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 paladin. Show all posts
Showing posts with label paladin. Show all posts
Tuesday, November 13, 2012
Wednesday, October 10, 2012
Gear Priority For Tanks In Mogu'shan Vaults
Yep, another tanking gear post.
As we trudge through Mogu'shan Vaults, one of the things we need to keep in mind is that we're going to be short some gear that doesn't drop in the vaults at all. For example, there is only one tanking trinket and ring that drops from the raid, and there are in fact, no tanking cloaks, helms, or legs that drop from the raid at all.
With the addition of the Charms of Good Fortune, I don't imagine that getting all the drops will be difficult by the time we get access to Heart of Fear and Terrace of Endless Spring; but we won't be able to replace the dungeon blues from Mogu'shan Vaults alone. However, we will have 3,000 valor at the end of this week and about 5,000 valor by the time the new raids launch, and I think we can be smart about where those points go to maximize our gearing strategy. Let's take a look then, at what we do get from the raid.
That leaves us with a few gaps and here is where we can fill them out.
That's a net sum of 10,500 valor points which is 10.5 weeks of capping valor, which is six weeks into the opening of the next two raids. Assuming you don't get lucky with drops from Sha or, like me; are willing to swap in some DPS pieces as long as they don't have Crit on them. Hit, Expertise and Haste are all great for Paladins right now.
I'll go into the why of it a little bit more in another post, but Theck has covered it plenty over at Sacred Duty. But briefly - with the way Active Mitigation works, keeping Bastion of Glory stacks up through Shield of the Righteous is our highest priority and the best way to do it is to hard-cap Hit and at least soft-cap Expertise for Holy Power generation, and any Haste you can get will reduce the cooldown of Crusader Strike and Judgment letting you get HP that much faster.
Anyway, if you are willing to use Haste items and reforge the crit away, your options broaden a bit, but please be fair to the plate DPS in your raid, and let them get their main-specs geared out before you roll on that gear. Yes, Haste is very good for us but any good raid will prioritize DPS over Tanks on actual DPS gear.
So, there you go. Hopefully it helps you plan out your Valor purchases and be in the best gear you can get before Heart of Fear comes out in November. If I've missed anything, please let me know! I deliberately didn't go into the crafted gear and such as it's ridiculously expensive right now.
Personally, I've been very lucky and got the tier tanking legs and the PvP gloves from Sha so that's two less items I have to purchase. I picked up the ring first as I was still using 450 item in that slot, and I'll probably grab the helm second (next week) and the trinket third leaving me with the hands and cloak to upgrade when Heart of Fear launches. I think I'll be okay to wait on those items till then.
Good luck on those Good Fortune rolls! :-)
As we trudge through Mogu'shan Vaults, one of the things we need to keep in mind is that we're going to be short some gear that doesn't drop in the vaults at all. For example, there is only one tanking trinket and ring that drops from the raid, and there are in fact, no tanking cloaks, helms, or legs that drop from the raid at all.
With the addition of the Charms of Good Fortune, I don't imagine that getting all the drops will be difficult by the time we get access to Heart of Fear and Terrace of Endless Spring; but we won't be able to replace the dungeon blues from Mogu'shan Vaults alone. However, we will have 3,000 valor at the end of this week and about 5,000 valor by the time the new raids launch, and I think we can be smart about where those points go to maximize our gearing strategy. Let's take a look then, at what we do get from the raid.
| Item | Source | Slot | Type |
| Chestguard of Eternal Vigilance | Boss Drop | Chest | Armor |
| Sollerets of Spirit Splitting | Gara'jal the Spiritbinder | Feet | Armor |
| Shoulderguards of the Unflanked | Boss Drop | Shoulder | Armor |
| Star-Stealer Waistguard | Boss Drop | Waist | Armor |
| Bracers of Six Oxen | Feng the Accursed | Wrist | Armor |
| Beads of the Mogu'shi | Boss Drop | Neck | Amulet |
| Band of Bursting Novas | Elegon | Finger | Ring |
| Vial of Dragon's Blood | Egeon | Trinket | Trinket |
| Elegion, the Fanged Crescent | Elegon | One-Hand | Weapon |
| Steelskin, Qiang's impervious Shield | Boss Drop | Shield | Shield |
That leaves us with a few gaps and here is where we can fill them out.
| Item | Source | Slot | Valor |
| Gloves of the Overwhelming Swarm | August Celestials | Hands | 1750 |
| Yi's Least Favorite Helm | Shado-Pan | Head | 2250 |
| Kovok's Riven Legguards | Klaxxi | Legs | 2250 |
| Yi's Cloak of Courage | Shado-Pan | Back | 1250 |
| Alani's Inflexible Ring | Golden Lotus | Finger | 1250 |
| Lao-Chin's Liquid Courage | Shado-Pan | Trinket | 1750 |
That's a net sum of 10,500 valor points which is 10.5 weeks of capping valor, which is six weeks into the opening of the next two raids. Assuming you don't get lucky with drops from Sha or, like me; are willing to swap in some DPS pieces as long as they don't have Crit on them. Hit, Expertise and Haste are all great for Paladins right now.
I'll go into the why of it a little bit more in another post, but Theck has covered it plenty over at Sacred Duty. But briefly - with the way Active Mitigation works, keeping Bastion of Glory stacks up through Shield of the Righteous is our highest priority and the best way to do it is to hard-cap Hit and at least soft-cap Expertise for Holy Power generation, and any Haste you can get will reduce the cooldown of Crusader Strike and Judgment letting you get HP that much faster.
Anyway, if you are willing to use Haste items and reforge the crit away, your options broaden a bit, but please be fair to the plate DPS in your raid, and let them get their main-specs geared out before you roll on that gear. Yes, Haste is very good for us but any good raid will prioritize DPS over Tanks on actual DPS gear.
| Item | Source | Slot | Type |
| Starcrusher Gauntlets | Elegon | Hands | Armor |
| Nullification Greathelm | Feng the Accursed | Head | Armor |
| Jang-xi's Devastating Legplates | Boss Drop | Legs | Armor |
| Cloak of Peacock Featehrs | Feng the Accursed | Back | Cloak |
So, there you go. Hopefully it helps you plan out your Valor purchases and be in the best gear you can get before Heart of Fear comes out in November. If I've missed anything, please let me know! I deliberately didn't go into the crafted gear and such as it's ridiculously expensive right now.
Personally, I've been very lucky and got the tier tanking legs and the PvP gloves from Sha so that's two less items I have to purchase. I picked up the ring first as I was still using 450 item in that slot, and I'll probably grab the helm second (next week) and the trinket third leaving me with the hands and cloak to upgrade when Heart of Fear launches. I think I'll be okay to wait on those items till then.
Good luck on those Good Fortune rolls! :-)
Thursday, September 20, 2012
Mists on the horizon
Firstly, the Legendary dudes stole part of my blog name for a show they're doing called "After Dark!" This makes me unreasonably and unbearably despondent. Sad enough to use an emoticon. :-(
Moving on.
This week was the final Dragon Soul run for me. I got to tank heroic Madness one last time, and now it's just a clear run towards Pandaria and the raids waiting for us on those distant, misty shores. The two hour clears of Heroic Dragon Soul were almost getting to be fun, but I'll be happy not to step into that place for a long, long time.
Unlike Wrath of the Lich King, my sets are all kinds of all over the place, distributed between three specs and while all of them are very well geared, none of them are complete. The side-effect of raiding with 3 specs, I suppose. And given my luck with loot, I went the entire expansion - the entire expansion (some 20+ Madness kills in normal or heroic mode) without seeing a single Souldrinker. Bravo, Dragon Soul, you have gotten one over me after all. You win this round, RNG.
Also, no heroic mounts, not from Ragnaros, not from Dragon Soul, not from Alysrazor... I've seen maybe 12 rare mounts in total drop from the bosses in all of Cataclysm and didn't win any. So it goes. I'm not too disappointed, though a Ragnaros mount would have been nice.
I don't have too many regrets about Cataclysm, but I'm just eager to put it behind me and look towards Mists, especially now that I'm trying to settle (again) into my new role, getting excited about tanking. After prepping for Retribution for a couple of months, it's a bit of a gear change, but I'm happier in this role than any other by far, and the weight of a shield on my arm is far more comfortable than the feel of a great heavy axe in my hands.
But the changes to tanking in general and the Protection Paladin toolbox in particular have been significant and I'm still getting used to them. We have a large number of keybinds and being a support class, it's well deserved. There are a tons of buttons we must necessarily have close at hand at all time. This is taking some tricky maneuvering of binds, add-ons, and re-training my hand and muscle-memory a bit, while trying to incorporate a ton of auras to track what ElvUI was doing for me, till it slowed my laptop to a crawl and had to be ejected. So now I'm stuck making my own UI, more or less, from SUF, Bartender and Weak Auras. Maybe that's worth throwing up here to help anyone making their own Tanking UI.
In a shocking bit of news for nobody, Tanking 25s is pretty different from 10s. The amount of specific information I had in 10s is missing (the smaller number of people meant that I could specifically call out to people for specific buffs or help) though that could just be me being new to the guild (not really, I've been here for over a month already.) Point being that I got myself killed a couple of times because I didn't exactly know who to call on for help - I'll need to make sure I correct that.
The other thing is that now I'm getting exposed to the new Vengeance mechanic and its never-ending climb to the stratosphere thanks to the removal of any cap. Do you know how much AP you get after eating an Impale? A ton. Like, six-figures of a ton. Holy shit. I have a feeling if I was tighter and better with my rotation I'd be wrecking meters left and right. But not all bosses are going to hit like that - and besides, it just makes tank swaps a nightmare. Maybe some kind of macro is necessary.
In more sad news, the removal of Righteous Defense is such a handicap that I didn't even realize it until I saw two or three adds peeling off and, as I'm want to do, I switched targets and my ring-finger spammed my ages-old RD macro-bind and the adds just continued on their merry way. It was a sad moment, and I paused to mourn the passing of an old friend whilst the loose adds gored on the bodies of my companions.
Moving on.
This week was the final Dragon Soul run for me. I got to tank heroic Madness one last time, and now it's just a clear run towards Pandaria and the raids waiting for us on those distant, misty shores. The two hour clears of Heroic Dragon Soul were almost getting to be fun, but I'll be happy not to step into that place for a long, long time.
Unlike Wrath of the Lich King, my sets are all kinds of all over the place, distributed between three specs and while all of them are very well geared, none of them are complete. The side-effect of raiding with 3 specs, I suppose. And given my luck with loot, I went the entire expansion - the entire expansion (some 20+ Madness kills in normal or heroic mode) without seeing a single Souldrinker. Bravo, Dragon Soul, you have gotten one over me after all. You win this round, RNG.
Also, no heroic mounts, not from Ragnaros, not from Dragon Soul, not from Alysrazor... I've seen maybe 12 rare mounts in total drop from the bosses in all of Cataclysm and didn't win any. So it goes. I'm not too disappointed, though a Ragnaros mount would have been nice.
I don't have too many regrets about Cataclysm, but I'm just eager to put it behind me and look towards Mists, especially now that I'm trying to settle (again) into my new role, getting excited about tanking. After prepping for Retribution for a couple of months, it's a bit of a gear change, but I'm happier in this role than any other by far, and the weight of a shield on my arm is far more comfortable than the feel of a great heavy axe in my hands.
But the changes to tanking in general and the Protection Paladin toolbox in particular have been significant and I'm still getting used to them. We have a large number of keybinds and being a support class, it's well deserved. There are a tons of buttons we must necessarily have close at hand at all time. This is taking some tricky maneuvering of binds, add-ons, and re-training my hand and muscle-memory a bit, while trying to incorporate a ton of auras to track what ElvUI was doing for me, till it slowed my laptop to a crawl and had to be ejected. So now I'm stuck making my own UI, more or less, from SUF, Bartender and Weak Auras. Maybe that's worth throwing up here to help anyone making their own Tanking UI.
In a shocking bit of news for nobody, Tanking 25s is pretty different from 10s. The amount of specific information I had in 10s is missing (the smaller number of people meant that I could specifically call out to people for specific buffs or help) though that could just be me being new to the guild (not really, I've been here for over a month already.) Point being that I got myself killed a couple of times because I didn't exactly know who to call on for help - I'll need to make sure I correct that.
The other thing is that now I'm getting exposed to the new Vengeance mechanic and its never-ending climb to the stratosphere thanks to the removal of any cap. Do you know how much AP you get after eating an Impale? A ton. Like, six-figures of a ton. Holy shit. I have a feeling if I was tighter and better with my rotation I'd be wrecking meters left and right. But not all bosses are going to hit like that - and besides, it just makes tank swaps a nightmare. Maybe some kind of macro is necessary.
/cancelaura Righteous Fury
/cast Hand of Salvation
/dance
In more sad news, the removal of Righteous Defense is such a handicap that I didn't even realize it until I saw two or three adds peeling off and, as I'm want to do, I switched targets and my ring-finger spammed my ages-old RD macro-bind and the adds just continued on their merry way. It was a sad moment, and I paused to mourn the passing of an old friend whilst the loose adds gored on the bodies of my companions.
Friday, September 7, 2012
First week of raiding in 5.0.4
Man, that raiding thing is a different animal.
I was churning out huge freaking numbers in dungeon all last week and then in raid, my output just plummeted, for any number of reasons. It has me pretty bummed out about my own performance, because nobody is a bigger critic of my numbers than me. I'm in competition with myself, and I have a certain expectation of what I want to see. When I fail to meet those expectations, the disappointment drives me figure out how I can fix the situation and perform better.
The reasons I came up with are the following:
Speaking of dismal DPS, last night my old guild was looking to go do some mix of normal and heroic DS so I hopped onto my Warlock that I hadn't played in a while, let alone prepared post patch. I stuck with Affliction as it seemed the least changed on beta, and quickly assembled a UI and read up the rotation while we zoned in. It took me most of the night to realize some basic things like, oh, I don't know:
My performance was even worse there. At least I got 3 items of gear, including the Madness staff and I bought another 2 with Justice points so my iLevel jumped up to 389. Yay? Yay.
I'm hoping that by fiddling with my UI and cleaning up my WTF/Interface folders, I can squeeze some more performance out of my laptop for next week. And
I was churning out huge freaking numbers in dungeon all last week and then in raid, my output just plummeted, for any number of reasons. It has me pretty bummed out about my own performance, because nobody is a bigger critic of my numbers than me. I'm in competition with myself, and I have a certain expectation of what I want to see. When I fail to meet those expectations, the disappointment drives me figure out how I can fix the situation and perform better.
