Synopsis
With not much melee around there is a good chance you will be maiming in Ulduar.
Last night I was in PTR in Ulduar, testing General Vezax. There was no thrash this time, but compared to last time we only had 1 rogue. The people that could interrupt were that rogue, 1 DK, me and an other druid in catform. I never was in a raid as feral, so I don't even know if Maim could interrupt spellcasts on bosses before 3.0.
Anyway it sucks! For kick a rogue only needs 25 energy. For maim we need to have Combopoints and it costs us 35 energy. A major DPS nerf. When it is your time to interrupt you want to be able to do that immediately. And you have to be ready!. That meant that it sometimes took 20 seconds of waiting time. 20 seconds of keeping GCD ready, 20 seconds of seeing your energy being full, 20 seconds in which you see Rip, SR, Mangle and Rake all drop off from your target... So fair to say my DPS was not optimal. That plus there was a dps nerf about 700 dps for cats on that boss. Well I think it would be about 700 dps even if I didn't interupt.
Also TellMeWhen still isn't fixed and instead of only showing my debuffs it shows debuffs casted by others too, though mine has priority, meaning it will show my rip with 2 seconds left before the other druid's rip with 16 seconds left. But after my Rip is gone it will show the other druid's Rip.
My dps could have been higher but the bossfight itself is totally unreliable too. We were playing from Europe and the server is in the US. That meant we had a .325 latency. Meaning I see the spellcast when it is already going and the boss knows I maimed him somewhat later too. So I had to keep GCD ready.
But it is my thought the boss is bugged. Because of a special shirt GM's provided us for this fight we were all hitcapped and my maim did always hit. The split second I saw the spell being cast I maimed but often the boss kept on casting his spell anyway. He also has the tendency to, after having a cast go through, cast 2 more after that, without others being ready for that. So that was a definite wipe every time.
Now the blogsourcing part of the post; I have a question for you on why maim doesn't always work.
Also I checked combat log and I wonder how that works too. My combat log showed me casting maim and doing x damage. 2 lines below that I saw the General Vezax his spell hit me. The thing I want to know on how that works is: Is the combat log local or server side? For instance, chat is server side. When you type a message and there is a lag you will not see the message. The message has to be processed by the server first and then will be given back to you (and whomever it may concern) and only then the message can be read. Does the combat log work the same? If you maim does the server have to process it and then you will see the maim in your combat log or will the combat log show it the second you cast it, not considering whether the server has received the maim?
PS in this case it could have been that the cast was ready before I maimed and that during those 2 lines I mentioned earlier the spell was traveling from him towards me. Still the change for that is really small, because since I was in melee range the spell (aoe) would have to hit me immediately.
Showing posts with label General Vezax. Show all posts
Showing posts with label General Vezax. Show all posts
Thursday, April 2, 2009
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Ulduar testing - General Vezax
Synopsis
Ulduar is fun!
2 days ago I went to Ulduar on PTR to test General Vezax. Finally there was hard trash!
It was really fun to do a boss/trash of which you know virtually nothing.
First of all there are no glyphs in PTR testing. They disappear when you zone. So there was no glyph of maul. If you have that glyph (and you should, there is a good chance you are tanking 2 mobs, like I did), you need to make sure you don't hit a cc-ed target. Yes you hear it. You need to cc trash!
In the rest of the post you will find some description of the fight, a bit on tactics and how druids are good with that. Also at the end there is some remark of awesome druid dps.
The trash before the boss consists of 4 packs. They are all level 82 (heroic 5-man boss level). The pack consists of about 9 or 10 mobs. You have to work with corner pulls and MD to tanks so the mobs will come closer before you attack. You need 2 tanks minimum, but with the great thing called dual spec you can have a couple of melee dps convert to tank for the trash if you want. You'll need to cc 4 or 5 mobs. Some mobs fear, others stun. Fear will wipe you if you run into a second group.
So tactics is back. Now we are finally getting a buff to swipe we might not even want it because you have to be away from cc-ed mobs instead of standing with your ass to them.
