3.1 news

Lifebloom: Mana cost of all ranks doubled. When Lifebloom blooms or is dispelled, it now refunds half the base mana cost of the spell per application of Lifebloom, and the heal effect is multiplied by the number of applications.


Say WHAT?

What about those of us who keep it running on a target without letting it bloom? That's an awful lot of mana being lost!

Well that explains it

So on Friday my raid group and I were hoping to finish up Naxx. Our goal was to do the Death Knight, Plague, and Frostwyrm quarters in 3 hours so we could dedicate Monday to the three smaller raids (OS, VoA and EoE). So we get a late start because the OT is running late. Everyone finally gets into Naxx and gets buffed up and there's a ready check. Everyone but a rogue is ready so we decide to start clearing trash in the DK wing.

And we wipe.

We laughed it up, claiming the importance of that last rogue, and saying we'd gotten our only wipe out of the way for the evening. Then we start doing trash again, and it's INTENSE. I'm talking two-tranquilities-a-pull, tank-is-swearing-at-me intense. Everyone starts getting frustrated when we wipe again. Sloppy pulling? People not paying attention? We're not sure what it is, but we've now wasted an hour (tank was half an hour late, and we've been struggling with the trash for almost half an hour).

So we finally make it through the first few pulls of the DK wing and we make it to the room with the little skeletons who attack you. Skeletons our tank usually one-shots. Skeletons that are now taking several hits to bring down.

A thought occurs to me, and I check the dungeon difficulty.

Sure enough, it's set on Heroic.

I announce this to the Vent channel to much laughter, and we all run out (laughing again at the giant skull on the Naxx portal). Everyone starts mentioning that they were suspicious- that there were respawns in quarters we had already finished, that the groups for pulling seemed bigger, etc etc. All signs pointed to it being on heroic, but it took forever for any of us to notice.

So it turns out you can 10 man some of the trash in 25-man Naxx if you don't mind the frustration of it all.


Even though we ended up running about an hour later than we usually do, we ended up clearing the place for a second time! Go team! I made out rather well from it, picking up my T7 shoulders off of Loatheb and got enough badges in the run to afford my T7 gloves (I already had my chest, so now I'm up to 3 pieces).


I also got the Charmed Cierge from the Four Horsemen, a new staff. The other resto druid already had it so I got it de facto, though I'm still not sure it's better than my previous combo, the war mace from heroic Nexus with an offhand. The mace/offhand combo has maybe 50 more SP, while the staff has about 30 more Mp5.

I'll have to fiddle around a little bit to see which ends up being the most effective. As for now, I just think it's funny that I'm carrying a candelabra around with me.

Photographic Evidence

Got a screenshot of the final Naxx clear, woot!



That's me on the throne shooting my fireworks at the rest of the group. :)

The other tree is not in tree form, he's the druid you can see front and center. If you look realllly closely you can see the bushiness of my paladin's beard next to the hunter's pet!

Yeah, okay, it's really zoomed out but the other one I had you can clearly read people's names, and I don't have my graphics software on this comp to blur them out, lol. So enjoy the fireworks!

Naxx Cleared! (now with less loot drama)

Yup, the raid group and I brought Kel'Thuzad down tonight. It only took two tries (first time was a bit sloppy; dps let some banshees toss us about a bit and it was not good). Go team! (I had lots of fireworks to spare when we did, it was awesome.)

An otherwise good experience was somewhat tainted by the loot distribution. The tier 7 helm piece for Pallies and Priests (and, warriors I think?) dropped. Now, we have 3 paladins: two tanks and a ret. They are all core members of the raid team, and have been raiding with us three days a week every week since we started.

Then, we have a mage DPS sub who comes with us sometimes, when she feels like it. She has been very vocal about being a sub and not wanting to commit full time to the team. Which is fine, whatever. Well, her priest alt dinged 80 a day or two ago so she decided she should get to bring the priest to kill Kel'Thuzad, even though she was undergeared and hadn't been running the instance with us all along.

And then she rolls on the helm token.

