from doing something nasty (I forget which/what, since I've never seen it happen!). How would you cope if you've no Champion? The Guardian has a Stamp skill that's also a clobber interrupt, but it's a much longer cooldown. If you had 4 GDNs, could they sequence their Stamps to the same effect? What other options are there?

[Caransil]

... & to stop Shadow Eater or Stone Biter from doing something nasty (I forget which/what, since I've never seen it happen!). ...

They summon a 9k elite

[Derigar/Tarinas]

You clobber them to stop the shadowy aura move, which drains the power from the whole group, which is never a good thing :)
Burglars also have an interrupt move, again with a larger CD, but really he doesn't use this move enough for the absolute requirement of a character that can interrupt every 3-5 seconds, just someone able to throw one out every now and then. Although really, apart from ever-seer who can do some truely nasty things if he gets off too many of his attacks, a champion really isn't a necessity for any section of the rift - even the fumeroles, while much harder with urfons, is still very possible as long as you only trigger one fumerole at a time. As far as i'm concerned, there are only a few classes that are absolute 'must haves' for the bosses

Barz - LM, backup stunner (LM/Burg), guardian, offtank, 2 minstrels, captains possibly
Zurm - same
Fruz - tank, healer
Zogtark - tank, off-tank, minstrel, hunter
Narnulubat - minstrel, tank, LM
Biter-brothers - 2 tanks, minstrel
Thrang - 2 tanks, 2 minstrels, LM
Roggy - guardian, 2 LM, 2 minsrels, champion, burglar, 2 captains

Any role described above that is not specifically a class is one i think can be filled by any class that can do the job required. Rest of the roles can be filled by most classes; hunters are always nice for DPS, an extra guardian as the off-tank is preferred, etc, but are NOT essential.

[Rhyaehar]

Zogtark is very hard with only one hunter to be honest. I've been in that position before. It took 2 LMs to keep me powerfed and one minstrel and a captain full on healing me.

[Derigar/Tarinas]

True, another hunter there would help, although another tactic may be to do such a large amount of damage to both drakes while on the ground that one hunter could easily finish them off when they take off, although this is slightly off the point that rigid set-in-stone class setups are not needed if you can satisfy a few basic roles. The main reasons i joined this group in the first place was how well the group did on bosses without the standard class structure; we had a captain as main tank in a few fights and still cleared them almost flawlessly, although i do admit some fights have more rigid requiremets than other, none have an absolute "If you don't enter with these 12 classes you will fail" requirement.

[Rufus]

LoreMasters can do decent ranged damage too so they can cover the second hunter role.

Ruf

[Rhyaehar]

I've seen a raid try that before (when I was only hunter). Problem with that is, it can only be done by one Loremaster, and only just. One of them will be constantly powerfeeding the minstrels and hunter, as the hunter should switch on Strength for this. It gets real tricky with one hunter. However, a decent group should manage.

[Raedwulf]

And that's the point - not should it be done; because ideally you'll have the balance you want; but can it be done, because that beats standing around for an hour or abandoning a raid for lack of that one extra {whatever}... So now we of one more way we can do things differently...

Does anyone else have any thoughts on what the minimum spec's are for the bosses? Or what the ideal balanced group is for each day?

[Rhyaehar]

On Boss 5 (Narnulubat), having 2 champions would be very nice. With them having (that berserker toggle that gives them great damage at the cost of evade) switched on, they would be ideal for killing the darklings, even at the later stages of the fight. This would leave the hunters to do what they do best, single-target nuking on the Seers/Boss.

On boss 6 (Shadow-Eater), they could each take one of the two bosses and keep clobbering them with the worst weapon they can find, to minimize their damage. That should keep their casts down to a minimum.

They might even have a good use at Thrang. Thrang does nothing but shoot that wound at people, so when clobbered by one champ, he can't do a thing. This would mean the rest will have a lot of work killing the shamans, but hey.. When a Shaman is singled out and clobbered properly, he can hardly heal.

[Derigar/Tarinas]

Some interesting uses for champions, although i question putting anyone up top with thrang as they will almost certainly be targetted by him at some point, and that will mean the minstrel will likely have to move to get into heal range which a) takes time and b) means they will be at risk of generating agro while in line of sight of thrang.

