... and if you don't get the reference then you fail, hardcore.
I just wanted to share a couple of thoughts while my ridiculously busy schedule of ridiculousness keeps me from writing anything meaningful.
After our bug-filled jaunt into ICC last week, we decided to start fresh this week even though we only got 5 bosses down last week... And due to illness/inability to form coherent sentences/real life causing low attendance/etc, we waited until Wednesday night to go in this week.
To make a much longer story very short: we smashed 7 bosses (Lower Spire + Fester, Rot, and Princes). A typical first night for us.
I was surprised by a couple of things during the run, though, that I wanted to share.
First, remember a few posts back? I said that the death of cat DPS was greatly exaggerated? Boy was I right.
Now, I realize they thought it was underpowered and made a couple of changes to bump it up. They may have done so even before I posted my previous thoughts. They may have done a little before then, and a little after. I'm here today to confirm that cat DPS is most definitely alive and well, even before the Cataclysm.
For the first time in my experience, I actually led the DPS chart on a couple of fights. One of them by a good margin.
At the end of the Saurfang fight I was sporting over 13k DPS. Once I get near my gaming machine again I can try to post up a screenshot - I got one that should show the Recount breakdown to show how much is attributed to melee, Rake, Rip, Shred, and Ferocious Bite. Much like pre-4.0, the breakdown was fairly even - roughly 25% each going to melee, Rip, and Shred, with the remaining 25% divided up among Ravage, Rake, and FB.
After a top half performance on Rotface, we moved to Festergut. We had a mage leading the chart for most of the fight, but I was a close second until we hit 25%. It is so incredibly liberating to actually have something to do differently when the Raid Leader announces "Kill shot range." Anyway, mere seconds before Fester fell down I passed him, finishing with 12.5k DPS to his 12.3k. The breakdown of damage was shifted slightly. I don't have the screenshots to compare at hand (I will offer more details once I do), but while the same general breakdown showed, it was shifted. (i.e. Rip had the highest percentage on Saurfang, IIRC, and Shred had the highest on Fester, again, unless my memory is failing me.)
I'm loving Nom Nom Nom, even if it did get the much less cool name Blood in the Water. Once the boss is in range, your life becomes Shred/Rake to 5 CPs, FB, do this two or three times depending on the time left on Savage Roar, then Shred/Rake to 5 CPs and Savage Roar, wash, rinse, repeat and watch the boss die. Since you don't really have to worry about refreshing Rip, the only timer you really have to watch at that point is Savage Roar.
Speaking of timers, I was moderately more impressed with my output because I haven't been using a debuff tracker addon. Last time I tried to load BadKitty, it was broken, and I haven't checked in the past week or so to see if it was fixed. I suppose it's technically harder to play this way, but given the proclamations of doom and gloom for Kitty DPS I wasn't worried about it until Cata actually dropped. So I was doubly surprised to find myself on top of the chart.
Moving on... My DPS as a tank seemed relatively high as well. There were even a couple of fights that I beat out a couple of our lower-geared folks that just must have had a bad fight that boss. I dunno *shrug*.
Speaking of tanking, my single-target threat has been WAY up - to the point where I'm stealing threat from our other tanks if I don't watch it - while my AOE threat has been way down, so-so at best. That 6-second cooldown on Swipe is a pain in my arse. Tab-targeting helps, but having the Pulverize buff fully powered helps as well, and you need to consume 3 stacks of Lacerate to get there, which requires focusing on one target. I still don't have a good handle on how to get and hold AOE threat, but I also realize that I might not have that until Cata comes and we get Thrash.
In completely unrelated matters, I finally completed the holiday uber-meta. Picked a candy bucket in Telaar and got Achievement spammed... Got my Violet Proto-Drake and danced in the... wait, I already spent 5k gold to get 310% flying. blizz can I have my 5k back? See, what I was reading over the past few weeks (sorry, I'm a bad blogger and don't have sources to link, it's been too long and I don't remember where I read them to begin with, but Wowwiki confirms it) said that if you already had a 310% speed mount, you got Master Flying for free, but this was not true if you gained the mount afterward. So, I spent my 5k, and then heard afterward that enough people complained about the holiday meta that they changed it so that it granted the Master flying skill. Thus I curse my impatience but please Blizzard give me my 5k back.
Anyway.... cheers!
Showing posts with label tanking. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tanking. Show all posts
Thursday, October 21, 2010
Friday, October 15, 2010
Pre-Cata 4.0 Bear Thoughts
So my guild went in to ICC 25 this week a day late due to the patch, to try to relearn on the go how the game is played, so I got a good look at how to do things bear-wise until Dec. 7th. I was actually pleasantly surprised with a few things, but I thought I'd roll that in to how to Bear in patch 4.0!
I'll cover all of the abilities in more complete detail in a later set of posts...
But first off, here is the spec I went with for my first go around...
Bear Build for 4.0!
Without the points to get to Perseverance (which I'll want at 85), I actually had one more point to use in the Feral tree than I will when I get that far. We'll have 5 more points then, 2 of which will be in Natural Shapeshifter to get to Tier 2 resto, 3 in Perseverance, and I will find 1 point from somewhere (current odds are to take one out of Stampede) at that point for Master Shapeshifter... but we'll see.
For now... that looks like a solid build. I have all the points in everything I want in the Feral tree, plus Heart of the Wild. I personally don't think it would be bad, while using 4p t10 armor, to put 3 points in King of the Jungle to enhance Enrage even further for in-combat use, but excepting the tier bonus there's no reason to put points there at all.
On a side note, the tooltip for the four piece bonus to t10 armor still reads that "Enrage no longer reduces your armor and instead..." I'm hoping they actually updated the mechanic so that it doesn't make you take extra damage, because Enrage no longer reduces armor anyway. Even if they didn't, the bonus makes you take less damage, and more than overcomes the extra damage you take from Enrage anyway, so... I guess it all works out. Anyway, back to the task at hand.
Tanking seemed... a little clunky to me. Times were, the only rotationally used abilities Bears had on cooldowns were FFF and Mangle. Now we've added Swipe and Maul to the mix, and given us an ability that wants us to build up Lacerate stacks, then remove them, AND an ability that wants us to have Lacerate ticking all the time.
So, in short, there's more buttons for us to press, and more limitations in how and when to press them. To make matters worse, Maul and Swipe both now cost 30 rage (although Swipe's rage cost is supposed to be coming down, and word is they're reducing the threat generation to match, but keeping the cooldown.) I can't say that I'm entirely pleased with that change - the 6 second cooldown on Swipe is a royal pain - but at least we'll be able to use Swipe at the beginning of a pull for initial aggro now.
I found myself doing things distinctively different for single-target and AOE pulls, which was... not entirely true previously. For single-target, Mangle and FFF followed by Maul. Maul and Mangle when off cooldown, fill in the space with Lacerates until 3 stacks, then Pulverize. If you have the Pulverize buff up, 3 stacks of Lacerate, and Maul and Mangle are on cooldown... FFF again. If that's also on cooldown... then Swipe, or consider Pulverizing to refresh the buff duration. Doing this, I've been putting out comparatively massive threat - typically outpacing our DK and Warrior tanks. Of course, maybe they just don't have their rotations down yet, or maybe I had rogue/hunter threat help, I don't know for sure.
For AOE pulls, I tended to start out with Lacerate, Pulverize immediately to have some buff up, then Swipe. From there, I was tab-target Maul, Mangle, and Lacerate wherever I needed threat. Swipe when off cooldown, and Pulverize whenever I could a) eat more stacks of Lacerate than the current buff had, or b) the buff was about to fall off. I found myself sometimes having no issues with rage at all, and sometimes being rage-starved it seemed no matter what I did. Either way, I was getting compliments from several folks on our run with doing awesome threat. One player who has regularly had issues with generating just a little too much threat said he was going all-out and couldn't catch me. Again, maybe I had help, but that certainly gave me some confidence.
All in all I didn't have many problems with threat generation, and when I did they seemed to be tied to rage starvation.
On the downside, the first night we got to Saurfang and had to stop because the door was bugged and wouldn't open after he died. The second night, we killed Rotface before giving up because several of our players were having bug issues with the raid instances - getting dropped out of the instance, not being able to come back in, WoW crashing when they came in, WoW crashing when they were summoned - just generally annoying bugs. I hope they get it all fixed soon.
I haven't had a lot of chances to cat yet, but I have a few thoughts I'll share when I get the time to. As for my last post about it, I realized later I did my dummy testing after they buffed us a little bit. Anyway, happy hunting!
I'll cover all of the abilities in more complete detail in a later set of posts...
But first off, here is the spec I went with for my first go around...
Bear Build for 4.0!
Without the points to get to Perseverance (which I'll want at 85), I actually had one more point to use in the Feral tree than I will when I get that far. We'll have 5 more points then, 2 of which will be in Natural Shapeshifter to get to Tier 2 resto, 3 in Perseverance, and I will find 1 point from somewhere (current odds are to take one out of Stampede) at that point for Master Shapeshifter... but we'll see.
For now... that looks like a solid build. I have all the points in everything I want in the Feral tree, plus Heart of the Wild. I personally don't think it would be bad, while using 4p t10 armor, to put 3 points in King of the Jungle to enhance Enrage even further for in-combat use, but excepting the tier bonus there's no reason to put points there at all.
On a side note, the tooltip for the four piece bonus to t10 armor still reads that "Enrage no longer reduces your armor and instead..." I'm hoping they actually updated the mechanic so that it doesn't make you take extra damage, because Enrage no longer reduces armor anyway. Even if they didn't, the bonus makes you take less damage, and more than overcomes the extra damage you take from Enrage anyway, so... I guess it all works out. Anyway, back to the task at hand.
Tanking seemed... a little clunky to me. Times were, the only rotationally used abilities Bears had on cooldowns were FFF and Mangle. Now we've added Swipe and Maul to the mix, and given us an ability that wants us to build up Lacerate stacks, then remove them, AND an ability that wants us to have Lacerate ticking all the time.
So, in short, there's more buttons for us to press, and more limitations in how and when to press them. To make matters worse, Maul and Swipe both now cost 30 rage (although Swipe's rage cost is supposed to be coming down, and word is they're reducing the threat generation to match, but keeping the cooldown.) I can't say that I'm entirely pleased with that change - the 6 second cooldown on Swipe is a royal pain - but at least we'll be able to use Swipe at the beginning of a pull for initial aggro now.
I found myself doing things distinctively different for single-target and AOE pulls, which was... not entirely true previously. For single-target, Mangle and FFF followed by Maul. Maul and Mangle when off cooldown, fill in the space with Lacerates until 3 stacks, then Pulverize. If you have the Pulverize buff up, 3 stacks of Lacerate, and Maul and Mangle are on cooldown... FFF again. If that's also on cooldown... then Swipe, or consider Pulverizing to refresh the buff duration. Doing this, I've been putting out comparatively massive threat - typically outpacing our DK and Warrior tanks. Of course, maybe they just don't have their rotations down yet, or maybe I had rogue/hunter threat help, I don't know for sure.
For AOE pulls, I tended to start out with Lacerate, Pulverize immediately to have some buff up, then Swipe. From there, I was tab-target Maul, Mangle, and Lacerate wherever I needed threat. Swipe when off cooldown, and Pulverize whenever I could a) eat more stacks of Lacerate than the current buff had, or b) the buff was about to fall off. I found myself sometimes having no issues with rage at all, and sometimes being rage-starved it seemed no matter what I did. Either way, I was getting compliments from several folks on our run with doing awesome threat. One player who has regularly had issues with generating just a little too much threat said he was going all-out and couldn't catch me. Again, maybe I had help, but that certainly gave me some confidence.
All in all I didn't have many problems with threat generation, and when I did they seemed to be tied to rage starvation.
On the downside, the first night we got to Saurfang and had to stop because the door was bugged and wouldn't open after he died. The second night, we killed Rotface before giving up because several of our players were having bug issues with the raid instances - getting dropped out of the instance, not being able to come back in, WoW crashing when they came in, WoW crashing when they were summoned - just generally annoying bugs. I hope they get it all fixed soon.
I haven't had a lot of chances to cat yet, but I have a few thoughts I'll share when I get the time to. As for my last post about it, I realized later I did my dummy testing after they buffed us a little bit. Anyway, happy hunting!
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
The Alt Club
Rambly post is rambly, about alts and paladins and tanking and dps and gearscore and another baby and I don't know where I'm going with this but hey it'll be fun.
It seems like everybody in my guild has at least 5 or 6 level 80 alts. I have 10 characters on Baelgun, but my reduced play time due to marriage and baby has meant that my alt-o-holic ways have been curtailed almost entirely.
Lately, though, since Kaethir has basically reached the point that even frost badges are useful for nothing except primordial saronites for LW patterns, or down-ranking for gems or heirloom gear, I have taken the time to work on my highest alt, Alrom, instead of repeating the same random dungeons with a supremely over-geared tank every morning. A week or so ago, he finally reached the level 80 plateau, and started the rep/gear/badge/daily grind. *Dance time* I have finally joined the Alt Club!
I have made no secret of the fact that one of the things I love most about playing a Druid is the versatility of being able to play whatever role I choose (provided of course that I have the gear, spec, etc. available at the time. It should be no surprise, then, that my first alt is from the only other class in the game that is capable of all 3 major raid roles, a paladin. A dwarf, which I suppose is a little odd for most players, but, well, there it is.
