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Dear low level paladin tanks…

I’m leveling my priest, Aneliese, with Antigen’s mage Mitogen. Aneliese has been disc since level 10. Yep, I’m leveling disc!

Since I’ve been leveling heals, you can imagine that I’ve run quite a few dungeons on my way from 1 to roughly 50. I do a lot of healing. I see a lot of tanks.

And, my pink comrades, I am ashamed of our class. I have judged the tanks presented to me, as a priest, and I find myself preferring warriors.

I know. It’s that bad.

Dear Low Level Pallies: Stop Sucking.

It is definitely possible to tank well as a Paladin at low levels. Roughly half the paladin tanks I’ve healed have been fantastic. They know the game; they use their Avenger’s Shield right; and they pull intelligently. Some of them even blow their Holy Power on Word of Glory.

Yet these good ones are a rare, rare breed.

Low level pallies. Let’s have a chat. Gather ’round and listen to Mommy Anafielle. I will smite you down if you keep screwing up and giving our very intelligent and very skillful a community a bad name.

Let’s talk about some basics….

DON’T queue as a tank without a Protection spec.

You might still be able to get away with tanking in ret at the low levels. Maybe. However, every excellent low level pally tank I’ve healed has been prot without exception. Either level as prot, or go get dual spec and keep some prot gear in your bags.

Dual spec is only 100 gold. Get it.

“I don’t have enough money.” Well, being a hybrid takes commitment, my friend. If you want to be a tank, you need a prot spec. If you can’t afford a prot spec, you can’t be a tank.

DON’T run around the room and gather everything up.

JUST DON’T DO THIS. EVER. RESIST THE URGE.

Don’t run around the goddamn room like an idiot. Because I am your healer. I will pre-bubble you, but that only goes so far. If you run around trailing a hundred mobs like the Jonas Brothers at a concert full of teenage girls, the moment I rebubble your half-dead ass, those teenage girls will realize that I am freakin’ Justin Bieber and TURN AROUND AMG THERE HE IS HOLY SHIT HERES A SHARPIE PLEASE SIGN MY TRAINING BRA TAKE A PICTURE AMGGGGGGGG BEST DAY OF MY LYFEEEEEEEEEEEE.

And then I’m dead.

Don’t make me Justin Bieber.

Really. Don’t do it.

I know that level 80 tanks can sometimes appear to pull very messily, especially when we outgear things.

You are not level 80. This is not the pre Marrogar trash in ICC. You are not a badass heroic geared raid tank with six personal healers, a low cooldown Consecrate, and the old school Seal of Cleave. This is Maraudon, post-4.0, and you are just some idiot who thinks that running close to mobs will stick them to you like glue.

There is absolutely no good reason to ever do this. It’s not like the mobs will die more effectively. Half the DPS don’t even have AE abilities yet. You are only making the whole dungeon slower! We’re all chasing after you, I’m burning through my mana pool healing everyone frantically, you aren’t holding threat on jack shit….. It’s just a mess, and a completely pointless one.

Stop being stupid.

DON’T confuse body pulling with actual threat.

Let’s talk about threat, and mobs. Mobs are fickle creatures.

They are pretty easy to snag. All you need to do is show your face, and they’ll chase you. Oh, they’ll chase you! It’s love at first sight – you’re at the top of their Omen – and everything is great. You are a hot little number, you sexy blood elf you, and they want a piece of that plate clad ass. You didn’t even have to get them flowers, and they are totally drooling all over you. It’s probably the hair.

But let me tell you a secret. It’s all a lie. They aren’t really all that attracted to you. Yours was just the first face they saw.

Once I start healing and other the other three people here start DPSing, they will drop you like you were nothing to them, nothing at all, and get way more interested in your more active friends. If you want to keep all those mobs, you actually have to hit them. Love is pain.

Actually, I’m a little bit concerned about where this analogy is going. Let’s drop it and move along.

My point is, you need to deal damage to mobs to keep them on you. A harsh but true fact. Welcome to the world of tanking.

Pro Tip: dropping a Consecrate on the ground and running through it doesn’t count.

It doesn’t do shit. It probably won’t tick on half of them. You need to sit them in a Consecrate and keep them there.

“Alright, ‘Anafielle’,” You might say, scornfully. “Quit telling me I’m a noob. Be useful. How the heck do I hold threat on a whole lot of mobs?”

There’s an easy answer.

Pull intelligently.

Fact of Life: The best way to hold threat on a lot of mobs is to pull them right in the first place.

I have no idea what spells you get now with 4.0, but it seems like you’ve got most of the really important ones. Here’s how I’d pull, if I was a young and pre-60 paladin tank.

Observe the area in front of you. Usually, you’ll target the mob you want the DPS to kill first. Run your ass in there. Now let’s all pause to mourn Prot’s present lack of Pursuit of Justice. I know. I miss it too. Alright, the moment of silence is over. Pull.

Hit your target with Avenger’s Shield, or Judgement and then Avenger’s Shield. The mobs run to you; you run to them; it’s like your meeting was meant to happen! When you stop, make sure they’re all in front of you. You’re not hitting jack shit with Hammer of the Righteous if your targets are not in front of you. You aren’t blocking if your targets aren’t in front of you. Backpedal accordingly.

Use Hammer of the Righteous. Use Avenger’s Shield. Sit your mobs in a Consecrate if it’s worth your mana to drop one. Switch targets if the DPS are being idiots and you want to make sure you’ve got threat on everything, but honestly, things in dungeons die in seconds. If you have pulled correctly, you will hold your mobs without too much trouble.

