World of Warcraft

[Mack Kilimaro]

I only need 2 achievemnts for my red proto drake. Less-rabi, which we seem to fail every time, and zombiefest, which I dont understand the strat for.

I can't make your groups succeed at Less-rabi, but let me take a crack at explaining Zombiefest.

The key to Zombiefest is understanding that the zombies in the first half of the instance will keep respawning until the 2nd boss (Salramm) dies. So, wherever Salramm spawns from, your mission is to drag him from there to the inn (where the Infinite Dragonkin start to spawn after the 2nd boss is dead). Then you wait five minutes before you kill him, to make sure that all the zombies in the first half respawn in that time. Those zombies will stay there.

Once you kill Salramm, talk to Arthas when he's in place and hopefully you don't pull more than 2 zombies. Go through the 3rd boss normally, open the bookshelf, and then let Arthas chill for a minute. You pull 25ish zombies from the gauntlet, probably also getting 2 elite ghouls. Make sure to turn off any ability that causes reflective damage because otherwise the zombies will die too soon. A hunter or shaman for some frost trap or earthbind action are great. Kill the ghouls single-target so you don't get owned while you're running, then drag your 25 zombies back to the first half of the instance. Then your tank rounds up every zombie in the first half of the instance (which is about 80 zombies). When they're all in the same place you AOE them and boom, Zombiefest.

What will mess you up is if the tank has to get any heals at all during this process because then the healer pulls aggro and gets owned. So resist the urge to heal the tank until it's all over.

[Kalbear]

Actually, zombiefest is easier than that.

Zombies can be killed anywhere in the instance and count for the achieve.

So what you do is have one person (usually a plate wearing DPS, but anyone who can take a couple hits and kite is fine) go back to the start, round up all the zombies, and then give the word.

That person kills all of those zombies. Everyone else who is with arthas at the fire part of CoS kills more. All it takes is about 20 zombies, and it's done. You don't have to drag anything anywhere.

Putricide still not down in 25s. People not showing up sucks a bit. People not reading the strategies sucks more. Its very frustrating; this guild was supposed to be better than that.

[Inigima]

Does anyone have advice for Less-Rabi? Still haven't managed that one myself.

[Inigima]

FYI: new phishing scheme. Even if you're not dumb enough to fall for it, your guildmates probably are. Spread the word.

Armory has new features that require you to log in. So, of course, someone has set up a fake armory page that looks very authentic. They've also bought a paid Google ad, so if you are searching for it for some reason, you might not notice and just click on the first thing you see, and get screwed.

Authenticators should secure against this attack, generally, but apparently you can reset your password via email without using your authenticator code, so if you're a dipshit and use the same password for both your WoW account and email account, it could be trouble.

[RaceBannon42]

12% was our best go on Putricide last night. We are way to inconsistant.

We got to P3 easily out first pull then proceeded to wipe in P2 the next 4 tries.

I'm terrible on that fight. I mean I'm not doing stupid shit to die most of the time, but my dps is crap. So much time spent running after adds,then abck to PP means no Maelstrom procs, constant movement plays hell with totems, especial magma totem, which means Firenova is almost worthless as well.

[Poobah]

Don't worry Race.

My DPS was absolutely horrible on our Putricide kill for the very same reasons. Also I kept loosing my stacks of the Herkmul War Token buff, and stuff. I think I barely scraped 6K. This fight just seems to hate enhancement.

[Weak With The Dawn]

Re: Occulus

There are still people who don't know how to do the final boss, even after the recent nerfs.

I once had a ruby drake rider who was convinced that it was the whelps that were killing people, so he went around and killed all the regular whelps around the ring. He was completely flabbergasted when more showed up during the fight.

[PhelanArcetus]

Lots of people are dumb.

We made a bad decision yesterday, starting with Rotface. Well, good in the end. We wiped a lot on him, trying various different kiting methods. Took a shot at Festergut, looked decent, and then had to reclear trash to kill him. Which we did, making our first Plaguewerks kill. Our main mage got Abracadaver, and I picked up the dps gloves because the ret pally had tier.

