We downed the Lich King on Tuesday, after extending the lockout, which means that while we could enjoy our hard-wrought victory, we also were completely locked out of ICC25 for the rest of the week. The question became, what the hell do we do on Wednesday?
When we formed the raid last night I threw up a ready check and put it to a vote: Yes for ToGC25, no for Uld25. About seven people chose the latter, the rest were for the former. So the die was cast and off we went.
(Theme of the night: Don’t blame me, I voted for Kodos… er, Ulduar.)
Even 23 manning it (some decided to take the night off after our victory), we had no trouble getting through Beasts and Jaraxxus. Faction Champs was a huge pain, giving us just about the worst melee comp ever: the Warrior, the Ret Pally, the DK, the Rogue. Only adding the Enhance Shaman could it have achieved a perfect storm of ballbusting.
Took us a few attempts to down that, but it got done. Then on Twins we went back and forth between trying the door strategy, doing a few attempts that way, then the normal way, then finally killing it.
After that it was around 45 minutes before raid end and we kind of half-heartedly putzed around on Anub before calling it.
So, on the down side, we basically ran progression rather than taking a victory lap. I would have definitely preferred the latter. On the bright side, the heroic Solace and heroic Death’s Choice trinkets dropped, along with another piece that was an upgrade for someone. So, there was some value to be had.
I originally wrote this title in my head last week as the companion to the post titled “Line ‘em up!” My thinking was Tuesday was another easy 11/12 clear and Wednesday would probably be the coup de grace, so the two work well together. Alas, my hubris got the better of me, and Wednesday we spent most of the night working on Phase 2. I decided that night we’d take what we learned and roll it over to immediately jumping to Arthas on Tuesday. The lockout was to be extended, the Lich King was to fall.
And last night was definitely a long time coming. We’ve been working on the fight for a total of four nights now. Which, for a guild that only raids twice a week for about 3 hours at a time, is no mean feat. Lots of blood, sweat, and tears have been shed. Ulcers have expanded like an ill-placed defile. Slowly but surely we clawed our way up there.
Last night I noticed as we were working through phase 2 during the first two hours something seemed different. Defiles usually were a bit scattered in previous weeks, but last night there were invariably perfectly placed out of the way every time. There were a few slip ups but nothing as major as a Defile being accidentally dropped in the middle of the room (aside from the second Defile which was always iffy because of how it lined up with Valks), which meant I never had to act on my threat of immediately wiping raid if Defile was dropped in the middle.
I love when no one calls my bluffs.
And, of course, it was key that even after weeks of defeats everyone stayed overwhelmingly positive. There were some lighthearted moments, mostly involving my propensity for letting Frank (my supposed ulcer has indeed been named) take over in vent. The first time we hit the Phase 2.5 transition with everyone up I yelled in vent to everyone “Don’t screw it up!”
At the time I meant aggro on the Raging Spirits, whom I hate, as you know, but everyone took that more existentially.
The running joke after some wipes was “Frank’s taking over!” which warranted a “There is no Rhidach, only Zuul” at one point. I’m glad no one took my spazzings personally, I’d rather people recognize that I tend to just get … carried away … so to speak. As long as everyone knows I’m not yelling at them, that’s all that matters. I’d be a terrible raid leader if everyone thought that I thought they sucked because of one mistake.
But, speaking of sucking, there was honestly not much of it to be had last night. I already mentioned how pro Defile drops were, which warmed the cockles of my heart. There were some clutch moments in Phase 3 with the Vile Spirits, which we basically had no experience with prior to tonight. Originally my plan was to kite them and have ranged burn them down, but that obviously wasn’t working, so we switched to the tried and true soaking method.
I worked out an order with the Paladins, and in one attempt that was generally leading to a wipe, all the Paladins were out of commission or dead, or Forbearanced, and in our moment of darkness I saw Sheepin (a mage) run into the fray and drop to the ground with a heavy thud, completely encased in ice. He then soaked up a huge chunk of the ethereal doom that was headed our way. It was a pretty clutch move, and something I completely didn’t think of. Major props to him for that initiative.
At around 9:30 server time, thirty minutes before raid end, I had to swap out a dps so we could keep going. Not a big deal, but it pointed out for me the mortality of the raid, we didn’t have much time left. I asked everyone if they could spare maybe an extra thirty minutes and everyone agreed down to a man (or woman). No dissent, everyone was gung ho on a kill tonight.
