Watcher 2.0

[Demonjay]

First of all i would like to say this fight is ridicules..
Turbine made it to hard that its not fun anymore for the casual players to attend
it takes a lot of coordination and strategy of all players
i think Turbine is trying to keep us busy till book8 comes out it seems
but a lot of players and kin cant make this raid and consider just leaving it till book8 comes out.

ive done some reading and i would like to go over some points we need to get nailed down at phase 3 at least
to successfully beat the watcher.

PHASE 1 & 2 have not changed
we can do those like we always did
the Transition from phase 2 to 3 and PHASE 3 we need to talk over because some big changes has happen here.

first i want to say certain classes must consider being traited a certain way for the fight

Captains - The Path of the Healing Hands
Champions - Deathstorm
Lore masters - Ancient Master
Burglers - Mischief Maker

Captain because we need all teh support we can get in this fight

Champions its very important u are ready to nuke those 12 crushing ones out

Lore master & Burgler for all the debuffing that must occur on the watcher

ok let me show u all a little animation of what i think we should try out going from PHASE 2 to 3

Edit:This tactic dint really work wel , and we are looking for a better way to deal with the 12 crushing ones



Mario = Tank
wario = watcher
rest explains it self

i know i know i was bored bare with me

We stand on the bridge infront of the last Tentacle we need to kill before th 12 crushing ones come
then Burn down the Tentacle and move to the left when the 12 crushing Tentacles come
at this point let the captains use in HW+LS and the only ones dealing with the 12 crushing ones are the 2 Champions must be np for then to burn those down being that they are deathstorm traited.

at this point the tank moves into position starting with a quick frey the edge and picks up the watcher.

now if that works wel we need to start the fight
and a part of the fight are the corruptions that NEED to be removed at all times , there can be not more then 3 corruptions on him at a time or els he can do 2 kind of attacks ( and im not 100% sure about this ) and even without the corruptions on him he can do the attacks..



these are

Crushing Devastation , Crushing Devastation is a 360 degree AoE attack The Watcher will throw out at random, at least as far as I can tell thus far. There is no induction, it is not clobberable, it simply is something that you need to deal with. The attack itself is honestly nothing special, it only really starts to do some serious damage if you let corruptions stack up on The Watcher, and have no debuffs on him. The basic animation for the attack is that The Watcher appears to leap up, and thrash left and right.

Terror of the Deep,Terror of the Deep is a 360 degree AoE, that affects anyone that's swimming inside the ring, sunken structure, ruins, bridge, etc. So in order to avoid this attack everyone must move onto the ruins (which can be seen a few feet below the surface of the water) which surround the watcher. Humans and elves can stand on them, dwarves and hobbits will be swimming, but as long as they are over the ruins they will be fine. The attack hits for roughly 2,500 morale (To a heavy armor class). It needs to be avoided at all costs. Also of note, this attack has a chance to knock back anyone hit by it back to the shore where you will then be hit with a Crushing and Squeezing Tentacle.

ok for the corruption removal
there are 3 classes that are best for this it seems
Wardens are the best corruption removal class in the game
Minstrel...but means we need a third minstrel ( dont see how so if any one can explain this to me pls do )
Champion spamming Feral Strikes, that should be enough to keep up, with occasionally falling behind where additional assistance is needed.

i say we need a Warden on every run its al ready hard as it is so lets try to take the best classes
but ik get to that in a bit

now for the Lore masters and Burglers pls keep on debuffing the bastard as much as u can

Fire lore
Wind lore
Gust of Wind
Sop: Command
Sop: See all ends
Ancient craft
Tar
Traited Disable

let me know if i missed anything

if we all have that up and sorted its just like we always do taking out the tentacles like we did to stop the healing he gets
and start that rhythm take down of tentacles

i leave it to this for now there are so many more points in this fight i can mention , but i dont want this post to be to long as for people lose concentration and forget half of what i wrote
and lets discuss the points i whent over with and maybe the things i missed to mention

o and for the classes i think we should take to make this run successfully are

2 Minstrels
2 Champions
2 Captains
2 Hunters
1 Tank
1 Loremaster
1 Burgler
1 warden

think thats the best setup for the watcher raid atm and i think we must consider stop sign ups for certain classes on that day to get that group setup that we desperately need

[valkath]

Here's a link people might be interested in. Just a few people discussing how they're now doing the Watcher

forums.lotro.com/showthread.php?t=257211

[wardo]

Hmm, just saw this one in there: '4) for about 2 hours we tried popping the 12 by the watcher before we decided that no one can be up there with the watcher when he pops in the 4th phase. its just suicide popping them in the deep water."

