Category: ruby sanctum

Holy How-to #9: Righteous Fury and You

Kurn / / holy how-to (wrath), icecrown citadel, raiding, ruby sanctum

Welcome to my Holy How-To for PVE Paladins. This is the ninth of what I hope to be a great many posts aimed at helping holy paladins succeed at PVE content. I will focus primarily on max-level talent specs, glyphs, enchants, gems and the like, including tools, tips and tricks that I use, but I hope to touch on levelling content and advice as well.

Today’s post will focus primarily on the use of Righteous Fury. True, Righteous Fury is most often left to the domain of the protection paladin, who needs the extra holy threat on their abilities to gain and then maintain aggro.

“But Kurn,” you might say, “I thought this was a HOLY how-to?”

Indeed it is. We’re going to look at the use of Improved Righteous Fury while healing as a holy paladin through T10 (ICC/Ruby Sanctum) content.

Continue reading “Holy How-to #9: Righteous Fury and You”

Your Thoughts: Paladins and Utility Spells

Kurn / / dps, healers, icecrown citadel, paladins, raiding, ruby sanctum, tanks

Due to a discussion I am having elsewhere, I would like to know what you all think is appropriate use of a paladin’s utility spells, regardless of spec, over the course of a 4 hour raid night which is in Ruby Sanctum (25m regular) and ICC 25 (mostly heroic, some regular modes).

Please answer the following questions.

1) Should all paladins use Lay on Hands at some point in that 4-hour block?

2) Should all paladins know how to Cleanse? Should every paladin be expected to Cleanse? What encounters should they/shouldn’t they be expected to Cleanse on? What spec do you expect paladins who Cleanse to be?

3) Should all paladins use Hand of Salvation at some point in that 4-hour block? On whom? What spec should these casting paladins be? In what situations should it be cast?

4) Should all paladins use Hand of Sacrifice at some point in that 4-hour raid? On whom? What spec should they be? What situations?

5) Should all paladins use BOP (Hand of Protection) at some point in that raid? On whom? What spec should they be? In what situations would it be useful?

I await your answers and then will tell you on Tuesday why I’m asking. :)

Kurn's Q&A #26

Kurn / / alchemy, gear, general, healing, icecrown citadel, paladins, q&a, raiding, ruby sanctum, weekly raids

Tuesday! A day off from raiding, a day to center myself and get caught up on a bunch of things, including weekly search terms that seem interesting.

1) what is raidwalled

“Raidwalled” is when a paladin with the talent Divine Sacrifice and Divine Guardian casts Divine Sacrifice, which activates Divine Guardian. This name comes from the warrior cooldown called Shield Wall, although Divine Guardian will not mitigate anywhere near as much damage as Shield Wall. However, it does affect the entire raid, whereas Shield Wall only affects the warrior.

2) bop remove cleave armor debuff ruby sanctum

That’s an awesome question. Next time I do RS, I’ll BOP an inactive tank for a second before freedoming them to see if that works.

3) do elixir mastery proc on potions

It astounds me that, more than three years since alchemy specializations were introduced, people still don’t get it.

No, Elixir Mastery alchemists proc on elixirs and flasks. Potion Mastery alchemists proc on potions. Transmute Mastery alchemists proc on transmutes.

4) drape of the violet tower holy paladin

DON’T DO IT DON’T DO IT DON’T DO IT BY ALL THAT IS HOLY DO NOT DO IT.

Okay, I may have exaggerated. But you have other options.

Fluttering Sapphiron Drape (10m Ony)
Flowing Sapphiron Drape (25m Ony)

And if you got lucky, Ahune dropped Shroud of Winter’s Chill for you and you didn’t get rid of it.

Honestly, I’d rank the cloaks thusly, from best to worst for a holy paladin:

25m Ony then Ahune then 10m Ony then Drape of the Violet Tower.

Seriously.

