On a roll-duar

Last night was probably the absolute most stressful raid night I’ve had in a while. Not because we wiped endlessly to a farm boss, or because there was some major loot drama. No–even worse–I had to lead it!

(Demogar, you are dead to me.)

I’m sure those of you who regularly lead raids are thinking “oh shut the hell up” at this point. And I agree, not a huge deal in the scheme of things. I’m just so used to being the guy in the background, crunching the numbers, and devising new strategies that to have to do the actually leading… it’s a thing of terror. I’m not as up to date on the dkp system as I should be, so there were some missteps on my part, but nothing that couldn’t be fixed after the raid on the guild website.

Anyway, the raid didn’t solely consist of me sweating uncontrollably and taking frequent afks to weep gently in a corner. Oh no, much more than that!

We started with Razorscale and then jumped over to Ignis. Ol’ Fire Crotch proved a little bit of an obstacle only because our tanking was different than how we’ve just about always been doing it. Usually I’m managing the adds with someone else but I had to swap in as the Ignis tank. Normally this is fine, but the add management was, shall we say, lacking. Healers frequently got mauled by golems and general panic ensued. However, after the wipe a quick switch in tank assignments saw me in my element and we downed it with little difficulty.

After Ignis we dissolved the Assembly of Iron Governor General-style and rolled on to knock down the two remaining Keepers we have on farm. Freya, as faithful readers of my ramblings know, is sometimes of an issue for us because our dps tends to tunnel-vision. Considering how important it is for the three elementals not to be killed too far apart from each other (chronologically speaking), it kind of necessary dps pays attention to the freaking health bars.

Thankfully Demo was back on by then, so I was able to rotate him in to the raid so his melodious bellowing could sheperd us to victory.

And we did the inconceivable: everyone paid attention and we one shot Freya. No resets, no wipes, no setbacks. Just a clean kill.

After that we marched over to Mimiron to encounter him the second time in a week (we previously killed him for the first time on Sunday) we were pretty much ready for the fight but there was a nagging fear in some of us (ok, in me) that Sunday’s one-shot might have been an accident, or just serendipity. But thankfully, we one-shot Mim again, definitely proving that Sunday’s success was not a fluke (it was a much cleaner kill this time around, as well).

Now we have Sunday completely free of anything but Thorim, and hopefully Vezax. I’m sure that with no distractions we’ll be able to focus and get Sparky down once and for all.

The once and future shield

I really don’t feel like writing a same old, same old raid recap (long story short: no Titanguard again, couldn’t kill Thorim again–but at least we know the new strategy works when dps is split right) so let’s talk about something else …

Well, I picked up the Northern Barrier last night intending it to be mainly a threat-set shield, but with the changes to avoidance in the next patch it had me thinking how NB would compare to my current shield of choice, the Wall of Terror.

As it stands right now, the two shields break down as:

WoT

1072 hp
1.63% avoidance
2.23% mitigation chance

NB

1072 hp
1.53% avoidance
.51% mitigation chance

So clearly WoT is the superior choice for a shield right now. What about in 3.2? Well, avoidance in WoT slips to 1.55% due to the sock in the gut that dodge rating is getting. This makes WoT only better by .02% avoidance chance. Assuming one is not block capped then WoT is the shield of choice, but if that block is a wasted stat then NB isn’t a terrible option come 3.2.

Personally my defense rating is a little tight right now so I don’t have the luxury of being able to enchant my shield or chest for stamina. However, that extra 22 defense rating on NB would give me enough breathing room to slap the +18 stamina enchant on the shield. The extra EH would definitely make the Barrier my favored bulwark.

Leading them to slaughter! (of Mimiron)

I was pretty optimistic going into last night about our chances with Mimiron. We did pretty well on Wednesday, pushing Mim to P4 with ease at the end. I thought maybe after an hour of wipes maybe we’d be able to down him. Hell, we had at least three hours to plink away at him. And yet, the unexpected happened…

We one-shot him.

It was a pretty incredible kill (which I’ll detail in a moment) and more so because Mimiron25 was supposedly an impossible boss. He was clearly nerfed into the ground, but I thought that’d be mostly affecting the normal mode, not heroic. On Wednesday when I made the command decision to divert our efforts on Thorim to Mimiron I was accused in officer chat of “leading the raid to slaughter.” It couldn’t be done, they clucked. Now: sweet, sweet vindication.

But I digress–here’s how we tanked it.

Phase 1

Demo main tanked Mimiron while I stayed prot spec and built second threat. The priests rotated through their various cooldowns while Demo did the same to get through the first three Plasma Blasts. Unfortunately a quick snafu hit and Demo died while running out of a shockwave that was happening during a Plasma Blast, so Mim ran over to me and I tanked him in the middle. At this point Mim was at 10% health and we easily push him to phase 2.

