The Next World of Warcraft Thread

[Guest Nadine]

Ran Vault last night with the guild...and failed miserably. Only 3 of our good DPS were on, and I was well off my a-game. The healers did a decent job but our tank kept dying during the third Meteor Fist of Koralon. Oh well.

I'm on the hunt for a Rich Silk Purple Shirt. My rogue and Shaman have had them for years but as time goes on they're increasingly hard to find, and they're the only shirts that I actually like on my toons. I have not even seen the tailoring pattern on the AH, the hunt continues....

The pattern is NEVER around. I have thought about farming for it, but I am too lazy. :P

[Kalbear]

So far in the new guild, I've been a part of doing Heroic ToC 10, Algalon, and ToC 25/Heroic Toc 25. The 10s went pretty well; we got through to Anub'arak and proceeded to wipe and wipe and wipe again. But we should have him this week after people did some analysis of phase 3 and how to boost our overall damage there.

Algalon was more frustrating; we didn't end up doing it, and part of that was at least a couple times my screwups. I'll do better next week.

ToC 25 was pretty outstanding. The normal mode was, of course, cake; we ended up beating the Faction champs when someone accidentally parked their toon close to where they dropped down and ninja pulled while they were afk. Then we got to heroic beasts, and managed after about 2 hours to down it for the first kill. That saved time for Jaraxxus who proceeded to wreck us with his new mechanics. Most of this I think was us not expecting multiple mistresses of pain; we'll do better at this in the future.

One interesting thing that makes me much happier than it should is the way they do loot; they do rolling on anything that anyone wants, and do loot council on some items from time to time depending on what they feel is the biggest need for the raid. Loot takes almost no time at all, people are basically counted on not to be douches about it and get a ton of drops, and it seems to work.

It's also interesting as there are a total of three ferals in the guild right now as well as a couple others who have feral as an offspec. I've not been able to play with other ferals before, and it's interesting to be able to directly compare based on spec and fight and gear how everyone does.

Between the 10-mans and the 25s I've gotten three huge upgrades right off the bat. That's not that important, but it's kind of nice to be able to get gear right away. It also helps me feel like I'm pulling my weight some.

Tonight's going to be Ulduar; it's going to be interesting to see that with the new group since that's a raid I actually have experience with. We're going for Firefighter, my favorite fight in there. Hopefully with all the extra gear the raid has we'll be able to get it down. They'll be able to work on Algalon 25 then.

[Weak With The Dawn]

Ah, a fellow person with great taste in WOW shirts. I've long thought the Rich Purple Silk Shirt is the finest one there is in the game. It looks good on its own and having that purple silk under any gaps your armor may have always looks cool. I have one for every toon I have ever played regularly.

Lucky, I think I have three total, I need about 4 more. There's only one other shirt I like: the bloody bandages you can buy in Dal.

Even though I don't play on an RP server, each of my toons has a back story, including my bank toon; an injured Orc warrior recovering in Silvermoon. So he runs around in tuxedo pants with bloody bandages when handling all my Auctions. It looks pretty badass, I gotta say.

The pattern is NEVER around. I have thought about farming for it, but I am too lazy. tongue.gif

Same, but then I realized I only have one tailor, and he's level 20 with 40 Tailoring skill, so I'll just ask my guild, maybe someone will have it.

[Kalbear]

Silena has that pattern, btw.

[PhelanArcetus]

A little more thinking, and I pulled down Rawr. (At work; there's no mac version and until I get a new machine later this month, I can't run Windows apps at home.) Rough analysis there says that my best short-term move on the paladin is the crafted boots, EoC neck, and Libram all together. Which I can definitely do as a batch early next week.

Which will also mean the end of my use of SealBar, as I take 3 of my empty bar slots for macros: Seal of Command (Righteousness for now) & equip EoC libram, Seal of Vengeance & equip EoT libram, Seal of Wisdom.

[Inigima]

I've just been informed that the Unliving Swine in Borean now give you a Swine Flu debuff.

