Buried up to my neck in raids, is where I've been.
Almost a month since I last wrote, and it's a bit of a shame - much of the normal-mode progression is already done, and I failed to document it. Ah, well. Still only about half-way through the tier, so there's more stuff to talk about.
Paladin Tanking
This is the best state the class has been in a long, long time. One of my biggest complaints throughout Cataclysm was that Vengeance had made Hit and Expertise irrelevant for tanks but with Active Mitigation, we've got a reason, not just to soft cap Expertise, but actually get up to 15% so we can skip Parries as well. That's unbelievably awesome.
For one, we put out tons and tons of damage. Seeing 200k+ DPS isn't unusual for me on certain fights, like Heroic Stone Guard, or Wind Lord. Even on Will of the Emperor I can manage to squeak into the top three for damage done and not to mention the unbelievable healing numbers I get from Light's Hammer, Sacred Shield and Seal of Insight. Word of Glory becoming a cool-down has lowered its overall numbers, but it's certainly a life-saver at times, healing me for nearly 50% of my health with a 5-stack of Bastion.
And I hope I'm not the only one swapping glyphs and talents in and out just about every fight to optimize my play-style for that particular boss. Suffice it to say, paladin tanking is unbelievably fun right now. I have half an article written as an introduction to Paladin tanking that I'll be posting shortly.
Progression
The raids continue apace, bosses die, they drop purples, and we move on. Heart of Fear continues to impress, though the bugs (get it?) are frustrating, especially when they keep us stagnant when we should be progressing. Last night, Wind Lord kept enraging because Recklessness failed to stack on the boss despite a number of different things we tried, and we finally gave up and went to bed only to find a blue post on the bug-report that it is, indeed, a bug.
It's one thing for a raid to fail because we misunderstand a mechanic or lack the gear, or whatever, but to fail to a bug after hours of attempts is just plain frustrating on a helpless level. Especially since it's a new bug introduced after a number of guilds had already killed the boss so we're working with a handicap at this point.
To further the point, there is the humiliation - hyperbole, to say the least, but I can think of no better word - the embarrassment of having to go in and clear the second half of Heart of Far on LFR before I've even gotten to see the Empress or the Amber-Shaper on normal-modes. It distresses me - but it also motivates me to push ahead and try for more this week. Though, of course, this week, we venture back into Mogu'shan for some Heroic raiding, but I hope we'll be able to make things work in Heart of Fear as well.
We'll see.
Heart of Fear
Despite the bugs (heh) mentioned above, the raid itself is quite fun. Vizir and Blade Lord are both good fights and continue the strand of personal responsibility and execution that Mogu'shan began. If you as a raider are asleep at the wheel, it's going to be difficult to carry you or to kill the boss at least in this phase of the tier. Garalon took a bit of doing, but we did kill him twice - coming excruciatingly close at times before wiping to the enrage. My favorite wipe was the one where he went immune with a single hit-point left on a leg while he had less than 2% health left. Did you know his enrage Crush goes through immunities? Heart-breaking. He died the next night without too much of a bother.
That's two out of three excellent raids already and tonight, Terrace opens up. I'm disappointed not to be going in there at 7:00pm server tonight, but such is the way of things. Perhaps next week if we manage to kill the Empress this week - though that seems remarkably optimistic. This staggered release was excellent, but for this two-week buffer between Heart of Fear and Terrace - I feel that another four-week gap would have been excellent, and it would give guilds the time to kill all normal modes and get a couple of heroic kills in before focusing on Terrace.
Content is coming too fast - and 5.1 is on the horizon! Perhaps I'm getting too old for this.
Guild
And lastly, I was made a full member about a month ago. I don't know if I mentioned it or not, I don't think I did, but there we go. It might seem amusing, but I was a bit nervous - I know I'm a good player, but I don't know that I'm great and part of the nerves came from knowing that I had nowhere to go if I didn't cut it here. Regardless, I'm very glad to be in Occasional Excellence, and very glad that I made the cut. One of the big reasons for this change was that I had issued a challenge to myself - could I play well enough to be in a hardcore guild and remain, if not on the cutting-edge, then in the vanguard of raiding guilds? The answer, I suppose, is that I can. It's gratifying.
