I spent the evening wrapping Xmas presents and preparing for our holiday travels, but did pop on very late for a few minutes to do the JC and a few other dailies.
I was very happy to hear the Badger group took down Kel'thuzad without undue trouble before I got on. 2x full Naxx-10 clears is nice. I've got January 6 penciled in for a Heroic raid night. Probably Sartharian and then a little Naxx if Sarth is as easy as advertised.
I've noticed I'm having a lot of conversations about DKP with people lately, not really my favorite topic. Then when I popped in on the remaining Badger group people on vent, Bloc pointed out in jest that we'd hardly spoken since he got "demoted" to the second group. Hmm. Well, first, I really did make a conscious effort to avoid the groups getting labeled first/second (or A/B) by going with Bear and Badger, but I guess that would never be perfectly successful. And honestly, there was a little concern early on that we hadn't distributed the dps very evenly, but I think we've seen that isn't an issue. I was never worried about the tanks or healers (only that a few of us were slow to level for various reasons). But having both groups clear Naxx is just about the same amount of time should settle any issues about first/second (Bear got their earlier by calendar days by raiding more often, I think the 2 groups ran about the same number of raids to get there).
But what really dawned on me afterwards is that if I want to have conversations about more interesting things than DKP, I should be more active about seeking out better conversations. On non-raid nights, I've tended to just kick around and not even bother getting on vent. But maybe I'll start making an effort to run around checking in with people. There is some danger to guild cohesion of running in 2 groups like this, but I don't think it'd be hard to head off.
Running 25s should help a lot too. And maybe we'll start looking for opportunities to swap up some people across the 2 Naxx-10 groups as well. I think it's easy to overlook what we have going here -- a decent sized guild of strong raiders and the makings of a really good team for the Heroic raid instances. This isn't l8raid anymore. We aren't going to be struggling to fill or relying on new people who don't know the encounters or are undergeared. People used to drift in and out of l8raid, which meant the DKP system was really important. It shouldn't be that way anymore.
The crux of a lot of the DKP questions is whether we should have the same DKP for 10s and 25s. I'm inclined to have one pool for a two main reasons. First, it's a lot simpler to administer. Second, if somebody has been unlucky in the 10s, I think they should get priority in the 25s.
I see two potential problems that could arise. First, people could 'game' the system by passing over small upgrades in the 10s to save points for the best-in-slot item from the 25s. This is really only a problem if we discover the people passing on small ups can't effectively do their jobs in the 25s. Currently, I don't anticipate this being a problem (partly because Naxx is not that hard) but we'll have to see. Second, somebody could stockpile DKP in the 10s, grab a bunch of best-in-slot loot from the 25s and then leave the guild to raid elsewhere. I don't think that's going to be a problem either.
There's a side issue in that one DKP pool makes people hesitant to take off-spec gear. On one hand, that means people work harder to optimize their main spec (good). On the other hand, the flexibility of people being able to respec might be handy for maintaining class balance in the 25s. Maybe we'll re-introduce the 1/2 price offspec loot option in the 10s after a bit.
Another funny side issue is that people could basically all end up trying to farm DKP in the 10s for use in the 25s. Note that if everybody does this, nobody gets any DKP because everything gets sharded. At that point, maybe we cancel the 10s and spend all week in the 25s. Or just run 10s when we have some newer toons to gear up (who would take loot and generate DKP). I suspect this issue will self-correct quickly.
So we'll see. I'll probably get on late and hang out a little again tonight. I won't stay up late so that I won't risk being tired for driving tomorrow. Fingers crossed that I can dig up enough bandwidth over vacation to at least check in daily for the JC quest and a /wave.
Friday, December 19, 2008
Thursday, December 18, 2008
Kel'thuzad down!
On Monday... yeah I still suck at being timely. That was a pretty fun fight and a gratifying win. We spent about half the raid night cataloging the various ways to screw up the fight -- have somebody stand too far outside initially and overaggro the trash, try to melee Banshees, leave Abombs untanked, let skellies bleed through to the middle, stand in the void zones, forget to heal the victims of the frost block, stand in the void zones, stand too close to the tank and get him frost blocked, stand in the void zones, etc.
But sorting through all the chaos and closing it out felt pretty good. Then we went and got schooled on real balls-out chaos by trying Sartharian with 1 drake up. I think we set up the fight with too much depending on me -- tank the drake, collect the fire elementals, avoid the flame walls, avoid the void zones. Collecting the fire elementals is the hardest part of that and focusing on that caused me to screw up other things like avoiding the flame wall. We tried it again last night with a different drake and it seems like it would help if the healers are close enough to me for the consecrate to pick up the Lava Blazes. But since I'm moving around, they have to heal and also avoid the frontal cone breath of the dragon, which is also hard.
We never really felt like we got going seriously on the Sartharian+1 fight. However, I'm unsure whether it was technical/positioning or we just need a little more gear. For example, after Monday, it felt like we needed 3 healers, but maybe you have to be able to 2-heal it to manage the dps to kill the drake's portal add(s), the blazes and still get Sarth down before it gets crazy. OTOH, I think we were the worst geared group to do the ZA bear run, so I believe we're capable of fairly strong technical play with practice.