[Guest Nadine]

I've just been informed that the Unliving Swine in Borean now give you a Swine Flu debuff.

They have for a while. IIRC, you turn green and get slowed or something. I was telling my son about the puking in shattrath quest and he wants to do it really badly. Anyone remember crap about that quest?

hmm, may never mine anywhere but wintergrasp from now on. Far fewer nodes than SB, but the nodes are mostly titanium or rich sardonite. May be one of the best kept secrets in game.

Been playing the AH like it was junk bonds. I know I am going to end up with some stupid thing worth 3K and end up never selling it, but damn, this is fun!!

[emberling]

I was telling my son about the puking in shattrath quest and he wants to do it really badly. Anyone remember crap about that quest?

Looks like it's part of the (long) quest line detailed here, specifically "Of Thistleheads and Eggs..."

[TrueMetis]

I have totally got to get back on haven't played my Gnome since summer started.

[PhelanArcetus]

Excellent night last night.

First off, for reference, last Thursday we did Vault and 4/5 Trial10.

Last night we did Vault, 5/5 Trial10, and finally extended our Ulduar lockout to get Hodir and Thorim down. It took all the way til Hodir for any tanking loot to drop, but I got the pant token, so I've got 4-pc T8 bonus at last. And we've agreed to try Wednesdays as well, which should double our ability to hit raid instances.

And following all that, I cleared HToC twice (nothing, but thanks for at least letting me see the healing belt when my warrior was there; it was mockery but the first time I've actually seen it drop), and the heroic daily, HoL (in 17 minutes). As well as farmed up a little fire, picked up the Libram of Valiance, and blew 5k on a Darkmoon Card: Greatness. Which I hadn't quite realized yet was literally the best trinket I have access to still.

[Guest Nadine]

Looks like it's part of the (long) quest line detailed here, specifically "Of Thistleheads and Eggs..."

<3

thanks!

[Weak With The Dawn]

hmm, may never mine anywhere but wintergrasp from now on. Far fewer nodes than SB, but the nodes are mostly titanium or rich sardonite. May be one of the best kept secrets in game.

Be careful Nadine, there are alot of speed hackers in Wintergrasp that farm nodes from underground. It's been a known issue for some time, so be prepared to report.

Got some better shoulders in Ulduar last night (my main tank insists on pronouncing it Ul-you-dar and it's bothers me for some reason). I still need better pants, I'm wearing my Naxx 10 pants cause I have not been on for any of our ToC 10 runs..:-(.

Found some Silk Purple Shirts on the AH last night but couldn't buy them because I'm broke after regemming. I finally downloaded a spreadsheet and let me tell you...it's a rogues best friend.

[Kalbear]

The second (and last) night of raiding for us, and we went into Ulduar. It was...interesting. And kinda awesome.

As soon as there are tanks and healers, we pull trash. No ready checks, no nothing. Discussion of strats are done during trash if needed. Most everything is done with AoE whenever possible; I think the only CC we did was on the way to Kologarn from XT, and that was the only marking too. Anywhere else you would do it otherwise (Freya trash, XT) was handled by simply moving the mob away from the group (like the 'make my friends immune guys) while the rest was AoEd down.

I've never seen people so amazingly on the ball and competitive on trash, either.

The bosses are done with different strats too, at least compared to what I'm used to. Some are better, some are worse, and it took some adjusting for me to get used to that as well. Things are largely not explained in massive depth on vent; they're hashed out in raid chat while the generics are talked about.

We tried Mimiron hard for a while. The best attempt got everything to 15% before the room blew up. We'll be going back next week to work on it, and will extend the raid ID so that we don't have to fuck around with clearing crap. I'm pretty sure that we'll get him next week. Our p3 is the part we need to work on in terms of making it clean, but we were consistently getting there without too many issues.

We'll also probably try and do Jaraxxus hard, and I think we can do it if we spend a bit of time on it. The hard part for us last time was dealing with the lightning, which apparently was simply us not purging nether power consistently. We may have to just deal with multiple mistresses of pain up, but that's not as bad as lightning one-shotting multiple people. If we can get that dealt with we should be able to down him, I think.

