Category: icecrown citadel

Kurn's Q&A 22

Kurn / / addons, alchemy, blogging, classes, dungeons, facepalm, gear, general, healing, icecrown citadel, paladins, professions, q&a, raiding, ramblings

Good evening, or perhaps good morning! Had a lovely Tuesday, including dinner with the family at my parents’ house, then got to login and play with the new chat features a little bit. Again, as stated before, please don’t be offended if I choose not to include you in my Real ID network. I feel that the tools they give us are still rather clunky and not remotely refined enough for my tastes to consider sharing with people I don’t already know in real life.

Having said that, BOY HOWDY, do we have a bunch of interesting terms this week! You’d think someone had been BORED TO DEATH at work or something! As such, starting this week, I’ll have an anonymous form for questions you’d like to ask me for this Q&A-style post. Look for it on Wednesday or Thursday.

In the meantime…

I clearly made a mistake last week when I said:

“I like seeing myself in search terms. It’s cute.”

1)

kurnmogh, why is majik the best tank?
kurnmogh, how did majik redefine the mage class and why was he so good?
kurnmogh sucks and majik rules
why is kurnmogh just not as good as majik at wow?

And my personal favourites:

how come kurn can only play any given class in world of warcraft just about half as well as majik?
how has kurnmogh played and lived in the shadow of majik for so long?

Let’s tackle these burning questions individually.

1a) Majik is the best tank because he is a stupidly good player. It’s like he’s an idiot savant.

1b) Majik was key in redefining the mage class because he was frost and he was competitive DPS through ’till Hyjal. His approach to playing his mage was one that involved using Billy, the water elemental, to his full extent, making sure to be hit-capped and generally not dying to stupid things. However, it should be noted that, while still drunk from the traditional pony keg booze after Maulgar, Majik did blink into Gruul, causing a wipe. He was so good because, as previously noted, Majik is an idiot savant when it comes to the World of Warcraft. It also helped that he was a meter whore throughout the ENTIRETY of Burning Crusade and this drove him to swap to an Arcane/Frost rotation which meant that he was constantly Arcane Explosioning on Hyjal waves. Like a tool. Sure, his numbers were huge, but I do believe he started dying more frequently at this point, which had a negative effect on his overall DPS.

1c) We’ll pair the next two together, as they’re essentially the same. It’s true, dear readers, I am not as good as Majik is at WoW. I just don’t have the instincts that he does when it comes to, well, basically anything. Majik is ten times better at this game than I am and doesn’t have this habit of forgetting to do things like pop class-specific cooldowns the way I do. (Nature’s Swiftness? What’s that?)

1d) My favourite questions! Hooray!

– Majik has four level 80s and is working on his fifth. The classes are: mage, druid, shaman and death knight. Kurn has six level 80s and they are: hunter, paladin, shaman, mage, druid, priest. As you can see, there’s some overlap. Majik’s hunter is in his 40s, Majik’s highest paladin toon still would get beat down by Hogger and Kurn hates death knights in general, so the comparison is really versus each other when it comes to a mage, a druid and a shaman.

– Given that Majik raided full-time on his mage for years, that’s not a fair comparison. This leaves us with two alts, the druids and the shaman. I fully agree I can only play the druid and shaman half as well as Majik can. Why? This is largely because I have spent all my time really focused on the paladin and the hunter.

– Thus, while I fully admit I can’t play a mage, druid or shaman as well as Majik, due in part to my not being an idiot savant, if he wants to try to level up his hunter or paladin to get a good comparison going, he is welcome to do so.

– As to living in his shadow, I’ve got to say that it was cold there in his shadow, to never have sunlight on my face. I was content to let him shine, that’s my way. I always walked a step behind. So he was the one with all the glory, while I was the one with all the strength. I wonder if he knows that I’m really his hero or everything he wishes he could be? Clearly, I am the wind beneath his wings.

Now that I’ve learned from my lesson regarding search terms, let’s move on!

2) unbound plague ticks damage

Here’s a parse of a mage in the raid having Unbound Plague for 10 seconds before passing it off:

[23:34:40.353] Mage afflicted by Unbound Plague from Professor Putricide
[23:34:41.515] Professor Putricide Unbound Plague Mage Absorb (999)
[23:34:42.459] Professor Putricide Unbound Plague Mage Absorb (1249)
[23:34:43.463] Professor Putricide Unbound Plague Mage Absorb (1561)
[23:34:44.410] Professor Putricide Unbound Plague Mage 1410 (A: 541)
[23:34:45.424] Professor Putricide Unbound Plague Mage 2439
[23:34:46.359] Professor Putricide Unbound Plague Mage 3049
[23:34:47.507] Professor Putricide Unbound Plague Mage 3811
[23:34:48.433] Professor Putricide Unbound Plague Mage 4764
[23:34:49.354] Professor Putricide Unbound Plague Mage 5955
[23:34:50.399] Professor Putricide Unbound Plague Mage 7444

Here’s me in the same raid for 11 ticks:

[23:37:09.981] Professor Putricide Unbound Plague Madrana 681  (A: 289)
[23:37:11.135] Professor Putricide Unbound Plague Madrana 1212
[23:37:11.978] Professor Putricide Unbound Plague Madrana 1254 (A: 261)
[23:37:13.153] Professor Putricide Unbound Plague Madrana 1895
[23:37:13.965] Professor Putricide Unbound Plague Madrana 2368
[23:37:15.331] Professor Putricide Unbound Plague Madrana 2960
[23:37:15.877] Professor Putricide Unbound Plague Madrana 3701
[23:37:17.203] Professor Putricide Unbound Plague Madrana 4626
[23:37:17.827] Professor Putricide Unbound Plague Madrana 5782
[23:37:19.300] Professor Putricide Unbound Plague Madrana 7227
[23:37:19.964] Professor Putricide Unbound Plague Madrana Absorb (9034)

So you can get an idea of the damage: it starts out very low and ramps up hugely. The damage it does isn’t too bad, but if someone with Plague Sickness gets it, that damage is increased by 250%.

3) any new way to cheat unbound plague

Well, I don’t condone cheating. Are you talking about better plague visibility now that AVR and AVRE have been broken? If so, you may want to look into using HudMap:

http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/hudmap.aspx

4) dbm mark vengeful shade

Okay, here’s the problem with Vengeful Shades; they’re not able to be targetted. That means you can’t click on them to mark them, you can’t hit V and see their health bars. You just have to watch for them when they spawn and run the hell away.

5) does feign death work on frozen orbs on toravon

Yes.

6) elixir mastery will double flasks?

Okay, let’s explain this again.

As an alchemist, you get this fun thing called “Mixology” which doubles all elixir and flask *durations* and increases their effects slightly.

In order to have the *possibility* to proc extra flasks, you must be an elixir-specced alchemist, that is an Elixir Master. This will not proc all the time. This will not double your haul. This happens approximately at a 10% rate from what I’ve noticed. So for every ten flasks you make, you will roughly get one extra.

