... Also known as Prince Arthas Menethil.
Our first attempts came this week, and our progress was up and down, to say the least. The good news is that we got through the first phase and transition, and got to see the defiles and val'kyr a few times. The bad news is that we did not continually progress, and of our ~10 attempts the 4th or 5th was our best attempt.
The only oddity in our strategy was that I stayed in my bear spec and gear, to be able to have a 3rd tank available for certain parts of the fight. Most notably, it allows us to have 2 tanks available to handle raging spirits during the transition back to fighting the Lich King, allowing our MT to focus solely on getting back to the right spot with Arthas rather than having to worry about a Raging Spirit at the same time.
Although I'm not 100% certain it's necessary and I suspect we will not use that angle when we make our successful run, I do think it is extremely helpful while we are learning the fight, because it slightly increases our success rate in that transition. The downside is that it cripples my DPS during the portions that I'm trying to cat form, with me beating out only the tanks at that point.
We had a LOT of trouble, the times we got to see defiles and Val'kyr, with both proper handling of defiles AND DPS getting the Val'kyr down. Unfortunately we only got to see that a time or two. We had some odd wipes in the first phase and during transition and although we were getting better again at the end we had lost our momentum and then ran out of time.
We are resetting next week, to allow, especially for our less-well-geared members, a chance at some more gear and a heaping load of badges, as well as getting us 8 more Sanctification tokens.
I should probably write something other than our raid updates eh?
What can I say it's a convenient topic.
Showing posts with label Epic Adventurers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Epic Adventurers. Show all posts
Friday, September 24, 2010
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
Internet Dragons
EA is killing those internet dragons!
It took us most of the night and 4 wipes (a couple to frustrating lack-of-movement mistakes), but we had good DPS all around and killed Sindragosa dead with time to spare on the last run.
We tanked her turned to the right as you face from the door out to her ledge. Run to the stairs when she pulls you in, run to the stairs when she starts her air phase. The five marked players spread out along the bottom step just far enough not to take too much damage from the ice tombs coming down. DPS the tombs at the proper speed so that they come down just after the last ice bomb from her. Stop DPS after 4 or 5 stacks of Chilled to the Bone and let it fall off. Wash, rinse, repeat. Move to Phase 2.
That part we had pretty well down, except for one frustrating oops during the ice tombs that entombed nearly half the raid.
We struggled mostly, on 3 of our 4 wipes, with not losing players during the transition from Phase 1 to Phase 2. But once we figured it out we were fine. Start by the back leg. Person with mark move to the front and get ice blocked, THEN everybody follow. Get behind, drop Mystic Buffet and DPS the tomb, then back on Sindy near the front leg. Marked player run to the back leg and get tombed. Everybody except half the melee DPS (we only had 5, so it was easy) run to the tomb, drop stacks, and kill the tomb. Player with mark run to the front, get tombed, and everybody except the OTHER half the melee DPS do the tomb thing again. Wash, rinse, repeat.
Even on the winning run we had a couple of mistakes - one of our ice tombs ended up behind her tail and left for dead, and we'd lost enough folks by the end that our marked players were just instructed to get the heck away from everybody else before getting tombed, and left in the tombs to die. But in the end it was another victory for EA, another step to finishing ICC before the Cataclysm reshapes WoW.
On to other news...
Although I don't heal at the moment I've kept up with tree-like Druid news. I hate the current implementation in beta of Tree of Life, but I don't think I'm alone in that. What I actually wanted to mention was about the Restoration Mastery.
In it's original incarnation, the Restoration Mastery provided extra healing to your HoT spells if they had lower HP *when the HoT was cast*. This caused quite a stir in the resto community, as well it should have - it's exquisitely terribad. When the proverbial fecal matter hits the proverbial air movement device, the last thing we want to be casting on a player is a HoT. It may be more mana efficient over the length of its application, but it doesn't get the player healed NOW, which is what is needed at that time. Combine that with Blizzard's push to get us to stop blanketing with HoTs and you have a recipe for disaster.
On a side note, it actually wouldn't have been an awful Mastery if they had allowed it to recalculate for each tick. I think that would have encouraged thoughtful proactive pre-hotting without giving too much benefit to raid blanketing... but I digress.
The Mastery now provides additional healing to our spells cast on players who already have a HoT ticking on them. This is most beneficial, IMO, to give us some more oomph as tank healers, as the tanks will *always* have HoTs ticking on them. It also happens to discourage clipping, which I'll explain in a minute. What it really allows is for the better healers to cast a Rejuv or other HoT on a target we expect to take damage, then when the damage hits and we need that extra oomph the HoT is already there to boost our heals. I like it.
About the clipping thing? Yeah, so if you are healing the tank, and you cast a Rejuv to boost the rest of your heals, and then you start a Lifebloom stack, it becomes important not to clip the Rejuv, since you'll only refresh the original, not recognize that there are already HoTs ticking. This is true on the rest of the raid, but not quite as important as on the tank. Once it falls off, you can reapply and get the boost because the Lifebloom is ticking... Which, when you refresh, will still be getting its bonuses.
