Well over the course of two evenings last weekend we managed to take down Plague, Military and Spider wings without too much trouble.
Plague went easily, no wipes on any of the bosses though we did almost wipe on the trash before Loathed. The previous time we got this far we just ran through followed by the maggots and the eyestalks did nothing. We tried the same thing this week but the eyes were active and managed to kill almost everyone except me, and I survived barely by getting out of range of the eyestalks on the bridge leading to Loatheb and managing to dps down 3 maggots, not all from full health I should add.
Military we had a wipe on Razuvious. I really hate this fight because when you try to reapply mind control it's very hit or miss. You do have to leave it a second or two after you break it, but sometimes it doesn't seem to apply at all and you end up repeatedly clicking it until you reestablish control of the acolyte. I'd say this is a pretty much hit or miss fight any time it's done. Gothik was easy again, and the git didn't drop the sword. Four horsemen we wiped on a couple of times, mainly because the two taking the rear mobs managed to die so we got raid wide big damage. However once they managed to keep themselves alive until the first horseman was down it was simply a case of me switching over to the back right horseman and switching back and forth to Rivendare until he went down then just back and forth between the rear two, which was pretty easy. This fight is simple if you can keep the two at the back alive and organise yourself properly. Nice breastplate for the Death Knight who hadn't bought it there.
Spider was as it normally is and then it was back to Construct quarter. Patch was easy, though we did get an aggro switch between the tanks early in the fight which could have been nasty. Then we did a couple of goes against Grobbulus. First time we were poor, only getting him down to about 1 million hp. Second time it seemed like people really upped their game and he was down to about 25 thousand hp when we wiped. We switched tanks for that fight to see if extra bear damage helped, which it seemed to. I was working on keeping the slimes and after the first couple I had no help as the dps went on the boss (not by design but hey, it almost worked). Perhaps next time I'll just take the adds and hold them while everyone piles in harder on Grobbulus to try to get him down. I'll have to research the slime damage to see how many I can realistically tank at one time.
Still, we're close to getting past that fight. Just Gluth and Thaddius to go and maybe, just maybe we'll get a 3rd night in to take down Sapphiron and Kel'Thuzad.
Friday 6 March 2009
Thursday 26 February 2009
More raiding fun, Plague Quarter
Okay, so the weekend before last was pretty much the same as I've already discussed, VoA, Sarth and Arachnid. We did decide to go poke Noth the Plaguebringer in Plague quarter and took him down easy so when this weekend rolled around it was decided we'd go straight to Plague quarter and see how we get on.
Heading to Noth there are some annoying trash gargoyles. One or two fly around and so are targettable before you get close, but there are some on the stairs which only activate when you get close to them. The key thing about these is that with about 40% of their health left they make an odd sound which gives a warning and you've got 6 seconds to kill them before they completely regain all health. It's best to have two tanks for this, one on each of the two gargoyles either side of the stairs. Tank and kill one while the other is off tanked, then switch and burn down. Shouldn't be too bad but it did surprise us the first time we got to them.
Head down the stairs and you're at Noth. Noth is an easy fight really. You pull him, drag him to a decent spot (we use the corner where there are no skeleton piles, not sure it makes a difference or not. Oh, and just a point to remember, make sure everyone has come inside the doorway or people will get locked out of the encounter. Every now and then Noth teleports to an upper balcony and you need to deal with waves of skeletons. These guys aren't too tough, but one type does AoE so if you're melee heavy your healers will need to be aware. To be honest the damage from them didn't seem to be too high. Noth also does a curse causing AoE damage, which doesn't seem to do a lot of damage but it's advised that dps moves away when they get it to reduce stress on the healers. Our pally healer has said he finds it no problem to heal through this encounter.
Usually Noth goes down by the third teleport, and he does have an ability which acts like an enrage timer which means you do need to try to get him down as quickly as possible.
With Noth dead it was easy to pull through all the next trash on the way to Heigan. The trash here seemed exceptionally easy, not many hp and no abilities we noticed, though maybe we just killed them quickly enough that they never got to use them. Heigan is famous (or should that be infamous?) for the safety dance. Well worth watching it at tankspot because it really helps to see it before you get to him, though I'll do my best to describe it here.
Again get everyone inside the doorway to make sure that when the event starts you get everyone involved. As soon as the tank pulls Heigan everyone can start dps, ranged and healers need to go and stand on the platform he walks around when you initially enter the room. The tank must be able to see the side of the room opposite because fairly quickly green fire is going to shoot up from the floor behind Heigan. When that happens the tank must drag Heigan through to the area where the fire came up. Tank him a bit more while still watching ahead and soon more green fire will erupt upwards and again he needs to be moved. The green fire was doing about 6k damage to me every time I made a mistake, which with 35k raid buffed isn't too bad but it's nasty on the melee dps.
There are four sections that he needs to be dragged to, then turn and take him back the opposite way. When you reach section 2 again he will teleport to his original platform, and everyone needs to move to section 1, because this is where the fun starts. The pattern of the fire from the floor is the same, but the speed is greatly increased, basically you run, stop for about a second then run again, all the way across the room, back then across another section before Heigan teleports back to the party. Tank tags him, takes him back to section 1 and slowly moves him across the room.
It's fun, but difficult. If you're the main tank you need to move him to certain spots, if you're dps you need to move when the tank moves, not when Heigan does, as he'll stand there and cast. This will almost certainly take you a few goes to master, but it's the key to the fight, as Heigan's general damage output is fairly low. The one other ability you need to watch out for is when he puts an effect on anyone up to 30 yards away making spells take 3 seconds to cast. This can seriously stress your healers.
We failed mostly on the speed phase, and mostly because our priest was dying a lot. Once he managed to get it through we managed to down Heigan and get the Safety Dance achievement, which you get for everyone surviving the fight.
Much whooping and hollering at another boss down and we moved on through to Loatheb. The involves running through a room with lots of bugs, which can be aoed down. It's best not to stop much before you get to the end of the room as there are eyestalks which can be dangers, though I barely noticed anything they did.
Loatheb requires your healers to be on their toes and your dps to follow orders. He has a tonne of hit points, something like 10 million in the 10 man version. He doesn't hit too hard, but he does stack raid wide dots which get progressively worse and the hard bit for your healers is that they can only heal for 3 seconds in every 20. So they need to watch for the aura that stops healing going off and time their heals accordingly. Deadly Boss Mobs makes this a lot easier, as you get a bar which shows you how many seconds you have left to heal in. If your healers work well through this, that will never be a problem, even if it sounds bad.
The key for the dps comes in the form of spores. These spawn from certain points around the room at 30 second intervals and give a buff which increases crit chance by 50% but reduces threat by 100%. So you really don't want your tank getting this or he's going to have a tough time holding aggro. As the bear tank wasn't really needed for this fight he changed to cat and whenever a spore appeared it was his job to get the melee group to move to him to get the buff while I moved Loathed away from the spores to avoid getting the 100% threat loss. He was also responsible for dragging one to the ranged group to help them get the 50% crit chance. Basically you need your melee and ranged all critting as much as possible to burn Loatheb's health pool down before his dots wipe everyone. It was easy to be honest, he lasted something like 3 minutes and the healers never had a problem. Grats to the druid for the t7 shoulder token he dropped.
A good night all round, two new bosses down and a quarter we're sure we can soon stick on farm status.
Heading to Noth there are some annoying trash gargoyles. One or two fly around and so are targettable before you get close, but there are some on the stairs which only activate when you get close to them. The key thing about these is that with about 40% of their health left they make an odd sound which gives a warning and you've got 6 seconds to kill them before they completely regain all health. It's best to have two tanks for this, one on each of the two gargoyles either side of the stairs. Tank and kill one while the other is off tanked, then switch and burn down. Shouldn't be too bad but it did surprise us the first time we got to them.
Head down the stairs and you're at Noth. Noth is an easy fight really. You pull him, drag him to a decent spot (we use the corner where there are no skeleton piles, not sure it makes a difference or not. Oh, and just a point to remember, make sure everyone has come inside the doorway or people will get locked out of the encounter. Every now and then Noth teleports to an upper balcony and you need to deal with waves of skeletons. These guys aren't too tough, but one type does AoE so if you're melee heavy your healers will need to be aware. To be honest the damage from them didn't seem to be too high. Noth also does a curse causing AoE damage, which doesn't seem to do a lot of damage but it's advised that dps moves away when they get it to reduce stress on the healers. Our pally healer has said he finds it no problem to heal through this encounter.
Usually Noth goes down by the third teleport, and he does have an ability which acts like an enrage timer which means you do need to try to get him down as quickly as possible.
With Noth dead it was easy to pull through all the next trash on the way to Heigan. The trash here seemed exceptionally easy, not many hp and no abilities we noticed, though maybe we just killed them quickly enough that they never got to use them. Heigan is famous (or should that be infamous?) for the safety dance. Well worth watching it at tankspot because it really helps to see it before you get to him, though I'll do my best to describe it here.
Again get everyone inside the doorway to make sure that when the event starts you get everyone involved. As soon as the tank pulls Heigan everyone can start dps, ranged and healers need to go and stand on the platform he walks around when you initially enter the room. The tank must be able to see the side of the room opposite because fairly quickly green fire is going to shoot up from the floor behind Heigan. When that happens the tank must drag Heigan through to the area where the fire came up. Tank him a bit more while still watching ahead and soon more green fire will erupt upwards and again he needs to be moved. The green fire was doing about 6k damage to me every time I made a mistake, which with 35k raid buffed isn't too bad but it's nasty on the melee dps.
There are four sections that he needs to be dragged to, then turn and take him back the opposite way. When you reach section 2 again he will teleport to his original platform, and everyone needs to move to section 1, because this is where the fun starts. The pattern of the fire from the floor is the same, but the speed is greatly increased, basically you run, stop for about a second then run again, all the way across the room, back then across another section before Heigan teleports back to the party. Tank tags him, takes him back to section 1 and slowly moves him across the room.
It's fun, but difficult. If you're the main tank you need to move him to certain spots, if you're dps you need to move when the tank moves, not when Heigan does, as he'll stand there and cast. This will almost certainly take you a few goes to master, but it's the key to the fight, as Heigan's general damage output is fairly low. The one other ability you need to watch out for is when he puts an effect on anyone up to 30 yards away making spells take 3 seconds to cast. This can seriously stress your healers.
We failed mostly on the speed phase, and mostly because our priest was dying a lot. Once he managed to get it through we managed to down Heigan and get the Safety Dance achievement, which you get for everyone surviving the fight.
Much whooping and hollering at another boss down and we moved on through to Loatheb. The involves running through a room with lots of bugs, which can be aoed down. It's best not to stop much before you get to the end of the room as there are eyestalks which can be dangers, though I barely noticed anything they did.
Loatheb requires your healers to be on their toes and your dps to follow orders. He has a tonne of hit points, something like 10 million in the 10 man version. He doesn't hit too hard, but he does stack raid wide dots which get progressively worse and the hard bit for your healers is that they can only heal for 3 seconds in every 20. So they need to watch for the aura that stops healing going off and time their heals accordingly. Deadly Boss Mobs makes this a lot easier, as you get a bar which shows you how many seconds you have left to heal in. If your healers work well through this, that will never be a problem, even if it sounds bad.
The key for the dps comes in the form of spores. These spawn from certain points around the room at 30 second intervals and give a buff which increases crit chance by 50% but reduces threat by 100%. So you really don't want your tank getting this or he's going to have a tough time holding aggro. As the bear tank wasn't really needed for this fight he changed to cat and whenever a spore appeared it was his job to get the melee group to move to him to get the buff while I moved Loathed away from the spores to avoid getting the 100% threat loss. He was also responsible for dragging one to the ranged group to help them get the 50% crit chance. Basically you need your melee and ranged all critting as much as possible to burn Loatheb's health pool down before his dots wipe everyone. It was easy to be honest, he lasted something like 3 minutes and the healers never had a problem. Grats to the druid for the t7 shoulder token he dropped.
A good night all round, two new bosses down and a quarter we're sure we can soon stick on farm status.
Monday 9 February 2009
Timed CoS and Spider Wing down
A few of us were on early on Friday night and for a challenge we tried to do a timed CoS run. This involves getting to an optional boss within 25 minutes of starting the event at Arthas. We took a def tank (moi), bear druid, pally healer, rogue and enhancement shammy. Not really the ideal group as we were without aoe dps but that never matters to us. For the most part the bear druid tanked, simply because he could get to the mobs in the first section of the run faster than I could.
