World of Warcraft

[Weak With The Dawn]

Getting a little better on Putrecide. Got him to around 60% last night. Unfortunately this includes the 5% buff. Myself and 3 others feel like it's cheating, but we were overpowered by the "Everyone else is using it" excuse. Maybe I'm just weird.

We still didn't kill the damn guy but we're doing much better on the slimes. We tried an altered strat for the first pull, killed the first slime before it hit it's second target, wiped about 10 slimes later, and then started using completely different strategies. Nothing worked as well as the first one, but no one seemed to notice it. Hopefully we'll kill him tonight since we have a few hours on him.

[PhelanArcetus]

Since you're melee-heavy like us, I'd suggest using the method we did. Try to tank Putricide right where the green slime spawns. Well, near there; I try to avoid standing there until it spawns to avoid puddles. Yes, you'll take explosions. But they're pretty weak when spread around like that. And dps can get on it immediately. Hell, I follow it as tank, since I can soak a lot. For the orange, we send ranged and the combat rogue, leaving those who suffer badly from switching on Putricide.

I'm quite happy to use the 5% buff, because while it is going to make things easier, it's not like we've been clearing everything trivially, either.

Oh, and the thing I wanted to post:

[Weak With The Dawn]

I'm quite happy to use the 5% buff, because while it is going to make things easier, it's not like we've been clearing everything trivially, either.

Not right now, but eventually it's going to be a 30% damage boost. That will certainly trivialize plenty of encounters, so I'd rather actually work on what we're doing wrong now, instead of relying on a buff to hand hold us through it all.

[PhelanArcetus]

Well yes. But I mean, there's stuff where we're doing well, but not great. Rotface is a good example. We can kill him without the buff. But the buff gives us a nice little buffer should we screw up some execution. On Putricide it should help us get him to phase 2 before the second ooze spawns.

The other fights, we're executing too poorly for a 5% buff to make the difference, except that it will get us to those fights sooner in the night.

[Weak With The Dawn]

Well yes. But I mean, there's stuff where we're doing well, but not great. Rotface is a good example. We can kill him without the buff. But the buff gives us a nice little buffer should we screw up some execution. On Putricide it should help us get him to phase 2 before the second ooze spawns.

The other fights, we're executing too poorly for a 5% buff to make the difference, except that it will get us to those fights sooner in the night.

I get that. I figured we would use the buff to plow through Lord M - Rotface. Then they discussed using the buff because it's "only 5%" and not using it when it gets so high that it's a detriment to personal progress. The issue there is, when is that "too high".

Even more worrying, if you decide 20% is when you stop using it, then you're going into everything that week minus the 15% boost you're used to. Which means once again you're back to adjusting you're raid around pushing out that last few extra dps or saying "screw it next week we're using the buff" instead of working on your problems.

I'm worried that as the buff gets higher we're going to rely on the game client to fix our mistakes instead of our raiders.

[PhelanArcetus]

I think we'll be leaving it on, though I could see arguing for "let's use it for all the stuff on farm to get there faster, then turn it off to do things for real".

I just don't think that's worth it. I'm content to accept the buff. We're a decent guild, we're by no means the best out there. We're pretty much exactly the sort of guild this is intended for; we'll get there eventually, we'll muddle through, but we're not going to get the lich king down without either post-LK gear or a buff like this. If we do get him down, without the buff existing, it would be probably not long before Cataclysm came out.

Prior to ToC, granted we did end up expanding our raid time around ToC's release, we hadn't gotten past downing 3 of the keepers in Ulduar. And rarely did we manage more than 2 in a given week. One time, somehow, we got three keepers down and had time to try Mimiron once or twice, and that was a fluke. Extending the raid lockout made a huge difference. A buff like this will allow us to get past fights with less time spent practicing until everyone executes correctly. We spent several entire nights on Rotface, not adjusting our strategy, but just getting to the point where all the raid members were practiced at handling their infections sensibly.

[Greywolf2375]

I didn't think the buff was something that you could choose per boss or even change once you've started in - I thought it was a setting for that raid ID; if you choose it on, it's on for everything. I was listening in to another guilds raid and it sounded like they couldn't switch once they had done Marrowgar. Is that a bug or is that the way it's intended?

