Line ‘em up …

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.

Raging Spirits are bastards

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.

We’re getting there

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.

More smooth sailing, &c.

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.

Beyond my wildest dreams

Last night was the easiest, smoothest, fastest, and all around best night we have ever had in Icecrown Citadel. I don’t know if something was in the water, or if everyone took their vitamins that morning, or if Anafielle and Valja brought over some powerful mojo with them from their last guild. Either way, something clicked and it was amazing.

First pull was at 6:36 server time, six minutes late, but we made up for it by chain pulling to Marrowgar and keeping a good pace going. After that we basically just steamrolled our way through and up to Saurfang, eventually reaching the first designated break at 7:21 server time.

When everyone was back, the pain train started up again and we burnt through Dreamwalker (where I scored the Grinning Skull Greatboots, finally) and then on to the Blood Wing. The weekly raid quest was for BQL, which had since eluded us. And, by eluded I mean we’ve gotten the quest a few times, just never completed it. The raid always insisted on a few “shaking off the rust wipes” to keep my blood pressure at a healthy level.

Once everyone was there we were off to the races. Minimal marks on the pre-Council trash, just enough to focus down the tacticians one by one. Council was dropped with no trouble, and then we shot up the steps to pull the Blood Queen. The first go was a last second wipe, thanks to losing a dps to a mind control (who, thanks to lag, somehow still managed to get his bite off, though) and a mis-timed Blood Lust. No matter, we quickly regrouped and then downed her with complete ease the second go, managing to snag the weekly quest in the process.

It was now 8:21, a full hour after Saurfang was down, and we were making fantastic time. Off to Plague Wing.

For Festergut, Anafielle and I had an arrangement where I’d get to kite the Rotface ooze if she got to tank Festergut first. I acquiesced and was helpless to stop her relentless march to shaming the dps on that boss. When we switched my devious plan was to call for blust at my 9-stack portion and post a higher spike than her. Unfortunately, hubris got the best of me, and like some trashy Bond villain I taunted her in vent, “and once I get to nine stacks I’ll have blood lust! And then–Wait! No! I didn’t call for–” BLAARGGLAARGAARRGGHH “Nyoooo!!”

She ended up posting some ridiculous dps and apparently scored the 32nd place on the prot pally Festergut rankings. Not too shabby!

Nonetheless, the rest of Plague Wing was fairly uneventful. We steamrolled Rotface, then Putricide as well, posting our cleanest kill yet. When Herr Doktor bit the dust, it was 9 server time, an hour left to go in the raid. Good god, I suddenly realized, we had time to do Sindragosa that night.

So, as we headed over to the Frostwing Halls again we did our best to dash any optimism Ana/Valja might have been feeling after our two and half hour 10/12 marathon. Sindragosa was no where near on farm, we’d probably be coming back tomorrow to finish the job after some aforementioned rust-shaking wipes.

Imagine my surprise when at 10:42 I found myself staring at the corpse of Sindragosa. We two-shot her, after spending an entire raid night on her the week before.

And to top it all off, we have an entire night to spend on Arthas now. Three and half hours of Lich King. Glorious.

Last night was definitely one our best raid nights ever, and succeeded beyond my wildest dreams. I hope those successes are foreshadowing of a Lich King kill tonight.

We’ve got the orange fever

Last week when we killed Sindragosa, Nordicslayer, our designated Shadowmourne-wielder-to-be, completed the Frost Infusion quest. Last night in our usual 10/12 romp through ICC-25 we had 7 Shadowfrost Shards drop. That’s a 70% drop rate, much higher than the 25% I was expecting.

I’m not sure where I got that number, but I’m happy that I wrong. We’re on track to finish that Shadowmourne by the end of June (sooner if luck is favorable and the randomness holds out). We have another person, a DK, who’ll be finishing Frost Infusion tonight and can collect shards as soon as Nordic is done. I’d expect his Shadowmourne to be done around August.

Very exciting!

On a related note, there’s been discussion about what to do with the BOE chest loot. While the system that these items come from is ridiculously ill-thought out, the fact that they are BOE means I can use them for some great guild morale boosting. The plan as it is now is the two Shadowmourne builders can pick one item from the chest to keep for themselves (both will probably pick the mount) and the rest we’ll distribute via some sort of guild lottery or as prizes in guild events.

Likewise I’m planning to somehow cajole everyone into unanimously giving me the Tabard of the Lightbringer as a thank you for all the stress the lovable scamps have put me through while running the guild and raids. I think I can sway them with some dignified weeping.