For those who've never done The Culling of Stratholme the first part involves waves of mobs that spawn in different areas of Strat. The direction appears as an arrow on the minimap and you go where the spawn is and you get groups of elites to kill. On the way there are lots of non-elites that you can pretty much ignore until you get to the big pulls where they can be aoe'd down even by pally consecrate. The hard part of a timed run is moving swiftly through this bit to give yourself plenty of time for the rest. You can try to keep the pulls moving back towards the central area all the time but that makes dps a little tougher. For the most part we fought them when we found them.
The first boss is Meathook, an annoying abomination that occasionally hits the lowest person on the threat list. The easiest way to do this is for someone to sit out the fight as otherwise the healer tends to take the hits and they are stunned for a few seconds after so no healing. I sat the fight out after dropping a set of devestates on him, annoying the pally a bit as he took the first hit. I then moved back out to stand behind him and did nothing else until looting my badge.
The elite spawns get a bit tougher until you get the second boss, a necromancer who is pretty easy to tear down with the high melee dps we have. We then made sure we spoke to Arthas to get him moving. This is one of the keys to a fast run, ensuring you talk to Arthas every time you need to move him on because failing to do so costs you time. We got to the building where you start to fight the dragons and sped through the first couple of sections fairly quickly until we were on the third boss. At this point we were well over halfway through the time and I really didn't think we were going to make it. Having cleared the building we were on to the final gauntlet. This is where having two tanks really helped speed things up. I ran through marking what elites I could, pulling four and then letting the bear move on to pull in some more. This allowed us to move very quickly through the gauntlet, though we did have two very good dps to burn down the elites quickly. We didn't stop in the middle, just carried on past, pulling as quickly as we could until we reached the end with a little over 3 minutes left. Ignoring Arthas we ran past and on to the optional boss, who is to the left of where Arthas stops. The timer was on 3 minutes when we started the fight, me tanking, them spanking. It was a hard, fast fight, and the timer was on 1 minute when the boss dropped and we got the chance to loot the bronze drake. Grats go to the rogue who got it on that run. We were all very pleased with how we'd done it, no deaths and within the time limit. Moved swiftly on to Mal'ganis, killed him with ease and the Royal Crest of Lordaeron dropped. Cue happy tank! Lovely looking shield and a decent upgrade for me once I got a +20 defense enchant put on it.
By this time the guild were starting to get online. It didn't take much longer before we had 2 tanks, 2 healers and 4 other dps and decided to drop into Obsidian Sanctum. Cakewalk. Even with 8 we can do this pretty easily now. We don't even bother with going through the portal on the second boss to worry about his drakes, we let them come through and kill them outside. When it comes to the final boss I've got the hang of moving my mouse around and positioning properly so I didn't get hit by a single wave which makes me absurdly proud of myself. No drops for me but a couple of happy people which is great. We didn't have Wintergrasp so we decided to do Spider Wing in Naxx again.
Cleared our way through the trash easily and took Anub'rekhan down first time, druid tank on him, me on the adds again. Swiftly moving on through the next sets of trash we got to Grand Widow Faerlina. Used our normal tactic of burning down the adds during the enrage phase and we one shotted her which was pretty impressive. Didn't hang around we just moved on to Maexxna where we'd had some problems before. This time we got her steadily down to 33% and I called a halt to dps while we waited out the next web wrap. It went off and we hammered into her but wiped when she was about 18%. Quite rightly the other tank asked me why I hadn't positioned her very well, and I'll explain that a little later on.
At this point we had Wintergrasp and people wanted to go do VoA so reluctantly the two tanks agreed. Both of us wanted to feel the achievement of Maexxna down and the other tank was encouraging people to believe we could do it. Anyway we went to VoA and died on the second trash pull when we got the wanderer. Luckily enough when we tried to go back in Wintergrasp was contested so it wouldn't let us so we went straight back to Naxx and onto Maexxna.
Now positioning Maexxna takes a bit of work if you're fairly new to tanking. She has a huge hitbox which means you can run and strafe and she just doesn't follow you. Trying to get her to the best position is pretty tricky, so for the second attempt, this is what I did. Moved to stand against the left hand wall, where she webs people. This means melee dps can help break them out without having to move too far, which is obviously very useful from their point of view as we're a very heavy melee dps guild at the moment. I then moved forward until I was in range and pulled, before moving back to the wall as she came in. Then I moved through her until she turned. Now this is a bit tricky, as you don't start with a lot of rage without charging, but it seemed to work pretty well. I had her back to the rest of the party and I could concentrate on hitting her as hard as I could. The other key thing to remember in this fight is to time shield block to start just as she web wraps. This helps you take less damage while everyone is webbed.
Again I called a halt to dps at 33% and waited out the web wrap before telling everyone to go as hard as they could. This is because she enrages at 30% and does a fair amount more damage. This time we took her down and got the achievement for finishing Spider Quarter. With 8 people we cleared the easiest wing of Naxx. That was a fine feeling. No drops for me but nice to see others getting some good purples.
It's moments like this that I love. When a group of people, good friends rather than expert raiders, comes together to take down a raid boss. That moment when you want to punch the air and take the credit for good tanking, good healing and good dps. It's what keeps me interested in WoW long after I would have moved on from another game.
For those who've never done The Culling of Stratholme the first part involves waves of mobs that spawn in different areas of Strat. The direction appears as an arrow on the minimap and you go where the spawn is and you get groups of elites to kill. On the way there are lots of non-elites that you can pretty much ignore until you get to the big pulls where they can be aoe'd down even by pally consecrate. The hard part of a timed run is moving swiftly through this bit to give yourself plenty of time for the rest. You can try to keep the pulls moving back towards the central area all the time but that makes dps a little tougher. For the most part we fought them when we found them.
The first boss is Meathook, an annoying abomination that occasionally hits the lowest person on the threat list. The easiest way to do this is for someone to sit out the fight as otherwise the healer tends to take the hits and they are stunned for a few seconds after so no healing. I sat the fight out after dropping a set of devestates on him, annoying the pally a bit as he took the first hit. I then moved back out to stand behind him and did nothing else until looting my badge.
The elite spawns get a bit tougher until you get the second boss, a necromancer who is pretty easy to tear down with the high melee dps we have. We then made sure we spoke to Arthas to get him moving. This is one of the keys to a fast run, ensuring you talk to Arthas every time you need to move him on because failing to do so costs you time. We got to the building where you start to fight the dragons and sped through the first couple of sections fairly quickly until we were on the third boss. At this point we were well over halfway through the time and I really didn't think we were going to make it. Having cleared the building we were on to the final gauntlet. This is where having two tanks really helped speed things up. I ran through marking what elites I could, pulling four and then letting the bear move on to pull in some more. This allowed us to move very quickly through the gauntlet, though we did have two very good dps to burn down the elites quickly. We didn't stop in the middle, just carried on past, pulling as quickly as we could until we reached the end with a little over 3 minutes left. Ignoring Arthas we ran past and on to the optional boss, who is to the left of where Arthas stops. The timer was on 3 minutes when we started the fight, me tanking, them spanking. It was a hard, fast fight, and the timer was on 1 minute when the boss dropped and we got the chance to loot the bronze drake. Grats go to the rogue who got it on that run. We were all very pleased with how we'd done it, no deaths and within the time limit. Moved swiftly on to Mal'ganis, killed him with ease and the Royal Crest of Lordaeron dropped. Cue happy tank! Lovely looking shield and a decent upgrade for me once I got a +20 defense enchant put on it.
By this time the guild were starting to get online. It didn't take much longer before we had 2 tanks, 2 healers and 4 other dps and decided to drop into Obsidian Sanctum. Cakewalk. Even with 8 we can do this pretty easily now. We don't even bother with going through the portal on the second boss to worry about his drakes, we let them come through and kill them outside. When it comes to the final boss I've got the hang of moving my mouse around and positioning properly so I didn't get hit by a single wave which makes me absurdly proud of myself. No drops for me but a couple of happy people which is great. We didn't have Wintergrasp so we decided to do Spider Wing in Naxx again.
Cleared our way through the trash easily and took Anub'rekhan down first time, druid tank on him, me on the adds again. Swiftly moving on through the next sets of trash we got to Grand Widow Faerlina. Used our normal tactic of burning down the adds during the enrage phase and we one shotted her which was pretty impressive. Didn't hang around we just moved on to Maexxna where we'd had some problems before. This time we got her steadily down to 33% and I called a halt to dps while we waited out the next web wrap. It went off and we hammered into her but wiped when she was about 18%. Quite rightly the other tank asked me why I hadn't positioned her very well, and I'll explain that a little later on.
At this point we had Wintergrasp and people wanted to go do VoA so reluctantly the two tanks agreed. Both of us wanted to feel the achievement of Maexxna down and the other tank was encouraging people to believe we could do it. Anyway we went to VoA and died on the second trash pull when we got the wanderer. Luckily enough when we tried to go back in Wintergrasp was contested so it wouldn't let us so we went straight back to Naxx and onto Maexxna.
Now positioning Maexxna takes a bit of work if you're fairly new to tanking. She has a huge hitbox which means you can run and strafe and she just doesn't follow you. Trying to get her to the best position is pretty tricky, so for the second attempt, this is what I did. Moved to stand against the left hand wall, where she webs people. This means melee dps can help break them out without having to move too far, which is obviously very useful from their point of view as we're a very heavy melee dps guild at the moment. I then moved forward until I was in range and pulled, before moving back to the wall as she came in. Then I moved through her until she turned. Now this is a bit tricky, as you don't start with a lot of rage without charging, but it seemed to work pretty well. I had her back to the rest of the party and I could concentrate on hitting her as hard as I could. The other key thing to remember in this fight is to time shield block to start just as she web wraps. This helps you take less damage while everyone is webbed.
Again I called a halt to dps at 33% and waited out the web wrap before telling everyone to go as hard as they could. This is because she enrages at 30% and does a fair amount more damage. This time we took her down and got the achievement for finishing Spider Quarter. With 8 people we cleared the easiest wing of Naxx. That was a fine feeling. No drops for me but nice to see others getting some good purples.
It's moments like this that I love. When a group of people, good friends rather than expert raiders, comes together to take down a raid boss. That moment when you want to punch the air and take the credit for good tanking, good healing and good dps. It's what keeps me interested in WoW long after I would have moved on from another game.
Monday 2 February 2009
No raids, just a post about levelling some alts
So this weekend we didn't get to raid at all. To be honest I wasn't too unhappy about that. For some reason on Friday evening I was having a hankering for just relaxing. I turned up online but we were only ever a max of seven players online and that's not quite enough to be sure of doing VoA or OS for us so when 9pm rolled around I decided it was time to head offline and just watch some TV.
I think I've burned out just a little bit on heroics at the moment. I've run quite a lot recently and having to run with a paladin who does amazing dps considering that half the time he's dead is just giving me a bit of a headache. It's a shame he has no sense of self preservation because if he did he'd be the highest dps in the guild by quite some way. As anyone who runs heroics knows, you have to be careful about aggro and if you get it you have to be ready to try to dump it as best you can. Some classes don't really get abilities to do this from what I've seen (could be wrong but our shammy always gets my vigilance) but paladins get bubble. Now bubble is great, it's complete invulnerability but it's also a decent aggro dump. Thing is that pallies can't use it for 30 seconds after they've popped their wings, and this pally pops his wings all the time. I've actually seen those wings sprout out of his back and less than 3 seconds later he's been face down in the dirt. I've tried explaining that he needs to take care of himself because the healer doesn't always get much time to heal him, but nothing I say seems to make much difference. Unfortunately he's one of the first five online most evenings so he runs all the time and I have to be careful not to make it personal when I'm talking over vent, which sometimes I find hard to do after three or four nights of watching him die. So a little break was quite welcome.
Over the weekend apart from my daily cooking quests (six more recipes to go for the Northrend Gourmet achievement) I didn't really have anything to do on my big, bad cow tank. I did a little fishing at the fountain in Dalaran but that got old quickly so I decided I'd take a look at my alts. Before I begin a little bit about me and repetition.
