Yesterday was still a holiday for us in lieu of Boxing Day and so we queued up early into the LFR rage machine.
Two different stories. Our Siege of Wyrmrest was full of hate, rage, and contempt. So like every other group out there. We had a small group who were ninja pulling the bosses and people rolling on tokens they didn't need and holding them hostage. Though none of us gave them the pleasure of our attention and went home tokenless.
We were still kind of shocked at how rude some people can be or perhaps they were just a pre-made group out to spread malice and trollocity (that is a word), but seriously I think there should be a way to just punch someone in the teeth through computer screens. Then I'll break their fingers and apologize profusely because I'm Canadian.
We then queued for the last four bosses and....holy crap the drakes on Ultraxion were taunted down ASAP, everyone but 3 people clicked their buttons, EVERYONE stacked on twilight purple thing without being told, EVERYONE only killed one tentacle and didn't go balls to the walls DPS and we one shotted deathwing without even having to use a single battle res. Though my DK and his very horrible frost-dps did very horrible didn't end up with a single upgrade (that rule still implies, the worst performers win everything), the smooth run made up for it. It was the season of giving for my little undead, our resident mage won a helm token and to help him finish his 2 piece I gave up my legs from the earlier Siege of Ragerest Temple and I had half-assedly rolled on the blood sipper sword and won from Deathwing but decided that frost is just way too boring and that a friendly paladin tank could make much more use of it than me.
tl;dr: The LFR grouping gods do exist, and one day you may get that one perfect group!
Wednesday, December 28, 2011
Thursday, December 22, 2011
Wonderful Friends: Trinkets
We all have and use and seek out powerful trinkets to aid us in downing the various baddies of Azeroth, but have we ever stopped and thought about what exactly these trinkets are?
Trinkets are probably some of the most powerful "things" out there. Think about the Darkmoone cards, a simple card that increases your stats significantly and some of them also have great magical bonuses or even a damage componenet. Do we carry these cards in our pockets or do we hold them out front and centre in battle so their effects could be utilized?
There are typicall three characteristics of trinkets:
Static Stats: Be it a straight up stamina/agi/int bonus, just by holding this item increases your personal power.
On Equip Effects: Be it a haste/mastery/spell/summoning proc, these trinkets somehow symbiotically link themselves to the user and react upon the user's actions when in combat.
On Use Effect: These trinkets grant us further bonuses however we must "activate" them. How do we activate them? I can imagine we crack them open or perhaps tap them three times, or maybe they are clap activated? Voice activated?
Real Life Trinkets:
1. Watch - On Use: Tell the time. +538 hit.
2. Lucky Charm - No Real Effect.
3. Mobile Phone - On Equip: Chance to make noises.
Real Life Trinkets That Resemble WoW Trinkets:
1. Lighter: On Use: Do 5 Fire Damage.
2. Headphones. On Use: Chance to absorb 100% of all sound until cancelled.
Okay I don't even know what the hell I was talking about anymore so I'm just going to end this post. Goodbye!
Truny and Trinkets?
Trinkets are probably some of the most powerful "things" out there. Think about the Darkmoone cards, a simple card that increases your stats significantly and some of them also have great magical bonuses or even a damage componenet. Do we carry these cards in our pockets or do we hold them out front and centre in battle so their effects could be utilized?
There are typicall three characteristics of trinkets:
Static Stats: Be it a straight up stamina/agi/int bonus, just by holding this item increases your personal power.
On Equip Effects: Be it a haste/mastery/spell/summoning proc, these trinkets somehow symbiotically link themselves to the user and react upon the user's actions when in combat.
On Use Effect: These trinkets grant us further bonuses however we must "activate" them. How do we activate them? I can imagine we crack them open or perhaps tap them three times, or maybe they are clap activated? Voice activated?
Real Life Trinkets:
1. Watch - On Use: Tell the time. +538 hit.
2. Lucky Charm - No Real Effect.
3. Mobile Phone - On Equip: Chance to make noises.
Real Life Trinkets That Resemble WoW Trinkets:
1. Lighter: On Use: Do 5 Fire Damage.
2. Headphones. On Use: Chance to absorb 100% of all sound until cancelled.
Okay I don't even know what the hell I was talking about anymore so I'm just going to end this post. Goodbye!
Truny and Trinkets?
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
Nerf X Class! Rage!
That's pretty much my reaction to everything that happens in battlegrounds. Why am I talking about PVP? Well, this is due to that "My Little Helpers Helped Me Do Something Kill 50 People As A Gnome" achievement that I had finished up a couple days ago and I saw how very very useful the hunter T13 2-piece bonus is for the extra focus. But anyways:
"Nerf dks! They are MOVING! And they attack!"
"Nerf mages! Seriously, ice block? Nerf ice block! It makes you totally invincible that is totally unfair! Frost nova AND a pet freeze? So I have to hope that they use BOTH of these on me before I break out of 'em and just eat their weak frostbolts?"
"Nerf warlocks! They have too many dots, how am I supposed to get rid of them??"
"Nerf rogues! Stealth is too OP, nerf stealth!"
"Nerf hunters! Who the heck is allowed to attack to powerfully at ranged??" (Yes, all classes get treated fairly who attack me)
"Nerf druids! They don't really pose that much of a threat but I am attacking them so just nerf them so they die faster!"
"Nerf priests! Absorbs and totally immune to every single type of damage and a fear and slow built into every single attack that they have? They are immortal!"
"Nerf warriors! Let me be able to kite them even easier! They shouldn't be able to hit me with their weapons wtf?
"Nerf pallies! Their attacks are too shiny and seriously, after bubble wears off they end up dying anyways!"
"Nerf shamans!" Their totems are too useful and I want a chain lightning effect, it's too cool, nerf its coolness!"
Though in all honesty, with a hunter who knows what they're doing, and say that minimum range gets removed...hunters will be honestly OP as hell. Maybe let our attacks only do 75% damage in the deadzone? Or 100%, whatever, up to you! I look forward to finally FINALLY completing the Violet Protodrake achieve next year as my last last last achievement is "School of Hard Knocks", which I had avoided like the Violet Plague due to the pvp "things" that I had to do.
P.S. Is it just me or do we all feel that our pets need their own "Master's Call", which breaks US from our roots to free THEM? Would that be too OP? Well it won't be until it's used against my non-existant frost-mage!
Turby the Nerfed
"Nerf dks! They are MOVING! And they attack!"
"Nerf mages! Seriously, ice block? Nerf ice block! It makes you totally invincible that is totally unfair! Frost nova AND a pet freeze? So I have to hope that they use BOTH of these on me before I break out of 'em and just eat their weak frostbolts?"
"Nerf warlocks! They have too many dots, how am I supposed to get rid of them??"
"Nerf rogues! Stealth is too OP, nerf stealth!"
