Category: firelands

Heroic Ultraxion and Some Ranting.

Kurn / / apotheosis, bastion of twilight, blackwing descent, dragon soul, firelands, raiding, ramblings

On Thursday, February 23rd, Apotheosis killed Heroic Warlord Zon’ozz.

We then took out Heroic Hagara as normal. We had previously taken down Heroic Yor’sahj for the second time and Heroic Morchok for something like the eighth time.

And then we faced Heroic Ultraxion for the first time, getting him to 8% and then, on Sunday night, we had a 0% wipe (somewhere around a million health left, maybe).

The first thing I want to rant about is how Heroic Dragon Soul is murder on raid leaders for organizing groups.

Heroic Morchok — you have to split your raid in half. As such, it makes life easier for everyone involved when you designate two and a half groups to Morchok and two and a half groups to Kohcrom. I can deal with this. That’s fine.

Heroic Yor’sahj — Due to the fact that you will, occasionally, have to spread out AND due to the fact that Deep Corruption almost certainly requires very controlled healing assignments, the easiest thing to do here is to dump three healers and two tanks into G1, most of melee in G2 and the rest of your DPS in groups 3, 4 and 5, putting a single healer in those groups with them.

Okay. I’m fine with that, too.

Heroic Zon’ozz — This was nightmarish for me. Maybe I organized the fight wrong, but we downed him, so I don’t think it’s wrong or even more complicated than it has to be. It IS complicated, though. So I have three healers, a tank and a “DPS tank” (feral druid) in G1 and then G2-G5 each have 1 healer and 4 DPS, all of whom are very, very precisely assigned to very, very precise DPS targets/physical locations. Naturally, it wouldn’t make sense to have two melee on one flail in the back of the room, two ranged on an eye in the front of the room and one healer tasked to healing all four of those people when they’re not in range of any of them, right? As such, group assignments for Zon’ozz are, I find, extremely fussy.

Heroic Hagara — I like to put the various people on a lightning line in a group together. That just makes SENSE, right? I also like to make sure Ice Lance soakers and healers are in the same group — and in the same lightning line.

And then, Heroic Ultraxion — Group 1 takes Hour of Twilight 1, Group 2 takes the second, Group 3 takes the third and then we go back to G1, G2, G3, G1 and G2.

Tier 11 was, without a doubt, The Interrupt Tier. Omnotron Defense system required interrupts. Maloriak required interrupts. Nefarian required interrupts. Halfus required interrupts. Ascendant Council required interrupts. Cho’gall required interrupts. Basically, if your interrupters weren’t competent, you were screwed.

Tier 12 was, in my estimation, the “OMFG WHAT COOLDOWN NOW?!” Tier. On every single encounter, proper planned usage of cooldowns was absolutely required. Shannox required tank cooldowns in particular, but Aura Mastery and Spirit Link Totem were great for the raid. Rhyolith – cooldown rotation in P2. Beth’tilac – hey, cooldown rotation in P2 again. Alysrazor – hey, yet ANOTHER batch of cooldowns for a specific phase of the fight! Baleroc – some cooldowns needed to help soak crystals/blades, but not much in terms of raid-wide cooldowns. Majordomo Staghelm – particularly on normal mode, was an encounter where cooldowns were OUT OF CONTROL. Ragnaros – hey, look, let’s all group up and BLOW ALL THE COOLDOWNS every minute or so. (Note – most of these comments describe the fights pre-nerf.)

And Tier 13 is, in my opinion, the “Hey, Let’s Make Your Raid Leader Cry by Making it So Inefficient to Not Organize Groups That They’ll Be Forced to Micromanage Groups!” Tier. And they make you do it through the crappy, old, outdated raid interface, which won’t allow you to change people’s groups while in combat, so you can’t even do it on trash.

So the second thing I want to rant about is related to group organization, particularly for Heroic Ultraxion.

You get a debuff when you eat an Hour of Twilight (even if you’re immune with a bubble or an Ice Block) that lasts two minutes. It’s called Looming Darkness. If you eat another Hour of Twilight while you have Looming Darkness, you die. No ifs, ands or buts. Dead. So you can only take every third Hour of Twilight. Not so bad, right? Just need 9 people on 25-man to soak Hours. Should be fine, right? Wrong. Heroic Ultraxion requires five soakers per Hour of Twilight. That is a minimum of 15 people (on 25-man) required to soak. Hours of Twilight come every 45 seconds, so every 2m15s, you’ll be asked to take another Hour of Twilight, if you’re a soaker.

Let’s look at who regular (ie: can take every third one) soakers can be:

Tanks – Your tanks have cooldowns up that last double duration and have half the cooldown length. This means that they can absolutely soak every third Hour and it’s probably best if you split your tanks into separate groups.

Feral (kitty) Druids – Hot tip: If you have your Feral (kitty) Druid go bear form, Thrall will mistake them for a tank and grant them Last Defender of Azeroth. That means that they can pop Survival Instincts on every third Hour of Twilight.

Fire Mages – Cauterize is beautiful. Doesn’t matter if you have no health, this will prevent your instant death and just requires a couple of heals before you burn yourself to death. There is a 1-minute internal cooldown on this, but that shouldn’t be an issue.

Hunters – Deterrence is amazing for Hour of Twilight. They take zero damage from it. With a two-minute cooldown, hunters are a fantastic choice for Hour of Twilight soakers.

Shadow Priests – Dispersion is great! 2m cooldown, 90% less damage taken. Yay!

Rogues – A well-timed Cloak of Shadows allows your rogues to eat every third hour without taking any damage.

DPS Warriors – A glyphed Shield Wall will allow you to survive an Hour of Twilight, but the downside is Shield Wall now has a 7m cooldown.

Of course, any spec of paladin or mage can eat a single Hour of Twilight due to their Divine Shield or Ice Block abilities.

But now, now we get into fancy acrobatics, including exterior cooldowns and swaps of people.

Up ’till now, we’ve really been looking at needing a 50% (or more) cooldown. Hour of Twilight is 300,000… or it was until the 5% nerf, whereupon it became 285,000 damage. Today, February 28th, it becomes 270,000 with the introduction of the 10% nerf.

I would still recommend 50%+ cooldowns. Fully buffed, I’m sitting at 164k health. If I pop glyphed Divine Protection (40% reduction of magical damage), I would “only” eat 162k hit. That leaves no room for error. As such, maybe 40% reductions will be doable at the 15% nerf, but likely only really reliable at the 20% nerf or beyond.

Further, Anti-Magic Zone will not work alone. Every single thing I’ve read about AMZ says that it will absorb 75% of incoming damage and THEN check to see if the cap has broken.

