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Merry Christmas everyone!
I hope you all enjoy the Holidays.
Release day! The Key to Reality is now available
9 months ago
Friday, December 25, 2009
Friday, December 18, 2009
Icecrown Citadel: The Lower Spire Part I
It was finally time to enter Icecrown Citadel, the Lich King's cosy little home. During our visit, we will meet some of the King's friendly house mates, but instead of shaking their hands and small talk about the weather and the financial crisis, we will bash their heads in and rob them of shiny purples. That's the price you have to pay when you chose to hang out with the wrong people.The first thing everybody does when zoning in is probably to run around and check the Ashen Verdict quartermaster and the armor vendor of your class. Or maybe you are one of those who prefer to /dance with Tirion Fordring while waiting for the rest of the raid to show up.
You can see the first boss of the instance, Lord Marrowgar, all the way from the entrance, but there are some trash to handle before you reach him.
Most of this trash can be aoed down. Things to look out for is that the skeleton casters should be faced away from the raid since they cast an ice spike spell that hits everybody in its way. The big insect mobs web wraps people, which can be annoying. And a couple of BIG skeletons will wake up when people step on hidden traps on the floor. Those big guys need to be tanked faced away from the raid, since they have a nasty cleave. They also have an aoe spell interrupt that especially healers need to be aware of.
It's pretty likely that raids will wipe on this trash once or twice the first time they enter the instance. Don't despair. It's the hardest trash in the entire wing.
Lord Marrowgar
Lord Marrowgar is the first boss in Icecrown Citadel. He's a big boney guy who likes to take a spin on the dance floor. He also impales people.This is a pretty easy fight. The general rules of raiding apply: Don't stand in fire, don't stand close to a mob that is whirlwinding, and free people who are impaled. We have all done this kind of fight before.
Things to look out for:
- Bone Storm - this is his whirlwind. When he starts whirlwinding, just run away to make the healers' job easier.
- Bone Spike Graveyard - impales people, and damage them for 10% of their health every second for 5 seconds or until the bone spike is killed. Make sure to kill these spikes as soon as possible.
- Coldflame - a line of fire on the floor. Move out of it, please.
- Saber lash - stack the tanks on top of eachother to split the damage of this attack, because it hurts.
Lady Deathwhisper
The second boss in The Lower Spire is Lady Deathwhisper. She has several male admirers who will spawn in the first phase of the fight, when your raid is trying to break down her defenses.
The challenge in this fight is to control the adds. In the first phase she is protected by a mana shield that would make any mage green of envy. This shield needs to be burned down. Seven adds will spawn and needs to be taken care of. During the fight, they might change form, to be more powerful, and also immune to either physical or magical damage. As a tank, make sure to pick up the fanatics before they kill a healer.
Things to look out for in phase 1:
Things to look out for in phase 2:
The challenge in this fight is to control the adds. In the first phase she is protected by a mana shield that would make any mage green of envy. This shield needs to be burned down. Seven adds will spawn and needs to be taken care of. During the fight, they might change form, to be more powerful, and also immune to either physical or magical damage. As a tank, make sure to pick up the fanatics before they kill a healer.
Things to look out for in phase 1:
- Death and Decay - it's green and it's big. Don't stand in it.
- Dominate Mind - she mind controls raid members. Make sure to CC them before they kill a healer.
- Empowered Adherents do aoe damage and should be killed fast.
- Deformed Fanatics hurt a lot and should be kited. Do not try to tank these guys.
Things to look out for in phase 2:
- Frostbolt - hurts a lot and needs to be interrupted.
- Vengeful Shades - adds that hunt a player. If the player is reached, the shade will explode and do loads of aoe damage.
- Touch of Insignificance - stacking debuff that reduces threat generation by 20% per stack. Due to this, two tanks need to switch tanking her when the stacks are starting to hurt the current tank's threat.
There are two more encounters in The Lower Spire. I'll get to them in my next post.
Thursday, December 10, 2009
Patch 3.3: First Impressions
I was prepared for the worst after hearing stories about crashing servers and immense latencies, but my patch day experience was only spoiled by one disconnect, and I wasn't lagging at all.
The first thing I did was to respec. I moved my three "filler points" in the prot tree from Reckoning and put them in Divine Sacrifice and Divine Guardian. Otherwise my spec stays the same as before.
I managed to do my cooking daily before someone in the guild needed a tank for the new heroics. I hadn't read much about the instances, and didn't know much more than that they were three and that we were supposed to run behind Jaina's skinny behind most of the time. Even though we had a full group, we used the Dungeon Finder feature to be teleported to the instance.
Even though I love the efficiency of being teleported straight to any instance, it kind of takes away the feeling of being part of a "big" world. When you had to fly to every instance, it gave you a feeling that you actually had to travel a distance from your safe haven to get to the place where the vile monsters rip brave adventurers to small pieces. Now you can spend all your time in Dalaran, just waiting for a teleport to the other side of the world (literally), and when you are done, you will be safe back at the inn, with a barmaid willing to please just within arm's reach.
Why would I want a fancy flying mount if I won't be travelling anywhere?
Anyhow, we got the the first instance, went inside, and started pulling. After a couple of groups, I realized that the healer had been AFK since we zoned in, so I took a break and drank some mana tea. Beware of the OOM monster when you tank these instances!
As soon as the healer came back, I pulled a new group, and we wiped. It was a bit surprising to be honest, but shit does happen. After that, we burned through all three instances up to the Lich King himself.
Spoiler alert: The Lich King fight consists of the entire group running away like little girls.
On the last ice wall, I managed to lose our healer to a stray mob, and after that, the Lich King caught up with me and killed me. The rest of the group ran away to safety, and got their heroic achievements, while me and the healer got nada. So I guess I have to run the last instance again just for the achievement...
Even though I didn't lag or disconnect much, there was a VERY annoying thing that screwed up my tanking: All mobs wanted to run through me and fight me from behind. It didn't matter how I pulled, the same thing happened all the time. So I had to constantly move around while tanking, which my rogue and ret pally companions didn't enjoy much. I really hope this is a bug, because it made tanking alot harder and very annoying. I can't even imagine how nasty tanking Anub'arak's adds on heroic will be if they keep running through you and attack you from behind...
After the heroics, I went to the new 25-man raid. I'll get back to that one in a later post.
So far, I'm impressed with the patch. The new dungeons are cool (at least the first time you run them), the Dungeon Finder tool seems nice, and the new raid instance is sexy. My first impression of the patch is that it's much better than the disappointing 3.2 patch. But it's only been one day, so I'll probably soon find something to complain about...
The first thing I did was to respec. I moved my three "filler points" in the prot tree from Reckoning and put them in Divine Sacrifice and Divine Guardian. Otherwise my spec stays the same as before.
I managed to do my cooking daily before someone in the guild needed a tank for the new heroics. I hadn't read much about the instances, and didn't know much more than that they were three and that we were supposed to run behind Jaina's skinny behind most of the time. Even though we had a full group, we used the Dungeon Finder feature to be teleported to the instance.
Even though I love the efficiency of being teleported straight to any instance, it kind of takes away the feeling of being part of a "big" world. When you had to fly to every instance, it gave you a feeling that you actually had to travel a distance from your safe haven to get to the place where the vile monsters rip brave adventurers to small pieces. Now you can spend all your time in Dalaran, just waiting for a teleport to the other side of the world (literally), and when you are done, you will be safe back at the inn, with a barmaid willing to please just within arm's reach.
Why would I want a fancy flying mount if I won't be travelling anywhere?
Anyhow, we got the the first instance, went inside, and started pulling. After a couple of groups, I realized that the healer had been AFK since we zoned in, so I took a break and drank some mana tea. Beware of the OOM monster when you tank these instances!
As soon as the healer came back, I pulled a new group, and we wiped. It was a bit surprising to be honest, but shit does happen. After that, we burned through all three instances up to the Lich King himself.
Spoiler alert: The Lich King fight consists of the entire group running away like little girls.
On the last ice wall, I managed to lose our healer to a stray mob, and after that, the Lich King caught up with me and killed me. The rest of the group ran away to safety, and got their heroic achievements, while me and the healer got nada. So I guess I have to run the last instance again just for the achievement...
Even though I didn't lag or disconnect much, there was a VERY annoying thing that screwed up my tanking: All mobs wanted to run through me and fight me from behind. It didn't matter how I pulled, the same thing happened all the time. So I had to constantly move around while tanking, which my rogue and ret pally companions didn't enjoy much. I really hope this is a bug, because it made tanking alot harder and very annoying. I can't even imagine how nasty tanking Anub'arak's adds on heroic will be if they keep running through you and attack you from behind...
After the heroics, I went to the new 25-man raid. I'll get back to that one in a later post.
So far, I'm impressed with the patch. The new dungeons are cool (at least the first time you run them), the Dungeon Finder tool seems nice, and the new raid instance is sexy. My first impression of the patch is that it's much better than the disappointing 3.2 patch. But it's only been one day, so I'll probably soon find something to complain about...
Monday, December 7, 2009
Weekly Raid Rant
Welcome to the Weekly Raid Rant. In this edition, we will look at the raids that my restoration shaman participated in this week.
First off was a PUG trip to Vault of Archavon (25). The good thing was that we one-shotted all the bosses in there. The bad thing was that Koralon only dropped hunter loot, and we didn't bring any hunters. As usual, nobody needed anything from Archavon.
Blizzard really need to split this raid instance into three (or four, after the next patch) individual instances. The people who are geared enough to down Koralon don't need anything from Archavon, and the people who need loot from Archavon don't have good enough gear to down Koralon. This will get even worse when Blizzard adds the fourth boss in here. It's insane to have a raid instance with bosses from four different Tier levels. It's almost like putting Yogg-Saron, Anub'arak, and Arthas in Naxxramas, next to Kel'Thuzad...
The next raid for my brave healer was Trial of the Crusader (25) with the guild's second group. This group consists of alts and players who are not picked in our "main" raid group. For the second week in a row, this group failed to kill Anub'arak. Yes, you read it right: A guild ToC run that fails to kill Anub'arak two weeks in a row.
People played like morons. Not enough dps on snobolds, mistresses, fel infernals, burrowers, scarabs, and valkyrs' shields. No cc or interrupts on Faction Champions. By shear brute force (thanks to several people actually out-gearing the place) we reached Anub'arak with only one wipe. We survived TWO missed stuns on Icehowl, several people getting killed by infernals on Jaraxxus, and a 15 minute long Faction Champions fight. The wipe came at Twin Valkyrs when they managed to heal themselves twice, and we hit the enrage timer.
I've noticed that people are getting sloppier every week when we raid in this group. Instead of improving from doing the fights over and over, people instead start making stupid mistakes and taking stupid risks. As a healer, the only thing you can do is heal your brains out and scream out in agony.
When the raid was called after just one wipe on Anub'arak (since it was obvious it wasn't worth continuing) I needed to use all that adrenaline I pumped into my system, so I went into a PUG Onyxia (25).
This PUG had all a normal Onyxia PUG has: An arms warrior doing 600 dps. A feral druid doing barely 1k dps. Mages that die immediately when the whelps come. Melee that don't run out of fire novas. And two holy paladins that healed LESS than the paladin tank did with his Judgement of Light. After a wipe, we downed the dragon on the second attempt. I ended up doing more than 30% of the total healing in the raid.
The worst healers in PUGs always seem to be paladins these days. Way too often I see paladin healers only spamming Flash of Light and not using Beacon of Light. They end up dead last on the healing meter, even when they are tank healing, and they always do less than 2k hps. Of course there are good paladin healers out there, and they usually blow the other healers away when using their spells in the right way, but they, sadly, seem to be the minority. At least in the PUGs I end up in.
Well, that's the end of this edition of the Weekly Raid Rant. I'm crossing my fingers for a patch release this week. I need new content to rant about.
First off was a PUG trip to Vault of Archavon (25). The good thing was that we one-shotted all the bosses in there. The bad thing was that Koralon only dropped hunter loot, and we didn't bring any hunters. As usual, nobody needed anything from Archavon.
Blizzard really need to split this raid instance into three (or four, after the next patch) individual instances. The people who are geared enough to down Koralon don't need anything from Archavon, and the people who need loot from Archavon don't have good enough gear to down Koralon. This will get even worse when Blizzard adds the fourth boss in here. It's insane to have a raid instance with bosses from four different Tier levels. It's almost like putting Yogg-Saron, Anub'arak, and Arthas in Naxxramas, next to Kel'Thuzad...
The next raid for my brave healer was Trial of the Crusader (25) with the guild's second group. This group consists of alts and players who are not picked in our "main" raid group. For the second week in a row, this group failed to kill Anub'arak. Yes, you read it right: A guild ToC run that fails to kill Anub'arak two weeks in a row.
People played like morons. Not enough dps on snobolds, mistresses, fel infernals, burrowers, scarabs, and valkyrs' shields. No cc or interrupts on Faction Champions. By shear brute force (thanks to several people actually out-gearing the place) we reached Anub'arak with only one wipe. We survived TWO missed stuns on Icehowl, several people getting killed by infernals on Jaraxxus, and a 15 minute long Faction Champions fight. The wipe came at Twin Valkyrs when they managed to heal themselves twice, and we hit the enrage timer.
I've noticed that people are getting sloppier every week when we raid in this group. Instead of improving from doing the fights over and over, people instead start making stupid mistakes and taking stupid risks. As a healer, the only thing you can do is heal your brains out and scream out in agony.
