I walked into the 2 dragons fight cold. I had read the strat, but most strats make no sense to me and tell me nothing that is really useful (one of the reasons I write my own).
The main thing I walked away from this fight knowing, is that this is not a DPS race, it is a survivability fight. Stay alive and you will easily beat the enrage timer. As usual, you can go find strats and videos on the web if you are so inclined.
So here are some things that helped me stay alive and healing during that fight:
Pink dragon
spread out - don't stand too near someone so when blue poop hits you on the head, it doesn't splash the sides of the bowl too much and splash the person next to you.
Run in under the tail for black out. Black out is really obvious to see on a person. DBM puts a skull on the persons head and they are glowing blue. STAY UNDER THE FRICKEN TAIL until the dispeller says GO! because if you don't, then the damage will make the healers very unhappy. (ETA replace "Under the tail" with "gathering spot of the RLs choice")
If you are the dispeller - be super fast and call out quick.
Smashy smashy. This dragon doesn't seem to be too bad.
Transition:
Don't stand in the poop.
If you DO stand in the poop and you end up in a weird twilight world, haul your arse to the portal on the side and GTFO ASAP! Avoid the glowing balls.
Blue dragon:
range SPREAD THE FUCK OUT!
Melee group stack under the tail.
OK here's the tricks:
Purple arrow
If you have a purple arrow on your head, run to melee. Melee will be under the tail, if they are not, that's their bad. No matter if you have an x on your head too. (see rules for x on head below)
IF YOU HAVE HOTS OR DOTS AND AN x... I am not 100% sure if each tick causes an explosion, I think it might... so be careful of that.
X on your head
If you have an x on your head, and you are stuck in melee (ie you are a rogue or something or have a purple arrow on your head) DO NOTHING. No autohits, no nothing. Stand there and /dance or something till it goes away
Otherwise, x on head GTFO! get away from anyone get out get away and continue doing what you normally do.
Why x and v?
x does aoe when you "do things" like heal or hit shit.
v drops poop from on high and you need to share the love.
Get this bit right, and not standing in the blue flamey bits on the ground is easy!
When the pink dragon gets annoyed
at some point, the pink dragon will start flaming 1/3 of the room. Designate a spotter (we found that dead people make great spotters) to tell the raid where the flames are going to be. At the point, it doesn't matter about DPS at all, just get out of the poop on the ground. Seriously, just concentrate on not standing in the bad and getting back to the pink dragon on the ground.
And it back to pink dragon again.
I found, the most important thing I could do in this fight was stay alive, and as a healer, emergency spot healing the raid to save idiots who stood in the poop *cough* like myself. Sometimes they died, but that actually turned into an advantage because it isnt a DPS race.
Hope that helps people wrap their brains around things - it has clarified things a bit for me.
I think the real trick is getting the inny and outey bits right (x and v) and having a good spotter for the 1/3 flamey bits, and also remembering that it is NOT a DPS race, you gotta stay alive.
Showing posts with label 10Man. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 10Man. Show all posts
Friday, March 18, 2011
Monday, February 28, 2011
Magmaw 10
HI!
Well, this expansion, strats are going to come a fair bit slower as I am with a much more casual raiding guild. But, I am still going to be writing up everything I can - and this one is about MAGMAW!
First up, Magmaw is a giant worm that doesn't move. He has a ginormous hit box, so hunters, be really careful when dealing with the small amount of trash leading up to him. One misclick and you pull the boss and everyone starts wondering why people are dying. It's funny the first time....
Anyway, for some reason people say that Magmaw has 2 phases - I personally find that terminology confusing, so I wont use it. It's not really 2 phases at all. But you will see what I mean when I get to it. Also, I will do a TL:DR at the end which summarises the fight in about 3-4 sentences.
Magmaw is a gear check. It has high but predictable damage output, and it is to some extent a DPS race.
Magmaw can do a few things when he is free to wiggle around and you set up your raid team positioning accordingly.
Shopping list:
1-2 tanks (our team goes with 2, but 1 would also work if you are confident with your skills),
3 healers
5-6 DPS - at least 1 ranged
The positioning is as follows:
Tank is on one side of Magmaw, everyone else (except the one ranged I mentioned) is "behind" Magmaw on the other side. Get as close to the giant worm as you can but don't fall off the edge!!! This, while funny even the 7th time, leads to wipes! The one lone ranged (usually a hunter for obvious reasons, two if you have two hunters) hangs out in range of heals, but at "ranged". There is a bit of broken floor in the middle, hanging around that is a good visual marker.
That's it. Stay with that as best you can. Tank keeps the attention of the boss, the DPS/Healer group don't stand in the poop and the ranged dude also doesn't stand in any poop.
What poop is there?
Well, there are several kinds of poop. There is Ignition, which is fairly obvious as half the room catches on fire. If it is the half that the DPS/Healer group is on, they need to get out of it asap, then move back when it is over.
There is another kind of unavoidable poop that the healers simply have to heal through. You will see it because everyone's health bars will start plummeting. But most everyone is grouped up, right? AoE heals are fantastic here and make that part of the fight almost trivial when done right.
One is especially for the ranged guy. Every... oh 30s or so, Magmaw will cast something called Pillar of Flame at someone at ranged (and if there is no ranged, then it will be in melee which is bad). It's like the steam geysers in Valithria from ICC. You have 4s to get out of the poop on the ground before you get launched into the air.
BUGS!!
From the ground of this event, a whole stack of adds will appear - Lava Parasites. Under NO CIRCUMSTANCES must these little critters be allowed to a) live or b) hit anyone. I can't stress this enough. When they are out, they are the number 1 DPS priority, no matter what else is happening. I mean it.
So, now these adds need to be CCed - slowed, trapped, ice bolted... and more especially, kited. See why I recommended a hunter be at ranged? Whoever is at ranged needs to kite these suckers around, not get hit, and not die. Also, they need to keep enough threat on them all that the DPS in melee are not pulling off the kiter. Every class has something they can do - go research what you can do to help slow or kill these adds. I mean everyone, pallies and rogues included. It is vitally important that these bugs die.
If they touch you, this is what happens: they decide you are a great host for their babies, and stab your stomach and infect you (read the tool tip, it's worth it!), you then get so sick you chuck more parasites everywhere. I mean, seriously awesome stuff, but kind of fatal to your existence and the existence of the raid. This pretty much causes a wipe.
OK got all that?
Not too bad - it's pretty much, don't stand in the poop, kite and kill the bugs.
"The Next Phase"
At some point Magmaw will emote something about exposing his pincers (always a bad idea for the boss to do) which, conveniently, will then EAT THE DAMN TANK. Yes, Magmaw will bend over and chomp on the tank. This debuff is visible on most raid frames - healers, time to focus on the tank. In 30s the tank will irrevocably die so healers, don't worry if your tank suddenly carks it. It just means the DPS are not doing their job.
Huh? What Job?
2 DPS need to be allocated the job of jumping on Magmaw's head. When he bends over to chomp on the tank, a little vehicle arrow will appear when you mouse over him. One at a time, you can jump up on his head, but beware that vehicle icon is not available for long, so you have to be quick.
Once up, your action bar will have a thing to do, which is use constricting chains to tie his head to the spike in the middle there. OK DPS, this is where you need to talk on vent or something. You BOTH have to get your chains on at the same time. If only one gets done, then Magmaw will rip free and well, you have to go again, and since you only have 30s till the tank dies, you really only get one shot at this. The animation that goes along with chaining Magmaw is not short, so talk, and time it together.
Magmaw also likes to headbutt the raid at this point often stunning people. Not a lot you can do about that except wear it. I mean, you can probably dodge away, but I don't believe it is worth bothering with.
Spiked
Let's assume you got it right, and Magmaw is tied to the spike. The target will now change to exposed something or other - be sure that you are DPSing the right thing! Because, while Magmaw is chained down, you are doing double damage. Also, there is zero healing required at this time, so healers, you will need to use this tome to regenerate mana however you do it.
CAVEAT: If there are parasites up - no matter what happens, they are a DPS target priority. The only 2 people excused from dealing with parasites are the DPS jumping on Magmaw's head. Even then, they need to get their job done asap and get back onto the parasites.
Eventually, Magmaw will break free, and we are back to dealing with him as usual. This is where my group uses a second tank to ease the pain of the being munched on debuff. But if you are confident, you can use the same tank.
Threat Dump!
DPS - be very careful of threat - there is a aggro dump when Magmaw is chained (I think it is at that point) and it CAN turn around and snot you for about 120k on cloth if the tank it not quick enough on the taunt. Possibly not enough to kill you, but it will give the healers the scare of their lives.
TL;DR
OK maybe more than 3-4 sentences...
Well, this expansion, strats are going to come a fair bit slower as I am with a much more casual raiding guild. But, I am still going to be writing up everything I can - and this one is about MAGMAW!
First up, Magmaw is a giant worm that doesn't move. He has a ginormous hit box, so hunters, be really careful when dealing with the small amount of trash leading up to him. One misclick and you pull the boss and everyone starts wondering why people are dying. It's funny the first time....
Anyway, for some reason people say that Magmaw has 2 phases - I personally find that terminology confusing, so I wont use it. It's not really 2 phases at all. But you will see what I mean when I get to it. Also, I will do a TL:DR at the end which summarises the fight in about 3-4 sentences.
Magmaw is a gear check. It has high but predictable damage output, and it is to some extent a DPS race.
Magmaw can do a few things when he is free to wiggle around and you set up your raid team positioning accordingly.
Shopping list:
1-2 tanks (our team goes with 2, but 1 would also work if you are confident with your skills),
3 healers
5-6 DPS - at least 1 ranged
The positioning is as follows:
Tank is on one side of Magmaw, everyone else (except the one ranged I mentioned) is "behind" Magmaw on the other side. Get as close to the giant worm as you can but don't fall off the edge!!! This, while funny even the 7th time, leads to wipes! The one lone ranged (usually a hunter for obvious reasons, two if you have two hunters) hangs out in range of heals, but at "ranged". There is a bit of broken floor in the middle, hanging around that is a good visual marker.
That's it. Stay with that as best you can. Tank keeps the attention of the boss, the DPS/Healer group don't stand in the poop and the ranged dude also doesn't stand in any poop.
What poop is there?
Well, there are several kinds of poop. There is Ignition, which is fairly obvious as half the room catches on fire. If it is the half that the DPS/Healer group is on, they need to get out of it asap, then move back when it is over.
There is another kind of unavoidable poop that the healers simply have to heal through. You will see it because everyone's health bars will start plummeting. But most everyone is grouped up, right? AoE heals are fantastic here and make that part of the fight almost trivial when done right.
One is especially for the ranged guy. Every... oh 30s or so, Magmaw will cast something called Pillar of Flame at someone at ranged (and if there is no ranged, then it will be in melee which is bad). It's like the steam geysers in Valithria from ICC. You have 4s to get out of the poop on the ground before you get launched into the air.
BUGS!!
From the ground of this event, a whole stack of adds will appear - Lava Parasites. Under NO CIRCUMSTANCES must these little critters be allowed to a) live or b) hit anyone. I can't stress this enough. When they are out, they are the number 1 DPS priority, no matter what else is happening. I mean it.
So, now these adds need to be CCed - slowed, trapped, ice bolted... and more especially, kited. See why I recommended a hunter be at ranged? Whoever is at ranged needs to kite these suckers around, not get hit, and not die. Also, they need to keep enough threat on them all that the DPS in melee are not pulling off the kiter. Every class has something they can do - go research what you can do to help slow or kill these adds. I mean everyone, pallies and rogues included. It is vitally important that these bugs die.
If they touch you, this is what happens: they decide you are a great host for their babies, and stab your stomach and infect you (read the tool tip, it's worth it!), you then get so sick you chuck more parasites everywhere. I mean, seriously awesome stuff, but kind of fatal to your existence and the existence of the raid. This pretty much causes a wipe.
OK got all that?
Not too bad - it's pretty much, don't stand in the poop, kite and kill the bugs.
"The Next Phase"
At some point Magmaw will emote something about exposing his pincers (always a bad idea for the boss to do) which, conveniently, will then EAT THE DAMN TANK. Yes, Magmaw will bend over and chomp on the tank. This debuff is visible on most raid frames - healers, time to focus on the tank. In 30s the tank will irrevocably die so healers, don't worry if your tank suddenly carks it. It just means the DPS are not doing their job.
