Synopsis
This is the message I wrote on my guild's forum.
It has been fun.
Hey guys. I sadly have to announce that raiding is no longer an option for me. Last week I had to unsign all raids because of my newly started job which at that point drained all my energy.
Looking to the future I see other stuff coming my way, next to my new full time work, and I have not the time to spend on raiding as is required. Sadly I don't get too much joy from raiding in WotLK as I once did. If that was the case I might have been able to get energy from raiding, though currently it is draining more from me then I can give with my new irl situation. So this is it for me.
Being here from day 1 I feel at home in TEF and if you would let me I'd like to stay in the guild as a social member, though I can understand if you don't.
Good luck in Ulduar and I bet you will be at least horde first in 3.2 as well!
So what does it mean for this blog? Well basically I won't be raiding. I will have no drive to do hard calculations on what talent is best for what and what a certain development means for the future of druids in raids. Nor will you will get any valuable information (for as much that was the case before) about raiding.
This blog will become a more casual blog. Next upcoming post will be about the bearforms and cat forms I just saw on PTR and how disappointed I am in them. I might join a few raids or instances but most of the time I see myself doing non-raiding and non-pvp (hate pvp) achievements. Not as much game achievements though personal achievements. Leveling my 4 alts to 80, gearing them a bit, grinding mobs for that one drop (which believe it or not I think is fun and is taken largely out of WotLK), playing casual and just for the fun.
Showing posts with label Raiding. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Raiding. Show all posts
Sunday, June 28, 2009
Thursday, June 18, 2009
I hope...
Synopsis
Apparently the bitching got through to Blizzard.
The current normal/heroic/hardmode shit is fucked and people hate it. Well at least some people. Well at least me (and Darksend).
This is what I found on my guild's forum. Posted by my guildmaster:
Quote:
"Blizzard is getting ready to put the next raids on PTR, they're going to be the Crusader's Coliseum and they'll have an interesting twist to them. For the first time, we'll now see Heroic 25 man raids and Normal 25 man raids. Massive LFG-confusion is sure to ensue, but this is the list:
10-man
10-man Heroic
25-man
25-man Heroic"
I hope this means no longer hardmode/normal mode. I hope there will be different loot tables for each as well! We will see t9.10n and t9.10h, t9.25n, t9.25h.
I hope, I hope... So now (I hope) when you kill hardmode 25 you will be looking not the same as every (possible) noob out there. This also means people can still experience the game content. I hardcore raiders will be a lot more satisfied.
He goes on; quote:
"The new system in the coliseum is interesting, in Heroic Modes you get rewarded based on how few tries you use to kill a certain boss. You only have X pulls every week, and the sooner you kill the boss the better/more rewards (loot too, I assume) you get."
This means that say there is a boss like Flame Leviathan is now in Ulduar. And say it is way too hard. You can't get past him. After 6 (?) tries or so he will be gone. You can move on to the next boss.
Also this means that any group of green wearing level 80 players can see every fight (for a short period before they die) in a week and get 0 loot, still having seen the end boss.
I think that is fair. Good Idea from Blizzard. Everyone can learn all the fights easy mode (normal). When you go hardmode (heroic), after having done it in easy mode it will not fuck up the loot you get in reference to gearing players. This means that the problem blizzard had before is solved.
Example: You are able to kill boss 1 in an instance every week, but boss 2 needs some work. There is 4 (?) loots every week. That sucks for gearing people. You need to farm the first few bosses for weeks before you are geared to take the last one.
People used to solve that by farming trash. Go into Sunwell, kill the first pack of trash, loot it, get out, reset, go in and kill trash again. Dropping a few recipes, a few things needed to craft stuff and maybe a trash epic.
Now you can still get upgrades by killing it on normal (easy) mode. Then you can try and get some loot from hardmodes.
This all leads me to conclude there are no hardmodes. There are still achievements, though no hardmodes. Trying for hardmodes will require "wipenights". Those are definitely gone. After x tries the boss is gone. So if loot is gonna drop 6 (?) items for a oneshot and 1 (?) on the last possible try this means the following; Doing hardmodes fucks you over! Hardmodes need a few things; skill and gear. If you decide to do hardmodes early on you will not get gear. Others who decide to do hardmodes in week 10 will get lots and lots of loot and then do the hardmode easy in said week 10, where the ones trying hardmode from the beginning get no gear.
I hope Blizzard has seen the light. Achievements in raids suck. Achievements to get 100 horsies is nice, but don't integrate them as a requirement into PVE.
I hope... I hope...
Remember, this is hearsay from PTR which is not even "live" on PTR yet. So all may change, but I think it will change for the better.... I hope
Apparently the bitching got through to Blizzard.
The current normal/heroic/hardmode shit is fucked and people hate it. Well at least some people. Well at least me (and Darksend).
This is what I found on my guild's forum. Posted by my guildmaster:
Quote:
"Blizzard is getting ready to put the next raids on PTR, they're going to be the Crusader's Coliseum and they'll have an interesting twist to them. For the first time, we'll now see Heroic 25 man raids and Normal 25 man raids. Massive LFG-confusion is sure to ensue, but this is the list:
10-man
10-man Heroic
25-man
25-man Heroic"
I hope this means no longer hardmode/normal mode. I hope there will be different loot tables for each as well! We will see t9.10n and t9.10h, t9.25n, t9.25h.
I hope, I hope... So now (I hope) when you kill hardmode 25 you will be looking not the same as every (possible) noob out there. This also means people can still experience the game content. I hardcore raiders will be a lot more satisfied.
He goes on; quote:
"The new system in the coliseum is interesting, in Heroic Modes you get rewarded based on how few tries you use to kill a certain boss. You only have X pulls every week, and the sooner you kill the boss the better/more rewards (loot too, I assume) you get."
This means that say there is a boss like Flame Leviathan is now in Ulduar. And say it is way too hard. You can't get past him. After 6 (?) tries or so he will be gone. You can move on to the next boss.
Also this means that any group of green wearing level 80 players can see every fight (for a short period before they die) in a week and get 0 loot, still having seen the end boss.
I think that is fair. Good Idea from Blizzard. Everyone can learn all the fights easy mode (normal). When you go hardmode (heroic), after having done it in easy mode it will not fuck up the loot you get in reference to gearing players. This means that the problem blizzard had before is solved.
Example: You are able to kill boss 1 in an instance every week, but boss 2 needs some work. There is 4 (?) loots every week. That sucks for gearing people. You need to farm the first few bosses for weeks before you are geared to take the last one.
People used to solve that by farming trash. Go into Sunwell, kill the first pack of trash, loot it, get out, reset, go in and kill trash again. Dropping a few recipes, a few things needed to craft stuff and maybe a trash epic.
Now you can still get upgrades by killing it on normal (easy) mode. Then you can try and get some loot from hardmodes.
This all leads me to conclude there are no hardmodes. There are still achievements, though no hardmodes. Trying for hardmodes will require "wipenights". Those are definitely gone. After x tries the boss is gone. So if loot is gonna drop 6 (?) items for a oneshot and 1 (?) on the last possible try this means the following; Doing hardmodes fucks you over! Hardmodes need a few things; skill and gear. If you decide to do hardmodes early on you will not get gear. Others who decide to do hardmodes in week 10 will get lots and lots of loot and then do the hardmode easy in said week 10, where the ones trying hardmode from the beginning get no gear.
I hope Blizzard has seen the light. Achievements in raids suck. Achievements to get 100 horsies is nice, but don't integrate them as a requirement into PVE.
I hope... I hope...
Remember, this is hearsay from PTR which is not even "live" on PTR yet. So all may change, but I think it will change for the better.... I hope
Balance coming up... I think?
Synopsis
A head's up of my Balance adventures.
Yesterday I realized how much I like to dps when standing still. I so hate those huge like mobs without a real defined hitbox. Most of all the arms of Kologarn. I never know where the fuck I am. I have to watch my messages to see why the fuck I am not hitting him. "You need to face your target". With large groups I have one selected, doing Berserk and wanna swipe. Well the mob is either somehow behind me or too far in front of me. How fucking annoying.
So since we have a huge wave of newbies we are doing a lot of bosses easy mode. Next Wednesday I will go Balance if they let me. Would mean a 1.5k dps reduction or so, but that should not be that much of a deal on 25 man easy mode.
My gear is pretty much ok. A lot of gear that was being disenchanted (nobody greeded) I got, and instead of disenchanting I kept the caster gear, swapped it for crappier caster gear I already had and then disenchanted the crappy thing. The guild still had the shards, and my gear is very nice!
Yesterday I spent some time (too much time) configuring my gear. Don't know how well Rawr is for balance, but I used it to see where I could get upgrades. So now I have my 3rd t8.5 helmet. Now when fully gemmed I am hitcapped (266 rating, which is 3 above the cap I am told), I have 409 haste, but not too much crit though. Though I still have to see where I am at when I have respecced. My spellpower, coming from gear alone (and maybe some random feral stat) is at 1820. So that should be close to 2k selfbuffed in the correct spec.
Not bad for off-offspec gear. No?
PS I really want to see triple spec (Meaning dual spec + 1 extra).
A head's up of my Balance adventures.
Yesterday I realized how much I like to dps when standing still. I so hate those huge like mobs without a real defined hitbox. Most of all the arms of Kologarn. I never know where the fuck I am. I have to watch my messages to see why the fuck I am not hitting him. "You need to face your target". With large groups I have one selected, doing Berserk and wanna swipe. Well the mob is either somehow behind me or too far in front of me. How fucking annoying.
