Look at my stupid luck

We had probably our best farm night in, well, forever in ICC-25 last night. Thanks to the 15% buff we steamrolled through the Lower Spire, then knocked over (or picked back up, however you want to term it) Dreamwalker, then smashed through the Blood Wing, then finally demolished the Plague Wing. Three hours are the first pull we had 10/12 bosses down, killing everything we have on farm. This completely frees up tonight for three hours of Progression Fun Time. I’m very happy.

Perhaps one of the best parts of the night was our third, and last, attempt on BQL. By all accounts we should have wiped on this attempt. Towards the end one of the dps died and one bite was put on the offtank, another on a healer in the last wave because the biters were going to get MC’d. We missed the enrage timer at the end, so Lana’thel turns gigantic, angry and red.

Seconds earlier I popped an armor pot, then as the timer hit zero I popped both my trinkets (Glyph and Key) for extra dodge and some damage absorption. Stupidly, I had Forbearance on me from popping Divine Shield when someone got feared right next to me during the second air phase. Locked out of my bubble, I basically prayed. This is what happened:

Somehow, I avoided every melee hit (except for the one that killed me and proc’d AD). I took some heavy hits from Shroud of Sorrow, but that wasn’t so bad for me. For everyone else, it pretty much blew them up immediately.

Anyway, the point being: behold(!) the improbable power of avoidance. It doesn’t always know you exist, but can be amazing when its golden countenance doth shine down upon thee.

Get the Last Word

Recently I’ve seen some folks poo-pooing Last Word, decrying as yet another one of “those sucky proc weapons.” I’d like to clear up this misconception, because nothing could be further from the truth. Here are three complaints I’d like to counterpoint:

1. It’s dependent on a proc

The proc was changed to have a 100% uptime. As long as you’re swinging that mace, you are benefitting from Blessing of Light.

2. The proc sucks

This sentiment could not be more wrong. Just focusing on the healing half of it, whenever Blessing of Light is up, any heals cast on you are increased as if the caster had 300 more spellpower. While this may seem like a small amount, it can be as much as 8% of the healer’s total buffed spellpower. That’s a lot of extra oomph to get just from a weapon proc.

This won’t translate into 8% more healing received, but it will make a noticeable difference in your healing intake and could feasibly make the difference in some sticky situations.

3. It doesn’t have any threat stats

With the proc having a constant uptime, you’re looking at 100 more strength. That’s comparable to just about every tanking weapon in ICC. Not only that, but the weapon speed is also huge. Slower weapons make your Holy Vengeance procs hit for more damage, among other abilities.

The slower the weapon is, often, the more threat your abilities will do. Indeed, according to Theck’s analysis, Last Word is the best tank weapon in the 264 range for tps. The 277 Last Word is the highest tps tank weapon in game.

In short, Last Word is a very powerful weapon. It’s a huge boon in the age of the trickle-down death, adding extra oomph to every heal you receive, and a powerful threat weapon to boot. Benefit while you can of the ignorance that surrounds this weapon and snatch it up before anyone knows any better.

New layout warning

I’m going to be monkeying around a bit. If you see the layout suddenly change and look terrible, just bear with me, that means I’m actively tinkering with it. I’ll be switching back to the tried and true one once I run out of steam chopping up CSS. New layout won’t go up permanently until it’s done.

Edit: Alright, well, I’ve decided I’m happy enough with my progress that I’m going to leave what I have up. I still have a lot more to do, of course, but this should hold pretty well for now. For example: comments are now threaded, hurray.

My to-do list:

1. Find a good font for posts
2. Change post title font
3. New color for the right sidebar
4. Add some better things on the sidebar like “greatest hits” and rss/etc links.
5. Change links color
6. New background color
7. Copy blockquote design from old layout
8. Somehow get comment avatar images to float left
9. Other things I can’t think of

I’ll take any other suggestions as well. I’m perfectly open to many design tweaks.

