Highs and lows

Low point

On Saturday I was struck with the desire to bring my lvl 65 hunter (my very first WoW character, rolled the day after the game was released) out and try to finally get him going again. I bought 145 emblems worth of heirloom items, paid for normal flying, and then tried to figure out how to play a hunter again. I lost interest immediately.

High point

Rolled a new warlock instead–yes, this is on top of my other alts: the 42 druid, the 41 shaman, the 48 mage, the 80 DK–I have Alt-ADHD.

Spent the better part of yesterday leveling it with Cendra’s new rogue. Was pretty fun, and I love all the spells it has at such a low level. I’ll probably play it until 40 or so and then get bored.

Low point

Saturday I threw together a somewhat impromptu Undying run. Razuvious was the raid weekly this week, so turns out half the people invited were saved already. Finally decide we’ll just 8 man it, everyone’s pumped for a fun drunk raid, and we go to do Razuvious first. While manning one of the Understudies, my pet frame was turned off and I couldn’t drop mine in time to save Zilga’s from dying. I pick Raz back up, we’re doing good, last 10% of health. Then I lose aggro, Razuvious runs over and instagibs a poor warlock and then before we can all flee to reset, the boss dies. I screwed up Undying on the first boss.

High point

Went and did ToGC-10 instead, finished it with 48 attempts left. Got a few upgrades for the warlock, who I hope will start raiding soon. One for the win column, overall.

Low point

After that tried a late ICC-10 alt run. Never got past Marrowgar because people couldn’t switch to spikes or avoid dying in the fire.

High point

No one got saved to a fail run.

Low point

Didn’t kill Putricide last night in ICC-10 (mains run).

High point

On our best attempt we got him to 26% and there was a marked improvement every attempt that didn’t have some crazy RNG screw up early on (ie, every “real attempt”). We definitely could have killed him with a lot more time.

Also, as you might have guessed, we killed Roface on 10man for the first time. We had a third healer in the group switch to actual heals for the fight and it reduced a lot of the “one healer dead = wipe” issues we had last week. Our first try we wiped at 7%, second at 1%, third a clean kill with no deaths. Was a thing of beauty.

Low point

Went into an AV yesterday to drop a Great Feast and score my Dinner Impossible achievement. Someone asks if there’s a tank and some tool responds he can tank it. Another guy says “Rhidach has 51.1k” (no wasn’t me) and the tool retorts “I’ll out threat him and live longer.” I kept trying to type in /raid a witty riposte (“Oh ho ho, so you think …”) but I failed to realize that you use /bg to talk in the battleground raid channel. I lose my chance to salvage my ego.

High point

I haunted him the whole way to Vann where he pulled and after a few seconds I pulled aggro by out tpsing him. He taunted back, the healers didn’t have enough time to react, and he died. And I lol’d. Oh, how I lol’d.

Better Late Than Never Friday, 1/22

Better Late Than Never Friday is a random monthly feature where I pull a bunch of search terms from Google Analytics that landed folks here and try to answer questions that may not be directly answered at this site, as gleaned from their keywords used.

righteous defense taunt small ooze

The Small Ooze is taunt immune, so unfortunately that won’t work. The only way to get rid of them is to merge one into a Big Ooze.

best libram tankadin

Eternal Tower is, technically, the best for survivability (although the ramp-up time is annoying and can cause issues). It’s a marginal upgrade over Defiance, however, and not worth getting until you run out of better things to spend Emblems of Frost on. Just farm Triumph badges and get the 245 dodge libram. Contrawise, Valiance is the best threat libram right now.

how to use righteous defense

Back in my day to use Righteous Defense you had to target the person being attacked, and if you wanted to directly taunt the attacking mob you’d have to use a /targettarget macro. Thankfully, Righteous Defense was changed a while back. It’ll work the same if you use it on the mob or the mob’s target.

armour penetration for tankadins

Bad stat for us, don’t even think about it! The same reasons that make ArP bad for Ret Pallies bad for us–our threat derives primarily from Holy damage, which pierces armor as is. It’s for this reason I always cursed the tanking gloves off of Ignis that had ArP on them.

does the hp5 on purified onyxia blood talisman work in combat

Yes. But you shouldn’t use it unless you’re soloing old content, or something equally frivolous. hp5 is not a tanking stat.

festergut amp magic

Bad idea, amplify magic will make the various raid damage attacks do even more damage. The only fight amp magic is good for is Saurfang, because every attack in that fight is classified as physical damage.

