Once bitten, twice wiped
I’m trying to think of a fight that puts as much of an emphasis on personal responsibility as Blood Queen does. And, by personal responsibility, I mean each raider paying specific attention to a buff that they have that realistically the raid leaders cannot see the status of and cannot feasibly direct the execution of in the midst of the encounter.
I suppose Thaddius would be a good analogue, since you really didn’t know if people were paying attention to their polarity until they had managed to zap-fry to death a huge swath of innocent people, their whole lives ahead of them, like a toaster dropped in the pool at the youth center.
Blood Queen presented a unique challenge for us if only because while we excel in many areas, coordination and good old fashioned attention-paying is not especially our strong suit. The attempts done on Blood Queen were a few weeks ago, done mostly as exploration, and resulted (I’m told, I wasn’t there) in some fantastic wipes. Then, last week after murdering Putricide we gave her the ol’ college try and, while failing, had enough success to know the fight was definitely feasible.
Last night we put the first serious night of attempts on her. We finally got to her lair at around 8:30 server or so, giving us a solid 90 minutes to lock down the fight.
Aiding us in our journey of pain would be an amazing addon that Demogar found called BloodQueen. You put in a priority list of bites and the addon will track who has the vampire debuff, the timing on their bite, and assign for them (communicated through raid warnings and whispers) who they have to bite.
So in the screenshot above Cendra got the debuff first, and then ten seconds before he could bite someone the addon told him to go for the first person in the priority list: Morvain. A /rw went out, an icon was put on Morvain’s head, and Cendra would then run off at the proper time to bite his assigned target.
The addon was working pretty well last night, and despite some issues with the mechanics of biting (mostly people not standing close enough to their target) we’re doing pretty well on bites until the third wave. At that point we were having issues with people losing track of who they had to bite in the endless sea of notifications and raid warnings. At that point someone came up with the idea of making a separate chat window for whispers so you can see and not lose track of your assignments. Brilliant, definitely helped.
Another suggestion was made by Zilga, apparently the ambassador of Healsylvannia, who declared “the healers claim the middle.” During air phase they would immediately retreat there, spread out, and begin tossing out whatever heals they could to keep people up while bloodbolts whirled overhead. Once they started doing that the air phases went super clean with only an occasional death. Game changing strat swap.
Tonight we have the whole night drop BQL. At first last night I was filled with fear and loathing that she would turn into a new Putricide, a fight that would take weeks for us to down and even then would hardly be clean enough to henceforth be declaredly a farm fight. BQL however, once we made those strategy changes, didn’t seem so bad. We have the dps, it’s just everyone executing their jobs precisely and maximizing personal dps. I think tonight we can drop her… our last attempt things were really clicking and I think if someone didn’t drop a swarming shadows in the middle of the room and kill a swath of people we could have killed her. We wiped at 14%, with half the raid dead.
And I want my damn shield to drop.
Armory Feed
“I suppose Thaddius would be a good analogue, since you really didn’t know if people were paying attention to their polarity until they had managed to zap-fry to death a huge swath of innocent people, their whole lives ahead of them, like a toaster dropped in the pool at the youth center.”
I read this to the girl I sit next to at the office. She doesn’t play WoW, but the point was definately made….PURE WIN!
good luck!
Depending on your paladin setup: Divine Guardian + Aura Mastery trivializes air phases.
We keep the bite plan very simple and flexible. G3 and G4 all have at least 4 ranged dps in them. First vampire will always go to one of them. First bite, then, goes to someone in the opposite group. 2nd bite goes to a range in the same group. 3rd bites go to 4 designated melee. 4th bites: melee bites melee, ranged group finish biting the people in their groups. It takes a lot of the chaos out of it, because it makes small groups personally responsible for managing their bites. There’s no raidwide chaos at the 4th bite as 8 people try to seek out 8 vampires.
“I suppose Thaddius would be a good analogue, since you really didn’t know if people were paying attention to their polarity until they had managed to zap-fry to death a huge swath of innocent people, their whole lives ahead of them, like a toaster dropped in the pool at the youth center.”
This is the best analogy I’ve ever read. Does this make me a terrible person?
“like a toaster dropped in the pool at the youth center.” This, is pure win!
Also, been reading your blog for awhile now but have never commented. And I just wanted to say thanks for writing something that is equally entertaining and informative, this blog has been a great help for keeping up on theory crafting behind Pally tanking!
Unlike many of the other posters I am deeply offended by your comment:
“like a toaster dropped in the pool at the youth center.”
As a former youth, a casual pool user, and a person who grew up at youth centers I am offended on many different levels. Please print a complete retraction and apology and then forward 500 Gold to my account for my pain and suffering.