The reasons I came up with are the following:
- My laptop just couldn't keep up with the add-ons and the 25-mode graphics. The first night was more or less a wash due to this - I couldn't just turn off all my add-ons as I had very specific bars setup and was trapped. Trying to run about and stay alive and keep DPS up at less than 10 FPS wasn't pretty. The second night was better, once I pared the add-ons down to, er, DBM, SUF, Hearkitty, FCFS helper and the loot system add-on, ran Fullscreen after turning all the bells and whistles down. But I do need to figure something out to keep 20 - 30 FPS going with graphics running at a decent level with the add-ons I want. If you have any suggestions or can offer any help in this area, please let me know. I'm running on a Laptop which makes it a bit more complicated.
- I ran with Holy Avenger the first night as it's a net DPS gain but goddamn, it was so hard to find places where I could sit still for a long enough time to get good use of it for burst. Not to mention, I kept getting locked trying to get it to line up with Avenging Wrath. Argh. The second night I switched to Divine Purpose and that felt significantly better. I'm going to test with the dummy and if I can get the same damage out of both, I'll run consistently with DP instead.
- This is probably a minor factor, but I didn't Reforge anything as I wasn't sure where our stat priorities lay. Next week, I'll throw everything I have into Haste because there were long stretches where I had nothing to press and got antsy and thanks to Sanctity of Battle, Haste helps with nearly every one of our HP builders. This should help out a bit. I was dismissing the Haste thing through the end of Cata as being irrelevant for Retribution, but I suppose I'll eat my words and my haste.
Speaking of dismal DPS, last night my old guild was looking to go do some mix of normal and heroic DS so I hopped onto my Warlock that I hadn't played in a while, let alone prepared post patch. I stuck with Affliction as it seemed the least changed on beta, and quickly assembled a UI and read up the rotation while we zoned in. It took me most of the night to realize some basic things like, oh, I don't know:
- Don't let Agony drop off, clip it to keep the 10 stacks ticking!
- Drain Soul returns Shards at any point for Haunt!
- A Soul Burned Soul Swap puts all 3 DoTs on the target immediately!
- I should be using Grimoire of Sacrifice every time, even though Grimoire of Supremacy is more flashy!
- Burning Rush actually needs to be canceled!
My performance was even worse there. At least I got 3 items of gear, including the Madness staff and I bought another 2 with Justice points so my iLevel jumped up to 389. Yay? Yay.
I'm hoping that by fiddling with my UI and cleaning up my WTF/Interface folders, I can squeeze some more performance out of my laptop for next week. And
Friday, July 6, 2012
Can I be a Warlock, please?
Wow, this has been a gap of nearly 3 weeks since I posted - long time since I've taken such a break.
There really isn't much to write about with my in-game activities, unfortunately, and while I'd like to wax philosophical on some other topics of the game, the muse fails to stir. Still, here I am today, after a few... extremely frustrating weeks of game. Not much raiding to talk about, a lot of mumbling on my part, and playing of alts and doing really repetitive boring stuff just to have a reason to log in. I've been seriously tempted just to uninstall WoW and wait till patch 5.0 to install it again, so I don't even get tempted into logging in just to sit in Dalaran staring at Trade with a mixture of horror and fascination.
But, log in I did, and do, and last night I dusted off my sweet, lovely Warlock lady for a bit of LFG action. First, as a good little diligent player, I sat on the Dummy for a bit just to remember my rotation, I spread some DoTs around and so forth, and when the dungeon started, I saw I was in the company of some full DS geared people (my poor Warlock is mostly in normal-FL gear). Afraid of a poor showing, I sat up straight and prepared to do my best.
Throughout the dungeon, I found myself competing pretty aggressively. I was Soul-Swapping full piles of DoTs like my life depended on it, I was keeping every bursty button on cool-down, every time I could boost my numbers, I did, and when a pile of mobs gathered, I gleefully breathed Shadowflame, spammed seeds of Corruption. I won't deny the cackled that left me as the screen exploded with huge, bright yellow numbers everywhere.
At the end of the dungeon, we were all within 1% of each other in overall DPS and damage done, and I was feeling pretty proud of myself. It made me wonder about how much fun I have playing my DPS specs lately, as I don't tank very much anymore even on Innana and Retribution has become my most progressed set, so I've developed a very DPSey mindset. And of course, in a given raid, ranged DPS almost always seems to outperform Melee, or should be, and playing Affliction would give me a great deal of utility in terms of what I can offer the table.
While raiding in Cataclysm offers me absolutely no inspiration anymore, I do kind-of want to raid on my Warlock, if I could find a late Friday night group for some cross-server action or something. It would let me make up my mind about how much I really enjoy flinging spells all over the place. I have to say, having tried Affliction on Beta, it feels a bit more frantic. Malefic Grip seriously messes with DoT refresh timers and Haunt replacing Shadow Bolt from Nightfall procs constantly breaking the normal flow of the rotation while constantly being aware of Drain-twisting for when a bursty part is about to come up or during Execute phase, all makes for some pretty tense casting. There are a lot of things to track and Affliction was never the most straightforward of specs. But I think it's a very rewarding spec to play, there is almost no other spec in the game that feels as in touch with its in-character description as Affliction.
You are laying curses and afflictions and banes on your enemies and devouring them from the inside out. There is no question of what an Affliction Warlock does. Merricat is a twisted, dark woman with a warped mind and I sometimes feels that she thinks she doesn't control her actions anymore, that she has stepped too far into the Nether and when she came back, she wasn't completely herself anymore.
Through all this, Affliction remains the least flashy of the 3 specs. Demonology has some incredibly cool moves, and Destruction has always been about the fire and brimstone, but Affliction is the quiet art of killing by looking at you and suddenly that belly-ache turns into blood pouring out of your ears. So I guess I'm okay with it.
By contrast, Retribution has become almost elegantly simple. We build Holy Power from absolutely everything. Judgment? HP. Crusader Strike? HP. Exorcism?! HP. Have too much HP? Have some extra storage. Inquisition is all buffed? Just spam those endless streaks of Templar's Verdicts. But at the same time, because we're hitting Verdict so much more, it had to scale down in terms of the damage it does, and that is a serious bummer. It doesn't feel like we're building up this massive blow, it feel more like a lot of medium-sized blows whittling down the enemy rather than bringing an overwhelming righteous force down.
So, how do you choose? I'm hoping we have a "Well, what the hell class and spec ARE we playing next expansion?" conversation soon, and we'll go from there. But, knowing what our armor-class breakout is like (3 each of plate, cloth and leather) I suspect I'll be back to tanking and my brief affair with my Warlock will be a memory, we'll glance at each other occasionally in Stormwind, steal brief smoldering looks, wonder what-ifs, exchange unfortunate smiles, shrug at each other, hoping that the time between patches brings us together again, and then we'll both return to our jobs.
There really isn't much to write about with my in-game activities, unfortunately, and while I'd like to wax philosophical on some other topics of the game, the muse fails to stir. Still, here I am today, after a few... extremely frustrating weeks of game. Not much raiding to talk about, a lot of mumbling on my part, and playing of alts and doing really repetitive boring stuff just to have a reason to log in. I've been seriously tempted just to uninstall WoW and wait till patch 5.0 to install it again, so I don't even get tempted into logging in just to sit in Dalaran staring at Trade with a mixture of horror and fascination.
But, log in I did, and do, and last night I dusted off my sweet, lovely Warlock lady for a bit of LFG action. First, as a good little diligent player, I sat on the Dummy for a bit just to remember my rotation, I spread some DoTs around and so forth, and when the dungeon started, I saw I was in the company of some full DS geared people (my poor Warlock is mostly in normal-FL gear). Afraid of a poor showing, I sat up straight and prepared to do my best.
Throughout the dungeon, I found myself competing pretty aggressively. I was Soul-Swapping full piles of DoTs like my life depended on it, I was keeping every bursty button on cool-down, every time I could boost my numbers, I did, and when a pile of mobs gathered, I gleefully breathed Shadowflame, spammed seeds of Corruption. I won't deny the cackled that left me as the screen exploded with huge, bright yellow numbers everywhere.
At the end of the dungeon, we were all within 1% of each other in overall DPS and damage done, and I was feeling pretty proud of myself. It made me wonder about how much fun I have playing my DPS specs lately, as I don't tank very much anymore even on Innana and Retribution has become my most progressed set, so I've developed a very DPSey mindset. And of course, in a given raid, ranged DPS almost always seems to outperform Melee, or should be, and playing Affliction would give me a great deal of utility in terms of what I can offer the table.
While raiding in Cataclysm offers me absolutely no inspiration anymore, I do kind-of want to raid on my Warlock, if I could find a late Friday night group for some cross-server action or something. It would let me make up my mind about how much I really enjoy flinging spells all over the place. I have to say, having tried Affliction on Beta, it feels a bit more frantic. Malefic Grip seriously messes with DoT refresh timers and Haunt replacing Shadow Bolt from Nightfall procs constantly breaking the normal flow of the rotation while constantly being aware of Drain-twisting for when a bursty part is about to come up or during Execute phase, all makes for some pretty tense casting. There are a lot of things to track and Affliction was never the most straightforward of specs. But I think it's a very rewarding spec to play, there is almost no other spec in the game that feels as in touch with its in-character description as Affliction.
You are laying curses and afflictions and banes on your enemies and devouring them from the inside out. There is no question of what an Affliction Warlock does. Merricat is a twisted, dark woman with a warped mind and I sometimes feels that she thinks she doesn't control her actions anymore, that she has stepped too far into the Nether and when she came back, she wasn't completely herself anymore.
Through all this, Affliction remains the least flashy of the 3 specs. Demonology has some incredibly cool moves, and Destruction has always been about the fire and brimstone, but Affliction is the quiet art of killing by looking at you and suddenly that belly-ache turns into blood pouring out of your ears. So I guess I'm okay with it.
By contrast, Retribution has become almost elegantly simple. We build Holy Power from absolutely everything. Judgment? HP. Crusader Strike? HP. Exorcism?! HP. Have too much HP? Have some extra storage. Inquisition is all buffed? Just spam those endless streaks of Templar's Verdicts. But at the same time, because we're hitting Verdict so much more, it had to scale down in terms of the damage it does, and that is a serious bummer. It doesn't feel like we're building up this massive blow, it feel more like a lot of medium-sized blows whittling down the enemy rather than bringing an overwhelming righteous force down.
So, how do you choose? I'm hoping we have a "Well, what the hell class and spec ARE we playing next expansion?" conversation soon, and we'll go from there. But, knowing what our armor-class breakout is like (3 each of plate, cloth and leather) I suspect I'll be back to tanking and my brief affair with my Warlock will be a memory, we'll glance at each other occasionally in Stormwind, steal brief smoldering looks, wonder what-ifs, exchange unfortunate smiles, shrug at each other, hoping that the time between patches brings us together again, and then we'll both return to our jobs.
Wednesday, June 6, 2012
I bring the fire and fury of heaven!
So. Having about equivalent damage done and DPS on the meters as a Rogue and Shadow Priest, both wielding Legendary weapons, is kind of awesome.
I've really grown to love playing a damage role recently, and it feels a lot more visceral in terms of having a direct impact on the encounters. You can see that when you're given a task, there's a real, active process you can apply to it and whittle down the enemy - especially when you're assigned a particular target like working down the Mana Bubble on Heroic Yor'sahj, a specific tentacle on Heroic Zon'ozz or the pylons on Heroic Haggara.
It took me a while, but I've gotten over the whole, "I need to save my cool-downs for Heroism." The fact is some of my cool-downs are very short, and even the long ones will get used twice in most fights (though Morchok died in ~3 minutes this week just as he cast the second pool, which was hilarious).
So, if I hit Guardian, buff Inquisition with 3 HP, hit Wrath and Zealotry, right at the pull, over a 6.5 minute long fight, I will get to use Guardian twice, Wrath and Zealotry 3 times, twice along with the Guardian buff if I wait just a bit for the 3rd use. That is awesome, and it really makes an impact on damage throughput. Having trinkets that buff me either through stacks from swings or from an ICD rather than on-use is also great because that's one (or two) less things to worry about (though I tend to just use those with a macro on Crusader Strike anyway).
Both our tanks are quite good at threat output (Death Knight and Warrior) so I give a two second count before exploding into a gibbering rabid animal, and I've never come close to pulling off of them. Even if that was an issue, that's what we have Hand of Salvation for, and the few seconds of decreased threat will give tanks the time to build up Vengeance and get their lead and after the first 10 seconds, threat is just not an issue anyway. We'll see how that holds up in Pandaria.
Now that I've gotten used to Retribution, the play-style has gotten rather simple. Keep Inquisition up, build up to 3 HP and spend it on Templar's Verdict. Hit Wrath and Inquisition more or less on cool-down except if Guardian is within a minute or so of coming up. With 4 piece Tier-13, we build Holy Power through Judgments so fast, those Templar's Verdicts just keep going out.
It almost makes me consider picking up Selfless Healer as it wouldn't be hard to setup a macro to throw a heal on the tank on a press just to keep that extra 3% damage done buff rolling. But it probably isn't worth the trouble. Very rarely do I use Holy Power to self heal except maybe on Zon'ozz and Haggara.
Warlocks are looking like so much fun on Beta that's all I play when I log in, but I should spend some time running some dungeons as Retribution just to get used to it and see what's changing. It doesn't seem like Retribution has a lot of changes but the 2 extra HP buffer and the new Talents might make a difference and I'm curious to see how weaving those into the game will change the rotation.
My off-sepc is still Holy and I'm running dungeons and LFR now and again to keep that in shape, as our 3rd healer slot was filled by an actual healer and not a pretender to the throne like me, so I can focus hard on keeping my number up.
At first, I was intimidated by the two legendary-wielding DPS in the raid - one of whom frequently lands on the WoL top 100 rankings for Shadow Priests on certain fights - would I embarrass myself in front of them? But their numbers have become my benchmarks instead.
It's not like I'll be ranking anytime soon, but hey, I'm going to play like I'm about to!
I've really grown to love playing a damage role recently, and it feels a lot more visceral in terms of having a direct impact on the encounters. You can see that when you're given a task, there's a real, active process you can apply to it and whittle down the enemy - especially when you're assigned a particular target like working down the Mana Bubble on Heroic Yor'sahj, a specific tentacle on Heroic Zon'ozz or the pylons on Heroic Haggara.
It took me a while, but I've gotten over the whole, "I need to save my cool-downs for Heroism." The fact is some of my cool-downs are very short, and even the long ones will get used twice in most fights (though Morchok died in ~3 minutes this week just as he cast the second pool, which was hilarious).
