Author: Kurn
//Found a new site (to me, anyways) in the last day or so, called TankingTips.com. For someone who has never played a prot warrior but has to lead said warriors through battle, it’s an AMAZING resource. And is obviously great for prot warriors, too!
Which is better, for example… The Brooch of Deftness or the Shattered Sun Pendant of Resolve? The answer to the age-old (well, since 2.4 anyways) question is here!
Chock-full of great, useful, smart information. Two thumbs up!
//So, my computer sucks. No, really. It does. It’s a laptop, integrated graphics card, etc. It sucks. To the point where if I’m the first on the constructs on Gorefiend, I will probably lag as I die and will miss the shackling of the constructs. I still lag when I’m not first, but at least others can help out at that point.
I have, therefore, been sitting myself out of this fight whenever we have enough healers to cover for me.
Sunday night, we had like, 10 healers online, so I sat myself and asked a couple people to alt or swap out and such.
They did six attempts with a couple of people DCing, a couple of people who had never attempted it, and then one of our mages (who lives in Malaysia with not the greatest internet connection ever) DCed again and finally, I had to swap him out. But who else was available? No one but myself. And on my HUNTER of all things, because we had enough healers.
So I macroed the spirit shackle, spirit lance and spirit volley spells to F1, F2 and F3 respectively, and went in, expecting to wipe the raid. As I have done in the past.
Well, our resident fury warrior had suggested to me that I bubble at the pull to ensure I’m not the first one marked for death. Lacking a bubble entirely as a hunter, I did what any hunter does when he or she doesn’t want to die. I feigned death right after the pull. And got back up after someone else got the shadow of death.
So I’m DPSing merrily away and noticing that the timer for the shadow of death is approaching 30 seconds on the first person who was marked. And that my Feign Death is similarly about to cool down.
As soon as FD cooled down, I feigned again.
And again, someone else got the Shadow of Death debuff.
Popped back up. More DPS. Feigned as soon as I could again.
This continued until Teron Gorefiend was at 25% and I stopped feigning and just poured on the DPS. In that fight, I used drums of battle twice, my trinket once, rapid fire once and beastial wrath once. And had a mana potion.
And didn’t die or wipe the raid. We killed him, our first-ever guild kill. And I was part of it on my hunter. And I wasn’t worthless.
It was hilarious. I was giggling with glee.
That said, bad timing might cause premature triggering of constructs in the raid, so I’ll try to continue to sit out, but at least I know I can help if I need to.
//Don’t click if you don’t want to be spoiled.
//More beta stuff!
//Okay, folks, don’t click if you don’t want to know about the WotLK beta.
//Thanks to a very kind and awesome friend, I have found myself in the Beta test for Wrath of the Lich King.
As such, I will be posting beta details and screenshots and stories here. However, I’ll do my best to keep spoilers under the “more” section of the post.
More soon!
//Priest healing is hacks. No joke, no lie, Circle of Healing, Renew, Prayer of Mending, all total hacks. I love it.
I completely blew up the healing according to WWS in my first-ever guild raid on my priest on Proudmoore. No joke. #2 on the night, with 15% of the heals. #1, a very geared resto shammy with 24% of heals. #3 was the healing officer, a holy paladin (I swear, she’s pretty much the equivalent of me over in that guild) with 15% of the heals (I beat her by 23k healing). Rounding off the bottom three; a shammy healer, another Circle of Healing priest and a resto druid. I should note all of these people, barring the other CoH priest, have more +healing than I do, and the other priest is around my level.
//So I realized today that it’s been forever since I updated this blog and didn’t talk about my guild. Back when I started it, I had all KINDS of conversational topics that I wanted to use to inform people about various misconceptions and such.
But I promptly forgot them all.
Until tonight! Tonight, I was reminded about paladins and their blessings and how they work completely differently from any other buff in the game, basically. I don’t generally think about this, because, well, I play a paladin daily. So I know how it works, and take for granted that others do too, because my guild was basically built on holy paladins being the core of the healers. So every learned about pally buffs early on.
But now, you see, I’ve taken my holy priest and gone forth and joined a raiding guild on Proudmoore. Without giving up my guild on Eldre’Thalas. In fact, Apotheosis (my E’T guild), is still my priority, but I thought I could relax and have fun with the priest by raiding content I already know in a guild that’s trying to work its way back to being 3/4 in TK and 5/6 of SSC.
The inspiration for today’s post came when I heard a mage calling for Salv on “Group 1” over Vent.
//I’ve (re)discovered that the life of a guild leader (be it GM, officer, class lead, what-have-you) is full of ups and downs.
Supremus down last Monday. I didn’t even get into the raid, because I had to go to my brother’s college graduation. So I got home and told the officers I was on standby… and they’re like “uh. Supremus down.”
