Enhancement Shaman on Ascendant Council (BoT): Tips/Tricks

Note: This is not a complete guide to the boss fight, if you'd like a real guide please visit Tankspot.com or other such sites. This is merely tips and tricks an enhancement shaman can use to help keep their raid alive and maximize total raid uptime.

Phase One: Ignacious and Feludius

The usual strategy is to have melee dps on Ignacious and ranged on Feludius. However, in my guild I usually dps Feludius because I have the best interrupt in the game. This reduces a lot of random outgoing damage from Feludius's Hydrolance, which helps keep people alive and save healer mana. Good awareness will help you here, as Feludius also casts Glaciate which will kill you if you don't run out. You'll need to keep a good eye on both bosses health and slow or stop dps accordingly. Also, don't forget about Aegis of Flame and the interrupt that needs to go out. Usually I don't switch to Ignacious unless my dps is really needed to burn down the shield, but my guild does 25 mans and 10 mans may be different.

Phase Two: Arion and Terrastra

For this phase, you'll want to dps Terrastra unless Arion is way ahead in health. Remember, when Terrastra has Hardened Skin, they'll absorb a lot of damage until the shield is broken, in which they'll take a big hit. If Terrastra is already a bit low and has the buff on him, slow or stop your dps and possibly work on Arion. If you can interrupt the Harden Skin cast, do it. It's a pretty quick cast so be ready for it. There's really nothing too special you can do here as an enhancement shaman. If you see your group is a little low or healers struggling, use a 5 stack of maelstrom on chain heal. Usually there's a lot of movement in this phase, so Healing Rain is not necessarily a good choice unless you have everyone stacking up.

Phase 3: Elementium Monstrosity

During this phase you can help your healers out a lot. There's going to be a lot of damage going out, so as things progress start using maelstrom stacks on chain heal. Again, with all the movement Healing Rain isn't a good option. Another tip is to wait to blow Heroism until the Monstrosity is down to at least 20%. Blowing it right away is okay, but waiting that 5 or so percent really helps the healers. They're able to get more healing out with the haste buff when the damage gets a lot higher.

If you have any questions, leave a comment and I'll answer the best I can!

Melee on Atramedes - Turning Down the Suck

Atramedes is a blind dragon in the Blackwing Lair raid instance. I've noticed that a lot of melee seem to have some difficulty with him - there's a lot of things he does that you need to avoid. You also will have what is called a sound bar during this fight. It, obviously, tracks how much sound you're acquiring. If you get 100 sound, Atramedes will know exactly where you are and brutally eat your face off, resulting in your death. This is not the desired outcome.

For most people, anyway.

The way my guild does this fight is we have all melee stack up on the left side of the room (as you walk in), and all ranged on the right. Usually we put 1-2 healers with the melee and the rest in the ranged group. Atramedes is tanked in the middle, head facing the door you walk in from. We have a hunter mid-direct pull onto our tank, then run back into the ranged group.

The most important part of this fight is tracking your sound bar.

It looks like that. The blue center will grow or shrink depending on how much sound you have. You MUST make sure that your sound bar is visible! If certain elements of your UI are blocking it, you need to move them.

The second most important part is avoiding anything you can that give extra sound. Some things are unavoidable, such as Modulation. Modulation looks like large rings, a bit like a sonar, and fills the entire room. As for things you CAN avoid:

Sonic Breath: "Cast at the highest sound player. Does 15,000 damage per second and adds 20 sound per second. Follows the player faster the higher their sound is." This happens on the ground phase. Depending on what boss mods you're using, you'll probably get a skull or x above you're head. At this point, you need to run away from your group - my guild has them run counter-clockwise, while everyone else takes a step or two in the opposite direction.

Anyone in either the melee or ranged groups can get this, so be ready to run.

Sonar Pulse: "Sends discs of sonic energy flying around the room. If touched inflicts 5850 to 6150 Arcane damage and adds seven sound."