I’m not saying, don’t chain pull… I’m just saying, don’t pull like an idiot!

One group is OK. Two groups is OK. Pull a group and carefully taunt a pat over. That’s all fine.

Chain pulling is ok! The mobs are almost dead? No problem, I like a fast dungeon. While I feel like it’s good tank etiquette to remain in place until everything’s dead, I don’t really mind if you move away to pull the next group while the DPS finishes off the last mob.

They key is to control what you tank.

Good tanking is about control.

You want to pull as many mobs as you can control. If that’s just one group, that’s just one group. If that’s two or three, that’s two or three.

Pull what you can control, finish them off, and move along.

Don’t let anyone rush you, and don’t rush yourself.

So…. low level pallies… please stop being dumb!

Hearts, stars, and rainbows,

Anafielle

Twitter Is A Useful Tool

Long, long ago, I was** an internet snob.

“Twitter? Are you kidding me?” I’d scoff. “Are you serious? Twitter is like the new home for AIMspeak and livejournalling emo children. Its popularity is a sign of how selfish and self centered our fragile generation has become. People think their two thousand followers totally care when you got coffee this morning or whether your work day sucks. It just plays into your belief that the world cares about your most mundane thoughts about nothing in particular…”

I’m a little bit elitist.

The character limit is the worst part. First of all, it encourages poor typing. And secondly… what the hell can you say in 140 characters?

Turns out you can say one hell of a lot.

** Side note: This does not mean that I have ceased to be an internet snob…

Look, I Got Addicted By Accident! Really!

I blame wow blogs. Months ago, I noticed that all my favorite wow bloggers had twitter feeds. Hmm. They were saying stuff I wanted to respond to. So I signed up for Twitter.

I can’t really watch a conversation without chiming in. So I started talking. A lot. Then I started following everyone that bloggers recommended on Follow Fridays, chiming into more conversations, following more useful people …

Unsurprisingly, I’m now a complete twitter addict. I too tweet about my coffee in the morning and how much work sucks. I gleefully typo things, misspell them, and mangle the english language in my unending quest to communicate the most mundane shit to the unfortunate souls who have chosen to follow me.

Of course, I also tweet about WoW a lot. Especially on raid nights.

Wow, Raiding, and Tweeting

If I’m having trouble with something – or if the guild is arguing about something – I like to tab out and throw a question at twitter.

This is the beauty of WoW Twitter. Ask a question, and you’ll get responses from a ton of people from all fields of play in the game. Casual players, levelers, RP addicts and writers, altoholics with ten 80s, PVP bloggers… and, of course, all manner of raider from the casual pug champion to raiders from world ranked guilds who’ve had H LK on farm for months.

It’s like forums – but faster!

Don’t Tell My Raid, But This Suggestion Came From Twitter

Take Wednesday night for an example.

Rhidach is gone. Which means, we hit a ridiculous fight – Heroic Lich King – for the first time on 25 without our raid leader and main tank. I had NO 25 experience on this fight, and I was in that sticky “Not really the raid leader, but the main tank, and the one putting the strategy together” position (what the hell? Was I raid leading? I don’t even know).

Needless to say, I forgot some shit.

Guess who forgot that druids (post-4.0) could Soothe the enrages off the Shamblers in phase 1? Guess who forgot that Shamblers do a second, untranq-able enrage at 20% health? Yeah.

Thank you, twitter. All I did was tab out to QQ that we couldn’t keep our shambler tank alive, and in response I got tons of useful suggestions. Mainly from FeistTheRogue, someone every single raider on twitter needs to follow, like, right now.

My point: don’t laugh when I link twitter or mention it in the course of my raiding posts. It’s a great tool! If you try it, you might find you like it.

Now, BRB. I need to tweet about how much work sucks again.

Enveloping Shadows on Twitter

Follow Friday, for the uninitiated, is a twitter phenomenon where you list people you recommend your followers to follow. You mark it with #FF. I personally think you should be following my guild:

  • Rhidach (@Rhidach)
  • Anafielle (@Anafielle)
  • Antigen (@hazmacewillraid) – ret paladin, occasional third tank
  • Ildara (@IldaraTheDruid) – tree druid
  • Ichioso (@OneOfManyIchi) – boomkin
  • Katmandu (@katmandu) – priest
  • Palehoof (@Palehoof) – hunter, Blizzard forums MVP

Antigen has a ret paladin blog at Haz Mace Will Raid, and the illustrious Palehoof has begun to post over at Blizz Planet.

Happy Friday, everyone!

Seal of Truth has not been nerfed

The Seal of Truth tooltip changed in a recent beta build. It appeared to be heavily nerfed – about 25% less damage – which sparked some worry in our community. Not like we are a volatile, passionate bunch or anything.

Good news, everyone:

The most recent Seal of Truth change was just a tooltip correction. The numbers did not go down.

We did nerf Censure and raise Exorcism in a previous build, but that should not be new information.

Source: Ghostcrawler, yesterday in this hilarious thread.

We can all breathe a sigh of relief.

Icecrown Citadel Is STILL Buggy

Yesterday’s post and last night’s raid got me thinking. We’ve had some pretty spectacular bugs in ICC since the patch.

I’m not talking about the week after 4.0 – that was madness, absolute madness. This is not the week after a patch. It’s been a long time. We’d expect most of the bugs to be worked out, right? Well…. not exactly.