So since we have a huge wave of newbies we are doing a lot of bosses easy mode. Next Wednesday I will go Balance if they let me. Would mean a 1.5k dps reduction or so, but that should not be that much of a deal on 25 man easy mode.
My gear is pretty much ok. A lot of gear that was being disenchanted (nobody greeded) I got, and instead of disenchanting I kept the caster gear, swapped it for crappier caster gear I already had and then disenchanted the crappy thing. The guild still had the shards, and my gear is very nice!
Yesterday I spent some time (too much time) configuring my gear. Don't know how well Rawr is for balance, but I used it to see where I could get upgrades. So now I have my 3rd t8.5 helmet. Now when fully gemmed I am hitcapped (266 rating, which is 3 above the cap I am told), I have 409 haste, but not too much crit though. Though I still have to see where I am at when I have respecced. My spellpower, coming from gear alone (and maybe some random feral stat) is at 1820. So that should be close to 2k selfbuffed in the correct spec.
Not bad for off-offspec gear. No?
PS I really want to see triple spec (Meaning dual spec + 1 extra).
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
10 man hardmodes
Synopsis
Yesterday I joined a guild 10 man hardmodes try. To my surprise, I liked it a lot.
I haven't played a lot of 10 man. The days that there is no guild raid scheduled I tend to want to spent otherwise. Invest some time in real life and not play 50+ hours wow anymore. Also 10 man didn't appeal to me. There is nothing to get there. Most of the loot I want is in 25 man.
Since we are struggling with getting 25 man runs going, and some kills (Yogg) are very sucky without 25. So we yesterday (for Europeans last day of the raiding week) skipped 25 man. Left it for what it was and continued the 10 man hardmode run some of us had already started.
2 weeks ago a lot of hardmodes for unlocking Agalon were done already. So this week there were 2 left basically. Freya 3 watchers + Mimiron. How much as I hate Freya 25 man I really loved playing Freya 10 man. The raid consisted of a lot of the top notch best players from our guild. The discipline was amazing! All knew what to do, nobody making much mistakes. A little bit learning there was involved and we killed her.
Now I must say Freya 10 man is quite a bit easier then 25 man. But still.
We went on to try Mimiron. That fight is incredibly hard. I liked to really progress raid here. After 10 tries we managed to get to phase 2 with 10 people alive. We got him to about 40% when only our DK tank was still alive. He actually managed to get him to 33% before he himself died. Which was fun to see. Mimiron vs a DK for 2 minutes long!
Having some bosses left we decided not to wipe there endlessly and killed him normal mode. Nobody touched a mine... but me :( Achievement gone. It was phase 4 and I had seen the gap, went for it but the damn middle and top part obstructed my view. The thing above him there also doesn't count for a wall so you can (not) see right through. I hate the way this fight is in that manner. Next Time I better strafe out.
We then went for Vezax. We did his hardmode really close a few times but it ended up with the MT dying. Not because of mana problems, but because he wasn't healed enough. Sad to not have gotten him, but still amused by the enjoyment we had gotten from the fight, we killed him normal mode and moved to Yogg Saron. After a accidental wipe we then were well adjusted and did him hard mode (within 7 minutes) which wasn't really a chalenge and then went to finish off council, ending up oneshotting them hardmode with the big guy killed last.
Now you are thinking; "Ok. What is this post about?"
In reference to my previous post I am a bit confused. I liked 10 man hardmodes. I don't feel for 25 man hardmodes. Should I stop doing 25 man and only do 10 man? Why did I like 10 man so much? Because it was easy? Because it was attainable?
I think it is the following; We were a group of 10 very good players. If I have to name 6 of the top players in my guild they were all in that group.
So I think the conclusion in respect to my previous post, next to what was said in there (which was true), also the following is contributing to the fact that I dislike Ulduar (or Blizzards way of implementing instances now);
Blizzard made it "easy" for all to clear naxx. A lot of people joined in good raiding guilds, replacing some excellent players that just stop (it happens too), but aren't really that good. My guild tries to have only the best players but since they are spread too thin on my server we have the problem that we don't have the luxury to do it anymore. There simply aren't that many good players.
The one thing to hope for is that my guild holds out and some other top guild doesn't. Hoping a guild will fail is not really nice, but it is the only thing that is a real solution. There are 4 other horde guilds having the same problems we do. Not enough (skilled) raiders. If one of them tumbles we would get a couple of their players and get a full group of good players. I think that is one of the things that would make my joy in 25 man raiding come back.
Still next to the summer and people having vacation time Blizzard is to blame for this too. There is less skill required to play, making "bad" players go unnoticed. Rather then blame the players, I blame Blizzard's current implementation. The players don't have to improve themselves. It is simply not needed. Pre WotLK when we got a new player we knew we had to put some extra time in him/her. You would see him underperform. Currently you don't, meaning the whole group of players performs not as good as they should/could.
Yesterday I joined a guild 10 man hardmodes try. To my surprise, I liked it a lot.
I haven't played a lot of 10 man. The days that there is no guild raid scheduled I tend to want to spent otherwise. Invest some time in real life and not play 50+ hours wow anymore. Also 10 man didn't appeal to me. There is nothing to get there. Most of the loot I want is in 25 man.
Since we are struggling with getting 25 man runs going, and some kills (Yogg) are very sucky without 25. So we yesterday (for Europeans last day of the raiding week) skipped 25 man. Left it for what it was and continued the 10 man hardmode run some of us had already started.
2 weeks ago a lot of hardmodes for unlocking Agalon were done already. So this week there were 2 left basically. Freya 3 watchers + Mimiron. How much as I hate Freya 25 man I really loved playing Freya 10 man. The raid consisted of a lot of the top notch best players from our guild. The discipline was amazing! All knew what to do, nobody making much mistakes. A little bit learning there was involved and we killed her.
Now I must say Freya 10 man is quite a bit easier then 25 man. But still.
We went on to try Mimiron. That fight is incredibly hard. I liked to really progress raid here. After 10 tries we managed to get to phase 2 with 10 people alive. We got him to about 40% when only our DK tank was still alive. He actually managed to get him to 33% before he himself died. Which was fun to see. Mimiron vs a DK for 2 minutes long!
Having some bosses left we decided not to wipe there endlessly and killed him normal mode. Nobody touched a mine... but me :( Achievement gone. It was phase 4 and I had seen the gap, went for it but the damn middle and top part obstructed my view. The thing above him there also doesn't count for a wall so you can (not) see right through. I hate the way this fight is in that manner. Next Time I better strafe out.
We then went for Vezax. We did his hardmode really close a few times but it ended up with the MT dying. Not because of mana problems, but because he wasn't healed enough. Sad to not have gotten him, but still amused by the enjoyment we had gotten from the fight, we killed him normal mode and moved to Yogg Saron. After a accidental wipe we then were well adjusted and did him hard mode (within 7 minutes) which wasn't really a chalenge and then went to finish off council, ending up oneshotting them hardmode with the big guy killed last.
Now you are thinking; "Ok. What is this post about?"
In reference to my previous post I am a bit confused. I liked 10 man hardmodes. I don't feel for 25 man hardmodes. Should I stop doing 25 man and only do 10 man? Why did I like 10 man so much? Because it was easy? Because it was attainable?
I think it is the following; We were a group of 10 very good players. If I have to name 6 of the top players in my guild they were all in that group.
So I think the conclusion in respect to my previous post, next to what was said in there (which was true), also the following is contributing to the fact that I dislike Ulduar (or Blizzards way of implementing instances now);
Blizzard made it "easy" for all to clear naxx. A lot of people joined in good raiding guilds, replacing some excellent players that just stop (it happens too), but aren't really that good. My guild tries to have only the best players but since they are spread too thin on my server we have the problem that we don't have the luxury to do it anymore. There simply aren't that many good players.
The one thing to hope for is that my guild holds out and some other top guild doesn't. Hoping a guild will fail is not really nice, but it is the only thing that is a real solution. There are 4 other horde guilds having the same problems we do. Not enough (skilled) raiders. If one of them tumbles we would get a couple of their players and get a full group of good players. I think that is one of the things that would make my joy in 25 man raiding come back.
Still next to the summer and people having vacation time Blizzard is to blame for this too. There is less skill required to play, making "bad" players go unnoticed. Rather then blame the players, I blame Blizzard's current implementation. The players don't have to improve themselves. It is simply not needed. Pre WotLK when we got a new player we knew we had to put some extra time in him/her. You would see him underperform. Currently you don't, meaning the whole group of players performs not as good as they should/could.
Sunday, June 7, 2009
How Blizzard killed PVE
Synopsis
Lots of players leaving and others not enjoying WoW as much as it could have been. It has been talked about a lot, but I today realized exactly what it is and how. Though it is personal and some of you might have figured this out LONG time ago.
WoW is no longer the game it used to be. My guild has had a lot of people not feeling the drive anymore. As a result they are leaving. There are others that don't feel the drive too. Coinciding with summer (and no longer being locked inside to flee the cold) this is very bad for the raiding communities in WoW.
The reason for it is not that Ulduar is not what we expected it to be. It is exactly what we expect it to be. However WoW itself has changed drastically. WoW have become socialistic bastards. "We want more people to experience end game encounters". In other words; if you suck ass you will one day kill Yogg Saron. This makes good players sad.
It is an attempt of Blizzard to make even more money. However I feel it has destroyed the game completely. The main driving force behind new and more people starting to play WoW, I think, was the mouth-to-mouth talk from friends on how awesome WoW was. At the moment I would recommend nobody to start playing WoW. Try some game that is not dying. The game is dying and it is time for a reanimation force from Blizzard.