How do you all handle the slime kiting on Rotface? I was getting splattered and having real problems generating threat, so we swapped to the hunter and later mage, but most of our wipes were due to loss of control of the big slime.

In a heroic as tank I tend to take the first couple of pulls slow, to gauge the healing and dps. Then I go as fast as I dare. As a healer, or dps, I only even consider pulling something if I know the tank. With a pug tank, not a chance of me intentionally pulling a mob. With a friend? I'll expedite any way I feel safe.

[emberling]

I was just talking about Less-Rabi last night since it keeps eluding me too. Apparently one of the more reliable strategies is to take an elemental shaman and just have them interrupt the first cast and then spend the entire rest of the fight mashing Wind Shear and doing nothing else. Supposedly the cast happens exactly five seconds after the previous one is interrupted, meaning that a talented Wind Shear will refresh exactly when the next cast starts and interrupt it flawlessly with no actual human reaction time required.

Tanks that insist on marking targets and can't hold aggro off of two or three different focused targets with reasonably little effort? Sounds like someone's either massively undergeared (which is fine, but I've run with several poorly geared tank alts/offspecs that have no issues whatsoever) or still playing TBC. Even when I do mark targets (in the few occasions where it actually is relevant enough - Spell Flingers with all three pug DPS comes to mind, though I do most of my randoms with one or two guildies to share the instant queue love) I hardly ever see the pug DPS paying a lick of attention to the giant floating skull, and it doesn't matter a whit. The only trouble is when dumb impatient people pull adds while DnD is on cooldown (I'd like to make a policy to let them die in any situation where they pull adds, but they usually feign/vanish/ice block/bubble it onto the healer) or when I get ridiculous miss strings and there's multiple geared split DPS, or bladestorm. Fuck Bladestorm. Oh, and rets that hit taunt because it crits for 10k, that's always fun. Can it go back to doing single digit damage please?

The thing that really makes multiple tanking trivial isn't the AoE tools everyone got in WotLK, though, and it isn't being unafraid to plan around taunting when you need to. That stuff helps, but the real godsend is nameplate threat glow. Without it, you basically have to feel how you're doing on threat on several different mobs, or tab through and check Omen and process that information in a very short time period. With it? Whack a mole. One color for 'let it soak up AoE threat', one color for 'target this and whack it some', and one color for 'taunt this.' It makes everything ridiculously simple, and I suspect many people aren't aware of this feature or aren't using it to its full extent (I, for example, wasn't really able to easily distinguish the colors on the default nameplates and ignored them; it wasn't until I set it up with Aloft and obvious bright contrasting colors that I got it down).

On a side note, though, it occurs to me that there are possible DK specs - even viable and possibly even good ones for, say, raids - that simply don't have the tools to solidly and comfortably tank heroics in a timely manner (chain/speed pulling). Tanking split DPS without DnD isn't impossible, but (particularly with unglyphed or no HB) it's difficult way out of proportion with any other heroic tanking situation. A 15 second cooldown is barely enough to keep pulls going in most groups - but you only even get that 15 second cooldown via three talent points that aren't even tier one (though they should be readily available) and do essentially nothing else of value, particularly for Frost.

[RaceBannon42]

How do you all handle the slime kiting on Rotface? I was getting splattered and having real problems generating threat, so we swapped to the hunter and later mage, but most of our wipes were due to loss of control of the big slime.

Hmm. We use a pally tank to kite the big ooze. He kites him in a clockwise circle. People run the small oozes into him, going counter clockwise. Are people dpsing the big ooze? or is it healer aggro? Not sure how control would be lost.

[Weak With The Dawn]

Lots of people are dumb.

We made a bad decision yesterday, starting with Rotface. Well, good in the end. We wiped a lot on him, trying various different kiting methods. Took a shot at Festergut, looked decent, and then had to reclear trash to kill him. Which we did, making our first Plaguewerks kill. Our main mage got Abracadaver, and I picked up the dps gloves because the ret pally had tier.