Here’s a little list just from last night’s raid.

Rezzing Alive

When you release after a wipe, we’ve been spawning in the graveyard alive with 1 HP.

We are a PVP server. I absolutely love that my server is PVP, and I much prefer PVP servers. But that makes this bug a serious pain in the ass. Mages just spam Arcane Blast and wipe out half a raid rezzing and mounting. It slows down our wipe recovery by a minute or two each time. Yes, there’s a ledge you can jump down and rez on. The allies found it. They kill you there, too.


I hate this one. I hate this one so, so much.

Nothing against the lesser faction, of course. I’m not blaming you allies. I’m sure my Horde bretheren kill you just as often, if not more often. The rez alive bug, or mechanic, is at fault. It’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen. Blizz, if you really want to force us to PVP in the graveyard between wipes, we should at least rez with more than 1 HP.

Side Note: Amusing Myself At Your Expense

There are silver linings. I once saw an Ally DK die on the way back into ICC. He flew into the front hall and let his lag dismount him… and died from the fall damage. From about 5 feet up.

I laughed for a good long time.

Gunship Never Ends

Last night, Lootship went without issue. (Except the part where they pulled it without me, but let’s not talk about that.) Then it ended, we enjoyed our free heroic loots, ran over to Saurfang…. and we were still in combat. We couldn’t get out.

Then our healers started getting their asses kicked. Something was hitting them from afar. Apparently – even though the encounter was over – the enemy gunners were enraged and decided to whoop us… out of nowhere!

We eventually had to all jump off the edge to reset it. Mass suicide: the only solution.

Rotface

We pulled the boss by accident while the Raid Leader was still handing out loot in Festergut’s room. My favorite boomkin fatfingered his scroll wheel on a menu, and Wrath’d the boss. By reflex, I taunted, although half the raid sprinted out the door. We decided to keep killing him although at least 10 were locked out. The 15 of us in there would have killed him, too… but Rotface mysteriously disappeared at 18%. He must have targeted someone outside.

This wasn’t a huge problem – we’d just pull again – but the encounter wasn’t over. Oozes and puddles kept spawning outside the door… although Rotface had reset inside his room! Ugh. Someone finally reset the whole encounter by pulling and dying.

Then someone did it again. Someone at range pulled the boss with half the raid running back. Once again, oozes spawned all over the instance, and again, someone had to suicide at the boss once he’d respawned yet again to reset the whole thing.

I don’t know why we had so much trouble with encounters resetting last night.

Sindragosa Pulled Into The Room

Not really a bug, I know! This is your occasional punishment for attempting to reset Sindragosa by running away. :) I’m including it only because I have epic screenshots!


Tee hee. Sindy, u mad bro?

If you’re having trouble with this, let me give you some hints. It really helps if your whole raid comes down to the floor (no one waits up by the door) and then runs together, as a group, out of the room. If you pull the trash dragon up the stairs, you’re a lot more likely to bug her out. I promise, your whole raid can get out the door even if you kill the dragons where they spawn.

Comments Welcome

Seriously. Blizz owes us all some repair gold to make up for all these bug-resetting suicides we’ve had to pull lately.

So… anyone else have a good one? What is your favorite raiding bug?

Sindragosa’s Frost Breath Post-4.0

I hope you all manage to put up with me for another week, because Rhidach’s on vacation yet again. Geez, does that guy ever raid?

Let’s talk about Sindragosa.

This fight has been massively buggy since 4.0. We’ve had some crazy issues- our first night raiding post-4.0, the 30% buff disappeared on us entirely. I’ve heard reports of tanks getting frost tombed, although we’ve never seen this, and supposedly it was hotfixed. Mystic Buffet debuff durations seem to be a few seconds longer than they should be in phase 3, which makes All You Can Eat a slightly larger pain in the ass than before. But doable.

The biggest bug, in my opinion, doesn’t seem to be a bug at all. I suspect the devs stealth buffed her breath. It’s a bit stinkier now.

Frost Breath Blues

Frost Breath is both the frontal cone attack and the 90 second attack and movement speed debuff that stacks on your main tank. In a pre-4.0 world, the debuff was just a very minor annoyance and fell off the MT by the end of each air phase. Now, it doesn’t. It appears to last about 20 seconds longer than each air phase.

I’ve seen a bunch of different explanations for why this is happening, ranging from “the debuff was always meant to act this way” to “the debuff is bugged and counting down one stack at a time” to “Paladins used to get 30% snare reduction from Toughness and they don’t anymore.” I don’t really care why it’s happening. The point is, if your MT just keeps stacking that thing up until phase 3, you’re pretty screwed.

The solution is to tank swap.

Tank Swapping Side Notes

Swap on every air phase. We also swap right as Phase 3 pops so she starts Phase 3 with an undebuffed tank.

For the swap, I highly recommend taunting the dragon before she flies into the air – instead of waiting for her to land after the air phase. Your post air phase pickup will be much cleaner.

Call for Hands of Freedom liberally. Our raid has 7 pallies. I use my own all the time on this fight, but I really like to get other people to pop theirs on me and then chain mine on the end. The pallies in our raid are already used to HoFing the tanks all the time and rarely do I even need to ask.

Use your Rocket Boots. Oh, wait… not everyone is gifted with the most glorious profession in the world, Engineering. I am so glad I powerleveled Engineering a few weeks ago. I dearly love that speed boost.