Right before the dps swap we had one attempt that ended with a 11.6% wipe. It was probably the third or so attempt that brought us into Phase 3, and the first that started with everyone alive in that phase. We kept losing folks to attrition, finally hitting around 15% with 10 people up. Every Harvest Soul fed Frostmourne, and I did my best to kite LK while hopefully the dps burnt down what remained of his health. Unfortunately I bit it at around 13%, though Anafielle sprung into action and picked him up. She, Sheepin, and Slorail (resto druid) did their best but the numbers were against them.
It was a heart breaking wipe, though it cemented for us all how imminent our victory was. Post-dps switch, we had a few more attempts consistently getting into Phase 3. Finally, at around 10 server, we had an amazing go taking us into Phase 3 with everyone up. Two attempts prior I really saw dps pick up as everyone seemed to hit a stride. Raging Spirits were dying before the next came up, Valks were only making it halfway to the edge, rather than 2/3rds of the way. There was an audible click, like someone hit the Pro button.
As we proceeded through that attempt, and steadily made our way through Phase 3, everything was coming together. Soakers were soaking, the remainder Raging Spirit died easily and no one walked in front of his screech. Arthas’ health was slowly but surely depleting.
At around 14% with 23 people up, this wave of calm washed over me. Time slowed down, that throbbing hum in my ears diminished, and I could hear a dulcet voice beckoning. It was Frank, mellifluously whispering, “you may have won this round, but I’ll be back.”
14% melted slowly into 13%; it was happening. You know that absolute moment of clarity you get the first time you are about to down a boss? That point where you realize that, holy hell, this was it. I could feel it, that endorphin rush paired with an enveloping wave of peace.
“Hold it together guys!” I shouted encouragement on vent. “We’ve got this, just lock it down!” 13 became 12. 12 became 11.”One percent to go!” Finally, 10%. “Oh, jesus, here it is! We did! Don’t release, ok?!”
Frostmourne was raised aloft and our lifeless corpses were laid low. You know the rest at this point.
When the dust cleared, there we were. Enveloping Shadows, 12/12 in ICC25 normal. Hot damn. Not bad for a plucky little guild that a year ago couldn’t clear Ulduar!
We’re now the 10th guild on our server to down LK25, and once we start working on hardmodes we’ll probably end up being the 3rd most progressed Horde guild overall. I honestly need to confess that such a possibility was unthinkable to me a year ago. I saw a guild that couldn’t even get passed Ulduar and thought we were doomed to be backbenchers for the rest of the expansion. A lot came together though, we brought in some awesome people, developed as players, brought in some amazing folks to round out the core, and improved as a guild. We deserve every inch of our victory. I am so very proud of each and every member of this guild.
Moreover, I am so very excited for the future. I always knew we were going to get to this point (though there were disagreements about the time table), and I’ve been mentally preparing myself for hardmodes for a month now. Our time has come, let the 277 loot flow like wine.
This was the most satisfying post I’ve ever written.
I spotted this thread on the WoW tanking forums and it brought up something I haven’t post on in a while: weapon enchants. Believe or not, a lot has changed and weapon enchants are a bit murkier now than they were a few months ago. Let’s talk about each of the major contenders.
Mongoose/Exceptional Agility
Up to the early days of ICC, Mongoose had an uptime of about 52% for us, which was damn good. These days, thanks to the retooling Ret got to defang Bryntroll for them, it’s down to as low as 25%.
Mongoose generally is, as Dirgen says in his epic enchants thread on Maintankadin, no better than Exceptional Agility now in terms of average Agility gained. And unlike EA, Mongoose might not be there when you need it. If you want an enchant for armor, I would go with Exceptional Agility.
Blood Draining
I’m a fan of Blood Draining right now because of the content I’m currently tackling and will be tackling in the near future. The beauty in BD is that it’s a free heal when you need it the most, under 35%. And, not to mention TBtL makes its crits 30% more effective. While we can’t stack it as fast without bleeds, having an extra oomph to the heal is a worthy trade-off, I would wager.
Accuracy
For farm content, threat sets, and sets you need to be hit capped for. The best threat enchant, but obviously weak for survival needs.
Conclusion
If feasible, I recommend keeping a stable of three weapons. A slow dps weapon with Accuracy, a tanking weapon with Blood Draining (for dangerous bosses), and a tanking weapon with Exceptional Agility (for less mortality-inducing encounters).
I have no idea how I did it. For the last few months, some friends and I have been talking about going to Blizzcon for the first time, with each statement being neatly hedged by bookend “assuming we get tickets.”
This past week gave us the chance to finally put our money where our mouths were. Tickets first went on sale Wednesday night, right in the middle of our attempts on the Lich King, and I was too stubborn to take a break to go for tickets. Someone else in guild managed to buy 7 tickets across two different accounts, which was somewhat annoying. Even more so, though, because he declared he was intending to scalp them. Pretty disheartening to hear for people who actually wanted to go to the stupid event.
