Posts
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.
Showing posts with label Trial of the Crusader. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Trial of the Crusader. Show all posts
Monday, December 7, 2009
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.
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.
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....
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.
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.
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.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)