7) how many people go into frostmourne on 25 lk

On normal, this is one at a time, approximately once a minute throughout the final phase when he casts Harvest Soul on someone. On heroic, EVERYONE goes into Frostmourne.

8) lightning-infused leggings worth it

I recently crafted mine, replacing the heroic Legplates of Failing Light. After looking at the Ruby Sanctum loot tables at MMO-Champion there are NO new legs being added. That means that there are no legs higher than ilvl 264 with haste on them. So yes. Definitely worth it for any holy paladin.

9) server transfer raid lockout

It all gets cleared. I had done my daily random heroic before I transferred my paladin. Then I transferred and ran another — none were barred from me, and I also got 2 extra Emblems of Frost by virtue of doing another “first” random.

10) shadow trap lich king

Don’t stand in them. It’s not rocket science, folks.

The Second Raid

Kurn / / addons, blogging, facepalm, guild, healing, icecrown citadel, raiding, ramblings

The second raid was infinitely better than the first. And the first wasn’t bad or anything.

We got Saurfang down after a few attempts. We stomped on heroic Rotface and heroic Festergut, killed regular Putricide (getting most people their Nausea, Heartburn… achievement), then stomped on the Blood Princes and BQL.

Then we looked at heroic Dreamwalker.

My new guild had never killed heroic Dreamwalker before.

We did it on our second try.

And that is a part of why I joined the guild. People were saying to me all night long in whispers how awesome it was that I was there, how much they enjoyed having me there, how I was just what they needed… And I think that’s got to be true. We downed Saurfang for the second time for them, Dreamwalker healed to full for the first… and I played significant roles in those fights.

I totally noobed it up on Festergut, though. Fellow healers, please take this as a warning and DO NOT DO WHAT I DID.

I use Clique and Grid. I have Clique binds for most of my spells. Flash of Light is left-click (shift-left click is to target), Holy Light is right-click, Sacred Shield is shift-right-click, Cleanse is middle-click, Beacon of Light is shift-middle-click, Holy Shock is thumb-click and Lay on Hands (a relatively new bind from about three weeks ago) is shift-thumb-click.

Tonight, before Saurfang, I was looking at my bindings and trying to figure out where I could put Hand of Protection for easier access during Saurfang instead of shift-left-click and then clicking on my Hand of Protection button.

So I figured Ctrl-Thumb-Click.

Who here sees where this is going?

I try out the binding a couple of times. I don’t like it. I DO like the thumb-click part of it, but the Ctrl is just a little far out of the way for me.

So I open up Clique. I decide to edit that bind.

And I promptly bind it to Shift-Thumb-Click.

Uh, Kurn? Didn’t you say that Shift-Thumb-Click was Lay on Hands?

Why yes. Yes I did.

Uh…?

Yeah.

So NORMALLY, when you try to bind something in Clique to an existing combination, it yells at you. But that’s apparently on the main screen only when you’re clicking the combination in your spellbook.

If you edit the bind directly, you can overwrite any prior combination. Without the yelling.

Oh, God, Kurn. What did you do?

Well, Saurfang went great with me BOPping someone on each attempt with ease.

Festergut, well, there we are, one tank with 9 stacks of the debuff, the other with 7 stacks, probably with Fester at under 20% health and I see the active tank (7 stacks) is about to die and so I do what any good paladin would have done; I went for my Lay on Hands bind, which has been, for the last few weeks, Shift-Thumb-Click. Which I UNKNOWINGLY bound to Hand of Protection.

Tank is BOPped, other tank gets aggro and blows up the raid because he hit 10 stacks.

I was completely oblivious as to why the tank got a 10th stack of his debuff. The GM said something in healer chat along the lines of “ha, ha, who bopped the tank?” and the ret pally was like “Not me!” and then I paused, remembering that I HAD messed with my Clique bindings and I HAD tried to cast LOH on the tank and hey, why wasn’t that on cooldown? Why WAS Hand of Protection on cooldown?

I checked my Clique binds and found the problem and switched Shift-Thumb-Click back to Lay on Hands and then let them know what had happened.

Apparently, I made the MT laugh, so, uh, way to go me?

I told him that it could have been worse, I could have DIed him the way I did one of our tanks on Bloodboil back in the day and he replied to say that a DI would have been the only thing that would have been funnier than a BOP.

>< Still annoyed! In my last guild, I was teased for standing in fire for months by my RL friend the resto druid and another RL friend of hers. And now, I’m going to be known as “the pally who bopped the tank”. /facepalm

By the way, I’m still in search of a good Clique-bind for BOP! :P

Anyways, getting Saurfang and Dreamwalker down was awesome. I also managed to snag heroic Unclean Surgical Gloves and heroic Crypt Keeper’s Bracers, which is kind of hilarious, given that it’s my second raid with them. EPGP is an odd beast and I’m going to have to read up on it again, but it’s got this nifty mod that makes things super easy.

In other guild-related things, my new GM and I are hitting it off beautifully. There’s a mutual admiration society going on and we just totally get along. I did not transfer with the intention to make good friends; I just wanted to escape the douchebags, but she’s definitely someone who has the potential to be one of those awesome people I still keep in touch with even if I’m not playing. The weird thing is that she already knows a stupid amount about me — she knows my real first name, she knows about this blog… It’s like, in the span of a couple of days, the woman already knows a ton about me.  I feel a little bit naked, if that makes sense. I mean, I go through a fair amount of effort to construct and maintain my various WoW personas, all of which have the “true” me at the center of them, mind you. But, for example, if I’m on my hunter, chances are, I’m going to be quieter. Just let me be there, in the back, shooting things. It’s what I like to do.

If I’m on my paladin, I’m not so quiet. I’ve spent a LOT of time as some kind of stupid leader in this game, including YEARS of that stuff on the paladin. Kurn-while-on-the-paladin is a lot more outspoken, a lot more critical (HOW CAN YOU NOT HAVE HASTE OMG FAIL) and can get frustrated really easily.

My GM has somehow managed to dissemble these personas, more or less, because I’m basically my actual self in talking to her. That doesn’t happen too often, at least without my expecting it. This just kind of happened.

There’s an opportunity, which will remain more or less cryptic, for a mutual exchange of information, a mutual way to get to know each other better. Part of me wants to participate. Part of me does not. The part of me that wants to is all like “HELL YEAH!!!!” and the part of me that doesn’t isn’t remotely as enthusiastic in trying to talk me out of the idea. It’s more like “Dude, whatever, give it a couple of weeks. You’ve been in the guild for like, 36 hours.”

It would involve stripping off yet another layer of my carefully constructed personas. “Kurn” and “Madrana”, if you will, are very public personas of mine. It’s still me in there, but there are things about me that none of my readers, no matter how dear to me, will ever know. Things that my long-time raiding companions never knew and probably will never know. You know, real life stuff.

All of this feeds into my interest in identity theory, online personas, the use of the Internet for anonymity… And really, you know, that’s it. That’s what’s bugging me about this. If this exchange of information happens, I’ve lost any real sense of anonymity I still have. Okay. Now that I know why it’s something I’m hesitating about, it’s time to figure out if that even matters.