After the incident, five of us coalesced and planned to meet in vent Saturday afternoon to coordinate and strategize our buying attempts.
Come Saturday morning, one of them (Anafielle) was at work and another (Gandy) was apparently napping. It came down to Ildara, Cendra, and I to somehow bring home the bacon.
Come around 12:55 eastern (5 minutes before the tickets went on sale), I began furiously F5ing until that checkout button appeared. I had all my ducks in a row, I was in Chrome (granted, it’s my default browser), already logged into the Blizzard Store, had my credit card set as my default payment method, and was completely in the zone. I was a leaf on the wind, watch how I fly.
I had instructed everyone to not bother to select a quantity, just hit the button as soon as you saw it to get in the queue ASAP and then change quantity after. Just get in the damn queue.
So 12:59 rolls around and I’m completely zen. F5. Is it there? No. F5. There? No. F5. Eventually, what seemed an eternity later, my subcortex catches a flicker of orange on the screen. Go time. I quickly click the button and jump in line.
Apparently I had trained for this moment all my life every time I immediately slammed on the gas whenever a traffic light shifted over to green. My reaction time was razor thin. All those pedestrians were not sacrificed in vain.
My initial queue position was 413. Four hundred and thirteen. As I read that number it slowly dawned on me, I was going to Blizzcon. Holy crap.
While Anafielle was despairing on Twitter, I shared my victory with Ildara and Cendra. Dara managed to get 3000ish in line, Cendra was stuck around 8000ish. I snagged the five tickets for us, and Dara grabbed another three for Palehoof and his two friends.
So, everything worked out in the end, generally. Anyone else get Blizzcon tickets? Or were you stuck in Queue Purgatory?
I’ll admit to it. I run the gamut of emotions: the terrifying lows, the dizzying highs, the creamy middles! Sure, I might offend a few of the blue-noses with my cocky stride and musky odor — oh, I’ll never be the darling of the so-called ‘City Fathers’ who cluck their tongues, stroke their beards, and talk about what’s to be done with this Rhidach.
Last night we did the familiar 11/12 routine, although it was a lot rougher than it’s been in the past. I had all 25 confirmed with two of the invites going to people still gearing up, but then like four of my vets couldn’t make it, so I ended up running a much bigger group of suboptimal people than I intended.
We were killing bosses more slowly than we did last week, and we had some annoying wipes on BQL thanks to one guy getting the very first bite and then DCing, and then the second attempt when a swath of dps died because they absolutely had to run through everyone during air phase to bite others rather than wait six seconds.
The most infuriating part of the night was at the very beginning. We have a guy in guild who is deaf and was generally a player who DC’d every 30 seconds and did terrible dps for the longest time, and as such never got raid invites. Of course in his mind, he was being discriminated against, not we were protecting the raid from someone with a terrible connection, attitude, and performance.
Last week I got ambushed into a meeting with this guy and he threw down the gauntlet demanding a raid invite, claiming he fixed his issues and even got a program that can convert Vent speech to text on his screen, so he won’t have issues with getting directions or whatever over Vent. In fact, he went so far as to accuse me of ignoring him the last time he tried to tell me about this program a month or so ago, which I had no recollection of. I suspected he was lying about that, but I could have been wrong.
Nonetheless, I felt bad that I might not have been giving this guy a fair shake, so I confirmed him for the Tuesday raid. And, just to clarify before anyone thinks ill of me, I was not keeping this guy out of raids because of his hearing. But him saying that that would not be a hurdle for his performance put me more at ease with his being there.
So, imagine my surprise when as we’re buffing up to start the raid this guy types “Damn, [random hunter] isn’t on tonight. He was going to be my translator.” My eyebrow cocks and I ask, “Translator? What happened to that program of yours?”
“Oh,” he replies, “it only works on phones, not on Vent. I told you that.”
What. The. Frak.
If only I wasn’t scraping the bottom of the barrel to get the raid going tonight, I would have kicked him so fast he head would spin. I was seriously contemplating a gkick as well, because that kind of duplicity is utter bullshit. Anyway, on the bright side, I am completely free of feeling guilty for this guy. I have washed my hands of this.
On a happier note
I finally got the Last Word off of Putricide. Finally. And I love it, such a sick weapon. My only complaint (and this is hardly a complaint) is since the proc happens so much, watching your character in melee is like watching them getting spammed with a spell. The Blessing of Light animation is constantly popping up, every time you melee.