I haven't seen nearly as detailed information about Feral Masteries, but I really like the fact that (at least at the moment) shifting forms allows us to shift our masteries. We still can't shift gear, but it should help with those fights were we want/need to be able to do both roles...
As for Arthas... you better bring it, buddy. Go big or go home. EA's coming for you.
It took us most of the night and 4 wipes (a couple to frustrating lack-of-movement mistakes), but we had good DPS all around and killed Sindragosa dead with time to spare on the last run.
We tanked her turned to the right as you face from the door out to her ledge. Run to the stairs when she pulls you in, run to the stairs when she starts her air phase. The five marked players spread out along the bottom step just far enough not to take too much damage from the ice tombs coming down. DPS the tombs at the proper speed so that they come down just after the last ice bomb from her. Stop DPS after 4 or 5 stacks of Chilled to the Bone and let it fall off. Wash, rinse, repeat. Move to Phase 2.
That part we had pretty well down, except for one frustrating oops during the ice tombs that entombed nearly half the raid.
We struggled mostly, on 3 of our 4 wipes, with not losing players during the transition from Phase 1 to Phase 2. But once we figured it out we were fine. Start by the back leg. Person with mark move to the front and get ice blocked, THEN everybody follow. Get behind, drop Mystic Buffet and DPS the tomb, then back on Sindy near the front leg. Marked player run to the back leg and get tombed. Everybody except half the melee DPS (we only had 5, so it was easy) run to the tomb, drop stacks, and kill the tomb. Player with mark run to the front, get tombed, and everybody except the OTHER half the melee DPS do the tomb thing again. Wash, rinse, repeat.
Even on the winning run we had a couple of mistakes - one of our ice tombs ended up behind her tail and left for dead, and we'd lost enough folks by the end that our marked players were just instructed to get the heck away from everybody else before getting tombed, and left in the tombs to die. But in the end it was another victory for EA, another step to finishing ICC before the Cataclysm reshapes WoW.
On to other news...
Although I don't heal at the moment I've kept up with tree-like Druid news. I hate the current implementation in beta of Tree of Life, but I don't think I'm alone in that. What I actually wanted to mention was about the Restoration Mastery.
In it's original incarnation, the Restoration Mastery provided extra healing to your HoT spells if they had lower HP *when the HoT was cast*. This caused quite a stir in the resto community, as well it should have - it's exquisitely terribad. When the proverbial fecal matter hits the proverbial air movement device, the last thing we want to be casting on a player is a HoT. It may be more mana efficient over the length of its application, but it doesn't get the player healed NOW, which is what is needed at that time. Combine that with Blizzard's push to get us to stop blanketing with HoTs and you have a recipe for disaster.
On a side note, it actually wouldn't have been an awful Mastery if they had allowed it to recalculate for each tick. I think that would have encouraged thoughtful proactive pre-hotting without giving too much benefit to raid blanketing... but I digress.
The Mastery now provides additional healing to our spells cast on players who already have a HoT ticking on them. This is most beneficial, IMO, to give us some more oomph as tank healers, as the tanks will *always* have HoTs ticking on them. It also happens to discourage clipping, which I'll explain in a minute. What it really allows is for the better healers to cast a Rejuv or other HoT on a target we expect to take damage, then when the damage hits and we need that extra oomph the HoT is already there to boost our heals. I like it.
About the clipping thing? Yeah, so if you are healing the tank, and you cast a Rejuv to boost the rest of your heals, and then you start a Lifebloom stack, it becomes important not to clip the Rejuv, since you'll only refresh the original, not recognize that there are already HoTs ticking. This is true on the rest of the raid, but not quite as important as on the tank. Once it falls off, you can reapply and get the boost because the Lifebloom is ticking... Which, when you refresh, will still be getting its bonuses.
I haven't seen nearly as detailed information about Feral Masteries, but I really like the fact that (at least at the moment) shifting forms allows us to shift our masteries. We still can't shift gear, but it should help with those fights were we want/need to be able to do both roles...
As for Arthas... you better bring it, buddy. Go big or go home. EA's coming for you.
Friday, September 17, 2010
Invading the Dragon's Lair
For the first time on 25-man, Epic Adventurers assaulted Sindragosa in her lair this week.
Although we were ultimately unsuccessful, it was a valiant attempt, and from what I understand we did *very* well for being our first ever 25-man attempt.
In our initial two attempts, we had ice blocked folks spread out across the bottom of the stairs. We learned fairly quickly that they were too spread out in the positions we had them - it was too difficult for the DPS to get all the ice blocks down quickly enough. We moved them in a little closer - just barely far enough apart to prevent them from killing each other when the blocks come down - and we were mostly successful at that portion of the fight. It helped that we had 4-5 druids along (one traded in for a sick hunter in the middle) and 3 shamans, so lots of brezzing.
Other than that, it all essentially came down to execution - don't get too many stacks of damage, kill the ice tombs quickly, and DON'T STAND IN THE RAID when you are targeted for an ice block. We only wiped once to that - we all had a good laugh, because it was an epic wipe-causing mistake. Oddly enough, we determined at this point that if everybody outside the ice tombs dies, the boss and tombs despawn and those in the tombs don't die.
