HFC - Halls of Blood (Gorefiend, High Council, Kilrogg)

[Edalia]

Gorefiend: http://www.wowhead.com/guides/raiding/hellfire-citadel/gorefiend-strategy-guide
Hellfire High Council: http://www.wowhead.com/guides/raiding/hellfire-citadel/hellfire-high-council-strategy-guide
Kilrogg Deadeye: http://www.wowhead.com/guides/raiding/hellfire-citadel/kilrogg-deadeye-strategy-guide

[Honorata]

Healing stuff: Hellfire High Council
If you use the default raid frames, the debuff is color-coded for your convenience. Goes from Purple to Yellow to Red. Want to put off dispelling until red or at least late yellow.

Priests will want to mass dispel in final Dia burn phase at end of fight since sub30% she starts spamming the dot.

[Honorata]

Kilrogg:
2 groups of 3 was enough to cover visions of death for TRR on a normal 12m attempt.

Currently hearing that Holy Priests sent to Visions of Death trigger Spirit of Redemption and aren't getting the buff -- presumably this will be fixed shortly, but is an issue right now.

TRR found assigning Visions of Death runes ahead of time for people in each group was helpful, since all runes need to be stood in to activate the thing. We had healers take first rune and DPS take center and back runes arranged alphabetically.

Glowy swirly healers get after they exit the Visions of Death removes Fel corruption, so we may want to stack with melee/tanks for a short while when we first come out of the thing.

[Snique]

On Kilrogg: is this one of those fights that's easier with more people?  My larger raid group had a bit of a challenge killing adds but managed to get them down, but F&L (which almost always runs 10 people) is having a HORRID time reliably getting adds down when 3 people are in the other realm.  Like, we mostly can't do it.

Maybe it's just a lack of DPS, which is bad news since I don't know an obvious way to improve our DPS with the pre-Kilrogg gear.  What's the per-DPS production for this fight on normal supposed to be?

Finally, how do you do this fight with only 1 melee?  It feels impossible since the OT can't interrupt often enough to solo the outer-world add and you want an interrupter for imps on the dream side.

[Fallowgrey]

On Gorefiend:

Inside his tummy, it helps for faster targeting if healers turn on friendly name plates with "Shift-V" (and back off again outside, given the clutter-covered environment).  Given it's not a spell, you can switch on/off the plates while riding in/out.

I was wracking my brains to understand what Honor was talking about when she suggested it, 'cause I kept thinking she meant frames, like, that Blizz would give you extra raid frames for the new targets.  I sat there thinking that my use of a unit frame add-on has been denying me this!  No wonder, I thought, I had difficulties with the proving grounds and in the Norushen fight.  Blizz gives a friendly NPC healing frame window, and I've never had it because stupid.  But no, apparently they still haven't given us this (unless I'm still ill-informed).  But Friendly Name Plates ain't bad, esp. used with Clique or mouse-over macros.  I still would love to see them added to the standard raid frames, but I guess Blizz wants healers to learn some targeting skills.

[Honorata]

Kilrogg for Snique:
First of all, it seems like most of HFC is tuned around 2-healing 10man (TRR and BCP mostly 3-heal at ~15), which is mega awkward on fights like this, but if you're 3-healing, you might want to have your third healer go DPS so you can meet DPS checks.

We do not prioritize sending interrupters into the death realm. Generally the two DPS we send are just strong AoE DPS (Or one strong AOE DPS and one of our top DPSers). If you have at least 2 lusts in your group, you may want to send one in with the first group and have them lust before they leave the death realm; then have the lust for the whole raid be used when the second group comes out.

If you only have one melee, I would recommend leaving them outside the whole time to be sharing interrupts on the big dude.

The bloodthirsters can be slowed and rooted. I've heard groups recommend chain rooting the one that spawns farthest from the pool, and killing the other, then killing the rooted one. Not sure how much you have in the way of roots with your comp.

You also probably cannot afford for your empowered DPS to completely tunnel the boss -- they will need to help somewhat on adds.

A quick scan through logs from TRR & BCP says our non-empowered DPS are usually hovering around 28-31k on this fight.

Since Fallow brought up Gorefiend:
This fight is brutal on 10m. Highly recommend getting up to ~14-15 for this fight to not suck.