Phase 2

Demo was brought back up and everyone was topped off for phase 2. Because there isn’t any threat on this phase the trick is to minimize raid damage by not standing in front of the boss if possible. I spent the majority of this phase running through the boss, Hammering, Shield Slamming, Judging, etc. Just weaving in and out of his LOS (keyboard turners are at a natural disadvantage here).

A key, key talent in this fight is Divine Sacrifice. The most critical aspect of this phase is to limit raid damage and get through it as fast as humanly possible. Taking 30% of the raid damage off the top was a big boon to the healers, I felt. I just wish the other three pallies in the raid had DivSac as well so we could layer them for some serious damage reduction.

If you can make it through Phase 1 and 2 with the entire raid intact then you are very well set up for the kill.

Phase 3

At this point Mimiron takes to the air, so the tanking of the head falls to a caster or some other ranged dps. Usually Cendra (hunter) takes care of this, but last night a warlock was particularly insistent he have the opportunity this time around so he took over that role.

What this phase does have for you to tank are two different things. One is the Assault Bots, which are heavy-hitting robots that like to cast a magical debuff on their tank that increases damage taken by 30%. This can be cleansed off though, which makes a pally ideal for tanking them. The other mob that needs to be controlled are the Bomb Bots which spawn under Mimiron’s head and bee line for a random raid member, to explode and do heavy damage. To control these guys we had Demo stand under Mim’s head and just taunt them as they spawned, and soak the damage from their explosions.

Also, if you’re tanking the Assault Bots, keep an eye out for red columns of light. Assault Bots spawn from these and if a squishy is standing next to their spawn, they kill them in short order before you have time to react. I warned the clothies and others to move away if a red column popped up next to them, and ran over to pick up Assault Bots the moment they spawned. (You have a second or two to grab them before they officially “activate”.)

Phase 4

Because Demo died in P1 I had aggro on the bottom third of Mimiron in this fight (the head and bottom keep their aggro tables from their respective phases). I tanked it in the center and just worked through my rotation keeping mind of the various danger moments the boss likes to throw at us. Ran out of shock, rotated the bottom so the middle wasn’t facing me for the spin-up, and kept an eye on nearby mines. Rockets didn’t seem to big of an issue because they favor ranged and people were a bit spread out.

Tanking in this phase isn’t particularly hard at all, it’s just being careful not to get shockwaved or shot by a super laser of some kind. Just stay on your toes and hope everyone else can manage to stay alive.

I think the best part of the fight was when I realized all three parts were at around 100k health each, and it clicked that we might actually kill Mimiron. Suddenly people were cheering in vent, giving the fifteen or so of us left the confidence to keep going. And finally we prevailed, and Mimiron’s creation slumped over defeated.

Lastly, a big grats to Demo on winning his t8.5 gloves and thus achieving his totally fair and balanced 4pc bonus. :P

Blocking with a dress, and the Spark of vindication

Raid night number 2 and we had ahead of us Emalon, Ignis, Iron Council, and Thorim. About 10 minutes before the raid started the battle for WG began with Horde as offense, so it was pretty much as predetermined outcome that we would take WG and have access to VOA. Once said predetermined outcome was determined, we hopped to over to Lake Wintergrasp and began summoning the rest of the raid for a quick mop up on Emalon and Archavon.

We downed Emalon and lo and behold… he dropped my effing dress. The one piece of tier I hoped never to win. Damn.

Anyways, yes, I took it. It now holds a hallowed place in my block set for the 4pc bonus. I’m loathe to use it in my EH set at the moment, however.

Heading over to Ulduar we steamrolled Ignis (which I really enjoy tanking the adds during… I have a bad habit of popping my own brittle golems with a shield slam). I was very excited to see that the Blood Draining enchant dropped. I sent the mats for it to Gulli in exchange for a vellum with the enchant. I’m looking forward to finally having a survivability enchant on my weapon.

And yes, I know I poo-poo’d BD a little while back. I was wrong, dammit.

Post-Ignis the Assembly of Iron was dismissed from their posts and the raid was ready for some progression. Unfortunately our Thorim strategy relies on several linchpin players, least among them the tanks. And the DK tank that usually grabs Champions decided his Internet wasn’t working so he couldn’t be of much use to us. So, Thorim was shelved and I (because Demo was off fixing his Mom’s radio or something) made the command decision to try Mimiron.

I know, I know. It sounds psychotic. But I’ve had this nagging feeling for the last week or two that Mimiron, with all his nerfs, would end up being easier than Thorim. After last night I’m fully confident this is the case.