Ulduar is a great instance, and yet it sucks monkey balls. The bossfights are awesome, but then again disappointing. There is no progress. Or at least not like it used to be. Previously you would work one week on a boss and finally get him down. Now you work 2 hours on him and he is dead. Then you can spent some time working on hardmode. And this is where it goes wrong. If you raid with 25 people at least a few of them do not really care about hardmodes. This depends on the server though. The top guilds on a heavily populated pve server will get those people. But if you don't you are screwed.
Now as to what this change has accomplished. A lot more people will see Yogg Saron. Basically, if you want to you can. Yay, but it means it is totally unrewarding for anyone skilled.
Pre 3.0 there were no hardmodes. Or rather there were no easy modes. Freya would always have her 3 watchers up. Flame leviathan would be way one of the last (optional) bosses since you need to kill him with 4 towers always. Then downing Flame leviathan would mean something. We last week went for the "easy" achievements and with not even a full raid we got 2 easy achievments done. 3 actually, nobody dying (part of a meta), no repairs and no overload. Where is the challenge?
Pre 3.0 you used to be in a guild and hear some guild took boss x and boss y and you would imagine yourself killing them one day. If your guild would suck you could choose to join an other (how ever hard that choice may be sometimes). If you wanted to you could see all bosses in an expansion. If you were in a top guild you would be walking around with great gear and all would see how great you looked and envy you. That is something that gives satisfaction.
What is the satisfaction now? Everyone looks the same after 2 months of raiding. If you are in a crappy guild you will kill Yogg Saron eventually for sure, as long as you have a PVE focus. There is no room for self improvement. And good players, the ones hooked to WoW are finding less and less enjoyment in it.
This will result in the biggest "Yay! WoW!"-sayers to go: "Yeah... WoW :S"
I don't know about PvP but I think Blizzard should hurry up with the new MMORPG game (non Warcraft) of which I have heard rumors. In my opinion WoW is dying and they need a followup.
As a closing statement;
To reach for a goal is to get the ultimate. The thing you can't get or have to do a lot for to get. Once you have it and you can't set any new goals you get depressed.
WoW has lost any ultimate can't-get factor it had in PvE. No goals so depression sets in.
Lots of players leaving and others not enjoying WoW as much as it could have been. It has been talked about a lot, but I today realized exactly what it is and how. Though it is personal and some of you might have figured this out LONG time ago.
WoW is no longer the game it used to be. My guild has had a lot of people not feeling the drive anymore. As a result they are leaving. There are others that don't feel the drive too. Coinciding with summer (and no longer being locked inside to flee the cold) this is very bad for the raiding communities in WoW.
The reason for it is not that Ulduar is not what we expected it to be. It is exactly what we expect it to be. However WoW itself has changed drastically. WoW have become socialistic bastards. "We want more people to experience end game encounters". In other words; if you suck ass you will one day kill Yogg Saron. This makes good players sad.
It is an attempt of Blizzard to make even more money. However I feel it has destroyed the game completely. The main driving force behind new and more people starting to play WoW, I think, was the mouth-to-mouth talk from friends on how awesome WoW was. At the moment I would recommend nobody to start playing WoW. Try some game that is not dying. The game is dying and it is time for a reanimation force from Blizzard.
Ulduar is a great instance, and yet it sucks monkey balls. The bossfights are awesome, but then again disappointing. There is no progress. Or at least not like it used to be. Previously you would work one week on a boss and finally get him down. Now you work 2 hours on him and he is dead. Then you can spent some time working on hardmode. And this is where it goes wrong. If you raid with 25 people at least a few of them do not really care about hardmodes. This depends on the server though. The top guilds on a heavily populated pve server will get those people. But if you don't you are screwed.
Now as to what this change has accomplished. A lot more people will see Yogg Saron. Basically, if you want to you can. Yay, but it means it is totally unrewarding for anyone skilled.
Pre 3.0 there were no hardmodes. Or rather there were no easy modes. Freya would always have her 3 watchers up. Flame leviathan would be way one of the last (optional) bosses since you need to kill him with 4 towers always. Then downing Flame leviathan would mean something. We last week went for the "easy" achievements and with not even a full raid we got 2 easy achievments done. 3 actually, nobody dying (part of a meta), no repairs and no overload. Where is the challenge?
Pre 3.0 you used to be in a guild and hear some guild took boss x and boss y and you would imagine yourself killing them one day. If your guild would suck you could choose to join an other (how ever hard that choice may be sometimes). If you wanted to you could see all bosses in an expansion. If you were in a top guild you would be walking around with great gear and all would see how great you looked and envy you. That is something that gives satisfaction.
What is the satisfaction now? Everyone looks the same after 2 months of raiding. If you are in a crappy guild you will kill Yogg Saron eventually for sure, as long as you have a PVE focus. There is no room for self improvement. And good players, the ones hooked to WoW are finding less and less enjoyment in it.
This will result in the biggest "Yay! WoW!"-sayers to go: "Yeah... WoW :S"
I don't know about PvP but I think Blizzard should hurry up with the new MMORPG game (non Warcraft) of which I have heard rumors. In my opinion WoW is dying and they need a followup.
As a closing statement;
To reach for a goal is to get the ultimate. The thing you can't get or have to do a lot for to get. Once you have it and you can't set any new goals you get depressed.
WoW has lost any ultimate can't-get factor it had in PvE. No goals so depression sets in.
Monday, May 18, 2009
What happened to expertise?
Synopsis
I am starving for expertise right now!
I have a dilemma. Before 3.1 I used to be craving for hit rating. Now I got Twisted Visage and I probably won't get an other weapon. It has a lot of hit. Then all other items that dropped also have a lot of hit. Got a couple of items that used to be worth a lot to me. Now that I have this much hit rating those that have hit rating have devaluated a lot.
Now with t8.5 I find myself looking at the other cap. Expertise. My tanking gear can't miss anything though I am barely expertise (soft) capped. That isn't too bad. The items are still BiS (best in slot), or the best I have. So overall it is better.
Now for cat I am a bit more worried. I had balanced that gear around expertise cap. The items I have now are so much better that I really want to equip them but it makes me loose the expertise cap. Being below expertise cap is something I really don't want. There are a couple of bosses in Ulduar you can;t really dps from behind So now in Ulduar expertise is worth more then it was before I seem to be lacking it.
Only thing to do is to get the 226 level item trinket that also boosts haste from Malygos. I kinda feel trinkets in WotLK are made for that special reason; to fill in for those extra stats you want but can't get from gear unless gimping yourself a lot since they mostly only got 1 or 2 stats.
But since that boss is bugged now I probably won't get it any time soon.
Any of you experiencing the same?
I am starving for expertise right now!
I have a dilemma. Before 3.1 I used to be craving for hit rating. Now I got Twisted Visage and I probably won't get an other weapon. It has a lot of hit. Then all other items that dropped also have a lot of hit. Got a couple of items that used to be worth a lot to me. Now that I have this much hit rating those that have hit rating have devaluated a lot.
Now with t8.5 I find myself looking at the other cap. Expertise. My tanking gear can't miss anything though I am barely expertise (soft) capped. That isn't too bad. The items are still BiS (best in slot), or the best I have. So overall it is better.
Now for cat I am a bit more worried. I had balanced that gear around expertise cap. The items I have now are so much better that I really want to equip them but it makes me loose the expertise cap. Being below expertise cap is something I really don't want. There are a couple of bosses in Ulduar you can;t really dps from behind So now in Ulduar expertise is worth more then it was before I seem to be lacking it.
Only thing to do is to get the 226 level item trinket that also boosts haste from Malygos. I kinda feel trinkets in WotLK are made for that special reason; to fill in for those extra stats you want but can't get from gear unless gimping yourself a lot since they mostly only got 1 or 2 stats.
But since that boss is bugged now I probably won't get it any time soon.
Any of you experiencing the same?
Saturday, May 16, 2009
So long... friend?
Synopsis
Today (well yesterday for me at least) Karthis announced he'll stop playing WoW. The title is not to announce me stopping. I am addressing it to Karthis, if he'll allow me to call him a friend.
Most of you know Karthis or at least his blog, Of Teeth and Claws. I myself found him a couple of months ago and he was an inspiration for me to start this blog and a good source of information.
He is a friendly guy and I am sad to see him stop playing WoW. I might have seen it coming, might have known in the back of my head. It doesn't really come as a surprise to me, though I didn't know, as he mentioned, he had quit a few times before already for some periods of time.
I myself have quit playing WoW a couple of times too. Most of the times it seems to coincide with me moving. First time (was playing my lock back then, august 2005), I went from a student house to my own apartment and I stopped playing. Then after 6 months I realized there was nothing else that came close to WoW and came back. Then I stopped twice more. Both for about a month or 2 when I first moved in with my girlfriend, the second time when we moved to where we live now. I never stopped my subscription though. Moving was more important then.
After that I never stopped from the game, and only stopped raiding for a period of 6 months since it had nothing much to offer me. I had seen Illidan. We took him down (when I was not there) and the week after when I met him we had two 1% wipes. Mission accomplished. Never cared about Sunwell at all. The game was done. End boss killed. Basta.
Now I find myself in kind of the same situation as Karthis if I am honest. I am not planning to stop playing and I owe it to the rest of the guild to keep tanking, but I don't feel compelled to anything in the game really. Probably because I am working more these days. I tend to value sleep more then farming. I only raid and do some dailies. Today and 2 other days this week I didn't even bother logging in to do the dailies. Though on 2 of those 3 days there were raids, I could not join them because I had not enough time that day. I could have logged an hour for dailies only though, but to my own surprise I didn't.