And then she wins it, after having to do a tie breaker with our main tank. :o

Edit:

Okay, having slept on it and thought about it for a while, I've decided that I was more frustrated in an "AW DANG" way for the pallies than I was in a "this sucks" way. We are a casual raiding guild, and while the loot rules for the guild state that subs and alts should get to roll only after mains, we certainly don't follow DKP or anything like that. There's always next week! I think I got a little caught up in all the effort that had gone into getting to Kethzy in the last month.

Maybe she will gear up her priest and I will be able to go back to pew-pewing as a moonkin. :D

Anyway, the good thing about being on a Monday/Tuesday raid schedule is that maybe we will give Malygos a try tonight, which should be super fun but I have a feeling it will take us a few tries to get the hang of it. :)

3.0.8

So I've downloaded and installed the patch, just waiting for the servers to come back online...

Is it just me or was the whole "you can turn in Relics of Ulduar for rep" thing not mentioned in the update?

Le sigh.

EDIT: Looks like you can turn them in, to the Hodir Quartermaster, as promised. 10 relics = 250 rep.


EDIT II: Not to sound bitter or anything, but does anyone else's game look like UTTER CRAP now that the patch has gone live? Everything is swathed in heavy, heavy fog on my computer, greyed and washed out. Icky.

An interlude: Heroic Old Kingdom

So today's daily was Ahn'kahet: The Old Kingdom. Now, I've done this one on heroic before, but it was a while ago, and with a pug. This time it was with my guild, and let's just say two hours after starting we decided to give up.

Here's why.

Our party was myself, my pally tank (that's "my" in the metaphorical possessive way, not the literal posessive way: I wasn't hotboxing), a mage, a hunter, and an elemental shammy.

Now, this is half of my raid team. We are pretty well geared.

And it was a wipe fest. Wipe after wipe after wipe. I don't know if it was an off night for us all or what, but we struggled. Took a break part way through to repair. Then fought our way to the last boss. Now, I love Herald Volazj's gimmick. He phases everyone in the party and makes everyone fight a clone of the whole party, by themselves. I had a BLAST doing this on normal when I was balance. I didn't have too much trouble the first time I did it on heroic as a tree. But tonight? Tonight we failed.

I never died in the insanity. It's hard to kill a tree. My party members soon discovered this as well: they could not kill my clone.

Now, I'm not that awesome. The trouble was that the game was turning our elemental shaman into a healer as well. So everyone had to deal with two healers, one of whom was wearing plate.

I consider this cheating.

I also consider the fact that apparently our evil clones can use any ability they want without the proper cool down cheating as well. Well sure, it's supposed to be a delusion, but c'mon now!

We wiped.

The tank suggested everyone take their weapon off right before then insantity then put it back on again.

This didn't prevent the shaman and tree from healing.

We wiped.

Then I thought I would be clever and go into cat form right before the insanity so I couldn't heal.

We wiped.

I asked if the cat form had worked: they replied yes, I was indeed a kitty in their insanity, but no, it didn't work. I could cast heals just fine as a cat. OMG HAX!11! Thank GOD I hadn't turned into a bear instead!

My argument here is that if I can't change away from resto for the fight then the shaman shouldn't be forced to change into resto for the fight.

So at this point we were thinking of giving up. It was getting late and people had work in the morning. My only last suggestion was to have the shammy tank and let him die, then do the insanity, and battle res him after, but people were too frustrated to give it another go when we discovered respawns at the beginning of the instance.

Plus, the clone of the dead shammy would probably just self-res anyway.

Sigh.

Beginner's Guide to Wrath raiding part III: Obsidian Sanctum

Aaaaand moving onwards.

Next I shall talk about Obsidian Sanctum, the dragon-tastic raid that makes you wonder why the other multi-coloured dragonflights haven't gotten their act together and actually DONE something about the ebil dragons.

Sersiouly, there's a ton of them, and Sartharion is essentially chilling in their basement.

Moving on.

The Obsidian Sanctum

Location: Wyrmrest Temple
In central southern Dragonblight, in the bottom floor of Wyrmrest Temple. There is a summoning stone to get here, and also a flight path that leads right to the temple. There are several portals down there, go through the one WITHOUT the big forboding zappy X and angry guards.