(Yes, I'm dead here.) These are REALLY easily avoided. The easiest way to do it is to stand at maximum range then strafe to the left or right to avoid them. And his hit box is MASSIVE.

That far away I can still hit him with all my abilities and have fair warning when discs are going to come at me.

Air Phase: This phase only lasts 40 seconds, and for that full 40 seconds you want to be constantly moving around the outer parts of the room. Atramedes will be dropping fire on the ground, and more sound discs. The difference here is these sound discs don't move but they do have a sonar bomb that falls into them, and if you're standing in it you gain a whopping 30 sound. He'll also cast Roaring Flame Breath, which is a lot like Sonic Breath. It will target a player and follow them, leaving fire on the ground and speeding up. If you get targeted, you'll want to save any speed boosting abilities for when it really closes in. This breath will target the person with the highest sound going into the air phase, but once someone hits a gong it will then target that person. You shouldn't be hitting gongs unless assigned to it.

If you want to check out the entire boss fight, take a look at this video from Tankspot:

Chimereon and You, the Enh Shaman

*dances*

"Billy Jean is not my loooover, she's just a giiirl that thinks that I am the oooone!"

Chimaeron!

And how to make your healers love you

Do not accidentally hit Chimaeron before the tank/raid leader pulls. This will lead to an immediate wipe, the wasting of food buffs and elixirs, and MUCH grumbling. Keep your back to him and do not target him if you're having issues not hitting him.

This fight is not a dps race UNTIL the last 20% - phase 2. It is mostly a healing fight. Therefore, you want to keep as many people alive for the actual burn phase. This can be really tough on the healers - they have to keep everyone above 10,000 health (except the tanks, who need to be kept as high as possible). And during Duel, which is where Chimaeron's heads fight each other, they need to try to top EVERYONE off as fast as possible and keep them up. This is a huge drain on their mana, obviously. This is where you come in and help and save the day and stuff.

Enhancement shamans have this lovely talent called Maelstrom Weapon. This talent says:

When you deal damage with a melee weapon, you have a chance (higher than rank 2) to reduce the cast time and mana cost of your next Lightning Bolt, Chain Lightning, Hex, or any healing spell by 20%. Stacks up to 5 times. Lasts 30 sec.

Let's look at one part of this. It reduces the cast time AND mana cost of a damage spell, Hex OR HEALING SPELL by 20%.

Free, instant-cast healing spells. And yes, it does work on Healing Rain.

You can be a clutch component on the fight against Chimaeron by using your full 5-stack of Maelstrom Weapon on Healing Rain, Greater Healing Wave, and Chain Heal. You'll keep yourself alive, you'll keep people near you alive, and you will help alleviate some healer headaches.

The best way I've found to do this is to make sure any melee dps near you are right at the edge of 6 yards away from you. Try to position yourself in the middle. Now, watch your health. If you're below 10k and you have a full stack of maelstrom, blow a chain heal off yourself. This will get you up a stabilizing health pool and will help stabilize dps near you as well. After Chimaeron casts Massacre, drop a Healing Rain or chain heal to boost your health back up.

During Duel, drop Healing Rain on the stacked up raid and start smashing Chain Heal, bouncing it off yourself. You're going to run out mana most likely, but your heals will help bring the entire raid up, and once you spread back out again it's absurdly easy to get a full mana bar again. Before Chimaeron goes into phase 2, try to throw a few more chain heals or Healing Rain (or both) to top yourself and others near you off.

Once Chimaeron hits phase 2, all healing is negated, so go back to your normal dps rotation. Be sure to spam Wind Shear whenever it comes off cooldown if you're a pretty high dps to minimize your threat and maximize your time alive. However, if your dps leaves a bit to be desired, you can actually change your imbue to Rockbiter, and change your shocks to Frost Shock to raise your threat. Sacrificing yourself will allow other, higher dps individuals to live longer, increasing the likelihood of a boss kill. Remember, it's about the kill and the team, NOT about your numbers and ePeen.