So I wonder why? I realize that having everything I want from the game in 3 weeks of 3.1 is kinda demoralizing. In Naxx I wanted to get all those items, get all BiS items there were. Huge upgrades. Lots of loot drops! Yes! Gief!
Now it is like... Ok, I got full t8.5. I got the best staff. The rest, like boots are relatively big upgrades, but still minor ones compared to 3.0 upgrades. I don't want anything from the game anymore really.
So what does it have left to offer for me? Hard modes? I totally agree with Karthis there. It is nice yes, but it is so boring to do that week after week. I saw a real nice upgrade left for me. It only drops from hard mode 10 man Yogg-saron. Come on!? I have to strain myself to the max for 10 man? I have to hope for it to drop? I am not gonna do that. Screw em. So screw me.
The wait till 3.2 when a new instance is opened. That is actually what the game has to offer me. I hope I find some fun in stuff to come though. Maybe go balance instead of feral dps, though balance seemed to me incredibly dull those 3 days that I played it.
One last thing. I thought about what it would be like if I wasn't this geared. If we were at Mimiron or anything before that. What it would be like if my guild was like it used to be. Wiping on Prince while others were killing Kael'thas. Essentially I would have to step down and join a worse guild. I don't think I could do that though. The best way I think is to describe it with a metaphor.
It is like driving a Porsche that handles really well and makes driving easy and dull. So to make it exiting again you would sell your Porsche and buy a Toyota Corolla without power steering instead. But you would not be able to enjoy it at all, knowing what it feels like going from 0 to 100 kmph in 6 seconds in a Porsche.
The only option left is to keep your Porsche and go hard mode. Drive 200 kmph (where for non-metric the speed limit is 120) and dodge all speed traps and police cars.
So I guess it is the pedal to the metal for me then.
Today (well yesterday for me at least) Karthis announced he'll stop playing WoW. The title is not to announce me stopping. I am addressing it to Karthis, if he'll allow me to call him a friend.
Most of you know Karthis or at least his blog, Of Teeth and Claws. I myself found him a couple of months ago and he was an inspiration for me to start this blog and a good source of information.
He is a friendly guy and I am sad to see him stop playing WoW. I might have seen it coming, might have known in the back of my head. It doesn't really come as a surprise to me, though I didn't know, as he mentioned, he had quit a few times before already for some periods of time.
I myself have quit playing WoW a couple of times too. Most of the times it seems to coincide with me moving. First time (was playing my lock back then, august 2005), I went from a student house to my own apartment and I stopped playing. Then after 6 months I realized there was nothing else that came close to WoW and came back. Then I stopped twice more. Both for about a month or 2 when I first moved in with my girlfriend, the second time when we moved to where we live now. I never stopped my subscription though. Moving was more important then.
After that I never stopped from the game, and only stopped raiding for a period of 6 months since it had nothing much to offer me. I had seen Illidan. We took him down (when I was not there) and the week after when I met him we had two 1% wipes. Mission accomplished. Never cared about Sunwell at all. The game was done. End boss killed. Basta.
Now I find myself in kind of the same situation as Karthis if I am honest. I am not planning to stop playing and I owe it to the rest of the guild to keep tanking, but I don't feel compelled to anything in the game really. Probably because I am working more these days. I tend to value sleep more then farming. I only raid and do some dailies. Today and 2 other days this week I didn't even bother logging in to do the dailies. Though on 2 of those 3 days there were raids, I could not join them because I had not enough time that day. I could have logged an hour for dailies only though, but to my own surprise I didn't.
So I wonder why? I realize that having everything I want from the game in 3 weeks of 3.1 is kinda demoralizing. In Naxx I wanted to get all those items, get all BiS items there were. Huge upgrades. Lots of loot drops! Yes! Gief!
Now it is like... Ok, I got full t8.5. I got the best staff. The rest, like boots are relatively big upgrades, but still minor ones compared to 3.0 upgrades. I don't want anything from the game anymore really.
So what does it have left to offer for me? Hard modes? I totally agree with Karthis there. It is nice yes, but it is so boring to do that week after week. I saw a real nice upgrade left for me. It only drops from hard mode 10 man Yogg-saron. Come on!? I have to strain myself to the max for 10 man? I have to hope for it to drop? I am not gonna do that. Screw em. So screw me.
The wait till 3.2 when a new instance is opened. That is actually what the game has to offer me. I hope I find some fun in stuff to come though. Maybe go balance instead of feral dps, though balance seemed to me incredibly dull those 3 days that I played it.
One last thing. I thought about what it would be like if I wasn't this geared. If we were at Mimiron or anything before that. What it would be like if my guild was like it used to be. Wiping on Prince while others were killing Kael'thas. Essentially I would have to step down and join a worse guild. I don't think I could do that though. The best way I think is to describe it with a metaphor.
It is like driving a Porsche that handles really well and makes driving easy and dull. So to make it exiting again you would sell your Porsche and buy a Toyota Corolla without power steering instead. But you would not be able to enjoy it at all, knowing what it feels like going from 0 to 100 kmph in 6 seconds in a Porsche.
The only option left is to keep your Porsche and go hard mode. Drive 200 kmph (where for non-metric the speed limit is 120) and dodge all speed traps and police cars.
So I guess it is the pedal to the metal for me then.
Thursday, May 7, 2009
I am so happy now!
Synopsis
It has been a bit quiet from me in posting. Was thinking about making a post on General Vezax dps (which is the best fight for me). But I think I'll wait for that a bit cause with my recent upgrade I might overagro the tank this week.
Pictures say more then words...
Today was a real nice raiding day. We had a few stupid wipes. Killed 7 bosses in Ulduar, all of the Vault and Malygos and Sarth2d, just for the loot. All withing a normal raiding time (4 hours... a bit more).
We killed Thorim, oneshotted him. I got my t8.5 helmet. Completing my whole t8.5 set. I am even hitcapped now in cps gear. Would like a bit more expertise tbh, but I am quite happy I have 18% spell hit rating on Growl ;)
And what I am even more happy about... I got the most imba weapon in the game at the moment (excluding the pvp one). Twisted Visage.
Kinda sad that the only upgrades I can get most likely will not change the way I look. So till 3.2 this is what I look like. Maybe I get a better tanking helmet.
It has been a bit quiet from me in posting. Was thinking about making a post on General Vezax dps (which is the best fight for me). But I think I'll wait for that a bit cause with my recent upgrade I might overagro the tank this week.
Pictures say more then words...
Today was a real nice raiding day. We had a few stupid wipes. Killed 7 bosses in Ulduar, all of the Vault and Malygos and Sarth2d, just for the loot. All withing a normal raiding time (4 hours... a bit more).
We killed Thorim, oneshotted him. I got my t8.5 helmet. Completing my whole t8.5 set. I am even hitcapped now in cps gear. Would like a bit more expertise tbh, but I am quite happy I have 18% spell hit rating on Growl ;)
And what I am even more happy about... I got the most imba weapon in the game at the moment (excluding the pvp one). Twisted Visage.
Kinda sad that the only upgrades I can get most likely will not change the way I look. So till 3.2 this is what I look like. Maybe I get a better tanking helmet.
Friday, May 1, 2009
Normal mode
Synopis
Ulduar 10 man cleared too.
Today we started raiding at a little past 19:30. There were not enough people available for 25 so we did 10 man. First time I was there 10 man. We had cleared all bosses by 2:20. Ok a bit late, so it is not a real one raid kill but it soon will.
Unbelievable how easy Ulduar 10 man is. I fucked up on Yogg-saron otherwise that too would have been a oneshot without death. We did about 4 hard modes/extra achievement things, gotten 6 boses oneshotted without a death. Ulduar 10 man is really easy.
I'll do it next week and the next and just simply farm achievements. There are a few really hard ones, but a lot of things are really forgiving.
Ulduar 10 man cleared too.
Today we started raiding at a little past 19:30. There were not enough people available for 25 so we did 10 man. First time I was there 10 man. We had cleared all bosses by 2:20. Ok a bit late, so it is not a real one raid kill but it soon will.
Unbelievable how easy Ulduar 10 man is. I fucked up on Yogg-saron otherwise that too would have been a oneshot without death. We did about 4 hard modes/extra achievement things, gotten 6 boses oneshotted without a death. Ulduar 10 man is really easy.
I'll do it next week and the next and just simply farm achievements. There are a few really hard ones, but a lot of things are really forgiving.
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Ulduar cleared!
Synosis
Last night at a it before 23:00 we killed Yogg-saron and we officially cleared (for now) Ulduar.
Last week Tuesday we first saw Yogg-saron when we, after about 15 tries we managed to briefly see phase 2 before we all died.
This week after in total 2.5 wipenights this night resulted in a kill. The problem we had was mostly the switch between phase 2 and 3. We got that down 2-ce. The first time it was a 6% wipe where we got some real good practices on switching between the mobs. The last time it was an excellent performance..
I again got the t8.5 item. I have gotten so many items because of tanking loot prio (though I dps more often then tank recently) that I now have 4/5 items. When we stop with tanking prio it will be a long while before I get any item I ever want again.
Don't I look great?
Last night at a it before 23:00 we killed Yogg-saron and we officially cleared (for now) Ulduar.
Last week Tuesday we first saw Yogg-saron when we, after about 15 tries we managed to briefly see phase 2 before we all died.
This week after in total 2.5 wipenights this night resulted in a kill. The problem we had was mostly the switch between phase 2 and 3. We got that down 2-ce. The first time it was a 6% wipe where we got some real good practices on switching between the mobs. The last time it was an excellent performance..