So, if I hit Guardian, buff Inquisition with 3 HP, hit Wrath and Zealotry, right at the pull, over a 6.5 minute long fight, I will get to use Guardian twice, Wrath and Zealotry 3 times, twice along with the Guardian buff if I wait just a bit for the 3rd use. That is awesome, and it really makes an impact on damage throughput. Having trinkets that buff me either through stacks from swings or from an ICD rather than on-use is also great because that's one (or two) less things to worry about (though I tend to just use those with a macro on Crusader Strike anyway).
Both our tanks are quite good at threat output (Death Knight and Warrior) so I give a two second count before exploding into a gibbering rabid animal, and I've never come close to pulling off of them. Even if that was an issue, that's what we have Hand of Salvation for, and the few seconds of decreased threat will give tanks the time to build up Vengeance and get their lead and after the first 10 seconds, threat is just not an issue anyway. We'll see how that holds up in Pandaria.
Now that I've gotten used to Retribution, the play-style has gotten rather simple. Keep Inquisition up, build up to 3 HP and spend it on Templar's Verdict. Hit Wrath and Inquisition more or less on cool-down except if Guardian is within a minute or so of coming up. With 4 piece Tier-13, we build Holy Power through Judgments so fast, those Templar's Verdicts just keep going out.
It almost makes me consider picking up Selfless Healer as it wouldn't be hard to setup a macro to throw a heal on the tank on a press just to keep that extra 3% damage done buff rolling. But it probably isn't worth the trouble. Very rarely do I use Holy Power to self heal except maybe on Zon'ozz and Haggara.
Warlocks are looking like so much fun on Beta that's all I play when I log in, but I should spend some time running some dungeons as Retribution just to get used to it and see what's changing. It doesn't seem like Retribution has a lot of changes but the 2 extra HP buffer and the new Talents might make a difference and I'm curious to see how weaving those into the game will change the rotation.
My off-sepc is still Holy and I'm running dungeons and LFR now and again to keep that in shape, as our 3rd healer slot was filled by an actual healer and not a pretender to the throne like me, so I can focus hard on keeping my number up.
At first, I was intimidated by the two legendary-wielding DPS in the raid - one of whom frequently lands on the WoL top 100 rankings for Shadow Priests on certain fights - would I embarrass myself in front of them? But their numbers have become my benchmarks instead.
It's not like I'll be ranking anytime soon, but hey, I'm going to play like I'm about to!
Wednesday, May 2, 2012
The Woes of a Hybrid
Maybe not woes so much as indecisiveness.
As I mentioned in my last post, I've gone ahead and removed my Tanking spec to slide into a healing spec and geared myself up reasonably quickly. We have lacked a solid third healer for some time, and this way I can fulfill the raid needs and learn a new spec at the same time. But it has led to other difficulties.
Last night was a good example of this as we finally killed Heroic Zon'ozz while I was healing and it felt damn good to be helping the raid overcome this fight that has held us back for some time.
The boss had close to 5 million health left when enrage hit, but we just kept pushing, as people were dying one by one, and my ineffectual heals did little to help the massive output of damage, I just bubbled, judged, and began to exorcism spam, hoping the dots would do the trick, and they did. There were only 2 or 3 of us left alive but the beast was dead and I released a breath I didn't realize I was holding.
But then, I stared at the heroic bracers that dropped, and wondering, do I bid and loose my spot on the Suicide Kings list? Do I wait for some Retribution gear to drop? Should I be passing all tank gear so the two dedicated tanks can get some gear?
I didn't know what to do. Being the only paladin meant the plate would go to me anyway, but it wasn't fair to everyone else in the raid for me to just gear up without sacrificing my spot - so which is it? What's my main spec?
So began my journey of self-discovery.
At this point, the only fights among the first 6 bosses that we 3-heal are going to be Zon'ozz and Warlord. Last night, we got Heroic Haggara down to ~40% with 2 healers and I think we'll kill her tonight with 2-healers once we clean up Lightning phase and we already 2-heal Morchok, Yor'sahj and Ultraxion.
Spine and Madness will need 3 heals, but that's some time away for us. In the mean time, I'm Retribution for 4 out of 6 heroic bosses that we're working on or killing right now, and I *think* that should be my main spec. If you count the two Deathwing fights, I'll be healing for half the bosses in the raid. Fine. So it doesn't matter, really, which spec I gear up first, I'll need the gear on both. I just need to pick one.
Except.
While my DPS is respectable, it isn't close to what one of the two tanks does as Frost. Her DPS is frequently up there with the Legendary wielding Shadow Priest and Rogue, and it feels more productive for her to be DPSing than me. And I enjoy tanking so much and she enjoys DPS (we refer to DPSing as "being a rock-star" in my raid for some reason) so much, we would both be happier doing the other job.
But.
There are many fights where a Blood Tank is just vastly superior to shield tanks. Yor'sahj, Zon'ozz and Hagara all benefit greatly from Blood Shields and Anti-magic Shells, making the fight much, much easier to heal. So much so that I feel like while I *could* tank those fights with glyphs and trinkets, it would just be easier to have her tank it and keep our progression on a faster pace.
So it seems like my decision is more or less made for me here, I *have* to go DPS for the 4 fights we 2 heal and I'll switch to heals for the other 2 fights. Which means, Retribution is my main-spec and Holy is my off-spec, and I'm sure I'll be geared up for the 2 Deathwing fights by the time we get there just based on off-spec bids.
Which leaves my Protection spec - the best geared of all my specs, the spec I've played non-stop for two expansions - in the dust.
It's an odd feeling but a good one to know that I can do this - that I can switch roles, and help the guild as necessary, be a hybrid class for real instead of just pretending to be a solo-spec class and tanking all the time. We started this expansion with 2 Paladin tanks. We're ending it with a Death Knight and a Warrior. Both of whom are extremely capable and are not holding us back in progression - in fact, it's my lack of experience as a healer that's holding us back right now, if anything. And I love a challenge.
It all feels odd. But good.
As I mentioned in my last post, I've gone ahead and removed my Tanking spec to slide into a healing spec and geared myself up reasonably quickly. We have lacked a solid third healer for some time, and this way I can fulfill the raid needs and learn a new spec at the same time. But it has led to other difficulties.
Last night was a good example of this as we finally killed Heroic Zon'ozz while I was healing and it felt damn good to be helping the raid overcome this fight that has held us back for some time.
The boss had close to 5 million health left when enrage hit, but we just kept pushing, as people were dying one by one, and my ineffectual heals did little to help the massive output of damage, I just bubbled, judged, and began to exorcism spam, hoping the dots would do the trick, and they did. There were only 2 or 3 of us left alive but the beast was dead and I released a breath I didn't realize I was holding.
But then, I stared at the heroic bracers that dropped, and wondering, do I bid and loose my spot on the Suicide Kings list? Do I wait for some Retribution gear to drop? Should I be passing all tank gear so the two dedicated tanks can get some gear?
I didn't know what to do. Being the only paladin meant the plate would go to me anyway, but it wasn't fair to everyone else in the raid for me to just gear up without sacrificing my spot - so which is it? What's my main spec?
So began my journey of self-discovery.
At this point, the only fights among the first 6 bosses that we 3-heal are going to be Zon'ozz and Warlord. Last night, we got Heroic Haggara down to ~40% with 2 healers and I think we'll kill her tonight with 2-healers once we clean up Lightning phase and we already 2-heal Morchok, Yor'sahj and Ultraxion.
Spine and Madness will need 3 heals, but that's some time away for us. In the mean time, I'm Retribution for 4 out of 6 heroic bosses that we're working on or killing right now, and I *think* that should be my main spec. If you count the two Deathwing fights, I'll be healing for half the bosses in the raid. Fine. So it doesn't matter, really, which spec I gear up first, I'll need the gear on both. I just need to pick one.
Except.
While my DPS is respectable, it isn't close to what one of the two tanks does as Frost. Her DPS is frequently up there with the Legendary wielding Shadow Priest and Rogue, and it feels more productive for her to be DPSing than me. And I enjoy tanking so much and she enjoys DPS (we refer to DPSing as "being a rock-star" in my raid for some reason) so much, we would both be happier doing the other job.
But.
There are many fights where a Blood Tank is just vastly superior to shield tanks. Yor'sahj, Zon'ozz and Hagara all benefit greatly from Blood Shields and Anti-magic Shells, making the fight much, much easier to heal. So much so that I feel like while I *could* tank those fights with glyphs and trinkets, it would just be easier to have her tank it and keep our progression on a faster pace.
So it seems like my decision is more or less made for me here, I *have* to go DPS for the 4 fights we 2 heal and I'll switch to heals for the other 2 fights. Which means, Retribution is my main-spec and Holy is my off-spec, and I'm sure I'll be geared up for the 2 Deathwing fights by the time we get there just based on off-spec bids.
Which leaves my Protection spec - the best geared of all my specs, the spec I've played non-stop for two expansions - in the dust.
It's an odd feeling but a good one to know that I can do this - that I can switch roles, and help the guild as necessary, be a hybrid class for real instead of just pretending to be a solo-spec class and tanking all the time. We started this expansion with 2 Paladin tanks. We're ending it with a Death Knight and a Warrior. Both of whom are extremely capable and are not holding us back in progression - in fact, it's my lack of experience as a healer that's holding us back right now, if anything. And I love a challenge.
It all feels odd. But good.
Friday, April 20, 2012
How I play dis?
For the first time since I hit level-cap in 2008, I have no tank-spec on Innana.
We have picked up what will (hopefully) be a consistent Warrior tank, our off-tank remains on her Death Knight and rather than try our luck with the fifth, sixth or seventh healer to fill our vacant 3rd healer slot, I decided to bite the bullet and get a Holy set together and become that third healer, while going Retribution or Protection as necessary, the rest of the time.
But don't worry - I'll still be writing about tanking, as it is my passion in the game, and I'm hoping I can add to my knowledge of the class by playing all 3 specs better, while helping the raid at the same time. If you were worried that I'd stop writing about tanking in the first place, that is, and I don't know why you would be because I don't really write about tanking all that much, to be honest, and when I do it tends to meander a bit and isn't particularly specific to Paladins, except when I go into mechanics and stuff... ahem, I'll stop now.
SO! After raid last night, I swapped out my gear and spec to Holy and ran a couple of dungeons with guildies where their DPS was killing stuff so fast, I didn't really get a gauge of how I was healing, but at least I figured out my UI somewhat, with a set of Mouse Over Macros and so forth.
First impression was: wow, I have a lot of spells to worry about.
Beacon of Light, Holy Shock, Holy Light, Divine Light, Holy Radiance, Flash of Light, Word of Glory, Light of Dawn and Cleanse.
On top of that, there are the emergency Cooldowns - Divine Plea, Avenging Wrath, Divine Favor, Aura Mastery, Guardian of Ancient Kings, Lay on Hands, Hand of Sacrifice, Trinkets - and a couple of defensive cool-downs - Divine Protection, Divine Shield - and then the spare Hands - Freedom, Salvation, Protection. Whew.
But the fact that I can key-bind and mouse-over everything is makes it a lot easier to deal with, for me. All the base healing spells are key-bound with mouse-over macros, all the hands are click-through macros on Grid and all the cool-downs are key-bound as they stand.
For the most part, though, at least in the Hour of Twilight dungeons, I found myself casting Holy Shock, Holy Light and Word of Glory most of the time. Holy Radiance was cast occasionally and I tended to use procs of Infusion of Light for instant Flash of Light. I really only had to use Avenging Wrath and Aura Master a couple of times and Lay on Hand once. I also enjoyed being able to just hit Divine Shield to get mobs off of me and keep healing and using glyphed Divine Protection to ease AoE damage for myself.
With a mana-pool of about 110k, I also didn't have any trouble with getting low on mana, except when I had to heal up a bear from 10k to full using only Holy Shock, Flash of Light and Word of Glory - that ate up a lot of my mana very, very fast - and I imagine that's what a lot of hectic raid damage looks and feels like. Need to see if I can sneak into a 2-heal Firelands run tonight to practice.
Stat-wise, I'm a little boggled. I like Haste, I like the way my casts feel at about 1900 Haste without any buffs, I forgot to check what it was like with raid-buffs, but the faster GCDs and casts just feel better than having to worry about Crits and wondering if my Mastery Bubbles are worthwhile. It feels more reliable and has an instant return.
WTB raid willing to let me practice healing by letting me solo Beth'tilac on the ground?
Now for the most important question: HOW DO I MOG? I want to look all holy-choirs-and-god-beams but I also want to use a dress. I'm thinking of starting with the Ulduar tier 10-person mode skirt and going from there.
Suggestions welcome!
We have picked up what will (hopefully) be a consistent Warrior tank, our off-tank remains on her Death Knight and rather than try our luck with the fifth, sixth or seventh healer to fill our vacant 3rd healer slot, I decided to bite the bullet and get a Holy set together and become that third healer, while going Retribution or Protection as necessary, the rest of the time.
But don't worry - I'll still be writing about tanking, as it is my passion in the game, and I'm hoping I can add to my knowledge of the class by playing all 3 specs better, while helping the raid at the same time. If you were worried that I'd stop writing about tanking in the first place, that is, and I don't know why you would be because I don't really write about tanking all that much, to be honest, and when I do it tends to meander a bit and isn't particularly specific to Paladins, except when I go into mechanics and stuff... ahem, I'll stop now.
SO! After raid last night, I swapped out my gear and spec to Holy and ran a couple of dungeons with guildies where their DPS was killing stuff so fast, I didn't really get a gauge of how I was healing, but at least I figured out my UI somewhat, with a set of Mouse Over Macros and so forth.
First impression was: wow, I have a lot of spells to worry about.
Beacon of Light, Holy Shock, Holy Light, Divine Light, Holy Radiance, Flash of Light, Word of Glory, Light of Dawn and Cleanse.
On top of that, there are the emergency Cooldowns - Divine Plea, Avenging Wrath, Divine Favor, Aura Mastery, Guardian of Ancient Kings, Lay on Hands, Hand of Sacrifice, Trinkets - and a couple of defensive cool-downs - Divine Protection, Divine Shield - and then the spare Hands - Freedom, Salvation, Protection. Whew.
But the fact that I can key-bind and mouse-over everything is makes it a lot easier to deal with, for me. All the base healing spells are key-bound with mouse-over macros, all the hands are click-through macros on Grid and all the cool-downs are key-bound as they stand.