[Daphne]

Dunno where to put this but some input regarding the Barz fight (which all agree is giving us often more trouble then it should): aka the reasons why we wipe

In my observance (and I've seen my share of wipes there) they are usually caused by:

a: people getting caught by his deadly attack - so everyone needs to keep half an eye on his movements, most especially also during the adds phases when this is the most dangerous as everyone is busy with something else - so at this time the Barz tank should maybe announce on TS when he goes off towards the group, and ofc everyone who sees it should shout the warning to scatter when he does his deadly thing - better to have half a dozen scream it on TS then it going unnoticed.

If he just kills a dps or two that is usually not a wipe (unless it reduces dps too much), but if he kills some keymembers like Minstrels or Loremasters (who then maybe cannot be rezzed) we are in serious trouble.

b: frankly speaking, the fact that it is bloody hard to tank the adds, thanks to everyone being all over the place.
I think that at the start of the addphase we should try that everyone (and that means the ranged dps too and most especially the minstrel who heals the maintank as he will usually get aggro - MT shouldn't really need any healing at this point anyways if he does his kiting right), should collapse together in one spot. If the add tank has to chase all over for Mobs adding on people (and PLEASE could people run TOWARDS the tank with their adds and not away....) the likelyhood is high he will not be able to get them all off you.

c: It might also help here if the classes who can take a bit of beating like Champs or Captains are ready to pick up on strays - they might also manage that thing we have done on the spiders in Hele last time of a tank aggroing a mob who should be mezzed but is in the middle of a pulk and pulling it out so it can be remezzed. One of our biggest problems is after all when a Slave or Slavemaster is right in the middle of the smaller adds that should be AoEed.

d: in the first add phase the troll cannot be tanked from the start as it will attack randomly ... however it should stay close to the keeper so again people should maybe not stand too far apart and the tank needs to try and move the keeper so its close to the troll (this also holds for the earlier pulls - as the troll just cannot be controlled it is really up to the tank who has the Keeper to keep him close - and yes I know whereof I speak as I got that nicely wrong myself once :oops: )

/huggels
Daphne

[Raedwulf]

Yes, this is exactly the right place, Daphne! :)

Agree fully with c) & d). In fact, I might even be the one who suggested both tactics originally! At least, I hadn't heard anyone else voice them before. We really do need to get into the habit of tanking awkward mobs out of the way, instead of screaming "No AoE! No AoE!" If you don't, you knacker a large part of the CHM & LM damage output & make the fight a lot longer than it needs to be. A longer fight means more chance of something going wrong.

There's something about this in the forthcoming class guides that Nimminas are producing. I was only going to post them here when they were all ready, but perhaps I'll post the CHM & LM guides this evening - they're both already finished...

[Derigar/Tarinas]

I think while the troll/keeper have caused a few deaths over the past month or so (including me once, although i'm certain that was someone elses fault :P), if we have 2 captains, then the healing is definately managable. The problem is that on Barz inparticular, the slave master has managed to get his buff up every single week for at least a month, one week as i'm sure we all remember it caused us to wipe on him twice and not get any further. The point i'd like to emphasise is that if he starts doing the buff animation 'I'll put and end to you, vermin!', it doesn't matter if he is in the corner, or in the middle of the group; addle/clobber/stun/mes do whatever it takes to stop that move from completing. If the stun gets broken (fairly likely if he's in the middle of the group) then so be it, we can then carry on with the normal plan of taking him to the time-out corner to think about what he's done. If he gets the buff up, multiple people will die, if the wrong people die (minstrels, captains, LM's) then we wipe.

[Notiane]

If those class guides are coming I will not have to put in that suggestion :), so onto what I think of the Barz fight, after reading Daphne's post, if the LM has the AoE trait equipped(wouldn't know name atm), he can root up to 8 targets(with Herb Lore) which could be very usefull with the add waves (one of the few times this many is usefull, so I usually don't have it) So LM stuns slave healer, waits for adds to get some distance from stunned slave, roots, and we have a 30 second window with much less adds to get the master out. Also, Cracked Earth can root up to 5, but the root kicks in after 10 seconds, and the inital damage would draw aggro to the LM, so would be harder to use, as eveyone would have to be aware of the CE icon, and stop damaging when the root kicks in.