The first attempt we pushed him to phase 3 (purely a learning attempt, considering only 6 of us made it to P3). Then we had a few stalled attempts when Demo switched to DPS and I tanked P1, which didn’t go so well. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t a fight or class mechanics issue, just bad luck of plasma blast while everyone was scrambling away from a shockwave, and a moronic moment when I sat in the shockwave because I wasn’t sure if Mim would move with me or not, then taking out the dps around me. Like I said, was my fault. /shame

Nonetheless, we swapped around and Demo MT’d P1 with me backup tanking (and using Hand of Sac to help with the last plasma blast). After the switch the attempts became much more refined and towards the end of the night we were getting him to P4 easily and with most of the raid intact. Unfortunately, we only got to see P4 twice before the raid was called due to the time, but I think Sunday we’ll be able to down the sucker. We have three hours of attempts ahead of us that night and everyone was pretty charged by what was seen as an inevitable kill.

All in all, we made serious progress. To use an old cliche, Mimiron is “on notice.”

It was 11pm when the raid concluded, so Dara and Cen and I headed down to Stranglethorn for our weekly raid attempts. After some wrestling with Door Boss we finally burst our way into ZG and headed over to the tiger boss. I’m a huge sucker for the Hoodoo piles in the area before said boss, so I activated one and only got a Voodoo doll (alas). The other pile however mindcontrolled me. The MC’d Rhidach immediately popped wings, switched to Seal of Righteousness, and took out Cendra in short order, then swung around and killed Ildara.

I wish I was that good at pvp while controlling my own character!

After both mount-dropping bosses failed to drop their mounts we headed over to Kara to take out Attumen. Unfortunately, our luck failed us this time and we were unable to get past the front door. After about 15 minutes of running horizontally back and forth through the portal, we called it a night.

Damn you, Door Boss.

Avoidance nerfed in current ptr

• Agility: The amount of agility required per percentage of dodge has been increased by 15%. This change required recalibrating the amount of dodge a player has with 0 agility by a slight amount as well, so all players will see their dodge percentage vary a small amount.
• Dodge Rating: The amount of dodge rating required per percentage of dodge has been increased by 15%. This is before diminishing returns. Combined with other changes, this makes dodge rating and parry rating equally potent before diminishing returns apply.
• Parry Rating: The amount of parry rating required per percentage of parry has been reduced by 8%. This is before diminishing returns. Combined with other changes, this makes dodge rating and parry rating equally potent before diminishing returns apply. Parry still diminishes more quickly than dodge.

Ach!

So three things to take away from this: Avoidance will be decreasing across the board by a significant number (and by significant I mean non-trivial, I may be being a bit dramatic in my word choice), Agility will end up being a worse avoidance stat than Defense, and Parry gems won’t automatically be a bad-tank red flag anymore (alas).

Before this change:

• 39.35 dodge rating was 1% dodge
• 49.18 parry rating was 1% parry
• 52.08 agility was 1% dodge

And now the numbers are:

• 45.25 dodge rating is 1% dodge
• 45.25 parry rating is 1% parry
• 59.89 agility is 1% dodge

Defense remains 123 rating as 1% dodge, 1% parry, and 1% miss (aka 3% avoidance, so 41 rating per 1% avoidance).

So, now that I vomited up all these numbers, what does this mean? For gems, the values of avoidance per gem are now (and I’m using values of 8, because as we discussed before, all your gems should have 12 stam as half of their worth):

• 8 parry is .18% avoidance
• 8 dodge is .18% avoidance
• 8 def is .19% avoidance (.064% dodge, parry, and miss)
• 8 agi is .13% avoidance (.146% with Kings)

Thus, shockingly, Enduring gems are now the best for avoidance out of all four. Before this change, Regal gems were worth .20% avoidance, but no more. And agility gems will no longer be close enough to justify using them over pure dodge. This doesn’t mean you want to start filling red slots with Endurings come 3.2, but it is interesting nonetheless.

Ultimately it makes sense that they would nerf avoidance, considering how the next tier of gear will make us even harder to hit. I’m not happy that I’ll be losing avoidance come next patch, but it’s not the end of the world.

One major caveat emptor: All these numbers I’ve cited are before diminishing returns. YMMV depending on how much avoidance you are currently rocking. (E.g., miss suffers a steep DR decline, so at a certain point dodge makes up for the .01% deficient and you’ll get more avoidance per point with dodge than defense.)

Getting back in the swing of things

Got back from my vacation yesterday at around 5pm, after driving through a torrential rain and thunderstorm that somehow managed to span the entire breadth of the state of Massachusetts. What a summer this has been so far.

Demo was secretly rooting against me getting home in time for the raid, I suspect. The running joke between us as you can imagine is Titanguard, which as of 5pm last night had failed to drop for the last 11 resets (aka every single FL kill since 3.1 dropped). And after last night that number bumped up to 12. Yeesh. I swear I’m going to put up a counter showing how many weeks in a row the RNG has been pushing me to alcoholism.