For the most part, though, at least in the Hour of Twilight dungeons, I found myself casting Holy Shock, Holy Light and Word of Glory most of the time. Holy Radiance was cast occasionally and I tended to use procs of Infusion of Light for instant Flash of Light. I really only had to use Avenging Wrath and Aura Master a couple of times and Lay on Hand once. I also enjoyed being able to just hit Divine Shield to get mobs off of me and keep healing and using glyphed Divine Protection to ease AoE damage for myself.
With a mana-pool of about 110k, I also didn't have any trouble with getting low on mana, except when I had to heal up a bear from 10k to full using only Holy Shock, Flash of Light and Word of Glory - that ate up a lot of my mana very, very fast - and I imagine that's what a lot of hectic raid damage looks and feels like. Need to see if I can sneak into a 2-heal Firelands run tonight to practice.
Stat-wise, I'm a little boggled. I like Haste, I like the way my casts feel at about 1900 Haste without any buffs, I forgot to check what it was like with raid-buffs, but the faster GCDs and casts just feel better than having to worry about Crits and wondering if my Mastery Bubbles are worthwhile. It feels more reliable and has an instant return.
WTB raid willing to let me practice healing by letting me solo Beth'tilac on the ground?
Now for the most important question: HOW DO I MOG? I want to look all holy-choirs-and-god-beams but I also want to use a dress. I'm thinking of starting with the Ulduar tier 10-person mode skirt and going from there.
Suggestions welcome!
Friday, April 13, 2012
This Is How I Mog (April, '12 edition)
I played with the idea of making some very specific mog-sets in the past, and have had the luck of getting a few drops that let me finish my sets. These might not look incredibly creative but I like complete sets and I think a good way to set the look of a full-set apart is, as my friend Maara said, to accent it with a couple of off-set items that compliment the themes. It's a very good way to distinguish the uniqueness of your character, I think.
Given that, here are my sets that I'm using now, and will likely use until either I get bored of them (unlikely) or Pandaria (very likely).
ARMOR OF RADIANT GLORY
This to me is the best paladin tanking set in game right now. The white and gray accents are lovely, they match well, the feathered shoulders are delicate but evocative, and with a good tabard, you can hide the hideous plate-belly-shirt. Of course, snagging Holy feet and belt to complete the look is important and you can luckily buy both of them from Valor vendors along with almost all the other pieces. So, if you can win the Shoulders the rest of the set can be purchased with Valor making this an easy 'mog to put together and yet I almost never see people in it.
The accents here are the weapons. The sword is Honor's Call which comes from being Exalted with Honor Hold in Hellfire Penninsula (many thanks to Maara for suggesting the sword.) The shield is the current Season Conquest PvP shield (which I splurged on despite the fact that I don't play Holy-PvP). Here are all the pieces I'm using. Oh, and no helm, no cloak.
Given that, here are my sets that I'm using now, and will likely use until either I get bored of them (unlikely) or Pandaria (very likely).
ARMOR OF RADIANT GLORY
This to me is the best paladin tanking set in game right now. The white and gray accents are lovely, they match well, the feathered shoulders are delicate but evocative, and with a good tabard, you can hide the hideous plate-belly-shirt. Of course, snagging Holy feet and belt to complete the look is important and you can luckily buy both of them from Valor vendors along with almost all the other pieces. So, if you can win the Shoulders the rest of the set can be purchased with Valor making this an easy 'mog to put together and yet I almost never see people in it.
The accents here are the weapons. The sword is Honor's Call which comes from being Exalted with Honor Hold in Hellfire Penninsula (many thanks to Maara for suggesting the sword.) The shield is the current Season Conquest PvP shield (which I splurged on despite the fact that I don't play Holy-PvP). Here are all the pieces I'm using. Oh, and no helm, no cloak.
| Slot | Item |
| Shoulder | Shoulderguards of Radiant Glory |
| Chest | Chestguard of Radiant Glory |
| Tabard | Argent Crusader's Tabard |
| Hands | Handguards of Radiant Glory |
| Belt | Dragonfracture Belt |
| Pants | Legguards of Radiant Glory |
| Boots | Pillarfoot Greaves |
| Sword | Honor's Call |
| Shield | Cataclysmic Gladiator's Redoubt |
ARMOR OF VINDICATION
If the objective of PvP armor is to make you feel like a bad-ass while giving your class as aggressive a look a look without descending into farce and brutality, then this set manages the look hands down. Even the helm is awesome! However, the belt is a bit under-whelming so I'm using an off-set belt which matches it quite nicely. Also, I don't have the feet quite yet as I can't splurge on Transmog gear just yet, but I will have the matching feet by the time the set is finished.
However - the sword is what takes this set over the top. Ashkandi has always looked good but it seems to just match this set in a way I can't describe - the colors accent well, the scale and size of it just brilliantly reflects the kind of sheer power and burst Paladins can bring to bear, while being majestic and graceful - it never seems brutal. If it could reflect a subtle, smoking enchantment of some sort, it could be perfect. No cloak, no helm. Pure awesome.
Thursday, April 5, 2012
What Happened to Paladin Tanks?
Throughout Firelands, I never felt like I had a problem as a Paladin tank, I could handle every single encounter, even heroics, just okay, I didn't feel like I was holding the raid back. Dragon Soul on normal mode was also the same, in that I thought we were just fine and I solo-tanked almost every boss in here except for Ultraxion and Warmaster. We might have been a bit overpowered in Tier 11 (remember all the add-tanking fights where we basically put up Holy Shield and giggled? Paladins were gods on Nefarian, arguably the toughest normal-mode boss in T11 which was full of tough, tough fights.)
So, going into Dragon Soul heroics I felt confident of my ability to continue to lead the tank-team as my co-tank puts out amazing 40k+ DPS in her beloved Frost spec anyway, we were both happy. Then we ran into two nights of wipes with Heroic Yor'sahj.
World of Glory just wan't enough to keep things going during Purple phase and if I ran out of cool-downs, I was dead. Lay on Hands was an uber-powerful tool but I really only got to use it once during the entire fight. After trying many, many, many strategies, we swapped me out for the DK. He died in 4 pulls.
I shrugged it off, I didn't think it was going to be indicative of a long-term problem, and my ego is strong enough to handle the fact that I don't get to tank EVERY fight in the entire expansion, that's okay. So we get to Heroic Hagara and every time she puts up Focused Assault, I get gibbed unless I'm hitting so many cooldowns that I have nothing left to go for the second cast of Focused Assault.
After the fourth or fifth time I was gibbed right out of the gate, I frowned and looked through my combat log looking at the damage done, whether I had Holy Shield up or not and... it didn't seem to be making a difference. I check my block-macro and it shows me a big, happy 102.7% coverage number which is 0.3% over where I need to be. Curiously, I do a couple of searches for Holy Shield and Hagara and, sure enough, Focused Assault is unblockable.
From the description of the Mastery, the Protection Paladin class is build around being able to soak through some of the incoming damage on their shields. There is a reason block-capping was not removed and Mastery was not nerfed throughout the expansion - because it became an easy metric to balance encounters around shield-tanks. Ferals had their physical damage shields and DKs had Death Strike.
The model worked - tanks were generally balanced enough that using shield-tanks didn't stone-wall raid groups. Until we get into a fight where the primary point of execution for a tank is to survive a narrow band of burst damage... using tools that are ineffective against the source of damage.
Now, there are ways around it, but none of them are pleasant or reliable.
So, rather than try all of that, we had our Boomkin go Feral just to see how it handles, and he is gear a little bit better than Firelands - 380something while I am at iLevel 397 in my tanking set. The healers never lost him to a Focused Assault.
It was jaw-dropping to see the difference in damage intake - and depressing.
Am I going to be able to tank Heroic Zon'ozz or do we have to let the DK handle it as well due to the amount of Magic AoE damage in phase 2? That would be three fights that I'm useless for as a tank, and if I didn't keep a set of DPS gear and play the spec at a reasonable level of competence, I would have to be benched because my class cannot do these fights, or at least not without making things unnecessarily difficult.
It isn't all doom and gloom - this week, our DK was missing and I was able to tank Heroic Yor'sahj with very, very twitchy fingers over my cool-downs and I was in constant communication with the healers. It felt more difficult than it needed to be, but I'm not concerned with that - I will always, always take the most difficult job whenever I can. What botherse me when I feel like I'm holding up the progression and making life hell for the healers by insisting I tank through mechanics that are not ideal for me. This is the second boss Paladins should be benched from tanking in Dragon Soul.
For the first time in this expansion, I'm feeling weak as a tank-class. And it feels like crap.
So, going into Dragon Soul heroics I felt confident of my ability to continue to lead the tank-team as my co-tank puts out amazing 40k+ DPS in her beloved Frost spec anyway, we were both happy. Then we ran into two nights of wipes with Heroic Yor'sahj.
World of Glory just wan't enough to keep things going during Purple phase and if I ran out of cool-downs, I was dead. Lay on Hands was an uber-powerful tool but I really only got to use it once during the entire fight. After trying many, many, many strategies, we swapped me out for the DK. He died in 4 pulls.
I shrugged it off, I didn't think it was going to be indicative of a long-term problem, and my ego is strong enough to handle the fact that I don't get to tank EVERY fight in the entire expansion, that's okay. So we get to Heroic Hagara and every time she puts up Focused Assault, I get gibbed unless I'm hitting so many cooldowns that I have nothing left to go for the second cast of Focused Assault.
After the fourth or fifth time I was gibbed right out of the gate, I frowned and looked through my combat log looking at the damage done, whether I had Holy Shield up or not and... it didn't seem to be making a difference. I check my block-macro and it shows me a big, happy 102.7% coverage number which is 0.3% over where I need to be. Curiously, I do a couple of searches for Holy Shield and Hagara and, sure enough, Focused Assault is unblockable.
From the description of the Mastery, the Protection Paladin class is build around being able to soak through some of the incoming damage on their shields. There is a reason block-capping was not removed and Mastery was not nerfed throughout the expansion - because it became an easy metric to balance encounters around shield-tanks. Ferals had their physical damage shields and DKs had Death Strike.
The model worked - tanks were generally balanced enough that using shield-tanks didn't stone-wall raid groups. Until we get into a fight where the primary point of execution for a tank is to survive a narrow band of burst damage... using tools that are ineffective against the source of damage.
Now, there are ways around it, but none of them are pleasant or reliable.
- Kiting is unreliable at best, and risky given the stacks built from Shards.
- Bubble/Taunt is a weak, weak solution prone to its own problems
- Taunt/juggle only works if you have a Paladin healer
So, rather than try all of that, we had our Boomkin go Feral just to see how it handles, and he is gear a little bit better than Firelands - 380something while I am at iLevel 397 in my tanking set. The healers never lost him to a Focused Assault.
It was jaw-dropping to see the difference in damage intake - and depressing.
Am I going to be able to tank Heroic Zon'ozz or do we have to let the DK handle it as well due to the amount of Magic AoE damage in phase 2? That would be three fights that I'm useless for as a tank, and if I didn't keep a set of DPS gear and play the spec at a reasonable level of competence, I would have to be benched because my class cannot do these fights, or at least not without making things unnecessarily difficult.
It isn't all doom and gloom - this week, our DK was missing and I was able to tank Heroic Yor'sahj with very, very twitchy fingers over my cool-downs and I was in constant communication with the healers. It felt more difficult than it needed to be, but I'm not concerned with that - I will always, always take the most difficult job whenever I can. What botherse me when I feel like I'm holding up the progression and making life hell for the healers by insisting I tank through mechanics that are not ideal for me. This is the second boss Paladins should be benched from tanking in Dragon Soul.
For the first time in this expansion, I'm feeling weak as a tank-class. And it feels like crap.
Wednesday, March 14, 2012
Then & Now
Vidyala over at Manaliciou posted a "Then & Now" theme a couple of weeks ago which I intended to get to, but to find some screen-shots I wanted to use, I had to boot-up a machine that hadn't seen the light of day since 2007. Still, it was worth digging through it just for the one image I did want, and remembered, and yes, it was there.
Now, keep in mind that my Paladin who has been my main focus since the day Wrath launched was not my first character. Or second. Or third. But my Paladin is my main at this point, and forever more, and that's the history I'll be tracking.
I rolled my first character, a human Mage, in the summer of 2007, got him to ~50 or so and shortly thereafter, a human Warrior and got him ~40 or so, before my wife who was my leveling partner took a break in late 2007. I decided to wait for her, and rolled a Night Elf Druid to play on my own and got him all the way up to 70 in early 2008, before the other two even reached Outland.
My Druid was my first love, and I played the hell out of him all through TBC, and sometime in mid-2008, while rolling through Z'A on my Druid, I rolled my Paladin to pass the time after raiding with a couple of them and enjoying their flashy spells, especially compared to the dull bears (remember, this was pre-reskin, when bears were horrifically ugly and boring to look at). I loved the Druid class, but didn't enjoy being in a shape-shifted form all the time and I wanted to look at all my shiny Tier 4 stuff, damnit!
Paladins pre-Wrath were a very strange affair - there were multiple Judgments and multiple Seals which interacted with each other in strange ways, the Seals had a very short duration and there were just an insane number of Blessings, no taunt other than Righteous Defense, spell-power was a think we had to worry about... anyway, it was a pain, but I enjoyed the look and feel of the class regardless.
Here's the oldest picture I could find of Joachim, somewhere in the late 40s, early 50s, having chopped off the head of an ogre and stuck it on a post while giving a thumbs-up. As you do.
I liked the look of a baldy-face and I had to have a Van Dyke just to hide that horrible lip-curl that Human males have. When patch 3.0 hit and all the huge Paladin changes came down, I just fell in love with the class and despite myself, leveled him to 70 first and began raiding in earnest, even joining my first hard-core 25-person raiding guild during Ulduar. Here he is, having grown a lot of hair and letting his beard down for the cold Continent, decked out in a set of T9, hanging out with some Sentinels.
During T10, I made a brief, ill-advised foray into Horde territory, though I have to admit, Joachim looked pretty damned hot as a Blood-Elf.
But that couldn't last and he reverted to his dumpy human self shortly thereafter. Here he is, with the Turtles guild, all surrounded by friends and, um, turtles, at our first guild kill of Lichy. It's so heartwarming to know that I still raid or know the majority of the people in this picture.
After playing a Blood Elf and seeing the awesome animations and smooth textures of the higher quality model, humans became even more difficult to put up with. Besides, my RP days were behind me, I had a lot of trouble staying with the character, so I wrote him a farewell and with Cataclysm, made the biggest change yet.
Joachim was dead, and I created Innana a female Draenei. I loved this look and honestly wish I could have stayed with it.