What I’m curious about is this, if your guild is building a Shadowmourne, what kind of drop rate are you seeing–or did you see–on the shards? And also, what’s your plan for the five BOE items?

Clipping Sindragosa’s wings

Wednesday night my guild took down Sindragosa on about the seventh attempt of the night. I made several tweaks to the strategy (as I detailed in a previous post) which I think made the difference. That is, in addition to the experience we had built up the last two times we faced down this frosty dame. Here’s how we did it:

Pre-Game

I used AVR to around a scene of seven meshes. I’ll go into further detail on how to do this in a future post, though it’s pretty simple. Put five raid symbols on the stairs–skull, cross, triangle, square, and circle–and arrange them with three in the front and two in the back. Put 10 yards between each symbol. You can test distance by drawing one and having someone stand in it, moving 10 yards away (checking a proximity detector to confirm distance) and then dropping a new symbol.

We also put two green circles out on the main floor. This is where people would be dropping frost beacons in phase 3. More on that in a bit, of course.

Sidenote: When people are positioning themselves on AVR-drawn objects, make sure they pan their cameras straight down. Because the stairs are on an angle the AVR meshes don’t sit well on them, kind of float, and can look like they’re in a different spot if viewed at a weird angle. Just pan the camera down and they’ll be in the right place for everyone.

Phase 1

When picking up Sindragosa you want her sitting on top of the west-east line that crosses the area horizontally. When she’s coming down stand in the southwest corner of the circle and swing around to hopefully position her in the proper place.

You melee want to stand at max melee range (to prevent getting Tail Swiped) and your ranged want to park themselves directly behind your melee. The reason ranged need to be so close is because when everyone gets sucked in for Blistering Cold, those that are farthest away are going to land after everyone else does, and thus have less time to run away from the aftershock. The closer the ranged are the bigger their headstart is.

Likewise, if you find your raid is having trouble running out of Blistering Cold there are two tricks you can use to give them some breathing room. Have a warlock put Curse of Tongues on Sindra, and the cast time for Blistering Cold will go from 5 seconds to 6.5. Also, when everyone lands, have a hunter turn on Aspect of the Pack, and then quickly turn it off right before the spell hits everyone. We had issues with some slower people and coupling those two changes made a world of difference keeping everyone alive after a Blistering Cold.

Also, I noticed that when Curse of Tongues is up, Sindra won’t lunge forward after casting Blistering Cold like she usually would.

Phase 2

After a period of time, Sindra will go up in the air and mark five people to be turned into ice blocks. We had DBM enabled on a raid assist and that threw up marks on each of those five players. They then ran to their respective spots as delineated by AVR.

Everyone else who was no marked was instructed to run to the wall of the stairs and hug that spot until the blocks went up. As soon as blocks formed we jumped in, knocking down the back two blocks, then the front three. You’ll find the farther apart the blocks are, the harder it will be to get them down in time. Splash damage goes a long way in this phase.

As the tank I was watching the timer while dpsing my own private block. Sindra casts four frost bombs and as soon as that fourth one hits you want to run out into the wider area and prepare to pick Sindra up and position her like you did when first aggroing her. Remember: on top of the east-west line is ideal.

Rinse and Repeat

Phases 1 and 2 will cycle until you hit 35%. For this reason you probably want to use Bloodlust/Heroism right off the bat, to get the best and most use of it, and hopefully restrict the fight to no more than three air phases. More than that and you’ll have Enrage timer issues.

Phase 3

This is where the fight gets interesting. Sindra will stay permanently grounded, but you’ll still get a frost beacon regularly. For this purpose we have those dots on the floor past the stairs. That’s where you want beaconed people to run and drop their block. Everyone else should be parked on the north-south line to avoid being caught in a chain block.

Have two to three dual wielding melee (we used two rogues and a frost DK) to be on permanent block duty. They’re going to have issues dpsing Sindra thanks to Chilled to the Bone, so we maximized raid dps by having the blocks demolition crew occupy themselves with that task while the rest of the raid only used the blocks to drop their Mystic Buffet stacks.

Train your dps and heals to watch the timer of Mystic Buffet, which has an 8 second duration, so that they can just park themselves next to a block and continue to dps or heal, and only break LOS when they have 2-3 seconds left on their timer. Once the timer expires, if LOS’d, they’ll drop their Buffet stacks. They might as well continue to dps/heal because just hiding behind the block and twiddling their thumbs won’t make Mystic Buffet fall off, the debuff has to tick to 0 first.