Which, you know, is great. And I’m proud of them and I’m glad they could do it without me. I was called in after a pally had to go so there we went, clearing to Akama (we accidentally poked our noses into Gorefiend’s room first, oops) and gave it Shade of Akama a few tries before ultimately calling it. Good night, though. Progress!
Tuesday, it was back to Hyjal for some beating up of bosses, only we had a lot of trouble on Anetheron, which left me wanting to throttle most of the DPS, but eventually he went down and we went up and wiped on Kaz’rogal due to a bad initial pull on him. Meh, it was late, we called it.
Thursday… we cancelled. Because we had something like 10 cancellations and some “I may not be able to make it” type signups.
Then this Sunday was my mother’s birthday, so when I got home, they had just killed Azgalor. Again, a first kill without me there! I’m beginning to feel superfluous. ;)
Monday saw two tailors and a blacksmith hit honored with the Ashtongue Deathsworn as we killed Naj’entus and one-shotted Supremus and tried Shade of Akama a couple more times.
Don’t get me started on how we’re failing at “the chess event of Black Temple”. It’s the easy fights we have problems with. Lurker? Bitch and a half to learn. Vashj? Learned it quickly, took a while to execute, but ultimately, we got better just about every time we tried. All of Hyjal? Easy mode, thus far. (I have no illusions about Archimonde…) But BT is proving challenging for us. Naj’entus – people are killing others by not waiting for the heals to finish. Supremus – people are standing in fire. Shade of Akama – things are getting loose and eating mages and healers.
Practice makes perfect, I suppose, but it also makes for one hell of a rollercoaster ride.
In other news, Season 4 comes out today. I don’t much care for my own toons, except that I put up 37 gems last night and have a ton of enchanting mats, so I might make a fair amount of cash over the next day or two.
//We did it. We actually did it. We downed Vashj and cleared SSC on Monday, June 2nd, 2008.
http://files.filefront.com/apotheosis+vs+vashjavi/;10483306;/fileinfo.html
I HIGHLY recommend you download the full movie to your HD and watch it full-screen.
Notable moments:
4:40ish – Dayden (whose POV this is from) takes a second from tanking a Naga and hammer of wraths the leaked elemental.
East side had the first tainted, but I believe all three others were on the west. Go Toga and Mass and Kam!
7:00 – Phase 3 – enrage in 4 minutes. You’ll note the length of the video is 11:12. Hehe.
The pallies do a good job of keeping Blessing of Freedom up on the tanks, too!
8:50ish – You can start seeing sporebats, oh dear.
9:05ish – Warthon starts getting beat on and eventually goes down. In the span of three seconds: static charge from a nearby raid member, a swing, a shock blast… with very few heals because we were all chasing them around.
He gets a battle rez about 10 seconds after he dies… and the druid who rezzed him had static charge. 3 hits of that, bam, dead Warthon.
10:40ish – 15865 heal from Madrana. That’s me. Lay on Hands. It crit. And, according to the logs, only overhealed for 7%. Ahahaha! This is my favourite moment and makes up for me dying in the green goo shortly thereafter. Like, 12 seconds after. Popped my SS, jumped out of the goo… and died in the goo again.
Vashj down.
Over 70 wipes, over 35 different raiders, way too many hours to count…
But Vashj down. SSC cleared. WOOT.
For anyone curious as to our raid makeup:
Druids: 1 (Resto)
Hunters: 3 (2 BM, 1 MM)
Mages: 2 (2 Arc/Frost)
Paladins: 4 (3 Holy, 1 Prot)
Priests: 4 (1 Imp DS, 1 CoH, 2 Shadow.)
Rogues: 2 (2 Combat/Swords)
Shaman: 5 (! 2 Enh, 1 Ele, 2 Resto)
Warriors: 2 (1 prot, 1 fury)
Warlocks: 2 (2 0/21/40, Destro/Demo)
How we laid it out for Phase 2:
West side: 1 BM Hunter, 1 paladin healing. 1 warlock going over to help with spawns whenever a tainted spawned.
East side: 1 BM Hunter, 1 MM Hunter, 1 paladin healing.
North side: 1 Enh shammy (w/ poison cleansing totem down), 1 priest (Imp DS) healing.
South side: 1 fury warrior, 1 paladin healing.
NW Generator: Resto druid
NE Generator: Resto shammy
SW Generator: Resto shammy
SE Generator: CoH Priest
Center: 2 Tanks (1 warrior, 1 pally), 2 rogues, 1 enh shammy
Striders: 1 ele shammy (kiting), 2 mages, 2 warlocks (one peeling off for west if needed), 2 shadow priests (for blackout, mindflay)
Here’s the anonymous report from WWS: