TL;DR question: How do you successfully tank these ubers on MP8+ for a group of glass canons?
I'm running around with 2-3 DPS'ers (2 DHs + sometimes 1 other DH or wizard, all around 200-250k EHP). We kill Kulle/Siegebreaker and Ghom/Rakanoth on MP7/8 with no problem, could probably even go higher, not even close to enrage. However, Leoric and Maghda are giving us a hard time. Meaning, we manage it, but when I look at some videos I feel like it should be easier.
Here's my spec - more or less classic CMWW. I have 19 APoC, 43% crit (can't afford a Mempo with crit yet and have low 3% crit Lacuni's) and 2.76 APS. I'm at 89k HP, 1200 LoH, 800 allres, and 6500 armor (buffed with Prismatic+Energy Armor). As you can imagine, I rarely ever die thanks to 678k EHP (except for strange combinations of ingame lag, brain lag, and stupidity). But when I do, it's in most cases a wipe; not on MP7, but on MP8+. Therefore I'd like to know how you deal with MP8+. Is there anything I've overlooked? Does it make such a difference to get 5-10% crit more and invest the 200m on a better Mempo (only have about 100m left at the moment)?
Or is it just that Leoric and Maghda can't be tanked and the other players simply need to have enough EHP to survive some hits by all their attacks? I mean, it's not just one attack, sometimes there's a swarm popping up in their face and if they're not at 100% it's an insta-death. How much EHP do the glass canons in your MP8+ uber groups have?
I haven't tried MP8 yet but I don't see why the strat would be much different than MP7. What I do as CM is focus on Mag. I use teleport as my extra skill so I teleport to her at the start and just do my best to keep her frozen as much as possible. I don't use EB on her, just WW, FN, and DS for better FN uptime, and I try to position myself between mag and the group so when she shoots out some swarms it's more likely to hit me than get by to chase them around.
The other players need to just not die, so if an attack one shots them, they either need to avoid it, or get more mitigation to not die. There's not really much more you can do besides trying to reach the 3.0 APS breakpoint and raising your crit higher to keep mag locked more. Even then she'll still throw out some sentries and probably still shoot some swams, from what I hear.
Rough estimate of Mag's bee damage is about 150-200k on MP7, so about 220k on MP8. I'd say your GCs need around 300k EHP to safely survive a hit from her, but that's a pretty rough estimate from my experience of her bees hitting me for around 15k on MP7 with around 89% mitigation (including barb buff, I love that buff).
You're in good shape. And as you've said, if you die, everyone else dies. Your buddies need to pump up their EHP... badly.
If you're the designated tank (which to me it seems like the case), try having your glass cannon wizard buddies run Ancient Guardian Familiar and Force Armor instead. While they may get wrecked by Ghom's poison (which can be solved with Diamond Skin and proper LoH or life steal), they will be able to survive Magdha's Wreck-Your-Face Butterfly Sneeze, as well as Leoric's Moonwalk of Doom, Rakanoth's charge and Kulle's meteor attacks.
Like you, I rarely die, and when I do die (if there are no barbs/monks in my party), there's a good chance we're all dead. Personally, I'm not sure about the EHP for people I party up with. The barbs and monks are usually in good shape, and the DHs and WDs in my group are usually smart enough to carry Smokescreen and Spiritwalk in cases of emergencies. Wizards I party up with generally have similar stats to you, so they all hold their own pretty well. But for the wizards with lower EHP, I really, really, really recommend Force Armor and Ancient Guardian.
So for strategy:
1. Game starts, don't go in. Wait for Leoric to finish flailing around before engaging. I can't even begin to count how many of my party members died within the first 3 seconds of the fight just because they went Leroy Jenkins on Leoric.
2. Kill Leoric. Ignore Magdha. Just dodge her butterflies and Arcane Sentries and gun down Leoric. This involves heavy kiting unless you're 100% certain of your EHP limitations. After that, it's straightforward.
3. If someone dies in the process while fighting Leoric, kill all surrounding mobs immediately (especially archers) and have someone aggro Maghda so her butterflies stay away from the one trying to do the reviving. Leoric will teleport, which is why someone will have to lure him away as well and preferably stunlock him when he begins his teleporting animation. A good way to do this is have everyone run off as far away from the dead character to increase the amount of space between Leoric/Magdha and the corpse.
I haven't tried MP8 yet but I don't see why the strat would be much different than MP7. What I do as CM is focus on Mag. I use teleport as my extra skill so I teleport to her at the start and just do my best to keep her frozen as much as possible. I don't use EB on her, just WW, FN, and DS for better FN uptime, and I try to position myself between mag and the group so when she shoots out some swarms it's more likely to hit me than get by to chase them around.