I hate doing the same quests over and over again. Levelling alts is akin to having my teeth pulled out, but for some reason every now and then I feel the need to do it. It started with the problems we had with Maexxna. "If only we'd had a druid who could have cleansed poisons and helped with healing," I thought to myself. Well I have a level 26 druid and though it would take me ages to level it to 80 I thought I'd give it a bit of a go and see how I got on. Over the weekend I got to level 30. It was painful. Druids have some nice abilities, and I've obviously specced Feral for levelling but I find cat druids to be a little squishy. Yes they can dish out good damage, but they also take a lot, and if they get more than a couple of adds they have a real problem. Sure you can switch to bear but I've yet to work out the best times to do this and so I ended up dying quite a lot. So four levels was a bit tedious and as most of it was in Thousand Needles it was made worse by the constant running from place to place and flying to Thunder Bluff and back. I was going to write a quick digression bit about running around during questing here but it's become so long I'm going to post it in another blog post altogether.
Having got to level 30 and got my druid his mount I decided I'd had enough of that playstyle and would go for something a little more 'in your face'. I had a hunter that I'd started with the intention of making him a gathering character. He had mining and skinning and I'd levelled him to 28 before Wrath came out and I thought I'd drag him out again. He too was in Thousand Needles but what the hell, at least the playstyle was very different. This was a lot more like it. Using aspect of the cheetah to move around quickly and switching to hawk to fight, using viper when mana got a bit low. My pet was tougher than my druid, able to easily handle taking on 3 mobs at once while I pew pewed (or twang twanged as I'm using a bow). I hammered through the two levels to get to 30 without breaking a sweat and found I really enjoyed it. I've played a hunter to 70 on the alliance side so I know the playstyle well and I do enjoy pet classes, it's just a shame warlocks are so badly broken at the moment that demonology is really no fun to play. Anyway, level 30 and a quick trip to Orgrimmar and I had two alts with mounts.
I decided I'd also go back and check in with my Blood Elf paladin. She was only level 16 and I'd stopped playing her after getting frustrated at trying to get onto the boat during the quest to collect the three night elf scrolls. I'd been using her to store ore and stone for my Death Knight's blacksmithing but dropped all that off in the bank and decided to take her out for a spin. Obviously for levelling she's retribution specced so I checked what quests I had and ran her out. Damn they have changed paladins, and oh so much for the better. Blessings now last 10 minutes rather than 5 and judgements are no longer based on judging the seal. A quick run around the area of Tranquilien learning the style and I was ready to head off and try the quests again. To be honest it was a joke. Killed all the elves on board the boat with no problem at all and did most of the rest of the quests without any real trouble, though the trolls with the cat pets do tend to do a lot of damage. Even managed to solo Kel'gash the Wicked easily enough. A couple of hours running around and she was level 20 and looking good. I'll be heading her out to the Undead zones soon, can't face another character doing Stonetalon Mountains and Thousand Needles.
Overall it was a pretty relaxed weekend. I'm glad I got the druid levelling done first, as I found the hunter and paladin far more pleasurable to level. I think I'll do that as the pattern to make sure I finish each session on a bit of a high. I'm sure once I've got a few more levels on the druid I'll enjoy it more, as I do like in your face combat more than I do hanging back and dpsing at range. It's a shame I can't get into my mage more at the moment as she's languishing at level 70 and could really do with running up the levels to get some green quest rewards to disenchant and some more cloth to help her tailoring. Still, now I'm levelling again you never know...
I think I've burned out just a little bit on heroics at the moment. I've run quite a lot recently and having to run with a paladin who does amazing dps considering that half the time he's dead is just giving me a bit of a headache. It's a shame he has no sense of self preservation because if he did he'd be the highest dps in the guild by quite some way. As anyone who runs heroics knows, you have to be careful about aggro and if you get it you have to be ready to try to dump it as best you can. Some classes don't really get abilities to do this from what I've seen (could be wrong but our shammy always gets my vigilance) but paladins get bubble. Now bubble is great, it's complete invulnerability but it's also a decent aggro dump. Thing is that pallies can't use it for 30 seconds after they've popped their wings, and this pally pops his wings all the time. I've actually seen those wings sprout out of his back and less than 3 seconds later he's been face down in the dirt. I've tried explaining that he needs to take care of himself because the healer doesn't always get much time to heal him, but nothing I say seems to make much difference. Unfortunately he's one of the first five online most evenings so he runs all the time and I have to be careful not to make it personal when I'm talking over vent, which sometimes I find hard to do after three or four nights of watching him die. So a little break was quite welcome.
Over the weekend apart from my daily cooking quests (six more recipes to go for the Northrend Gourmet achievement) I didn't really have anything to do on my big, bad cow tank. I did a little fishing at the fountain in Dalaran but that got old quickly so I decided I'd take a look at my alts. Before I begin a little bit about me and repetition.
I hate doing the same quests over and over again. Levelling alts is akin to having my teeth pulled out, but for some reason every now and then I feel the need to do it. It started with the problems we had with Maexxna. "If only we'd had a druid who could have cleansed poisons and helped with healing," I thought to myself. Well I have a level 26 druid and though it would take me ages to level it to 80 I thought I'd give it a bit of a go and see how I got on. Over the weekend I got to level 30. It was painful. Druids have some nice abilities, and I've obviously specced Feral for levelling but I find cat druids to be a little squishy. Yes they can dish out good damage, but they also take a lot, and if they get more than a couple of adds they have a real problem. Sure you can switch to bear but I've yet to work out the best times to do this and so I ended up dying quite a lot. So four levels was a bit tedious and as most of it was in Thousand Needles it was made worse by the constant running from place to place and flying to Thunder Bluff and back. I was going to write a quick digression bit about running around during questing here but it's become so long I'm going to post it in another blog post altogether.
Having got to level 30 and got my druid his mount I decided I'd had enough of that playstyle and would go for something a little more 'in your face'. I had a hunter that I'd started with the intention of making him a gathering character. He had mining and skinning and I'd levelled him to 28 before Wrath came out and I thought I'd drag him out again. He too was in Thousand Needles but what the hell, at least the playstyle was very different. This was a lot more like it. Using aspect of the cheetah to move around quickly and switching to hawk to fight, using viper when mana got a bit low. My pet was tougher than my druid, able to easily handle taking on 3 mobs at once while I pew pewed (or twang twanged as I'm using a bow). I hammered through the two levels to get to 30 without breaking a sweat and found I really enjoyed it. I've played a hunter to 70 on the alliance side so I know the playstyle well and I do enjoy pet classes, it's just a shame warlocks are so badly broken at the moment that demonology is really no fun to play. Anyway, level 30 and a quick trip to Orgrimmar and I had two alts with mounts.
I decided I'd also go back and check in with my Blood Elf paladin. She was only level 16 and I'd stopped playing her after getting frustrated at trying to get onto the boat during the quest to collect the three night elf scrolls. I'd been using her to store ore and stone for my Death Knight's blacksmithing but dropped all that off in the bank and decided to take her out for a spin. Obviously for levelling she's retribution specced so I checked what quests I had and ran her out. Damn they have changed paladins, and oh so much for the better. Blessings now last 10 minutes rather than 5 and judgements are no longer based on judging the seal. A quick run around the area of Tranquilien learning the style and I was ready to head off and try the quests again. To be honest it was a joke. Killed all the elves on board the boat with no problem at all and did most of the rest of the quests without any real trouble, though the trolls with the cat pets do tend to do a lot of damage. Even managed to solo Kel'gash the Wicked easily enough. A couple of hours running around and she was level 20 and looking good. I'll be heading her out to the Undead zones soon, can't face another character doing Stonetalon Mountains and Thousand Needles.
Overall it was a pretty relaxed weekend. I'm glad I got the druid levelling done first, as I found the hunter and paladin far more pleasurable to level. I think I'll do that as the pattern to make sure I finish each session on a bit of a high. I'm sure once I've got a few more levels on the druid I'll enjoy it more, as I do like in your face combat more than I do hanging back and dpsing at range. It's a shame I can't get into my mage more at the moment as she's languishing at level 70 and could really do with running up the levels to get some green quest rewards to disenchant and some more cloth to help her tailoring. Still, now I'm levelling again you never know...
Tuesday 27 January 2009
What a weekend!
Well last weekend was a superb success for this particular cow tank. Started on Friday night. With only eight of us we headed to Obsidian Sanctum as we didn't have Wintergrasp so Archavon wasn't available. While the group were gathering we won Wintergrasp and so quickly headed off there. Eight of us went in and it was no problem to take the big guy down. We got a couple of pieces of the pve gear which was nice, then headed straight down to kill Sartharion.
Managed to do all the trash, the drakes and Sartharion without a single wipe and the tier 7 gloves token for hunters, shaman and warriors dropped. Now our shaman had joined a 25 man Archavon raid a few weeks ago and already has the tier 7.5 gloves so it was an uncontested roll and this particular cow tank was very, very happy.
Went on to Naxxramas and quickly cleared our way to Anub'rekhan. Having watched the video on tankspot I asked to have a go at tanking the boss. Damn getting the movement right is hard. I just about managed it the first time around but failed on the second and the raid wiped. We picked ourselves back up and I let the druid tank do it as he'd been successful the week before. I took on the adds and it worked nicely, 1 boss down and some purples for people to pick up. One small problem that came up was with Deadly Boss Mobs that seemed to get the timing of the aoes wrong. We then moved on to Grand Widow Faerlina, confident after our performance on the previous week that this wasn't going to take too long.
Oh how fate likes to knock us down. Having charged in and pulled Faerlina away I was happily tanking her when the enrage warning went off. I informed DPS who immediately killed one of the adds. A few seconds later the enrage went off, which was a bit of a surprise, so I shouted again and the dps killed the second add. Didn't stop me getting whalloped stupidly hard and the raid wiping. Hmmm seems something was up, DBM was reporting incorrect timings. Ok so we go back in and decide to try again, however this time I'll call the warnings when I actually see her enrage. I call it loud when it happens, and I see an add go down but she doesn't stop her enrage, so I call again and another add goes down, still no stopping the enrage. Wipe. Hmmm. One of the guild asks in general Naxx chat whether she's bugged, seems people are pretty sure she is in the 25 man version and not so sure about 10 man. A quick guild discussion and we decide to leave her where she is and assume she's bugged for now.
So we talk about what to do next and decide it's time to try Patchwerk again. This time the druid and I decided to swap duties. He was the hateful strike recipient and I was to just be the normal tank. We headed into Construct Quarter and were clearing the trash when the Minion Bracer dropped. Woot! Damn nice bracer, ranked 3rd on the current tankspot gear listings. Grabbed that sucker with a need roll and equipped it immediately.
Finished clearing the trash and got into position for Patch. Quick pull and position and we began our tanking. Patch is an easy fight from one point of view, in that you go all out, use every damage ability you have as often as possible and try to get him down. He only damages the two tanks and stays stuck on them as long as they have the highest threat and the highest amount of hit points. The hardest thing is that he has a hard 5 minute enrage timer and he hits like a freight train so he's hard on the healer's mana.
The first time we tried the paladin healer ran out of mana with Patch on about 5 percent which was a real shame. We regrouped, the paladin confident that he could take a little more time between heals rather than just full on spamming. Set up, pulled and got him down with about a minute to spare before the enrage timer. Awesome feeling of accomplishment at getting him down and with only nine people. Very impressive work from everyone in the guild on that fight.
Decided it was time to call it a night there.
Saturday we had UK as the daily heroic and I wanted to try UP for the Red Sword of Courage. Hit UK and did it without even thinking, mage, pally healer, pally dps, DK dps and me. Everyone was ok to help with UP and so we headed in. Cleared the first and second bosses with no problems then on to the third. Oh Blizz, how I hate thee somedays. Started working our way slowly and surely down the gauntlet, the mage picking up the harpoons. Suddenly everything disappeared and the whole thing reset. So we moved back, Skadi appeared again, we started the event and moved down. Got all the way to the end, rest. So all the way back to the start and try again. This time got half way, reset. The DK needed to go then so we brought in a priest who was online to help out. Start again, all the way to the end, mage gets him down off his mount but I'm confused by the call, thinking he's just started shooting when he meant he'd got him down, so I wasn't there to pick him up and we wipe. Getting frustrated with the resets now I say time to call it a halt, but the mage says no, we'll get this sucker if he brings out druid tank. Druid tank comes in and we go again, this time the druid collecting the harpoons. Slow and steady movement to the end, bring him down and boom, between the druid and my tank we keep him from wiping everyone and burn him down. I even get the nice tanking belt from him when he drops.