Huh? What Job?
2 DPS need to be allocated the job of jumping on Magmaw's head. When he bends over to chomp on the tank, a little vehicle arrow will appear when you mouse over him. One at a time, you can jump up on his head, but beware that vehicle icon is not available for long, so you have to be quick.
Once up, your action bar will have a thing to do, which is use constricting chains to tie his head to the spike in the middle there. OK DPS, this is where you need to talk on vent or something. You BOTH have to get your chains on at the same time. If only one gets done, then Magmaw will rip free and well, you have to go again, and since you only have 30s till the tank dies, you really only get one shot at this. The animation that goes along with chaining Magmaw is not short, so talk, and time it together.
Magmaw also likes to headbutt the raid at this point often stunning people. Not a lot you can do about that except wear it. I mean, you can probably dodge away, but I don't believe it is worth bothering with.
Spiked
Let's assume you got it right, and Magmaw is tied to the spike. The target will now change to exposed something or other - be sure that you are DPSing the right thing! Because, while Magmaw is chained down, you are doing double damage. Also, there is zero healing required at this time, so healers, you will need to use this tome to regenerate mana however you do it.
CAVEAT: If there are parasites up - no matter what happens, they are a DPS target priority. The only 2 people excused from dealing with parasites are the DPS jumping on Magmaw's head. Even then, they need to get their job done asap and get back onto the parasites.
Eventually, Magmaw will break free, and we are back to dealing with him as usual. This is where my group uses a second tank to ease the pain of the being munched on debuff. But if you are confident, you can use the same tank.
Threat Dump!
DPS - be very careful of threat - there is a aggro dump when Magmaw is chained (I think it is at that point) and it CAN turn around and snot you for about 120k on cloth if the tank it not quick enough on the taunt. Possibly not enough to kill you, but it will give the healers the scare of their lives.
TL;DR
OK maybe more than 3-4 sentences...
- One ranged for kiting parasites (priority kill targets), hunter best.
- Rest group up "behind" Magmaw.
- Don't stand in the poop.
- 2 DPS jump up asap, coordinate chain activation (30s Max time for this).
- Burn Magmaw (parasites die first).
- EEEP! Aggro Dump!!!
- Rinse, repeat.
- Collect bad RNG loots.
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Mana vs Concentration pots
So, while deliberating the ins and outs of paladin healing this week with my guildies (mostly, my paladin partner in crime, Siha) we came to a bit of a realisation: I was mana potting, she was conc potting.
What exactly is the difference?
Mana pots give you a one shot 10k (approx) hit of mana.
Conc pots mean you stay put for up to 10s and gain back up to 22K mana (more if you are an alchemist - which I am not, so I dont know the details of the buff there).
Here is a bit of an analysis I popped on our forums trying to figure out which was better (slightly edited for a couple of errors I made and were pointed out to me):
--
So, 10s of silence with a concentation pot gives a guaranteed 22k mana. But you cant do anything else. For 10s.
vs
A mana pot (quick 10k) plus hitting the boss. Seems like the proc rate of insight is about 30-40% per successful melee hit giving around 937 mana, with a judgement doing about 3.5k, but also leaving you free to heal or do other things.
So in 10s a mana pot (10k instant) plus 2 judges (7k) plus 5 (ish) hits with a proc rate of about 2 of them returning mana puts you about 2 k behind a conc potion, without having to be immobile for 10s (ie you can WoG or HS or anything else at the same time)
Thoughts?
I think it is situational. Clearly, Magmaw favours conc pots (probably bracketed by judgements to maximise regen) but I suspect other fights might favour the mana pot.
--
Siha added that coinciding DP with a conc pot would really throw you back up in the mana stakes, and I said while that is a good idea, (I mean it really IS a good idea, and one of which I should have thought), it didn't change the math because both mana pots and conc pots could be coincided with DP.
So people - what have you experienced? When is it a good time to mana pot? when is it good to conc pot?
What exactly is the difference?
Mana pots give you a one shot 10k (approx) hit of mana.
Conc pots mean you stay put for up to 10s and gain back up to 22K mana (more if you are an alchemist - which I am not, so I dont know the details of the buff there).
Here is a bit of an analysis I popped on our forums trying to figure out which was better (slightly edited for a couple of errors I made and were pointed out to me):
--
So, 10s of silence with a concentation pot gives a guaranteed 22k mana. But you cant do anything else. For 10s.
vs
A mana pot (quick 10k) plus hitting the boss. Seems like the proc rate of insight is about 30-40% per successful melee hit giving around 937 mana, with a judgement doing about 3.5k, but also leaving you free to heal or do other things.
So in 10s a mana pot (10k instant) plus 2 judges (7k) plus 5 (ish) hits with a proc rate of about 2 of them returning mana puts you about 2 k behind a conc potion, without having to be immobile for 10s (ie you can WoG or HS or anything else at the same time)
Thoughts?
I think it is situational. Clearly, Magmaw favours conc pots (probably bracketed by judgements to maximise regen) but I suspect other fights might favour the mana pot.
--
Siha added that coinciding DP with a conc pot would really throw you back up in the mana stakes, and I said while that is a good idea, (I mean it really IS a good idea, and one of which I should have thought), it didn't change the math because both mana pots and conc pots could be coincided with DP.
So people - what have you experienced? When is it a good time to mana pot? when is it good to conc pot?
Friday, February 18, 2011
One boss in BWD gawn
So, we killed magmaw on our first 10man adventure into raiding on wednesday night. In typical raiding style, it went down on the last pull of the night!
I drew a lot of conclusions from that raid, and I need to do a couple more before I write up some advice on how to kill magmaw (there are a couple of very straight forward things you need to do to win) but also, on holy paladin healing. There were two of us in the raid - and we are both very competent pally healers, with VERY different styles. Looking at the recount summaries made me guffaw in amusement. The other holy pally was using Divine Light as her go to spell, and pumping out the HPS. She probably has a good 8-10 gear points on me. Me? Well, I was using every trick in the book to squeeze as much as I could out of what I had! I used literally everything, except Light of Dawn, which I am not a fan of as a spell.
Today, I am hoping to go through the parses and see how much mana I generated compared to the other holy pally, and see if that is where I was lacking. I strongly suspect it is. I was experimenting with flasks and food, and I was trying the int flasks - I suspect until my gear picks up, I might need the spirit flask.
Here's a screen shot of the kill attempt and my spell usage (Yes I know they don't fit on my actual blog, just click them and they will take you to a page with just the image. RSS feed readers... you will have no idea what I am talking about!)
As you can see, I was very evenly using every trick at my disposal. I was keeping shock on CD as much as I could (which, honestly, probably wasn't enough). Here is the other holy pally:
As you can see, she was pumping out the DLs hard as her go to spell. I simply do not have the mana, or regen to keep that up as much as she did.
Then the money shot - why I need to up my spirit:
Guess where Brang ran short on mana completely and utterly and was running on fumes? Yes, I was the light pink line. This really rams home to me that my attribute distribution on my gear is not ideal, and I am a bit short when it comes to being 10man raid ready. Not a LOT short, just a little bit.
Remember that list I put up a couple of weeks a go with the self gearing information? Yeah, well I'm still wearing that list. It's not the best list, but as you can see above, it is really just about raid ready, or at least very close to it. I am near to replacing my crafted helm with the JP badge helm and that might make a bit of difference for monday, we will see! Unfortunately, I don't have another holy pally to compare myself to in that raid.
But, I think I acquitted myself quite well, I kept pace on the whole, considering my gear level. I didn't die too much, I didn't stand in the fire, and on the whole, the tanks didn't get omnomnomed to death.
Monday will be another raid instance, so we will see how that goes! I will chat to our kiters of adds for magmaw and see if I can get a good understanding of how they controlled the adds successfully (as toward the end of the night, they really had those adds under control) Then I will write up a NERD guide to 10man magmaw.
I drew a lot of conclusions from that raid, and I need to do a couple more before I write up some advice on how to kill magmaw (there are a couple of very straight forward things you need to do to win) but also, on holy paladin healing. There were two of us in the raid - and we are both very competent pally healers, with VERY different styles. Looking at the recount summaries made me guffaw in amusement. The other holy pally was using Divine Light as her go to spell, and pumping out the HPS. She probably has a good 8-10 gear points on me. Me? Well, I was using every trick in the book to squeeze as much as I could out of what I had! I used literally everything, except Light of Dawn, which I am not a fan of as a spell.
Today, I am hoping to go through the parses and see how much mana I generated compared to the other holy pally, and see if that is where I was lacking. I strongly suspect it is. I was experimenting with flasks and food, and I was trying the int flasks - I suspect until my gear picks up, I might need the spirit flask.
Here's a screen shot of the kill attempt and my spell usage (Yes I know they don't fit on my actual blog, just click them and they will take you to a page with just the image. RSS feed readers... you will have no idea what I am talking about!)
As you can see, I was very evenly using every trick at my disposal. I was keeping shock on CD as much as I could (which, honestly, probably wasn't enough). Here is the other holy pally:
Then the money shot - why I need to up my spirit:
Remember that list I put up a couple of weeks a go with the self gearing information? Yeah, well I'm still wearing that list. It's not the best list, but as you can see above, it is really just about raid ready, or at least very close to it. I am near to replacing my crafted helm with the JP badge helm and that might make a bit of difference for monday, we will see! Unfortunately, I don't have another holy pally to compare myself to in that raid.
But, I think I acquitted myself quite well, I kept pace on the whole, considering my gear level. I didn't die too much, I didn't stand in the fire, and on the whole, the tanks didn't get omnomnomed to death.
Monday will be another raid instance, so we will see how that goes! I will chat to our kiters of adds for magmaw and see if I can get a good understanding of how they controlled the adds successfully (as toward the end of the night, they really had those adds under control) Then I will write up a NERD guide to 10man magmaw.
Thursday, August 12, 2010
For The Horde!
I had my last raid with my previous guild. Last Thursday (ie one week ago) I made the transfer to horde and my new cataclysm 10man guild. I decided to do it then as the night before the 25man barely ran and that night had been called. My new guild were on my case saying "Come raid with us!!".
So, I was torn. I sat there thinking "I should stay and help my 25s, they need me, they put effort into me" And then I caught myself. No, I had earned everything I had via DKP, I didn't owe the guild anything for my gear, if anything they owed me at this point. I had turned up, put up with complaining and bitching. Put up with a culture I had enjoyed less and less as time went on. The more I thought about it, the more I wondered why I was still there staying with a guild that I wasn't overall comfortable with and denying the people who actually wanted to play with me (and not just because of my shiny mace). RealID meant I had everyone I wanted to keep in touch with on my friends list already and I could talk across faction with them. There really was no downside to my leaving except personal guilt. And personal guilt, in this case, was very silly! So, I said bye to the 11 people online, the 3 people left in my vent channel (not including all the people in passworded channels - I really hate passworded channels) after the 25man failure and hit "continue" on the transfer webpage of my battle.net account.
This is (slightly abridged, but) what I posted to the guild:
So, that was that. Mostly I got sarcasm and bitterness from the people who bothered to reply to me (there were a couple of nice answers) which sealed the deal completely for me.
Since that time, I have raided twice in my new guild. And I never realised that going backward in content could be so much fun. We were wiping on LDW ICC10 normal (because, despite all my raiding time, I have never killed LK in 10man mode) and I was enjoying it. People were learning, they were improving, criticism was constructive and people never took it personally. I got to talk about balls to the face, and horizontal and vertical balls when explaining princes (which was hilarious to all involved).
In short; new guild good, old guild broken. Looks like I will have things to write about soon enough!
So, I was torn. I sat there thinking "I should stay and help my 25s, they need me, they put effort into me" And then I caught myself. No, I had earned everything I had via DKP, I didn't owe the guild anything for my gear, if anything they owed me at this point. I had turned up, put up with complaining and bitching. Put up with a culture I had enjoyed less and less as time went on. The more I thought about it, the more I wondered why I was still there staying with a guild that I wasn't overall comfortable with and denying the people who actually wanted to play with me (and not just because of my shiny mace). RealID meant I had everyone I wanted to keep in touch with on my friends list already and I could talk across faction with them. There really was no downside to my leaving except personal guilt. And personal guilt, in this case, was very silly! So, I said bye to the 11 people online, the 3 people left in my vent channel (not including all the people in passworded channels - I really hate passworded channels) after the 25man failure and hit "continue" on the transfer webpage of my battle.net account.