Bad Breath Won’t Stop Us

We’ve done both heroic Sindy 25 and All You Can Eat since the patch without much trouble. For All You Can Eat, the first tank swap is still a bit sticky, and we ended up holding DPS on the dragon to transition her right after an air phase. If you transition her at the “end” of a ground phase, one of the tanks will have 2 stacks of the movement debuff. If you transition her right “after” an air phase, it works much better- one tank is clear and the other is almost clear.

I don’t mind tank swapping at all. Actually, I like it better! Pre-4.0, this encounter really sucked for the off tank. It was my least favorite fight to OT (with the possible exception of being third tank on Putricide).

I’ve seen people argue that this encounter was originally designed to require two tanks the whole time. If that is true, I sort of wish it had been like this from the start.

The Switch to Mumble

You might have seen from the blog posts or from our twitter feeds that Enveloping Shadows recently switched from to Mumble from Ventrilo. Here’s a little story about why we switched and why I’ve fallen completely in love with Mumble.

Primary Target Can Suck It

A few months ago, the small company that used to manage our Ventrilo server got bought out by Primary Target. They changed our server information, and then a slew of technical difficulties began.

The lag was unbearable for weeks. Vent would disconnect randomly at the most inconvenient times, kicking everyone out of the raid. We ended up raiding at least once on a public vent because ours crapped out in the middle of Heroic Putricide 25, while we were learning it. To add insult to injury, Primary Target apparently “lost” the prepayment our officers made for the original server. And their customer service was plain awful – the officers got in touch with them to try to figure out what was going on, and got no information whatsoever. Their customer service sucked and gave us no hope that anything would get better, anytime soon.

After a few weeks, our poor officers sighed and decided we’d have to move. Since we were switching anyways, we opted to give Mumble a try.

Mumble For The Win

I don’t know all the technical differences between Mumble and Ventrilo, nor do I really care about going into them in this blog post. You can go read plenty of other sites for that. As a tank, a very talkative person, and a weekend raid leader, here’s my impression of Mumble post-switch.

1) Sound Quality

It just plain sounds better. Vent sounds awful and scratchy in comparison. And voice modulation! I know you can do this with Vent, but Mumble does it so much better! Hearing the whole raid swoon as Mumble automatically modulated down the voice of a certain holy pally who enjoys screeching at the raid when something goes wrong… it was truly amazing.

2) People Can Talk Over Each Other

We have a talkative vent. People talk right over poor Rhidach constantly – he doesn’t just have to yell, he has to really moan and groan and threaten to quiet us all down, and even then people will start right back up with the banter when he’s done going through a strat. We will gleefully poke at each other, mock each other, and discuss everything from class changes to whose child is cuter straight through into a progression pull until a difficult game mechanic (or an irritated tank) shuts everyone up. We will also enter into a strategy discussion – a ton of us will – with equal gusto, and we like to hang out in vent for hours after raids. When we learned Heroic Putricide and Heroic Sindragosa, the hardest adjustment might have been to keep vent “clear” for plague call outs, healer calls and tank swaps.

We talk over each other. A lot. Vent sounds like crap when two people try to talk at once. Mumble doesn’t sound perfect, but you don’t get that crazy feedback noise, and you can hear everything said by each person.

3) No Latency. No Delay.

I have a lot of silly pet peeves. Raid calls are one. I get very, very irritated when someone takes it upon themselves to call something out and they call it out late. I watch raid warnings and listen to vent simultaneously, and I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen a raid warning pop and heard a call just a half second or second later… and thought, with irritation, “That wasn’t exact. Why call it out?”

Little did I know, this was a Vent delay issue, not a raid awareness issue. Because as soon as we switched to Mumble, that mysterious and hard to quantify delay just… disappeared. I now hear calls simultaneous with raid warnings.

Oh my god, it’s beautiful. It’s so beautiful. As a raid leader, I was sold from the first Heroic LK pull. You don’t understand until you hear someone call a Defile target RIGHT AS the raid warning pops. It’s really cool.

Check out my post a few days ago on Heroic Halion, where I talk about how the healers yelled at people who had Combustion. I’d be willing to bet that Mumble over Vent made a difference as far as response time goes. I am an aural person. I respond better to sounds than visual cues, which is why I always play with game sounds on. Switching to Mumble was a game-changing experience for me.

The End Result

I don’t know if Rhi feels as strongly as I do. I know the whole raid was extremely skeptical, especially the day we lost about half an hour before raid while everyone found the client and installed it. And yet within an hour or so, everyone was completely sold on the new service.

Even though we’ve had some technical difficulties with Mumble, too, the people we’ve got the server from have been great about communicating with us when something goes wrong and when it’s likely to be fixed. Customer service is really worth a lot. No one’s said a thing about returning to Vent. I’m sure Mumble isn’t for everyone, but it sure has worked well for us.

Links: Here’s a nice little Youtube video with a display of Mumble’s latency vs Vent’s latency. The Mumble website, and a link to Multiplay, the company we bought our Mumble server from (they’re great!)

Heroic Halion 10 for Halloween

Hey all, remember me? It’s Anafielle! I still have author privileges! Rhidach hasn’t taken them away since I got up on TV and claimed the blog was mine! He did threaten to gkick me, but luckily I have blackmail photos from Blizzcon. /cackle

Since Patch 4.0 killed my usual 10 man raid, I’ve been enjoying my free Sunday nights. I’ve been taking advantage of my spare time by … playing more wow. And so, on Halloween night, I found myself talked into coming along to a raid I had wanted to see for some time: Heroic Halion 10.