Also going back in to finish off the heroic 10-man, killing Anub'arak. After looking at the logs it looks like nature resistance is a big key (or can be); we're planning on using NR pots and having the tanks (who are topped off most of the time) use some NR enchants/flasks so that they can reduce the healing done. It's probably not necessary for the 10-man, but it'll help with our comp - and it'll likely help with the 25 as well (that's how Premonition did it, I found out).

[Stego]

10 man heroic Anub was so easy I can't imagine needing gimmicks. Maybe on 25 man, but... 10 man is all about knowing how to kite or not. There's nothing else to the fight, tbh.

[Kalbear]

10 man heroic Anub was so easy I can't imagine needing gimmicks. Maybe on 25 man, but... 10 man is all about knowing how to kite or not. There's nothing else to the fight, tbh.

P1 & 2 weren't bad at all. We didn't have any problems with kiting; it was just about P3. P3 is where things went downhill for us. Again, part of it is the comp. I'm guessing you had at least one rogue doing FoK interrupt spam, possibly a pally with holy wrath, and one resto druid for sure. We don't have any of that, so it's a bit rougher. Especially not having the holy wrath or FoK spam hurts.It's possible we're missing something from the fight that we should have had or some concept, but in general what happened would be one of the adds would get a strike off and pwn a healer. Or we simply couldn't do enough DPS fast enough before the adds got out of control. A lot of our time was spent simply figuring out how best to deal with those adds.

Like I said, it's probably not necessary to get it done, but it will help significantly for us, and it'll be good prep for the 25-man version.

[Guest Nadine]

Moose, how do I tell? I have never heard of this thing.

[Weak With The Dawn]

Moose, how do I tell? I have never heard of this thing.

This thread from the European forums has some good descriptions of speed hackers. I have not seen any on my realm, but I know a few friends of mine have had some issues.

[Stego]

P1 & 2 weren't bad at all. We didn't have any problems with kiting; it was just about P3. P3 is where things went downhill for us. Again, part of it is the comp. I'm guessing you had at least one rogue doing FoK interrupt spam, possibly a pally with holy wrath, and one resto druid for sure. We don't have any of that, so it's a bit rougher. Especially not having the holy wrath or FoK spam hurts.It's possible we're missing something from the fight that we should have had or some concept, but in general what happened would be one of the adds would get a strike off and pwn a healer. Or we simply couldn't do enough DPS fast enough before the adds got out of control. A lot of our time was spent simply figuring out how best to deal with those adds.

Like I said, it's probably not necessary to get it done, but it will help significantly for us, and it'll be good prep for the 25-man version.

Do you folks have a warrior tank? I am able to interrupt them all with my 4 interrupts.

[Kalbear]

We do, though he was having problems interrupting. He wouldn't see one of the two adds and their cast at all. Part of that, I think, is that we were going for the one submerge strat, which meant that he had to focus entirely on putting as much threat and damage on those adds as humanly possible. Though thinking about it...that's not really true, is it? The two submerge means more like you need to burn them fast; the one submerge lets them be around for a bit while you mostly focus on Anub. So I don't know. I do know that when we switched one of the DPS to dedicated interrupts on one of the two adds it went a lot more smoothly.

I think we could probably do a better job in P2 as well; we kind of brute-forced it since we were looking at getting to one submerge and just let kiting do whatever. That worked, but it's a lot cleaner to spread the orbs out a bit and make Anub run as far as he can with one and only one person, then have everyone else spread out. It's not critical, but it would help. People were getting pwned by those stupid adds too.

Mostly the fixes above help with the DPS in P3, which was the real problem for us. Some of that may have been keeping people's health way too high - but this will work too, I think. Both tanks contributed 50% of the overall healing, which means if we can cut that by 20-30% we'll be doing a lot of effective damage.

[Stego]

What is your second tank actually tanking in phase 3?