World Of Warcraft - Prelude to Pandas

[Mack Kilimaro]

For ph1 we set one ranged into each quarter, put a healer with two of them then positioned the tanks and melee so they could easily step into the other squares to take the blasts. Also saw that making sure people did spread gave a better opportunity to see the red charge marker on the ground. We got through it with a disco & resto drood as the healers, though the end was a little tight with his increasing damage.

Disco and Resto Druid is our exact 2-healer combo, so that's an encouraging sign. I think there were some things we could improve, definitely. One other problem we were having with people taking charges is that a hunter was trying to use frost trap to slow down the sappers, and whatever 4.3 did to change or reset settings to emphasize player spell effects, it made it pretty much impossible to see the charge circles underneath that frost trap. Once we had him stop doing that, because there were sufficient other slows/stuns, things got better, but we didn't get a lot of attempts after that.

We did try to stack the Elites for a little cleave/splash or whatever. I think that worked. I feel like we picked a poor position to try to tank them, though - if we were in a corner, then most of the raid would be farther away from most charges.

When I was talking about stacking for Blackhorn, I meant ranged/healers at maybe a 20 yard distance. That would mean everyone would probably have to move for every shockwave, but there would be benefit from any circle-based healing or whatever. I don't know if that would be beneficial in balance, because some people just can't get out of the shockwave at this point. Too tunnel visioned or dumb or whatever. Well, I guess maybe it will be better next week. Or not, who cares.

I will be conflicted between wanting to try out the raid finder's second half and not wanting to see either of the Deathwing fights with a punch of pug idiots before I get to see it with my guild raid.

[Lyanna Stark]

Ugh 12% wipe on Madness, always cos we have something really dumb happen, like people dying on jumps and our warrior charged off the edge, or something odd happens with taunting on the tentacle. We manage the difficult things, like getting everything down in time. And it takes 15 min for one try. Grrr, annoying fight!

EDIT: 9% ./wrist Another 20 minutes. and LOTS of wipes to weird stuff, like jumping between platform.

[Greywolf2375]

So we went back last night to FL To try to finish the 2 remaining legendary staffs.

And we ended up wiping on legs. Six times. The steering is apparently all effed up in this patch, in terms of the responsiveness of the dude to damage and turning. We've one-shot'd this boss in the past, oh, month now, and we struggled to get him to phase 2 last night. It was horrendous. We eventually gave up in disgust, after the encounter failed to reset following a wipe (none of us can zone in, even after we disbanded and reformed).

I think Blizz broke something there.

So if your guild is working on downing Rhyolith in heroic - be warned.

wow, we got lucky then. When we did it we didn't run into any of those problem - turning friendly in the middle of the fight, that's a fun one.

didn't get in on it, but some gulidies got Madness to 10% last night in 10 man. Looking forward to this week - cleaning up mistakes we made on Ping pong & Ultraxion. got a good number of upgrades in raid so we shouldn't be hit as hard from the soft enrage. Lootship looks like it should be even easier on 25 with more to cover the deck & get to the harpoons/dragons

[TerraPrime]

Was listening in on vent for last night's raid (benched again! :( ). They had about 5 or 6 wipes at 5% at the end, before finally getting it done. It was about cleaning up the execution, it seems, and tightening up the raid cd rotation for healing at the end. I think they ended up killing the first set of adds in p2, but then ignore the second set in preference to burning the boss down. In the final success, the spriest was actually dc'd after the 2nd platform, and they managed it with 24. So it's not so much about output, but raid awareness and execution.

Yeah, so listening in on raid chat as standby for 3.5 hrs was not fun. The silver lining is that I got my hunter to 83 now (halfway through), and boy, I miss playing hunter. Such a fun class (for me anyways).

[Nukelavee]

I put the tard in huntard.

Seriously. Poor MrNoodles.

[Kalbear]

This expansion is so weird. We start out in T11 where the normal mode fights are very hard, there are three wings and almost no lore. They eventually lower the difficulty of normal mode only, but even then the hard modes are a slog. In addition balance is messed up between 10 and 25.

Then we get to Firelands. Only 7 bosses, and on normal mode only Rags is difficult. Still takes a bit of time to down. Hard modes are fairly difficult and Rags is downright insane on difficulty. Then after a few weeks we get the mother of all nerfs to normal and heroic, making normal supercake and hard modes mostly easy other than Rags, who is still fairly tough.

And then we get Dragon Soul, where normal mode is just above Naxxramas, there's an even easier mode that could be described as 'doable if you can drool on your keyboard' and hard modes that appear to not be too horrible.

What kind of fucked up difficulty curve is this?

[Mack Kilimaro]

I've got to say I took some enjoyment in seeing all the stories about bans handed out for the LFR loot exploiting stuff. With the tales of 8 day bans, it's like Blizz decided to cut all those people out of the world first discussion.

Now if only they'd fix this mature language filter and enemy debuff crap.