Alas, it was not to be. With no lore forthcoming for the Draenei after the announcement of Pandas, I had to revert back to the base race for the Alliance for the sake of story and immersion. I need to feel like my character (and I) have a huge, vested interest in the world and setting, and are really, really committed and I don't feel like the Draenei have that going for them at all except for Valen saying "Trust me."
So back to the base races again but which one? The Dwarves were too silly for me, so I elected to became human again. Only human again.
This is how I looked last night when I logged out.
I think I've finally settled on something that makes me happy - being Alliance feels like home, and being Human give me plenty of immersion and story and incentive to do things in game. The human female is a world better than the human male and my armor looks fantastic.
For the first time since I faction-transferred to the Horde, I'm finally satisfied with my character. I can't imagine changing again, but based on my past, who can say!
Thanks again to Vidyala for an awesome theme. I had a lot of fun parsing through tons of screen-shots to make this.
Now, keep in mind that my Paladin who has been my main focus since the day Wrath launched was not my first character. Or second. Or third. But my Paladin is my main at this point, and forever more, and that's the history I'll be tracking.
I rolled my first character, a human Mage, in the summer of 2007, got him to ~50 or so and shortly thereafter, a human Warrior and got him ~40 or so, before my wife who was my leveling partner took a break in late 2007. I decided to wait for her, and rolled a Night Elf Druid to play on my own and got him all the way up to 70 in early 2008, before the other two even reached Outland.
My Druid was my first love, and I played the hell out of him all through TBC, and sometime in mid-2008, while rolling through Z'A on my Druid, I rolled my Paladin to pass the time after raiding with a couple of them and enjoying their flashy spells, especially compared to the dull bears (remember, this was pre-reskin, when bears were horrifically ugly and boring to look at). I loved the Druid class, but didn't enjoy being in a shape-shifted form all the time and I wanted to look at all my shiny Tier 4 stuff, damnit!
Paladins pre-Wrath were a very strange affair - there were multiple Judgments and multiple Seals which interacted with each other in strange ways, the Seals had a very short duration and there were just an insane number of Blessings, no taunt other than Righteous Defense, spell-power was a think we had to worry about... anyway, it was a pain, but I enjoyed the look and feel of the class regardless.
Here's the oldest picture I could find of Joachim, somewhere in the late 40s, early 50s, having chopped off the head of an ogre and stuck it on a post while giving a thumbs-up. As you do.
I liked the look of a baldy-face and I had to have a Van Dyke just to hide that horrible lip-curl that Human males have. When patch 3.0 hit and all the huge Paladin changes came down, I just fell in love with the class and despite myself, leveled him to 70 first and began raiding in earnest, even joining my first hard-core 25-person raiding guild during Ulduar. Here he is, having grown a lot of hair and letting his beard down for the cold Continent, decked out in a set of T9, hanging out with some Sentinels.
During T10, I made a brief, ill-advised foray into Horde territory, though I have to admit, Joachim looked pretty damned hot as a Blood-Elf.
But that couldn't last and he reverted to his dumpy human self shortly thereafter. Here he is, with the Turtles guild, all surrounded by friends and, um, turtles, at our first guild kill of Lichy. It's so heartwarming to know that I still raid or know the majority of the people in this picture.
After playing a Blood Elf and seeing the awesome animations and smooth textures of the higher quality model, humans became even more difficult to put up with. Besides, my RP days were behind me, I had a lot of trouble staying with the character, so I wrote him a farewell and with Cataclysm, made the biggest change yet.
Joachim was dead, and I created Innana a female Draenei. I loved this look and honestly wish I could have stayed with it.
Alas, it was not to be. With no lore forthcoming for the Draenei after the announcement of Pandas, I had to revert back to the base race for the Alliance for the sake of story and immersion. I need to feel like my character (and I) have a huge, vested interest in the world and setting, and are really, really committed and I don't feel like the Draenei have that going for them at all except for Valen saying "Trust me."
So back to the base races again but which one? The Dwarves were too silly for me, so I elected to became human again. Only human again.
This is how I looked last night when I logged out.
I think I've finally settled on something that makes me happy - being Alliance feels like home, and being Human give me plenty of immersion and story and incentive to do things in game. The human female is a world better than the human male and my armor looks fantastic.
For the first time since I faction-transferred to the Horde, I'm finally satisfied with my character. I can't imagine changing again, but based on my past, who can say!
Thanks again to Vidyala for an awesome theme. I had a lot of fun parsing through tons of screen-shots to make this.
Thursday, February 16, 2012
Various and Sundry
Bah-humbug.
Deathwing, after six-odd weeks of kills, has dropped two rogue axes, not once, not twice, but multiple times. In addition to the agility polearm and the bow for a raid with no main-spec ferals or any hunters, Deathwing can go DIAF. I'm tired of disenchanting the same goddamned things while pining for a Souldrinker and the rest of the raid is still using crappy 397 gear week after week.
In fact, the loot-tables have been just miserable. I don't think we've seen more than one or two healer trinkets drop and other than Resolve of the Undying (which drops every week like clockwork) we have seen no Tanking trinkets. I could also complain about the fact that this week we saw 4/5 tier token drop for the Hunter/Warrior/Shaman set which we have none of, but that would be just the icing on the cake.
Bah. Normal mode Dragon Soul has gotten super-boring at this point, as we're mostly finished with all of the achievements as well, except for the Gunship and Madness ones. At least we started working on Heroic bosses finally, which has been incredibly gratifying. We're also nearly finished with the Firelands meta achievement, which I'm eager to put behind us, and we're maybe three weeks from finishing the legendary. And then I never have to do Firelands again!
You know what would actually be kind of fun? Going back to T11 and doing the hard Heroics there. These Heroics are still a hold-over of the super-hard T11 tuning and they didn't really nerf this content so I'm kind of hungry to go see it. Heroic Yor'sahj kicked our ass for a while this week though, so working on the current tier isn't a bad thing either, for me.
Other than that, and some mid-level Arena, and occasionally playing my Death Knight, I really haven't had a whole lot to do in game. I wound up almost emptying my bank last night to buy a relatively cheap Deathcharger (60k) and immediately liquidated some assets on the AH overnight to get back up to 35k, so maybe I'll play the AH for a few weeks.
Mostly, I'm working on some off-line writing and programming projects, and I'm excited for MoP to start so we can leave Cataclysm behind for good. I did pay for the year-long subscription, but I likely won't be logging into Beta as I hate spoiling myself, or having to do all that work twice on the same character. I might log in to test the class changes and talent tree stuff and so forth, but I won't do any leveling or dig into the new zones at all.
As far as when to expect the game, my crystal-ball gazing has revealed the following to me:
Alpha: This month
Beta: Mid-April
Release: Mid-August
Unless I'm very wrong and my Insider Source(tm) has been misinformed.
And finally, have you guys seen the new Paladin tree? It's pretty interesting and I want to chew it over and write a full post about it. And for those of you freaking out about Ardent Defender missing from the talents, it has been made a base-line ability under protection. Relax.
Deathwing, after six-odd weeks of kills, has dropped two rogue axes, not once, not twice, but multiple times. In addition to the agility polearm and the bow for a raid with no main-spec ferals or any hunters, Deathwing can go DIAF. I'm tired of disenchanting the same goddamned things while pining for a Souldrinker and the rest of the raid is still using crappy 397 gear week after week.
In fact, the loot-tables have been just miserable. I don't think we've seen more than one or two healer trinkets drop and other than Resolve of the Undying (which drops every week like clockwork) we have seen no Tanking trinkets. I could also complain about the fact that this week we saw 4/5 tier token drop for the Hunter/Warrior/Shaman set which we have none of, but that would be just the icing on the cake.
Bah. Normal mode Dragon Soul has gotten super-boring at this point, as we're mostly finished with all of the achievements as well, except for the Gunship and Madness ones. At least we started working on Heroic bosses finally, which has been incredibly gratifying. We're also nearly finished with the Firelands meta achievement, which I'm eager to put behind us, and we're maybe three weeks from finishing the legendary. And then I never have to do Firelands again!
You know what would actually be kind of fun? Going back to T11 and doing the hard Heroics there. These Heroics are still a hold-over of the super-hard T11 tuning and they didn't really nerf this content so I'm kind of hungry to go see it. Heroic Yor'sahj kicked our ass for a while this week though, so working on the current tier isn't a bad thing either, for me.
Other than that, and some mid-level Arena, and occasionally playing my Death Knight, I really haven't had a whole lot to do in game. I wound up almost emptying my bank last night to buy a relatively cheap Deathcharger (60k) and immediately liquidated some assets on the AH overnight to get back up to 35k, so maybe I'll play the AH for a few weeks.
Mostly, I'm working on some off-line writing and programming projects, and I'm excited for MoP to start so we can leave Cataclysm behind for good. I did pay for the year-long subscription, but I likely won't be logging into Beta as I hate spoiling myself, or having to do all that work twice on the same character. I might log in to test the class changes and talent tree stuff and so forth, but I won't do any leveling or dig into the new zones at all.
As far as when to expect the game, my crystal-ball gazing has revealed the following to me:
Alpha: This month
Beta: Mid-April
Release: Mid-August
Unless I'm very wrong and my Insider Source(tm) has been misinformed.
And finally, have you guys seen the new Paladin tree? It's pretty interesting and I want to chew it over and write a full post about it. And for those of you freaking out about Ardent Defender missing from the talents, it has been made a base-line ability under protection. Relax.
Monday, January 23, 2012
HOW TO: Solo Tank Madness Of Deathwing 10
My Paladin brothers and sisters, let us bow our heads and pray - for this is the battle in which we prove our prowess. Indeed, here we shine, and bear the brute force of our enemies on our shoulders alone, allowing our comrades to do the best of works - the culling of these enemies of life itself. Keep your shield close, your sword in hand, look the beast in the eye and know that the Light has given you all that is necessary, all that is best, to conquer even the Aspect of Death. Cloak yourself in truth, carry the shield of the righteous, cast your final judgment on the ender of worlds and know that this crusade has come at least to its end.
Ahem.
We've used this strategy a couple of times now and it is pretty damned fool-proof. Once you get the flow of the fight down, prepare for achievement spam. I'll assume you know the basic flow of the fight as you can learn from WoWPedia, WoWHead or any millions of other sites.
Composition
1 Tank (preferably a Paladin, but most classes can handle it)
2 Healers (we used a Discipline Priest and Paladin)
7 DPS (if you can get a DK to DPS you can make phase 2 very easy)
Glyphs
Prime: Truth, WoG, Shield
Major: Focus Shield, LoH
Un-glyph'd Divine Protection is very useful on Impales but Glyph'd DP can be very useful to deal with Bolt impact, Tetanus and other raid-wide magical damage, it's a matter of what's more important to you and what's killing you.
Phase 1
Platform Order: Green (Ysera) > Red (Alextrasza) > Yellow (Nozdormu) > Blue (Kalegos)
The order of kill is as follows on each platform:
Corruption > Bolt > Limb > Hemorrhage > Limb > Blistering Tentacle > Limb > Blistering Tentacle > Limb
The DPS benchmark is to make sure your raid can kill the Corruption before the Elementium Bolt lands. This ensures that you should only ever get 1 Impale per platform. This is crucial. As a paladin you CAN survive two per platform but you shouldn't have to as if you're consistently getting 2 Impales, the last platform will be troublesome.
So. You start on a platform, you can ignore the limb more or less, spread out a bit so people aren't standing in a line behind one another, and nuke the Corruption as soon as it comes up. Here is how you survive all the Impales:
Platform 1 (Ysera): Dream
Platform 2 (Alextrasza): Ardent Defender + Divine Protection
Platform 3 (Nozdormu): Guardian of Ancient Kings + Divine Protection
Platform 4 (Kalegos): Ardent Defender + Divine Protection
Bolt will be coming out very soon after killing the Corruption, so swap and kill the Bolt, then begin on the limb. Keep the limb below 75% - preferably right about 80% - until Hemorrhage happens. Take it slow - this is the mana-regen part for your healers, if you're standing around waiting, it's fine, let your healers get the mana back up, this is crucial with 2 healers, as the Tentacles will burn through their mana pretty fast and you really don't want Blistering Tentacles and Hemorrhage at the same time.
Once Hemorrhage goes down, swap and burn the Limb. Jump platform, repeat.
On the third and fourth platforms, you will have to deal with Blistering Tentacles as Alextrasza won't help you on those two - leave at least your top melee DPS who loose the most by swapping on the limb while the rest of the raid swaps and kills the Tentacles. We leave our Rogue on the limb. Ranged starts with the furthest Tentacles, melee on the nearest, and you should swap and help as well. I use Hammer here to splash some damage onto the Limb.
You might need to use Divine Guardian or other raid-wide CDs here, especially on the second set of Tentacles if the DPS is slow on getting them down and your stacks get high.
On the fourth platform you will also have to deal with the Bolt impact (as you'll easily kill it without the impact on the other 3 platforms thanks to Nozdormu). What's important here is that the Corruption is killed as early as possible before the Bolt lands, preferably with 5 seconds to go so you can all get well far away from the impact point to minimize damage from the crash. If you find yourself dying to this over and over, you can even use Heroism on the Corruption to get through this part. We have our DPS save all their CDs and Trinkets on the third Platform to use on the fourth Corruption and that's usually enough.
After that it's the same as third - Limb > Blistering Tentacles > Limb > Blistering Tentacles. This one can cut a bit close with the Cataclysm timer.
Notice this whole time the only thing you've had to tank is the Corruption, survive the impales, and pick up the Hemorrhage for a couple of seconds before they evaporate thanks to Kalegos' buff. There isn't a lot to tank and using two tanks is a massive waste. As you're tanking the fourth Corruption, you're likely to be closest to the impact point when it lands if your DPS is low - remember it is safe to use Divine Protection in that case. Don't be afraid to use it to save yourself as long as you're not tanking Hemorrhages or Corruptions.
This should never happen, but, IF YOU TAKE A SECOND IMPALE FOR ANY REASON, your only recourse is an immunity. Ardent Defender is part of your first-impale rotation, but you can use DivineShield or Blessing of Protection to survive it - hit the ability, taunt, wait for the debuff to run out, and cancel. You don't need to loose a melee to pull this off but the timing can be tricky. Remember you have 3 seconds to pull this off - plenty of time and GCDs.
Phase 2
The basic progression of this is to burn Deathwing, swap and kill the Elementium Fragments, burn some more, swap and burn the Elementium Horrors, burn some more, stop at 11%, deal with the second wave of adds, the second set of Terrors, then hit hero and burn to kill while ignoring all other adds.