Ruby Sanctum

Our setup: dual pally tanks, three heals (including a priest spec’d into Body and Soul), and five high DPS. We stuck Antigen from Haz Mace Will Raid with fire side tanking in his offspec. Poor guy.

We almost wiped on a miniboss when all three healers went offline due to phone calls or Trick or Treaters ringing the door. Both tanks died, but our co-GM and resident pro hunter kited the miniboss from 11% to zero while those of us who were dead panicked and then started cheering on Mumble.

It just wouldn’t feel like a Ruby Sanctum raid without a trash wipe.

Heroic Halion: Notes on Phase 1

The fire side tank should pull the dragon from the left side of the room. We pull Halion about halfway off the center and keep him facing to the left. Each time the meteor falls, we don’t care where it lands- the entire raid runs through the dragon.

DBM gives raid warnings for Fiery Combustion / Soul Consumption targets, and several people would calmly call out the target, just to remind them. Our snare droppers got to the edges without issue. Speaking of which, our guild recently switched to Mumble, and it really shined on a fight like this. I used to hate Vent delays on critical call-outs. Mumble has no delay. It’s amazing. We’ll never go back.

I suck at Combustion / Consumption. I tunnel vision’d a few times, and jerked awake only when I heard a healer call my name. Thank god for Engineering. I smacked my Rocket Boots and got to the edge in time to drop a tiny circle like a pro. Psh. Me? Tunnel vision? Noooo. (I did this at least three times.)

Between Rocket Boots and Body and Soul, our snare droppers had no issues at all. Our ability to deal with this mechanic without screwing it up vastly simplified the fight.

Shadow Realm Tanking

I was the Shadow Side tank. No, I do not turn the dragon the whole time. I stare at orbs and only move for Cutters. I turn the dragon with pure strafing and a little bit of forward movement. Wrathy posted an excellent guide on dragon turning some time ago that’s worth a read.

Here is my own guide to cutter survival:

  • Observe the two orbs across from you.
  • Center yourself between them.
  • Hit strafe as needed.
  • Enjoy your continued survival.

You get a ton of warning when cutters pop- there’s a DBM timer, as well as a convenient emote built into the fight that gives you about 2 seconds more warning. When the cutters were a few seconds from activating, I’d made a judgement call about whether to sit in my “pie piece” or move to the next “pie piece,” whichever one took the least movement.

Positioning is scarier on heroic, because the stakes are higher, but here’s the secret: it’s easier. Two reference points is better than one.

Shadow Realm Survival

All we really had to do was keep everyone alive through cutters. This took about two hours.

It was my first time tanking Shadow Side on heroic – and I rarely ever tank Shadow side even on Normal 25 – so it took me more than a few tries to get a feel for when to move the dragon, how fast to turn him, and how to move him predictably.

Predictable movement is the key to tanking a fight over and over. No one wants a boss jerking around randomly. And Halion definitely jerked around a bit when I was first getting the hang of it. I would adjust him pretty quickly, and pretty “late”, right before cutters. My goal for phase 2 and 3 was to get my movement as smooth and predictable as possible, but at the start of the evening, I was far from smooth about it. I figured it would be ok because we were all watching the orbs to stay alive.

It turns out I was wrong. Several of my raiders were only watching the dragon.

Watch the Orbs AND the Dragon!

I know it’s my job to get the dragon positioned right, but I didn’t realize that there were people in the raid who never looked at the orbs. This wasn’t going to fly. There’s too much delay if they just position on the dragon. You need to watch both. But at least two of the healers told me that the dragon was in the way, and they were actually incapable of seeing orbs anywhere in the room. Their only possible reference point was the dragon.

I get a little irritated when people tell me they can’t do something that their fellow raiders are doing just fine. One of the healers was seriously fighting with me, like it was my fault she died to cutters. Well, I know when I screw up, and I do it all the time and call myself out on Mumble for it. But I stand my ground when I’ve got something right. I was tanking it right, and her awareness needed some work. Her survivability was partially my job, but she needed to take some responsibility for it, too.

I pulled out an argument I save for special occasions: “Maybe Rhidach can do it that way, but I’m not him, so you’ll have to deal with me. If I’m tanking, you need to figure out some way to watch orbs. I will not have the dragon moving so perfectly that you can survive just by looking at him. So let’s all agree to be better- I will adjust earlier, and tell you when I’m moving. And you will glance up at orbs when DBM shouts at you that cutters are about to come, so you don’t die. Now, pull it again.”

And then we pulled again. There’s something to be said for winning a fight by steamrolling the competition. I wasn’t even the raid leader, but most of the time when Rhidach’s not around, I end up as the de facto raid leader since no one else steps up. People tend to listen, and I take advantage of it.

To be fair to the people having trouble with cutters, I made a serious effort to be as vocal on Mumble as I could possibly be, and I moved the dragon a lot more preemptively. I tanked better for it.

The End

It really wasn’t much more complicated than that. We just had to live through cutters. Eventually, we all lived through them … and he fell over and coughed up the purps! After just two hours of work. Not too shabby. What was so hard about that? /preen /highfive

Halion Heroic… what a fun fight. I can’t believe we didn’t hit it before.

It was challenging, and very punishing of anyone with low raid awareness, yet extremely doable by a relatively competent 10 man raid once everyone watches their surroundings. I actually thought that was one of my favorite fights on 10 that I’ve done recently, and it felt good to kill it. A sunday night well spent.