We showed good progress the entire night, with the exception of the ice block incident. By the time we had had enough, we had reached and gotten mostly through the final phase - she had around a million HP left on the last wipe of the night, and the raid leader had called for us to ignore the ice-blocked folks and just burn Sindy as hard as we could. Unfortunately we'd lost too many to gradual attrition at that point, and couldn't keep enough people alive any longer.
Based on our progress, we've been told we may extend the lockout - little more time for a few more shots and I think she would have gone down, and then we can spend time learning the LK fight. I'm impressed with our first night in, although I think 3 nights of raiding in a row might just kill me if we have to keep it up more than a few weeks.
Although we were ultimately unsuccessful, it was a valiant attempt, and from what I understand we did *very* well for being our first ever 25-man attempt.
In our initial two attempts, we had ice blocked folks spread out across the bottom of the stairs. We learned fairly quickly that they were too spread out in the positions we had them - it was too difficult for the DPS to get all the ice blocks down quickly enough. We moved them in a little closer - just barely far enough apart to prevent them from killing each other when the blocks come down - and we were mostly successful at that portion of the fight. It helped that we had 4-5 druids along (one traded in for a sick hunter in the middle) and 3 shamans, so lots of brezzing.
Other than that, it all essentially came down to execution - don't get too many stacks of damage, kill the ice tombs quickly, and DON'T STAND IN THE RAID when you are targeted for an ice block. We only wiped once to that - we all had a good laugh, because it was an epic wipe-causing mistake. Oddly enough, we determined at this point that if everybody outside the ice tombs dies, the boss and tombs despawn and those in the tombs don't die.
We showed good progress the entire night, with the exception of the ice block incident. By the time we had had enough, we had reached and gotten mostly through the final phase - she had around a million HP left on the last wipe of the night, and the raid leader had called for us to ignore the ice-blocked folks and just burn Sindy as hard as we could. Unfortunately we'd lost too many to gradual attrition at that point, and couldn't keep enough people alive any longer.
Based on our progress, we've been told we may extend the lockout - little more time for a few more shots and I think she would have gone down, and then we can spend time learning the LK fight. I'm impressed with our first night in, although I think 3 nights of raiding in a row might just kill me if we have to keep it up more than a few weeks.
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
The Final Push
.... or the beginning of the end! Or something like that.
Our guild leader has declared that we are making the final push to kill Arthas on our 25-man raids. We are ceasing all alt activity on progression raids (we had been allowing alts through the gunship, then through deathwhisper when we began doing heroic lootship), and are scheduling a 3rd night every week in addition to more serious usage of lockouts to extend raids week to week.
With everything we've been hearing about anticipated dates for Cataclysm, it was decided that this is the time to make a serious push to complete the end game raid of Wrath.
On our first night this week we smashed everything we took a shot at, with the exception of one wipe on Blood Council due to failure to avoid AOE around black balls. Our second night, we have PP, BQL, and Dreamwalker still to go among bosses we have successfully defeated. We hope to get those three and have a go at Sindragosa on the second night.
I didn't post about it last week, but IMO we took a step back - we had a couple of failures on Dreamwalker and took 7 tries to down BQL. I'm hoping that the renewed focus on actually progressing will give folks the oomph to have clean attempts on the second night, and get down, for the first time, everything we have already downed, all in one week.
It's time for us to quit goofing around and get it done!
Our guild leader has declared that we are making the final push to kill Arthas on our 25-man raids. We are ceasing all alt activity on progression raids (we had been allowing alts through the gunship, then through deathwhisper when we began doing heroic lootship), and are scheduling a 3rd night every week in addition to more serious usage of lockouts to extend raids week to week.
With everything we've been hearing about anticipated dates for Cataclysm, it was decided that this is the time to make a serious push to complete the end game raid of Wrath.
On our first night this week we smashed everything we took a shot at, with the exception of one wipe on Blood Council due to failure to avoid AOE around black balls. Our second night, we have PP, BQL, and Dreamwalker still to go among bosses we have successfully defeated. We hope to get those three and have a go at Sindragosa on the second night.
I didn't post about it last week, but IMO we took a step back - we had a couple of failures on Dreamwalker and took 7 tries to down BQL. I'm hoping that the renewed focus on actually progressing will give folks the oomph to have clean attempts on the second night, and get down, for the first time, everything we have already downed, all in one week.
It's time for us to quit goofing around and get it done!
Thursday, September 2, 2010
Teaching the Professor
The only term I could use to properly define the Professor Putricide fight is controlled chaos.
On second thought, I'm not so sure about the controlled part.
We had faced him a few times before, but without much success, never making it to phase 3 and making it through the transition from phase 1 to phase 2 cleanly only a couple of times.
This week was destined to be different...
We smashed through the Lower Spire and Putricide's two... "sons" on the first night without much difficulty. This has been a regular ritual for us for a couple of months now, and the second night started out with a roll through the princes and their queen, and we moved on to the Professor. We've been skipping Dreamwalker the past few weeks even though we've healed her successfully a few times. Our successful strategy has involved 4 tanks, and we've been down two of our regular progression tanks and one of our backups has been spotty on attendance. Since adding me into the mix we have 4 regular progression tanks, with an extremely solid backup Paladin tank and a serviceable backup Druid for a total of 6 tanks geared enough to fill at least an OT slot. Take out 3... and we don't have the tankage necessary. I suppose at this point we might be able to do it with 2 or 3 tanks (putting our best one by himself on one side for the 3 tank setup...) but that's the raid leader's job to decide, not mine.