[Weak With The Dawn]

I didn't think the buff was something that you could choose per boss or even change once you've started in - I thought it was a setting for that raid ID; if you choose it on, it's on for everything. I was listening in to another guilds raid and it sounded like they couldn't switch once they had done Marrowgar. Is that a bug or is that the way it's intended?

I know you can't turn it back on, but I was under the assumption that you could turn it off whenever you wanted.

That way you could soar through farmed content and then work on stuff as normal. Since we opted to keep the buff when we hit Professor I can't confirm or deny if you can turn it off whenever you want, but once it's off, it's off for good (that week).

["Blackfyre"]

Sigh,

I know these changes are coming, but I HATE that they are completely changing how Enhancement works again.

We went from wanting Str in TBC and Int was useless. Now we want AP or haste after capping hit & exp, and Int is desireable. Next we dont want Int again! AP is going away...

I wouldn't mind so much if it didn't happen until the expansion comes out, but there going to be a 4.0 and likely for a month or more before the expansion comes, so we need to regem, enchant etc for a month of play

Enhance... its like a curse. I love it and at times hate it. But, I can't ever see not playing that way. Glory days of vanilla.

Whats the name of your enhance shaman Race? Mine is Tawhaki, Dark Iron.

[RaceBannon42]

Enhance... its like a curse. I love it and at times hate it. But, I can't ever see not playing that way. Glory days of vanilla.

Whats the name of your enhance shaman Race? Mine is Tawhaki, Dark Iron.

Baelor Quel'dorei

[jurble]

So first attempts on BQL 25 today. We've had Princes on farm for weeks, but my Gleader really wanted to get Prof. before even trying BQL on 25, but today one of our tanks didn't show, so we went to BQL. It's an easy, and we were doing well, I think, could've gotten it down today, but we have so much down time it's enraging. People constantly go afk for food or drinks, and dudes who didn't get into the raid at raid start time log off and don't wait, so we can't switch people in. We had like 4 attempts in 2 hours. It's atrocious. DPS wasn't an issue, we can pretty much just have anyone bite anyone, and we're good on enrage. But random scrubs always did something wrong, like not getting the binding laser off, not biting anyone at all and getting mc'd, standing too close in aerial, etc. Times like this I wish I was in a top guild where people who don't pay attention/functionally retarded are in smaller numbers.

[Mack Kilimaro]

Professor Putricide down! Woo! That was a skin-of-the-teeth kill... the only people left alive when he keeled over were me, the other tank and one healer. I thought the 5% buff would give us a little more breathing room, but unfortunately our usual mage wasn't raiding tonight and the replacement was not on his level of DPS. Still, it was nice to finally kill him. 9 bosses in one night is pretty good for us. Sets us up for Blood Queen (who we've killed once before) on the second night, and then we can get a good couple of hours in the Frost wing, maybe even getting one or two new bosses. That would be fantastic.

[TerraPrime]

Cleared VoA10 and Fester/Rot last night. We stayed with the old strat on Rotface (kiting) and got it done in 4 tries. We had 9 ppl standing at the end. Perhaps it's the 5% buff?

We started on Professor tonight. Got 10 attempts in, and best shot was 62%. Still a lot to learn with positioning and movement. We're using the stack-on-green-slime strat, and we will have bad combos sometimes, with the pool from the slime, then professor will spawn a pool at the same spot, and then we get malleable goo. The abom was basically full-time eating puddle once phase 2 starts and can barely do anything else other than slowing the orange. Things worked better once we get the disc prist to go holy and do raid heal, instead of a holy pally and a shaman doing raid.

Quick questions: does the abom need healing before it despawns in phase3? I noticed the health dropping, but when I did try to heal it didn't seem to add that much health back?

Also, does the shaman slowing totem work on slimes? We tried it but didn't see that much of a difference?

It's hella difficult to move in this fight as a healer, because I'm watching health bars. I can see the green puddles in my peripheral vision, but I missed the stupid orange flasks twice and went boom.