Being a fresh level 80 with essentially a few quest blues and greens and 3 pieces of heirloom gear to his name, I have been queuing as ret with him, dealing with the longer queue times in order to be a contributing member of the group rather than a severe liability. I suffered, the first few days as an 80, from being limited to normal dungeons due to Blizzard's insistence that you have a GS in the 2500-ish range before you get to go into a heroic dungeon. Once I picked up a couple of decent low-level pieces and bought my first T9 piece, however, the heroic queue opened up for me and off I went!
Melee DPS as a paladin instead of a kitty is a world of difference. No button-mashing, no energy management, no worrying about clipping a DoT, no worrying about losing a buff or a debuff or any of the other 100 things a kitty has to worry about. Just hit whichever ability is left-most on my bar and not on cooldown. If I've managed to flub that up and nothing is off cooldown at the moment, hit Divine Plea. Wash, rinse, repeat. Watch things die. It's so easy and smooth it's sickening. Of course, maybe that's because I'm in a heroic with overgeared players and it doesn't matter that I can't get above 2k DPS yet. Heck, 1.5k most of the time.
By the way, that notoriously long queue as a DPS? Meh. 8-10 minutes is the worst I've seen. That's still forever, compared to sub-30 seconds as a tank, but come on. Half the time I queue up, take a flight path, do one Tournament Daily, take another flight path and the queue hits before I land. I suppose in today's 'gogogo' world where 20 seconds is too much time to wait, most people would be upset. Me? I'm more than happy, even though I can't tank yet and that's really what I want to do.
I have been working up a prot set and spec in the meantime, and although I'm not there yet being a lot of times the only player in a group that is still actually pulling upgrades from heroics, it is moving quickly. I need to get Kaethir off his furry rear end long enough to buy and cut a couple of gems for Al, for the pieces that I don't expect to be replaced within a week or so (like that prot t9 piece I bought), and take the energy to find an enchanter to put something, anything, on those pieces I'm bothering with gems for. I'm not even really close to the 535 defense I'm told I need for heroics, but once I get there, look out, there'll be a fail-pally tank on the loose.
Since I don't want to be a total fail-tank when I do get to delve into heroic tanking, I have been taking some of my questing time to put on all my prot stuff and see how it works. It's quite painful, in some respects. Part of a prot pally's mana regen is based on incoming heals - which you don't get running around solo. I am satisfied with the survivability, but the loss of DPS just makes soloing too slow to be much fun, so I am only going to be soloing as prot to make sure I keep my weapon skills at a reasonable level with whichever weapon is currently my best prot weapon.
Tanking also seems a little more smooth with a paladin to me, but then, I haven't been put in a situation where I really have to use all the paladin's tools yet. It is a little overwhelming how much is available when things go wrong - hands, seals, hammers, etc. - compared to the bear's available responses, which are: bash, growl, and make myself harder to kill. I suppose on one level it's easier to bear tank, because when stuff goes wrong you just do more of what you were already doing anyway. Of course, I'm probably just blowing hot electrons because this will all be moot come Cataclysm anyway, but still.
Awhile back, I wrote a post wondering about what I would do with Alrom once I got him to level 80. Turns out he's going to be doing the same things Kaethir does, except while wearing plate, casting spells, and wielding weapons, instead of fur, roars, and claws. I suppose there's some psychological or metaphorical connection I should be making here, but at the moment the only thing that comes to mind is that I like tanking, I like damage meters, and I like hitting things. Or maybe it's more that I'd rather do that than play whack-a-mole. Or whack-a-not-green-bar. Whatever.
I do still enjoy healing, and I may in the future trade in one of my pally specs for a holy one to find out what it's like. Frankly, not being able to be a proactive healer frightens me, but in a heroic I don't expect slow reaction times to lead to wipes, and I don't intend to use this character in raids except, maybe, for the occasional weekly raid quest or alt-able portion of our guild raids. Time will tell.
On a completely non-WoW-related post, my wife is pregnant again, or so the little peed-on stick tells us. Some people seem to think that we are crazy, but I like the idea of having our first two kids so close together. My wife insists that we'll be waiting for awhile after this one before trying again, even though she's the one that wanted a big family when we started this whole shindig. I can't help but think that she said that last time and, well, look where we are now. Not that I'm complaining, I like fatherhood. Here's to hoping my second child is as happy and easy to take care of as my first.
I don't know if it was fun for you, but it was fun for me! Wwwhheeeeeeeeee!
It seems like everybody in my guild has at least 5 or 6 level 80 alts. I have 10 characters on Baelgun, but my reduced play time due to marriage and baby has meant that my alt-o-holic ways have been curtailed almost entirely.
Lately, though, since Kaethir has basically reached the point that even frost badges are useful for nothing except primordial saronites for LW patterns, or down-ranking for gems or heirloom gear, I have taken the time to work on my highest alt, Alrom, instead of repeating the same random dungeons with a supremely over-geared tank every morning. A week or so ago, he finally reached the level 80 plateau, and started the rep/gear/badge/daily grind. *Dance time* I have finally joined the Alt Club!
I have made no secret of the fact that one of the things I love most about playing a Druid is the versatility of being able to play whatever role I choose (provided of course that I have the gear, spec, etc. available at the time. It should be no surprise, then, that my first alt is from the only other class in the game that is capable of all 3 major raid roles, a paladin. A dwarf, which I suppose is a little odd for most players, but, well, there it is.
Being a fresh level 80 with essentially a few quest blues and greens and 3 pieces of heirloom gear to his name, I have been queuing as ret with him, dealing with the longer queue times in order to be a contributing member of the group rather than a severe liability. I suffered, the first few days as an 80, from being limited to normal dungeons due to Blizzard's insistence that you have a GS in the 2500-ish range before you get to go into a heroic dungeon. Once I picked up a couple of decent low-level pieces and bought my first T9 piece, however, the heroic queue opened up for me and off I went!
Melee DPS as a paladin instead of a kitty is a world of difference. No button-mashing, no energy management, no worrying about clipping a DoT, no worrying about losing a buff or a debuff or any of the other 100 things a kitty has to worry about. Just hit whichever ability is left-most on my bar and not on cooldown. If I've managed to flub that up and nothing is off cooldown at the moment, hit Divine Plea. Wash, rinse, repeat. Watch things die. It's so easy and smooth it's sickening. Of course, maybe that's because I'm in a heroic with overgeared players and it doesn't matter that I can't get above 2k DPS yet. Heck, 1.5k most of the time.
By the way, that notoriously long queue as a DPS? Meh. 8-10 minutes is the worst I've seen. That's still forever, compared to sub-30 seconds as a tank, but come on. Half the time I queue up, take a flight path, do one Tournament Daily, take another flight path and the queue hits before I land. I suppose in today's 'gogogo' world where 20 seconds is too much time to wait, most people would be upset. Me? I'm more than happy, even though I can't tank yet and that's really what I want to do.
I have been working up a prot set and spec in the meantime, and although I'm not there yet being a lot of times the only player in a group that is still actually pulling upgrades from heroics, it is moving quickly. I need to get Kaethir off his furry rear end long enough to buy and cut a couple of gems for Al, for the pieces that I don't expect to be replaced within a week or so (like that prot t9 piece I bought), and take the energy to find an enchanter to put something, anything, on those pieces I'm bothering with gems for. I'm not even really close to the 535 defense I'm told I need for heroics, but once I get there, look out, there'll be a fail-pally tank on the loose.
Since I don't want to be a total fail-tank when I do get to delve into heroic tanking, I have been taking some of my questing time to put on all my prot stuff and see how it works. It's quite painful, in some respects. Part of a prot pally's mana regen is based on incoming heals - which you don't get running around solo. I am satisfied with the survivability, but the loss of DPS just makes soloing too slow to be much fun, so I am only going to be soloing as prot to make sure I keep my weapon skills at a reasonable level with whichever weapon is currently my best prot weapon.
Tanking also seems a little more smooth with a paladin to me, but then, I haven't been put in a situation where I really have to use all the paladin's tools yet. It is a little overwhelming how much is available when things go wrong - hands, seals, hammers, etc. - compared to the bear's available responses, which are: bash, growl, and make myself harder to kill. I suppose on one level it's easier to bear tank, because when stuff goes wrong you just do more of what you were already doing anyway. Of course, I'm probably just blowing hot electrons because this will all be moot come Cataclysm anyway, but still.
Awhile back, I wrote a post wondering about what I would do with Alrom once I got him to level 80. Turns out he's going to be doing the same things Kaethir does, except while wearing plate, casting spells, and wielding weapons, instead of fur, roars, and claws. I suppose there's some psychological or metaphorical connection I should be making here, but at the moment the only thing that comes to mind is that I like tanking, I like damage meters, and I like hitting things. Or maybe it's more that I'd rather do that than play whack-a-mole. Or whack-a-not-green-bar. Whatever.
I do still enjoy healing, and I may in the future trade in one of my pally specs for a holy one to find out what it's like. Frankly, not being able to be a proactive healer frightens me, but in a heroic I don't expect slow reaction times to lead to wipes, and I don't intend to use this character in raids except, maybe, for the occasional weekly raid quest or alt-able portion of our guild raids. Time will tell.
On a completely non-WoW-related post, my wife is pregnant again, or so the little peed-on stick tells us. Some people seem to think that we are crazy, but I like the idea of having our first two kids so close together. My wife insists that we'll be waiting for awhile after this one before trying again, even though she's the one that wanted a big family when we started this whole shindig. I can't help but think that she said that last time and, well, look where we are now. Not that I'm complaining, I like fatherhood. Here's to hoping my second child is as happy and easy to take care of as my first.
I don't know if it was fun for you, but it was fun for me! Wwwhheeeeeeeeee!
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!
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
I'm on a BOAT!
*smiles* I stood in the middle of *OUR* boat and swiped/mauled for 5 minutes straight. I guess that's worthy of an achievement? I dunno, but I lol'd anyway.
The Blood Queen escaped last week - some of our team really hasn't figured out how to bite the proper DPS, or stay far enough apart not to die when she rains fire down upon us. Or something like that. In any case, we didn't get as close as we did the week before. But another venture tonight, I hope, will provide the cure!
The good news is that instead of having Dreamwalker and Blood Princes still up, only Dreamwalker remains this week among bosses we have downed. We 24-manned her last week, so even if we are down a player or two I don't expect a problem there this week, and we can spend most of the night working on Blood Queen and/or Putricide.
On a completely unrelated note, my daughter starting teething while we were at GenCon 2 weeks ago. She's got 2 on the bottom, and (we think) one through on the top... and she's been amazingly not hard to deal with the entire time.
Before you know it she'll be driving the boys wild! ;)
The Blood Queen escaped last week - some of our team really hasn't figured out how to bite the proper DPS, or stay far enough apart not to die when she rains fire down upon us. Or something like that. In any case, we didn't get as close as we did the week before. But another venture tonight, I hope, will provide the cure!
The good news is that instead of having Dreamwalker and Blood Princes still up, only Dreamwalker remains this week among bosses we have downed. We 24-manned her last week, so even if we are down a player or two I don't expect a problem there this week, and we can spend most of the night working on Blood Queen and/or Putricide.
On a completely unrelated note, my daughter starting teething while we were at GenCon 2 weeks ago. She's got 2 on the bottom, and (we think) one through on the top... and she's been amazingly not hard to deal with the entire time.
Before you know it she'll be driving the boys wild! ;)
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
Wish us luck
So I'm back from GenCon all ready to go, we downed our usual Lower Spire + Fester and Rot last night (and on only my 3rd time tanking Rotface, first time on 25, first time truly tanking the slimes!), and we're going in again tonight. We'll probably go after the Princes and then Dreamwalker before giving the Blood Queen another shot.
Last week we wiped with her at 1% and 0.1% (She had 620 HP remaining. Yep.) so I'm confident we'll get her tonight! Wish us luck!
Last week we wiped with her at 1% and 0.1% (She had 620 HP remaining. Yep.) so I'm confident we'll get her tonight! Wish us luck!
Friday, July 23, 2010
I AM RENEWED!
a.k.a. That Stupid Green Dragon, redux.
Inevitably, I post things that are innacurate.
My last post went up early this past Thursday morning at its predetermined time. I tend to use Blogger's post options to set posts to appear a day or two after I write them to give me time to reread and edit them should I find errors or sections that I feel have been written poorly.
An unfortunate consequence of this is that when I post things like status updates about my guild's raids, if I write them early in the week and set them to post Wednesday or Thursday morning, it means that my guild has a chance to prove me wrong.
Such it is that now (Thursday morning as I write this, mere minutes after my previous post went up,) we are no longer stumbling over that stupid green dragon.
The fact is not lost on me that the Strength of Wrynn buff now stands at 30%, which makes several of the fights we would probably STILL be on the edge of beating go from difficult but beatable to laughably easy. One comment that came over vent on Tuesday after we downed Saurfang was, 'remember when this guy was HARD?' It would still be incredibly difficult if we didn't have that buff, I think. It has, IMO, kind of reached the level of insanity, though. I popped Survival Instincts and cracked 116k HP. One hundred sixteen thousand.
Not that I'm really complaining... if it allows us to see content that we would otherwise not be able to even attempt, I'm all for it.
Back to the dragon. We went again with a 4-tank setup with 6 healers, 3 of whom went the portals every time and 3 of whom did not. My little corner of the room had relatively few spawns until the end, and most of them that weren't Suppressors were zombies, so I spent a lot of my time being an agile little angry bear and running around trying not to get too many stacks of Corrosion until the DPS could take care of the zombie. We wiped once due to the DPS curve, and then healed her just as things were starting to get out of hand again.