Where was I? Oh yes, Putricide.
Our typical MT and raid leader took the Abom - I don't have any experience with it and I think it gives him less to pay attention to so he can better direct the raid. I controlled the Professor himself, and our backup Druid - who is usually specced Balance for most of our raids, and is an excellent Boomkin at that - stayed feral but went cat form until the 3rd phase. This was the role I had on our previous attempts, when we had one of our other main progression tanks with us.
Unfortunately I'm turning into an old man, and our report isn't up yet so I can't check it to remember exactly how many times we wiped... but we made it to the 3rd phase if not every time then almost. I know we wiped once to debuff stack buildup (and my craptastic hardware crashing...) and we wiped once more due, in essence, to poor handling of Putricide by us tanks not moving him properly.
We did have an issue on 2-3 of our attempts with having an ooze or gas cloud up during the shift to 3rd phase, which draws DPS away from the boss, giving his slime puddles time to grow. Probably not coincidentally, our successful run had no slime up (and no slime puddles up!) at the time of the shift.
Malleable goos on me were occasionally a problem, but we got that worked out.
In the end, of course, we taught the professor a lesson. What it is, beyond "don't mess with us or we'll let you kill us a few times before we kill you," well, that I don't know.
We had been planning on locking out next week to have more time for attempts on Putricide and maybe Sindragosa, but after a vote revealed a decent chunk of folks that still want/need the gear and marks from the bosses we've downed we decided that we'll do a fresh run next week.
On the upside there is actually some gear to be had for me. One of our raiders took a sojourn through another guild to get a LK kill and then came back, opening up our ability to do heroic lootship, which we did succesfully this week (even though we were all dead at the end). Unfortunately, I lost the roll by 1 to a rogue on the heroic version of Ikfirus's Sack of Wonder. Add in all the additional Marks we'll be pulling, and soon I have no doubt we'll be knocking on the Lich King's door.
Onward, Epic Adventurers!
On second thought, I'm not so sure about the controlled part.
We had faced him a few times before, but without much success, never making it to phase 3 and making it through the transition from phase 1 to phase 2 cleanly only a couple of times.
This week was destined to be different...
We smashed through the Lower Spire and Putricide's two... "sons" on the first night without much difficulty. This has been a regular ritual for us for a couple of months now, and the second night started out with a roll through the princes and their queen, and we moved on to the Professor. We've been skipping Dreamwalker the past few weeks even though we've healed her successfully a few times. Our successful strategy has involved 4 tanks, and we've been down two of our regular progression tanks and one of our backups has been spotty on attendance. Since adding me into the mix we have 4 regular progression tanks, with an extremely solid backup Paladin tank and a serviceable backup Druid for a total of 6 tanks geared enough to fill at least an OT slot. Take out 3... and we don't have the tankage necessary. I suppose at this point we might be able to do it with 2 or 3 tanks (putting our best one by himself on one side for the 3 tank setup...) but that's the raid leader's job to decide, not mine.
Where was I? Oh yes, Putricide.
Our typical MT and raid leader took the Abom - I don't have any experience with it and I think it gives him less to pay attention to so he can better direct the raid. I controlled the Professor himself, and our backup Druid - who is usually specced Balance for most of our raids, and is an excellent Boomkin at that - stayed feral but went cat form until the 3rd phase. This was the role I had on our previous attempts, when we had one of our other main progression tanks with us.
Unfortunately I'm turning into an old man, and our report isn't up yet so I can't check it to remember exactly how many times we wiped... but we made it to the 3rd phase if not every time then almost. I know we wiped once to debuff stack buildup (and my craptastic hardware crashing...) and we wiped once more due, in essence, to poor handling of Putricide by us tanks not moving him properly.
We did have an issue on 2-3 of our attempts with having an ooze or gas cloud up during the shift to 3rd phase, which draws DPS away from the boss, giving his slime puddles time to grow. Probably not coincidentally, our successful run had no slime up (and no slime puddles up!) at the time of the shift.
Malleable goos on me were occasionally a problem, but we got that worked out.
In the end, of course, we taught the professor a lesson. What it is, beyond "don't mess with us or we'll let you kill us a few times before we kill you," well, that I don't know.
We had been planning on locking out next week to have more time for attempts on Putricide and maybe Sindragosa, but after a vote revealed a decent chunk of folks that still want/need the gear and marks from the bosses we've downed we decided that we'll do a fresh run next week.
On the upside there is actually some gear to be had for me. One of our raiders took a sojourn through another guild to get a LK kill and then came back, opening up our ability to do heroic lootship, which we did succesfully this week (even though we were all dead at the end). Unfortunately, I lost the roll by 1 to a rogue on the heroic version of Ikfirus's Sack of Wonder. Add in all the additional Marks we'll be pulling, and soon I have no doubt we'll be knocking on the Lich King's door.
Onward, Epic Adventurers!