When the raid was called after just one wipe on Anub'arak (since it was obvious it wasn't worth continuing) I needed to use all that adrenaline I pumped into my system, so I went into a PUG Onyxia (25).
This PUG had all a normal Onyxia PUG has: An arms warrior doing 600 dps. A feral druid doing barely 1k dps. Mages that die immediately when the whelps come. Melee that don't run out of fire novas. And two holy paladins that healed LESS than the paladin tank did with his Judgement of Light. After a wipe, we downed the dragon on the second attempt. I ended up doing more than 30% of the total healing in the raid.
The worst healers in PUGs always seem to be paladins these days. Way too often I see paladin healers only spamming Flash of Light and not using Beacon of Light. They end up dead last on the healing meter, even when they are tank healing, and they always do less than 2k hps. Of course there are good paladin healers out there, and they usually blow the other healers away when using their spells in the right way, but they, sadly, seem to be the minority. At least in the PUGs I end up in.
Well, that's the end of this edition of the Weekly Raid Rant. I'm crossing my fingers for a patch release this week. I need new content to rant about.
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Video of Anub Heroic Kill
To add some flair to my otherwise colorless blog, I'm posting the video of our Mad Skill kill of Anub (10-man). It was made by our mage Fjrebqll, who incidentally was not drunk that fight (but I'm sure he was when he made his character's name up).
/salute Fj
I hope you enjoy yourself in your new guild.
/salute Fj
I hope you enjoy yourself in your new guild.
Monday, November 23, 2009
Chilly Winds and Pilgrim's Flu
I've been a bit demoralized lately, for several reasons.
Five of the members of our "Saturday Evening Heroic ToC 10 Fun Raid" left the guild last week. Not only were they five of the guild's best players, but also five of my best friends in the game. I won't discuss their reasons for leaving in this blog, but both I and my wife, who enjoyed our 10-man raids immensely, were not surprised to see them leave.
The guild's 25-man raids are stagnant. The guild management and the raid leader decided to stop doing heroic Coliseum several weeks ago, and instead pursue hard modes in Ulduar. This decision has resulted in lots of QQ on our forums, fewer signups, and people leaving the guild. The morale of the remaining raiders are low.
The combination of no longer enjoying our 25-man raids, losing our fun 10-man raid group, and spending a week sick with the flu has made me spend my game time on things I might not have done otherwise.
I've been running Outland heroics with my wife to grind reputation with factions nobody really cares about anymore. I've been fishing. I've been doing cooking and fishing dailies I never bothered with before. I even bought Haris Pilton's fashionable bag for many gold coins (shopping is supposed to make you happy, right?).
So when a new in-game holiday shows up, I'm first in line to get those shiny achievements done. I have nothing better to do anyway, right?
But, to be honest, Pilgrim's Bounty is a pretty stupid holiday.
Five of the members of our "Saturday Evening Heroic ToC 10 Fun Raid" left the guild last week. Not only were they five of the guild's best players, but also five of my best friends in the game. I won't discuss their reasons for leaving in this blog, but both I and my wife, who enjoyed our 10-man raids immensely, were not surprised to see them leave.
The guild's 25-man raids are stagnant. The guild management and the raid leader decided to stop doing heroic Coliseum several weeks ago, and instead pursue hard modes in Ulduar. This decision has resulted in lots of QQ on our forums, fewer signups, and people leaving the guild. The morale of the remaining raiders are low.
The combination of no longer enjoying our 25-man raids, losing our fun 10-man raid group, and spending a week sick with the flu has made me spend my game time on things I might not have done otherwise.
I've been running Outland heroics with my wife to grind reputation with factions nobody really cares about anymore. I've been fishing. I've been doing cooking and fishing dailies I never bothered with before. I even bought Haris Pilton's fashionable bag for many gold coins (shopping is supposed to make you happy, right?).
So when a new in-game holiday shows up, I'm first in line to get those shiny achievements done. I have nothing better to do anyway, right?
But, to be honest, Pilgrim's Bounty is a pretty stupid holiday.
- The quests that kept sending you back and forth between Stormwind, Ironforge, and Darnassus wanted me to reroll a mage just to get the portals...
- Getting people to understand how to pass food around the tables is like teaching dogs to read and write.
- Killing 40 turkeys in a row in competition with 40 others? Everytime you reach over 30 turkeys you know there will be a gnome mage popping up, stealing your next turkey with an Ice Lance, and you will weep when you see your timer run out.
- Finding a rogue of each race to shoot with your Turkey Shooter? Good luck with that one...
- And how many times will you get ganked in Horde cities when you just want to sit down and enjoy their food and hospitality?
Monday, November 16, 2009
Patch 3.3 Badge Tanking Gear
MMO Champion has listed the gear that we will be able to buy with the new badges, Emblems of Frost.
The tanking stuff looks really nice, and all plate pieces have bonus armor on them. I assume the extra armor is there to compensate for the reduced avoidance that we are facing in Icecrown due to the Icecrown version of Sunwell Radiance.
This is what we can look forward to:
Cataclysmic Chestguard - expertise and block value on the same piece of gear isn't very usual, but considering Blizzard showers tanking gear with hit rating again in 3.3, maybe that expertise will be needed. The armor, stamina, and strength on this chest piece makes my mouth water.
Gauntlets of the Kraken - straight-forward tanking gloves.
Verdigris Chain Belt - straight-forward tanking belt.
Sentinel's Winter Cloak - very nice cloak with bonus armor in addition to the usual tanking stats.
Corroded Skeleton Key - trinket with loads of stamina and a damage absorption use effect. But isn't absorbing 3200 damage quite low?
We don't know the prices of these items yet, but I will most likely pick up the cloak and the trinket first, since I have gear of item level 245 and 258 in the other slots.
There is a libram as well, but I won't waste badges on that one, since it's such a minor upgrade from the current badge libram.
The tanking stuff looks really nice, and all plate pieces have bonus armor on them. I assume the extra armor is there to compensate for the reduced avoidance that we are facing in Icecrown due to the Icecrown version of Sunwell Radiance.
This is what we can look forward to:
Cataclysmic Chestguard - expertise and block value on the same piece of gear isn't very usual, but considering Blizzard showers tanking gear with hit rating again in 3.3, maybe that expertise will be needed. The armor, stamina, and strength on this chest piece makes my mouth water.
Gauntlets of the Kraken - straight-forward tanking gloves.
Verdigris Chain Belt - straight-forward tanking belt.
Sentinel's Winter Cloak - very nice cloak with bonus armor in addition to the usual tanking stats.
Corroded Skeleton Key - trinket with loads of stamina and a damage absorption use effect. But isn't absorbing 3200 damage quite low?
We don't know the prices of these items yet, but I will most likely pick up the cloak and the trinket first, since I have gear of item level 245 and 258 in the other slots.
There is a libram as well, but I won't waste badges on that one, since it's such a minor upgrade from the current badge libram.
Sunday, November 8, 2009
Another Dead Bug
At least we are improving :)
I was away on a business trip all week, and felt a bit rusty when we started ToC10 this Saturday. But it ended well, and we could all add another achievement to the list...
Sunday, November 1, 2009
Dead bug = sweet
Sweet kill.
Five minutes past raid end time, last attempt for the night called. We already knew there would be no follow-up raid this raid lock. And that's when we nail him.
We screwed up totally and wiped more than ten times on Faction Champions. Our mage was drunk, and our disc priest left because he didn't think the raid was "serious" enough.
The bug still died, and it was the guild's first heroic Anub kill.
It felt good.
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Patch 3.3 nerf batch 1
The patch notes do not look good for paladins these days.
First, we had the changes to Divine Sacrifice and Divine Guardian:
These changes have been called buffs or nerfs depending on who you talk to. For a raiding paladin, they are downright nerfs. The old version of the talents had much better damage absorption, but did require the paladin to bubble to not kill himself. The new version makes Divine Sacrifice without Divine Guardian (which is the most likely case for retribution paladins) a lot less useful.
What's the deal here? We have a damage absorption talent that cannot be used by a main tanking paladin, but still exists all the way down in the third tier in the tanking tree, which is hard to reach for both holy and (especially) retri paladins.
Apparently, this "raid wall" talent was too powerful and they had to move the raid wide part of the talent down to the fourth tier Divine Guardian (which earlier "just" increased the amount of damage absorbed by the then raid wide Divine Sacrifice), where fewer people will be able to reach it.
While these changes annoys me, they do not come close to the feelings I have for the following changes:
I don't PvP much with my paladin these days, but by looking at the number of PvP nerfs that has hit the paladins in WotLK, paladins must have been completely dominating the PvP scene (and still I don't see paladins dominating in the top-rated arena teams...)
The nerf to Sacred Shield makes it totally worthless for anyone except the holy paladin. As a tankadin, I often cast this on myself (if I don't have a holy paladin casting it on me) to reduce the incoming damage, but that is pointless now.
Actually, I don't even see the point to keep Sacred Shield as a baseline ability for paladins anymore, since it is useless without Infusion of Light, which is deep in the holy tree. If Blizzard wants only holy paladins to use this ability, then just put it in the holy tree and remove it as a baseline ability. Now the untalented Sacred Shield is a joke.
The nerf to Aura Mastery is clearly also a PvP nerf. It's the exact same nerf that Hand of Freedom got a couple of patches ago.
And then we come to my favorite "change": Lay on Hands can no longer be cast on yourself.
What has Blizzard been sniffing this time? Gnomish Ultra Glue (c)?
Lay on Hands has saved by butt so many times, I cannot count them all. It has a looooooong cooldown, so I save it for those very special moments where my healer is dead and the boss is starting to chew my face off after I have been auto-ressed by Ardent Defender.
Removing the self-cast on Lay on Hands would remove one of the few tanking cooldowns paladins have. I have even suggested getting LoH off the global cooldown, so it would be a more reliable tanking cooldown....
What's the reason for this nerf?
PvP? I don't think so. You cannot use LoH in arena, and you will only be able to use it once in a battleground. That's hardly a reason for a nerf.
PvE? I can only assume that it is because of the extra survivability it gives paladins when they solo content. Is that really something you want to balance talents around? Or is it because raiding holy paladins sometimes use it to get mana back when they have the talent glyphed? We are still talking about an 11 minute (talented and glyphed) cooldown, guys!
I read a new post from Ghostcrawler where he says that they have removed the change to LoH in their internal build. That doesn't mean that we can rest assured that the change will not go live. It means that Blizzard considers this talent broken, and that they are not finished messing with it yet.
Personally, I don't like where these changes are going. I am also very tired of getting nerfed because of PvP.
Atleast Icecrown Citadel looks cool. Although I'm not exactly thrilled about that the first boss in there wipes raids by passing gas. Is Blizzard catering to the 6-year olds now?
First, we had the changes to Divine Sacrifice and Divine Guardian:
- Divine Sacrifice: Redesigned. The effect of Divine Sacrifice is now party-only and the maximum damage which can be transferred is now limited to 40% of the paladin’s health multiplied by the number of party members. In addition, the bug which allowed Divine Sacrifice to sometimes persist despite reaching its maximum damage has been fixed. Divine Sacrifice will now cancel as soon as its maximum damage value is exceeded in all cases. Finally, damage which reduces the paladin’s health below 20% now cancels the effect early.
- Divine Guardian: This talent no longer increases the amount of damage transferred to the paladin from Divine Sacrifice. Instead it causes all raid and party members to take 10/20% reduced damage while Divine Sacrifice is active. In addition, the duration has been changed to 6 seconds, however the effect does not terminate when Divine Sacrifice is removed before its full duration.
These changes have been called buffs or nerfs depending on who you talk to. For a raiding paladin, they are downright nerfs. The old version of the talents had much better damage absorption, but did require the paladin to bubble to not kill himself. The new version makes Divine Sacrifice without Divine Guardian (which is the most likely case for retribution paladins) a lot less useful.
What's the deal here? We have a damage absorption talent that cannot be used by a main tanking paladin, but still exists all the way down in the third tier in the tanking tree, which is hard to reach for both holy and (especially) retri paladins.
Apparently, this "raid wall" talent was too powerful and they had to move the raid wide part of the talent down to the fourth tier Divine Guardian (which earlier "just" increased the amount of damage absorbed by the then raid wide Divine Sacrifice), where fewer people will be able to reach it.
While these changes annoys me, they do not come close to the feelings I have for the following changes:
- Sacred Shield can now only occur every 30 sec. (Up from 6 sec)
- Lay on Hands can no longer be cast on yourself.
- Infusion of Light now also reduces the cooldown on the effect of Sacred Shield by 12/24 sec.
- Aura Mastery now lasts 6 sec. (Down from 10 sec)
I don't PvP much with my paladin these days, but by looking at the number of PvP nerfs that has hit the paladins in WotLK, paladins must have been completely dominating the PvP scene (and still I don't see paladins dominating in the top-rated arena teams...)
The nerf to Sacred Shield makes it totally worthless for anyone except the holy paladin. As a tankadin, I often cast this on myself (if I don't have a holy paladin casting it on me) to reduce the incoming damage, but that is pointless now.
Actually, I don't even see the point to keep Sacred Shield as a baseline ability for paladins anymore, since it is useless without Infusion of Light, which is deep in the holy tree. If Blizzard wants only holy paladins to use this ability, then just put it in the holy tree and remove it as a baseline ability. Now the untalented Sacred Shield is a joke.
The nerf to Aura Mastery is clearly also a PvP nerf. It's the exact same nerf that Hand of Freedom got a couple of patches ago.
And then we come to my favorite "change": Lay on Hands can no longer be cast on yourself.