We tried AMZ on Sunday and ended up with a dead group. I made sure through the logs that it wasn’t previously hit by Twilight Instability and yet AMZ only absorbed ~58k per person.

What does this mean?

Well, for me, it means a somewhat ridiculous group composition that is really reliant on certain people to be there.

G1: Tank, Rogue, Hunter, Mage, Shadow Priest
G2: Tank, Rogue, Hunter, Mage, Shadow Priest
G3: Feral Druid, DPS Warrior 1, Mage, Holy Pally with PS+Glyphed Divine Protection, Holy Pally with bubble

Then we get to the sixth Hour of Twilight and G3 becomes:
Feral Druid, DPS Warrior 2, Mage, Holy Pally (bubble), Ret Pally (bubble)

Now we COULD get into HoSac and other such things and, you know what? We’ll have to if one of the mages, hunters, rogues or shadow priests aren’t there. One of my mages was tentative for Sunday. Do you know what my G3 looked like in the planning stages? Here, I’ll show you:

Feral Druid, DPS Warrior 1, Holy Pally with PS+DP, Holy Pally with bubble, HoSac from Holy Pally with bubble on Ret Pally with Glyphed DP

Hour Six: Feral Druid, DPS Warrior 2, Holy Pally bubble, HoSac from Holy Pally with bubble on Holy Pally with glyphed DP, Ret Pally with bubble.

It’s like musical chairs but with bubbles, Divine Protection and Hand of Sacrifice.

We can play with externals, but the problem with that is you then are reliant on not one, but two people to do their job flawlessly each and every time. I try to steer clear of those scenarios. While on Sunday, the disc priest hit me with Pain Suppression appropriately when called for each time, we missed one once on Thursday. Instead of 5 people soaking, you have 5 people and then a sixth that has to be responsible to help for the soaking.

It’s maddening.

So much for “bring the player, not the class”, right?

Now, I understand that this isn’t quite so bad as, say, Heroic Spine, pre-nerfs. Spine requires (or required) you to stack all kinds of bursty DPS. Still, my progression fight is Ultraxion and I’ll bitch about Spine when I get to it.

However, this is completely ridiculous. Blizzard tends to take an idea and run with it, all too often learning their lessons too late to make meaningful changes to current content. Look at Dragon Soul — is there any real interrupting going on? No, they learned that too much interrupting is annoying, not compelling, after T11. Is there a ton of trash? No, they also learned that from Bastion of Twilight. Cooldowns are used, but they SHOULD be used, but it’s not the kind of craziness that accompanied Flame Scythes on normal Staghelm, pre-nerf. They learned from the design mistakes they made in Firelands.

This time, it’s raid organization and even now, with the 10% nerf, there’s still raid comp stacking that absolutely must happen. Who the hell has 15 people who can consistently solo soak Hours of Twilight? It’s to the point where I have brought up to the officers the possibility of allowing well-geared alts of certain classes to come in for H Ultraxion if it otherwise means we can’t even attempt the boss. Next thing you know, I’ll be in H Ultraxion on my hunter, which is a horrifying thought, not just to me (oh god fading light halp) but I imagine my guild would be less than thrilled. (I sincerely hope it doesn’t come to this. I also sincerely hope I get a decent ranged weapon before it ever WOULD come to this.)

The good news is that it was a 0% wipe on Sunday and several in the 5-7% range, so we almost certainly have him this week — assuming all the people we’re relying on can make it.

If not, I’m going to be spending some Quality Time with my raid notebook, meticulously planning out more cooldown acrobatics. Thanks, Blizzard. I really appreciate all the extra headaches you’re throwing at us that go completely against your “bring the player, not the class” philosophy.

Glory of the Firelands Raider Achieved

Kurn / / achievements, apotheosis, firelands, raiding, T12

So my last post detailed how crappy it is to be the one who makes decisions like “who gets their mount first?” and such. Shortly after posting that, we walked into Firelands with 25 people and got 23 people their Glory of the Firelands Raider achievements. (The other two in the group just need Only the Penitent…)

This post will detail how to go about getting those less-common achievements, or at least how we did them. I won’t cover the six heroic boss kills, nor Share the Pain, nor Only the Penitent…

The first tip is that we did all of these achievements on NORMAL MODE. That was a huge help.

Death from Above

Goal

This achievement basically means that, during the Beth’tilac encounter, you don’t kill any Cinderweb Drones while they’re below the web. If you are to kill them at all, you kill them above the web.

How to Get It

1) Send up as many people to the top of the web as you can while still assuring yourself of the ability to kill all Spinners and Spiderlings below. This should include a tank, at least one healer and some DPS.

2) Downstairs DPS should stop DPS on the Cinderweb Drones at 20%. Then ignore them. Their energy will tick down. When it reaches 0%, they will go up to the top of the web and will start to drain energy from Beth’tilac herself. This will have the side-effect that she will cast Smoldering Devastation sooner and, as a result, will transition to Phase 2 (the ground/burn phase) sooner.

3) As soon as a Cinderweb Drone goes up to the top of the web, DPS above should focus on it to kill it.

4) If a Cinderweb Drone comes back downstairs, YOU MUST NOT KILL IT. Off-tank it. If it is low on health, let it consume a Cinderweb Spiderling!

5) Tanks should swap between tanking Beth’tilac and when they get Widow’s Kiss, they should pick up any Cinderweb Drones that remain and then swap back. You will likely have 2 drones — one that has already gone up and one that just recently spawned.

We did this on our first attempt, although it was a little hairy and we needed to feed 1-2 spiderlings to a drone.

We had 1 tank, 2 healers and 7 DPS go up top with 1 tank, 4 healers and 10 DPS stay on the bottom.

Not an Ambi-Turner

Goal

This achievement wants you to defeat Rhyolith without ever turning him left. Don’t be fooled by the “while his armor is intact” crap. That means until he sheds it completely at 25%, not when all armor stacks have worn off. Also, damage to the left foot is acceptable, but as soon as he turns left, you are screwed.

How to Get It

Tikari, one of our melee officers and the one who “drives” Rhyolith, brought this solution to the table:

We will want as much direct damage, and as few DoT’s as possible – zero DoT’s on the left legs. For example, I’ll be going with instant/instant poison.

We will have the following calls:
1. Stop DPS (this means everything).
2. Soft right (~6 DPS or so to execute sweeping turns).
3. Hard right (~10 DPS or so assigned to legs opens up on them to make tight turns).

