Warlords Of Draenor Divers infos.

Hi there, I'm writing this guide to help any rogues out on this fight in particular as I feel it is the fight in Highmaul where we have to change up our norm to achieve the most out of our skillset. It's going to be a long read but I'll split it into the different phases so you can see what I change from different phases.

As a background, I'm a Combat Rogue in a 7/7 HC guild named Reincarnation on Chamber of Aspects EU, currently 658ilvl at time of 7/7 HC clear. I've been playing Rogue since vanilla and raid the relatively casual 9 hours a week across 3 days.

http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/character/chamber-of-aspects/Whijett/simple

I'm not going to go too much into the common rotation nuances of Combat or any other spec as there are plenty of guides in that respect but more on how I feel is the best way to deal with the mechanics of this fight which others may either be struggling with or not thought of but these are obviously open to discussion.

Glyphs, Talents and Optimisation

Firstly, I'll go over my glyphs, talents and action bar optimisation I specifically used for this encounter.

http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/tool/talent-calculator#cZa!2121020!dkPOJs

Of particular note is that I use Elusiveness and Shadowstep for this fight to maximise uptime and mitigate the extreme AOE damage in this fight.

As a general note, I take Burst of Speed in 95% the bosses since SoO as I feel it offers more than Shadowstep but for this I take ShS simply due to the Force Nova push back. ShS allows to you either completely mitigate or hugely reduce the residual damage you would otherwise take trying to run through the Nova and should generally be saved just for this ability.

Elusiveness is mandatory for most bosses but even more so here due to the amount of AOE damage sustained throughout the fight.

Force Nova, Arcane Aberration pulse, Arcane Wrath, Volatile Anomalies, Warmage Fixate etc.

Use Feint liberally to help your healers especially during Force Nova's and Arcane Aberration uptime.

In terms of glyphs, I run Energy and Disappearance as standard for Combat for the extra pool and weaving Vanish into the rotation more often (Which you should be doing). As the 3rd glyph, I'd take either Feint or Smoke Bomb. Personal preference really and depends on how much your raid relies on your Smoke Bomb.

Glyph of Killing Spree was invaluable as I found a couple of times the tank taunting the boss over mines mid Killing Spree but landing me back in the original place saved me and the raid but this is more a peace of mind glyph than a mandatory glyph.

As a small tweak I also moved my sprint button to an easier button. I'm so used to Burst of Speed that I barely use Sprint, but without it I felt that moving it to an easy button (I chose T) really helped but this is personal preference and everyone’s UI/Key binds are different.

Another tip for Tricks of the Trade usage will depend on your tanks. We had a dedicated tank that took Mark of Chaos every time it was going to be cast. The other tanks duty was to pick up the Arcane Aberration or both which is where Tricks of the Trade comes in handy.

Each time the add spawns, cast Tricks on the tank that doesn't take Mark of Chaos which will free him up to ideally taunt the boss as well. This not only keeps your up time higher but also increases the damage possible for the other melee DPS. I set up a macro to cast Tricks on my focus which I set to the 'off tank' which picks up the adds.

Smoke Bomb is your raid cool down and is needed for this fight during the transition phases but I'll go into more detail on that later.

The Fight

Right, now that I've gone over some of the preparation I'll dive into the fight, dividing it into the phases and transitions.

Phase 1

This is pretty straight forward, Pre-pot, spam your energy, Killing Spree early and then Slice n Dice, Adrenaline Rush. When the add spawns, Tricks and nuke down. ShS the nova. If your raids DPS is good enough you should be going into Phase 2 just before Killing Spree cools down (between 5-10 seconds).

Phase 2

Once he has come down the tank should position him in the centre of the room. This strategy remains similar except a few small changes.

When the big add dies, it pushes you back so watch your positioning, try to face mines so you get knocked back away from them.

Force Nova's need to be either ShS or Cloaked through. Feint and Sprint if absolutely needed (which it is in later phases).

If you get Arcane Wrath, the best thing is to get as close to your jails walls as you can towards your ranged group. In our raid, 1 of our ranged (usually hunter) would step forward towards me to take the Mark and allowed me to continue my DPS happily and made it easier for the raid to deal with.

Transition 1

During this phase, your priority is interrupting Warmages which you will need to co-ordinate a rotation with other melee DPS as ranged generally have much longer cool downs. You won't be able to stop the casts of Nether Blast completely but it all helps. Having a say macro for interrupts can help you co-ordinate and keep your raid comms clear.

A trick our melee DPS did was stack on 1 side of the Warmage, if one of you is fixated, they move directly opposite the stacked group. This gives enough room for everyone to DPS happily while mitigating the splash damage.

If you are targeted by Fixate, Feint needs to be up 100% of the time and Cloak may need to be used in an emergency.

Once the Warmages are down there should be about half the little adds remaining. This is when I found was the best place to use Smoke Bomb. On first attempts, it can be difficult to co-ordinate focus and we found plenty of AOE damage coming out because of this. Plant a smoke bomb in the middle of them and keep Feint up 100% until all of them are dead. Cloak if it is up too.

Phase 3

The only real thing that should trouble Rogues more than the other phases here is that triple Force Nova. He now Nova's 3 times in 8 second intervals. This requires us to ShS the first, cloak the 2nd and Feint/Sprint the 3rd in most cases.

A trick Combat rogues can do is Killing Spree just after the Nova comes out which also takes us over the damage. As useful as this is, I don't recommend saving it for this mechanic if it is off CD. Longest I'd wait is 5 seconds or so otherwise it's going to hit your DPS heavily.

The Arcane Wrath now does more bounces more but we can now move freely so it's much easier to pass it off to ranged.

Arcane Aberration Tricks strategy remains unchanged.

Transition 2

This phase adds a new mob named Gorian Reaver. This is a priority, so much so that our raid saved Heroism/Time Warp for this part just to nuke the Reaver down. Our raid only had 3 melee DPS and we felt that we had more than enough DPS on the Reaver and that it would be useful for melee to interrupt the Warmages and begin work on them. This worked out well as with the Heroism buff 3 of us we're well under way with the first Warmage as the Reaver went down and let us clear up the small adds quicker.

Again, drop Smoke Bomb here to soak the explosion damage of the small adds along with Feint but save Cloak unless absolutely necessary.

Phase 4

This is the most chaotic of the phases but the Nova remains the main issue to deal with. It still pulses 3 times but as you take damage from it you also pulse in an AOE for more damage which stops the raid from stacking. It's important to be aware of this and spread from the tanks and other melee.

The best way to mitigate this is to cloak the Nova but you can only do this once. I feel it will be best after that to back off slightly from the boss just before the nova comes in to ShS and sprint through which gives the melee more room to avoid others.

Also small adds spawn randomly around but do not do raid wide AOE like their bigger brothers. It's a good idea to pick these up and either Tricks to off tank or Evasion tank them until your tank can pick them up. If your tank can get these stacked we can get some really nice cleave damage on them while maintaining CP's on Margok.

Lastly, avoid the orbs which the tank now spawns from Mark of Chaos. They are slow moving and easy to see and you really need to save Cloak for the Nova in this phase.