As one of my favorite Sandman comics said about falling from mountains, "Sometimes you wake up. Sometimes the fall kills you. And sometimes, when you fall, you fly."
Showing posts with label wipe. Show all posts
Showing posts with label wipe. Show all posts
Tuesday, November 13, 2012
Thursday, April 14, 2011
Painfully Wiping
We've been raiding for about 10 weeks now, and most of our core raiders have reached a cap with their gear and we consistently clear 8 or 9 bosses every week quite easily. Whenever I get to this point in a raiding tier, I assume that if we have too-easy a night, we're farming and I have no interest in farming, so I immediately push for progression.
This week was one such night. I wanted to get started on the end-wing bosses and I chose Cho'gall. For some reason we started stumbling a bit on Ascendant Council on Tuesday and it took us a couple of wipes to get through it which cut into our time but we got to Cho'gall with about an hour left and we'd only pulled him maybe four or five times before only getting as far as 40% or so with three-healers.
This week was one such night. I wanted to get started on the end-wing bosses and I chose Cho'gall. For some reason we started stumbling a bit on Ascendant Council on Tuesday and it took us a couple of wipes to get through it which cut into our time but we got to Cho'gall with about an hour left and we'd only pulled him maybe four or five times before only getting as far as 40% or so with three-healers.
Friday, May 7, 2010
The Sindragosa Blues (again)
Sorry I've been away. Was on vacation and then work ate my life.
Anyway. Now that we have a (relatively) stable group, we've been working on Sindy for two weeks now, last night was our first serious series of attempts and we got her to ~10% on our best try.
Previously, Icy Grip was the bane of our raids, people would die and I'd gnash my teeth but after much thought, I changed our positioning to hold Sindy horizontal to the stairs and have people just DPS and heal from the stairs things worked out very well. It gave people a very specific point to run towards (up the stairs) and dropping blocks on the stairs makes Ice Bomb dodging trivial.
So, ever since the first attempt last night, I saw that Phase 1 and 2 are down rock solid, we barely ever lost a person to Icy Grip, and we got her into Phase 3 right after her 3rd air phase with 3 full time healers.
But people seem to panic on phase 3.
We manage to hold it together for about 2 or 3 blocks, I assigned 2 melee burn 'em down, people clipped their debuffs, tank swaps happened whenever the other tank's debuff dropped, and then either an Icy Grip or a misplaced block would disrupt the process and then we'd fall behind and never catch up to switching to the boss because blocks start coming too soon and then, we hit enrage with anywhere from 15% - 20% left to go.
Our best attempt got her to 14% or so, I think, which was still a solid million and a half hit points.
I think our current strat will work, we just need to spend a little bit more time on her and focus our energy.
On a side-note, I'm especially pleased with the guild's membership right now. Lots of friends, both old and new, and only one or two trouble spots that I think will settle down soon. It's good to be in such company in pre-Cata days.
Anyway. Now that we have a (relatively) stable group, we've been working on Sindy for two weeks now, last night was our first serious series of attempts and we got her to ~10% on our best try.
Previously, Icy Grip was the bane of our raids, people would die and I'd gnash my teeth but after much thought, I changed our positioning to hold Sindy horizontal to the stairs and have people just DPS and heal from the stairs things worked out very well. It gave people a very specific point to run towards (up the stairs) and dropping blocks on the stairs makes Ice Bomb dodging trivial.
So, ever since the first attempt last night, I saw that Phase 1 and 2 are down rock solid, we barely ever lost a person to Icy Grip, and we got her into Phase 3 right after her 3rd air phase with 3 full time healers.
But people seem to panic on phase 3.
We manage to hold it together for about 2 or 3 blocks, I assigned 2 melee burn 'em down, people clipped their debuffs, tank swaps happened whenever the other tank's debuff dropped, and then either an Icy Grip or a misplaced block would disrupt the process and then we'd fall behind and never catch up to switching to the boss because blocks start coming too soon and then, we hit enrage with anywhere from 15% - 20% left to go.