Zero dps on the legs at the start. I mean, zero. We will let him walk forward, stomp, summon two volcanoes, and light one (hopefully one to his right – if not, we’ll deal). Then we will turn right (likely soft) on my call. I will try to keep a soft right call going to get as many volcanoes early as possible. Then as we get closer, we’ll switch to hard rights and just keep him spinning clockwise as we burn him as quickly as possible to force phase 2.

And that’s pretty much what we did. At about 50% or so, we blew heroism and EVERY DPS in the raid switched to the right leg and we turned him in circles for a little bit until he hit 25%, then we blew him up. Beautiful.

We did this on our second attempt (the first had nowhere near enough DPS to turn him, so we bumped that to 6 from 2). Raid comp here was 2 tanks, 6 healers, 17 DPS. Specifically on the legs: 1 combat rogue, 1 assassination rogue, 1 fury warrior, 2 frost DKs, 1 marks hunter, 1 elemental shaman and 2 arcane mages.

Bucket List

Goal

Drag Shannox all over the freaking map to each of the points required, then kill him.

How to Get It

A really simple, if somewhat long, achievement. (And we did it while someone in the raid was getting their foci from Shannox, too!)

First – clear a LOT of trash. You’ll need the space. Anything on the road from the Path of Corruption all the way to Alysrazor’s room and any wandering patrols.

Essentially, you want to pull him at the Path of Corruption. Pull him up the ramp of it until the achievement UI pane checks off “Path of Corruption”. While this is happening and Shannox is turned around again to go back DOWN the path of Corruption, DPS should open up and absolutely slaughter Rageface, to make the encounter slightly less complicated. This will, of course, cause Shannox to do a bit of extra damage.

Going along the road over towards the entrance, you’ll pass by Beth’tilac’s cliffs. Hug the cliffs and you will eventually get credit for Beth’tilac’s Lair. There’s a great spot just to the right of the ramp leading up to Beth’tilac if you’re having trouble finding a spot.

Then head over towards the entrance of the instance. Just a bit up the ramp from where the portal to Majordomo’s area is will be the border for “Flamebreach” and you just need to cross Shannox past that before spinning him around and moving on.

Next up, head over towards Rhyolith’s ramp. Make sure you’ve done Rhyolith FIRST (or at least his trash!) so that you don’t trigger the gauntlet. You just need to go a little ways up. Again, watch the achievement pane for credit, then turn around and head for Alysrazor’s room.

We had previously killed Alysrazor, so we just fought Shannox in there. We had already killed Rageface, so we killed Riplimb, blew heroism and killed Shannox.

Again, the raid comp was 2 tanks, 6 healers and 17 DPS.

Do a Barrel Roll!

Goal

Essentially, the goal of this is to not take any avoidable environmental damage here. No Brushfire, no Lava Spew, no Fiery Tornadoes and no Incendiary Clouds.

How to Get It

We sent five DPS up in the air, as per usual. This left us with 12 DPS on the ground, 2 tanks and 6 healers.

DPS had the instructions to focus the Initiates as they dropped to essentially blow them up before they got a Brushfire out. Stuns were useful here, since Brushfire is not interruptable. This helped greatly to eliminate the chance of hitting Brushfire, because, well, there were very few Brushfires to be found.

Tanks were given the instructions to eat their plump lava worms almost as soon as they could. On normal mode, you get 2 spawns of 2 worms each. We had the tanks use cooldowns through tantrums until the hatchlings were dead. This helped greatly to eliminate the chance of hitting Lava Spew, because the worms were barely alive long enough to clip someone.

The air team was fantastic in dodging Incendiary Clouds, so make sure whoever you send up is extremely comfortable up there.

Fiery Tornadoes were the sticking point, but we found a specific spot on the ground where tornadoes spawn near. Once we all clumped up on that spot and chased the tornadoes around from then on, it only took us a total of two attempts to get the achievement done.

Here’s the spot. It’s on the southern wall of the room. Here’s the picture — that’s the entance to the left.

 

As noted, the tornadoes will go CLOCKWISE, so you’re in a good spot if you’re just off the purple spot towards the entrance.

The biggest problem here was people “getting lost in the crowd”, so to speak. I nearly clipped a tornado because I lost track of where my own toon was and had drifted right a bit, and someone ended up clipping one, so we called a wipe and tried again. It worked beautifully.

Tips:

– Have the Achievement UI pane open (track the achievement) for Bucket List. It really helps.
– Use Raid Achievement for Do a Barrel Roll. It’s really handy and tells you what portion of the fight was failed and by whom. So if your whole raid team, for example, has gotten through a fight with Alysrazor and not taken Brushfire damage, and you already have that portion of the achievement, you can ignore any Brushfire failures.

Hope that’s helpful to everyone attempting their hand at Glory of the Firelands Raider! The other achievements are either really easy (Share the Pain, Only the Penitent) or depend on your group’s progression through Firelands (need all bosses dead on heroic except for Ragnaros).

Good luck!

Guilt and Glory of the Firelands Raider

Kurn / / achievements, apotheosis, firelands, guild, raiding, ramblings

One of my favourite memories about Burning Crusade is also one of my most guilt-inducing memories about Burning Crusade. I led Apotheosis to Vashj and Kael’thas kills before the Hand of A’dal title was no longer obtainable. Bear in mind that these were fights that we worked on seemingly forever. With a roster that was ever-changing and ridiculously low attendance “requirements”, it’s a wonder we made it through 4/5 Hyjal and 5/9 Black Temple before 3.0 dropped.

But we did it. We worked hard at getting Vashj down three times and Kael died twice, I believe it was.

One of my best moments was getting one of our rogues, Kut, his Hand of A’dal title. Kut had been around in Tier 4 and parts of Tier 5, but had a demanding schedule of work and class and, honestly, having him there for both a Vashj kill and a Kael kill was just flat-out luck, it feels like. I did what I could to work around his schedule and it paid off with Kut, our token “lying dead in the fire” rogue, getting his Hand of A’dal title.

The flipside of that is that we didn’t get Majik his. Maj had his own conflicts with raiding and such. We did get him a Kael kill, but the one night we’d set aside for Vashj for a fourth kill… things just didn’t click. We couldn’t get her down again. Our second-ever kill of Vashj was a 1-shot (seriously!) but we couldn’t close the deal on what was to be our fourth kill. And so Majik, and a couple of others, never got their Hand of A’dal titles.

Thus, Hand of A’dal is both one of my best moments and one of my worst.

Tonight, Apotheosis starts in on Glory of the Firelands Raider achievements. Well, that’s a bit misleading. We’ve already accomplished most of those — all six heroic bosses required? Done. Share the Pain? Done. Only the Penitent…? Done (and easily repeatable if anyone’s missing it). Ostensibly, the worst is over.

