Last night we made our way in for a couple of hour of work in the Heroic mode bosses of the lower spire. We were running one person short and a friend graciously stepped in to save our skins.
Marrowgar
3-shot. Mostly because I was trying to work out a 3-point ping-pong strategy till someone mentioned that he only targets the farthest character so we started to have our OT run out to range with 10 seconds to go on Bone Storm and then I split out to the opposite end of the room just as he cast, so he spent the whole time ping-ponging between us. 1-shot with that positioning. Easy mode.
Lady Deathwhisper
2-shot. Once we figured out that the adds needed a LOT more attention in phase 1 and to stay away from Dark Martyrdom, phase 1 cleaned up and phase 2 was just a matter of DPS switching off to kill adds while tanks tried desperately to build threat with stacks of Touch. Not too hard, and we were miles away from the enrage timer with three healers. Not as easy as Marrowgar but easy enough.
Gunship
What is this I don't even.
Deathbringer Sourfang
This is actually the first challenging fight. Our first two attempts were really sloppy and he built Blood Power way too fast. After we cleaned tank taunts and adds up, we started running into deaths right about the 3rd mark popping up. We would have the boss around 15% when the third mark went out and that'd be too much for two healers to handle, we'd loose a mark and it was essentially a wipe. The best we got him down to was around 12 - 11%.
How to fix this? Well, I have a couple of ideas. For some raeson we had melee running out to blood boil to avoid extra ticks on the AoE splash. "But wait," you say, "Blood Boil doesn't splash, only Blood Nova, and that's not a DoT!"
To you I say, "Where were you last night?!"
I don't know what I was thinking. And no one corrected me. Anyway, we'll clear that up. Also, I think we'll just have to hope RNG plays well, and we get at least one mark off on a healer so we can start chain-HoPing them (we havea a couple of paladins) sub 30% to minimize the amount of BP he gains. We had a minute and a few seconds on the enrage when we got him to 12% so I think maybe we can afford to do it with three healers?
We have some options and when I suggested a normal mode kill last night just to get on to a few easier bosses, the raid revolted.
I love my little turtles.
In other news, can ICC PLEASE stop dropping mail shit that goes to OS? PLEASE?
Thursday, June 24, 2010
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
The Hardest Raid Boss Of All
Last night we were all ready to go and girded our loins and sniffed like Rocky just before a fight, I had even spent a little bit of time in the cold box with a side of beef, myself, and I know our Philadelphia folks had run up the stairs of that building and posed beneath the statue of the Italian Stallion.
But all our preparation was for naught, and we were felled, defeated, unable to progress. Our nemesis was invulnerable to our taunts, his damage unhealable, his resistance too high for our casters to pierce, his armor too tough for our melee to pierce.
It was the Patch Day Boss.
Our server didn't come up till 9:40 EST which is an hour and forty minutes in to our three hour raid slot. Alas, alas, by then, most folks had logged off of vent, and a few were still having trouble even connecting to the game.
So, another night fell by the wayside, to a beast that has managed to hold back raids for years and, is as of yet, unconquered.
But all our preparation was for naught, and we were felled, defeated, unable to progress. Our nemesis was invulnerable to our taunts, his damage unhealable, his resistance too high for our casters to pierce, his armor too tough for our melee to pierce.
It was the Patch Day Boss.
Our server didn't come up till 9:40 EST which is an hour and forty minutes in to our three hour raid slot. Alas, alas, by then, most folks had logged off of vent, and a few were still having trouble even connecting to the game.
So, another night fell by the wayside, to a beast that has managed to hold back raids for years and, is as of yet, unconquered.
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
After the Lich King
This is the hard part, isn't it?
Right after the end boss is dead, right before a new keep-'em-busy raid is released, trying to motivate and encourage people to come for raid progression into hard modes. Tonight is the first night of our steps into Hard Modes so we'll see how it goes.
My expectations are modest so we'll see what we can accomplish, but tonight will also be a test of our perseverance and tenacity. Can we continue to run face first into walls on fights that we've cleared with our eyes closed on heroic and succeed or will someone just whine for us to "switch to normal mode already."
Thankfully, Blizzard has added the Vanquisher mounts as motivation to keep doing hard modes, not to mention the fact that some of the 10-man heroic loot is BIS outside of 25-man Hard Modes. But really, loot is a weak excuse right now.