A word about this whole encounter on heroic. The problem is not the mobs as they come down, it's not even Skadi when you get him down. As long as you have a decent healer, competent dps who move when told to avoid the ice it's easy. The hard part is when you get to the end with the harpoons you have undead generating in a room off to the side. These are the bloody annoying bit, because they tend to fire spells or throw harpoons at your healer through small gaps between the pillar and the wall. It's hard to tank these guys and grab them and get them out without your healer getting perilously close to the place where Skadi will land. This requires a cool head from the tank, dps and healer to get these guys dead while making sure when Skadi lands he's not on top of everyone in the group. Once you've got Skadi down it's just a case of hitting him hard, and everyone moving when he whirlwinds. The tank can taunt him back once he gets a little way away and then it's fairly simple.
So onward through the rest of the critters until King Ymiron's room. Ymiron isn't particularly difficult, you just have to avoid the orb stage. We'd never seen him do the orb before, even though we'd run this instance once on normal before. The first time he channeled it and I didn't move him as I didn't realise that's what he was doing. Seconds later we all wiped. Still, now I'd seen it and knew what to look for. Second time when he summoned it I moved away and kept kiting him around the room away from it. It moves pretty slowly and no one got hurt by it as we kept him moving and kept the dps up. Got him through all four stages and he dropped and the sweet bastard that he is he dropped the Red Sword on the first go. I am so glad I don't have to drag my guild through that place again because really the event with Skadi is just a real pain.
So that left this particular cow tank with a weekend which already included a pair of tier 7 gloves, an awesome bracer and weapon upgrade and 73 emblems of heroism to play with. I also got the mats together to give to a guildie blacksmith to make me the lovely tanking helm. Unfortunately this leaves me short of titansteel for my hog when I get the recipe, but then that's months away anyway. So with seven badges to go it was time to get some instances done on Sunday.
As always we hit Violet Hold, kicking our way through the bosses in there for an easy three badges. UK was the daily so we picked up that quest and sped over to UK for another easy set of badges. 78 now and so close to the tier 7 chestpiece. A quick discussion and we decided on Gundrak, a nice place to run for 5 badges. Off we go and within a few minutes we've got the second boss down on the first go. Off to pick up the second boss, drag him back with the newly nerfed engineering speed up on boots and ready to spank his ass. Working him down, avoiding the poison novas as best I can (which to be honest is pretty bad) and suddenly there are snakes heading past. Not the big humanoid types but the snakes that do snake wrap. WTF? Next thing I know the pally is calling over vent to say he's snake wrapped. The pally dps is dead (no surprise there really) and we wipe. Seems like Blizzard have fixed the exploit of pulling the first boss to the second bosses room. We rez and head in to the entrance nearest the spirit healer, which is on the other side of the instance. Quick run down, kill the mobs around the pit then on to Moorabi. Pull, tank, interrupt his changes as often as possible and he changes at about 40% which is a bit slack on our part. Still we kick his ass and decide to head down to do Eck. Easy enough, run down and kill the little monsters, pull the three out of the room and then charge in and all stay close to burn Eck down. Now I'm over 80 shards. Quick discussion and we decide to head back around and try snake boss again.
Fail. Too many snake wraps. So we decide we'll go again, putting the pally on the snake adds. Two reasons for this, one his damage output is high, two it's better to get him out of the main fight as he never seems to get out of poison nova and never heals himself when he gets hurt. Maybe he can deal with the snakes Pull and epic fail again. Pally is dead in about 30 seconds, and I can tell from the calls of the others in the group that he wasn't doing what we wanted him to anyway. So we decide to take a break after a reasonably frustrating time. Still, when we get back to Dalaran it's off to the emblem vendor, grab the token for the breastplate and get it from the woman at the blacksmiths. Sweet! So in one weekend I've got a new helm, sword, gloves, wrist and breastplate. My hit points are around 28k, armor about 23.4k and a sword doing 30 more dps than the previous one. Bring on any boss you care to name.
Managed to do all the trash, the drakes and Sartharion without a single wipe and the tier 7 gloves token for hunters, shaman and warriors dropped. Now our shaman had joined a 25 man Archavon raid a few weeks ago and already has the tier 7.5 gloves so it was an uncontested roll and this particular cow tank was very, very happy.
Went on to Naxxramas and quickly cleared our way to Anub'rekhan. Having watched the video on tankspot I asked to have a go at tanking the boss. Damn getting the movement right is hard. I just about managed it the first time around but failed on the second and the raid wiped. We picked ourselves back up and I let the druid tank do it as he'd been successful the week before. I took on the adds and it worked nicely, 1 boss down and some purples for people to pick up. One small problem that came up was with Deadly Boss Mobs that seemed to get the timing of the aoes wrong. We then moved on to Grand Widow Faerlina, confident after our performance on the previous week that this wasn't going to take too long.
Oh how fate likes to knock us down. Having charged in and pulled Faerlina away I was happily tanking her when the enrage warning went off. I informed DPS who immediately killed one of the adds. A few seconds later the enrage went off, which was a bit of a surprise, so I shouted again and the dps killed the second add. Didn't stop me getting whalloped stupidly hard and the raid wiping. Hmmm seems something was up, DBM was reporting incorrect timings. Ok so we go back in and decide to try again, however this time I'll call the warnings when I actually see her enrage. I call it loud when it happens, and I see an add go down but she doesn't stop her enrage, so I call again and another add goes down, still no stopping the enrage. Wipe. Hmmm. One of the guild asks in general Naxx chat whether she's bugged, seems people are pretty sure she is in the 25 man version and not so sure about 10 man. A quick guild discussion and we decide to leave her where she is and assume she's bugged for now.
So we talk about what to do next and decide it's time to try Patchwerk again. This time the druid and I decided to swap duties. He was the hateful strike recipient and I was to just be the normal tank. We headed into Construct Quarter and were clearing the trash when the Minion Bracer dropped. Woot! Damn nice bracer, ranked 3rd on the current tankspot gear listings. Grabbed that sucker with a need roll and equipped it immediately.
Finished clearing the trash and got into position for Patch. Quick pull and position and we began our tanking. Patch is an easy fight from one point of view, in that you go all out, use every damage ability you have as often as possible and try to get him down. He only damages the two tanks and stays stuck on them as long as they have the highest threat and the highest amount of hit points. The hardest thing is that he has a hard 5 minute enrage timer and he hits like a freight train so he's hard on the healer's mana.
The first time we tried the paladin healer ran out of mana with Patch on about 5 percent which was a real shame. We regrouped, the paladin confident that he could take a little more time between heals rather than just full on spamming. Set up, pulled and got him down with about a minute to spare before the enrage timer. Awesome feeling of accomplishment at getting him down and with only nine people. Very impressive work from everyone in the guild on that fight.
Decided it was time to call it a night there.
Saturday we had UK as the daily heroic and I wanted to try UP for the Red Sword of Courage. Hit UK and did it without even thinking, mage, pally healer, pally dps, DK dps and me. Everyone was ok to help with UP and so we headed in. Cleared the first and second bosses with no problems then on to the third. Oh Blizz, how I hate thee somedays. Started working our way slowly and surely down the gauntlet, the mage picking up the harpoons. Suddenly everything disappeared and the whole thing reset. So we moved back, Skadi appeared again, we started the event and moved down. Got all the way to the end, rest. So all the way back to the start and try again. This time got half way, reset. The DK needed to go then so we brought in a priest who was online to help out. Start again, all the way to the end, mage gets him down off his mount but I'm confused by the call, thinking he's just started shooting when he meant he'd got him down, so I wasn't there to pick him up and we wipe. Getting frustrated with the resets now I say time to call it a halt, but the mage says no, we'll get this sucker if he brings out druid tank. Druid tank comes in and we go again, this time the druid collecting the harpoons. Slow and steady movement to the end, bring him down and boom, between the druid and my tank we keep him from wiping everyone and burn him down. I even get the nice tanking belt from him when he drops.
A word about this whole encounter on heroic. The problem is not the mobs as they come down, it's not even Skadi when you get him down. As long as you have a decent healer, competent dps who move when told to avoid the ice it's easy. The hard part is when you get to the end with the harpoons you have undead generating in a room off to the side. These are the bloody annoying bit, because they tend to fire spells or throw harpoons at your healer through small gaps between the pillar and the wall. It's hard to tank these guys and grab them and get them out without your healer getting perilously close to the place where Skadi will land. This requires a cool head from the tank, dps and healer to get these guys dead while making sure when Skadi lands he's not on top of everyone in the group. Once you've got Skadi down it's just a case of hitting him hard, and everyone moving when he whirlwinds. The tank can taunt him back once he gets a little way away and then it's fairly simple.
So onward through the rest of the critters until King Ymiron's room. Ymiron isn't particularly difficult, you just have to avoid the orb stage. We'd never seen him do the orb before, even though we'd run this instance once on normal before. The first time he channeled it and I didn't move him as I didn't realise that's what he was doing. Seconds later we all wiped. Still, now I'd seen it and knew what to look for. Second time when he summoned it I moved away and kept kiting him around the room away from it. It moves pretty slowly and no one got hurt by it as we kept him moving and kept the dps up. Got him through all four stages and he dropped and the sweet bastard that he is he dropped the Red Sword on the first go. I am so glad I don't have to drag my guild through that place again because really the event with Skadi is just a real pain.
So that left this particular cow tank with a weekend which already included a pair of tier 7 gloves, an awesome bracer and weapon upgrade and 73 emblems of heroism to play with. I also got the mats together to give to a guildie blacksmith to make me the lovely tanking helm. Unfortunately this leaves me short of titansteel for my hog when I get the recipe, but then that's months away anyway. So with seven badges to go it was time to get some instances done on Sunday.
As always we hit Violet Hold, kicking our way through the bosses in there for an easy three badges. UK was the daily so we picked up that quest and sped over to UK for another easy set of badges. 78 now and so close to the tier 7 chestpiece. A quick discussion and we decided on Gundrak, a nice place to run for 5 badges. Off we go and within a few minutes we've got the second boss down on the first go. Off to pick up the second boss, drag him back with the newly nerfed engineering speed up on boots and ready to spank his ass. Working him down, avoiding the poison novas as best I can (which to be honest is pretty bad) and suddenly there are snakes heading past. Not the big humanoid types but the snakes that do snake wrap. WTF? Next thing I know the pally is calling over vent to say he's snake wrapped. The pally dps is dead (no surprise there really) and we wipe. Seems like Blizzard have fixed the exploit of pulling the first boss to the second bosses room. We rez and head in to the entrance nearest the spirit healer, which is on the other side of the instance. Quick run down, kill the mobs around the pit then on to Moorabi. Pull, tank, interrupt his changes as often as possible and he changes at about 40% which is a bit slack on our part. Still we kick his ass and decide to head down to do Eck. Easy enough, run down and kill the little monsters, pull the three out of the room and then charge in and all stay close to burn Eck down. Now I'm over 80 shards. Quick discussion and we decide to head back around and try snake boss again.
Fail. Too many snake wraps. So we decide we'll go again, putting the pally on the snake adds. Two reasons for this, one his damage output is high, two it's better to get him out of the main fight as he never seems to get out of poison nova and never heals himself when he gets hurt. Maybe he can deal with the snakes Pull and epic fail again. Pally is dead in about 30 seconds, and I can tell from the calls of the others in the group that he wasn't doing what we wanted him to anyway. So we decide to take a break after a reasonably frustrating time. Still, when we get back to Dalaran it's off to the emblem vendor, grab the token for the breastplate and get it from the woman at the blacksmiths. Sweet! So in one weekend I've got a new helm, sword, gloves, wrist and breastplate. My hit points are around 28k, armor about 23.4k and a sword doing 30 more dps than the previous one. Bring on any boss you care to name.
Monday 19 January 2009
Raiding weekend - lessons to be learned
Friday night we attempted our first guild raid. With 2 tanks, 2 healers and five DPS we checked to see whether we had Wintergrasp and as we did we went for Vault of Archavon.
Straight into the instance we worked our way fairly easily down to his room.
I'd read the strategies. I'd watched a video. Now it was time to see how we would do against our first raid boss.
Answer? Easy. With only nine players, 7 of which were what you'd call entry level raid geared we took Archavon down. Cue much whooping and hollering on in-game chat. Okay, so far so good then. On to Sartharion in Obsidian Sanctum.