[Mack Kilimaro]

We started on Professor tonight. Got 10 attempts in, and best shot was 62%. Still a lot to learn with positioning and movement. We're using the stack-on-green-slime strat, and we will have bad combos sometimes, with the pool from the slime, then professor will spawn a pool at the same spot, and then we get malleable goo. The abom was basically full-time eating puddle once phase 2 starts and can barely do anything else other than slowing the orange. Things worked better once we get the disc prist to go holy and do raid heal, instead of a holy pally and a shaman doing raid.

Quick questions: does the abom need healing before it despawns in phase3? I noticed the health dropping, but when I did try to heal it didn't seem to add that much health back?

My experience with being the abomination is that if it needs healing, you're not beating the berserk timer. The abomination gets like 630k health on 10 man, it is constantly damaging itself and will take a little extra from the pools, as well as the phase 2 gas bombs and stuff. You can throw it some heals here and there if your abom person is taking more damage than that - it won't look like it'll make much difference since the health pool is so high, but every heal you give it is a few seconds to spare. I have generally hit phase 3 with 80-100k health on the abom. You should have your abom player call out if he notices he gets below 200k or so. There is bad luck to contend with - if you can't avoid being in a gas bomb while eating a slime puddle, for instance. If your DPS on PP is good enough then token heals should be enough.

As well, if you are finding the abomination is getting overwhelmed just catching up to slime puddles, then that probably means either your abom tank needs to react quicker, or your raid needs to tighten up its positioning. If people are spread out too much when the slimes are going out, then the slimes may grow in the time the abom is running to them or lapping up one puddle. I generally find that I have long enough to eat all available slime puddles, and put up 3-5 stacks of the armor debuff on each ooze. Occasionally, depending on how the timer lines up, I have a few extra seconds to help DPS the ooze while I'm on the way to the next slime puddle. That damage adds up: you can hit Mutated Slash every GCD for 6-12k and the auto-attack adds another 6-12k.

You may find you're losing a lot of DPS time by employing the stack-on-green strategy. We switch PP's position between underneath the orange tank (when the green ooze comes next) to the middle of the room (when the orange ooze comes next - with the ranged getting closer to the green tank than the middle). Generally that provides enough time for the green ooze to be killed before it hits its target and knocks people around, though even on our kill tonight we had a couple explosions. We find that moving around like this means that the slime puddles will generally be near the orange tank when the orange ooze is next and the green tank when the green ooze is next, which means that the abomination is in place next to each ooze to help with some melee attacks before it chooses a target. We don't move all the way to the far end to get away from the orange ooze since the target can be mobile - melee doesn't have to chase PP as far and melee are closer to start DPSing the orange ooze sooner.

[RaceBannon42]

Last night ICC was a cakewalk. We one shot everything up to Sindy. (Skipped plague to finish off one guys shadowmourne requirements) Had a bit off bad luck on Sindrigosa so it took two tries. That 5% may not seem like that much, but it makes a ton of difference in the margian of error allowable. DPS dies? no problem you've got enough to make up for it. Someone doesnt move out of the aoe? They live by the skin of their teeth and a bigger heal lands in time.

If you are stuck at 50% its probably not going to mean you kill a boss this week, but you are going to get a lot closer.

Got Sinrigosa's Claw last night. Not a big upgrade, but no one else wanted it. Also got enough frosts to get the T10 chest and legs for my 4 set. I've only got one token though so I need to see which is better to upgrade first.

[Poobah]

Marrowgar and Lootship down on Hard Mode.

Had a few pulls of DBS and Lady D but we want to kill Lich King every week for now, so we don't want to be burning a whole night to get one kill. We're discussing tactics for the ones we couldn't get on HM and coming back next week with a better idea of how it goes.

[PhelanArcetus]

If not for monday I'd call last night our worst ICC ever.

Yay we have the buff. Ok we're doing fine, sloppy but fine. Ok we're up to Marrowgar wait what happened to the hunter. So we wait 10+ minutes wondering when the hunter's internet will go back up. Finally we swap in a warlock and take down Marrowgar (sloppy) and LadyTalktalktalk (nothing wrong). Warlock has to go, hunter is back, laggy but back.

Now one of our healers, who has been a little sick, has to run to the bathroom. We know he could be a while. Does the raid leader (his brother, who lives with him, I might add) make any attempt to line up a replacement? Nope. (The raid leader being the guy who stepped up to do invites when the people who understand leadership at all got burned out; he can't lead worth a damn and tries to get votes on everything.) So we end up 9-manning gunship and saurfang before eventually calling it.