Rabble, rabble, rabble

The community is in complete uproar right now over the recently announced plans to change raiding in Cataclysm in regards to 10 and 25man raiding. As the announcement states, both will drop the same loot (thought 25s will drop more) and both will be of a comparable difficulty. Personally, I think this is a fantastic change, and this is coming from someone who primarily raids in 25s.

If my guild dies this summer, I would in a heart beat just switch to pure 10s and never look back. I love the reduced size, the relaxed atmosphere, the greater comraderie. The fact that more often than not in 25s you need to deal with people that if you had the luxury of choice, you would disassociate with, has always left a bad taste in my mouth for the larger raid setting.

Likewise, I’m excited for all the people that are 10man raiders, either by choice or not, and will get to have the same loot and the same prestige, provided difficulties are balanced. If that’s even possible. Sure, you can make LK-25 have more health and do more damage than LK-10, but there are some things that will be harder to balance between 10s and 25s. More existential things. For example, Empowered Shock Vortex is *so* much easier to avoid in 10man, because you have so many fewer melee. Likewise the air phases on BQL, with only 10 people spreading out is cake.

Another plus: I won’t have to run two versions of the same content every week to max out my emblems intake. I never want to go back to the ToC system where I was doing ToC-10, H ToC-10, and ToC-25 every goddamn week. That was a prescription for burnout if I ever saw one.

But overall I think the change is awesome, and as long as they find some way to normalize the difficulty between 10s and 25s (and not just make 25s as easy as 10s, but rather the reverse) then it will be a boon for every aspiring raider in Azeroth. I could care less if someone in a strict 10man gets to enjoy the same flavor of ice cream as me. As long as we both worked as hard to chase down the truck, we deserve access to the same stuff.

On AVR

Ever since this was featured on mmo-champ this weekend, suddenly everyone knows about it, for good or ill. Mostly ill.

The reactions have run the gamut from “this cheapens raiding” to “this is cheating!!!” to “good players don’t need it, bad players will still stand in fire.”

I’ve sung the praises of this mod recently, and I will continue to do so. I love it, it’s awesome, and yes I like it because it makes certain bosses easier. For Rotface we used to stack on one leg then shift to another when a Big Ooze exploded. Now we just take care not to stand in the red circle. On 10man last night, I don’t think anyone ever even got hit by an ooze rocket.

I realize now I’ve offered evidence for the anti-AVR crowd. I guess all I can offer in the addon’s defense is that where some people see cheats, I see streamlining.

Perhaps (assuming Blizzard doesn’t kill this mod) the fact that an addon can neuter their oh-so-favorite mechanic, the “don’t stand in x”, they will respond by introducing some more depth to encounters that go beyond standing in the right place at the right time. I think it’s about time we finally kill off the void zone as a staple of boss design.

And ultimately I suppose that’s AVR’s sole strength: it kills the void zone. Using this mod won’t make slack-jawed raiders keep a Valk from dropping someone to their death, or get their bite off during BQL, or not stack their Mystic Buffet too high. AVR makes raiding as easy mode as DBM did when it allowed your to see the timers on boss abilities. It’s just another tool in the box.

Account security in your raid

Ever since I took over as GM of Enveloping Shadows, I’ve been viewing just about every happenstance in the guild through the prism of “how does this affect the raid?”

My primary goal is and will remain keeping the raid viable, progressing, and upbeat, and if something conflicts or threatens one of those three things I become obsessed with it.

For example, immediately after I took over one of our dps warriors got hacked. Normally this wouldn’t be an issue, he’d file a ticket and get his account restored. Might have no even missed a raid if the hacking took place later in the week.

The twist however was that this warrior did not own his account. He had purchased it at some juncture and had been using it for some time. He didn’t have the account information and had absolutely no way of getting it back from support. The dps warrior who was always in the top ten on the charts, was kitted out in 264 gear, and even had a Shadow’s Edge, was kaput.

Thankfully he had a second account (his own) with an 80 paladin, and he switched that to his main and basically jumped right back in the saddle. So I guess there’s a happy ending to that. He’s even working on another Shadow’s Edge.