How do you all handle the slime kiting on Rotface? I was getting splattered and having real problems generating threat, so we swapped to the hunter and later mage, but most of our wipes were due to loss of control of the big slime.

In a heroic as tank I tend to take the first couple of pulls slow, to gauge the healing and dps. Then I go as fast as I dare. As a healer, or dps, I only even consider pulling something if I know the tank. With a pug tank, not a chance of me intentionally pulling a mob. With a friend? I'll expedite any way I feel safe.

Our mage wants that staff purely because his name is Cadabra.

Our pally tank was having issues kiting the slime too, the biggest issue was when slime vats got knocked down to close to him he would end up passing a little to close to the raid and getting everyone murdered. We'll be in there again tonight talking new strats I'll let you know if we come up with anything good.

[Kalbear]

Pally tanks with consecrate and shield have a way easier time kiting than almost any tanking class. DKs area also okay, but pallies are pro at it.

If you have a warrior, you can shockwave it.

If you have a druid, it turns out you're kind of fucked.

Things to note is that it resets threat values whenever it eats, so do try and time a threat move for those points.

[Greywolf2375]

good news for the rets, DKs & war dps - blue confirming a Str dps ring from the Ashen Verdict in the next patch. Wonder if they will have to go through the 200g/quest to exchange?

[Mack Kilimaro]

Things to note is that it resets threat values whenever it eats, so do try and time a threat move for those points.

Pretty sure that is not the case, unless it works differently on 25 man. I know there is no way that it's been totally resetting threat on me because I would have screwed up kiting far more often than I have if it was. Maybe it reduces threat when it eats, but even that I don't believe to be the case.

I try to smack it with Hammer/Shield of Righteousness and then Judgment and then I start running. It doesn't hit THAT hard when there are no stacks.

I haven't worried about the big slime pools. Just plow through 'em and let a healer deal with it. Paladin tank does have the advantage of being able to quickly self-cast Hand of Freedom to minimize the time spent there. Leave behind consecrate where you can, toss the avenger's shield at some point, and you should be good.

[PhelanArcetus]

Ah, yeah. We had warrior/druid last night, so I volunteered to take the slime. We passed it off to the hunter and later mage, and the mage was doing better but mostly had issues when he got the little slime himself. Basically when I had it, either I couldn't keep it on me, or I'd get smacked hard and die fast.

It resetting aggro might be the issue too, if that happens. We'll play more next week and maybe have a paladin tank. I was trying to pull off dpsing, so I couldn't see too well what was happening to get the slime out of control. Definitely we need to work on the initial merge, and then it seemed it was a matter of the mage sometimes getting trapped, or having to move in to make a slime merge. Probably also little slimes going "loose" because people didn't wait long enough after dropping them to allow a merge.

I love the idea of a strength dps ring... but I need to see how they itemize it. The fact that the agi dps ring has hit is a critical factor in my current upgrade plans.

[emberling]

The aggro reset is when two big slimes merge, from what we observed.

The main thing that really made the difference on Rotface kiting for us was the realization that the big slime pool really isn't that big a deal. It won't one-shot you. It won't snare you so much that you'll get caught in melee and die. As the offtank for the fight, think of it as the damage you're 'tanking.' It's much, much preferable to the big slime getting near the raid, and takes much less coordination than moving Rotface and the entire raid around in order to keep an un-slimed path for the kiter to take (as was our first plan). You don't just ignore it, certainly - you do what you can to use cooldowns to mitigate its damage and stay in it for as little time as possible - but it's not some kind of super touch of death.

The other big thing that we learned is that we have to emphasize that little slimes go in front of the big one, because if you just tell people to run to the big one, some of them will chase it from behind for days and wonder why they're being yelled at.

