So. Since I last wrote the most important happenings to me and raiding:
The beginning of January was pretty slow. However by the end of January we had killed both Lurker and Void Reaver, which was great. Then things started falling apart. We had a lot of trouble handling a new influx of recruits of varying gear levels, and had to deal with quite a few people who would raid for one week, decide it wasnt for them, but still make off with decent loot. kind we also had a lot of drama. The kind that causes people to /gquit. There were 2 weeks where basically we could barely do Gruul and Magtheridon. Some initiates we were trying to gear up stopped raiding entirely, and some initiates we had geared up left to other guilds.
Though regrettably we lost quite a few good raiders in the process, we also lost pretty much every single raider that I felt was holding us back because they couldn't think or react fast enough when something wrong happened during an encounter, or took a month to figure out simple new boss mechanics. As a testament to this fact, we downed Hydross on our first night of attempts on him. Our attempt when we downed him wasnt perfect, I almost wiped the raid due to one of my dots being up, and the final transition we were dangerously close to having Hydross do a double transition, spawning an additional set of 4 adds. But the fact that we were ahead of the enrage timer and only had 3 deaths the entire attempt shows we have what it takes.
As far as 2.4, I can't wait for it. It has a lot of good changes that remove some of the "annoying chore" barriers it has. Hopefully the new gear options and removal of attunements, and in zone boss kill requirements will make it possible for my guild to get through all of the TBC raid content before WotLK drops (hahahahaha. I can dream cant I?)
Showing posts with label raid report. Show all posts
Showing posts with label raid report. Show all posts
Mar 9, 2008
Jan 25, 2008
raid report: progression content
And after last night we now have Loot Reaver, Lurker, and Magtheridon down. This leaves the only 25-man content left for us to do on sunday being Gruul (which takes us an hour tops on a bad day) and new content.
When we finally nailed lurker it was a very short encounter. Thanks to the fact that we had a shadow priest in the raid and the 3 other warlocks all respecced to destruction for maximum pewpew, he was only allowed to submerge 3 times, in the end the damage meters was a boomkin at the top (he was getting power infusions). One of the attempts had 4 of the top 5 DPS slots being occupied by warlocks, while the final attempt I had fallen off to 7th place.
The spec the other warlocks are using is the 0/21/40 Demonic Sacrifice/Shadowflame spec. It's a very good spec, though the DPS cycle is a little boring, as you just mash the Shadowbolt key over and over. Personally I'm not going to spec off of affliction because it still has some very nice raid tools that are useful into BT: Blood pact, shadow embrace, and malediction.
Its a tradeoff between having me do an extra 200 DPS or extending the tanks life by +1000 HP and reducing all incoming physical damage he receives by 5%. The malediction also allows either the mages or warlocks/moonkins to have a slight edge over what they would normally have by 3%. Additionally, Destruction spec is highly life/mana inefficient, and puts a strain on healers.
The new boss we ended up trying was Morogrim Tidewalker. It was progression raiding at its finest:
"All right team! Move in!"
*raid gets turned into fine red mist*
"Good attempt team! Lets rez and try again!"
He has some interesting abilities. The worst of them is when he summons a dozen murlocs on the raid. Not just because theres a lot of adds that have to be managed and AOEd, but because they're murlocs. I was glad when I thought we left those buggers back on Azeroth where they belonged, but somehow Blizzard just had to find a way to put them in Outland.
When we finally nailed lurker it was a very short encounter. Thanks to the fact that we had a shadow priest in the raid and the 3 other warlocks all respecced to destruction for maximum pewpew, he was only allowed to submerge 3 times, in the end the damage meters was a boomkin at the top (he was getting power infusions). One of the attempts had 4 of the top 5 DPS slots being occupied by warlocks, while the final attempt I had fallen off to 7th place.
The spec the other warlocks are using is the 0/21/40 Demonic Sacrifice/Shadowflame spec. It's a very good spec, though the DPS cycle is a little boring, as you just mash the Shadowbolt key over and over. Personally I'm not going to spec off of affliction because it still has some very nice raid tools that are useful into BT: Blood pact, shadow embrace, and malediction.
Its a tradeoff between having me do an extra 200 DPS or extending the tanks life by +1000 HP and reducing all incoming physical damage he receives by 5%. The malediction also allows either the mages or warlocks/moonkins to have a slight edge over what they would normally have by 3%. Additionally, Destruction spec is highly life/mana inefficient, and puts a strain on healers.
The new boss we ended up trying was Morogrim Tidewalker. It was progression raiding at its finest:
"All right team! Move in!"
*raid gets turned into fine red mist*
"Good attempt team! Lets rez and try again!"
He has some interesting abilities. The worst of them is when he summons a dozen murlocs on the raid. Not just because theres a lot of adds that have to be managed and AOEd, but because they're murlocs. I was glad when I thought we left those buggers back on Azeroth where they belonged, but somehow Blizzard just had to find a way to put them in Outland.
Jan 24, 2008
raid report: acting like idiots
We were supposed to off Lurker last night, but after an hour and a half of failed attempts, it became clear that certain members of our raid weren't fucking paying attention and wiping us repeatedly.
As I mentioned before, theres a treshold of where if 5 people die, you might as well wipe the raid. In addition, we dont have the people to field the Paladins and Mages for the encounter, so if one of them dies, its practically game over.
I personally wasnt causing wipes and was actually focusing on killing the adds rather than killing the boss himself. The fight is supposed to be long, you can't really speed things up by cranking out your top DPS rotation on him and then start DPSing adds with low mana. I only died intentionally suiciding myself when it was apparent a wipe was going to happen the entire night. And after the 2nd wipe, I got myself a glass of wine and the entire experience was a lot more fun.