[Derigar/Tarinas]

Yes, i agree with the fundamental basis for this idea, which is we need to get the master stunned as quickly as possible and keep him stunned, because regardless of mes breaking and annoyances; if the master is stunned anywhere, he will not be buffing and killing us all.

A possible idea along the same lines is to root/mes (or a combo of the two) the master the second he appears, then move everyone else very far away from him (the corner near the edge of the cliff for example) so even if the master got his buff up, he will be stuck where he is and won't buff his friends. As long as barz is not hitting the main tank, this should hopefully be enough distance to keep all the adds outside of his range, the only possible problem could be pale folk hitting the main tank while he is in range of a buffed master, so he may need to bring barz a little closer for this bit and sit tight taking hits until they are dead (on the bridge should be close enough).

Note: I'm making a huge assumption here that i've never really been able to confirm (due to running for my life mostly) that the buff only applies when an enemy is in range of the master who has the buff on, so that if an enemy leave the range, the buff disappears.

[Raedwulf]

You're talking about Deep Lore, Noti. Personally, I wouldn't waste a slot on equipping it, because there are many more useful traits I could equip. How often do you really need +5 AoE targets? Not very...

My question regarding the Barz-wave slavemaster is - why DO we need to move him? It's the accepted wisdom, it's the instruction given every time. But if he's stunned & out of the way, does it matter where the hell he is? He's stunned, he's not buffing, he's not subject to AoE. Why do we need to move him to the back of the cavern?

If there isn't a good answer to that... We stun him when he comes in, move everything else out of range, then massacre it. Much easier, surely?

[Rhyaehar]

I think the decision to move him was made back in the days when there was some moronic champion doing dumb things. Your average champion so to say. Stunning him where he is would be fine, it's the rest that needs to watch the AoE attacks while the tanks have not yet managed to drag the other NPCs out.

[Raedwulf]

Your average Anything, Mr Biased Hunter Git! :P Sooooo... The next time we do a full Day One, we've several intersting new tactics to properly test - balling up on the Troll-masters; tanking out awkward mobs before mezzing; and stunning the Boss-wave SM's as soon as they appear. This could be me demanding you do this. Start thinking about it now. I'm very demanding, me (sic) am... ;)

[Notiane]

I agree, Raed, on the Deep Lore not being the most usefull trait. It is nice with the huge number of pale folk adds, but they rarely cause a problem. And also, I think the slave master should be stunned as soon as he appears. A thought on those add waves, ONLY the LM's (or burg if he's stunning/back up stunning) move to where the adds spawn, the rest of the groups stays where they are (somewhere in the middle of the room, near the stairs) and wait for the adds to come to them. that way the stuns would always be far from the fight. The stunner would have to drag them there, but that shouldn't be any problem.

[Bino]

Hi,
I was thinking about distraction skill. None of the groups I was in actually use it so I wonder whether it is even possible. I suppose it wont work on bosses but maybe it could work on other mobs. Does anyone have an experience with that?
Problem is that it doesnt stick everytime, so you need to have a LM/BRG as a backup for the stun.
Another thing is that the higher level of the mob, the lower chance it will succeed.
And of course you cant use it in combat.
The advantage of this is that it works like kind of perma-stun, if it sticks on the mob he/she/it just stands on the spot like a stupid monkey and you can run around him, mocking him, whatever, without being noticed.

[Derigar/Tarinas]

True, its a very nice skill, the only issue as you pointed out is that it fails suprisingly often. If the move does fail then you have to be ready for all the enemies charging towards the minstrel at once and to stun/root/mes the targets on the move and making sure all the enemies are agroed quickly to avoid the minstrel taking too much damage.

[Raukothaurondir]

Our tactic for the slave/slavemaster wave is just to stun the slave and have the champ immediately go on the slavemaster and clobber. The group then stands together on one spot, all in melee range of each other (near the back if you like) and not spread out, this way the tank can aggro all without having to chase after minstrels etc. We then dps the slavemaster and adds down using aoes as the slave is mezzed away from group.
This way you only need to mez 1 target so have plenty of backups if a resist happens. Also on that last wave you have 2 ranged mobs which are a pain to try and tank and who will also be targeting minstrels, so having spare stuns/mezzes for them can only be a good thing (or a burglar with enrage traited, to pull them into melee range).

