Heartbreaker

Some of us put together an ad hoc 10-man group yesterday to try some hardmodes. Before one of our healers disconnected on Iron Council, we did the XT-002 hard mode kill.

The idea is to kill the heart on the first heart phase, which then starts the hard mode. Gravity Bombs will now leave nasty void zones on the ground, and Light Bombs will leave Life Sparks that deal nasty damage and needs to be nuked fast.

After some tries we realized that there were no more adds coming after hard mode had been engaged, which meant we didn't really need two tanks. I switched to retri, but kept my shield on at the beginning, so that I could tank adds at the start.

As soon as hard mode was started, we quickly nuked the remaining adds and I equipped my two-hander to help out with the dps. With an extra dps and the extra damage reduction provided by my Divine Sacrifice (which can't really be used while tanking adds), the girlish robot went down and we got our achievement.

Summer time

It's summer time and everything slows down a bit. Raid sign-ups in our guild is low and several raids are cancelled. We don't have enough core sign-ups to continue on Yogg-Saron.

I'm mostly playing my rogue alt at the moment, except when I collect useless achievements (like the Flame Warden title achievement) on Arnax.

There are some big changes to paladins coming in patch 3.2. I'll get back to those in a post later. At the moment, I am on vacation and will not post much at all.

I hope you all enjoy your summer :)

Epic gems are coming!

In the next major content patch, we will get access to epic gems. That means a lot of regemming of gear, and a major upswing in jewelcrafters' income (for some time atleast).

We will be able to get raw epic gems from the following:

• Prospecting Titanium Ore
• Alchemy transmutations
• Purchased with Honor
• Purchased with Emblems of Heroism

I still have a stash of Emblems of Heroism, but I can imagine that people will start grinding some heroics again to get more emblems to trade in for gems.

I better start doing the JC dailies again on my shaman, so that I can buy all the new designs I need... Oh, the day does not have enough hours for all this grinding...

Reaching Phase 3 on Yogg-Saron

After the Yogg-Saron nerfs (see below), we managed to get to phase 3 in the fight. So far, our best attempt is 20%, and it feels like the kill is not far away.

The latest Ulduar nerfs are:

• The Yogg-Saron encounter has received the following changes: Death Ray no longer hits players who are under the effect of Malady of the Mind, Guardians of Yogg-Saron no longer use Dominate Mind, the spawn rate of Guardians of Yogg-Saron is more forgiving, and these Guardians will no longer spawn if a player that is protected by Hodir’s Flash Freeze hits an Ominous Cloud.
  
• The Flame Leviathan encounter has received the following changes: the bonus health Flame Leviathan receives per tower has been reduced, the ejection height from Flame Leviathan has been reduced, the snare effect of the Tower of Frost has been removed, and the cannons on Demolishers and Siege Enginers should now break Flash Frozen vehicles in 1 shot.
  
• The XT-002 Deconstructor encounter has received the following changes: the health of the heart has been slightly reduced in heroic difficulty and the rate at which Gravity Lapse and Searing Light are cast has been reduced.

We haven't done the Flame Leviathan on hard mode yet, so I don't really know the impact of those changes. The XT-002 fight was already easy, so the nerfs feels a bit unnecessary.

The removal of mind control from the Guardians makes the Yogg-Saron fight easier, especially for a tank. I hated having several of them on me and then suddenly seeing myself casting Hand of Protection on them and then go on to stun a fellow raider, losing all aggro on the mobs and seeing them turn to healers...

The change in spawn rate was noticable, since I realized I had Exorcism off cooldown when I needed it more often than before.

Now we just have to perfect phase 3...

Vindication and Hammer of Justice nerfs

More incoming PvP nerfs for paladins in today's hotfix:

• When immune to the stun of following abilities, Maim, Bash, and Hammer of Justice will no longer cause player spells to be interrupted but they will still interrupt NPCs.
• The Retribution Paladin talent Vindication no longer reduces the targets stamina or intellect but does correctly lower agility, spirit, and strength.

The first one means that sooner or later, the diminishing returns from the stun effect of Hammer of Justice will make the opponent immune to the silence effect as well as the stun effect.

The second one turns Vindication into a completely useless talent. Reducing the opponent's agility, spirit, and strength is not exactly useful.

So within a couple of weeks, several paladin PvP talents have been nerfed: Hand of Freedom, Eye for an Eye, Hammer of Justice, and Vindication. And of course the nerf to Exorcism so that it no longer could not be used on players and their pets. Even our retribution aura got nerfed!

If retribution paladins are so overpowered in PvP that they need these nerfs, why are we not seeing more of them in the higher brackets in Arena?

Failure at General

On Thursday, we engaged Genral Vezax. This week we didn't have a death knight tank in the raid, and since I had successfully tanked the big squid on 10-man, I stepped up to the challenge to tank him.

It didn't go well at all.

The Surge of Darkness was not a problem. I used my bubble wall every other cast, and one of the priests used his cooldown every other cast. I was never even close on dying to the ability that should have been the biggest problem due to limited tankadin cooldowns.

Instead, it was the Searing Flames that got me killed. I had 43k health in the fight, which meant that I could survive two consectutive melee hits (Squid Face hits for around 20k on plate) if topped off. Due to lag, the assigned interrupters failed to interrupt Searing Flames a few times, which instantly lead to a wipe. The reason was the 75% reduction of armor on the tank, which meant that Squid Face could one-shot me.

After five wipes (due to four Searing Flames and one parry-gib), the Raid Leader brought in a death knight to tank, and I went retri for dps. The General went down on the first try.

Even though I agree that a death knight tank is better suited (i.e. has more tools to survive) to tank General Vezax, the comparison this time fails, since when the death knight stepped in, suddenly all the Searing Flames were interrupted, and the new tank didn't have to deal with losing 75% of his armor.

For future attempts (if I am ever allowed to tank Squid Face again), an additional cooldown needs to be assigned for when (or rather IF) the tank gets the Searing Flames debuff.

Patch 3.1.3

I took a week off from raiding and spent only little time online, mostly doing dailies with my alts. I have four level 80s and they all need that darn Sons of Hodir reputation.... (two exalted so far)

This week it seems like we are getting a new minor patch. For paladins, it's all about PvP nerfs (again...)

• Eye For An Eye: This talent now deals 5/10% of the critical strike damage taken by the paladin back at the attacker.
  
• Hand of Freedom: The base duration of this buff has been reduced from 10 seconds to 6 seconds.

And then we have yet another Ulduar nerf:

Mimiron

• The flight time of Rocket Strikes has been increased, and Rocket Strikes will try to prefer players at range.
  
• The Leviathan Mk II component of the V-07-TR-0N will become stunned during Phase 4 when the VX-001 component begins to cast the P3Wx2 Laser Barrage ability.
  
• Proximity mines now deal less damage and have a lower duration. A small arming time has also been added so proximity mines will not immediately detonate on creation.

Now, I must admit I don't mind the rocket nerf (I've got killed more times by rockets than I want to admit), and phase 4 could be a bit messy if the Laser Barrage occured just after a Shock Blast and the tank is repositioning the boss. But, seriously, why the nerf to mines? Did people actually die from these?