I again got the t8.5 item. I have gotten so many items because of tanking loot prio (though I dps more often then tank recently) that I now have 4/5 items. When we stop with tanking prio it will be a long while before I get any item I ever want again.
Don't I look great?
Friday, April 24, 2009
Ulduar WWS
Synopsis
Cat dps is really nice! Really nice. However some fights are not made for us.
My raidleader finally got to put up some WWS from fights.
First up General Vezax (last week). We did some wrong strategies on him to start out with. Ranged dps gets an imba buff but not for the fights where we were.
WWS Vezax tries
(Showing only Bosses, I was tanking on trash).
I do not have the Savage Roar glyph yet and in most of the fights I needed to mangle. In all fairness the DK often had to pull a cloud and the rogues were on interrupt duty. For the tries that we did with the tactic that got em down in the 4th try the next day, the WWS is bugged. There was more ranged dps at the top. The last try we took him down on I really screwed up my rotation. A try before that I was at nr1 damage done, 5.2k dps (recount data) 4 or 5 minutes into the fight.
Other fights are often not as nice for druids. Our main dps comes from Rip. We do ok, but when Rip comes in we go to the top. There are a lot of fights that have us on waves of trash. That is not nice for us.
This week we took down 10 bosses in 2 days already. I was there for all fights this time and tanked a lot. I listed the bosses below. Linked a WWS for most of em. (Those that are not linked you can find if you select different fights in the other WWS)
Flame leviathan
Fun fight, no traditional fight. So nothing much I can say about it.
XT-002
Cat; Was new for me. We 2-shotted him so I never got the chance to learn the fight. The rogues are up there so I should be near there too. However the boss completely becoming immune a couple of times in the fight means you loose all dots. My dps should be higher, though it is more suited for rogues.
Kalogarn
Cat; We 2-shotted this one too. So my dps is low again. I was learning the fight, while most knew what to do. Though the targets that are up are really good for cat DPS. When you are on the arm you will move away before it dies and let ranged finish it. In that time you can have Rip ticking while you focus on the main target.
Auriaya
The only boss we really had difficulties with that day.
I was tank here. You need 4 tanks to survive the 4 adds which die within a minute. Makes you pretty much useless for the rest of the fight. The main task I set before myself was to make sure nobody died. Whenever the large pack of little cats was nuking 1 guy I did Demoralising Roar. I think it is really helpful, though in later fights healers got it down and never let a person die again.
Something else I did was assist in killing the jumping add away from the raid. Taunting it too when the jumping was over. If he dies in the pack the whole raid is standing in a voidzone. This guy is really not tankable. Control of raid dps is a must here.
We then skipped a few bosses;
Hodir
Main Tanked him all the way. Full frost resistance.
Freya
Tanked adds here. We tried 3 tries with 1 tree up. That is really hard. Because it was late we took it down and killed Freya easily.
The next day...
Thorim
Tanking; The gauntlet was not that hard anymore (after wiping the weak before for a few hours). Get 2 mages to sheep the whirlwinding mobs that stun. Didn't do the gauntlet though, I tanked in the arena.
At first we tanked em in 3 groups (3 tanks). We didn't get the adds down, though that should not be really bad since you just need to survive till the gauntlet is done. However the less adds the better. Best to do is all aoe tank in the center. The tank who gets agro tanks the champions. These need to be disarmed and there is no real problem. All adds get aoe'd down.
Then when Thorim comes he does a real nasty debuff to tanks once in a while, that will get em easily killed. We started taunting and having alternative tanking by 2 tanks. Though phase 1 might not need that much tanks when all stay in the center, it is a nice thing to have 4 tanks so you can risk 2 dying. However we needed to battleress them too.
Mimiron
Cat; Something like last week. No WWS available. I managed to see dps I did in phase 1. 5.2k and top 3 for sure. Even with running in and out. In phase 2 you need to run to his back all the time and dps suffers. In phase 3 I stood under the head again. Doing nothing, just soaking blows from bomb bots bearform, cat gear and spec. Dps suffered there enormously.
Phase 4 I was again high on dps. When the tank died the lower part immediately turned to me and before I could go bear I died. Not my fault I died this time. Luckily our DPS DK tanked him till the end.
It was near the end of the raid day and with 30 minute trash killing ahead we went back and took some bosses we skipped.
Razorscale
Tanked adds; oneshotted him. Can't believe how easy he was. Of course most of us knew the fight already, but the tactics were so simple to learn and understand.
Ignis the Furnace Master
Tanking; The boss our guild knows the best of all guilds on my server probably. We had the server's first kill. This boss has been fixed and hugely nerfed. Kiting him, I only was in danger once (35% health) and I used Barkskin. Since nobody died in the fight we all got the meta-part for the immortal variant in Ulduar.
2 days of no raiding ahead. Getting some sleep, reading, replying to Tarskin. Sunday we'll get to Yogg-saron and hopefully/probably kill him on monday or teusday.
PS I have 3 t8.5 items now. The gloves. Using EPGP (dkp) system I will get such a low rating that after we stop with tanking prio it will take 3 months for me to get another item.
Do I now have 2t8 in cat? Sadly no. I have the gloves from Malygos (226) that have a lot of hit. Replacing that 226 gloves and nerfing the rest of my gear to get hitcapped again for another 226 item just for the 2t8 set... I don't know if I should do it. I rather save some emblems for the headslot item and get that enchanted properly.
Cat dps is really nice! Really nice. However some fights are not made for us.
My raidleader finally got to put up some WWS from fights.
First up General Vezax (last week). We did some wrong strategies on him to start out with. Ranged dps gets an imba buff but not for the fights where we were.
WWS Vezax tries
(Showing only Bosses, I was tanking on trash).
I do not have the Savage Roar glyph yet and in most of the fights I needed to mangle. In all fairness the DK often had to pull a cloud and the rogues were on interrupt duty. For the tries that we did with the tactic that got em down in the 4th try the next day, the WWS is bugged. There was more ranged dps at the top. The last try we took him down on I really screwed up my rotation. A try before that I was at nr1 damage done, 5.2k dps (recount data) 4 or 5 minutes into the fight.
Other fights are often not as nice for druids. Our main dps comes from Rip. We do ok, but when Rip comes in we go to the top. There are a lot of fights that have us on waves of trash. That is not nice for us.
This week we took down 10 bosses in 2 days already. I was there for all fights this time and tanked a lot. I listed the bosses below. Linked a WWS for most of em. (Those that are not linked you can find if you select different fights in the other WWS)
Flame leviathan
Fun fight, no traditional fight. So nothing much I can say about it.
XT-002
Cat; Was new for me. We 2-shotted him so I never got the chance to learn the fight. The rogues are up there so I should be near there too. However the boss completely becoming immune a couple of times in the fight means you loose all dots. My dps should be higher, though it is more suited for rogues.
Kalogarn
Cat; We 2-shotted this one too. So my dps is low again. I was learning the fight, while most knew what to do. Though the targets that are up are really good for cat DPS. When you are on the arm you will move away before it dies and let ranged finish it. In that time you can have Rip ticking while you focus on the main target.
Auriaya
The only boss we really had difficulties with that day.
I was tank here. You need 4 tanks to survive the 4 adds which die within a minute. Makes you pretty much useless for the rest of the fight. The main task I set before myself was to make sure nobody died. Whenever the large pack of little cats was nuking 1 guy I did Demoralising Roar. I think it is really helpful, though in later fights healers got it down and never let a person die again.
Something else I did was assist in killing the jumping add away from the raid. Taunting it too when the jumping was over. If he dies in the pack the whole raid is standing in a voidzone. This guy is really not tankable. Control of raid dps is a must here.
We then skipped a few bosses;
Hodir
Main Tanked him all the way. Full frost resistance.
Freya
Tanked adds here. We tried 3 tries with 1 tree up. That is really hard. Because it was late we took it down and killed Freya easily.
The next day...
Thorim
Tanking; The gauntlet was not that hard anymore (after wiping the weak before for a few hours). Get 2 mages to sheep the whirlwinding mobs that stun. Didn't do the gauntlet though, I tanked in the arena.
At first we tanked em in 3 groups (3 tanks). We didn't get the adds down, though that should not be really bad since you just need to survive till the gauntlet is done. However the less adds the better. Best to do is all aoe tank in the center. The tank who gets agro tanks the champions. These need to be disarmed and there is no real problem. All adds get aoe'd down.
Then when Thorim comes he does a real nasty debuff to tanks once in a while, that will get em easily killed. We started taunting and having alternative tanking by 2 tanks. Though phase 1 might not need that much tanks when all stay in the center, it is a nice thing to have 4 tanks so you can risk 2 dying. However we needed to battleress them too.
Mimiron
Cat; Something like last week. No WWS available. I managed to see dps I did in phase 1. 5.2k and top 3 for sure. Even with running in and out. In phase 2 you need to run to his back all the time and dps suffers. In phase 3 I stood under the head again. Doing nothing, just soaking blows from bomb bots bearform, cat gear and spec. Dps suffered there enormously.
Phase 4 I was again high on dps. When the tank died the lower part immediately turned to me and before I could go bear I died. Not my fault I died this time. Luckily our DPS DK tanked him till the end.
It was near the end of the raid day and with 30 minute trash killing ahead we went back and took some bosses we skipped.
Razorscale
Tanked adds; oneshotted him. Can't believe how easy he was. Of course most of us knew the fight already, but the tactics were so simple to learn and understand.
Ignis the Furnace Master
Tanking; The boss our guild knows the best of all guilds on my server probably. We had the server's first kill. This boss has been fixed and hugely nerfed. Kiting him, I only was in danger once (35% health) and I used Barkskin. Since nobody died in the fight we all got the meta-part for the immortal variant in Ulduar.