5) stormbringer gloves

I admit, I had no idea what the hell these were. The 251 Stormbringer Gloves are nice 251-level gloves. I would recommend the badge gloves over them, though, for a holy paladin. The Gauntlets of Overexposure are better — more int, more haste. They’re also available for 60 Emblems of Frost. Ultimately, I like the Unclean Surgical Gloves and the heroic Unclean Surgical Gloves better.

Here’s a comparison.

6) +casting +”beacon of light” +threat

I’m pretty sure that you do get some measure of threat merely by casting Beacon of Light. The Lich King looked at me last night after I cast Beacon of Light on an OT. It’s likely not much, probably the equivalent of a face pull, and would probably need to be done right when the boss becomes active (in the case of the Lich King, for example) in order to cause any significant threat.

Does the mirrored heal from Beacon of Light cause threat? I honestly don’t know. I’ll see if I can figure that one out.

7) any way to parse halion log

I use World of Logs, but the last I saw, it wasn’t able to parse both the shadow realm and the physical realm, since you’re only logging for your active realm.

I love WoL dearly and have no doubt they’re working on this issue.

8) halion beacon of light

What I like to do is beacon the tank here and raid heal, including myself. However, I never, ever hesitate to directly heal the tank, even if beacon is on them. I do this on most single-tank portions of fights. Will the beacon go through the realms? I do not think so.

9) holy paladin multiple beacon

You can have an unlimited number of beacons on a single target. The only limitation is how many holy paladins you have around.

10) is the weekly on the same lockout as the regular raids

Yes. That means if your weekly is Lord Jaraxxus and you go into TOC10 to kill him, you will be saved to TOC10. Same if it’s XT-002 Deconstructor and you go in to Ulduar 25, you are then saved to Ulduar 25.

Kurn's Q&A 25

Kurn / / gear, healing, icecrown citadel, paladins, priests, q&a, raiding, ruby sanctum

It’s Tuesday and that means it’s time for Kurn’s Q&A! I really do enjoy my days off of raiding. It lets me get all kinds of stuff, WoW, not-WoW, RL, etc, done!

1) does sacred shield use gcd

Yes, it does. That’s why it’s very important not to refresh your Judgements of the Pure, your Sacred Shield and your Beacon of Light all at the same time. That’s three GCDs (3-4.5 seconds) of not healing.

2) “drape of the violet tower” vs. “heartsick mender’s cape”

I’ll be talking about the 251 version of the Heartsick Mender’s Cape here, just because it’s more accessible than the 264.

Heartsick Mender’s Cape, on paper, a little worse than the Drape of the Violet Tower. On paper, it loses 8 intellect, 8 stamina, 3 mp5, 8 armor, 12 spellpower and a whopping 52 crit.

The Heartsick Mender’s Cape, however, has 45 haste.

Even though it’s a lower item level and is missing out on 8 int and some crit and spellpower, the 45 haste makes this godly compared to the Drape of the Violet Tower.

The Drape has one other thing going for it — accessibility. 50 Emblems of Frost and it’s yours. Too bad it’s not a great choice. Heartsick Mender’s Cape is a little deeper into ICC10 than many pugs go, unfortunately, but it’s still way better than the Drape.

3) baltharus the warborn armor debuff

Wrong boss. It’s General Zarithrian that has the armor debuff and that, my dear readers, is called Cleave Armor.

4) heroic putricide is fun

I really do enjoy it. Malleable Goo can still kiss my ass, but I really like the plague.

5) holy paladin which gem for lockjaw

Brilliant King’s Amber or Brilliant Dragon’s Eye if you’re a JC. Unless you’re running Flash of Light style, in which case a Runed Cardinal Ruby or Runed Dragon’s Eye.

6) holy vs. disc heroic putricide

I like disc. Not only do you keep the 3% damage reduction buff up by casting shields (Renewed Hope is hax!) but you also have the ability to mitigate a CRAPTON of damage in P3. And believe me, you NEED to mitigate a crapton of damage in P3.