We did some more Naxx again Tues & Wed, but moved at a leisurely pace. We tried going for the achievement kill on Grand Widow without success. We also noticed we're about a full minute short of the 3m achievement kill on Patchwerk. Patch is a simple fight, so that probably indicates we're a bit undergeared for achievements yet in Naxx.
It felt like the last couple of nights were a little less joyful than last week's Naxx. Maybe a accomplishment-hangover following the excitement of our first KT kill and realizing we won't have another big accomplishment like that for a little while? Or maybe with the kill achieved, people have started thinking more about gear optimization as their next thing to work for. Sadly that depends on loot distribution, which is less team-oriented and maybe less fun-oriented. Or maybe it was anticipating the slower raiding schedule of the next couple of weeks due to holiday vacation travel. Or maybe it was just all the extra wipes testing ourselves against the harder versions of the battles.
Hopefully, the breaks over the holidays will get people pumped up again. I'll be frequently unavailable until around Jan 3rd. I will be trying to get online with the craptop to at least do the daily JC quest. If I can get >5 fps, I might try to do something more complicated, but I'm not counting on it.
I'm planning to put Heroic (25) raiding on the schedule first week of next year (Jan 6). It looks like we can clear Naxx-10 in two nights for both raiding groups, so it's time to measure ourselves against the Heroic versions and see how far we can get.
But sorting through all the chaos and closing it out felt pretty good. Then we went and got schooled on real balls-out chaos by trying Sartharian with 1 drake up. I think we set up the fight with too much depending on me -- tank the drake, collect the fire elementals, avoid the flame walls, avoid the void zones. Collecting the fire elementals is the hardest part of that and focusing on that caused me to screw up other things like avoiding the flame wall. We tried it again last night with a different drake and it seems like it would help if the healers are close enough to me for the consecrate to pick up the Lava Blazes. But since I'm moving around, they have to heal and also avoid the frontal cone breath of the dragon, which is also hard.
We never really felt like we got going seriously on the Sartharian+1 fight. However, I'm unsure whether it was technical/positioning or we just need a little more gear. For example, after Monday, it felt like we needed 3 healers, but maybe you have to be able to 2-heal it to manage the dps to kill the drake's portal add(s), the blazes and still get Sarth down before it gets crazy. OTOH, I think we were the worst geared group to do the ZA bear run, so I believe we're capable of fairly strong technical play with practice.
We did some more Naxx again Tues & Wed, but moved at a leisurely pace. We tried going for the achievement kill on Grand Widow without success. We also noticed we're about a full minute short of the 3m achievement kill on Patchwerk. Patch is a simple fight, so that probably indicates we're a bit undergeared for achievements yet in Naxx.
It felt like the last couple of nights were a little less joyful than last week's Naxx. Maybe a accomplishment-hangover following the excitement of our first KT kill and realizing we won't have another big accomplishment like that for a little while? Or maybe with the kill achieved, people have started thinking more about gear optimization as their next thing to work for. Sadly that depends on loot distribution, which is less team-oriented and maybe less fun-oriented. Or maybe it was anticipating the slower raiding schedule of the next couple of weeks due to holiday vacation travel. Or maybe it was just all the extra wipes testing ourselves against the harder versions of the battles.
Hopefully, the breaks over the holidays will get people pumped up again. I'll be frequently unavailable until around Jan 3rd. I will be trying to get online with the craptop to at least do the daily JC quest. If I can get >5 fps, I might try to do something more complicated, but I'm not counting on it.
I'm planning to put Heroic (25) raiding on the schedule first week of next year (Jan 6). It looks like we can clear Naxx-10 in two nights for both raiding groups, so it's time to measure ourselves against the Heroic versions and see how far we can get.
Monday, December 15, 2008
Slacking
Oof, I didn't post for almost a week. I don't know if anybody reads the blog anymore since I moved to blogger, but maybe they don't now.
The problem has been that RL has gotten unusually busy with preparations for the holidays and things. Plus, there's been so much to do online that I try to jump on when I have a few free minutes instead of trying to keep up the blog. And then there's the problem that jumping on all the time has led to some concerns about how much time the game can consume.
So last week (Tues) started with a night off somewhat unexpectedly. Then we got rolling again pretty well on Wednesday. I considered trying to get into a Heroic Thurs or Fri but got on late and everybody was formed up running heroics or Naxx or something. Sat, I did get into a heroic when Dethno graciously respecced dps so I could tank Heroic Azjol-Nerub.
Sadly, that run didn't really go that well and left me feeling like a bit of a slacker as a tank. I'm still trailing a bit as far as gearing up and instance knowledge and I felt that fairly acutely when we had trouble Sat night (especially with the better geared tank respecced to dps next to me). Fortunately, things started to turn at least a little bit. I picked up a good belt from the Heroic and we had a nice run Sunday including getting my T7 legs and even better, our first defeat of Sapphiron in Naxx.
I also made the epic tanking ring this week, so overall the gear is coming together. It's still clear that Dethno and Ragon are probably going to be the best geared tanks when we get to 25s, which has made me wonder whether I should be planning to go to those as dps, a third tank or poor healer. I'm starting to pay attention to dps gear some, but I've also been thinking about evaluating the OT things my spec brings:
The first 2, I'm pretty sure end up being about 10% extra effective mitigation to the MT (plus a little extra rage for low dmg bosses):
Devotion aura with +6% healing and +1291 armor (via Imp Devo in prot tree)
Blessing of Sanctuary: -3% damage and every block/parry/dodge gives 10 rage
These 2 talents seem helpful, but I haven't verified how useful they are:
Judgments of the Just: Active judgments reduce mob attack speed by 20%
Divine Guardian: 30% of damage taken by party/raid members within 30 yrds directed to the Paladin when Divine Shield is up (4m cooldown).