This is (slightly abridged, but) what I posted to the guild:
This has been coming for some time, you all know what I am going to be saying. I'm not retiring, however.
I am moving early to the 10man guild I am starting horde side. The transfer is currently in process. I was going to see out this raiding week, but given the dogging I decided to add to the shitness and move earlier rather than later. 4 holy paladins last night is not great for raid balance at the best of times, and when one is the goo queen [NER: That's me, I keep getting hit by malleable goo no matter what I do!], it's even more sheeite.
I wanted to say that I have honestly enjoyed my time [here]. It was a big thing for me to do, move to [this guild]. Not sure how many of you will understand how big a deal it was, some might, but there you go.
...
I do feel awful about leaving, but I am a guild leader at heart. I have spent most of my wow time running guilds, and to be honest, I miss it a lot more than I thought I would.
But this is what I am going to be going to do:
(it happens to be horde because people wanted it)
I am running a 10man focussed guild... This guild will be special in that come cataclysm when we start raiding, none of us will research anything. No boss mods, no clues. We will walk in there cold. We will take off our clothes and run into the boss and see what happens.
We want to recapture the magic that we used to have learning new bosses, working together, strategising and NUDIE PULLS! FD pulls with pets, remember them? I do, and I miss that feeling of walking into a new boss and looking around in awe and not knowing what was in store. More and more I feel like raiding is simply going through the motions - everyone knows what to do before we walk in there, you get yelled at if you ask a stupid question.
Here is a guild who has been doing it for a while if you are interested in more information:
http://www.converge-dh.com/website/z...ncetactics.php [NER: Oh for the love of the light, I cant find the post with the comment in it from a guildy of that guild to credit them!!]
Yes, this will mean we are not competing for server firsts, but I don't care about that anymore. For me, there are 2 things to playing wow. The satisfaction of defeating a boss by the skin of my teeth with cunning and luck, and having fun with friends.
For me, 25s progression raiding is not magical anymore. I don't care if I kill LK HM, because that first LK kill we did was everything I could have wanted.
So, that was that. Mostly I got sarcasm and bitterness from the people who bothered to reply to me (there were a couple of nice answers) which sealed the deal completely for me.
Since that time, I have raided twice in my new guild. And I never realised that going backward in content could be so much fun. We were wiping on LDW ICC10 normal (because, despite all my raiding time, I have never killed LK in 10man mode) and I was enjoying it. People were learning, they were improving, criticism was constructive and people never took it personally. I got to talk about balls to the face, and horizontal and vertical balls when explaining princes (which was hilarious to all involved).
In short; new guild good, old guild broken. Looks like I will have things to write about soon enough!
Friday, April 9, 2010
10mans in a 25 focussed guild
10mans are great for a 25 progression guild.
Because of the smaller format, you can grab a bunch of people with more gear than the raid is tuned for and learn the fights coming up in 25s. I cannot stress how invaluable that experience is in making sure every moment in your 25 man run counts. I have run a lot of 25s, and as a raid leader and as a raid member, it becomes very obvious very quickly who has and who has not run a 10 prior to the main raid. I have also noticed it very distinctly in my own ability to adapt to the craziness of 25s if I have had a crack in 10s beforehand.
10s are easier to put together, you can do them in downtime and have fun with your little group of friends in the guild.
But what happens when a group of people in the guild form a 10man and they start progressing, and they kill the endboss and start on hardmodes while another group is struggling to get people together? What happens when the group of people are all the officers? What happens if the officers are split between 2 competetive groups unevenly and they end up having fights in officers down those lines over 25man content and stuff "for the good of the guild"?
In short, 10mans can be a very divisive situation in your guild. They necessarily isolate people into little groups and those little groups form very tight knit circles of friends. This in and of itself is not a bad thing. Circles of people will happen wherever you go. What makes this situation different is that new people will find it hard to join in, they may feel alienated and unwelcome on top of feeling unsure in a new guild. This, of course, probably isn't the case, but how you spend you non raiding time is really important. It should be encouraged for people to mix and form friendships understandings and trust so that their 25man behaviour is more accommodating and overall raid performance improves.
How often have you thought so and so was an idiot only to find out maybe 2 months later, that, no they are not? And the only way you found that out was by running chain heroics with them one day because you had a spot free and they came along? All this time you thought they were an elitist snob because they were the RL of that 10man that ran on sundays and never included anyone new. After that, you may have trusted them more in raids to do their job, or when they said that blah blah happened instead of thinking the worst, you might give them the benefit of the doubt. Then maybe a week or two later, you start enjoying raiding again and your OWN performance improves.
Don't underestimate the impact that fracturing your guild members can have on your morale, and therefore, raid performance. Not everyone has a robust personality and wont take being told "no, we dont need blah class for our run" to heart or even more unintentionally hurtfully hear "We worked for weeks to get this group together, and we enjoy running together, we don't have room for everyone". Ouch. Yeah, I head that said recently in my guild. While very true and factual, it was really very upsetting to the poor person on the receiving end (and no, it wasn't me).
Lastly, 10s should always take a second place to 25s in a 25 progression guild. If the officers need another 25 night for a recruitment alt run, and the best time they can find is at the same time as your 10man, don't emo out at everyone saying how unfair it all is. Talk to your officers about the situation! It might be that the 25 is completely optional and you can continue your 10man while another alt 25 is running. But at the end of the day, if the 25 run is "official" (ie a recruitment run offering all the perks of a normal guild run, or a new progression night) then, no matter how put out you feel, you are there to raid 25s, not 10s and you should support the guild in that endeavour. If you are questioning this, mayhaps this guild isn't for you after all. And you know what, that's ok too.
As officers and guild leaders, you should be sensitive to all the things I have spoken about above. Be aware of which officers are attending which 10s. Try and find out from those not attending 10s how they feel about the situation, how they have been treated. Make damn sure that no divisions spring up within your guild based on who goes to what 10man. If you can, as officers, mix up where you attend. Be "busy" one week for your regular 10 with your officer friends and see if you can sit in on another one. You might not think it immediately, but morale and raid performance is greatly affected by this out of raid stuff, because no matter what happens, people are people and you need people to defeat the game and earn purple (and sometimes orange) pixels!
Because of the smaller format, you can grab a bunch of people with more gear than the raid is tuned for and learn the fights coming up in 25s. I cannot stress how invaluable that experience is in making sure every moment in your 25 man run counts. I have run a lot of 25s, and as a raid leader and as a raid member, it becomes very obvious very quickly who has and who has not run a 10 prior to the main raid. I have also noticed it very distinctly in my own ability to adapt to the craziness of 25s if I have had a crack in 10s beforehand.
10s are easier to put together, you can do them in downtime and have fun with your little group of friends in the guild.
But what happens when a group of people in the guild form a 10man and they start progressing, and they kill the endboss and start on hardmodes while another group is struggling to get people together? What happens when the group of people are all the officers? What happens if the officers are split between 2 competetive groups unevenly and they end up having fights in officers down those lines over 25man content and stuff "for the good of the guild"?
In short, 10mans can be a very divisive situation in your guild. They necessarily isolate people into little groups and those little groups form very tight knit circles of friends. This in and of itself is not a bad thing. Circles of people will happen wherever you go. What makes this situation different is that new people will find it hard to join in, they may feel alienated and unwelcome on top of feeling unsure in a new guild. This, of course, probably isn't the case, but how you spend you non raiding time is really important. It should be encouraged for people to mix and form friendships understandings and trust so that their 25man behaviour is more accommodating and overall raid performance improves.
How often have you thought so and so was an idiot only to find out maybe 2 months later, that, no they are not? And the only way you found that out was by running chain heroics with them one day because you had a spot free and they came along? All this time you thought they were an elitist snob because they were the RL of that 10man that ran on sundays and never included anyone new. After that, you may have trusted them more in raids to do their job, or when they said that blah blah happened instead of thinking the worst, you might give them the benefit of the doubt. Then maybe a week or two later, you start enjoying raiding again and your OWN performance improves.
Don't underestimate the impact that fracturing your guild members can have on your morale, and therefore, raid performance. Not everyone has a robust personality and wont take being told "no, we dont need blah class for our run" to heart or even more unintentionally hurtfully hear "We worked for weeks to get this group together, and we enjoy running together, we don't have room for everyone". Ouch. Yeah, I head that said recently in my guild. While very true and factual, it was really very upsetting to the poor person on the receiving end (and no, it wasn't me).
Lastly, 10s should always take a second place to 25s in a 25 progression guild. If the officers need another 25 night for a recruitment alt run, and the best time they can find is at the same time as your 10man, don't emo out at everyone saying how unfair it all is. Talk to your officers about the situation! It might be that the 25 is completely optional and you can continue your 10man while another alt 25 is running. But at the end of the day, if the 25 run is "official" (ie a recruitment run offering all the perks of a normal guild run, or a new progression night) then, no matter how put out you feel, you are there to raid 25s, not 10s and you should support the guild in that endeavour. If you are questioning this, mayhaps this guild isn't for you after all. And you know what, that's ok too.
As officers and guild leaders, you should be sensitive to all the things I have spoken about above. Be aware of which officers are attending which 10s. Try and find out from those not attending 10s how they feel about the situation, how they have been treated. Make damn sure that no divisions spring up within your guild based on who goes to what 10man. If you can, as officers, mix up where you attend. Be "busy" one week for your regular 10 with your officer friends and see if you can sit in on another one. You might not think it immediately, but morale and raid performance is greatly affected by this out of raid stuff, because no matter what happens, people are people and you need people to defeat the game and earn purple (and sometimes orange) pixels!
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
Hot tip for the cold top
Wanna know something awesome for the Lich King fight?
In phase 3, with the val'kyr who wanna drop your mates off the edge of the cliff? Yeah, those chicks always ALWAYS head for the closest edge. Have a think about that for a moment. Yes, that means you can control which direction they move, and instead of having them go off in seemingly random directions, if you stand stacked just off centre, you can get them moving predictably to the edge. Which makes CC and DPSing them down a whole lot easier!
It also means that if you stack over there *points* then you can get them going that way which is not over the defile on the ground *turns 180 and points at the black goo on the ground*
No, I haven't killed LK - but I have spent a lot of gold on repairs wiping.
I also haven't yet been in on a Blood Queen kill, nor that green dragon and I finally got a putricide kill last Thursday. I have 2 strats due to be written up (being putricide and council)
In phase 3, with the val'kyr who wanna drop your mates off the edge of the cliff? Yeah, those chicks always ALWAYS head for the closest edge. Have a think about that for a moment. Yes, that means you can control which direction they move, and instead of having them go off in seemingly random directions, if you stand stacked just off centre, you can get them moving predictably to the edge. Which makes CC and DPSing them down a whole lot easier!
It also means that if you stack over there *points* then you can get them going that way which is not over the defile on the ground *turns 180 and points at the black goo on the ground*
No, I haven't killed LK - but I have spent a lot of gold on repairs wiping.
I also haven't yet been in on a Blood Queen kill, nor that green dragon and I finally got a putricide kill last Thursday. I have 2 strats due to be written up (being putricide and council)
Friday, February 5, 2010
Dropping back to 10s
The casual flavour is really hitting us hard over here and our raids have been struggling for a while. So, I had to make the hard call this week and announce to my guild that we were stopping 25s for the mean time and would be running 10s until we regrouped.
There are many reasons for this, a large one being that 25s have been sucking the fun out of the game for not just me, but for many people, and it felt like we were flogging a dead horse. We weren't short on numbers per se (we were still fielding a full team every night just and recruiting hard) but the lag compounded with the motivation and we came to a point where the officer team really were not leading any more. So, for the first time in the history of the guild, we are not raiding 25s and we are not doing "progression" content.