7) lay on hands glitch 13 min cooldown

The only way you have a 13 minute cooldown on Lay on Hands is if you have 1/2 Improved Lay on Hands in the holy tree as well as the minor Glyph of Lay on Hands. It’s not a glitch, you’re missing a talent point in that talent.

8) marking vengeful shades targets

Nope, sorry. They are not targettable. Period.

9) putricide heroic army of the dead

I am normally not a fan of “army of the nub” as I call it, but it’s GREAT on Putricide on the second transition phase to help improve DPS and to help eat up the Ooze Explosions.

10) sanctum guardian xerestrasza despawns?

Yes, she despawns after a soft reset of the instance (30+ minutes with no one in there).

Kurn's Q&A 24

Kurn / / healing, paladins, q&a, raiding, ramblings, real id, ruby sanctum

Oof, all this Real ID crap, plus a nap, means a later-than-usual Q&A post. I’ve decided to rely solely on my search terms for this stuff going forward, by the way. I decided I didn’t need a way for people to anonymously harass me. If you have a question, let me know via email or twitter. :)

1) how many people recemended on ruby sanctum

… 10 or 25? Haha, no, seriously, here’s the breakdown:

10: 2 tanks, 2-3 healers, 5-6 DPS. I strongly recommend three healers unless you SUPER outgear the content.

25: 3 tanks (one can be DPS or heals for Halion himself, but you need three for Baltharus), 6-7 healers, 15-16 DPS.

2) divine sacrifice macro it cutting my fps

No. Your Divine Sacrifice macro is not cutting your FPS. If anything, the spell effects of Divine Sacrifice are cutting your FPS. Turn down your graphic settings, either Particle Density or some of the other effects.

3) does the beacon accept its own heals

I’m confused. If you mean “will heals that land on the beacon directly copy through Beacon of Light, effectively hitting them twice?”, then no. Only Flash of Light, Holy Light, Holy Shock and Lay on Hands heals to OTHER targets will be copied to your beacon target.

If, on the other hand, you mean “can I beacon myself and benefit from heals I cast on other people?” then the answer is yes.

4) halion shadow resistance

You don’t need Shadow Resistance gear, but an aura or Prayer of Shadow Protection is highly recommended.

5) holy light vs flash of light 3.3

I’ve always done my best to acknowledge that there is another interesting way to play a holy paladin, that being the Flash of Light style. However, I don’t like that style. I don’t think I’ve hidden my dislike of it, but I also try not to be all “you’re a moron” if you do like that style. The reason I don’t like it is because it’s less flexible. You are basically forced to keep casting Flash of Light because you don’t have the mana pool to sustain casting Holy Light more regularly than “every once in a while”.

Whereas Holy Light style paladins CAN cast Flash of Light if the occasion calls for it and CAN cast Holy Light ’till the cows come home if we need to.

That’s why I prefer a Holy Light style and always will.

6) meta achievement requires “neck-deep in vile” 3.3.5 25

YES. It does require it on 25-man. Absolutely confirmed. (Click for a larger version of this screenshot of a GM ticket.)

7) ruby sanctum 3 healers

The reason I strongly recommend three healers is because the shadow aura in the twilight realm just flat-out sucks. Get a raid healer and a tank healer in the twilight realm and any decent healer outside and you should be fine.

8) anyway for you to block a real id person from seeing your potential friends

Afraid not.

9) saviana ragefire “no hunter”

… got a rogue with Anesthetic Poison? Otherwise, you’re going to need awesome heals on the group.

10) toravon frost or physical damage

Both. There is a lot of frost damage in terms of Frostbite stacks on the tanks and Whiteout every so often, but his hits are physical.

Kurn's Guide to Ruby Sanctum

Kurn / / guide, raiding, ruby sanctum

Welcome to my guide to Ruby Sanctum, the raid instance released in Patch 3.3.5 of World of Warcraft.