This is followed by our mage saying something incorrect (that the sick healer was being rude by making us wait for him), and the healer making it back in time to see that in his raid chat and get pissed off. So while we followed up with vault and ToC (intended to just do Jaraxxus for the weekly, but it was going so fast we finished it, mostly for kicks), I'm thinking we're pretty hosed for tonight.

And I capped the night off with a reminder of why pugging ToC sucks. I should have ditched after the first wipe where the OT didn't even pick up Gormok from the MT, but I stupidly stayed in through three wipes, the second of which saw the top dps leave and the next highest switch to healing (in place of the other paladin). I stepped up my healing for the 3rd try and we got to the worms, but the OT failed miserably and, while I'd boosted my throughput, the supposedly better healer still left me doing 50% of the total healing. Blech.

Still, as long as I can get a VoA10 and ToC to Jaraxxus tonight as well as my randoms, the random tomorrow will hook me up with 2/3 of a crit, 2% haste, 50 str, and 2pcT10. And pretty soon I can afford the crafted boots as well.

[Kalbear]

Grats, Mack!

We started on Professor tonight. Got 10 attempts in, and best shot was 62%. Still a lot to learn with positioning and movement. We're using the stack-on-green-slime strat, and we will have bad combos sometimes, with the pool from the slime, then professor will spawn a pool at the same spot, and then we get malleable goo. The abom was basically full-time eating puddle once phase 2 starts and can barely do anything else other than slowing the orange. Things worked better once we get the disc prist to go holy and do raid heal, instead of a holy pally and a shaman doing raid.

Quick questions: does the abom need healing before it despawns in phase3? I noticed the health dropping, but when I did try to heal it didn't seem to add that much health back?

Also, does the shaman slowing totem work on slimes? We tried it but didn't see that much of a difference?

The slime puddle from the slime? To my knowledge there's no slime puddle the slime (green or brown) produces.

The way you avoid slimes at the spot of the spawn is to..not have PP right at the point of the spawn so that melee isn't right at the point of the spawn. Same with gas bombs. Your tank should ideally be watching the gas timers, move PP off the area to drop the bombs, move him back, and move him to the spot after he's dropped slimes.

If your abom is only eating slime, chances are you're out of position too often. Which is normal; you just have to get used to it.

[Weak With The Dawn]

We finally got the Lich King down as well. It's a shame we couldn't do it before the buff became available, but that's life.

We started well tonight with solid P2s, and managed to kill it on our third proper visit to P3. :)

Grats!

Apparently my opinions on the buff have set off a discussion on the guild site about what we consider ourselves to be. It looks like we're deciding if the majority of us are in it to get a rating, for the sake of raiding, or personal improvement.

This should turn out interestingly enough. They'll hopefully discuss making our raid times a little earlier too. We usually start at 11pm for me and go until about 2-3 am, which is killing me at work. I know we've had a number of complaints, hopefully that'll change.

[Mack Kilimaro]

It's a good week for epic, last-second kills. The past month or so, my GM and I have gotten in on an afternoon ICC 25 PUG group. Up until this week it's been kill the first four bosses, wipe a few times on Festergut and then call the raid. We were excited to go this week with the buff, but a lot of the regular DPS were not there, so the second tier of people meant we were not as hopeful as we might have been.

Still, the first attempt we were 2.2 million damage short, and that was with two people dying on the first Pungent Blight and one person dying on the second. Next attempt: we're creeping along a bit behind the pace. Bloodlust after the first Pungent Blight catches us back up to the pace but it starts to slip again. 10 million health to go with one minute remaining. I'm sitting there as a healer, watching the health fly down as the berserk timer is ticking off. 5 million to go with 30 seconds. Two seconds left on the berserk timer, he has 500k health, and I'm like, "Fuck it. Let's bubble and see what happens." Two other paladins also bubbled. The rest of the raid died as soon as he berserked, and the three of us flailed helplessly at him while the dots ticked off. He keeled over right as our bubbles wore out. Divine Shield saved the day. That was pretty awesome.