We're expecting some sort of loot reset at the start of Cata so who knows how quickly we'll be dropping out 264/277 level gear? Will we be seeing so much stamina and strenght on gear that no longer has to pay points out of its budget to the old stats, that the old gear just evaporates? Or will they upgrade our ICC gear to be so awesome that we can walk into Cata Heroics with it?
I'm hoping to be successful tonight and use that momentum to push my guys to get to 9/12 in a couple of weeks. If we can get there without too much nonsense, then I think we can knuckle down and focus on Putricide and Sindragosa on heroic and once we get through that nonsense, I'll just have to push push push the raid towards H:LK.
Hopefully the progression will keep up and we'll see raid attendance regularly fill up until the eve of 4.0. I don't want to stop raiding - for one, I'm enjoying the game a lot at this level, and am looking forward to old bosses with new twists, but also, if we loose focus I think we'll spend a lot of time getting it back in Cata. I know we'll miss a month of raiding as people level and gear up so I don't want to add any more to that missed time than absolutely necessary.
But all of that is months away.
Wish us luck tonight as we face down Heroic Marrowar. :-)
Right after the end boss is dead, right before a new keep-'em-busy raid is released, trying to motivate and encourage people to come for raid progression into hard modes. Tonight is the first night of our steps into Hard Modes so we'll see how it goes.
My expectations are modest so we'll see what we can accomplish, but tonight will also be a test of our perseverance and tenacity. Can we continue to run face first into walls on fights that we've cleared with our eyes closed on heroic and succeed or will someone just whine for us to "switch to normal mode already."
Thankfully, Blizzard has added the Vanquisher mounts as motivation to keep doing hard modes, not to mention the fact that some of the 10-man heroic loot is BIS outside of 25-man Hard Modes. But really, loot is a weak excuse right now.
We're expecting some sort of loot reset at the start of Cata so who knows how quickly we'll be dropping out 264/277 level gear? Will we be seeing so much stamina and strenght on gear that no longer has to pay points out of its budget to the old stats, that the old gear just evaporates? Or will they upgrade our ICC gear to be so awesome that we can walk into Cata Heroics with it?
I'm hoping to be successful tonight and use that momentum to push my guys to get to 9/12 in a couple of weeks. If we can get there without too much nonsense, then I think we can knuckle down and focus on Putricide and Sindragosa on heroic and once we get through that nonsense, I'll just have to push push push the raid towards H:LK.
Hopefully the progression will keep up and we'll see raid attendance regularly fill up until the eve of 4.0. I don't want to stop raiding - for one, I'm enjoying the game a lot at this level, and am looking forward to old bosses with new twists, but also, if we loose focus I think we'll spend a lot of time getting it back in Cata. I know we'll miss a month of raiding as people level and gear up so I don't want to add any more to that missed time than absolutely necessary.
But all of that is months away.
Wish us luck tonight as we face down Heroic Marrowar. :-)
Friday, June 18, 2010
Le Roi Est Mort
It's good to be the King(slayer). Here's how we got there (not the actual strat, our phase 3 was still pretty messy and I want to clean it up before I post a strategy.)
With our second extension, we walked up to the Frozen Throne.
For the first time, we had a full guild run, on a fresh night with our three best healers, two tanks who knew the fight well, three ranged DPS pushing 9k on stand'n'cast fights and two melee DPS, only one of whom was here for the first time.
I was feeling good about it.
We spent 15 minutes talking about the whole fight, and then pulled. Phase 1: easy. Phase 2: just about perfect. We have a valk spawn just at transition and pick up a healer, the healer drops due to being in the AoE as the Valk slowly flew out and we started loosing people in the transition as tanks failed to pick up the adds fast enough and we hit Phase 3 down three or four folks and then exploded.
At that point, my feeling good went up to, "The cat's in the bag."
Every attempt there after was cleaner, and cleaner and we got to Phase 3 every single time. An hour in, on our fourth or fifth attempt, we wiped in Phase 2 for the first time due to a messy Defile and I called a 10 minute bio/walk/afk break, took a much needed stretch, walked about the apartment, and then when I sat down again, I broke down how to go from Phase 2 into transition - we stop at 43%, wait for the next Valk, kill it, move to the edge, and transition.
Bang. Phase 2 transition with no deaths, very clean. We pop hero, tanks grab the adds, DPS burns like crazy the phase transition goes perfectly and we hit phase 3 with only one spirit up and no deaths.
