Tips For Emalon PUGs

Emalon the Storm Watcher I was in three different Raid groups that wiped twelve times on Emalon this week before I was finally in a group that took him down this morning on my thirteenth attempt. I thought I’d expand a bit on my previous thoughts on Emalon by offering a few suggestions for Raid leaders in charge of PUGs during this portion of the Vault of Archavon.

Recruit High DPS

I’m normally very quickly offended when someone asks what my DPS is before I am invited to a group but in this case I think it’s justified. The Emalon fight, as it currently stands, is just a DPS race on the enraged add. If you can get enough high DPS (mostly above 3K, from my limited experience so far) then you shouldn’t have much trouble eventually taking the guy down.

Boot Low DPS

Again, I’m usually pretty adamantly against harsh treatment of players but this fight is just too tough or even impossible without a lot of high DPS players. If there are people below 2K (and I’ve seen some groups with players under 1.5K this week) then those players need to be politely told they’ll be replaced. It’s just too difficult for the rest of the DPS players to carry the burden of low performing teammates right now against Emalon.

The group I was in this morning that finally took Emalon down had one wipe before the leader took charge and removed the bottom 5 people on the DPS chart. We replaced them with new DPS that were more prepared for the fight and did it on our second attempt. I’m sure some feelings got hurt in the process but it was either 5 people get upset or all 25 of us waste an hour of our time and leave empty-handed.

Make Tanking Locations Clear

For a room so tiny, I’m amazed at all of the different tanking strategies I’ve seen against Emalon so far. One PUG has people yelling for fighting on the stairs, the next one is tanking Emalon on those exact same stairs, another is pulling him to the back and bringing the adds up to the front. The best setup I’ve seen so far is Emalon on the right or left and the adds on the opposite side. This lets the ranged DPS sit square in the center, spaced out as evenly as possible, and still gives melee players a short distance to run when the add enrages.

Also, make sure you have tanks with some experience. My second PUG last night had a tank who, as I later discovered using PUG Checker (Shameless Plug!), had never finished any form of the Vault at all. We wiped eight times.

Calm Down

Finally, dear Raid Leader, I need you to calm down. I highly doubt, on my server at least, that a PUG has taken down Emalon on their first attempt. Acting like a crying, whining toddler when things don’t go well the first try doesn’t exactly instill confidence in the rest of the group. I’ve seen plenty of these Emalon PUGs already break up after the first wipe because the Raid Leader lost his mind and basically yelled everyone away. It’s only a game, children. Please be civilized.

Now I Predict The Future

This might be the frustration of my 7.7% success rate this week but I feel another nerf to Emalon coming down the pipe. Either they need to lower the health on the adds a bit more or they need to turn the Vault into two separate instances. As it stands now there are few PUGs willing to even bother with Archavon until Emalon is dead because killing one of the two saves you to the instance for the week. So if you kill one but bomb out on the other until the PUG disbands you are basically out of luck for seven more days.

tiggs4e on May 29th, 2009

i’m a huge fan, love your blog love WoW Headlines :D just sayin

May200928

Nance

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