I've been meaning to check with recap if possible, but I worry that JotJ doesn't leave a visible debuff on mobs we fight, so I worry that it might not work on bosses. It's a Req 45 talent, so it really ought to work on everything, but I'd feel better if it were confirmed.
...wanders off mid-blog to Maintankadin.com...
Ok, JotJ rocks. I was worried might not stack with Demo Shout or something, but it does and it's a big mitigating factor. OTOH, I learned that the +heal part of Imp Devo doesn't stack withe Tree healing buff. So that's only effectively useful on the nights Darsonsind isn't in the raid. Interesting.
But when I'm a pure OT, I should probably start working on getting better use out of my under-used 'Hands' spells. I'm used to thinking about Hand of Protection and Hand of Freedom, but their use doesn't come up so often (hmm, I wonder if I could HoP on Dethon during Gluth -- can he still shockwave/thunderclap when under HoP?). I think I can improve by using Hand of Salvation and possible Hand of Sacrifice more often.
Hand of Salvation is -20% threat cast on a high dps. The few times I've thought to use it, there have been range issues. But I can find more opportunities for it, epecially when OT.
I'm wondering about using Hand of Sacrifice more often as extra mitigation for the MT. I could eat 30% of the MT damage for 12s (every 2m). Maybe if I was using this and the Div Guardian, it'd be worth setting a beacon on me to spread the healing automatically?
Mostly, I've been focusing on doing a little dps, occasional heals, but with practice maybe I can mix in some more specials, too. I wonder what will be the most utility in 25s -- fill in the gaps prot, or full ret in weaker gear. I guess we have a few weeks to work it out either way.
The problem has been that RL has gotten unusually busy with preparations for the holidays and things. Plus, there's been so much to do online that I try to jump on when I have a few free minutes instead of trying to keep up the blog. And then there's the problem that jumping on all the time has led to some concerns about how much time the game can consume.
So last week (Tues) started with a night off somewhat unexpectedly. Then we got rolling again pretty well on Wednesday. I considered trying to get into a Heroic Thurs or Fri but got on late and everybody was formed up running heroics or Naxx or something. Sat, I did get into a heroic when Dethno graciously respecced dps so I could tank Heroic Azjol-Nerub.
Sadly, that run didn't really go that well and left me feeling like a bit of a slacker as a tank. I'm still trailing a bit as far as gearing up and instance knowledge and I felt that fairly acutely when we had trouble Sat night (especially with the better geared tank respecced to dps next to me). Fortunately, things started to turn at least a little bit. I picked up a good belt from the Heroic and we had a nice run Sunday including getting my T7 legs and even better, our first defeat of Sapphiron in Naxx.
I also made the epic tanking ring this week, so overall the gear is coming together. It's still clear that Dethno and Ragon are probably going to be the best geared tanks when we get to 25s, which has made me wonder whether I should be planning to go to those as dps, a third tank or poor healer. I'm starting to pay attention to dps gear some, but I've also been thinking about evaluating the OT things my spec brings:
The first 2, I'm pretty sure end up being about 10% extra effective mitigation to the MT (plus a little extra rage for low dmg bosses):
Devotion aura with +6% healing and +1291 armor (via Imp Devo in prot tree)
Blessing of Sanctuary: -3% damage and every block/parry/dodge gives 10 rage
These 2 talents seem helpful, but I haven't verified how useful they are:
Judgments of the Just: Active judgments reduce mob attack speed by 20%
Divine Guardian: 30% of damage taken by party/raid members within 30 yrds directed to the Paladin when Divine Shield is up (4m cooldown).
I've been meaning to check with recap if possible, but I worry that JotJ doesn't leave a visible debuff on mobs we fight, so I worry that it might not work on bosses. It's a Req 45 talent, so it really ought to work on everything, but I'd feel better if it were confirmed.
...wanders off mid-blog to Maintankadin.com...
Ok, JotJ rocks. I was worried might not stack with Demo Shout or something, but it does and it's a big mitigating factor. OTOH, I learned that the +heal part of Imp Devo doesn't stack withe Tree healing buff. So that's only effectively useful on the nights Darsonsind isn't in the raid. Interesting.
But when I'm a pure OT, I should probably start working on getting better use out of my under-used 'Hands' spells. I'm used to thinking about Hand of Protection and Hand of Freedom, but their use doesn't come up so often (hmm, I wonder if I could HoP on Dethon during Gluth -- can he still shockwave/thunderclap when under HoP?). I think I can improve by using Hand of Salvation and possible Hand of Sacrifice more often.
Hand of Salvation is -20% threat cast on a high dps. The few times I've thought to use it, there have been range issues. But I can find more opportunities for it, epecially when OT.
I'm wondering about using Hand of Sacrifice more often as extra mitigation for the MT. I could eat 30% of the MT damage for 12s (every 2m). Maybe if I was using this and the Div Guardian, it'd be worth setting a beacon on me to spread the healing automatically?