Actually, it’s well past time for sleep. I’ll figure that bit out in the morning or, perhaps more accurately, the afternoon. ;)

Apologies for the sidetrip into the land of sociological musings. I hope the Festergut story made the entry worth reading. ;)

The First Raid

Kurn / / guild, healing, icecrown citadel, raiding, ramblings, Uncategorized

You know, thinking about it, this blog has documented the fall of Apotheosis, my time on Bronzebeard, my time in my last guild and now will document my time on Skywall.

The idea that, five years from now, I could look at this entry and go “oh my God, my first raid on Skywall!” gives me a moment’s pause. Should I record everything for posterity? Probably not. Should I gloss over things in the hopes that I’ll have a shiny entry to remember my first raid by? Probably not.

As always, it seems, the right amount of detail is somewhere in the middle.

Continue reading “The First Raid”

Brief Update

Kurn / / blogging, facepalm, guild, icecrown citadel, lfg, ramblings

1) Paladin is on Skywall, guilded. All mods seem to be working (YAY DXE, YAY DBM, YAY GRID & CLIQUE & DOMINOES!) with very little effort (sigh, CLCBPT, you fail. SexyMap, you too.) and I’ve already made money with my bank alt. ;)

2) I was guilded for maybe 30 minutes when my new GM found the blog. Hi! ;)

She apparently is more like me than I thought since we both have the ability to stalk online. ;D

I felt just a wee bit embarassed about the mush I’ve previously posted, but it’s all good. And it was a harmless reminder that anyone can actually find and read this.

(I’d hope if any of my former guildies find this, they’ll see how much trouble I took to not name names. You won’t find me naming names in my new guild, either.)

3) Reckoning hates me. I queued up for the daily heroic (I think it reset, since I got 2 frosts on my last server and then 2 frosts on the new one) and it gave me… Heroic Halls of Reflection. Thanks, RNG. Love you too.  I arrived after what had been a wipe where both the tank and healer had left. The tank who arrived with me promptly left. Five minutes later, we have a tank. It was not super smooth (DPS need to stop pulling aggro and standing in front of cleaving mobs) but we got through relatively unscathed. I haven’t healed it as a pally in a long time — I miss my chain heals, dammit. ;)

Anyways. I need to grab some food before the raid, which is in, you know, 40m. Which is new. And early. Working on LDW HM apparently, and I’m hoping all my DXE settings really DID carry over so I don’t look like a moron eating ghosts.

Stupid Vengeful Shades. WHY must they be so vengeful?

Oh! And thanks to everyone who listened to me bitch about my last guild and how I was unhappy and for wishing me well on my new server. <3 It’s meant a lot. :)

Kurn's Q&A #21

Kurn / / fishing, gear, hunters, icecrown citadel, paladins, q&a

It’s Tuesday! My traditional day off from raiding and the day I’ve set aside to examine my search terms from the last week. Apologies for the lack of wowhead tooltips on most of this stuff; I just can’t reach the site at the moment. Here we go, Q&A number 21.

1) bloodsurge heroic gearscore

Listen here, pal. If you’re lucky enough to get Bloodsurge, Kel’Thuzad’s Blade of Agony and your first thought about it has to do with GEARSCORE, then there is no more hope for the people playing this game and you make me want to quit the game entirely. You jackass.

2) holy pally haste gemming

No.

Just… no.

Get to 676 haste, yes, but don’t do it via gems. Even if you drop down to 251 shoulders from some “awesome” 264 shoulders with no haste. Even if you use 232/245/258 pants because they have haste and your tier don’t. Just don’t gem for haste.

3) fol paladin armory

Excellent request, let’s go take a look at a top guild and a couple of their paladins.

Scrubbles, of Premonition (the top US guild), is clearly a spellpower paladin:

http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Sen’jin&cn=Scrubbles

Over 4,000 spellpower unbuffed, 677 haste, a fair amount of crit. This guy is doing it right.

What’s that? He’s not gemmed full spellpower?

No, he’s not. He needed some gems to get to 676+ haste and managed to use the Reckless gems to help him snag socket bonuses.

But Kurn, you just said not to gem for haste!!

I know, but this guy definitely knows what he’s doing. He already had a lot of haste and has only used a few hybrid spellpower/haste gems to get to the magic number. You’ll note he’s got a couple of other gems that match the socket bonuses (they’re mostly +spellpower) and he’ll use Royal Dreadstones (sp/mp5) and I see a Luminous Ametrine (sp/int) to make sure he’s not much over the haste minimum. This is someone who has looked at their gear and looked at what they feel they need more of while still prioritizing spellpower. He has spellpower on every gem and then adds in a couple of different stats based on what he feels he needs and he does that in such a way that he snags the spellpower from the socket bonuses. That’s what makes him smart — he’s not just dropping in a haste gem here or there. The fact that he’s at 677 haste indicates that some very careful thought into exactly how to gem.

Don’t follow his lead unless you’re building a very specific set of gear like Scrubbles has.

Zaroua, also from Premonition, has a different method to maximizing their FoL gear.

http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Sen’jin&cn=Zaroua

They’re, uh, in 4pc T9.

Which, frankly, is awesome if you’re healing people who have Sacred Shield on them. It LOOKS to me, and I could definitely be wrong, that Scrubbles is the main tank healer and that Zaroua is relied upon for tank healing the way a druid would be — with hots and quick, fast heals. 3600+ spellpower, not quite at the haste cap, even with 40 haste food, but an interesting playstyle.

I really did love the T9 4pc. It made me REALLY sad to swap out my chest and legs for better pieces.

4) aspect of the wild putricide heroic

Sure, go ahead, although it’s probably more beneficial for raid DPS for a shaman to drop a Nature Resistance totem. (See that, Rilgon? I thought about RAID DPS FIRST. ;D)

5) can i fish for the turtle mount while in a raid group

Yes, no issue here. You cannot do your fishing daily while in a raid group, though.

6) how do paladin buffs work

Wow. Been a long time since I’ve had to explain HOW pally buffs work.

Okay, you have up to four paladin buffs. Each lasts for 10 minutes (regular blessing) or 30 minutes (greater blessing).

Blessing of Sanctuary (only available with the proper talent in the protection tree): Only really useful for the prot pallies themselves, unless you’re lacking a discipline priest to proc Renewed Hope from shielding people.

Blessing of Kings (baseline, all paladins have this): 10% stat increase. What’s not to love?

Blessing of Wisdom (baseline, all paladins have this, holy paladins have up to 2 points to improve this): Gives you mana every five seconds.

Blessing of Might (baseline, all paladins have this, with the choice of up to 2 points to improve this): Gives you extra attack power.

You can cast any blessing on any person and not have it affect anyone else. But if you start casting Greater Blessings, they will buff everyone *of that class* in the raid. So say you’re the only paladin in the raid and your DK tank wants kings and your DK DPS wants might. You give out the greater blessing (probably kings) to death knights and then you give a simple blessing of might to the DPS, overwriting their kings from you.

You can only have one blessing up per person per paladin.

For a priority list, check out #5 in this previous Q&A.