This has had a dual fold effect on the guild. Some people instantly left for greener pastures - some people I didn't expect, and others I did. I am honestly hoping that the people that have stayed and rallied will forge a strong solid core of friends to move forward with in the future. Some people are putting their feelers out still and this week's raiding is a bit all over the place. The lag isnt great, and people are "not logging on" and a few guildies have said they have seen apps around the traps. I am not looking because looking will make me feel sad, I think. I am just going to kick back and watch people leave and see what we have left.
The other effect is that we will be working on hardmodes in 10s. I am gunning for at least 2 IDs to clear and kill the Lich king *puts fingers in ears* LA LA LA NOT LISTENING WANNA SEE LORE UNFOLD!! This will get people familiar with fights and strats in a smaller, less laggy environment and with a tighter knit group. Then, in a couple of months when we have numbers again, I am HOPING that we will just be able to waltz in and smash face.
At least, that is the plan I have in the back of my mind. Whether or not we can pull it off? NFI!
So, I will still be writing up strats, but for the moment, they will be 10man oriented. I have a putricide, blood council and blood queen strat in my mind ready to go. So they should appear in the next few days. And hopefully, after Monday, I will have the rest of them done and dusted and I can start working on the hardmode stuff! I will also muse on the hows and whys of the decision in the near future, but at the moment, the wound is still a bit raw to talk about.
It's not the damn game, it's the people in it that make this all so hard for me. Stupid people. Wish I cared less sometimes, but then the highs certainly would not be as high without putting my everything into the people.
There are many reasons for this, a large one being that 25s have been sucking the fun out of the game for not just me, but for many people, and it felt like we were flogging a dead horse. We weren't short on numbers per se (we were still fielding a full team every night just and recruiting hard) but the lag compounded with the motivation and we came to a point where the officer team really were not leading any more. So, for the first time in the history of the guild, we are not raiding 25s and we are not doing "progression" content.
This has had a dual fold effect on the guild. Some people instantly left for greener pastures - some people I didn't expect, and others I did. I am honestly hoping that the people that have stayed and rallied will forge a strong solid core of friends to move forward with in the future. Some people are putting their feelers out still and this week's raiding is a bit all over the place. The lag isnt great, and people are "not logging on" and a few guildies have said they have seen apps around the traps. I am not looking because looking will make me feel sad, I think. I am just going to kick back and watch people leave and see what we have left.
The other effect is that we will be working on hardmodes in 10s. I am gunning for at least 2 IDs to clear and kill the Lich king *puts fingers in ears* LA LA LA NOT LISTENING WANNA SEE LORE UNFOLD!! This will get people familiar with fights and strats in a smaller, less laggy environment and with a tighter knit group. Then, in a couple of months when we have numbers again, I am HOPING that we will just be able to waltz in and smash face.
At least, that is the plan I have in the back of my mind. Whether or not we can pull it off? NFI!
So, I will still be writing up strats, but for the moment, they will be 10man oriented. I have a putricide, blood council and blood queen strat in my mind ready to go. So they should appear in the next few days. And hopefully, after Monday, I will have the rest of them done and dusted and I can start working on the hardmode stuff! I will also muse on the hows and whys of the decision in the near future, but at the moment, the wound is still a bit raw to talk about.
It's not the damn game, it's the people in it that make this all so hard for me. Stupid people. Wish I cared less sometimes, but then the highs certainly would not be as high without putting my everything into the people.
Monday, January 11, 2010
All that healing is making me thirsty
So, with a less than sparkly team, our sunday 10man advanced into ICC10, hoping for a shot at the professor. But, due to circumstances both in and out of our control, festergut handed our arses to us on a silver platter.
But, I smelled a problem early on. 3 healers, and I, the holy pally, am putting out over 50% of the healing (inc guessed absorbs from the disc priest). Yeah, the tank is taking a lot of damage, but BUH!? I suspect that was where most of our issues lay. But after me throwing off my headphones in anger at getting blamed for tanks dying and doing an entire attempt logged off of vent and no one noticed (yeah guys, I don't actually need to hear you complaining sometimes! but I very quickly noticed how lonely it was at the other end of a silent computer screen), we got ourselves sorted and tanks got CDs under control and priests got their oh shit moments sorted. And yeah, Festergut hit the floor.
Festergut is a tank and healer check. Kind of like patchwerk, but I found patchwerk to be a lot more forgiving on the tank healing, even when I was gear appropriate, because there was little to nothing else going on other than damage on the tanks. With Festergut, that isn't true, there is some serious raid damage as well as nasty tank damage.
Me? I didn't have time to do anything except chain heal until I went oom (which, fortunately for me, was about the end of the fight, you can tell when I go oom, because tanks start dropping. Kill attempt? Both tanks dead!).
Quick tips for Holy Pallies and mana management, NERD style.
1 - get a mana pool that simply doesn't fit in your pants. This means stacking int. My current goal is 40k 25raid buffed (I'm at almost 39k atm)
2 - get as much crit as you possibly can. It's still a very effective way of regenning mana. (If anyone is interested, I have numbers in a spreadsheet somewhere.)
3 - Haste haste haste... then some more haste. Not so great for mana management, but 1.3s (or less with hero) Holy Lights are sexy as a sexy thing!
4 - Flasks of Mojo, MP5 or crit food and glyph seal of wisdom
5 - get seal of wisdom up, get into the bosses face and autohit the bastard! 1500 mana for a hit every so often? Yeah, that's totally worth it.
6 - DP + trinkets + wings = win ... do it around 70% mana if you can, or else, when there is a lull in healing. It's 15s, so worst case, call out in vent for assistance on the tank for 15s. Also, macro them together to save on clicky-clicky time.
7 - macro Divine Illumination to a healing spell. Have it constantly on CD. I have mine set to Holy light, so if the initial part of the fight is not too bad, I flash until the damage starts mounting up then HL and DI come up together once the shit starts hitting the fan. And DI is used every CD after that.
But, I smelled a problem early on. 3 healers, and I, the holy pally, am putting out over 50% of the healing (inc guessed absorbs from the disc priest). Yeah, the tank is taking a lot of damage, but BUH!? I suspect that was where most of our issues lay. But after me throwing off my headphones in anger at getting blamed for tanks dying and doing an entire attempt logged off of vent and no one noticed (yeah guys, I don't actually need to hear you complaining sometimes! but I very quickly noticed how lonely it was at the other end of a silent computer screen), we got ourselves sorted and tanks got CDs under control and priests got their oh shit moments sorted. And yeah, Festergut hit the floor.
Festergut is a tank and healer check. Kind of like patchwerk, but I found patchwerk to be a lot more forgiving on the tank healing, even when I was gear appropriate, because there was little to nothing else going on other than damage on the tanks. With Festergut, that isn't true, there is some serious raid damage as well as nasty tank damage.
Me? I didn't have time to do anything except chain heal until I went oom (which, fortunately for me, was about the end of the fight, you can tell when I go oom, because tanks start dropping. Kill attempt? Both tanks dead!).
Quick tips for Holy Pallies and mana management, NERD style.
1 - get a mana pool that simply doesn't fit in your pants. This means stacking int. My current goal is 40k 25raid buffed (I'm at almost 39k atm)
2 - get as much crit as you possibly can. It's still a very effective way of regenning mana. (If anyone is interested, I have numbers in a spreadsheet somewhere.)
3 - Haste haste haste... then some more haste. Not so great for mana management, but 1.3s (or less with hero) Holy Lights are sexy as a sexy thing!
4 - Flasks of Mojo, MP5 or crit food and glyph seal of wisdom
5 - get seal of wisdom up, get into the bosses face and autohit the bastard! 1500 mana for a hit every so often? Yeah, that's totally worth it.
6 - DP + trinkets + wings = win ... do it around 70% mana if you can, or else, when there is a lull in healing. It's 15s, so worst case, call out in vent for assistance on the tank for 15s. Also, macro them together to save on clicky-clicky time.
7 - macro Divine Illumination to a healing spell. Have it constantly on CD. I have mine set to Holy light, so if the initial part of the fight is not too bad, I flash until the damage starts mounting up then HL and DI come up together once the shit starts hitting the fan. And DI is used every CD after that.
Friday, June 19, 2009
XT-002 Heroic: Heartbreaker
Ok So I managed to completely lose my previous strat here, so I will be rewriting this from scratch (which probably needed doing anyway)
Shopping list:
1MT
1DPS/OT
6 healers
Some serious DPS.
Set up the same way as explained in the Normal mode strat. To jog your memory, tank XT in the middle, Turn him away from the raid, melee on the left arse cheek, ranged and healers stacked a small ways behind them. Light is right and go hard to get XT to 75% as soon as possible!
Heartbreaker!
To activate this hardmode, all you have to do it kill the heart before the timer runs out. Pfft easy, right? WRONG! This means popping anything and you have at your disposal to increase DPS. Get rogues using expose armour as it is faster to apply than sunders. Get your healers DPSing as well (there is no raid damage at this time). Go ballistic, get out the whips and smash/smoosh that thing into the ground.
A useful thing to know if you are very close to activating hardmode: Dots keep ticking on the heart even when it has gone back up! So load it up. Hardmode can activate several seconds AFTER the heart has gone back up into the body. So, don't give up on hardmode until you get a second heart phase!
Ok, so we smashed the heart, now what?
Lucky for you the adds will stop spawning. But things will get harder. XT resets to 160% health (ouch) and you have about 2 min less on the enrage timer! Time to pull out the best DPS you can muster. Keep moving left and right, but now there is extra added bonus things that the gravity and light do!
/tar life /DPS!
Your first light on some one is going to do something funky, and the reason you are running to the right leg will now become apparent. Make sure you are in line of sight of the tank. When the light thingy drops off, a new annoying thing called a Life Spark will start hitting you like a mack truck if you don't move quick back to your group. The MT needs to quickly taunt this life spark away from anyone else and tank it. Healers need to be on their game and aware of the extra damage, and all ranged DPS need to smash that life spark down as quickly as possible and get back onto DPSing XT as soon as they can. If a ranged gets aggro on the spark to early, they may need to kite it around until dead. Obviously, this is not ideal, but it happens sometimes if the person is accidentally too far away from the tank to taunt.
Black goo?
So, you are running left with gravity bomb, you stay out there until it drops off and suddenly, there is a big pool of black goo surrounding you! RUN OUT!! RUN OUT! So, now with gravity bombs you have to move to a position to drop your goo away from everyone else! Which makes it a fair bit harder to manage.
The shopping list mentions a DPS/OT?
Yes it does! Make sure there is a plate wearer who can grab the big trash (if any happen to spawn) and just hang onto them until the MT is ready to taunt them himself.
Tympanic Tantrum
Tympanic tantrum is a lot more deadly in hardmode, it actually almost does enough damage to kill someone. If they happen to be not topped up, or have a light/grav thingy on them, they may well die if you are not on top of heals. Ret/Prot paladins with Divine Sacrifice can help out here if you are struggling, and so can priests with their 8s "HEAL EVERYONE" ability. Organise a rotation ahead of time to help out.
Is that really all?
Yeah pretty much! The tanks need to be very fast on picking up the sparks, DPS have to be uber-elite and smash those life sparks as soon as they can. The main trick here is to not make a mistake. Like all the hardmodes in ulduar, this is about perfection! Make it perfect, and XT will die with a broken heart. Aw.
Shopping list:
1MT
1DPS/OT
6 healers
Some serious DPS.
Set up the same way as explained in the Normal mode strat. To jog your memory, tank XT in the middle, Turn him away from the raid, melee on the left arse cheek, ranged and healers stacked a small ways behind them. Light is right and go hard to get XT to 75% as soon as possible!
Heartbreaker!
To activate this hardmode, all you have to do it kill the heart before the timer runs out. Pfft easy, right? WRONG! This means popping anything and you have at your disposal to increase DPS. Get rogues using expose armour as it is faster to apply than sunders. Get your healers DPSing as well (there is no raid damage at this time). Go ballistic, get out the whips and smash/smoosh that thing into the ground.
A useful thing to know if you are very close to activating hardmode: Dots keep ticking on the heart even when it has gone back up! So load it up. Hardmode can activate several seconds AFTER the heart has gone back up into the body. So, don't give up on hardmode until you get a second heart phase!
Ok, so we smashed the heart, now what?