Phase 3 is not a dps race, it’s an endurance test. If your raid panics and starts blowing cooldowns you’re going to get chain blocks and wipe. Just reassure them to pay attention, exercise situational awareness, and always stand in the middle if they’re not dropping a block or their stacks. Slow and steady wins the race.

As for Frost Resist

I made everyone in raid wear two pieces so we could work on surviving to the end of the fight. On the sixth attempt we reached my big goal: wiping to the enrage timer. The seventh attempt we killed Sindra with a few seconds left on the timer (although, funnily enough we were 24 manning it because one guy had to go pick up his daughter–I never expected that to be the attempt).

Now I think next week, since everyone has seen a kill, we can dial that back to one piece of FR and probably none in a few cases. I’ll let the healers make that call.

Personally, I wore Belt and Boots again for little more than 300 FR. I’m happy with damage intake with that number.

Aftermath

Killing Sindragosa was a huge morale boost for the guild. We’d been kinda stuck on her for the last two weeks and now that she’s down I’m sure the next kill will be a lot easier.

After dropping her I was so happy to be able to lead the raid up to the Lich King. At that point we were mostly farting around, without much effect (although Phase 1 is kinda down now, haha) but I was just happy to let everyone see the fight and the area. There was much “ooing and ahing” from those that aren’t party to my 10man runs.

Somehow I need to figure out how to finagle the schedule so we can get some meaningful attempts on Arthas every week. I suppose if we start three shotting Sindra every week that’ll be about two hours every Wednesday to learn him. That could work.

Moreover, the guild’s designated Shadowmourne person completed the last of the Unholy/Blood/Frost quests and will start collecting shards next week. Very exciting!

Lock, stock, and …

Ok, back to Sindragosa tonight. It didn’t go too well last week, but I’ve made some roster switches and some strategy tweaks and I think we’ll have a better shot at her tonight.

Last night was a huge pain, with the game seemingly intent on neutering my goal of killing all farm bosses (10/12) and having a clean slate for Sindra tonight. We had a few roster switches on the way to Saurfang, thanks to various emergencies popping up. That delayed us a bit. Then, when we finally downed Saurfang the door to the Upper Spire wouldn’t open. Awesome.

I herded everyone out and we jumped to Naxx to kill Razuvious for the weekly while I ran a 20-minute timer awaiting a soft reset. After 20 minutes we went back and (thankfully) the door was now open. But that was 20 minutes behind on the clock we then were.

Everything went swimmingly, including BQL, which we three shot. And the two wipes before were enrage wipes with 1-2% of her health to go. We probably could have killed her the first time if I didn’t get DI’d. I was planning to just bubble and taunt and hope the dps killed her during fixate. No dice though, my DI (while well-meant) just made me drop aggro and let BQL blow everyone up. Of course, I blame myself but the true fault was with people who died in the second air phase or whenever and made us miss the enrage. I know mistakes happen, but gah.

Anyway, I’ll digress for now. Let’s focus on the positive: not one mind control in any of the three attempts. /bask

We dropped BQL with about thirty minutes left in raid, if we were going to 10 server time. So 30 minutes for Rotface/Festergut/Putricide. Eek. I chain pulled more or less to Rotface, we quickly one-shot him, then dodged over and dropped Festergut post haste. That was done at around 10 server though, so I more of less begged people to not drop so we could hopefully kill Putri rather than forgo his loot.

Amazingly, we one-shot the good doctor as well. I was pleasantly surprised to say the least.

Raid redundancy is key

We’re a casual guild, we don’t enforce mandatory attendance percents, people are generally free to come and go as they please, though the more consistent people are favored for invites. One of the huge issues we’ve had in the past though was, with the old system, we protected the spots of about 30 people and didn’t invite or gear beyond that. And, after time some burnt out or stopped showing up and we brought in new faces but we were totally screwed a few months ago when we were getting 7-8 no shows a night from the core.

To prevent this from happening in the future and killing raids, I started recruiting a lot more folks, to the point where we have about 40 raiders now that can come in and keep me confident I’m not hurting the raid. And we still have about 8 people or so night to night who can’t make it, and thanks to the redundancy in the system we haven’t missed a raid night since I started bringing in those new recruits.

Last night we had three different people drop because of various emergencies–one crippling lag, one a friend in a car accident, and one not explained but it sounded urgent. I had plenty of folks on standby though and the only delay was in summoning a standby person to come in. The system worked.