The major problems: 2 fold, one, people still dying due to spout. The fact that we still have to call it out over TS is a problem: its pretty obvious he is going to do it and there are plenty of raid warnings for it. Second, our rogues need to stop doing stupid shit on melee adds. The first attempt a rogue got killed by a cleave (DPSing a cleaving add from the front!). He then died again for the SAME REASON after getting battle rezzed. And to top it off he wasnt the only rogues making the same dumb mistakes, sometimes they would just break CC before a tank even threw a single sunder on the target, sometimes several of them would die from a single cleave.
As I mentioned before, theres a treshold of where if 5 people die, you might as well wipe the raid. In addition, we dont have the people to field the Paladins and Mages for the encounter, so if one of them dies, its practically game over.
I personally wasnt causing wipes and was actually focusing on killing the adds rather than killing the boss himself. The fight is supposed to be long, you can't really speed things up by cranking out your top DPS rotation on him and then start DPSing adds with low mana. I only died intentionally suiciding myself when it was apparent a wipe was going to happen the entire night. And after the 2nd wipe, I got myself a glass of wine and the entire experience was a lot more fun.
The major problems: 2 fold, one, people still dying due to spout. The fact that we still have to call it out over TS is a problem: its pretty obvious he is going to do it and there are plenty of raid warnings for it. Second, our rogues need to stop doing stupid shit on melee adds. The first attempt a rogue got killed by a cleave (DPSing a cleaving add from the front!). He then died again for the SAME REASON after getting battle rezzed. And to top it off he wasnt the only rogues making the same dumb mistakes, sometimes they would just break CC before a tank even threw a single sunder on the target, sometimes several of them would die from a single cleave.
Jan 23, 2008
raid report: loot reaver and magtheridon tuesday
As you can tell from the title, we downed void reaver. We were 10% ahead of the timer pretty much the whole fight, and we basically 24 manned it since one of the priests was very unlucky and died right off the bat, in her defense this was the second time she'd ever fought the guy while the most the rest of us had 3 or more tries on him. Last time we tried him I think we failed only because we were bringing in several people that were not properly geared, just so we could at least get an attempt in. This time our powerhouse DPS team was on the job, and it showed.
Afterwards we had just enough time to one-shot Magtheridon, which we haven't done in a while. We almost wiped several times when our main tank and secondary tank both died within minutes of eachother, the final moments we were trying to burn him down with half the raid dead, barely beating his next blast wave cast with burst DPS.
Afterwards we had just enough time to one-shot Magtheridon, which we haven't done in a while. We almost wiped several times when our main tank and secondary tank both died within minutes of eachother, the final moments we were trying to burn him down with half the raid dead, barely beating his next blast wave cast with burst DPS.
Jan 21, 2008
raid report: managing expectations
I showed up 2 hours late for the raid invite last night (I forgot that I was an hour BEHIND server time, and thought that I was an hour AHEAD of server time). It was ok though, since for once 3 other warlocks in the guild were on that wanted to raid. By the time I got on they were still working on getting Lurkey Below down, so my mishap had the added bonus of dodging repair bills on a boss we should have been able to 2-shot. Additionally, as an Affliction Warlock, Lurker's boots aren't much of an improvement on the Frozen Shadowweave boots.
Then we spent an hour clearing trash to Void Reaver and had just enough time to get in one failed attempt. You probably aren't going to down a boss you are learning with 5 substitute raiders that haven't been gearing themselves up, don't raid regularly, and haven't been in the fight at all.
One major difference this time was that our Main Tank was a Druid. I dont remember reaching a threat ceiling at all until about 5 minutes into the fight when he got punted away too many times. Meanwhile last time with our Warrior MT, I would have reached an aggro ceiling 2:30 into the fight. Perhaps this is due to the fact that I didn't have a shadow priest, but thats only 15% more damage, and even then we had 4 Misdirects last time instead of only 2 this time.
The highlight of the raid was when I finally joined up for the Void Reaver, one of the other warlocks said to me "Sun, I've been meaning to talk to you about managing expectations". I was confused of course, and he went on to explain that I was being too accomodating with my healthstones, and they were getting yelled at throughout the night for not handing them out fast or soon enough. My fellow warlocks went on to explain that it is an important thing to do in life in general, one stating: "Never be too great of a spouse. Otherwise she will expect you to be great all the time. Thats why every once in a while I make it a point to be an ass to my wife."
PROTIP: As a raiding warlock, you know a soul well only has 10 stones per well, and it has a 5 minute cooldown. To get the entire raid stoned that means you need at least 3 wells. To do this, zone in early, and when you coun the first 10 people, drop a soul well. That one will dry up by the time there are ~15 people in there. By the time the entire raid is raidbuffing for trash, drop another well. Finally, when you are just before a boss encounter drop the well again. If there was a hard trash encounter also drop wells because some people use their stones then rather than die on the battlefield.
Then we spent an hour clearing trash to Void Reaver and had just enough time to get in one failed attempt. You probably aren't going to down a boss you are learning with 5 substitute raiders that haven't been gearing themselves up, don't raid regularly, and haven't been in the fight at all.
One major difference this time was that our Main Tank was a Druid. I dont remember reaching a threat ceiling at all until about 5 minutes into the fight when he got punted away too many times. Meanwhile last time with our Warrior MT, I would have reached an aggro ceiling 2:30 into the fight. Perhaps this is due to the fact that I didn't have a shadow priest, but thats only 15% more damage, and even then we had 4 Misdirects last time instead of only 2 this time.
The highlight of the raid was when I finally joined up for the Void Reaver, one of the other warlocks said to me "Sun, I've been meaning to talk to you about managing expectations". I was confused of course, and he went on to explain that I was being too accomodating with my healthstones, and they were getting yelled at throughout the night for not handing them out fast or soon enough. My fellow warlocks went on to explain that it is an important thing to do in life in general, one stating: "Never be too great of a spouse. Otherwise she will expect you to be great all the time. Thats why every once in a while I make it a point to be an ass to my wife."
