Tree With a Buzzsaw

 Many weeks ago when the first Throne of Thunder LFR was released, I was very excited to find out that the Zandalari Council would drop a healing weapon in the form of a fist weapon!

I used to run around on Turny, exploring old dungeons and collected a myriad of strange and wonderful weapons in which I would equip randomly to heal heroics back in Wrath. Transmogging before it was cool. Having picked up my druid once again, I managed to win this said fist weapon and immediately opened up my Mogit to find some cool transmogs. One of the most easily obtainable fist weapon was [Calamity's Grasp], which drops off 25M Kel'thuzad. A spinning buzz-saw...as a healer, and a tree? AWESOME! I am not going to be running Nightbane in Karazhan for a nice flamethrower offhand!

Weekly Progression

This week's progression update actually has progression within it! We downed Tortos! We put in several attempts last week at the end of raid and our healers just kept dying. Having re-thought our bat acquisition methods and allocated our turtle kicking appropriately, we finally downed this turtle-a-hole and I can reasonably say that we can do this again fairly easily.

In retrospect, I think next week I can manage my embers a bit better, perhaps saving one to F&B an immolate on all the bats, and also to keep my uptime of ROF on them a bit higher. But...I'll worry about that this weekend.

EAT CRAP TORTOS!

Random Notes

Now that the entire set of TOT LFR is out, I find that I don't have enough time to do them all on two characters. I am now picking and choosing which has the prettiest upgrades, then weighed based on which wing is the easiest.

Last week it took about six or seven queues of trying for the Pinnacle of Storms just to get into FRESH queue. I somehow managed to maintain top heals, EVEN when I was exclusively the one going in connecting the star-dots for the celestials. WTF?

It's an odd feeling not doing everything for once. My warlock did not even touch the 4th wing. Time and time again I'd get into a failed Lei Shen run. Seriously who wipes to Lei Shen LFR more than 5 times? What mechanic is still not getting through or not being communicated it boggles my mind.

Anyways. Missed out on some rep and possible Secrets of the Empire, but then again I do not yet have a qualifying helm (still using a 483 of all things) to put the new shiny meta in anyways.

The sucky part is, Iron Qon and Twin Consorts are so easy, coupled by the fact that they drop the two more awesome tier pieces, shoulder and helm. For druids, this helm is the only model and I believe is not imitated by any other off-set.

I believe the phenomenon happening now is that once Twin Consorts dies, HALF the raid is "peace out", because we sure did when we finally managed to get into a fresh queue.

Frustrating indeed, perhaps this will get better in the next couple of weeks. STOP QUEUING US TO LEI SHEN! And let's end off with a cool picture!



Turny the Buzzsaw Healer

MoP LFR Tips: Throne of Thunder - Lei Shen

Oh hello!

The fourth and final quarter of the Throne of Thunder has been released in LFR as of yesterday and I am sure many people have questions or want to have a quick brief understanding of the Lei Shen fight in order to facilitate a smooth kill.

I am skipping over Iron Qon and Twin Consorts momentarily as they are fairly insignificant. Let's get straight to Lei Shen.

Lei Shen

Organization
First off, you will want to assign your raid to cover the four different quadrants of the platform. I'll tell you why later. Mark each corner and split people up making sure there's at least one healer in each group. Also make sure people are paying attention and make sure they know what group they are in.

Lei Shen's general mechanic throughout the first phase is that he needs to be tanked near one of the four lightning conduits around the room. By doing this, he will charge the conduit instead of doing an AOE to everyone in the raid.

Dangerous Ability: Occasionally Lei Shen casts Thunderstruck, denoted by a bright blue lightning circle on the ground. Get out of this circle!


Tanks: I believe you taunt off each other after each "Decapitate".


Overall Strategy
The Lei Shen fight boils down to handling each mechanic at each different conduit located on each corner of the platform, and also splitting up into groups to handle ALL of those mechanics at once in each corner. Now I will explain what to do at each conduit:

You will probably tank him starting at the north conduit, and once this conduit is charged once, you will move to the east, then south, then west and so on. As he is moving he will do his AOE since he is not near a conduit, but it won't last long as long as tanks move quickly. Heal through it.


