Bloodlord Mandokir

[usonian]

This guy has been the guild's, well at least my:) largest frustration in our ZG runs since we started.  So after last night's heartbreaking attempts I thought maybe I'd start a thread to discuss any strategy or clear up any confusion about how to fight this guy.  He seems to be the only one that we can't nail down consistently and the only thing I can think of to fix it is to increase the overall awareness of the situation and discuss.  I know last night was a post-patch attempt so we weren't exactly in top form, but he's given us problems in the past as well so here goes:

The Basic Strategy

1. Everyone but MT kill the Raptor first, then onto the Bloodlord.
2. Bloodlord enrages, spam heals on MT, MT should use Shield wall.
3. Steady DPS (not too much).
4. HIT ESCAPE AND STOP EVERYTHING when you are being watched (you will get an emote).  Seriously this is the single most important step in this fight. It's just like getting poisoned when fighting Hakkar you simply MUST do it, otherwise he will one-shot you and gain a level, making him that much harder to kill.
5. When Bloodlord charges away from MT, everyone should stop attacking, hunters FD if needed, until the MT has aggro again.  Since he is shedding aggro from the MT on a charge, any attacks could pull him another direction should the MT miss a taunt, resulting in the popular "ping-pong effect".
6. Hopefully he eventually dies and we all continue on to Hakkar.

Additional Strategy

After reading a few forums like this one http://www.tribalwar.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-398193.html , I've read some things that we might want to consider in our strategy.  No idea if these are all confirmed, but they're good points of discussion.

1. If the Bloodlord watches you and you have a DoT on him, no amount of escape-mashing will save your life.  This seems like a big one to me and makes sense after all the deaths Kitty had last night.  If the goal is to restrict DPS, maybe we should avoid putting dots on him.  Not sure how big of an impact this has on damage, but it's huge if it keeps guildies from being one-shoted and the Bloodlord from leveling.
2. The Bloodlord will only gain a level when he kills a person who is being watched.  If this is true, then step 4 above is that much more crucial.
3. Keep a hunter near the MT to pull the Bloodlord back with distracting shot.  Not sure if this is worth it, especially if everyone stops attacking after a charge.
 
I know we hear all these things everytime we fight him but if we're still having problems then there is always a possibility that something is not clear to everyone.  This fight should not be difficult, but can be lost with very small mistakes so this is a chance to read, understand, comment, ask questions, and of course correct me if I'm wrong:)

-Uso

[JohnnieRat]

You can control where the bloodlord charges --> It is 100% of the time going to be at the person who is farthest away from him. If we positioned someone to abosrb the charge away from the raid, we would avoid the chain 1 shotting that we experienced because if no one causes threat on the charge, he will return to the tanking spot. His charge hits for almost nothing so anyone could do it also (It's the huge sword he swings that hurts)

There's a million different ways to kill this guy with positioning and all, but each way involves aggro control and not dying. It might be easier (especially for Kitty's repair bill) to avoid DoTs alltogether. Part of what I saw happening is when is someone else (Kitty) got charged, people would spam heals on the non-tank and when the Bloodlord got back on Uso, he would 2 shot him and he dies... causing more chaos.

Step 1: Pull
Step 2:
Step 3: Profit

[Shadowwolf]

Generally our strategy has always been and has basically worked for us that the hunters stand farthest away and when he charges they all FD to ditch aggro back to the tank. It worked for the most part last night but I think our largest problem is just DPS. We have soooo much DPS in our raids and people burn off the damage so quickly hes all over the place after the first 2min of the fight because everyone is so close together on the aggro table. The times we have been successful and its been smooth is when we regulated dps to a slow level and burned him down methodically only turning up the full DPS meter when he hit about 20% or so to take him out for good. Once he levels about 3 or 4 times, hes nearly impossible to tank, because his damage skyrockets to a level where his hits are for more hp then what our tanks have and aggro has reset so much due to the deaths that he just runs all over.

I think the biggest thing is just focus heals on the MT and MA, everyone else back up and bandage and spam any kind of aggro reducing ability you might have while watching for the emote and dps rate.

One other thing I did notice, when he gets in a group, everyone just kind of stands there to let the tank grab him, but the problem is he does his little spinning thing and can take out just about all the casters with that move if he gets into the caster group. Im thinking maybe if you see him run towards your group and its not you hes after, everyone else should back away from him and the person with aggro stand still to allow the tank to catch him. This way we minimize the loss to 1 person if any instead of 10.

We could have a warrior wait by the hunters to taunt him back to the MT as another option, kind of like what we have to do with the spider boss, where we have a delivery warrior that just taunts, lures him back, and then when they drop aggro, goes back and waits till the next time.

[Dylon]

Uso said something about DoT's..

Well I know me and any other warrior with deep wounds has a little problem with that, I dont know what kind of impact it has on his aggro, but we get an involutary DoT that is set and rennews everytime we crit..So i was wondering what ideas you had about the problems this could cause if any, Its only Bleed damage so i dont even know if it generates any threat or what..  ;p


p.s. Uso i know you know what deep wounds does being a warrior, but alot of people might not so i explained how deep wounds worked so people could see where im coming from if they dont know how it works  :p

[Lynette]

The one thing that stood out for me last night was that a few folks continued to attack him when the tank lost aggro.  I think that makes it that much tougher for the MT to get control.

My take is as soon as he runs off away from the MT, all attacks should stop until the tank gets him and pulls him back to the battle spot.  If one tank dies, no one attacks him until the next tank has 5 sunders on him.

Slow and steady dps makes sense to me, provided our healers have the mana to keep the tanks up.

[KittyPurple]

I really didn't know that about the DOTs.. Thanks for the advice, I'll stop using them on him. That will hurt my DPS alot but in this fight that might be a good thing. Maybe next time i won't die 6+ times in one fight.

[Grendeel]

It may be the toughest boss we have in zg but we still walk away downing him almost always.

Imo Lynette said the key to beating him (aside from our regular strat Shadow mentioned).  That is when he charges someone or when the tanks lose aggro, everyone has to recognize this and allow the tanks to bring him back under control.   If this is done, we will win everytime the way we do it.

As for the dots Kitty, i find it has absolutely no effect on us whatsoever.  I have never been charged when being watched (other than the first couple times trying the bloodlord and not stopping my casting).  I have found the moment i use shadowbolt (even downranked ones), plus having dots on him, he comes to kill me.    Lately (as per our strat) i have only used dots and a constant immolate cast.  Although he still occasionally comes a calling on me, i find this works best.

[Shadowwolf]

Yea I dont think Blizz would do DoTs to have an impact on the watching part, they designed a build of warlock to be reliant on DoTs to play so that would make them pretty useless, heh. I think its more the high aggro spells and spacing out the DPS. Basically with slow DPS is time between casts. Yes damage done has a factor in aggro, but time between attacks is a bigger factor then damage done, tanks can compensate for damage with taunts, shield bash, etc, the frequency they cant. Not saying anyone does this but as an example, if youre a mage mashing the frostbolt spell button every time its ready the whole fight, hes going to come kill you. Same with heals, if you are tossing tons and tons of heals in short time, hes probably going to come get you.

Hes a strategy fight in longevity, one that cant be rushed as we saw when unloading DPS on him does. Onyxia is actually quite similar with her phases. The fight is designed to be lengthy, theres no way around it. Its a strategy of outlasting him basically. Once he hits 50% on health, he becomes a little easier to control too so long as he doesnt keep leveling. Its probably why a lot of the ZG stuff is in many ways a lot better than tier 1 in MC as most of the MC bosses are "kill it quick" where ZG bosses all have some sort of challenge to overcome.