Alone in the Darkness Questions

[Beats]

So, we've been working on this in 25 man and I have a few questions.

First off, we're running with the following setup:
2 tanks
5 healers(2 pallies, 1 shaman, 1 holy priest, 1 druid)
7 melee dps(2 rogues, 1 warrior, 2 DKs, 1 feral, 1 enh shaman--we have flexibility to add a ret pally to this group)
2 hunters
9 casters(1 ele shaman, 2 sp's, 3 mages, 3 locks--can add a boomkin)

-Is 5 healers too many? Should we be going with 4?

You can see one major issue is only having 2 hunters, but we've made arrangements with a DK or feral taking the 3rd beacon out and smart use of vigilance and taunts.

We're mostly clean in phase 1 and have all the Guardians dead before the tentacles spawn.

In phase 2, we have made the following arrangements:
7 melee, 2 hunters, and resto druid are all assigned to a specific portal and are told they must 100% be at the portal the instant it spawns. We have a holy pally on each side of the boss ready to deploy Blessing of Protection for any last second Squeezes by constrictors. Once in the portals, every one of them is assigned to focus a particular target to burn down. Our resto druid is very solid and there is very little holding back if any at all by them to burn their targets. Our typical stun comes anywhere from 46 seconds left to 40 seconds left with 42 being a solid average.
-To date, they've been using bloodlust down there and often times find themselves holding back in the last portal phase for around 15-20 seconds. So, am I correct in enforcing that we save bloodlust for phase 3? Or should we give them the tools they need to get it done down there?
-Any tips or tricks or secrets anyone would care to share on how to speed things up?

"Upstairs," we seem to be ok. With a good set of stuns, we're getting to phase 3 with typically less than 1 corrupter alive..sometimes there are 2 at quarter to half health and sometimes there are none. We have "dot classes" including 3 affliction locks and 2 sp's keeping dots on corrupters while maintaining focus fire on crushers. When crushers are taken out, we have all the casters clean up corrupters the best we can.(Sometimes some of them are just too far away for us to get to for complete clean-up but dots usually take care of them.) I'd say our Malady spreading leaves a little to be desired, but most people are aware of it and we don't see more than a jump or 2.
-Again, I'm open to any advice to help us clean up this phase, as it seems sort of sketchy in comparison to some videos (like Fusion's) that we have seen.

Our "success rate" of getting to clean phase 3 is very low. Amongst our problems are:
-The most prevalent is melee not getting timely stuns due to a variety of factors (Someone takes someone else's portal, inopportune brain links with someone across the map, "bad skull placement" in the portals, etc)
-Early deaths such as occasional death ray, Maladied into death ray or crusher melee range, occasional failure to decurse Curse of Doom(yes, we had 2 mages fail at this last night)
-Random other stuff...Hard really to say, but there is a large variety of things that can and will go wrong on occasions.

Is there any way to prevent all this stuff from shutting us down before phase 3 more than 50% of the time? Or is it going to be a low success rate always?

One in phase 3, we "catch up" on the first and second Immortal Guardian and then switch dps to Yogg and/or the remaining Corrupter. Our tanks are good at picking up the Immortal Guardians and healers are good at keeping them alive.
-Should we be keeping any dedicated dps on Immortal Guardians as they arrive other than the 2 FoK spamming rogues?

Now is where we are getting frustrated. When the beacons go out, our hunters are having issues getting their target. We use the mod Fusion provided for marking and it is very solid. The hunters are using the nameplate addon suggested to enlarge the enemy nameplates, but the every changing/positioning of the marked targets makes them challenging to acquire.

Since we have had little experience in clean phase 3's, I do not want to get too frustrated with them yet, because they've had little chance at practice.
-My question is, is this something that gets easier with practice? Is there a trick to pick up the right target? Perhaps another addon or macro?
-Once we do have successful removal of beacons, who should be doing AOE on the adds? (my thought is the 2 rogues, 2 sp's, and 3 mages with living bombs--too much? too little?)