So I’m faced with a list of 32 people who could possibly be at the raid tonight and only 25 spots to give out.

One thing that I was pretty clear about was that the Raider-ranked people would be given priority on the first reset, but then there’s the group composition to think about. I’m basically going to have to sit a tank and a healer who are Raider-ranked and pull in at least one (perhaps two) Initiates who are DPS.

Plus, if people are causing our failure on Alysrazor’s Do a Barrel Roll! then I’m going to have to sit people and pull in others.

All of it together combines to stress me out just a wee bit.

Now, I know that I’ll be able to get most people their achievements and mounts and, barring catastrophic failure, my own achievements and mount are secured. But the important thing to me is that people not be left behind on this particular set of achievements. Yet, due to 4.3 likely coming out on November 29th, I fear that some of our Initiates who don’t have Alysrazor, Shannox, Beth’tilac or Rhyolith on heroic won’t get theirs. And that sucks. And of course, if anything goes seriously wrong with an achievement (I can foresee SO many problems…) then it’s possible we could screw it up this week and screw 10ish people out of their achievements due to a lack of time.

Ultimately, we didn’t have the news that 4.3 was likely launching on November 29th until November 10th, by which point we’d already killed Shannox, Beth’tilac, Rhyolith and Alysrazor on heroic, so we couldn’t go backwards, revive them and spend last reset doing achievements.

Instead, we repeated 6 heroic boss kills (including our second H Baleroc kill) and played with Heroic Ragnaros and that, essentially, will mean that the majority of us have gotten all the upgrades we can possibly get (barring possible Baleroc and Majordomo heroic loot). In short, the guild is probably stronger for spending last week clearing 6/7 heroic modes and we’re probably better prepared for 4,3’s raid because of it, but it might be at the cost of getting some of our newer people their meta achievement and their mount. Which sucks. And that’s why I mentioned the Hand of A’dal title to start out this post. We literally ran out of time before the title was no longer available and that’s why Majik doesn’t have it. I’m hoping 4.3 is delayed just one more week so that we can finish out the achievements and get one more 6/7 HM reset in, but if that doesn’t happen, then, once again, my guild will have literally run out of time to get some people some achievements.

Second-guessing myself and my decisions (and the decisions of the other officers) does us no good, but it’s still disappointing to know that, if the patch does drop on November 29th, we had the opportunity to do the achievements last week and didn’t. I guess it shows that I value the people in the guild more than the gear, and that’s probably a good thing, but I probably won’t feel great about things unless 4.3 comes out on December 6th.

It’s decisions like these that I stress out over and probably the fact that I do stress over them means that I’m a decent leader, but it’s definitely an unpleasant part of the job.

Catching up with Kurn

Kurn / / 4.3, achievements, apotheosis, blogging, firelands, guild, podcast, raiding, ramblings, T12

I have been a bad person of late, not responding to (m)any comments of late, for which I sincerely apologize. I’m currently writing this post as a break from working on a project for my Video Games as Literature class. Things should be less hectic as of Wednesday!

That said, I had to talk a bit about Heroic Ragnaros, recruitment, Blessing of Frost, Majik and a couple of other topics.

Heroic Ragnaros

We pulled him once on Thursday night. We got Baleroc down for the first time that night, had a third kill of heroic Majordomo and still had time left in the raid. So we pulled Heroic Ragnaros (and I frapsed our infamous FIRST attempt, too!). We didn’t do too badly, in that we didn’t die instantly. ;) We did die to sons hitting the hammer, though. I think doing the nerfed version of regular Ragnaros for so long meant that we were expecting the sons to melt as they normally do. Hot tip: they don’t die so easily!

We spent Sunday night, our last night of the raid week, working on Heroic Ragnaros. 20 pulls on heroic, then one pull on normal to kill him.

According to WoL, the best pulls lasted four minutes and two seconds, four minutes and three seconds and four minutes and four seconds.

For anyone familiar with the heroic Ragnaros fight, that’s a pretty clear sign that the Molten Elementals and/or Molten Seeds kicked our asses. And you would be correct.

It was pretty clear that at least some of the group hadn’t watched the L2R video I’d linked in the forums and didn’t really understand the concept of all grouping up for Molten Seeds. On the one hand, bad preparation. On the other, at least they understood that grouping up for Molten Seeds is normally a bad thing? (Silver linings, Kurn, silver linings.) Still, we eventually got away from the Molten Seeds with just a couple of deaths, but it’s the Molten Elementals that would then catch up to us and brutally murder us.

Someone had suggested using a moonkin’s Typhoon to knock them back. I was going to respond that it probably wouldn’t work when Hestiah, who was asked to go moonkin for the occasion, answered in raid chat:

For some reason, this had me howling with laughter. I mean, absolutely cracking up. It continued for a couple of minutes, too. Oh, man.

Anyway, so yes, the current sticking point is the Molten Elementals. It didn’t help that we had 2 healers and a tank in their DPS offspecs, either. Of course, we don’t always GET to Phase 2, because sometimes, the sons reach the hammer and KABOOM, we are all dead. We had some AMAZING saves, though! Great work by so many people. (Seriously, a 1/7 split is not a lot of fun, though.)

What now? Well, we’re gonna do another week of heroic farming, I do believe — try out some apps, get some gear, get the heroic Baleroc achievement for people who weren’t in for the first one… and then maybe work a bit more on Ragnaros. Ultimately, we don’t know if we’re going to push him, but I think that we’re just going to run out of time before 4.3 comes out. What we will do is spend two resets and get people their Glory of the Firelands Raider achievements. Heroic Baleroc again will finish off the hard achievements, leaving us with things like Bucket List, Not an Ambi-Turner and the others.

I do worry about Alysrazor’s achievement, though. I can’t do anything about the air team, but I’m thinking I’ll use a sacrificial lamb method to have people mark a couple of SAFE places to stand for the tornadoes. So we’d go through P1 and then, when the tornadoes come out, have people mark the ground with safe marks. So to the left of a right-moving tornado, or to the right of a left-moving tornado. And then wipe it and do it again. Doing the achievements on normal mode will make things a lot easier, like we’ll be able to really lock down the initiates on Alysrazor and kill them before Brushfire comes out. We can hopefully get the hatchlings to eat worms quickly and burn them down and use CDs to go through tantrums so that Lava Spew is out of the equation. Then the tornadoes. And hopefully, the air team will have done a good job of not eating clouds. And then kill her during her first ground phase.

That’s the plan, at any rate.

So after we get the meta achievement… then what?