7) hunter pets absorb putricide damage

Yes, they do absorb damage from Unstable Ooze Adhesive’s explosion. And they take a ton less due to their passive avoidance. They will naturally take 90% less damage from AOE spells, which is awesome for this particular fight.

8) lich king heroic 25 tactics shambling

My advice is to tranq shot these bastards so they don’t kill your Shambling Horror tank. :P

9) saurfang divine guardian kurn

I like seeing myself in search terms. It’s cute.

You would think that I would pop Divine Shield and Divine Sacrifice (triggering Divine Guardian) a lot on Saurfang, but the truth is that I don’t.

What I do is this:

– If a CASTER gets Boiling Blood pre-first mark, I BOP (hand of protection) them. This prevents Saurfang from gaining a bit of Blood Power and pushes back the first Mark of the Fallen Champion.
– If I get Boiling Blood pre-first mark, I DS/DS out of it, which has the happy result in lessening the damage others are taking as well, so that he gains even LESS Blood Power, pushing back the first Mark of the Fallen Champion even more.
– If I get Boiling Blood at all AFTER the first mark, I’ll probably take the GCDs to hit my macro. I will only do this if I’m only healing one mark and if Saurfang has just cast Mark of the Fallen Champion, which means the damage he’s putting out is relatively low. He hits harder, even with Mark of the Fallen Champion when he has more Blood Power, so when he casts a mark, he’s back to 0 Blood Power. This is the “safe time” (and I use that term very carefully) to use a global for something that isn’t spamming Holy Light.

10) turtle hunter dreamwalker beacon

You can do this, yes. If you beacon Dreamwalker and park a Tenacity pet with 2/2 Blood of the Rhino right next to Dreamwalker, you can spam heal the pet and the Glyph of Holy Light splashes will be bigger. However, this effectively removes the pet from combat and thus really sucks for a hunter. Tenacity pets are not good raiding pets, they’re not going to have the buffs a Ferocity pet is going to have, which means that hunter is going to hate you for suggesting that:

a) they don’t bring their wolf to the raid,
b) they just park the damn pet right there by the dragon

While it WILL output more healing, if you’re having issues where you need that much more healing, chances are you need your DPS to be at their best and hunters are NOT at their best without a wolf giving them Ferocious Howl and access to Call of the Wild.

I strongly recommend beaconing the dragon and healing *yourself* while you park yourself next to the dragon. She’s got a large hitbox so you can be pretty far out before Glyph of Holy Light splashes no longer reach her.

LK & Frostmourne, Guild Apps

Kurn / / guild, healing, icecrown citadel, raiding, ramblings

15 or so heroic pulls last night.

I still rule because I have not yet been hit by a Shadow Trap at all. That’s right. I am awesome.

More pain by enraged Shambling Horrors:

[01:09:51.954] Shambling Horror hits OT 60173  (O: 26676, B: 4080)

Average melee hit on the MT: 43,748.2

Ow.

We made it to the first transition phase twice, I think. Idiot!Priest kept dying to Shadow Traps and kept screwing up dispels and neglected to shield as much as he should have been. Good times. :P

We didn’t last long on the transition phases because either the OT would die while me and the other tank healer were running for the edge OR because he would then get beaned in the face by an enraged Shambling Horror. Or two.

Anyways, two and a half hours on heroic LK led to no real progress, just a lot of practice on Shadow Traps, I guess. It’s not like it’s a hard mechanic. Move away from the skull marked in the raid?

So then, because it was Monday and Tuesday’s the reset, we switched to normal mode.

For the first time EVER, and that is EVER, I got Harvest Soul on me!!! I was like “HOLY CRAP, it’s ME!” and I couldn’t heal myself. >< And I’m like, chanting to myself, “don’t let me die, don’t let me die…” No pain suppression or any CDs on me, but they kept me up!!

[01:39:25.719] The Lich King casts Harvest Soul on Madrana
[01:39:25.760] Madrana afflicted by Harvest Soul from The Lich King
[01:39:26.042] Resto Druid Rejuvenation Madrana +0 (O: 4149)
[01:39:26.657] The Lich King Harvest Soul Madrana 10185 (R: 4500)
[01:39:27.301] Resto Druid Echoes of Light Madrana +*10185* (O: 3056)
[01:39:27.710] The Lich King Harvest Soul Madrana 11640 (R: 3000)
[01:39:28.521] Idiot!Priest Glyph of Power Word: Shield Madrana +2455
[01:39:28.662] The Lich King Harvest Soul Madrana 81 (A: 11559, R: 3000)
[01:39:28.911] Raid Leader Flash Heal Madrana +*9266* (O: 2568)
[01:39:29.060] Resto Druid Regrowth Madrana +0 (O: 8410)
[01:39:29.060] Resto Shammy Chain Heal Madrana +*0* (O: 11325)
[01:39:29.060] Resto Druid Rejuvenation Madrana +0 (O: 4149)
[01:39:29.302] Raid Leader Penance Madrana +0 (O: 5691)
[01:39:29.821] Raid Leader Penance Madrana +0 (O: 5663)
[01:39:29.961] The Lich King Harvest Soul Madrana 8090 (A: 3550, R: 3000)
[01:39:30.082] Resto Druid Nourish Madrana +8090 (O: 1527)
[01:39:30.456] Resto Shammy Lesser Healing Wave Madrana +*0* (O: 12418)
[01:39:30.716] Raid Leader Penance Madrana +0 (O: 6073)
[01:39:30.716] The Lich King Harvest Soul Madrana 11640 (R: 3000)
[01:39:31.336] Resto Druid Nourish Madrana +9201
[01:39:31.657] Resto Shammy Ancestral Awakening Madrana +2439 (O: 2487)
[01:39:31.815] Madrana’s Harvest Soul fades

And then… I got to heal Terenas Menethil. Awesome.

The instant I zoned in, I was like “what the… who… shoot, okay, I guess I don’t heal that spirit thing and… OMG, TERENAS!” So I started healing him. And that was awesome. So super cool. And then I was like “oh crap, I have to dispell him, don’t I?” and lo and behold, a little debuff icon showed up on Terenas’ name plate and I’m like “CLEANSE, BITCH! YEAH!”

hahaha. I was really stupidly excited to finally get pulled into Frostmourne.

For those curious about the experience:

Terenas Menethil yells: You have come to bring Arthas to justice? To see the Lich King destroyed?
Terenas Menethil yells: First, you must escape Frostmourne’s hold, or be damned as I am; trapped within this cursed blade for all eternity.
Terenas Menethil yells:  Aid me in destroying these tortured souls! Together we will loosen Frostmourne’s hold and weakedn the Lich King from within!

And here’s the one screenshot I thought to take. (Click for a larger version.)

So that was fairly epic. :)

In other news, I’ve dropped in two apps, one each to the guild on Skywall and the one on Hyjal.

I’d get more perks on Hyjal (and shorter raids, instead of longer ones) but I’m still leaning towards Skywall. Both guilds seem pretty cool, but I think that knowledgeable healers are lacking in the Hyjal guild.

There are two holy pallies in that guild, though one is going prot. The other is an app.