"Nerf hunters! Who the heck is allowed to attack to powerfully at ranged??" (Yes, all classes get treated fairly who attack me)
"Nerf druids! They don't really pose that much of a threat but I am attacking them so just nerf them so they die faster!"
"Nerf priests! Absorbs and totally immune to every single type of damage and a fear and slow built into every single attack that they have? They are immortal!"
"Nerf warriors! Let me be able to kite them even easier! They shouldn't be able to hit me with their weapons wtf?
"Nerf pallies! Their attacks are too shiny and seriously, after bubble wears off they end up dying anyways!"
"Nerf shamans!" Their totems are too useful and I want a chain lightning effect, it's too cool, nerf its coolness!"
Though in all honesty, with a hunter who knows what they're doing, and say that minimum range gets removed...hunters will be honestly OP as hell. Maybe let our attacks only do 75% damage in the deadzone? Or 100%, whatever, up to you! I look forward to finally FINALLY completing the Violet Protodrake achieve next year as my last last last achievement is "School of Hard Knocks", which I had avoided like the Violet Plague due to the pvp "things" that I had to do.
P.S. Is it just me or do we all feel that our pets need their own "Master's Call", which breaks US from our roots to free THEM? Would that be too OP? Well it won't be until it's used against my non-existant frost-mage!
Turby the Nerfed
Ridiculous Idea: Play Melee
I think it's the Christmas spirit getting to me that I've been having these wild and wacky thoughts all day: that I would level up and play some sort of melee dps. Say what?
I already have my DK, if it were any of my toons all he needs is a few pieces of gear and he'd be able to run LFR and test out the amazing fun that is Frost. I find playing Frost to be highly hypnotic. The potential is there to absolutely dominate on the charts but one thing I found was that it was very very boring. The first few minutes of playing is nice when all your attacks crit and what not, but...yeah no. Essentially all you do is position yourself, then stare at your three buttons, and whichever (is that a word?) lights up, you press it. Of course you have to mind your focus but that doesn't take a lot of brain power. Frost to me is at the point of just pushing buttons to churn out numbers, rather than being an ice cold frosty blade wielding frost..wielder..of..DOOM....
Next! My next highest melee-able character is my pally. She is 75% into level 84 and is currently a tank/healer. I remember being ret once and it was an absolutely horrendous experience. Perhaps one should never ever ever try out a dps spec with the mindset of being super efficient any time before level 85. Things just die too damn fast! Nonetheless in the at most 8 seconds for boss fights, I did top the meters as ret, with what little optimization that I could do but it didn't feel very...fulfilling. You know you are potentially a very good "dps player" when you can out-dps low level tanks. That's the standard I put myself up to. Yes, I've done this..even with a boomkin! Anyways, enough useless bragging. Do I want to give up tanking or healing to become clunky? Well I did see some ret pallies do very well in some of the LFR bosses....but they were probably heroic geared already...so no!
Next up is my rogue. I had a dream I was having fun playing my rogue. WTF? Again as combat/subtlety I can top the charts in the non-important level 72 dungeons that my rogue does, but in everyday use...rogues are horrible for questing. I tried out the assassination tree and OH MY is that clunky as ever or am I missing something? Makes retribution look playable! Subtlety is fun in the sense you get to sneak around but if your ambush doesn't crit then you'll spend the next ten minutes trying to out live your quest mob. Combat...ah combat, everyone and their rogue dog is combat and while it's made for teh fite, I don't think it feels very rogue-like..more akin to a nimble warrior. Or a clumsy ninja. Anyways, any class where I have to "keep up" some useless ability like savage roar or the rogue thing where it makes you attack faster....no thanks I'd prefer to be always attacking rather than waste my combo points thank you. (Aka I'm lazy)
So essentially if I were to have an optimal melee dps, it would be my DK. However...too boring. What happened to the days when we had to setup our diseases then mind our blood strike and watch our unholy/frost rune combos then either proc some death runes or wait for more blood runes or trigger certain combinations?
tl;dr: With my DK, I'm too busy watching my action bar, rather than the game. With my other characters, I can watch TV while playing the game.
*Update: I came to my sense, I'll stick with Prot/Holy on my Paladin
I already have my DK, if it were any of my toons all he needs is a few pieces of gear and he'd be able to run LFR and test out the amazing fun that is Frost. I find playing Frost to be highly hypnotic. The potential is there to absolutely dominate on the charts but one thing I found was that it was very very boring. The first few minutes of playing is nice when all your attacks crit and what not, but...yeah no. Essentially all you do is position yourself, then stare at your three buttons, and whichever (is that a word?) lights up, you press it. Of course you have to mind your focus but that doesn't take a lot of brain power. Frost to me is at the point of just pushing buttons to churn out numbers, rather than being an ice cold frosty blade wielding frost..wielder..of..DOOM....
Next! My next highest melee-able character is my pally. She is 75% into level 84 and is currently a tank/healer. I remember being ret once and it was an absolutely horrendous experience. Perhaps one should never ever ever try out a dps spec with the mindset of being super efficient any time before level 85. Things just die too damn fast! Nonetheless in the at most 8 seconds for boss fights, I did top the meters as ret, with what little optimization that I could do but it didn't feel very...fulfilling. You know you are potentially a very good "dps player" when you can out-dps low level tanks. That's the standard I put myself up to. Yes, I've done this..even with a boomkin! Anyways, enough useless bragging. Do I want to give up tanking or healing to become clunky? Well I did see some ret pallies do very well in some of the LFR bosses....but they were probably heroic geared already...so no!
Next up is my rogue. I had a dream I was having fun playing my rogue. WTF? Again as combat/subtlety I can top the charts in the non-important level 72 dungeons that my rogue does, but in everyday use...rogues are horrible for questing. I tried out the assassination tree and OH MY is that clunky as ever or am I missing something? Makes retribution look playable! Subtlety is fun in the sense you get to sneak around but if your ambush doesn't crit then you'll spend the next ten minutes trying to out live your quest mob. Combat...ah combat, everyone and their rogue dog is combat and while it's made for teh fite, I don't think it feels very rogue-like..more akin to a nimble warrior. Or a clumsy ninja. Anyways, any class where I have to "keep up" some useless ability like savage roar or the rogue thing where it makes you attack faster....no thanks I'd prefer to be always attacking rather than waste my combo points thank you. (Aka I'm lazy)
So essentially if I were to have an optimal melee dps, it would be my DK. However...too boring. What happened to the days when we had to setup our diseases then mind our blood strike and watch our unholy/frost rune combos then either proc some death runes or wait for more blood runes or trigger certain combinations?
tl;dr: With my DK, I'm too busy watching my action bar, rather than the game. With my other characters, I can watch TV while playing the game.
*Update: I came to my sense, I'll stick with Prot/Holy on my Paladin
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
Fruitcakes
I was working on some of the pre-Christmas time doable achievements for Merrymaker yesterday, and I realized I had eaten my fruit-cake that is required for ['Tis the Season]. Oops! From reading the forums, from back in 2008, it sounds like we are able to get more from the gifts after the 25th? Or we randomly get presents in the mail? I don't really remember as I rescued Metzen' on four different characters, all receiving random packages which I promptly threw away the useless space-wasting contents. Honestly, what does one do when seeing random junk/food? Throw it away or eat it!