Well, more heroic farming, but I figure we’ll have, at most, one or two more resets after we finish the achievements. So a couple more nights on heroic Ragnaros or do we kill him on normal and give people some time off to recuperate before 4.3 hits?

To choose to work on Heroic Ragnaros, when Beru’s guild, Monolith, just got him down last night after 388 pulls… well, it kind of seems foolish, doesn’t it? It took them over two months. I’m pretty sure we won’t have two months until the next patch.

But shouldn’t we still go down fighting? That’s what we did in Tier 11 content. We pushed heroic V&T and got them down just five days before 4.2 dropped and we even played with heroic ODS, which we didn’t get down.

The time people put in on the Heroic Ragnaros fight, though, makes it seem as though it’s not an achievable goal unless we don’t go to Dragon Soul right away. And that’s the difference right there. Do we bash our heads on something that is likely not to be achieved? Or do we rest our raid crew and prep for 4.3?

Having said that…

Apotheosis Recruitment

Apotheosis is still recruiting! We’ve had some snazzy apps — an enhancement shaman and shadow priest will be starting their trials with us this week. We have an interesting elemental shaman app and I’ve been going back and forth with a hunter.

We could still use a mythical retribution paladin and any spec of warrior, so if you’re one of those and can attend 75% of raids that take place on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays, from 9pm ET until midnight (invites at 8:45!), apply now!

Blessing of Frost

Then, there’s Blessing of Frost! We didn’t record last week because Majik had no power, due to a snowstorm and such. We can’t record today because Majik has actually lost his voice. Last night, during the raid, was hilarious. He honestly couldn’t speak, and took to threatening me in raid chat. (We will ignore the fact that I was probably taunting him about being unable to speak.)

So we’re going to let his voice recover and aim to have a new episode of Blessing of Frost out on Wednesday at some point, maybe Thursday at the latest. (We’re going to try to record on Tuesday.) It’s made all the more hilarious because MAJIK HAS IMPORTANT THINGS TO SAY!!! So, uh, yeah. Tune in this week (probably!) for a new episode of Blessing of Frost. :)

Majik Gets a Crazy Idea

And in case you’re missing your weekly dose of Majik (and who would?), he has decided to set up a blog.

Majik’s Missives is a blog where Majik will talk about his gaming life. Not just WoW, but TF2, League of Legends, reflections on older games, all that kind of stuff. He’s actually a pretty decent writer, so definitely check out his first post. He’s got a couple of others already written up and will be posting them throughout the week.

And on that note, my dear readers, it’s back to my Video Games as Literature project. Have a great Monday. :)

"End" of Expansion Malaise

Kurn / / achievements, apotheosis, firelands, guild, raiding, ramblings, T12

I’m still here, folks, no worries of my head exploding about pandas and the like. ;)

I’ve been slammed recently with deadlines for my classes at university and with all kinds of guild work, but hope to get back to posting regularly in the next week or so.

In the meantime, I wanted to touch on the malaise and burnout and fatigue I’m seeing of late.

We’re not even done with the second tier of raiding this expansion and I’ve had a few raiders come to me to tell me that they’re stepping down or will be stepping down when 4.3 comes out.

While I can’t say I’m completely surprised, I have to say that it’s a little bit startling that so many people — both in my guild and others — are throwing in the towel.

I’m not sure what’s causing it, in general, although I suspect that there’s more to it than just a reason or two.

I do think, however, that Heroic Ragnaros, or the prospect of him, is causing part of this malaise and fatigue. Every single raider who has aspired to clear heroic modes in Firelands has to have thought to themselves, at one point or another, “MAN, that Heroic Rag fight is completely brutal!”

Reading blogs like Beru’s and Borsk’s, reading tweets from Derevka and Pliers, there’s no way anyone can be delusional enough to think “hey, my guild will be different! We’ll spend a week on him and he’ll fall over!”

In Wrath of the Lich King, we didn’t encounter a heroic-mode boss of the difficulty of Heroic Ragnaros (or even close!) until Heroic Lich King. Heroic Anub’Arak came close, in that a lot of guilds got to 4/5 in TOGC and then “hey, ICC is open! Screw Anub’Arak and his ridiculousness!!!”

That’s not to say that Sarth3D wasn’t challenging (it was) or that Algalon wasn’t rough (again, it was) or that 1 or 0 Light Yogg wasn’t extremely difficult (I understand it was). But to *clear* the instance, the final (even optional) bosses were doable for a progressive raid guild.

But Anub’Arak was a jerk, to put it mildly. A lot of people didn’t get him down until after ICC had come out, as I recall. A lot more people only got to 4/5 and then waved a little white flag and moved on to ICC.

And then, Heroic Lich King was a fight that was even more nightmarish.

Here we are, in Tier 12 content, no idea when 4.3 and T13 will be coming out (my best is ~4 weeks from now) and people are being faced with the prospect of an “impossible” boss. Most guilds spend in excess of 350 wipes on him.

By contrast, a lot of progressive guilds got through to Sinestra (although perhaps heroic Twilight Ascendent Council or heroic Al’Akir eluded them…).

So why is Heroic Ragnaros so hard?

I’m not saying “omg nerf heroic rags!!!” or anything. I’m trying to question the logic of putting such an “impossible” boss into this portion of the content. Obviously, the last boss of the expansion has to be Deathwing, so they couldn’t put a bad-ass Heroic Rag at the very end of content.

I think Blizzard does themselves a disservice by making Heroic Ragnaros such a huge stumbling block. I also think they’re doing themselves a disservice by only having 7 “real” bosses this tier. As a result of so few bosses, I think pretty much all classes have a slot where they can’t upgrade to 391 (holy paladins are stuck with the reputation 378 belt, for example) and the way Firelands is structured leads to bashing our heads on walls as we push forward.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind bashing my head against a heroic boss 3 nights in a row.

I’m starting to realize that other people do and I think that’s contributing to the burnout I’m seeing/hearing about. The kind of people who are willing to bash their heads against Heroic Ragnaros for 350+ pulls are increasingly rare. Once again, I have to point to how easy it was to gain gear in Wrath of the Lich King as a reason for people’s lack of patience. It took me months, months (!) of raiding before I got my first epic on Kurn, back in the day. Nowadays, people hit max-level and can immediately use a ton of epics. I understand the reasoning for it and, as a guild leader, I’m thankful for the ability to gear up quickly for lesser-progressed people, who then expand the recruitment pool, but the sense of entitlement is what I think is causing issues.

I remember the days of spending several resets (with our limited roster and time back in the day) on different bosses. Nowadays, it seems as though if you spend more than one reset on your farm content and a single new boss, it’s not enough. God forbid if you don’t down a new boss every week!