What has Blizzard been sniffing this time? Gnomish Ultra Glue (c)?
Lay on Hands has saved by butt so many times, I cannot count them all. It has a looooooong cooldown, so I save it for those very special moments where my healer is dead and the boss is starting to chew my face off after I have been auto-ressed by Ardent Defender.
Removing the self-cast on Lay on Hands would remove one of the few tanking cooldowns paladins have. I have even suggested getting LoH off the global cooldown, so it would be a more reliable tanking cooldown....
What's the reason for this nerf?
PvP? I don't think so. You cannot use LoH in arena, and you will only be able to use it once in a battleground. That's hardly a reason for a nerf.
PvE? I can only assume that it is because of the extra survivability it gives paladins when they solo content. Is that really something you want to balance talents around? Or is it because raiding holy paladins sometimes use it to get mana back when they have the talent glyphed? We are still talking about an 11 minute (talented and glyphed) cooldown, guys!
I read a new post from Ghostcrawler where he says that they have removed the change to LoH in their internal build. That doesn't mean that we can rest assured that the change will not go live. It means that Blizzard considers this talent broken, and that they are not finished messing with it yet.
Personally, I don't like where these changes are going. I am also very tired of getting nerfed because of PvP.
Atleast Icecrown Citadel looks cool. Although I'm not exactly thrilled about that the first boss in there wipes raids by passing gas. Is Blizzard catering to the 6-year olds now?
Monday, October 26, 2009
Giants Dancing on my Brain
I missed our Ulduar hard mode raid yesterday due to migraine, which sucked. It's not really possible to raid when it feels like you have two enraged giants tap dancing on your brain, while a ravenous shark is gnawing away at the back of your head.
So I missed out on the Iron Council and Hodir hard modes. Since we did the Flame Leviathan and XT-002 hard modes on Wednesday, at least I got those checked off on my list.
Our little ten-man group got heroic Anub down to 17% a couple of times on Saturday. 17% is still miles away from a kill of course, but we feel that we've got the kill in sight. My gear for the fight is shaping up, but I'm still short 8% from being passive unhittable. The gear set is still making a difference, since the amount of damage made to me is significantly lower than it used to be in my EH gear.
Before the giants started their dancing lessons on my cerebrum and the shark still hadn't reached my medulla oblongata, I attented a 25-man Trial of the Crusader raid with my shammy as dps. I have now completed Trial of the Crusader as all possible roles: Tank (paladin and death knight), healer (shaman), melee dps (rogue and warrior), and ranged dps (shaman).
As in almost every other raid, ranged dps is the easiest role. You tab between targets, keep up your rotation, and make sure not to stand in fire. That's it. Kudos to people who don't fall asleep while doing this every raid ;P
I'll try to make my next post a little bit more useful. Like discussing patch 3.3 and the pleasure of tanking in a dress again, or something.
P.S. If you were wondering: The giants were of course singing as well:
So I missed out on the Iron Council and Hodir hard modes. Since we did the Flame Leviathan and XT-002 hard modes on Wednesday, at least I got those checked off on my list.
Our little ten-man group got heroic Anub down to 17% a couple of times on Saturday. 17% is still miles away from a kill of course, but we feel that we've got the kill in sight. My gear for the fight is shaping up, but I'm still short 8% from being passive unhittable. The gear set is still making a difference, since the amount of damage made to me is significantly lower than it used to be in my EH gear.
Before the giants started their dancing lessons on my cerebrum and the shark still hadn't reached my medulla oblongata, I attented a 25-man Trial of the Crusader raid with my shammy as dps. I have now completed Trial of the Crusader as all possible roles: Tank (paladin and death knight), healer (shaman), melee dps (rogue and warrior), and ranged dps (shaman).
As in almost every other raid, ranged dps is the easiest role. You tab between targets, keep up your rotation, and make sure not to stand in fire. That's it. Kudos to people who don't fall asleep while doing this every raid ;P
I'll try to make my next post a little bit more useful. Like discussing patch 3.3 and the pleasure of tanking in a dress again, or something.
P.S. If you were wondering: The giants were of course singing as well:
We're dancing on his brainTrue story.
Just dancing on his brain
What a glorious feelin'
We're enraged again
Monday, October 19, 2009
The Beasts Are Down
We finally downed Northrend Beasts on 25 man heroic yesterday, and it was a darn good feeling. Getting the heroic version of the tanking chestplate was also a good feeling (and adding the stamina trinket from normal Faction Champions just an hour before that made my loot day complete). That chestplate has three sockets and insane stats and will make a nice addition to my gear collection.
The reasons for our success yesterday were mostly better dps and better survivability. We reached Icehowl several times with only one or two dead, and the last worm almost dead. On our kill, Dreadscale was even dead before Icehowl entered the arena.
We run with three tanks; a warrior, a druid, and yours truly.
I pick up Gormok at the start, popping wings and swinging away all that I can. Even with stamina gear I can keep our dps behind me on threat (when they start catching up, it's time for the first tank switch). When the worms enter, I grab Gormok while the other tanks get a Hand of Protection from our two holy paladins. As soon as Gormok is dead, I bubble off my stacks of Impale and taunt Dreadscale off the druid, who by then should have the first Burning Bile, which he spreads to whoever needs it (often the warrior tank).
The druid and I switch tanking on Dreadscale depending on Burning Bile application. When he enrages, I usually pick him up. And when Icehowl enters the arena, I pick him up as well (Dreadscale should be dead by then).
On our kill, we actually failed on one of Icehowl's charges. I watched him go all big and red, quickly popped Bubble Wall, saw Ardent Defender's self-ress proc, and then I was finally topped off and could continue tanking. That was a couple of sweaty seconds...
We had a couple of attempts on Jaraxxus, but the portals and volcanos were not killed fast enough, and poor me was swamped in mistresses and infernals on every attempt. We then called the raid early to celebrate our progress.
In our 10-man on Saturday, we got heroic Anub down to 23% even though we had switched out half the team. We always leave him with more than 20 attempts remaining, since it's just a "fun raid" that has a stricked time limit, but it's nice to see that we can get that far with a casual raid.
The reasons for our success yesterday were mostly better dps and better survivability. We reached Icehowl several times with only one or two dead, and the last worm almost dead. On our kill, Dreadscale was even dead before Icehowl entered the arena.
We run with three tanks; a warrior, a druid, and yours truly.
I pick up Gormok at the start, popping wings and swinging away all that I can. Even with stamina gear I can keep our dps behind me on threat (when they start catching up, it's time for the first tank switch). When the worms enter, I grab Gormok while the other tanks get a Hand of Protection from our two holy paladins. As soon as Gormok is dead, I bubble off my stacks of Impale and taunt Dreadscale off the druid, who by then should have the first Burning Bile, which he spreads to whoever needs it (often the warrior tank).
The druid and I switch tanking on Dreadscale depending on Burning Bile application. When he enrages, I usually pick him up. And when Icehowl enters the arena, I pick him up as well (Dreadscale should be dead by then).
On our kill, we actually failed on one of Icehowl's charges. I watched him go all big and red, quickly popped Bubble Wall, saw Ardent Defender's self-ress proc, and then I was finally topped off and could continue tanking. That was a couple of sweaty seconds...
We had a couple of attempts on Jaraxxus, but the portals and volcanos were not killed fast enough, and poor me was swamped in mistresses and infernals on every attempt. We then called the raid early to celebrate our progress.
In our 10-man on Saturday, we got heroic Anub down to 23% even though we had switched out half the team. We always leave him with more than 20 attempts remaining, since it's just a "fun raid" that has a stricked time limit, but it's nice to see that we can get that far with a casual raid.
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Did 3.2 Kill Serious Raiding?
Now you probably wonder what in the world I'm talking about. Why would a content patch like 3.2 kill serious raiding? We've gotten even more raid instances to raid! Have I lost my mind?
Well, for our guild, the 3.2 patch killed serious raiding. With "serious raiding" I mean several raid nights a week spent on hard content, many wipes, high repair costs, grinding teeth, and adrenaline pumping.
Since Trial of the Crusader was introduced, our guild can't seem to get enough sign-ups for Ulduar. This is a shame, since we have so much left undone in there. We have several hard modes left, and thus we are very very far off from even seeing Algalon.
It's understandable that people aren't interested in wiping in Ulduar when they can easily farm Trial of the Crusader for shinier epics.
OK. So all this QQ about lack of serious raiding must mean that we have Trial of the Grand Crusader on farm as well, right? Well, no. We are still stuck on Northrend Beasts in TotGC-25. We always seem to lack the dps to kill off the last worm before Icehowl enters the arena. The reasons for lacking dps are two: Gear and people dying when they shouldn't.
So to increase our chances to progress we farm. On Wednesdays we do Onyxia-25, VoA-25, and TotC-25. That usually takes about 1.5 hour. After that we try TotGC-25 for a couple of hours. This means that the guild's entire 25-man raiding takes place in one night.
Later in the week the guild has several TotC-10 runs, and a couple of TotGC-10 runs. Farm. Farm. Farm. We actually farm 10-man content to be able to progress in 25-man content. Is it just me who thinks that is a bit awkward?
In a normal week, I do TotC-25, TotC-10, TotGC-10, and some tries on TotGC-25 on my paladin. I also do TotC-10 and TotC-25 on my shaman. Just guess how tired I am of farming that frigging coliseum? I'm killing the same stinking bosses five times a week! And they fall over easier than a twenty-dollar hooker.
Some people seem to be content with this. Farming easy instances to get shiny epics? What's not to like? Getting big upgrades to your gear without the risk of dying? Sweet!
And while people roll around in the purples from Coliseum, Ulduar is empty and unfinished.
Looking forward, at least Icecrown Citadel is more than one room.....
Well, for our guild, the 3.2 patch killed serious raiding. With "serious raiding" I mean several raid nights a week spent on hard content, many wipes, high repair costs, grinding teeth, and adrenaline pumping.
Since Trial of the Crusader was introduced, our guild can't seem to get enough sign-ups for Ulduar. This is a shame, since we have so much left undone in there. We have several hard modes left, and thus we are very very far off from even seeing Algalon.
It's understandable that people aren't interested in wiping in Ulduar when they can easily farm Trial of the Crusader for shinier epics.
OK. So all this QQ about lack of serious raiding must mean that we have Trial of the Grand Crusader on farm as well, right? Well, no. We are still stuck on Northrend Beasts in TotGC-25. We always seem to lack the dps to kill off the last worm before Icehowl enters the arena. The reasons for lacking dps are two: Gear and people dying when they shouldn't.
So to increase our chances to progress we farm. On Wednesdays we do Onyxia-25, VoA-25, and TotC-25. That usually takes about 1.5 hour. After that we try TotGC-25 for a couple of hours. This means that the guild's entire 25-man raiding takes place in one night.
Later in the week the guild has several TotC-10 runs, and a couple of TotGC-10 runs. Farm. Farm. Farm. We actually farm 10-man content to be able to progress in 25-man content. Is it just me who thinks that is a bit awkward?
In a normal week, I do TotC-25, TotC-10, TotGC-10, and some tries on TotGC-25 on my paladin. I also do TotC-10 and TotC-25 on my shaman. Just guess how tired I am of farming that frigging coliseum? I'm killing the same stinking bosses five times a week! And they fall over easier than a twenty-dollar hooker.
Some people seem to be content with this. Farming easy instances to get shiny epics? What's not to like? Getting big upgrades to your gear without the risk of dying? Sweet!
And while people roll around in the purples from Coliseum, Ulduar is empty and unfinished.
Looking forward, at least Icecrown Citadel is more than one room.....
Monday, October 5, 2009
Busy Weekend
After being away for a week, I had some catching up to do!
On Friday I did a 25-man VoA raid with my resto shaman, which gained him the T9 elemental pants and the T8 resto gloves (so that I now have that imba 4pc T8 bonus). The raid leader was a completely clueless and undergeared tank, but the raid went smooth thanks to a couple of good healers and some very good dpsers.
A group of friends put together a 10-man Trial of the Grand Crusader raid just for fun on Saturday. It went better than expected. We only wiped once (an annoying 1% wipe at Twin Valkyr) before engaging Anub'Arak.
I must say, the difference in difficulty between heroic 10-man and heroic 25-man is staggering. Most of us is wearing several pieces of 25-man gear, which of course makes it easier, but still...
We totally screwed up on the first Twins attempt, and still got them down to 1%. I was the last man standing, dpsing them both with everything I got, and sadly with Lay on Hands on cooldown (I had to use it earlier in the fight when my healer died due to getting hit by orbs). The cheering on vent was hilarious, especially when Ardent Defender ressed me and I kept hitting them ladies with my sword until the bitter (second) end.
Anub'Arak, on the other hand, was a hard nut to crack. We did 11 attempts on him before calling it since it was getting late. We got to phase 3 several times (best attempt 26%), but we seemed to lose people too often in phase 2, which made phase 3 very hard.
On Sunday I brought my resto shaman to the guild's second 25-man Trial of the Crusader raid. Since the nerf to Faction Champions, these raids now run smooth and with few deaths. Afterwards, we went to Onyxia and downed her as well. I have now done Onyxia both on 10-man and 25-man on my shaman, but I still haven't done any Onyxia raid on my paladin (you will get your chance Arnax, don't worry).
My wife got the retribution paladin helm from Onyxia, only days after spending 75 Emblems of Triumph on the badges helm. I can understand her frustration :)
We had an Ulduar hardmode raid scheduled for Sunday evening, but it was cancelled due to lack of signups.