Professor Putricide 10 (Heroic)

My 10 man is technically working on Heroic Lich King. However, last Sunday was Labor Day Weekend – a few key raiders were missing, and I myself was exhausted from moving all week. So, instead of progression, I bowed to some pleas from five raiders very, very close to their Icecrown 10 drakes and took a “drake raid” into ICC.

We only needed to get All You Can Eat, Heroic Putricide, and Been Waiting A Long Time For This (the LK achievement). Easy, right? A few drake-owning experts came along for shits and giggles, I cracked a beer or three, and we all hopped on vent for a relaxing night.

Uhhhhh…. or not so relaxing. Some of those are still hard for us! But hell, we got them done, and it was a lot more fun than H LK would have been.

Professor Putricide 10 (Heroic)

Heroic Putricide is very much on my mind these days – he’s our current 25m progression, and I think he’s the toughest achievement you need for the drake. Here’s an overview of some of the things I’ve done to make him cough up his seriously nice purps.

Oh, a note on raid composition: I have successfully 2 healed and 3 healed this fight. It can be done either way. As I have learned, you want 4+ melee-range bodies (pets count!) to mitigate green explosions, and you really want 5 ranged to handle the disease.

Transition: Many Adds! Handle It!

There are two adds. The abom driver should slow orange. A very pro abom driver can slow both adds by slowly eating slime in phase 1 and entering the transition at 100 slime power.

We stacked most of the raid on the Green spawn point to eat explosions, burned down green while the orange target kited, and then switched over to Orange.

Green Adds: Green explosions are a lot more dangerous on heroic, and will kill people if you don’t have enough bodies stacked on the target. We had no pets, and our melee had to be very pro about stacking. Be aware that if melee are chasing behind green at max melee range, they might not eat the explosion. Their #1 priority should be STACK, so everyone lives, with the #2 priority being KILL IT DEAD. Remember, surviving is key. At 30% on 10 man, this fight is not a DPS race at all.

Remember that you can control where you fly when Green explodes by positioning yourself around him. Don’t explode towards your current Plague Carrier. Don’t explode towards Orange. If orange picks you, and you explode towards him, you will die. In fact, the best thing to do is to try to explode towards the back wall.

Orange Adds: Putricide 101 – if orange stops chasing his target and casts Gaseous Bloat again, he is picking a new target! The melee need to Run The Hell Away before he picks one of them and wipes the raid.

Unbound Plague

We set a strict Plague Order for unbound plague. Five ranged, five possible plague targets.

I copied something I saw Aliena do in the tankspot video – I made a /y macro with the plague pass order and put it on a convenient key so I could smack it every so often and remind the raid. Ranged can also, you know, write it down.

Quarantine: We designated a single spot in the room the “plague spot.” If you have plague, stand there! It’s in the center, near the door to the room – the plagued person stood in the “bar.” This simplified plague passing so much. Each ranged knew exactly where to go to get the plague. Everyone knew where NOT to stand so they didn’t accidentally get plague. If a melee got it first, the melee would run over to the right spot and stand there for a moment until Ranged #1 came and got it.

Passing Plague: Each person held it for 10-12 seconds, and passed it. The current plague’d person always called out for the next in line to come get it. I had an emergency melee paying attention in case there was a plague mixup and we needed a 6th plague carrier. (This was Antigen, whose high RA unfortunately means he gets stuck with a ton of the bitchy jobs.)

There are a lot of different ways to handle Plague. Some raids use a Quarantine area for people with Plague Sickness (the debuff). Some raids don’t bother with a safe spot or with an order – they just pass it naturally around the ranged. Different strategies work for different people. This is what worked for us.

Editor’s note: When I wrote this post, I wasn’t aware of the addon Plagued. This addon does things like counts down the plague timer in /say over the plagued person’s head. It might negate the need for a designated safe spot, and will definitely make passing a whole lot clearer! We plan to use this on 25 and I really can’t wait to see it. We will probably not have to use a safe spot anymore.

Just Kill Him Dead

The key is to keep everyone alive. Don’t mess up explosions, don’t mess up diseases. As long as your ranged can handle the disease, your DPS can handle the transition phases, and everyone can make up for the extra damage done and received on Heroic, Putricide will fall over and cough up his ridiculously sexy purps.

Oh, I suppose I already mentioned what he drops. Ah, you see, Putricide drops this trinket… it’s pretty nice… Have I linked it enough yet? No? OK, I’ll link it again.

Oh, you know, just one more time for good measure…

Patch 4.0 and Beta Burnout

Patch 4.0 is upon us, ladies and gentlemen. It’s on the PTR.

MMO-Champion estimates the Cataclysm release date at November 2.

The end is nigh.

It sure took its sweet time coming.

Beta News Overload

May. That’s when the Beta opened. Cataclysm news has swamped the wow community for four full months now. And don’t even mention last year’s Blizzcon, or the months of alpha leaks. The wow community has been saturated with all Cataclysm news, all the time, for so long.

Those in the beta struggle daily now with the grossly unfamiliar and the radically redesigned, the poorly-tuned and the just plain broken. Meanwhile, the rest of us mere mortals content ourselves with the incredible volume of information emanating from the beta.

There’s a lot to take in. The people in the beta are getting an imperfect albiet closer look at it all, and the most of us left out have only the inevitably biased views of the masses by which to judge.