Mostly, I've been focusing on doing a little dps, occasional heals, but with practice maybe I can mix in some more specials, too. I wonder what will be the most utility in 25s -- fill in the gaps prot, or full ret in weaker gear. I guess we have a few weeks to work it out either way.
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
Dragons!
We opened the evening in the Obsidium Sanctum under Wyrmrest Temple. Everybody had been saying the boss there, Sartharion, wasn't too tough with 10 and leaving none of the drakes up. I wouldn't say it was easy. It was chaotic and I felt like I was working hard to try to corral the adds, but we did win without wiping, so I guess by that standard it wasn't hard.
Thinking about how to beat the boss in the harder mode where you leave one of his (her?) 3 drake buddies up is trickier. There's an awful lot to tank, adjust and react to -- portals with a mob to jump in and fight, lava spawns, waves of fire to find the gap and hide from. That might take some creativity.
It's also tempting to practice the main fight since I think I could do better on add control. Maybe if the healers were positioned more in a group so I knew where the adds would be going. Are those random occasional meteors just effects or do they do damage?
From a dragon, we went to 4 horses. That is a complicated fight and it took awhile to (a) figure out the roles and (b) me to stop sucking at taunting. It felt easy on the win, though, so I suspect it won't be so hard next time.
I think that encounter has the longest runback from the GY, too. Between working a bit slowly across the two different instances, the extra wipe by my macro mis-writing and that runback, we didn't have much more time than a quick get-to-know-you wipe to end our evening with yet another dragon, the Frost Wyrm Sapphiron.
The frost dragon fight might benefit from a little Frost Resist gear. It may not be strictly necessary, but we'll have a few days to get a piece or two ready for next weekend. Assuming no hitches, we ought to be back to the final section of Naxx next Sun/Mon.
An optimistic schedule might be:
Tues - Sartharian, Spider & Military Wings
Wed - Construct & Plague Wings
Sun/Mon - Frost Wyrm Wing
We can probably fall a bit behind that schedule, e.g., spend a little time trying Sarth with 1 drake up, and just do Spider Wing tonight, and still have a shot at clearing. The main thing I'm even mildly wondering about is if we'll hit a roadbump by not having a Shaman to boost the caster dps, e.g., on Loatheb.
Thinking about how to beat the boss in the harder mode where you leave one of his (her?) 3 drake buddies up is trickier. There's an awful lot to tank, adjust and react to -- portals with a mob to jump in and fight, lava spawns, waves of fire to find the gap and hide from. That might take some creativity.
It's also tempting to practice the main fight since I think I could do better on add control. Maybe if the healers were positioned more in a group so I knew where the adds would be going. Are those random occasional meteors just effects or do they do damage?
From a dragon, we went to 4 horses. That is a complicated fight and it took awhile to (a) figure out the roles and (b) me to stop sucking at taunting. It felt easy on the win, though, so I suspect it won't be so hard next time.
I think that encounter has the longest runback from the GY, too. Between working a bit slowly across the two different instances, the extra wipe by my macro mis-writing and that runback, we didn't have much more time than a quick get-to-know-you wipe to end our evening with yet another dragon, the Frost Wyrm Sapphiron.
The frost dragon fight might benefit from a little Frost Resist gear. It may not be strictly necessary, but we'll have a few days to get a piece or two ready for next weekend. Assuming no hitches, we ought to be back to the final section of Naxx next Sun/Mon.
An optimistic schedule might be:
Tues - Sartharian, Spider & Military Wings
Wed - Construct & Plague Wings
Sun/Mon - Frost Wyrm Wing
We can probably fall a bit behind that schedule, e.g., spend a little time trying Sarth with 1 drake up, and just do Spider Wing tonight, and still have a shot at clearing. The main thing I'm even mildly wondering about is if we'll hit a roadbump by not having a Shaman to boost the caster dps, e.g., on Loatheb.
Monday, December 8, 2008
Flashes
...Arthas, fearing for his minions, reaches through the ether to tamper directly with our connectivity...
...Thaddius down, Construct Wing Clear. Dethno relogs, "Did we win? I d/c-ed at 10%" Didn't impair his aggro holding noticeably...
...Loatheb down, Plague Wing Clear. Sure, if *everybody* is at or above 2500 dps (cept the lame OT, of course) you can do it in <5m.
...Gothik adds down, Gothik engaged. Why is everybody standing still? Oh s**t...
...Standing in the basement, only one little light blinking forlornly on the cable modem. Damn you, Comcast!
...Folding laundry, staring and vainly wishing for the some lights to start blinking again. iPhone chirps, Kyoka, "We got him anyway. Lol."
...Tonight, we go back to battle the famed 4 Horsemen of the Apocolypse. And maybe a dragon, or two...
...Thaddius down, Construct Wing Clear. Dethno relogs, "Did we win? I d/c-ed at 10%" Didn't impair his aggro holding noticeably...
...Loatheb down, Plague Wing Clear. Sure, if *everybody* is at or above 2500 dps (cept the lame OT, of course) you can do it in <5m.
...Gothik adds down, Gothik engaged. Why is everybody standing still? Oh s**t...
...Standing in the basement, only one little light blinking forlornly on the cable modem. Damn you, Comcast!