[Derigar/Tarinas]

I think the plans that involve taking the enemies away from the slave master in the barz fight inparticular are the ones most likely to work, as typically the master has been getting the buff up so quickly as of late we don't have time to properly react. Also, any decent plan for dealing with the master needs to take into account that stuns/roots/messes have the habit of failing when you need them most, which does mean if a single clobber is resisted for example, that the buff will succeed and unless we have a backup plan or have already seperated the enemies, it'll come down to luck that we've either killed enough enemies already or that the buffed mobs don't target and defeat our essential classes (ie main tank, both minstrels or both LM's)

[Raedwulf]

I don't think Clobber can be resisted. The problem is more that the Champion has to constantly back away to drag the Slave Master to where the current plan requires him to be. Inevitably, that runs the risk of moving him out of range at just moment when the SM starts his induction. You then get a whole load of IF's come into play - IF the CHM can't get back in melee range in time; IF he gets stuck into an induction / CD off of one of this own skills (the last time this happened with me as CHM, I got caught out of range with my bow attack animation going off); IF something happens to distract him; IF the SM chooses to start immediately after the CHM last Clobbered him (3s CD); THEN we have a problem because I *think* the induction on that SM buff is quite quick, certainly less than 3s.

My vote goes to stunner & back-up, hit him as soon as he appears & keep him there. There shouldn't be any reason for anyone to need to go near him until after Barz is dead, & anything else can be dragged away, one by one if necessary. The only risk is if a "Bones" happens in the wrong place & keeps the stunners far enough away to allow him to escape & buff, but that's pretty unlikely! I don't know what Rhy will do tonight, but this is certainly what I will be trying on Monday.

[Notiane]

This thread is slowly becoming a "Barz tactics discussion thread" :Y , so onto Barz...Maybe our first priority should be stun the Master, the healer should be stunned as well, clearly, but she posses no threat up to the point where the adds actually been dealt some damage, and even if she gets off a heal or two, that can be overcome. The Master's buff can cause havoc straight from the start...

As the thread actually is about ALL the rift, something to discuss on other bosses: the biter boys. We currently bring down both to around 10k, then keep switching targets. Nothing wrong with that, but another group I used to run with brought the two together (after bringing them down to 10k), then had G1 concentrate on the one boss, the other group on the other, giving Champs and LM's a chance to AoE to their likings, and a single hunter could compensate easily if one goes down too fast(or too slow) I'm not saying this or that would be better, I just think this would be a valid tactic, especially if we'd have more then just the one champ in the group(which doesn't happen all that often, I know).

And then there's Narnulusomething, Narn. Having been on wound removal more then once, and also been the minstrel on the main tank, I think it may be possible to have those two handle the darklings on that side, while keeping the MT alive as well. Don't get me wrong this will not be easy, as a lore master I have no trouble dps-ing all out, and cure wounds on the MT when needed, as a minstrel I needed to focus on healing with all I had, but a more accomplished minstrel might be able to do wath I talked about. This would free another player (captain) to take down the shamans, faster kills, easier fight, happy faces all around.

Your thoughts, please, more accomplished minstrels (Yes, Tari, that means you). Can Narn's movement be slowed when the Shamans are still up? if so, I'm sure this could work, as the tank would avoid damage by running away from Narn to kill darklings, freeing some time for the minstrel to do the same, and, as said, I know the LM should be able to take out most, so with the help of both tank and minstrel, the darklings shouldn't pose a threat.

[Raedwulf]

As the thread actually is about ALL the rift, something to discuss on other bosses: the biter boys. We currently bring down both to around 10k, then keep switching targets. Nothing wrong with that, but another group I used to run with brought the two together (after bringing them down to 10k), then had G1 concentrate on the one boss, the other group on the other, giving Champs and LM's a chance to AoE to their likings, and a single hunter could compensate easily if one goes down too fast(or too slow) I'm not saying this or that would be better, I just think this would be a valid tactic, especially if we'd have more then just the one champ in the group(which doesn't happen all that often, I know).

The Guide (which doesn’t look entirely up to date with our current tactics) says Kill Shadow-eater first, if you dont do it, several adds will spawn. After Shadow-Eater is dead, there will be a spawn of few Darklings and two more monsters, kill Darklings before they turn into elites, then kill the other two. Then kill Shadow-Eater’s ally, Stone-Biter.