Fast forward to this week. On Wednesday one of the confirmed resto shamans (or, shamen?) didn’t show. I brought in another healer from standby and we went about our business. Towards the end of the night, the shaman hopped in vent and informed us his account was hacked. The hacker had deleted his characters and put an authenticator on it. And, moreover, he didn’t own the account so he might not be able to get it back.

Another one!

Though again, thankfully, we were blessed with a happy ending. Whoever was in charge of support that morning must have been feeling generous, because the shaman got the account back without supplying much (if any) information. So, I was not faced with having to replace him with a new healer in the roster and then gearing that new healer up. A very relieving turn of events.

Now, to get back to the point: both these unfortunate incidents obviously affect the victim, but they affect the raid as well. Losing a great dps with a great gear would be a pain in the butt. Losing a great healer would be more damaging. The raid suffers when people whom you depend on are forcibly removed from the raiding pool.

Of course, your raiders have a responsibility to the 24 folks that they adventure with. Moving forward (especially after two incidents in about a month) I’m strongly considering some kind of recourse, being it dkp bonuses for having an authenticator (as incentive), benching non-authenticator’d people more often, or just plan demanding everyone obtain one.

At the very least, if you don’t own your account (the root of the issue, this is pretty dumb, honestly), you should take steps to prevent your account from being hacked. Get an authenticator. It can’t prevent the original owner from taking back the account that he sold to you, but it can prevent some low-life on the other side of the world from destroying everything you’ve worked so hard on.

Tanking the adds in the Dreamwalker encounter

I remember this being really messy the first time we tried. It was a pain to figure out which adds you wanted to pay the most attention to, and when. Er, except for the Blazing Skeletons. Those bastards make it quite clear early on how deserving of attention they are.

The key to this fight is standing in the right place and tanking the right mobs. Let’s talk about the room first:

Ideally you’ll be assigned a specific side while another tank gets the other. This side that you’re placed in is your world. Everything that enters it is now your domain. And that includes every undead creature that exits the doors on your side.

Pan your camera out enough that you can reasonably see both doors at just about all times. This is going to be key because the Blazing Skeletons are as sneaky as a Fel Reaver. You do not want them surprising your raid. As soon as one of those guys enters your domain, shout out in vent your side and if it’s the front or back door. If it’s coming from the back door, let it move far enough to clear the central pillar between the doors. If you attack it prematurely, it’ll stop moving, and place itself out of LoS for your ranged.

You want that Blazing Skeleton dead before it gets a tick of Lay Waste off, ideally. I’ve heard whispers of how the Lay Waste mechanic works, in that the Blazing Skeleton will only cast when in melee range of its target, and I’ve seen it get “confused” and delay the channel of Lay Waste. But we’ve never been able to purposefully replicate this effect. I’m not going to say having someone out of melee range taunting will delay the Lay Waste cast, but something seems to be happening. I just don’t know what.

What not to tank

Ignore the suppressors. They have no aggro, they will just run up and start channeling their healing debuff on Dreamwalker. The best way for you to help kill these is to tank mobs on top of them so the cleaves and AOEs of your dps will drop them down significantly, and usually kill them. Likewise, Holy Wrath is excellent for a quick stun on them all at once.

Moreover, avoid the Blistering Zombies. Everytime they melee you they will stack Corrosion on you. Goes up to five stacks, for a total debuff of 50% armor. Combine that with an Abom increasing your Physical damage taken by 25%, and you have an issue. Let the hunters kite these.

The Risen Archmages are kind of a gray area. They don’t hurt that much, but they can be a major threat to healers if they sneak past you and start wreaking havoc in the middle of your healing corps. I usually just throw a Hand of Reckoning on these guys when they spawn, bring them close, and then let the dps burn them down. If one of the melee dps grabs aggro, it’s not a big deal.

About face

When tanking the Aboms you want to park them on top of where Suppressors spawn and face them southward, away from Dreamwalker. Gut Spray (along with many other attacks) will hurt Dreamwalker, so let’s not make the healers’ job harder, eh?

The Gut Spray will also do some heavy damage to your melee, so make sure none of them are mouth breathing and standing in front of the Abom with you.