The Conduits
Each conduit, which will be denoted by the cardinal points of the compass, N, E, S, W, each have a different mechanic tied to them when Lei Shen is near them.


North: If you get targeted by an arrow, stack with everyone as this will do HUGE damage that needs to be split.

East: Spread out, as he casts a chain lightning that spawns adds when anyone gets hit. Kill the adds ASAP.

South: Someone will get targeted by a lightning ring that will explode after 3 seconds, stunning anyone caught in it. As a healer I found this platform to be moot as there are no adds. Or perhaps it was because I was healing it.

West: Occasionally you will see pale blue circley pools on the ground. STAND IN THEM to soak lightning balls. If you do not, an add shows up and adds a lot of unnecessary damage. Don't confuse these with Thunderstruck, which is really bright.

Hopefully by the time you've seen all the conduits he's at 65%....

Phase 2: Once Lei Shen hits 65% and 30% he will teleport to the middle of the room and this is where the assigned groups go to their assigned corners. You will need to handle the stun, kill adds, and soak damage all at once in your smaller groups. Once this phase ends, kill off any additional adds and continue to kill the boss. Most importantly, someone will get targeted by the north conduit ability and must split this damage between the group.

Post Phase 2 & Phase 3: After the Lei Shen teleports to the middle (65%) he will gain lightning whip, which is a huge cone to dodge, which leaves lightning streaks on the ground. You can jump over these streaks. And after the 30% phase he gains a wind ability which is moot. Keep moving to stay on the platform, continue to mind the mechanics in phase 1 and dodge his whip.

Additional Info (Probably not necessary for LFR purposes):

One of the conduits in the room will become inactive if they have the highest charge during the two intermission phases, I believe no adds/mechanics happen in that quadrant and you only have to deal with 3. Also, each conduit gains power the more you charge them. For example, the northern conduit will begin to target additional players, requiring smaller groups to stack up to split damage.

That should cover the brunt of the fight hopefully I did not miss anything but I must go eat lunch now, goodbye and have fun.

Turny the Helpful Tree

The People of LFR

Good evening,

Hey reader, are you proud of me or are you proud of me? I have not moaned nor groaned about LFR woes for a very very long time. I've been trying to co-ordinate or take up leadership (what little of it there is) or at least voice my most objective recommendations on how to clear most of my LFR runs.

Because seriously, just do this shit right so I can get my 90 VP and complain about not getting loot as quick as possible.

As of T15, Durumu has been the sore point and honestly as long as two healers, two tanks and some DPS are alive...get ready to carry the rest of your raid as their writing corpses receive upgrades while all you get for thanks is a steaming bag of gold, and to add insult to injury, your fail bag doesn't even have anything else in it. This is what I mean when I complain about reward vs effort. There is none and don't expect it. /bitter

Anyways this post is about the various types of people I've observed going through the various LFRs and here it is:

The Unhelpful Elitist: This elitist will first off state passive aggressively that they have cleared this on regular/heroic but will not provide any valuable advice. They will scoff and scorn the lesser folk for wasting their time and that's "why I don't do LFR". Well fuck you. If you've done the fight in a more complicated manner, why don't you pull some tips out of your almighty fat-ass and help the group out? No one gives a fuck that you've cleared this on reg, let's just get this over with.

The Bitch: Yeah there's always one. All they do is complain about how the group sucks or that everyone is mentally challenged, and yet again they do not provide any useful recommendations for improvement. They will say "this shit is easy just do it". Well, HOW? This is usually when I pipe in with the how as their underdeveloped brains are probably incapable of communicating their thoughts further.

The Pro Tank: This tank knows all the fights and lays out the perfect plan, co-ordinates with their off-tank and the raid follows and executes. This person is my dream tank as it saves me from having to type anything at all.

The-Anyone-Doing-Less-Than-50k dps: The min i-lvl is 480. Act like you are 480+. (I changed the threshold from 80k as that would make me an elitist, but it really should be 80k)

The Helpful Elitist: This is me. I'll give you the tips and tricks to look out for, without boggling you with spell details and perhaps giving class tips and that's it. Behind the screen I am wondering how the FUCK did you wipe twice to LFR Tortos?