Lucky for you the adds will stop spawning. But things will get harder. XT resets to 160% health (ouch) and you have about 2 min less on the enrage timer! Time to pull out the best DPS you can muster. Keep moving left and right, but now there is extra added bonus things that the gravity and light do!
/tar life /DPS!
Your first light on some one is going to do something funky, and the reason you are running to the right leg will now become apparent. Make sure you are in line of sight of the tank. When the light thingy drops off, a new annoying thing called a Life Spark will start hitting you like a mack truck if you don't move quick back to your group. The MT needs to quickly taunt this life spark away from anyone else and tank it. Healers need to be on their game and aware of the extra damage, and all ranged DPS need to smash that life spark down as quickly as possible and get back onto DPSing XT as soon as they can. If a ranged gets aggro on the spark to early, they may need to kite it around until dead. Obviously, this is not ideal, but it happens sometimes if the person is accidentally too far away from the tank to taunt.
Black goo?
So, you are running left with gravity bomb, you stay out there until it drops off and suddenly, there is a big pool of black goo surrounding you! RUN OUT!! RUN OUT! So, now with gravity bombs you have to move to a position to drop your goo away from everyone else! Which makes it a fair bit harder to manage.
The shopping list mentions a DPS/OT?
Yes it does! Make sure there is a plate wearer who can grab the big trash (if any happen to spawn) and just hang onto them until the MT is ready to taunt them himself.
Tympanic Tantrum
Tympanic tantrum is a lot more deadly in hardmode, it actually almost does enough damage to kill someone. If they happen to be not topped up, or have a light/grav thingy on them, they may well die if you are not on top of heals. Ret/Prot paladins with Divine Sacrifice can help out here if you are struggling, and so can priests with their 8s "HEAL EVERYONE" ability. Organise a rotation ahead of time to help out.
Is that really all?
Yeah pretty much! The tanks need to be very fast on picking up the sparks, DPS have to be uber-elite and smash those life sparks as soon as they can. The main trick here is to not make a mistake. Like all the hardmodes in ulduar, this is about perfection! Make it perfect, and XT will die with a broken heart. Aw.
Monday, May 25, 2009
Thorim WTF??
Ok, so we failed hardcore on Thorim AGAIN.
So in a nerd induced rage, I went souring the 'nets looking for that thing I was convinced we had missed. That one fossil that proves evolution is real, that missing link, that golden eagle, that... that... thing that will make it all better.
And you know what?
I think I found it.
Buried in all the comments on a thread asking about help with thorim I found out that the Champions can be disarmed, thus stopping their WW. WTH? Why is this not mentioned in any strat anywhere? Nowhere. Not in any guides or anything. The most you get is "target the champions first and kill them" or "take out the evokers first" But not why, or how. In fact, many strats just say "manage the adds in arena while the gauntlet team do this" Where this is a detailed description of how to deal with the gauntlet.
So, we tried it in 10man on the weekend, and blow me down if the arena healer said that it was a gobshite load easier to heal.
Made.Of.Win.
I will update tomorrow when we try it out tonight on the 25man version!
So in a nerd induced rage, I went souring the 'nets looking for that thing I was convinced we had missed. That one fossil that proves evolution is real, that missing link, that golden eagle, that... that... thing that will make it all better.
And you know what?
I think I found it.
Buried in all the comments on a thread asking about help with thorim I found out that the Champions can be disarmed, thus stopping their WW. WTH? Why is this not mentioned in any strat anywhere? Nowhere. Not in any guides or anything. The most you get is "target the champions first and kill them" or "take out the evokers first" But not why, or how. In fact, many strats just say "manage the adds in arena while the gauntlet team do this" Where this is a detailed description of how to deal with the gauntlet.
So, we tried it in 10man on the weekend, and blow me down if the arena healer said that it was a gobshite load easier to heal.
Made.Of.Win.
I will update tomorrow when we try it out tonight on the 25man version!
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
Accidentally HIS ENTIRE BODY!
Yes, we accidentally the Kologarn hard mode achievement!
Kologarn 10man over the weekend was accidentally done with the hard mode. How was this managed? Pretty easy actually - easier than you would think.
While you are downing the right arm, make sure there is a goodly dose of AoE going on and splash damage onto the left arm accumulates. When you are ready, and the left arm is at about 10% or less, smash the right arm, then smash the left arm, ensuring that smashing the left arm kills Kologarn. Collect your Hard Mode achievement which isn't actually very hard. I suspect that this will get changed soon so that it wont apply.
I suspect this method will work in 25man as well with a bit more management, perhaps save a heroism for it.
Kologarn 10man over the weekend was accidentally done with the hard mode. How was this managed? Pretty easy actually - easier than you would think.
While you are downing the right arm, make sure there is a goodly dose of AoE going on and splash damage onto the left arm accumulates. When you are ready, and the left arm is at about 10% or less, smash the right arm, then smash the left arm, ensuring that smashing the left arm kills Kologarn. Collect your Hard Mode achievement which isn't actually very hard. I suspect that this will get changed soon so that it wont apply.
I suspect this method will work in 25man as well with a bit more management, perhaps save a heroism for it.
Friday, April 24, 2009
25 Flame Leviathan - plus two or three towers
Everyone knows how to do Flame Leviathan, I am not going to explain the basic strat, I am going to explain things that are VITAL to getting a two or three towers under control. Four towers is an entirely different matter, that will have it's own strat post.
There was a lot of confusion about "hard mode". When you start, you can initiate the event by talking to one of two people. If you talk to Brann, none of the orbital defense systems are activated. This is Normal Mode.
If you talk to Norgs (as I affectionately dubbed him) he sets off the towers. All of them. As you move through the gauntlet you DESTROY the ones you do not want to do, leaving up the ones you do.
The towers we are currently doing (in order of preference) include:
Tower of Storms (Thorim's Hammer) – deals Boosts Flame Leviathan's Physical Damage by 25%. Shortly after the fight starts, Flame Leviathan will activate Thorim's Hammer. Thorim's Hammer causes pillars of light to appear and shortly afterward do around 10% (150k or so) damage to any targets under the beam along with a 1% damage AOE to all vehicles. Total of about 20 Beams. Flame Leviathan will activate this only once. Just, dont stand in any beams and you will be ok.
Tower of Flames (Mimiron's Inferno) – Boosts Flame Leviathan's Fire Damage by 50%. Shortly after the fight starts, Flame Leviathan will activate Mimiron's Inferno. Mimiron's Inferno causes fiery orbs to fall from the sky in a slowly set path. Orbs start where Flame Leviathan entered the room and continues in a clockwise direction in a diamond formation. Orb strikes deals fire damage to all nearby enemies, leave behind a flaming blaze that deal damage over time when touched. Effect lasts for the entire fight but are pretty easy to avoid.
Tower of Frost (Hodir's Fury) – Hodir's Fury cause's several White-Teal beams to appear and follow players around. The beam itself does no damage but after it stops moving on top of a vehicle, it will call down a ball of frost that deals frost damage to all nearby enemies and entombing them in ice where they take an additional 1% damage per second. Ice is broken by a fire attack. Effect lasts for the entire fight. Simply move directly forward or backward when you see the beam"lock on" to you and you will avoid this.
The above three towers are pretty easy mechanically. One leaves a trail of fire you need to avoid (easy if you pay attention), one has big beams from the sky that chase you around and one puts out a singular random event of big blue AoE bolts from the sky. Save shields for this event. Apart from that, it is business as usual, except FL has more health, so you just need to be good at not taking damage and good at dealing it.
Shutdowns
The key to this fight are the shutdowns.
Send 2-3 people up as soon as FL is engaged. They are marked, their vehicles are marked, and we have allocated a chopper to each player to pick them up and deliver them back to their vehicle after shut down. They then quickly grab some pyrite and are thrown up as soon as possible. Getting this cycle right, ensuring there is minimal down time and that the people do not die is the way to kill this boss.
The 3 people are 2 DPS and a DPS off healer (like an ele shammy, they do this the best). If you have no healer up there you will die. It's not a lot of damage but it is enough to kill most guilds in Naxx or early Ulduar gear. You NEED to have ranged go up as when you are on top of FL you cannot move. You are thrown to a position with a tower to kill. Kill your tower, then target another tower and kill it asap. Once all 4 towers are destroyed, FL shutsdown and the DPS are flung off the top of the tower.
Once Flame leviathan has finished repairing his towers (the reason for the shutdown in the first place) he comes out of shutdown and activates again. As soon as shutdown is over, you can send up your team again to repeat the process.
DPS during a shutdown
This is where about 80% of your damage will come from. FL takes extra damage while in shutdown - take advantage of that.
Demolishers must be fully stocked or close to it (it takes 2 pyrite to fill the tanks), and they need to launch all their pyrite at FL during this phase. Those pyrite launchers do stupid amounts of damage. It doesn't matter if you dont DPS any other time (apart from keeping tar alight) your main job is to make sure all that pyrite lands during shutdown. If you are a passenger who is not on the tower, keep stocked with pyrite, mash your rockets (2) and keep tar alight (1).
Siege engine passengers should be keeping the odd tar alight with (1) but mostly mashing (2) as that is a very powerful attack.
Choppers get that tar down, and keep laying it! If you get bored, grab some pyrite and shuffle it near the demolishers.
Doing all of the above should get you a really good dose of death on FL.
What to do when NOT in shutdown
DPS is not so important at this point, but not unimportant, if that makes sense.
Demolisher passengers (once back in the vehicle) grab pyrite asap. Those not getting flung should be shooting down pyrite for the flung ones to quickly retrieve. Once they are done, load yourselves up. Keep tar alight, and DPS when you have time. Your job is to stay as alive as possible. Stay at range.
Siege engines get in and interrupt the flame jets. Passengers keep mashing (2) as you are the main DPS dealers for this phase of the fight and only hit (1) when you see unlit tar. When the 5s warning comes in your fave boss mod, all siege engines get away from FL so that you have a good head start on kiting if you happen to be picked. If Thorim's hammer comes, make sure you have a shield ready (1 min CD). Passengers, if you can, make sure that you shoot down pyrite when possible as well!
Choppers will pick up their person, and return them to their vehicle as fast as they can, then back to dodging around and dropping tar. Again, try shuffling pyrite into the middle to help the demolishers.
What to do when kiting
Run away. Stay as far away as possible. Passenger should be liting tar as they go. Kite the FL through tar, I cannot stress how important that is, and make sure that tar is lit up. Avoid the orbital defense fires, try not to get trapped by them. Easy *cough* yes, easy!
That's it. Rinse repeat. Make sure that you take as little damage as possible, and you maximise DPS during shutdown. It should take 2-3 shutdowns to get the boss down depending on how well you kite him through tar at other times.
This applies to 10 man as well, just fling 1-2 people not 2-3!
Practise your shutdowns with two or three towers up ready for four towers. Two or three towers have been nerfed a fair bit recently, and they are a lot easier now than when this guide was first written (We found that 4 towers now is as hard as 2 towers was back in 3.1.0). Yes, you can almost certainly Zerg through 2 towers now with no shutdowns. Three you might be pushing your luck, and doing 4 you definately need to shutdown, so you may as well get some pratcise in. Getting the shutdowns means the fight goes a lot quicker as well leaving you more time for working toward other hardmodes and Yogg!
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Cock Blocking
I recently experienced the trauma of "cock blocking"
But what is it? In one sentence, cock blocking is where for some inexplicable reason your raid team keeps dying to a boss and you can't figure out why. Tensions rise, officer bitch in officer channel, raiders lose motivation and guild morale PLUMMETS. Then, you figure it out and the fight is a piece of cake!
Longer version.
We recently cock blocked on Sarth 3D. Our strat was right, but for some reason we simply kept dying at the third drake. The results on our guild culture were startling.
Officers noticed who was our strong and weak members and why. Weak members were ones that we noticed DiedInAFire more often, or were "unavailable" to come along. But they didn't always notice when people improved, and only noticed the failures. Officers were complaining in officer channel about what we were doing wrong, what was wrong with the strat, that the healers were failing, or the melee were failing, or the tanks were not tanky enough or the wrong tanks were available, that we shouldnt be bashing our heads against this without the "optimal" team. In all, it got very negative. How do you combat officer negativity? You keep the discussions impersonal. Ensure that no officers take offense at comments aimed at their team. Keep the strat conversations constructive, stop the whining and ask questions about how to improve. Take officers to task for simply saying "We are failing" yes we are all well aware of that, please say what is failing and offer a way to fix it.