I realize this encounter has been nerfed (we didn't do attempts pre-nerf) and we have put in very little time in comparison to alot of other guilds. We are a 3 night per week raiding guild and doing our best to get stuff like this done. Our best attempt was Yogg at 24% (with 2 beacons going off at Yogg) so we definitely have alot of improvement to be made.

Thanks in advance for any advice or tips you can give!

[Feist]

[QUOTE=Beats;2739]

In phase 2, we have made the following arrangements:
7 melee, 2 hunters, and resto druid are all assigned to a specific portal and are told they must 100% be at the portal the instant it spawns. We have a holy pally on each side of the boss ready to deploy Blessing of Protection for any last second Squeezes by constrictors. Once in the portals, every one of them is assigned to focus a particular target to burn down. Our resto druid is very solid and there is very little holding back if any at all by them to burn their targets. Our typical stun comes anywhere from 46 seconds left to 40 seconds left with 42 being a solid average.
-To date, they've been using bloodlust down there and often times find themselves holding back in the last portal phase for around 15-20 seconds. So, am I correct in enforcing that we save bloodlust for phase 3? Or should we give them the tools they need to get it done down there?
-Any tips or tricks or secrets anyone would care to share on how to speed things up?

Send down 8 or even 9 melee instead of the 2 hunters if you can. Our portal team is 8 melee DPS, a feral (tank) in cat form, and a resto druid - note we run 3 tanks, so we still have 2 upstairs. You really want longer stuns on Icecrown/Stormwind if you can get them. 50 seconds should be attainable on SW, and a constant on Icecrown.

Make sure that people use their speed boost abilities (Sprint, Spirit Walk, Engi Boots etc.), to get to their tentacles, not to the brain, if they're assigned to go long. Rogues should note that the Sprint cooldown will only be availiable for 1st and 3rd ports - if Stormwind is first, save it - Wyrmrest WILL be next, and you'll need the Sprint there.

Don't blow bloodlust downstairs. If you can't push into P3 without it, you don't have the DPS to do Yogg-0 AFAIK. Ideally you should still be holding for 5-10 seconds at the end downstairs to give the folks up top time to reposition and confirm that they're clean.

Also, any Ret Paladins going downstairs should wait a half-tick before taking their portal, and be ready to BoP any constricted melee before hopping down - assign them a nearby tentacle (i.e. don't have them go long - rogues and engineers are best for that, with Arms Warriors being 'not bad') - similarly any holy or prot paladins should be holding their BoP for a bad constrict (i.e. a melee, or someone with a really nasty brain link)

[Kyth]

Originally Posted by Feist

Also, any Ret Paladins going downstairs should wait a half-tick before taking their portal, and be ready to BoP any constricted melee before hopping down - assign them a nearby tentacle (i.e. don't have them go long - rogues and engineers are best for that, with Arms Warriors being 'not bad') - similarly any holy or prot paladins should be holding their BoP for a bad constrict (i.e. a melee, or someone with a really nasty brain link)

We actually have absolutely everyone wait until it's clear (i.e. someone got constricted.)

Otherwise you get bitten over and over by this really annoying bug, where you click your portal right as you get constricted and it leaves you up top but the game thinks you took the portal, so you go insane unless you can manage to kill yourself before the brain phase ends.

As a bonus, you also often get disconnected. So you're racing to get back in game before the melee stun him so you can get killed by a crusher so you don't go insane.

It's thrilling. And one of the many joys of Yogg+0.



So, yeah, my advice would be *everyone* waits until "that constrictor" that goes off right around when you take portals, and then ducks in.

Can either call on vent, or just have people set up grid to show the constrictor debuff so they can hop down the minute it goes out.

[Kyth]

Originally Posted by Beats

So, we've been working on this in 25 man and I have a few questions.

-Is 5 healers too many? Should we be going with 4?

We initially killed him with four. Now we do five.