General Info:
There's only one boss here too, but unlike VoA, mingled amongst the trash there are some mini-bosses as well, that you can kill if you like, or leave living for an achievement and more loot (I have not tried this yet, but I have a feeling its a bit more for those who are reading my "Advanced Guide to Wrath raiding," which is a pretty neat accomplishment considering they'd have to go into the future to read that).

You may want to use some CC on the trash pulls here, as they do hit pretty hard. Also, some of them spawn this red globes that shoots lightning. You do not want to be near the lightning. Unless you enjoy the pain. You can move away from it to break the contact, but be wary of moving too far from the group.

The room is set up with a large area in the middle where Sartharion is, and an outer ring that you can go around in either direction.

Required tanks: 2
Required classes: none
Helpful resistences: fire (duh, he's a dragon), shadow (the dot inside the twilight portals is shadow)
Total Badges: 4-9 (depending on if you get the bag of spoils)

The Twilight Drakes
In clearing the area around Sartharion's platform, you will encounter three mini-bosses, the twilight drakes. Two of them are identical: Vesperon and Shadron, each of whom will be either the first or the last of the three you fight, depending on if you go clockwise or counterclockwise. These guys are pretty easy: they start out as a tank and spank, but will periodically spawn a portal. On the other side of the portal is a mini-mini boss. Usually what we do is when the portal spawns everyone but the main tank and one healer goes through the portal and takes down the new add. You can't ignore these adds because while the portal is open the Twilight Drake is almost invincible. The reason you need to take a healer into the portal is while you're in the twilight realm everyone takes damage over time which will need to be healed.

But it's really not that bad. A word of advice: make sure your off-tank goes into the portal first. One suggestion is to have the OT call out over vent when he is through. If you don't use vent, put a mark on the OT so you can see when he is through. Other than that, just bring everything down quick. You will get a badge, but no gear.

The other Twilight Drake is Tenebron, who is a little different than his brotha's. He is also a tank and spank and also summons a portal, but on the other side of his portal there are eggs. You can go into the portal and kill the eggs if you want. If you don't, the eggs will hatch and little dragon adds will come through the portal and attack you. If you have a lot of AoE, you might want to skip going into the portal for this one. Even with 8 people (so only 4 dps) we managed these hatchlings: we just had three consecrate auras hold and damage them while the frost mage rained frost. It works.

If you don't have enough AoE (and you will find out if you get overwhlemed by adds) then by all means go through the portal and kill the eggs. Otherwise Tenebron is just the same as the other drakes and will drop a badge when he dies.

Sartharion
2.5 million HP on normal

So once you get all the trash and the mini-bosses down, you will be back where you started at the front door and all you will have left is Sartharion, the big dragon daddy.

To me, this is a fight about dps skill and also good strategy. Although I've never read this online, he DOES have somewhat of an enrage. He summons fire elementals throughout the fight, which the offtank will have to pick up. However, when he is around 10%, he summons a LOT of elementals all at once, so you will have to hurry and burn down his HP because there are probably too many elementals at this point to be handled well.

So that's one bit of the strategy: adds. Have an offtank, then have him take the adds.

The second bit of strategy is the flame walls. If you have never done this fight before, I tell you this: no amount of reading strategy online, no amount of diagrams or pictures can adaquately prepare you for this fight. It's okay if you get hit by the walls the first few times. Expect to. Expect your group, if the whole group has not done this before, to maybe wipe once or twice. It's okay.

Once you get the hang of the walls, it's a piece of cake.

Essentially, every 30 seconds Sartharion makes a wall of flame come across the area you fight him on. Some times it comes from the left, some times it comes from the right. Depending on which side it comes from, there are holes in different areas. Stand in the holes and you won't take damage.

If you are doing this for the first time, when the emote pops up that the fire is churning, start looking around WITH YOUR MOUSE. Simply using keys to turn your character around is not fast enough. Look around with your mouse until you see the wall. You will see a gap, go run to the gap! There, you did it! Super!