I should probably enjoy complaining about relatively minor levels of raid suckage while it lasts. Tonight I made up my mind to switch from my guild's progression raid group to the fail raid group. It's really fail, like still find a way to wipe on normal Firelands fail, and God only knows when they will kill more than just Morchok on non-raid finder difficulty. I am in an unfortunate middle ground where the progression group has become too hardcore for me. My heart's not really in it any more.

I always looked forward to getting to raid with my BFF, but she had to stop playing due to RL stuff for most of the Firelands tier. She plays a rogue and when I showed her that picture of the legendary daggers turning somebody into Batman, she was excited to come back, since the raid group has no rogue. She spent the last week plowing through the new heroics to upgrade her gear from 359s to 378s and after tonight, I believe she has precisely one 359 left. Despite bridging the gap in gear quickly, that wasn't good enough; she isn't hardcore enough, I was told. There is some level of fairness here, as in the BWD/BoT tier she would always be the lowest DPS. I'm not talking shit tier, like sub-tank DPS or barely-above-tank DPS, but definitely not top tier - good enough tier especially when you consider she had good awareness and was not the sort of person to stand in fire.

That was always enough, but now it's not, even factoring in that this is our best opportunity to get the legendary while it's current tier. We missed Dragonwrath by two weeks. Fail group's where we're wanted, so fail group's where we'll go. At least with us in there it'll be a little less fail.

[Lyanna Stark]

This expansion is so weird. We start out in T11 where the normal mode fights are very hard, there are three wings and almost no lore. They eventually lower the difficulty of normal mode only, but even then the hard modes are a slog. In addition balance is messed up between 10 and 25.

Then we get to Firelands. Only 7 bosses, and on normal mode only Rags is difficult. Still takes a bit of time to down. Hard modes are fairly difficult and Rags is downright insane on difficulty. Then after a few weeks we get the mother of all nerfs to normal and heroic, making normal supercake and hard modes mostly easy other than Rags, who is still fairly tough.

And then we get Dragon Soul, where normal mode is just above Naxxramas, there's an even easier mode that could be described as 'doable if you can drool on your keyboard' and hard modes that appear to not be too horrible.

What kind of fucked up difficulty curve is this?

I dunno. It is weird.

That said, we found out the hard way that the last two/three encounters are gear checks, and nothing else.

Got to P2 of Deathwing several times with flawless execution, but we just don't have the gear for it. Healers go oom, we can't keep the tanks up (even when we have mana left ) on the adds and we can't DPS down DW fast enough. Had several sub 5% wipes (one on 1%). That said, our average ilvl is 383 (we checked) and we have no tank with raid wall (running DK druid) so all in all, we're extremely happy and should get it down next week with just a bit more gear. One tank 4 set bonus would probably have made it. We are that close. We're also considering recruiting a block tank since a CTC capped paladin with 4 set and Argent Defender means you can drop a tank for an extra DPS. Healing a blood DK tanking on the fourth platform (Kalecgos) is....interesting.

It's pretty clear tho that with more gear you can most or less brute force Madness. It's not really a difficult encounter with the mechanics, not compared to some of the heroic FL or heroic T11 encounters. I'd rank it as mechanically easier than both Warmaster and Spine, just with a tighter gear check. A bit on par with Ultraxion really. Nuke nuke nuke, heal lots, nuke more, heal lots, next platform, rinse repeat. I sat on between 13-19k DPs as Disc, haha. Clearly I need to smite harder.

Compared to the difficulty of say, Nef, on normal, I'd say this is nothing.

[Kalbear]

SW got Morchok hardmode down. Apparently it wasn't too bad. The first four bosses don't look horrible as far as heroic mechanics.

Morchok makes more cock and you have to fight two of him. Otherwise it's basically the same. You get two groups instead of 1 and go to town.

Warlord guy summons big fucking tentacles when you play pong. Kill the tentacle. More damage to heal too.

ooze master summons 4 oozes instead of 3. This can be tough, but in general the kill order is always yellow->green->purple. Always. And the basic strategy is either 'group up and kill the add that spawned' or 'spread out 4 yards and kill the add that spawns'

Hagara is a bit more interesting. On ice she makes someone slow, and when they get dispelled they put down a sheet of ice that slows everyone. So HoF & dispelling at the right time. On lightning they put up random conductors that totally fuck your shit up, so you have to avoid them when chaining. Also does 5 ice blocks vs .2 But nothing that just changes the encounter like it's totally different. BL is already 4/8.

[Greywolf2375]

did the LFR with our 25 man. Holy cow...didn't get to do it last week so I hadn't seen how much different it was. Getting the loot sorted took more time than the bosses did. I liked it as a warm up, but was a little worried that because it was so easy we'd have dumb mistakes in normals. And we did...Spriest face pulled Morchok, warrior face pulled Zon'ozz. Still able to get them down, just frustrating that people can't pay attention.

Did have someone rage quit because we sat him for Morchok for getting saved to BH when we'd been saying in guild since last Thursday to not get saved to any current tier raid. "you guys take BH too seriously /gquit" No, I take listening to instruction seriously.