Lichy starts casting Soul Siphon on our ranged over and over which gibs us a bit on Vile Spirits but we manage. Defile dodging in Phase 3 is a piece of cake. His health plummets pretty fast - 40% gets to 30% and then sinks to 20% and suddenly Hammer of Wrath lights up before I realize it... and then inexplicably healers start to OOM.
We start loosing people in Frostmourn. Tanks start chaining CDs as he starts to soft-enrage and suddenly we loose our OT and I realize it's down to me, two healers and one DPS.
Behind LK I see our Holy Priest blossom into an angel and LK starts to cast Vile Spirits. 11%. With DP on CD, I pop wings, pop trinkets, and call for everyone to start DPSing, healers too. 11% dissolves to 10%, then painfully crawls down, 10.8%, 10.7%, 10.6%. The spirits are starting to come down and I'm out of CDs. 10.5%
Raid chat is going nuts. Vent starts going crazy.
I move him away from the spirits. 10.5%. 10.4%. My brain tells me to watch for any CDs, my finger hovers over Holy Wrath to hold off the Vile Spirits for another second when BANG. I'm dead.
0.4% to go? Really? What? How? We had ages to go on Enrage, I had AD up still, what happened? My heart sinks.
But then I realize he hasn't despawned and someone on Vent is screaming "We did it!"
I look up from a frantic scan of combat log and see him start his monologue - " No question remains unanswered. No doubts linger..."
Vent. Explodes.
After much squealing, /hi5ing and so forth, we collect loot, and with an hour and change left on our raid timer, we go do the weekly, try to pull the entire first room in Military Quarter and... because I forgot to rebuff RF after the rez, we then wipe on Naxx trash.
It's good to be brought back down to earth sometimes.
To make up for it, two days later, we decided to go in on our second raid night of the week and delivered what I had been promising the guild once we cleared through Lich King - an Algalon kill.
Half the raid had never seen him. First attempt was great but our Starkiller DC'd. Second attempt, he DC's again, I ask our lovely Elemental Shaman to switch to kill stars, but we still wipe to enrage at 5%. We swap out our DCing Boomkin from Australia for another healer, switch a healer out to shadow to kill stars, and then bang, down goes Algalon with a good 40+ seconds on the enrage.
After Lich King, the Algalon fight seems ridiculously easy.
We preened around Dalaran for a while with our second set of shiny new titles (Starcaller) and then went back in to Ulda and cleared all the way down to Yogg, doing a handful of hard modes along the way, and as it was an hour over raid time at that point, we called it after a messy swipe at Yogg with Freya down as our Keeper to guard our Sanity.
A bunch of us are one achievement away the Rusted Protdrake (One Light, wouldn't you know it)so maybe we'll knock that out one of these nights.
I'm very pleased with the way things are with the guild right now. I'd love to continue this sort of progression for the next few weeks in ICC Hard Modes and hopefully we'll see 3.3.5 on live servers in a couple weeks, and that will carry us through to Cataclysm.
My goal for the day Cataclysm drops?
Hover over the gates of Stormwind on a Bloodbathed Vanquisher with a Bane of the Fallen King title.
With our second extension, we walked up to the Frozen Throne.
For the first time, we had a full guild run, on a fresh night with our three best healers, two tanks who knew the fight well, three ranged DPS pushing 9k on stand'n'cast fights and two melee DPS, only one of whom was here for the first time.
I was feeling good about it.
We spent 15 minutes talking about the whole fight, and then pulled. Phase 1: easy. Phase 2: just about perfect. We have a valk spawn just at transition and pick up a healer, the healer drops due to being in the AoE as the Valk slowly flew out and we started loosing people in the transition as tanks failed to pick up the adds fast enough and we hit Phase 3 down three or four folks and then exploded.
At that point, my feeling good went up to, "The cat's in the bag."
Every attempt there after was cleaner, and cleaner and we got to Phase 3 every single time. An hour in, on our fourth or fifth attempt, we wiped in Phase 2 for the first time due to a messy Defile and I called a 10 minute bio/walk/afk break, took a much needed stretch, walked about the apartment, and then when I sat down again, I broke down how to go from Phase 2 into transition - we stop at 43%, wait for the next Valk, kill it, move to the edge, and transition.
Bang. Phase 2 transition with no deaths, very clean. We pop hero, tanks grab the adds, DPS burns like crazy the phase transition goes perfectly and we hit phase 3 with only one spirit up and no deaths.