See, when I receive a present, I expect a gift, not low level food. If only I had read through ALL the metas required for Merrymaker. If only the food had been useful, like giving us a special +120 stats, I would have saved them. My toons only eat one single food and that is the Seafood Feast (yes, when I put one down it's cause my food buff ran out not because I'm sharing but....ah crap now everyone knows my secret).
Now I'm not sure if I had received the "Extra Special" gift box that has 20 fruitcakes in it, I may have thrown them all out....or maybe I hadn't....oh well!
Turby the Fruitcake Destroyer
See, when I receive a present, I expect a gift, not low level food. If only I had read through ALL the metas required for Merrymaker. If only the food had been useful, like giving us a special +120 stats, I would have saved them. My toons only eat one single food and that is the Seafood Feast (yes, when I put one down it's cause my food buff ran out not because I'm sharing but....ah crap now everyone knows my secret).
Now I'm not sure if I had received the "Extra Special" gift box that has 20 fruitcakes in it, I may have thrown them all out....or maybe I hadn't....oh well!
Turby the Fruitcake Destroyer
Monday, December 19, 2011
Don't Worry About Me, Worry About Downing the Boss
Sadly I'm going to be a bitch and rat out this hunter in what I would like to call the: We Couldn't Kill Deathwing Drama.
Ok so it wasn't actually that dramatic really. It was an unlucky week for my warlock, no upgrades, but at least she received 500 VP (low standards always works). I needed to do the last 3 bosses in LFR and queued my happy ass in there and everything went smoothly up until Madness. Now when an affliction warlock tops the charts even before anything goes below 25%, you've got problems. I was the only one doing over 45k at this point and of course we did not manage to kill dw's tentacles while killing blisterings faster than he could cast Cataclysm. Three times. Group leaves and reforms and we notice one hunter doing something to the tune of 13k dps. Or was it 15k? Regardless, so low that it's almost not possible unless you actually stop your auto-attacking given all the buffs we get during the encounter.
What I hope was happening behind that computer was someone tabbed out watching the encounter. And not porn. Or dying of a heart attack. He was discovered and a minor discussion ensued about how one could possibly do such low damage. Perhaps he had a really really poor system that rendered all actions useless, perhaps lag spiked to 7,000. Perhaps his dog jumped onto his face during the encounter, knocking everything over. Anyways, they had no excuse except telling us to worry about downing the boss rather than his dps.
True. Very true. We shouldn't be SO judgemental of others. HOWEVER, one key component to actually downing the boss requires everyone to at least be TRYING. At least make your contribution count. At least do more than the tank. (The tank was 9th on the meters in this group, that's how tight we were). At least try to push steady shot more than 2 (or was it 5) times during the encounter? Please? At least TRY, don't get carried, especially not through such brainlessly simple and mind-numbing encounters such as they are exhibited in LFR. Don't even use that as your reason for slacking, just because it is so easy you feel you are able to slack. No it doesn't work like that. Perhaps the top 5 DPS'ers might slack and miss a global cooldown (or not use Demon Soul) or skip a potion, however, they're still probably doing pretty damn good and no one would even notice.
Regardless of the reason for such underperformance, and how you judge us judging your performance, it just wasn't enough. If there was any external reason preventing you from performing "well", maybe then uhh...don't play? I mean, really, I'm not nerd-raging here, I'm not telling you to know your buttons 100% and that I know my buttons 100% but really they're just buttons....push them??
So a magic vote-kick appeared and alas, our group of 25 became 24. One less friend and adventurer. I did lament the fact that had he stayed, our other 2/3 well performing hunters would have lost both the Kiril, Staff of Viagra and Vishanka, Does a Dot to him. And guess what? We downed DW (after some more low dps left), and both those items dropped! Congratulations again. And yes, had he stayed, our 13k dps would probably have won both those items. Unless he already had them and felt too good to perform....uhhh....
Truny the Not Worrying
Ok so it wasn't actually that dramatic really. It was an unlucky week for my warlock, no upgrades, but at least she received 500 VP (low standards always works). I needed to do the last 3 bosses in LFR and queued my happy ass in there and everything went smoothly up until Madness. Now when an affliction warlock tops the charts even before anything goes below 25%, you've got problems. I was the only one doing over 45k at this point and of course we did not manage to kill dw's tentacles while killing blisterings faster than he could cast Cataclysm. Three times. Group leaves and reforms and we notice one hunter doing something to the tune of 13k dps. Or was it 15k? Regardless, so low that it's almost not possible unless you actually stop your auto-attacking given all the buffs we get during the encounter.
What I hope was happening behind that computer was someone tabbed out watching the encounter. And not porn. Or dying of a heart attack. He was discovered and a minor discussion ensued about how one could possibly do such low damage. Perhaps he had a really really poor system that rendered all actions useless, perhaps lag spiked to 7,000. Perhaps his dog jumped onto his face during the encounter, knocking everything over. Anyways, they had no excuse except telling us to worry about downing the boss rather than his dps.
True. Very true. We shouldn't be SO judgemental of others. HOWEVER, one key component to actually downing the boss requires everyone to at least be TRYING. At least make your contribution count. At least do more than the tank. (The tank was 9th on the meters in this group, that's how tight we were). At least try to push steady shot more than 2 (or was it 5) times during the encounter? Please? At least TRY, don't get carried, especially not through such brainlessly simple and mind-numbing encounters such as they are exhibited in LFR. Don't even use that as your reason for slacking, just because it is so easy you feel you are able to slack. No it doesn't work like that. Perhaps the top 5 DPS'ers might slack and miss a global cooldown (or not use Demon Soul) or skip a potion, however, they're still probably doing pretty damn good and no one would even notice.
Regardless of the reason for such underperformance, and how you judge us judging your performance, it just wasn't enough. If there was any external reason preventing you from performing "well", maybe then uhh...don't play? I mean, really, I'm not nerd-raging here, I'm not telling you to know your buttons 100% and that I know my buttons 100% but really they're just buttons....push them??
So a magic vote-kick appeared and alas, our group of 25 became 24. One less friend and adventurer. I did lament the fact that had he stayed, our other 2/3 well performing hunters would have lost both the Kiril, Staff of Viagra and Vishanka, Does a Dot to him. And guess what? We downed DW (after some more low dps left), and both those items dropped! Congratulations again. And yes, had he stayed, our 13k dps would probably have won both those items. Unless he already had them and felt too good to perform....uhhh....
Truny the Not Worrying
Thursday, December 15, 2011
Turny the Dancing Moonkin
Feral. I tried it, didn't like it, and therefore I am now a Moonkin. My bear 4 teh fite and kitty days are over. Well not really, I have a 2nd druid. Turny is now my "mana using" druid, part time heals, part time ranged DPS.