Well this was rather a change. Tried to do the first trash pull on the left and ended up wiping badly. Didn't manage to get any real kill order in, CC just didn't get used properly and we got the two big adds join in.
Reassembled and used some CC. Druid pulled with hibernate, pally repentanced one, I off tanked one and the group burned the other two down as the druid held them. Much better, all dead and no fatalities. Now on to the two wanderers.
Druid pulls one, I off tank the other. Druid shouts for the group to go on my target and I'm whaling the hell out of it with everything I have. His hit points aren't moving, and when they do they go straight back up again. Now we know what this is, someone has the debuff that heals when they hit, but they're not stopping. We end up with dps switching targets until it all gets too much and we wipe again.
A general discussion, repetition of tactics and in again. Same method, I off tank one and druid tanks the other. This time the dps are listening and if they get debuffed they back off until it's cleared. Nice and neat, two mobs down. Move up and into the first boss. We know the tactic, wait until the portal, go in and clear up then dps the boss. Wipe, I'd forgotten about the damage of the circles on the ground and stood in it while it killed me. My fault. Try again and either something glitched or it was very odd because even with a portal up we could still dps the boss. So we all stayed there and killed it pretty quickly.
Couple more trash pulls then onto the second boss. We decided to try ignore the portal, get in there and kill the dragon with the druid scooping up adds. Worked like a charm, dead dragon and no deaths. Onto the final dragon. This time we had to do the run into the portal to kill the add but it was smooth, I kept moving out of the circles and soon we had another dead dragon. Finished off the trash and onto the boss. Everyone got ready and our warlock appeared so we invited in and got him to the instance. 10 of us for the final boss.
I was main tanking so ran in and positioned the boss over on the left. We had our pally shouting the moves for the waves and to be honest it wasn't too difficult. I could see the ones coming from the right and moved Sartharion accordingly. However some of the melee got caught in a couple of waves and the damage was too much. Wipe.
Second attempt, same tactics but this time better movement from everyone, including me. Solid, steady dps and healing and soon the dragon was defeated. Two short raids in our first night. Not bad for a guild of casual, if mostly skilled players.
Then onto Naxx. We decided to pop in and see if we could down Anub'rekhan in the Spider wing. I hadn't watched the tankspot video (not expecting us to hit Naxx that night) so the first two attempts didn't go too well. I didn't do the run properly, trying to kite backwards rather than just running away. Cue frustrating time for all. So our bear tank, who had watched the video stepped in to MT and I switched to OT the adds.
Worked first time, though I had some hairy moments taking serious damage from the adds. Unfortunately our priest doesn't inspire confidence with his healing. I'm constantly hearing the less than 30% health warnings which always puts me on edge. Still, I didn't die and we got Anub'rekhan down. 3 raid bosses and a few wipes. Not bad for a Friday.
Little did we realise what was to come. Not enough people online on Saturday but by 8 ish on Sunday we had nine online and decided to hit Naxx again. Deciding to carry on in the spider wing we moved on to Grand Widow Faerlina. No problem on the trash on the way and soon we're standing before her. I ran through tactics over chat. Get all the adds down to low hit points then when she enrages kill one. Do the same each time she enrages then go all out when the last has died. I tagged Faerlina and pulled her a little distance away and watched as the melee killed one of the adds before the first enrage. On the second enrage they killed one of the adds then started in and killed the next. The damage from the enrage is mental, and with nothing to stop it, dead tank. The bear tried to step in but it didn't last long.
So we went back in, discussed the tactic again and began the fight. Much, much better. I called the enrages and the dps took the adds down in the right order, one per enrage. The end was still hairy because even with cooldowns and a decent if not spectacular set of gear she was still hammering my hit points. However she died, and no fatalities amongst our players so all was well.
Moved on through the instance clearing our way to Maexxna. Now this is a bitch of a fight. First time poor placement on my part made clearing the webs more difficult, and though the healing was solid I died because the necrotic spray was on me and the shammy was clearing it from the warlock. Too much damage and we wiped.
Second time we lost the paladin to a web wrap against the wall and the priest didn't switch fast enough to heal me and the group wiped.
Third time and we had the positioning sorted but between the spiders that were attacking the healers, the web wraps and necrotic spray we wiped. Same on the fourth try. This fight is not built for our group setup. Only two healers makes it difficult if you lose one. A shammy who is enhancement specced and pretty much our best dps can't do that and clear the necrotic spray very easily and having a single druid in cat form dpsing the webs and trying to keep control of the spider adds isn't enough. We only had 9 at this point and the only way we would have done it easily would be to add a healing shammy for poison clearing and a few more heals to help out. We'll go back to it, but we decided it was time for a change after four wipes and not even being close to taking the spider down.
So we moved on to Patchwerk. Should be fairly easy right? Standard tank and spank right? Well in theory...
Trash proved no real problem with the splitting the tanking duties up fairly easily. We cleared the area, positioned ourselves and the druid pulled Patchy. I think we had him at about 75% when I died. The priests healing simply couldn't keep up. To be honest I should have pulled and the bear should have been the one taking the hateful strikes. He's got more armor, more hit points but a little lower avoidance. Reading the strategies it would probably have been best to have him taking hateful strikes while being healed by the paladin while I take normal melee while being healed by the priest. We were probably knocking out enough dps to take him out, but with only two healers it's a pretty tough fight.
Overall a successful Friday and an annoying Sunday. We may get enough on tonight to try again for Patchwerk and Maexxna but if not there's always next week...
Straight into the instance we worked our way fairly easily down to his room.
I'd read the strategies. I'd watched a video. Now it was time to see how we would do against our first raid boss.
Answer? Easy. With only nine players, 7 of which were what you'd call entry level raid geared we took Archavon down. Cue much whooping and hollering on in-game chat. Okay, so far so good then. On to Sartharion in Obsidian Sanctum.
Well this was rather a change. Tried to do the first trash pull on the left and ended up wiping badly. Didn't manage to get any real kill order in, CC just didn't get used properly and we got the two big adds join in.
Reassembled and used some CC. Druid pulled with hibernate, pally repentanced one, I off tanked one and the group burned the other two down as the druid held them. Much better, all dead and no fatalities. Now on to the two wanderers.
Druid pulls one, I off tank the other. Druid shouts for the group to go on my target and I'm whaling the hell out of it with everything I have. His hit points aren't moving, and when they do they go straight back up again. Now we know what this is, someone has the debuff that heals when they hit, but they're not stopping. We end up with dps switching targets until it all gets too much and we wipe again.
A general discussion, repetition of tactics and in again. Same method, I off tank one and druid tanks the other. This time the dps are listening and if they get debuffed they back off until it's cleared. Nice and neat, two mobs down. Move up and into the first boss. We know the tactic, wait until the portal, go in and clear up then dps the boss. Wipe, I'd forgotten about the damage of the circles on the ground and stood in it while it killed me. My fault. Try again and either something glitched or it was very odd because even with a portal up we could still dps the boss. So we all stayed there and killed it pretty quickly.
Couple more trash pulls then onto the second boss. We decided to try ignore the portal, get in there and kill the dragon with the druid scooping up adds. Worked like a charm, dead dragon and no deaths. Onto the final dragon. This time we had to do the run into the portal to kill the add but it was smooth, I kept moving out of the circles and soon we had another dead dragon. Finished off the trash and onto the boss. Everyone got ready and our warlock appeared so we invited in and got him to the instance. 10 of us for the final boss.
I was main tanking so ran in and positioned the boss over on the left. We had our pally shouting the moves for the waves and to be honest it wasn't too difficult. I could see the ones coming from the right and moved Sartharion accordingly. However some of the melee got caught in a couple of waves and the damage was too much. Wipe.
Second attempt, same tactics but this time better movement from everyone, including me. Solid, steady dps and healing and soon the dragon was defeated. Two short raids in our first night. Not bad for a guild of casual, if mostly skilled players.
Then onto Naxx. We decided to pop in and see if we could down Anub'rekhan in the Spider wing. I hadn't watched the tankspot video (not expecting us to hit Naxx that night) so the first two attempts didn't go too well. I didn't do the run properly, trying to kite backwards rather than just running away. Cue frustrating time for all. So our bear tank, who had watched the video stepped in to MT and I switched to OT the adds.
Worked first time, though I had some hairy moments taking serious damage from the adds. Unfortunately our priest doesn't inspire confidence with his healing. I'm constantly hearing the less than 30% health warnings which always puts me on edge. Still, I didn't die and we got Anub'rekhan down. 3 raid bosses and a few wipes. Not bad for a Friday.
Little did we realise what was to come. Not enough people online on Saturday but by 8 ish on Sunday we had nine online and decided to hit Naxx again. Deciding to carry on in the spider wing we moved on to Grand Widow Faerlina. No problem on the trash on the way and soon we're standing before her. I ran through tactics over chat. Get all the adds down to low hit points then when she enrages kill one. Do the same each time she enrages then go all out when the last has died. I tagged Faerlina and pulled her a little distance away and watched as the melee killed one of the adds before the first enrage. On the second enrage they killed one of the adds then started in and killed the next. The damage from the enrage is mental, and with nothing to stop it, dead tank. The bear tried to step in but it didn't last long.
So we went back in, discussed the tactic again and began the fight. Much, much better. I called the enrages and the dps took the adds down in the right order, one per enrage. The end was still hairy because even with cooldowns and a decent if not spectacular set of gear she was still hammering my hit points. However she died, and no fatalities amongst our players so all was well.
Moved on through the instance clearing our way to Maexxna. Now this is a bitch of a fight. First time poor placement on my part made clearing the webs more difficult, and though the healing was solid I died because the necrotic spray was on me and the shammy was clearing it from the warlock. Too much damage and we wiped.
Second time we lost the paladin to a web wrap against the wall and the priest didn't switch fast enough to heal me and the group wiped.
Third time and we had the positioning sorted but between the spiders that were attacking the healers, the web wraps and necrotic spray we wiped. Same on the fourth try. This fight is not built for our group setup. Only two healers makes it difficult if you lose one. A shammy who is enhancement specced and pretty much our best dps can't do that and clear the necrotic spray very easily and having a single druid in cat form dpsing the webs and trying to keep control of the spider adds isn't enough. We only had 9 at this point and the only way we would have done it easily would be to add a healing shammy for poison clearing and a few more heals to help out. We'll go back to it, but we decided it was time for a change after four wipes and not even being close to taking the spider down.
So we moved on to Patchwerk. Should be fairly easy right? Standard tank and spank right? Well in theory...
Trash proved no real problem with the splitting the tanking duties up fairly easily. We cleared the area, positioned ourselves and the druid pulled Patchy. I think we had him at about 75% when I died. The priests healing simply couldn't keep up. To be honest I should have pulled and the bear should have been the one taking the hateful strikes. He's got more armor, more hit points but a little lower avoidance. Reading the strategies it would probably have been best to have him taking hateful strikes while being healed by the paladin while I take normal melee while being healed by the priest. We were probably knocking out enough dps to take him out, but with only two healers it's a pretty tough fight.
Overall a successful Friday and an annoying Sunday. We may get enough on tonight to try again for Patchwerk and Maexxna but if not there's always next week...
Monday 12 January 2009
More Heroics - Drak'Tharon Keep first time
Friday we did Violet Hold and Utgarde Keep with a strong group of shammy, rogue, priest, warlock and me. Got enough badges to get my Chained Military Gorget which I was really happy about.
However I want to talk about Saturday night and how it was a great night for heroic runs.
We started off with four getting ready to try Utgarde Keep, shammy, disc/holy priest and druid. Just as we got there our healing pally got online and we were 5. To be honest we could probably have done it with 4, but with 5 we sped through it, gathering badges and shards on the way. To be honest UK is an easy heroic, we only used shammy CC in there to make things a little easier but we could probably have done it without any of it.
We did however decide to try to get the achievement "On the Rocks" which involves not shattering any of the frost tombs he does. With two healers this was easy. I got tombed the first two times which made things easy as they were healing me anyway. The druid dps got tombed the third time but it wasn't long before it was all done and another heroic achievement done. On the second bosses rather than dps one down then the other we simply set the druid on the caster and the shammy on the tank, grouped up close together to stop the charges doing too much and burned them down with me frantically trying to hold aggro on both against very strong dps. Pretty easy to be honest. Last boss is a joke, even if you don't get out of Smash/Dark Smash our pally can heal through easily enough.