I'm spending a lot of my game time on my shaman these days. Healing on my shaman is a lot more fun than healing on my paladin ever was (Arnax can feel safe with his prot/ret dual spec, since I don't see him ever doing any healing). Arnax is still my main, and I always bring him out for the serious stuff. I have loads of reputation and quest grinding left to do on him, but I'm the kind of person who needs variety in the game, and switching from tank to healer (or dps) in raids is a good way to keep the game feeling fresh.
But don't worry. This will not turn into a shaman blog....
On Friday I did a 25-man VoA raid with my resto shaman, which gained him the T9 elemental pants and the T8 resto gloves (so that I now have that imba 4pc T8 bonus). The raid leader was a completely clueless and undergeared tank, but the raid went smooth thanks to a couple of good healers and some very good dpsers.
A group of friends put together a 10-man Trial of the Grand Crusader raid just for fun on Saturday. It went better than expected. We only wiped once (an annoying 1% wipe at Twin Valkyr) before engaging Anub'Arak.
I must say, the difference in difficulty between heroic 10-man and heroic 25-man is staggering. Most of us is wearing several pieces of 25-man gear, which of course makes it easier, but still...
We totally screwed up on the first Twins attempt, and still got them down to 1%. I was the last man standing, dpsing them both with everything I got, and sadly with Lay on Hands on cooldown (I had to use it earlier in the fight when my healer died due to getting hit by orbs). The cheering on vent was hilarious, especially when Ardent Defender ressed me and I kept hitting them ladies with my sword until the bitter (second) end.
Anub'Arak, on the other hand, was a hard nut to crack. We did 11 attempts on him before calling it since it was getting late. We got to phase 3 several times (best attempt 26%), but we seemed to lose people too often in phase 2, which made phase 3 very hard.
On Sunday I brought my resto shaman to the guild's second 25-man Trial of the Crusader raid. Since the nerf to Faction Champions, these raids now run smooth and with few deaths. Afterwards, we went to Onyxia and downed her as well. I have now done Onyxia both on 10-man and 25-man on my shaman, but I still haven't done any Onyxia raid on my paladin (you will get your chance Arnax, don't worry).
My wife got the retribution paladin helm from Onyxia, only days after spending 75 Emblems of Triumph on the badges helm. I can understand her frustration :)
We had an Ulduar hardmode raid scheduled for Sunday evening, but it was cancelled due to lack of signups.
I'm spending a lot of my game time on my shaman these days. Healing on my shaman is a lot more fun than healing on my paladin ever was (Arnax can feel safe with his prot/ret dual spec, since I don't see him ever doing any healing). Arnax is still my main, and I always bring him out for the serious stuff. I have loads of reputation and quest grinding left to do on him, but I'm the kind of person who needs variety in the game, and switching from tank to healer (or dps) in raids is a good way to keep the game feeling fresh.
But don't worry. This will not turn into a shaman blog....
Friday, October 2, 2009
Back at the Keyboard
I'm back after spending a week in the deep dark forests of Finland, where I attended a training course for Software Architects.
In my absence, my guild has accomplished the following:
It's too bad that I couldn't be there when Diabbix got his mace, but that's life. Getting the legendary mace is a nice guild achievement, and we have a couple of priests with fragments in their bags, waiting for their turn. But signups for Ulduar has waned significantly lately, so it might be hard to accomplish.
Well, time to log on. I have to catch up on some of the dailies....
In my absence, my guild has accomplished the following:
- Forged the guild's first legendary mace (congratulations, Diabbix!)
- Downed Onyxia in an official guild run
- Cleared Trial of the Crusader with TWO guild runs
It's too bad that I couldn't be there when Diabbix got his mace, but that's life. Getting the legendary mace is a nice guild achievement, and we have a couple of priests with fragments in their bags, waiting for their turn. But signups for Ulduar has waned significantly lately, so it might be hard to accomplish.
Well, time to log on. I have to catch up on some of the dailies....
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
The Wondrous World of PUGs
Since the changes that made every boss drop Conquest emblems, and the daily heroic quest rewarding Triumph emblems, I have been running heroics with PUGs every day. Running with PUGs these days are not as bad as it used to be, mostly because the majority of people outgear the content, and not because people are in any way better players than before.
I respecced my shaman to restoration a couple of weeks back, which means I'm pugging as tank (paladin and death knight), dps (rogue), and healer (shaman). You can say that I get to see pugging from every perspective.
The smoothest runs are almost always when I run as tank. It's very obvious that the skill and gear of the tank is the biggest factor of success in a pug. It doesn't really matter if the healer or the dps are any good as long as I'm tanking with any of my over-geared tanks. As a tank, you set the pace and decide the risks. After the first couple of pulls, you know what to expect from the rest of the group, and adjust accordingly for the rest of the instance. I've only wiped once when running as tank, and that was when a dps pulled all nine adds on Palentress in Trial of the Champion.
When running as dps, you pretty much are in the hands of the tank and the healer. Sure, you can help out as much as you can by protecting the healer and only hitting the tank's target, but if they both suck, you are in for an unecessary repair bill.
As a healer you can make a difference, but only up to a certain point. If the tank can't hold aggro or does stupid pulls, or if the dps is trigger-happy to the extreme and ignore Omen, you will have deaths no matter how well you heal. I have to admit that the only times I have ever left a group is when I'm healing and it's obvious that the tank has no clue of what he's doing.
It really makes me sad to see that so many tanks are so terrible, even after Blizzard has made tanking so much easier than before. Tanks that fail at heroics at level 80 wouldn't have made it through the gates to the heroics in TBC.
But of course you get pleasant surprises as well when you find yourself in an amazing group, burning through the instance, making jokes, or maybe doing huge pulls just to test your limits.
PUGs can turn out either way. It can be a fun ride or a real pain. You never know, and I guess that is the beauty of it these days.
I respecced my shaman to restoration a couple of weeks back, which means I'm pugging as tank (paladin and death knight), dps (rogue), and healer (shaman). You can say that I get to see pugging from every perspective.
The smoothest runs are almost always when I run as tank. It's very obvious that the skill and gear of the tank is the biggest factor of success in a pug. It doesn't really matter if the healer or the dps are any good as long as I'm tanking with any of my over-geared tanks. As a tank, you set the pace and decide the risks. After the first couple of pulls, you know what to expect from the rest of the group, and adjust accordingly for the rest of the instance. I've only wiped once when running as tank, and that was when a dps pulled all nine adds on Palentress in Trial of the Champion.
When running as dps, you pretty much are in the hands of the tank and the healer. Sure, you can help out as much as you can by protecting the healer and only hitting the tank's target, but if they both suck, you are in for an unecessary repair bill.
As a healer you can make a difference, but only up to a certain point. If the tank can't hold aggro or does stupid pulls, or if the dps is trigger-happy to the extreme and ignore Omen, you will have deaths no matter how well you heal. I have to admit that the only times I have ever left a group is when I'm healing and it's obvious that the tank has no clue of what he's doing.
It really makes me sad to see that so many tanks are so terrible, even after Blizzard has made tanking so much easier than before. Tanks that fail at heroics at level 80 wouldn't have made it through the gates to the heroics in TBC.
But of course you get pleasant surprises as well when you find yourself in an amazing group, burning through the instance, making jokes, or maybe doing huge pulls just to test your limits.
PUGs can turn out either way. It can be a fun ride or a real pain. You never know, and I guess that is the beauty of it these days.
Friday, September 11, 2009
Additional Changes in Patch 3.2.2
I already addressed the changes to tankadins in patch 3.2.2 in an earlier post, but Blizzard has added some more changes to the PTR since then.
Also, when looking at the QQ on the forums, and the blue responses to these QQs, I am quite sure we will see a nerf to Ardent Defender sooner rather than later.
- Seal of Corruption and Seal of Vengeance: These seals will now only use the debuff stacks generated by the attacking paladin to determine the damage done by the seal and by the judgement. [This is actually a bug fix. It was discovered that several paladins using SoV ended up using the same stack of debuffs on the mob. Apparently, it was the smallest stack of debuffs that was used to calculate the damage, which both hurt the dps of retris and the tps of prots.]
- Blessing of Sanctuary: This blessing now grants 10% strength in addition to its current effects. Also, the strength and stamina bonuses from this blessing will no longer be lost when Blessing of Kings is removed. [With the changes to Touched by the Light, Blizzard had to add the strength multiplier to BoS to make it comparable to the almighty Kings. Just losing 10% agility, spirit, and intellect in exchange for 3% damage reduction and mana regen is finally starting to look like a nice deal.]
- Hammer of the Righteous: The damage from this ability is now considered physical instead of Holy. The threat generated by the ability has been increased such that it will continue to do approximately the same threat it did when it was Holy damage. [This is a change I do not like. It is obviously another PvP nerf. I assume plate wearers were whining about getting hit hard by holy damage that ignored their armor. The main reason I do not like this change is not because I think it is a threat nerf (it is a dps nerf actually, but hopefully not a threat nerf), but because it is another step away from the signature spell damage tank paladins used to be. I liked the fact that we were doing holy damage to mobs, and that we got threat multipliers from casters. Now we are just as dependent on Sunder Armor or Faerie Fire as warrior or druid tanks (but we do not have an ability like that ourselves).]
- Added a recipe for Drums of Forgotten Kings. These drums increase all stats by 8% for all players in a raid. Does not stack with Blessing of Kings. [All leatherworkers can now bring Kings to the raid.]
- The Black Heart: This item’s animation has been changed and no longer resembles Hand of Protection. [I think many of us got a heart attack when we first saw this animation on the tank. I really do not know what Blizzard was thinking when they picked this animation for the proc of the trinket.]
- Relics: All buffs provided by relics (idols, librams, totems and sigils) now share an exclusive category such that gaining a buff from one of these items will remove all other buffs gained from items in this category. [No more libram swapping, which I think is good since it was a stupid exploit.]
Also, when looking at the QQ on the forums, and the blue responses to these QQs, I am quite sure we will see a nerf to Ardent Defender sooner rather than later.
Thursday, September 10, 2009
A Day at the Coliseum
Before our Trial of the Crusader raid yesterday, I pugged a VoA 25 with the normal pug perks:
We burned through Trial of the Crusader. No wipes and almost no deaths at all, and the place was clean in less than an hour. We ran out, and set the raid difficulty at "25 player heroic" for the first time. We entered with our heads up high, pumped up, and ready for action.
Ouch.
Heroic Northrend Beasts hurt.
We ran with three tanks, and our warrior tank kept getting killed by Gormok. We changed healing assignments, changed the tank rotations, and started to manage to get Gormok down. Then the worms stomped us good.
We still haven't seen Icehowl on heroic, but it seems like Gormok's Impale stacks and the worms' poisons would be the hardest part of this fight. The damage on the tanks are insane. This encounter really is a gear check, and not just for the tanks. The healers need to be able to pump out some serious healing, and the dps must be on their top game to burn down the mobs before the next wave comes. On most of our tries, Gormok was at about 20% when the worms entered the arena.
I love being a paladin tank, though. Being able to bubble the Impale stacks off rocks. And Ardent Defender procs a lot more than I really feel comfortable with :P
I've read that some of the hardcore guilds complain that heroic Coliseum is too easy. Well, I guess they play in a different league than we do.
- A holy paladin who refused to buff kings because "he was specced for improved wisdom". He also didn't bring enough reagents to buff the raid for more than two wipes.
- A rogue who dpsed Emalon by throwing stuff at him because "his gear broke".
- Loud ninja discussions when said holy paladin rolled and won dps gear.
- People dpsing the wrong targets at Emalon.
We burned through Trial of the Crusader. No wipes and almost no deaths at all, and the place was clean in less than an hour. We ran out, and set the raid difficulty at "25 player heroic" for the first time. We entered with our heads up high, pumped up, and ready for action.
Ouch.
Heroic Northrend Beasts hurt.
We ran with three tanks, and our warrior tank kept getting killed by Gormok. We changed healing assignments, changed the tank rotations, and started to manage to get Gormok down. Then the worms stomped us good.
We still haven't seen Icehowl on heroic, but it seems like Gormok's Impale stacks and the worms' poisons would be the hardest part of this fight. The damage on the tanks are insane. This encounter really is a gear check, and not just for the tanks. The healers need to be able to pump out some serious healing, and the dps must be on their top game to burn down the mobs before the next wave comes. On most of our tries, Gormok was at about 20% when the worms entered the arena.
I love being a paladin tank, though. Being able to bubble the Impale stacks off rocks. And Ardent Defender procs a lot more than I really feel comfortable with :P
I've read that some of the hardcore guilds complain that heroic Coliseum is too easy. Well, I guess they play in a different league than we do.
Monday, September 7, 2009
Anub'arak
We downed the last boss (Anub'arak, a.k.a. Anoob'arak) in Trial of the Crusader already last Wednesday, but I haven't had the motivation to write about the fight until now. I guess I was disappointed in how darn easy he turned out to be.
The way I see it, Faction Champions is the only encounter in normal mode that is even close to challenging. I can see raids getting stuck on the PvP encounter due to it being just that: a PvP encounter.
Anyways, back to Anoob'arak.
Anoob'arak is a big bug that you probably already met once in Azjol-Nerub. The tactics to kill him in the Coliseum are very simple:
Pull boss -> stand on ice -> loot boss.
But you probably want me to tell you more, so here goes...
The fight has three phases. The third phase starts when he reaches 30% of his health. Before that, phase one and two can occur several times.