Thursday, June 10, 2010
The Little Druid that Could
Awhile back I was running some regular commentary about my guild and the progress we'd been making in ICC and whatever other random game or real life thought crossed my mind. Well... I figure since I took more than a month to write the first post of my Kitty primer I should ramble on awhile about what's been going on, starting, of course, with the most important person on the planet...
WARNING: POOPY DIAPERS AHEAD!
Kaethir's Cub
My little one was born, of course, back near the end of March. She's grown from the measly 6lb 3oz she was at birth to a whopping 10lb 7oz as of a week or so ago... Needs more meat on her bones, she's not gonna tank any bosses at that size!
She's doing great, no jaundice or major problems, and she's been sleeping through the night almost since the day my wife went back to work. She's been "talking" for awhile now, smiling and giggling and generally making our lives wonderful.
Not to say she's perfect, but, well, she's perfect! She has of course the times that she decides to poop while you're changing her diaper... four times in a row... but I couldn't have asked for a better infant. The few times she's cried there's always been a reasonable reason (gas, constipation, or the doctor sticking her with a giant needle) and so far she's just been a wondrous little miracle.
Sorry, I'm a new Dad, sometimes I just have to get mushy about her.
Movies
I don't recall mentioning much of anything about movies before, but I enjoy good Sci-Fi, Adventure, and Action flicks as much as the next person and I wanted to mention that Iron Man 2 and Avatar are both really good films that have come out in the last few months. You should see them, or so I would have you believe.
Also, I saw an advertisement for The Expendables. Anything with Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis, Jason Statham, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, and Terry Crews is going to be either really, really good, or really, phenomenally bad. I'm cautiously optimistic.
One final note on movies and then I'll quit. In a moment of masochism I decided to DVR Transmorphers when I saw it on Encore. I noticed this littlegem pile of awful awhile back in Blockbuster. Incidentally, it came out a little before Transformers, which was an infinitely better movie. I watched about 20-30 minutes of it (that I can't get back) before deciding that there was no redeeming quality to it, at all. IMHO, and in no particular order, it had bad acting, directing, casting, special effects, music, choreography, and writing, and the plot (which seemed like some inane mashup of the Matrix and Transformers) had to have been written by a dyslexic chimpanzee. Save yourself.
Epic Adventurers and ICC
On with the show.
When last we left ourimpaled imperiled heroes, Epic Adventurers had finally downed Deathbringer Saurfang in 25-man mode. We've had a few changes to our raiding schedule since then, but we've continued to press onward.
Our progression 10-man team (which I, unfortunately, am unable to participate in) has downed Festergut, Rotface, and the Blood Princes, while our 25-man team is regularly one-shotting the first 6 bosses (through Saurfang, plus Festergut and Rotface) in one night.
We run a fun/alt 10-man run on Sunday nights, which regularly clears through Saurfang. The group I led in this past Sunday took a couple of shots at Rotface but couldn't pull it off.
I have been learning more and more about the intricacies of playing a Feral DPS, and I've had occasional opportunities to tank even on our 25-man runs, which has been a blast for me. I've been topping 8k DPS against Saurfang, without optimizing my gems. I share some gear between my sets, so it's impractical to completely optimize for either, and I think I've done well with the limitations I have.
The big team is currently stumbling over the Dreamwalker. The strategy we've been employing is to have just 2 tanks to hold down the baddies, each one generally hanging out at the point of the wall in between the spawn points on each side of the green dragon, with the melee DPS roughly divided up between the sides and the ranged DPS and heals more or less roaming around the middle, assisting wherever it is needed. Owing to the nature of the fight, we've been running a little healer heavy.
We seem to be having some difficulty keeping up. I'm not entirely certain where the problem is. This is complicated by the fact that due to my reduced raiding schedule, I'm not there every week.
It has been suggested to me that we should use 3-4 tanks, split up the DPS more, and engage the Adds closer to their spawn points. I'm a little leery of the idea, but I may propose it to our raid leader as something to try. I'm sure we'll get it figured out soon.
Two posts in three days? Is the ground getting cold for anybody else?
WARNING: POOPY DIAPERS AHEAD!
Kaethir's Cub
My little one was born, of course, back near the end of March. She's grown from the measly 6lb 3oz she was at birth to a whopping 10lb 7oz as of a week or so ago... Needs more meat on her bones, she's not gonna tank any bosses at that size!
She's doing great, no jaundice or major problems, and she's been sleeping through the night almost since the day my wife went back to work. She's been "talking" for awhile now, smiling and giggling and generally making our lives wonderful.
Not to say she's perfect, but, well, she's perfect! She has of course the times that she decides to poop while you're changing her diaper... four times in a row... but I couldn't have asked for a better infant. The few times she's cried there's always been a reasonable reason (gas, constipation, or the doctor sticking her with a giant needle) and so far she's just been a wondrous little miracle.
Sorry, I'm a new Dad, sometimes I just have to get mushy about her.
Movies
I don't recall mentioning much of anything about movies before, but I enjoy good Sci-Fi, Adventure, and Action flicks as much as the next person and I wanted to mention that Iron Man 2 and Avatar are both really good films that have come out in the last few months. You should see them, or so I would have you believe.