2 days of no raiding ahead. Getting some sleep, reading, replying to Tarskin. Sunday we'll get to Yogg-saron and hopefully/probably kill him on monday or teusday.
PS I have 3 t8.5 items now. The gloves. Using EPGP (dkp) system I will get such a low rating that after we stop with tanking prio it will take 3 months for me to get another item.
Do I now have 2t8 in cat? Sadly no. I have the gloves from Malygos (226) that have a lot of hit. Replacing that 226 gloves and nerfing the rest of my gear to get hitcapped again for another 226 item just for the 2t8 set... I don't know if I should do it. I rather save some emblems for the headslot item and get that enchanted properly.
Friday, April 3, 2009
The art of trashtanking
Synopsis
Tanking trash needs dps to understand game mechanics. You can't tank decent with stupid dps.
Last night I was one of 3 tanks in Naxx 25. The trash tanking in Deathknight Wing can be hard. We did it over and over again after resetting the instance several times when we were failing on Razuvious trying for immortal. (Only to find someone dying on the boss right after that.)
Anyway the packs in there are pretty hard and consist of 5 or more and you often get 2 groups. The raidleader said our tanking sucked. And yes indeed the trash was all over the place. Though I really don't think it was because of bad tanking. It was because of bad dps.
Some examples.
Anyway... the next and last example is in my opinion something hard to forgive. The arrogance is so huge and it shows a total lack of knowledge of the game mechanics. Again we are tanking trash. There is aoe damage. Normally swipe can do more threat then any aoe dps can so that is no problem. The only preblem is there when someone does single target dps. In this case a hunter. There are 3 tanks, and 6 mobs. Not all mobs are targetted by the tanks. Sure the tanks can switch between them, but it is really hard to do it correctly (not without marks anyway). So for tanks (at least for) tanking trash is having 1 main target you mangle and maul and the rest you swipe. Call them main target and off-target. next to that I constantly watch for some mob to break out of the pack so I can taunt it.
To continue on the example. The hunter had chosen a target that was an off-target for all 3 tanks and was not being tanked by anyone directly. This mob then ran towards him and I taunted it. It turned, came back to me, but when he was close the taunt had stopped working and the mob ran back towards the hunter. The thing was, all this time the hunter had targeted this mob and had not stopped dps. If this player had been decent he would have done any of the following (decreasing in most appropriate thing to do, nr 1 being the best imo):
Anyway, to finish my story, if you have dps that doesn't allow you to tank you have to switch your target to the mob running away. You get that mob but that means you can't get threat on other mobs. So they break loose and you have to taunt those, with taunt being on cooldown. It is a cascading effect, that makes it seem you are sucking at tanking. Instead the dps that overagros should wake up and realise they might be doing something wrong...
Tanking trash needs dps to understand game mechanics. You can't tank decent with stupid dps.
Last night I was one of 3 tanks in Naxx 25. The trash tanking in Deathknight Wing can be hard. We did it over and over again after resetting the instance several times when we were failing on Razuvious trying for immortal. (Only to find someone dying on the boss right after that.)
Anyway the packs in there are pretty hard and consist of 5 or more and you often get 2 groups. The raidleader said our tanking sucked. And yes indeed the trash was all over the place. Though I really don't think it was because of bad tanking. It was because of bad dps.
Some examples.
- A dps gets agro. He starts running away. RUN TO THE TANK!? What are these people who don't know to stay in range of the tanks?
- Tanks start out on a group. Charge in and swipe. There are 3 tanks so we all 3 want to get those trash together so all our aoe hits all targets, and others can aoe all at once. We are often not given time to do this and while moving there is already hard aoe and dps on mobs. You loose agro and you have to chase them.
- A rogue wanted to have some fun and gets agro on a mob. You taunt it and want to drag it into the pack. Instead the rogue stuns it... dps on the mob still continues, meaning you have to go back to the mob, do dps and hope you got to do enough threat when the mob gets out of the stun.
Anyway... the next and last example is in my opinion something hard to forgive. The arrogance is so huge and it shows a total lack of knowledge of the game mechanics. Again we are tanking trash. There is aoe damage. Normally swipe can do more threat then any aoe dps can so that is no problem. The only preblem is there when someone does single target dps. In this case a hunter. There are 3 tanks, and 6 mobs. Not all mobs are targetted by the tanks. Sure the tanks can switch between them, but it is really hard to do it correctly (not without marks anyway). So for tanks (at least for) tanking trash is having 1 main target you mangle and maul and the rest you swipe. Call them main target and off-target. next to that I constantly watch for some mob to break out of the pack so I can taunt it.
To continue on the example. The hunter had chosen a target that was an off-target for all 3 tanks and was not being tanked by anyone directly. This mob then ran towards him and I taunted it. It turned, came back to me, but when he was close the taunt had stopped working and the mob ran back towards the hunter. The thing was, all this time the hunter had targeted this mob and had not stopped dps. If this player had been decent he would have done any of the following (decreasing in most appropriate thing to do, nr 1 being the best imo):
- before gaining initial agro, he would have seen himself high on the threatlist and switched to a different target. /target tank /assist. Very simple;
- before gaining initial agro, seen himself high on the threatlist and he could have done Feign Death;
- when the mob was running towards him he could have done a Feign Death;
- when the mob was taunted by me he could have changed his target.
Anyway, to finish my story, if you have dps that doesn't allow you to tank you have to switch your target to the mob running away. You get that mob but that means you can't get threat on other mobs. So they break loose and you have to taunt those, with taunt being on cooldown. It is a cascading effect, that makes it seem you are sucking at tanking. Instead the dps that overagros should wake up and realise they might be doing something wrong...
Thursday, April 2, 2009
Maim my ass off... (Blogsourcing)
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.
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.
Saturday, March 28, 2009
You are not prepaired...
Synopsis
Preparation for Ulduar non stop hardcore raiding.
So Ulduar is coming in a few weeks. We plan to be raiding whenever enough people are online to do so. No set times, just whenever possible. Subbing people in and out.
This means there is not much time to grind and prepare for a raid in between, unless you are frequently online during the day or late.
I am starting a new job (though part time) soon and I have other work beside that. So not many long nights ahead and playtime during the day is cut too.
So... I prepared myself:
This is my own bank-alt's guildbank btw.
Since the flasks are gonna change (2 flasks for the same mats, lasting only 1 hour) I haven't crafted them yet. I have been told you can change the old flasks for new ones once 3.1 hits, but still. I rather keep the ingredients ready.
A small 300 speed potions, about 130 armor potions and mats for 40 1h AP and 40 1h health flasks (filled the non-full stack of frost lotus to 20 at this point).
For food I have dumped materials in our guildbank to make 80 fish feasts. Next to that I fished 400 Dragonfin Angelfish. Took me 5.5 hours btw. Now I have 240 agility food ready and waiting (had 40 left) and I have some strength food too.
When I get new gear it will need gems and enchants. So instead of selling them I have a stack of about 10 to 14 of each kind of rare gem (uncut) lying around and if some nice craftable leather items drop (when they are not BoP), I have between 30 and 60 eternals of each kind too. I am an enchanter so my enchanting mats are plenty too. I got leg enchants lying around and enough frost oil for the inscriptions on shoulders (I am inscriber).
So yeah... I am prepared...
Preparation for Ulduar non stop hardcore raiding.
So Ulduar is coming in a few weeks. We plan to be raiding whenever enough people are online to do so. No set times, just whenever possible. Subbing people in and out.
This means there is not much time to grind and prepare for a raid in between, unless you are frequently online during the day or late.
I am starting a new job (though part time) soon and I have other work beside that. So not many long nights ahead and playtime during the day is cut too.
So... I prepared myself:
This is my own bank-alt's guildbank btw.
Since the flasks are gonna change (2 flasks for the same mats, lasting only 1 hour) I haven't crafted them yet. I have been told you can change the old flasks for new ones once 3.1 hits, but still. I rather keep the ingredients ready.
A small 300 speed potions, about 130 armor potions and mats for 40 1h AP and 40 1h health flasks (filled the non-full stack of frost lotus to 20 at this point).
For food I have dumped materials in our guildbank to make 80 fish feasts. Next to that I fished 400 Dragonfin Angelfish. Took me 5.5 hours btw. Now I have 240 agility food ready and waiting (had 40 left) and I have some strength food too.
When I get new gear it will need gems and enchants. So instead of selling them I have a stack of about 10 to 14 of each kind of rare gem (uncut) lying around and if some nice craftable leather items drop (when they are not BoP), I have between 30 and 60 eternals of each kind too. I am an enchanter so my enchanting mats are plenty too. I got leg enchants lying around and enough frost oil for the inscriptions on shoulders (I am inscriber).
So yeah... I am prepared...
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Achievement fun
Synopsis
Achievements are stupid, or rather "It is not a bug, it's a feature"!
I skipped a day of posting on the blog. Maybe better not to flood stuff and maybe also better to do some other stuff the always posting. Anyway the reason was that I have gotten old (it was my 30th birthday Sunday).
Anyway since we killed Sarth 3D it is a nice chance to get a pretty dragon (Glory of the raider). Since we are probably never gonna do immortal, aiming for that dragon on normal is the best thing to go for. Especially because the dragons are going to be removed as rewards after 3.1.
Being a bit unlucky on an undying run, but knowing undying is going to be really doable, I had 4 achievements left. Malygos in under 6 minutes is the only really hard one left and the Grand Widow Faerlina achievement was one of the others.
The last two I wanted to kill 2 birds with 8 stones. Sarth 8 man and Gonna Go When the Volcano Blows.