(Also, Fallow, in your defense, I think I said "frames" and not plates. Which is my bad. Sometimes they will give us targeting frames on the side of the UI (mushrooms, etc), but I guess the essences spawn too fast for that to be a viable option on this fight.)

[Marco]

I've never interrupted anything inside the visions on Kilrogg.  Just step out of the fire left behind by the big demons and AOE a lot.

Problems dealing with adds is usually a matter of reacting to them quickly, not raw DPS.  Prioritize the humanoids over the bloods; bloods reaching the boss is just raid damage, assuming you're not getting fel-corrupted bloods.  Try not to send in all of your snaring DPS (like hunters, and I think fire mages) in the same team.  I like having ranged DPS on both sides of the room (even when a team is in) with the middle of the room used for Heartseeker, but ranged on both sides needs to help with adds on both sides, moving up and down the hallway for range.

Also, normal-mode Kilrogg actually seems to get easier, albeit slower, if you skip every other visions phase.  We do this by accident sometimes and it seems to help rather than hurt.  The fight does start spawning more adds as time goes on, so the DPS has to get used to killing three humanoids before they reach the pool instead of four, but the spawns are staggered so that's mostly an issue of practice.

Kilrogg is a little sensitive to smaller raid sizes, but not as much as Gorefiend in my experience.

[Gwyddyon]

Since death knights are cheaters, they can death grip adds backwards on Kilrogg, but this only helps if you have one.

[ghoselle]

Since death knights are cheaters, they can death grip adds backwards on Kilrogg, but this only helps if you have one.

The adds are also subject to things like Ursol's Vortex from druids - so if you are having trouble with adds getting there, it might be worth looking at some of the talents you generally think of as more pvp oriented.

[Marco]

Heroic Gorefiend can be challenging even for an overgeared group.  I have noticed that when people mess up mechanics outside at just the right time, it occasionally makes the fight go better rather than worse, because extra DPS get sent into the stomach and do a better job of killing adds.  This made me wonder when it could make sense to have a DPS deliberately suicide during phase 1.

The wowhead guide shows the schedule of Shadow of Death casts for different raid sizes.  Of note:

* There are 36 seconds between the first and second DPS sets going in, and between the second and third.  That's basically no overlap, since people usually leave a few seconds before the 40-second maximum.

* For the first cast, there's a discontinuity between 12-person raids, where only one DPS is sent in, and 13-person raids where two are sent in.  There's another discontinuity for the second cast between 14-person and 15-person raids.

The most dangerous part of the phase seems to be during the transition between the first and second DPS groups.  The second DPS group (maybe just one individual) goes in and is overwhelmed by constructs, many of whom get through along with the Enraged Spirit, distracting the raid from getting the spirit down in a timely manner.  If an essence also gets through during this period, it can often cause a wipe.  A similar glut of adds sometimes makes it through near the end of the phase, but it's not as big of a deal since the raid is going into Feast of Souls.  So if a DPS were to suicide in, doing so around 25 seconds to smooth that first transition would seem to make the most sense.

The caveats are:

* You can't pre-assign who goes in, particularly for the second phase 1, because anyone could have the debuff.  But you could coordinate over voice who will go in after the first shadows of death cast happens.

* Having more than one person suicide could be dangerous.  Players who go in get a 3-minute debuff, which will last basically until the same part of the next phase 1; so to be safe, you don't want more than half of your DPS going in during each phase 1.  For particular raid sizes like 10 and 17, even sending in one extra DPS could be an issue if you are running with an extra healer.

[Marco]

I got a chance to try the Gorefiend suicide strategy in a 12-person raid on heroic.  The debuff lasts only two and a half minutes and starts counting from the moment you enter, so I don't think it's really much of a constraint.  The person who suicides in for the first phase 1 can also do it for the second.  I generally went in right about when Shared Fate happened.

I think this plan helped a lot for keeping constructs from overwhelming the raid when the spirit comes out, but it might have left the outside somewhat undermanned.  Touch of Doom affects three people at this raid size (possibly in all raid sizes) and doesn't hit tanks, so it's choosing from about seven targets during the time that two DPS are in the stomach.  So it's a bit of a tradeoff.