Lichy starts casting Soul Siphon on our ranged over and over which gibs us a bit on Vile Spirits but we manage. Defile dodging in Phase 3 is a piece of cake. His health plummets pretty fast - 40% gets to 30% and then sinks to 20% and suddenly Hammer of Wrath lights up before I realize it... and then inexplicably healers start to OOM.
We start loosing people in Frostmourn. Tanks start chaining CDs as he starts to soft-enrage and suddenly we loose our OT and I realize it's down to me, two healers and one DPS.
Behind LK I see our Holy Priest blossom into an angel and LK starts to cast Vile Spirits. 11%. With DP on CD, I pop wings, pop trinkets, and call for everyone to start DPSing, healers too. 11% dissolves to 10%, then painfully crawls down, 10.8%, 10.7%, 10.6%. The spirits are starting to come down and I'm out of CDs. 10.5%
Raid chat is going nuts. Vent starts going crazy.
I move him away from the spirits. 10.5%. 10.4%. My brain tells me to watch for any CDs, my finger hovers over Holy Wrath to hold off the Vile Spirits for another second when BANG. I'm dead.
0.4% to go? Really? What? How? We had ages to go on Enrage, I had AD up still, what happened? My heart sinks.
But then I realize he hasn't despawned and someone on Vent is screaming "We did it!"
I look up from a frantic scan of combat log and see him start his monologue - " No question remains unanswered. No doubts linger..."
Vent. Explodes.
After much squealing, /hi5ing and so forth, we collect loot, and with an hour and change left on our raid timer, we go do the weekly, try to pull the entire first room in Military Quarter and... because I forgot to rebuff RF after the rez, we then wipe on Naxx trash.
It's good to be brought back down to earth sometimes.
To make up for it, two days later, we decided to go in on our second raid night of the week and delivered what I had been promising the guild once we cleared through Lich King - an Algalon kill.
Half the raid had never seen him. First attempt was great but our Starkiller DC'd. Second attempt, he DC's again, I ask our lovely Elemental Shaman to switch to kill stars, but we still wipe to enrage at 5%. We swap out our DCing Boomkin from Australia for another healer, switch a healer out to shadow to kill stars, and then bang, down goes Algalon with a good 40+ seconds on the enrage.
After Lich King, the Algalon fight seems ridiculously easy.
We preened around Dalaran for a while with our second set of shiny new titles (Starcaller) and then went back in to Ulda and cleared all the way down to Yogg, doing a handful of hard modes along the way, and as it was an hour over raid time at that point, we called it after a messy swipe at Yogg with Freya down as our Keeper to guard our Sanity.
A bunch of us are one achievement away the Rusted Protdrake (One Light, wouldn't you know it)so maybe we'll knock that out one of these nights.
I'm very pleased with the way things are with the guild right now. I'd love to continue this sort of progression for the next few weeks in ICC Hard Modes and hopefully we'll see 3.3.5 on live servers in a couple weeks, and that will carry us through to Cataclysm.
My goal for the day Cataclysm drops?
Hover over the gates of Stormwind on a Bloodbathed Vanquisher with a Bane of the Fallen King title.
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
Kingslayers
Not much more to say tonight, but I will write up my impressions and aftermath later.
Suffice it to say, I sleep the sleep of the just tonight. :)
Friday, May 28, 2010
Almost There Is An Inch Too Far
Someone needed to leave early last night so we got about an hour and a half of work in on Arthas, and it was pretty productive.
Phase 1 is a piece of cake, the transitions are almost effortless at this point, and Phase 2 is getting a hell of a lot cleaner. Even on messy Phase 2 attempts we can pretty reliable dodge Defiles and kill the Val'kyr before they drop someone off the edge.
We finally broke through to 40% last night, got through the transition okay, with one raging spirit still up but we totally fucked up the positioning into Phase 3 and wiped after the first Vile Spirits and that was on our last attempt.
So, after the person left, we pretty much 9-man'd 7 bosses in about an hour and called it a night. Next week we'll go back in on Lich King again on Tuesday. My team is giving me a lot of latitude here, and they are hungry for a kill, so I'm glad to have them with me. No one is complaining, no one is bitching, we're all here to be supportive and do our best.
--
Warning: Sloppy emo whining ahead...