After killing 2 of the 4 groups (in our case the 1st and 3rd group) a sort of miniboss (hard mob) is set loose. It will patrol and you will agro it. You need to pick it up and tank. It will shoot out some kind or shadow thing which you can easily walk away from if you watch for it. At 25% intervals there will be an add spawning and the boss will become immune untill the add is down.
We did the trash with 3 tanks, me being one of them, tanking 2 melee adds. I felt safer using cooldowns on them once in a while. That is how hard they are. I have no real testing information on the tanking though.
I didn't get too much info on the boss. After 5 tries Ulduar shut down. Some things I know of, the boss itself hits very hard and there is no mana regen for mana users. Max int gear is needed. You need to stand in green stuff to regen mana, but for each mana regenerated you loose life. So melee; never go into it! The boss needs to be kited. I myself am thinking of a tactic where the MT healers are constantly in the green shit and a couple of raidhealers that heal the healers and rest of the raid.
A few more tips:
Also I finally had some other (decent/good geared) cats with me in the raid. I did more dps then they did, so that is some sort of confirmation that I don't totally suck on dps.
Found out that TellMeWhen is a bit bugged on PTR (I think). Whenever my Rake was finished, I then saw it up again with 2 seconds left or so, which was probably the rake cast by someone else. That was very confusing making me not as efficient in dps as I could be. Also a note for self; don't change the setup of TellMeWhen on PTR compared to live. It confuses!
Ulduar is fun!
2 days ago I went to Ulduar on PTR to test General Vezax. Finally there was hard trash!
It was really fun to do a boss/trash of which you know virtually nothing.
First of all there are no glyphs in PTR testing. They disappear when you zone. So there was no glyph of maul. If you have that glyph (and you should, there is a good chance you are tanking 2 mobs, like I did), you need to make sure you don't hit a cc-ed target. Yes you hear it. You need to cc trash!
In the rest of the post you will find some description of the fight, a bit on tactics and how druids are good with that. Also at the end there is some remark of awesome druid dps.
The trash before the boss consists of 4 packs. They are all level 82 (heroic 5-man boss level). The pack consists of about 9 or 10 mobs. You have to work with corner pulls and MD to tanks so the mobs will come closer before you attack. You need 2 tanks minimum, but with the great thing called dual spec you can have a couple of melee dps convert to tank for the trash if you want. You'll need to cc 4 or 5 mobs. Some mobs fear, others stun. Fear will wipe you if you run into a second group.
So tactics is back. Now we are finally getting a buff to swipe we might not even want it because you have to be away from cc-ed mobs instead of standing with your ass to them.
After killing 2 of the 4 groups (in our case the 1st and 3rd group) a sort of miniboss (hard mob) is set loose. It will patrol and you will agro it. You need to pick it up and tank. It will shoot out some kind or shadow thing which you can easily walk away from if you watch for it. At 25% intervals there will be an add spawning and the boss will become immune untill the add is down.
We did the trash with 3 tanks, me being one of them, tanking 2 melee adds. I felt safer using cooldowns on them once in a while. That is how hard they are. I have no real testing information on the tanking though.
I didn't get too much info on the boss. After 5 tries Ulduar shut down. Some things I know of, the boss itself hits very hard and there is no mana regen for mana users. Max int gear is needed. You need to stand in green stuff to regen mana, but for each mana regenerated you loose life. So melee; never go into it! The boss needs to be kited. I myself am thinking of a tactic where the MT healers are constantly in the green shit and a couple of raidhealers that heal the healers and rest of the raid.
A few more tips:
- Everyone should be down from the platforms when you enter the room. If not the raid gets massive damage.
- When you wipe on the patrolling add, stay away from the edge of the platform. It will deathgrip people from the platform and kill them instantly.
Also I finally had some other (decent/good geared) cats with me in the raid. I did more dps then they did, so that is some sort of confirmation that I don't totally suck on dps.
Found out that TellMeWhen is a bit bugged on PTR (I think). Whenever my Rake was finished, I then saw it up again with 2 seconds left or so, which was probably the rake cast by someone else. That was very confusing making me not as efficient in dps as I could be. Also a note for self; don't change the setup of TellMeWhen on PTR compared to live. It confuses!
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