Mainly, we find ourselves swamped with the QQ, the fighting, the cheering and the ranting that inevitably results when an online world with 11 million incredibly passionate believers finds itself faced with a radical redesign to practically every working aspect of the game. Positive reports are few and far between.

Passionate people, angry or otherwise, are most likely to be the loudest voices online, and so those voices are the ones that seem to define the character of the beta process – at least for me.

This can be a little wearing for the rest of us.

Losing Heart and Losing Steam

Don’t get me wrong. I want people to care.

For example, I desperately wanted Rhidach in the beta – no one better to judge with a discerning eye how the my beloved class and role would function in a post-cataclysm world. I’ve followed Gravity’s detailed descriptions through alpha and beta, Kurn’s holy pally musings, the healing experts at World of Matticus, World of Raids’ occasional videos, and Rilgon’s up and down journey through the beta hunter. I even put World of Raids’ Blue Tracker in my Google Reader.

I want skilled communicators and talented players rigorously testing my beta. That’s the whole point of a beta. Cataclysm absolutely depends on the dedication of its testers and the quality of their feedback.

But I’m not a tester. I’m just a newshound. I’m your garden variety forums lurker, avid tweeter, and half-assed blogger. I’m two or three degrees of separation away from anything close to actual Cataclysm experience.

It used to make me interested. Angry. Happy. Excited.

Now? Now… I’m just tired. I can’t get engaged in it.

Cataclysm is interesting to me in a far-off, clinical way. I vaguely want to read about what’s going on, but I just can’t get worked up about it anymore – not until it’s on my live servers, affecting my life.

Cataclysm Won’t Be Perfect

I welcome new things, even broken new things. I don’t even expect it to be perfect, or close to it. Wasn’t anyone around for WOTLK? It’ll probably be ass-all broken for months! And god help me, I’m looking forward to it.

I want it to be as perfect as possible, of course, but that’s the job of the beta testers – I can get worked up about it, but it doesn’t do anything for me. All it does is make me depressed!

There will be rage when Cata drops. Oh, the world will rage. I expect enough flaws to fuel a veritable avalanche of QQ and tears enough to fill six oceans. Twitter will break, #Cataclysm will trend, and the intertubes will clog up with the cries of ten million warriors claiming paladins are still OP. Or something like that.

I can’t wait. Even if I have to rage myself. Even if I end up spending my time complaining about how my class is broken and begging for fixes – I want Cataclysm here and now!

I can’t wait for all the new information Cata will bring. There will be tons of daily, informative blog posts here courtesy of my (thank god) concise cotank. There had better be blog posts over at Avenging Wrathy. There will be so many Maintankadin forums threads from the best and brightest minds in my community, full of delicious maths, pages of code, colored graphs and truckloads of theorycrafting. Unlike beta posts, all these things will be directly relevant to my live servers. I want them here now!

For good or for ill, broken or working as intended, Cataclysm will be something fresh and new and interesting.

It’s just so far away.

But you know what’s right here? WOTLK.

The End of WOTLK Is Nigh

Patch 4.0 now – suddenly – looms before us. An end to Lich King raiding for good. If you’re anything like me, you’re suddenly thinking: 1) Thank goodness! Cata’s finally coming! And then… 2) Oh my god, I still have things to do!!

There’s a time limit on WOTLK now. Suddenly I’m jarred out of my vague beta-related depression and back into the world of Arthas. I don’t have time to wallow in indecision or lose focus. Soon, just a few weeks away, WOTLK raiding will come to an end for good. I’m glad its coming, but I still have things to do! We only have a few weeks left!

How do I want to spend the last two months of this expansion?

Do I want to look back on the end of WOTLK and see that I slowly faded away, letting my frustration with the state of the beta and my exhaustion with ICC color how I approached my endgame goals? Do I want to let my 10 man lapse out of self-doubt, laziness, or lack of focus? Do I want to slowly give up on everything, right when it’s finally getting difficult?

For me, the answer is no!

Enveloping Shadows still has tons of raid content ahead, within our grasp: an 11th heroic boss on 25, and Drake achievements to gather. I sure would like to wipe a bit on Heroic Halion 25 and (gasp) Heroic Lich King 25 as well. And I still have yet to break the top 100 on WOL for Heroic Festergut, to my great disgrace! Ugh!!

This expansion is not over for us yet!

So you guys in the beta, keep plugging away. I love your posts, but I’m not going to let the fighting and the raging screw with my head anymore.

I’m going to focus myself on the here and now, for me: the end of WOTLK.

The Not-So-Farm Farm Night

Rhidach wasn’t around for last night’s raid. I tanked last night with Antigen of Haz Mace Will Raid, who dutifully threw on a prot set to hang out with me at the super-exclusive Boss Crotch Club.

I feel like yesterday was opposites day, but no one remembered to tell me about it. Three difficult bosses (Halion, Saurfang, and Blood Princes) were as simple as pie, while unquestionably farm bosses (Marrogar and BQL) decided to present us with a string of problems.

Halion 25N

Halion was an easy kill with no deaths at all. I really have to practice my strafing movement as per Wrathy’s excellent guide, because I strafe too much without moving forwards and have to adjust sometimes. But it was mostly right, and he died with ease.

The real challenge in Ruby Sanctum remains the trash. We made it through all the trash without wiping, even though we face-pulled two of the mob groups and failed to CC the Commander on one of them. That, in itself, I felt was worthy of progression DKP!