Avoiding those lava strikes is pure luck and nothing you should ever focus on in a raid. If you die from the first lava wall (you are a noob) you will not get any of them. So the achievement is said to be a reward for sucking. Today we proved it is not always a "bug", it is a feature! To get enough people to have that achievement you need to let them die in the start, in the process making the Sartharion fight a lot more fun.
We had me and 2 others dying in the beginning and we were also doing 8-man. So we had 5 people left alive to kill Sartharion. A paladin alt tanked the boss and he once got to 6k health, that was the minimum. Our healer paladin had 20+ blazes on him at the end while the rest was trying to get the boss down (only 3 dps vs 6 makes that last part last loooong).
Anyway here is a screenshot to prove it. And again, the 3 dead guys were intended!
PS You can see my interface here. I'll make a post on that later, but if you have any questions now, just ask em.
Achievements are stupid, or rather "It is not a bug, it's a feature"!
I skipped a day of posting on the blog. Maybe better not to flood stuff and maybe also better to do some other stuff the always posting. Anyway the reason was that I have gotten old (it was my 30th birthday Sunday).
Anyway since we killed Sarth 3D it is a nice chance to get a pretty dragon (Glory of the raider). Since we are probably never gonna do immortal, aiming for that dragon on normal is the best thing to go for. Especially because the dragons are going to be removed as rewards after 3.1.
Being a bit unlucky on an undying run, but knowing undying is going to be really doable, I had 4 achievements left. Malygos in under 6 minutes is the only really hard one left and the Grand Widow Faerlina achievement was one of the others.
The last two I wanted to kill 2 birds with 8 stones. Sarth 8 man and Gonna Go When the Volcano Blows.
Avoiding those lava strikes is pure luck and nothing you should ever focus on in a raid. If you die from the first lava wall (you are a noob) you will not get any of them. So the achievement is said to be a reward for sucking. Today we proved it is not always a "bug", it is a feature! To get enough people to have that achievement you need to let them die in the start, in the process making the Sartharion fight a lot more fun.
We had me and 2 others dying in the beginning and we were also doing 8-man. So we had 5 people left alive to kill Sartharion. A paladin alt tanked the boss and he once got to 6k health, that was the minimum. Our healer paladin had 20+ blazes on him at the end while the rest was trying to get the boss down (only 3 dps vs 6 makes that last part last loooong).
Anyway here is a screenshot to prove it. And again, the 3 dead guys were intended!
PS You can see my interface here. I'll make a post on that later, but if you have any questions now, just ask em.
Saturday, March 7, 2009
Frost Resistance
Synopsis
Even though druids are getting nerfs they might be favored in certain fights in Ulduar.
Judging from what I have heard form guildmates, Ulduar has bosses where you either need huge armor or huge (frost) resistance. The polar set is something that a lot of druids already have (+ ring). They have max frost resistance and more importantly they are already defense capped. With current gear it might be impossible or otherwise very difficult for other plate wearers to wear the full plate frost resistance set and be defense capped. Instead of only equipping 3 or 4 frost resistance items (and thus nerfning other stats) they also have to equip a couple of defense items nerfing them more on those fights then druids.
With new Ulduar gear that might be more attainable but this is good news for druid tanks. We are complaining about being nerfed, but SD shield should weigh up to the armor loss and is a lot better versus magic then melee, making us better on magic fights (ehrm... I was wrong, read edit). And since there is no problem for druids to wear the full frost resistance set druids might be very much favored for progress raiding.
The fear druids had to be never ever be picked as MT is canceled out since we seem to be the preferred tank on any frost damage fight (for now). For progress raiding we look to become necessary rather then a nuisance.
This is a bit strange if you look at blizzards ultimate goal to make all tanks equal. But I think it might be that blizzard has realized that since each tank kind has a different way of tanking those tiny small changes will be utilized to the max in progress raiding. So as long as we have some difference versus other tanks there will be fights where druids are preferred.
[edit]
See comments. The SD shield is only physical so that sucks ;)
[/edit]
Even though druids are getting nerfs they might be favored in certain fights in Ulduar.
Judging from what I have heard form guildmates, Ulduar has bosses where you either need huge armor or huge (frost) resistance. The polar set is something that a lot of druids already have (+ ring). They have max frost resistance and more importantly they are already defense capped. With current gear it might be impossible or otherwise very difficult for other plate wearers to wear the full plate frost resistance set and be defense capped. Instead of only equipping 3 or 4 frost resistance items (and thus nerfning other stats) they also have to equip a couple of defense items nerfing them more on those fights then druids.
With new Ulduar gear that might be more attainable but this is good news for druid tanks. We are complaining about being nerfed, but SD shield should weigh up to the armor loss and is a lot better versus magic then melee, making us better on magic fights (ehrm... I was wrong, read edit). And since there is no problem for druids to wear the full frost resistance set druids might be very much favored for progress raiding.
The fear druids had to be never ever be picked as MT is canceled out since we seem to be the preferred tank on any frost damage fight (for now). For progress raiding we look to become necessary rather then a nuisance.
This is a bit strange if you look at blizzards ultimate goal to make all tanks equal. But I think it might be that blizzard has realized that since each tank kind has a different way of tanking those tiny small changes will be utilized to the max in progress raiding. So as long as we have some difference versus other tanks there will be fights where druids are preferred.
[edit]
See comments. The SD shield is only physical so that sucks ;)
[/edit]
Friday, March 6, 2009
Tell Me When
Synopsis
For cat DPS I use the addon TellMeWhen to have a good visual of buffs and debuffs. This is on how to set it up and my experiences with it.
When I started this blog a few days ago I had a lot of thoughts about what I could write here. Karthis and I seem to inspire each other. He made a post on his user layout which I also had in mind. Since he is on that subject I'll add to that and tell you what I find so great about the addon TellMeWhen. Btw, credits on this go to a poster on Elitist Jerks who first introduced me to TellMeWhen.
First of all a screenshot.
This is the setup screen. Don't mind the things in the bottom. They are part of my own fully customised UI. The only thing important is what is above my unitframe Orange bar Monedula, which is if you must know ag_unitframes mod. It is pretty much in the center, maybe a bit too much in the center for some, but at least it is obviously there and can't be missed.
First of all it is made up out of 4 different bars. In the standard game inteface > addons > TellMeWhen you can set those up. Either enable or disable them, how many columns they have and how many rows. You can easily resize them (right bottom corner) to make them bigger or smaller.
For each button you can set the following:
I myself have it setup as follows:
4 bars:
3 columns:
You can track other peoples debuffs on target so you don't need to apply them (Mangle).
You can add any debuff you got so you can be carefull if needed.
Compared to a bar system each icon has its own place. If an icon is missing you know which one it is!
Important icons can be HUGE!
In action it would look like this:
You can see the clock timers active on the icons (for instance Savage Roar here is a 14 second buff that has 13 seconds left till it is gone). I also installed OmniCC which displays the seconds. In PTR this will become really important if you have TellMeWhen. Why I will explain later.
To continue, here you can see both Tigers Fury and Berserk are ready and I have all my debuffs active on the target. A huge Clearcasting proc int he middle (kinda over my character, but that is ok, I don't want to miss my free shred!)
As you can (not) see, there is no lacerate (to the right of berserk) active ont he target. Something that is not active will not be shown.
One more thing, some spells (as can be seen int he first screenshot) are depicted by a watch. This is a default Icon for when the icon is not available (yet). For instance Faerie Fire (Feral) is a spell you don't have in normal form and is not available. Also TellMeWhen does not know what Clearcasting looks like. However after combat it does know these things and when going back to the configuration display you will see those spells have the correct icon now.
One last thing I promised on why OmniCC will become important.
The new Glyph of Shred in PTR will add 2 seconds to mangle every time you do shred (max 3 times). So max 26 seconds. Currently if you are not using OmniCC you will see a clock timer on Rip that will have made a complete circle in 20 seconds. When you look at the buff and see it is half way you know it will take 10 seconds before it is finished.
Now the way Shred increasing Rip is implemented on PTR is this.
You do Rip. Rip lasts 20 seconds:
For cat DPS I use the addon TellMeWhen to have a good visual of buffs and debuffs. This is on how to set it up and my experiences with it.
When I started this blog a few days ago I had a lot of thoughts about what I could write here. Karthis and I seem to inspire each other. He made a post on his user layout which I also had in mind. Since he is on that subject I'll add to that and tell you what I find so great about the addon TellMeWhen. Btw, credits on this go to a poster on Elitist Jerks who first introduced me to TellMeWhen.
First of all a screenshot.
This is the setup screen. Don't mind the things in the bottom. They are part of my own fully customised UI. The only thing important is what is above my unitframe Orange bar Monedula, which is if you must know ag_unitframes mod. It is pretty much in the center, maybe a bit too much in the center for some, but at least it is obviously there and can't be missed.
First of all it is made up out of 4 different bars. In the standard game inteface > addons > TellMeWhen you can set those up. Either enable or disable them, how many columns they have and how many rows. You can easily resize them (right bottom corner) to make them bigger or smaller.
For each button you can set the following:
- The name of the spell. Note: It must be the full name (i.e. Mangle - Cat, not just mangle)
- The type of the Icon. I only use cooldown or buff/debuff.
I myself have it setup as follows:
4 bars:
3 columns:
- Tiger's Fury (cooldown: show if ready)
- Berserk (cooldown: show if ready)
- Lacerate (debuff on target, for when I tank. It shows stacks also + clock timer)
- Clearcasting (buff active on me + clock timer). This one is huge, I don't want to miss it
- Twilight Torment (debuff active on me). Also huge, I don't want to hit and stress healers unless necessary on the sarth 3d fight.