So, in your respective roles, what have you observed?

Turny the Observant Tree

Ignorance is Bliss: When do we Draw the Line Between Having Fun and Being "Good"?

Hello my three readers,

Yes you heard it, I we have a new friend! /wave

So as we all know, there is a new set of quests on the Isle of Thunder that requires us to gather summoning stones to call upon and kill these rare elite mobs for weekly rep with the Shado Pan Assault (SPA). There was only two of us on last night and went off to pug in general chat. Surprisingly the island was very quiet and we only managed to find one warlock. That's fine, I was on my healer, we had a tank and a warlock. Warlocks are OP at doing damage so we decided to 3-man Kros.

Biggest mistake ever.

Now here's the part of the story where I want you to put on your objective glasses and try to throw away any of your pre-conceived notions of what "should" be and just listen to what happened.

Alright. We summon the boss, he's angry and I have hots up and our tank is pulling Kros away so he has some time to run to the little add that he goes back to gobble up and heal himself. Okay.

The warlock who still has his Voidwalker up is now standing there doing nothing. Ok, maybe he's laggy or DC or something. Or confused.

The add spawns and he's still standing there, I start to wrath the add down and he dies ok great. The warlock is still standing there. My recount says he has a few ticks of corruption on the boss and has used Fel Flame a couple times. Ok wtf?

The add spawns again and I am unable to wrath it down, the boss heals to full. We ask the warlock to stand by the add to kill it when he spawns. But intrinsically this also meant, "be near the boss and also kill the add".  Well, he's just standing there. Now he's summoned his wild imps and is casting soulfires at the boss. Ok. After about 10 minutes of trying to get this person to kill the add, he finally starts to help, but it's geting real close because he has not yet used Metamorphosis or used shadow bolt once. Say what?

10 minutes later, the boss is dead. Longest fight ever. And we now confirm can be done with a tank, a resto druid and a warm body doing 10k dps.

In the Moment

At that moment, my inner warlock was literally asking:

"What the fuck is this guy doing? Kill the goddamn boss! Why the shit are you using a void walker and why aren't you using all your goddamn abilities?" Why won't you kill the fucking add? Where's shadowbolt? Cast doom on Kros! Use a fucking imp!

Afterthoughts

Now that I think back, I made the right choice to be civil and just /cheer as we made the kill. This is where my question pops up: Where do we draw the line?

This warlock was ilvl 435 and had no reason to be on this island. He obviously had no concept of what a damage rotation was, what spells and cooldowns his class had, or even the fact that certain pets have different purposes.

As a raider, this is a no no but when you think about it, for someone who doesn't even have the concept of these things, or the knowledge that he is actually being measured for knowing or not knowing these points, what does it matter?

For all we know he's a 10 year old having fun with his warlock, he found a quest and wanted a group. I have let my younger cousin, who is also 10, muck about on my characters. He'll admire my mounts, check out the various pets and ask to kill random things with all the shiny abilities. There's no concept of which ability to cast first, or how they interact with each other since it's not even a thought that crosses his mind. He's just "a warlock, who can kill things". He'll say "ooh I'll use Soulfire on you!" "..ooh what's Fel Flame?" It's that simple, and perhaps it's us who are bound by optimization and performance who are actually the victim of the system.

Where do we Draw the Line?

So now I ask, when do we have the right to berate others for how they push their buttons? He never pre-emptively promised us that he'd be a good warlock. We just assumed. Should we offer constructive feedback? Smile and be on our way? Tell them they suck? Had we said that, I don't think he'd know what we meant by "suck", is there a way to not suck? (Well yes, but you know...)

This is just too mind boggling, I'll just start armory-ing everyone from now on.

Turny the Mighty Tree

The Trolls Are Cleared

Good evening my two readers,

We've been making some good progress over the past...uh day in the raiding world. We were having some issues on co-ordination on Horridon for the past couple weeks but yesterday his giant corpse lay battered and bruised as we cut him open to see the shiny loots within his warm quivering dino body.