I can definitely see why you'd want a paladin kiter for cleansing coordination, but DKs are probably better at the kiting part, with more frequent cooldowns to use while taking a dip and Chains for the little guys. Paladins can build more threat on the big ooze, certainly, but you only need enough threat to keep it on you, after all. So though we run Paladin/DK, we had the paladin tank Rotface and the DK kiting, because the paladin's vastly superior gear outweighed the slight kiting advantage. Our GM apparently did it with reasonable success on her druid alt, too, though I wasn't there to see it; I assume much feral faerie fire was used. Warriors seem entirely boned as far as I can tell.

You can certainly use a non-tank, but you definitely want someone with some solid defensive cooldowns and either enough health to take a hit from a big guy, or a good slow that they can apply to the little guy, because without a snare you basically have to run into the big guy to get yours to merge. I'm actually not certain that a hunter is at all appropriate. Mage seems fine, and DK is probably ideal (barring prot paladin, since that's not a 'non-tank').

[Shryke]

I was just talking about Less-Rabi last night since it keeps eluding me too. Apparently one of the more reliable strategies is to take an elemental shaman and just have them interrupt the first cast and then spend the entire rest of the fight mashing Wind Shear and doing nothing else. Supposedly the cast happens exactly five seconds after the previous one is interrupted, meaning that a talented Wind Shear will refresh exactly when the next cast starts and interrupt it flawlessly with no actual human reaction time required.

Tanks that insist on marking targets and can't hold aggro off of two or three different focused targets with reasonably little effort? Sounds like someone's either massively undergeared (which is fine, but I've run with several poorly geared tank alts/offspecs that have no issues whatsoever) or still playing TBC. Even when I do mark targets (in the few occasions where it actually is relevant enough - Spell Flingers with all three pug DPS comes to mind, though I do most of my randoms with one or two guildies to share the instant queue love) I hardly ever see the pug DPS paying a lick of attention to the giant floating skull, and it doesn't matter a whit. The only trouble is when dumb impatient people pull adds while DnD is on cooldown (I'd like to make a policy to let them die in any situation where they pull adds, but they usually feign/vanish/ice block/bubble it onto the healer) or when I get ridiculous miss strings and there's multiple geared split DPS, or bladestorm. Fuck Bladestorm. Oh, and rets that hit taunt because it crits for 10k, that's always fun. Can it go back to doing single digit damage please?

The thing that really makes multiple tanking trivial isn't the AoE tools everyone got in WotLK, though, and it isn't being unafraid to plan around taunting when you need to. That stuff helps, but the real godsend is nameplate threat glow. Without it, you basically have to feel how you're doing on threat on several different mobs, or tab through and check Omen and process that information in a very short time period. With it? Whack a mole. One color for 'let it soak up AoE threat', one color for 'target this and whack it some', and one color for 'taunt this.' It makes everything ridiculously simple, and I suspect many people aren't aware of this feature or aren't using it to its full extent (I, for example, wasn't really able to easily distinguish the colors on the default nameplates and ignored them; it wasn't until I set it up with Aloft and obvious bright contrasting colors that I got it down).

On a side note, though, it occurs to me that there are possible DK specs - even viable and possibly even good ones for, say, raids - that simply don't have the tools to solidly and comfortably tank heroics in a timely manner (chain/speed pulling). Tanking split DPS without DnD isn't impossible, but (particularly with unglyphed or no HB) it's difficult way out of proportion with any other heroic tanking situation. A 15 second cooldown is barely enough to keep pulls going in most groups - but you only even get that 15 second cooldown via three talent points that aren't even tier one (though they should be readily available) and do essentially nothing else of value, particularly for Frost.

The Cooldown and Cost of DnD can make it a real pain to chain pull.

When I was Frost and had the 30 second cooldown is was brutal.

As Blood, I find my only real problem is the DPS who pull a "POM-AP Pyroblast" style attack right out of the gate on the mob I'm NOT targetting while I'm busy trying to apply and spread diseases.

[PosseKnight]

So I usually just lurk but I'm gonna post about the two ways I did less rabi since it's such a pain in the ass. Had every achivement but that on my warrior and DK for months. When I first tried to do it I tried to get a shaman to wind shear, but I didn't know any shamans back then and trying to get pugs to respec for wind shear and explain it just didn't work out so well. My guild leader is a arcane mage and I found this strat on wowhead.