Our best attempt got her to 14% or so, I think, which was still a solid million and a half hit points.
I think our current strat will work, we just need to spend a little bit more time on her and focus our energy.
On a side-note, I'm especially pleased with the guild's membership right now. Lots of friends, both old and new, and only one or two trouble spots that I think will settle down soon. It's good to be in such company in pre-Cata days.
Friday, March 19, 2010
Raiding Less (and why that's better)
I was standing in Dalaran staring into the fountain newly decorated with garish gold statues and thinking deep thoughts as usual about what an egotistical bastard Tirion was for erecting a statue of himself in the middle of the city when I saw an old friend wander by.
We said hello, and began to talk, mostly about raiding as that's what everyone seem to be into lately, and as we wandered northward, I invited her to come along with my raids as we often have gaps in ranged DPS and she is a good warlock.
We stopped to peer into the most displaced well in the midst of a busy boulevard, "As long as you run at a normal pace."
I blinked, "Normal pace?"
"Oh, you know," she sighed, leaning against the bricks, as mammoths, unicorns, bears, kodos and other horrible things went whizzing by, "I was running with this other big guild on the server and they just kept pulling the whole time with nary a pause. Kind of stressful."
"Huh," I said, swallowing the compulsion to push her into the well just to hear her yelp, because I'm really ten years old, "Well, I set a reasonable stride. I think."
She shrugged, and then we waved farewell, she went on to the bank in the north and I wandered into the smithy, to hem and haw at various tier pieces, and began to think about the pace of my runs.
See, when I run a raid, people laugh a little because I tend to cover things very, very quickly over vent and end with a brisk, "Gogo!" even as I toss a shield into a mob pack or charge a boss' face.
I know it's funny, but I'm really doing it to make a point. Trash should take minimal time. Once you're through a dungeon more than twice, you should know what the pulls are, you should know know how many packs to pull, the patrol patterns, all of that jazz. The tanks should be pulling continuously unless the healers ask for a slowdown. Dead folks should get raised as the pulls happen, and rebuffs aren't important.
I first learned that you can run as quickly as this whilst studying this video by Kyth of StratFu fame (BTW, I think I have a small crush on Kyth) but have adopted it to most of my dungeoneering, whether 5-mans or raids.
When I walk into a 5-man, my gear level is at a place where I feel comfortable saying, "I'm just going to chain-pull the dungeon, please tell me to slow down if you need room." And then 10-15 minutes later, almost every dungeon in the game is done.
And I for one think this is great.
Another major killer is downtime for AFKs - having set points are great for this. As Blizzard has really adopted the wing structure for raids this expansion, I usually don't take a break in the middle of a wing. If we're flying along, I'll take a break every other wing. Or whatever. It's a lot more structured that way and people feel accomplished and ready to take on the new wing when they get back.
Of course, learning a boss is different, I'm mostly talking about farm content here. Once you know a dungeon, you as a raid leader should give your tanks permission to pull aggressively and tanks should pull aggressively, and healers should coordinate to make sure raid heals are covered at all times - there is no need to pause between packs of mobs if your DPS and healers are keeping up with you without a problem. Chain-pull, get to the bosses, don't linger over the "is everyone ready?" and just get shit down.
I typically throw up a /readycheck when we reach a boss and as soon as the last person checks off, I'll shout out any last minute instructions, "I'll take left side, Issacc take right side, melee clear all adds before switching to boss, on phase transition wait for her to be moved off the platform before ripping your CDs, ranged open up, GoGo!" And if ranged doesn't open up, I'll just throw a shield and get it started. My raids have NO ROOM for dillydallying.
Pull hard, pull fast, pull clean, don't wipe, and someone tell Tirion he's an egotistical bastard for sitting frozen in an iceblock all fight long and then taking credit at the end for everything.
Sick bastard.
