I’ve been thinking a bit lately about what people are doing to maximize damage during instances and the one that stuck out to me the most is Malygos. We are victims of our pets even if we aren’t Beast Mastery. For example, our DPS will suffer on a fight like Thaddius as our pet will not receive the charge stack to increase their damage. Things like that are unavoidable.
But on a fight like Malygos there are a couple steps we can take to insure our pet pulls as much weight as possible. Many extremely progressed Hunters are reporting that they use Aspect of the Beast during Bestial Wrath and they are reporting DPS increases. This evening I found a 10-man Malygos PUG, and while the group was incapable of killing him, it did give me a few chances to mess around with Aspect of the Beast and positioning my pet.
As any Hunter can tell you, Malygos’ hit box is a monstrosity. It’s huge. It’s like an orange on a toothpick! That’s a virtual planetoid. It’s got its own weather system. And . . . I am sure you get the idea. Now most bosses that have huge hit boxes we fix by simply taking a step back. But the problem with Malygos is that in order to maximize group DPS, you need to get as many DPS standing in the spark when you kill it as possible. And since you usually have more melee than Hunters, it too frequently gets killed to close to Malygos that we cannot stand in the spark and still have range to shoot.
After the first attempt with this group I decided it was time to see how Aspect of the Beast was going to work out as well as practice pet control to make sure Khagan took advantage of these sparks. So I decided to Fraps what ended up being our last attempts and illustrate what I was trying to do. This video won’t be all that enlightening but might shed some light into my little thought process. Remember, watching in high-quality looks less like crap. And I hope you don’t mind a little Bowie. :)
Now as I mentioned, this was a PUG group and was far from perfect execution on my part. Phase 1 in the video (which is all the video is) went smoother than any other attempts. The group realized that since I had missed all the sparks before this attempt and was still #2 on DPS that perhaps moving the sparks back a bit would be good. When this attempt ended (shortly after phase 3 began since some folks don’t know how to fly in a pack) I was at 3700 DPS and solidly in first place by about 550. Now this would have been higher with a better group composition, food buffs, better ammo, etc etc. That’s just nit-picking however. But Khagan pulled his weight big time, personally he out-DPSed two of our other DPS folks. Which could have been another reason we were failing. Ah well. PuGs for Malygos are hit or miss.
I am looking forward to trying this again in a guild group fully buffed to see what numbers it churns out for me. Thoughts, comments, etc. Post ‘em up!
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I’ve found him to be a rather challenging fight in regards to maximizing dps. I’ve also been toying with the AotB idea… I spent all of our last 25naxx in AotB to see what sort of numbers I would pull with it. Overall, I did well… but I was expecting something more.
Anyway.. a quick side-not to all of you that use exotic pets — one of our Hunter alts noticed that a devilsaur can attack Malygos when goes into the air, before the Vortex… and of course in the transition between phases 1 and 2, which is normally a great time to pump out some extra numbers.
Quick note on the Malygos fight. Pets tend to “bug” during this fight, thus losing dps. I counter this by before every vortex wave clicking on “passive” and then sending my pet back in when I return to the ground.
i find it interisting that your pet didnt get buggy – or i missed it cuz of the quality -. my pet always happens to ve gone missing after the vortex so just before vortex i ve to put it on passiv as #2 said.
my recount never shows the real dps that people r doing, when a spark is coming it completly “fucks up” so i dont know what dps i do but i assume i do less :*(
the hitbox on maly is rather frustrating, but high five that u got the balls to go malygos pugs, i wouldnt dream of killing him without my guild.
After wiping repeatedly on 25 last night, I have some idea of the pet behavior. =p
I can’t watch the video at work, but what I was doing, and I assume Dro is doing something similar, is hitting my Pet Follow hotkey (she misbehaves on me, so I have her hotkeyed to run the hell back before I get kicked) as I was falling so I could send her back in.
My cat would otherwise bug until I hit Pet Follow, when she would show up by my side with no issues.
Nice heads up on the Devilsaurs Weezzii… when the patch hits, I’m thinking of going to a tweaked 53/18 taking the 51 point BM. I’ll probably mostly still use my cats because I’m all sentimental and crap, but I’d definitely pull out the Dino to make that fight a little less hellish.
An interesting video about the actual fight is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7ayqT3NljI My guild is working on the under 5 minute Maly achievement. Basically in a nutshell how to accomplish this is to use DK’s to position sparks, Druids root them, collect 4 in the same spot. Sec you get Maly to 55% or so pop them all. We have taken Maly down to under 20% before phase 2 this way. Guild in the linked video gets him to 0%. Reason I’m bringing this up is I think it would be helpful if you stack a few sparks regardless if you are trying for the achievement or not so when you get to P3 hes really low and people don’t have too much time to show how much they stink on their dragon riding skills. :)
Some thoughts on “keeping the pet in the spark.”
If your spark is correctly positioned on the edge of Maly’s hitbox, you can stand at the back edge of the spark and DPS. If this is the case, recalling your pet to your current position and then sending it in to attack will INITIALLY keep it in the spark, as the pet will only move to the edge of the hit box to attack. However, when Malygos turns to cast Arcane Storm, the pet will LOSE the hit box edge as it attempts to get “behind” Malygos again. As often as not, it will move to a point just outide of the hit box center, and will likely lose the spark. Thus, whenever Malygos casts arcane storm, it becomes necessary to recall the pet to your side, then send it in again to “re-find” the hit box once Maly re-orients on the MT if you want the pet to stay in the spark. Or so I’ve found, anyway.