Phase One:
Have ranged dps shoot down as many frost orbs as possible. When these orbs hit the ground, they turn into Permafrost. Permafrost is a thick layer of ice which a) slows movement speed by 80% (good for kiting, see phase 2), and b) stops mobs from burrowing down underground and heal.
Have one or two offtanks to pick up the two Nerubian Burrowers that spawn. Make sure to tank them on Permafrost so that they cannot submerge, since they heal to full health if they do. These bugs put a stacking armor-reducing debuff on the tanks. It's up to the raid leader if you want to kill off these adds in phase 1, or if you focus your dps on Anoob'arak until he submerges and then switch to the adds.
Annob'arak has a frontal cone attack, so only the main tank should stand in front of him.
Phase Two:
Every now and then (if he isn't tanked on Permafost), Anoob'arak will submerge. While underground, he will pursue a random player. If people are standing outside of Permafrost, Anoob'arak will be impaling targets around the person who is pursued. This is very unecessary damage, since it can be easily avoided by standing on Permafrost, where no spikes will hit you.
Loads of small adds are also spawns. These should be kited through Permafrost and killed off by ranged dps, since they put a stacking nature damage debuff on people they hit.
When Anoob'arak is resurfacing, he goes back to Phase 1. At 30% health, phase 3 starts.
Phase Three:
This is a dps race. The big bug puts up Leeching Swarm, which leeches 10% of people's current health and heals him.
Best advice to give here is: do not keep people's health at 100%, since that means he leeches more and thus heals more. Keep health bars at about 50% (except the main tank, who of course should be topped off).
Blow cooldowns. Kill him. Get achievement. Loot. Be happy.
We wiped once because some people decided that standing on ice when being pursued by giant spikes was a bad idea, which resulted in half the raid being killed in phase 2. Second attempt was an easy kill with no deaths.
We cleared Trial of the Crusader (25 player) in less than 90 minutes. Instead of starting the heroic version of it, we went to Ulduar to get the legendary mace to one of our druid healers. He has the fragments, and all we need is a Yogg+3 kill.
The Trial of the Grand Crusader raid scheduled for Thursday was cancelled due to too few signups, so I still haven't experienced Coliseum on heroic. But I've heard it's hard, so I look forward to the challenge.
The way I see it, Faction Champions is the only encounter in normal mode that is even close to challenging. I can see raids getting stuck on the PvP encounter due to it being just that: a PvP encounter.
Anyways, back to Anoob'arak.
Anoob'arak is a big bug that you probably already met once in Azjol-Nerub. The tactics to kill him in the Coliseum are very simple:
Pull boss -> stand on ice -> loot boss.
But you probably want me to tell you more, so here goes...
The fight has three phases. The third phase starts when he reaches 30% of his health. Before that, phase one and two can occur several times.
Phase One:
Have ranged dps shoot down as many frost orbs as possible. When these orbs hit the ground, they turn into Permafrost. Permafrost is a thick layer of ice which a) slows movement speed by 80% (good for kiting, see phase 2), and b) stops mobs from burrowing down underground and heal.
Have one or two offtanks to pick up the two Nerubian Burrowers that spawn. Make sure to tank them on Permafrost so that they cannot submerge, since they heal to full health if they do. These bugs put a stacking armor-reducing debuff on the tanks. It's up to the raid leader if you want to kill off these adds in phase 1, or if you focus your dps on Anoob'arak until he submerges and then switch to the adds.
Annob'arak has a frontal cone attack, so only the main tank should stand in front of him.
Phase Two:
Every now and then (if he isn't tanked on Permafost), Anoob'arak will submerge. While underground, he will pursue a random player. If people are standing outside of Permafrost, Anoob'arak will be impaling targets around the person who is pursued. This is very unecessary damage, since it can be easily avoided by standing on Permafrost, where no spikes will hit you.
Loads of small adds are also spawns. These should be kited through Permafrost and killed off by ranged dps, since they put a stacking nature damage debuff on people they hit.
When Anoob'arak is resurfacing, he goes back to Phase 1. At 30% health, phase 3 starts.
Phase Three:
This is a dps race. The big bug puts up Leeching Swarm, which leeches 10% of people's current health and heals him.
Best advice to give here is: do not keep people's health at 100%, since that means he leeches more and thus heals more. Keep health bars at about 50% (except the main tank, who of course should be topped off).
Blow cooldowns. Kill him. Get achievement. Loot. Be happy.
We wiped once because some people decided that standing on ice when being pursued by giant spikes was a bad idea, which resulted in half the raid being killed in phase 2. Second attempt was an easy kill with no deaths.
We cleared Trial of the Crusader (25 player) in less than 90 minutes. Instead of starting the heroic version of it, we went to Ulduar to get the legendary mace to one of our druid healers. He has the fragments, and all we need is a Yogg+3 kill.
The Trial of the Grand Crusader raid scheduled for Thursday was cancelled due to too few signups, so I still haven't experienced Coliseum on heroic. But I've heard it's hard, so I look forward to the challenge.
Monday, August 31, 2009
My WoW History
Since we are coming up to the five year anniversary of WoW, I decided to recap my own history in the game.
I entered the World of Warcraft about a month after its release. My first character was a dwarf paladin named Thorwald. I was attracted to the idea of a holy warrior that was wearing heavy armor, a two-handed weapon, and used a combination of magic and brute force to kill monsters. Thorwald was deleted when he reached mid-30s, since I got bored with the combat system (buff yourself, autoattack, and watch mobs die at random speed). I then tried out an undead rogue for 35ish levels, and then a human mage. That mage eventually became my second character to reach 70, and is now, at level 71, working as my bank character / enchanter.
I have played every class in the game to at least level 55. The only classes that never made it to 70 were warrior, druid, and priest.
I didn't start raiding until I was 70. My first raid instance ever was Karazhan, and my first raiding character was a holy paladin named Isolde. Isolde had been around for a long time by then. After deleting my dwarf paladin, I realized that I still wanted one of those holy warriors, so I created a human paladin and levelled her as a holy/ret hybrid. She was my first character to reach both 60 and 70. These days she is stuck at 71, still dressed in her BT/MH epics, sitting at the inn in Valiance Keep.
I raided SSC, TK, MH, and BT on my holy paladin until I got bored with the paladin healing style. I then switched my main raiding character to my elemental shaman and spent some time spamming lightning bolts at stuff in raids.
At this time, I felt the guild needed another tank, and thus Arnax was born. I levelled him as protection from day 1. I still remember the mid-30s when I finally got Reckoning, which made AoE grinding alot faster. "Need to kill X boars? Sure, just round them up and hack away!". Switching between Seal of light and Seal of wisdom to keep them bars topped off while being attacked by a plethora of mobs was fun.
I tanked my way through all the TBC raids up until Council in BT when The Patch was released, which made it easier for everyone to finish off those pesky final bosses. Thus I never tanked Illidan before 3.0, and I always brought my shaman to Archimonde for an extra tremor totem until 3.0 hit us.
Arnax is now my main, and is the character I bring to progression raids. I have a rogue alt who I bring to our second raid group (Ulduar and Coliseum) and a death knight alt who I help out in Naxx with. My shaman has raided Naxx and Ulduar, but is now in the ice box.
I have deleted all my other alts, mostly to remove the temptation to level them as well. But I have found that the experience of having played almost all of the classes up to 70 has served me well. I know what to expect from other classes, and I know their strengths and weaknesses. Actually, the only specs I have absolutely no clue about are balance druids and shadow priests.
The only class that I have stuck by with through all these years is the paladin. My current main paladin was not my first, but my third paladin created. It just took some time for me to figure out which spec I enjoyed the most (I play a horde retribution paladin as well).
It's been a fun five years. The last three years my wife has played the game as well, which has made it even more fun. The time I have spent with the guild Guardians of Destiny has been great, and I thank them for letting me raid with them, and letting me switch roles from healer to dps to tank in our progression raids.
With Icecrown Citadel at the horizon, and Cataclysm later on, the future of WoW looks promising. I hope to enjoy it as long as it lasts.
I entered the World of Warcraft about a month after its release. My first character was a dwarf paladin named Thorwald. I was attracted to the idea of a holy warrior that was wearing heavy armor, a two-handed weapon, and used a combination of magic and brute force to kill monsters. Thorwald was deleted when he reached mid-30s, since I got bored with the combat system (buff yourself, autoattack, and watch mobs die at random speed). I then tried out an undead rogue for 35ish levels, and then a human mage. That mage eventually became my second character to reach 70, and is now, at level 71, working as my bank character / enchanter.
I have played every class in the game to at least level 55. The only classes that never made it to 70 were warrior, druid, and priest.
I didn't start raiding until I was 70. My first raid instance ever was Karazhan, and my first raiding character was a holy paladin named Isolde. Isolde had been around for a long time by then. After deleting my dwarf paladin, I realized that I still wanted one of those holy warriors, so I created a human paladin and levelled her as a holy/ret hybrid. She was my first character to reach both 60 and 70. These days she is stuck at 71, still dressed in her BT/MH epics, sitting at the inn in Valiance Keep.
I raided SSC, TK, MH, and BT on my holy paladin until I got bored with the paladin healing style. I then switched my main raiding character to my elemental shaman and spent some time spamming lightning bolts at stuff in raids.
At this time, I felt the guild needed another tank, and thus Arnax was born. I levelled him as protection from day 1. I still remember the mid-30s when I finally got Reckoning, which made AoE grinding alot faster. "Need to kill X boars? Sure, just round them up and hack away!". Switching between Seal of light and Seal of wisdom to keep them bars topped off while being attacked by a plethora of mobs was fun.
I tanked my way through all the TBC raids up until Council in BT when The Patch was released, which made it easier for everyone to finish off those pesky final bosses. Thus I never tanked Illidan before 3.0, and I always brought my shaman to Archimonde for an extra tremor totem until 3.0 hit us.
Arnax is now my main, and is the character I bring to progression raids. I have a rogue alt who I bring to our second raid group (Ulduar and Coliseum) and a death knight alt who I help out in Naxx with. My shaman has raided Naxx and Ulduar, but is now in the ice box.
I have deleted all my other alts, mostly to remove the temptation to level them as well. But I have found that the experience of having played almost all of the classes up to 70 has served me well. I know what to expect from other classes, and I know their strengths and weaknesses. Actually, the only specs I have absolutely no clue about are balance druids and shadow priests.
The only class that I have stuck by with through all these years is the paladin. My current main paladin was not my first, but my third paladin created. It just took some time for me to figure out which spec I enjoyed the most (I play a horde retribution paladin as well).
It's been a fun five years. The last three years my wife has played the game as well, which has made it even more fun. The time I have spent with the guild Guardians of Destiny has been great, and I thank them for letting me raid with them, and letting me switch roles from healer to dps to tank in our progression raids.
With Icecrown Citadel at the horizon, and Cataclysm later on, the future of WoW looks promising. I hope to enjoy it as long as it lasts.
Thursday, August 27, 2009
Twin Val'kyr
The fourth boss encounter in Trial of the Crusader is the Twin Val'kyr (a.k.a. The Twin Loot Piñatas). Even though the strategy for this fight seems very complicated, the execution is simple, and the encounter itself turned out to be the easiest so far.
Is it just me, or isn't a raid instance tuned badly when every new encounter is one- or two-shotted? Aren't we supposed to be wiping for hours to learn a new boss and than feel the rush of adrenaline and satisfaction when it's downed? Coliseum is nowhere near that. People can slack on learning tactics, slack on execution, do stupid mistakes, and we STILL down the bosses.
The Faction Champions were tough the first week, until people managed to change their mindset from PvE to PvP. This week it was a two-shot, and on the second attempt we barely had any deaths at all.
Anyway, let's return the focus to the Twin Val'kyr. As I mentioned above, the tactics seem a lot more complicated than they are.
There are two mobs: Edyis Darkbane and Fjola Lightbane. They share a health pool, so it doesn't really matter how you split your dps, but to split it about half on each is best, due to the nature of the encounter.
There are four portals in the room, two black and two white. When you click on them, you get a black or white buff. When you have the white buff, you take less "white" damage, and you do more damage to the black val'kyr. When you have the black buff, you take less "black" damage, and you do more damage to the white val'kyr. Split the raid, so that half gets the white buff and the other half gets the black buff. Target the corresponding mob and start the fight.
(Note: Darkbane is doing shadow damage, while Lightbane is doing fire damage. Fire resistance aura and Shadow protection are good buffs.)
Things to look out for:
We tanked the two val'kyrs close to eachother between two portals. That way the melee didn't have to move so much when switching targets during Twin's Pacts and everybody was in range of healers at all times. Everybody is also close enough to both types of portals so that they quickly can switch buff before a Light or Dark Vortex.
As a tank, this fight is a faceroll. Get the right buff, and your threat will be insane if you get some stacks of the damage buff (by absorbing orbs). Switch to the safe buff before a Vortex, and then switch back to the assigned one as soon as possible afterwards. Damage is negligible. The val'kyrs have special attacks that are supposed to hurt the tank, but I didn't even notice them.
We wiped once due to the raid leader announcing the wrong thing to do before a vortex, which caused confusion and resulted in half the raid dying. The second attempt was a clean kill without any deaths.
It will be very interesting to see how Blizzard tunes the heroic version of this raid instance. The normal mode is just too easy.
Is it just me, or isn't a raid instance tuned badly when every new encounter is one- or two-shotted? Aren't we supposed to be wiping for hours to learn a new boss and than feel the rush of adrenaline and satisfaction when it's downed? Coliseum is nowhere near that. People can slack on learning tactics, slack on execution, do stupid mistakes, and we STILL down the bosses.