But, part and parcel to this, people need to go on standby sometimes. And sometimes, the standbyers need to be the vets or officers. The system can’t work if it isn’t fair, you know? One officer I had on standby last night bitched to me for no end since he saw on Sunday night he was on standby for Tuesday, and this was the first time in… well, since the new system was instituted that he was benched. And this was for one night.

Last night when the raid started the bitching did not cease. He sat in vent and sarcastically shot little snarks across my bow about his position. The kicker? This guy’s a frigging officer, and he was conducting himself like this. I had half a mind to at least demote, at most gkick, and wash my hands of this. If you’re an officer you are supposed to set a frakking example for the members. How will they react when they see an officer bitching in vent over being benched for one goddamn night? Ugh.

Like a nail in the head, I need that.

Let’s dance, Sindy

I alluded to some strategy changes earlier in this post. They are basically minor tweaks to ameliorate issues we had with people getting hit by Blistering Cold more than I would like. For example, if people don’t have a run speed enchant or talent, they need to get Tuskarr’s Vitality. And a hearty facepalm if they didn’t already have some kind of speed boost. Especially, the dps. Likewise I’m making sure ranged dps/healers stand behind the melee rather than at max range.

Also, I’m asking everyone to bring two pieces of Frost Resist gear. That might be overkill, but my main goal is to make it to the enrage with everyone alive then dial back survivability until we find the right balance between that and dps.

I think we have a better shot of Sindragosa tonight. We know the fight a bit more, I’ve cut anyone from the raid tonight who was a constant disaster last week, and the increased focus on survival should bear fruit. I hope.

Alright, let’s do this.

Azeroth was screwed

At Azeroth’s darkest moment, it depended on a motley crew of about 20 heroes (and that is questionable) to defeat Archimonde and keep him from destroying the world tree. I pity the world if they really were saved by the group of people I joined in Hyjal on saturday night. The pug consisted of about seven people from my guild, six from a 70-capped raiding guild called Glory Days, and a smattering of other random 80s.

It must have been a full moon or something, because there were some colorful personalities in that pug. The leader spent the entire raid falling behind and taking forever to dispense loot. There was a ret pally who was constantly screaming in all caps for a SUMMON to Hyjal, or for some friend of his to be SUMMONED, or for him to be SUMMONED because he fell off a cliff. I use all caps because that’s how communicated, petulantly and in a demanding, infantile manner. I wanted to reach through the Internet and slap him.

He must have been some 12 year old kid spending a saturday night being babysat by the Internet, because I can’t imagine a high-functioning adult could ever behave in the way he did. It’s just not possible.

When we were meeting in the Night Elf village to head down to Archimonde, the warlock ran off the cliff, somehow aggro’d Archimonde, was one shot, and then caused the boss to immediately kill everyone in the zone. I was standing up next to Tyrande, saw everyone suddenly drop dead and a golden sheath of light burst from me. “Oh, hey, AD procced.”

Once we pulled it became obvious that, of course, many of the assembled dopes didn’t get their tears and eventually fell to their deaths. It was fun watching the squares on grid of each mouth-breather one by one turn grey to reflect their easily prevented-demise.

And let’s talk for a second about the stupidity of this strict-70 raiding guild that organized the run. How are you a strict TBC raiding guild when you depend on 80s to carry you through lvl 70 content? Like the old robot adage goes, “does not compute.” Basically they organized the run (and I use that word as loosely as possible), took all the loot they wanted since they could make the loot rules, barely contributed (if at all–most of the mouth-breathers were wearing Glory Days tags), and then when we finished were like “ok, let’s go to Sunwell!” I could not drop group faster.

5/8

After we fled that clusterfark, those of us that went to Hyjal continued our bored old-school raiding antics and went to BWL at someone’s suggestion. I am always game for BWL because I’m trying to compile a full Judgement set. After scoring the Judgement Spaulders off of Chromaggus that night, I’m now at 5/8. Just the chest, boots, and belt to go. I think my ultimate goal is to assemble the full judgement gear, my Thunderfury (still waiting on your binding, Garr, you jerk), and some equally awesome shield, and then (if this is possible with the new system) queue up for a random Stratholme and run some levelers through the place. It will be bewilderingly awesome, especially since as an 80 nothing will be able to hit me for much, regardless of what gear I’m wearing.