It's very doable with four as there just isn't that much healing before P3, and P3 can be four-healered. But that's a decision you need to figure out for your guild. If your DPS is strong, try five. If your healers are strong, try four.

You can see one major issue is only having 2 hunters, but we've made arrangements with a DK or feral taking the 3rd beacon out and smart use of vigilance and taunts.

Yep that's exactly what we did when it was five beacons.

Unlike Feist, btw, we send one hunter down (and sent two this past week) and have no problems. You need a good hunter who can figure out how to do dps down there, but Aspect of the Pack is very nice.

Also, this is crazy but we used them to get our first kill: Drums of Speed. You can have them available for every portal in each group as long as you have four leatherworkers and arrange groups accordingly. It actually helps when you're talking things like "42 second stuns are nice but 43 would be awesome."

In phase 2, we have made the following arrangements:
7 melee, 2 hunters, and resto druid are all assigned to a specific portal and are told they must 100% be at the portal the instant it spawns. We have a holy pally on each side of the boss ready to deploy Blessing of Protection for any last second Squeezes by constrictors. Once in the portals, every one of them is assigned to focus a particular target to burn down. Our resto druid is very solid and there is very little holding back if any at all by them to burn their targets. Our typical stun comes anywhere from 46 seconds left to 40 seconds left with 42 being a solid average.
-To date, they've been using bloodlust down there and often times find themselves holding back in the last portal phase for around 15-20 seconds. So, am I correct in enforcing that we save bloodlust for phase 3? Or should we give them the tools they need to get it done down there?

Stop using lust. You want it for P3. P2 is easy once you get good at it.

See my notes in the previous post about portals and constrictors.

We found throwing HoT's on all the melee as they were taking the portals was very useful and helped reduce melee gibs. All but one healer focuses on the melee in that "just before portals" phase, with the remaining healer covering ranged who get constricted.

In some of the arrangements (I'm not a melee so I don't know which sorry) it's actually better off to work via zone assignments: e.g. druid swipe is quite overpowered on one of them.

We have melee use vent if their sanity or health are low and they are going to have trouble on their target. There's never a reason NOT to call for help. If you let people know, then those 'behind' you can swing by and help after they've finished their target.

When we were working on it, stuns were in the 43-47 second range typically. 41 was considered a "crappy" stun and we'd probably look into why it happened. 50 was stellar and did happen a few times.

"Upstairs," we seem to be ok. With a good set of stuns, we're getting to phase 3 with typically less than 1 corrupter alive..sometimes there are 2 at quarter to half health and sometimes there are none. We have "dot classes" including 3 affliction locks and 2 sp's keeping dots on corrupters while maintaining focus fire on crushers. When crushers are taken out, we have all the casters clean up corrupters the best we can.(Sometimes some of them are just too far away for us to get to for complete clean-up but dots usually take care of them.) I'd say our Malady spreading leaves a little to be desired, but most people are aware of it and we don't see more than a jump or 2.

Ya that's exactly what we do, with the slight variation that when a crusher gets to 30% health (i.e. it'll be 25% by the time people finish their casts) we have all but the locks switch off to a corruptor.

We have one person in charge of calling which direction to go and what to kill. (you can hear this on the vent on http://www.stratfu.com/blog/2009/08/...nd-strategies/ )

It's better to have one dead, one alive corruptor than two at half health if you're still a little rocky in P2 (due to them sending out more debuffs.)

Your mages should also keep living bomb up on corruptors.

Do note that unless you have instants to cast, running to get in range of a corruptor is probably a DPS loss. Move towards it as you have instants otherwise it ends up not being worth it (moving is very dps-expensive.)

Our "success rate" of getting to clean phase 3 is very low. Amongst our problems are:
-The most prevalent is melee not getting timely stuns due to a variety of factors (Someone takes someone else's portal, inopportune brain links with someone across the map, "bad skull placement" in the portals, etc)

That's very normal. The good news is P3 is comparatively easy once you get there, even though the DPS check is more severe.