The Faction Champions were tough the first week, until people managed to change their mindset from PvE to PvP. This week it was a two-shot, and on the second attempt we barely had any deaths at all.
Anyway, let's return the focus to the Twin Val'kyr. As I mentioned above, the tactics seem a lot more complicated than they are.
There are two mobs: Edyis Darkbane and Fjola Lightbane. They share a health pool, so it doesn't really matter how you split your dps, but to split it about half on each is best, due to the nature of the encounter.
There are four portals in the room, two black and two white. When you click on them, you get a black or white buff. When you have the white buff, you take less "white" damage, and you do more damage to the black val'kyr. When you have the black buff, you take less "black" damage, and you do more damage to the white val'kyr. Split the raid, so that half gets the white buff and the other half gets the black buff. Target the corresponding mob and start the fight.
(Note: Darkbane is doing shadow damage, while Lightbane is doing fire damage. Fire resistance aura and Shadow protection are good buffs.)
Things to look out for:
- Black and white orbs spawn in the room. People having the white buff will get an extra stacking damage buff if they absorb a white orb, and take some minor damage if they absorb a black orb, and vice versa. If the orbs reach the boss, they will also get the stacking damage buff, so that should be avoided if possible.
- Light/Dark Vortex is a nasty AoE damage ability that does significant "white"/"black" damage to the entire raid if people are not having the right buff up. To avoid damage, everybody must make sure to have the right buff (i.e. the white buff if it is a Light Vortex). The spell has an 8 second cast time, so you have plenty of time to get to the nearest portal and get the correct buff in time.
- Twin's Pact is a powerful heal that needs to be interrupted. The val'kyr that is casting this heal is shielded by a 250k shield. The cast time for the heal is 15 seconds, so that's how much time you have to burn through the shield and interrupt the heal. To be able to burn trough the shield in time, everybody has to switch buff to the opposite of the target (i.e. switch to the white buff forEdyis Darkbane). After the heal is interrupted, everybody should return to their assigned buff and target.
We tanked the two val'kyrs close to eachother between two portals. That way the melee didn't have to move so much when switching targets during Twin's Pacts and everybody was in range of healers at all times. Everybody is also close enough to both types of portals so that they quickly can switch buff before a Light or Dark Vortex.
As a tank, this fight is a faceroll. Get the right buff, and your threat will be insane if you get some stacks of the damage buff (by absorbing orbs). Switch to the safe buff before a Vortex, and then switch back to the assigned one as soon as possible afterwards. Damage is negligible. The val'kyrs have special attacks that are supposed to hurt the tank, but I didn't even notice them.
We wiped once due to the raid leader announcing the wrong thing to do before a vortex, which caused confusion and resulted in half the raid dying. The second attempt was a clean kill without any deaths.
It will be very interesting to see how Blizzard tunes the heroic version of this raid instance. The normal mode is just too easy.
Thursday, August 20, 2009
Faction Champions
Did you enjoy the Priestess Delrissa encounter in Magister's Terrace? Then you will absolutely love Faction Champions in the Coliseum.
The encounter is set up as a PvP-like fight against ten random mobs, all having about the same abilities as you might be used to facing in PvP.
There is not much tactics to talk about in this fight. It's more about fast reactions and controlling the mobs as much as possible. Crowd control can be used for some time, but the diminishing returns are ridiculous and the mobs will be immune quite fast (of course their crowd controls have no diminishing returns at all....). Basic advice is to control the melee, interrupt the casters, cleanse/dispel/purge, and burn down the healers as fast as possible.
This is by far the hardest fight so far in the Coliseum. We actually spent an hour wiping before we got the hang of the fight. Our kill order was holy priest, shammy, resto druid, mage, shadow priest, warrior, hunter, death knight, ret paladin, and rogue. We had a death knight kiting the rogue the entire fight, which helped a lot. Our druids were entangling the melee as much as possible, our priests were dispelling shields, our interrupters were interrupting heals, our hunters slowed mobs with traps and killed off totems as soon as possible, and so on. Everybody in the raid has an important task, and it was most likely not the task they usually perform in a raid encounter.
As a tank, I initially felt like a fish out of water. I tried the first couple of attempts as retribution, but realized I did little use actually dpsing. I spent most of my time cleansing and stunning. So I respecced back to protection and figured out my role in the fight:
The PvPers in the raid loved the encounter. Some of the non-PvPers were complaining a bit about Blizzard putting a PvP fight in a PvE raid. It was noticable that it took some time for people to get used to the fight. It is not a fight you can plan in advance and execute according to that plan. This fight requires fast reactions, ability to improvise and adapt, and for each player to know how to best use his class in a PvP-like encounter.
After the kill we went to Ulduar, where Flame Leviathan finally, after 17 kills, dropped Titanguard for the first time.
The encounter is set up as a PvP-like fight against ten random mobs, all having about the same abilities as you might be used to facing in PvP.
There is not much tactics to talk about in this fight. It's more about fast reactions and controlling the mobs as much as possible. Crowd control can be used for some time, but the diminishing returns are ridiculous and the mobs will be immune quite fast (of course their crowd controls have no diminishing returns at all....). Basic advice is to control the melee, interrupt the casters, cleanse/dispel/purge, and burn down the healers as fast as possible.
This is by far the hardest fight so far in the Coliseum. We actually spent an hour wiping before we got the hang of the fight. Our kill order was holy priest, shammy, resto druid, mage, shadow priest, warrior, hunter, death knight, ret paladin, and rogue. We had a death knight kiting the rogue the entire fight, which helped a lot. Our druids were entangling the melee as much as possible, our priests were dispelling shields, our interrupters were interrupting heals, our hunters slowed mobs with traps and killed off totems as soon as possible, and so on. Everybody in the raid has an important task, and it was most likely not the task they usually perform in a raid encounter.
As a tank, I initially felt like a fish out of water. I tried the first couple of attempts as retribution, but realized I did little use actually dpsing. I spent most of my time cleansing and stunning. So I respecced back to protection and figured out my role in the fight:
- Cleanse. There are massive debuffs being thrown around in this fight. Cleansing all kinds of crowd control on my fellow raid members and the worst of the DoTs is very important for survival.
- Interrupt/stun/silence. With a 40 second cooldown on my Hammer of Justice, I couldn't interrupt as well as other classes, but the stun effect (until immune) was very useful. The silence effect on Avenger's Shield also turned out to be very useful.
- Blessing of Protection. Clothies love me.
- Taunt. Even though there is no "real" aggro table, it is possible to taunt the melee classes. This saved our clothies more than once. When I saw one of the melee go for the healers or casters, I taunted the mob and got his attention for a few seconds, thus saving the cloth-wearing target from certain death.
The PvPers in the raid loved the encounter. Some of the non-PvPers were complaining a bit about Blizzard putting a PvP fight in a PvE raid. It was noticable that it took some time for people to get used to the fight. It is not a fight you can plan in advance and execute according to that plan. This fight requires fast reactions, ability to improvise and adapt, and for each player to know how to best use his class in a PvP-like encounter.
After the kill we went to Ulduar, where Flame Leviathan finally, after 17 kills, dropped Titanguard for the first time.
Monday, August 17, 2009
Patch 3.2.2 Changes
Yet again, I'm getting the news late. Taking the weekend off made me miss the announced changes in patch 3.2.2. Anyway, here they are:
Patch 3.2.2 is already up on the PTR, so adjustments to these changes will surely pop up during the coming weeks. Even though the changes so far are nerfs to tankadins, I don't cry myself to sleep at night.
- Righteous Fury: The bonus threat from Holy spells caused by this talent has been reduced from 90% to 80%. [Straight-forward nerf to tankadin threat. Maybe we should have seen this coming, with the recent buffs and all. Even though I don't enjoy being forced to pump out less threat, I think this is a good change in the long run. Blizzard has had problems with scaling tankadin dps since our threat modifier was so big. I'd prefer to get threat from pure dps than from a modifier that won't help me actually kill stuff.]
- Judgements of the Just: The reduction in cooldown to Hammer of Justice provided by this talent has been reduced to 5/10 seconds instead of 10/20 seconds. [PvE nerf due to PvP. Ever heard that one before? Apparently, a stun on a 20 second cooldown was too good to be true in PvP, even though it was barely useful as an interrupt in PvE. For me, this is the final nail in the coffin for Hammer of Justice as a tankadin ability. I didn't put points into the Improved Hammer of Justice talent since I believed the cooldown was still too long, and now Blizzard has made it even worse. Just face it: They don't want us to be able to interrupt.]
- Touched by the Light: This talent now provides 20/40/60% of the paladin’s strength as spell power instead of 10/20/30% of the paladin’s stamina. [Another PvP nerf. Protection specced healing paladins decked out in spell power plate in Arena was the latest Flavor of the Month, and Blizzard decided to crush that spec hard and fast. With the nerf to Judgement of the Just AND Touched by the Light, that spec is now dead. For the normal tankadin, it is a small threat nerf, since we still have more than twice as much stamina than strength. But the change still makes sense. Stamina shouldn't be a threat stat, and Strength now got even better as a threat stat. In the long run, I think this also is a good change.]
- Seal of Command: This ability now chains to strike up to 2 additional targets when it is triggered by an attack. [Seal of Cleave! Yes, sounds good! Since Seal of Vengeance sucks rhino balls on trash, this will make up for it. However, Seal switching is quite expensive these days. Having to switch seals between trash, bosses, and AoE packs will drain one's mana. Just imagine the Onyxia fight, when switching between the Broodmother and her whelps. That would require a seal switch every time.]
Patch 3.2.2 is already up on the PTR, so adjustments to these changes will surely pop up during the coming weeks. Even though the changes so far are nerfs to tankadins, I don't cry myself to sleep at night.
Thursday, August 13, 2009
Lord Jaraxxus
Lord Jaraxxus is the second boss in Trial of the Crusader. We found him to be easier than the first, three-phased boss encounter; Northrend Beasts.
There is a lot of damage going around in the raid, especially if the raid members don't move out of the fires, if the adds are not killed fast, and the boss's abilities are not interrupted, dispelled, or spell stolen. But seriously, all those tricks are Raiding 101 anyways.
We used two tanks: one tanking Jaraxxus in the center of the room, and one (yours truly) taking care of the adds that spawned.
Our first try on this boss was a wipe since we lost too many melee to fires (standing in fire = bad). The second attempt went so well that our raid leader (who was relaxing while tanking Jaraxxus) yelled out that we should do an achievement by keeping two Mistresses of Pain up when the boss died. This of course meant more work for the poor adds tank, who now needed to tank two demons as well as three infernals at the same time. But I'm a paladin, and we all know paladins rock, right?
Overall, it's an easy fight, as long as your raid knows how to interrupt, position, dispel, and heal. Having an imba adds tanks helps too :)
There is a lot of damage going around in the raid, especially if the raid members don't move out of the fires, if the adds are not killed fast, and the boss's abilities are not interrupted, dispelled, or spell stolen. But seriously, all those tricks are Raiding 101 anyways.
We used two tanks: one tanking Jaraxxus in the center of the room, and one (yours truly) taking care of the adds that spawned.
- The raid should be spread out in a circle around him, since he casts a chain lightning-like spell called Fel lightning which will chain to up to five targets.
- Spreading out also helps against the Legion flames, a debuff that makes the target burn and leave a trail of flames behind when moving. If you move, make sure to move straight away from the boss, so that as few people as possible are affected by the fire trail.
- Incinerate Flesh is another thing to look out for. Its target will have to be healed for 70,000 within 15 seconds, or he will explode.
- Jaraxxus casts a Fel fireball on the tank, which needs to be interrupted since it deals a silly amount of damage. Make sure to have assigned interrupters!
- Nether Power is a buff that Jaraxxus gains which increases spell damage dealt by 20%. This buff should of course be spell stolen by mages, since it stacks up to 10 times. If you have no mages around, make your priests dispel it at least.
- The Mistress of Pain spawns from a portal and should be nuked down as fast as possible by ALL dps, except those on interrupt duty. The Mistress hits quite hard and will also attack a random target with Spinning Pain Spike that deals 10-15k damage.
- Infernals spawns from volcanos. A volcano spawns 3-4 infernals at the same time, so the adds tank needs to be quick and mobile to pick them up. They do nasty AoE damage and needs to be tanked away from the raid. It's not very easy to make them move with you, since they randomly target other players before returning to the tank. All ranged dps need to burn down these adds as soon as possible to avoid unecessary raid damage.
Our first try on this boss was a wipe since we lost too many melee to fires (standing in fire = bad). The second attempt went so well that our raid leader (who was relaxing while tanking Jaraxxus) yelled out that we should do an achievement by keeping two Mistresses of Pain up when the boss died. This of course meant more work for the poor adds tank, who now needed to tank two demons as well as three infernals at the same time. But I'm a paladin, and we all know paladins rock, right?
Overall, it's an easy fight, as long as your raid knows how to interrupt, position, dispel, and heal. Having an imba adds tanks helps too :)
Thursday, August 6, 2009
Northrend Beasts (and a bugged XT)
The first fight in the new raid instance is a three phase fight, where you encounter three different beasts.