Gonna read rest later on.

[wardo]

Oh, found another interesting bit to read for the tank:
forums.lotro.com/showthread.php?t=260073

[Demonjay]

posting this of wardo here

Apr 16, 2009 11:41:02 GMT -1 wardo said:

Hey all,
after a couple of unsuccessful runs it's time to bring him down again.

My suggestion (after reading forums and unsuccessful runs):
Phase 1 & 2 as normal (dif with watcher 1.0: phase 2 use melee to get big tents down, as we've been doing succesful last couple of runs), bring down right tent to 5k
Transition: all stand in corner next to pillar except 1 hunter, bring down tent. This will spawn 11 crushing in corner next to pillar, and 1 at hunter position.
Move around pillar and melee classes take down the crushing tent which spawned at hunter position
- Let 1 hunter starts tanking the 2 tents next to watcher
After 10 seconds Watcher will spawn:
- 1 other hunter starts tanking the watcher.
After watcher does his 360 AOE scream (which killed us a couple of times)( he does this a couple seconds after he pops up) the tank moves and and takes over agro
When agro of watcher is taken over by tank: hunter switches to 1 of the big tens so they are divided over 2 hunters
- Tank makes sure watcher faces the back while the group moves to the platform, hunters last.

The big tents next to watcher do aoe splash damage so the hunters should end up cross tanking the tents so the group doesn't get hit by this splash damage. This splash damage is the unclear factor in the transition phase, we might have to find a nice spot for the hunters until the group moves to the watcher after his scream

We should end up like this for the 3rd phase:

TANK
Watcher (facing tank)
Left tentacle Right tentacle
Hunter tanking right tent group Hunter tank left tent


Hmm spaces and tabs don't seem to be working for the above setup, I'll draw a decent picture (or steal one somewhere and add it later)


Melee group & hunters: get your beleriand dam on you leg. weapon if you haven't already!

well we can try that out m8 i think he can be tanked by a hunter fir a short while till he gets the ranged buff , thats the only one u can remove ( u can only remove the mellee coruptions )
so hunter picks up watcher and other hunter tentacles
we kill off the crushing ones and move in right.

i suggest we still stand on the bridge when fighting him but the hunters that are tanking the tentacles muct cross tank him and we all stand in teh middle of the bridge
this must work tbh.

how long do u want the hunter taking the aggro in the begining from the watcher till the tank moves in ?

next time we talk this over before the fight and tell the hunters their position and role in the fight so it VERY CLEAR where every one has to stand during the last fight
position is very important

[kristle]

I like Wardo's idea/research.

The one thing I don't get is the cross-tanking of tents.

Think about it: cross tanking must mean forcing them into ranged attack to avoid a close range AOE if we don't cross tank. If close range is melee, it must logically mean ranged=not aoe, melee=aoe. So what we're trying to avoid is just a melee AOE on the group.

This is kinda important - it means that tents should be huntanked as far as possible to avoid melee aoe on the dps groups.

For the set up it means we must avoid having hunts in the group. "Cross-tanking" may not be vital - but keeping tents in ranged attack mode, as far as possible, is important.

Which would mean a set up for last phase of

**** <------------> tank <------------->****
**** <------------> watcher <------------->****
hunt <------------> group <------------->hunt

Question: do we still put warden on watcher with tank?

[nimcuran]

Apr 16, 2009 20:06:47 GMT -1 @kristle said:

I like Wardo's idea/research.

The one thing I don't get is the cross-tanking of tents.