Crack down on the taking of portals. We wasted so much time to that I can't even begin to explain it. We actually had a night where we had them do nothing but stand by their portals and we took screenshots and slowly worked through deductive reasoning who it was that was regularly screwing up the portals.

We have all the melee arrange around the 'waypoint' before we engage him for the first time and sort out where everyone is.

If you have to, spend a night where melee do NOTHING other than stand at their portals the entire time between portal phases. Pound it into people's heads which portal is theirs. Or force people to get their early.

Bad skull placement means you need to call for help. Nothing wrong with it, it happens. Once in a while, yeah, it's unrecoverable. You wipe and go again. Really crazy skulls *do* happen.

Brain links should never be an issue if it's between the portal crew and someone else: the other person ALWAYS should move to the portal person, never the other way around, no matter what.

If it's portal/portal that sucks, but you can meet halfway or the dude without the speed boost can be by his portal with the other guy ready to zip away: remember they poof the minute you click.

-Early deaths such as occasional death ray, Maladied into death ray or crusher melee range, occasional failure to decurse Curse of Doom(yes, we had 2 mages fail at this last night)

Death rays should never happen but you know that.

Maladied into crusher melee range should never happen: we considered that an avoidable death because you can (and should) stand far closer to your max range. Malady happens, why are you playing games with it? I yelled about that a bunch and it stopped happening.

Your shaman, btw, can and should be decursing up top. There's really very little reason, especially with *five* healers, to expect your mages to decurse.

[QUOTE]Is there any way to prevent all this stuff from shutting us down before phase 3 more than 50% of the time? Or is it going to be a low success rate always?[/B]

Yes. But it will take time. People need to play better.

One in phase 3, we "catch up" on the first and second Immortal Guardian and then switch dps to Yogg and/or the remaining Corrupter. Our tanks are good at picking up the Immortal Guardians and healers are good at keeping them alive.
-Should we be keeping any dedicated dps on Immortal Guardians as they arrive other than the 2 FoK spamming rogues?

Absolutely you should be.

If you have a DPS DK you're set, but last week we had two FoK rogues, two mages (mix of LB/single target -- see my post in the caster role forum below about that), an elemental shaman, and a hunter. That kept us "comfortable" on immortals.

If you have an unholy DK (we only have one, it's our tank, he's unholy) you can subtract a full two people off that list.

Now is where we are getting frustrated. When the beacons go out, our hunters are having issues getting their target. We use the mod Fusion provided for marking and it is very solid. The hunters are using the nameplate addon suggested to enlarge the enemy nameplates, but the every changing/positioning of the marked targets makes them challenging to acquire.

Since we have had little experience in clean phase 3's, I do not want to get too frustrated with them yet, because they've had little chance at practice.
-My question is, is this something that gets easier with practice? Is there a trick to pick up the right target? Perhaps another addon or macro?
-Once we do have successful removal of beacons, who should be doing AOE on the adds? (my thought is the 2 rogues, 2 sp's, and 3 mages with living bombs--too much? too little?)

Absolutely no macro or trick to do it. Impossible. If it was possible everyone would be using it.

It's definitely a challenge. Tanks trying to keep still helps tons, since the mobs won't move a lot on their own. Emphasize to them that they need to stand still for those 3-4 seconds, as still as they can be.

It might also just be that you can't use our strat -- I honestly think a full-bore AE strat might be better now that you're guaranteed only three beacons. But I'm not sure.

There's no need for concentrated AE with only three beacons unless one stays on Yogg. It'll just be three mobs with high health and then whatever new ones came in. So yes, that sounds fine. Although your mages should probably be doing living bomb the whole time -- again, see what I wrote in the caster area here.

Our best attempt was Yogg at 24% (with 2 beacons going off at Yogg) so we definitely have alot of improvement to be made.

One beacon, even on every beacon phase, will be okay if you have some folks switch to AE (we have the hunters and spriest switch only.)