Actually, I felt that increasing MP from 6 to 7 or 7 to 8 it's not just a minor step - it hurts. Sure, the strat might be the same, but on lower levels (i.e., when you're not at your limit) "bad strategies" work and errors will be forgiven. Therefore I'm looking for errors in my strategy which only matter once we get to our limits ;-)
CMWW sometimes feels like button smashing and nothing else, that's why I like to at least put some thought into which buttons I smash: I try to hit DS only when my health jumps around or some Arcane Sentrys are there, and I try to minimize EB. I was wondering how much influence EB has on the CM procs? Or is it really just for damage? Since we have really no damage problem at all, I could even replace EB with LL or some other spell with high CM proc coefficient.
The other players need to just not die, so if an attack one shots them, they either need to avoid it, or get more mitigation to not die. There's not really much more you can do besides trying to reach the 3.0 APS breakpoint and raising your crit higher to keep mag locked more. Even then she'll still throw out some sentries and probably still shoot some swams, from what I hear.
Rough estimate of Mag's bee damage is about 150-200k on MP7, so about 220k on MP8. I'd say your GCs need around 300k EHP to safely survive a hit from her, but that's a pretty rough estimate from my experience of her bees hitting me for around 15k on MP7 with around 89% mitigation (including barb buff, I love that buff).
As you might know, I like high APS numbers... I tried it with 3.00 APS once, but obviously had to sacrifice some EHP for that. I felt that it was not worth it. So if you say that even then people report her going crazy, it's probably not worth it investing in some high-EHP Witching Hour or Lacuni...
Unfortunately, we don't have a barbarian around. The only barb is my twink, and obviously I can't play both at the same time ;-)
You're in good shape. And as you've said, if you die, everyone else dies. Your buddies need to pump up their EHP... badly.
Yeah, I told them. They're quite reluctant though. But at least I have a prominent quote now to throw at them next time they try to argue with me :-P
And yeah, I'm just the designated tank. In fact, I made a barbarian and a wizard and with both of them I wanted to act as support class (well, obviously in the first place with a barb). However, I felt that the barb can't really tank a mob (at least not like in WoW) - the taunt is too limited. So far it worked pretty well with the wizard, we can even farm keys on MP10... but ever since we got our asses handed to us by Leoric and wasted a machine for nothing, we *know* that there's room for optimization.
1. Game starts, don't go in. Wait for Leoric to finish flailing around before engaging. I can't even begin to count how many of my party members died within the first 3 seconds of the fight just because they went Leroy Jenkins on Leoric.
2. Kill Leoric. Ignore Magdha. Just dodge her butterflies and Arcane Sentries and gun down Leoric. This involves heavy kiting unless you're 100% certain of your EHP limitations. After that, it's straightforward.
3. If someone dies in the process while fighting Leoric, kill all surrounding mobs immediately (especially archers) and have someone aggro Maghda so her butterflies stay away from the one trying to do the reviving. Leoric will teleport, which is why someone will have to lure him away as well and preferably stunlock him when he begins his teleporting animation. A good way to do this is have everyone run off as far away from the dead character to increase the amount of space between Leoric/Magdha and the corpse.
Thanks for the tips, really helpful. Especially the first point... I think no one ever died in the first 3 seconds, but it's nice to know. On Kulle and Ghom I just teleport in as quickly as possible to stunlock ASAP and make the fight super easy for everyone - and just did the same for Leoric.
About the bold printed part: that is exactly why so far I always end up tanking Leoric. I tried to tank Magdha several times, but my mates always said that they felt it's easier when I tank Leoric instead and we ignore Magdha. I'm by the way less concerned about the wizard (he recently hit p100 and started replacing his farming gear with more EHP gear) but the demon hunters. They use Smoke Screen to escape the swarms though. Well, like you already said, by now I probably have done my part and they have to gear up...
EB is mostly for DPS purposes. It costs 20 AP and only has an effective coefficient of 1/3 per cast. WW costs 35 AP but tics 36 times at 2.73 I think, for an effective coefficient of 36/8 = 4.5 per cast, which is considerably higher than EB. Single target you might have some white attacks if you use EB, particularly if your crit is on the lower side, so ignoring EB single target will slightly increase your FN uptime. Whether it's significant or not, I haven't really looked into, and when both bosses are together I start casting EB again until one moves away.
I wouldn't recommend dropping EB for anything, since it's great for the other bosses, and you won't really gain anything from LL because you're always casting WW anyway, so you won't have any time to cast LL. Also, EB doesn't use an attack animation whereas almost any other dps skill you might consider using instead of it will likely require an attack animation. Slow Time is about the only skill I would even think of considering as a replacement, assuming you don't use it already (I use teleport for MP7, Slow Time for MP6).
