Boss Focus: The Opera - Wizard of Oz
In a Nutshell
The opera is accessible as soon as you have killed Moroes. You need to talk to Barnes, the Stage Manager, in order to start one of three possible events.
This post is about the most fun event, the Wizard of Oz. It evolves around some unconventional means of crowd control and dealing with a lot of mobs at once.
Rundown
The mobs you need to control and take down will be standing on the stage from the start, but you are not able to interact with them from the start. They will activate one after another and join the fight. This means that you have to be sensible when timing your heals. It can easily happen that a large heal hit’s your tank right after a mob has activated, giving you a nice head start in aggro. I strongly recommend to use a bossmod add-on like Bigwigs for this.
The first to activate is Dorothee. She has no regular aggro list and cannot be tanked. Instead she will be chain casting water bolts on the entire raid that need to be healed through. When engaged, she will quickly summon Tito to join the fray. You should have your offtank pick him up and tank him.
The next one to join in is Roar. He is vulnerable to fear effects and can be completely crowd controlled this way. However, I would suggest to have your maintank build a little aggro first. In this case he will be running for your tank and not a squishy if the fear is resisted or comes out late. Note that he is considered a beast, so the hunter ability Scare Beast will work, along with Fear, Howl of Terror, Death Coil and Psychic Scream.
Strawman is the next one to activate. He is very vulnerable to fire, and any fire damage done to him will disorient him for 6 seconds. Any mage, warlock or shaman is able to "tank" him by chain casting fire spells. If done right, Strawman will not deal any damage throughout the entire fight.
The last one to join the battle is Tinhead. He needs to be tanked by your maintank and will deal moderate damage to him/her. Tinhead will suffer from a Rust debuff that increases periodically as the fight continues. The debuff stacks up to 8 times and each one reduces his movement speed by 10%. As soon as 3 to 4 debuffs are reached, your tank can easily kite him and won’t take any more damage.
When all 5 mobs are dead, the Crone will spawn on the center of the stage and will enter combat. She deals moderate melee damage on a tank and will occasionally stop to cast a chain lightning. Just spread out and healing through it shouldn’t be an issue. The only other thing to watch out for is a summoned cyclone that moves around the stage. Try to avoid it, but getting caught is nothing more than a nuisance, you will still be able to cast Renew, Prayer of Mending and other instants while up there.
Watch out for
Be careful during the starting phase, when mobs are still entering the fight. A mistimed Greater Heal will quickly get the attention of a freshly activated mob. A fairly common cause for wipes here.
Watch out for Roar running towards you or someone near you. If your warlock just missed a beat and his/her Fear is not ready yet, you can save the day, or at least the warlock, by activating your Psychic Scream just as Roar rushes by.
Keep your Power World: Shield ready for casters that are tasked for key jobs in the fight. That is the mage that controls Strawman or the warlock that fears Roar for example. If something goes wrong, this can buy them the time they need.
Healing Roles
Since Dorothee will be dishing out damage to random players and your tanks won’t be taking damage all the time, we usually give soft assignments at best. If at all. Just determine who will be watching the tanks as a top priority, and everyone else will be healing the raid.
Rewards
Once the Crone bites the dust, you will be able to loot 2 Badges of Justice and, if you are lucky, you may get your hands on the Blue Diamond Witchwand or the Ribbon of Sacrifice. I’m still waiting for that accursed trinket… *gnashes teeth*