I don't know what else to say about this fight. I've wanted to kill this son of a bitch for ages. When the raid opened in December, I was RL for a guild that was trying to do so much that it didn't get ANYTHING done and I was raiding 4, 5 nights a week and was on the path to burnout and insanity trying to fit 18 people into one 10-man or run 2 10-mans with alts.
When Frost Wing opened, I went Horde side to join a guild, that was very professional, but it lack any sense of fun or camaraderie and I felt like I was just a number which is no fun for me. I lost all responsibility, but I also lost everything else that was fun about raiding.
When I came back, it was mid-March and joined up with some friends from the old guild, and we didn't get a stable raiding core together until about a month ago. And even now we regularly have people dropping out due to emergencies and issues, which is understandable, but when my two most geared healers are offline, and I'm relying on an under-geared druid playing his off-spec to pre-HoT Infests - and he is a damned good healer! - it's frustrating.
I feel like this is the third time I'm starting from scratch on my journey to killing Arthas. And now that the end of the road is in sight, I feel like I keep snatching for the ribbon that marks the end and just keep missing it with the tip of my fingers.
I'm ready. I'm eager. I just want to kill him and I think I want him dead so much, it's making me desperately hungry. I know I shouldn't be this attached to a kill for a game, but I want this very much. I want this, for myself, but more than anything, for my team, for my friends who've stood by me while I went on my Horde Adventure... I owe this to you guys.
We're almost there. The lights in the house on the mountain are on, warm and inviting, we just need to get through the last bit of snow in our way, just get over that last hill and we'll be Kingslayers, drinking mead and sitting with our feet up in that house on the mountain top and I'll buy all the rounds all night long.
Phase 1 is a piece of cake, the transitions are almost effortless at this point, and Phase 2 is getting a hell of a lot cleaner. Even on messy Phase 2 attempts we can pretty reliable dodge Defiles and kill the Val'kyr before they drop someone off the edge.
We finally broke through to 40% last night, got through the transition okay, with one raging spirit still up but we totally fucked up the positioning into Phase 3 and wiped after the first Vile Spirits and that was on our last attempt.
So, after the person left, we pretty much 9-man'd 7 bosses in about an hour and called it a night. Next week we'll go back in on Lich King again on Tuesday. My team is giving me a lot of latitude here, and they are hungry for a kill, so I'm glad to have them with me. No one is complaining, no one is bitching, we're all here to be supportive and do our best.
--
Warning: Sloppy emo whining ahead...
I don't know what else to say about this fight. I've wanted to kill this son of a bitch for ages. When the raid opened in December, I was RL for a guild that was trying to do so much that it didn't get ANYTHING done and I was raiding 4, 5 nights a week and was on the path to burnout and insanity trying to fit 18 people into one 10-man or run 2 10-mans with alts.
When Frost Wing opened, I went Horde side to join a guild, that was very professional, but it lack any sense of fun or camaraderie and I felt like I was just a number which is no fun for me. I lost all responsibility, but I also lost everything else that was fun about raiding.
When I came back, it was mid-March and joined up with some friends from the old guild, and we didn't get a stable raiding core together until about a month ago. And even now we regularly have people dropping out due to emergencies and issues, which is understandable, but when my two most geared healers are offline, and I'm relying on an under-geared druid playing his off-spec to pre-HoT Infests - and he is a damned good healer! - it's frustrating.
I feel like this is the third time I'm starting from scratch on my journey to killing Arthas. And now that the end of the road is in sight, I feel like I keep snatching for the ribbon that marks the end and just keep missing it with the tip of my fingers.
I'm ready. I'm eager. I just want to kill him and I think I want him dead so much, it's making me desperately hungry. I know I shouldn't be this attached to a kill for a game, but I want this very much. I want this, for myself, but more than anything, for my team, for my friends who've stood by me while I went on my Horde Adventure... I owe this to you guys.
We're almost there. The lights in the house on the mountain are on, warm and inviting, we just need to get through the last bit of snow in our way, just get over that last hill and we'll be Kingslayers, drinking mead and sitting with our feet up in that house on the mountain top and I'll buy all the rounds all night long.
Thursday, May 27, 2010
The Lich King Makes Me Aware Of Something
Lich King is getting there. My team has put in some good time on him by now and I can smell blood in the water. People are eager and discussing the fight in GChat without any prompting from me and that's always a good sign.