Oh,a and alizbabble or whatever, yeah...another face pull. At least we did get I think two tier pieces out of it.

[TerraPrime]

Last night we attempted heroic Morchok. Didn't make it, and we spent 3 hours on it. Best attempt was 45%. The problem was tank survivability. They went "splat" really easily. The damage logs showed that in many cases, they received over 300k dmg in less than 2 seconds. The second stomp is particularly bad because the tanks had to move to separate the clones so the DPS won't be eating double stomps, and we had only 1 mobile healer (tree). So cds were popped and we devised a chaining of healers (A stays and casts, while B and C moves, then B stops and casts, A and C moves, etc). Healers were adjusting and coordinating with tanks. The DPS portion of the fight is rather simple: group to soak stomp dmg, but don't be the closest to the boss unless you're the designated rogue, and move to the crystal if linked. Lots of movement, though, and very little stand-and-cast time over all.

[Kalbear]

Have you tried using rogues to feint and eat the stomps?

[TerraPrime]

Have you tried using rogues to feint and eat the stomps?

Yes, we have 1 rogue each as the +1, with the tank. They stand closest to the boss, so they'll eat the additional dmg.

Or do you mean have a rogue eat the entire stomp by themselves? Is that possible?

[Kalbear]

If you have two rogues they can both feint and eat all the damage. So you'd need 4 rogues for hte fight, but yes it could be done.

[TerraPrime]

Well, I think we have 3 on the roster, 2 being reliably active.

So how will this work exactly? Does the tank duck out right before stomp? Wouldn't this move the boss? How will having 2 rogues help the tank survive longer?

Right now here's what we do:

Tank1pulls boss

Raid stacks at boss butt with rogue1 closest to boss

Stomp

Boss clones

Tank 2 taunts clone and kites him away to right, tank1 moves boss to left

DPS and heals split into R and L group and follow the appropriate tank

First crystal spawns

Groups stay stacked on boss butt for stomp, rogue 2 is closest to boss aside from the tank

Crystal soakers run to crystal, soak, then run back to boss butt

Repeat until stone barriers then run and hide behind to pewpew

[Mack Kilimaro]

7/8 on normal in one night. That was our first ever kills of Blackhorn and Spine. We had two Madness attempts where we made it to the 4th platform. That was pretty ninja.

I finally got a shield drop, so no more Elementium Earthguard for me.

[Lyanna Stark]

Can you use an spriest to soak the stomp as well perhaps?

We got Madness to 1%, 2% and 5% last week, so we're hoping for a kill hopefully on the second raid day, but as we are bringing in people who were sat last week, God only knows.

[Greywolf2375]

got to 6/8 last night - only had two attempts at Spine but still were getting to the 3rd tendon, so looking good for tonight. Other tank and I are both 3/4 for tier pieces, so getting closer and closer. Thankfully also flattened out our class distribution some so we're not really in danger of having anything DE'd yet which was a problem in FL. Still waiting for heroic Mandible to drop some day.

[Lyanna Stark]

got to 6/8 last night - only had two attempts at Spine but still were getting to the 3rd tendon, so looking good for tonight. Other tank and I are both 3/4 for tier pieces, so getting closer and closer. Thankfully also flattened out our class distribution some so we're not really in danger of having anything DE'd yet which was a problem in FL. Still waiting for heroic Mandible to drop some day.

Loot RNG is ./wrist. Think we got mandible on our first beth kill. Chatted to some other guild on our server who had never seen the Raggy healing mace drop. We've never seen Sulfuras drop on any of our kills. Sometimes there should be a check that if you had item A drop for 3 weeks straight, at least make the chance that it drops again somewhat smaller.

I did 4 LFR bosses yesterday with a nightmare pug and it dropped 0 cloth items, trinkets or anything and 12 vanquisher tokens. Yey? So far, I have never seen a Conqueror token in LFR and I've done the first four twice. We've seen on in our normal raid group (shoulders).

[Greywolf2375]

Loot RNG is ./wrist. Think we got mandible on our first beth kill. Chatted to some other guild on our server who had never seen the Raggy healing mace drop. We've never seen Sulfuras drop on any of our kills. Sometimes there should be a check that if you had item A drop for 3 weeks straight, at least make the chance that it drops again somewhat smaller.

I did 4 LFR bosses yesterday with a nightmare pug and it dropped 0 cloth items, trinkets or anything and 12 vanquisher tokens. Yey? So far, I have never seen a Conqueror token in LFR and I've done the first four twice. We've seen on in our normal raid group (shoulders).

Yeah - I do know that feeling. We had never seen Sulfuras drop on a 10 or 25, alt run or anything. Last week trying to finish up a staff we had it drop - but the only other plate wearer was a frost DK, so it's now in my bags for a dusty OS.

We have been lucky this week - a couple double drops, but have had a very nice spread between LFR & normal to get tier.