Tuesdays are for buggy raids
I think now that the Lich King is vulnerable he must be attempting to slow down raids with buggy boss encounters. How else can I explain the painful nonsense we kept running into last night?
First of all, thanks to Patch Day a swath of people were either late or having huge performance issues. Lag was also a major issue for some, though we were thankfully spared the dreaded Gunship lag. Nonetheless, all these little nibbling bites that were slowing people down were invariably cutting into raid performance.
And then there was the brand new buggified version of Saurfang we ran into last night. Usually we don’t see the first Mark until sub-50%, last night we had it at around 70% or so, and a second one going out before 60%. We assumed maybe someone was having issues kiting or people were standing too close together, but instead it just seemed like his Blood Power generation rate was off the charts.
We reset the fight by fleeing to the boat, but then the second time we had the same BP generation issues. We just decided to go with the flow and ended up killing Saurfang with something like six Marks up, no deaths. It wasn’t ultimately an issue for us, but this bug can probably prove to be a roadblock for others. Hopefully they’ll fix it soon.
After Saurfang we were already pushing against the clock and just went to cement our Blood Council kill last week with an equally clean kill. No luck on our part though, because in addition to melee dps assuming being told to scatter when Empowered Shock Vortex was being cast actually meant clump with other melee and get one shot, we had to deal the Kinetic Bombs deciding to randomly explode in midair.
We probably had a few wipes caused by bombs going off and killing too many people, especially ranged dps, which was tight last night and led to more Bombs hitting the ground and exploding. We kept getting ground up in the negative feedback loop.
Based on some cursory research I did it sounds like putting dots on the Bombs was making them explode as they were preparing to despawn. Does that make sense? Anyone have any insight into this?
Finally at around 15 minutes before raid end we dropped Blood Council after eeking out the kill with half the raid dead.
Overall not the best raid night, by far. Still, as long as attendance holds all week we can finally get some progress done on a wing boss. That’s all I ask, dammit.
Armory Feed
We encountered the same Blood Power gain rate increase as well. I know we had some spacing issues, but Marks were popping up constantly.
The one that really bit us, however, was the beasts CLIMBING BACK UP THROUGH THE FLOOR after we had knocked them over the edge. So I guess we’ll have to give up on the Typhoon strategy for a little while. That’s one way to keep from trivializing a mechanic.
@Rhidach
3 February 2010 at 2:42 pm #
You were using the typhoon strategy? Crazy! I always wanted to try that, just for the laughs.
We had extreme blood power rate gain as well. Last weeks raid he didn’t get a mark off. This week our first attempt we had 5 marks and beasts that would not leave the platform. It brought some raid stress as one of our finger pointers (we only have one and he does it to cover his own mistakes but that is for another post) was claiming that I was cleaving. I had been messing with our warrior tank in vent that his dps sucks because in the first hallway I was doing 6k dps on trash and was up near our hunters so Mr. Lock assumed I am an idiot and was still using seal of cleave.
Anywho…. I usually try to stun the left mob if my hammer is up if not I taunt it back after it is a fair distance away. Yesterday, it was coming to me no matter what, and sticking to me. I don’t use hammer of the righteous when beasts are out or close to being out, no consecrating past my first 969 rotation. So yeah no clue why it was happening.
Tijeras’s last blog ..Protadin: Day off tomorrow so yes I am still up reading through logs. It looks like the av rep ring procs a whole lot more. 46 times yesterday
Hmm and here I thought we just messed up on Saurfang. We wiped once last night on him to the same thing. We hit almost a full mark near 70% 3 times but we did soft resets on him. Then we just said ok let’s just go with the flow here and see what happens and it was better but we definitely had a mark at 50% instead of the usual 18% or less before first mark. Ended with 2 almost a 3 and just did a burn him strat at 15% forget beasts and keep marks up and using divine sac.
Was a bit screwy.
From what I understand there was a bug last night – supposedly fixed by some rolling restarts this morning – that had Saurfang’s heroic mode start despite being set to normal mode. So, congrats to all who took him down on your first heroic kill. ;)
We had extra bloodpower but it really wasn’t an issue, maybe three marks instead of one? Despite the terrible lag we clearedthe first four, then got festergut, rotface and got our progression kill on putricide (woooo!) which we two shot and THEN had a couple of goes at pinces. Our best night yet whilst laggy (700-> 1800ms) and buggy and 50% of our group only does 10mans, no 25s.
I wanted to ask about keeping the beach balls up. You mentioned using pets, I havnt seen this strat anywhere else tho. We have a lock tanking, a Mage who’s os is glyhped n talented for permanent elemental and a dk. Is it possible to do with those pets? Do the pets need to be doing ranged damage only? Would u need more than 1 pet per ball?
Cheers, Nasi.
@Rhidach
4 February 2010 at 9:22 am #
Grats on the Putricide kill Nasi! Yeah our strategy for the beachballs is just ranged keep track of balls and put their pet on them. I think the key is at the start of the fight to set the pet to Passive and then just assign it what to attack manually. A pet will autoattack (be it a melee hunter pet or a ranged Imp) and keep the orb up in the air. Any pet will work, the key is just to get something on the beachball that won’t require you to sacrifice major damage to keep it afloat. And one pet per ball is all you need.
According to Wowwiki’s undocumented patch notes.
* Deathbringer Saurfang will no longer gain blood power from Mark of the Fallen Champion. In addition, mitigation abilities such as Power Word: Shield will no longer prevent blood power generation.
http://www.wowwiki.com/Patch_3.3.2_%28undocumented_changes%29
Yeah, unfortunately I don’t have a video with the Typhoon strat posted because we didn’t try it until our 3rd or 4th kill. I’ll have to see if I have a whole or partial kill captured with the knockback. This has the potential to trivialize the beasts, even assuming you still have to kite/kill 2 or 3 each spawn. There are several complications, however, with running this strat – even before the new wrinkles.
1) all the spikes on the edge of the platform can block beasts from going over, so ranged still need to be ready to pickup on leftovers bouncing off the “wall”.
2) based on #1, positioning of your tanks and boomkins is very important both for the angle of knockback and the range.
3) you’ll notice a nifty ability on wowhead called “Summon Player”. This does exactly what you think it will do, can do it to random people, and bugs those players out such that they aren’t eligible for loot on that kill. Also, be prepared to make hard decisions if you combine the risk of this strat with killing off some of your Marks.
4) you need to have 2 or 3 boomkins but a shaman or two are helpful as backup.
Oh, I forgot to mention: the Typhoon strat is every bit as satisfying as you’d imagine, probably even more so for the ranged dps. And it never, ever, ever gets old.
I vote yes to trying Typhoon strat…even though we have the encounter on farm now I would love to see that…
I did have a capture of the fight! I hadn’t used it before because I had inadvertently disabled recording of the interface. It actually works out OK, though, with the viewport tweaks giving me a nice almost-16:9 resolution.
My guild is, obviously, not nearly as good as many out there – but we eventually get bosses down. Take a look and let me know what you think.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBnBuh014ow
@Rhidach
8 February 2010 at 2:00 pm #
@Joe Ego: I have to wait to get home to watch that, but I can’t wait. Also, I don’t think you’re see many tanks using a 2H weapon, a lot of our abilities require a shield or a 1H weapon to use. A good chunk of our rotation would disappear.
@TRM: Thanks for the run down, you’ve given me a lot to think about.