We said we'd discuss on the forums, so here's my take:

I don't particularly like giving up and I recognise that we're not going to improve if we don't work on it, but I think we ought to shelve heroic Marrowgar for awhile.

Although we do beat him every week, it typically takes an hour or more to do so. It also means that we have to cut short heroics we know we can beat in significantly less time (like Deathwhisper) or not get much progression work in on new bosses. If we're concerned about passing over Marrowgar's 264s, consider we'll probably get at least two bosses worth of 264s more by skipping him than if we work on him and run out of times for other things. Also, I'm not even sure if there's anything from his loot table we even need?

More important than loot, it's also a big morale killer to start the night off with 15 wipes to a boss we've beaten numerous times. Then everyone is agitated and angry the whole rest of the night, we get frustrated over small mistakes, we waste time over-analysing the strategy (which we know works for us when we execute correctly, and better than all the other strategies we've tried) in an effort to "fix" whatever it is we're doing wrong, and then we feel burnt the whole rest of the night. I'm including myself in that category.

Anyway, I'm just not sure whatever gains we get from killing him are worth it. Maybe after we're beating "harder" hard modes and we've made more progression on the rest of the place, coming back to HM Marrowgar in a month or two will seem like a joke.

At the very least, if we don't just start skipping hard mode Marrowgar entirely, an alternative may be to just cap our number of attempts on bosses we've beaten before. For example, if it takes more than [6 attempts / half hour / whatever] to beat a non-progression boss, it's time to flip them to normal and move on. That way we at least aren't beating our heads against the wall for quite as long.

So, that's my two cents. Not sure how everyone else feels?

In more optimistic news, I felt like we did really well on Saurfang and can get him with some practice / improvement / our regular team, and am glad we had some time to try.

Some general observations.

Bone Spike doesn't pick tanks, even if tanks aren't high on threat. This suggests that the cleave ability itself, Bone Slice adjusts his targeting priorities and moves those hit to the bottom of the list and would only spike them if no other valid targets are available.

The charge during Bone Storm follows a random target one of N furthest targets mechanic. This is why when you have hunters he almost always charges them first (because they have to be at range even when the boss is stationary). N for 10 man is likely between 2-4 targets, I haven't made enough observations to figure out a definitive number.

For simplicity sake, lets say you have two positions where the raid is during Bone Storm. One side for the raid, one side for just the main tank. If N is 3, after the boss charges into the raid side with 9 people, the tank that is standing further away is a valid target for his next charge, however, he is only 1 of 3 valid targets. This means you have a one third chance of the boss charging out of the raid, and a two thirds chance of him remaining in the raid. This follows similar observations in other encounters like the number of ranged targets required for Deathbringer Saurfang's Blood Nova or Festergut's Vile Gas. In Festergut you need at least 3 targets at range in 10 man to prevent Vile Gas from hitting melee. However, if one of the three is dead, the next cast of Vile Gas isn't gaurenteed to hit melee. It follows similar rules where 2 of the 3 targets it takes into consideration are still at range, and you'd have a two thirds chance of being safe. Not an ideal situation, but still losing one ranged is not a guarenteed wipe, just a very likely one.

In D&C this past week we adopted a slight variation to the method we used on Marrowgar in BC. D&C typically just overpowers content, but Marrowgar is still a bit of a dice roll using our original method. The method we use in BC now has the tanks spread out during bone storm to assigned locations forming a large triangle with the raid basically positioned in the middle of them. If Marrowgar charges one of the tanks, then the other two tanks would be the two furthest from him and be part of his prefered target list. How many targets he has on his list I don't know, that would take a long time to test. However he does have the tendancy to bounce between the tanks more often than to the raid itself which suggests his target list is rather small even on 25 man (maybe 4 or 5 furthest targets). Since the tanks have significantly higher effective health than anyone else, they can afford to be further away from healers because healers have more time to react. Since aggro isn't reset, whoever was the main tank still holds a threat lead (often assisted by misdirects during the bone storm). The boss meanders back over to the tank and the raid simply has to make sure they aren't standing in front of the boss when he stops. Meanwhile the off tanks are also running back into position and since Marrowgar is kinda slow the off tanks generally beat him back. Rinse and repeat. The first charge heading to a hunter typically gives your tanks a little time to spread out. Also because the tanks don't get spiked there isn't much issue with having them stand further away during the bone storm.