Incidentally, I've been thinking about my gear since facing up to the King, and I think I need to reevaluate a lot of my normal tanking set and tweak it for Lich King (and eventually, hard modes) which requires a lot more survivability than I was anticipating. Part of this was also inspired by Rhidach's post on Righteous Defense, about the stats revealing from the latest Armory Data Mining efforts.
I'm going to scale back on my threat a bit and start going for a bit more armor, a bit more Stamina, and a tiny bit less mitigation.
What does that mean?
It means getting rid of all of my DefenseRating+Stam gems and replacing them with pure Stam unless I have a huge Stam socket bonus.
It means getting rid of all my Strength+Stam gems and replacing them with Agility+Stam gems for the bonus armor.
It means replacing my Armsman enchant with Stamina.
It means replacing my +10 stats with stamina.
I might also finally cave and get the Pillars of Might crafted. And I might also buy the off-set hands, even though that's going to kill my Hit Rating.
But if I do that, my threat will go in the toilet and I don't always have a rogue or a hunter to Tricks/MD me, so unless in 25s, where I can always depend on those, I think I have to stick with SOME level of threat.
I guess I've been so heavily invested in my Retribution set lately that I've sort of neglected my Protection set for a while. I've even taking to having the other Paladin Tank and a Death Knight who's also spec'd for tanking but usually goes DPS tank so I can go Ret on farm kills (which is, essentially, all content but the King). So, while doing 10k DPS as Ret is fun and all, I need to focus on my real passion and make sure my gear is as good as it can get for Lich King.
Nothing major, but these minor little things might let me stay alive an extra second through a cooldown less Soul Reaper if I absolutely need to tank him through it while the other tank is running away to drop a defile or something.
Anyway. It's interesting how harder encounter make you reevaluate your gear set that you've been comfortable in for ages. Lich King has been the most fun in raids I've had in a while. And I'm proud of my team for sticking with it without complaints or issues.
I hope to report back tomorrow with a kill shot. Wish us luck. :-)
Incidentally, I've been thinking about my gear since facing up to the King, and I think I need to reevaluate a lot of my normal tanking set and tweak it for Lich King (and eventually, hard modes) which requires a lot more survivability than I was anticipating. Part of this was also inspired by Rhidach's post on Righteous Defense, about the stats revealing from the latest Armory Data Mining efforts.
I'm going to scale back on my threat a bit and start going for a bit more armor, a bit more Stamina, and a tiny bit less mitigation.
What does that mean?
It means getting rid of all of my DefenseRating+Stam gems and replacing them with pure Stam unless I have a huge Stam socket bonus.
It means getting rid of all my Strength+Stam gems and replacing them with Agility+Stam gems for the bonus armor.
It means replacing my Armsman enchant with Stamina.
It means replacing my +10 stats with stamina.
I might also finally cave and get the Pillars of Might crafted. And I might also buy the off-set hands, even though that's going to kill my Hit Rating.
But if I do that, my threat will go in the toilet and I don't always have a rogue or a hunter to Tricks/MD me, so unless in 25s, where I can always depend on those, I think I have to stick with SOME level of threat.
I guess I've been so heavily invested in my Retribution set lately that I've sort of neglected my Protection set for a while. I've even taking to having the other Paladin Tank and a Death Knight who's also spec'd for tanking but usually goes DPS tank so I can go Ret on farm kills (which is, essentially, all content but the King). So, while doing 10k DPS as Ret is fun and all, I need to focus on my real passion and make sure my gear is as good as it can get for Lich King.
Nothing major, but these minor little things might let me stay alive an extra second through a cooldown less Soul Reaper if I absolutely need to tank him through it while the other tank is running away to drop a defile or something.
Anyway. It's interesting how harder encounter make you reevaluate your gear set that you've been comfortable in for ages. Lich King has been the most fun in raids I've had in a while. And I'm proud of my team for sticking with it without complaints or issues.
I hope to report back tomorrow with a kill shot. Wish us luck. :-)
Friday, May 14, 2010
The King, However, Is Still Alive
So, we faced up to Arthas last night.
We cleared up Phase 1 after 1 wipe and consistently got to phase 2 after that. The Transition is a bit messy, but I have some thoughts on how to clean that up. I don't want to go into too much detail about what we did since I'm just learning the fight now and once I have a strat down, I'll type it all out.