It’s a great weapon though–awesome proc, slow speed, good chunk of strength, nice chunk of stamina. I’m very happy with it.
Tonight’s the night
I’ll refrain from posting a Rod Stewart video, but … actually … eh, yeah, I’ll refrain. Anyway, tonight’s our next night of attempts on the Lich King.
I’ve assembled a pretty strong team, assigned some slight respecs to pick up some slowing talents, and devised a new strategy which I hope will take some of the “oh crap, where do I go?” out of the fight.
I call it the Highway strategy, and it will probably fail miserably, but for the time I like it. I know the lines will disappear during Phase 2 and thus not help at all but this should help point out what I have conceived in my head. Basically star is always and forever the stack point. When the Defile cooldown hits about one second left we all scatter (in an orderly fashion) north or south of the lines so Defiles are dropped out of the way, then everyone back in.
Likewise, with a better slowing arsenal this week, I think Valks should be much less of an issue. So combined with better Defile management and better Valks management, Phase 2 should be less of a teeth-grinding ulcer-fest and generally proceed more smoothly overall.
I have high hopes for tonight. And, if worse comes to worse, we’re extending the lockout next week. Cause this frakker is gonna die. I’m Andrew Jackson and he’s the Federal Bank. It’s go time.
I was watching Week 3 of Big Crits (words can not express how much I love this show) and a moment that really stuck out to me was when they were working on the Lich King and their tank was having issues with the Raging Spirits. My sympathy goes to that guy, cause boy howdy those Spirits are huge pains in the butt.
They spawn during the transition phases, immediately knocking down whoever they are cloned from and if not quickly picked up they’ll murder someone in close range. This makes transitions something of a panic time for me. I’m watching DXE to tell me when a new Raging Spirit has been cast, the name of the target (though that seldom helps since I don’t know where these people were standing), and then frantically searching the screen for the Spirit to appear.
I’ve found that the threat plates addon I have is immensely helpful, because as the Spirits appear and grow larger the bar is huge, easy to click on, and easy to grab. Which, then of course brings up the second issue: threat.
My dps are great but they can be very trigger happy. Like, they could beat Dick Cheney in a “shoot a rich guy in the face” contest. So to speak. Anyway, we had several occasions where as soon as the Raging Spirit came up they immediately went to town. I get parried, suddenly fall behind in threat in that crucial first three seconds, and the Spirit manages to disintegrate one of them. On another occasion or two, someone at range would end up out-threating me in that initial window, the mob would turn and then nuke a whole column of the raid. Not pretty.
The best solution I can think of is to force the dps to count to three before they open fire. That seemed to work well in the latter part of the raid night.
Anyway, don’t mind me, I’m just a man-obsessed right now. I am so ridiculously pumped to get back on the Frozen Throne next Wednesday and finally put this to bed.
Last week we spent 3.5 hours on the Lich King and we consistently getting roadblocked at the second Defile. Last night we spent another 3.5 hours on Arthas, and this time we saw Phase 3 a few times. It’s definitely getting better.
We still have work to do on Defiles, and the slows on Valks were definitely not as optimal as they could be. For the former I’ll continue to hammer home constant vigilance and training everyone to keep an eagle eye on their focus target frame. For the latter I’m looking up the best slows to use. It seems like a DK specced into Chilblains can be a huge help, as well as a Warrior using Piercing Howl. I don’t think we’ve been doing slows correctly at all, and I’m kicking myself for that.
The foundation is there. There are improvements to be made, and I think next week we’ll make a much better showing.
I love Tuesday nights right now. Thanks to the Icecrown buff we are sailing right through 11 of the 12 bosses (which even a month ago seemed an impossible task for a single night), racking up huge chunks of loot, and everyone is in a fantastic mood, joking and having fun.
Apparently our server isn’t doing too well as we head into the summer, one of the major raiding guilds on the server has been completely stalled due to attendance, another from their Shadowmourne guy going on hiatus immediately after getting his legendary (ouch), leading to further hiatuses, followed up by one of the officers emptying out the bank and server transferring.
We’re oddly one of the more active Horde guilds in ICC25 man, which has lead to us getting a few pretty good apps from said disaffected guilds. I will gladly pick those bones, tyvm.
Fuh-nee
Two new guild in-jokes started up fairly recently. One of them, playing on my quickness to stressing out over the roster and other guild management issues, involves my imaginary ulcer being given the name Frank. So now whenever someone does something death-defying or otherwise gives me a quick jolt of stress I let them know that “Frank says hi.”