Above all - ensure that even if the officers are disagreeing in officer channels that TOGETHER they present a united face to the guild. That the officers are seen to support one and other no matter what. Failure to do this will result in the guild members fracturing and morale plummet even more as their leadership isn't doing their job.
Guild members will feel that this is all for nothing. That they are wasting their time and money. There are simple ways to combat this. One we used was putting down a fish feast after a Good Attempt to save personal expenditure. Another one was the GBank sending out gold for repair money after a Good wipefest night.
Something we also did was not reward bad raiding. An issue with the way content is structured for "hard modes" is that you can always bring the notch down a level and kill the boss. We stopped doing this. You want Phat Lewtz? you need to bring your game face because we are not doing this with 2 drakes this week - only 3.
There is also a curve of ability on a particular raid night. There is a warm up as people get back into remembering how to do a progression boss. That might take 1 or 2 attempts. Then you will notice a steep improvement over the course of the next 5 or more attempts until there is a peak. On that peak morale is high, people are seeing the end in sight, they are working hard and trying their best. Then BAM someone does something stupid and the momentum is gone. This will become evident after 1 or 2 attempts. Identify this point and stop raiding for the night before it destroys your progression.
Also, get raid analysis going. WowWebStats and WowMetersOnline are both excellent sites to see who is doing what. Both offer differing statistics and I know I try to use both.
If you can keep up the momentum, eventually you will work out the piece of the strat you are missing and all of a sudden everything will fall into place and the fight will be easy! You will wonder why on earth you had such an issue with it for so long and the cheering on Vent will be deafening. Everyone in the guild will siddenly be on a high and proud to be a member of your guild!
That makes it all worth it, if you ask me.
But what is it? In one sentence, cock blocking is where for some inexplicable reason your raid team keeps dying to a boss and you can't figure out why. Tensions rise, officer bitch in officer channel, raiders lose motivation and guild morale PLUMMETS. Then, you figure it out and the fight is a piece of cake!
Longer version.
We recently cock blocked on Sarth 3D. Our strat was right, but for some reason we simply kept dying at the third drake. The results on our guild culture were startling.
Officers noticed who was our strong and weak members and why. Weak members were ones that we noticed DiedInAFire more often, or were "unavailable" to come along. But they didn't always notice when people improved, and only noticed the failures. Officers were complaining in officer channel about what we were doing wrong, what was wrong with the strat, that the healers were failing, or the melee were failing, or the tanks were not tanky enough or the wrong tanks were available, that we shouldnt be bashing our heads against this without the "optimal" team. In all, it got very negative. How do you combat officer negativity? You keep the discussions impersonal. Ensure that no officers take offense at comments aimed at their team. Keep the strat conversations constructive, stop the whining and ask questions about how to improve. Take officers to task for simply saying "We are failing" yes we are all well aware of that, please say what is failing and offer a way to fix it.
Above all - ensure that even if the officers are disagreeing in officer channels that TOGETHER they present a united face to the guild. That the officers are seen to support one and other no matter what. Failure to do this will result in the guild members fracturing and morale plummet even more as their leadership isn't doing their job.
Guild members will feel that this is all for nothing. That they are wasting their time and money. There are simple ways to combat this. One we used was putting down a fish feast after a Good Attempt to save personal expenditure. Another one was the GBank sending out gold for repair money after a Good wipefest night.
Something we also did was not reward bad raiding. An issue with the way content is structured for "hard modes" is that you can always bring the notch down a level and kill the boss. We stopped doing this. You want Phat Lewtz? you need to bring your game face because we are not doing this with 2 drakes this week - only 3.
There is also a curve of ability on a particular raid night. There is a warm up as people get back into remembering how to do a progression boss. That might take 1 or 2 attempts. Then you will notice a steep improvement over the course of the next 5 or more attempts until there is a peak. On that peak morale is high, people are seeing the end in sight, they are working hard and trying their best. Then BAM someone does something stupid and the momentum is gone. This will become evident after 1 or 2 attempts. Identify this point and stop raiding for the night before it destroys your progression.
Also, get raid analysis going. WowWebStats and WowMetersOnline are both excellent sites to see who is doing what. Both offer differing statistics and I know I try to use both.
If you can keep up the momentum, eventually you will work out the piece of the strat you are missing and all of a sudden everything will fall into place and the fight will be easy! You will wonder why on earth you had such an issue with it for so long and the cheering on Vent will be deafening. Everyone in the guild will siddenly be on a high and proud to be a member of your guild!
That makes it all worth it, if you ask me.
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Loot Distribution
OK, this is a curly one, massively, hugely curly and is often the demise of many guilds. My guild is currently in the middle of this discussion and the results are very interesting. I will not be focusing on the details of each system, you can look that up yourself. I will be looking at how Item distribution can affect your guild culture and vice versa.
Master Looter: This assigns one person to be in charge of allocating all the boss drops out to "worthy" members of the group. And this is where things get interesting.
Once you get into the realms of 10man+ (which, let's face it, most of the WoW community is now doing) you start having the questions of how to hand out this loot in a fair and equitable way. Often this means "with the least QQing" but sometimes it isn't.
DKP Systems
There are plenty of differing systems out there. Anything from "EQDKP" or "MLDKP" to "Ni Karma" or "Zero Sum" and Rolling systems. I am not going to go into them all here, as google is your friend. Just throw the above keywords into google and read up on the differing types of DKP. I am going to focus on the strengths and weaknesses on a high level of each major system.
DKP - Pros
DKP creates a currency that you can reward for guild members for effort. Basically, you can use this currency as an incentive for people to turn up, punish them for noobish behaviour ("50 DKP MINUS!") or reward a hard nights raiding or a one shot. This encourages people to put on their game face, if that it what motivates them. DKP great for casual guilds pushing progression content as it creates a clear list of who is doing what and what is fair. It encourages people to come to wipefests in the name of having a chance at getting gear, because there are tangible rewards to turning up to a wipe night. I have found that DKP is good for newer guilds, or guild building a solid team of regular raiders. It is great for guilds with still a reasonably high turnover of members, as it is "known" to be "fair". The other thing that makes it great for newer guilds is that it removes personal intervention (on the whole) from the decision making process. Officers do not need to make too many decisions or overrides on item distribution. This can, when used properly, create a great feeling of trust as when you DO override a DKP decision it can be for all the right reasons, thus starting to generate a guild feeling of trust and maturity.
DKP is good for guilds with younger members, for whom it is all about the shinies. They can plan and scheme to their hearts content and still help the guild progress.
DKP hoarding is a pro if you have high turnover, as it keeps gear within the guild.
DKP - Cons DKP has a massive overhead for out of game maintenance. It requires all gear be costed, all items minutely tracked, time minutely tracked (to award DKP) attempts on bosses "costed", and allocations for DKP for people on standby. Getting all this to balance in a sensible way that does not over inflate the system is NOT EASY and very difficult to get right. It requires people to watch their DKP, watch offspec gear handouts, and micromanage their own gear progression.
It encourages the saving/hoarding of DKP for that best in slot item. The saving for gear gimps the guild not the person. The more gear that goes out to people, the more chance they have to experiment with gear try new things, rotations etc that they wouldn't normally have to do - because they are too busy trying to save for that item that drops off the last boss, and stop person b from having more DKP than them and and and... yeah
Basically, DKP is a stateful system which requires a lot of micromanagement.
Often, newer members find it very hard to break into an established DKP system with massive inflation. You end up with people either not caring and spending on everything or saving for that one item.
DKP overhead is probably unmanageable for 10man guilds - the advantages of the system are outweighed by the overhead of running it. Also, 10man guilds tend to be tighter and fall much more under the considerations below for rolling.
Rolling - Pro
Recently, my guild has tried a simple rolling system for gear distribution in Naxx. Basically it goes like this: attendance is tracked using ctrt (for LC decisions), /roll 101 for loot council intervention (often for best in slot items or something someone really wants), /roll for a standard upgrade and /roll 99 for "meh" upgrades or sidegrades or offspec.
We have found this to be faster and simpler to run than DKP (many less mods required and calculations and scheming by people) and the ML is much relieved by the lack of stress. This system also encourages people to look at other guild members and see what they have and see if the gear improves the raid as they are not counting their pennies on offspecs and saving for gear. We have had much less DEing, and more people trying new things. For example, our boomkin would never had been able to put together a haste set as well as a crit set with DKP.
Rolling is very good for 10 man guilds where it is pretty unlikely that more than 2 people will be vying for an item at the same time on the whole.
Rolling - Cons
This system may be too simplistic a model for a lot of people. It requires a lot more ownership by guild members and a lot more trust within your guild. This is probably only good for a guild who has been raiding for some time together and trust the officers decisions, and trust their fellow guildmate to not get snippy about gear. Loot council has it's own issues, simply by the fact that it is not an automated system making the decisions (like in DKP) but this is a strength and a weakness. This can be riddled by bad luck on rolling, and people can get upset. Officers CAN intervene, and it DOES rely on people saying, hey I got 3 pieces tonight, I will pass so someone else can have some shinies.
--
Basically, it's horses for courses. Both types of loot distribution have their own systems of management and pros and cons. What you need to really identify is what kind of guild are you or, even, what kind of guild do you want to be. Setting a precedent by using a item distribution system can encourage and discourage certain types of people to your guild. You can use this to your advantage. It is your guild, set the tone early and set it firmly and don't be afraid to say - sorry, you just don't fit with us.
Generally these are my tips for what I am looking for in a system
a) fast
b) easy to run and maintain
c) gets gear where it should go
d) doesn't focus on "loot" as a reward
Yes, this post is confusing and long but this is a MASSIVE topic, and this is just a very high level view of 2 major systems used.
Master Looter: This assigns one person to be in charge of allocating all the boss drops out to "worthy" members of the group. And this is where things get interesting.
Once you get into the realms of 10man+ (which, let's face it, most of the WoW community is now doing) you start having the questions of how to hand out this loot in a fair and equitable way. Often this means "with the least QQing" but sometimes it isn't.
DKP Systems
There are plenty of differing systems out there. Anything from "EQDKP" or "MLDKP" to "Ni Karma" or "Zero Sum" and Rolling systems. I am not going to go into them all here, as google is your friend. Just throw the above keywords into google and read up on the differing types of DKP. I am going to focus on the strengths and weaknesses on a high level of each major system.
DKP - Pros
DKP creates a currency that you can reward for guild members for effort. Basically, you can use this currency as an incentive for people to turn up, punish them for noobish behaviour ("50 DKP MINUS!") or reward a hard nights raiding or a one shot. This encourages people to put on their game face, if that it what motivates them. DKP great for casual guilds pushing progression content as it creates a clear list of who is doing what and what is fair. It encourages people to come to wipefests in the name of having a chance at getting gear, because there are tangible rewards to turning up to a wipe night. I have found that DKP is good for newer guilds, or guild building a solid team of regular raiders. It is great for guilds with still a reasonably high turnover of members, as it is "known" to be "fair". The other thing that makes it great for newer guilds is that it removes personal intervention (on the whole) from the decision making process. Officers do not need to make too many decisions or overrides on item distribution. This can, when used properly, create a great feeling of trust as when you DO override a DKP decision it can be for all the right reasons, thus starting to generate a guild feeling of trust and maturity.
DKP is good for guilds with younger members, for whom it is all about the shinies. They can plan and scheme to their hearts content and still help the guild progress.
DKP hoarding is a pro if you have high turnover, as it keeps gear within the guild.
DKP - Cons DKP has a massive overhead for out of game maintenance. It requires all gear be costed, all items minutely tracked, time minutely tracked (to award DKP) attempts on bosses "costed", and allocations for DKP for people on standby. Getting all this to balance in a sensible way that does not over inflate the system is NOT EASY and very difficult to get right. It requires people to watch their DKP, watch offspec gear handouts, and micromanage their own gear progression.
It encourages the saving/hoarding of DKP for that best in slot item. The saving for gear gimps the guild not the person. The more gear that goes out to people, the more chance they have to experiment with gear try new things, rotations etc that they wouldn't normally have to do - because they are too busy trying to save for that item that drops off the last boss, and stop person b from having more DKP than them and and and... yeah
Basically, DKP is a stateful system which requires a lot of micromanagement.