Swap seals

Keep Seal of Vengeance up for most of the fight, except for when the Abom dies. It’ll erupt into a pack of Rot Worm mobs that you want to pick up asap. Switch to Seal of Command, drop a Consecrate, and then HotR as they come up. Try to pick them all up and burn them down as fast as possible.

Ultimately, Dreamwalker (like all add fights) seems initially tough because there’s so much to keep track of. Once you get the hang of the adds and how to control them, and your healers get the hang of their all-too-important role, the fight quickly becomes a cake walk.

A frosty reception

We got Sindragosa to 25% last night, for the first real night of attempts on her.

Had a solid hour and a half to work on her and we made some serious progress. People learned the ice blocks, towards the end I don’t think we were losing anyone to Blistering Cold, and the idea of Phase 3 was starting to form itself in everyone’s heads. Good ol’ fashioned progression. I love it.

Next week we’re basically dedicating Wednesday to Sindragosa. I expect the following day I’ll be gracing this blog with a kill shot.

As for the fight itself, it didn’t seem too rough from a tanking perspective. The hardest part, I guess, was positioning. Picking up Sindra initially and turning her in a way that her side is perpendicular to the stairs, and avoiding cleaves right off the bat.

I also decided to go with wearing 2 pieces of Frost Resist gear, which in hindsight seemed a bit overkill. Having 313 FR was great for neutering the Frost Breaths, but I don’t think I needed that much. I wish I had run a log of the fight (I accidentally turned it off after BQL) last night so I could check damage from breaths vs melees and see if I was taking more physical damage than necessary to mitigate the frost damage. More dataz are needed!

I’m curious how much, if any, FR you all run for Sindragosa-25?

Overall I’m very optimistic about our chances in this fight. I think ES will be seeing Arthas sooner than later.

On a roll in ICC

Last night we ran out of bubblegum in Icecrown and posted our best night yet, speed-wise. Invites went out at 6:28 server time, first pull was at about 6:40, and Saurfang was down by 7:30. This was probably the fastest we ever made it into the Upper Spire. Things were looking good.

We easily one-shot Festergut and Rotface and then rolled into Putricide. Unfortunately it took five goes to drop him (one day we’ll get him on the first go), thanks to some awesome RNG-arrific attempts. However, at least when we did kill him everyone was up.

Once the Plague Wing was cleared it was about 9:15. 45 minutes left in the raid.

So we headed over to Dreamwalker and easily one-shot her. Er, one-saved her. Something like that. Honestly, I’m disappointed with how long we put off this fight. Once you get the hang of it and your dps internalize the kill order (and the healers get the hang of the orbs), it’s total cake. With Dreamwalker down, we had about 20 minutes left, so we went and banged out the Blood Council.

This now sets us up for tonight with Blood Queen (which should be doable within an hour) and then we’ll have on Sindragosa for the better part of the night. I’m expecting a good two hours to learn the encounter, get everyone some experience on it, and teach them the fear of magic betrayals.

Personally, I am very excited to have so much time for progression tonight. A month ago we were terrified of Putricide (confession: I still kinda am), completely unable to do the BQL fight, and seemingly hopeless against the future challenges of Icecrown. What a difference a month makes. I think it’s reasonable to say that within a few weeks we’ll be working on the Lich King.

I’m especially happy with the fact that we took two new raiders with us last night, and both did pretty well. We’ve been recruiting a little lately, just to keep the “buffer” up (my goal is at least 35-37 capable raiders to make up for people not showing or not signing up, which seems to be working well so far). These last two pick ups were already 245 geared, and with the core already pretty much decked out in off-set drops, they should be gearing up pretty quickly soon enough.

It feels so good to be optimistic about 25man raids.

I picked up my last 264 tier piece last night, giving me the 4pc bonus. I like the idea of an extra “cooldown,” especially now that we’re doing ICC-10 hardmodes where it’ll be a boon on some fights. However, I am not liking the fact that I have to somehow balance my gear around a tier chest with no defense, the Pillars of Might with no defense, and the Boots of Kingly Upheaval with no defense.