20 defense vs titanium plating

Neither, go with the BC-era +18 stamina enchant if you have the defense to spare. Otherwise get the +defense enchant.

22 agility titanweave dodge

Agility if you have enough defense, Titanweave otherwise.

3.3 divine sacrifice worth it?

Absolutely! Assuming you get Divine Guardian as well, it’s like a free 20% damage reduction cooldown for us that benefits the raid as well. DS/DG is a mandatory talent for raiding.

blacksmithing vs engineering tankadin

I’m partial to engineering, myself, for the cool toys and the armor glove enchant/agility cloak enchant. However, you’d probably be better off if min/maxing just to go with the straight +60 stamina of blacksmithing.

seal of righteousness vs seal of vengeance

Seal of Vengeance is still our best single-target threat seal. Seal of Righteousness has it’s uses though, particularly on Rotface if you’re kiting the Big Ooze. You can’t melee it, and because SoR’s judgement offers the most damage in that situation, it’s the best choice.

Interrupting the Council, and some achievs fun

After Tuesday’s lagtastic night we had downed the first five bosses of ICC, leaving us Rotface and the Blood Council as Wednesday’s agenda. I admit, I was full trepidation, our Rotface kill last week was a bit messy and I was worried we’d get bogged down in that fight.

The first attempt though alleviated a lot of my worry, we got him to 17% on the first go, and that was with a snafu involving someone’s first time on the fight and them not realizing they got infected. So, messy finish, but hopeful nonetheless. Second attempt we got him down to 12%, mainly due to another ooze issue where a second Big Ooze got made and it ate a few people. Third time, however, was the charm and despite everyone going to hell at 5% we got Rotface down. Very exciting.

I don’t want to say to say the “f” word just yet (er, I mean farm), but we’re definitely getting there.

With Rotface down the time came to go put some attempts in on the Council (my thinking being we’d have more success against them than against Putricide). So happily off to the Blood Wing we trudged and lined up for a trash pull.

The trash before the Blood Council is… interesting. It requires strategy and–believe it or not–crowd control. For the two huge packs before the Blood Council’s stage we ended up shackling one guy and trying to use hunters to take one of the Tacticians out of commission. The Tacticians (basically Rogues) suck. They pop in out of no where, sap a tank, making him drop aggro, and then the mobs run roughshod over everyone. Definitely do what you can to burn down the Tacticians one at a time while the other is controlled.

Once we cleared out the trash we were ready for some potshots on the Council.

The fight itself isn’t too awful, it just requires a lot of juggling, so to speak. There’s the shock waves, the beach ball, the conjured flame, and the dark nuclei all to contend with. The fight is a huge orchestra of different clashing cacophonies, and the point of the fight is to get everyone to herd those dangers into one smooth harmony. Not as hard as it seems, but we spent the rest of the night learning everything that can go wrong (as is our usual habit) which lines us up for a kill next week.

Some things I learned:

• When Valanar is empowered and casts his shock wave you have 4.5 seconds not to run away, but you find your own spot away from other melee. When the cast time ends a shock spot appears under you and explodes for a chunk of damage. The trick is to be by yourself so you don’t get hit by other shocks.
• When someone gets chased by an empowered Conjure Flame they need to run for it (this means all ranged need to be at max range from Taldaram) and wave through everyone around them. Every time the Conjured Flame incidentally hurts people around it, it will do less damage when it explodes. So the kiter should take it through ranged, burn as many stacks as possible, and then explode it with them 15 yards away from everyone.
• The ranged tank on Keleseth has a really hard job.

Some things I read today that I wish I knew last night:

• It might make more sense for a melee tank to deal with Keleseth in the 25 man. If he gets into melee on the ranged tank (especially while empowered) that poor ranged will go splat. I think next week I’m going to try to tank him and Demo can take Valanar and Purraj (the druid) can get Taldaram. It’d be a boon for raid dps at the very least.
• If you sic a hunter’s pet on a beachball the pet will stand under it, wait for it to get low, and then hit it enough to send it up in the air. This will trivialize the beachballs.

Pretty complicated seeming fight, but once we get the hang of it, it should be cake. I’m looking forward to trying it next week.

Speaking of months behind!

