So, we've gone up against netherspite for the first time and gotten a feel for how he operates.

We know that no matter what we need to intercept the beams during the portal phase -- especially the green beam.

So, this is what we'll do.
The top four in armor get Red duty, numbered 1-4 based on armor points.
The three healers get Green duty.
Everyone else gets Blue duty.
Since we can take more than one beam at seperate intervals, those on one kind of beam for their primary should rotate over to another once they get nether exhaustion on their primary.

For example:
As Fiad I would tank initially, taking the red beam.
Once I hit 30, I should move out and let the next guy (#3) tank and move to cover the green beam.
Another player may instead move from the red beam after nether exhaustion and cover the blue beam, while someone on blue may go to Green.

If you're on red duty, if you heal you go from red to green. if you can't heal you go from red to blue.
If you're on blue duty, you go to green.
If you're on green duty you go to blue unless you can tank, then you go to red.

Now, this is confusing to be sure on its own. I mean with 4-5 people going through each beam in a 2 minute period, how do you keep it organized?

well obviously if we go and use 5 per beam every 2 minutes we're going to use half the raid twice every 2 minutes on more than one beam. So... to simplify things, let's forget that you can stay in one beam longer than another and set a common denominator or a stack of 25. so, 25 should put us at 5 people per beam before nether exhaustion wears off.

then we do this:
Red: Green: Blue:
1 1 1
2 2 2
3 3 3
4 4 4
5 5 5

Assuming we're all on teamspeak, we assign people to the numbers. so long as they aren't Red 1, Green 1, we're good.

So you could have a guy on Red 1, green 4 and blue 5 and that's fine.

Then as the fight begins, raid leader calls out the numbers. when he gets to 25 in his stack he calls 2, and the folks that are red 2, green 2 and blue 2 intercept their beams. Call 3 and red 3, blue 3 and green 3 intercept, etc.

thoughts?

Makes sense to me.

This does seem a bit unnecessarily confusing. I would encourage you to take advantage of all the things you can do to make the beam phase much simpler. You want to minimize switches if possible. They have some risk of going wrong. Also, people will die. The more people you have assigned to hold a beam, the less backups you have. Make sure your strategy does no fall apart if you lose a person or two.

In particular:

• Healers are okay for the green beam, but rogues and DPS warriors are way better. Rogues and warriors get only an advantage from it and no disadvantage. (They get stacking lower energy/rage costs for all their abilities.) Thus one of them can hold the green beam for an entire phase and put out obscene damage in the process. 2 people total and the green beam is covered for the fight. If a healer gets low on mana they can "tap" the green beam for a second, but with the tank needing no healing in the red beam, mana is not usually an issue.
• People can always hold a beam for 30+ stacks. Using more than 2 people per beam per beam phase (4 total for a beam) is just making the fight more complex. If you use 2 people per phase, they can always take the same spot again on even/odd beam phases. Ie. the tank for the fist half of red phase #1 also does the first half of red phase #3, 5, etc.
• Ideally only spell casters should take the blue beam. They get an advantage from it and everyone gets a disadvantage. A decently geared warlock can hold the blue beam for the entire beam phase using Life Drain. They take steadily more damage but they drain steadily more life.

Thus just to throw out a quick example:

Red Beam: Fiadfiel, Tanriel (odd phases) / Voldir, Kalynn (even phases)
Green Beam: Voldir (odd phases) / Taius (even phases)
Blue Beam: Laela (odd phases) / Kaadan (even phases)

In any case, its my experience that the banish phase is when the fight is won or lost.

The key to this fight is not in handling the complexity but simplifying it to its most primitive form.

Warriors and Rogues are ideal for the green beam since the negative effect of reduced mana pool doesn't affect them while the benefit does. Healers can take the beam but must be intelligent about doing so. A healer with no mana does no healing. However if you are already below 50% mana in the fight there is no reason you can't knock off the top 50% of your mana pool and in turn increase your efficiency.

Warlocks are best for the blue beam because they can be pretty self sufficient. They make the blue beam trivial. Anything else in the blue beam you have to consider almost like your main tank, you will be spamming heals on them more than anyone else in the group. Sometimes healers are decent for taking the blue beam since they can heal spam themselves. No one should take a blue beam for the entire duration however unless they are a warlock.

The red beam is fairly trivial. Anyone with decent enough defenses should be fine in it. You want to have your MT or OT be the first to grab it in the phase. They can last to 30 stacks. After them you can have someone in mail. The reason you want your real tanks first is because if the blue beam doesn't get picked up right away, Netherspite gets his damage buff and you'll need a person with real avoidance to take the hits first. It's important that you have your MT highest in agro because at the start of a portal phase he has normal agro until someone is in the red beam. You don't want him taking out your warlocks or something before someone gets the perma-agro from the red beam.

To add on Hanstall's advice, I'll post my Kara raid's current strat as well.

Aryaltel (druid tank) tanks the entirety of the red beam for phase one (until banish) by "beam dancing". I (paladin tank) tank the entirety of the red beam for the phase just after banish.

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Beam Dancing:

The tank jumps into the red beam the second it's active and waits until they've gained the buff (which is easily told by the mass flux of health increase) plus one second.

The tank jumps out of the beam at that point and stays out for 3-5 seconds, keeping Netherspite's attention by default due to still having the Red Buff. At the end of that 3-5 seconds, the tank jumps back into the red beam and stays there until his health has returned completely to full, plus one second. Rinse and repeat this through the phase, and the tank will lose ALOT less maximum health, and be able to fully hold Netherspite with almost no heals for the entirety of the phase.

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During the Banish phase, Aryaltel (bloody overpowered druids *grin*) generally stays in with Netherspite without a healer while the rest of the raid including myself run all the way out of breath range. This part of our strategy I wouldn't attempt unless you have a decently geared druid tank, simply because the amount of health and armor they have allows for nearly endless fun with that particular dragon. This isn't exactly needed, it just keeps Netherspite's attention while everyone's running out and allows one of our two tanks to have continuous threat on him while making the end of the banish phase transition a little easier since Netherspite won't be running to "meet" a tank and making a mess of the battle layout.

For our Green beams, we have two rogues who just switch between phases and maintain the entirety of each phase. Should one of our healers need mana, they simply call out that they're taking over the green beam for that phase and take it from the rogue on duty.

For our blue beams, we decided to try something out that has been working great. On the phases that I'm not tanking (when Aryaltel is in the red beam) I take the blue beam and generally am able to hold it for the full 30 seconds. On the phases I'm not taking it, we have 3 solid rotations of folks (two hunters and one mage) who just call out when the damage starts getting to be too much.


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Every group set up will end up having a bit of personality since not every raid is able to do things the exact same, but hopefully that'll come of some use for y'all. Take care!