Speaking as someone who uses a scorpid, and is thus dependence on stack maintenance for DPS, this little feature + the “passive and re-attack” after each vortex is really annoying. :) All in all, though, I find the Maly fight pretty simple for pet mechanics… now, keeping the damn thing alive on Sarth, otoh, is driving me insane. I can have the damn pet recalled and be STANDING on it, and the lava wave won’t hit me, but it’ll hit the pet half the time. I don’t get it and it makes me stabby. =/
Sorry for the double. >.<
The current BM dps records (the 6.8k patch fights) are all currently held by hunters who went “post to post” in AotB. The double-dipping on it is just incredibly broken. (It adds 21 percent to pet AP instead of the 10 percent intended). That double dipping is definitively fixed in 3.0.8, and the thought seems to be that post-to-post dragonhawk will be the way to go once that happens. Of course, YMMV.
Also, just realized (can’t see the vid at work) that Dro was frequently not able to stand in the spark himself to dps. We make our guild’s DKs DG the spark to an area just on the edge of Maly’s hit box, then hit it with chains of ice. 9 times out of 10, the spark then dies right on the hit box edge, and the melee uses the inner edge of the spark and the hunters use the outer edge. It took us a couple weeks to get our DKs trained to put it in the right spot, but now that they’re good at it, it’s SO much nicer.
Most of the attempts last night didn’t allow me to be in the sparks. The one in the video however was a bit better letting me get in most of them. And yes, the pet will bug out. But as soon as I start falling out of the vortex I mash the passive button a few times and send them back in almost immediately. My guild DK’s are better at positioning sparks so I don’t get left out though. :)
Thanks for the tip on the devilsaur. I stopped bringing mine out because on Sartharion it always gets hit by fire. For once the huge pet hitbox might help! My cat always seemed to get stuck in the middle post vortex, so I need to watch that closer.
@Bigvett That is very interesting actually. I am going to have to forward that video along. Thanks!
Thanks for the post on this. I’ve been wondering how to get my pet more involved in some of these fights, although I haven’t had the chance to try Malygos yet. I’ve been leaving a ton of DPS on the table by keeping my pet by my side on a lot of fights where I’ve not yet figured out how to keep him alive otherwise. Will continue to investigate!
riffraff’s last blog post..25-Naxx SUPERPUG!
@Riffraff – send him in! Splash heals help a lot… I’ve only found a couple fights where pets are in real trouble. Safety Dance (my cat has lived through this too though, depends on the tank) and OS (don’t be dumb with pet follow) AnubRekhan as well, pull it back for the swarm. Pets are quite survivable though. Send it in, learn from experience, not speculation! =)
@Remuna – I do have him in most of the time, else my DPS goes in the trash. A lot of fights I’ve figured out how to keep him alive, even with a lot of crap going on. (OS for example, isn’t too hard). When accidents happen there’s always Heart of the Phoenix, or a quick Pet Res (specced currently with Improved Revive pet). Where I start getting timid is stuff like Grobbulus or Kel’Thuzad where there are often a lot of things to think about/lot of bad AOE to kill the pet. I’ll continue to try and get better with this.
riffraff’s last blog post..25-Naxx SUPERPUG!
As a side note to those attempting to “hold” sparks over until they get a few of them together for the achievement, there’s a rumor going around at the moment (I don’t think there’s actually been a blue post about it though) that sparks will no longer be rootable/deathgrip-able after the patch.
Hopefully that doesn’t happen.
Weezzii’s last blog post..Ventrilo Woes No More
Didn’t read through all the comments above, so appologies if I post something again.
About petbugging, as you might remember you gave me hints about it some month ago about going petdefensive then petpassive to get it out of the area where it gets stuck.
I quickly added the two last lines in my pet manegement macro:
/petpassive [target=pettarget,exists]
/petdefensive
/petpassive
It works like a charm. This is rather important as I usually bring a scorpid. I’m using it for RoS at Maly first breath as EU-Silvermoon has enormous serverlag, sometimes it lags so bad that there are no shields in phase 2 or you get a breath off onto the raid before anyone is even close to land after whirlwind. I also use it during second drake Sartharion 3d , both 10 man and 25 man version with much sucess (i do however spec 3 points longevity instead of 3 cobra strikes for those raids).
Mana might be an issue but i seldom find myself in the position when I can’t do this; you can shoot of your normal rotations while up in the air. Trick is to get your character facing the boss once but after that, you will be automaticly face him while casting steady shot. There are some penalties on the cast time as you take damage.
Went to 10 man maly with guildies tonight to get the 5 min achievement done. Wish I had thought of using AotB to be totally honest. However we did fine and got lucky with sparks on the first attempt; got him from 65% to 0% in one go once we killed the gathered sparks. Then it was simply a matter of killing off the scions (with the sparksbuff still going) asap then the melee mobs, then put up a token dot on malygos once phase 3 started and we made it with good time to spare. :)
Shanx EU – Silvermoon
Oooooh I get it, FI does a Malygos video and now QQ does one… Shenanigans!
j/k bud :)
<3 Ty
@Tyrae I only wish mine was a 5 minute kill video. :)