PROTIP: As a raiding warlock, you know a soul well only has 10 stones per well, and it has a 5 minute cooldown. To get the entire raid stoned that means you need at least 3 wells. To do this, zone in early, and when you coun the first 10 people, drop a soul well. That one will dry up by the time there are ~15 people in there. By the time the entire raid is raidbuffing for trash, drop another well. Finally, when you are just before a boss encounter drop the well again. If there was a hard trash encounter also drop wells because some people use their stones then rather than die on the battlefield.
Jan 17, 2008
raid report: reminding myself why i hate ZA
Our guild doesn't really run ZA agressively at all. We've downed the Lynx boss, but we don't take it nearly as seriously as 25-man bosses, where we are required to study strategies before the first pull.
Part of the problem is that we haven't learned the content, so we end up wiping on something that is supposed to be "post Karazhan Level", with a team of people that can flash fry Nightbane and Prince. The bear boss and the trash leading up to him are bearable (PUN!). But then we get to the Eagle boss and our strategy still isnt perfect. His gauntlet is really annoying, and when we do fight him our agreed upon strategy is to collapse just before he launches somone into the air, but this leaves us super wide open for his Static Disruption. Personally I think this might be dealing fatal blows to us, since the debuff from his chain lightning is quite punishing.
We tried not killing the birds the first two times but it wasn't working out at all. While DPS can handle a few interruptions, our healers aren't geared enough to a point where they can handle interruptions and heal the raid.
We were getting ready for our fourth attempt, when we hit the gauntlet respawn timer. 30 minutes is entirely too short for learning the encounter. Thats when we decided to stop the raid and go off to Karazhan, chain pulling our way through Opera before calling it a night.
Part of the problem is that we haven't learned the content, so we end up wiping on something that is supposed to be "post Karazhan Level", with a team of people that can flash fry Nightbane and Prince. The bear boss and the trash leading up to him are bearable (PUN!). But then we get to the Eagle boss and our strategy still isnt perfect. His gauntlet is really annoying, and when we do fight him our agreed upon strategy is to collapse just before he launches somone into the air, but this leaves us super wide open for his Static Disruption. Personally I think this might be dealing fatal blows to us, since the debuff from his chain lightning is quite punishing.
We tried not killing the birds the first two times but it wasn't working out at all. While DPS can handle a few interruptions, our healers aren't geared enough to a point where they can handle interruptions and heal the raid.
We were getting ready for our fourth attempt, when we hit the gauntlet respawn timer. 30 minutes is entirely too short for learning the encounter. Thats when we decided to stop the raid and go off to Karazhan, chain pulling our way through Opera before calling it a night.
Jan 16, 2008
raid report: gruul & mag tue-- wait we're doing lurker today too?
Gruul and Mag were 2 shot deals.
The first attempt at Gruul just being very unlucky with the Random Number Generator and having most of our DPS die in the first few shatters. I personally got to enjoy being lobbed into the center of gruul, not being able to see where I was going, but knowing I had to move out as the tanks always charge after being launched and hate being next to anyone else. When I finally got out from underneath him I was next to 3 other DPSers.
Mag we lost our first attempt due to the fact that certain people jumped the gun and clicked early on a rotation. Otherwise it was a pretty standard pew pew pew loot loot loot procedure.
And then I thought we were done. But with ample time leftover we got 2 failed Lurker Attempts in. The first attempt we had one of our sheeping Mages die 3 times in a row due to bad luck his CC target. We ended up wiping that attempt after he died again, and his sheep target went to town. The second time, I died like a newbie right off the bat when transitioning from my lurker DPS spot to an Island DPS spot: I stepped a little TOO close to lurker before he submurged. Ranged dont usually have to worry about threat on Lurker, so when you walk into his melee zone before he submurges as a ranged theres a good chance he will one-shot you. I got hit for some 11k damage, which I could have survived if I ate +sta buff food instead of +dmg buff food. The rest of the attempt deteriorated as other people were making stupid mistakes.
The real downer of the evening was that I used elixirs on Magtheridon and a flask on Lurker. So much wasted consumables.
The first attempt at Gruul just being very unlucky with the Random Number Generator and having most of our DPS die in the first few shatters. I personally got to enjoy being lobbed into the center of gruul, not being able to see where I was going, but knowing I had to move out as the tanks always charge after being launched and hate being next to anyone else. When I finally got out from underneath him I was next to 3 other DPSers.
Mag we lost our first attempt due to the fact that certain people jumped the gun and clicked early on a rotation. Otherwise it was a pretty standard pew pew pew loot loot loot procedure.
And then I thought we were done. But with ample time leftover we got 2 failed Lurker Attempts in. The first attempt we had one of our sheeping Mages die 3 times in a row due to bad luck his CC target. We ended up wiping that attempt after he died again, and his sheep target went to town. The second time, I died like a newbie right off the bat when transitioning from my lurker DPS spot to an Island DPS spot: I stepped a little TOO close to lurker before he submurged. Ranged dont usually have to worry about threat on Lurker, so when you walk into his melee zone before he submurges as a ranged theres a good chance he will one-shot you. I got hit for some 11k damage, which I could have survived if I ate +sta buff food instead of +dmg buff food. The rest of the attempt deteriorated as other people were making stupid mistakes.
The real downer of the evening was that I used elixirs on Magtheridon and a flask on Lurker. So much wasted consumables.
Jan 14, 2008
raid report: not yet a lootreaver
Last night was our guilds first formal stab at doing Void Reaver. Right off the bat when you enter the place there is a 6 pull, with 5 AOEs and some Mind Controllers thrown in for good measure. Some of the trash pulls are pretty boring, and I was particularly underwhelmed by the trash pulls inside Void Reavers room. Apparently they are supposed to be "harder than VR himself", and our guild leader had found a video of a guild where half of the raid died on one of the trash pulls.