All of this begs the question: “Kurn, you guys are 5/7 HM and you’re working on Heroic Baleroc. What happens after you get him?”

Short answer: Probably doing Glory of the Firelands Raider and working (at least a bit) on Heroic Ragnaros.

Long answer: It really depends on the time allotted us after we hit 6/7 and knock out Glory of the Firelands Raider, but, by golly, if I can SPAWN Heroic Ragnaros, I want to WIPE to Heroic Ragnaros.

It’s not all decided, we’re still chatting about things, but I really have to question what the hell Blizzard was thinking to put in a boss that requires 350+ pulls in the second tier of raid content and I have to question if that’s good for the game and good for the raiding population.

My thinking is no, it’s not good for the game, nor is it good for the raiding population. I think we’ll see more burnout issues come 4.3 after more people have beaten their heads on the Heroic Ragnaros fight.

In other (somewhat related!) news:

Apotheosis of Eldre’Thalas is an Alliance 25-man raiding guild with several spots open at the moment!

We are currently seeking:

– 1-2 hunters (!)
– 1 retribution paladin
– 1 elemental shaman
– 1 enhancement shaman
– 1 warrior (either DPS or tank!)

We raid 3 nights a week, from 9pm ET until midnight. Raiders are expected to be online by 8:45pm for invites and are expected to make 75% of scheduled raids in a given month.

Come throw in an app!

http://www.apotheosis-now.com/main/

4.3 PTR Notes – Nerfage Ahoy.

Kurn / / 4.3, apotheosis, firelands, podcast, ptr, raiding, ramblings

According to MMO-Champion, holy paladins are, once again, being nerfed in this latest PTR build. Bear in mind that these changes may not see live servers, but this is what they’ve got going on at the moment.

Beacon of Light is triggered by Holy Shock, Flash of Light, Divine Light and Light of Dawn at 50% transference and Holy Light at 100% transference. It does not transfer Holy Radiance, Protector of the Innocent or other sources of healing.

So I’m reading that and going “Okay, Holy Shock, Flash of Light, Divine Light, Light of Dawn, Holy Light, that’s fine, that’s normal… no Holy Radiance, okay… wait. No Protector of the Innocent? Probably no Enlightened Judgements either. And no other sources of healing. Okay, fine.”

And then it hit me.

“WAIT A MINUTE. HOLD THE PHONE. WHAT ABOUT WORD OF GLORY?!”

I can live without Protector of the Innocent transferring. I hate that talent and I’ll be able to drop one of those points into Last Word if that’s the case. I’ll still keep one point in Enlightened Judgements for my spirit to hit conversion, of course, and that’s fine.

But did they just forget to list Word of Glory or is Word of Glory really not going to transfer?

Frankly, I’m of the mind that they forgot to mention it. After all, our other Holy Power heal (Light of Dawn) is transferred at 50%, so why wouldn’t Word of Glory transfer?

*** ETA: A blue post clarified that this was, in fact, an oversight and Word of Glory will continue to transfer through Beacon of Light. The rest of this post, written before the clarification, has been left intact. ***

However, Blizzard has done some whacked-out things in the past. I wouldn’t put it past them to have done this deliberately. Obviously, they’re trying to tune us appropriately, and that’s okay, but it’s possible that Word of Glory will be nerfed in that it won’t transfer with Beacon of Light any longer. I’m not saying that’s likely. I’m saying it’s possible. I’m also not saying that this change will make it through to live, even if it is intended, but let’s say, for the sake of argument, that it is intended that Word of Glory no longer gets transferred.

The major question would be “Why?”

Let’s be honest: Word of Glory is a big heal. A 3-charge Word of Glory, that is. In my current gear (ilvl 383) while raid buffed, that’s about 24k on a non-crit. More than that, it’s an instant big heal. Comparatively, Holy Light is about 11.5k, Divine Light is about 30k, Holy Shock is around 10k and Flash of Light is around 23k.

But wait, you say, Flash of Light can be instant with an Infusion of Light proc and heals for about the same.

Right. But Flash of Light costs a ton of mana at the same time. Word of Glory is 100% free.

We currently have the ability to hit someone for a sizeable amount (~24k in my gear level, raid-buffed) as an instant-cast spell that is free of mana cost. And we can do that pretty darn frequently.

If we don’t use it on our Beacon of Light target, that’s ~24k healing to an individual and another ~12k healing to our Beacon. Instantly, that’s ~36k healing on a non-crit, costing us no mana, castable on the move.

So I could see why they would think this is overpowered. Our holy power generation isn’t terribly lacking, at least not from what I’ve noticed (but then, I tend to Beacon my own tank and benefit from Tower of Radiance), so I generally have a lot of Holy Power and, in fact, I do not dump it as often as I should. If used consistently at 3 stacks of Holy Power in higher gear levels, Word of Glory, and its subsequent transfer through Beacon of Light at the moment, is pretty darn overpowered.

I can see their reasoning, if this is an intentional change. Doesn’t mean I like it, but I can see how powerful that can be on a variety of fights.

That said, I am still hopeful that it’s just an oversight and they forgot to mention Word of Glory in the first part of their announcement.

In other news, Apotheosis downed Heroic Majordomo Staghelm on Sunday (and we’re looking for an exceptional retribution paladin and a skilled hunter!), Episode 38 of Blessing of Frost is out and I’ve been nominated for a Stopie Award! Go vote for me in the category: Loudest Voice on Twitter!

Pondering the Glory

Kurn / / achievements, apotheosis, firelands, gear, raiding, ramblings, T12

So how are people out there dealing with the possibility of getting the Glory of the Firelands Raider achievement?

Back in Wrath, the guild I was in hit 11/12 25-man HM and then immediately did a full reset of achievement stuff. We did Neck-Deep in Vile that week and then the next week, did Been Waiting a Long Time for This, which resulted in getting Glory of the Icecrown Raider.

In Tier 11, we got to 7/13 HM before Firelands came out (Halfus, V&T, Magmaw, Maloriak, Chimaeron, Atramedes, Conclave), so Glory of the Cataclysm Raider wasn’t even a possibility for us, as we were missing, you know, 5 heroic kills.

Due to the nerfs, we will likely hit 5/7 HM tonight or Sunday (Majordomo) and after a break for BlizzCon, we’ll tackle heroic Baleroc. (I think we would have hit 6/7 HM without the nerfs, but it would have taken longer.)