Think about it: cross tanking must mean forcing them into ranged attack to avoid a close range AOE if we don't cross tank. If close range is melee, it must logically mean ranged=not aoe, melee=aoe. So what we're trying to avoid is just a melee AOE on the group.

This is kinda important - it means that tents should be huntanked as far as possible to avoid melee aoe on the dps groups.

For the set up it means we must avoid having hunts in the group. "Cross-tanking" may not be vital - but keeping tents in ranged attack mode, as far as possible, is important.

Which would mean a set up for last phase of

**** <------------> tank <------------->****
**** <------------> watcher <------------->****
hunt <------------> group <------------->hunt

Question: do we still put warden on watcher with tank?

agree with kris, tho we could have only one hunter tanking the 2 tentacles? if so:
****---------------------watcher---------------*****
hunt-----------------------------------------------group

which gives a lot more room between us and the aoe tentacle.

we could ofc have a hunter in the group that tanks the far tentacle, and the hunter who's alone tanking the tentacle which is close to the group?

ps. imo, spawning the 12 ones at the deep water = wipe

pps. i dunno if any of this has been suggested before, cba to read everything:)

EDIT: this also keeps us farther away from the watcher (and safer) when he does the panic button attacks like

i suggest a champ & warden at the back of the watcher spamming the corruption thingy

[wardo]

new link to read to get a bit of extra info
forums.lotro.com/showthread.php?t=259809

1) Who gets dangled

if you are able to burn down the strangling within a couple seconds of it coming up, even if the wrong person gets dangled, there's no problem. this is a coordination issue -- good coordination will kill the adds before they have any chance of doing anything bad. it only becomes a luck issue if you're not killing that add fast enough, thus giving it an opportunity to cause havok.

2) When they are dangled

not random at all. when is exactly every 60 seconds. you can (and probably should) have a raid member with a stopwatch calling out "add in 5 seconds" so people are 100% prepared for when it arrives.

3) How often the Watcher does his Crushing Devastation

afaik, this is fairly constant and can be healed through assuming you have corruptions under control. only if you got more than 1 corruption stacking will this become a problem.

4) How often the Watcher crits on his Crushing Devastation

a properly traited LM can keep the likelihood of crits down to basically zero with traited-and-legacy-lengthened SOP:SEA (-1920 to all crit chances with 60+ second duration on a 60s cooldown skill). the combination of SEA and all the other LM debuffs that can be constantly kept up (SOP:C, Firelore, Windlore, Gust of Wind), plus burg/RK debuffs if you have those in the raid, crits are unlikely and even non-crits are significantly lower/slower/less likely to hit.....

5) Did your corruption removal miss?

as others have noted, it seems like you need a more robust corruption removal approach. not just one person and a backup, but one or two people on constant duty (warden best, minstrel second best assuming you're running with 3 minstrels, champ third best) and two burst removers ready to go if the first line of defense fails.


Oh and how can i put a picture in my sig ?? haven'tmanaged it so far :-(

[Demonjay]

wel guys the more i read about the watcher and see videos ( never trust a video completly it can be edited)

i like the bridge tactic more...
just dont feel the pillar thing is working , tank has to be in position when he pops up to tank him and warden and LM must start de buffing and coruption removal straight away

the 12 crushing ones can easly be dealt with the champs,LM,Hunters ( quick Rain of arrows to help out )

then cross tanking the tentacles

BUT if we wanna keep at the pillar thats fine by me i just think we are making it harder for ourselfs

here a very nice vid
of the knights of the white tree on the evernight server

[wardo]

Parking the crushing ones around the corner seemed to work great couple of times, and gives just a bit less stuff to deal with, so I still prefer that option. We've never gotten as far as we did yesterday!
Fact it you won't see it in vids (seen vids with it being edited out) cause kins are afraid that the devs will "fix" it.
Example and discussion about it: forums.lotro.com/showthread.php?t=262086
So I would suggest let's stick with that tactic for now, and improve it from there.


About the special watcher attacks, the link I posted yesterday implies they will keep coming during the fight, and as long as we keep the corruptions down we should be able to handle it. Moving out of it's range should help us. Addling, interrupting & conj starters might help with this also (we should try this to see if it helps).

[kristle]

Well, we made it through the transition for the first time tonight ;D

Our job now as I see it is:

1. Figure out where everyone should be standing (don't think we have that sorted yet).

2. Assign a corruption removal team

3. Work out where to move to avoid which Watcher attacks.

4. Get everyone to read the answers to the above!

So, Wardo, DJ, others - what do you think about the above?

Also, classes. Two champs do seem to be a must and this is a bit difficult for us atm. Two hunters would also help a lot until we have this fight under control.

Not suggesting we start 'picking' the team - but it may be worth trying to organise ONE 'special event' run in a week or two where we encourage the right classes to sign-up. That would, I hope, result in a kill - and after that we should be set for more kills. We need to get our own hope for this, get organised, and get the mutant prawn dead.

Something like:

Mins x 2 (Dj, me)
Champs x 2 (Lovok, Doro)
Hunts x 2 (Nim, Finn, Ael, Ap)
Capts x 2 (Fear, Katr)
LM (Edi, Agan)
Tank (Thrar, Pudz)
Burg (wardo, Nim, Tani)
Last spot would ideally be a warden (Kal) but I think we can live with 1 more or less random (Burg, Hunt, Champ, LM, RK).

Finally, I do think we will now kill the prawn. We will need a few more runs to get the transition just right (like we did on 1.0), and then a run or two more to get corruptions, positions and Watcher attacks right, but then he's on farm status.

We will also have a turtle to kill next week:)

[kristle]

We made it thro' the transition twice tonight (wp all!), so now need to get set for the Watcher fight itself.

Some points from the fight:

• It's pretty clear 2 champs are a must.
  
• We need corruption removal team ready to go.
  
• We have yet to figure put how to avoid the big attacks from the prawn - this is our major challenge.
  

[thrar]

May 3, 2009 22:53:18 GMT -1 @kristle said:

[/li][li]We have yet to figure put how to avoid the big attacks from the prawn - this is our major challenge.

[/quote]

I don't know if we can avoid them - I had him turned from whole raid all the time (last time I even used force taunts which I shouldn't) and the swipes still did damage to everyone... Ppl on us forums reported they get hit by tail swipes even what watcher's turned and you can see this on some vids, so it's rather a corruptions issue if u ask me

[Demonjay]

tbh we are so close in getting it nailed down it all a matter of getting in position , debuffing the watcher and remove the coruptions

[wardo]

Wasn't there yesterday so really wondering how it went.

About the big attacks: Every 60 seconds the Watcher supposed to do a short-range 360 AOE attack. He announces it (can't remem the exact text), and we should start using a stopwatch so we know it's coming.
We can use 2 tactics here:
1). move away from the watcher (on the bridge, the 2 bits which stick out of the water are safe from this attack, move away further you you might encounter the "sharks"( roaming tents)
-2). Take it like a man. But we have to make sure the corruptions are gone, or it could mean a wipe. Cause the melee corruptions increase the damage a lot..3 or 4 corruptions and 95% will be gone..

So depending how well the corruptions removal works (again I don't know how this bit went yesterday) we could decide for option 1 or option 2.

Another stopwatch job: every 60 seconds someone is lifted by a tentacle. Being lifted by a tentacle is never nice but it might be trouble if:
A). If the timing is close to the 360 AOE shout it could mean trouble
B). If a minst is lifted we might have and healing issue if we can't get the minst down quick enough => bigger trouble
C). If a hunter tanking a tentacle is lifted, tentacle will pick other target with splash damage => also troubles
D). If the tank is lifted, watcher will switch attacks to someone else (aoe the group) => major trouble

I think we should have a lifting tentacle melee team, who can move fast and get people down if it happens. If the tank is lifted the hunters and other ranged people should get him down ASAP.

About the team setup, yeah I agree that's why I dropped yesterday . Maybe one day if we got him on farm status and we can kill him with our eyes closed even when we don't have to have a well-balanced team it's different, but for now, I totally agree.