Next it was back to Dalaran to do Violet Hold. This is pretty much on farm for our guild now, we do it most days and gather the three badges. We all had the achievement "Defenseless" as have most of the guild to be fair so we had no compunction in getting the priest to use the items that kill the groups of dragonkin when they appear. Very easy run through.
The heroic daily was Drak'Tharon, an instance I've never done though some in the guild have done it on heroic before. So off we went to Grizzly Hills. Fairly straightforward instance. The guild had found the first boss difficult when they went in before but this time it was pretty easy. Tank and spank and no adds. I pulled him down the steps into the room and tanked him in the alcove on the right had side of the stairs. Tore through him quickly, looted and moved on. The second boss is a bit of an event, with mobs flooding down the stairs and coming from behind. A bit difficult at times to target the elites but generally this was pretty easy. Once they were all dead we all piled into the boss and burned him down easily.
Moved on through with a few issues with the trash (no deaths but it's hard to pull them properly and they use nets which makes tanking them a little difficult) and got to King Dred. We decided to go for the achievement, which involves killing Dred after killing 6 of the raptors that come throughout the fight. The druid stealthed and marked them all up and I pulled Dred. For me this was a fairly easy fight, keep him aggroed and do as much dps as possible. With rage no problem it was full on Heroic Strike fun, hitting him with revenges and shield slams when available and keeping up the sunder stack along with thunder clap and demo shout debuffs. In fact, I should probably have dpsed a little less because Dred died about 3 seconds before the sixth raptor did. Unfortunately the fight was a little too mana intensive for the paladin who went oom just at the end of the fight, Dred killing me just as he died. A close encounter and a shame we didn't get the achievement. Next time we should be able to.
The last fight, The Prophet Tharon'ja is pretty easy. Tank and spank him for a bit then you get turned into skeletons with a few abilities. Use all of them (except the taunt). One keeps you alive, the others do damage to him. You swap back and forth during the fight but it's pretty easy really. He soon died and we were 4 badges better off. I still had the quest for Drakuru so I completed that. As I'd already done all the Drakuru quests in Zul'Drak this was all I needed to get the "Guru of Drakuru" achievement.
Our shammy was 2 badges short of the 40 needed to get the off hand weapon he wanted so he asked if we'd be willing to do another heroic. The healing pally needed to go so we persuaded our best dps pally to come along to fill in his place, the priest finally being allowed to go back to healing. As we know the first 2 bosses in Gundrak really well we decided to give that a go. I was also hoping for the tanking shoulders to drop from the second boss.
As usual we used the tactic of ignoring the first boss and going through to the second, the Drakkari Colossus. This is an annoying fight, simply because when in his water elemental phase the boss drops pools of purple goo that do a lot of damage. This means the tank has to move him about to avoid the damage and stop the melee getting killed too. Still, we managed it with no deaths and the shoulders dropped. Cue happy tank!
The druid ran back to the first room and pulled Slad'ran, dragging him back to the room just before the second boss. Easier for a druid than a tank as druids in cat run fast and so avoid most of the damage he causes on the trip. As a tank that's been reasonably dangerous for me. As soon as he was in sight I taunted then layed into him hard. Easy fight this one, all you need is someone to control the adds and keep them off your healer and for everyone to get out of the way of poison nova. Killed him and we had the two badges the shammy needed. A quick discussion and everyone was up for finishing so on we went.
Rather than pulling all the way down the path we ran up and out, across the courtyard and down the other steps. A couple of pulls and we were at Moorabi. The key to this fight is interrupting his mammoth form change as often as possible. Eventually it gets too fast, but with a shammy, druid, pally and tank we had a fair few to rely on. He eventually changed at about 20% but was an easy burn down.
Ran off to do the optional heroic boss Eck. He's an annoying fight simply because if people spread out he jumps all over the place, regardless of aggro. Even though everyone knows the bunch up tactic seems the priest decided to back off whick led to a little problem trying to get him back on me. Still no deaths and we were soon all covered in Eck residue and had another item to disenchant.
Jumped off the platform and into the water and it was over to the final few pulls. The rhino riders are annoying, simply because while you're killing the rhino it's hard to keep aggro on the rider, who throws spears at your ranged. Still they burned down pretty quickly and we were at the last boss.
After a few runs in which this boss seemed near impossible the last two times I've done it we've not had a single death. Having dps watching out for his whirlwind is essential. Everyone spreads out then comes back in when he stops. Other than that it's burn him down and hope the healer can heal through the impale. No problems for us again this time and we had a dead troll. Unfortunately the hemorrhaging circle didn't drop for the dps and I've already got the gauntlets.
So another heroic cleared and I got the "What the Eck" achievement for having Eck residue on me during the final fight. So four heroic instances done and 20 badges earned. Now that's a good Saturday night.
However I want to talk about Saturday night and how it was a great night for heroic runs.
We started off with four getting ready to try Utgarde Keep, shammy, disc/holy priest and druid. Just as we got there our healing pally got online and we were 5. To be honest we could probably have done it with 4, but with 5 we sped through it, gathering badges and shards on the way. To be honest UK is an easy heroic, we only used shammy CC in there to make things a little easier but we could probably have done it without any of it.
We did however decide to try to get the achievement "On the Rocks" which involves not shattering any of the frost tombs he does. With two healers this was easy. I got tombed the first two times which made things easy as they were healing me anyway. The druid dps got tombed the third time but it wasn't long before it was all done and another heroic achievement done. On the second bosses rather than dps one down then the other we simply set the druid on the caster and the shammy on the tank, grouped up close together to stop the charges doing too much and burned them down with me frantically trying to hold aggro on both against very strong dps. Pretty easy to be honest. Last boss is a joke, even if you don't get out of Smash/Dark Smash our pally can heal through easily enough.
Next it was back to Dalaran to do Violet Hold. This is pretty much on farm for our guild now, we do it most days and gather the three badges. We all had the achievement "Defenseless" as have most of the guild to be fair so we had no compunction in getting the priest to use the items that kill the groups of dragonkin when they appear. Very easy run through.
The heroic daily was Drak'Tharon, an instance I've never done though some in the guild have done it on heroic before. So off we went to Grizzly Hills. Fairly straightforward instance. The guild had found the first boss difficult when they went in before but this time it was pretty easy. Tank and spank and no adds. I pulled him down the steps into the room and tanked him in the alcove on the right had side of the stairs. Tore through him quickly, looted and moved on. The second boss is a bit of an event, with mobs flooding down the stairs and coming from behind. A bit difficult at times to target the elites but generally this was pretty easy. Once they were all dead we all piled into the boss and burned him down easily.
Moved on through with a few issues with the trash (no deaths but it's hard to pull them properly and they use nets which makes tanking them a little difficult) and got to King Dred. We decided to go for the achievement, which involves killing Dred after killing 6 of the raptors that come throughout the fight. The druid stealthed and marked them all up and I pulled Dred. For me this was a fairly easy fight, keep him aggroed and do as much dps as possible. With rage no problem it was full on Heroic Strike fun, hitting him with revenges and shield slams when available and keeping up the sunder stack along with thunder clap and demo shout debuffs. In fact, I should probably have dpsed a little less because Dred died about 3 seconds before the sixth raptor did. Unfortunately the fight was a little too mana intensive for the paladin who went oom just at the end of the fight, Dred killing me just as he died. A close encounter and a shame we didn't get the achievement. Next time we should be able to.
The last fight, The Prophet Tharon'ja is pretty easy. Tank and spank him for a bit then you get turned into skeletons with a few abilities. Use all of them (except the taunt). One keeps you alive, the others do damage to him. You swap back and forth during the fight but it's pretty easy really. He soon died and we were 4 badges better off. I still had the quest for Drakuru so I completed that. As I'd already done all the Drakuru quests in Zul'Drak this was all I needed to get the "Guru of Drakuru" achievement.
Our shammy was 2 badges short of the 40 needed to get the off hand weapon he wanted so he asked if we'd be willing to do another heroic. The healing pally needed to go so we persuaded our best dps pally to come along to fill in his place, the priest finally being allowed to go back to healing. As we know the first 2 bosses in Gundrak really well we decided to give that a go. I was also hoping for the tanking shoulders to drop from the second boss.
As usual we used the tactic of ignoring the first boss and going through to the second, the Drakkari Colossus. This is an annoying fight, simply because when in his water elemental phase the boss drops pools of purple goo that do a lot of damage. This means the tank has to move him about to avoid the damage and stop the melee getting killed too. Still, we managed it with no deaths and the shoulders dropped. Cue happy tank!
The druid ran back to the first room and pulled Slad'ran, dragging him back to the room just before the second boss. Easier for a druid than a tank as druids in cat run fast and so avoid most of the damage he causes on the trip. As a tank that's been reasonably dangerous for me. As soon as he was in sight I taunted then layed into him hard. Easy fight this one, all you need is someone to control the adds and keep them off your healer and for everyone to get out of the way of poison nova. Killed him and we had the two badges the shammy needed. A quick discussion and everyone was up for finishing so on we went.
Rather than pulling all the way down the path we ran up and out, across the courtyard and down the other steps. A couple of pulls and we were at Moorabi. The key to this fight is interrupting his mammoth form change as often as possible. Eventually it gets too fast, but with a shammy, druid, pally and tank we had a fair few to rely on. He eventually changed at about 20% but was an easy burn down.
Ran off to do the optional heroic boss Eck. He's an annoying fight simply because if people spread out he jumps all over the place, regardless of aggro. Even though everyone knows the bunch up tactic seems the priest decided to back off whick led to a little problem trying to get him back on me. Still no deaths and we were soon all covered in Eck residue and had another item to disenchant.
Jumped off the platform and into the water and it was over to the final few pulls. The rhino riders are annoying, simply because while you're killing the rhino it's hard to keep aggro on the rider, who throws spears at your ranged. Still they burned down pretty quickly and we were at the last boss.
After a few runs in which this boss seemed near impossible the last two times I've done it we've not had a single death. Having dps watching out for his whirlwind is essential. Everyone spreads out then comes back in when he stops. Other than that it's burn him down and hope the healer can heal through the impale. No problems for us again this time and we had a dead troll. Unfortunately the hemorrhaging circle didn't drop for the dps and I've already got the gauntlets.
So another heroic cleared and I got the "What the Eck" achievement for having Eck residue on me during the final fight. So four heroic instances done and 20 badges earned. Now that's a good Saturday night.
Thursday 8 January 2009
On warlocks
For a long time my main on my current server was a Horde warlock. It was my first character. I'd played a warlock in beta and enjoyed it, and so I played it to 60 when that's the highest level you could get.
Then I dropped from the game for a while, played Alliance on another server for a year or so, then got convinced to come back and play my warlock again. By this time they'd added new talents and you could get a felguard pet. So I respecced demonology and took that bad boy out for a run. I loved it. I tore through Outland, destroying everything in my wake. The guild I'd joined that my buddy was in was great. They were already full of 70s and they were doing the top end instances so when I got to 68 I started running with them too. They were all very good players, amazingly good at recovering when anything went wrong. I worked hard to keep up, to polish my skills and soon I was 70 and part of a regular team which was running the top end instances. The great thing was as soon as 5 guildies were online, including someone with a healer and another with a tank we'd hit somewhere for gear or faction.
I had some holiday time and one of the guildies who loved pvp offered to show me around the various battlegrounds. For me pvp had remained something I'd stayed away from, due to a few bad experiences with first person shooter games online in my youth. He loved pvp, he even has a character with over 100,000 honor kills, so when he offered to show me around I figured why not? I don't have anything to lose.
I loved it too. Well all except Warsong Gulch. The whole grab the flag and hide was just frustrating as hell for me. But Arathi Basin, Alterac Valley and especially Eye of the Storm (because Horde used to destroy Alliance 9 times out of 10 in my battlegroup). I also loved the gear that was available. It was far better than anything I could get out of instance bosses or faction rewards, given that season 1 was available for honor and badges. So I began to farm. Honor in Alterac Valley and tokens from all the others. During the week, every day for about 3 hours and most of the day at weekends I would be in pvp land getting myself geared. It took a month or so, but I was covered in purple gear that for a warlock was exceptional for both pvp and pve. High stam, high int, high +spell damage. It was wonderful.
People then began to talk about heroics. We'd never done that kind of thing before, it had seemed too tough for a casual guild. So we started out slow, into Slave Pens. It was tough in there, mobs hit hard, but we persevered. We worked at it and we got so we could do the instances pretty quickly. We had Botanica on farm, every night 5 badges. People were buying up gear and whispers were starting about Karazhan. For a small guild this was the holy grail, a raid instance we could probably do. I was keen. Nowhere else could I get upgrades at the time, even from badge items.
