10-Man Heroic Conclave of Wind

I believe more fight than any this will represent the biggest progression cock block to any guild.  This is specifically because the fight can be broken down into three platforms in which each platform is insanely important.  Remember when you are planning your raid you have to make sure that all platforms are taken care of.  When we first tried this out we brought our standard group and found out very quickly that we would need to bring a specialized group in order to kill this.

In this little guide I will be going down what you need on each platform and what people need to be doing on each platform.

Nature Platform – Anshal

On normal this platform spawns ads that need to be killed.  As well he spawns these circles that heal him and the ads up so he needs to be kited out of those.  The basic strategy in Normal is to group them up and kill them.  Simple enough.

However in heroic mode these ads have quite a bit of health so you will need some bad ass AoEers to take care of this.  However unlike in Normal you can only have THREE DPS TOTAL on this platform.  So you will most definitely need some badass AoE on this platform. You will also want a misdirect be it a hunter or a rogue.  That threat needs  to snap on to the tank immediately so that you can AoE like mad.

The tank will be kiting these ads while maintaining threat using some large radius AoE mechanic (blood boil, thunderclap, consecrate, swipe).  So you want AoE that are going to be able to dump threat.  This means moonkins and elemental shamans are going to be pretty undesireable (unfortunately).  However hunters and fire mages will be amazing.  I’m not saying it’s impossible for hasn’t been done, merely saying it is suboptimal to have certain classes here.

As well you will have to worry about Toxic Spores.  This is a spell that will deal AoE damage so before the ads are even touched they will need to be stunned or frozen until the cast time on Toxic Spores has gone.  Additionally you can just have all ranged on this platform and have the tank kite and get healed through what he has splashed.  Just make sure you have some sort of AoE snare for your tank otherwise he will not be able to kite.

All the DPS on this platform will have to jump across when The Djinn are nearly at full strength.  If you are not using a prot paladin on the frost platform your tank will have to jump as well.  The healer will want to be away from the bridge as the boss will B-line it for him until the replacement tank shows up.

Yes, the healer will always stay on this platform at all times.

Frost Platform – Nezir

This platform is roughly the same as on regular.  On Normal you place a single tank with a single healer here.  You prefer the holy paladin/prot paladin combination so that they can both bubble off their stacks.  Your tank is almost constantly kiting so he’s not in the blue stuff on the ground and is eating frontal cones which he is pointing away from his healer.  There is a stacking and pulsing frost debuff that increases frost damage by 10% so the old strat was to just double bubble it off.

In Heroic you will need two healers assigned to the Frost Platform.  The two healers will alternate between Frost and Wind.  The healer will be responsible for three people on the frost platform, himself, the tank, and a DPS who will be on the frost platform 50% of the time.

Obviously this DPS is going to need to be someone who has high survivability so it needs to be someone who can burn cooldowns to survive or take less damage.  So this cannot be a hunter, if you have a hunter for this I guarantee you that you will wipe (unless you have some bad ass heroic geared healers).

The first jump should take place at about 5 stacks. The healers switch spots and both healers are losing their stacks of a debuff.  When it comes time for the ultimate both healers need to be on the frost platform.  The healer who jumps over is the one without the nature debuff.  If neither have a nature debuff then it is the one with the higher stacks of frost.

Your tanks should switch places (if they need to) as soon as all of the ads are dead on the Nature platform.  This should be near to the time of the ultimate so it usually works out.

You can see why a prot paladin is going to be pretty preferred.  You have a tank swap going on from West to East and a healer swap going on from North to South.

Wind Platform – Rohash

In Normal you have a healer or DPS chill out on this platform and dodge storms and wind blast.  It represents the highest skill base for this fight on Normal.  The change on this platform is actually the ones that makes this fight so impossibly difficult for so many guilds.

Rohash now applies a debuff that will increase damage by 5%.  Basically all those weak sauce spells that did no damage will now hit like a truck as this debuff stacks.  So your healers will be switching back and forth between frost in order to clear this and the frost debuff.

You will need two DPS on this platform.  One of them has to be specifically a rogue.  The other can be whatever you have left over.  If you have to CHOOSE someone from your guild to do this pick up someone with a lot of survivability cooldowns or mitigation.  This person will after all be ping ponging between frost and wind damage.

So your rotating DPS is there for his DPS at a specific time.  This person needs to break down a shield off of the Wind Djinn.  While this shield is active everyone on this platform will be taking increasing AoE damage until this shield is DPSed off.  As soon as this shield is DPSed off the spare DPS jumps over to the frost platform and does some damage to it.  Keep in mind if you are this person, healing is pretty bleak on this fight so do whatever you can to survive while you’re not DPSing down a shield.

Healer will be doing the standard thing.  Jump over once the frost healer is at 5 stacks and return to nature after the ultimate.

The rogue however has a very class specific role that only a rogue can do.  The rogue has to stay on the wind platform and keep recuperating himself every time he takes any damage at all.  Obviously when the shield comes up he should be DPSing but after that, back to recup spamming.  This rogue has to be aware of the tornados as they are very unfriendly to melee and will knock you off the platform.

On to the juicy bits.  The rogue must pop cloak of shadows when his debuff hits stack 12.  A little after this the ultimate will hit.  While in the ultimate the rogue must feint once every 6 seconds and spam recuperate while in the cyclone.  What this will do is remove the debuff (no extra 30% damage in the cyclone), extra 50% dmg mitigation from feint in the cyclone, and he will be healing himself.

After you come down, rinse and repeat.

Alternatives to a Rogue?

The most challenging part of this fight for 10-man guilds that don’t have a rogue is going to be dealing with that wind platform.  Off the top of my head there are two ways of dealing with this fight without the rogue:

1. Frost Mage/Ret Paladins: Frost mages can remove the debuff using ice block and ret paladins can remove it using bubble.  Obviously you would need a frost mage and a ret paladin together (or two frost mages).  So when the mage goes up he will use his frost barrier then to soak up some of that damage.  Additionally he will slow fall to reduce fall damage.  When the ret paladin goes up he will drop pretty darn low and will use word of glory once Sacred Shield procs.  This will grant enough health to survive falling. The ret paladin should also consider using Divine Protection while up there to mitigate damage before sacred shield procs.  When the ret paladin lands he should pop Zealotry and spam himself with Word of Glories until the shield appears on the boss.
2. Have your DPS alternate similar to how your healers do.  The only exception is that the person who has cleared off his debuff on the frost platform first must jump over just before the ultimate as everyone else.  You want two classes that will have some magic way to keep themselves up during the ultimate.  Moonkins (can heal themselves), destro locks (30% dmg mitigation to magic), enhancement shaman… you get the idea, people who can take care of themselves.

A reader was gracious enough to post us this video:

It’s a little bit hard to tell what’s going on but basically the mage is iceblocking the first and third ultimates and is clearing off his stacks for the second ultimate just before it hits.  To clarify further he is clearing his stacks by jumping over to the frost platform and jumping back just before the ultimate hits.

Anyway that’s my little take on the Conclave of Wind on Heroic.  Best of luck to you.