- Savage Roar (buff active on me + clock timer)
- Rake (debuff active on target + clock timer)
- Rip (debuff on target + clock timer)
- Faerie Fire (Feral) (debuff on target + clock timer, done by anyone)
- Faerie Fire (debuff on target + clock, done by anyone)
- Trauma (debuff on target, done by anyone)
- Mangle - Cat (debuff on target + clock timer, done by anyone)
- Mangle - Bear (debuff on target + clock timer, done by anyone)
You can track other peoples debuffs on target so you don't need to apply them (Mangle).
You can add any debuff you got so you can be carefull if needed.
Compared to a bar system each icon has its own place. If an icon is missing you know which one it is!
Important icons can be HUGE!
In action it would look like this:
You can see the clock timers active on the icons (for instance Savage Roar here is a 14 second buff that has 13 seconds left till it is gone). I also installed OmniCC which displays the seconds. In PTR this will become really important if you have TellMeWhen. Why I will explain later.To continue, here you can see both Tigers Fury and Berserk are ready and I have all my debuffs active on the target. A huge Clearcasting proc int he middle (kinda over my character, but that is ok, I don't want to miss my free shred!)
As you can (not) see, there is no lacerate (to the right of berserk) active ont he target. Something that is not active will not be shown.
One more thing, some spells (as can be seen int he first screenshot) are depicted by a watch. This is a default Icon for when the icon is not available (yet). For instance Faerie Fire (Feral) is a spell you don't have in normal form and is not available. Also TellMeWhen does not know what Clearcasting looks like. However after combat it does know these things and when going back to the configuration display you will see those spells have the correct icon now.
One last thing I promised on why OmniCC will become important.The new Glyph of Shred in PTR will add 2 seconds to mangle every time you do shred (max 3 times). So max 26 seconds. Currently if you are not using OmniCC you will see a clock timer on Rip that will have made a complete circle in 20 seconds. When you look at the buff and see it is half way you know it will take 10 seconds before it is finished.
Now the way Shred increasing Rip is implemented on PTR is this.
You do Rip. Rip lasts 20 seconds:
- Rip debuff 20 seconds, time left 20 seconds.
- Rip debuff 22 seconds, time left 10 seconds. <- this is not the way it works!
- Rip debuff 10 seconds, time left 10 seconds.
Thursday, March 5, 2009
Swipe swoop - another epic story
Synopsys
Swipe might be OP... Ya think?
This will be a bit more shorter then my last story. More of a joke with a great punchline.
Last night we did Naxx 25 again. As boring as it is on the spider wing our DK tank wanted to make it a... bit... more exiting. In Grand Widow Faerlinas room the trash consists of 4 or 5 packs of 10 caster trash and a pack of about 15 small spider. So he pulled them all!
I was fully cat on this run and I had planned on swiping these mobs. I must say I was lucky I was one of the last to die (how I managed to live that long, I have no idea). Anyway I had SR up the whole time (gotten myself a 34 sec buff on a big spider before that) but I did not use Berserk which would have meant even more dps.
On that trash on damage done I (Monedula) am just a bit over our DK tank, but just look at the DPS.
17k DPS. So swipe might be a wee bit OP!
Swipe might be OP... Ya think?
This will be a bit more shorter then my last story. More of a joke with a great punchline.
Last night we did Naxx 25 again. As boring as it is on the spider wing our DK tank wanted to make it a... bit... more exiting. In Grand Widow Faerlinas room the trash consists of 4 or 5 packs of 10 caster trash and a pack of about 15 small spider. So he pulled them all!
I was fully cat on this run and I had planned on swiping these mobs. I must say I was lucky I was one of the last to die (how I managed to live that long, I have no idea). Anyway I had SR up the whole time (gotten myself a 34 sec buff on a big spider before that) but I did not use Berserk which would have meant even more dps.
On that trash on damage done I (Monedula) am just a bit over our DK tank, but just look at the DPS.
17k DPS. So swipe might be a wee bit OP!
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
Here I am to save the day - an epic story
Synopsis
A story about a disastrous battle versus Kel'Thuzad whit a happy ending; starring Monedula.
Ok, time for a first druid post. Not as much a post about tanking or dps, theorycrafting or mechanics, but a story of a fight verses Kel'Thuzad on Naxxramas 25 man. that happened about a week ago.
First of all you must know that our tactic on Kel'Thuzad makes use of 3 tanks. One maintank, and 2 offtanks. Could be done with 1 offtank, but having 2 offtanks means, first of all, it is easier to pick up the 4 scarab-like adds and thus less raid damage. Second, tanks are melee and that would endanger the maintank and other melee on Kel'Thuzad in case of a frostblast. We don't need the extra dps that much either. Third, it is easier to heal 2 tanks then 1 getting double damage.
My roll was that of an offtank. A Deathknight was the maintank. A paladin was the other offtank. We started out fine but at 50% something went wrong. I don't know what exactly but our Deathknight maintank died. Me and the Paladin both went to get Kel'Thuzad and the Paladin won. So I went to give a combat ress to the Deathknight. Both me and the Deathknight went back to the entrance of the chamber waiting for the adds.
The adds came. I was comfortably tanking 2 of them and the same goes for the Deathknight. Again however something went wrong. This was a real disastrous try. Definitely the worst one since we first cleared Naxxramas. What exactly went wrong, I again don't know but the Paladin died. Kel'Thuzad had no tank. Again, now dragging the scarab adds, me and the deathknight raced for Kel'Thuzad. Again I lost, that is to say, the Deathknight taunted first.
Now I realized we had a Deathknight without any buffs tanking 2 adds and Kel'Thuzad. He is very well geared but I would rather have me tanking all the adds then have those on our Deathknight. So I started taunting the adds from the Deathknight. Being in a corner, to prevent people dying from frostblast that might land on me, was not that easy. I got one and hit him a few times. That time the Deathknight died again. Disaster!
Now we had Kel'Thuzad focussing on healers and dps and also a scarab around. At this point I forgot I had an aoe taunt ability (which is not something you use often) and I single target taunted Kel'Thuzad. Went to tank him and started looking for the loose scarab. Once I had targetted him I saw him making a pretty angel out of a holy priest and then I taunted him and he came to me.
I was swiping to get overall agro, and then targetted Kel'Thuzad again. I realized he was out of range and I had lost agro. Luckily he had targeted a rogue who for a few moments was evasion tanking Kel'Thuzad. Taunted again and started swiping and throwing everything at them.
So there I was, Kel'thusad at 20% health with him hitting me, aided by his 4 scarab adds. Half the raid was lying dead on the floor. I used every cooldown I had and I am glad our healers are sublime! Finally the evil bastard died!
It was the most fun I could ever have on what would have otherwise been a pretty boring fight. Everyone else hated it, I loved it! I Love tanking!
A story about a disastrous battle versus Kel'Thuzad whit a happy ending; starring Monedula.
Ok, time for a first druid post. Not as much a post about tanking or dps, theorycrafting or mechanics, but a story of a fight verses Kel'Thuzad on Naxxramas 25 man. that happened about a week ago.
First of all you must know that our tactic on Kel'Thuzad makes use of 3 tanks. One maintank, and 2 offtanks. Could be done with 1 offtank, but having 2 offtanks means, first of all, it is easier to pick up the 4 scarab-like adds and thus less raid damage. Second, tanks are melee and that would endanger the maintank and other melee on Kel'Thuzad in case of a frostblast. We don't need the extra dps that much either. Third, it is easier to heal 2 tanks then 1 getting double damage.
My roll was that of an offtank. A Deathknight was the maintank. A paladin was the other offtank. We started out fine but at 50% something went wrong. I don't know what exactly but our Deathknight maintank died. Me and the Paladin both went to get Kel'Thuzad and the Paladin won. So I went to give a combat ress to the Deathknight. Both me and the Deathknight went back to the entrance of the chamber waiting for the adds.
The adds came. I was comfortably tanking 2 of them and the same goes for the Deathknight. Again however something went wrong. This was a real disastrous try. Definitely the worst one since we first cleared Naxxramas. What exactly went wrong, I again don't know but the Paladin died. Kel'Thuzad had no tank. Again, now dragging the scarab adds, me and the deathknight raced for Kel'Thuzad. Again I lost, that is to say, the Deathknight taunted first.
Now I realized we had a Deathknight without any buffs tanking 2 adds and Kel'Thuzad. He is very well geared but I would rather have me tanking all the adds then have those on our Deathknight. So I started taunting the adds from the Deathknight. Being in a corner, to prevent people dying from frostblast that might land on me, was not that easy. I got one and hit him a few times. That time the Deathknight died again. Disaster!
Now we had Kel'Thuzad focussing on healers and dps and also a scarab around. At this point I forgot I had an aoe taunt ability (which is not something you use often) and I single target taunted Kel'Thuzad. Went to tank him and started looking for the loose scarab. Once I had targetted him I saw him making a pretty angel out of a holy priest and then I taunted him and he came to me.
I was swiping to get overall agro, and then targetted Kel'Thuzad again. I realized he was out of range and I had lost agro. Luckily he had targeted a rogue who for a few moments was evasion tanking Kel'Thuzad. Taunted again and started swiping and throwing everything at them.
So there I was, Kel'thusad at 20% health with him hitting me, aided by his 4 scarab adds. Half the raid was lying dead on the floor. I used every cooldown I had and I am glad our healers are sublime! Finally the evil bastard died!
It was the most fun I could ever have on what would have otherwise been a pretty boring fight. Everyone else hated it, I loved it! I Love tanking!
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