This guide will cover the basic abilities that Halion and the minibosses within the instance will use on the normal versions of the encounter. It will also give you some ideas on how to deal with these abilities during these fights. It will also talk a bit about trash and how to get through it relatively unscathed.

Continue reading “Kurn's Guide to Ruby Sanctum”

Amusing screenshots.

Kurn / / parses, ramblings, ruby sanctum

After parsing my Ruby Sanctum 10 run the other night, I about fell over laughing at the rankings. The hunter is my brother. I’m the resto shaman who starts with a K. Our buddy Maj is the frost DK.

Hilariously amusing to be one of the first parses up. My brother was ranked world 10th in DPS on Baltharus and Zarithrian!

Today, the continuation, where we actually go out and kill Halion. With a little luck. :)

"It works for me!"

Kurn / / facepalm, healing, icecrown citadel, paladins, raiding, ramblings, ruby sanctum

Codi was talking about how she’s basically been accused of being an elitist in terms of stuff she says on her blog and how, because she’s so advanced, people have used that as a caveat when it comes to taking her advice.

This got me thinking about my own paladinesque standards.

What do I know?

Well, I know what works for me, and what HAS worked for me, in all tiers of content in this expansion, through regular modes and hard modes.

Like Codi, I’ve got a fair bit of gear and a fair bit of progression under my belt.

I’m pretty sure that most of my sort of requirements for a holy paladin are good ones. They’re requirements that would show someone’s done reading and research about the class, that show that people understand the basic tenet of “more mana is always better than more spellpower” and such.

Given the ICC buff, though, a lot of people are getting by with terrible specs and horribly-chosen gear.

But if it works for them and their raid group, does anyone really have the “right” to say that they’re being an idiot?

On Tuesday night, I ran a pug Ruby Sanctum 10 with Maj and my brother. There was a failish paladin in the group.

Here is her armory. Click on it and it’ll open in a new window, then come back here and we’ll go through why I think she’s pretty fail.

http://www.chardev.org/?profile=428926

1) Helm: Right helm. Wrong meta. Wrong gem. IMHO: Insightful and Nightmare Tear. I won’t even talk about the arcanum, since that’s too nitpicky at this point.

2) Neck: Great necklace. Good gem.

3) Shoulders: Right shoulders. Wrong gem.

4) Cloak: Why any holy paladin wastes Emblems of Frost on this piece of crap, I don’t know. Good gem and enchant, at least.

5) Chest: Well, there are better options. But the tier chest isn’t terrible. Again with the hybrid gems, though. WTB 20 ints!

6) Bracers: Great bracers. Would prefer 16 int enchant and a 20 int gem.

7) Gloves: Great gloves. Need 2×20 int gems, though. Fine enchant.

8) Belt: Wrong belt. Should have the Belt of the Lonely Noble or the Lich Killer’s Lanyard, both of which are identical to each other, and both have haste. Also tries to hit the socket bonus here with a Dazzling Eye of Zul. Socket bonuses are evil and are there to confuse you!

9) Pants: Great pants, good enchant, needs more int gems.

10) Boots: No haste on boots. … and a 20 AP/10 crit gem. w. t. f.

11) Ring 1: A caster ring, with hit and no haste… and a Dazzling Forest Emerald. REALLY?

12) Ring 2: Exalted ICC ring, nicely gemmed.

13) Trinket 1: Love that Talisman.

14) Trinket 2: Why, dear God, why the Purified Lunar Dust?

15) Weapon: Lockjaw is a solid weapon in ICC 10. Not enchanted with anything, though…

16) Shield: Great, perfect.

17) Libram: Dear sweet fancy Moses, why a gladiator libram?

18) Talents:

a) 60 in Holy: 2/2 Blessed Hands, 3/3 Imp Concentration Aura, 3/3 Sacred Cleansing. Eesh.

b) 11 in Prot: All solid pickups, including Divine Sacrifice, but no Divine Guardian makes me want to cry.

19) Glyphs: Seal of Light and Holy Shock instead of Seal of Wisdom and Beacon of Light. OH THE HUMANITY.