We worked on Kara until we could get as far as Curator. We could only ever get enough people on two nights a week so we never got further than the Chess Event. It was fun! I finally managed to get a couple of upgrade drops, the cloak from Moroes and the Staff of Infinite Mysteries from Curator. Life was good. With the advent of the Sunwell I even spent 100 badges on a very nice chest piece. Things calmed down though, less people were coming online and we stopped raiding Kara. There was a lull, but the excitement was simmering, because sometime later in the year we'd have Wrath to look forward to. New instances, new challenges, new gear.
In the lull, and with the advent of increased experience all the way through Outland I levelled my warrior and my mage to 70, ready for the expansion. When it came, my warlock was the first on the zeppelin from the Undercity, the first to see Howling Fjord. I did all the quests, then switched to Borean Tundra and did them all there. I was a little disappointed though. My gear was better than a lot of the quest rewards, and most of the blue rewards had crit on them. I didn't want crit, I was demonology, I was only interested in gear with +stam, +int and +damage, it was all I needed. I moved on into Dragonblight, and into Grizzly Hills and all the time I was utterly underwhelmed by the gear choices I was getting, and by the experience of playing the warlock. The damage upgrade on spells seemed low when I trained. My new level 75 spell was based on me being face to face with my foe which I never was, it wasn't my playstyle. The level 80 spell was a teleport. How was that going to help me level, or grind, or be useful in instances?
I got as far as level 77 before I decided it was time to really level my warrior. I'd got him to 73, mainly by doing the quests that would get me to the stage where I had the quests in instances. I'd main tanked Uthgarde Keep and Nexxus and got good rewards from there so I decided to push on to 80. So I stormed through the zones, doing the odd instance with my guild on the way. At 77 I bought him epic flying and cold weather flying. Eventually I was 80, I had pretty decent gear thanks to Ciderhelm's great level 80 easy defense guide. I spent a lot of time levelling engineering to get the tanking goggles and the tanking gun (and the wonderful Gnomish Army Knife). I got a guildie blacksmith to make me the tanking shield and I felt ready to hit heroics.
All the time my warlock was languishing. I just felt no desire to level her. She was sitting there with distinctly average gear and distinctly under par feeling spells. My pet was taking a fair beating from mobs, requiring plenty more healing than it had seemed to need before. Nothing felt like it was scaling right. Eventually I levelled her to 80, but I didn't really enjoy it. I did it because it would help level her Inscription by herbing while I was levelling and I did it because I felt I owed it to the guild to have a dps character for those times when our guild leader fancied tanking in bear mode. I also did it because I want to make a hog for my warrior and levelling and doing quests makes cash.
Warlocks need some love. I agree at one time they were overpowered, but never has it seemed so tedious and pointless playing one now. I loved that character. I played it for a year or so, doing instances and having fun. I could dish out good damage, usually either top or second in Karazhan, up against some very well equipped and skilled rogues and mages. I had utility too, soulstones, healthstones, CC on elementals and demons. I've still got those, but I just don't seem to have the rest. Normalisation has meant that lots of gear has +crit now. I suppose I could go destruction, but to be honest I just can't be arsed. Maybe when the Blizzard love machine targets it's eye on warlocks things will change. Maybe when they get a boost I'll get back into pvp with her and have a good time. Until then she'll sit for the most part in Orgrimmar, waiting for me to decide on what spec to give her now she's level 80, or waiting to be taken out to do quests in Northrend purely for the cash. A sad end to a once loved toon.
Then I dropped from the game for a while, played Alliance on another server for a year or so, then got convinced to come back and play my warlock again. By this time they'd added new talents and you could get a felguard pet. So I respecced demonology and took that bad boy out for a run. I loved it. I tore through Outland, destroying everything in my wake. The guild I'd joined that my buddy was in was great. They were already full of 70s and they were doing the top end instances so when I got to 68 I started running with them too. They were all very good players, amazingly good at recovering when anything went wrong. I worked hard to keep up, to polish my skills and soon I was 70 and part of a regular team which was running the top end instances. The great thing was as soon as 5 guildies were online, including someone with a healer and another with a tank we'd hit somewhere for gear or faction.
I had some holiday time and one of the guildies who loved pvp offered to show me around the various battlegrounds. For me pvp had remained something I'd stayed away from, due to a few bad experiences with first person shooter games online in my youth. He loved pvp, he even has a character with over 100,000 honor kills, so when he offered to show me around I figured why not? I don't have anything to lose.
I loved it too. Well all except Warsong Gulch. The whole grab the flag and hide was just frustrating as hell for me. But Arathi Basin, Alterac Valley and especially Eye of the Storm (because Horde used to destroy Alliance 9 times out of 10 in my battlegroup). I also loved the gear that was available. It was far better than anything I could get out of instance bosses or faction rewards, given that season 1 was available for honor and badges. So I began to farm. Honor in Alterac Valley and tokens from all the others. During the week, every day for about 3 hours and most of the day at weekends I would be in pvp land getting myself geared. It took a month or so, but I was covered in purple gear that for a warlock was exceptional for both pvp and pve. High stam, high int, high +spell damage. It was wonderful.
People then began to talk about heroics. We'd never done that kind of thing before, it had seemed too tough for a casual guild. So we started out slow, into Slave Pens. It was tough in there, mobs hit hard, but we persevered. We worked at it and we got so we could do the instances pretty quickly. We had Botanica on farm, every night 5 badges. People were buying up gear and whispers were starting about Karazhan. For a small guild this was the holy grail, a raid instance we could probably do. I was keen. Nowhere else could I get upgrades at the time, even from badge items.
We worked on Kara until we could get as far as Curator. We could only ever get enough people on two nights a week so we never got further than the Chess Event. It was fun! I finally managed to get a couple of upgrade drops, the cloak from Moroes and the Staff of Infinite Mysteries from Curator. Life was good. With the advent of the Sunwell I even spent 100 badges on a very nice chest piece. Things calmed down though, less people were coming online and we stopped raiding Kara. There was a lull, but the excitement was simmering, because sometime later in the year we'd have Wrath to look forward to. New instances, new challenges, new gear.
In the lull, and with the advent of increased experience all the way through Outland I levelled my warrior and my mage to 70, ready for the expansion. When it came, my warlock was the first on the zeppelin from the Undercity, the first to see Howling Fjord. I did all the quests, then switched to Borean Tundra and did them all there. I was a little disappointed though. My gear was better than a lot of the quest rewards, and most of the blue rewards had crit on them. I didn't want crit, I was demonology, I was only interested in gear with +stam, +int and +damage, it was all I needed. I moved on into Dragonblight, and into Grizzly Hills and all the time I was utterly underwhelmed by the gear choices I was getting, and by the experience of playing the warlock. The damage upgrade on spells seemed low when I trained. My new level 75 spell was based on me being face to face with my foe which I never was, it wasn't my playstyle. The level 80 spell was a teleport. How was that going to help me level, or grind, or be useful in instances?
I got as far as level 77 before I decided it was time to really level my warrior. I'd got him to 73, mainly by doing the quests that would get me to the stage where I had the quests in instances. I'd main tanked Uthgarde Keep and Nexxus and got good rewards from there so I decided to push on to 80. So I stormed through the zones, doing the odd instance with my guild on the way. At 77 I bought him epic flying and cold weather flying. Eventually I was 80, I had pretty decent gear thanks to Ciderhelm's great level 80 easy defense guide. I spent a lot of time levelling engineering to get the tanking goggles and the tanking gun (and the wonderful Gnomish Army Knife). I got a guildie blacksmith to make me the tanking shield and I felt ready to hit heroics.
All the time my warlock was languishing. I just felt no desire to level her. She was sitting there with distinctly average gear and distinctly under par feeling spells. My pet was taking a fair beating from mobs, requiring plenty more healing than it had seemed to need before. Nothing felt like it was scaling right. Eventually I levelled her to 80, but I didn't really enjoy it. I did it because it would help level her Inscription by herbing while I was levelling and I did it because I felt I owed it to the guild to have a dps character for those times when our guild leader fancied tanking in bear mode. I also did it because I want to make a hog for my warrior and levelling and doing quests makes cash.
Warlocks need some love. I agree at one time they were overpowered, but never has it seemed so tedious and pointless playing one now. I loved that character. I played it for a year or so, doing instances and having fun. I could dish out good damage, usually either top or second in Karazhan, up against some very well equipped and skilled rogues and mages. I had utility too, soulstones, healthstones, CC on elementals and demons. I've still got those, but I just don't seem to have the rest. Normalisation has meant that lots of gear has +crit now. I suppose I could go destruction, but to be honest I just can't be arsed. Maybe when the Blizzard love machine targets it's eye on warlocks things will change. Maybe when they get a boost I'll get back into pvp with her and have a good time. Until then she'll sit for the most part in Orgrimmar, waiting for me to decide on what spec to give her now she's level 80, or waiting to be taken out to do quests in Northrend purely for the cash. A sad end to a once loved toon.
Wednesday 7 January 2009
Heroic Azjol Nerub
Well last night was a mixed bag.
Started out with five getting online, two well geared pallies, a death knight and a newly dinged 80 shammy as well as my tank. After some discussion we decided we'd try Heroic Violet Hold to see how we got on. The shammy was unsure of his healing, given that he'd never run an instance with this character (though he's the guild's bear off tank and the most experienced raider of all of us) and was still wearing a few greens. Still, we know the instance well and the dps was fairly well equipped so we decided what the hell.
Good run overall, though we did get Xevozz for the first time ever and wiped as we didn't know the tactic. After a quick wiki read I knew what to do and we downed him on the second try. Thankfully the next boss was Erekem, arguably the easiest of the bosses in the instance and soon we were facing Cyanigosa. Short fight later and with only the loss of one of the pallies (funnily enough the one who always dies) and we were looting. Nice little 3 badge run and no real stress on the healing for the shammy. Great, we know we can farm this pretty easily now.
So, we sat around while people went afk for a bit putting kids to bed, discussing what to try next. I fancied having a go at heroic Azjol Nerub, mainly in the hopes of getting the lovely +111 stam trinket from Hadronox. The guild had done this once before and explained that the last boss was a monumental pain in heroic, even though it's arguably the easiest boss in all the normal instances for a fairly well geared group at the right level.
With everyone back online we decided to give it a go.
Well it was a learning experience at least. Had no problem with any of the trash. Ok, ok so there's hardly any of it, but I'm just saying, even the two tanky mobs before the last boss weren't difficult at all.
The first event we got wiped once. Not enough dps on the waves lead to us getting the second while still toying with the first. Tactics were sound, use repentance on one of the mobs coming in and burn the other two down. Just not fast enough. Okay, back for another go. This time, smooth. For the first time I used Heroic Strike as a rage dump, eager to up my damage and help burn the mobs down faster. I know, I know, I should have been doing this from the beginning but I'm still learning ok? Timing Shield Slams, Revenges, Devestates, Thunder Claps, Shockwaves, Demoralising Shouts, Concussive Blows as well as looking to interrupt with Shield Bash means I'm watching a lot and it's taken me a while to get to the stage where I'm comfortable throwing in rage dumps from HS. However second time round, we got them all down well and moved onto Hadronox.
Two wipes here. First because again we didn't get the trash down fast enough and Hadronox was on us quick. That lead to issues with positioning and soon it was all over. The annoying thing about the Hadronox trash during the event is the fact that they seem to ignore damage from Consecration and the Death Knight aoe abilities, always going for the healer. So we got the position correct on the second try, me right at the edge of the platform to Thunder Clap and get any mobs that got near. We also detailed one of the pallies to be ready to grab any adds that ignored me. Nice and easy, got everything down quickly, with me speeding up the pulls on the second couple of mobs and we were well positioned when Hadronox started coming towards us.
Grabbed the aggro easily enough, turned him around to let the melee go to town and began to kite him around a little to avoid the poison clouds. Then it happened. I utterly lost where I was. All I could see was Hadronox and I was kiting him around in a circle. Under the platform where the healer was standing and out of line of sight. Bollocks. By the time I got back to where I could get healed it was all over bar the dying.
So, back for the third go, same tactics worked well on the trash and this time Hadronox was kited in a nice circle that kept me in range and sight of the healer. Dead spider, no trinket. Damnit, and I hate this instance already.