Marrogar 25H

I feel like Tricks of the Trade has to come with a tooltip that says something like “Best used on unsuspecting healers,” and our three rogues gleefully comply. Usually it’s a fun game to hold threat while the healer finds their Tricks cancel macro, and one Rhi and I invariably win. But I wasn’t expecting it, and so while I was positioning Marrogar (read: backing away while he wandered over to me) our resto shammy pulled threat. Marrogar cleaved half the raid. I blame only myself. Never again will I position a boss like a lazy bum.

The fun didn’t stop there. Antigen’s telepathy is strong, but just wasn’t good enough to keep up with my random coldflame dancing when I am lazy about calling out where I’m moving. We went opposite ways on a coldflame, and I ate a unmitigated Saber Lash and dropped like a rock. Battle rezzes were down. I spent the rest of the fight skillfully tanking the floor while Antigen stared down boss crotch like a pro in nothing but offspec tank gear and 3 or 4 million health to go.

It was nothing short of hilarious to watch a string of plate DPS come up to the front of the boss one by one, like a queue of lambs approaching the alter, ready and willing to be slaughtered at the whim of RNG. Each one popped whatever mitigation cooldowns they had and slowly died, one after another, until the boss finally hit the floor.

Lady Deathwhisper 25H

This is how pros kill Lady D.

Saurfang 25H

A night of farm hilarity was marked by one gloriously easy kill.

I posted yesterday on Saurfang Blood Beasts. I owe everyone on twitter thanks for helping me, but the best advice without question came from FeistTheRogue – who recommended using less healers – and Matticus from World of Matticus, who told me a fabulous DPS trick that gave us critical extra time on beasts.

One of our trees went Boomkin, giving us access to 2 Typhoons and leaving us with 5 healers. A much, much better setup.

I had been using the wrong DPS strat all along. I had originally told the ranged to burn the left side beasts first, while we stunned the right side ones and killed them second. This is great for 10, but really a stupid plan for 25s. Instead I told the ranged to kill the beasts on the opposite sides from them (as they could). The boomkins Typhoon’d, the ele shammies traded off with Thunderstorm, and we used Frost DK Chillblains for an AE slow as usual.

We had a huge positioning error in the center and Saurfang gained blood power ridiculously fast from Nova. But it didn’t matter. Beasts were cleanly, cleanly killed. He went down like butter, and the fight felt a ton easier than usual.

That felt damn good.

Blood Prices 25H was an easy one-shot with no deaths at all. The tried-and-true “If you’re melee, FOR GOD’S SAKE DON’T ATTACK VALANAR” strategy proves its worth yet again.

Blood Queen Lanath’el 25H

Dear Fury Warrior #494509865069845.

I understand a little bit about how you think. I know. I have Festergut, and you have BQL. Penis size is roughly proportional to the length of the Recount DPS bar, and BQL is without a doubt the best chance to prove that you are at least four inches more e-manly than the next best asshole in the raid. Actually, I think gearscore factors into the penis math there somehow too… but I digress.

But let’s get one thing straight. If you have been DC’ing all night, if the raid waits 3 or 4 minutes on you to reconnect right before BQL, and your raid leader shrugs and says “We can 24 man this with ease, let’s just do it.” … Don’t go balls to the wall and get the first bite.

My squealing, girly admiration for the vast size of your epeen will fall before my fury at wiping on the easiest Heroic mode of them all when you inevitably DC, especially when it costs us the Blood Wing weekly.

Not to mention, doing this to my favorite holy pally:

I am very protective of my precious tank healers, and that lights my goddamn fuse. (Side note: She was annoyed at the time but later mused, “He’s getting better at it. The circle was cleaner tonight.” I guess practice makes perfect.)

So. Fury Warrior. It’s probably not worth asking me anymore if I have a spot for you in my ICC Lich King Heroic 10 man. I’ve got at least fourteen people requesting a spot every week, and you’ve now cemented your spot at the bottom of the list, somewhere after my 12 year old cousin’s level 34 rogue and Morvain’s cat. So stop asking.

We wiped, and then we killed. End of story.

Fate is a Huge, Huge Bitch

A note on Rhidach’s absence. He wasn’t on vacation. He was on standby.

This guy is 100% committed to his guild and our extensive standby system, which he forced into place despite guild politics and drama. He has endured months of complaints, rants, drama, and whining, and stood strong despite all the irritation people who hate standby have thrown at him.

He saved the guild, without a shadow of a doubt. We kept raiding throughout the summer with 30 to 35 people signed up week after week while competing guilds dropped dead from boredom or attendance problems. And his commitment to the standby system that originally brought me to this server is so strong that this week he put himself – the raid leader, GM, and main tank – on standby, just to be fair.

Fate really is a bitch.

The one, single item, that he has always wanted most out of ICC – which he has been jokingly bleeding my DKP for – the one thing which he has lusted after and posted about for ages, and fully deserved, and which I knew he’d win off me and secretly wanted him to have…

… of course, it would drop tonight.

Winning it for 1 DKP made me feel bad. I didn’t even have the heart to joke about it.

On the other hand, he has the BQL 264 shield. I however have seen absolutely nothing shield-like drop for months, and pathetically, I was using the Gunship 10 shield. The normal shield. Yes…. the 251 shield.

And so a minor upgrade for him became a massive, massive upgrade for me… and therefore, probably, a better upgrade for the raid.

RNG works in mysterious ways.