We then went on to attempt the Zandalari Council and surprisingly got him down in about four attempts. Nothing too dramatic. I shall update everyone (if you care, which you probably don't) on our attempts at Tortos tonight, I would actually be quite delighted if a 522 bow dropped for our wonderful hunters.

Now I don't want to taint this happy post with my next topic so I shall start a new post riiiiiight now.

Truny the Progressive

MoP LFR Tips: Throne of Thunder - 3rd Wing: Halls of Flesh-Shaping

Oh hello my one reader,

Sorry for the delay as I had meant to put these tips up to ease the madness that is LFR for us all last week but I was busy so yes here we go.

Don't be overwhelmed by the horror stories you hear about Durumu, as the 3rd wing is probably the easiest and quickest LFR wing since MV 1st half.

Durumu

Again, I will highlight the IMPORTANT things that you will SEE so we wont' be boggled by spell names or abilities and that other shit. Unfortunately, they put "real" raid mechanics into Durumu so I may appear quite long-winded starting now:

1. Stuff on the ground. Occasionally Durumu will target random people and shoot poop at them. Once the poop hits it leaves a pool on the ground. Try to move to the outer edge if it targets you.

2. Colored beams. The colored beams, red, blue, and yellow are essentially radars, if you are targetted by red or blue, run around the platform until a mist beasts appears then kill it. The yellow beam will move by itself.

3. Once all three colored beasts are dead, I recommend running to the face of the boss where he will then start to cast his deadly laser of DOOM.

3a. Durumu will start preparing a giant laser in front of him that WILL ONE SHOT whoever touches it, AND he..

3b. ...summons gas all around the room with hard to see gaps in them. There are two "mazes" of open area, one for ranged, and one for melee. I tend to follow the one in melee as I can follow the boss's movements. Essentially go for where the gas seems to the thinnest in density.

3c. SO. As he is preparing his laser, gas will fill up on both sides of him and here is where you PAY ATTENTION. Watch for the ground to either the left or right of his laser (it is safe to stand on the laser now), and you will see little squiggles on the ground. THIS DENOTES THE SAFE ZONE and also the direction in which he will turn. If the squiggles are on the right, start going to the right as he will start turning that way and as gas fills, the mazes will start to form on the right. This will pretty much "determine" (get it hahaha) the success of the group.

4. No matter how many stacks of Determination you get, you will still get one shot by his laser, so keep moving. If you can't see exactly where the next section of the maze is, pop a CD and GUESS.

5. I believe the developers are looking to make the safe spots more visible, but in the meanwhile maybe try turning down your graphics, but also note the following sequence of events leading up to his laser so you'll know when to expect it.

6. The good thing is if you have enough people alive, half the raid can be dead and you can still kill him.

7. Best to ask who knows where to go, mark them, then follow them!

Primordius

If you've made it to Primordius you are in the clear, however here is a quick overview of what you should do for success:

1. Tanks kite Primordius around the room.

2. DPS kill slimes and stand in their residue until you are turned into a Saurok.

That's it.

Some may choose to leave Primordius standing, but slimes reach him faster this way and he 'll do increased damage AND us warlocks won't have a large group of slimes to cast rain of fire on for endless embers.

Dark Animus

These last two fights as you can see...are substantially easier to go through than Durumu. Less trash too!

1. Slowly kill the small little golems around the room. This may need to be communicated to everyone.

2. Focus down any medium golems which spawn after they absorb the energy from the dead small golems.

3. Focus down big golems and medium golems, and once the boss activates focus on him as he'll eat the remaining golems.

4. Stay out of animus rings and puddles. Pew pew.

Hopefully this sort of helps you acquire your 90 VP in a more better manner (yes, more better).

Truny the Sort of Helpful

Hunters and the Lack of Ranged Weapons in MoP

Hello my two readers,

I've been meaning to make this post many many weeks ago when my hunter had first dinged level 90 and began his epic adventure to find a proper bow or gun to slay baddies with.

It was a horrible experience. Only a handful of heroics dropped guns/bows and on the outset, only one single boss dropped a bow in raid, the 6th boss in Mogushan Vaults. After dozens and dozens of heroics, I finally found a 463 gun and used the JP upgrade to bring it up to 471 in preparation for the release of Terrace.