I’m looking at the app on the armory:

MH: Heroic Trauma.

Trinket 1: Purified Lunar Dust

Helm: Heroic Faceplate of the Forgotten

Adequate haste (751). Uses Fish Feasts and Flasks of the Frost Wyrm.

Appears to blow Avenging Wrath AND Divine Illumination at the same time as Divine Plea, which means he’s not losing any healing when popping Divine Plea, but it’s making him have only two offsets (he also has the Talisman of Resurgence) instead of three.

And sometimes, he pops all those things all at once!

Judges, but honestly, not much more than once a minute, even with only one other pally in the raid. Actually, that’s maybe not even quite once a minute.

All of which causes me to go “BLAH”.

Compare and constrast that to the resto shammy GM who healed four marks on heroic Saurfang and you have an idea as to why I’m leaning towards Skywall.

Anyways. Coming up today: Kurn’s Q&A #21, a new poll, possibly a new video or two (Strat Live key run/Cannonmaster Willy run) and probably more pondering out loud about which guild I should choose if they both want to trial me.

Heroic Lich King.

Kurn / / healing, icecrown citadel, raiding

Ow, ow, ow, ow. Seeing my tanks get hit for for 65k is not fun. Well, okay, it’s moderately amusing because it’s like, HOLY CRAP, 65k! But anyways.

We pulled Lich King on heroic 25m for the first time last night. And will spend another nearly-three hours on it tonight, I would imagine.

The first thing you all should know about LK heroic 25m is this.

That’s right. 103,151,168 health. Remember the days when Ragnaros had the most health of any mob in the game and it was “just” 1,099,230? So heroic LK on 25 has ONE HUNDRED TIMES the health that Rag did.

Just to put that into perspective for you.

Once I recovered from that shock, it was time to learn a new strategy for Phase 1.

On heroic, Shadow Traps will target a player and take a few seconds to spawn. Anyone on the shadow trap when it spawns (and 10y around them) will take about 20k damage and, if they’re still in the vicinity and alive, will then be blown backwards off the ledge, basically, and die. The Shadow Traps do not go away immediately after they spawn, either. (They do vanish if someone trips one.)

So what we did was split the raid into three groups.

Group 1: Melee and tanks. Melee starts the encounter halfway up the steps to prevent getting initial aggro on Arthas. This group stays in the middle third of the platform.

Group 2: Ranged and healers. We split them up half and half, basically. Group 2 stands to the LEFT of the stairs as you face them. They stay on the left third of the platform.

Group 3: Same as group 2, except on the RIGHT of the stairs as you face them.

As each group gets a Shadow Trap, they strafe 10-15 yards out, staying grouped up. By “out”, I mean “north”, towards where you enter the LK’s area. This can occasionally cause range issues if, say, melee has had four shadow traps in a row and Group 2 has had 0, so the healers need to move ahead to stay in range of the melee, but then the ranged have to go WITH them because otherwise, the group gets broken up by shadow traps. That is bad. You want to stay on top of each other during this phase.

Here’s what an early P1 looked like for us (click for a larger version):

So you can see how we’re laying the Shadow Traps down, right? The dead people are either morons who did not move or casualties of Infest. More on that in a bit.

By the time you get into the transition phase, you SHOULD be relatively close to the ledge. If not, haul ass.

We got to a transition phase once and the OT died to an enraged shambling horror that was leftover and that was a wipe.

Things to note:

– Remember Infest? Remember what Infest was like before PW:S was affected by the zone-wide buff? Remember scrambling to heal the LIVING CRAP out of EVERYONE? Yeah. We’re back to that, now. Infest hits HARD.

– Still have Necrotic Plague going on, too. Good times!

– LK was hitting my tanks HARD. I was popping Divine Plea super early and often. It was basically on cooldown 30 seconds into the fight and every minute thereafter.

Here, have a look at the first few beatings:

[00:22:12.321] The Lich King hits MT 51804
[00:22:17.206] The Lich King hits MT 31706 (A: 4408, B: 8212)
[00:22:25.735] The Lich King hits MT 40055 (B: 4790)
[00:22:27.522] The Lich King hits MT 34616 (A: 7437)
[00:22:41.952] The Lich King hits MT 32598 (A: 6992)
[00:22:45.681] The Lich King hits MT 40040
[00:22:47.564] The Lich King hits MT 41317 (A: 4719)

Or perhaps a death log would be more interesting:

[00:32:03.840] Madrana Holy Light   MT +0 (O: 23014)
[00:32:03.840] RL Friend Resto Druid Rejuvenation MT +0 (O: 4173)

Full health.

[00:32:04.022] The Lich King hits MT 68943 (A: 4503, B: 2395)

I think my precise thought here was “HOLY SHIT.”

[00:32:04.212] Resto Shaman Healing Wave MT +*0* (O: 30521)

This is lag, obviously, this landed before the hit.

[00:32:04.212] Good Resto Shaman Riptide MT +1831
[00:32:04.375] Resto Shaman Earthliving MT +1382
[00:32:04.536] Dumbass Priest Flash Heal MT +8241
[00:32:04.536] RL Friend Resto Druid Lifebloom MT +2655
[00:32:04.536] Drudge Ghoul hits MT Absorb (3040)
[00:32:04.884] RL Friend Resto Druid Wild Growth MT +1414
[00:32:04.884] Resto Shaman Riptide MT +1736
[00:32:04.892] Other Holy Pally Beacon of Light MT +27150
[00:32:05.089] Good Resto Shaman Lesser Healing Wave MT +8725
[00:32:05.487] Madrana Holy Light MT +15411 (O: 8078)

Whew. Back to full.

[00:32:05.500] RL Friend Resto Druid Lifebloom MT +0 (O: 2655)
[00:32:05.657] Resto Shaman Ancestral Awakening MT +0 (O: 11530)
[00:32:05.673] Dumbass Priest Flash Heal MT +*0* (O: 11816)
[00:32:05.673] RL Friend Resto Druid Wild Growth MT +0 (O: 1384)
[00:32:05.861] RL Friend Resto Druid Rejuvenation MT +0 (O: 4173)

Still full.

[00:32:05.861] The Lich King hits MT 74738 (A: 982)

OH MY GOD.

[00:32:06.358] Good Resto Shaman Earthliving MT +1463
[00:32:06.504] RL Friend Resto Druid Lifebloom MT +2643
[00:32:06.504] Other Holy Pally Beacon of Light MT +17768
[00:32:06.515] Good Resto Shaman Riptide MT +5040
[00:32:06.718] RL Friend Resto Druid Wild Growth MT +1352
[00:32:06.952] Madrana Holy Light MT +23603
[00:32:07.123] Good Resto Shaman Riptide MT +1831
[00:32:07.269] Other Holy Pally Beacon of Light MT +7395
[00:32:07.452] RL Friend Resto Druid Lifebloom MT +2643
[00:32:07.606] The Lich King hits MT 65671 (O: 1151, A: 6147)
[00:32:08.141] MT dies

Dead. Thanks for playing! Obviously, the other holy paladin should have had a holy light casting on his last cast there as it might have kept him up. That was a very small overkill.