PROGRESS feels so great.
We moved on to try Putricide instead of the Blood Queen, and while we did get better in general through the night we were unable to succeed in the kill. We seem to be still on the curve of success in the DPS department, and one DPS falling over to an orange slime (Gas Cloud?) or green slime (Volatile Ooze?) kills us in the long run because we can't continue to get them down fast enough to keep damage up on Putricide himself. But much like Blood Queen, we were getting better, and I think that in a few week we'll be working on Sindy.
We have now completed every boss but the main wing bosses (Putricide, Blood Queen, Sindragosa) and the Lich King himself.
RAWR!!
Edit: and this was not supposed to go live until tomorrow morning, but I clicked "Publish" before I set the time. I am a Fail Blogger.
Inevitably, I post things that are innacurate.
My last post went up early this past Thursday morning at its predetermined time. I tend to use Blogger's post options to set posts to appear a day or two after I write them to give me time to reread and edit them should I find errors or sections that I feel have been written poorly.
An unfortunate consequence of this is that when I post things like status updates about my guild's raids, if I write them early in the week and set them to post Wednesday or Thursday morning, it means that my guild has a chance to prove me wrong.
Such it is that now (Thursday morning as I write this, mere minutes after my previous post went up,) we are no longer stumbling over that stupid green dragon.
The fact is not lost on me that the Strength of Wrynn buff now stands at 30%, which makes several of the fights we would probably STILL be on the edge of beating go from difficult but beatable to laughably easy. One comment that came over vent on Tuesday after we downed Saurfang was, 'remember when this guy was HARD?' It would still be incredibly difficult if we didn't have that buff, I think. It has, IMO, kind of reached the level of insanity, though. I popped Survival Instincts and cracked 116k HP. One hundred sixteen thousand.
Not that I'm really complaining... if it allows us to see content that we would otherwise not be able to even attempt, I'm all for it.
Back to the dragon. We went again with a 4-tank setup with 6 healers, 3 of whom went the portals every time and 3 of whom did not. My little corner of the room had relatively few spawns until the end, and most of them that weren't Suppressors were zombies, so I spent a lot of my time being an agile little angry bear and running around trying not to get too many stacks of Corrosion until the DPS could take care of the zombie. We wiped once due to the DPS curve, and then healed her just as things were starting to get out of hand again.
PROGRESS feels so great.
We moved on to try Putricide instead of the Blood Queen, and while we did get better in general through the night we were unable to succeed in the kill. We seem to be still on the curve of success in the DPS department, and one DPS falling over to an orange slime (Gas Cloud?) or green slime (Volatile Ooze?) kills us in the long run because we can't continue to get them down fast enough to keep damage up on Putricide himself. But much like Blood Queen, we were getting better, and I think that in a few week we'll be working on Sindy.
We have now completed every boss but the main wing bosses (Putricide, Blood Queen, Sindragosa) and the Lich King himself.
RAWR!!
Edit: and this was not supposed to go live until tomorrow morning, but I clicked "Publish" before I set the time. I am a Fail Blogger.
Thursday, July 22, 2010
That Stupid Green Dragon
So in the absence of one of our progression tanks I've had quite a few opportunities over the past month or so to tank on our progression runs. Whatever our leadership had decided was holding me back from at least being a fill-in for our progression tanks has at least to a certain extent been abated, and as near as I can tell, we have our 3 main progression tanks and the 4th (fill-in) spot is run by 3-player committee based on who is available for the run and which role each of them prefers. The short version is that with one of our tanks just now returning from a bit of a hiatus, I've had a lot of chances to do that thing I do.
It's been a heck of a lot of fun.
EA has progressed to the point where we almost always 1-shot the first 6 bosses in ICC (through Saurfang plus Festergut and Rotface), and we've got the Blood Princes down to two shots, max.
I like the Blood Prince fight. There's a lot of insanity going on, but for the most part it's survivable insanity, as long as you are at least mildly situationally aware. I've only had the opportunity to tank the fight once, and I had Keleseth (or Taldaram... whichever one is not the one that requires you to run around collecting balloons... on second thought I *think* it's Taldaram) for the duration. Tanking that prince is a piece of cake. I've also had the opportunity to DPS it a time or two, and it's a bit rough on feral DPS, but it's still fun. Feral Charge comes in handy for target switching.
The past couple of weeks we've taken a couple shots at Putricide and Blood Queen. Putricide was insanity, but we only tried him once or twice. Blood Queen is fun - I think we'll get her in a week or two with a few more upgrades and a bit of patience and another couple times to figure out how all that biting stuff works.
We are, however, still stumbling over healing the Dreamwalker, which we've been putting the most work into over the past month and a half or so. We've tried going healer-heavy (which failed miserably), we've tried taking in a 2-tank team with normal healer count (which did even worse), and I think we've finally settled on a plan we believe will work - she was healed to 91% on our best attempt.
We went light 1 healer (bringing 6), and went with four tanks, one specifically for each doorway. The added tanks gives us better control over the adds as well as the opportunity to have a little extra time to handle adds because they're beating on a tank instead of DPS or heals. We are *slightly* slower downing the adds, but since we have the extra tanks it's not quite as big a deal. It does seem to matter more when a DPS dies (as we are more on the edge of the DPS curve for survivability), but it matters a little less for most of the adds to die quite as quickly. I am hopeful that we'll have this fight down within a couple of weeks as well.
That's the state of EA progression raids. Hope everything's going well with your guild's raids.
It's been a heck of a lot of fun.
EA has progressed to the point where we almost always 1-shot the first 6 bosses in ICC (through Saurfang plus Festergut and Rotface), and we've got the Blood Princes down to two shots, max.
I like the Blood Prince fight. There's a lot of insanity going on, but for the most part it's survivable insanity, as long as you are at least mildly situationally aware. I've only had the opportunity to tank the fight once, and I had Keleseth (or Taldaram... whichever one is not the one that requires you to run around collecting balloons... on second thought I *think* it's Taldaram) for the duration. Tanking that prince is a piece of cake. I've also had the opportunity to DPS it a time or two, and it's a bit rough on feral DPS, but it's still fun. Feral Charge comes in handy for target switching.
The past couple of weeks we've taken a couple shots at Putricide and Blood Queen. Putricide was insanity, but we only tried him once or twice. Blood Queen is fun - I think we'll get her in a week or two with a few more upgrades and a bit of patience and another couple times to figure out how all that biting stuff works.
We are, however, still stumbling over healing the Dreamwalker, which we've been putting the most work into over the past month and a half or so. We've tried going healer-heavy (which failed miserably), we've tried taking in a 2-tank team with normal healer count (which did even worse), and I think we've finally settled on a plan we believe will work - she was healed to 91% on our best attempt.
We went light 1 healer (bringing 6), and went with four tanks, one specifically for each doorway. The added tanks gives us better control over the adds as well as the opportunity to have a little extra time to handle adds because they're beating on a tank instead of DPS or heals. We are *slightly* slower downing the adds, but since we have the extra tanks it's not quite as big a deal. It does seem to matter more when a DPS dies (as we are more on the edge of the DPS curve for survivability), but it matters a little less for most of the adds to die quite as quickly. I am hopeful that we'll have this fight down within a couple of weeks as well.
That's the state of EA progression raids. Hope everything's going well with your guild's raids.
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?
Thursday, April 1, 2010
Now For Something Completely Different!
While I lay around and try to build a wall as a base for a shed in my backyard thereby avoiding getting pictures of my new little cub up, I'd like to drop an entry into the "Asshat of the Day" bin.
I hopped on to do a quick random, and finding no guildmates on I went ahead and hopped in as a tank. The loading screen dropped me into an Utgarde Keep... one that had just barely started already, as they had cleared the group just at the top of the stairs inside the door. There was a Shaman healing, a hunter, a warrior, and one other (sorry, I can't remember clearly) DPS, and me the big bear.
We said hello and started moving. I pulled one guy because I could time it right, then pulled one of the two groups. A little mishap in rage generation left me out at the end of that fight, and my enrage down... and the warrior pulled the next group. Hoping he was just a little overeager, I waded in and we downed the group with no problems... but while still looting the bodies, he pulled the next two guys.
He then proceeded to pull the first group with a Forge Master before I was even close enough to FFF.
It was at this point that I said, and I quote, "Please stop pulling for me, k thx." I got no response, but I hoped I had gotten the message across.
Up through the proto-drakes everything went mostly fine, although he continually pushed the edge of what I was doing. The first group through the door on the far side, though, he just couldn't wait and charged in before I did... but barely, so I just went with it.
We came into the Prince's room, and I moved forward enough to FFF one of the four Vyr'kul in the room, and then I backed up to wait for them to come to me and ensure we didn't accidentally aggro the boss. This, however, was apparently too slow of a tactic for the warrior, who charged in to the middle of them as I was still moving backward to pull them further.
It was at this point that I decided it was time to invoke the, "You pull it, you tank it" maxim.
After this champ keeled over dead (I apologize if the healer was actually trying to keep him up; the healer was (I think) the lowest-geared character on the run), I charged in and grabbed all of them. I took my sweet time to make sure we had gotten all of our loot, and then I rezzed his sorry butt.
His response? "Now you've pissed me off."
I actually think he tried to pull aggro from me for the rest of the run. Not sure if he taunted or not, I just did my thing and never lost aggro on anything that mattered. I outgeared him by a fairly significant margin, so I don't think he *could* have taken aggro from me without taunting. He continually toed the line of charging in before me, apparently trying to time it so that I was already hitting the button when he charged, and on a couple of the less-threatening baddies he did even go in first, and I let him take the things he hit. If I'd have had more time I'd have let him die another time or two just to make my point, but I was in a hurry and he never did anything incredibly out of line (like charge a boss...) so I went with it.
Let me be clear, folks, when I'm tanking heroics, I may not be the fastest tank out there, but I don't mess around. I stop after kills only long enough to loot and double-check my healer's mana, and I move again. If that's not fast enough for you, be ready for a repair bill, and don't get pissed off at me for it, because its your own damned fault.
Amoroso of Malfurion, you are the asshat of the day.
I hopped on to do a quick random, and finding no guildmates on I went ahead and hopped in as a tank. The loading screen dropped me into an Utgarde Keep... one that had just barely started already, as they had cleared the group just at the top of the stairs inside the door. There was a Shaman healing, a hunter, a warrior, and one other (sorry, I can't remember clearly) DPS, and me the big bear.
We said hello and started moving. I pulled one guy because I could time it right, then pulled one of the two groups. A little mishap in rage generation left me out at the end of that fight, and my enrage down... and the warrior pulled the next group. Hoping he was just a little overeager, I waded in and we downed the group with no problems... but while still looting the bodies, he pulled the next two guys.
He then proceeded to pull the first group with a Forge Master before I was even close enough to FFF.
It was at this point that I said, and I quote, "Please stop pulling for me, k thx." I got no response, but I hoped I had gotten the message across.
Up through the proto-drakes everything went mostly fine, although he continually pushed the edge of what I was doing. The first group through the door on the far side, though, he just couldn't wait and charged in before I did... but barely, so I just went with it.
We came into the Prince's room, and I moved forward enough to FFF one of the four Vyr'kul in the room, and then I backed up to wait for them to come to me and ensure we didn't accidentally aggro the boss. This, however, was apparently too slow of a tactic for the warrior, who charged in to the middle of them as I was still moving backward to pull them further.
It was at this point that I decided it was time to invoke the, "You pull it, you tank it" maxim.
After this champ keeled over dead (I apologize if the healer was actually trying to keep him up; the healer was (I think) the lowest-geared character on the run), I charged in and grabbed all of them. I took my sweet time to make sure we had gotten all of our loot, and then I rezzed his sorry butt.
His response? "Now you've pissed me off."
I actually think he tried to pull aggro from me for the rest of the run. Not sure if he taunted or not, I just did my thing and never lost aggro on anything that mattered. I outgeared him by a fairly significant margin, so I don't think he *could* have taken aggro from me without taunting. He continually toed the line of charging in before me, apparently trying to time it so that I was already hitting the button when he charged, and on a couple of the less-threatening baddies he did even go in first, and I let him take the things he hit. If I'd have had more time I'd have let him die another time or two just to make my point, but I was in a hurry and he never did anything incredibly out of line (like charge a boss...) so I went with it.
Let me be clear, folks, when I'm tanking heroics, I may not be the fastest tank out there, but I don't mess around. I stop after kills only long enough to loot and double-check my healer's mana, and I move again. If that's not fast enough for you, be ready for a repair bill, and don't get pissed off at me for it, because its your own damned fault.
Amoroso of Malfurion, you are the asshat of the day.
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Ramblings
Rambling the First, on Hybrids
My apologies to the author whose post inspired me, I cannot recall which blogger it was to give credit. I can, however, use a post from my own blog's history as a starting point.
In examining the fact that Druids simply don't follow the rules, I mentioned the fact that we can, to a certain extent, shift roles mid-fight by shifting forms. While this remains true and does showcase our hybrid capabilities, we aren't and can't be good enough at a backup role to be truly hybrid, with half an exception for bears and cats.