We only spent about an hour and change on him, so it wasn't nearly enough time, and I think I will extend the raid lockout into next week, though what I really want is to clear up the achievements (I think we only have 4 or 5 left to do).
But. Putting in time with the King is important and I want to maintain progression momentum. And I know we need more time on him. We just do. Once Phase 2 clears up, I'm confident we'll coast to a smooth kill in a couple of weeks, just like we did with Sindragosa.
We wiped on her for two weeks in a row before killing her this week very smoothly in three attempts, and I think the time you put in does good, you put in attempts, you learn the rhythm of the fight, you go to sleep and process it over, you think about it during the day or remember the sequence of events better or whatever, so the next time you come in you're much more ready for it.
But the issue is, when a boss is that difficult, how do you keep coming back week after week for more? How long do you beat your face on a boss before it gets tedious? How do you keep coming back and motivating and encouraging people to keep coming back?
Well, I'm trying very hard to do that.
I typically tend to be a chatterbox as my guild will tell you, but I think it helps to take a minute or two after every raid to talk over how it went (though I tend to take 5 - 10 minutes *cough*), congratulate everyone on progression, encourage them to show up, set expectations, and also, review the progression plan! I go over our plan on a regular basis, let everyone know what I want to do and discuss any questions.
I think it helps keep the guild engaged, and hopefully, they feel like a part of a team. That does a lot more for morale than all the cold-hearted efficiency you can muster, and people will show up time and time again to progress, and be loyal because you're showing your own loyalty to them.
I typed this as part of a comment in another thread on wow.com but I think it fits in here as well:
Good luck to us all! I can't wait to down him and move on to hard modes.
We cleared up Phase 1 after 1 wipe and consistently got to phase 2 after that. The Transition is a bit messy, but I have some thoughts on how to clean that up. I don't want to go into too much detail about what we did since I'm just learning the fight now and once I have a strat down, I'll type it all out.
We only spent about an hour and change on him, so it wasn't nearly enough time, and I think I will extend the raid lockout into next week, though what I really want is to clear up the achievements (I think we only have 4 or 5 left to do).
But. Putting in time with the King is important and I want to maintain progression momentum. And I know we need more time on him. We just do. Once Phase 2 clears up, I'm confident we'll coast to a smooth kill in a couple of weeks, just like we did with Sindragosa.
We wiped on her for two weeks in a row before killing her this week very smoothly in three attempts, and I think the time you put in does good, you put in attempts, you learn the rhythm of the fight, you go to sleep and process it over, you think about it during the day or remember the sequence of events better or whatever, so the next time you come in you're much more ready for it.
But the issue is, when a boss is that difficult, how do you keep coming back week after week for more? How long do you beat your face on a boss before it gets tedious? How do you keep coming back and motivating and encouraging people to keep coming back?
Well, I'm trying very hard to do that.
I typically tend to be a chatterbox as my guild will tell you, but I think it helps to take a minute or two after every raid to talk over how it went (though I tend to take 5 - 10 minutes *cough*), congratulate everyone on progression, encourage them to show up, set expectations, and also, review the progression plan! I go over our plan on a regular basis, let everyone know what I want to do and discuss any questions.
I think it helps keep the guild engaged, and hopefully, they feel like a part of a team. That does a lot more for morale than all the cold-hearted efficiency you can muster, and people will show up time and time again to progress, and be loyal because you're showing your own loyalty to them.
I typed this as part of a comment in another thread on wow.com but I think it fits in here as well:
Encourage your raiders, talk to them, treat them like a team, motivate them, and engage them. Make coming to progression content a privilege and most of all, make them feel appreciated. I never get tired of saying, "Thank you for coming," and I mean it. I couldn't raid without every single person who logs in and stands next to me to raid - and I want my raiders to know that.I'm really happy to be in the guild that I'm in, with all the people I'm in it with. They're good players, but more importantly, they're good friends.
Good luck to us all! I can't wait to down him and move on to hard modes.
Thursday, May 13, 2010
The Queen Is Dead
Tuesday night, it all came together.
The funny thing was, we had 2 PuGs last week that we replaced with guildies this week, and I said to myself, I said, "Joachim, we're going to spend some time catching these folks up to Phase 3, so be ready for a few wipes."
"But Joachim," I said to myself, I said, "I don't understand, we just spent a while learning the fight, I don't have the patience to sit through two hours of wipes again!"