Often, newer members find it very hard to break into an established DKP system with massive inflation. You end up with people either not caring and spending on everything or saving for that one item.
DKP overhead is probably unmanageable for 10man guilds - the advantages of the system are outweighed by the overhead of running it. Also, 10man guilds tend to be tighter and fall much more under the considerations below for rolling.
Rolling - Pro
Recently, my guild has tried a simple rolling system for gear distribution in Naxx. Basically it goes like this: attendance is tracked using ctrt (for LC decisions), /roll 101 for loot council intervention (often for best in slot items or something someone really wants), /roll for a standard upgrade and /roll 99 for "meh" upgrades or sidegrades or offspec.
We have found this to be faster and simpler to run than DKP (many less mods required and calculations and scheming by people) and the ML is much relieved by the lack of stress. This system also encourages people to look at other guild members and see what they have and see if the gear improves the raid as they are not counting their pennies on offspecs and saving for gear. We have had much less DEing, and more people trying new things. For example, our boomkin would never had been able to put together a haste set as well as a crit set with DKP.
Rolling is very good for 10 man guilds where it is pretty unlikely that more than 2 people will be vying for an item at the same time on the whole.
Rolling - Cons
This system may be too simplistic a model for a lot of people. It requires a lot more ownership by guild members and a lot more trust within your guild. This is probably only good for a guild who has been raiding for some time together and trust the officers decisions, and trust their fellow guildmate to not get snippy about gear. Loot council has it's own issues, simply by the fact that it is not an automated system making the decisions (like in DKP) but this is a strength and a weakness. This can be riddled by bad luck on rolling, and people can get upset. Officers CAN intervene, and it DOES rely on people saying, hey I got 3 pieces tonight, I will pass so someone else can have some shinies.
--
Basically, it's horses for courses. Both types of loot distribution have their own systems of management and pros and cons. What you need to really identify is what kind of guild are you or, even, what kind of guild do you want to be. Setting a precedent by using a item distribution system can encourage and discourage certain types of people to your guild. You can use this to your advantage. It is your guild, set the tone early and set it firmly and don't be afraid to say - sorry, you just don't fit with us.
Generally these are my tips for what I am looking for in a system
a) fast
b) easy to run and maintain
c) gets gear where it should go
d) doesn't focus on "loot" as a reward
Yes, this post is confusing and long but this is a MASSIVE topic, and this is just a very high level view of 2 major systems used.
Thursday, February 5, 2009
Picking raiding times
Starting a regular raiding schedule
Picking raiding days is hard. They need to be set in stone and regular so people can organise themselves around it and you can advertise them during recruiting times.
If you are at the point of starting to pick some set raiding times, you are NOT going to be able to please everyone, so don't bother trying. In short, you need to set the raiding schedule based on when the most people can show and also when your Raid Leader and MTs can turn up. Everyone also needs to understand that in this case by sheer practicality it is GOING to be majority rules. If 10 people can turn up on a Thursday, but only 6 can turn up on Monday... and you can make Monday but not Thursday I can tell you RIGHT NOW that 10 man raid will run on Thursday and it is not your fault and it is not the officers fault.
Raids will run when people can make it - that is not the officers fault, so be nice to them.
Rotating rosters are fail and confusing. Don't even consider a rotating roster. Keep your weekly raids regular and people will make them because they know what to expect.
Not everyone will be happy with the outcome, but hopefully most people will.
Use a calendar, either in game or php raid calendar or something similar on your website to advertise the raiding roster and get people to sign up based on that.
Adding but not subtracting
Once you have a raiding schedule it is trivial to add in extra runs. What is not so trivial is moving or removing raids. As soon as you move something you will start Guild Dramaz, and this is something you really dont need. If moving a raid night becomes a necessity, it needs to be advertised in advance and good solid reasons given as to why (because people that cannot make the new night will feel that they are being singled out and persecuted, even if that is not the case).
The importance of communication
Getting solid consistent raiding running is based on communication. Officers need to communicate raid plans and schedules as far in advance of their raid as they possibly can and the guildies NEED to communicate when they can and cant make it and when things change at the last minute. There is NOTHING more annoying than having 8 people turn up to a raid and 11 people said they would be there and then the raid wont run. Often people rearrange Real Life to raid. So be courteous and help work out a regular raiding schedule that works for the guild.
Officers should have as many ways of contacting raiders as they can OUT of game. This often includes SMS, guild websites (inc raid calendars and PMs), emails, phone, chat clients (like MSN) and vent/teamspeak servers. Guild members should have out of game contacts for their section leaders and raid leaders so that if something comes up at the last minute (OH NOES THE CAT ATE MY CAT5 CABLE!) they can let the officers know that they wont be there and the officers can find a replacement.
It all comes down to respect. Respect your guildies enough to keep them informed and respect your officers enough to let them know when your circumstances change.
WoW is a team sport, don't let your team down but not communicating effectively.
Picking raiding days is hard. They need to be set in stone and regular so people can organise themselves around it and you can advertise them during recruiting times.
If you are at the point of starting to pick some set raiding times, you are NOT going to be able to please everyone, so don't bother trying. In short, you need to set the raiding schedule based on when the most people can show and also when your Raid Leader and MTs can turn up. Everyone also needs to understand that in this case by sheer practicality it is GOING to be majority rules. If 10 people can turn up on a Thursday, but only 6 can turn up on Monday... and you can make Monday but not Thursday I can tell you RIGHT NOW that 10 man raid will run on Thursday and it is not your fault and it is not the officers fault.
Raids will run when people can make it - that is not the officers fault, so be nice to them.
Rotating rosters are fail and confusing. Don't even consider a rotating roster. Keep your weekly raids regular and people will make them because they know what to expect.
Not everyone will be happy with the outcome, but hopefully most people will.
Use a calendar, either in game or php raid calendar or something similar on your website to advertise the raiding roster and get people to sign up based on that.
Adding but not subtracting
Once you have a raiding schedule it is trivial to add in extra runs. What is not so trivial is moving or removing raids. As soon as you move something you will start Guild Dramaz, and this is something you really dont need. If moving a raid night becomes a necessity, it needs to be advertised in advance and good solid reasons given as to why (because people that cannot make the new night will feel that they are being singled out and persecuted, even if that is not the case).
The importance of communication
Getting solid consistent raiding running is based on communication. Officers need to communicate raid plans and schedules as far in advance of their raid as they possibly can and the guildies NEED to communicate when they can and cant make it and when things change at the last minute. There is NOTHING more annoying than having 8 people turn up to a raid and 11 people said they would be there and then the raid wont run. Often people rearrange Real Life to raid. So be courteous and help work out a regular raiding schedule that works for the guild.
Officers should have as many ways of contacting raiders as they can OUT of game. This often includes SMS, guild websites (inc raid calendars and PMs), emails, phone, chat clients (like MSN) and vent/teamspeak servers. Guild members should have out of game contacts for their section leaders and raid leaders so that if something comes up at the last minute (OH NOES THE CAT ATE MY CAT5 CABLE!) they can let the officers know that they wont be there and the officers can find a replacement.
It all comes down to respect. Respect your guildies enough to keep them informed and respect your officers enough to let them know when your circumstances change.
WoW is a team sport, don't let your team down but not communicating effectively.
Monday, February 2, 2009
Heroism and YOU!
Another MaxDPS post (whew for a healing toon, I am posting a lot about DPS at the moment!)
One of my guildies posted this posty thing. I asked him if I could post it here and he graciously acquiesced. Here is a treaty on Heroism and cooldowns.
--
The correct timing of heroism is crucial to pushing our raid DPS up through the roof. I am always mindful of when it should be hit, and so are our RLs. Between us 3 the call is usually made at just the right time, and when it happens its a beautiful thing.
As an individual raider, Heroism can be a tricky thing. The ideal situation is for Hero to be popped, and then all your cooldowns blown in time with it to maximise its effect. However, there are times when it may be better to blow your cooldowns independently when you feel that the extended spread of your abilities over heroism outweigh the spike DPS of blowing them in sync. This would be most obvious in fights where Hero is saved for an Enrage timer (I blow my CD's at the start of the KT fight, and save the second and third round for the 40% burn down); but also in fights like Malygos, with external effects (power sparks and Vortex's). This means that in some fights there will be times when your cooldowns are up, but you should not use them. The time spent saving these cooldowns is referred to me as dead space, and is where your DPS will be at it's most inefficient. However the reward for saving these cooldowns can sometimes be greater than the loss you suffer through the dead space (see Malygos below).
Heres what I mean about Overall benefit vs Burst Benefit, and your "dead space":
Kel'Thuzad
Saving Cooldowns for the 40% burn
Using Cooldowns at the beginning and then saving for Heroism
Constantly using Cooldowns when they're up
It is up to you to decide which cooldown method will be the best to maximise your DPS in any particular situation. Know the length of the fight, know whether to save for Heroism and how many times you can use Cooldowns in a fight. The difference between a 6 minute fight and a 7 minute fight is massive when considering how to engineer your cooldowns. If a fight is only long enough for one set of cooldowns (3 or 4 minute fights for most classes) then save it for Hero.
Of course not every fight will be as straightforward as KT, so this is why we always emplore you to research every aspect of an upcoming battle. With Malygos, for instance, we blow heroism when we have two sparks on the ground and right after a Vortex. This is a fight where it is a good idea to leave some "dead space" at the start of the fight, and blow all your cooldowns when the Hero comes up. The combination of two power sparks buffing your damage, and the time to use all of heroism, makes up for the extra DPS you may have gotten at the start and end of phase 1. This is a good example of how important knowledge of the fight mechanics is in regards to maximising your DPS.
I'll end by saying that all shammies should be particulary concerned with how Heroism works in a fight, and how crucial the timing can be. It is your ability after all, and you are the ones who push that magic button.
One of my guildies posted this posty thing. I asked him if I could post it here and he graciously acquiesced. Here is a treaty on Heroism and cooldowns.
--
The correct timing of heroism is crucial to pushing our raid DPS up through the roof. I am always mindful of when it should be hit, and so are our RLs. Between us 3 the call is usually made at just the right time, and when it happens its a beautiful thing.
As an individual raider, Heroism can be a tricky thing. The ideal situation is for Hero to be popped, and then all your cooldowns blown in time with it to maximise its effect. However, there are times when it may be better to blow your cooldowns independently when you feel that the extended spread of your abilities over heroism outweigh the spike DPS of blowing them in sync. This would be most obvious in fights where Hero is saved for an Enrage timer (I blow my CD's at the start of the KT fight, and save the second and third round for the 40% burn down); but also in fights like Malygos, with external effects (power sparks and Vortex's). This means that in some fights there will be times when your cooldowns are up, but you should not use them. The time spent saving these cooldowns is referred to me as dead space, and is where your DPS will be at it's most inefficient. However the reward for saving these cooldowns can sometimes be greater than the loss you suffer through the dead space (see Malygos below).
Heres what I mean about Overall benefit vs Burst Benefit, and your "dead space":
Kel'Thuzad
Saving Cooldowns for the 40% burn
Fight Start 40% Heroism
----------------------------------------------
{cooldowns--------}
{---------Dead-Space----------} ~60% (Not good lulz)
Using Cooldowns at the beginning and then saving for Heroism
Fight Start 40% Heroism
----------------------------------------------
{cooldowns-------} {cooldowns--------}
{-Dead-Space-} ~20% But with Added Burst in
the early stages of
the burn phase
Constantly using Cooldowns when they're up
Fight Start 40% Heroism
----------------------------------------------
{cooldowns-----}{cooldowns-------}{cooldowns----}
No Dead Space, but less syncronisation with heroism.
It is up to you to decide which cooldown method will be the best to maximise your DPS in any particular situation. Know the length of the fight, know whether to save for Heroism and how many times you can use Cooldowns in a fight. The difference between a 6 minute fight and a 7 minute fight is massive when considering how to engineer your cooldowns. If a fight is only long enough for one set of cooldowns (3 or 4 minute fights for most classes) then save it for Hero.