Also, I saw an advertisement for The Expendables. Anything with Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis, Jason Statham, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, and Terry Crews is going to be either really, really good, or really, phenomenally bad. I'm cautiously optimistic.
One final note on movies and then I'll quit. In a moment of masochism I decided to DVR Transmorphers when I saw it on Encore. I noticed this little
Epic Adventurers and ICC
On with the show.
When last we left our
Our progression 10-man team (which I, unfortunately, am unable to participate in) has downed Festergut, Rotface, and the Blood Princes, while our 25-man team is regularly one-shotting the first 6 bosses (through Saurfang, plus Festergut and Rotface) in one night.
We run a fun/alt 10-man run on Sunday nights, which regularly clears through Saurfang. The group I led in this past Sunday took a couple of shots at Rotface but couldn't pull it off.
I have been learning more and more about the intricacies of playing a Feral DPS, and I've had occasional opportunities to tank even on our 25-man runs, which has been a blast for me. I've been topping 8k DPS against Saurfang, without optimizing my gems. I share some gear between my sets, so it's impractical to completely optimize for either, and I think I've done well with the limitations I have.
The big team is currently stumbling over the Dreamwalker. The strategy we've been employing is to have just 2 tanks to hold down the baddies, each one generally hanging out at the point of the wall in between the spawn points on each side of the green dragon, with the melee DPS roughly divided up between the sides and the ranged DPS and heals more or less roaming around the middle, assisting wherever it is needed. Owing to the nature of the fight, we've been running a little healer heavy.
We seem to be having some difficulty keeping up. I'm not entirely certain where the problem is. This is complicated by the fact that due to my reduced raiding schedule, I'm not there every week.
It has been suggested to me that we should use 3-4 tanks, split up the DPS more, and engage the Adds closer to their spawn points. I'm a little leery of the idea, but I may propose it to our raid leader as something to try. I'm sure we'll get it figured out soon.
Two posts in three days? Is the ground getting cold for anybody else?
Friday, January 8, 2010
The Guns of Icecrown Citadel
Illorien, Renakashin, and I finally managed to get another scheduled guild run into ICC 10-man Wednesday night.
This is just our second outing as a group. One of our guild officers was running a second 10-man group in parallel that night as well. Epic Adventurers had not, as of the beginning of these groups, downed any boss in ICC except for Marrowgar, and the group the three of us were leading had not even done that.
Wednesday was a day for progressing!
We had a bit of a time sorting out players for each group and a lot of turnover at the last two DPS spots in our run, but we ended up with this group dynamic:
Tanks:
Illorien and Myself
Heals:
Renakashin, another Holy Paladin, and a Resto Druid
DPS:
Hunter, Warrior, Mage, Warlock, Ret Pally
So a bit late we started in. My last post on ICC10 detailed our troubles with regards to the trash leading up to Marrowgar. Tonight there was no such trouble. We managed to lose a player or two to lacking of target marking and not being quick enough on taunts of the trap-spawned saber-lashing Deathbound Wards, but no wipes and we were shortly facing down the monstrosity that is Lord Marrowgar.
Lord Marrowgar!
We originally stayed with the strategy we had tried (and been getting better with) on our last run - tanking Marrowgar in the middle, spreading out the DPS and trying to contain the insanity. Our first attempt was going fairly well until I crashed and had to reboot. I didn't see what happened while my computer was starting up again, but I can't imagine it was pretty.
When I got back in it was suggested that we tank him off to the side of the room instead of the middle. Something about him only being able to use his fire in the same general direction or something - being a tank, I'm in front of him and I can't tell you what it looks like from the other side, but somebody felt this would help with being able to avoid the fire (or possibly bring everybody closer together for killing bone prisons.) It was also noted that he seemed to like to be in one corner or the other at the end of his whirlwind, which would mean less moving him and the raid having to avoid it.
It was an excellent suggestion, and our second attempt was flawless. Illorien and I occasionally had to switch sides of the room - he really did end his whirlwind in one end of the room or the other basically every time - but with Feral Charge I was able to close the distance quickly, and Illorien was quick enough to stay more or less with me. Our DPS worked well at breaking prisons and getting back on the boss, and he went down without a single player death. Progress for our crew and Frost Emblems for the win!
The trash before Lady Deathwhisper didn't provide anywhere near the challenge that the trash before Marrowgar did our first time in. Then again, if we'd known anything about the Deathbound Wards the first time in, we wouldn't have had nearly the issues we did. In any case, it was a simple matter to pull a small group at a time and down them healers, casters and melee. The two big spider-looking guys are a minor pain, but they went down without causing us any issues.
Lady Deathwhisper!
For anybody that hasn't done this fight (and if you've found your way here, you probably have!), it's not an exceptionally difficult fight, if you have reasonable DPS and good coordination. Simply put, you have to maintain enough DPS on Deathwhisper's shield to kill her before she enrages while still having enough of the right kinds of DPS to take out the adds in each wave before a new wave spawns.