Blizzard has made a point of making characters with multiple roles specialize and remove their hybrid capabilities in order to be competitive with other classes. While this is a good thing in general - hybrids shouldn't be able to be the best simultaneously at 2 things - it has the (I hope) unintended consequence of removing some of what I consider the key benefits of playing a hybrid class. While being able to switch between tank, healer, and 2 different forms of DPS is nice, we can't effectively switch in the middle of a fight, which would seem to me to be one of the key benefits of being a shapeshifter.
The shifting of stats for bears means that bears and cats can fake it - the gear they want shares stats, with the exception of cloaks, amulets, rings, and trinkets - but you're not going to have "enough" survivability as a bear or be solid enough at DPS as a cat to make this worthwhile, and if you've taken the talents to be really great at one you're going to be missing key talents for the other, not to mention the glyph clashing. The other two forms that share key stats - boomkin and tree - cannot really share because the forms that make each great are not attainable at the same time, and even if they were, you need spirit as a tree and hit as a crit chicken, and each is not needed by the other. This means that unlike cats and bears, where the gear (if not the gems and enchants) can be shared, trees and boomkin are unable to really move between each other.
They are doing away with a number of secondary stats in Cataclysm. Perhaps some of the Druid's hybrid-ness will return, but I doubt it.
In this blogger's humble opinion, the era of the true hybrid is over, and has been for quite some time. Being one of the things that drew me to this class, I hope it can come back, but I mourn its loss and expect that it is gone for good.
Rambling the Second, on Dual-spec
On a side note, Blizzard can we please have 7 specs? I would so have one of each Druid spec and a PvP spec or three. I would even pay 1000g apiece, at least for 2 more than I have now, so I could have a cat and boomkin spec. What's that you said? No other class in the game could use more than 3, and most couldn't even really do that? So what, *I* could use it! ;)
Rambling the Third, on My Specs, My Guild, and Raids
Speaking of specs, I'm toying with a couple of ideas. While I enjoy making like a tree and leaving (ooooh, bad pun!), I have an issue that I've been pigeonholed into that role in my guild's raids (long story, if you've read my earlier posts you should have a taste) and it causes me to have an issue with gear. Specifically, I don't get the opportunity to roll on gear for my main spec.
I've attempted to discuss the issue with my guild and raid leader, and while a resolution may still be forthcoming, I'm not hopeful.
This leads me to some decision making regarding my options. The last resort, always, is to leave and try to find another guild. I'd like to avoid that if I can, because frankly I love my guild, I'm friends in real life with a number of the members, and I don't really relish the thought of trying to find a new one that I would fit in to. Since I don't want to do that, I'm left with trying to find options that simultaneously allow me to stay in the guild, continue running raids, and actually have a chance to roll on gear for my main spec sometime.
The second-most extreme (beyond /gquit) option I have thought of is removing the ability to do anything but tank by respeccing by secondary spec into another bear spec. I think I've just about ruled that out though, because I believe that would lead to no guild raids for me.
I could also forsake the 25-man raids to run my own 10-mans. However, with Wednesday and Thursday claimed for 25-man runs and Tuesday a hit-or-miss night to have the folks in my guild on to play, that seems like an iffy proposition at best. I tried running Mondays in the past, and by then most of our players have their mains locked. My Friday and weekend availability is not steady enough to run then. Plus, given that I have committed to my significant other that I will only raid on a regular basis on one night a week, that would preclude me from running in the guild 25-mans, which I also would like to continue doing.
The option that seems to present me with the best situation is to change my offspec from tree to kitty DPS. This would allow me to roll on leather gear and weapons that I would actually use for my main spec even if I'm in my offspec, because the two forms share stats now. The major downside to this plan is that I lose the flexibility of having a healing spec. If I'm not tanking I become just the meat in the room. (For all you DPS out there, I'm kidding. I love you guys.) Also, I still couldn't roll on tanking accessories for things such as the cloaks, rings, amulets, and trinkets, but I can get by with Emblem items for most of those.
Of course, this plan also requires me to do the research and take the time to learn how to be good with the class with the hardest DPS rotation in the game... or so I've been told it is. Stay tuned, my blog name may become somewhat of a misnomer.
Rambling the Fourth, on Blog Changes
Check out some changes on the site, I added some perma-links to the bear and tree primers on the right, and a real blogroll and limited the blogroll updates to the latest 5. Also, I actually touched my profile. No pics yet, but I'm working on it!
Rambling the Fifth.... ok I'm done.
As always, thanks for reading, and have a wonderful week!
My apologies to the author whose post inspired me, I cannot recall which blogger it was to give credit. I can, however, use a post from my own blog's history as a starting point.
In examining the fact that Druids simply don't follow the rules, I mentioned the fact that we can, to a certain extent, shift roles mid-fight by shifting forms. While this remains true and does showcase our hybrid capabilities, we aren't and can't be good enough at a backup role to be truly hybrid, with half an exception for bears and cats.
Blizzard has made a point of making characters with multiple roles specialize and remove their hybrid capabilities in order to be competitive with other classes. While this is a good thing in general - hybrids shouldn't be able to be the best simultaneously at 2 things - it has the (I hope) unintended consequence of removing some of what I consider the key benefits of playing a hybrid class. While being able to switch between tank, healer, and 2 different forms of DPS is nice, we can't effectively switch in the middle of a fight, which would seem to me to be one of the key benefits of being a shapeshifter.
The shifting of stats for bears means that bears and cats can fake it - the gear they want shares stats, with the exception of cloaks, amulets, rings, and trinkets - but you're not going to have "enough" survivability as a bear or be solid enough at DPS as a cat to make this worthwhile, and if you've taken the talents to be really great at one you're going to be missing key talents for the other, not to mention the glyph clashing. The other two forms that share key stats - boomkin and tree - cannot really share because the forms that make each great are not attainable at the same time, and even if they were, you need spirit as a tree and hit as a crit chicken, and each is not needed by the other. This means that unlike cats and bears, where the gear (if not the gems and enchants) can be shared, trees and boomkin are unable to really move between each other.
They are doing away with a number of secondary stats in Cataclysm. Perhaps some of the Druid's hybrid-ness will return, but I doubt it.
In this blogger's humble opinion, the era of the true hybrid is over, and has been for quite some time. Being one of the things that drew me to this class, I hope it can come back, but I mourn its loss and expect that it is gone for good.
Rambling the Second, on Dual-spec
On a side note, Blizzard can we please have 7 specs? I would so have one of each Druid spec and a PvP spec or three. I would even pay 1000g apiece, at least for 2 more than I have now, so I could have a cat and boomkin spec. What's that you said? No other class in the game could use more than 3, and most couldn't even really do that? So what, *I* could use it! ;)
Rambling the Third, on My Specs, My Guild, and Raids
Speaking of specs, I'm toying with a couple of ideas. While I enjoy making like a tree and leaving (ooooh, bad pun!), I have an issue that I've been pigeonholed into that role in my guild's raids (long story, if you've read my earlier posts you should have a taste) and it causes me to have an issue with gear. Specifically, I don't get the opportunity to roll on gear for my main spec.
I've attempted to discuss the issue with my guild and raid leader, and while a resolution may still be forthcoming, I'm not hopeful.
This leads me to some decision making regarding my options. The last resort, always, is to leave and try to find another guild. I'd like to avoid that if I can, because frankly I love my guild, I'm friends in real life with a number of the members, and I don't really relish the thought of trying to find a new one that I would fit in to. Since I don't want to do that, I'm left with trying to find options that simultaneously allow me to stay in the guild, continue running raids, and actually have a chance to roll on gear for my main spec sometime.
The second-most extreme (beyond /gquit) option I have thought of is removing the ability to do anything but tank by respeccing by secondary spec into another bear spec. I think I've just about ruled that out though, because I believe that would lead to no guild raids for me.
I could also forsake the 25-man raids to run my own 10-mans. However, with Wednesday and Thursday claimed for 25-man runs and Tuesday a hit-or-miss night to have the folks in my guild on to play, that seems like an iffy proposition at best. I tried running Mondays in the past, and by then most of our players have their mains locked. My Friday and weekend availability is not steady enough to run then. Plus, given that I have committed to my significant other that I will only raid on a regular basis on one night a week, that would preclude me from running in the guild 25-mans, which I also would like to continue doing.
The option that seems to present me with the best situation is to change my offspec from tree to kitty DPS. This would allow me to roll on leather gear and weapons that I would actually use for my main spec even if I'm in my offspec, because the two forms share stats now. The major downside to this plan is that I lose the flexibility of having a healing spec. If I'm not tanking I become just the meat in the room. (For all you DPS out there, I'm kidding. I love you guys.) Also, I still couldn't roll on tanking accessories for things such as the cloaks, rings, amulets, and trinkets, but I can get by with Emblem items for most of those.
Of course, this plan also requires me to do the research and take the time to learn how to be good with the class with the hardest DPS rotation in the game... or so I've been told it is. Stay tuned, my blog name may become somewhat of a misnomer.
Rambling the Fourth, on Blog Changes
Check out some changes on the site, I added some perma-links to the bear and tree primers on the right, and a real blogroll and limited the blogroll updates to the latest 5. Also, I actually touched my profile. No pics yet, but I'm working on it!
Rambling the Fifth.... ok I'm done.
As always, thanks for reading, and have a wonderful week!
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
We might get TWO buttons?
I'd like to point out a blue post by Ghostcrawler that I came across...
Yes, a lot of the focus of the post is warrior tanking, but there's some other aspects thrown in.
The part I'd like to point out is this:
For the love of Elune, yes, please, give us something else we can use instead of just spamming swipe and hoping our gear is strong enough to out-threat everybody else with it.
Yes, a lot of the focus of the post is warrior tanking, but there's some other aspects thrown in.
The part I'd like to point out is this:
3) There are differences in how tanks generate AE threat, and therefore damage. Warriors are jealous of the DK and especially paladin persistent area-based damage, and the others are jealous of the warrior's burst AE threat on incoming adds. Druids are jealous of anyone with more than one button.
For the love of Elune, yes, please, give us something else we can use instead of just spamming swipe and hoping our gear is strong enough to out-threat everybody else with it.
Monday, January 25, 2010
Icecrown Ramblings, Part 2
So there's been a little hubbub lately (at least over at I Sheep Things..., I thought there were others but my brain fails me at the most inopportune times) over how to go after the escape from the Lich King encounter in Halls of Reflection. I thought I'd throw my $.02 into the ring on this little thing.
For those that didn't just go read the post I linked, or have no idea what I'm talking about, I'll explain. Everybody else can skip the next paragraph (or two).
In this, the last encounter of the three Icecrown Citadel 5-man instances, you come upon Jaina Proudmoore fighting (and losing) to Arthas. She freezes him temporarily, then you, your crew, and Jaina must escape from him before he catches you and turns you into some mindless slavering undead minion to go out and make more mindless slavering undead minions. As you run away, Arthas throws up ice walls and summons bad guys to kill you, and you must beat them as Jaina breaks down the walls - which she does, conveniently, just as you beat each wave.
What Rhii refers to as an exploit and I will refer to simply as the cheesy way to do things is that you can apparently run off to the side after you start the encounter, let Arthas meander his way past, and fight the bad guys without him sneaking up behind you.
In case you didn't get the idea from that last paragraph, I think this is just silly. Let me explain. Please take my comments with a grain of salt - I've not experimented with this, but I'll make some assumptions (yes I know) about what goes on from what I've read.
First, although this was initially not the case, there is no advantage time-wise to running the encounter this way - you still have a limited amount of time to beat each wave or Arthas catches Jaina and you all die. So advantage: push.
Second, although reports differ on how the adds spawn when you are following Arthas instead of leading him, there's at least a chance that the adds spawn in the middle of your party. In case you have your head under a rock, that's a nightmare for a tank. When leading, the adds spawn by Arthas, and while the ghouls jump a long distance and land in a semi-random pattern, you can see them coming and prepare, and the other adds run in - giving the tank a point of contact to gather them up. While this might mean that the DPS has to wait half a second to go crazy on them, it also reduces the chance of random spawn on healer causing wipes. Advantage: non-cheesy way.
Third, the most common reason I hear folks say for doing it the cheesy way is that it's easier. I can't make a definitive personal comparison because I've never run it the cheesy way, but I can say this: I have never failed at the encounter, and have been part of more than one group that has completed the encounter in time to get the Achievement. The encounter is far easier, IMHO, than the first encounter of the instance in which you face waves of undead that hit harder and have a more difficult approach in which to gather them up from. If you can get TO that encounter, there's no reason you need to try to use a poor choice in the design of the encounter to try to make it easier, because it's not that incredibly hard to begin with.
I guess I could have summed this all up by saying: I don't think there's any reason to do it that way.
Personally, since I'm the tank 95% of the time, I just run on ahead and if the rest of the group wants to try to follow him without a tank, I'll let them. I suppose I could do the same thing as the healer, although that seems slightly more suicidal. In either case, I have yet to have anybody choose to do so.
If anybody comes along and disagrees, please feel free to share your reasons in the comments.
For those that didn't just go read the post I linked, or have no idea what I'm talking about, I'll explain. Everybody else can skip the next paragraph (or two).
In this, the last encounter of the three Icecrown Citadel 5-man instances, you come upon Jaina Proudmoore fighting (and losing) to Arthas. She freezes him temporarily, then you, your crew, and Jaina must escape from him before he catches you and turns you into some mindless slavering undead minion to go out and make more mindless slavering undead minions. As you run away, Arthas throws up ice walls and summons bad guys to kill you, and you must beat them as Jaina breaks down the walls - which she does, conveniently, just as you beat each wave.