We said hello, and began to talk, mostly about raiding as that's what everyone seem to be into lately, and as we wandered northward, I invited her to come along with my raids as we often have gaps in ranged DPS and she is a good warlock.
We stopped to peer into the most displaced well in the midst of a busy boulevard, "As long as you run at a normal pace."
I blinked, "Normal pace?"
"Oh, you know," she sighed, leaning against the bricks, as mammoths, unicorns, bears, kodos and other horrible things went whizzing by, "I was running with this other big guild on the server and they just kept pulling the whole time with nary a pause. Kind of stressful."
"Huh," I said, swallowing the compulsion to push her into the well just to hear her yelp, because I'm really ten years old, "Well, I set a reasonable stride. I think."
She shrugged, and then we waved farewell, she went on to the bank in the north and I wandered into the smithy, to hem and haw at various tier pieces, and began to think about the pace of my runs.
See, when I run a raid, people laugh a little because I tend to cover things very, very quickly over vent and end with a brisk, "Gogo!" even as I toss a shield into a mob pack or charge a boss' face.
I know it's funny, but I'm really doing it to make a point. Trash should take minimal time. Once you're through a dungeon more than twice, you should know what the pulls are, you should know know how many packs to pull, the patrol patterns, all of that jazz. The tanks should be pulling continuously unless the healers ask for a slowdown. Dead folks should get raised as the pulls happen, and rebuffs aren't important.
I first learned that you can run as quickly as this whilst studying this video by Kyth of StratFu fame (BTW, I think I have a small crush on Kyth) but have adopted it to most of my dungeoneering, whether 5-mans or raids.
When I walk into a 5-man, my gear level is at a place where I feel comfortable saying, "I'm just going to chain-pull the dungeon, please tell me to slow down if you need room." And then 10-15 minutes later, almost every dungeon in the game is done.
And I for one think this is great.
Another major killer is downtime for AFKs - having set points are great for this. As Blizzard has really adopted the wing structure for raids this expansion, I usually don't take a break in the middle of a wing. If we're flying along, I'll take a break every other wing. Or whatever. It's a lot more structured that way and people feel accomplished and ready to take on the new wing when they get back.
Of course, learning a boss is different, I'm mostly talking about farm content here. Once you know a dungeon, you as a raid leader should give your tanks permission to pull aggressively and tanks should pull aggressively, and healers should coordinate to make sure raid heals are covered at all times - there is no need to pause between packs of mobs if your DPS and healers are keeping up with you without a problem. Chain-pull, get to the bosses, don't linger over the "is everyone ready?" and just get shit down.
I typically throw up a /readycheck when we reach a boss and as soon as the last person checks off, I'll shout out any last minute instructions, "I'll take left side, Issacc take right side, melee clear all adds before switching to boss, on phase transition wait for her to be moved off the platform before ripping your CDs, ranged open up, GoGo!" And if ranged doesn't open up, I'll just throw a shield and get it started. My raids have NO ROOM for dillydallying.
Pull hard, pull fast, pull clean, don't wipe, and someone tell Tirion he's an egotistical bastard for sitting frozen in an iceblock all fight long and then taking credit at the end for everything.
Sick bastard.
Monday, February 22, 2010
Sindragosa
The once noble prime-consort of the Blue Dragonflight, Sindragosa was killed by Neltharion and left to die in the glaciers of Icecrown. Full of hatred for everyone that let her die, Sindragosa's bones lay buried for thousands of years until she was raised by the Lich King as the ultimate Frost Wyrm.
You might have seen her trying to aggro you through the log-in screen for the last fifteen months or so. She also tried to murder you in the Pit of Saron before Jaina or Tyrande yanked you to safety. Now, finally, in Icecrown Citadel we have a chance to strike back at her for all the endless cycles of flap-flap-roar as we waited for the crawling queue numbers to tick down to zero.