First off is Gormok the Impaler. He's your ordinary neighbourhood magnataur. And he impales people. But overall, he's not a scary guy. There are basically three things to look out for:
There are two things to look out for:
Whenever I got the Paralytic Toxin, the two tanks moved closer to eachother, so that the toxin would be neutralized by the fire debuff from the other tank. If I had my bubble off cooldown, I just used that to get rid of the toxin. I love being a paladin :)
And remember that the worms do an aggro reset when they switch. We had some dpsers who learned that the hard way...
When the two worms bite the dust, the third and final phase starts as Icehowl enters the arena. He is a big, hairy, and angry wendigo. There are a couple of things to look out for:
Other than that, this fight is not hard. I tanked him with my back against a wall so that his frontal cone attack and knockbacks had little effect. Since there is an early warning on who he will charge, there should be no problem in moving out. Blizzard has even given the target a temporary movement speed buff which makes it even easier.
Northrend Beasts is an easy encounter, at least on 25 man normal mode.
The loot gods where good to me, and I got myself the Chestplate of the Towering Monstrosity and a Tier 9 token (Trophy of the Crusade). Now I just have to figure out how to use it...
When we were finished at the Coliseum, we went to Ulduar, where we got a nasty surprise.
XT is bugged to oblivion. There are MILLIONS of adds coming, and light bombs and gravity bombs being applied even during the Tantrums. A fight that usually takes about three minutes took us close to nine minutes. Since there were so many adds, the dps on XT himself was low, and I noticed on Omen that I had a 60% threat lead on the closest dps. This fight needs to be hotfixed ASAP.
We cleared all the way to Freya before calling it a night.
First off is Gormok the Impaler. He's your ordinary neighbourhood magnataur. And he impales people. But overall, he's not a scary guy. There are basically three things to look out for:
- Staggering Stomp does some AoE damage, so make sure to have ranged people at max range.
- Impale puts a nasty bleed debuff on the tank. It stacks, so at 3 or so stacks, you should switch tanks until the debuff falls off.
- Snobold Vassal is some annoying mob that sit on people's shoulders and stops them from doing anything useful. They need to be killed immediately.
There are two things to look out for:
- They both do a frontal cone attack (fire or poison) so the tank needs to tank them facing away from the raid.
- Acidmaw applies a Paralytic Toxin which makes the target immobile after some time. Only way to get rid of this is to get close to someone who has the fire debuff from the other worm.
Whenever I got the Paralytic Toxin, the two tanks moved closer to eachother, so that the toxin would be neutralized by the fire debuff from the other tank. If I had my bubble off cooldown, I just used that to get rid of the toxin. I love being a paladin :)
And remember that the worms do an aggro reset when they switch. We had some dpsers who learned that the hard way...
When the two worms bite the dust, the third and final phase starts as Icehowl enters the arena. He is a big, hairy, and angry wendigo. There are a couple of things to look out for:
- Ferocious Butt is a hard hit which also stuns for 3 seconds.
- Arctic Breath is a frontal cone attack that freezes the targets and deals damage over time.
- Whirl is an AoE attack with a knockback effect.
- Massive Crash is where the fun starts. He jumps into the air, lands in the middle of the room and, knocks everybody back and stuns them. Then he glares at a raid member and then charges him. The target needs to move out FAST. If Icehowl misses his target he crashes into the wall and is stunned for some time. However, if Icehowl hits his target, that person dies and Icehowl gains the effect next on the list:
- Frothing Rage is a damage and attack speed increase of 50%.
Other than that, this fight is not hard. I tanked him with my back against a wall so that his frontal cone attack and knockbacks had little effect. Since there is an early warning on who he will charge, there should be no problem in moving out. Blizzard has even given the target a temporary movement speed buff which makes it even easier.
Northrend Beasts is an easy encounter, at least on 25 man normal mode.
The loot gods where good to me, and I got myself the Chestplate of the Towering Monstrosity and a Tier 9 token (Trophy of the Crusade). Now I just have to figure out how to use it...
When we were finished at the Coliseum, we went to Ulduar, where we got a nasty surprise.
XT is bugged to oblivion. There are MILLIONS of adds coming, and light bombs and gravity bombs being applied even during the Tantrums. A fight that usually takes about three minutes took us close to nine minutes. Since there were so many adds, the dps on XT himself was low, and I noticed on Omen that I had a 60% threat lead on the closest dps. This fight needs to be hotfixed ASAP.
We cleared all the way to Freya before calling it a night.
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
New specs for 3.2
Patch 3.2 brings some minor changes to my specs (I'm dual-speccing prot/ret).
Let's start with my primary spec:
Protection
The most important change here is that I want two points in Vindication. To be able to get that, I need to steal two points from Conviction. There are no real alternatives here, since Crusade is more threat than Conviction, and I just cannot give up Pursuit of Justice.
The other change is a minor one. I decided to give up on Divine Sacrifice and Divine Guardian. Divine Sacrifice has been nerfed since I picked it (it's capping at 150% of the paladin's health), and with the changes to Sacred Shield (only one shield per player) I find the improved duration of Sacred Shield in the Divine Guardian talent to be less useful. I usually kept Sacred Shield up on myself, and then the improved duration (and absorption) was useful. Now, since I can only have one Sacred Shield up, I will let the holy paladin handle this.
The three points from Divine Sacrifice and Divine Guardian were tough to find a new home to.
The alternatives were Divinity, Improved Hammer of Justice, and Reckoning.
I don't see Divinity as useful, since 3% extra healing won't change a thing. It will only give more overhealing done on me.
Improved Hammer of Justice was tempting, but the cooldown would still be too long to be really useful.
So the three points went into Reckoning for some extra threat.
My secondary spec is dps:
Retribution
In my earlier retribution spec I had Divine Sacrifice and Divine Guardian for some raid utility. These two talents I have now scrapped, since I needed five points in Holy.
Seals of the Pure is now mandatory in the Holy tree.
The new Vindication talent is sexy enough to warrant two points.
I also picked up Seal of Command again. I've been running as ret without Seal of Command for a while, since I only ever used Seal of the Martyr. I believe we will have some use for Seal of Command in fights where there is no time to ramp up the stacks of Holy Vengeance on the mobs to make Seal of Vengeance do enough damage. It will also be a better alternative in PvP.
That left four points without a home. I dumped them in Divinity, with the justification that it could be useful to get some extra heals from an Art of War proc Flash of Light.
I'm leaving my glyphs as they were before the patch. I'm going to revisit them later, when I've got the time. For now, the old ones have to do :)
Let's start with my primary spec:
Protection
The most important change here is that I want two points in Vindication. To be able to get that, I need to steal two points from Conviction. There are no real alternatives here, since Crusade is more threat than Conviction, and I just cannot give up Pursuit of Justice.
The other change is a minor one. I decided to give up on Divine Sacrifice and Divine Guardian. Divine Sacrifice has been nerfed since I picked it (it's capping at 150% of the paladin's health), and with the changes to Sacred Shield (only one shield per player) I find the improved duration of Sacred Shield in the Divine Guardian talent to be less useful. I usually kept Sacred Shield up on myself, and then the improved duration (and absorption) was useful. Now, since I can only have one Sacred Shield up, I will let the holy paladin handle this.
The three points from Divine Sacrifice and Divine Guardian were tough to find a new home to.
The alternatives were Divinity, Improved Hammer of Justice, and Reckoning.
I don't see Divinity as useful, since 3% extra healing won't change a thing. It will only give more overhealing done on me.
Improved Hammer of Justice was tempting, but the cooldown would still be too long to be really useful.
So the three points went into Reckoning for some extra threat.
My secondary spec is dps:
Retribution
In my earlier retribution spec I had Divine Sacrifice and Divine Guardian for some raid utility. These two talents I have now scrapped, since I needed five points in Holy.
Seals of the Pure is now mandatory in the Holy tree.
The new Vindication talent is sexy enough to warrant two points.
I also picked up Seal of Command again. I've been running as ret without Seal of Command for a while, since I only ever used Seal of the Martyr. I believe we will have some use for Seal of Command in fights where there is no time to ramp up the stacks of Holy Vengeance on the mobs to make Seal of Vengeance do enough damage. It will also be a better alternative in PvP.
That left four points without a home. I dumped them in Divinity, with the justification that it could be useful to get some extra heals from an Art of War proc Flash of Light.
I'm leaving my glyphs as they were before the patch. I'm going to revisit them later, when I've got the time. For now, the old ones have to do :)
Friday, July 31, 2009
Achievements
I recently reached 5500 achievement points on my paladin. I know this isn't very much (I'm not even top-10 in my guild), but it's a lot more than I have on my alts, who sit on around 1500 achievement points.
When the achievement system was introduced I thought it was nonsense, and vowed not to give a rat's ass about it. But I think we all get hooked sooner or later. For me, it was when Naxx started to get dull, and the only challenge left was to do the achievements in there.
Achievements have changed the way we play the game.
First of all it's the obvious e-peen of having loads of achievement points.
Second, achievements are now being used as a "proof" that you are capable of something. How often do we not see the "LFM VoA-25, link achievement"? Achievements are of course not a good measure at all of anyone's capability, but it will at least give a hint that the player knows what it is all about.
Third, achievements force players to stay at the current content longer. First you have to down the boss. Then you have to down him with less raid members. Then you have to down him while constantly jumping or running in circles. Then you have to down him while closing your eyes, standing on one leg, and reciting the Holy Bible.... backwards. It's an ingenious way of Blizzard to make content last longer, even for hardcore players. And by looking at the number of achievements added every patch, they are well aware of it.
Fourth, it gives the hardcore players a shot at fame and glory by giving them titles and mounts to strout around in Dalaran with. Everybody will get the epics in the end, but only the hardcore will have the titles and mounts.
And last, but not least, it makes the players' ties to their character stronger than ever. Do you think that holy paladin with 10k achievement points are willing to reroll anytime soon? For every patch, the amount of achievement points are getting higher and the hill to climb to "catch up" with a reroll is getting steeper. As I mentioned at the start of this post: My alts are about 4000 achievement points behind my main. Dropping my main for any of those will seriously hurt my achievement e-peen.
So, are achievements good or bad?
Well, the good thing is that they have introduced an entire new dimension in playing. Now the goal is not just shiny epics, but also shiny achievements, titles, and mounts. More incentives make more people play more (TM).
People are a lot less likely to reroll, since they just cannot stand to face redoing all those achievements again on a new character. This would mean fewer "Flavor of the Month" characters, but also stronger feelings for one's main character.
But there are of course bad sides as well. How fun is it really to kill the same boss in eight different ways? Or wipe an entire night on a farmable boss because you have to do it another way to get an achievement? Or having a single mistake by a single player ruin the entire achievement for everyone for another week (e.g. The Immortal). Or having to pick another 249 pink eggs to get a chance to get a drop which you will need to get another achievement?
Personally, I think achievements are good. They add a flavor to the game, and make some boring aspects of it more meaningful.
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Our new Vindication
I'm very excited about the redesigned Vindication. The new Vindication will reduce the target's Attack Power by 574, which is the same as a warrior's talented Demoralizing Shout (or a druid's talented Demoralizing Roar). Considering that a warrior needs to spend five talent points to get the debuff up to par and 10 rage for every application of the debuff, Vindication wins hands down, since it costs a mere two talent points and is applied automatically and for free.
There are, of course, some caveats:
I feel the only competition left is the warlock's Curse of Weakness. If you have an Affliction warlock in the raid with two points in Improved Curse of Weakness, this curse is still a better option. The improved Curse of Weakness reduces Attack Power with the same amount as Vindication (574), but also reduces the targets armor by 5%. This curse not only frees up the warrior or druid from keeping up Demoralizing Shout/Roar, but also frees up the warrior from doing Sunder Armor, or the rogue from doing Expose Armor.
So if you have a friendly Affliction lock in the raid: Give him or her a hug!
Otherwise, tell the warriors and druids to stop shouting (or roaring) to reduce Attack Power since you will be able to do it without effort. Let them spend their precious red bars on killing stuff instead.
There are, of course, some caveats:
- Warriors still rule supreme when it comes to AoE damage reduction, since both Thunderclap and Demoralizing Shout are applied to multiple mobs within range, whereas Judgement of the Just and Vindication are only applied to a single target (or up to three targets if one manages to apply them with Hammer of the Righteous).
- Demoralizing Shout has a 30 second duration compared to Vindication's 10 seconds.
- Vindication has a "chance to proc", which means that if one is unlucky or need to kite the mob, the debuff could fall off.
I feel the only competition left is the warlock's Curse of Weakness. If you have an Affliction warlock in the raid with two points in Improved Curse of Weakness, this curse is still a better option. The improved Curse of Weakness reduces Attack Power with the same amount as Vindication (574), but also reduces the targets armor by 5%. This curse not only frees up the warrior or druid from keeping up Demoralizing Shout/Roar, but also frees up the warrior from doing Sunder Armor, or the rogue from doing Expose Armor.
So if you have a friendly Affliction lock in the raid: Give him or her a hug!
Otherwise, tell the warriors and druids to stop shouting (or roaring) to reduce Attack Power since you will be able to do it without effort. Let them spend their precious red bars on killing stuff instead.
Thursday, July 23, 2009
Heroic Heartbreaker
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After (finally) killing Yogg-Saron, we could start concentrating on the hard modes in Ulduar.
First on the list was Heartbreaker. I've already made a post on this for when we did it on 10 man, and XT has the same extra abilities on 25-man. He just hits harder and has more health.
I was tanking XT against one of the walls, so that adds wouldn't spawn from the junk piles on that wall. The other tank took care of Pummelers until hard mode was engaged, and after that he was picking up Life Sparks. Since I was tanking the boss against a wall, all I could see was a pair of giant robot legs.