But how was her performance? The paladin outhealed me on bosses; 3 attempts at Ragefire, 9 on Baltharus, 1 on Zarithrian and 2 on Halion. Granted, my shaman is terribly geared, still sitting in T9. I think anyone with any amount of gear could outheal me at this point.

She had good overall uptime on Beacon of Light (89.7%) and Sacred Shield (81.3%), but dropped to 69.1% uptime on Judgements of the Pure.

Here’s what boggles me, though — she used Divine Plea 15 times and only offset it with the Talisman once and Avenging Wrath once. She didn’t use Divine Illumination AT ALL.

To me, all the things I’ve pointed out as being wrong, the gems, enchants, uptimes, offsets for DP… these are basics. BASICS. These are things that make my head want to explode. Never, not in a million years, would I want this paladin to raid alongside me in ICC. Ever.

And yet, despite the issues I can clearly see in the logs and on her armory, she did an overall good job. I mean, we beat the trash, we beat the minibosses and today, at least 8 of us are going back into RS10 to down Halion. She’s not necessarily one of them, unfortunately, because she hasn’t responded to my calendar invite or in-game mail, but Thursday was successful, in my opinion.

So my question is… do I have a right to question what works for some people? I’m sitting here saying “do X, Y and Z” because those are the “best practices”. Those are the things that I’ve learned work best, mathematically, practically, etc.

But so what if someone isn’t living up to their potential? Should it really make a difference in a pug? Should I care that the pally is specced abysmally? Should I care that she’s having to waste globals to refresh SS and BoL? Not if she’s keeping people up. And that’s what she did, by and large.

Let’s see what happens to her stats if I go fixing her gems, glyphs, stats, etc.

Pre-Kurn edits:

33.15% crit

2980 +healing

203 mp5 while casting

1886 intellect

32404 mana

Post-Kurn edits:

33.73% crit

2873 +healing

174 mp5 while casting

2041 intellect

34729 mana

So she gains half a percent of crit, loses 107 +healing, gains 155 intellect (2325 mana) and loses 29 mp5 while casting. She also gains a proc from her meta that is awesome, the chance to proc 4% of her maximum mana back whenever she judges, a raid-saving CD in Divine Guardian, a longer and stronger Sacred Shield and a longer Beacon of Light.

To me, it’s obvious that my tweaks make her toon that much more efficient, that much stronger.

But it is absolutely necessary for success in her current content, which is ICC 10? She has one, count ’em, one regular 10-man Putricide kill.

Without knowing more about her and her raid group, all I can say is that whatever she’s doing is, more or less, working for her. She’s pushing through content with her guild (2 Fester/Rot kills to date, 1 PP kill, so that’s progression) and she wasn’t the cause of wipes on my pug.

A lot of what I say here comes from my own experience. You know, doing Saurfang 25 normal back pre-ICC buff wasn’t easy. It wasn’t particularly HARD for us, because we were decked out in 245/258 gear and picking up 251/264 upgrades, but it wasn’t easy to heal. Nowadays, there’s a LOT more room for error with a 25% buff. And by “a lot” I mean A LOT. People don’t need to be properly min/maxed for the content anymore, because the buff means that you can get away with damn near anything on regular.

But when I was doing it without the buff, I NEEDED these optimizations to my gear and playstyle. I constantly need that stuff on what my guild currently considers progression. I can’t imagine going a night without my meta gem. On Thursday night, through Baltharus, Ragefire, Zarithrian, Halion, Council, BQL and Dreamwalker, I gained 53400 mana back just from my meta gem. I gained 258k mana back from Seal of Wisdom. This stuff is still absolutely necessary — for me.

But is it so very necessary for other players? Or are all these things just tips to min/max when min/maxing might not even be needed for a player these days?

Don’t get me wrong, I will still bellow from the highest mountaintop that a good holy pally should do X, Y and Z and will continue to try to instill good practices on the malleable minds of not-optimized paladins.