And not to mention I like to sport the Bloodvenom Blade on farm content… I’m suffering a major crisis here. I’m going to just make a special set just for the 4pc for specific fights and stick to the Cataclysmic Chestguard for the rest. The CC is still better than the tier chest until 277, anyway.

But, I digress. On a different note: I’m going to leave you with why I hate Gearscore.

Gotta love that reasoning.

What #BlizzChat has told us about Cataclysm

1. Ret Paladins (at least) will be getting an interrupt.

Q. What information/ideas can you share on PvP utility in the Retribution tree? Mandatory gap closer/interrupt question. Not having a cleanse will hurt. :\
A. Retribution paladins will be getting an interrupt.

It’s disappointing they side-stepped the gap closer portion of the question. That’s a pretty serious concern for Ret that they’re losing a lot from their defensive bag of tricks, without much offense-oriented to make up for it. An interrupt is nice, a gap closer is near-mandatory I would say.

2. What goes in our Libram slot will be homogenized, in that we’ll be sharing more generic relics with Death Knights and maybe Druids.

Q: Will relics and wands be getting any new attention in Cataclysm?
A: With relics, the plan is to make them class agnostic. In other words, there might be a +strength relic that a death knight or paladin might want to equip. We think that will let us add more of them to the game without them being so specialized. They will feel more like wands.

This is interesting and unexpected. While lore-wise it doesn’t make much sense for a Paladin and DK to share a relic, in a design sense it seems prudent.

3. Vengeance is being designed with off tanks in mind.

Q: Can you go into more detail on Vengeance? As it stands it sounds like off tanks will be at a significant disadvantage.
A: We want Vengeance to have a long enough duration that off tanks won’t lose their damage bonus. In most situations, the off tank is doing some tanking along the way. The worst case scenario would be say a fight where the off tank needs to tank in phase 3 but not phase 1. Remember, even in that case though you have tools to generate high threat. Vengeance is there to keep DPS from pulling off you late in the fight.

As an oft-off tank, I feel assuaged. As long as the duration is long and even little ticks of AOE set off Vengeance, it’ll be good for us tanking wingmen too. And, finally, an excuse to stand in void zones.

4. Holy Shock will still have a damage component despite being baseline and available for Ret/Prot.

Q: Now that paladin’s Holy Shock is baseline is there any plans to change the Art of War talent?
A: We like Art of War, so we don’t expect it will go away. We understand the concern that Holy Shock might compete with Art of War a little bit in terms of role (an instant damage spell) and that’s something we’re going to have to address.

Just don’t screw it up for us! I want that ranged goodness to stay intact, more or less.

Heroic baby steps

Last night we took our first cracks at heroic ICC-10. Personally, I was not in the best condition for the venture, sporting a pounding headache and a fuse about three sizes too small. Despite my condition, everyone put up with my shenanigans and we made some good progress into the hard modes.

I’m going to spend this post talking about the four hard modes we did: Marrowgar, Gunship, Saurfang (though we didn’t down this), and Festergut and impart anything we learned.

Lord Marrowgar

What’s different?

• Bone Spikes happen during Bonestorm
• Coldflame hurts more, stays up longer
• Bonestorm will probably kill you if you are in his hitbox

The first time we tried this fight we lost six people on the first Bonestorm. It was then I realized we weren’t in Kansas anymore. I think it woke everyone else up, as well. This isn’t your father’s pug’s Marrowgar.

Mark the tanks up so people are *especially* careful not to stand on them over the course of the fight. I’m not certain (thanks to borking the combatlogs) but it looked like a Rogue ate a Saberlash at one point. So make sure no one gets too close.

When you pull try to keep him in the center of the room and have melee and ranged (minus hunters) stand inside Marrowgar’s hitbox. Coldflames start outside the hitbox and spread from there, so there’s a safety zone within. The only caveat is to watch the timers, because once you hit 5 seconds til the Bonestorm you want people to scatter so they don’t get taken out right off the bat.