After possibly the most annoying trash in the entire raid (I actually liked most of the trash in ICC until I encountered this colossal waste of time and mana), the murder of some frost-wyrm hatchlings (which - explain to me the point of baby dragon skeletons? They're dead so it's not like they're going to grow up to be eviler or anything... I mean, they're cute and all, but still. WTF?) and two mini-boss dragons - one of whom is Rhimefang of Pit fame and another dragon with a name but if she's a named mob from somewhere I'm forgetting it - you finally get to pull the boss... oh, no, wait, she'll actually agro as soon as the second dragon dies. Nevermind.
Also, holy run on sentence, batman.
Pro-tip: Pull the second dragon to the stairs so the raid has time to adjust positioning and the tank doing the pull can get into place without a freakout-scramble-clusterfuck.
Thankfully after that first pull (and wipe) she'll fly up above the platform, patiently waiting for you to descent onto the platform below the stairs.
Anyway. We put in about 2 hours and change on her last night, including a ten minute break where I ran and grabbed my Frost-resist set, realized I hadn't touched it since Hodir, and re-gem'd with Dragoneye's and Epic gems on the spot. Our DPS is generally pretty fucking awesome, and they were epic as always last night, but we still kept running into multiple sub-5% enrage-wipes.
The primary culprit was the 3rd phase unleashed magic mechanic and the tanks (the raid lead, Alex is the main tank, and the bum who's writing this blog, me, helps out) were swapping every time a tomb came down. At the end, we were trying to clean-up even the smallest clip on the DoT pulse to try to get the tombs down faster - trust me, when you wipe at 440k with the entire raid alive due to hitting the enrage, you'll gnash your teeth, fist-pound your keyboard and bemoan getting clipped by the DoT just before you stepped around the tomb.
Anyway, the raid timer ticked down, we were a half hour over the time we normally run so the raid was called and I had a severe case of the blue balls.
She's going down next week. But I still look like I have blueberries danging from my scrotum.
You might have seen her trying to aggro you through the log-in screen for the last fifteen months or so. She also tried to murder you in the Pit of Saron before Jaina or Tyrande yanked you to safety. Now, finally, in Icecrown Citadel we have a chance to strike back at her for all the endless cycles of flap-flap-roar as we waited for the crawling queue numbers to tick down to zero.
After possibly the most annoying trash in the entire raid (I actually liked most of the trash in ICC until I encountered this colossal waste of time and mana), the murder of some frost-wyrm hatchlings (which - explain to me the point of baby dragon skeletons? They're dead so it's not like they're going to grow up to be eviler or anything... I mean, they're cute and all, but still. WTF?) and two mini-boss dragons - one of whom is Rhimefang of Pit fame and another dragon with a name but if she's a named mob from somewhere I'm forgetting it - you finally get to pull the boss... oh, no, wait, she'll actually agro as soon as the second dragon dies. Nevermind.
Also, holy run on sentence, batman.
Pro-tip: Pull the second dragon to the stairs so the raid has time to adjust positioning and the tank doing the pull can get into place without a freakout-scramble-clusterfuck.
Thankfully after that first pull (and wipe) she'll fly up above the platform, patiently waiting for you to descent onto the platform below the stairs.
Anyway. We put in about 2 hours and change on her last night, including a ten minute break where I ran and grabbed my Frost-resist set, realized I hadn't touched it since Hodir, and re-gem'd with Dragoneye's and Epic gems on the spot. Our DPS is generally pretty fucking awesome, and they were epic as always last night, but we still kept running into multiple sub-5% enrage-wipes.
The primary culprit was the 3rd phase unleashed magic mechanic and the tanks (the raid lead, Alex is the main tank, and the bum who's writing this blog, me, helps out) were swapping every time a tomb came down. At the end, we were trying to clean-up even the smallest clip on the DoT pulse to try to get the tombs down faster - trust me, when you wipe at 440k with the entire raid alive due to hitting the enrage, you'll gnash your teeth, fist-pound your keyboard and bemoan getting clipped by the DoT just before you stepped around the tomb.
Anyway, the raid timer ticked down, we were a half hour over the time we normally run so the raid was called and I had a severe case of the blue balls.
She's going down next week. But I still look like I have blueberries danging from my scrotum.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)