The other, actually funny one, deals with Zilga (one of the priests) and her jingle about poor dragon positioning and cleaves–Zilga’s gonna eat a cleave, doo da, doo da. On Spinestalker, the last drake before Sindragosa, I’ll drag it up the steps and chase Zilga around attempting to get it to cleave her. She then proceeds to taunt me with “I’ve been cleaved by better tanks than you!” So that’s our little game now.
Last night I also had the opportunity to bring three new raiders into ICC to try them out and get them some gear (again, I love that buff). One of them, a Rogue, did some ridiculous dps on many fights, placing in the top 5 despite being in 245-251 gear. He then over the course of the night picked up seven upgrades. I expect him to be a beast tonight on our LK attempts.
Also tried out a Demo Lock for the first time, something the casters have been lobbying for forever. Unfortunately our top two caster dps weren’t on last night, so I won’t be able to ask how they thought of having some extra SP.
Speaking of sailing
After raid, Morvain and I dragged a group to Uld-10 so we could finish the last achievement for our Rusted Protos. After one full go across Razorscale’s 10 minute enrage timer and then a minute into the next attempt we finally managed to roast the 25th Iron Dwarf we needed for the achievement.
Done and done.
I finished up the night by dragging a few more people into MC for my weekly dose of disappointment re: Thunderfury. And, of course, alas, no binding. Nordic taunted me with the fact he ran the place this weekend (he needs the opposite binding from me) and the one I am seeking dropped. I died a little on the inside. Ok, understatement–I died a lot on the inside
And speaking of slow deaths, more LK-25 attempts tonight! If I post about the kill tomorrow you’ll know it went well (obviously), if silence … er, send flowers.
Vidyala asks “How much is too much?” While she’s speaking more existentially, I wonder the same with regards to tanking. How much survivability is too much? At want point do we achieve effective immortality–alphabetically the next step after EH–and no longer fear death?
In my earlier post about armory data mining, there were many folks honestly disagreeing with me on the merits of my recommendations based on the level of content they are tanking. Some stick to heroics and thus seldom, if ever, experience tank death. Some are raiding ICC 10 or 25 and thanks to the buff are pushing past 60k hitpoints.
Those two experiences are like two sections of the same tanking möbius strip. Vastly different content, but the same indelible question: at what point do I hit diminishing returns on my survivability stats?
Actually, let’s scale back that question–is there such a think as too much survivability? Many might say yes, some of them having commented on the data mining post to that effect. I would say there is not. If you think there is such a thing, let me pose this question to you: what odds are you willing to accept for your survival? If you can gear to only die once every 100 encounters, but do 5% more threat than someone who gears to die only once every 1000 encounters, is that a worthy trade-off?
I personally would say no. In my mind I have one primary directive, to survive. Holding threat is secondary. I would always be that latter tank, gearing to prevent as many possible tank deaths as possible even if it means a little less threat. If you lose threat you can always taunt it back, or salv a dps, or what have you. It’s seldom the end of the encounter. If a tank dies, things can rapidly snowball into a wipe. I would posit that 9 times out of 10, a tank death will lead to a wipe more than a tank losing aggro.
So I ask, why would you increase the possibility of the former to prevent the latter?
An example: I saw a discussion of my data mining post elsewhere and someone brought up my commandment not to socket Nightmare Tears. The commenter said they saw a single Nightmare Tear as superior over socketing a single Shifting Dreadstone because, gosh, it’s a lot of stats for one gem. Sure, you lose five stamina, but you gain strength, intellect, and spirit. … And yet, the only bit of that that remotely reduces damage is the 5 block value you get (6.5 after talents).
So the survivability trade-off between a Shifting and a NT is this: Shifting gives you 55 hitpoints, and the Tear will let you ignore 6.5 hitpoints worth of damage when you block (if you block). How does a Tear remotely appeal?
My position is and will always be that survivability comes first. If we’re following the proper rotation and staying caught up on gear and your dps are not knuckle-dragging idiots, threat should never be an issue. We should never have to gem or enchant for threat, it should come organically from our gear. If we need to increase our threat, we put on a cape that has hit, or a pair of boots that has expertise. We don’t regem to gain a few more points of strength.
Coming back to the original question, I would say there is no such thing as too much survivability. Indeed, there’s no such thing as an immortal tank. Even a god can bleed. To that end, I will always gear, gem, and enchant to keep myself as optimally alive as possible. Once I have too much hp, I will focus on mitigation and avoidance. Never threat. That’s not my job.
I have no idea how I did it. For the last few months, some friends and I have been talking about going to Blizzcon for the first time, with each statement being neatly hedged by bookend “assuming we get tickets.”
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