Munkenmo wrote on Nov 10
th, 2011 at 3:05pm:
i don't get the dps shit slowly.
last night (hard) i went in told arcanes to put up 2 disco balls.
stood in first, adds zoned in, group ran to second discoball.
1 circle of death, 1 finger and 2 destructions later, we waited for second wave to spawn, ran back to first discoball and repeated.
maybe i was spoiled with 2 arcanes and 3 fvs, but trash didn't drop too much slower and the blades weren't a problem till the end of round 1.
Going to go back in tonight with an artificer and see if his reduce damage orb thingy mitigates blade damage, failing that i've gotta come up with an idiot proof exit strategy cause melee dropped like flies when escaping.
I've been pretty convinced that crowd controlling them, ( heightened web then mass hold) and letting the group pick them off one at a time is the way to go. You can still wail or circle of death them, as long as the rest of the party isn't in the immediate vicinity. The blades that home in on you tend to go after the person generating the most threat. Generally that's the cleaving barb or haste boosted melee. That person then runs into the middle with the other melee. Blades follow them there and goodbye most if not all of the melee group.
Holding them offers the opportunity to pick of the barbazu one at a time. Or, if the party gets the hell back, has all blades coming at a caster or ranged toon who is not moving into the melee group or near the raid healers.
What's interesting is that I see a whole new possibility for griefing groups by taking out the barbazu en masse then moving torward the party. I wouldn't be surprised to see this in the future.
As far as the ring of blades, the gap is more than enough to step through without getting hit. One can start out close to Arry and move away through the gap. Having all of the folks in melee range move the same direction at the call (typically 7 o'clock) allows a single mass cure or heal to keep everyone good.
High dps groups will still one round him. Worse scenario seems to be two rounds in a mediocre dps group. Archers can hug the wall with a fireshield on and never get hit at all...