Now in 10 man we adapted this slightly only on a smaller scale. We had the two tanks spread out more and then the third point of the triangle was basically the raid in the middle but we would just shift closer to one tank or the other when the boss charged a particular side.

BC would spend a good hour or so on Marrowgar heroic. With our revised method we don't lose anyone it seems. The method seems relatively sound and some of the basic concepts can be applied to 10 man as well, however only if you do not use a single tank method. Using multiple tanks is part of the core of the strategy because you can have the multiple high effective health players standing further away from each other to soak the charges.

Renitoor was present for BCs first kill on heroic Marrowgar on an alt and provided some basic advice based on what Pie has done. If Pie's method hasn't changed and still finds this fight to be annoying, consider this advice my repayment.

The main difficulty in 10man is that, although there are a million different strategies out there, they all seem highly dependant on the makeup of the group, the balance of ranged vs. melee and the healing classes being used. For example, Nine Man doesn't run with a hunter.

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Pie typically kills heroic Marrowgar in 1-2 tries so we haven't had an issue with our strategy on him. Last couple times it's been a one-shot.

Basic 25 man position during phase 1.


BOOOOOOOOOOOOONE STOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORM


Tanks spread out, boss pinballs between tanks. Raid has to move significantly less (avoid fire yes, avoid big spinning mob less often).

10 man, slightly modified positioning.
Note tanks stand a little closer. Raid makes the third point of the triangle and if the boss charges them they move side to side of the circle.

Even if you don't have a hunter it doesn't matter so much. The first charge is not going to be to a tank anyway. Get out of the first charge. Tanks can spread out to try to soak the remaining charges.

It's not to say one strategy is any better than others. Whatever works will work. It is just understanding the mechanics and applying revisions to your methods that exercise a clearer understanding of those mechanics. I still get crap from people when I say that melee can help with adds on Deathbringer Saurfang. Just cause the method isn't as common place, doesn't mean it isn't viable.

And sorry, my MS paint skills aren't as epic as yours.

One other thing to keep in mind is something else this method promotes is less movement required by the raid overall. The less you have to move, the higher your DPS and healing, the easier everything gets to deal with in general.

Thanks Quin, this explanation for Bone Storm targeting does make sense and explains some of the problematic behavior we have seen. Your strategies seem very sound, given this mechanic. As Tziva mentioned, Pie typically one shots Marrowgar with our "split the raid in two" strategy so its not worth tweaking now. On the other hand, most 10 mans seem to still be having a lot of difficulty with this fight and I'd guess that your suggestion would help a lot.

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Splitting the raid in two has the same good effect in that you are guaranteed that he will bounce between the sides rather than staying in one area. However, I think the reason that this does not work well in 10 man is that by the time you add in people being Bone Spiked, you don't necessarily have enough critical mass with 4 people active on a side to keep up with the healing/DPS requirements.

Currently our success in To 11 mainly seems to hinge on whether or not Marrowgar decides to do repeated Bone Storms in the main raid. Since our 2nd tank is not really contributing all that much grouped with the main raid, it would be a big win if pulling him out separately made the chance of repeated Bone Storms in the raid be greatly reduced. (Hopefully to zero.)

I actually healed a Marrowgar 10 HM (in a Pug!) on Sunday that was so easy it was almost trivial. Because we had no melee other than tanks, the strategy was treat it like regular, more or less, so there was no real headache over positioning. We stayed kinda middle but spaced, just dodged fires and bonestorms.

Obviously if you're melee heavy, this wouldn't worked, but it was amazingly easy with a ranged dominated group. The fires and bonestorms were spaced out enough that they were very easy to dodge, but we were still close enough that the healers could hit most everyone at any time and the ranged could have a go at any of the spikes.

Thats how we do it in D&C for the most part. Its like normal except you try harder to be near a healer and to stay outta shit.

Thank you Quin for the diagrams and ideas on Marrowgar's bonestorm. They'll be excellent help in taking him down next week. Let me know if I can ever repay the favor, perhaps by tanking an instance or two for you.

-Fiad