And if you think it’s okay to have Enraged Shambling Horrors hitting your OT for any amount of time? Wrong.

[00:23:49.929] Shambling Horror hits OT 73255  (O: 80523, A: 11540)

I am probably going to be leaving my guild tomorrow and applying to the Skywall and Hyjal guilds I was talking about, so tonight is almost certainly my last raid with this guild.

I find my feelings about that are more than a little mixed, but I know that I’m not going to be happy pushing through to HLK and wiping with these people for the next X number of months. I’d rather take a couple of steps back in progression to ensure that when I DO kill LK, it’ll be with people who are, you know… not assholes.

Guilds & Loyalty & Obligation, Oh My!

Kurn / / healing, icecrown citadel, paladins, raiding, ramblings

(or, Yes, Kurn is Still Bitching About Her Guild And Stuff… You Got A Problem With That?)

So, as previously mentioned, I didn’t raid last Thursday. Or last Sunday. And I didn’t raid on Monday, either. Insert 24h downtime and then I figured I’d go raid tonight. Apart from anything else, I was definitely getting twitchy. I hadn’t healed on the paladin for, oh, a week. I actually tried to toss a renew up on a tank at one point by clicking my mouse wheel and got the error message that there’s nothing to dispel. (It’s bound to Cleanse on my pally.)

Anyways, it didn’t start off terribly. I don’t raid for loot, but it was definitely very nice to get the heroic version of the Bulwark of Smouldering Steel. We’ve had five shields drop since our first week in ICC and this is only the second heroic one. I’m too tired to do the math, but that is a LOT of weeks without a shield dropping.

Apart from that, the raid pretty much sucked. Here are some “highlights”.

Heroic Lady Deathwhisper:

Number of Resto Shaman in the raid: 2

Number of Resto Druids in the raid: 1

Number of decurses by Resto Shammies on one attempt: 3 and 1 = 4

Number of decurses by Resto Druids on same attempt: 12

Heroic Deathbringer Saurfang:

Wipes: 2

Number of times people beaned in the face by Blood Beasts over all three attempts: 13

Number of times the raid leader got beaned in the face by Blood Beasts and subsequently died: 4

Heroic Blood Prince Council:

Number of wipes: 1 (which is 1 more than usual)

Number of times the stupid DPS forced ME to move, while healing the MT, despite Shadow Prison: 3

Number of times the stupid DPS killed me because they refused to move and I could not move lest the MT die: 1

Number of times veteran ret paladin died to Shadow Prison: 2

Number of dispels of Glittering Sparks by anyone over 2 attempts: 6 (me), 2 (RL/shadow priest), 2 (holy priest)

Number of dispels of Glittering Sparks by virtue of Mass Dispel by ANY priest over 2 attempts: 0 (I think that the healing lead asked the holy priest to go disc and he doesn’t seem to have done so)

Blood Queen Lana’thel:

Number of healers asked to heal tanks: 3 (1 holy paladin, 2 resto shaman)

Number of non-Chain Heals cast by shammies: 33 + 43 = 76

Number of Earth Shield heals on MT: 8 (never refreshed)

Number of Earth Shields heals on OT: 1 (placed on the OT at the end of the fight)

On a scale of 1-10, with 1 being “Not at All” and 10 being “Extremely”, the level of fear Kurn has of looking through the rest of the log to see Earth Shield failure: 14

If I was looking to last night’s raid to convince me that I should stick around despite the fact I’m currently not speaking to the raid leader, well, that definitely wasn’t convincing at all.

Everything was pissing me off. The stupid holy/disc priest who is the one who thinks outside the box before thinking inside it was all “yaaaaaaay, we have healers tonight!!!! I’ve missed you guys!!!” and it made me want to punch him in the face. Which, you know, is silly. He was genuinely happy to have so many members of the healing team online. But I still wanted to punch him in the face. I didn’t feel like it was a big ol’ happy reunion or anything. I was actually dreading the raid, exactly as I have been for the past couple of months and everything about it had the effect of stressing me out or frustrating me.

And so, perhaps it’s finally gotten to that point where a decision will have to be made. Do I put the good of my guild ahead of me and my desires? Or do I run screaming from this atmosphere and find a new home?

Let me be clear: I am not a guild hopper. I spent a year in Fated Heroes — my first real guild. I was there from the day I dinged 50 until the day it disbanded. I spent a couple of months in Skull, until such time that they ceased raiding pretty much entirely and my old FH crew and I started up Apotheosis. I was in Apotheosis for over a year and a half, until we stopped raiding officially in March of 2009.

From March of 2009 until September, I was in a raiding guild on Bronzebeard and only left due to two reasons:

1) The raid leader had ragequit and, though I was an officer, I didn’t have the energy to help them pick up the pieces of the guild. I tried, but I really couldn’t help keep it together.

2) My RL friend’s guild was in need of holy paladins; after nearly two years of talking about raiding together “someday”, “someday” was finally here.

And so I’ve been in my RL friend’s guild since October, with my trial having started in September. That’s nine long months of TOC, TOGC, ICC and the odd Ulduar run. I’ve been there for their Algalon kill and the crafting of my friend’s Val’anyr. I was acting healing lead for more than two months while my RL friend dealt with RL stuff. I was responsible for the healing for Sindragosa and LK regular kills and all the hard mode kills except Putricide and some of Sindragosa (I did some basic strat stuff, but it got further refined by my RL friend and the raid leader, which then led to a kill).

My point in this is not to toot my own horn, but merely to show that I am someone who values loyalty, who IS loyal, who always puts the needs of her guild/raid group/healing team ahead of her. The exception, of course, being when I took the crappy boots off Dreamwalker from Failadin. ;D

Leaving a guild is never an easy decision for someone like me, who believes that there has to be more to the guild than showing up with 24 others and downing content, or attempting to. I’m not saying I want to be best friends with everyone in my raid group, but I’d kind of like to respect the majority of the raiders. I’d like to push myself to keep up the tank because I don’t want to let the tank down, not just because I’m scared they’ll swap me out for a poor performance.

I want to be patted on the head every so often and told that I did a good job. I want to do my job quietly, but I want people to recognize that even if I didn’t top the healing meters, I DID do my job. (Don’t get me wrong, I CAN top healing meters if I really want to, and I will do so on certain fights, without even aiming for that goal, but that shouldn’t be the measure of success on a fight. :P)

I want to be surrounded with people who can play their classes adequately, if not extremely well. I want people who KNOW how to play, who can rely on others in the group to do what they’re supposed to do on each attempt.

Like, for instance, resto shammies who know they’re supposed to get rid of the damn Curse of Torpor and NOT let it run full duration on a freaking tank healer. Have you ever seen every healing ability you have on cooldown for fifteen seconds? It’s not a pretty sight, but it was necessary because if I didn’t throw my tank SOMETHING, he was gonna die.