Once you get the hang of it, you will realize that there are pretty much two places where there could be gaps, one if the wall is coming from the left, one if it is coming to the right. If you are ranged or heals, I recommend standing with your back to one of these gaps. Then, if the wall is coming from behind you (aka the emote happens and you don't see a wall) then you are safe. If it is coming from in front of you, you will have to move, but you will easily be able to see the gap.

So mind the gap, as the British say, and you should be in good shape.

Also, don't be too worried if you lose a couple of dps. We've done this with a 9-man group, and also done it with a full group with a couple of dead dps, and were fine both times. If you lose one of your top dps and have a battle res, use your discretion. Maybe you want to res that person. (All I know is that my ghetto battle rez* has been hotfixed and I am sad. :( ).

Conclusion:

So it takes a little practice, but it's not that bad. Once you get the hang of it and can do it without any wipes, it's a pretty quick fight. Including all the trash and mini-bosses and whatnot, it currently takes my group around 40 minutes to do this (but we've never done the trash with a full 10 man group, so YMMV).

I highly recommend this raid because of the AWESOME LOOT he drops. Sartharion drops five things: a badge, a tier 7 GLOVE token, another piece of epic gear from his loot table, a bag containing 5 more badges and some gold, and a 22 slot bag all to be rolled on. So far in 2 kills I've only gotten the 22 slot bag from him, but I love it. I can't wait for the patch to come out so I can have some Frostweave bags (the mats to make imbued frostweave are going down in the next patch).

So yeah, I'm a big fan of this raid. If only Sartharion would drop some druid tier gear, then I'd really be happy!





*Ghetto Battle Res: I like to think I invented this. It's the practice of a Night Elf druid using Shadowmeld to get out of combat and then using her regular res to revive a fallen comrade even during a battle. I could do this for a good long time after Wrath came out, but it has recently been fixed, I think, because now as soon as I gain combat status again the res cancels. :(

Beginner's Guide to Wrath raiding part II: Vault of Archavon

Okay, so here we go! I'll talk about the Vault of Archavon first, because it is short and easy. :)

Vault of Archavon

Location: Wintergrasp Fortress
You must have control of Wintergrasp to do this raid. To get in, run into the fortress and take the portal to the waiting room. There is no summoning stone. There's also no flight path into Wintergrasp (only out), but you can fly in over the mountains with a mount, or take the portal in from the Silver Enclave in Dalaran.

If you want to pug this instance, a great time to do it is right after a Wintergrasp victory. There will be plenty of groups doing both the 10-man version and the 25-man version.

General Info:
This raid has only one boss. There's a little bit of trash leading up to him, but nothing spectacular. You can do the trash with one tank and less than a full group of DPS.

Tanks required: 2
Specific classes required: none
Helpful resistences: Nature (the boss's AoE cloud does nature damage)
Total badges: 1


Archavon the Stone Watcher
2.3 million HP on normal

I'd say there are two components to Archavon: two well-coordinated tanks and some decent dps.

The reason that you will need 2 tanks is that Archavon will occasionally lunge for one of the tanks (that's the emote he uses), pick the tank up, and use him as a weapon. When this happens the other tank will need to quickly gain threat and pick him up. It's not too bad if you watch out for the emote and grab him quick.

The reason you need decent DPS is that Archavon has a FIVE MINUTE enrage timer. After five minutes has passed, he will enrage and start doing massive damage. You can surive for a little while, but the group will wipe. So get him down before then.

Other than this, there are really only two things for DPS or healers to watch out for: he will throw spikes at a random player. That player should hold still, because if he runs, the spikes will follow him and do damage to more people. They don't do terrible damage; it's easy to heal through. The other thing he does is lunge at a random player and put an AoE cloud down. Stay out of the cloud (good advice for almost any raid).

Conclusion: If you have the DPS, this is a pretty easy fight. From the time everyone gets in 'til the loot is handed out, the whole thing takes anywhere from 10-15 minutes without a wipe. It's an easy badge, plus he drops two random epics: any random T7 piece or random season 5 PvP.

