Phase 1: Lashers

When these explode, more than 2 explosions at once will kill most of your raid members. It's therefore very important to do controlled kills.

First, whittle them down to 30% with AE by keeping them all in a small area. We've seen two successful positionings here:

One is to group everyone up on one spot, with Freya maneuvered by the tank so she is slightly out of the clump. This is what Fusion does. The advantage is that you have a single point to go to, with no complex coordination. The disadvantage is that when the Unstable Energy beams spawn, your entire raid needs to move.

The other option is to have one group form the center (everyone standing on the same model) and the other groups at the four compass points around there. This reduces the number of unstable energies that spawn on a clump most of the time, and may result in fewer deaths. The disadvantage is that you need people reliably standing on the correct spot to spread out the raid, and loose clumps will result in lashers missing the AE -- which is dangerous. Remember lashers can and will stand on any side of a person.

We start the raid at the bush by the river, it's a good memorable group-up point. The critical thing is that the center of the bush is the center of the clump, not the edges.

Either way, your raid needs to move in concert when unstable energy spawns: it's critical that everyone stays together and moves into another tight clump about 10' away, or the lashers will again drift apart and take damage unevenly.

No one should use any single- or several-target abilities in this phase, including chain lightning. They will cause some lashers to die early, or the rest of the lashers to be at too high health when pulled out.

Regardless of your positioning strategy, if trees spawn while the AE is whittling them down, all ranged need to switch off immediately (other than your frost or frostfire mage) and kill the tree: if melee go out to kill it, they will pull lashers out of the clump.

If roots go out, use point-blank AE and melee help destroy them as fast as possible.

Once the lashers reach about 30% (your tanks will need to try various health levels depending on your raid), a warrior or a feral (they do not have to be a tank) AE taunts and moves in one direction while the raid moves in another. Our tank moves across the river while the raid moves away from the river.

At this point, as long as the next few steps go well, you will just burn them down, so ignore any trees that the melee can't get. Taunt lasts for 6 seconds. As it's about to wear off, have a protection warrior shockwave them, and then move out. If you don't have a protection warrior, use a destruction warlock spec'd into shadowfury.

As soon as they're stunned, your AE taunter must leave or risk dying to the 100k+ of damage if all the lashers are blown up there (which you hope they will be.)

Before the stun wears off, your frost mage should have his pet out and used the ranged frost nova to stun them. If you don't have a frost mage, use another shadowfury.

Two lockdowns (any two of: shockwave, shadowfury, or water elemental nova) should be enough to get them dead if you taunt them out at a good time.

If, however, any of these steps fail, and the mobs start running around, it's vitally important that the raid remain calm.

The lasher phase is the easiest phase in terms of DPS requirements, and you have plenty of time to kill them one by one as long as everyone is careful and healers are alert.

The raid should scatter, and ranged DPS need to just very slowly kill the lashers, ideally targetting single ones at the edge to avoid killing anyone. Melee handle any roots or trees.

Tremor plus 1-2 lashers is a death here, so be extra-cautious.

Phase 2: Elementals

The three elementals are the next-easiest phase, but require coordination and control.

Depending on your raid composition and your guild's strengths, you will want roots/trees handled by either the ranged or the melee. We have destruction warlocks and hunters assigned to switch off to kill them, and everyone else stays on their mobs.

Snaplasher

Snaplasher will not 'root' himself like he does on 10's. Either use a DK spamming Chains of Ice or a frost mage to keep him snared. A backup frostfire mage is very useful since the frost snare may fall off if your mage is kiting.

The biggest risk for the ranged in this phase is that roots will hit the person who has snaplasher aggro. If they cannot drop aggro (via iceblock, feign, or soulshatter), they need a BoP or BoF immediately from a paladin.

As of the 3.2 patch, many other abilities will drop roots such as Blink from a mage. (once I get a list I will update it here.)

Mages should not spec into 'frostbite', since the risk is too high that Snap will end up rooted in range of a melee player (ranged should never risk being near snap.)

He still can act as if he's rooted when he's in melee range of players, however, so the entire raid must be aware of where he is (we use a raid symbol on his head and call when he's near the melee.) To help reduce snaplasher deaths, your tanks for the other two elementals should adjust, swinging them around or even moving a bit to reduce the risk.

Ancient Water Spirit

We put a rogue on the water spirit, interrupting everything on his own through stuns and interrupts. The DPS on him is a tank and one other melee, both of whom can help with backup interrupts.

Storm Lasher

The rest of the melee, usually 3-4, kill Storm Lasher. He's tanked by our Freya tank.

Two people rotate interrupts on Stormbolt, with one person (we use a feral druid) in charge of stunning about a second before the earthquake to prevent him from casting Lightning Lash, a chaining attack, during earthquake.

It's vitally important that no one else, including pets (turn off all charge autocasts), stuns the Storm Lasher, since stuns have diminishing returns in PvE. You need the full stun duration to reduce the chance of gibs.

Phase 3: Conservator

This is usually the hardest phase to meet the DPS requirements on -- compounded by roots and trees spawning inconveniently and mushrooms requiring too much raid movement.

We have hunters and destro locks primary on roots and trees, moving to be in range if they have to. Anyone else in range needs to turn and attack them, however, since it's common to have critical raid members rooted away from a mushroom, unable to help themselves.

Aura Mastery plus Concentration Aura will block any subsequent silences from affecting you, and can help your healers get critical heals on key players.

Our rules for Fury are:

• DPS always move and stand in the middle of nowhere (on 25's). Don't try to be clever and find an unused mushroom, someone is likely to try to move there shortly.

• If someone has roots and fury and you die to their fury, it's your fault -- if you don't see someone moving with fury, don't die in righteous indignation, just move
• Healers move out if they can (e.g. if Aura Mastery + Concentration Aura is up), otherwise move to the edge of a mushroom and try to avoid hitting people. The raid needs to be aware and move away if need be.
  

In all phases tremor + roots is often a death, but especially during Conservator when raid damage can get high and healers may be unable to heal -- your raid members need to save their immunities and health cooldowns.

We chain Aura Mastery + Concentration Aura on the first conservator, and hit Bloodlust for the second conservator along with Aura Mastery + Concentration again if they're up (which they should be.)

Phase 4: Boss Phase

There are differing ideas on how to handle Phase 2, this is what we've found to be the most reliable:

The raid groups tight on Freya, other than hunters who stand at their minimum distance (and they make sure to stand on the outside of our tanking triangle, so they're never dropping seeds in the path the raid will be moving.)

Pets *will* spawn seeds, so warlocks need to move their imps with them despite the minor DPS loss.

There are three possible tanking locations:

• the bush
• tree #1
• tree #2

In most cases we move around these clockwise. The tank calls the move, but the expectation is that everyone moves the minute seeds go out.

If roots go out, everyone stays and AE's. It *is* possible to have roots and seeds simultaneously: in that case if the entire raid stays and AE's, everyone will live. If the raid moves out and then tries to kill them, they'll get one, maaaybe two people out. It's far better to keep strict discipline and dispose of the roots quickly: roots are the #1 priority in P2.

Healer cooldowns like Pain Suppression can be used to save someone who is stuck in a far roots who therefore didn't get freed. Although this should only ever happen due to player error: not clumping closely enough, or lagging behind the clump.

If a tree shows up, the raid needs to kill it quickly. The tank needs to be alert also: it's possible the tree will spawn out of range of the current tanking location. This is why we use three positions rather than two: we can always move forwards to the next position and get into range of any tree without risking hitting the raid with exploding seeds.

The enrage timer in P2 is very very forgiving as long as you have people alive.