Of course not every fight will be as straightforward as KT, so this is why we always emplore you to research every aspect of an upcoming battle. With Malygos, for instance, we blow heroism when we have two sparks on the ground and right after a Vortex. This is a fight where it is a good idea to leave some "dead space" at the start of the fight, and blow all your cooldowns when the Hero comes up. The combination of two power sparks buffing your damage, and the time to use all of heroism, makes up for the extra DPS you may have gotten at the start and end of phase 1. This is a good example of how important knowledge of the fight mechanics is in regards to maximising your DPS.
I'll end by saying that all shammies should be particulary concerned with how Heroism works in a fight, and how crucial the timing can be. It is your ability after all, and you are the ones who push that magic button.
On the back of DPS tips
I spied today one of the best quotes I can think of for the use of WWS and Recount as DPS tools (and what I mean by comparing stats as not a pissing contest)
DPS stats are exactly that - merely a tool to see relatively what you were doing during that fight. I cannot express my opinion more strongly than that. Never use them for anything more than measuring your own DPS and gauging rotations and where you might benefit from a bit more crit or a bit more haste or whatever to tweak your gear.
There are many things that affect your or others DPS in a fight. These include the sheer mechanics of a fight. Wondering why your mages have low DPS? see how much decursing or CCing they were doing. Perhaps your ret pallies DPS dropped mid fight - see what mana return they got for the fight. There are many mechanical reasons why DPS or damage can be low for a fight. Perhaps the fight required a lot of movement (GET OUT OF THE FIRE!!!) or the boss had a specific mitigation mechanic that needs to have something special dont to neutralise it. Perhaps the boss is resistant to a certain school of machic (nature or frost for example)
All these things play a part in the stats and you need to really understand all this before you go making judgements on your guildmates.
Players place too much emphasis on this. It’s a tool. Balancing around recount stats is like using a thermometer to predict the weather.
DPS stats are exactly that - merely a tool to see relatively what you were doing during that fight. I cannot express my opinion more strongly than that. Never use them for anything more than measuring your own DPS and gauging rotations and where you might benefit from a bit more crit or a bit more haste or whatever to tweak your gear.
There are many things that affect your or others DPS in a fight. These include the sheer mechanics of a fight. Wondering why your mages have low DPS? see how much decursing or CCing they were doing. Perhaps your ret pallies DPS dropped mid fight - see what mana return they got for the fight. There are many mechanical reasons why DPS or damage can be low for a fight. Perhaps the fight required a lot of movement (GET OUT OF THE FIRE!!!) or the boss had a specific mitigation mechanic that needs to have something special dont to neutralise it. Perhaps the boss is resistant to a certain school of machic (nature or frost for example)
All these things play a part in the stats and you need to really understand all this before you go making judgements on your guildmates.
Friday, January 30, 2009
Quick Tips for upping DPS
Here is a quick tips list for how to up your DPS when you first start raiding. You will quickly find that raiding is not like 5mans, and 10mans are much less forgiving than 25 mans. So here are some ideas on where you can start looking so that you can be the best you can be as a DPSer.
Be raid aware - You cant DPS dead. I often find that this is the easiest and best way to improve raid DPS. Learn the fights, watch movies on youtube, read up on bosses. Get DBM or bigwigs installed so you know when boss CDs come up or when they are going to use an ability. Time your trinkets and other CDs for the right time. Call out heroisms so people all pop trinkets and CDs (for example treants + heroism is win for aboomkin) together with a heroism. Get co-ordinated and work as a well oiled team :)
Know your class - go read up on what all the cool kids are doing these days with spells and rotations and stuff.EJ is a good place if you like numbers and spreadsheets, MMO champion is also a decent place to start. And if all that is too much, try wowwiki.
Know your gear - What you have and what you need and where to get it. Get Rawr, use the Armory, look at atlasloot ingame. Make a plan, what you need, where it drops and enact that plan.
Know your gems/enchants/glyphs etc - go get a socket for your belt, give someone an enchanting point and get your gear enchanted. Learn which glyphs you should be using for your spec and rotation. No seriously, do it. Do it NOW and as soon as you get new gear. Bring mats with you to raids so you can instantly use new gear.
Know your stats - hit is the single most important stat if you think your DPS is low. Melee/huntards do much of their DPS from white damage, the more your miss the more your DPS will drop. locks and mages need hit to actually have their spells LAND. There are plenty of things out there on the net to help you. Learn the way of Google Fu.
Learn the difference between crit and haste and how much you should have of each (it is a very difficult concept to know the difference between throughput and DPS, but they ARE different) they are stats which should be balanced - find your sweet spot for your class and spec.
Know your threat and your tank - By this I mean their TPS. Learn what your tanks average TPS is, and how hard and fast you can cast and still maintain a safe buffer on the threat meters for those crits. Know where you can sit safely and pump out the most DPS based on what your tank is capable of. If you are having issues, perhaps talk to your tank about what they can do to help up their TPS as well as looking at what you can do to reduce threat.
GET MODS - first up get quartz. this will improve your throughput by letting you know what your current lag is. Cast the next spell in your rotation as soon as your cast bar hits the red. EVERY caster should have this or a similar mod (yes even healers).
Next get Omen. This is a totally essential mod, learn how it works, learn what all the options mean and where you should be aiming for on the meters relative to your tank.
Get DBM or bigwigs (see above)
Get Ora2 or CTRA so you can set your tank lists and all kinds of other nifty raid features the more people in the raid have them, the more useful they are as a tool.
Get raidframes of some kind - they provide so much more information than the vanilla frames it is stupid and blizzard are looking into fixing it.
Get recount, now this will give you a immediate feedback on what of your spells is doing the most damage so you can maximise output. THIS IS NOT FOR A PISSING CONTEST! It will also show you real time what the raid DPS is (really handy) and how fiddling with it affects your real output.
There are more mods than this, but these are the basics I would recommend.
Know your consumables - you can cover off gaps in your character with food buffs and pots and flasks and elixirs. There is +40 hit food available, MP5, SD, Haste, expertise... all kinds of things. You should all have consumables up all the time. If you don't you are letting your raidmates down. DRINK POWERTHIRST!
Be raid aware - You cant DPS dead. I often find that this is the easiest and best way to improve raid DPS. Learn the fights, watch movies on youtube, read up on bosses. Get DBM or bigwigs installed so you know when boss CDs come up or when they are going to use an ability. Time your trinkets and other CDs for the right time. Call out heroisms so people all pop trinkets and CDs (for example treants + heroism is win for aboomkin) together with a heroism. Get co-ordinated and work as a well oiled team :)
Know your class - go read up on what all the cool kids are doing these days with spells and rotations and stuff.EJ is a good place if you like numbers and spreadsheets, MMO champion is also a decent place to start. And if all that is too much, try wowwiki.
Know your gear - What you have and what you need and where to get it. Get Rawr, use the Armory, look at atlasloot ingame. Make a plan, what you need, where it drops and enact that plan.
Know your gems/enchants/glyphs etc - go get a socket for your belt, give someone an enchanting point and get your gear enchanted. Learn which glyphs you should be using for your spec and rotation. No seriously, do it. Do it NOW and as soon as you get new gear. Bring mats with you to raids so you can instantly use new gear.
Know your stats - hit is the single most important stat if you think your DPS is low. Melee/huntards do much of their DPS from white damage, the more your miss the more your DPS will drop. locks and mages need hit to actually have their spells LAND. There are plenty of things out there on the net to help you. Learn the way of Google Fu.
Learn the difference between crit and haste and how much you should have of each (it is a very difficult concept to know the difference between throughput and DPS, but they ARE different) they are stats which should be balanced - find your sweet spot for your class and spec.
Know your threat and your tank - By this I mean their TPS. Learn what your tanks average TPS is, and how hard and fast you can cast and still maintain a safe buffer on the threat meters for those crits. Know where you can sit safely and pump out the most DPS based on what your tank is capable of. If you are having issues, perhaps talk to your tank about what they can do to help up their TPS as well as looking at what you can do to reduce threat.
GET MODS - first up get quartz. this will improve your throughput by letting you know what your current lag is. Cast the next spell in your rotation as soon as your cast bar hits the red. EVERY caster should have this or a similar mod (yes even healers).
Next get Omen. This is a totally essential mod, learn how it works, learn what all the options mean and where you should be aiming for on the meters relative to your tank.
Get DBM or bigwigs (see above)
Get Ora2 or CTRA so you can set your tank lists and all kinds of other nifty raid features the more people in the raid have them, the more useful they are as a tool.
Get raidframes of some kind - they provide so much more information than the vanilla frames it is stupid and blizzard are looking into fixing it.
Get recount, now this will give you a immediate feedback on what of your spells is doing the most damage so you can maximise output. THIS IS NOT FOR A PISSING CONTEST! It will also show you real time what the raid DPS is (really handy) and how fiddling with it affects your real output.
There are more mods than this, but these are the basics I would recommend.
Know your consumables - you can cover off gaps in your character with food buffs and pots and flasks and elixirs. There is +40 hit food available, MP5, SD, Haste, expertise... all kinds of things. You should all have consumables up all the time. If you don't you are letting your raidmates down. DRINK POWERTHIRST!
Friday, January 23, 2009
10man makeup (Naxx)
Have had a request for some more information on forming a 10man group. This is a much bigger topic than 25s as 25s can be much more generic and are a lot more flexible. 10s you dont get anywhere near as much wiggle room to set up your group.
So I will start with a Naxx team as that is what most people will be working on right now.
Very simply you need the following:
2 tanks
2-3 healers
5-6 DPS
Tanks:
You are not taking a MT and and OT. You are taking 2 tanks. Preferably one should be specced into AoE tanking, and one should be specced into single target. Both will be OTing at some stage and both will be MTing. They are of equal importance, DO NOT get the idea that one is a MT and more important than the other - therein lies the way of the elitist raider!
There is no good or bad combination of classes, only good and bad combination of specs and gear level. My favourite combo is Feral+Pally.
Healers:
if you are taking 2 healers you need at least one direct healer and one AoE healer. A good combo is pally/Disc priest/shammy + Drood/Holy Priest/shammy. If you are taking 3 (recommended for newer groups to naxx10) then take 2 AoE type healers. My fave combo for healers is Pally (because I am one) Holy priest, druid.
Dee Pee Ess:
A even balance of melee and ranged is the go here, if possible. However, there is no encounter that REQUIRES a certain balance. You can clear Naxx with only melee or only ranged (but it is harder; KT and sapph will be very hard with all melee). But you are gimping your raid DPS if you do that buff wise. I reccomend 2 melee and 3 ranged. My fave combo is: ret pally, DK, huntard, mage, lock. But really, anything that covers off mana regen, melee buffs or anything like that will be good.
Speaking of covering off buffs with your group MMO-champion have a webpage that really helps with this. You can find it here
This is one combination I am fond of.
Here is another with 3 healers.
So I will start with a Naxx team as that is what most people will be working on right now.
Very simply you need the following:
2 tanks
2-3 healers
5-6 DPS
Tanks:
You are not taking a MT and and OT. You are taking 2 tanks. Preferably one should be specced into AoE tanking, and one should be specced into single target. Both will be OTing at some stage and both will be MTing. They are of equal importance, DO NOT get the idea that one is a MT and more important than the other - therein lies the way of the elitist raider!
There is no good or bad combination of classes, only good and bad combination of specs and gear level. My favourite combo is Feral+Pally.
Healers:
if you are taking 2 healers you need at least one direct healer and one AoE healer. A good combo is pally/Disc priest/shammy + Drood/Holy Priest/shammy. If you are taking 3 (recommended for newer groups to naxx10) then take 2 AoE type healers. My fave combo for healers is Pally (because I am one) Holy priest, druid.
Dee Pee Ess:
A even balance of melee and ranged is the go here, if possible. However, there is no encounter that REQUIRES a certain balance. You can clear Naxx with only melee or only ranged (but it is harder; KT and sapph will be very hard with all melee). But you are gimping your raid DPS if you do that buff wise. I reccomend 2 melee and 3 ranged. My fave combo is: ret pally, DK, huntard, mage, lock. But really, anything that covers off mana regen, melee buffs or anything like that will be good.
Speaking of covering off buffs with your group MMO-champion have a webpage that really helps with this. You can find it here
This is one combination I am fond of.
Here is another with 3 healers.
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