World Of Warcraft Discussion

[Verbal32]

Good run in ICC 10-man last night. We had already downed the first 6 bosses over the last month or so, and we got the opportunity to start with them already dead, so we did it.

 

We had a run on Sunday and downed the Blood Prince Council after a few wipes, and then wiped on Blood Queen Lana'thel a few times before calling it. Then last night we picked up again and 1-shotted the Blood Queen......and then failed miserably on Valithria Dreamwalker. Ouch.

 

I remember that fight in 25-man, and I figured it would be easier in 10-man. Nope. Just as nuts. We were low on ranged DPS, so our melee just couldn't get the adds down quick enough, or interrupt the spellcasters quick enough. Not good. We barely healed Valithria past 70% each time.

 

Canuk made a comment about us only downing 1 boss per day - I think that's solid. If we can beat that fight tomorrow, we can concentrate on the Professor Putricide fight, which I think is easier than Valithria. After that, only 2 bosses left. Woot.

[Emperor]

I plan to watch that fight tonight. I think the biggest problem we had was tanks holding aggro on mobs. Healers kept being bombarded with adds. If we can burn the mobs quicker and leave the healers free to do their portal dance it should be an easy fight.

 

Other news: I plan to have my pally up to 80 this weekend. Fun. I already have 4-5 pieces of 80 tanking gear ready to go so I could be in the 3500 or more by the time I reach 80. Also Ridonk is the new guild leader of SG. Xexah and I decided to join the Dragons so we could get in more raids and make it easier for them to coordinate raids. We both plan to rejoin SG once we have a solid 10 man raid group (or cata, whichever comes first). I will continue to set up SG raids on Friday night so we can keep doing the low ones. Make it your mission to invite at least one person to SG if you see people wandering around without guilds.

[Verbal32]

Well, damn, yesterday was a productive day for raiding. I'm happy you both are in Dragons now, as what happened last night (2 Kingslayer players coming in to help) will happen with regularity while we raid. Now we only have Putricide (a fight we've seen) and Arthas. Good place to be in. I can expect Putricide likely put down on our next night raiding, and maybe a few tries at the Lich King.

 

I think we'll all have Kingslayer with a week or so.

 

As far as old raids go, I only have BWL to hit up for vanilla, and then the BC raids, of which I think I've already done one or two. Once we down Arthas, we should look at going into Ruby Sanctum and getting Halion taken care of. We're geared for it now.

[Emperor]

I would love to get some newer pieces of gear to get my gs a bit higher.

 

Isn't putricide optional? do we need to down him for kingslayer? how hard a fight is Arhtas?

 

I haven't done any of the BC raids. I know Lowell is 70 now so we could pull him and Cat into our group. Xex signed up for the Friday night 25 RS. Let me know and I can send out some invites.

[Verbal32]

I have company for the weekend, so I might not be online Fri/Sat night. Not sure.

 

And Putricide is not optional. People say that because you can skip him and go to the blood or frost wing before you have to finish the plague wing. But you can't fight Arthas until you've downed Putricide. There are 12 bosses, and Putricide is one of them. We are 10/12 right now, which is awesome.

 

And I'm looking forward to RS as well to get higher iLvl gear. We should have Kingslayer and Halion dead before Cataclysm at this rate!

[Verbal32]

And about Arthas - I've seen videos of the fight, and Varju has tried it as well.

 

It is probably the hardest fight thus far in the game. One mistake by 1 player in the entire raid, and there is a guaranteed wipe.

[Mulk]

Verbal is so, so right. Phase 2 is the hardest part - something like three quarters of my wipes on the LK (around 200 or so amongst all of my 80s) came as a result of bungling the second Valkyr/Defile combo once you get into that Phase. I think I only ever wiped in Phase 3 twice. The rest were an assortment of Phase 1 screw ups and botching the second transition phase. Putricide and Sindragosa are pretty good training for the LK - they require good positioning, awareness, a goodly amount of raid damage and spikey tank damage that causes healer heart attacks.

 

What helped one of the groups I did was a bit of roleplay: we gathered up in the center mimicking fighting the LK away from the edge and threw a raid icon on someone at random (we did not call it out in Vent; you don't have time to react to a voice call) to simulate Defile, counted two seconds, and if that person had people in proximity of him/her at the end of two seconds, we called it a wipe and tried again. We did that repeatedly until people got the hint. Basically, if there are 4 people in the Defile when it drops, the puddle will spread across the platform before you can get out. 2 or 3 will make a large puddle you might be able to get around, or might not. I think it saved us a few repair bills, or at least helped us make Phase 2 last long enough to learn something from it.

[Verbal32]

That's exactly how it was described to me. And I like the idea of the RP to practice. We sometimes have a few DPS that are a little lacking in the raid awareness department.

 

An example would be on Sindragosa. I kept noticing that people weren't staying on the opposite side of the ice blocks, and were getting hit by the AOE damage she drops from up high. You shouldn't get hit at all if you position yourself correctly, and a couple of people were NEVER in position, lol.

[Ashaman Kovan]

So if you've never done a Raid before. Like at all. What's the best way to learn what it is you should be doing in your role for any given raid? (I'm DPS) Cause I know you guys are all veterans and pros NOW but the first times you ran a raid how was it that you learned??

[Mulk]

well...I started raiding 5 years ago or so, so I'm a touch fuzzy on what I did. Basically, I think I talked with people who had and asked them what to expect and how to go about it. I knew no other high level druids at the time so I kinda had to figure it out from scratch. Basically, though, you corner someone who either plays your class or plays your role (DPS/Heal/Tank) and ask them for suggestions on how to do your job well and efficiently; in the case of DPS, spell rotations and any helpful tips ("Be sure to watch for adds and kill X add first") on the fights themselves. Watching the vids about how to do a fight helps too, so you don't need square one explanations, but there isn't really a substitute for doing the fight.