What Rhii refers to as an exploit and I will refer to simply as the cheesy way to do things is that you can apparently run off to the side after you start the encounter, let Arthas meander his way past, and fight the bad guys without him sneaking up behind you.
In case you didn't get the idea from that last paragraph, I think this is just silly. Let me explain. Please take my comments with a grain of salt - I've not experimented with this, but I'll make some assumptions (yes I know) about what goes on from what I've read.
First, although this was initially not the case, there is no advantage time-wise to running the encounter this way - you still have a limited amount of time to beat each wave or Arthas catches Jaina and you all die. So advantage: push.
Second, although reports differ on how the adds spawn when you are following Arthas instead of leading him, there's at least a chance that the adds spawn in the middle of your party. In case you have your head under a rock, that's a nightmare for a tank. When leading, the adds spawn by Arthas, and while the ghouls jump a long distance and land in a semi-random pattern, you can see them coming and prepare, and the other adds run in - giving the tank a point of contact to gather them up. While this might mean that the DPS has to wait half a second to go crazy on them, it also reduces the chance of random spawn on healer causing wipes. Advantage: non-cheesy way.
Third, the most common reason I hear folks say for doing it the cheesy way is that it's easier. I can't make a definitive personal comparison because I've never run it the cheesy way, but I can say this: I have never failed at the encounter, and have been part of more than one group that has completed the encounter in time to get the Achievement. The encounter is far easier, IMHO, than the first encounter of the instance in which you face waves of undead that hit harder and have a more difficult approach in which to gather them up from. If you can get TO that encounter, there's no reason you need to try to use a poor choice in the design of the encounter to try to make it easier, because it's not that incredibly hard to begin with.
I guess I could have summed this all up by saying: I don't think there's any reason to do it that way.
Personally, since I'm the tank 95% of the time, I just run on ahead and if the rest of the group wants to try to follow him without a tank, I'll let them. I suppose I could do the same thing as the healer, although that seems slightly more suicidal. In either case, I have yet to have anybody choose to do so.
If anybody comes along and disagrees, please feel free to share your reasons in the comments.
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.
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
How to Make Friends.... or Something Like That
Sorry, the tree post is still coming, but it'll have to wait. I'm busy, and want to put a positive note out today.
I had one of my best cross-server pugs the other day, and I felt it deserved mention.
We pulled Nexus, and I casually glanced at folk's gear scores before we started. 3 of the 5 were 5k+, and the other two didn't miss it by much. I figured this would be a clean, easy run. We feasted and buffed and off we went!
Little did I know how clean and easy. 17 minutes later, a scant 2 minutes after the LFG buff wore off, Keristraza collapsed.
I picked up Split Personality on Grand Magus. She was down nearly 60% before her first and only split.
For the first time in my WoW experience, I really did chain-pull most of the instance, pulling each group before we were finished with the last. Nobody really had any issue with it. My pally healer did almost as much damage as she did heals outside of boss fights.
I was impressed. It's times like this that I wish Blizzard had implemented an addendum to their cross-server ignore feature, that would give you a preference for people in cross-server groups. I think that would be fun, and allow more interaction and relationship-building than the current system, perhaps even sister guilds on other servers.
Also, I keep growing gradually closer to my Glory of the Hero proto-drake. I think I'm going to make a serious push to get it in the next month or so.
Hope folks had a happy holiday season! Back to the grindstone.
I had one of my best cross-server pugs the other day, and I felt it deserved mention.
We pulled Nexus, and I casually glanced at folk's gear scores before we started. 3 of the 5 were 5k+, and the other two didn't miss it by much. I figured this would be a clean, easy run. We feasted and buffed and off we went!
Little did I know how clean and easy. 17 minutes later, a scant 2 minutes after the LFG buff wore off, Keristraza collapsed.
I picked up Split Personality on Grand Magus. She was down nearly 60% before her first and only split.
For the first time in my WoW experience, I really did chain-pull most of the instance, pulling each group before we were finished with the last. Nobody really had any issue with it. My pally healer did almost as much damage as she did heals outside of boss fights.
I was impressed. It's times like this that I wish Blizzard had implemented an addendum to their cross-server ignore feature, that would give you a preference for people in cross-server groups. I think that would be fun, and allow more interaction and relationship-building than the current system, perhaps even sister guilds on other servers.
Also, I keep growing gradually closer to my Glory of the Hero proto-drake. I think I'm going to make a serious push to get it in the next month or so.
Hope folks had a happy holiday season! Back to the grindstone.
Monday, January 4, 2010
Frost Emblem Accessories
*EDIT*
I've changed my mind a bit about the importance of the Corroded Skeleton Key. Please see this post for details.
*END EDIT*
As a followup to Tier 10 and the Bear, I'd like to take a quick look at what is available from an Accessories standpoint for bears. There's not a lot so this should go quick!
Trinket
Corroded Skeleton Key
Stats: +228 Sta, Use: Absorbs 3200 damage, lasts 20 sec.
Cost: 60 Emblem of Frost
Great trinket, gives a purchasable upgrade from the Coren Direbrew stamina trinkets. Meh-inducing use ability, but better again that the Direbrew ones. Will purchase sometime in the middle of my planned leather item upgrades. The issue at hand is that the only significant increase is in stamina, which will only help in that it will let me back off some of my two-color gems to single color because I won't need the stamina bump as much.
None of the other trinkets are worth talking about.
Idol/Relic
Idol of the Crying Moon
Stats: Periodic damage from Rake or Lacerate causes you to gain 44 Agi for 15 seconds. Stacks 5 times.
Cost: 30 Emblem of Frost
I like this item a LOT. I'll take 220 Agi over the 135 from Idol of the Corruptor or 200 dodge rating from the Idol of Mutilation any day. I'm probably going to insert the combination of this and the trinket (90 badges) at the top of my list, ahead of my leather items, as the next leather item on my list is 95 badges.
Cloak
There are a few options here which seem promising, but probably only one we want. Each of them costs 50 Emblem of Frost. Here they are:
Might of the Ocean Serpent
Stats: 177 a, 95 Str, 103 Sta, Y socket, 45 exp, 65 ArP
Recovered Scarlet Onslaught Cape
Stats: 177 a, 90 Agi, 90 Sta, B socket, 60 crit, 105 AP, 52 ArP
Sentinel's Winter Cloak
Stats: 737 a, 90 Str, 124 Sta, Y socket, 48 def, 48 dodge
At first, I thought this was a slam dunk, but on second thought I'm not quite as certain. I like the Might's expertise, but it is otherwise inferior to the Cloak. We'll rule that out. The Cloak nets you 139 Sta (assuming 15 from a 2-color gem), while the Cape nets you only 120 (assuming 30 from the socket). I like the dodge rating, but 90 Agi will net you more dodge than that 48 dodge rating. 560 more armor is nice, but it's not affected by our multiplier. I don't think either one is a bad choice, but I think I may be going for the Cape rather than the Cloak.
There are no rings or neck items available via Frost Emblems. Given my current items, the cloak will probably come after I've manage to upgrade most of my leather items.
The tree post is coming soon!
Abbreviations Glossary:
a: armor
AP: Attack Power
ArP: Armor Penetration
exp: expertise
Stat Abbreviations:
Agi: Agility
Sta: Stamina
Str: Strength
Socket Abbreviations:
B: Blue
M: Meta
R: Red
Y: Yellow
I've changed my mind a bit about the importance of the Corroded Skeleton Key. Please see this post for details.
*END EDIT*
As a followup to Tier 10 and the Bear, I'd like to take a quick look at what is available from an Accessories standpoint for bears. There's not a lot so this should go quick!
Trinket
Corroded Skeleton Key
Stats: +228 Sta, Use: Absorbs 3200 damage, lasts 20 sec.
Cost: 60 Emblem of Frost
Great trinket, gives a purchasable upgrade from the Coren Direbrew stamina trinkets. Meh-inducing use ability, but better again that the Direbrew ones. Will purchase sometime in the middle of my planned leather item upgrades. The issue at hand is that the only significant increase is in stamina, which will only help in that it will let me back off some of my two-color gems to single color because I won't need the stamina bump as much.
None of the other trinkets are worth talking about.
Idol/Relic
Idol of the Crying Moon
Stats: Periodic damage from Rake or Lacerate causes you to gain 44 Agi for 15 seconds. Stacks 5 times.
Cost: 30 Emblem of Frost
I like this item a LOT. I'll take 220 Agi over the 135 from Idol of the Corruptor or 200 dodge rating from the Idol of Mutilation any day. I'm probably going to insert the combination of this and the trinket (90 badges) at the top of my list, ahead of my leather items, as the next leather item on my list is 95 badges.
Cloak
There are a few options here which seem promising, but probably only one we want. Each of them costs 50 Emblem of Frost. Here they are:
Might of the Ocean Serpent
Stats: 177 a, 95 Str, 103 Sta, Y socket, 45 exp, 65 ArP
Recovered Scarlet Onslaught Cape
Stats: 177 a, 90 Agi, 90 Sta, B socket, 60 crit, 105 AP, 52 ArP
Sentinel's Winter Cloak
Stats: 737 a, 90 Str, 124 Sta, Y socket, 48 def, 48 dodge
At first, I thought this was a slam dunk, but on second thought I'm not quite as certain. I like the Might's expertise, but it is otherwise inferior to the Cloak. We'll rule that out. The Cloak nets you 139 Sta (assuming 15 from a 2-color gem), while the Cape nets you only 120 (assuming 30 from the socket). I like the dodge rating, but 90 Agi will net you more dodge than that 48 dodge rating. 560 more armor is nice, but it's not affected by our multiplier. I don't think either one is a bad choice, but I think I may be going for the Cape rather than the Cloak.
There are no rings or neck items available via Frost Emblems. Given my current items, the cloak will probably come after I've manage to upgrade most of my leather items.
The tree post is coming soon!
Abbreviations Glossary:
a: armor
AP: Attack Power
ArP: Armor Penetration
exp: expertise
Stat Abbreviations:
Agi: Agility
Sta: Stamina
Str: Strength
Socket Abbreviations:
B: Blue
M: Meta
R: Red
Y: Yellow
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
Tier 10 and the Bear
I'd like to take an in-depth look at the stat bonuses on Tier 10 gear and the other items available with Emblems of Frost for bear tanks. If you've read this blog at all, you probably know already that fairly soon I'll follow up with a look at the gear with respect to trees.
Bear with me, these are going to be long. Perhaps not quite Bearwalls, but long.
I'll be comparing this gear to the Tier 9 level gear as well as trying to decide what's the best value - the most bang for your Emblem buck, if you will. Of course, this will depend on the gear you're currently wearing. If I say a particular piece is the best upgrade, but you're wearing an item from ToGC in that slot and still using blues elsewhere, replace the blues first.
The Tier 9 level I'll be using is the base level - for those of us that did some 25-man ToC (or heroic ToC at all) and may have picked up trophies or heroic versions of gear, remember that your mileage will vary, because your Tier 9 gear is a little better than what I'm putting forth here. Also note that I'm not examining accessories (back, neck, rings, and trinkets) yet. If I can work up the courage I might tackle that later.
If you are confused as to any abbreviations, please see the end for a glossary.
Without further ado, let me begin.
Head
Tier 9: Malfurion's Headguard of Conquest
Stats: 485 a, 104 Agi, 120 Sta, M/Y sockets, 80 crit, 64 exp., 129 AP
Cost: 50 Emblem of Triumph
Triumph Emblems: Hood of Lethal Intent
Stats: 506 a, 120 Agi, 136 Sta, M/Y sockets, 82 hit, 165 AP, 64 ArP
Cost: 75 Emblem of Triumph
Tier 10: Lasherweave Headguard
Stats: 517 a, 144 Agi, 144 Sta, M/R sockets, 88 crit, 143 AP, 80 ArP
Cost: 95 Emblem of Frost
Frost Emblems: None available.
I'm going to go ahead and mention something here at the top that I've noticed across the board. Take a look at the Tier 9 vs. Hood of Lethal Intent. I didn't put the iLevel of the items in my summary. Hood is an iLevel 245, while the Tier 9 is a 232. Something they did with the purchasable gear is that the individual items are generally better than the tier pieces in-slot if you don't raid enough to get the Trophies (or Marks of Sanctification for Tier 10). The 2nd level non-heroic tier gear is approximately on par with the pieces you can buy without having to raid. I'm not sure how I feel about it, but that's what you see here. The only reason to stay with the T9 gear is if you desperately need the expertise...
It is also good to note that the Hood is a bit more DPS-centric, with hit vs. crit and ArP vs. expertise. The major stats win out though, and you should take the Hood unless you feel that the Tier bonus is worth the stat drop and you can't afford to lose another piece.
You lose expertise for ArP in the step up to Tier 10 from Tier 9, or hit for crit coming from the Hood. I'm not excited by the loss either way, but the nice step up in base stats - +40 or 24 Agi, +24 or 8 Sta - far outweighs the loss. If this pulls you off your hit or expertise caps, try to shift your gems or enchants to compensate. The downside is that it costs you 95 Frost Emblems to do this step - that's a fairly huge cost. Let's see how that pans out as we go forward.