...Folding laundry, staring and vainly wishing for the some lights to start blinking again. iPhone chirps, Kyoka, "We got him anyway. Lol."
...Tonight, we go back to battle the famed 4 Horsemen of the Apocolypse. And maybe a dragon, or two...
Friday, December 5, 2008
Noctambulating
I took the night off from raiding last night and Uglykid put together the second group of Naxx raiders from the guild. Of course, then he kept having to afk to take care of his little one but they pressed on to take down the first boss in the Military quarter and then the entire Spider wing.
So that's 9 bosses down in total in our first 3 nights in Naxx using 2 mostly different groups of raiders (there was some overlap in the groups). I'm planning to go back with the group from Wednesday this coming Sunday and try to get Thaddius and Loatheb. That'd give us 3 wings clear our first week and I think it's a reasonable shot. It's also possible we might even find a way to clear the military quarter and even pop the last wing open on Monday night.
Having the 2 groups sharing the instance makes planning a little tricky. It's also possible we could use some spare time to investigate Sartherion for additional amusement.
I was thinking of trying to run a heroic or two for badges/rep last night, but getting on late meant everybody was already in a run or Naxx. So I did some quests and JC stuff and listened in on vent a bit. I even fished up some Dragonfin and made the 40 str/40 stam food that I think is optimal for me tanking (finally hit 400 cooking and can start getting recipes). I also took some time to tidy up the DKP listings from the Tues/Wed raids. I still need to work out some options/issues with the DKP interface, but I think the data is reasonably accurate now at least.
Tonight will be another semi-off night. Maybe I'll get on in time to run heroics, or maybe I'll just end up questing for more gold again. I spend a bunch on Titanium so that Dethno could make me the cool crafted shield. I think I owe somebody a Frost Orb still for that and maybe some Eternals. I'm hoping to be able to contribute some nice crafted stuff myself from the epic JC recipes, but it'll take 10 days at least to make the first ring or neck and I'm already wondering if we'll see better drops by the time I can make them. I'll stockpile tokens until the last minute just in case.
I'm still pleasantly surprised that is getting out of the gate on raiding so well. We're probably going to have to plan the jump to Heroic mode (25 person) sooner than I expected as well.
So that's 9 bosses down in total in our first 3 nights in Naxx using 2 mostly different groups of raiders (there was some overlap in the groups). I'm planning to go back with the group from Wednesday this coming Sunday and try to get Thaddius and Loatheb. That'd give us 3 wings clear our first week and I think it's a reasonable shot. It's also possible we might even find a way to clear the military quarter and even pop the last wing open on Monday night.
Having the 2 groups sharing the instance makes planning a little tricky. It's also possible we could use some spare time to investigate Sartherion for additional amusement.
I was thinking of trying to run a heroic or two for badges/rep last night, but getting on late meant everybody was already in a run or Naxx. So I did some quests and JC stuff and listened in on vent a bit. I even fished up some Dragonfin and made the 40 str/40 stam food that I think is optimal for me tanking (finally hit 400 cooking and can start getting recipes). I also took some time to tidy up the DKP listings from the Tues/Wed raids. I still need to work out some options/issues with the DKP interface, but I think the data is reasonably accurate now at least.
Tonight will be another semi-off night. Maybe I'll get on in time to run heroics, or maybe I'll just end up questing for more gold again. I spend a bunch on Titanium so that Dethno could make me the cool crafted shield. I think I owe somebody a Frost Orb still for that and maybe some Eternals. I'm hoping to be able to contribute some nice crafted stuff myself from the epic JC recipes, but it'll take 10 days at least to make the first ring or neck and I'm already wondering if we'll see better drops by the time I can make them. I'll stockpile tokens until the last minute just in case.
I'm still pleasantly surprised that
Thursday, December 4, 2008
Raid recap
We had 20 people turn out ready to raid Naxxramas on Tuesday night. Sadly, we could only take 10 right away. We formed up the initial group based mainly on the group that had worked together in BC to beat Zul'Aman. However, there's a very good core of additional players who we're going to build a second raid group around tonight. On Tuesday, it didn't look like we quite had the healers to confidently build 2 separate groups (6 is probably best) so we are going to share the instance with two groups this week so that we can have some players from the first group help fill in any gaps in the second group.
Ragonbadger will MT the second group and Uglykid will help organize the raid that goes tonight. This has tempted me to label the groups as the "Bear" group (the one based on ZA running the last two nights) and the "Badger" group since we seem to have a few people obsessed with badgers around the guild these days. ;) That was to avoid any perception that one group is the first/main group and an "other" group that might be expected to have less progression since I think we have enough solid raiders to progress with both. For the first group, after considering healing options, we went with 2. The raid was Dethnotronic & Beros tanking, Sariana and Leoruuc healing, Wiseman, Kyoka, Islowlykill, Sherider, Uglykid and Barantir for dps.
Dealing with groups, raid maintenance (signups, DKP, WWS) kept me from getting around to blogging yesterday (plus the usual RL: work, family, etc.), so I'll review both runs for reference.
The first trick on Tuesday night was to find the way into Naxx. I flew around it 5 times before I spotted the entrance on the bottom middle of the ziggurat. After forming up and heading in, we had no real issues with trash in the Plague wing.