So my raid on Wednesday was lacking in so many ways and was not at all what I had hoped it might be. I hoped that with a few nights off, I’d be ready to go back to ICC and kick some ass. And I, personally, totally kicked some ass. I have no idea how, but I hit 7k HPS on Saurfang, and I didn’t even have Marks 1/3 to heal, I was given 2/4. I never died to something that was my fault (see: DPS killing me on Blood Prince Council) and when the tanks died, it was either a wipe or they weren’t my target for that fight. (Like Saurfang, and for some reason, we lost a tank on our Council kill, but it wasn’t my target, nor was it my beacon. I didn’t even notice.)

As a former guild master, I automatically hated people who left my guild. Period. You leave my guild, you are dead to me. As a raider, I’m similarly pissed when a core person leaves a guild. And so this is where responsibility and loyalty and obligations come into play. As a member of any guild, I have a responsibility to show up for raids, ready to raid and prepared for the fights. I have a feeling of loyalty and belonging when I’m in a good guild, where we can learn from mistakes or laugh about near misses and all be collectively inspired to kick some ass after a 2% wipe. I have an obligation to do my best, to not let down the people around me, to do what I can for the team.

This is why, more often than not, I open my stupid mouth and try to help if I see things being done “wrong” or not being done at all. I’m the one who tells the paladins what to judge. I’m the one who sets up pally power for the optimal buffing setup. I’m the one who does all of this stupid stuff because other people either don’t do it or, in my experience, they do it WRONG. Er, “wrong”. As in, sub-optimally.

I’m not someone who, by nature, min/maxes completely out the wazoo. If I were, I’d run 10s, I’d have crafted the shammy spellpower legs for Madrana already and replaced the 258 Legplates of Failing Light.

But when something is done sloppily in a raid, I tend to be a little cranky. So I step up. Same with healing and healing assignments. That’s how I got to be healing lead in my Bronzebeard guild; I wouldn’t shut up about how X, Y and Z would be better than A, B and C. I feel like if things are done sloppily, we’re all just wasting each other’s time.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why I devote myself to the guilds/raid groups I become part of — I want the team to succeed.

So when the time comes to leave a guild, I am, of course, drowned in waves of guilt. My natural inclination is to help the team, not myself. Leaving a guild is the ultimate in selfishness; you’ve gotten loot, experience, strategies from raiding with these people and then you leave and take your loot and experience and another idea of how to do things to another raid group.

But, as anyone who’s been reading can tell, I’m clearly getting to this point with my current guild.

So I’m exploring my options and plan to talk to my RL friend about this stuff tomorrow. There’s already a guild that’s caught my eye, but I figure hey, if your guild is looking for a holy paladin, let me know, either here or via email at kurn [at] apotheosis-now [dot] com. Why not, right?

Some notes:

– I will not go Horde.

– I would prefer raid times between 8:30pm ET and 1am ET (not for 4.5 hours, but a 3-3.5 hour chunk in there). (Obviously, I am on North American servers and cannot transfer to any other versions, blah, blah, blah.)

– I prefer PVE servers and have no interest in going to a PVP server. RP is potentially negotiable, but not my preference.

– Server economy must be strong; I don’t care if things are pricey so long as they’re available.

– Prefer Alliance to dominate Wintergrasp so VOA pugs are easy to form.

– I have 0 interest in 10-mans. I am only interested in 25-man ICC (and eventually Ruby Sanctum) and my preference is at least 9/12 HM already down. (Perhaps 8/12, but I have no desire to relearn/teach people how to do fights I already spent hours wiping on.)

– Must have a competant healing lead who is very aware of all five healing specs and how they work together. Healing leads who bitch people out for not topping meters are not competant. :P

– Similarly, must have a competant healing team. Preferably, a competant raid group in general.

– Must have a respectful atmosphere. I don’t want to see racist, sexist, homophobic crap, no religious or national intolerance either. If your raid group consists of people who call each other “gay” or “fag” or use “rape” casually to indicate domination of something in the game, I would probably rather stay with my current guild and all the abuse the GM lays on us.

– I’d really only stay until 4.0/Cataclysm. This is just a short-term stay to help finish ICC heroic and Ruby Sanctum.

So, yeah. Let’s see if there are any options out there, eh?

ETA: Here’s a CharDev profile of my gear and talents:

http://www.chardev.org/?profile=420109

A Look at a Heroic Putricide Strategy

Kurn / / guide, icecrown citadel, raiding

Good news, everyone! I’ve decided to take a minute here and talk about how my guild does Heroic Professor Putricide on 25-man. Seems that there are a lot of people out there struggling with the fight and not a lot of information out there, so I thought I’d drop in my two cents.

Please bear in mind that I really don’t know a lot of the details as to how the DPS works on this fight, but I do know how healing works pretty darn well.

Our raid composition is rarely exactly the same, but our tanks almost always are. We have a warrior tank who is the MT. We have another warrior tank who is in the abomination. We have a bear tank who plays kitty for us until Phase 3.

For raid buffs, we find it essential to drop Nature Resistance Totem and have Prayer of Shadow Protection up, in addition to the regular raid buffs. In lieu of NR Totem, Aspect of the Wild may be used, but this is a serious DPS/healing check, so you don’t really want to gimp your DPS by forcing a hunter out of Aspect of the Dragonhawk.

For paladin auras, we prefer Improved Devotion Aura, if only for the extra armor (and the bonus healing if there’s no tree in the raid), Concentration Aura to help reduce or eliminate spell pushback and either Retribution Aura or Shadow Resistance Aura, though it doesn’t stack with Prayer of Shadow Protection. (A holy paladin can use Aura Mastery + Shadow Resistance Aura to boost everyone’s Shadow Resistance for a short time.)

Phase 1:

Healing: We typically run with six healers. Two holy paladins, one disc priest, one resto shaman and the remaining are a mix of either 2 resto druids or 1 resto/1 holy priest or even 1 resto shammy/1 holy priest. It really depends on who’s around, but we do our best to have at least two holy paladins, the disc and a shammy.

Paladins: Beacon MT, heal raid, focusing on Unbound Plague and Gaseous Bloat targets, helping out on Volatile Ooze Adhesive targets if possible.

1 Resto Shammy: Raid healing + Volatile Ooze Adhesive targets.

Disc Priest: Raid healing by virtue of shielding folks and tossing out Renews, Prayers of Mending and the odd Prayer of Healing. Spot heals with Penance and Flash Heal as well.

Other healers: Focused really on the raid and these are the people who will do the most moving. They’re the ones who stand on the Volatile Ooze Adhesive person, but the pallies and shammy generally won’t, since the melee and 3-4 healers is enough to absorb the damage.

We also find that a minimum of one resto druid with Revitalize is excellent for regenerating the abomination’s energy. If possible, two resto druids with this talent really helps out because it means the slime puddles really don’t have to stay up for long at all in order to regen the abom’s energy. In the comments, ambient reminds us all that Rapture works like Revitalize does. The important thing is having two of these effects on the abomination as often as possible. :) More energy = more slows on adds. Thanks for the reminder, ambient!