The only thing you're needed for is to tank the Horrors. I pick both of them up right away and drag them into Nozdormu's slow-time puddle, our Frost DK taunts one off of me. The DPS jumps on that one and burn it super fast - Anti-magic Shell is more than enough to soak the few stacks of Tetanus. You on the other hand will have a lot of stacks of Tetanus by this time and will be chaining CDs to survive. I usually use Guardian of Ancient Kings here just as the first Terror Dies and keep a twitchy hand on LoH, AD, or anything else to survive the massive spikes of damage from the DoT. If you need to, you can have someone taunt off and kite the add for 2 seconds or so to let the DoT drop off but usually it isn't necessary. Play it safe, and you'll be fine.
The Horrors are really quite survivable - on the kill last week, I died to a Tetanus tick after the first set of adds died and our feral druid and DK tanked the second set of adds just fine - though we did use Heroism to burn the adds faster. Your only purpose in Phase 2 is to survive tanking one of the adds while DPS deal with the other.
Burn Deathwing to get him as close to 11% as you can, and stop. Deal with the second set of adds the same way and you're on the home stretch.
Once the second set of Horrors die, use Heroism if you didn't use it on the Horrors and just burn to kill. If a third set of Elementium Fragments spawn, ignore them and just keep burning. You can't survive the AoE damage sub 10% for every long with 2 healers.
Save Divine Guardian for when Deathwing hits about 6% health as the AoE damage spikes quite a bit at 5%. Chain Divine Guardian with other raid-wide CDs - we go DG, Discipline Barrier, Aura Mastery, our Boomkin starts to channel Tranquility and Deathwing is usually dead right about then. I throw in a Holy Radiance too because why the hell not. Remind everyone to use Dream if it's off cool-down at this point as well.
It's actually not a difficult fight to tank at all, despite my preamble. Once you get the order of kills and rhythm down, this strategy is very repeatable. The healing on the other hand is really intense and you will want to hug your healers the first couple of times through. But it is certainly not more difficult than 2-healing, Ragnaros I don't think.
Good luck!
Ahem.
We've used this strategy a couple of times now and it is pretty damned fool-proof. Once you get the flow of the fight down, prepare for achievement spam. I'll assume you know the basic flow of the fight as you can learn from WoWPedia, WoWHead or any millions of other sites.
Composition
1 Tank (preferably a Paladin, but most classes can handle it)
2 Healers (we used a Discipline Priest and Paladin)
7 DPS (if you can get a DK to DPS you can make phase 2 very easy)
Glyphs
Prime: Truth, WoG, Shield
Major: Focus Shield, LoH
Un-glyph'd Divine Protection is very useful on Impales but Glyph'd DP can be very useful to deal with Bolt impact, Tetanus and other raid-wide magical damage, it's a matter of what's more important to you and what's killing you.
Phase 1
Platform Order: Green (Ysera) > Red (Alextrasza) > Yellow (Nozdormu) > Blue (Kalegos)
The order of kill is as follows on each platform:
Corruption > Bolt > Limb > Hemorrhage > Limb > Blistering Tentacle > Limb > Blistering Tentacle > Limb
The DPS benchmark is to make sure your raid can kill the Corruption before the Elementium Bolt lands. This ensures that you should only ever get 1 Impale per platform. This is crucial. As a paladin you CAN survive two per platform but you shouldn't have to as if you're consistently getting 2 Impales, the last platform will be troublesome.
So. You start on a platform, you can ignore the limb more or less, spread out a bit so people aren't standing in a line behind one another, and nuke the Corruption as soon as it comes up. Here is how you survive all the Impales:
Platform 1 (Ysera): Dream
Platform 2 (Alextrasza): Ardent Defender + Divine Protection
Platform 3 (Nozdormu): Guardian of Ancient Kings + Divine Protection
Platform 4 (Kalegos): Ardent Defender + Divine Protection
Bolt will be coming out very soon after killing the Corruption, so swap and kill the Bolt, then begin on the limb. Keep the limb below 75% - preferably right about 80% - until Hemorrhage happens. Take it slow - this is the mana-regen part for your healers, if you're standing around waiting, it's fine, let your healers get the mana back up, this is crucial with 2 healers, as the Tentacles will burn through their mana pretty fast and you really don't want Blistering Tentacles and Hemorrhage at the same time.
Once Hemorrhage goes down, swap and burn the Limb. Jump platform, repeat.
On the third and fourth platforms, you will have to deal with Blistering Tentacles as Alextrasza won't help you on those two - leave at least your top melee DPS who loose the most by swapping on the limb while the rest of the raid swaps and kills the Tentacles. We leave our Rogue on the limb. Ranged starts with the furthest Tentacles, melee on the nearest, and you should swap and help as well. I use Hammer here to splash some damage onto the Limb.
You might need to use Divine Guardian or other raid-wide CDs here, especially on the second set of Tentacles if the DPS is slow on getting them down and your stacks get high.
On the fourth platform you will also have to deal with the Bolt impact (as you'll easily kill it without the impact on the other 3 platforms thanks to Nozdormu). What's important here is that the Corruption is killed as early as possible before the Bolt lands, preferably with 5 seconds to go so you can all get well far away from the impact point to minimize damage from the crash. If you find yourself dying to this over and over, you can even use Heroism on the Corruption to get through this part. We have our DPS save all their CDs and Trinkets on the third Platform to use on the fourth Corruption and that's usually enough.
After that it's the same as third - Limb > Blistering Tentacles > Limb > Blistering Tentacles. This one can cut a bit close with the Cataclysm timer.
Notice this whole time the only thing you've had to tank is the Corruption, survive the impales, and pick up the Hemorrhage for a couple of seconds before they evaporate thanks to Kalegos' buff. There isn't a lot to tank and using two tanks is a massive waste. As you're tanking the fourth Corruption, you're likely to be closest to the impact point when it lands if your DPS is low - remember it is safe to use Divine Protection in that case. Don't be afraid to use it to save yourself as long as you're not tanking Hemorrhages or Corruptions.
This should never happen, but, IF YOU TAKE A SECOND IMPALE FOR ANY REASON, your only recourse is an immunity. Ardent Defender is part of your first-impale rotation, but you can use DivineShield or Blessing of Protection to survive it - hit the ability, taunt, wait for the debuff to run out, and cancel. You don't need to loose a melee to pull this off but the timing can be tricky. Remember you have 3 seconds to pull this off - plenty of time and GCDs.
Phase 2
The basic progression of this is to burn Deathwing, swap and kill the Elementium Fragments, burn some more, swap and burn the Elementium Horrors, burn some more, stop at 11%, deal with the second wave of adds, the second set of Terrors, then hit hero and burn to kill while ignoring all other adds.
The only thing you're needed for is to tank the Horrors. I pick both of them up right away and drag them into Nozdormu's slow-time puddle, our Frost DK taunts one off of me. The DPS jumps on that one and burn it super fast - Anti-magic Shell is more than enough to soak the few stacks of Tetanus. You on the other hand will have a lot of stacks of Tetanus by this time and will be chaining CDs to survive. I usually use Guardian of Ancient Kings here just as the first Terror Dies and keep a twitchy hand on LoH, AD, or anything else to survive the massive spikes of damage from the DoT. If you need to, you can have someone taunt off and kite the add for 2 seconds or so to let the DoT drop off but usually it isn't necessary. Play it safe, and you'll be fine.
The Horrors are really quite survivable - on the kill last week, I died to a Tetanus tick after the first set of adds died and our feral druid and DK tanked the second set of adds just fine - though we did use Heroism to burn the adds faster. Your only purpose in Phase 2 is to survive tanking one of the adds while DPS deal with the other.
Burn Deathwing to get him as close to 11% as you can, and stop. Deal with the second set of adds the same way and you're on the home stretch.
Once the second set of Horrors die, use Heroism if you didn't use it on the Horrors and just burn to kill. If a third set of Elementium Fragments spawn, ignore them and just keep burning. You can't survive the AoE damage sub 10% for every long with 2 healers.
Save Divine Guardian for when Deathwing hits about 6% health as the AoE damage spikes quite a bit at 5%. Chain Divine Guardian with other raid-wide CDs - we go DG, Discipline Barrier, Aura Mastery, our Boomkin starts to channel Tranquility and Deathwing is usually dead right about then. I throw in a Holy Radiance too because why the hell not. Remind everyone to use Dream if it's off cool-down at this point as well.
It's actually not a difficult fight to tank at all, despite my preamble. Once you get the order of kills and rhythm down, this strategy is very repeatable. The healing on the other hand is really intense and you will want to hug your healers the first couple of times through. But it is certainly not more difficult than 2-healing, Ragnaros I don't think.
Good luck!
Monday, December 12, 2011
New Season Shenanigans
I swapped back to Innana to PvP with for this season and it is a massive culture shock.
Warlock PvP is all about control, very strict oversight of the field, making sure at least one of the opponents is being juggled and dotting everything up. While being focused so you're continuously self-healing and kiting as much as you can.
Palading PvP especially in 2's with a Rogue melee-cleave is all about burst. The longest fight we had was maybe 45 seconds last night. The number of stuns and interrupts the rogue has, plus my interrupt and stun, and the amount of burst I can dump within the first 20 or 30 seconds of a fight is just absolutely crushing at very low levels. I'm sure it'll even out very quickly as we get another week or two of gear in, but still, it was very shocking to go from such a nuanced play-style to essentially a burst-fest with occasional Stun/Hammer/Repentance/Blind chains on the healer.
Cleared an 8/0 win streak in less than an hour.
I do still want to PvP on my warlock, but I'll probably do more Battlegrounds and maybe see if I can sneak into a 3's team. Like a dummy I completely failed to realize I could have been gathering Conquest last week so I'm short, essentially, an item. Ah, well. It'll even out in the long run.
I also managed to find someone last week in Trade who had the tanking wrists pattern and had them crafted, and my Warlock bought the boots for Innana, while she picked up the Relic and Cloak as I can't get either of those upgrades from the raid. With the tier legs and shoulders I picked up two weeks ago, my gear is looking pretty good and I'm seriously starting to get into a situation where my gems are starting to slowly shift into the blue spectrum.
I'm considering actually re-gemming for full-out mastery just so I can swap out one of my mastery trinkets for a stamina trinket, but I kind of like having a sort-of DPS trinket on hand to get a bit of extra damage in (and a minute bit of parry as well) on demand. I don't know.
I'm excited for a 3-day raid week. I want a new title already, damn-it.
Warlock PvP is all about control, very strict oversight of the field, making sure at least one of the opponents is being juggled and dotting everything up. While being focused so you're continuously self-healing and kiting as much as you can.
Palading PvP especially in 2's with a Rogue melee-cleave is all about burst. The longest fight we had was maybe 45 seconds last night. The number of stuns and interrupts the rogue has, plus my interrupt and stun, and the amount of burst I can dump within the first 20 or 30 seconds of a fight is just absolutely crushing at very low levels. I'm sure it'll even out very quickly as we get another week or two of gear in, but still, it was very shocking to go from such a nuanced play-style to essentially a burst-fest with occasional Stun/Hammer/Repentance/Blind chains on the healer.
Cleared an 8/0 win streak in less than an hour.
I do still want to PvP on my warlock, but I'll probably do more Battlegrounds and maybe see if I can sneak into a 3's team. Like a dummy I completely failed to realize I could have been gathering Conquest last week so I'm short, essentially, an item. Ah, well. It'll even out in the long run.
I also managed to find someone last week in Trade who had the tanking wrists pattern and had them crafted, and my Warlock bought the boots for Innana, while she picked up the Relic and Cloak as I can't get either of those upgrades from the raid. With the tier legs and shoulders I picked up two weeks ago, my gear is looking pretty good and I'm seriously starting to get into a situation where my gems are starting to slowly shift into the blue spectrum.
I'm considering actually re-gemming for full-out mastery just so I can swap out one of my mastery trinkets for a stamina trinket, but I kind of like having a sort-of DPS trinket on hand to get a bit of extra damage in (and a minute bit of parry as well) on demand. I don't know.
I'm excited for a 3-day raid week. I want a new title already, damn-it.
Tuesday, December 6, 2011
Paladin Transmog Sets - Part 2
Right now I'm sporting a mixture of the first set I made, with a different shield than the one I showed there. Mostly because Human Female model covers her entire face with the shield and it's not a lot of fun. Also, I quite like the model's face so I'm actually not using the helm right now.
Anyway, once I do start to build up some Tier 13 gear, I'll be switching to a more contemporary look. However, there are some issues I have with the full Paladin set. Mostly with the fact that it brings back the bare midriff. Ugh.
Thankfully, we also happen to have an amazing PvP set this season, and with Conquest available through daily Random BGs at a reasonable pace, we can build what I think is a truly unique and inspirational, Paladin-y set.
I really like this set and I think this is what I'm going to be wearing till MoP comes out. The added benefit is that you can get a LOT of this gear without ever having to set foot into the raid. The only thing you'll need from the raid are the shoulders. Almost everything else is purchasable with Conquest or Valor.
The Shoulders, Hands and Legs are all Paladin Tier 13 gear, but, you can also buy the off-set pieces from the Valor vendor, or get the off-set healer pieces from the raid. I'll have to wind up buying or getting the healer Belt and Boots somehow myself. The Conquest sword and shield are absolutely amazing. Some of the best art that has come into the game in a long time. They're beautiful, but functional, and they are absolutely on-mark for Paladins.
The chest, sword and shield are all from Conquest gear. I'll be doing Arenas on Innana this season, so I expect to be able to get the weapon and shield fairly easily, however, I won't be doing it as Protection so it'll be a bit of a point-sink just for aesthetics. But oh, so worth it. Look at those gear - just absolutely lovely and perfect for a Light-wielding warrior. The cloak is actually a throw-back to ICC, and is purchasable with Justice for cheap. I like the colors as they synchronize well with the blue in the shield.
If you're a fan of helmets, I would recommend you forgo the winged Tier helm and actually grab the PvP conquest helm as well - it fits in quite nicely with the rest of the set and actually makes you look a bit like an avenging and wrathful angel of some sort straight out of the Old Testament.
Here are the individual items in detail and a link to the base set for you to start messing with.