In short, EB = dps skill, WW = CM procing. Replacing EB for a CM proc spell doesn't really make sense.
We tried Slow Time once, didn't really work out. Plus, with all the freaking teleport bosses it's really nice to have teleport available. And it makes it really quick to locate the 5 elite packs and keywarden.
Hm okay, will stick to EB then. Kinda makes sense - no time for spamming anything besides WW.
I also thought of getting a Slorak's Madness with +8% Energy Twister crit... but I would drop to 2.42 APS then (have a 1.78 Chantodo's now), so not really an option (according to the infamous CMWW formula, my "proc value" would drop by 0.2 then, from 6.1 to 5.9).
I'd say the Slorak's Madness would be fine if you could keep above 2.5 APS, but below 2.5 is definitely not worth it.
Regarding Slow Time, I don't really like it against Mag because the swarms begin to stack and it really sucks just insta dying when you get 2-4 stacked on top of each other. Otherwise I like it for the 20% group dps, but like you I greatly prefer teleport (I use fracture for party rezzing). I really hate the siegebreaker fight because I can't lock Keule in place so having teleport to get out of his bubble is great, as well as teleporting after Keule teleports away.
Honestly I don't use that formula since the recommended value is like 8-9 and I found a max dps gain at like 6.5 with my current stats (2.5 APS, 20 APoC, 46% crit) and 100 ms reaction time. It seems more like a rule of thumb thing that is best used to tell when you're actually over saturation on AP. For example, if you're above 9, you can drop some crit or APoC with minimal performance loss, if any.
I'm running around with 2-3 DPS'ers (2 DHs + sometimes 1 other DH or wizard, all around 200-250k EHP). We kill Kulle/Siegebreaker and Ghom/Rakanoth on MP7/8 with no problem, could probably even go higher, not even close to enrage. However, Leoric and Maghda are giving us a hard time. Meaning, we manage it, but when I look at some videos I feel like it should be easier.
Here's my spec - more or less classic CMWW. I have 19 APoC, 43% crit (can't afford a Mempo with crit yet and have low 3% crit Lacuni's) and 2.76 APS. I'm at 89k HP, 1200 LoH, 800 allres, and 6500 armor (buffed with Prismatic+Energy Armor). As you can imagine, I rarely ever die thanks to 678k EHP (except for strange combinations of ingame lag, brain lag, and stupidity). But when I do, it's in most cases a wipe; not on MP7, but on MP8+. Therefore I'd like to know how you deal with MP8+. Is there anything I've overlooked? Does it make such a difference to get 5-10% crit more and invest the 200m on a better Mempo (only have about 100m left at the moment)?
Or is it just that Leoric and Maghda can't be tanked and the other players simply need to have enough EHP to survive some hits by all their attacks? I mean, it's not just one attack, sometimes there's a swarm popping up in their face and if they're not at 100% it's an insta-death. How much EHP do the glass canons in your MP8+ uber groups have?
The other players need to just not die, so if an attack one shots them, they either need to avoid it, or get more mitigation to not die. There's not really much more you can do besides trying to reach the 3.0 APS breakpoint and raising your crit higher to keep mag locked more. Even then she'll still throw out some sentries and probably still shoot some swams, from what I hear.
Rough estimate of Mag's bee damage is about 150-200k on MP7, so about 220k on MP8. I'd say your GCs need around 300k EHP to safely survive a hit from her, but that's a pretty rough estimate from my experience of her bees hitting me for around 15k on MP7 with around 89% mitigation (including barb buff, I love that buff).
Crusader DPS and EHP Spreadsheet, meant for Crusaders
My Wizard
If you're the designated tank (which to me it seems like the case), try having your glass cannon wizard buddies run Ancient Guardian Familiar and Force Armor instead. While they may get wrecked by Ghom's poison (which can be solved with Diamond Skin and proper LoH or life steal), they will be able to survive Magdha's Wreck-Your-Face Butterfly Sneeze, as well as Leoric's Moonwalk of Doom, Rakanoth's charge and Kulle's meteor attacks.
Like you, I rarely die, and when I do die (if there are no barbs/monks in my party), there's a good chance we're all dead. Personally, I'm not sure about the EHP for people I party up with. The barbs and monks are usually in good shape, and the DHs and WDs in my group are usually smart enough to carry Smokescreen and Spiritwalk in cases of emergencies. Wizards I party up with generally have similar stats to you, so they all hold their own pretty well. But for the wizards with lower EHP, I really, really, really recommend Force Armor and Ancient Guardian.
So for strategy:
1. Game starts, don't go in. Wait for Leoric to finish flailing around before engaging. I can't even begin to count how many of my party members died within the first 3 seconds of the fight just because they went Leroy Jenkins on Leoric.