Since six of the achievements required for the meta will be already done (the six heroic bosses) and since we regularly do Share the Pain and Only the Penitent… is really easy to do and isn’t even part of the boss encounter… that leaves four achievements:

Bucket List – Shannox
Not an Ambi-Turner – Rhyolith
Death from Above – Beth’tilac
Do a Barrel Roll – Alysrazor

To me, it’s a no-brainer to take a reset or two (to get everyone covered) and get these guys down on normal to get the achievements. However, the fact remains that Shannox and Alysrazor drop heroic tier tokens and the other bosses drop valuable heroic loot (oh god, I want a heroic Ward of the Red Widow!).

Given that we don’t know when 4.3 will drop (although I’d be surprised if it’s before American Thanksgiving, in late November), we don’t know how many resets we have before the new raid opens up. It’s safe to say that we’ll move on to the new raid once it opens.

Obviously, there is a finite amount of resets left between now and 4.3. Will using two (because, with a roster of ~34, we’ll NEED two) resets to get the meta achievement be worth two resets of heroic loot off those bosses? Better question: do we need to do all of them on normal? Shannox isn’t so hard on heroic, maybe we could get away with kiting him forever, but I know we could do it on normal.

I’m not even going to talk about time spent on that versus heroic Ragnaros. That’s a whole other question in and of itself.

So how are you fine people handling this in your guilds? Are you? Do you even care? I’ve got a poll up on the Apotheosis forums, asking the raiders what they think of the meta, but I’m curious to know how others are dealing with it.

Post-Nerf Heroic Alysrazor: A Huge Disappointment

Kurn / / apotheosis, facepalm, firelands, guild, raiding, ramblings

24 pulls is all it took us and Alysrazor collapsed.

It took us 46 pulls to get her down on normal.

Something ain’t right here.

(Yes, I’m still talking about nerfs.)

Do I want to wipe more on a boss like Alysrazor? No, not particularly. But I don’t feel as though we earned the kill. Granted, our kill was near-perfect execution, except for Majik’s Mumble client dying on him and Kaleri dropping her Power Word: Barrier on the other side of town at the pull. ;) And I could have done without some of the deaths we had, to be sure… but it went very smoothly. If we can do that every time, we’ll have no problems killing her every single week on heroic.

However, it just feels as though Alysrazor has been de-clawed, had her wings clipped, whatever.

Tornadoes move just as slowly in heroic as they do on normal.

Firestorm won’t automatically kill you if you don’t line of sight it, not if you’re healed up and use a defensive CD. (Our pally tank app ate a Firestorm while still working on a hatchling. He put up Ardent Defender and blew Lay on Hands and lived with plenty of health to spare.)

The biggest challenge, it seemed, was re-allocating DPS.

I’m sorry, but is that all there is to heroic Firelands bosses?

Let’s examine them, shall we?

Normal Shannox: Some people on dogs, some people on Shannox.
Heroic Shannox: Just about every single person on Shannox, a few people on various dogs for slows and breaking Face Rage.

So that’s a simple reallocation of DPS.

Normal Rhyolith: Some people on Fragments and Sparks, some people on legs.
Heroic Rhyolith: Same as above — stun/slow/blowback Liquid Obsidium.

Another reallocation of DPS, but I’ll admit, this one was effing tricky — at least pre-nerf.

Normal Beth’tilac: Some people on caves, some people on spinners and drones, some people on top of the web.
Heroic Beth’tilac: Same as above — and then blow up the Engorged Broodlings.

Same damn thing, more reallocation of DPS and some healing, but the worst part about this fight was making sure caves were covered. Once we had that down, the boss died.

And now…

Normal Alysrazor: Some people up top, some people on Initiates, some people on hatchlings. Dodge Brushfire, Tornadoes, Lava Spew and Incendiary Clouds.
Heroic Alysrazor: Same as above — plus dodge Firestorm and Meteors and Boulders.

Really? I mean… it’s just not that difficult. I’d say it’s actually easier than normal because the hatchlings die so quickly. The worst part here isn’t even the Firestorm, it’s making sure Initiates die quickly enough that interrupters can interrupt them.

At least Majordomo Staghelm has a “real” new mechanic in Concentration. I’m looking forward to that fight, but am prepared to be “meh” about it.

It makes me sad. It feels very much as though these “heroic modes” are like “normal” modes now that the nerfs have gone through, at least to an experienced raid group. I’m sure Ragnaros will be different, of course, and it’s not like the challenge has completely vanished from heroic Firelands… but I didn’t enjoy heroic Alysrazor. At all. And, prior to our work on heroic Alysrazor, that was my favourite fight. I really didn’t feel as though I was healing with finesse last night — I felt as though all I was doing was praying that my tank wouldn’t get two-shotted or that people wouldn’t fall out of the sky or die to tornadoes.

I spent the vast majority of our time on Heroic Alysrazor just hoping we could execute it, but there wasn’t anything to figure out after the first 10ish pulls. We tried a couple new variations last night and eventually just said screw it and went back to what we’d been doing, essentially, with very minor tweaking to get Initiates down.

And then, on one glorious attempt when most people didn’t die or disconnect or anything… she died.

Totally anticlimactic.

Am I proud? Of course. Am I pleased that we’re 4/7? Absolutely.

But ultimately, I got more of a sense of accomplishment at knowing that we budgeted our raid time this week extremely well (repeat of H Rhyolith and H Shannox, plus first kills of H Beth and H Alysrazor and a full clear and we even did Volcanus!) than I did when we downed Alysrazor.

Sad.

Please, don’t let raiding be this ridiculous in 4.3.

Comfortable with my Class

Kurn / / apotheosis, firelands, guild, healing, paladins, raiding, ramblings, T12

On Tuesday night, Apotheosis got Heroic Beth’tilac 25 down.

Dar, one of our resto shaman, had posted to say she wasn’t going to be there, which left me with a difficult decision: who was going to heal Dar’s people in the northwest? For 28 attempts, Dar had dutifully healed that particular corner.

In order for it to go as smoothly as possible, I wanted to make as few major changes as I could.

What did that mean? That meant that I was going to take her spot.

I got to heal our moonkin, Hitoku and, lucky me, Majik, my caster officer and my co-host over at Blessing of Frost.

(The “lucky me” was sarcasm. If you couldn’t tell. ;))

So, for 28 attempts prior to Tuesday, I was essentially healing the ground tank, keeping an eye on Dar and other healers, taunting spinners down and generally watching everything, as a raid leader is prone to doing. I had never assigned myself to a cave and, to be honest, I would be happy if I never had to do so again… But I digress.

It took us 10 pulls to kill Beth’tilac Tuesday, bringing us to 3/7 25-man heroics. For each of those 10 pulls, I was healing my cave group, although my cave group migrated from northwest to southeast at one point. Jasyla said she liked that little northwest corner better and I could totally see why. The southeast corner is cramped and crowded!