Shoulder
Tier 9: Malfurion's Shoulderpads of Conquest
Stats: 447 a, 81 Agi, 89 Sta, Y socket, 60 haste, 119 AP, 52 ArP
Cost: 30 Emblem of Triumph
Triumph Emblems: Duskstalker Shoulderpads
Stats: 467 a, 93 Agi, 101 Sta, Y socket, 67 crit, 135 AP, 59 ArP
Cost: 45 Emblem of Triumph
Tier 10: Lasherweave Shoulderpads
Stats: 477 a, 107 Agi, 107 Sta, R socket, 71 crit, 126 AP, 63 ArP
Cost: 60 Emblem of Frost
Frost Emblems: None available.
Here we see again the disparity in items available with Triumph Emblems... And again, unless you want the set bonus, take the Duskstalker piece instead of the Tier-9.
The step up to Tier 10 nets you +26 or +14 Agi, and +18 or +6 Sta. It has the same secondary stat set as the Duskstalker piece, which loses haste for crit, an acceptable change as a bear. It also has a red socket instead of yellow, which I consider a plus for a bear - yellow gives us crit or hit, red gives us Agi or dodge.
To compare spending 95 Frost for the head vs. 60 Frost for the shoulders... Comparatively, 35 badges gets you 10 to 14 Agi and 2 to 6 Sta (depending on which piece you're coming from for each choice.) That doesn't seem like a lot, but it's more stats per Emblem used to spend the 95 Frost, provided you're making the same jump (T9 to T10 or Emblem piece to T10). Not by much, and I'd probably go ahead and spend the badges early anyway to get the boost while I rebuild to the bigger number.
Chest
Tier 9: Malfurion's Raiments of Conquest
Stats: 596 a, 104 Agi, 120 Sta, R/Y sockets, 74 crit, 70 haste, 161 AP
Cost: 50 Emblem of Triumph
Triumph Emblems: None available.
Tier 10: Lasherweave Raiment
Stats: 636 a, 144 Agi, 144 Sta, R/Y sockets, 96 crit, 159 AP, 80 ArP
Cost: 95 Emblem of Frost
Frost Emblems: Shadow Seeker's Tunic
Stats: 665 a, 162 Agi, 162 Sta, R/Y/B sockets, 108 crit, 92 exp, 184 AP
Cost: 95 Emblem of Frost
There's a solid upgrade here no matter which way you go, but the Shadow Seeker's Tunic is clearly a MUCH better upgrade than the T10 piece. +40 or +58 Agi, +24 or +42 Sta, AND an additional blue socket (which equals +30 Sta).
Continuing to examine against the previous most-efficient use of Emblems... I'm taking this over the head item or the shoulders. It's definitely more efficient than the head, and enough of a boost over the shoulders that it is worth it to me to wait for 95 badges.
I'd also like to point out that I think the secondary stats are better for bears on the Tunic rather than the T10 Raiment. I want the 4-piece T10 set bonus. This very well might be the only piece I don't pick up.
Wrist
None. Oddly enough, the highest wrist purchasable with Emblems require only Emblems of Valor. I'm moving on...
Hands
Tier 9: Malfurion's Handgrips of Conquest
Stats: 373 a, 81 Agi, 89 Sta, Y socket, 52 hit, 60 crit, 119 AP
Cost: 30 Emblem of Triumph
Triumph Emblems: None Available
Tier 10: Lasherweave Handgrips
Stats: 398 a, 107 Agi, 107 Sta, R socket, 63 haste, 126 AP, 71 ArP
Cost: 60 Emblem of Frost
Frost Emblems: Cat Burglar's Grips
Stats: 416 a, 120 Agi, 120 Sta, Y/Y sockets, 80 crit, 129 AP, 64 ArP
Cost: 60 Emblem of Frost
I see an interesting dilemma here. Multiple sockets and 13 better each Agi and Sta, as well as crit vs. haste in secondary stats. I like the red socket better - I'll use it for an Agi or Agi + Sta gem - but multiple sockets may outweigh it. It won't outweigh the set bonus in my mind, though, and this isn't enough of an upgrade to make me choose the Cat Burglar's Grips over the T10 piece.
It's also not enough of a bonus to make me spend my hard-won, precious Emblems of Frost here before spending them on the Tunic either, though. Still going for the chest.
Waist
There are no Tier pieces here, and nothing is available from Triumph Emblems either. There is a Frost Emblem item, and for comparisons of Emblem spending here it is...
Frost Emblems: Vengeful Noose
Stats: 374 a, 120 Agi, 120 Sta, R/Y sockets, 64 haste, 129 AP, 80 ArP
Cost: 60 Emblem of Frost
For me, and the item I'm coming from, this provides a boost of nearly 50 Agi and 25 Sta, as well as another socket. That's about the same boost as I'd get out of my chest item with 35 less badges. We have a new front-runner.
Legs
Tier 9: Malfurion's Legguards of Conquest
Stats: 522 a, 102 Agi, 120 Sta, R/B sockets, 64 hit, 80 crit, 129 AP
Cost: 50 Emblem of Triumph
Triumph Emblems: None available.
Tier 10: Lasherweave Legguards
Stats: 577 a, 144 Agi, 144 Sta, R/Y sockets, 80 exp, 159 AP, 96 ArP
Cost: 95 Emblem of Frost
Frost Emblems: None available.
Here we get it easy, a straight Tier 9 to Tier 10 comparison. Solid statistical upgrade in Agi and Sta. I like the expertise on the T10 item, but I like the blue socket on the T9. 38 Agi and 24 Sta for 95 Emblems is not as strong as either the Tunic or the Vengeful Noose. This might be the 3rd or 4th upgrade I target from among this group of items.
Feet
There are no Tier items for feet, and nothing is available for Emblems of Triumph or Frost.
So, among these items, I'll be targeting the Vengeful Noose first, followed by the Shadow Seeker's Tunic next. I'll have to examine my secondary stat layout at the time to determine the next upgrade from among the hands, legs, head, and shoulder items. At that point, I will likely buy them from the cheapest to the most expensive, because there isn't particularly a huge difference in cost to benefit ratio.
Look back soon for the Tree version... or perhaps the Accessories! Thanks for reading!
Abbreviations Glossary:
a: armor
AP: Attack Power
ArP: Armor Penetration
exp: expertise
Stat Abbreviations:
Agi: Agility
Sta: Stamina
Str: Strength
Socket Abbreviations:
B: Blue
M: Meta
R: Red
Y: Yellow
Bear with me, these are going to be long. Perhaps not quite Bearwalls, but long.
I'll be comparing this gear to the Tier 9 level gear as well as trying to decide what's the best value - the most bang for your Emblem buck, if you will. Of course, this will depend on the gear you're currently wearing. If I say a particular piece is the best upgrade, but you're wearing an item from ToGC in that slot and still using blues elsewhere, replace the blues first.
The Tier 9 level I'll be using is the base level - for those of us that did some 25-man ToC (or heroic ToC at all) and may have picked up trophies or heroic versions of gear, remember that your mileage will vary, because your Tier 9 gear is a little better than what I'm putting forth here. Also note that I'm not examining accessories (back, neck, rings, and trinkets) yet. If I can work up the courage I might tackle that later.
If you are confused as to any abbreviations, please see the end for a glossary.
Without further ado, let me begin.
Head
Tier 9: Malfurion's Headguard of Conquest
Stats: 485 a, 104 Agi, 120 Sta, M/Y sockets, 80 crit, 64 exp., 129 AP
Cost: 50 Emblem of Triumph
Triumph Emblems: Hood of Lethal Intent
Stats: 506 a, 120 Agi, 136 Sta, M/Y sockets, 82 hit, 165 AP, 64 ArP
Cost: 75 Emblem of Triumph
Tier 10: Lasherweave Headguard
Stats: 517 a, 144 Agi, 144 Sta, M/R sockets, 88 crit, 143 AP, 80 ArP
Cost: 95 Emblem of Frost
Frost Emblems: None available.
I'm going to go ahead and mention something here at the top that I've noticed across the board. Take a look at the Tier 9 vs. Hood of Lethal Intent. I didn't put the iLevel of the items in my summary. Hood is an iLevel 245, while the Tier 9 is a 232. Something they did with the purchasable gear is that the individual items are generally better than the tier pieces in-slot if you don't raid enough to get the Trophies (or Marks of Sanctification for Tier 10). The 2nd level non-heroic tier gear is approximately on par with the pieces you can buy without having to raid. I'm not sure how I feel about it, but that's what you see here. The only reason to stay with the T9 gear is if you desperately need the expertise...
It is also good to note that the Hood is a bit more DPS-centric, with hit vs. crit and ArP vs. expertise. The major stats win out though, and you should take the Hood unless you feel that the Tier bonus is worth the stat drop and you can't afford to lose another piece.
You lose expertise for ArP in the step up to Tier 10 from Tier 9, or hit for crit coming from the Hood. I'm not excited by the loss either way, but the nice step up in base stats - +40 or 24 Agi, +24 or 8 Sta - far outweighs the loss. If this pulls you off your hit or expertise caps, try to shift your gems or enchants to compensate. The downside is that it costs you 95 Frost Emblems to do this step - that's a fairly huge cost. Let's see how that pans out as we go forward.
Shoulder
Tier 9: Malfurion's Shoulderpads of Conquest
Stats: 447 a, 81 Agi, 89 Sta, Y socket, 60 haste, 119 AP, 52 ArP
Cost: 30 Emblem of Triumph
Triumph Emblems: Duskstalker Shoulderpads
Stats: 467 a, 93 Agi, 101 Sta, Y socket, 67 crit, 135 AP, 59 ArP
Cost: 45 Emblem of Triumph
Tier 10: Lasherweave Shoulderpads
Stats: 477 a, 107 Agi, 107 Sta, R socket, 71 crit, 126 AP, 63 ArP
Cost: 60 Emblem of Frost
Frost Emblems: None available.
Here we see again the disparity in items available with Triumph Emblems... And again, unless you want the set bonus, take the Duskstalker piece instead of the Tier-9.
The step up to Tier 10 nets you +26 or +14 Agi, and +18 or +6 Sta. It has the same secondary stat set as the Duskstalker piece, which loses haste for crit, an acceptable change as a bear. It also has a red socket instead of yellow, which I consider a plus for a bear - yellow gives us crit or hit, red gives us Agi or dodge.
To compare spending 95 Frost for the head vs. 60 Frost for the shoulders... Comparatively, 35 badges gets you 10 to 14 Agi and 2 to 6 Sta (depending on which piece you're coming from for each choice.) That doesn't seem like a lot, but it's more stats per Emblem used to spend the 95 Frost, provided you're making the same jump (T9 to T10 or Emblem piece to T10). Not by much, and I'd probably go ahead and spend the badges early anyway to get the boost while I rebuild to the bigger number.
Chest
Tier 9: Malfurion's Raiments of Conquest
Stats: 596 a, 104 Agi, 120 Sta, R/Y sockets, 74 crit, 70 haste, 161 AP
Cost: 50 Emblem of Triumph
Triumph Emblems: None available.
Tier 10: Lasherweave Raiment
Stats: 636 a, 144 Agi, 144 Sta, R/Y sockets, 96 crit, 159 AP, 80 ArP
Cost: 95 Emblem of Frost
Frost Emblems: Shadow Seeker's Tunic
Stats: 665 a, 162 Agi, 162 Sta, R/Y/B sockets, 108 crit, 92 exp, 184 AP
Cost: 95 Emblem of Frost
There's a solid upgrade here no matter which way you go, but the Shadow Seeker's Tunic is clearly a MUCH better upgrade than the T10 piece. +40 or +58 Agi, +24 or +42 Sta, AND an additional blue socket (which equals +30 Sta).
Continuing to examine against the previous most-efficient use of Emblems... I'm taking this over the head item or the shoulders. It's definitely more efficient than the head, and enough of a boost over the shoulders that it is worth it to me to wait for 95 badges.
I'd also like to point out that I think the secondary stats are better for bears on the Tunic rather than the T10 Raiment. I want the 4-piece T10 set bonus. This very well might be the only piece I don't pick up.
Wrist
None. Oddly enough, the highest wrist purchasable with Emblems require only Emblems of Valor. I'm moving on...
Hands
Tier 9: Malfurion's Handgrips of Conquest
Stats: 373 a, 81 Agi, 89 Sta, Y socket, 52 hit, 60 crit, 119 AP
Cost: 30 Emblem of Triumph
Triumph Emblems: None Available
Tier 10: Lasherweave Handgrips
Stats: 398 a, 107 Agi, 107 Sta, R socket, 63 haste, 126 AP, 71 ArP
Cost: 60 Emblem of Frost
Frost Emblems: Cat Burglar's Grips
Stats: 416 a, 120 Agi, 120 Sta, Y/Y sockets, 80 crit, 129 AP, 64 ArP
Cost: 60 Emblem of Frost
I see an interesting dilemma here. Multiple sockets and 13 better each Agi and Sta, as well as crit vs. haste in secondary stats. I like the red socket better - I'll use it for an Agi or Agi + Sta gem - but multiple sockets may outweigh it. It won't outweigh the set bonus in my mind, though, and this isn't enough of an upgrade to make me choose the Cat Burglar's Grips over the T10 piece.
It's also not enough of a bonus to make me spend my hard-won, precious Emblems of Frost here before spending them on the Tunic either, though. Still going for the chest.
Waist
There are no Tier pieces here, and nothing is available from Triumph Emblems either. There is a Frost Emblem item, and for comparisons of Emblem spending here it is...