Our kills since the nerf have been pretty sloppy and we've had beacons go off on Yogg decently often.

[Feist]

Originally Posted by Kyth

We actually have absolutely everyone wait until it's clear (i.e. someone got constricted.)

Otherwise you get bitten over and over by this really annoying bug, where you click your portal right as you get constricted and it leaves you up top but the game thinks you took the portal, so you go insane unless you can manage to kill yourself before the brain phase ends.

As a bonus, you also often get disconnected. So you're racing to get back in game before the melee stun him so you can get killed by a crusher so you don't go insane.

It's thrilling. And one of the many joys of Yogg+0.

While I've definitely run into this bug, it seems to be substantially less common in my experience than it was several minor patches ago, and I think I can count on one hand the number of times we've run into it and had to have a melee suicide/brez to keep an attempt going - on the whole, we gain more time than we lose by taking the risk I suppose.

Throwing HoT's on melee before they go down helps a lot - we actually have a disc priest make as much of a loop as he can and get PW:S's up on us before we head down too - it provides a really nice buffer of time before a real healer can catch up to us.

Some specifics on assignments downstairs:

Specific tentacles works best for Stormwind and Wyrmrest - Wyrmrest in particular, if you do use ranged DPS will be an LoS nightmare, both for them, and for your healer - make sure your melee are ready to 1) call for help, and 2) use a survival cooldown to buy time in Wyrmrest.

Icecrown works better in terms of zone assignments as the 3 trios can each be AoE'd (this is why you can routinely get 50+second stuns in icecrown too)

As a rule of thumb, you should be aiming for 50+ on Icecrown, 45-50 on Stormwind, and 40-50 on Wyrmrest - keep in mind that if you get a shitty stun on Wyrmrest, so long as it isn't your last portal phase, you'll have a nice long stun to play catchup immediately afterwards in Icecrown.

[Kyth]

Would be interesting if that's the case. It was a huge, huge issue in the past, and we just wait out of habit now.

It was responsible for probably only ~10-15% of our wipes -- not that many, but enough that it frayed on already-tired nerves.

[Shiri]

I just wanted to chime in and plug our kill video. It shows 2 perspectives, myself (shadow priest), and a rogue.

Crappy youtube version

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcb8ST0M-f4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XuRajzsOufs

High quality, uncut version

http://www.mwguild.net/v2/vids/MW-Deathsdemisev2.wmv

We assign portals for every one of our melee dps. The video clearly shows melee getting into position prior to portals opening in order to maximize stun time. And yes, the order in which you see the illusions does matter. Wyrmrest is the worst one to get last because you have the shortest stun usually.

[Kyth]

It sort of matters -- not tremendously though. As long as your ranged prioritize corruptors *away* from your P3 tanking spot, you can usually get 1-2 down with dots even as Yogg is spawning.

And post-nerf his health is lower by 30% (i.e. 6% less on his model), so even if your melee have to swing by the crusher to kill it on their way over, you should be fine.


I'll put our links in this thread too rather than just in the linked blog post:


For a review of the two main strategy themes (AE versus pullout) read: http://www.stratfu.com/blog/2009/08/...nd-strategies/


Video:

Filefront Download

YouTube stream

Warcraft Movies stream

[Gondlem]

One other thing I think is worth mentioning to any guilds that are having trouble with control in phase two, is that Corruptors should be a higher priority for DPS than Crushers, within reason.

If you happen to have a Corruptor spawn right next to a Crusher for example, ranged should always take down the Corruptor first. A tank can sit on that Crusher all day and keep the debuff off the raid if nobody is DPSing it, but that Corruptor is going to be spamming debuffs which could easily catch someone at a bad time and cause problems. Probably more importantly, don't just charge straight for the Crusher and start blowing it up when there's a Corruptor closer to the ranged group. It's a raid DPS increase that way, and safer.