Basically in the pulls there are these two demon guys that do massive AOE damage to the raid if not CCed correctly. In the video half the raid dies on the pull. In actuality, it was really more of a problem that the warlocks just sucked at CCing. Their first mistake in the video is that they dont bother pulling the patrol first. The second mistake is that they have their main tank pull and then run out of Voidreavers room into a hallway. The third mistake was that their warlocks dont have a debuff timer mod at all, so they have to guess when they need to apply the next banish, leading to the demons AOEing life down quickly. With the mod it's quite easy for a warlock to keep a demon banished repeateadly, not allowing them to move or act. Furthermore with misdirect, you can have the warlocks run in and body pull the group while the golems are misdirected and the additional blood elf mob is sheeped off the bat.
Void Reaver himself was a much trickier deal. He doesnt hit the tank that hard. The real issue is the melee DPS avoiding his poundings, and everyone avoiding the sparks he lobs. Part of my problem with his sparks that he's lobbing is that they come from above at a very inconvenient angle. You cant zoom out the camera far enough normally to get a birds eye view of the situation to see all the sparks, and to have the camera looking slightly up the entire fight is also tricky, since as you have to move around to dodge the sparks you will be moving the camera around a lot.
The thing that pisses me off about Void Reaver though is that he's just a gigantic threat management fight. At least the way our guild does him, we have one main tank doing his best to build threat, while he gets constant misdirects from whatever hunters we have in the raid. But it's just not enough. I'm not even using my spelldamage trinket and I can quite easily reach the aggro ceiling in 3 minutes. Soulshatter doesnt get rid of enough threat for me. It's really more of a fight for our Hunters, Rogues and Mages to shine because they have better threat elimination abilities. My alternative is to start farming threat reduction items, I trashed my old threat reduction gear ages ago because I got to a point where I thought the tanks I was running with would generate enough threat for me that I wouldn't have to worry about it ever again, at least with a meter running anyway.
The best choice right now may be just to get to exalted with the Keepers of Time for the Time Lapsed Shard and spam that on its every cooldown. And then hopefully supplement those with Shrouding Potions, but I don't know if we have an alchemist exalted with Sporregar. If those arent enough, theres another trinket I can get that's a drop in Shadow Labrynth, and get a cape from Sporregar. Hopefully it wont come to that.
It's been a while since I've done Black Morass runs, so it'll be interesting to see how different it is now that I have insane gear to back me up on them.
Basically in the pulls there are these two demon guys that do massive AOE damage to the raid if not CCed correctly. In the video half the raid dies on the pull. In actuality, it was really more of a problem that the warlocks just sucked at CCing. Their first mistake in the video is that they dont bother pulling the patrol first. The second mistake is that they have their main tank pull and then run out of Voidreavers room into a hallway. The third mistake was that their warlocks dont have a debuff timer mod at all, so they have to guess when they need to apply the next banish, leading to the demons AOEing life down quickly. With the mod it's quite easy for a warlock to keep a demon banished repeateadly, not allowing them to move or act. Furthermore with misdirect, you can have the warlocks run in and body pull the group while the golems are misdirected and the additional blood elf mob is sheeped off the bat.
Void Reaver himself was a much trickier deal. He doesnt hit the tank that hard. The real issue is the melee DPS avoiding his poundings, and everyone avoiding the sparks he lobs. Part of my problem with his sparks that he's lobbing is that they come from above at a very inconvenient angle. You cant zoom out the camera far enough normally to get a birds eye view of the situation to see all the sparks, and to have the camera looking slightly up the entire fight is also tricky, since as you have to move around to dodge the sparks you will be moving the camera around a lot.
The thing that pisses me off about Void Reaver though is that he's just a gigantic threat management fight. At least the way our guild does him, we have one main tank doing his best to build threat, while he gets constant misdirects from whatever hunters we have in the raid. But it's just not enough. I'm not even using my spelldamage trinket and I can quite easily reach the aggro ceiling in 3 minutes. Soulshatter doesnt get rid of enough threat for me. It's really more of a fight for our Hunters, Rogues and Mages to shine because they have better threat elimination abilities. My alternative is to start farming threat reduction items, I trashed my old threat reduction gear ages ago because I got to a point where I thought the tanks I was running with would generate enough threat for me that I wouldn't have to worry about it ever again, at least with a meter running anyway.
The best choice right now may be just to get to exalted with the Keepers of Time for the Time Lapsed Shard and spam that on its every cooldown. And then hopefully supplement those with Shrouding Potions, but I don't know if we have an alchemist exalted with Sporregar. If those arent enough, theres another trinket I can get that's a drop in Shadow Labrynth, and get a cape from Sporregar. Hopefully it wont come to that.
It's been a while since I've done Black Morass runs, so it'll be interesting to see how different it is now that I have insane gear to back me up on them.
Jan 11, 2008
raid report: taking lurker to school
Last night my guild and I rallied and after a few attempts finally killed lurker. Like I said before our problems were all just people making ridiculously stupid newbie mistakes such as "dont aggro a mob before a tank gets on it", "keep the CC CCed", and "get out of the way of the blue beam of death".
I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that on Magtheridon we didn't have to worry about DPSing the mobs being CCed, and we had to DPS the channelers as fast as possible, which meant that it was the tanks who had to aggro at the pace at the DPS, rather than the DPS paying attention to their threat. Lurker works on a much leisurely pace and punishes you for trying to jump the gun and "speed things up" more than taking things at a steady, reliable pace.
Up next is Voidreaver. His fight mechanic doesnt seem too difficult, and from what I understand is that I have to soulshatter in the first few minutes so I can soulshatter again in the latter few minutes. (pew pew pew)
I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that on Magtheridon we didn't have to worry about DPSing the mobs being CCed, and we had to DPS the channelers as fast as possible, which meant that it was the tanks who had to aggro at the pace at the DPS, rather than the DPS paying attention to their threat. Lurker works on a much leisurely pace and punishes you for trying to jump the gun and "speed things up" more than taking things at a steady, reliable pace.
