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!