DPSing: Uh… moar pew pew? ;) No, seriously, the DPS really just focus on the boss, always prioritizing the adds when they come out. We WILL try to stop DPS at 84% if we’re due for another add. We have discovered, the hard way, that even one extra add up during any transition phase is a bad, bad thing.

Tanking/positioning: The tank is usually moving Putricide around, away from Unbound Plague targets, towards Volatile Ooze Adhesive targets. It’s a very mobile encounter and while we used to stand on various sides based on which add was coming out back on normal mode, we don’t tend to do this any longer and definitely not on heroic mode.

Once the adds are down and we’re not due another one for a bit, we will push Putricide to 80% and start the first transition phase.

Transition Phase 1:

Healing: We maintain the same assignments as during phase 1, with the paladins healing the Gaseous Bloats and a resto shammy on the Volatile Ooze Adhesives. Unbound Plague should fall off someone just as the transition is beginning, so we don’t have to worry about that again until Phase 2.

DPSing: What can be said but kill the add that you can attack? Something that helps us immeasurably, though, is a good Gaseous Bloat kiter. They’ll run the ooze away from the raid, initially, and then come running back towards the group, so that the DPS can get a good start on the Ooze and then can ruin the Gas. Go go focused fire!

Phase 2:

I hate Malleable Goo. :P

Healing: Nothing’s changed, everyone’s still doing what they’ve been doing up ’till now.

Tanking: Same thing, MT is on Putricide, OT is in the abomination and the other OT is playing kitty.

DPSing: Again, the same.

In reality, Phase 2 is so similar to Phase 1 that it’s hard to believe that the addition of Malleable Goo is such a problem. But it IS a problem. I believe that Putricide launches THREE Goos (I’m usually too busy to count!) and the only way to really avoid them is to watch for them. DXE, AVR, DBM, BigWigs, none of them will show you all the targets. Trust me, I’ve tried.

So what I do is move my big central warning text from the middle of my screen off to the side and watch my Malleable Goo timer as best I can. When the warning noise (from DXE, I believe) goes off, I stop whatever I’m doing and look up at Putricide and run like the dickens.

This does not mean that I don’t get hit, now and then, because I do. :P But it’s a lot less often now that I’ve trained myself to watch for it. Plus I still have DBM yelling at me if it’s targetting me specifically.

So, same as the end of Phase 1, we hold off DPS at around 38% or so until we’ve killed all the adds and then we push Putricide into transition.

Transition Phase 2:

Same as the first transition phase, with two exceptions:

1) We hit heroism.

2) We also try to pull out summonable pets for the Volatile Ooze Adhesive explosion, to help absorb the damage. We’re talking Army of the Dead, Ghost Wolves, Shadowfiends, hunter pets, warlock pets and shammy elementals. These pets are really key to absorbing damage and helping to finish off the transition adds so we can get on to Putricide ASAP in P3. Adds MUST go down before DPS switches to Putricide.

This is one reason why going into a transition with any kind of extra add up is recipe for disaster. It prevents you from getting back to the boss in a timely fashion.

Phase 3:

Okay, time to switch things up!

Tanking: OT pops out of the abom. OT pops out of kitty into bear form. MT tanks until he has two stacks of Mutated Plague, then Bear Tank taunts and holds the boss for two stacks. Then other OT taunts and holds the boss for two stacks.

Subsequent taunts are quick, just for one stack each, so it goes like this:

Tank 1: 2 stacks

Tank 2: 2 stacks

Tank 3: 2 stacks

Tank 1: 1 additional stack, for 3 stacks

Tank 2: 1 additional stack, for 3 stacks

Tank 3: 1 additional stack, for 3 stacks

Tank 1: 1 additional stack, for 4 stacks

Tank 2: 1 additional stack, for 4 stacks

Tank 3: 1 additional stack, for 4 stacks

If Putricide isn’t dead by now, chances are, the entire raid is.

The important thing for the tanks to do, apart from knowing when to taunt, is to NOT change direction abruptly. Keep moving him slowly, keeping him out of slime puddles and away from the orange vials and such, but you really don’t want to be going one way and then have another tank taunt and go back the way you just came.

Healing: Healers, I hope you’re ready for some insane freaking damage here. It’s just STUPID.

Paladins: Don’t worry about beacon yet. It should still be on your MT, but I encourage you to keep spamming Holy Light directly on your first tank. You MUST be aware of the tank rotation! As soon as you see that the first tank has two stacks (or whatever you stack to), you need to switch targets immediately. With any luck, your beacon is still up on the MT (although I wouldn’t waste the mana to refresh it) and you can pre-emptively heal the second tank a bit.

After everyone has two stacks is an ideal time to do three things:

1) Find a better place to stand. You want to stand somewhere far enough away from the tanks that you won’t have to move again for the encounter, barring environmental crap, but close enough that they’re still in range. You want to be near the area where they will be kiting the boss towards. But don’t just run over immediately when people have two stacks…

2) This is a great time for one paladin to hit Divine Shield/Divine Sacrifice. The 20% damage reduction for six seconds is enough of a buffer, usually, for you to run to a new place to be before you resume casting and the Divine Shield aspect allows you to run through slime if you need to in order to get to your new location. Any other paladins should chain DS/DS at this point, so when one finishes, the next begins.

3) As soon as you’ve done your DS/DS and moved to a better location, beacon YOURSELF and heal the active tank. This is pretty much the only way you’re going to be able to stay alive on the encounter because you’re taking 18k+ damage every time Mutated Plague ticks on the three tanks when it’s getting to 3 stacks. It’s actually really easy to keep up one tank (and yourself, via beacon) just by spamming the crap out of Holy Light and using all your cooldowns available to you — wings, Divine Illumination, Lay on Hands, anything you’ve got.

Priests: Derevka suggests chaining Divine Hymns at the end of P3, so probably at about the time the first stack of 3 appears and the raid damage gets significantly harder. Chaining them will allow subsequent Divine Hymns to benefit from the buff of the initial heal, with disc priests going first, then holy priests for maximum output. Thanks for the tip! :)

Raid healers: You are probably going to die unless your DPS is seriously on top of things. I honestly recommend priests use the occasional Binding Heal. Don’t worry about the paladins because they’ve beaconed themselves. Don’t worry about the tanks. Worry about yourselves and the DPS.

DPSing: Apart from killing the boss, your biggest responsibility is containing the Unbound Plague. I really haven’t spoken a lot about the plague, because it’s easy enough to hand off/avoid in the first two phases with just a little practice, but since everyone is basically bunched up for Phase 3, this is where it’s YOUR responsibility to get it the hell out of the raid. You do not want this ticking on your tanks or healers and you especially do not want anyone to have the plague ticking on them after they’ve already had the plague. Plague Sickness is bad, okay? The loss of your DPS (if you’re melee) or the slowdown of your DPS (if you’re ranged and have to move) is really minor compared to the havoc that the Unbound Plague can cause in melee range. So if you get it, RUN IT OUT. If you die with it, it’s not the end of the world, because at least you won’t spread the plague. But try to hand it off after about 10 seconds.

And that is, more or less, how my guild does Professor Putricide on 25-man heroic mode.

Comments or questions are welcome. :)