Being melee, running around, waiting for energy to replenish, keeping up stacks of various useless buffs which are actually useful (savage roar, mangle, bleeds), I just don't like the style of WoW melee in end-game PVE. There's a difference between dungeons and just regular questing and prowling around. Melee is quite fun in just "normal" everyday questing and killing. I really hope Monks will be designed as just pure throughput melee, rather than what we currently have "keep up buffs, and keep up bleeds". Of course if a class had too much oomph, it would be unbalanced for PVP. Blah who cares about PVP! Like I've suggested a thousadnieith times over: Create a generic PVP based talent tree or profile for all toons, which promote balance, but let us have our crazy PVE cooldowns!
So anyways, back on track now. I queued as a feral kitty for the LFR excitement and managed to pull in 18-20ish K, fairly suboptimal in my ACTUALLY 369 feral set. Luckily my healing set in my bags allowed me to queue bahaha! I was 6-10th in damage, which is usually unheard of on my hunter/warlock, but it was still "okay". This tells me two things, either I know what I'm doing regardless of gear, or we have people in there who really don't know what they're doing, or they were lagging, or afk....
But anyways, just for the fact that I sometimes have to wait for enough energy to use my Shred was enough to sway me to switch to Boomkin. This might just be me though, as I'm used to spamming buttons and always ALWAYS having some spell/ability casting on every single GCD from the beginning of the fight to the end. If you mess up, you lose.
Moonkin'ing.
Well, I've been levelling my second druid as a moonkin, with the intention that he would be my 4th and last ranged DPS toon. However, he had recently hit level 60 and guess where he is now? Yup, Hellfire Peninsula. Aka probably going to be stuck there for the next 6 months. So when I respecced my level 85 druid to a moonkin, everything was fairly similar save for the extra talent points and extra skills/cooldowns. From early on I had figured out the gist of the Eclipse functions and it was pretty fun cycling between nukes and also blasting out a Starsurge once in a while. The "rotation" pretty much stays the same but I also get Ents Go to War, and also Star Fall! I reckon I'd use my trees whenever they would stay alive the longest, and perhaps during bloodlust, and Starfall off cooldown and especially during my arcane spell boosted eclipse.
Nonetheless I did way more damage and had a better time as a ranged caster after doing the other 4 bosses in LFR as a moonkin. I was in the top 3 damage dealers which kind of concerned me if we would even finish given I was testing all this out in my full healing gear with no reforges! We did get to Hagara with minor casualties though! I didn't really have any ACTUAL dps trinkets either, save for the 365 stopwatch I dug up out of my bank back from the Brewfest days.
tl'dr: Turny's now a moonkin and not a cat/bear. Not that anyone cares.
Turny the Boomkin
Being melee, running around, waiting for energy to replenish, keeping up stacks of various useless buffs which are actually useful (savage roar, mangle, bleeds), I just don't like the style of WoW melee in end-game PVE. There's a difference between dungeons and just regular questing and prowling around. Melee is quite fun in just "normal" everyday questing and killing. I really hope Monks will be designed as just pure throughput melee, rather than what we currently have "keep up buffs, and keep up bleeds". Of course if a class had too much oomph, it would be unbalanced for PVP. Blah who cares about PVP! Like I've suggested a thousadnieith times over: Create a generic PVP based talent tree or profile for all toons, which promote balance, but let us have our crazy PVE cooldowns!
So anyways, back on track now. I queued as a feral kitty for the LFR excitement and managed to pull in 18-20ish K, fairly suboptimal in my ACTUALLY 369 feral set. Luckily my healing set in my bags allowed me to queue bahaha! I was 6-10th in damage, which is usually unheard of on my hunter/warlock, but it was still "okay". This tells me two things, either I know what I'm doing regardless of gear, or we have people in there who really don't know what they're doing, or they were lagging, or afk....
But anyways, just for the fact that I sometimes have to wait for enough energy to use my Shred was enough to sway me to switch to Boomkin. This might just be me though, as I'm used to spamming buttons and always ALWAYS having some spell/ability casting on every single GCD from the beginning of the fight to the end. If you mess up, you lose.
Moonkin'ing.
Well, I've been levelling my second druid as a moonkin, with the intention that he would be my 4th and last ranged DPS toon. However, he had recently hit level 60 and guess where he is now? Yup, Hellfire Peninsula. Aka probably going to be stuck there for the next 6 months. So when I respecced my level 85 druid to a moonkin, everything was fairly similar save for the extra talent points and extra skills/cooldowns. From early on I had figured out the gist of the Eclipse functions and it was pretty fun cycling between nukes and also blasting out a Starsurge once in a while. The "rotation" pretty much stays the same but I also get Ents Go to War, and also Star Fall! I reckon I'd use my trees whenever they would stay alive the longest, and perhaps during bloodlust, and Starfall off cooldown and especially during my arcane spell boosted eclipse.
Nonetheless I did way more damage and had a better time as a ranged caster after doing the other 4 bosses in LFR as a moonkin. I was in the top 3 damage dealers which kind of concerned me if we would even finish given I was testing all this out in my full healing gear with no reforges! We did get to Hagara with minor casualties though! I didn't really have any ACTUAL dps trinkets either, save for the 365 stopwatch I dug up out of my bank back from the Brewfest days.
tl'dr: Turny's now a moonkin and not a cat/bear. Not that anyone cares.
Turny the Boomkin
Wednesday, December 14, 2011
Making Sense of Bag Space, Pets, and Mounts
Our trusty steeds, our swift drakes, our backpack, our tiny companions, and our fighting companions. They are always there, convenient and easily accessed, taken for granted. Occasionally we will ask "but wait, how are we carrying around so many bags, and how are we fitting so many items into our bags and yet remain fairly mobile?"
Hunter Pets
Our five active pets are the easiest to justify. We have one active pet at all times, and the other four are out hunting/prowling/adventuring in the near vicinity of our characters until called upon! What exactly they do while inactive I can not say, but hey, there are four of them, perhaps they are playing cards!
Companion Pets
Now it gets tricky. How do we "bring" along over a hundred tiny little companions with us, and yet only have one visible at any given time? Well we can explain that some are summoned from the void while the rest just sit in this imaginary "companion" panel in our menu. Perhaps the entire world is digital and we just "load" them when we feel like it. Yes, the game is digital but...you know what I mean.