Other than that I think everything has been covered. Give your melee a tentacle each when you can, have them use drums, sprint, whatever they can to get to their tentacle as fast as possible and kill it. Brain DPS really doesn't matter that much. Faster stuns are everything when it comes to reaching p3 consistently so you can practice it.

[Footspeedy]

-Is 5 healers too many? Should we be going with 4?

- We did it from start to finish with 4, while I don't think 5 is too many, bringing only 4 helps while learning phase 2 and allows for a little bit of error.

-To date, they've been using bloodlust down there and often times find themselves holding back in the last portal phase for around 15-20 seconds. So, am I correct in enforcing that we save bloodlust for phase 3? Or should we give them the tools they need to get it done down there?

- Bloodlusting on the bottom is bad, however for learning purposes. If you would otherwise not make it I highly recommend lusting the 3rd brain phase as a crutch in order for people to spend more time in phase 3, even if it's most likely not going to be a kill. If you can't make it when everyone gets down everytime you NEED to change something.

-Any tips or tricks or secrets anyone would care to share on how to speed things up?

- We send down 8 melee 1 hunter, 1 priest we have each tentacle numbered and assigned (some are better for some classes, make sure your sending sprinters to the back). We have 8 people assigned a number and one person as the "backup", If someone can't get down RIGHT away they call their number and the backup takes over, then they come down and resume helping out on the closer ones(we don't do this on Icecrown though).

- People sometimes trade portals when they get brain linked (this is once everyone is used to every portal, don't even try to do this if you are having issues with the whole "wrong portal" thing).

- Prehot as much as you can, don't let anyone go down with any sort of debuff, (if your not using a ret pally and not sending a priest its likely that your brain team has gotten last second apathy at least a few times. If you can find a way to send down a magic cleanser that should help as ferals can get curses.

- I'm fairly sure that they have fixed the "portal/constricter" thing as we haven't had it happen to us since the patch, and we kind of ignore the constricter timer (habit of learning it postpatch).

- As soon as its stunned turn pack on
- Use drums of speed if you can
- If for some reason something happens and someone dies/dcs your second tank can take portals and be marginally useful.
- If you can not make it on the third brain phase, prehot your brainteam and send down the second tank over your healer.(Go big or go home).
- Use your healthstone during the "Dragon Vision", if its the dragon vision and your top team is fast you can have a soulwell waiting for melee as they exit.

"Upstairs," we seem to be ok. With a good set of stuns, we're getting to phase 3 with typically less than 1 corrupter alive..sometimes there are 2 at quarter to half health and sometimes there are none. We have "dot classes" including 3 affliction locks and 2 sp's keeping dots on corrupters while maintaining focus fire on crushers. When crushers are taken out, we have all the casters clean up corrupters the best we can.(Sometimes some of them are just too far away for us to get to for complete clean-up but dots usually take care of them.) I'd say our Malady spreading leaves a little to be desired, but most people are aware of it and we don't see more than a jump or 2.
-Again, I'm open to any advice to help us clean up this phase, as it seems sort of sketchy in comparison to some videos (like Fusion's) that we have seen.

- Put sara on focus, her malady has a 3 second cast time, you can preemptively call it and get people on their toes as it is casting.

- During stuns if a mob has dots on it and is low enough to die to them we consider it dead and move on, Do not waste damage overkilling things during stuns. We generally consider corrupters at ~30% with dots, and crushers at ~15% as dead (we run with 2 spriest/3 lock/2 mage/1 moonkin as dot classes). Its a good idea to move even earlier then this.

- If a single corrupter spawns close to where the melee exit the brain room. It is already as good as dead, don't waste range dps on it(unless its one of the first few or ones during the last brain phase).

- Try to meet the melee by the brain room exit if you can. Every time a stun ends a new constricter will spawn and if you are grouped up melee can kill it quickly.

- Have someone direct where to go, and in what direction even if you are wrong while learning how to do the calls. Having everyone together significantly lowers the chances of something bad happening to people.