Gloves: Handguards of Radiant Glory (Valor alternative: )
Leges: Legguards of Radiant Glory (Valor alternative: )
Shoulders: Shoulderguards of Radiant Glory
Chest: Cataclysmic Gladiator's Ornamented Chestguard (Conquest)
Belt: Blinding Girdle of Truth (Valor)
Boots: Silver Sabatons of Fury (Valor)
Sword: Cataclysmic Gladiator's Slicer (Conquest)
Shield: Cataclysmic Gladiator's Barrier (Conquest)
Cloak: Sentinel's Winter Cloak (Justice)
Helm: Cataclysmic Gladiator's Ornamented Headcover (Conquest)
If you are still dedicated to using the Tier chest, you can always sport it with an undershirt to eliminate the midriff. It doesn't fit perfectly, but the result isn't terrible either. Lastly, you always have the option of using a good looking Tabard to cloak yourself - but if you do this, I'd recommend ditching the cloak. You have some pretty good options here, and the set is just lovely. I've linked alternate set pictures below so you can decide what works best for you.
With a Formal White Shirt.
With the Argent Crusader's Tabard, sans cloak.
I realize this set is expensive to make in terms of the time commitment required to get all the items, but I think it's worth it in the long run. It's one of the best looks I can imagine for a Paladin that's in the game right now. Enjoy!
Anyway, once I do start to build up some Tier 13 gear, I'll be switching to a more contemporary look. However, there are some issues I have with the full Paladin set. Mostly with the fact that it brings back the bare midriff. Ugh.
Thankfully, we also happen to have an amazing PvP set this season, and with Conquest available through daily Random BGs at a reasonable pace, we can build what I think is a truly unique and inspirational, Paladin-y set.
I really like this set and I think this is what I'm going to be wearing till MoP comes out. The added benefit is that you can get a LOT of this gear without ever having to set foot into the raid. The only thing you'll need from the raid are the shoulders. Almost everything else is purchasable with Conquest or Valor.
The Shoulders, Hands and Legs are all Paladin Tier 13 gear, but, you can also buy the off-set pieces from the Valor vendor, or get the off-set healer pieces from the raid. I'll have to wind up buying or getting the healer Belt and Boots somehow myself. The Conquest sword and shield are absolutely amazing. Some of the best art that has come into the game in a long time. They're beautiful, but functional, and they are absolutely on-mark for Paladins.
The chest, sword and shield are all from Conquest gear. I'll be doing Arenas on Innana this season, so I expect to be able to get the weapon and shield fairly easily, however, I won't be doing it as Protection so it'll be a bit of a point-sink just for aesthetics. But oh, so worth it. Look at those gear - just absolutely lovely and perfect for a Light-wielding warrior. The cloak is actually a throw-back to ICC, and is purchasable with Justice for cheap. I like the colors as they synchronize well with the blue in the shield.
If you're a fan of helmets, I would recommend you forgo the winged Tier helm and actually grab the PvP conquest helm as well - it fits in quite nicely with the rest of the set and actually makes you look a bit like an avenging and wrathful angel of some sort straight out of the Old Testament.
Here are the individual items in detail and a link to the base set for you to start messing with.
Gloves: Handguards of Radiant Glory (Valor alternative: )
Leges: Legguards of Radiant Glory (Valor alternative: )
Shoulders: Shoulderguards of Radiant Glory
Chest: Cataclysmic Gladiator's Ornamented Chestguard (Conquest)
Belt: Blinding Girdle of Truth (Valor)
Boots: Silver Sabatons of Fury (Valor)
Sword: Cataclysmic Gladiator's Slicer (Conquest)
Shield: Cataclysmic Gladiator's Barrier (Conquest)
Cloak: Sentinel's Winter Cloak (Justice)
Helm: Cataclysmic Gladiator's Ornamented Headcover (Conquest)
If you are still dedicated to using the Tier chest, you can always sport it with an undershirt to eliminate the midriff. It doesn't fit perfectly, but the result isn't terrible either. Lastly, you always have the option of using a good looking Tabard to cloak yourself - but if you do this, I'd recommend ditching the cloak. You have some pretty good options here, and the set is just lovely. I've linked alternate set pictures below so you can decide what works best for you.
With a Formal White Shirt.
With the Argent Crusader's Tabard, sans cloak.
I realize this set is expensive to make in terms of the time commitment required to get all the items, but I think it's worth it in the long run. It's one of the best looks I can imagine for a Paladin that's in the game right now. Enjoy!
Friday, November 18, 2011
Paladin Transmog Sets - Part 1
In case you weren't sure, I'm really, really, really excited for Transmogrify. I'm a stickler for the way gear looks, I want my character to look powerful, regal and heroic. I want her to be dressed as a sword-wielding shield-bashing name-taking blood-spilling holy warrior of the Light would dress. That is to say, not wearing plate bikinis and exposing a flat mid-riff in the hopes of distracting her enemies.
So I'm going to make a catalog of various sets I'm planning to use - I'm sure I'll swap between these as the mood and whim strikes. I'll start with my hands-down absolutely favorite, best remembered set from the last two years that I actually gained and used actively while playing that I haven't worn in close to a year - the Sanctified Lightsworn Plate. This is the set in it's unadulterated glory:
It certainly isn't bad on it's own,and it might be fine for healing, or even DPS but I think tanking sets just look better without a skirt. I adore paladin sets with with plate skirts, but I think functionally they work as ceremonial or for healing at best. And besides, can you imagine her being able to kite mobs in that skirt? I don't think so. The set itself is dramatic and striking, the visor is unique, the glow and effects and the details of the ribbon are lovely and I like the way it works even when you color shift it for some glamour shots.
So, taking the head and shoulders as a base, and relying exclusively on Icecrown gear, I build into this.
Paladin Transmogrify Set: Modified Sanctified Lightsworn Plate
(link to full set)
The set uses a lot of stuff you can easily purchase from Vendors or get crafted:
Of course, I would have much rather used the purchased off-set Tanking chest piece, but it suffers from bare-midriff-itis. You can mitigate it with a black undershirt somewhat, but the colors and patterns don't quite match up. The caster belt helps transition between the warrior tier legs and the Paladin tier chest piece quite nicely. I don't use a cloak with it because it just looks much better without it.
UPDATE POST PATCH 4.3!!
It's one thing to plan an outfit and another to wear it. I found the shield and sword to just not be up to my standards in game, in terms of look and feel, and while it might work for you, the shield in particular was just too big and disguised my character's face far too much. I wound up using the Soul Blade and a vintage shield called Brutal Gladiator's Barrier that you can buy from the retro PvP vendor in Stormwind/Orgrimmar the same as the PvP shield I linked above for a small amount of Honor. Here's how I look in game right now:
Pretty snazzy, if I may say so myself!
Next time, I'll look at modifying Tier 13 to be even more bad-ass than it already is, by eliminating the bare-mid-riff and tweaking the look slightly with different weapons and cloaks.
So I'm going to make a catalog of various sets I'm planning to use - I'm sure I'll swap between these as the mood and whim strikes. I'll start with my hands-down absolutely favorite, best remembered set from the last two years that I actually gained and used actively while playing that I haven't worn in close to a year - the Sanctified Lightsworn Plate. This is the set in it's unadulterated glory:
It certainly isn't bad on it's own,and it might be fine for healing, or even DPS but I think tanking sets just look better without a skirt. I adore paladin sets with with plate skirts, but I think functionally they work as ceremonial or for healing at best. And besides, can you imagine her being able to kite mobs in that skirt? I don't think so. The set itself is dramatic and striking, the visor is unique, the glow and effects and the details of the ribbon are lovely and I like the way it works even when you color shift it for some glamour shots.
So, taking the head and shoulders as a base, and relying exclusively on Icecrown gear, I build into this.
Paladin Transmogrify Set: Modified Sanctified Lightsworn Plate
(link to full set)
The set uses a lot of stuff you can easily purchase from Vendors or get crafted:
- Head: Lightsworn Faceguard (1100 JP)
- Shoulders: Lightsworn Shoulderguards (695 JP)
- Chest: Lightsworn Chestguard (1100 JP)
- Legs: Pillars of Might (crafted)
- Hands: Gauntlets of the Kraken (695 JP)
- Boots: Boots of Kingly Upheaval (crafted)
- Belt: Lich Killer's Lanyard (695 JP)
- Shield: Icecrown Glacial Wall. Drops from Blood Queen Lana'thel in 25s - alternately, you can buy an almost-look-alike from the legacy PvP gear vendor in SW/Org called Wrathful Gladiator's Redoubt for 190 Honor. It comes in 3 colors so you can find the one you like best. It's not as nice as the Glacial Wall but for being so easy to obtain it's absolutely a good substitute.
The only thing you might actually have to go hunting for is this:
- Weapon: The Facelifter. Drops from Professor Putricide in 10s - alternately, you can use the Soul Blade, a BoE sword from Bastion of Twilight that's fairly easily found and looks quite good.
UPDATE POST PATCH 4.3!!
It's one thing to plan an outfit and another to wear it. I found the shield and sword to just not be up to my standards in game, in terms of look and feel, and while it might work for you, the shield in particular was just too big and disguised my character's face far too much. I wound up using the Soul Blade and a vintage shield called Brutal Gladiator's Barrier that you can buy from the retro PvP vendor in Stormwind/Orgrimmar the same as the PvP shield I linked above for a small amount of Honor. Here's how I look in game right now:
Pretty snazzy, if I may say so myself!
Next time, I'll look at modifying Tier 13 to be even more bad-ass than it already is, by eliminating the bare-mid-riff and tweaking the look slightly with different weapons and cloaks.
Thursday, November 3, 2011
HOW TO: Ragnaros 10-man
Since the first six bosses in Firelands are rather silly and easy post nerf, I figured I might write up how we do Ragnaros as guilds might still be stuck on him. The way we do the Intermissions in particular are a bit different than most guides so maybe it'll be helpful for someone.
Also, it took me a while to do this because I wanted to experiment with making animated GIFs and see how that goes, so this is an experiment! :-) I don't know. Hopefully it's helpful! If you think I'm doing something wrong, please let me know.
There are also some Paladin Tank specific tips at the bottom.
RAGNAROS (10) NORMAL
2 tanks, 2 healers, 6 DPS
Unless your DPS is very high (which is to say, if you can push phase 2 with 5 DPS taking only 2 seeds and if you can handle Intermissions with 5 DPS), you want to do this with 2 healers.
6 DPS will also trivialize Phase 3 as you can get through it well before a 3rd meteor forms. If you have more than 3 melee DPS, you might have a bit of trouble but it should be okay with a bit of practice.
You want to set up your groups so you have 1 tank, 1 healer and 3 DPS in each group for ease of positioning in phase 3.
Phase 1
Main things to handle: Smash, Knock-back and Traps
This is a very simple phase - positioning almost doesn't matter. Melee should be tight up against the boss on the lip of his hot-tub to his side to mitigate Parry and they will never have to worry about Smash. The ranged and healers can position themselves at a angle to the Smash as it falls. The only way you might take damage here is if Ragnaros lines up a knock-back and a Smash so that you get knocked into a wave - just strafe towards or away from the Smash to mitigate this as necessary. Also, if a trap lands behind you, move away so you don't get knocked into it.
Dedicate a Mage to handle the traps - they will have no trouble with every single one, but failing that you can rotate paladins (bubble), Shadow Priests, Rogues, Hunters, Warlocks.... this shouldn't be much of an issue, just make sure you have the person call out before detonating it and making sure the raid health is high enough to sustain the damage. Doing it after a knock-back once the raid is topped off is probably best.
Tanks should swap off after 3 stacks of Burning Wound, and we found that taunts were actually messy if the debuffed tank kept DPSing due to very high Vengeance stacks. We found it better to just pull off for a few seconds to ensure safe swaps to avoid gaining a 4th stack of Burning Wound. With tight taunting, you can make sure neither tank ever has more than a 3-stack.
This phase should go very quickly and you will get used to the mechanics after a couple of pulls.
Intermission 1
We have a very strict positioning, that we use for both transitions. I'll illustrate using our composition:
Balance Druid - Rogue - Feral - Mage - Priest - Arcane Mage
At the very least, the 2 people at either ends should be ranged, but if you can get four ranged and have 2 each on either side, it would be even better.
This is not a strict formation - the DPS will have to adjust left or right and decide who takes 2 based on the position of the hammer. There will be 2 DPS assigned 4 adds and 4 DPS with one each. No matter where the hammer falls the DPS with single adds need to clean up their add first before shifting over to help with the spares. This is an animated image that will show all 3 positions of hammer.
We trained on the first set of adds with no help from the Tanks until we got it right. That way our DPS was used to handling it on their own and the tanks could cleanly pickup the extra adds in the 2nd intermission without having to worry about splitting attention between the sets of adds.
Now that we have it down, the tanks do help with the adds, but we've drilled it into the DPS that it's their jobs to get the adds down and the positioning is super-simple, as people just need to remember who they're standing next to and they will know where to go. The shifts aren't that complicated either. Just make sure your DPS at either end is careful of the last add on their side as it will go through the lava to get to the Hammer if it's on the left or right, and you do not want melee running into that. Healers can regen mana here for the most part. Also, don't run into the hammer. Hammer.
Phase 2
Main things to handle: Smash, Engulfing Flames and Seeds
Here is all of Phase 2. I spelled it out in detail below, but I think this illustrates it in an easy way.
Pick a side, doesn't matter which one, but you need to gather up while staying 6-yards apart. Staying within Melee is preferable unless Engulfing Flames is on the inner ring. Dodge the first Smash as it comes, wait for Seeds to land, watch out for Engulfing Flames and then as soon as Seeds land on YOU (the timers are slightly off for this, so you need to watch your own feet and move when you see the spinny thing under your feet)! Now, book it to the opposite side using any (safe) speed boost you have, and gather up on the other end as fast as you can.
The positioning is tricky here but every time you move you need to gather up on the boundary between the two nearest Engulfing Flames zones. That way as soon as it hits you can move in or back and not take damage from that. You can drop a raid marker on both sides to identify where you want to gather up.
Shortly thereafter, Seeds will explode and rush you - group up, use ONE raid cool-down here (Aura Mastery, Barrier, Divine Sacrifice, etc.) and AoE the adds down. Now, quickly, either step into Melee or spread out a bit because you're going to get another Smash shortly afterward. This is a not as tight a moment, as soon as the adds die, your raid needs to position itself for the Smash. You have a short amount of time to call it out and adjust. But it's very easy to get focused on one thing and miss the Smash here, especially as you'll have a lot of ground effects going on - know what's going to happen and be prepared.
Right after Smash is the ideal time for DPS cool-downs as you'll have a few long seconds of burn here with only Engulfing Flames to worry about.
60 seconds later, the second set of seeds land - same as before. Run to the opposite side on the boundary of the two Flames zones.
Now, this is the tricky part. 3 things will come at the same time right after the Seeds explode - the adds are rushing you, the Smash is about to come down, and Engulfing Flames is about to go off. This is the make it or break it moment. You WANT Flames to be in the middle or far back so your entire raid just moves onto the lip and avoids everything. That's ideal. But it won't happen like that every time. Chances are you will have Flames in melee range and you will have to do a lot of dodging to avoid the Smash in addition to moving back out of range.