Bags and Storage
Bag space goes from reasonable to extraordinary. A new character has a single backpack and maybe an apple in their bag. That's reasonable. At end game, what do we have? Well I can tell you that my hunter has pretty much what sums up to be a weapon rack, a wardrobe, a knickknack cupboard, a mining storage bag, and a fridge on him at all times. How can we manage to carry not just our equipped weapons but a dozen other weapons with us? Do we mix the food we carry with all the severed heads we are required to loot for vengeful npcs? One could say our bags are just digital storage, with the ability to physically relay items to and fro the fabric of space and time. This could explain why gold has no weight, and is simply displayed as a balance near our bags. Another view could be that our bags are just an "idea" of what we possess, and it is our character's cognition that dictates what we own. When we delete an item, does it physically cease to exist, or does it disappear because we believe it ceases to exist? But then again, tailors make bags. Psychic bags? Nonetheless, this bag can carry a dozen polearms and my entire Wrath-Cata bow collection! That's one big bag!
Perhaps our bags use the same technology as the T.A.R.D.I.S., it's bigger on the inside! This could explain where we keep our pets and mounts. In miniature stables!
Mounts
I like to envision my character as Gandalf when summoning a mount. I whistle and they come running on the wind, ready to guide me to my next destination (usually 100 feet over, I try not to do that too often). However, a lot of us have over a hundred mounts, how are we able to memorize the call of all our different mounts? Are they ALL out in the wild? Do we keep them in a time-space technologicalized stable? Do we "summon" their form out into the physical world? This could explain how some NPCs can mail us mounts, through the mailbox. Perhaps they are sharing with us the idea of a mount. Since we believe, it exists. But only when legitimately prompted to.
So I guess I made even less sense to all the things we take for granted. Maybe our characters themselves are the "idea" of an adventurer. All we see is our character, but we don't see what is behind the scenes, their lackeys, the caravan with our actual bags, the cages and stables for our mounts and pets, our bankers, armourers. This is why "mountains" and lakes seem so small for our characters, to the point where we could either walk up them or swim across them within seconds, it's the idea of our entourage travelling. The idea of the mob out in the wild that you are fighting is actually an entire colony of that mob. Shit doesn't get real until we enter actual dungeons, that's when everything becomes localized, and to scale. It's bigger on the inside. Stonecore is a great example, from the outside we can fly around the pillar of earth in 15 seconds, but try walking around the perimeter of Stonecore!
So keep this post in mind for the next time you loot something, or call out a mount, or choose a companion pet...where did they come from? And also, when you "win" loot via roll, that's the epitome of laziness. We pretty much bypass game-time. Think of how this magical item automatically passes into your "bag", we are actually bypassing the actual movement of our characters walking up to a corpse, and looting an item.
Truny Makes Bags
Hunter Pets
Our five active pets are the easiest to justify. We have one active pet at all times, and the other four are out hunting/prowling/adventuring in the near vicinity of our characters until called upon! What exactly they do while inactive I can not say, but hey, there are four of them, perhaps they are playing cards!
Companion Pets
Now it gets tricky. How do we "bring" along over a hundred tiny little companions with us, and yet only have one visible at any given time? Well we can explain that some are summoned from the void while the rest just sit in this imaginary "companion" panel in our menu. Perhaps the entire world is digital and we just "load" them when we feel like it. Yes, the game is digital but...you know what I mean.
Bags and Storage
Bag space goes from reasonable to extraordinary. A new character has a single backpack and maybe an apple in their bag. That's reasonable. At end game, what do we have? Well I can tell you that my hunter has pretty much what sums up to be a weapon rack, a wardrobe, a knickknack cupboard, a mining storage bag, and a fridge on him at all times. How can we manage to carry not just our equipped weapons but a dozen other weapons with us? Do we mix the food we carry with all the severed heads we are required to loot for vengeful npcs? One could say our bags are just digital storage, with the ability to physically relay items to and fro the fabric of space and time. This could explain why gold has no weight, and is simply displayed as a balance near our bags. Another view could be that our bags are just an "idea" of what we possess, and it is our character's cognition that dictates what we own. When we delete an item, does it physically cease to exist, or does it disappear because we believe it ceases to exist? But then again, tailors make bags. Psychic bags? Nonetheless, this bag can carry a dozen polearms and my entire Wrath-Cata bow collection! That's one big bag!
Perhaps our bags use the same technology as the T.A.R.D.I.S., it's bigger on the inside! This could explain where we keep our pets and mounts. In miniature stables!
Mounts
I like to envision my character as Gandalf when summoning a mount. I whistle and they come running on the wind, ready to guide me to my next destination (usually 100 feet over, I try not to do that too often). However, a lot of us have over a hundred mounts, how are we able to memorize the call of all our different mounts? Are they ALL out in the wild? Do we keep them in a time-space technologicalized stable? Do we "summon" their form out into the physical world? This could explain how some NPCs can mail us mounts, through the mailbox. Perhaps they are sharing with us the idea of a mount. Since we believe, it exists. But only when legitimately prompted to.
So I guess I made even less sense to all the things we take for granted. Maybe our characters themselves are the "idea" of an adventurer. All we see is our character, but we don't see what is behind the scenes, their lackeys, the caravan with our actual bags, the cages and stables for our mounts and pets, our bankers, armourers. This is why "mountains" and lakes seem so small for our characters, to the point where we could either walk up them or swim across them within seconds, it's the idea of our entourage travelling. The idea of the mob out in the wild that you are fighting is actually an entire colony of that mob. Shit doesn't get real until we enter actual dungeons, that's when everything becomes localized, and to scale. It's bigger on the inside. Stonecore is a great example, from the outside we can fly around the pillar of earth in 15 seconds, but try walking around the perimeter of Stonecore!
So keep this post in mind for the next time you loot something, or call out a mount, or choose a companion pet...where did they come from? And also, when you "win" loot via roll, that's the epitome of laziness. We pretty much bypass game-time. Think of how this magical item automatically passes into your "bag", we are actually bypassing the actual movement of our characters walking up to a corpse, and looting an item.
Truny Makes Bags
Tuesday, December 13, 2011
In With the Old
Old heroics. Mechanics. Melee unfriendly. Old Cata.
I was happily maxing out the VP of my various toons yesterday, with my hunter being the last one just short 50 VP. Instead of doing a faceroll Twilight Heroic, I decided to queue for a regular heroic for kicks. I knew beforehand that this wouldn't be a walk in the park, and that it most likely wouldn't be completed in 20 minutes.
I got Deadmines.With a rather squishy tank who's gear was slowly breaking throughout the run. Overall this was a normal group, your normal 10k dps and whatnot.
Thinking back to these new Cata mechanics, I now find them really annoying. Is this bad? Have we been programmed even more so to feel entitled to quick loot with little work? Getting through a Deadmines with new players isn't a walk in the park, the adds hit hard, there are a lot of adds and there are things to interrupt and pay attention to which are simply not present in the new heroics. Sure you could interrupt Carrion Swarm, along with the mandatory interrupt on Azshara in WOE but that's about it.
Deadmines is the perfect example, first boss: Wall of Fire. Boss with cleaves and fire adds. Boss with exploding mists. The DM Gauntlet. All these were fresh and new and epic, but now they are not meant for us anymore. They are for our alts. Don't get me wrong it is still FUN, (and Torby had fun tanking a lot of trash) just not in proportion to the potential reward, in our case the raw VP. Am I implying that there should be some sort of correlation between fun vs reward? Maybe? Probably not. It all depends.