Bonestorm can be painful, and will be the most dangerous part of the entire fight. You’ll have about five of them. Just make sure everyone stays generally in the same circular area, but spreads out. If two people are next to each other you might get a delicious RNG sandwich where one person gets Spiked and the person next to them is targeted for Bonestorm/a Coldflame drop. Basically, guaranteeing the Spiked person is a goner. For that reason don’t pile up on each other.

The fight is pretty straight forward but there is a serious RNG element. Everytime a healer gets Bone Spiked (especially during a Bone Storm) you’ll find yourself short for breath. Save Divine Sacrifice for those times when you only have two healers.

Basically hold it together through each Bonestorm and you should be fine.

The SS Lolship

What’s different?

• Rockets have a knockback
• Mages have more health
• Enemy ship has more health

There’s really not much to say about this fight. You might at the end find yourself questioning whether this was on Heroic or not. I suppose the only thing you need to watch out for is people on the side of the boat getting knocked off after eating a rocket.

Two words: Loot. Piñata.

Deathbringer Saurfang

What’s different?

• Blood Beasts will one-shot your kiters
• Blood Beasts will gain Scent of Blood, fun for the kiters
• Blood Power stacks faster
• Saurfang hits harder (thus, more damaged on the Marks)

On the bright side

• Still only two Blood Beasts

We only did three attempts on this, getting to 41% our last go. I wanted to keep going and see how far we could get in ICC-10 that night, but in hindsight we totally could have downed Saurfang if we spent the last hour of the raid on this guy, rather than moving on. The fight isn’t that rough for the tanks. It’s your healers that are going to be pulling their hair out by the end of this. You think they were white knuckle healing the Frenzy phase before?

We had a hunter kiting on one side, an Ele Shaman on another, with an Arcane Mage assisting both. When Beasts came up, a DK would Chains of Ice the one heading for the Hunter, giving Cendra extra time to pump damage into the Beast before it reached him. Then, when the Beast was closing in, I would taunt and before it could get to me Cendra would finish it off. On the other side the Ele Shaman/Mage pair didn’t have much trouble with theirs.

I found that playing taunt tag with the Blood Beasts to be crazy helpful in keeping them away from your kiters. If those creatures reach their target, you’re going to be down a kiter and they probably end up finishing off a healer in the ensuing chaos.

I’ll report more on this fight when we actually down it.

Festergut

What’s different?

• Oh god, three stacks, it hurts
• Malleable Goos away!
• Much tighter enrage timer

This fight is very easy once you get the hang of it. For one thing, don’t want your healers in melee anymore. If they get hit by Malleable Goo they suffer a 250% casting speed debuff, and that’s murder with so much AOE and tank damage, so keep them out with ranged.

When you pull Festergut, run him over to the left, far away from Putricide’s balcony. This will give you maximum viewing range to watch the Malleable Goos get tossed down and to predict who they’re heading for. Likewise, a small green puddle will appear on the floor to presage where the Goo is going to hit. Ranged and Heals can adjust accordingly, though melee has a somewhat harder job with it.

Because Festergut is so big it’s going to be hard for melee to see the puddle if they’re directly on top of the boss. Instead they should stand to the left or right of the boss (next to his leg) so they can see under themselves when a green puddle appears. If ones does appear, melee should immediately shuffle over to the other leg. This should put them out of the range of the Goo.

Being hit by the Goo will also give you a movement debuff. Watch for this to happen when Gas Spores are up, in case someone needs a Hand of Freedom to help get them over to the ranged Spore in time for the debuff.

The three-inhale period for Festergut is going to be a test for your tanks. He hits like a truck then (again, I wish I had logs) and you’ll want to use everything in your arsenal to mitigate the damage. Use bubblewall, pop an armor pot, pop trinkets. External cooldowns. Whatever you need to do! Moreover, don’t be afraid to put a Hand of Sacrifice on the other tank during their turn at a three-inhale phase.

Pop Divine Sacrifice during the Pungent Blight.

Like I said, the fight is generally pretty easy (in the sense it’s not hard to adapt to the mechanics). Don’t get hit by Malleable Goo, get your three spores, don’t die to anything stupid. Use your cooldowns to not get gibbed by Festergut during his soft enrages.