Up next is Voidreaver. His fight mechanic doesnt seem too difficult, and from what I understand is that I have to soulshatter in the first few minutes so I can soulshatter again in the latter few minutes. (pew pew pew)
Jan 10, 2008
raid report: lurker lessons
Ahhh. Learning content. Far better than farming the same old tired farming bosses for items. Even when I'm fighting a boss that has a gear upgrade for me, after a few downings of said boss, it gets old. I want to head onward to newer and more challenging foes! The only reason I'm even bothering to kill these guys over and over is so my guild can go on to the next.
Even trash mobs feel more exciting and vibrant on a new boss encounter. The pulls are particularly more fun for my warlock since pulling aggro on Gruul and Magtheridon trash mobs is fairly easy to do. On the trash surrounding Lurker's pool, there are enough targets that I can throw up all my DoTs on the primary target and then begin to load them up on the next target, with just enough time leftover to Drain Soul the primary target. SSC trash also actually drop useful crap too: flask tokens, nether vortices, and epics, oh my! Tonight we had the random drop Feral Druid Staff drop for us twice. It's a welcome change from killing trash in Gruul and Magtheridon, who barely have loot tables at all. Karazhan foes drop epics, but they are very specific and theres a good chance that nobody who can use it will be in your 10 man.
When it came to the actual Lurker, we failed.
Dying to Lurker's Spout must quickly become dying to Prince's Enfeeble/Nova for us. It just shouldn't happen. Ever. But every once in a while somone makes a stupid mistake and gets blown off the platform and killed. Lurker and his adds aren't really that hard at all, but the fight is fast paced enough that every person that dies during the fight has a huge effect on how the rest of the fight plays out. The breaking point seems to be at 5 people. Once any 5 people die our entire raid just begins to fall apart. Not immediately, but its a point of no return from which the encounter goes from being "easy" to "battle of attrition", where more people just keep dying and dying.
Our main tank was previously in a guild that did SSC, so he is particularly pissed off that we keep making newbie mistakes on the easiest boss there. Current things we need to figure out:
1) Not dying on spout
2) Lettings tanks get aggro on the melee adds before DPSing -- they do an 8000 damage cleave (on cloth)! One one attempt the rogue group engaged him before the tank even was nearby and just got slaughtered by a cleave and a few attacks.
3) Getting better at CCing adds. Those melee adds just love to make a beeline to our healers when they arent under control and attack + cleave = death.
A lot of it is us just doing really dumb shit that we shouldn't do, and should know better than doing by now.
In the end we found out that once guys start respawning on the platforms, the pirranas also reappear. Luckily we found this out during a wipe recovery, and not during an encounter.
Even trash mobs feel more exciting and vibrant on a new boss encounter. The pulls are particularly more fun for my warlock since pulling aggro on Gruul and Magtheridon trash mobs is fairly easy to do. On the trash surrounding Lurker's pool, there are enough targets that I can throw up all my DoTs on the primary target and then begin to load them up on the next target, with just enough time leftover to Drain Soul the primary target. SSC trash also actually drop useful crap too: flask tokens, nether vortices, and epics, oh my! Tonight we had the random drop Feral Druid Staff drop for us twice. It's a welcome change from killing trash in Gruul and Magtheridon, who barely have loot tables at all. Karazhan foes drop epics, but they are very specific and theres a good chance that nobody who can use it will be in your 10 man.
When it came to the actual Lurker, we failed.
Dying to Lurker's Spout must quickly become dying to Prince's Enfeeble/Nova for us. It just shouldn't happen. Ever. But every once in a while somone makes a stupid mistake and gets blown off the platform and killed. Lurker and his adds aren't really that hard at all, but the fight is fast paced enough that every person that dies during the fight has a huge effect on how the rest of the fight plays out. The breaking point seems to be at 5 people. Once any 5 people die our entire raid just begins to fall apart. Not immediately, but its a point of no return from which the encounter goes from being "easy" to "battle of attrition", where more people just keep dying and dying.
Our main tank was previously in a guild that did SSC, so he is particularly pissed off that we keep making newbie mistakes on the easiest boss there. Current things we need to figure out:
1) Not dying on spout
2) Lettings tanks get aggro on the melee adds before DPSing -- they do an 8000 damage cleave (on cloth)! One one attempt the rogue group engaged him before the tank even was nearby and just got slaughtered by a cleave and a few attacks.
3) Getting better at CCing adds. Those melee adds just love to make a beeline to our healers when they arent under control and attack + cleave = death.
A lot of it is us just doing really dumb shit that we shouldn't do, and should know better than doing by now.
In the end we found out that once guys start respawning on the platforms, the pirranas also reappear. Luckily we found this out during a wipe recovery, and not during an encounter.
Jan 9, 2008
raid report: gruul & mag tuesday
Gruul
One shot encounter. I learned that my DPS isnt sucking, its my threat. I outthreat the secondary tank too early in fights now, even with salvation. Ideally I want to be blowing soul-shatter halfway through the fight. Instead I do it within the first few growths and end up gaining too much aggro by growth 10.
Mag
3 wipes. 4th times the charm!
We did it this time with only 2 warlocks, which is tricky since Infernal CC is a tricky task with less than 3. It's doable, but only if the hunters spam their freezing traps early and often.
Wipe 1 - My memory is a bit fuzzy on this one. DPSing the channelers down was great. Until the last channeler. Somehow I died and a few other people did. We recovered, I got a battle rez. 2 actually (way to go druid synchronization!). Rezzed again after a blast wave, so as to not get instagibbed by a late/failed cube clicking. Next blast wave went ok, but then it became my rotation's turn to click. I distinctly remember seeing somone at their cube but not clicking at the appropriate time, and too my dismay by the time they did start clicking, I had died (2 ticks from blast wave and the standard cube damage is greater than 8000 damage, which was how much HP I had with 0 buffs on). Luckily Magtheridon was still banished. Then in the next rotation 2 people were not in position to click at all. Many groans as we wipe.