Speaking of rewards, let's talk about drops. Oh drops, the amount of rage and drama that's been linked to your dark dark history since the beginning of gaming time. Let's say you defeat Madness and your time hasting staff drops. You roll, and of course you are going to lose. This of course happened to my Warlock. However, due to the intensity and engagement of the encounter, I didn't really care. We brought a pugged group from not being able to stack on Lootship 2, to one shotting the two encounters afterwards, it was a victory! A lootless victory but still a victory! Now say the caster doing 20k dps won. Well, you are welcome for the carry but thanks for staying alive and now you've seen the fight!
Sure it's great that someone in "need" got an upgrade, but I'd also like to add some subtext, and that is a reminder that any given piece of loot will not help anyone press the right buttons. But that's as far as I'm going to talk about LFR drops.
So the old heroics are great training grounds for healers and melee! As a healer, I automatically expect one of the melee to drop to 50% on any given pull for every single pull in every single heroic. One thing I found funny when healing the new heroics was ...that didn't happen! Another thing I've noticed is that everyone is playing their rogues and rogues are doing a trillion DPS now! Coming within 5% of a hunter's damage is totally imbalanced, I shall QQ unecessarily for all hunters out there! Because the more damage someone else does, the less loot and VP and fun we get!!
So we've agreed that the new heroics and LFR are great stepping stones to....to what? To regular raiding? Free handouts up to ilvl 390 all for what? The basis has been very nicely setup, I am excited to run my Paladin through the gearing game once she hits 85 and I bet it will be MUCH smoother than before. Perhaps for when patch 4.4 hits and the three Old God heroics are released, they will be MUCH more difficult and will utilize normal/heroic modes along with the raid that comes with it?
Truny Forgot What He Was Talking About
I was happily maxing out the VP of my various toons yesterday, with my hunter being the last one just short 50 VP. Instead of doing a faceroll Twilight Heroic, I decided to queue for a regular heroic for kicks. I knew beforehand that this wouldn't be a walk in the park, and that it most likely wouldn't be completed in 20 minutes.
I got Deadmines.With a rather squishy tank who's gear was slowly breaking throughout the run. Overall this was a normal group, your normal 10k dps and whatnot.
Thinking back to these new Cata mechanics, I now find them really annoying. Is this bad? Have we been programmed even more so to feel entitled to quick loot with little work? Getting through a Deadmines with new players isn't a walk in the park, the adds hit hard, there are a lot of adds and there are things to interrupt and pay attention to which are simply not present in the new heroics. Sure you could interrupt Carrion Swarm, along with the mandatory interrupt on Azshara in WOE but that's about it.
Deadmines is the perfect example, first boss: Wall of Fire. Boss with cleaves and fire adds. Boss with exploding mists. The DM Gauntlet. All these were fresh and new and epic, but now they are not meant for us anymore. They are for our alts. Don't get me wrong it is still FUN, (and Torby had fun tanking a lot of trash) just not in proportion to the potential reward, in our case the raw VP. Am I implying that there should be some sort of correlation between fun vs reward? Maybe? Probably not. It all depends.
Speaking of rewards, let's talk about drops. Oh drops, the amount of rage and drama that's been linked to your dark dark history since the beginning of gaming time. Let's say you defeat Madness and your time hasting staff drops. You roll, and of course you are going to lose. This of course happened to my Warlock. However, due to the intensity and engagement of the encounter, I didn't really care. We brought a pugged group from not being able to stack on Lootship 2, to one shotting the two encounters afterwards, it was a victory! A lootless victory but still a victory! Now say the caster doing 20k dps won. Well, you are welcome for the carry but thanks for staying alive and now you've seen the fight!
Sure it's great that someone in "need" got an upgrade, but I'd also like to add some subtext, and that is a reminder that any given piece of loot will not help anyone press the right buttons. But that's as far as I'm going to talk about LFR drops.
So the old heroics are great training grounds for healers and melee! As a healer, I automatically expect one of the melee to drop to 50% on any given pull for every single pull in every single heroic. One thing I found funny when healing the new heroics was ...that didn't happen! Another thing I've noticed is that everyone is playing their rogues and rogues are doing a trillion DPS now! Coming within 5% of a hunter's damage is totally imbalanced, I shall QQ unecessarily for all hunters out there! Because the more damage someone else does, the less loot and VP and fun we get!!
So we've agreed that the new heroics and LFR are great stepping stones to....to what? To regular raiding? Free handouts up to ilvl 390 all for what? The basis has been very nicely setup, I am excited to run my Paladin through the gearing game once she hits 85 and I bet it will be MUCH smoother than before. Perhaps for when patch 4.4 hits and the three Old God heroics are released, they will be MUCH more difficult and will utilize normal/heroic modes along with the raid that comes with it?
Truny Forgot What He Was Talking About
Wednesday, December 7, 2011
The Annoying Thing with Demonology
Demon Soul. Fel Hunter. Fel Guard. What is the diabolical relationship between these three elements?
Our Fel Guard is our top AOE dps pet, and his/her/its Demon Soul bonus gives us increased spell damage and haste. This is the best DS for our spec. Nuking.
However, not all fights are AOE, or have lots of AOE elements in them. Think black oozes on Yor'sahj. That's about it.
The fel hunter , or fel puppy, once only used by affliction warlocks is now the top dps single target pet. With all our dots on the enemy, their shadow bites can hit for upwards of 50k, whereas our felguards could never dream of hitting for that much.
So we use the fel hunter? Well no. The fel hunter's DS is increased shadow dot damage, and our only two dots are corruption and our bane.This is a meh boost, not as great as increased damage fast nukes.
So we have to juggle. Pop DS with felguard out, use his felstorm then switch out to fel hunter until the next CD of DS, then switch to felguard. This is of course to maximize DPS. How annoying is this? Another minor annoyance is that DS does not exactly line up right with metamorphosis so possibly juggle with every other meta?
All this juggling is doable. Just really annoying. And all this while refreshing corruption, which doesn't get auto-refreshed and our bane and trying to get into melee to use shadowflame.
Annoying. But totally needed cause affliction is just not bursty.
Truny the Annoyed
Our Fel Guard is our top AOE dps pet, and his/her/its Demon Soul bonus gives us increased spell damage and haste. This is the best DS for our spec. Nuking.
However, not all fights are AOE, or have lots of AOE elements in them. Think black oozes on Yor'sahj. That's about it.
The fel hunter , or fel puppy, once only used by affliction warlocks is now the top dps single target pet. With all our dots on the enemy, their shadow bites can hit for upwards of 50k, whereas our felguards could never dream of hitting for that much.
So we use the fel hunter? Well no. The fel hunter's DS is increased shadow dot damage, and our only two dots are corruption and our bane.This is a meh boost, not as great as increased damage fast nukes.