Probably the more exciting thing last night was the last minute achievement burst I was inspired to do. Before raid I gathered some buddies (Cendra, Ildara, Gulliveig, Gandy) and we jumped over to Gundrak to try to do Less-Rabi. The strategy I outlined was gently get him to 51%, interrupt the next transform, then bloodlust and push to the kill while throwing interrupts like nuts at the 5 second mark.

I pulled and after the first transform he was already at 41% health. I boggled a bit but kept going. Somehow, not sure, we nailed the next interrupt which must have been a millisecond long since it took place at like 10% health. Moorabi dropped before he knew what hit him. So, Less-Rabi done and two more to go: Share the Love and Amber Void.

Since we were already in Gundrak we finished the place up to get to the last boss and then Gandy jumped on his DK to initially tank at first. Once I got impaled I took over and held him for the rest of the fight. After about three rhino phases everyone was impaled and we dropped the boss and grabbed the achiev. That was the last one Cendra and Ildara needed for Glory of the Hero so I dropped a mailbox for Cendra so he could retrieve his Red Proto, which was then the 100th mount he needed for Mountain of Mounts. Crazy achievement day for Cen!

After the raid we then headed over to Oculus so I could grab my last Glory of the Hero achievement, Amber Void. It was a quick run (as Oculus is stupid-simple now) and it wasn’t long before a Proto was also waiting in my mailbox.

Now to help Gul get his Glory achievement.

The deck was stacked against us

Last night was a bit of a clusterfark. Demo was MIA, leaving me to MT and someone to offspec OT, which normally wouldn’t be bad but earlier yesterday I had a wisdom tooth pulled and was numbed to the gills and couldn’t really talk on vent. Combine that with cataclysmic server lag on gunship and a chunk of Saurfang, the dkp addons not working and us having to log bids on paper, and associated other random nonsense and we had a pretty crazy raid night.

The gunship battle in particular was ridiculous. Once we were in the air, right before the first jump, we got struck with crippling server lag. On my screen my GCDs ground to a near half and all the people who jumped were just bouncing up and down between the two ships. I managed to make it over on a wing and a prayer and pulled Muradin with a shield toss. And… he just stayed there.

For some reason he decided he should toss knives at me, and who am I to argue? I just hung out and let him do his thing. When the time came to flee we all ran to the edge and jumped over.

Coordination would have been a tad bit easier if I could talk on vent, so I had to rely on hastily typed raid warnings to tell people when to flee. Eventually we got the Alliance ship down, but only by the skin of our teeth. If gunship wasn’t a joke we would have had a real problem.

Saurfang had a huge lag spike that saw two Blood Beasts get trapped in melee and rack up a lot more blood power than we usually had at that point. He eventually got like five marks off by the end of the fight, more than what we’re used to. Thankfully we downed him without any dying to a mark, so it generally a clean(ish) kill.

By this point it was about an hour later than it usually is when Saurfang drops thanks to dkp issues and server lag, obviously we weren’t going very far last night. Recognizing this, I still wanted to at least get Festergut down, so we headed over to his room.

That fight went pretty well overall, we had some initial issues where some tiny little thing would go wrong and put us behind the enrage timer. On one attempt a DK taunted by accident and died, and waited for a spore to accept his battle rez. We eventually wiped by 2%!

Another attempt one of the hunters had a critical error and WoW crashed for him. We wiped on that attempt by .6%.

Finally on the last attempt the stars aligned and we killed Festergut with 19 seconds to spare. Yours truly even managed to break 10k dps after the boss was pulled off of me and I dropped behind him, popped wings, and dps’d my little heart out. In the spirit of Jong I even ripped my shirt off for the dps boost.

I know pally tank dps is generally OP right now, but I’m very happy with that number nonetheless.

Tonight we’re going after Rotface and the Blood Council and then taking if from there when it comes to wing bosses.

Tankadin leveling 51-80: coming of age

Where we left off last week: just dinged level 50, rocking a 0/41/0 spec, enjoying our brand new Avenger’s Shield spell, and obtaining a new minor glyph slot. Today I’m going to show you have to jump those last thirty levels and hit level 80 specced and glyphed and ready for raiding.

Levels 51-60

51 — Redoubt (3/3) [putting last point in there]
52-54 — Touched by the Light (3/3)
55-57 — Shield of the Templar (3/3)
58-59 — Judgements of the Just (2/2)
60 — Hammer of the Righteous (1/1)

Nothing much exciting happens in this bracket, other than at 57 or 58 you can head over to Outlands. At 60 you get the Hammer of the Righteous spell which is amazing for heroics. Go ahead and drop your Consecration glyph for the HotR glyph. It’ll make dungeons that much easier!