Frost Emblems: Vengeful Noose
Stats: 374 a, 120 Agi, 120 Sta, R/Y sockets, 64 haste, 129 AP, 80 ArP
Cost: 60 Emblem of Frost
For me, and the item I'm coming from, this provides a boost of nearly 50 Agi and 25 Sta, as well as another socket. That's about the same boost as I'd get out of my chest item with 35 less badges. We have a new front-runner.
Legs
Tier 9: Malfurion's Legguards of Conquest
Stats: 522 a, 102 Agi, 120 Sta, R/B sockets, 64 hit, 80 crit, 129 AP
Cost: 50 Emblem of Triumph
Triumph Emblems: None available.
Tier 10: Lasherweave Legguards
Stats: 577 a, 144 Agi, 144 Sta, R/Y sockets, 80 exp, 159 AP, 96 ArP
Cost: 95 Emblem of Frost
Frost Emblems: None available.
Here we get it easy, a straight Tier 9 to Tier 10 comparison. Solid statistical upgrade in Agi and Sta. I like the expertise on the T10 item, but I like the blue socket on the T9. 38 Agi and 24 Sta for 95 Emblems is not as strong as either the Tunic or the Vengeful Noose. This might be the 3rd or 4th upgrade I target from among this group of items.
Feet
There are no Tier items for feet, and nothing is available for Emblems of Triumph or Frost.
So, among these items, I'll be targeting the Vengeful Noose first, followed by the Shadow Seeker's Tunic next. I'll have to examine my secondary stat layout at the time to determine the next upgrade from among the hands, legs, head, and shoulder items. At that point, I will likely buy them from the cheapest to the most expensive, because there isn't particularly a huge difference in cost to benefit ratio.
Look back soon for the Tree version... or perhaps the Accessories! Thanks for reading!
Abbreviations Glossary:
a: armor
AP: Attack Power
ArP: Armor Penetration
exp: expertise
Stat Abbreviations:
Agi: Agility
Sta: Stamina
Str: Strength
Socket Abbreviations:
B: Blue
M: Meta
R: Red
Y: Yellow
Monday, December 28, 2009
Yet another Primer Followup
BBB posted an excellent intro to being a bear the other day... you should go read it if you haven't already.
Hope everybody had a great holiday!
Hope everybody had a great holiday!
Thursday, December 17, 2009
The Trash of Icecrown Citadel
I had originally planned on titling this post the Guns of Icecrown Citadel. Turns out I was a little ambitious in thinking we would make it to the gunship battle on our first trip in.
I had heard that the trash in ICC was rough for any ill-prepared groups. In ways it was better and in ways it was worse than I had expected... but I'll get to that.
We decided to try to get as good a group together as we could, focusing on getting our best DPS. We struggled to find healers in our guild willing to come, one of them flat out stating that she was afraid of the place. We pugged in an excellent but very slightly under-geared priest for the final healing spot... Here's the breakdown:
Tanks (2):
Me (Bear) and Illorien (DK)
Heals (3):
Holy Paladin (Renakashin, co-leader), Tree Druid and Holy Priest
DPS (5):
Warrior, Hunter, Rogue, 2 Mages
The TRASH!
The first thing you encounter on the way in the door is a pair of undead that are pure melee but explode when killed, doing a fairly decent chunk of damage. Plus, every so often, another one paths in from the next room. A little mismanagement of this led to us losing a couple of folks while we cleared them out - once you've taken the top of that set of stairs, they stop coming in from the next room. There's another group of these that run around the room - we pulled them out and downed them fairly easily. Illorien held them in place, I pulled them out one at a time for the DPS to go nuts on.
We were at last able to begin moving into the room. It has essentially 5 sets of mobs, one group in each corner and one dead ahead in the back half of the room. It also has a special secret surprise, that I'll get to in a moment. The right and left corners closest to the door each have a humanoid Undead caster and three of the Damned - the exploding undead I mentioned previously. The corners further from the way in each had a spiderlike Undead caster as well as the groups of the Damned. The spiders throw random web wraps around that players must be broken out of, and don't appear to have a threat table, or at least cast randomly enough that the threat table doesn't seem to matter. The group in the middle is made up of 2 of the spiders, 1 of the humanoid Undead casters, and 2 non-explosive melee Undead. Our general plan of attack for the four corners was for the DK to hold down the melee while the DPS and myself burned down the caster, then for me to pull out the Damned one by one for the DPS to burn.
The corners went smoothly. The casters really don't like to move, and it's impossible to move the spiders via LOS if any member of the raid is in its LOS. We discovered with the last group that the DK's death grip can yank the spider out and (at least sometimes) not disturb the group of melee. It worked, though, and we decided to use a similar plan of attack on the group in the middle, singling out a caster at a time for death, followed by the melee.
Illorien dropped a Death and Decay, and I charged a spider. It was well on it's way to dying when I hear over Vent, "There's a giant coming... Giant coming!" I turned around and saw two gigantic undead slaughtering the ranged DPS and healers. It was the first of our wipes trying to deal with those two giants. The one spider went down, but that was it.
Those two giants were epic trash for us. We tried several strategies for fighting them, all of which failed for various reasons. You can't pull them out of the room - they run back in and reset. We tried several different methods to split them up so that the DPS could burn one down without worrying about the other one. We tried pulling them into the corner of the room... None of our methods worked... they were too close to the other group so we pulled them, or they managed to take out DPS somehow... Illorien noticed that they were using Saber Lash - an ability Lord Marrowgar also uses - that does melee damage to the target (tank) and his nearest ally... which meant that we absolutely had to have the tanks on top of each other to take the Saber Lashes.
When we realized that, we decided to stop trying to separate them. Illorien and I grabbed them and brought them to the front edge of the room, just inside where they would step out and reset and far enough away not to aggro the other mobs. Then we turned them away from the raid and let the DPS burn down one target, while the two of us prayed for healing fast enough that double Saber Lash wouldn't do us in. It worked like a charm.
The last group of mobs, already down one member from our first run-in with the giants, went down with ease.
The next room, smaller than the last, has just one group of adds in the center, but has two of the giants sleeping on opposite sides of the room, and there's not much room to maneuver without almost certainly waking them up.
Illorien was trying to scoot in a little bit and pull some of the smaller trash and one of the giants woke up. Since nothing else aggro'd, we counted our blessings and downed it. We were then able to move in to the now-vacated side and aggro the smaller trash while keeping some distance from the other giant.
It woke up after we had started in on the smaller trash. I picked it up and burned a couple of cooldowns to stay alive while the DPS dealt with the smaller casters, then Illorien pulled everything else with him to stand in front of the giant. With both us there, the giant wasn't going to kill us by itself, so the DPS burned down the smaller melee mobs and then we brought down the giant.
After a grueling hour plus we had made it to Lord Marrowgar.
We wiped several times on him before we ran out of time, as our pug healer had to go guild raid on his main, and several of our guild folks were itching to end early due to early mornings. We learned a bit, and tried a couple strategies, but I think our group as a whole might not have quite been there, gear-wise. We tended to do alright in Phase 1 - our folks moved out of the fire and broke down the bone prisons fairly efficiently, our healers were generally able to keep up, and things went smoothly. Then Phase 2 - the whirlwind - came along, and as long as it wasn't badly timed with respect to a bone prison, we usually handled that fairly well. Usually the issue came at the end of the whirlwind, when we had a little trouble with folks struggling to keep away from the boss while the tanks dragged him back into position while still staying out of the mass of cold fire on the ground. Several times we lost people as the second Phase 1 started because of how crazily spread out folks were and the healer's need to focus on the tanks. I think a combination of being a little short in a couple of places lead to everybody needing to be danged near perfect.
We got him down to almost 50% on one run.
For being our first ever time going in to the instance, I think we did fairly well, especially considering basically none of us have any Heroic ToC gear.
I'm not sure if we'll try again next week, or perhaps give a go at Heroic ToC10. That was pretty rough on us.
Good luck and hope you get a chance to clear it!
I had heard that the trash in ICC was rough for any ill-prepared groups. In ways it was better and in ways it was worse than I had expected... but I'll get to that.
We decided to try to get as good a group together as we could, focusing on getting our best DPS. We struggled to find healers in our guild willing to come, one of them flat out stating that she was afraid of the place. We pugged in an excellent but very slightly under-geared priest for the final healing spot... Here's the breakdown:
Tanks (2):
Me (Bear) and Illorien (DK)
Heals (3):
Holy Paladin (Renakashin, co-leader), Tree Druid and Holy Priest
DPS (5):
Warrior, Hunter, Rogue, 2 Mages
The TRASH!
The first thing you encounter on the way in the door is a pair of undead that are pure melee but explode when killed, doing a fairly decent chunk of damage. Plus, every so often, another one paths in from the next room. A little mismanagement of this led to us losing a couple of folks while we cleared them out - once you've taken the top of that set of stairs, they stop coming in from the next room. There's another group of these that run around the room - we pulled them out and downed them fairly easily. Illorien held them in place, I pulled them out one at a time for the DPS to go nuts on.
We were at last able to begin moving into the room. It has essentially 5 sets of mobs, one group in each corner and one dead ahead in the back half of the room. It also has a special secret surprise, that I'll get to in a moment. The right and left corners closest to the door each have a humanoid Undead caster and three of the Damned - the exploding undead I mentioned previously. The corners further from the way in each had a spiderlike Undead caster as well as the groups of the Damned. The spiders throw random web wraps around that players must be broken out of, and don't appear to have a threat table, or at least cast randomly enough that the threat table doesn't seem to matter. The group in the middle is made up of 2 of the spiders, 1 of the humanoid Undead casters, and 2 non-explosive melee Undead. Our general plan of attack for the four corners was for the DK to hold down the melee while the DPS and myself burned down the caster, then for me to pull out the Damned one by one for the DPS to burn.
The corners went smoothly. The casters really don't like to move, and it's impossible to move the spiders via LOS if any member of the raid is in its LOS. We discovered with the last group that the DK's death grip can yank the spider out and (at least sometimes) not disturb the group of melee. It worked, though, and we decided to use a similar plan of attack on the group in the middle, singling out a caster at a time for death, followed by the melee.
Illorien dropped a Death and Decay, and I charged a spider. It was well on it's way to dying when I hear over Vent, "There's a giant coming... Giant coming!" I turned around and saw two gigantic undead slaughtering the ranged DPS and healers. It was the first of our wipes trying to deal with those two giants. The one spider went down, but that was it.
Those two giants were epic trash for us. We tried several strategies for fighting them, all of which failed for various reasons. You can't pull them out of the room - they run back in and reset. We tried several different methods to split them up so that the DPS could burn one down without worrying about the other one. We tried pulling them into the corner of the room... None of our methods worked... they were too close to the other group so we pulled them, or they managed to take out DPS somehow... Illorien noticed that they were using Saber Lash - an ability Lord Marrowgar also uses - that does melee damage to the target (tank) and his nearest ally... which meant that we absolutely had to have the tanks on top of each other to take the Saber Lashes.
When we realized that, we decided to stop trying to separate them. Illorien and I grabbed them and brought them to the front edge of the room, just inside where they would step out and reset and far enough away not to aggro the other mobs. Then we turned them away from the raid and let the DPS burn down one target, while the two of us prayed for healing fast enough that double Saber Lash wouldn't do us in. It worked like a charm.
The last group of mobs, already down one member from our first run-in with the giants, went down with ease.
The next room, smaller than the last, has just one group of adds in the center, but has two of the giants sleeping on opposite sides of the room, and there's not much room to maneuver without almost certainly waking them up.
Illorien was trying to scoot in a little bit and pull some of the smaller trash and one of the giants woke up. Since nothing else aggro'd, we counted our blessings and downed it. We were then able to move in to the now-vacated side and aggro the smaller trash while keeping some distance from the other giant.
It woke up after we had started in on the smaller trash. I picked it up and burned a couple of cooldowns to stay alive while the DPS dealt with the smaller casters, then Illorien pulled everything else with him to stand in front of the giant. With both us there, the giant wasn't going to kill us by itself, so the DPS burned down the smaller melee mobs and then we brought down the giant.
After a grueling hour plus we had made it to Lord Marrowgar.
We wiped several times on him before we ran out of time, as our pug healer had to go guild raid on his main, and several of our guild folks were itching to end early due to early mornings. We learned a bit, and tried a couple strategies, but I think our group as a whole might not have quite been there, gear-wise. We tended to do alright in Phase 1 - our folks moved out of the fire and broke down the bone prisons fairly efficiently, our healers were generally able to keep up, and things went smoothly. Then Phase 2 - the whirlwind - came along, and as long as it wasn't badly timed with respect to a bone prison, we usually handled that fairly well. Usually the issue came at the end of the whirlwind, when we had a little trouble with folks struggling to keep away from the boss while the tanks dragged him back into position while still staying out of the mass of cold fire on the ground. Several times we lost people as the second Phase 1 started because of how crazily spread out folks were and the healer's need to focus on the tanks. I think a combination of being a little short in a couple of places lead to everybody needing to be danged near perfect.
We got him down to almost 50% on one run.
For being our first ever time going in to the instance, I think we did fairly well, especially considering basically none of us have any Heroic ToC gear.
I'm not sure if we'll try again next week, or perhaps give a go at Heroic ToC10. That was pretty rough on us.
Good luck and hope you get a chance to clear it!
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Impromptu Weekend ToC10
I don't often get time to play much on the weekends - family commitments, time with the spouse, and my other two geek-related time consuming hobbies (Magic: the Gathering and Dungeons and Dragons) combine to form just about the ultimate WoW blockage on the weekends.