We tried a couple of different plans, but the one that worked for us was this: We put the ret Pally on Deathwhisper full time. The Warrior and Hunter were targeting the Adherents, while the Warlock and Mage targeted the Fanatics. Once all of any group were down, the ranged DPS switched to Deathwhisper until the new group of adds spawned. We had the Pally and the Warrior switched at first, it took folks awhile to figure out exactly what was needed on the adds, and Ill and I found out we needed to mark targets for DPS to focus on when there were multiple targets for physical/magical DPS.
While Ill and I had to tank the Fanatics, our damage was focused on the Adherents, since that's where we were limited less. I did discover fairly soon, though, that I had one single ability that could do more than 100 damage to the Fanatics: GO GO FERAL FAERIE FIRE. Yeah, I know, 1000 damage every 6 seconds or so isn't much, but it helps, dangit! One of our attempts ended up doomed when we lost both our Mage and our Warlock with multiple Fanatics up. Let me tell you how much you're not going to be able to kill them without magical damage.
I think Illorien and I failed a little in our explanation of the fight - our successful run had more than once in which the adds went down with 15+ seconds to spare before the next group spawned. I can only surmise that we had DPS switching to the wrong adds because we were calling out to focus fire on an Empowered Adherent or Deformed Fanatic, and we hadn't clearly laid out that you need to stay on the correct type of add because you can't really help with the others.
On what was to be our last attempt of the night because of time, we broke through her shield with all adds down and just under 3 minutes left on her enrage timer. The nice thing about this point in the fight is that it takes a ton less time to take her down than it does to take her shield down. It took us less than 2 minutes to bring her down after her shield fell. On a high from a successful fight, we decided to press on and try the Gunship Battle.
The trash in between is PVP-ish except for the frost drake. None of it caused us much issue, though. Unlike the Faction Champions fight in ToC, these aren't true PVP-like mobs, and they go down a LOT easier. The drake's a chump, too, and easy to kill.
The Gunship Battle!
It took awhile to explain this fight because most of our raid hadn't been here before. There's a lot of random stuff to talk about, but here's the gist of what we did.
Our raiding party to the other boat consisted of Illorien, Renakashin, the Warlock, and the Warrior. Our guns were manned by the Hunter and the ret Pally. Everything was going well up until the end of our first raiding party trip across to the other side. Rena had issues getting back across and died. Fortunately, she was close enough to the edge that our tree was able to Rebirth from our boat, and before long we were up and going again. Our Warlock went down, then our Mage. I tried to Rebirth the Mage but a portal opened up and he got one-shotted by the mob that appeared on top of him.
We added our hunter to the raiding party going across. Somehow, through all this craziness, we managed to stay ahead of the Horde. When we lost our ret Pally shortly before the end of a raid to the other boat, some folks were ready to wipe - but we were close enough to the end that Illorien hopped in the cannon in his place, and before another battle mage came out, Orgrim's Hammer fell from the skies.
With no more trash and still on the high of success, we put off sleep for just a little longer to give a shot at Deathbringer Saurfang.
Deathbringer Saurfang!
I probably didn't do a good job of explaining this fight - I know I failed to mention why I was spreading everybody out as much as I was. We failed, but with it already being late and in a one-more-shot mode for the last 2 encounters we decided to call it for the night. The deathblow was 2 of our healers going down. I think we gave up a little too much blood power before that happened anyway - I was off on my taunt from Ill, among other things - although we did burn down the blood beasts relatively quickly. I'm positive our next run will be even more successful.
EA's other group had also reached Saurfang by the time we ended. As of the time of writing of this post I do not know if they were successful or not. In either case, our guild made a huge step in progression through the Citadel.
Thanks for joining me on this little detour! I know we may be a little behind the curve, as new content dropped this week and we haven't quite cleared the old content yet, but this was a big success for us and we look forward to more consistent success in the future.
This is just our second outing as a group. One of our guild officers was running a second 10-man group in parallel that night as well. Epic Adventurers had not, as of the beginning of these groups, downed any boss in ICC except for Marrowgar, and the group the three of us were leading had not even done that.
Wednesday was a day for progressing!
We had a bit of a time sorting out players for each group and a lot of turnover at the last two DPS spots in our run, but we ended up with this group dynamic:
Tanks:
Illorien and Myself
Heals:
Renakashin, another Holy Paladin, and a Resto Druid
DPS:
Hunter, Warrior, Mage, Warlock, Ret Pally
So a bit late we started in. My last post on ICC10 detailed our troubles with regards to the trash leading up to Marrowgar. Tonight there was no such trouble. We managed to lose a player or two to lacking of target marking and not being quick enough on taunts of the trap-spawned saber-lashing Deathbound Wards, but no wipes and we were shortly facing down the monstrosity that is Lord Marrowgar.
Lord Marrowgar!
We originally stayed with the strategy we had tried (and been getting better with) on our last run - tanking Marrowgar in the middle, spreading out the DPS and trying to contain the insanity. Our first attempt was going fairly well until I crashed and had to reboot. I didn't see what happened while my computer was starting up again, but I can't imagine it was pretty.
When I got back in it was suggested that we tank him off to the side of the room instead of the middle. Something about him only being able to use his fire in the same general direction or something - being a tank, I'm in front of him and I can't tell you what it looks like from the other side, but somebody felt this would help with being able to avoid the fire (or possibly bring everybody closer together for killing bone prisons.) It was also noted that he seemed to like to be in one corner or the other at the end of his whirlwind, which would mean less moving him and the raid having to avoid it.