So we have to juggle. Pop DS with felguard out, use his felstorm then switch out to fel hunter until the next CD of DS, then switch to felguard. This is of course to maximize DPS. How annoying is this? Another minor annoyance is that DS does not exactly line up right with metamorphosis so possibly juggle with every other meta?
All this juggling is doable. Just really annoying. And all this while refreshing corruption, which doesn't get auto-refreshed and our bane and trying to get into melee to use shadowflame.
Annoying. But totally needed cause affliction is just not bursty.
Truny the Annoyed
Looking for Rage
For us over here in Canada (Yes I'm Canadian, sorry to have deceived you all this time), the Fall of Deathwing LFR encounter was released (as with the rest of the world) and I was quite excited to be able to "see this encounter" as I am a "casual" player/raider, we only raid oh wait...we've gone from one day a week to three. Okay so not so casual. But still not heroic content and or completing all encounters within 10 days progression. I am a ranked BM Hunter if that means anything. (LMAO?)
ANYWAYS. I queued up and got thrown into a group on Spine of Deathwing. I was hoping "please please just let me be a replacement for one dps who couldn't finish the encounter". Nope. Corpses all over the airship.
Now what was really lacking was good leadership and also good following-instructions-skills. This is what was going on as I zoned in.
"Okay, get it to 9 and kill 3 corruptions and kill blood". Say what? Get what to 9? What's a corrupted? What blood? Then they started the encounter. Whoa, tentacles. Do I have to latch on? Do I kill 'em? How many do we kill? Whats with this big add, oh these slimes are the bloods, what do we do?
I BELIEVE this group tried to do the encounter a la Regular Mode and tried to trigger barrel rolls. NO WAY LFR will require 25 pugs to execute that properly. I reckon all we had to do was stand in the middle. (Which worked when I ran this again).
This group totally failed and half the group left. By this time I had picked up on pretty much what needed to be done. We needed to single out ONE big add, have a tank hold it near Deathwing's plate (WHICH IS THE AREA CLOSEST TO HIS NECK), then someone else hold the other 2 until we need 'em. Since you only need to blow up his plates 3 times, we only kill 3 tentacles to get 3 big adds. Ideally. Essentially killing slimes buffs the big add, so we want to kill 9 slimes near the big add until it does it's nuclear explosion.
Simple enough?
Ok, so I tried to convince people to listen. We set up markers and all the jazz. First we marked a tentacle as Moon and said "Don't kill Moon". Moon died. Oh well, it's LFR the offtank can handle 3. Then we marked the big add and told people to kill slimes near it until it got 9 stacks of buff. Nope. It died before it hit 5 buffs. Apparently "Stop DPS" means "Keep killing fools". That's okay, we still have 2. We get a big add to 9 buffs, and the tank does not move it to the plates. Failed. We run out of big adds. Wipe it.
I requeued after trying to lead this group a couple more times and one-shot 3/4 of the Deathwing encounter until we magically decided to have a Server Restart just as we were killing Kalecgos' claw on Madness. Oh well. Oh and ranged, PLEASE kill Blistering Tentacles that grow out of Deathwing's claw in case you have no idea what people are yelling about. Thanks!
It still amazes me the amount of not paying attention that goes on and also the amount of rudeness lately. Yes, Pugs are super super excruciating at times, if you had read my GUILD chat complaints you would have been crying from the profanity. However on the raid side I was trying to be calm and organized and shit but alas, that does not work.
Turby Looking for Rage
ANYWAYS. I queued up and got thrown into a group on Spine of Deathwing. I was hoping "please please just let me be a replacement for one dps who couldn't finish the encounter". Nope. Corpses all over the airship.
Now what was really lacking was good leadership and also good following-instructions-skills. This is what was going on as I zoned in.
"Okay, get it to 9 and kill 3 corruptions and kill blood". Say what? Get what to 9? What's a corrupted? What blood? Then they started the encounter. Whoa, tentacles. Do I have to latch on? Do I kill 'em? How many do we kill? Whats with this big add, oh these slimes are the bloods, what do we do?
I BELIEVE this group tried to do the encounter a la Regular Mode and tried to trigger barrel rolls. NO WAY LFR will require 25 pugs to execute that properly. I reckon all we had to do was stand in the middle. (Which worked when I ran this again).
This group totally failed and half the group left. By this time I had picked up on pretty much what needed to be done. We needed to single out ONE big add, have a tank hold it near Deathwing's plate (WHICH IS THE AREA CLOSEST TO HIS NECK), then someone else hold the other 2 until we need 'em. Since you only need to blow up his plates 3 times, we only kill 3 tentacles to get 3 big adds. Ideally. Essentially killing slimes buffs the big add, so we want to kill 9 slimes near the big add until it does it's nuclear explosion.
Simple enough?
Ok, so I tried to convince people to listen. We set up markers and all the jazz. First we marked a tentacle as Moon and said "Don't kill Moon". Moon died. Oh well, it's LFR the offtank can handle 3. Then we marked the big add and told people to kill slimes near it until it got 9 stacks of buff. Nope. It died before it hit 5 buffs. Apparently "Stop DPS" means "Keep killing fools". That's okay, we still have 2. We get a big add to 9 buffs, and the tank does not move it to the plates. Failed. We run out of big adds. Wipe it.
I requeued after trying to lead this group a couple more times and one-shot 3/4 of the Deathwing encounter until we magically decided to have a Server Restart just as we were killing Kalecgos' claw on Madness. Oh well. Oh and ranged, PLEASE kill Blistering Tentacles that grow out of Deathwing's claw in case you have no idea what people are yelling about. Thanks!
It still amazes me the amount of not paying attention that goes on and also the amount of rudeness lately. Yes, Pugs are super super excruciating at times, if you had read my GUILD chat complaints you would have been crying from the profanity. However on the raid side I was trying to be calm and organized and shit but alas, that does not work.
Turby Looking for Rage
Tuesday, December 6, 2011
No Stride
Heh so I had said that I'd take this new patch in stride... that is until we actually strode into Dragon Soul with our regular raid roster. Morchok was easy, but for Yor'sajh and Zonnzonn...we were either lacking in DPS (only 2 of us were over 20k) or heals. Blah. You know what, I'll just have to push out another 2k dps to make up for it!
So anyways, I had said I'd take this new Deathwing stuff slowly, since we're going to be stuck with it until MOP or until secret mini-raid in 4.4 hits. My goal was to get valor capped on my two mains. Oh yes, my Warlock is now my main again now that I've gotten her geared up! It turns out I got valor capped on five toons. The plan is to use two of the toons VP to gear up Turby and Truny first (two are healers, they have quick queues).
LFR = good times. With a semi-organized group, these are pretty much free hand-outs of tier gear and trinkets. My hunter got very lucky and won two pieces of T13 off one boss, my warlock won a shoulder and a nifty trinket, my priest won a robe and a healing trinket, and of course my resto druid...he wins nothing. He hasn't won anything since his first raid in TOC when a nice warlock gave him the Perdition staff.....maybe this week will be different.