I might even organize a “We Are the World” style telethon where all the Pally tanks in the blogosphere will get together and sing for the benefit of getting me a Titanguard. … Or not.

Anyhoo, the night did not solely consist of the 30 minutes I spent weeping in vent with my push to talk key down. Oh no, there was more. We decided to be masochists and did a serious push for Thorim again, getting to his sparkly behind with about an hour left in the raid. Unfortunately, after two attempts one of the linchpins of our strategy (the FoK rogue) had to go to work so we really couldn’t continue. Putting Thorim off for tonight we wandered over to Freya’s area.

I am happy to report that Freya’s trash is very much a cakewalk these days. Gone are the hour-long wipefests to clean every nook and cranny of that room of various vicious flora. Now we can easily pick off all the groups and the elders that need to die in a tidy 30 mins or so.

One thing that bothers me about this fight though is how badly some people (read: dps) need to be walked through the encounter. The key to the various waves of adds are twofold: don’t kill stormlasher/snaplasher/water spirit unless they’re all low health and don’t kill all the detonators before the healers can get everyone up. During the fight Demo will constantly have to bellow in vent “STOP DPS STORMLASHER” “ON WATER SPIRIT” “STOP WATER SPIRIT” “KILL SNAPLASHER” “SLOW DOWN ON DETONATORS” “GIVE HEALERS A SECOND”, etc.

And if he doesn’t everything will go to hell.

Shouldn’t have to be that way! DPS should have half a brain to notice “oh hey stormlasher is at 30%, time to switch to next mob” or “hey, everyone’s health looks kind of low, better not nuke all these detonators.” Makes me envy the jerks that only have to show up and faceroll their way to 3.5k dps rather than do the serious thinking about how the encounter is going. (Not that all dps are like that, but some most definitely are the mouth-breathing, facerolling type.)

After the kill, Freya once again had a Conqueror’s pants token in her cache, but I couldn’t bring myself to win it. I need to save my dkp for the tiny, minuscule chance that maybe Titanguard exists.

(A man can dream!)

So close. So very, very close.

New raid week, kill number 11 (every week since Ulduar debuted) on the Flame Leviathan, and dontcha know it, no Titanguard. Again. I hate you RNG.

Like I described in a post last week, Thorim’s been a bit of a headache for us these last few weeks. For this raid period I had a new strategy formed and ready to go, and in order to get a shot at trying it we steamrolled through FL, XT, Kolo, Auriaya, and Hodir to get to ol’ Sparky himself.

Slight diversion: After we killed Kologarn a bunch of us bounded across the bridge to hit the cache o’ loot failing to notice that a pack of rubbles didn’t despawn, and they were chewing up the healers that hung back to rez. Oops. (See screenshot above!)

Anyway, so we get to Thorim and explain my crazy scheme. One mage is designated as the Evoker Marker. It’s his job to use the following macro:

/target Dark Rune Evoker
/script setraidtarget(“target”,6)

This basically makes him immediately target an Evoker and mark it for melee. Melee uses an assist macro on the Mage to target his target and start burning down the marked Evoker. The Mage watches the Evoker like a hawk to spellsteal any Rune Shields that the mob puts up on itself.

That’s the biggest prep work that needs to be done. When in the arena, the group that’s assigned to that part of the fight will stack in the copper circle in the middle. Yes, I know there is the occasional silence, but that’s just something that needs to be worked through. The closer we are stacked the easier AOE is going to be for burning down the mobs.

So, one tank is in the middle (this was me, last night) with the arena group and one tank stands just outside. This tank is assigned to pick up champions as they jump into the fight and tank them away from the stack. champions tend to whirlwind and kill in short order any squishees. So, they must be kept away at all costs. Likewise, three ranged are assigned to kill the champions and focus on them the entire time. That way the second tank doesn’t get overwhelmed with champs.

Big game changer that makes arena easy: Fan of Knives. Have two rogues (at least) and make them spec into improved FoK and apply the glyph for it. Then just have them mash the FoK button like there’s no tomorrow, with the stack tank as their Tricks of the Trade target. It’s unbelievably effective at taking out the trash.

Last night this strategy was doing wonders during the hour of attempts we put in on this fight. Clearly the execution was just what needed refinement. We even had one attempt that we absolutely would have had, no one was dead in the arena, the gauntlet group was almost at Thorim… and then the champs tank DC’d. And the champs ran into my group and the clothies got cut to ribbons. We absolutely would have had it that time had the DC not occur.

Tonight we’ll be heading to Thorim first.

Programming note: I’m away on a trip for the next few days, which means unfortunately I won’t be blogging again until Wednesday. I’ll be occasionally tweeting, though, in desperation about how much I miss WoW. Do join me for that!