We wiped once on Noth the Plaguebringer, but got him on the second try. We weren't really trying to 1-shot everything. We'd look up the boss's abilities on Wowwiki before pulling, but expected we also needed to see what they looked like live. The basic plan was read, then dive in and wipe, then plan the strat and get to work. Heigen the Unclean took a few more tries since we all needed to learn the pattern of "dancing" to avoid the eruptions. Dethno got the pattern down right away, so I just followed him. I think it was tougher for the dps to do their jobs and manage the dance, but we got it in a small handful of attempts.
We wiped again discovering the gauntlet that leads to the final boss of the Plaguewing, Loatheb. Then we spent some time working on Loatheb, but got a bit discouraged by his apparent dps requirements -- 6.7m hp in 5-6m meant a dps rate about 1/3 higher than we were managing. We left feeling like we might need some more general gear upgrades before beating him. Or it might be possible to get by with some raid stacking (e.g., subbing out weak OT dps for somebody who can crank).
Instead of beating our heads against it, we went and tested out Patchwerk. Our first pull was marred by discovering he summons a slightly wider set of uncleared trash pulls than expected. On the second pull, we found it was hard to keep up with the healing requirements. That got us to the planned end of raid time, so we called it there.
We re-formed on Wednesday evening with Hawksy in for Leo (who will heal tonight's group) and Barantir respecced Holy to go 3-healer for Patch. That did the trick and we got him slow and steady on the first attempt. Then we went and learned Grobbulus. It sounded complicated, but we got the hang of the tank kiting pattern and planned exploding zones pretty quickly and got him down on the third attempt. Ugly had to run afk to take care of his baby, so Auroen came in to learn Gluth with us.
We read that Gluth is one of the harder and more technical fights in Naxx and we struggled at first. It sets up like a 3-tank fight, but you don't have 3 tanks in a 10 person raid. Two tanks normally hold Gluth because he does a stacking Mortal Strike debuff that reduces healing by 10% per stack -- at 7 to 8, you're not getting much heals. But then a steady stream of fairly hard hitting, high hp zombies spawn in the back of the room and have to be kited around for a long time. We did a bunch of tries with Barantir trying to kite them in his holy spec, but it was tough to go a long time without him getting hit, stunned and pwned while also keeping the spawning ones off the healers. Part of the challenge was that hunters can only keep up the frost trap half the time to slow the zombies. A shaman could keep slowing up all the time, but we'd lose the ability to tranq Gluth's enrage (which might or might not be an issue anyway since he doesn't hit that hard).
Dethno and I noticed that as we traded aggro, you could run away from the boss and help with the zombies some because Gluth doesn't hit that hard so letting the Mortal Strike stack up a bit isn't fatal. So we invented a different strat: Beros holds Gluth and lets MS stack up while Dethno kites zombies. At 7 stacks, Dethno calls for 2x frost novas from Wiseman and Sherider to hold the zombies while he pulls Gluth off me for 10s to clear the debuff and re-collects the zombies. That's a lot of work for Dethno, but he nailed it and we got Gluth in the first try with that strat.
We promptly wiped on the next pull and on rez at the GY, Islowlykill said there was free loot in Wintergrasp since the alliance controlled it. So we went there instead on a lark and killed Archavon the Stone Watcher. He's easy but drops class specific loot so while we got him on one try, the rogue and feral druid leggings weren't really useful to anybody.
This group now takes a few nights off (unless helping the group going tonight). We'll plan to go back on Sunday night and take on Thaddius, who looks easy on paper, and maybe work on Loatheb, who doesn't. The general schedule is intended to be 4 nights/week, 3 hours/night, Sun-Wed. 3 hours isn't too fatiguing and I think the Sun-Wed schedule will work out well too. It gets us a couple of nights with a fresh instance, a couple of days off and a couple more right before the reset. It also leaves Fri/Sat open for people to do other things like spend time with their S.O. or PvP. The "Badger" group can pick a different schedule next week if they'd like to since we'll have 2 instances going. I'll have to remind them to think about planning.
Ragonbadger will MT the second group and Uglykid will help organize the raid that goes tonight. This has tempted me to label the groups as the "Bear" group (the one based on ZA running the last two nights) and the "Badger" group since we seem to have a few people obsessed with badgers around the guild these days. ;) That was to avoid any perception that one group is the first/main group and an "other" group that might be expected to have less progression since I think we have enough solid raiders to progress with both. For the first group, after considering healing options, we went with 2. The raid was Dethnotronic & Beros tanking, Sariana and Leoruuc healing, Wiseman, Kyoka, Islowlykill, Sherider, Uglykid and Barantir for dps.
Dealing with groups, raid maintenance (signups, DKP, WWS) kept me from getting around to blogging yesterday (plus the usual RL: work, family, etc.), so I'll review both runs for reference.
The first trick on Tuesday night was to find the way into Naxx. I flew around it 5 times before I spotted the entrance on the bottom middle of the ziggurat. After forming up and heading in, we had no real issues with trash in the Plague wing.
We wiped once on Noth the Plaguebringer, but got him on the second try. We weren't really trying to 1-shot everything. We'd look up the boss's abilities on Wowwiki before pulling, but expected we also needed to see what they looked like live. The basic plan was read, then dive in and wipe, then plan the strat and get to work. Heigen the Unclean took a few more tries since we all needed to learn the pattern of "dancing" to avoid the eruptions. Dethno got the pattern down right away, so I just followed him. I think it was tougher for the dps to do their jobs and manage the dance, but we got it in a small handful of attempts.