Wipe 2 - I think this one a tank did not establish aggro soon enough. So we had channelers running wild, which basically means they start to over DPS the raid with their shadowbolt volleys and heal the DPS target. Somone on Teamspeak blames the CC, the other warlock, my CO, gets angry.
Wipe 3 - Started out fine, but then for some reason one of the tanks just died. Then another one did. Then we had like 8 infernals running around with 8 people dead and not even the first channeler dead. I suicide via Hellfire because I know theres no way to recover from that. Somone blames the CC on Teamspeak again, pissing off my CO even more. I feel like blaming a healers because they've been doing a crappy job here since the first attempt.
Wipe 4 - Our guild leader said this was our last attempt, because he was tired of the newbie mistakes we were making the first 3 wipes. We all put on our A game, and kill the 5th channeler before the first cube click has to occur, which is really good for our DPS. There were a few times when the 1st rotation was too slow at getting all the clicks off and so it became a competition between the 2nd and 1st rotation on who could interrupt magtheridon better. 2nd rotation - my rotation - came out on top... until after the cave in. Then the guild leader got a little nervous and accidentally called out for a click 5 seconds too early, and 2 people in our rotation clicked. Finally when Magtheridon actually began casting blast wave the rest of us clicked, just in the nick of time to banish Magtheridon.
PROTIP: Always look at Magtheridons caster bar to click, and never ever ever ever rely on a boss mod timer for when to click. For when to move into position for clicking it works very well, but as a marker for clicking it will just wipe your raid.
6 peices of T4 dropped in a single night!... And not a single one was "of the hero". Curse you random number generator!
As an added bonus this week I finally got my head out of my ass and got back into the top 5 on the damage meters. For Maulgar I was 4th, which is pretty good because of the rapid target switching that occurs. For Gruul I was 2nd, behind the best DPS rogue in the guild. And thats without a shadow priest buffing my damage.
One shot encounter. I learned that my DPS isnt sucking, its my threat. I outthreat the secondary tank too early in fights now, even with salvation. Ideally I want to be blowing soul-shatter halfway through the fight. Instead I do it within the first few growths and end up gaining too much aggro by growth 10.
Mag
3 wipes. 4th times the charm!
We did it this time with only 2 warlocks, which is tricky since Infernal CC is a tricky task with less than 3. It's doable, but only if the hunters spam their freezing traps early and often.
Wipe 1 - My memory is a bit fuzzy on this one. DPSing the channelers down was great. Until the last channeler. Somehow I died and a few other people did. We recovered, I got a battle rez. 2 actually (way to go druid synchronization!). Rezzed again after a blast wave, so as to not get instagibbed by a late/failed cube clicking. Next blast wave went ok, but then it became my rotation's turn to click. I distinctly remember seeing somone at their cube but not clicking at the appropriate time, and too my dismay by the time they did start clicking, I had died (2 ticks from blast wave and the standard cube damage is greater than 8000 damage, which was how much HP I had with 0 buffs on). Luckily Magtheridon was still banished. Then in the next rotation 2 people were not in position to click at all. Many groans as we wipe.
Wipe 2 - I think this one a tank did not establish aggro soon enough. So we had channelers running wild, which basically means they start to over DPS the raid with their shadowbolt volleys and heal the DPS target. Somone on Teamspeak blames the CC, the other warlock, my CO, gets angry.
Wipe 3 - Started out fine, but then for some reason one of the tanks just died. Then another one did. Then we had like 8 infernals running around with 8 people dead and not even the first channeler dead. I suicide via Hellfire because I know theres no way to recover from that. Somone blames the CC on Teamspeak again, pissing off my CO even more. I feel like blaming a healers because they've been doing a crappy job here since the first attempt.
Wipe 4 - Our guild leader said this was our last attempt, because he was tired of the newbie mistakes we were making the first 3 wipes. We all put on our A game, and kill the 5th channeler before the first cube click has to occur, which is really good for our DPS. There were a few times when the 1st rotation was too slow at getting all the clicks off and so it became a competition between the 2nd and 1st rotation on who could interrupt magtheridon better. 2nd rotation - my rotation - came out on top... until after the cave in. Then the guild leader got a little nervous and accidentally called out for a click 5 seconds too early, and 2 people in our rotation clicked. Finally when Magtheridon actually began casting blast wave the rest of us clicked, just in the nick of time to banish Magtheridon.
PROTIP: Always look at Magtheridons caster bar to click, and never ever ever ever rely on a boss mod timer for when to click. For when to move into position for clicking it works very well, but as a marker for clicking it will just wipe your raid.
6 peices of T4 dropped in a single night!... And not a single one was "of the hero". Curse you random number generator!
As an added bonus this week I finally got my head out of my ass and got back into the top 5 on the damage meters. For Maulgar I was 4th, which is pretty good because of the rapid target switching that occurs. For Gruul I was 2nd, behind the best DPS rogue in the guild. And thats without a shadow priest buffing my damage.
Jan 6, 2008
raid report: magtheridon sunday
I originally wasn't going to raid sunday night, I've been sick recently and I wanted to just sit back and relax and do chores I had been avoiding.
So when I logged on around the usual quitting time for Raiding we have, I was surprised to see everyone still stuck in Magtheridon's Lair. I don't know how many wipes occured, but immediately after the attempt I logged on to failed, I was conscripted into the instance for "one last attempt". So by raidiquette, I had to go on this one last attempt for the night.
Being groggy on a Magtheridon fight for a warlock is never fun. As a warlock my job is to make sure any infernals that spawn are CCed the moment they appear, lest they kill a healer. On top of that you have to make sure the initial 5 adds are permanently Curse of Tongued, as their shadowbolt volleys will kill people if they cast them too often. Then, if your a warlock, youre usually on cube clicking duty, where accidentally clicking your cube too early or not getting in position at the right time becomes a wipe. I was on cube duty.