There’s nothing here about bringing both down to 10K, so why do we do it? And, since Noti says it isn’t necessary to keep them apart, why have we been? Reading between the lines above, it implies that X seconds after Shadow-Eater dies "there will be a spawn of few Darklings and two more monsters". I presume that those two monsters are world-eaters & that, by killing the Biters more-or-less simultaneously, we avoid having them spawn, yes? I presume also that the reason for keeping the two apart is, if my memory serves corrcetly, they start with different morale totals?

In which case, Noti’s tactic seems perfectly valid to me. If anyone’s worried about the two getting out of sync, bring Eater down to 5-6K, then bring Biter alongside when he’s reached the same level.

On Narnulubat (correct spelling!), the Guide says "Let MT start by tanking Narnulabat - best is to kite him around the platform as he hits very hard. Use anything you can to slow him (tar ftw)" which is exactly Noti’s suggestion, so why did we stop doing it this way?

[Rhyaehar]

On Narnulubat (correct spelling!), the Guide says "Let MT start by tanking Narnulabat - best is to kite him around the platform as he hits very hard. Use anything you can to slow him (tar ftw)" which is exactly Noti’s suggestion, so why did we stop doing it this way?
Narnulubat has a flame aura around him while the adds are alive, burning all in range slowly. Kiting him around the platform would only increase the required input of the Minstrels. Added to that, there's the 100% damage reflection during that stage. How would a champion feel if you did your bladestorm, had a nice crit worth a few 100s morale, to see them coming back to you?

[Raedwulf]

Fair enough! :) I ask questions like this partly because I don't know why we do what we do a lot of the time (or don't do something else); and partly because, even if I do, I bet there are others who don't. Never having tanked Narn, I wasn't aware of the aura. Having tried Clobbering Thrang last week & found the same thing, though, it sounds like Turbine had a bit of a theme going here! ;)

[Derigar/Tarinas]

More accomplished? me? Your first mistake is a costly one :P

As for Narnulubat, for reasons stated above about the 100% damage reflection, the lack of room to move about nd the added shadow/fire aura damage the tank/party would be taking from being exposed to additional enemies and the increased difficulty of LOS and range for healing, i think moving him about too much would probably not be a good idea, but hey, i'm all for experimenting (as i have no idea if slowing him works, can't see why it wouldn't though).

The high damage he deals to the main tank should be taken into account for those that are unaware of it as it means the main tank minstrel needs to be a bit of a healbot for this fight. To put it in perspective - not including barz's bone gnawing fun-time or the balrog's tantrums on the elf chick, i don't think a single enemy deals more damage per hit than narnulubat. There have been times (more than once, which is why i slightly dread this fight), where i have Anthem of the free people up (+20.1 in-combat morale regen for fellowship), +10% fire mitigation and am doing nothing but firing off heal after heal on the main tank and Narnulubat was able to out-damage my healing.

[Derigar/Tarinas]

For those that are curious as we often don't explain it, heres a brief list of why we do certain things in the rift (i'm certain i don't know a few, but can hazard a guess) or points of interest.

Troll and troll keeper - keep together as distance between the two is directly proportional to the damage they deal us. Far apart the troll can easily deal 2500 per hit. The troll attacks people at random with heavy AoE attacks directed at everything infront of him until the keeper is defeated

Slave and slave master - Slave heals very rapidly and is an elite master, hence its easier to deal with her at the end. Slave master has a buff preceeded by the phrase 'I'll put an end to you vermin!' which increases the damage of all allies within a certain radius (10m or so) by 300%, which kills people quickly. This is why we try to keep him stunned in a corner away from the group

Barz before Zurm - If killed the other way around, Barz gets another attack, something along the lines of 'I will bring the cavern down on you' which is followed by large shadows appearing on the ground. Anyone still in the shadows 3 seconds later will all take heavy damage.

Barz - We should all know most of this stuff by now, so i'll just mention about 'No power is stronger than barz'. When he says this, he will pick someone, attempt to stun them, runs over to them, hits them once or twice, steals a chunk of thier power and then runs back to the person with most agro. If anything, when barz uses this attack and starts heading towards you, if you are able to, you should run towards him so he can get on with hitting you and getting back to the tank. While it doesn't matter too much as long as you don't run away from barz, the problem is he occasionally decides to do a bone gnaw immediately after he has run to the target. If he is in the middle of everyone when he does the bone gnaw, its very possible that 2 or 3 people will be caught by suprise and killed. Death is a bad thing.