Note that we’re skipping the Guarded by the Light talent for now, since we won’t have Divine Plea for another 10 levels.

Levels 61-70

61-65 — Deflection (5/5)
66-67 — Improved Judgements (2/2)
68-69 — Heart of the Crusader (2/3)
70 — Guarded by the Light (1/2)

We have everything we need from the Prot tree, so we can dip over to Ret and start picking out some new toys over there. Divine Plea is coming at 71 though, so the talent point you get from 70 should be spent getting ready for that.

If you’re Alliance, at level 64 you get Seal of Vengeance, which will replace Seal of Righteousness as your primary tanking seal for basically the rest of the game. If Horde, you have to wait until 66 for Seal of Corruption, our version of SoV. Crusader Aura at 64 is pretty nifty, as well.

At 70 we get a new minor glyph slot. There are really no good choices for this, you might as well dump the Glyph of Blessing of Kings in there. Alternatively, whatever Blessing you use the most.

Levels 71-80

71 — Guarded by the Light (2/2)
72 — Heart of the Crusader (3/3)
73 — Seal of Command (1/1)
74-75 — Pursuit of Justice (2/2)
76-77 — Conviction (2/5)
78-80 — Crusade (3/3)

Big milestones this bracket. At 71 your mana problems disappear forever thanks to Divine Plea (and Guarded by the Light giving it generally constant uptime). At 73 you get our old friend Seal of Command back, which will return to being your primary aoe seal (with SoV/C still better for bosses and single targets). At 75 you start moving 15% faster, which is always awesome for leveling. Moreover, at 75 we get Shield of Righteousness, out highest damage single target attack.

Now that you’ve hit 80, you should have a spec that looks like this. Well, that’s good for leveling, but now that you can run heroics and raids, it’s time to respec.

Pick up the cookie cutter 0/53/18 spec and recalibrate your glyphs to: Divine Plea, Seal of Vengeance, and Judgement. If you’re sticking to heroics, you might find Hammer of the Righteous is a better fit for that last glyph slot instead of Judgement.

I hope this guide was of benefit to you levelers out there. For more information once you hit 80, check the Guides tab above and don’t be afraid to kick me an email (rhidach at gmail dot com) if you have questions about what you’re next step is.

Happy tanking!

Tips for Festergut and Rotface

Festergut and Rotface suck. They are hard bosses and require each and every raider to give 110%. Each player needs to maximize the performance of their role and minimize anything that hurts the overall team effort (especially avoidable damage!).

Here are some dopey little tricks you can use to bring your A game to each fight:

1. Use a slow dps weapon for Festergut

Considering how tight the enrage timer can get, dps from every member of your group matters, and as Paladins we have the luxury and privilege of contributing more than our fair share of tank dps to the pile.

While Festergut may hit hard, he only does during a small window of the fight. Assuming you have the defense to spare, don’t be afraid to use a slow dps weapon (the slower the better) to maximize your damage. The slower your weapon is, the more damage each 5-stack proc from Seal of Vengeance/Corruption will do.

2. When not tanking Festergut, stand behind him

You should be soft-capped for expertise anyway, so to maximize your damage done on this fight, stand behind the boss to avoid causing parries for yourself and the person currently tanking.

3. Make the best use of your Gastric Bloat buff

Let’s combine points one and two. When you hit 9 stacks of Gastric Bloat and get the boss pulled off you, jump behind the boss, cancel Righteous Fury, self-cast Hand of Salvation, pop wings, and go to town.

Doing that in the ten man last night, after my tank switch I ended up pushing little more than 8000 dps. You can see it after that second huge dip in my dps, I slid behind the boss and immediately exploded in damage.

4. Make sure to Judge when kiting the Big Ooze

Judging is an important part of keeping threat on the Big Ooze while kiting. If you’re just shield tossing every 30 seconds you’re going to find the healer aggro riding hard on your heels. So, you definitely need to judge when possible.

The easiest way to manage Judging without getting murdered by being too close to the Ooze is to run ahead of it (as you would normally) until you’re just out of range and the Judgement icon is red on your bar. The millisecond it gets color back, click it/hit the hotkey, unleash your Judge, and then keep moving.

You can also use the range on Judgement to safely gauge your distance from the Big Ooze.

