HOW TO: Nefarian

This is part 9 of a series where I'll cover the way my guild does all the normal-mode encounters on the 10 person difficulty in the current raiding tier. I'll cover the fights in general but also talk specifically about tanking from a paladin perspective and give any hints I can about how we assign DPS and healing.

This is a very Paladin-tank specific view, and you'll excuse me for that, I hope.

HOT TO:Maloriak and Chimaeron

This is part 7 of a series where I'll cover the way my guild does all the normal-mode encounters on the 10 person difficulty in the current raiding tier. I'll cover the fights in general but also talk specifically about tanking from a paladin perspective and give any hints I can about how we assign DPS and healing.

HOW TO: Trash and Atramedes

This is part 6 of a series where I'll cover the way my guild does all the normal-mode encounters on the 10 person difficulty in the current raiding tier. I'll cover the fights in general but also talk specifically about tanking from a paladin perspective and give any hints I can about how we assign DPS and healing.

HOT TO: Magmaw and Omnotron Defense System

This is part 5 of a series where I'll cover the way my guild does all the normal-mode encounters on the 10 person difficulty in the current raiding tier. I'll cover the fights in general but also talk specifically about tanking from a paladin perspective and give any hints I can about how we assign DPS and healing.

PuGing on an RP server

I don't try to hide the fact that I play on a (notorious) Role-Play server (Moon Guard, where all of Goldshire became a red-light district and had degenerated to a point where invisible GMs started monitoring the place).

When I queue in LFG, the people from other servers will comment on where I come from, expecting to wipe continuously, or will remark on the fact that I have raid-gear as an aberration to what they would expect from Moon Guard. My druid friend Lava and I really enjoy telling them made-up stories about how we just sit around being furries in Goldshire since we're from Moon Guard.

But outside of that notoriety the fact that this server has a large and vibrant community of Roleplayers serves me well. The place has a filled in, living and breathing feel to it.

Creeping Progress: Early Blackwing Descent

Enough with the dungeons. Let's talk about raids. We've been raiding for two weeks, now, and currently sit at 4/12 and I wanted to review my thoughts about the the current style and mood of raiding, and so forth.

General Impressions
The titanic health-pool on all bosses seems excessive but I can see why it's there. With heroic and early raid gear, we're seeing bosses die in about 7 or 8 minutes depending on the figh which seems like a long time - I remember when we were doing Herioc Blood Princes a seven-minute fight seemed like an eternity. And then I remember doing Sindragosa back in February of last year and realize - hey, we used to wipe to enrage on that fight and the enrage on her was 10 minutes!

Also, tank damage is less brutal but raid damage is far more brutal. Healers are doing the majority of the heavy lifting here and I don't envy them. Effective reduction of raid-damage is a major factor in most fights if you want to keep healers from OOMing and the DPS wind up having to do a lot of dodging/juggling of mechanics (keeping out of fire on Halfus with Storm up, keeping out of all the incidental damage on Omnitron, etc.) which lowers DPS overall but increases healer efficiency.