The most tricky thing in both these situations is making sure you tank stays in melee range or Ragnaros will swing and murder anyone else who is in range - usually a rogue (sorry Vesti).
By now, Ragnaros should be sub-50% and you should make a call depending on your DPS and the time remaining before the next cast of Seeds if you want to push him or take a 3rd set of seeds. With 6 DPS this is not a problem, and you can easily push it with 2, as a 3rd will strain your mana and you might not have a 3rd raid-wide cool-down to deal with a 3rd set of adds.
The less time you spend in this phase, the better.
Intermission 2
Just handle it exactly as you did Phase 1 - the only difference is that you want to keep at least one Son alive for a little while and kill it as close to the end of the phase as possible. Tanks should pick up one Scion each and bring them to the center, mark one for focus and DPS can swap to it as their adds are cleaned up. Ideally you want to get at least one add down before transition into Phase 3 but it isn't too terrible if you don't. Your raid will have to watch out for Blazing Heat and not give a fire boost to the Sons but it is generally not an issue with a bit of awareness.
If you can handle the Sons in phase 1, you can handle the Sons here. The only trick is to get one of the adds below 50% to slow it, use knock-backs, stuns, Death Grip, etc. to delay its journey as much as possible and really burst on one of the Scions. Cleaves and such will get the other one low - they each have 1.5 million health, so you'll need to hit a few short-cool-down DPS boosts to get one down before transition.
Phase 3
Main things to handle: Smash, Engulfing Flames and Meteor
Group up loosely in the middle, dodge any Smashes or Flames that come your way, get any remainingScions down quickly, hit Heroism and all your really big damage cool-downs, trinkets, take that potion and go nuts. You have a good, long period to really burst him here with very little, very predictable movement, and you can get him through as much as half his remaining health very quickly if you transition with no Scions.
About 60 seconds into the phase, the first Meteor will spawn. Ragnaros should have 30% - 25% health left. Immediately, your raid should split - remember how you split your raid into 2 5-man parties? Group 1 goes left, Group 2 goes right, and whoever is being chased by the meteor knocked it back into the center once they've kited it to their side. The raid just keeps on DPSing and dodging Smash and Flames.
Here it becomes a game of kickball - every time it's knocked back, the meteor will pick a different target and move towards them. It's also immune for a few seconds after each knock-back, so you want it as far into the middle as possible. Make sure there is one person on each side who's responsible for jugging it so everyone isn't just focused on Ragnaros assuming someone else will handle it.
Ideally, you want the meteor picking people on the opposite side so it has to travel to them before getting knocked into the center again and so forth. Chances are it will target people in the same group repeatedly and if it's very close, have the person run out and kite it to the opposite group. But if RNG isn't being really terrible, you should still be able to burn the boss with only one meteor up. More meteors will spawn every 30 seconds (or so it seems) after the first one, but I think the pace might increase after 3 meteors. On our training runs, we saw as many as 5 at a time. That was kind of. Crazy.
At this point, if you're able to deal with the meteor okay, you should be able to kill him. Knock back or kite, either way, you're very close, and all you need is one clean pull at this point. If Rag is at 15% or so, and the meteors are getting too close for comfort - maybe try and have a tank with high stacks or DPS run out with one all the way towards the back while the rest of the raid pushes Rag over.
I do believe that if executed correctly, you can easily get this phase down. The only trouble is that most people will not get a lot of time to practice this as the focus you need to get through Phase 2 and the second transition has drained you (and the healers) and you just kind of tunnel-vision into getting him down to 10% and meteors hit people and you wipe.
The other strategy is to simply have the person who's targetted kite it away from the raid and have the raid move away from the meteor but it requires a great deal of personal responsibility and if a healer gets targetted you need to hit it right away to get it switch targets. We were able to kill him with both strategies but splitting up and playing kickball made it seem more organized for us.
Also, with this other strategy phase 3 can wind up looking like this.
Please note that while I did make the other GIFs, I didn't make this (very awesome) one, I found it while doing random searches for information. Whoever made it is, obviously, awesome.
Paladin Tank specific stuff:
- Use WoG to heal your co-tank after swaps
- If you go into Phase Transition with a Trap up, you should take it, use a bubble after reaching the apex of your parabolic journey, and you should land okay.
- Use Divine Sanctuary for one of the two Seeds (co-ordinate with other raid-wide cool-downs so you don't use them all at once)
- Holy Radiance after Seeds while you still can (still grumbling about the added cast time to that spell in 4.3)
- You can take 1 meteor hit if you're Bubbled, or LoH someone who just got hit by Meteor to save their life
Good luck!
Also, it took me a while to do this because I wanted to experiment with making animated GIFs and see how that goes, so this is an experiment! :-) I don't know. Hopefully it's helpful! If you think I'm doing something wrong, please let me know.
There are also some Paladin Tank specific tips at the bottom.
RAGNAROS (10) NORMAL
2 tanks, 2 healers, 6 DPS
Unless your DPS is very high (which is to say, if you can push phase 2 with 5 DPS taking only 2 seeds and if you can handle Intermissions with 5 DPS), you want to do this with 2 healers.
6 DPS will also trivialize Phase 3 as you can get through it well before a 3rd meteor forms. If you have more than 3 melee DPS, you might have a bit of trouble but it should be okay with a bit of practice.
You want to set up your groups so you have 1 tank, 1 healer and 3 DPS in each group for ease of positioning in phase 3.
Phase 1
Main things to handle: Smash, Knock-back and Traps
This is a very simple phase - positioning almost doesn't matter. Melee should be tight up against the boss on the lip of his hot-tub to his side to mitigate Parry and they will never have to worry about Smash. The ranged and healers can position themselves at a angle to the Smash as it falls. The only way you might take damage here is if Ragnaros lines up a knock-back and a Smash so that you get knocked into a wave - just strafe towards or away from the Smash to mitigate this as necessary. Also, if a trap lands behind you, move away so you don't get knocked into it.
Dedicate a Mage to handle the traps - they will have no trouble with every single one, but failing that you can rotate paladins (bubble), Shadow Priests, Rogues, Hunters, Warlocks.... this shouldn't be much of an issue, just make sure you have the person call out before detonating it and making sure the raid health is high enough to sustain the damage. Doing it after a knock-back once the raid is topped off is probably best.
Tanks should swap off after 3 stacks of Burning Wound, and we found that taunts were actually messy if the debuffed tank kept DPSing due to very high Vengeance stacks. We found it better to just pull off for a few seconds to ensure safe swaps to avoid gaining a 4th stack of Burning Wound. With tight taunting, you can make sure neither tank ever has more than a 3-stack.
This phase should go very quickly and you will get used to the mechanics after a couple of pulls.
Intermission 1
We have a very strict positioning, that we use for both transitions. I'll illustrate using our composition:
Balance Druid - Rogue - Feral - Mage - Priest - Arcane Mage
At the very least, the 2 people at either ends should be ranged, but if you can get four ranged and have 2 each on either side, it would be even better.
This is not a strict formation - the DPS will have to adjust left or right and decide who takes 2 based on the position of the hammer. There will be 2 DPS assigned 4 adds and 4 DPS with one each. No matter where the hammer falls the DPS with single adds need to clean up their add first before shifting over to help with the spares. This is an animated image that will show all 3 positions of hammer.
We trained on the first set of adds with no help from the Tanks until we got it right. That way our DPS was used to handling it on their own and the tanks could cleanly pickup the extra adds in the 2nd intermission without having to worry about splitting attention between the sets of adds.
Now that we have it down, the tanks do help with the adds, but we've drilled it into the DPS that it's their jobs to get the adds down and the positioning is super-simple, as people just need to remember who they're standing next to and they will know where to go. The shifts aren't that complicated either. Just make sure your DPS at either end is careful of the last add on their side as it will go through the lava to get to the Hammer if it's on the left or right, and you do not want melee running into that. Healers can regen mana here for the most part. Also, don't run into the hammer. Hammer.
Phase 2
Main things to handle: Smash, Engulfing Flames and Seeds
Here is all of Phase 2. I spelled it out in detail below, but I think this illustrates it in an easy way.
Pick a side, doesn't matter which one, but you need to gather up while staying 6-yards apart. Staying within Melee is preferable unless Engulfing Flames is on the inner ring. Dodge the first Smash as it comes, wait for Seeds to land, watch out for Engulfing Flames and then as soon as Seeds land on YOU (the timers are slightly off for this, so you need to watch your own feet and move when you see the spinny thing under your feet)! Now, book it to the opposite side using any (safe) speed boost you have, and gather up on the other end as fast as you can.
The positioning is tricky here but every time you move you need to gather up on the boundary between the two nearest Engulfing Flames zones. That way as soon as it hits you can move in or back and not take damage from that. You can drop a raid marker on both sides to identify where you want to gather up.
Shortly thereafter, Seeds will explode and rush you - group up, use ONE raid cool-down here (Aura Mastery, Barrier, Divine Sacrifice, etc.) and AoE the adds down. Now, quickly, either step into Melee or spread out a bit because you're going to get another Smash shortly afterward. This is a not as tight a moment, as soon as the adds die, your raid needs to position itself for the Smash. You have a short amount of time to call it out and adjust. But it's very easy to get focused on one thing and miss the Smash here, especially as you'll have a lot of ground effects going on - know what's going to happen and be prepared.
Right after Smash is the ideal time for DPS cool-downs as you'll have a few long seconds of burn here with only Engulfing Flames to worry about.
60 seconds later, the second set of seeds land - same as before. Run to the opposite side on the boundary of the two Flames zones.
Now, this is the tricky part. 3 things will come at the same time right after the Seeds explode - the adds are rushing you, the Smash is about to come down, and Engulfing Flames is about to go off. This is the make it or break it moment. You WANT Flames to be in the middle or far back so your entire raid just moves onto the lip and avoids everything. That's ideal. But it won't happen like that every time. Chances are you will have Flames in melee range and you will have to do a lot of dodging to avoid the Smash in addition to moving back out of range.
The most tricky thing in both these situations is making sure you tank stays in melee range or Ragnaros will swing and murder anyone else who is in range - usually a rogue (sorry Vesti).
By now, Ragnaros should be sub-50% and you should make a call depending on your DPS and the time remaining before the next cast of Seeds if you want to push him or take a 3rd set of seeds. With 6 DPS this is not a problem, and you can easily push it with 2, as a 3rd will strain your mana and you might not have a 3rd raid-wide cool-down to deal with a 3rd set of adds.
The less time you spend in this phase, the better.
Intermission 2
Just handle it exactly as you did Phase 1 - the only difference is that you want to keep at least one Son alive for a little while and kill it as close to the end of the phase as possible. Tanks should pick up one Scion each and bring them to the center, mark one for focus and DPS can swap to it as their adds are cleaned up. Ideally you want to get at least one add down before transition into Phase 3 but it isn't too terrible if you don't. Your raid will have to watch out for Blazing Heat and not give a fire boost to the Sons but it is generally not an issue with a bit of awareness.
If you can handle the Sons in phase 1, you can handle the Sons here. The only trick is to get one of the adds below 50% to slow it, use knock-backs, stuns, Death Grip, etc. to delay its journey as much as possible and really burst on one of the Scions. Cleaves and such will get the other one low - they each have 1.5 million health, so you'll need to hit a few short-cool-down DPS boosts to get one down before transition.
Phase 3
Main things to handle: Smash, Engulfing Flames and Meteor
Group up loosely in the middle, dodge any Smashes or Flames that come your way, get any remainingScions down quickly, hit Heroism and all your really big damage cool-downs, trinkets, take that potion and go nuts. You have a good, long period to really burst him here with very little, very predictable movement, and you can get him through as much as half his remaining health very quickly if you transition with no Scions.
About 60 seconds into the phase, the first Meteor will spawn. Ragnaros should have 30% - 25% health left. Immediately, your raid should split - remember how you split your raid into 2 5-man parties? Group 1 goes left, Group 2 goes right, and whoever is being chased by the meteor knocked it back into the center once they've kited it to their side. The raid just keeps on DPSing and dodging Smash and Flames.
Here it becomes a game of kickball - every time it's knocked back, the meteor will pick a different target and move towards them. It's also immune for a few seconds after each knock-back, so you want it as far into the middle as possible. Make sure there is one person on each side who's responsible for jugging it so everyone isn't just focused on Ragnaros assuming someone else will handle it.
Ideally, you want the meteor picking people on the opposite side so it has to travel to them before getting knocked into the center again and so forth. Chances are it will target people in the same group repeatedly and if it's very close, have the person run out and kite it to the opposite group. But if RNG isn't being really terrible, you should still be able to burn the boss with only one meteor up. More meteors will spawn every 30 seconds (or so it seems) after the first one, but I think the pace might increase after 3 meteors. On our training runs, we saw as many as 5 at a time. That was kind of. Crazy.
At this point, if you're able to deal with the meteor okay, you should be able to kill him. Knock back or kite, either way, you're very close, and all you need is one clean pull at this point. If Rag is at 15% or so, and the meteors are getting too close for comfort - maybe try and have a tank with high stacks or DPS run out with one all the way towards the back while the rest of the raid pushes Rag over.
I do believe that if executed correctly, you can easily get this phase down. The only trouble is that most people will not get a lot of time to practice this as the focus you need to get through Phase 2 and the second transition has drained you (and the healers) and you just kind of tunnel-vision into getting him down to 10% and meteors hit people and you wipe.
The other strategy is to simply have the person who's targetted kite it away from the raid and have the raid move away from the meteor but it requires a great deal of personal responsibility and if a healer gets targetted you need to hit it right away to get it switch targets. We were able to kill him with both strategies but splitting up and playing kickball made it seem more organized for us.
Also, with this other strategy phase 3 can wind up looking like this.
Please note that while I did make the other GIFs, I didn't make this (very awesome) one, I found it while doing random searches for information. Whoever made it is, obviously, awesome.
Paladin Tank specific stuff:
- Use WoG to heal your co-tank after swaps
- If you go into Phase Transition with a Trap up, you should take it, use a bubble after reaching the apex of your parabolic journey, and you should land okay.
- Use Divine Sanctuary for one of the two Seeds (co-ordinate with other raid-wide cool-downs so you don't use them all at once)
- Holy Radiance after Seeds while you still can (still grumbling about the added cast time to that spell in 4.3)
- You can take 1 meteor hit if you're Bubbled, or LoH someone who just got hit by Meteor to save their life
Good luck!
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