5. Use Seal of Righteousness for Big Ooze kiting

Seal of Righteousness will give you the most threat bang for your buck. Since you won’t be able to get close enough to build a 5 stack, Seal of Vengeance/Corruption is useless. Moreover, Seal of Command is only really good for aoe situations.

Thus, the burden falls on the neglected Seal of Righteousness. Each time you judge with SoR you’ll do more threat than you would judging any other seal.

Tankadin leveling 1-50: speccing the early years

I got an email from one of my WoW-playing friends recently who’s leveling his brother’s paladin in his spare time. He wanted to level by sticking to the dungeon finder tool and initially asked if it made sense to go prot and just farm LFD. I kind of scoffed at the idea and told him just go ret/holy (since he’s a healer usually, it’d be more comfortable for him). Anyway, he emailed me again earlier this week:

so i bucked your suggestion and went prot, because the dungeon queues are literally instant, which i like for my xp/hour
i was thinking – you should write a “how to” for baby prots. like what talents to fill out first, what heirlooms to get, what stats to prefer, pre-divine plea mana strats

And so I shall!

First, a disclaimer: I leveled my tankadin (yes, as prot) during the early days of TBC. Back then we auto-attacked until level 40 and we liked it! … Uphill, both ways. And there was none of this “mounts at 20″ nonsense, we ran ourselves from end of Desolace to the other… and we liked it!

Sidenote: I originally recommended going straight prot all the way, but after discussing it with my colleague Honors on Twitter, I was persuaded to his point of view that it makes more sense to hang out in the Ret tree initially. The reasons why are below in the relevant sections.

Pre-game

There are no tanking heirlooms per se, but that doesn’t mean you can’t use some dps heirlooms to speed up leveling and make you nigh-unkillable in the first chunk of the game. I would recommend grabbing:

Venerable Dal’Rends Sacred Charge (enchanted with Crusade) — 40 EoH
Polished Breastplate of Valor (enchanted with Major Health) — 40 EoH
Polished Spaulders of Valor — 40 Emblems of Heroism
Swift Hand of Justice — 50 Emblems of Heroism

If you want to go the extra mile, and already have it, grab Discerning Eye of the Beast as well. But, don’t go out of your way for it. It’s not critical, just the bonus mana is nice and that would normally be an empty trink slot.

With those items you’ll be ready to level in style. For the other slots though, when you get items from the AH or for quests, always take the highest armor class item with stamina and strength. Those are your two biggest stats (the “of the Bear” item class) and should be the two you focus on gear-wise. Avoid any intellect, mp5, spirit gear. Even though are attacks are technically spells, mana shouldn’t be a big concern for you. And spellpower is garbage, avoid that at all costs.

Levels 1-10

Before you do anything, hie thee to a mailbox and grab all your heirloom items (assuming you sprung for them).

Now, unfortunately, there are no talents at this point in your character’s life. You start off with Devotion Aura, Seal of Righteousness, and Holy Light. Just burn through all the quests and when you hit level 10 you should have your first tanking seal (Righteousness), a judgement spell (Judgement of Light), your first cooldown (Divine Protection), and your extra life (Lay on Hands).

Levels 11-20

10-14 — Benediction (5/5)
15-16 — Improved Judgements (2/2)
17-19 — Heart of the Crusader (3/3)
20 — Seal of Command

At level 14 you get Righteous Defense, your aoe taunt (pulls up to three mobs off a friendly target). At 16 you get Hand of Reckoning, a single-target taunt that does damage (don’t be afraid to use this as an attack when pulling). And, most importantly, at 16 you get Righteous Fury, which you’ll need to hold aggro. Once you get this spell you’re ready to hit the LFD tool with a… er… righteous fury. Lastly, you get Consecrate at level 20, which is key for holding large groups of mobs.

At level 15 you get your first two glyph slots, and for those I’d recommend grabbing Glyph of Judgement and Glyph of Lay on Hands for each.

If you’re tanking dungeons at this point you’ll have to learn how to cope with a limited toolset. Manage pulls by grabbing one add with Hand of Reckoning, judging a second, and then dropping Consecrate. Hopefully the dps you run with will be intelligent enough to know to attack what mob you are attacking. If you lose aggro be sure to quickly pick it back up with either taunt. Be sure to keep Righteous Fury on at all times!

Bless yourself with Might until level 20 when you get Kings, then switch to that.