Anyhow, during the first attempt, I lost Majik. Then, several other people died. So it wasn’t totally my bad, but I vowed to do better.

In the span of 10 pulls, ladies and gentlemen, I became a cave-healer pro. I kicked some ass. Not only did I keep my targets alive, but on try 10, our kill, approximately 97% of the Engorged Broodlings that spawned wanted to blow me up. I am not joking. Better still, I have it all frapsed and it’s embedded below. (Bear in mind that in P2, my computer suddenly decided to violently revolt and I experienced some tremendous lag and loss of framerate. It’s not the best video ever, but it is our first kill.)

 

Kurn, you may be wondering, what on earth does any of this have to do with being comfortable with your class?

Good question!

On the kill attempt, I was constantly the target of the broodlings, as I mentioned. Walks was healing up in the northeast and one thing he had been saying earlier in the night was that if a broodling was heading for someone at southeast, there was no way he could stop them, since they’re up on some damn ledge. So he took to calling out “ledge”.

Of course, on the kill attempt, his broodlings came at me frequently. So I was always calling out “got it”, while running to the ledge where the spiders come down from, while ALSO trying to heal Majik and Hitoku and, you know, trying not to kill myself while doing so.

I think it was only after the whole raid was over for the night that I realized that there was no way in hell I would have been able to manage all that crap (seriously, FOURTEEN broodlings hit me!) AND keep Maj and Hitoku alive if I weren’t extremely comfortable with how my class works.

It’s almost instinctual after a certain point. Granted, my instincts aren’t always spot-on or great or whatever, as you can tell since I do let Judgements of the Pure drop off and don’t use my Guardian and the like on the kill (which I’ll blame on the fact that my computer was about to throw up on me) but they really served me well over the whole raid night. At various points during the entire night, I popped cooldowns appropriately, even using Lay on Hands on Hitoku at one point. I figured out where my Beacon of Light was best put to use (sadly, on Majik) and basically, that was all the real thinking I had to do about how to heal my group.

Venom Rain? Aura Mastery. I’m low on health? Pop my bubble to buy myself some extra time to heal up my group members before turning to myself. Need to regen mana? Use my shiny Fiery Quintessence and pop Divine Plea. See 3 bright orange beams on me from Engorged Broodlings? Don’t panic, use instant heals like Holy Shock and Word of Glory until I’m in position to interrupt one and can start casting again.

Paladins have changed substantially since the original World of Warcraft game came out. Holy paladins have changed and evolved right along with the other specs. While we still need to stand still and cast to be most effective, Holy Radiance (well, the current iteration, not the 4.3 version!), Holy Shock, Word of Glory and a Flash of Light with Infusion of Light proc are all things we can do on the run. Even a 1-2 point Word of Glory can be useful (you can see in the video I made some use of that) if you’re on the move and someone needs a heal ASAP.

Giving Divine Protection a shorter cooldown for Holy (due to Paragon of Virtue) is great and it came in handy all through the night when magical damage (which includes nature damage, which is what those nasty little Engorged Broodlings emit) was troubling me. No problem — Shift-A (my keybind for Divine Protection) to the rescue!

During the night, apart from maybe the first pull or two, despite having absolutely no experience healing where I was healing and healing the people I was healing, I felt calm and in control of myself.  I really do attribute my ability to adapt to cave healing to knowing what all my buttons do. The only thing I didn’t use duing the night was Hand of Freedom and I could have used it when I was stuck in the Volatile Poison on the ground at one point on our kill.

I encourage everyone to take a second look at all your abilities. Not just the ones in the holy tree, look at prot and ret as well. Read through your spellbook and be sure you understand what your abilities do. Armed with that knowledge, you can walk into a fight and adapt much more quickly than you would otherwise. Don’t forget about your Hand spells, your procs, your set-it-and-forget-its (like Holy Radiance and Guardian of Ancient Kings).

Paladins are very strong healers and not restricted to tank healing. Not only that, but we have a ton of utility, so don’t forget to use those utility spells! Once you know exactly what you’re capable of doing, you’ll react with your instincts, leaving your brain to sit there and worry about where you should be standing, rather than what spell to use.

(And you can always read through my second revamped Holy How-To Guide to help you out!)

First Reactions to the Nerfbat

Kurn / / apotheosis, facepalm, firelands, guild, raiding, ramblings

Well, for better or for worse, we repeated our Heroic Shannox kill (3rd kill) without needing Jagged Tear to drop off our Shannox tank at ALL, ending the encounter with 15 stacks on him.

We downed Heroic Rhyolith for the first time, after 46 total attempts, 40 of which were pre-nerf. (That brings us to 2/7 HM, btw.)

And then we flipped it to normal to take out Alysrazor and Baleroc.

Since we had someone working on the charged focus for Alysrazor, we needed two “full powers” from her, so that’s two full cycles.

We had to call “DPS OFF!” several times.

The Initiates who cast Fieroblast? They apparently now cast Fieroblast after every third Brushfire. In fact, it took us several initiates before we realized they even still CAST Fieroblast.

Tornadoes are very slow, now. You can keep ahead of one and actually run into the next one with just a single feather.

Healers were healing Gushing Wound on the tanks because there was basically nothing else to do. I wonder what four healers for that next week would be like.

Baleroc melted. You can COMPLETELY screw up the healing order for the shards and people will probably still live.

I think we’ll be pulling Heroic Beth’tilac and Heroic Majordomo Thursday/Sunday, so we’ll see what they’re like. Those are new (to us) heroic fights, but it’s clear that the normal modes are just so completely ridiculous now, at least for a group that’s done three full clears and probably a few 6/7 weeks.

Really, it’s kind of sad.

Having said that, the raid group was in fine form on Tuesday night. Lots of laughing, lots of joking… for some reason, at one point, people were openly pondering the gestation period for a Smurf.

So we had a “fun” raid night with good spirits and good moods, for the most part, but it feels weird. The Rhyolith kill doesn’t feel hard-fought. The hardest part on Alysrazor was NOT killing her faster.

Normally, for me, the best part of any night is any progression on a boss.

Tonight, it was that I got the Eye of Purification.

Ah, well. We’ll see what the next few months hold for us, eh?

Oh, and don’t forget to listen to this week’s episode of Blessing of Frost! We post a new one just about every Tuesday, so be sure to keep listening. Next week, we’ll reflect on the Firelands nerfs and talk about some of the community’s reactions and you’ll doubtlessly hear me bleeping myself again. ;)