The fight was pretty hectic. We lost 2 people by the time the final channeler died, and a few more kept dying as time wore on. There were at least 5 substitutions on cube clicking duty due to their designated clickers dying, thankfully I wasnt one of them. One thing of distress was that when people died, they didnt use TeamSpeak to declare so, instead opting to spam raidchat with their "I died" macro.
The good news was that we killed him. We got our second member in 5/5 T4, and a new recruit got their T4 chest token. Thats how we roll.
Right now killing Magtheridon isnt that thrilling for me anymore, but I imagine some other classes can use his drops a lot more than I can. On the whole I think the killing of Magtheridon was more about reassuring ourselves that we are still up for 25 man content. Guild morale is a fickle thing and is easily raised, but just as easily lost.
So when I logged on around the usual quitting time for Raiding we have, I was surprised to see everyone still stuck in Magtheridon's Lair. I don't know how many wipes occured, but immediately after the attempt I logged on to failed, I was conscripted into the instance for "one last attempt". So by raidiquette, I had to go on this one last attempt for the night.
Being groggy on a Magtheridon fight for a warlock is never fun. As a warlock my job is to make sure any infernals that spawn are CCed the moment they appear, lest they kill a healer. On top of that you have to make sure the initial 5 adds are permanently Curse of Tongued, as their shadowbolt volleys will kill people if they cast them too often. Then, if your a warlock, youre usually on cube clicking duty, where accidentally clicking your cube too early or not getting in position at the right time becomes a wipe. I was on cube duty.
The fight was pretty hectic. We lost 2 people by the time the final channeler died, and a few more kept dying as time wore on. There were at least 5 substitutions on cube clicking duty due to their designated clickers dying, thankfully I wasnt one of them. One thing of distress was that when people died, they didnt use TeamSpeak to declare so, instead opting to spam raidchat with their "I died" macro.
The good news was that we killed him. We got our second member in 5/5 T4, and a new recruit got their T4 chest token. Thats how we roll.
Right now killing Magtheridon isnt that thrilling for me anymore, but I imagine some other classes can use his drops a lot more than I can. On the whole I think the killing of Magtheridon was more about reassuring ourselves that we are still up for 25 man content. Guild morale is a fickle thing and is easily raised, but just as easily lost.
Jan 4, 2008
raid report: gruul & mag thursday
And after a long winter break my guild decided it was time to do 25 mans again.
This was probably the first time I logged into my main for over a week, and I was surprised at the graphics. I remember them being much more low rez and blocky. I think I might've fiddled with the graphics settings before logging off last time.
A lot of other people were logging on for the first time after the break too. And it showed:
Maulgar
Usually Maulgar isnt worth mentioning since he goes down quick and easy. For the uninitiated, if your guild can clear Karazhan, you can kill Maulgar once you learn how to do the initial pull.
We wiped Maulgar 2 and a half times.
The first two times was because the mage tank was getting a lot of spell resists on his spellsteal and not enough heals. I think the problem was mostly because he had too much of his Arena gear on and not enough spell hit on.
The half was because by the time we got all his adds down we were down to basically a few tanks and a few healers. Execute spam saved the day. He dropped two Hero pants tokens, so I finally got my second peice of T4. Hooray... sorta. Most of us dont even need T4 peices anymore, and are really only getting them for completionists sake. Even on the half wipe I still think he needed more spell hit on, because by the time we killed the first 4 adds, I and another mage managed to outthreat him on a mob that he had been building aggro on since the beginning of the fight.
Gruul
One shotted Gruul.
Our rustiness really only showed when there were a few times when I took over 5000 damage from shattering, where normally I only take 1000-2000 damage, if any at all. He died somewhere around 13 growths. Not the greatest fight. My DPS was somewhat lacking because I wasnt given salvation, and for whatever reason 3 different tanks were vying for the coveted 2nd position*, which meant three different people were getting misdirects. I also used Soulshatter way too soon into the fight and ended having to stop DPS entirely.
Gruul finally dropped his tanking shield, and I was wondering where that shield had come from since I've seen it around a few times. The shield went to our main tank automatically, but all the warriors, paladins and shamen (shamans?) rolled on the shield just to piss him off anyway. Our token DPS warrior got a 100, and "gave" the shield to MT, and currently claims credit for every block our main tank does with it.
Magtheridon
Triple wiped on Magtheridon and called it a night.
Wipe 1: A rogue on cube clicking duty died too close to the first blast wave and nobody could run into his position in time.
Wipe 2: DPS pulled aggro away from the first channeler that we kill. We got him back into position only to have him break away a second afterwards and get a heal. Everyone groans and the raid leader calls for a wipe.
Wipe 3: 2 cube clickers died right before the first blast wave, and one person was not in position.
On the positive side I had the foresight to only use Elixirs on these attempts instead of a flask.
*For the uninitiated: Gruul will do additional damage to anyone who is second on his threat meter, so to be safe all of the DPS tries to stay third or below.
This was probably the first time I logged into my main for over a week, and I was surprised at the graphics. I remember them being much more low rez and blocky. I think I might've fiddled with the graphics settings before logging off last time.
A lot of other people were logging on for the first time after the break too. And it showed:
Maulgar
Usually Maulgar isnt worth mentioning since he goes down quick and easy. For the uninitiated, if your guild can clear Karazhan, you can kill Maulgar once you learn how to do the initial pull.
We wiped Maulgar 2 and a half times.
The first two times was because the mage tank was getting a lot of spell resists on his spellsteal and not enough heals. I think the problem was mostly because he had too much of his Arena gear on and not enough spell hit on.
The half was because by the time we got all his adds down we were down to basically a few tanks and a few healers. Execute spam saved the day. He dropped two Hero pants tokens, so I finally got my second peice of T4. Hooray... sorta. Most of us dont even need T4 peices anymore, and are really only getting them for completionists sake. Even on the half wipe I still think he needed more spell hit on, because by the time we killed the first 4 adds, I and another mage managed to outthreat him on a mob that he had been building aggro on since the beginning of the fight.
