Down goes Faction Champs

Gone, all gone! I spent almost every bit of my dkp last night on two Trophies of the Crusade, so I am now sitting at 17 dkp. Egads.

Totally worth it though, the T9.45 shoulders are sezzy. Also have a Trophy banked for the eventual acquisition of the Legguards, so I think I’m in a pretty good spot. Even if I’ll be getting the other tank’s leavings for the next few resets. At least I’ll have my 2pc bonus… soon enough…

… I’ve made a huge mistake.

Um, but I digress. Per my post last week I’ve already swapped out the Glyph of SoV. After equipping the shoulders I was at 32 Expertise, so ditching the glyph dropped me back to 22. Another Col25 piece will put me back over the top, so I’m happy where I am right now. And yes, I did replace it with the Glyph of Righteous Defense.

Also, speaking of loot and the side effects thereof, I’m sitting at 37.7k unbuffed hp right now. That is simply ridiculous. I remember walking through the Dark Portal at around 4k hp, stepping off the zeppelin in the Howling Fjord at about 18k, and walking into Naxx the first time with 25k. With all likelihood I’ll probably be walking into Icecrown Citadel with 40k hp. The number inflation is insane. Can you imagine what tank hitpoints are going to look like at 85 (or whatever the level cap is next time around)?

Last night we walked into the Coliseum ready for a better night than last week’s roflstomping. No need to relearn the fights, we know the mechanics now. One-shots inc! … right?

Er, not entirely the case. We lost a few folks on the Jormungars because they had never done the fight before and didn’t realize turning green was a bad thing. We entered phase three with half the raid dead somehow and I eventually got my face smashed in by what stank of parry haste. I wish WWS wasn’t failing to split the fights up properly. All I have to go by is Recount saying the two attacks were .1 seconds apart. It hurt. More likely though, he just used an instant attack right before meleeing me.

Jaraxxus on the other hand was a total rout, an easy one-shot. That fight is hilariously undertuned.

With the two farm fights out of the way it was time for some serious progression: the Faction Champions. I had originally perhaps set expectations a little high, dubbing the encounter a “loot pinata”. Oh, how I was wrong.

I mean, the PTR version I understand was pretty easy. It seems like these guys were buffed between testing and live.

When we first started the fight I was standing over where they dropped down, so of course the whole lot of them lept down onto me, and promptly began to tear me apart. It was horrifying. That first attempt quickly ended in a wipe.

Originally Demo and I switched to our dps offspecs for this, anticipating that we’d be more useful that way. After the first few wipes (yes… I said few…) we realized that prot was a better choice because it gave us the ability to harass the healer npcs. As prot, I was able to use a full suite of abilities on this fight: Avenger’s Shield for silences, Hammer of Justice with 40 sec cooldowns, Divine Sacrifice for the initial pull–and additionally Arcane Torrent and my engineering Frag Belt. I was pretty useful as healer control.

One huge caveat in this fight: watch Shaman totems! The healing stream one in particular does huge chunks of healing, and will make it impossible to kill anything. Keep nameplates on so you can see them. (Moreover, both Shaman npcs drop healing totems, so don’t assume the Enhancement one won’t!)

The full roster we faced was a Warlock and Felhunter, Hunter and cat, Resto Shammy, Holy Pally, Holy Priest, Shadow Priest, Warrior, DK, Rogue, and Mage.

My main job was to assist a rogue in locking down a Shaman. Demo worked on the holy pally by himself, and the dps burnt down the priest first. Once the priest was down everyone moved to the Shaman (who I shadowed on to watch totem drops) and took that out. Once he was dropped, on to the Pally.

The Paladin had a nasty habit of popping Divine Shield when almost dead, and then healing back to 20% health. Make sure someone is on the ball and ready to Mass Dispel or Shattering Throw the bubble when this happens.

After the Paladin dropped we moved over and took out the DK and Warrior to give the healers some breathing room. Then the Rogue, Spriest, Warlock, and finally the Mage went down. The Mage was probably the biggest pain thanks to his Blink with a one second cooldown. He was all over the map when we were focusing him.

We did this fight with six healers, which seems like a lot but your healers are going to be constantly harassed, and will be heavily dispelling. You should definitely help out with Cleanses if you stay prot. I didn’t do as many as I’d like but next time around I’ll be much more focused on this.

All in all, it is a good fight, and definitely a challenge–which is a good thing. The Coliseum needed a challenge fight, and it’ll be interesting to see if the Twins ramp that up, or if they’re similarly undertuned.

After the 25man was wrapped up we started a 10man group and steamrolled everything. Champions were much easier in the 10man, natch. 9 easy badges and I was off to buy my new shoulders.

It was a good night.