Dave - The ranged attack he has focuses on the person with the second highest amoun t of agro on him and usually stays with the same person for the whole fight. The attack stuns whenever it hits.

Fruz - The waves of enemies heal fruz for 1500 morale every 2 or 3 seconds when they reach him, hence we keep them apart and kill them before they arrive

Zogtark - The drakes stop attacking and move to their take-off positions when they drop down to 20k out of 24k morale. When airbourne then hurl fireballs that often deal about 1500 damage a hit. They need to reach the spots before flying, so we slow them down with everything we have to avoid too many fireballs being thrown at us. Zogtark also heals the drakes if he is anywhere even remotely close to them (he seems to heal between a third and half of their morale) so we take him right to the far corner to keep them apart

Fumeroles - Activate when you approach, so we take a certain path very slowly. We clobber (don't use addle as they are immune to all cry type attacks) to stop fumerole spawns (these guys reflect 100% damage and also apply a fire DoT to people nerarby. The orc waves stop when someone reaches the top platform, so its common to see someone run on ahead after the third fumerole fight has been started.

Narnulubat - Reflects 100% of damage until the shamans are dead. Deals heavy wounds to the main tank which can mean the minstrels are unable to keep up with the healing. If the darklings reach the swirling hole they transform into summoned darklings, which are elite enemies. If we use certain skills (tar/some stuns/roots/ some messes), the darklings teleport up to the platform, often the people killing them are so close to the spawn point that they miss this.

Biter bros - Unsure really, mostly just guesses as every group i have been in since the first where we worked out what happens if either dies too soon has killed them at the same time and had no issues. I think one of them summons darklings from the corner of the room and if they reach the other guy they transform. We kill them as close together as possible to stop tons of adds from appearing, which i suspect is from darklings coming from the dead enemy's corpse, so if they are close together, the elites start coming immediately.

Thrang - If Eimyr isn't tanked, he can one shot everyone. If we try to tank Thrang, the tank dies very quickly (thanks to Raed for suiciding himself to find this out :P). When the shamans are in LOS with each other, they can heal each other considerably (4k a heal i think). If you try to fight too many at once, they will just heal themselves up to full very easily. As if it needs saying, we explode fumeroles by thrang to temporarily remove his debuff so we can actually kill the git.

Balrog - We listen to the elf chick because she is lonely, we are kind and caring, but mainly because she has the damn keys to the door. We stand on the sigil during the second stage of the fight because while we are near the elf chick, we get 6000 in-combat morale regen, so the minstrels don't need to heal anyone. We keep the rog enraged during this part as if he goes for the elf chick, he hits her for 6000 damage a hit. When both levers have been pulled, the damage dealt to the elf goes down to the usual about (about 700 a hit), but he starts using the hope strip/damage move known as Baleful Roar, which affects everyone in LOS, so we hide round the corner and rush around when he does a roar in the hope that he doesn't do two in quick succession. We clobber the ever-seer to stop him getting off his wound/fear moves that can deal heavy damage or outright kill us. Next we pull levers 1,2 and 4 to open the door (no idea why those 3). The rest of the fight we stay on the sigil for no real reason, its just a nice visual and auditory marker for us (e.g 'GET TO THE F%^&ING SIGIL FOR HOPE'). Melee units and the tank arrange themselves so that everyone except the tank is attacking from the rog's side to minimise damage taken (tank will move to get the elf chick in the right spot, rest of you need to pay attention). We run when he jumps as its instant death if he catches anyone. We enrage at 12k to stop him killing the elf chick in 3 attacks. We steal his sword because we're bastards.

[Raedwulf]

Love it! Excellent post, Tari! _O_ Two small clarifications required, though. The first from you - could you edit that last sentence in the Burz para, cos I have no idea what you mean. The second from me - I didn't actually die Clobbering Thrang. I don't know whether Clobbering him made any difference; I do know that his aura was killing me far faster than my iCMR & skills could keep up. So I hastily dropped off the top! It's not a workable tactic in a standard group, unless (possibly & we might try this) the minstrel responsible for the left pocket full of GDNs & melee types stands on the balustrade at the inner side of the stairs where, hopefully, he can see both the pocket below & the CHM above.