- When a stun happens and there are multiple tentacles up, have dot classes setup in range of as many tentacles as possible. Almost all dots can be cast while moving.

- Before the first portal, if melee are ever near the range group melee are responsible for all constricters and corrupters that are "reasonably" nearby.

- If a skull is ever going to run into Yoggs model and get knockbacked into people call it out asap so people can adjust.

-The most prevalent is melee not getting timely stuns due to a variety of factors (Someone takes someone else's portal, inopportune brain links with someone across the map, "bad skull placement" in the portals, etc)

If you are hearing the wrong portal, you need to figure out the problem. I can't tell you what it is but I can tell you that your going to waste a insane amount of time on it if you don't properly correct it through whatever means.

-Early deaths such as occasional death ray, Maladied into death ray or crusher melee range, occasional failure to decurse Curse of Doom(yes, we had 2 mages fail at this last night)

- Death ray - play better or call it. Everyone makes mistakes but if people are repeat offenders you need to do something.
- Skull into death ray - avoidable if its not the first skull, if it is that's why you have combat res.
- Skull into crusher melee - avoidable, either stand farther away or have your tank REALLY aware of the skulls. Crushers will channel diminish power unless they are hit with a melee attack. If your tank stops attacking/doesn't joust back in you shouldn't die.
- Curse of doom - There is very little to heal during p2, let your healers get almost ALL the dispels to increase your dps.

-Random other stuff...Hard really to say, but there is a large variety of things that can and will go wrong on occasions.

Trust me, I know. We have awful luck with things going wrong on this fight (mainly dcs). But being quick and aware and accommodating those things that go wrong can turn things around quickly. I highly recommend the "8 assigned + 1 backup" plan as its worked marvelously for us.

Is there any way to prevent all this stuff from shutting us down before phase 3 more than 50% of the time? Or is it going to be a low success rate always?

It gets better as you get more practice and tweak your phase 2 strategy slowly.

One in phase 3, we "catch up" on the first and second Immortal Guardian and then switch dps to Yogg and/or the remaining Corrupter. Our tanks are good at picking up the Immortal Guardians and healers are good at keeping them alive.
-Should we be keeping any dedicated dps on Immortal Guardians as they arrive other than the 2 FoK spamming rogues?

We have 1 ele shaman, 1 boomkin, 2 rogues, 1 unholy dk on our adds. Unholy dks are insane for being on adds. We don't "help" at the start at all. When people turn away from yogg they try to throw in damage on the adds.

Now is where we are getting frustrated. When the beacons go out, our hunters are having issues getting their target. We use the mod Fusion provided for marking and it is very solid. The hunters are using the nameplate addon suggested to enlarge the enemy nameplates, but the every changing/positioning of the marked targets makes them challenging to acquire.

We do p3 different then most other guilds. We have two tanks drag one big pile to the back middle and a hunter on each side taunt a one mob each for a 1/1/1 split, then we spend ~10 seconds aoeing and then just let incidental damage clean them back up between beacons (here is a artpad that I posted on our guild forums for reference, http://artpad.art.com/gallery/?knuosu16kq5w). While this works great its very unforgiving if you mess up a taunt since all but two of the mobs will get a double beacon and your tank may die unless you have crazy aoe+tank cds. If we had 3 hunters we'd probably just taunt out all 3 mobs (I know we could have ferals/dks/pallys do it but we are use to just using hunters /shrug).

Anyway, the way we handle marking mobs is quite simple.

Hunter1 - Uses a target macro to target a mob
Hunter1 - Puts a shape on the mob
Hunter2 - When hunter 2 sees hunter 1s shape he Uses a target macro to target a different mob(if your macro gets the marked mob hit it again).
Hunter2 - Marks mob #2
Hunters taunt.
If we did 3 hunters we would just have another one mark after the second mark pops up.

-My question is, is this something that gets easier with practice? Is there a trick to pick up the right target? Perhaps another addon or macro?

Everything gets easier with practice. =).