The only downside to his loot is that he drops the T7 item, not the token, so it will be class and spec specific, so it is possible that he will drop an item no one in your group can use. These items cannot be disenchanted or sold to a vendor, so if no one needs it, it is a waste (I have a T7 warlock glove in my bank right now, lol). Also, there's a chance that he will drop PvP gear, so if no one in your group does PvP, that would be a loss too. But the whole thing is so quick that even if you don't get any gear out of it, it's still a 10-minute badge and a good time.

Weekly Raid Roundup (aka a beginner's guide to entry-level Wrath raiding, part I)

Hello hello!

Monday marked the end of the first week of raiding for my new team. All in all, it was a good week- we killed some bosses, got some gear, and really learned a lot. Here's what went down.

Our group, in case you are curious, consists of two Paladin tanks (both of which are crit capped, and around 25k health and maybe 26k defense), six DPS: two rogues (one rather well-geared and one slightly less so), my Ret Pally sister, a frost mage, an unholy death knight, and an elemental shaman. We also have two druid healers! Go team tree! When we started I was a bit more geared than my counterpart, but we've both gotten some fabulous upgrades since then and are about on par with each other.

On our first Monday (we are a monday/tuesday raid schedule) we decided to to Vault of Archavon (VoA) and Obsidian Sanctum (OS) because we didn't want to start Naxx and have it reset the next morning. We got VoA after one wipe, and tried a few times on OS without luck and eventually gave up. On Tuesday we did OS successfully, as well as the first two bosses in the Arachnid quarter of Naxx. We got together on Friday for another stab at OS (got it on the first try, it's really just a matter of learning how to manage the flame waves) and brought Patchwerk and Noth down, and gave Heigan a try. After some struggle this past Monday we finally finished the Arachnid and Plague quarters.

So everything reset Tuesday morning and on Tuesday night we did OS again (eight-manning the drakes and nine-manning the boss) and completed the Plague quarter in Naxx again.

I've learned a lot about these raids in giving them a try (or in some cases, try after try after try) this past week. I'd seen a lot of videos on Tankspot, but there's a huge difference between seeing the video and actually doing it. So I thought I'd do a little roundup of some observations I've made, maybe it will be useful!

I think I'll break it down into a few posts so it will be manageable. Next I'll put together my thoughts on the two smaller raids, OS and VoA.

In which the author has been a bad blogger (now with more guild drama!)

Ahoy hoy radio silence!

I am not dead, just a bad blogger. I've been busy with life and finals and holidays and whatnot, and too busy having fun with Wrath to sit down and think about it too much!

Plus, I've officially respecced resto now (perhaps I should rename the blog SPAM LAFFBL00M?), so now I'm too busy being stressed (don'tletthetankdiedon'tletthetankdiedon'tletthetankdiedon'tletthetankdiedon'tletthetankdie) to have fun and exciting things to post about.

How am I doing? Pretty good. How are you? I'm 80 now, and raiding. The raiding team I'm on has done VoA and is working on Naxx and OS (we only officially started January 5th). We used to be the second raiding team in my guild but there has been an infection of TEH DRAMAZ in my guild! It used to be run by two co-leaders. We had one core raiding team and were just about to start running our second when one of the leaders decided to bail and take his raiding team (and all of their alts, which is around 50 characters, probably 4/5ths of those at 80) with him. Of course this led to some more people following that leader, others leaving out of fear of the guild falling apart (which is a counterproductive way to deal with that fear), and still others just leaving for the heck of it. So now we're down to one 10-man raiding team (on the plus side now I am on TEAM 1 instead of team 2, lol), which sets us back a bit. We'd already started doing some 25-man content, which we're pretty much only going to be able to do if we pug now, because we don't really have enough geared members any more- le sigh.

All in all we lost 100 characters (probably around 25 actual players plus their alts) so we're down to a little over 200 members. There are a couple of guilds we'd been in talks with to merge, so maybe that will happen.

Until then I'll be happy raiding 3 or 4 nights a week, and having fun with 10-man content. Hopefully we'll have Kel'Thuzad down by this or next monday. We'll see!



And expect some more posts soon, I have a few things I want to talk about and stories I want to share.

Until then, ta!