We wiped again discovering the gauntlet that leads to the final boss of the Plaguewing, Loatheb. Then we spent some time working on Loatheb, but got a bit discouraged by his apparent dps requirements -- 6.7m hp in 5-6m meant a dps rate about 1/3 higher than we were managing. We left feeling like we might need some more general gear upgrades before beating him. Or it might be possible to get by with some raid stacking (e.g., subbing out weak OT dps for somebody who can crank).
Instead of beating our heads against it, we went and tested out Patchwerk. Our first pull was marred by discovering he summons a slightly wider set of uncleared trash pulls than expected. On the second pull, we found it was hard to keep up with the healing requirements. That got us to the planned end of raid time, so we called it there.
We re-formed on Wednesday evening with Hawksy in for Leo (who will heal tonight's group) and Barantir respecced Holy to go 3-healer for Patch. That did the trick and we got him slow and steady on the first attempt. Then we went and learned Grobbulus. It sounded complicated, but we got the hang of the tank kiting pattern and planned exploding zones pretty quickly and got him down on the third attempt. Ugly had to run afk to take care of his baby, so Auroen came in to learn Gluth with us.
We read that Gluth is one of the harder and more technical fights in Naxx and we struggled at first. It sets up like a 3-tank fight, but you don't have 3 tanks in a 10 person raid. Two tanks normally hold Gluth because he does a stacking Mortal Strike debuff that reduces healing by 10% per stack -- at 7 to 8, you're not getting much heals. But then a steady stream of fairly hard hitting, high hp zombies spawn in the back of the room and have to be kited around for a long time. We did a bunch of tries with Barantir trying to kite them in his holy spec, but it was tough to go a long time without him getting hit, stunned and pwned while also keeping the spawning ones off the healers. Part of the challenge was that hunters can only keep up the frost trap half the time to slow the zombies. A shaman could keep slowing up all the time, but we'd lose the ability to tranq Gluth's enrage (which might or might not be an issue anyway since he doesn't hit that hard).
Dethno and I noticed that as we traded aggro, you could run away from the boss and help with the zombies some because Gluth doesn't hit that hard so letting the Mortal Strike stack up a bit isn't fatal. So we invented a different strat: Beros holds Gluth and lets MS stack up while Dethno kites zombies. At 7 stacks, Dethno calls for 2x frost novas from Wiseman and Sherider to hold the zombies while he pulls Gluth off me for 10s to clear the debuff and re-collects the zombies. That's a lot of work for Dethno, but he nailed it and we got Gluth in the first try with that strat.
We promptly wiped on the next pull and on rez at the GY, Islowlykill said there was free loot in Wintergrasp since the alliance controlled it. So we went there instead on a lark and killed Archavon the Stone Watcher. He's easy but drops class specific loot so while we got him on one try, the rogue and feral druid leggings weren't really useful to anybody.
This group now takes a few nights off (unless helping the group going tonight). We'll plan to go back on Sunday night and take on Thaddius, who looks easy on paper, and maybe work on Loatheb, who doesn't. The general schedule is intended to be 4 nights/week, 3 hours/night, Sun-Wed. 3 hours isn't too fatiguing and I think the Sun-Wed schedule will work out well too. It gets us a couple of nights with a fresh instance, a couple of days off and a couple more right before the reset. It also leaves Fri/Sat open for people to do other things like spend time with their S.O. or PvP. The "Badger" group can pick a different schedule next week if they'd like to since we'll have 2 instances going. I'll have to remind them to think about planning.
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
Raid night
It's time to raid again, Naxxramas-style. I'm looking forward to getting my ass handed to me repeatedly on content that the BC Sunwell guilds all say is ridiculously too easy.
However, I'm not looking forward to making 8+ people unhappy when we set up the raid group tonight. We have 18 or so signed up for a 10 person raid. Kind of the worst possible number -- maximizing the number of unhappy people without quite having enough for a second group.
Maybe we'll improvise with more rotations or even more raid nights this week, just to try to get everybody a taste. With a little luck, we may be able to field 2 groups next week.
However, I'm not looking forward to making 8+ people unhappy when we set up the raid group tonight. We have 18 or so signed up for a 10 person raid. Kind of the worst possible number -- maximizing the number of unhappy people without quite having enough for a second group.
Maybe we'll improvise with more rotations or even more raid nights this week, just to try to get everybody a taste. With a little luck, we may be able to field 2 groups next week.
Monday, December 1, 2008
The Oculus
We decided to try The Oculus on Heroic mode last night, in spite of the fact that most of us hadn't ever even see it on non-heroic. Beros, Hawksy, Inkx, Primux and Stupidrenren wiped our way through the instance and nearly got through, but stalled too long on the final boss and had to call it due to the late hour.
We started by wiping on the first set of trash pulls. But we got the hang of it. Later, when we had to reclear them, we cruised through in just a few minutes. By then we had worked out the CC and AoE issues. We didn't have a lot of either in our group. The mobs reliably broke Inkx's traps quickly. It was nice the rooting worked, but rooting didn't add much for the all spellcaster pulls. Even gathering up the mobs was tricky since the little whelplings are casters. As I ran around picking them up, Hawksy's healing would exceed the consecrate threat and they'd start leaving me. I think the easy time through, Renren went bear, Primux grabbed some and Hawksy just did Circle healing.