If you find mana hard to manage, and you’re dealing with lots of downtime, don’t be afraid to judge wisdom. And don’t consecrate for only one mob, because the spell sucks up a huge chunk of mana when you cast it. Consecrate sparingly. However, once you hit 20 and grab Seal of Command, couple that by changing your major glyph to Glyph of Seal of Command. Now every time you judge you’ll gain back 8% of your mana!

Levels 21-29

21-25 — Divine Strength (5/5)
26-27 — Pursuit of Justice (2/2)
28-29 — Conviction (2/5)

At this point we’re just bouncing between the Ret and Prot tree, biding our time until level 30. Enjoy Pursuit of Justice now while you can, you won’t be seeing it again until past 60.

Legel 30: Respec!

Now that we’ve hit level 30, it’s time to hop over to a capital city and ditch our current build so we can reboot as full prot. When you respec, grab these:

10-14 — Divine Strength (5/5)
15-19 — Anticipation (5/5)
20-22 — Improved Righteous Fury (3/3)
23-27 — Toughness (5/5)
28-29 — Improved Devotion Aura (2/3)
30 — Blessing of Sanctuary

Now, the huge, huge new spell at 30 is Blessing of Sanctuary. This becomes your primary tanking blessing for the rest of the game. All the good parts of Kings (stam and strength) coupled with mana return on every block, dodge, or parry and damage reduction to boot. You can’t beat it. This spell will generally negate a lot of your mana concerns and adequately replace Seal of Command.

Another major glyph slot opens at 30, and you can put the Glyph of Consecration in there. That’ll give you a little more return for the massive amounts of mana it costs you to drop a consecrate. Change your first major glyph back to Judgement now that Seal of Command isn’t part of your toolbox anymore.

Levels 31-40

31-33 — Reckoning (3/5)
34 — Devotion Aura (3/3) [this is putting the last point in there]
35-37 — One-Handed Weapon Specialization (3/3)
38-39 — Sacred Duty (2/2)
40 — Holy Shield

Just a note on the 3/5 Reckoning: generally, 3 points in Reckoning will be enough to ensure optimal uptime in aoe tanking situations. The last two points have diminishing returns, we can better use them elsewhere.

At 34 you can get Divine Shield and thus the ability to bubble hearth. Use it well.

And at 40 you get Holy Shield, which is awesome for tanking dungeons. That extra 30% block means more mana from Blessing of Sanctuary, less damage taken, and more threat when Holy Shield does damage to a mob. You’ll find aoe tanking becomes a walk in the park at this point.

Levels 41-50

41-43 — Ardent Defender (3/3)
44 — Spiritual Attunement (1/2)
45-47 — Combat Expertise (3/3)
48-49 — Redoubt (2/3)
50 — Avenger’s Shield

Two awesome talents at this point. Avenger’s Shield is when pulling gets really easy. No longer do you pull one mob then run in to intercept the rest, now you can hit three mobs at once and build a huge pile of initial threat. And with Spiritual Attunement, you’ll find mana is nearly infinite in dungeons.

You also get a minor glyph slot at 50, which you should put Glyph of Sense Undead into. At this level you’ll probably be spending a lot of time in the Plaguelands and the undead-filled dungeons there in. Coupled with your new Holy Wrath spell, you’ll find aoe tanking undead mobs is where tankadins truly shine.

Contine to Part 2: Levels 51-80. >>

Stomping Putricide’s kids

Sorry for the non-post on Wednesday. I really didn’t have the time to get a post together, and moreover lacked anything interesting to blog on. So in the end I did you all a favor sparing you some dopey half-arsed meditation on what’s a better technique for jumping during Keristrasza. I prefer the occasional twirl, myself, but that’s neither here nor there.

So anyway, Tuesday’s raid was fairly standard: blew through the first four bosses in an hour and then went into the Plagueworks to down Festergut and Rotface. Unfortunately, ever since Saurfang the raid was afflicted by some pretty nasty server lag. On our last attempt on Festergut I was getting on ability off every six seconds or so. It was a mess. Eventually we called it in frustration, the enrage timer being too tight to beat with the hurdles thrown up in front of us.

Last night we assembled on time and headed in with the determination to kill Festergut fast and get some serious work down on Rotface. At the time though I was filled with doubt because many of our top dps couldn’t make it that night. Festergut’s enrage loomed eerily over the potential of our raid.