2. Kill Leoric. Ignore Magdha. Just dodge her butterflies and Arcane Sentries and gun down Leoric. This involves heavy kiting unless you're 100% certain of your EHP limitations. After that, it's straightforward.
3. If someone dies in the process while fighting Leoric, kill all surrounding mobs immediately (especially archers) and have someone aggro Maghda so her butterflies stay away from the one trying to do the reviving. Leoric will teleport, which is why someone will have to lure him away as well and preferably stunlock him when he begins his teleporting animation. A good way to do this is have everyone run off as far away from the dead character to increase the amount of space between Leoric/Magdha and the corpse.
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Actually, I felt that increasing MP from 6 to 7 or 7 to 8 it's not just a minor step - it hurts. Sure, the strat might be the same, but on lower levels (i.e., when you're not at your limit) "bad strategies" work and errors will be forgiven. Therefore I'm looking for errors in my strategy which only matter once we get to our limits ;-)
CMWW sometimes feels like button smashing and nothing else, that's why I like to at least put some thought into which buttons I smash: I try to hit DS only when my health jumps around or some Arcane Sentrys are there, and I try to minimize EB. I was wondering how much influence EB has on the CM procs? Or is it really just for damage? Since we have really no damage problem at all, I could even replace EB with LL or some other spell with high CM proc coefficient.
As you might know, I like high APS numbers... I tried it with 3.00 APS once, but obviously had to sacrifice some EHP for that. I felt that it was not worth it. So if you say that even then people report her going crazy, it's probably not worth it investing in some high-EHP Witching Hour or Lacuni...
Unfortunately, we don't have a barbarian around. The only barb is my twink, and obviously I can't play both at the same time ;-)
Yeah, I told them. They're quite reluctant though. But at least I have a prominent quote now to throw at them next time they try to argue with me :-P
And yeah, I'm just the designated tank. In fact, I made a barbarian and a wizard and with both of them I wanted to act as support class (well, obviously in the first place with a barb). However, I felt that the barb can't really tank a mob (at least not like in WoW) - the taunt is too limited. So far it worked pretty well with the wizard, we can even farm keys on MP10... but ever since we got our asses handed to us by Leoric and wasted a machine for nothing, we *know* that there's room for optimization.
Thanks for the tips, really helpful. Especially the first point... I think no one ever died in the first 3 seconds, but it's nice to know. On Kulle and Ghom I just teleport in as quickly as possible to stunlock ASAP and make the fight super easy for everyone - and just did the same for Leoric.
About the bold printed part: that is exactly why so far I always end up tanking Leoric. I tried to tank Magdha several times, but my mates always said that they felt it's easier when I tank Leoric instead and we ignore Magdha. I'm by the way less concerned about the wizard (he recently hit p100 and started replacing his farming gear with more EHP gear) but the demon hunters. They use Smoke Screen to escape the swarms though. Well, like you already said, by now I probably have done my part and they have to gear up...
I wouldn't recommend dropping EB for anything, since it's great for the other bosses, and you won't really gain anything from LL because you're always casting WW anyway, so you won't have any time to cast LL. Also, EB doesn't use an attack animation whereas almost any other dps skill you might consider using instead of it will likely require an attack animation. Slow Time is about the only skill I would even think of considering as a replacement, assuming you don't use it already (I use teleport for MP7, Slow Time for MP6).
In short, EB = dps skill, WW = CM procing. Replacing EB for a CM proc spell doesn't really make sense.
Crusader DPS and EHP Spreadsheet, meant for Crusaders
My Wizard
Hm okay, will stick to EB then. Kinda makes sense - no time for spamming anything besides WW.
I also thought of getting a Slorak's Madness with +8% Energy Twister crit... but I would drop to 2.42 APS then (have a 1.78 Chantodo's now), so not really an option (according to the infamous CMWW formula, my "proc value" would drop by 0.2 then, from 6.1 to 5.9).
Regarding Slow Time, I don't really like it against Mag because the swarms begin to stack and it really sucks just insta dying when you get 2-4 stacked on top of each other. Otherwise I like it for the 20% group dps, but like you I greatly prefer teleport (I use fracture for party rezzing). I really hate the siegebreaker fight because I can't lock Keule in place so having teleport to get out of his bubble is great, as well as teleporting after Keule teleports away.
Honestly I don't use that formula since the recommended value is like 8-9 and I found a max dps gain at like 6.5 with my current stats (2.5 APS, 20 APoC, 46% crit) and 100 ms reaction time. It seems more like a rule of thumb thing that is best used to tell when you're actually over saturation on AP. For example, if you're above 9, you can drop some crit or APoC with minimal performance loss, if any.
Crusader DPS and EHP Spreadsheet, meant for Crusaders
My Wizard