But how necessary is it?

Happy Canada Day / Cataclysm Stuff / Ruby Sanctum

Kurn / / cataclysm, icecrown citadel, raiding, ruby sanctum

Happy Canada Day, folks! I’m headed to Ottawa for the day to see the Queen. No, not Céline Dion or Sarah McLachlan, as some of my new guildies guessed. The actual Queen Elizabeth II.

I’m pretty excited, actually. She’s in Ottawa for Canada Day, which is very cool. I’ve been in Washington DC on July 4th at least twice and now I finally get to be in my own nation’s capital on the day celebrating our independence as a nation. True, I’m missing the fireworks, but THE QUEEN, people!

Ahem. Yes, I’m a monarchist. Well, it’s better than being a separatist, right? Right. The point of that was to say that I’m out of town for the day, but normal operations here at Kurn’s Corner will resume later tonight or tomorrow. :)

Also, there’s a lot of Cataclysm Beta stuff being talked about because invites are going out and the NDA has been lifted. I am not currently in the beta (but you can believe I’m going to be double-checking every freaking day). I would LOVE to hear from you guys regarding paladin changes in Cataclysm if you ARE in the Beta. I’d love to hear about talents, glyphs, new spells and the like. I mean, you’re going to get my perspective about Cataclysm anyways, so you may as well make sure that I’m actually up to date about such things. ;)

Please don’t hesitate to email me with your bits of Cataclysm news at:

kurn [at] apotheosis-now [dot] com

Finally, the guild is heading in to Ruby Sanctum tonight. We got Heroic Lady Deathwhisper as a guild first last night and repeated a Saurfang heroic kill, which is never easy when you only have the one holy paladin in the raid. I’ve discovered that at 4m30s or so, I’m spending more time looking at my dwindling mana bar and Divine Plea cooldown and the boss’ health than I am on if my beacon is still up.

Anyways, 9/12, just in time for the GM’s birthday today and into Ruby Sanctum tonight for something new and exciting! I’ll have a post up about RS strats, mostly cobbled together from my mini-boss experience on Tuesday on the shaman, combined with what I learn tonight about Halion.

Have a fantastic Canada Day, people. I’ll see you later. :)

Hilarity and Halion

Kurn / / facepalm, healing, raiding, ramblings, ruby sanctum

So, as it’s Tuesday, I met a friend for a late breakfast, we went to see a movie (Iron Man 2, which was definitely worth the $6.75), we wandered and chatted and then I came home to discover that, as per usual, Blizzard and I don’t agree on things and Ruby Sanctum is open.

I was asked to go heal for my new guild when I logged on to do my transmutes, but I’d just walked in and was supposed to do a few Ahunes with my brother and Majik over on Proudmoore.

Maj, my brother and I actually ended up doing the weekly (twice on two toons each) and then when I told them that Ruby Sanctum was up… that’s all they wanted to do.

I’ll get into details on the fight in a post tomorrow or something, but can I just say that it was a HILARIOUS raid, even though we didn’t down Halion?

Maj was on his DK, tanking. My brother (whom we call Fog or Foggy) was pressed into service on his rarely-used hunter because his paladin, while able to solo-tank Anub’Rekhan, would have been smushed into itty bitty little bite-sized morsels of dragon food if he had tried tanking in Ruby Sanctum. I… was on my resto shaman. My poor, neglected, rusty old resto shaman.

We pugged seven people: another resto shammy and a holy paladin (a poorly specced, not optimally geared paladin which, to be honest, made me want to cry a bit) to make three healers. We had another paladin tank (who tended to forget about Righteous Fury), a shadow priest, a mage, a warlock and a fury warrior. So five DPS, 3 healers, 2 tanks. Might have been a little conservative on our parts, but hey, we strongly suspected it might not be a faceroll kind of instance.

We went to the right first, killing trash and getting the hang of the first miniboss, Saviana Ragefire.