Last weekend rolled around with no major plans for Saturday afternoon, I figured I had a good chance to get something done. I haven't had a chance yet to go in to the Icecrown Citadel raids, illness and houseguests had prevented me from having a chance to do ToC last week, and the weekly raid quest was for Lord Jaraxxus's head, so I decided to try to put together an impromptu run for ToC10. Encouraged by the fact that we had cleared it last week, I was hopeful to get a run in before dinner plans with the wife, and started putting a group together about 2:00.
Luckily for me, the two friends that have been my co-leaders for the raids weren't able to get into a ToC10 earlier in the week, so their mains weren't saved, and another guildie who has been bringing her healer almost every time was able to come, so we had most of the core tanks and heals we brought previously. We filled in with one pugged healer and 3 pugged DPS and set off. It took us until after 2:30 to get it all together, but it worked! The breakdown:
Tanks (2):
Bear (me!) and DK
Heals (3):
2 Holy Paladins and 1 Disc/Holy Priest
DPS (5):
2 Hunters, 1 Warrior, 1 Rogue, 1 Enh. Shaman
I was hoping for 3 ranged DPS. Lord Jaraxxus is a little easier with more ranged DPS - there's less need for melee DPS to switch to Mistresses, and those pesky Infernals die that much faster - and gives you more chances to survive issues with Anub. I was confident that this would work, however, so we ran with it.
The Northrend Beasts!
Everyone was familiar with this fight (even though one of the pugs had only seen it on 25-man), so it went fairly smoothly. Gormok went down like the chump he is - I started with him, the other tank taunted off of me, I taunted back... I think that was the last time I taunted until he had barely 30k health left. We lost one of the hunters during the jormungar portion... so when the first worm fell, the other tank picked up the remaining one, and I shifted out and battle-rezzed him. Druids cheat so hardcore. Nobody got hit by Icehowl's charge, so he was easy. One down, 4 to go.
It's difficult, on our server, to pug into good groups for ToC. One of our pugs commented at this point, "finally got a good group!" When everybody knows what they are doing and most of them are geared well for the instance, things tend to go well! :)
We moved on...
Lord Jaraxxus!
A little stategery and we're ready to go for the next boss. Jaraxxus started out normally, although it took a little long to drop the first Mistress - I don't think the melee DPS switched to her right away, but once they did she fell quickly. The infernals came next, and this is where we started to get into a little trouble. It was my fault mostly, I think, for not marking which infernal to focus on. They're already difficult to really hold aggro on (at least for me... maybe I'm doing something wrong...) and without either excess ranged DPS or me marking a clear target it took too long to down them and they ran too wild near the melee, did too much damage, overstressing the healing. There were still one or two of them up when the second Mistress came.
Things got a little crazy after the second set of infernals came. We were already behind due to the craziness of the first round of adds, and at some point, I forget exactly when, the DK, the other tank, went down. I immediately had to stop what I was doing, of course, and pick up Jaraxxus, trying my best to keep the adds aggro'd on me. We lost a couple other folks - three or four in total - but beyond me trying to keep ahold of them we ignored the adds the rest of the way and we'd done enough damage before starting to lose people that he went down just before things were really about to get out of hand. It was a little close, but two bosses down, and no wipes yet!
The Faction Champions!
Our kill order: Priest (not Shadow, I don't remember if he's Disc or Holy), healing Shaman, Warlock, Rogue, Boomkin, Paladin. We wiped once or twice - our first run went pretty well and we downed three of them, especially good considering our hunters forgot to use frost traps and I called out the wrong target after the priest went down. (I was sloppy that day, I don't know why.) The DK pestered the paladin, keeping him (or is it a her?) essentially out of the fight. The rogue went down early the first try due to burst damage, and losing his kick interrupt really hurt.
The champions continue to give us more trouble on our runs than any of the other bosses, and I'm not entirely sure why. We're getting better with them, though, and I consider that a good sign.
The Twin Val'kyr!
We one-shotted them. There was a little confusion as to which people were supposed to be on which side of the room, but the fact that we pull the two of them fairly close together in the center of the room made that a little less important - we had a fairly even distribution of light and dark and that's all that really mattered. None of their special abilities did much of anything, and we didn't have issues with too many of the wrong-colored orbs hitting our guys.
I felt a little bad when I won the Loop of the Twin Val'kyr, as that is just about the only upgrade left in ToC10 for Illorien (our DK and co-leader).
You might think, from what I've said, that we were moving fast! No, one of our pugs complained because it was taking us awhile in between bosses. Admittedly, we had a few folks go afk for a couple minutes for issues that probably could have waited, but we don't fly like that. It's one of the endearing features of our guild, I think, that we understand that people are human and things happen, and we're willing to work with the time people give us. One of our breaks was because all of us leading the raid were a little under the weather and one of us went to make tea because her throat felt like it was wrapped in ropes of fire, and another break happened because one of the healers had a puppy get into a roll of toilet paper. I can understand the desire to get through things fast, but please... people are human, cut them a little slack if they can't stay 100% dedicated to a game for nearly 2 hours at a time.
Anub'arak!
Before we started up the event that drops you into Anub'arak's cavern, our pug shammy opened up a trade and gave me 8 gold. Luckily I figured out what was going on before I hit the water, and clicked off the water-walking buff he had put on me. Our DK escaped a similar fate, but I'm not sure if he saw it and clicked it off or had another method. I gave him his gold back, 'cuz I'm just a nice guy like that, but it was funny anyway.
One of the folks on the raid had never been to Anub before, so we had to explain the entire fight. Much like our last clear, we had a slightly sub-par healer setup - 2 paladins and 1 priest. Determined, however, we set out to vanquish our foe!
Our first attempt was doomed fairly early on. We lost both our hunters to some craziness in Anub's first underground phase. Our shaman made a valiant effort to use his small ranged arsenal to pick up the slack in dropping permafrost, but we lost a healer as well and had an add still up heading into phase 3. We wiped shortly thereafter.
Despite our relative success during our demise, we decided to switch one of our paladin healers to tanking the adds, move the DK to Anub himself and I pulled out my tree gear and filled in the healing slot. In addition to providing a steadier flow of smaller heals for phase 3 goodness, that helped the other 2 healers a bit by providing the Tree of Life aura.
The second attempt was nearly flawless, as we didn't lose anybody until Anub was well into phase 3 and our victory was nearly assured.
It took us about 2 hours in total, and while I was ready (and actually started trying to refill the spots of folks who left) to give ICC a shot, I was out of time.
Tuesday, I expect my little crew will be giving our first shot (or at least, the first shot with me there!) at ICC's 10-man raid. I haven't even had a chance to do the 5-man in heroic mode yet. We'll see what happens though, and I'm hopeful we can get through it!
Last weekend rolled around with no major plans for Saturday afternoon, I figured I had a good chance to get something done. I haven't had a chance yet to go in to the Icecrown Citadel raids, illness and houseguests had prevented me from having a chance to do ToC last week, and the weekly raid quest was for Lord Jaraxxus's head, so I decided to try to put together an impromptu run for ToC10. Encouraged by the fact that we had cleared it last week, I was hopeful to get a run in before dinner plans with the wife, and started putting a group together about 2:00.
Luckily for me, the two friends that have been my co-leaders for the raids weren't able to get into a ToC10 earlier in the week, so their mains weren't saved, and another guildie who has been bringing her healer almost every time was able to come, so we had most of the core tanks and heals we brought previously. We filled in with one pugged healer and 3 pugged DPS and set off. It took us until after 2:30 to get it all together, but it worked! The breakdown:
Tanks (2):
Bear (me!) and DK
Heals (3):
2 Holy Paladins and 1 Disc/Holy Priest
DPS (5):
2 Hunters, 1 Warrior, 1 Rogue, 1 Enh. Shaman
I was hoping for 3 ranged DPS. Lord Jaraxxus is a little easier with more ranged DPS - there's less need for melee DPS to switch to Mistresses, and those pesky Infernals die that much faster - and gives you more chances to survive issues with Anub. I was confident that this would work, however, so we ran with it.
The Northrend Beasts!
Everyone was familiar with this fight (even though one of the pugs had only seen it on 25-man), so it went fairly smoothly. Gormok went down like the chump he is - I started with him, the other tank taunted off of me, I taunted back... I think that was the last time I taunted until he had barely 30k health left. We lost one of the hunters during the jormungar portion... so when the first worm fell, the other tank picked up the remaining one, and I shifted out and battle-rezzed him. Druids cheat so hardcore. Nobody got hit by Icehowl's charge, so he was easy. One down, 4 to go.
It's difficult, on our server, to pug into good groups for ToC. One of our pugs commented at this point, "finally got a good group!" When everybody knows what they are doing and most of them are geared well for the instance, things tend to go well! :)
We moved on...
Lord Jaraxxus!
A little stategery and we're ready to go for the next boss. Jaraxxus started out normally, although it took a little long to drop the first Mistress - I don't think the melee DPS switched to her right away, but once they did she fell quickly. The infernals came next, and this is where we started to get into a little trouble. It was my fault mostly, I think, for not marking which infernal to focus on. They're already difficult to really hold aggro on (at least for me... maybe I'm doing something wrong...) and without either excess ranged DPS or me marking a clear target it took too long to down them and they ran too wild near the melee, did too much damage, overstressing the healing. There were still one or two of them up when the second Mistress came.
Things got a little crazy after the second set of infernals came. We were already behind due to the craziness of the first round of adds, and at some point, I forget exactly when, the DK, the other tank, went down. I immediately had to stop what I was doing, of course, and pick up Jaraxxus, trying my best to keep the adds aggro'd on me. We lost a couple other folks - three or four in total - but beyond me trying to keep ahold of them we ignored the adds the rest of the way and we'd done enough damage before starting to lose people that he went down just before things were really about to get out of hand. It was a little close, but two bosses down, and no wipes yet!
The Faction Champions!
Our kill order: Priest (not Shadow, I don't remember if he's Disc or Holy), healing Shaman, Warlock, Rogue, Boomkin, Paladin. We wiped once or twice - our first run went pretty well and we downed three of them, especially good considering our hunters forgot to use frost traps and I called out the wrong target after the priest went down. (I was sloppy that day, I don't know why.) The DK pestered the paladin, keeping him (or is it a her?) essentially out of the fight. The rogue went down early the first try due to burst damage, and losing his kick interrupt really hurt.
The champions continue to give us more trouble on our runs than any of the other bosses, and I'm not entirely sure why. We're getting better with them, though, and I consider that a good sign.
The Twin Val'kyr!
We one-shotted them. There was a little confusion as to which people were supposed to be on which side of the room, but the fact that we pull the two of them fairly close together in the center of the room made that a little less important - we had a fairly even distribution of light and dark and that's all that really mattered. None of their special abilities did much of anything, and we didn't have issues with too many of the wrong-colored orbs hitting our guys.
I felt a little bad when I won the Loop of the Twin Val'kyr, as that is just about the only upgrade left in ToC10 for Illorien (our DK and co-leader).
You might think, from what I've said, that we were moving fast! No, one of our pugs complained because it was taking us awhile in between bosses. Admittedly, we had a few folks go afk for a couple minutes for issues that probably could have waited, but we don't fly like that. It's one of the endearing features of our guild, I think, that we understand that people are human and things happen, and we're willing to work with the time people give us. One of our breaks was because all of us leading the raid were a little under the weather and one of us went to make tea because her throat felt like it was wrapped in ropes of fire, and another break happened because one of the healers had a puppy get into a roll of toilet paper. I can understand the desire to get through things fast, but please... people are human, cut them a little slack if they can't stay 100% dedicated to a game for nearly 2 hours at a time.
Anub'arak!
Before we started up the event that drops you into Anub'arak's cavern, our pug shammy opened up a trade and gave me 8 gold. Luckily I figured out what was going on before I hit the water, and clicked off the water-walking buff he had put on me. Our DK escaped a similar fate, but I'm not sure if he saw it and clicked it off or had another method. I gave him his gold back, 'cuz I'm just a nice guy like that, but it was funny anyway.
One of the folks on the raid had never been to Anub before, so we had to explain the entire fight. Much like our last clear, we had a slightly sub-par healer setup - 2 paladins and 1 priest. Determined, however, we set out to vanquish our foe!
Our first attempt was doomed fairly early on. We lost both our hunters to some craziness in Anub's first underground phase. Our shaman made a valiant effort to use his small ranged arsenal to pick up the slack in dropping permafrost, but we lost a healer as well and had an add still up heading into phase 3. We wiped shortly thereafter.
Despite our relative success during our demise, we decided to switch one of our paladin healers to tanking the adds, move the DK to Anub himself and I pulled out my tree gear and filled in the healing slot. In addition to providing a steadier flow of smaller heals for phase 3 goodness, that helped the other 2 healers a bit by providing the Tree of Life aura.
The second attempt was nearly flawless, as we didn't lose anybody until Anub was well into phase 3 and our victory was nearly assured.
It took us about 2 hours in total, and while I was ready (and actually started trying to refill the spots of folks who left) to give ICC a shot, I was out of time.
Tuesday, I expect my little crew will be giving our first shot (or at least, the first shot with me there!) at ICC's 10-man raid. I haven't even had a chance to do the 5-man in heroic mode yet. We'll see what happens though, and I'm hopeful we can get through it!
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