Long run round, fun drop down and we were at Anub'Arak. Nightmares will follow me for some time to come. Even though I've done this boss four times in normal this was just an utter pain in the ass. Four wipes and we never got past the first burrow. First attempt we got him down to the part where he disappears then the other mobs came and we were wiped by his spikes coming through the ground. I couldn't even see the damn things coming, given that at the time I was trying to grab a hold of the elites and get them dead. Second attempt our healer was wiped by the first wave of carrion beetles which killed him in a couple of seconds. Third attempt we got a pound wipe which got most of the dps and fourth time we were actually looking good before I disconnected while backing away from pound. Got back in just in time to disconnect again and it was all over. Given that my gear was down at 23% durability by this point and we were all a little frustrated we decided to call it a night.
We'll be back though, because I won't let a boss defeat me. It's all about learning. I'm not an elite tank, I don't pretend to be. I'm a guy who wants to tank for his guild and enjoys the rather more hectic playstyle than ranged dps with a warlock. Anyone reading this can laugh at my newbishness, that's sort of the point. Plenty of other people who post tell you how good they are, but I'm happy to let people know (if anyone ever reads this that is) that everyone has to learn. There's not a player out there who picked this game up and has done everything perfectly. They learned their role. They read the websites, they experimented, they crunched the numbers, they debated with others of their class, they ignored the trolls, they worked at it and they got good.
Started out with five getting online, two well geared pallies, a death knight and a newly dinged 80 shammy as well as my tank. After some discussion we decided we'd try Heroic Violet Hold to see how we got on. The shammy was unsure of his healing, given that he'd never run an instance with this character (though he's the guild's bear off tank and the most experienced raider of all of us) and was still wearing a few greens. Still, we know the instance well and the dps was fairly well equipped so we decided what the hell.
Good run overall, though we did get Xevozz for the first time ever and wiped as we didn't know the tactic. After a quick wiki read I knew what to do and we downed him on the second try. Thankfully the next boss was Erekem, arguably the easiest of the bosses in the instance and soon we were facing Cyanigosa. Short fight later and with only the loss of one of the pallies (funnily enough the one who always dies) and we were looting. Nice little 3 badge run and no real stress on the healing for the shammy. Great, we know we can farm this pretty easily now.
So, we sat around while people went afk for a bit putting kids to bed, discussing what to try next. I fancied having a go at heroic Azjol Nerub, mainly in the hopes of getting the lovely +111 stam trinket from Hadronox. The guild had done this once before and explained that the last boss was a monumental pain in heroic, even though it's arguably the easiest boss in all the normal instances for a fairly well geared group at the right level.
With everyone back online we decided to give it a go.
Well it was a learning experience at least. Had no problem with any of the trash. Ok, ok so there's hardly any of it, but I'm just saying, even the two tanky mobs before the last boss weren't difficult at all.
The first event we got wiped once. Not enough dps on the waves lead to us getting the second while still toying with the first. Tactics were sound, use repentance on one of the mobs coming in and burn the other two down. Just not fast enough. Okay, back for another go. This time, smooth. For the first time I used Heroic Strike as a rage dump, eager to up my damage and help burn the mobs down faster. I know, I know, I should have been doing this from the beginning but I'm still learning ok? Timing Shield Slams, Revenges, Devestates, Thunder Claps, Shockwaves, Demoralising Shouts, Concussive Blows as well as looking to interrupt with Shield Bash means I'm watching a lot and it's taken me a while to get to the stage where I'm comfortable throwing in rage dumps from HS. However second time round, we got them all down well and moved onto Hadronox.
Two wipes here. First because again we didn't get the trash down fast enough and Hadronox was on us quick. That lead to issues with positioning and soon it was all over. The annoying thing about the Hadronox trash during the event is the fact that they seem to ignore damage from Consecration and the Death Knight aoe abilities, always going for the healer. So we got the position correct on the second try, me right at the edge of the platform to Thunder Clap and get any mobs that got near. We also detailed one of the pallies to be ready to grab any adds that ignored me. Nice and easy, got everything down quickly, with me speeding up the pulls on the second couple of mobs and we were well positioned when Hadronox started coming towards us.
Grabbed the aggro easily enough, turned him around to let the melee go to town and began to kite him around a little to avoid the poison clouds. Then it happened. I utterly lost where I was. All I could see was Hadronox and I was kiting him around in a circle. Under the platform where the healer was standing and out of line of sight. Bollocks. By the time I got back to where I could get healed it was all over bar the dying.
So, back for the third go, same tactics worked well on the trash and this time Hadronox was kited in a nice circle that kept me in range and sight of the healer. Dead spider, no trinket. Damnit, and I hate this instance already.
Long run round, fun drop down and we were at Anub'Arak. Nightmares will follow me for some time to come. Even though I've done this boss four times in normal this was just an utter pain in the ass. Four wipes and we never got past the first burrow. First attempt we got him down to the part where he disappears then the other mobs came and we were wiped by his spikes coming through the ground. I couldn't even see the damn things coming, given that at the time I was trying to grab a hold of the elites and get them dead. Second attempt our healer was wiped by the first wave of carrion beetles which killed him in a couple of seconds. Third attempt we got a pound wipe which got most of the dps and fourth time we were actually looking good before I disconnected while backing away from pound. Got back in just in time to disconnect again and it was all over. Given that my gear was down at 23% durability by this point and we were all a little frustrated we decided to call it a night.
We'll be back though, because I won't let a boss defeat me. It's all about learning. I'm not an elite tank, I don't pretend to be. I'm a guy who wants to tank for his guild and enjoys the rather more hectic playstyle than ranged dps with a warlock. Anyone reading this can laugh at my newbishness, that's sort of the point. Plenty of other people who post tell you how good they are, but I'm happy to let people know (if anyone ever reads this that is) that everyone has to learn. There's not a player out there who picked this game up and has done everything perfectly. They learned their role. They read the websites, they experimented, they crunched the numbers, they debated with others of their class, they ignored the trolls, they worked at it and they got good.
Tuesday 6 January 2009
First Post!
Okay, I thought I'd do this in a kind of question and answer format.
Why should I read this? Because you enjoy reading about other people's experiences, the odd rant and just general thoughts about WoW as a hobby. I've been inspired by blogs such as Noobding and Big Bear Butt and so decided just to write a few thoughts now and then about low end raiding and heroics.
Why CowTank? I'm currently playing as my main a Tauren warrior on the EU server Aszune.
Why is this here? Simply because I'm enjoying playing the game and reading other blogs from players and thought I'd write a few of my own experiences and thoughts for others to laugh at, agree or disagree with and maybe even learn from.
What sort of player are you? Casual raider. Yes I know this is a contentious term and that lots of people say you can't be a casual raider. Well you know what? I don't care, the term seems to fit me. I'm in a small guild with about 14 actual players. Towards the end of Burning Crusade we were running Karazhan a couple of nights a week and doing pretty well to be honest, given that most of us weren't uber geared (well my warlock was but those were the days when a few bits of arena and lots of pvp gear were exceptional for 'locks) and that half the time we were doing Attumen and Moroes with 9 people. We actually managed to get all the way to Curator once with only 9 though we did skip Maiden on that run.
Why don't you join a 'proper' raiding guild? Because I enjoy the guild I'm in very much. Many of us are from the same town and so we meet up semi regularly for a few drinks and WoW related chat. Also everyone in the guild, without exception is polite and friendly. The larger the guild, the greater the chance to get people in who will moan about loot or bitch about not being able to get into groups. We all know what it's like. I would love to have seen more of the raid element as I levelled. I've never seen any of the 40 person raid content nor the 25 man stuff in Burning Crusade. I never saw Zul'Aman and I may never see Icecrown in 10 man. That's a shame, but I wouldn't leave the guild I'm in just for the loot because the people are great.
On the same point I don't like the pressure of larger raiding. When I played Everquest I was a cleric and I did a few things like Naggy and Hate and I just didn't like it. One mistake and you wipe, continual Complete Heal rotations and the like. The pressure of that was just too much to be fun for me. Sure it was great to get loot but the game is about more than that for me. It's about the balance between challenging and fun.
What classes have you played? Most of them to the mid fifties with the exception of druid. For a long time my main was an undead warlock but at 60 the guild I was in disbanded and so I stopped playing WoW. Then some friends who had the game came up with the idea of starting a group who would play regularly one night a week, doing all the instances. For some stupid reason I posed the idea of playing alliance on Moonglade so we did. On that server I levelled a priest and hunter to 70 as well as a paladin and rogue to 61 and a shammy to 54. Then due to frustrations about failures in heroics and encouragement from old friends on Aszune I switched back to playing my warlock up to level 70 where I found a guild capable of doing heroics with ease.
The guild were often short of tanks, and the paladin who did most of the tanking preferred to be retribution and doing battlegrounds so I thought I'd level a warrior. It took a long time and I hated most of it as I was levelling as fury but though I only did a couple of instances before Lich King came out I found tanking to be challenging and fun. This has continued all the way through Northrend, and due to the fact that I find warlocks are absolutely awful to play in Lich King my warrior has become my main. I've also levelled a mage to 70 on Aszune too and played around with a Death Knight to 60.
Anything else? I think that's enough for now, don't you?
Why should I read this? Because you enjoy reading about other people's experiences, the odd rant and just general thoughts about WoW as a hobby. I've been inspired by blogs such as Noobding and Big Bear Butt and so decided just to write a few thoughts now and then about low end raiding and heroics.
Why CowTank? I'm currently playing as my main a Tauren warrior on the EU server Aszune.
Why is this here? Simply because I'm enjoying playing the game and reading other blogs from players and thought I'd write a few of my own experiences and thoughts for others to laugh at, agree or disagree with and maybe even learn from.
What sort of player are you? Casual raider. Yes I know this is a contentious term and that lots of people say you can't be a casual raider. Well you know what? I don't care, the term seems to fit me. I'm in a small guild with about 14 actual players. Towards the end of Burning Crusade we were running Karazhan a couple of nights a week and doing pretty well to be honest, given that most of us weren't uber geared (well my warlock was but those were the days when a few bits of arena and lots of pvp gear were exceptional for 'locks) and that half the time we were doing Attumen and Moroes with 9 people. We actually managed to get all the way to Curator once with only 9 though we did skip Maiden on that run.
Why don't you join a 'proper' raiding guild? Because I enjoy the guild I'm in very much. Many of us are from the same town and so we meet up semi regularly for a few drinks and WoW related chat. Also everyone in the guild, without exception is polite and friendly. The larger the guild, the greater the chance to get people in who will moan about loot or bitch about not being able to get into groups. We all know what it's like. I would love to have seen more of the raid element as I levelled. I've never seen any of the 40 person raid content nor the 25 man stuff in Burning Crusade. I never saw Zul'Aman and I may never see Icecrown in 10 man. That's a shame, but I wouldn't leave the guild I'm in just for the loot because the people are great.
On the same point I don't like the pressure of larger raiding. When I played Everquest I was a cleric and I did a few things like Naggy and Hate and I just didn't like it. One mistake and you wipe, continual Complete Heal rotations and the like. The pressure of that was just too much to be fun for me. Sure it was great to get loot but the game is about more than that for me. It's about the balance between challenging and fun.
What classes have you played? Most of them to the mid fifties with the exception of druid. For a long time my main was an undead warlock but at 60 the guild I was in disbanded and so I stopped playing WoW. Then some friends who had the game came up with the idea of starting a group who would play regularly one night a week, doing all the instances. For some stupid reason I posed the idea of playing alliance on Moonglade so we did. On that server I levelled a priest and hunter to 70 as well as a paladin and rogue to 61 and a shammy to 54. Then due to frustrations about failures in heroics and encouragement from old friends on Aszune I switched back to playing my warlock up to level 70 where I found a guild capable of doing heroics with ease.
The guild were often short of tanks, and the paladin who did most of the tanking preferred to be retribution and doing battlegrounds so I thought I'd level a warrior. It took a long time and I hated most of it as I was levelling as fury but though I only did a couple of instances before Lich King came out I found tanking to be challenging and fun. This has continued all the way through Northrend, and due to the fact that I find warlocks are absolutely awful to play in Lich King my warrior has become my main. I've also levelled a mage to 70 on Aszune too and played around with a Death Knight to 60.
Anything else? I think that's enough for now, don't you?
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