Gruul
One shotted Gruul.
Our rustiness really only showed when there were a few times when I took over 5000 damage from shattering, where normally I only take 1000-2000 damage, if any at all. He died somewhere around 13 growths. Not the greatest fight. My DPS was somewhat lacking because I wasnt given salvation, and for whatever reason 3 different tanks were vying for the coveted 2nd position*, which meant three different people were getting misdirects. I also used Soulshatter way too soon into the fight and ended having to stop DPS entirely.
Gruul finally dropped his tanking shield, and I was wondering where that shield had come from since I've seen it around a few times. The shield went to our main tank automatically, but all the warriors, paladins and shamen (shamans?) rolled on the shield just to piss him off anyway. Our token DPS warrior got a 100, and "gave" the shield to MT, and currently claims credit for every block our main tank does with it.
Magtheridon
Triple wiped on Magtheridon and called it a night.
Wipe 1: A rogue on cube clicking duty died too close to the first blast wave and nobody could run into his position in time.
Wipe 2: DPS pulled aggro away from the first channeler that we kill. We got him back into position only to have him break away a second afterwards and get a heal. Everyone groans and the raid leader calls for a wipe.
Wipe 3: 2 cube clickers died right before the first blast wave, and one person was not in position.
On the positive side I had the foresight to only use Elixirs on these attempts instead of a flask.
*For the uninitiated: Gruul will do additional damage to anyone who is second on his threat meter, so to be safe all of the DPS tries to stay third or below.
Dec 12, 2007
raid report: gruul & mag tuesday
Since our primary tank was not on today, our secondary tank got to be the main tank for these fights. We also had to drag in some PVPers to fill in a few slots since as the holidays approach more people log off to go spend time with their families. I know personally this is the last week I can raid, so I want to kill Lurker and Reaver.
Downed maulgar easily, our 3rd warrior tank finally got T4 shoulders to replace his Dungeon set. Downed Gruul with 24 people (somone was AFK for too long and we decided to just go on without them).
Magtheridon was a 2 shot encounter again. The first wipe happened because the main tank died, and then he went and killed me and another cube clicker. Usually when the main tank dies on this guy we all end up wiping but this time somone was able to get aggro on him and get healers before half the Raid wiped so we were only down 3 people. So I ended up wiping the raid by not bothering to tell them that they needed somone to click my cube.
The 2nd shot was a bit more interesting. We had to click the cube one last time when Magtheridon was at 2%. Apparently somone got confused as to which cube they should have been at and their cube was absent for the channeling. A few pulses later 80% of the raid dies and the rest of us burn him down for the last 1%. A lot of people were pissed off but you cant really complain when you get to loot the guy.
The GM was extra happy because this was the first night we were able to farm 6 T4 tokens in a night. I'm extra happy because it means the rest of the 25 man content left for us to do is bosses we haven't killed, which is a lot more fun than killing bosses we have on farm.
Downed maulgar easily, our 3rd warrior tank finally got T4 shoulders to replace his Dungeon set. Downed Gruul with 24 people (somone was AFK for too long and we decided to just go on without them).
Magtheridon was a 2 shot encounter again. The first wipe happened because the main tank died, and then he went and killed me and another cube clicker. Usually when the main tank dies on this guy we all end up wiping but this time somone was able to get aggro on him and get healers before half the Raid wiped so we were only down 3 people. So I ended up wiping the raid by not bothering to tell them that they needed somone to click my cube.
The 2nd shot was a bit more interesting. We had to click the cube one last time when Magtheridon was at 2%. Apparently somone got confused as to which cube they should have been at and their cube was absent for the channeling. A few pulses later 80% of the raid dies and the rest of us burn him down for the last 1%. A lot of people were pissed off but you cant really complain when you get to loot the guy.
The GM was extra happy because this was the first night we were able to farm 6 T4 tokens in a night. I'm extra happy because it means the rest of the 25 man content left for us to do is bosses we haven't killed, which is a lot more fun than killing bosses we have on farm.
Dec 9, 2007
raid report: magtheridon
Raided Magtheridon tonight. Would have gone on to attempt Lurker Below, but a lot of people had to leave within the hour and our main tank had a family crisis that he needed to attend to.
On the plus side I got the Eye of Magtheridon with a 100 roll.
http://www.wowhead.com/?item=28789
Granted you dont want to trigger its secondary effects, but some theorycrafters have found that its a really good trinket to have if you havent reached the spell hit cap -- which I havent.
We wiped only once, which is nice, since we can start saying we farm Magtheridon now. We had trouble the first attempt because after the 30% collapse too much healing was diverted away from the tank. Additionally for some reason anytime anyone talked over TS we got massive white noise interference, which didnt help since there was some assistance that needed to be done. (I also clicked the cube way too early one rotation and almost wiped the raid. I got super lucky by the fact that the moment my cube channeling ended the other 4 went up.)
2nd time we got close to wiping towards the end, two clickers ended up dying close to eachother and it was pretty tense since Mag was falling below 5% around then. Thankfully people stepped up on both occasions.
On the plus side I got the Eye of Magtheridon with a 100 roll.
http://www.wowhead.com/?item=28789
Granted you dont want to trigger its secondary effects, but some theorycrafters have found that its a really good trinket to have if you havent reached the spell hit cap -- which I havent.
We wiped only once, which is nice, since we can start saying we farm Magtheridon now. We had trouble the first attempt because after the 30% collapse too much healing was diverted away from the tank. Additionally for some reason anytime anyone talked over TS we got massive white noise interference, which didnt help since there was some assistance that needed to be done. (I also clicked the cube way too early one rotation and almost wiped the raid. I got super lucky by the fact that the moment my cube channeling ended the other 4 went up.)
2nd time we got close to wiping towards the end, two clickers ended up dying close to eachother and it was pretty tense since Mag was falling below 5% around then. Thankfully people stepped up on both occasions.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)