So without further ado, here's some quick tips for the current LFR bosses:
Morchok: AOE heal his stomp. Run close to a crystal if it has a beam on you. Run behind a pillar when he uses Black Blood. Too easy.
Yor'sahj the Unsleeping: Also known as "Skittles" due to his slimes. This fight is confusing at first until you get a hang of his slimes. Essentially the priority of the slimes is generally accepted to be:
-Purple > Green > Yellow > (Then I would use) Blue > Red > Black, depends on your heals. But the first three, PURPLE GREEN YELLOW are generally accepted. Sometimes you'll see Purple Yellow Green. But essentially in LFR, if you manage to kill any one you're good, the most important part is communication. Don't have some people run to one slime, and some to the other. I'm not going to explain what each slime does, but rather explain what to expect for some combinations.
So say the boss casts Purple, Yellow, Black. Automatically you should know to kill purple, then aoe down adds. You have to prepare this as you are going to kill the purple slime.
Say the boss casts Red, Green, Blue. What do you do? Kill Red, expect aoe damage from green and all dps have to prepare to kill mana void. This is when I double check lifebloom is up, or even blow tree form for multiple life blooms in anticipation of the void. Depends.
Say the boss casts Purple, Red, Green. Go kill purple, but also prepare to STACK since you see red. Red does damage based on your proximity to the boss, and we've seen a lot of casters who hang back get one shot.
Warlord Zon'ozz: Also known as Ping Pong. Now the LFR version of this boss is severely undertuned as to the actual mechanics of the fight. Essentially have a couple people handle the void ball, or actually it might have just been moving by itself....have the tank face the boss away, then stack when he does his massive AOE phase, rinse and repeat.
Hagara the Stormbinder: Aka the boss where NO ONE listens to tips.
TANKS: The one thing to look out for is "Focused Assault". If she starts doing this. MOVE AWAY FROM IT. It's the same abilities the flayers cast. You can totally strafe or sidestep or move back, or run through the boss to avoid this totally unecessary damage. MOVE AWAY FROM FOCUSED ASSAULT MOVE AWAY MOVE MOVE MOVE. (I tried doing this while healing it and the tanks didn't listen, they lived, but I don't like wasting mana as with most people right?)
Ice Phase: Everyone run to the outside ring, and kill the ice crystals in a clockwise manner. Be wary of ice walls/waves that spawn and also move clockwise. You'll have to be pro-active and run ahead of the waves rather than waiting for it, for it maybe too late. Surprisingly a lot of people die to this, and perhaps they are not [Ready for Raiding].
Lightning Phase: In this phase, Hagara spawns an add that must be killed near one of the lightning conductors around the edge of the platform. Once it dies it will overload the conductor and charge the players around it, it would be best for everyone to gather in one area while lightly spread and run together around the room by maintaining the lightning chain to overload the rest of the conductors.
But most importantly move out of Focused Assault, your healers are trained to be as efficient as possible and if you try to tank it it means they'll have to cast three or four fast-expensive heals!
So anyways, I had said I'd take this new Deathwing stuff slowly, since we're going to be stuck with it until MOP or until secret mini-raid in 4.4 hits. My goal was to get valor capped on my two mains. Oh yes, my Warlock is now my main again now that I've gotten her geared up! It turns out I got valor capped on five toons. The plan is to use two of the toons VP to gear up Turby and Truny first (two are healers, they have quick queues).
LFR = good times. With a semi-organized group, these are pretty much free hand-outs of tier gear and trinkets. My hunter got very lucky and won two pieces of T13 off one boss, my warlock won a shoulder and a nifty trinket, my priest won a robe and a healing trinket, and of course my resto druid...he wins nothing. He hasn't won anything since his first raid in TOC when a nice warlock gave him the Perdition staff.....maybe this week will be different.
So without further ado, here's some quick tips for the current LFR bosses:
Morchok: AOE heal his stomp. Run close to a crystal if it has a beam on you. Run behind a pillar when he uses Black Blood. Too easy.
Yor'sahj the Unsleeping: Also known as "Skittles" due to his slimes. This fight is confusing at first until you get a hang of his slimes. Essentially the priority of the slimes is generally accepted to be:
-Purple > Green > Yellow > (Then I would use) Blue > Red > Black, depends on your heals. But the first three, PURPLE GREEN YELLOW are generally accepted. Sometimes you'll see Purple Yellow Green. But essentially in LFR, if you manage to kill any one you're good, the most important part is communication. Don't have some people run to one slime, and some to the other. I'm not going to explain what each slime does, but rather explain what to expect for some combinations.
So say the boss casts Purple, Yellow, Black. Automatically you should know to kill purple, then aoe down adds. You have to prepare this as you are going to kill the purple slime.
Say the boss casts Red, Green, Blue. What do you do? Kill Red, expect aoe damage from green and all dps have to prepare to kill mana void. This is when I double check lifebloom is up, or even blow tree form for multiple life blooms in anticipation of the void. Depends.
Say the boss casts Purple, Red, Green. Go kill purple, but also prepare to STACK since you see red. Red does damage based on your proximity to the boss, and we've seen a lot of casters who hang back get one shot.
Warlord Zon'ozz: Also known as Ping Pong. Now the LFR version of this boss is severely undertuned as to the actual mechanics of the fight. Essentially have a couple people handle the void ball, or actually it might have just been moving by itself....have the tank face the boss away, then stack when he does his massive AOE phase, rinse and repeat.
Hagara the Stormbinder: Aka the boss where NO ONE listens to tips.
TANKS: The one thing to look out for is "Focused Assault". If she starts doing this. MOVE AWAY FROM IT. It's the same abilities the flayers cast. You can totally strafe or sidestep or move back, or run through the boss to avoid this totally unecessary damage. MOVE AWAY FROM FOCUSED ASSAULT MOVE AWAY MOVE MOVE MOVE. (I tried doing this while healing it and the tanks didn't listen, they lived, but I don't like wasting mana as with most people right?)
Ice Phase: Everyone run to the outside ring, and kill the ice crystals in a clockwise manner. Be wary of ice walls/waves that spawn and also move clockwise. You'll have to be pro-active and run ahead of the waves rather than waiting for it, for it maybe too late. Surprisingly a lot of people die to this, and perhaps they are not [Ready for Raiding].
Lightning Phase: In this phase, Hagara spawns an add that must be killed near one of the lightning conductors around the edge of the platform. Once it dies it will overload the conductor and charge the players around it, it would be best for everyone to gather in one area while lightly spread and run together around the room by maintaining the lightning chain to overload the rest of the conductors.
But most importantly move out of Focused Assault, your healers are trained to be as efficient as possible and if you try to tank it it means they'll have to cast three or four fast-expensive heals!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)