We wiped on the first boss, read over our combat logs and got him the second time with just that much practice on avoiding the bombs.
Then we got our dragons, discussed what colors we should use and figured out where the next set of mobs (constructs) were. And wiped on the constructs. I think we wiped 3-4 times on the next 4 pulls of 3-4 spellcasters + 1 construct. We were really feeling the lack of CC. Renren could root the construct, but the casters were giving us trouble. The next couple of pulls of 3 constructs + 1 caster were no problem. I think we had Mocha tank the caster and maybe that would have been better on the previous pulls too.
The we pulled the second boss and wiped again. We pre-read on wiki and it warned of the Energizing cores first and summoning Drake Captains second. However, it seemed like it was the Captains that were causing the trouble so we took a few minutes and tried completely clearing all the nearby drakes to see if that kept them from coming. I don't think it helped, but we were able to dodge the various attacks enough to get through the boss anyway.
The trash mechanic on the 3rd boss took us by surprise -- you aggro and he summons a bunch of adds and ports away. There's no time to set up CC there, so it's a bit tricky to gather them up and also figure out which is the dangerous ones to kill first.
I think we wiped a few more times on the 3rd boss getting the hang of kite-tanking away from the frost bombs and dodging his arcane explosions. It's hard to get clear of the explosion if you have the slowing debuff, so I had to plan the kiting to keep us close to the hiding spots.
The fourth boss was rumored to be the easy one, but we did not find it easy. Maybe because it was late, or we were experimenting with too many different strats, it took awhile to key in on the issue that he's summoning a lot of adds in Heroic mode (4-5 instead of 2-3 on non-heroic). By the end, we settled on a 1 red, 1 green and 3 amber drake strategy so that we could spam time stop and have everybody focus on killing the adds. But we were tired so we started running into execution issues. Plus only Hawksy and I had working mics so it was hard for the amber drake riders to coordinate the time stop. As we were hearthing out, we realized that I should just have been calling all the time stops -- whenever I was low on hp, at the enrage, whenever there were a lot of whelps.
I'd like to go back and try it again tonight if possible. I'm sure it'll be a lot easier the next time through and I'd like to wrap up the daily heroic quest from yesterday as well. I should also make some time to make sure I'm fully prepped for Naxx tomorrow.
We started by wiping on the first set of trash pulls. But we got the hang of it. Later, when we had to reclear them, we cruised through in just a few minutes. By then we had worked out the CC and AoE issues. We didn't have a lot of either in our group. The mobs reliably broke Inkx's traps quickly. It was nice the rooting worked, but rooting didn't add much for the all spellcaster pulls. Even gathering up the mobs was tricky since the little whelplings are casters. As I ran around picking them up, Hawksy's healing would exceed the consecrate threat and they'd start leaving me. I think the easy time through, Renren went bear, Primux grabbed some and Hawksy just did Circle healing.
We wiped on the first boss, read over our combat logs and got him the second time with just that much practice on avoiding the bombs.
Then we got our dragons, discussed what colors we should use and figured out where the next set of mobs (constructs) were. And wiped on the constructs. I think we wiped 3-4 times on the next 4 pulls of 3-4 spellcasters + 1 construct. We were really feeling the lack of CC. Renren could root the construct, but the casters were giving us trouble. The next couple of pulls of 3 constructs + 1 caster were no problem. I think we had Mocha tank the caster and maybe that would have been better on the previous pulls too.
The we pulled the second boss and wiped again. We pre-read on wiki and it warned of the Energizing cores first and summoning Drake Captains second. However, it seemed like it was the Captains that were causing the trouble so we took a few minutes and tried completely clearing all the nearby drakes to see if that kept them from coming. I don't think it helped, but we were able to dodge the various attacks enough to get through the boss anyway.
The trash mechanic on the 3rd boss took us by surprise -- you aggro and he summons a bunch of adds and ports away. There's no time to set up CC there, so it's a bit tricky to gather them up and also figure out which is the dangerous ones to kill first.
I think we wiped a few more times on the 3rd boss getting the hang of kite-tanking away from the frost bombs and dodging his arcane explosions. It's hard to get clear of the explosion if you have the slowing debuff, so I had to plan the kiting to keep us close to the hiding spots.
The fourth boss was rumored to be the easy one, but we did not find it easy. Maybe because it was late, or we were experimenting with too many different strats, it took awhile to key in on the issue that he's summoning a lot of adds in Heroic mode (4-5 instead of 2-3 on non-heroic). By the end, we settled on a 1 red, 1 green and 3 amber drake strategy so that we could spam time stop and have everybody focus on killing the adds. But we were tired so we started running into execution issues. Plus only Hawksy and I had working mics so it was hard for the amber drake riders to coordinate the time stop. As we were hearthing out, we realized that I should just have been calling all the time stops -- whenever I was low on hp, at the enrage, whenever there were a lot of whelps.
I'd like to go back and try it again tonight if possible. I'm sure it'll be a lot easier the next time through and I'd like to wrap up the daily heroic quest from yesterday as well. I should also make some time to make sure I'm fully prepped for Naxx tomorrow.
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