"As an arcane mage, the strat I've used so far and if done right has yet to fail for me is to bring the boss to ~75% with slow DPS and have someone inturupt it. Preferably don't use shield bash or counterspell. This is done to avoid a stun during the "burn" phase (which is considered 40% of his HP in 10 plus change seconds. This usually requires a lusted/hero'd w/ CD's group DPS of ~17000, which is low considering alot of people have their healers go DPS and arc mages with CD's do ALOT).

After the first inturupt, all DPS but the arc mage goes all out, the mage must be prepared to counterspell at around 50-40%. Between 70 and 50% the mage (or myself) is blowing all cooldowns available and stacking AB slowly ready for a burn. If the DPS is low, the mage can assist to make sure theres not too much HP left for the burn, but not too little that they will miss the inturupt. If the DPS is too high (IE: getting him to 25%), you may not want them to go "all out" untill after the second inturupt. There is a good chance he will cast exactly at 50% so be prepared.

As soon as the CS is hit, the mage goes all out (which should be, if you have a lust/hero, capable of at least 8k DPS, if not 10). The boss should be dead within 10.5s that u need to kill him. The counterspell will lock out his third cast giving you that extra time to kill him, and If you need confirmation on this, Try it out, you will see the raid warning that hes transforming, but he wont cast anything.

Ive done this with 3 4 and 5 DPS, but having only 3, ESPC if theyre not all pulling 4-5k, is tough. When going with 3 we tried to burn him to more like 60% before the first interupt.

The only times that a group has not done this properly with me is if another player hits the second inturupt instead of me, which ends in fail since the boss will usually die about 2 seconds after casting. Make sure everyone in your group understands that after the first inurupt, their job is to DPS and ONLY DPS.

I also suggest lusting/heroing before the pull, as it will still be up after the fight and will be just one less thing to worry about."

We did it with me as a prot warrior (2k DPS) ,shaman for BL(4k), arcane mage with improved counterspell(7k), shadow priest(2k) and a lock(6.5k). We one shotted it and I find that to be the easiest way.

On my DK I tried the 5 DPS zerg version but that took a while and it's easy for things to go wrong, if you miss a interrupt and he transforms, he's usually dead before you can wipe and try again.

I went DPS spec and cleared out the room first..first time I didn't clear the two adds on the left and army pulled them in. Let army tank, I take the first interrupt with mind freeze, have a shaman BL before we pull him. Hopefully he's dead before he gets another cast in, we downed him in 13 seconds but it took a lot of tries.

DPS for that group was from 6k to me bringing up the rear as 3k while in a mix of tank and dps gear in frost pres. One thing for all of my tries is we had a shaman for BL. Hope that helps!

[Mack Kilimaro]

Took an hour and a half to kill Rotface, which sucked. Then we lined up for Putricide. Our first attempt, we had someone die before we even got to phase 2. Our second attempt, we had 1:00 left on the berserk timer and he hadn't even gotten to phase 3.

Attempt #7, we got him down to 900,000 health (10 man) with one minute left on the berserk timer when one of the tanks died. We had plenty of room for slime puddles to go. That was the end of our raid time for the night, but we've got three attempts and we're going back tomorrow. Hopefully we will down him then. I'm feeling pretty good about it. We really made some great strides in that many attempts.

[Shryke]

Downed Festergut. A fun fight and one HELL of a tight DPS race. Also I'm thinking that guy would be a pain in the ass if your tanks Threat generation is too different from one another.

We banged our head against Rotface for awhile though. Then all teh trash respawned and we called it a night.

I'm thinking we're just gonna need to go with the strategy above and just have the tank say "Fuck the slime" and run the circle like it's not there.

Once we got the hang of the fight though the REAL issue we were having, though, was people not getting rid of their little slimes and us wiping due to a second big slime forming right on top of the boss and 1 shotting the raid.