 

Some people spend time at the target dummies perfecting their spell rotations/priority lists. Others just fiddle with it on the fly as they instance. Whatever works for you. :) Key thing to remember is that there is almost always room to improve, no matter how good you are. Being aware enough to avoid boss mechanics in as much as you can is a HUGE help and RL's will love you for it, even if you're a bit green.

[Canukistani]

as a dps, work on your situation awareness. this can be best be practiced in battlegrounds. go kill other players while practicing moving your camera around and seeing what's happening to the other members of your raid. If you see a healer being attacked, break off your current combat and go save them. that will get you used to the mobility sometimes needed in raids.

 

also try to get in to do the weekly raid quest. don't worry about not having done it before. the chances are your group will be way over geared for it. even if you die you get a look at raid dynamics.

 

also, when in a raid DO NOT RELEASE YOUR SPIRIT after you die. not until everyone else has also died. if you die and release and your raid kill the boss you will not get any achievements or loot chances for that boss. also, releasing your spirit will make it nigh impossible for a druid to find you to give you a battle resurrection.

[Canukistani]

verbal, i think we should roleplay out the fight for PP too. make the tank roleplay as the blobs. after all, all he needs to do in the real fight is tank PP. the off tank, dps and healers need to practice on the blobs.

[Emperor]

Way to not be around last night canuk :P

 

We got very close to killing PP a few times. Down to 1% I think. Then we ran out of room to run.

[Emperor]

QuietAiel - Really it is just learning the bosses. Trash is trash and you can not do too much wrong there. Before you raid you either need to read up on the bosses you plan to encounter or watch a youtube of what is going on. In most cases DPS just need to know a trick or two about a boss to be ok (come together when you are marked with this, dont knock over bottles, etc). Really just make sure you are putting out max dps.. like 5-6K. So yeah, learn your rotations.

 

I am not pro by any means. I know most of the boss fights in ICC but that is my raid experience.

[Mulk]

Emperor, I think you meant to address that to Ashaman Kovan. :) I've raided a lot, for a long time, but I'm on a break that I'm not sure will ever end. The Lich King wipe fest about killed any desire I have to chew glass on anything, plus I have a new daughter and my play time is severely cramped.

 

About all I do is log on, RP a bit and do a quest or two and maybe an instance. I haven't even hit a BG in a month or so.

[Verbal32]

Way to not be around last night canuk :P

 

We got very close to killing PP a few times. Down to 1% I think. Then we ran out of room to run.

 

Yeah, that 1% was with a DPS dead, too. With them alive, we would have downed PP no problem. At this point, we are really close. We know the mechanics, and are doing a decent job of executing on it (i.e. group for slime, run the hell away for ooze, and DPS those down quickly) - we just need to be a little tighter on our DPS and kill PP before the whole room is a slime puddle. At that point, we (the healers) can't keep people up.

 

Actually, Emp....I think you and I can 2-heal this fight. I really do. The extra DPS might be the difference...

[Emperor]

There was an attack or two near the end that was taking everyone to no life. What was that? Was it just them running over slime? That is when we need as much healing power as possible. We gotta keep anyone from dying or PP gets life back. We can try 2 healers though, sure. We don't really need the dps until phase 3 though.

[Mulk]

Emp: Putricide stacks a DoT on the tanks that does damage to the entire raid. At around 5 stacks it starts to become unhealable. The reason you noted hits that big is probably due to that stack reaching 5 on both tanks or 6 or more on one of them. Phase 3 is a dps race, not just because of the green goo, but because eventually you can't heal it anymore.

[Verbal32]

Exactly, and we also had an ooze that began p3 with us, so we started behind on that DPS race....not to mention it changed targets with the phase and blew somebody up.

 

Emp, I think that I'll pop Heroism right at the start of phase 3 and we should be able to spam heal the raid until they kill PP. I'm also going to suggest the tanks swap at 2 stacks to make it easier on us. With an extra DPS banging away, that should be doable.

[Emperor]

Emp: Putricide stacks a DoT on the tanks that does damage to the entire raid. At around 5 stacks it starts to become unhealable. The reason you noted hits that big is probably due to that stack reaching 5 on both tanks or 6 or more on one of them. Phase 3 is a dps race, not just because of the green goo, but because eventually you can't heal it anymore.

 

Thats what it is. Yeah if we go down to switching at two stacks this will be easy (is that possible?). I think I heard Varju say he was making the OT take PP before he was debuffed. How long does it take to debuff?

[Mulk]

I believe it stacks once every 10-12 seconds? something like that. It's been a couple of months since I did the fight.

[Verbal32]

Might be even less, but somewhere around 8-10 seconds for a stack sounds about right. So a swap every 20 seconds should be reasonable for the tanks.

[Mulk]

Might be even less, but somewhere around 8-10 seconds for a stack sounds about right. So a swap every 20 seconds should be reasonable for the tanks.

 

I've always just counted stacks. DBM and BigWigs (or any other boss mod) should tell you when it stacks. If you swap every other stack, you'll be fine. I've also done the thing where you just have one tank take it to 4 and then the other one take it to 5. Either way works.

[Emperor]

Are we up to doing a SG oldie raid on Friday?

[Emperor]

We wiped maybe 10 times last night on PP. I think we did alright with two healers but the dps just were not killing the oozes fast enough nor were they stacking on each other fast enough to help us out. I don't know the answer at this point.