We wiped a few times on her, since people weren’t watching the BIG FLASHING ARROW THINGS when they had the Conflag debuff. We learned very quickly that conflag is BAD and you want to make sure those people gtfo of the raid and away from each other.

I think it was on our fourth try on Saviana Ragefire that the warrior, mage, shadow priest, warlock and paladin tank all died. And we kept going. That’s right. Three healers, the tank and one DPS — my brother.

HILARIOUS.

We got it done, too. Took something like 14 minutes, because I KNOW I used Mana Tide twice. After about 10 minutes, I realized three things:

1) I had no mana potions. At all. I actually had to trade my brother, while in combat, for the one Runic Mana Potion he had.

2) My mana regen on the shaman SUCKS.

3) Waiting about three seconds before being able to cast even Lesser Healing Wave sucks a LOT.

But we did it! It was great!

We didn’t invite the puggers to Vent, but rather me and Maj and Fog were all on my Vent together. It was so damn funny to hear Majik yelping when his health would be low or to hear him yelling at the pugs (who couldn’t hear him, obviously) to GTFO of the raid. “Run, run, RUN YOU FUCKERS, RUN!” was just one example of that. We really got into a nice rhythm that probably no one else ever should have to be in for as long as we were, but it worked out really nicely and I re-evaluated my opinion of the failish paladin because at least they knew how to run away from the rest of the raid when they have a HUGE red arrow on their HEAD.

It was somewhere around the 11 minute mark when I realized that my paladin instincts had failed me again. I didn’t have Earthliving Weapon on. Whoopsiedoodle.

But better yet, I believe that it was AFTER the fight that my brother says, on Vent, “Guys? I, uh, I might have possibly done all that without Aspect of the Dragonhawk on.”

Then we went towards Baltharus the Warborn.

This guy kicked our ass all over the Ruby Sanctum. I have no idea how many times we wiped on him. Let me see if I can glean this information from the logs.

Ouch. Seven wipes on him.

We lost the shadow priest after the fourth wipe, who “disconnected”, and replaced him with… another shadow priest. Who was much more good natured, too.

The issue was that our paladin tank wasn’t picking up the clone properly or that the blast wave right before the split was throwing a healer or a tank completely OOR. We had people die to melee hits from the clone, we had people die from being OOR or out of LOS… We also had people too close to each other so that mark thing was splashing to others. Took us 4-5 attempts to figure out it’s a lot like Boiling Blood on Saurfang. I vaguely recall being incredibly thankful that we’d gone for the mage instead of a rogue we’d been considering inviting. Apart from AB and food and stuff, the rogue would have died as frequently as the poor warrior did from AOE on the melee.

After the seventh wipe, I was like “Okay, guys. We’ve been here for a fairly long time, so we’ll give it two more attempts and then call it for the night and maybe try to set something up later this week.”

Apart from anything else, I was POOR and couldn’t afford the repairs. I was sincerely not prepared for a raid on the shammy, hahaha.

Well, we walked in and while we lost the warrior and actually lost the prot pally, we got Baltharus down. AWESOMESAUCE.

We investigated the Ruby Sanctum, as per the quest Krasus at Wyrmrest had us do, turned it in and decided to see what Zarithrian was like.

God bless Tremor Totem.

The sunder debuff on the tanks suck, the fear sucks, the adds suck, but we one-shot the bastard because WE WERE AMAZING. Ahahaha.

And then we decided to take a look at Halion himself.

We only did two attempts on him, but had a good time of it. We blew hero at the start on the second attempt now that we knew to expect crazy fire shit dropping from the sky and actually got into P2 and all zoned into the shadow realm. THE DEATH BEAMS ARE HILARIOUS. Oh my God, I haven’t laughed so hard on a wipe in a REALLY long time.

Anyways, we called it and plan to go back sometime this week to finish it off. With any luck, I’ll have done it on the pally by then.

Man, too much fun. I really miss raiding at all with Majik. And my brother, for that matter. :)