But of course, you do what you have to do, so I girded my loins, took a breath, skipped Plague and Blood wing entirely, and dove right into the Frost wing. We approached Dreamwalker with our usual swagger and realized that we'd done her on 9-man before, so we could easily get Portal Jockey, and I volunteered to catch the 3rd portal (we typically have 3 healers, 2 taking every portal, our magnificent Guild Leader heals the raid on her Holy Priest, while we use one tank to tank everything, 1 DPS on the Suppressors and everyone else eats everything else).
Since we could obviously afford 1 extra DPS doing nothing I decided to take the portal. Of course, I never realized the portals move around so when the 2nd set of portals spawned on the other side of the room, I missed them while killing a Blazing Skeleton and there went the achievement. Oh, well. Next week.
After the Elevator Boss and Spider Room of WTF we came up to Sindi, and pulled. First two attempts were cluster fucks. People spreading tombs everywhere in the air phase, people not LoSing the Frost Bombs and I hit that vent button, like I meant it, and I said, "I don't know what the hell is going on. And I don't care. Now shape up, or ELSE!"
Else what? I dunno. But the threat worked. And the next attempt we get to phase 3 with no deaths or anything. So I go, FINALLY! And get ready to start calling out names for people to move and do what they need to do but.... after about two tomb runs I realize I don't need to because everyone, including the 2 folks who've never seen this phase, and doing everything right!
People move out, ranged switches over to explode one, then clip their debuff on the other, people give each other room, when we get a double tomb at one point, nobody panics and they clean up both of them. At about a minute to go, while I'm LoSing, we loose the tank but somehow I was still 2nd on the meter so she rushes up the stairs at me, I pull her into place away from the raid, raid gets to her side, I realize her health is down to 1% and two more seconds later, she's keeling over, and the raid is spamming achievements.
It was a good night. We went and cleared through a few more bosses before calling it a night. Tonight, we kill Putricide, and then the blood wing, before going in to work on the Lich King.
I am fucking excited. And really proud of my boys and girls. Way to go, my turtles. Way to go.
The funny thing was, we had 2 PuGs last week that we replaced with guildies this week, and I said to myself, I said, "Joachim, we're going to spend some time catching these folks up to Phase 3, so be ready for a few wipes."
"But Joachim," I said to myself, I said, "I don't understand, we just spent a while learning the fight, I don't have the patience to sit through two hours of wipes again!"
But of course, you do what you have to do, so I girded my loins, took a breath, skipped Plague and Blood wing entirely, and dove right into the Frost wing. We approached Dreamwalker with our usual swagger and realized that we'd done her on 9-man before, so we could easily get Portal Jockey, and I volunteered to catch the 3rd portal (we typically have 3 healers, 2 taking every portal, our magnificent Guild Leader heals the raid on her Holy Priest, while we use one tank to tank everything, 1 DPS on the Suppressors and everyone else eats everything else).
Since we could obviously afford 1 extra DPS doing nothing I decided to take the portal. Of course, I never realized the portals move around so when the 2nd set of portals spawned on the other side of the room, I missed them while killing a Blazing Skeleton and there went the achievement. Oh, well. Next week.
After the Elevator Boss and Spider Room of WTF we came up to Sindi, and pulled. First two attempts were cluster fucks. People spreading tombs everywhere in the air phase, people not LoSing the Frost Bombs and I hit that vent button, like I meant it, and I said, "I don't know what the hell is going on. And I don't care. Now shape up, or ELSE!"
Else what? I dunno. But the threat worked. And the next attempt we get to phase 3 with no deaths or anything. So I go, FINALLY! And get ready to start calling out names for people to move and do what they need to do but.... after about two tomb runs I realize I don't need to because everyone, including the 2 folks who've never seen this phase, and doing everything right!
People move out, ranged switches over to explode one, then clip their debuff on the other, people give each other room, when we get a double tomb at one point, nobody panics and they clean up both of them. At about a minute to go, while I'm LoSing, we loose the tank but somehow I was still 2nd on the meter so she rushes up the stairs at me, I pull her into place away from the raid, raid gets to her side, I realize her health is down to 1% and two more seconds later, she's keeling over, and the raid is spamming achievements.
It was a good night. We went and cleared through a few more bosses before calling it a night. Tonight, we kill Putricide, and then the blood wing, before going in to work on the Lich King.
I am fucking excited. And really proud of my boys and girls. Way to go, my turtles. Way to go.
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.
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