Sure enough, however, my pessimism was proven wrong and we kill Festergut on the third attempt (after two bad attempts trying to get people to stack/spread innoculations better). And not only that, but the raid dps last night was only about 800 less than it was the first night we killed him. A stinging and welcome rebuke to my negativity, for sure.

Eyes on the prize — let’s kill Rotface

Now that Festergut was dead again (last week: not a fluke) we could focus on the latest roadblock in our progression, Rotface.

One of the biggest issues we had during Rotface last week was, as we determined after, the fight was going on way too long. Our best attempt was seven minutes long, and that was with him at 4%. Ideally, he should be dead by 6 minutes, because that’s the point when infections go out at an insane rate, to the point where the fight is unsustainable to continue.

Remember: infections increase over time, and are not tied to Rotface’s hp, so bring the pain fast and hard is essential.

Part and parcel to our poor coordination last week was, every time there was a slime explosion, everyone just ran for it, usually far away from the boss. This produced raid dps over time that looked like this:

Notice those gigantic sinkholes? That when everyone panicked and ran for it. That’s a huge dps loss to accumulate over time!

Last night the new plan was this: everyone stacks and stands generally on the same side of the boss. So we started with everyone on the left leg (with ranged a little farther back). When there was an explosion, I would call out the cast, and everyone would shift to his right side.

When the Big Ooze begins casting his explosion, he targets where random people were standing at that moment. Coupled with a 2 yard range of the slime rocket damage (once they hit the ground), to negate the threat of the ooze explosions, all everyone needs to do is shift away to the other side of the boss uniformly.

The upside to that change in strat was people could continue dpsing during an explosion with minimal interruption. That gave us this raid dps:

Huge improvement!

After a few attempts working out the kinks and getting everyone used to the new strat, we had an amazing last attempt with expert slime drop offs, quick and efficient shuffling, and exceptional heals. I would occasionally look up at Rotface during my circling of the room, and noticed that he was suddenly at 10%. At this point the infections really started to pick up, and once it got to 5% people just went in to dps and I joined them, being vigilant that if any Big Oozes popped up in the middle I’d grab it and run for it. But 5%-0 took the blink of an eye, and Rotface dropped easily.

An awesome turn around from last week when we were having huge issues on Rotface. It’s always heartening to see that sometimes you just need a strategy change to seal the deal.

I don’t know if everyone was actually expecting to kill Rotface because we weren’t really ready for Putricide. No one knew the strat, had seen him in 10 man, or anything else that would make this a modicum more easy on us.

Despite the 10 minute break we all took to watch the Tankspot video, we basically went in blind, which was kind of fun in a masochistic way. We burned 5 attempts getting him down to 70% or so on our best shot. Lots of work to do there for sure, but whatever. It’ll happen in due time.

For now I’ll focus on the positive: Rotface down.

Bryntroll change nerfs our enchants

Ah, Blizz, the best laid plans of mice and men gang aft agley, eh?

Bryntroll was proccing too much for Unholy DKs and Retribution Paladins we were told, specifically in the latter’s case because refreshing Holy Vengeance (or Blood Corruption) was making the axe proc.

So Blizz changes it so Holy Vengeance/Blood Corruption cannot proc the weapon anymore, and at the same time makes it so those two effect applications cannot proc weapon enchants anymore. This was probably unintentional, because I don’t think there was a major outcry on Ret enchant uptimes. But, the fact remains.

Sidenote: I wonder if this will reduce the uptime on Rune of the Fallen Crusader for dps Unholy DKs?

Nonetheless, unintended consequences abound. Of course as anytime something affects Ret, we are inadvertently hit as well. This change now means Mongoose and Blade Warding have significantly shorter uptimes.

Theck crunched the numbers over at Maintankadin and came up with (for hit/exp capped tanks) a drop from 61% to 42% for Mongoose and 44% to 31% for Blade Warding. The numbers are worse, of course, if you’re neither hit nor expertise capped, which you probably will not be in a survivability-minded gear set.

The aftermath

Does this change how we approach enchants at all? A little. According to Theck, if you’re enchanting for threat, Accuracy is once again far and away your best choice, with even the lowly Titanium Weapon Chain beating out Mongoose.

If you’re enchanting for survivability, Mongoose is probably still your best bet, because even with a diminished uptime, it’s still the only enchant that gives effective health. Blood Draining is more appealing and worth getting if you’d prefer the gimmicky heal over the cold comfort of occasional dodge and armor.