Three more Kingslayers

Last night finally saw the end to the latest 10man lockout I’ve been running. I do a 10man once a week in ICC and we usually just extend the lockout until we finish it up, then shake the roster up a bit. My big goal for this lockout was to get the LK kill for some people that run in other groups, so we could have a second 10man doing hardmodes and getting some 264 loot. Now that that’s done, the next lockout I run will be more focused on hard mode progression and less on another LK kill.

Our second LK kill wasn’t anymore difficult than the last one, I think we got him on the fifth attempt or so. Defiles are pretty much cake once you get everyone focused and hyper aware (though, I say this in 10man, where I can weed out those incapable of paying attention) and Valks are a non-issue with a 15% buff. We had some initial trouble with Infest, but that’s only because we were so used to having our pro disc healer neutralizing them before they ever became an issue. How complacent we were.

I’m mostly looking forward to taking my guild into the 25man version of this fight, but also terrified at the thought of it. We’ll see how it goes when the time comes for the greater group of us to face down Arthas.

Three years in the making

Happy birthday Gulliveig!

Lastly, I would be remiss if I didn’t wish a very happy birthday to my pal, Gulliveig.

Check out the cake my girlfriend (she of the Rhidach Cake) made for his birthday party Friday:

A pug shaman surrounded by troll totems. Celebrating his two loves–pugs and shamanism. That pug face is kind of haunting, though.

Many happy returns, buddy.

I just don’t get it

I raid with an incredible group of people. People that can learn from mistakes and build upon progress to score some amazing kills. And yet, we have nights like we did last night on Sindragosa. And I just don’t get why. I see attempts where no on dies to Blistering Cold, where no extra blocks happen in air phase, where everyone is alive at the Phase 3 start, and yet we then follow it up with multiple attempts of Blistering Cold deaths, extra blocks, and multiple deaths before 35%. Maybe I expect too much.

Sindragosa, from my perspective at the business end of the dragon, seems to be such an easy fight. And, god knows, I’ve made the fight even easier. Removed so much guess work.

Using AVR I put symbols on the stairs (I’ll detail how in a future post) for each raid icon and two green dots further ahead. In air phase, people get icons from DBM and need to run to park on their symbol. Usually, this goes smoothly, but then there were so many attempts where people run up the middle of the stairs to get to safety in the back and were hit by multiple frost beacons, immediately killing them. How many times did I have to shout “if not beaconed, run up the sides!” during the course of the night? Who knows.

As for the two green dots, I explained in phase 3 I want to see frost beaconed people run to either dot and everyone else, to stay 10 yards away from those dots if they are not beaconed and not using that block to drop Mystic Buffet. And what happened? Multiple people over the course

Tunnel-visioning, that’s the problem. No situational awareness. We hit phase 3 and people panic and lose sight of the most important thing: endurance. They stand in the red circles AVR puts under people to indicate that person was beaconed, they run up too many stacks of Chilled to the Bone, they don’t drop their Mystic Buffet stacks. They die in the first phase 3 Blistering Cold because they weren’t expecting it.

For kicks, here’s the dead simple way of doing Sindragosa:

1. When sucked in for Blistering Cold immediately turn around and run out. (Mouse turn, not keyboard turn). Don’t die.
2. In air phase stand on the symbol corresponding to your mark. If not marked run up the sides of the stairs until you reach the safe spot in the back.
3. LOS the Frost Bombs. Put a block between you and the swirl out ahead.
4. During phase 3 do not stand within 10 yards of those two green dots. If beaconed drop your block on the closest one. If it’s your turn to drop Mystic Buffet, do so once the block is made. If beaconed while behind the block immediately run to the next green dot.

And yet.

I don’t write this post to cast aspersions at my raid crew. They’re a fantastic group of people. I just need to find some way to make everything click. It frustrates me to no end that I am powerless to make these stupid little mistakes go away. I know we’ll kill Sindragosa eventually, once everything clicks. I’d just prefer that was sooner rather than later.

Frost Resist Sidenote: Now that I remembered to run a log, I can affirmatively say that with ~300 FR I took about 20k damage per Frost Breath and resisted on average 14k damage per. This seemed pretty healable (especially with 60k hp), so I think more than 300 FR will be unnecessary.

Moreover, my OT and I were switching regularly during Phase 3 so I never ate a Frost Breath more than around 30k, unless the OT was dead and my stacks were out of control.

I wore Belt and Boots this time. I think my buffed FR number was 301, but I know for a fact it was more than 300.

Fun fact: I cast Hand of Freedom on myself 52 times last night. I thought it’d be more than that.