We had a few wipes due to lack of moving when people got the bombs, or people getting killed by XT's tantrum. The healers really have their work cut out for them, and to ease their job, we made one of the shadow priests respec holy.
Eventually, XT was downed and our first hard mode loot was given to our hunter GM. That darn robot didn't drop the sweet tanking mace this time, and since Flame Leviathan refuses to drop Titanguard, I'm still stuck with Last Laugh.
On our Hodir kill for the night, I solo-tanked him without any frost resistance gear for the first time. I didn't really notice any difference in damage intake, but I loved to see my threat look better than with all that resistance gear.
Monday, July 20, 2009
Yogg-Saron down
After several weeks of weak signups, we finally got a solid group together so that we could do some serious attempts on Yogg-Saron. After only a few attempts we downed him (after a 2% wipe on our second attempt for the night).
This kill felt very good. Yogg-Saron has felt like a road block for some time now, especially seeing how me burned through the rest of Ulduar without any real problems (Mimiron was probably the second hardest kill, and after all the nerfs to him, that fight is now cake walk).
I just had to include the achievement we did just before the Ulduar raid. To get our spirits up, we did an Alterac Valley Blitz before entering Ulduar. I guess it helped :)
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
How To: A Tankadin Guide to Yogg-Saron
The Yogg-Saron fight has three phases, and the tankadin tasks for each are a bit different.
Phase 1:
In this phase, you need to kill guardians, which spawn from moving clouds, close to Sara until she dies (she takes about 12% of her health in damage per killed guardian).
We usually have three tanks (or two tanks plus a dps warrior or death knight in defensive stance/frost presence). The raid is positioned close to the entrance. The two main tanks pick up guardians and tank them close to the raid until their health is low. Then the guardians are kited close to Sara where a small group of ranged dpsers finish them off. As soon as a guardian is dead, the tank runs back to the raid to pick up a new guardian. The third (off) tank is picking up lose guardians and holds them away from the healers until one of the main tanks picks them up.
Things to look out for: Stepping in the clouds will make an extra guardian spawn, and if too many of them are up at the same time, the raid risks to be overrun by them.
Phase 2:
Tentacle time! Yogg-Saron appears in the center of the room and three kinds of tentacles spawn. Portals will open, letting raid members enter Yoggie's sick, perverted mind. The phase will end when Yogg-Saron's brain has taken enough damage from the people inside his mind.
However, a tankadin is more useful outside, so you won't be going into the portals.
As mentioned, there are three types of tentacles spawning outside.
Things to look out for: Your Sanity might take some hits due to Brain Link, Malady of the Mind, and Psychosis. Make sure to refresh your Sanity at one of the Sanity Wells, because if your Sanity hits zero, you are mind controlled for the rest of the fight (and your raid will mock you for it when they kill you).
Phase 3:
In the third phase the ranged memebers of the raid will dps Yogg-Saron. The melee dps will spend their time killing off the Immortal Guardians that spawn every 10 seconds. These guardians hit very hard at full health (they will one-shot everything except the tanks), but hit like a smurf when low on health. The guardians should be tanked at least 20 yards away from Yogg-Saron since he casts Empowering Shadows on random guardians, and letting Yoggie heal himself is a bad tactic.
Yogg-Saron also casts Lunatic Gaze every 12 seconds. All raid members must face away from Yogg-Saron when this is being cast.
We bunch all the raid up away from Yogg-Saron, preferrably close to a Sanity Well. All healers face away from Yogg-Saron during the entire fight. We use two tanks: one to pick up the spawning adds before they kill someone, and one to tank them until they are at 1% health (when Thorim will kill them off). Melee dps single targets the guardians to burn them down as fast as possible, since they hit so hard at full health.
As a tankadin, you can either be the tank picking up spawning adds with your many ranged pick-up tools (Exorcism, Avenger's Shield, Hand of Reckoning, Righteous Defense, Judgement), or you could AoE tank the adds while spamming Righteous Defense on your fellow tank, to keep all adds on you until they die.
Things to look out for: Again, keep an eye on your Sanity.
It is an intense and long fight where simple mistakes will make the encounter very difficult.
Good luck!
Phase 1:
In this phase, you need to kill guardians, which spawn from moving clouds, close to Sara until she dies (she takes about 12% of her health in damage per killed guardian).
We usually have three tanks (or two tanks plus a dps warrior or death knight in defensive stance/frost presence). The raid is positioned close to the entrance. The two main tanks pick up guardians and tank them close to the raid until their health is low. Then the guardians are kited close to Sara where a small group of ranged dpsers finish them off. As soon as a guardian is dead, the tank runs back to the raid to pick up a new guardian. The third (off) tank is picking up lose guardians and holds them away from the healers until one of the main tanks picks them up.
Things to look out for: Stepping in the clouds will make an extra guardian spawn, and if too many of them are up at the same time, the raid risks to be overrun by them.
Phase 2:
Tentacle time! Yogg-Saron appears in the center of the room and three kinds of tentacles spawn. Portals will open, letting raid members enter Yoggie's sick, perverted mind. The phase will end when Yogg-Saron's brain has taken enough damage from the people inside his mind.
However, a tankadin is more useful outside, so you won't be going into the portals.
As mentioned, there are three types of tentacles spawning outside.
- The Crushers channel a nasty debuff called Diminish Power, which reduces the damage the raid does with 20%. It stacks up to 4 times if you have 4 Crushers up (which is a REALLY bad idea). The channeling can be interrupted by hitting it with a melee attack. Sounds easy enough, right? Well, the Crusher also gets a stacking buff called Focused Anger everytime it is hit that increases damage done by 3%. This buff can stack up to 99 times. This makes it impossible to tank the tentacle, since it will one-shot anything with 40 or so stacks of the buff. The tankadin thus needs to "joust", i.e. run in, hit it, and quickly run out. Try to avoid getting more than 30 stacks of Focused Anger, so that the tanks don't risk dying.
- The Constrictors Squeeze raid members. When being squeezed, one takes 7500 damage every second. Only way to get people out of Squeeze is to kill the Constrictor. As a tankadin, you can bubble your way out of this. You can also use Hand of Protection on someone else who is squeezed. Save your HoP for a melee that needs to enter a portal, or for someone who otherwise would die.
- The Corruptors spread four kinds of debuffs: a magic one, a curse, a disease, and a poison. Help the healers to cleanse these, especially the mana-draining poison.
Things to look out for: Your Sanity might take some hits due to Brain Link, Malady of the Mind, and Psychosis. Make sure to refresh your Sanity at one of the Sanity Wells, because if your Sanity hits zero, you are mind controlled for the rest of the fight (and your raid will mock you for it when they kill you).
Phase 3:
In the third phase the ranged memebers of the raid will dps Yogg-Saron. The melee dps will spend their time killing off the Immortal Guardians that spawn every 10 seconds. These guardians hit very hard at full health (they will one-shot everything except the tanks), but hit like a smurf when low on health. The guardians should be tanked at least 20 yards away from Yogg-Saron since he casts Empowering Shadows on random guardians, and letting Yoggie heal himself is a bad tactic.
Yogg-Saron also casts Lunatic Gaze every 12 seconds. All raid members must face away from Yogg-Saron when this is being cast.
We bunch all the raid up away from Yogg-Saron, preferrably close to a Sanity Well. All healers face away from Yogg-Saron during the entire fight. We use two tanks: one to pick up the spawning adds before they kill someone, and one to tank them until they are at 1% health (when Thorim will kill them off). Melee dps single targets the guardians to burn them down as fast as possible, since they hit so hard at full health.
As a tankadin, you can either be the tank picking up spawning adds with your many ranged pick-up tools (Exorcism, Avenger's Shield, Hand of Reckoning, Righteous Defense, Judgement), or you could AoE tank the adds while spamming Righteous Defense on your fellow tank, to keep all adds on you until they die.
Things to look out for: Again, keep an eye on your Sanity.
It is an intense and long fight where simple mistakes will make the encounter very difficult.
Good luck!
Monday, July 13, 2009
Tankadin changes in patch 3.2
These are the changes (so far) that the tankadin will face in patch 3.2:
Overall, these are some very nice buffs. Paladin tanks will be stronger than ever in patch 3.2.
- Block Value: The amount of bonus block value on all items has been doubled. This does not affect the base block value on shields or block value derived from strength. [Blizzard is desperately trying to make block useful again. The first "fix" is to increase the block value of items, thus increasing the mitigation block gives warriors and paladins. In addition, it will increase the threat these two tanks can dish out.]
- On-Use Block Value Items: All items and set bonuses that trigger temporary increases to block value have been modified. Instead of increasing their block value amount by 100% like other items, they have all had their effect durations doubled. This applies to Glyph of Deflection, Gnomeregan Autoblocker, Coren's Lucky Coin, Lavanthor's Talisman, Libram of Obstruction, Tome of the Lightbringer, Libram of the Sacred Shield, the tier-8 paladin Shield of Righteousness bonus, the tier-5 paladin Holy Shield bonus, and the tier-5 warrior Shield Block bonus. [The amount of block value would have been too high if these items would have had their block value doubled. Making the duration longer gives the desired mitigation buff without insane spikey threat. The duration buff makes it possible for several of these items and set bonuses to have a 100% uptime.]
- Blessing of Sanctuary: This blessing now also increases stamina by 10%. This effect is not cumulative with Blessing of Kings. [Blizzard wants Sanctuary to be THE tanking blessing. The problem is that Kings is still better. I prefer 10% more agility (avoidance, mitigation, and threat), 10% more strength (mitigation and threat), and 10% intellect (mana) over the 3% damage reduction and mana regen.]
- Righteous Fury: No longer has a duration or mana cost, remaining until cancelled or death. Also cancelled when a Paladin activates a different talent specialization. [Thank you, Blizzard. Finally!]
- Seal of Vengeance and Seal of Corruption: These seals have been redesigned to deal substantially more damage. Now, once a paladin has 5 copies of the debuff from these seals on his or her target, on each swing the paladin will deal 33% weapon damage as Holy, with critical strikes dealing double damage. [Threat buff? Thank you!]
- Shield of Righteousness: Now deals 100% of shield block value as damage instead of 130%. In addition, the benefit from additional block value this ability gains is now subject to diminishing returns. Diminishing returns occur once block value exceeds 30 times the player's level and caps the maximum damage benefit from shield block value at 34.5 times the player's level. [The reduction from 130% to 100% is understandable since the amount of block value has been doubled on items. I don't really understand how the diminishing return works, though.]
- Ardent Defender: Redesigned. Any damage that takes the paladin below 35% health is reduced. This reduction applies only to the portion that pushes the paladin below 35% health (example: a paladin at 50% health takes a 40% hit; the first 15% hits as normal while the next 25% is reduced). In addition, once every 2 minutes an attack that would have killed the paladin will fail to kill, and instead heal the paladin for up to 10/20/30% of maximum health depending on the paladin's defense rating. [Wonderful and interesting. The first implementation Blizzard put on the PTR was too overpowered. But even this nerfed version is still good. In a way you could call it a passive Guardian Spirit on a 2 min cooldown.]
- Guarded by the Light: This talent will no longer cause Divine Plea's duration to be refreshed by using Judgement of Wisdom, Judgement of Justice, or Judgement of Light. [I assume this nerf was introduced to stop protection-specced PvP healers to keep mana regen up indefinitely. It's still lame. I find it very useful to be able to judge to refresh the Divine Plea timer in fights that require a lot of moving or tanking of several roaming adds.]
- Vindication: Redesigned. Now lowers target attack power, is consistent and does not stack with Demoralizing Shout. [Blizzard nerfed the heck out of Vindication recently, due to its effects in PvP. When they realized that the nerfed version was completely worthless, they decided to redesign it to a paladin version of Demoralizing Shout. I like it. It frees up rage/mana and a global cooldown for DPS warriors and warlocks. And it's yet another passive buff/debuff that the paladin can set up without interrupting his/her rotation.]
- Agility and Dodge Nerf, Parry Buff: The avoidance gained from agility and dodge will be nerfed by 15%. The avoidance gained by parry will be buffed by 8%. [This is just me simplifying the changes made. I'll let the math champions battle this one out. I think Blizzard's intention is to make parry more attractive and also to slightly nerf avoidance overall. They don't want another Sunwell Radiance aura "fix".]
- Exorcism: Now has a 1.5 second cast time, but can once again be used on players. [The only real nerf for tankadins. Blizzard is trying to make it up to us with the changes to Hand of Reckoning (see below). I will miss being able to pick up mobs with Exorcism. Single target pulls, I always use Exorcism. Multi-target pulls, I use Avenger's Shield and Exorcism. Picking up new adds at Thorim or Yogg-Saron, I always use Exorcism. When I want to push for threat over everything else, I use Exorcism instead of Holy Shield in my rotation. I will still be able to pull with Exorcism, but I won't be able to do it will running in or while fighting something else. I will surely miss Exorcism.]
- Hand of Reckoning: Redesigned. Now does damage only when target does not currently have the caster targeted, but damage done increased to 50% of attack power, occurring after the taunt effect is applied. [This is a nice change, since it makes it a much better taunting tool. The old version often failed if the person with aggro kept dpsing the mob, and I didn't have the cooldown or range to attack the mob directly after the taunt. It will be nice to be able to just cast this, and not have to follow up with a judgement or something. But while having the mob's attention, this does not bring the extra threat Exorcism did.]
Overall, these are some very nice buffs. Paladin tanks will be stronger than ever in patch 3.2.
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