Emalon, no so pinata like

Last week at a barbecue I attended, someone brought a pinata which we tried to gently damage, but it was very tough and possessed almost unreasonable melee damage mitigation. It was only when a member of the group became enraged that it split to spill the candy goodness (ok, it was me).

Which brings me onto Emalon and Kam's attempts to kill him. The first issue is usually that the DPS in a raid need to do 2000 DPS minimum, whereas some puggers don't. The 2 trash mobs just before Emalon will explode if they aren't killed in time, which is usually a bad sign - on the first Emalon 25 pick up group I got into, the raid was wiped by the trash and then by Emalon himself. The second PUG I got into managed to kill the trash, although they apparently swapped some low DPS out after the first mob.

The tactics for the fight are reasonably straightforward - Emalon occasionally does a Lightning Nova AOE which he casts for 5 seconds before it goes off, during the cast melee need to leg it out, then back in once the cast has gone off. There are 4 adds called Tempest Minions who are off tanked somewhere else. Occasionally Emalon will do an "Overcharge" on one of them, at which point the Minion gains an Overcharged buff, one every 2 seconds, which stacks to 10 then the mob explodes, killing everyone. So as soon as overcharge happens, the valiant melee need to run over to where the adds are tanked, select the overcharging one and kick the buggery out of it. Ranged of course get to select the overcharged mob and continue DPS.

Now selecting which mob is overcharged can be tricky. They are fully healed when they gain the buff, so you could spot the fully healed one, except that when a new add appears, it is also fully healed. The adds are also very tall, so enabling enemy name plates means melee can still only see their knees, not the health on the name plates. I eventually settled on the tactic of tabbing to a mob as Kam runs across to them - usually the 1st mob selected is the right one. I check the buffs on the mob - it should be showing the Overcharged buff, complete with little lightning icon. If that is not there, I've got the wrong mob and need to hit tab some more.

The first PUG I got into couldn't kill the overcharged Tempest Minion in time. The second PUG were getting the minions down by 8 or 9 overcharged stacks and we seemed to be doing well.

A further complication is that Emalon has a berserk timer at 6 minutes, after which he enters hard enrage mode and 1 shots everyone. This is reached when the raid does not have sufficient DPS, or most cruelly not sufficient DPS on the boss to kill him in time. On my second PUG we were killed by the berserk timer.

Because running from Emalon to his adds and back again wastes DPS time for melee, and running in and out for Lightning Nova also wastes DPS time, this fight really doesn't favour melee. In fact PUG groups mainly look for ranged and don't like taking melee that much. They also tend to ask for the achievement, which is kind of chicken-and-egg if you don't have it... you can't get into a PUG to get it. They also tend not to want to kill Archavon until Emalon is dead, which means the chances for an Archavon kill have pretty much evaporated.

So Kam's progress in getting Emalon down has been bad thus far, still I'm all in it for cheesy achievements and the chance at some loot. Oh, and another Archavon kill please.