It was an excellent suggestion, and our second attempt was flawless. Illorien and I occasionally had to switch sides of the room - he really did end his whirlwind in one end of the room or the other basically every time - but with Feral Charge I was able to close the distance quickly, and Illorien was quick enough to stay more or less with me. Our DPS worked well at breaking prisons and getting back on the boss, and he went down without a single player death. Progress for our crew and Frost Emblems for the win!
The trash before Lady Deathwhisper didn't provide anywhere near the challenge that the trash before Marrowgar did our first time in. Then again, if we'd known anything about the Deathbound Wards the first time in, we wouldn't have had nearly the issues we did. In any case, it was a simple matter to pull a small group at a time and down them healers, casters and melee. The two big spider-looking guys are a minor pain, but they went down without causing us any issues.
Lady Deathwhisper!
For anybody that hasn't done this fight (and if you've found your way here, you probably have!), it's not an exceptionally difficult fight, if you have reasonable DPS and good coordination. Simply put, you have to maintain enough DPS on Deathwhisper's shield to kill her before she enrages while still having enough of the right kinds of DPS to take out the adds in each wave before a new wave spawns.
We tried a couple of different plans, but the one that worked for us was this: We put the ret Pally on Deathwhisper full time. The Warrior and Hunter were targeting the Adherents, while the Warlock and Mage targeted the Fanatics. Once all of any group were down, the ranged DPS switched to Deathwhisper until the new group of adds spawned. We had the Pally and the Warrior switched at first, it took folks awhile to figure out exactly what was needed on the adds, and Ill and I found out we needed to mark targets for DPS to focus on when there were multiple targets for physical/magical DPS.
While Ill and I had to tank the Fanatics, our damage was focused on the Adherents, since that's where we were limited less. I did discover fairly soon, though, that I had one single ability that could do more than 100 damage to the Fanatics: GO GO FERAL FAERIE FIRE. Yeah, I know, 1000 damage every 6 seconds or so isn't much, but it helps, dangit! One of our attempts ended up doomed when we lost both our Mage and our Warlock with multiple Fanatics up. Let me tell you how much you're not going to be able to kill them without magical damage.
I think Illorien and I failed a little in our explanation of the fight - our successful run had more than once in which the adds went down with 15+ seconds to spare before the next group spawned. I can only surmise that we had DPS switching to the wrong adds because we were calling out to focus fire on an Empowered Adherent or Deformed Fanatic, and we hadn't clearly laid out that you need to stay on the correct type of add because you can't really help with the others.
On what was to be our last attempt of the night because of time, we broke through her shield with all adds down and just under 3 minutes left on her enrage timer. The nice thing about this point in the fight is that it takes a ton less time to take her down than it does to take her shield down. It took us less than 2 minutes to bring her down after her shield fell. On a high from a successful fight, we decided to press on and try the Gunship Battle.
The trash in between is PVP-ish except for the frost drake. None of it caused us much issue, though. Unlike the Faction Champions fight in ToC, these aren't true PVP-like mobs, and they go down a LOT easier. The drake's a chump, too, and easy to kill.
The Gunship Battle!
It took awhile to explain this fight because most of our raid hadn't been here before. There's a lot of random stuff to talk about, but here's the gist of what we did.
Our raiding party to the other boat consisted of Illorien, Renakashin, the Warlock, and the Warrior. Our guns were manned by the Hunter and the ret Pally. Everything was going well up until the end of our first raiding party trip across to the other side. Rena had issues getting back across and died. Fortunately, she was close enough to the edge that our tree was able to Rebirth from our boat, and before long we were up and going again. Our Warlock went down, then our Mage. I tried to Rebirth the Mage but a portal opened up and he got one-shotted by the mob that appeared on top of him.
We added our hunter to the raiding party going across. Somehow, through all this craziness, we managed to stay ahead of the Horde. When we lost our ret Pally shortly before the end of a raid to the other boat, some folks were ready to wipe - but we were close enough to the end that Illorien hopped in the cannon in his place, and before another battle mage came out, Orgrim's Hammer fell from the skies.
With no more trash and still on the high of success, we put off sleep for just a little longer to give a shot at Deathbringer Saurfang.
Deathbringer Saurfang!
I probably didn't do a good job of explaining this fight - I know I failed to mention why I was spreading everybody out as much as I was. We failed, but with it already being late and in a one-more-shot mode for the last 2 encounters we decided to call it for the night. The deathblow was 2 of our healers going down. I think we gave up a little too much blood power before that happened anyway - I was off on my taunt from Ill, among other things - although we did burn down the blood beasts relatively quickly. I'm positive our next run will be even more successful.
EA's other group had also reached Saurfang by the time we ended. As of the time of writing of this post I do not know if they were successful or not. In either case, our guild made a huge step in progression through the Citadel.
Thanks for joining me on this little detour! I know we may be a little behind the curve, as new content dropped this week and we haven't quite cleared the old content yet, but this was a big success for us and we look forward to more consistent success in the future.
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