As for Blade Warding… this benighted enchant went from crap to super crap. Continue to avoid it.

And as for me, I have posts to edit. Sigh.

Months behind, but we still had fun

Late Friday night a couple of us were online and bored. After throwing out a couple of options someone suggested a good old fashion drunk raid, and the responsibility was passed onto me to decide where to go. After some thinking, I decided that we’d finally put to rest an old bugbear that’s haunted us since 3.1: Yogg-Saron.

You might recall from my 2009 in review meme response that my biggest disappointment from the previous year was that the guild never killed Yogg-Saron, mostly because our raid organization was a little more than slightly askew back them. Now, months behind, we were going to do something about it. The plan was to skip worrying about achievements, just go in, kill Yogg, and get out before we all passed out from lateness and alcohol poisoning.

And thus, with a gin and tonic in one hand (yes, I have the drinking taste of an elderly British colonialist) and a mouse in the other, I headed into the titanic prison for the first serious raid in a long time.

This rules were simple, generally following the old Naxx rules: socials after boss kills, when a green dropped whoever won the disenchanted mats could instruct someone else to drink, if you died you drank, if you were b-rezzed you had to finish your drink before you accepted it, if you looted a gray armor/weapon you drank.

We took a pretty direct path, rolling over Flame Leviathan, downing the hard-mode XT somewhat by accident, dropping Kologarn while attempting to solo tank it and skip adds, then killing Auriaya and Hodir (drink if you forgot frost resist gear! … and everyone drinks) in short order. On Thorim we accidentally did the hard mode, even while splitting the group down the middle regardless of how much dps was on either side.

Nordicslayer, usually a dps warrior, and he of not-so-Undying fame, tanked the hallway. Towards the end someone warns him not to stand in the runes being cast and he calls out in vent, half-panicked, “no one said there’d be voidzones!!” He was playing to his reputation, but definitely one of the funnier moments of the night.

The funniest, hands down, though was in Freya’s room. At the entrance, someone of course let go the guild motto of “It’ll only take twenty minutes!” We all laugh and start clearing. Finally, after slogging through all the trash and a somewhat messy job on Freya an achievement pops up. Con-speed-atory, what the hell is that? We all click it and the description comes up: “Defeat Freya within 20 minutes of the first creature you kill in the Conservatory of Life in 10-player mode.”

It actually took 20 minutes. I had to excuse myself so I could go convulse with laughter in the other room. I almost lizzed a little.

Once we got to Mimiron, one of the warriors dc’d and I brought in Falowin to replace him. We engaged Mimiron and were doing great until phase 3 when a shockwave finished off three melee too slow to get out of the way. Thankfully, we probably had twice the raid dps we needed and easily dropped him.

Then is was down to Vezax who was mostly a joke. By this point I was sporting a fantastic buzz and really enjoying the colors and lighting. In short, my tanking was getting somewhat sloppy. But, I was having a great time.

And then we walked over to Yogg-Saron, ran in, and in a huge clusterfrak wiped spectacularly. Like someone flipping a switch, I immediately sobered up in nascent panic.

My dumb, drunken idea was to solo tank it, and that generally worked with a little finesse. By the third attempt I had managed to harness what little buzz remained, allowing me to slow down time and dance among the green clouds under Sara. No one tripped any extra clouds aside from myself right off the bat and we pushed it to Phase 2 nice and clean. Then we moved fluidly as a group, slaying tentacles like a Lovecraftian gardener, and the melee hopped into the brain room when the portals appear. Unlike the first attempt when half the melee couldn’t find a portal and then those that did eventually came our mind controlled, this time they maximized dps on the brain and came out ready to go back in.

The time between brain attacks was minimal because dps was blazing fast, and before I knew it we were on phase 3. I quickly remembered what little I knew about the phase and attempted to pick up all the guardians while keeping my back to Yogg when possible. Falowin counted off health remaining while I jumped into a sanity well and panicked over the flocking numbers of guardians. Suddenly a wave of calm washed over me when the numbers hit the single digits, and finally the Beasts with a Million Maws slumped over. I had killed a god. I was like a Ghostbuster.

Anyway, it was a great night. We had lots of drunken fun, managed to snag a (sadly and hugely late) first kill for the guild, and scored a lot of shards for the guild bank. Most of all it was laid back and truly enjoyable. Something I don’t really get often in the high stress, progression-esque 25mans.

Now, back to the hard modes.