Heart of Fear was released, and lo and behold, oh, there were no ranged weapons so fuck you hunters go farm Mogushan Vaults. Ok..

Terrace had one single weapon, the only sha-touched weapon that we can use and thus began the cycle of insanity. You would have thunk that Yogg'saron was the master of insanity? Hell no, he's got nothing on Lei Shi.

Ah Lei Shi, the one boss who drops pretty much everything useful for every single class yet refuses to yield anything more than a belt. Speaking of belts, why are there so many belts in TOES? Do I really need to choose between twelve different agility belts? Many times I got so frustrated that I didn't even both staying and facerolling the Sha of Fear.

Weeks and weeks passed, I got sick of my hunter's bad luck and skipped many weeks but according to my log I have a dozen Lei Shi kills and of course every week, gold and any other item but tier and the gun. I've read many other folks have had even worse luck, going five months with no new weapon, and jeez, how do you stand it? Why didn't you just quit and play your warlock? (Jokes, I did.)

Coming from the standpoint of my druid and warlock, I had a 476 through inscription on the get-go and wasn't really too worried about upgrades because it was purple and somehow a purple item will satiate a lot of folks in this regards. Are rogues also as screwed with this system? Do agi daggers even exist?

So I thought, okay, maybe the intention with the game is that upgrades aren't that big a deal anyways and we should just enjoy everything else. This is true, except that multiple weeks of NOTHING is quite aggravating, despite the fight being mind numbingly easy. On one hand was I being too entitled to loot that I should EXPECT an upgrade after 3 months? Well, the game sort of has changed to encourage that sort of thought, but maybe not. And honestly, the thing is that hunters aren't even that fun to play with anyways. To add insult to injury, here, don't have upgrades but also please mind your many 15,20,30,45,60 second cooldowns so don't even both looking at the screen thanks.

Then rejoice, Throne of Thunder is released and there are two relatively easy to get ranged weapons on the get-go. Of course, nothing on the first few attempts and I rage-semi-quit.

Then as we approached our very first real TOES run and we down Lei Shi with relative ease, i burned my token and got...nothing, but guess what was in her stupid treasure chest?

Ermagerd, a sher terched gern!

That's right, Tao'ren the Soul Burner. Pristine and untouched, ready to be shot repeatedly for months on end. I was the only hunter, actually come to think of it I am the only hunter who is still relatively active in our guild and I was elated. This was a different kind of excitement which brought me back to when epics were actually  very hard to come by. It brought me back to when I was freshly new to the game and was still using THOTTBOT to look up all the different bows/guns in the game. Back to when an epic was revered and cherished, and not just something you got and later ignored, only looking forward to replace it with something better. Another historical moment was when I won the ilvl 200 "epic" crossbow in heroic Utgarde Keep. It was scary, since anyone could roll need/greed on anything and we couldn't trade items and there was that tiny risk that someone would need the crossbow for gold or because they were crazy.
First you must understand the viewpoint as to WHY my hunter was so keen on getting an upgrade. It's not being entitled to epics, it's in his nature. You see, when I first started playing, I made sure that at every level I had the strongest possible weapon I could obtain at that level. And this brings us back to Thottbot. I manually mined and saved up gold for Hurricane, a level 34 epic bow just because it was the "best" one then (or maybe not). It was just my thing with the hunter and what MoP did was break this tradition for many months.

With the lack of filler-heroics, the ONLY place to gear up alts is through LFR and we all know what crazy madness can happen in there. Even if the runs are smooth, it's boring and again if you've run a warlock through anything, every other toon will feel weak as hell.

Anyways, that was my little rant/thing on stupid ranged weapons for this expansion. I won't wish you luck because I have a better suggestion for when you are frustrated, go roll a warlock.

Truny the Warlock

Receiving End of the Fel

Yes silly Paladin, use your stupid little bubble.

It's always nice to be the one doing the slaughtering and blood curdling cackling, but what does it look like from the receiving end of all the destruction and chaos?