I’d Rather Be Wowing!

Our 25 raid alliance is in the brink of being put to hiatus. Even with the attempt to merge with other raid group, we are still struggling to fill up the raid by pull time. This problem is aggravated with our stagnancy in Ulduar 25. Many people in the group have voiced their opinion that we are just not ready for Ulduar yet, and we could benefit from going back to Naxx. I’m not sure why the “raid management” haven’t considered that as an option. For the first time, we cancelled our Ulduar 25 raid yesterday and it will be most likely to be cancelled again this Sunday.

But if there’s a silver lining from the whole ordeal, is that we are able to put more time on our Ulduar 10 run. Though that’s also not without any problem. We are back to our healer problem as one of our healers decided to quit (temporarily) and another healer is moving to new place (which has also hinted her burnt out from healing). That leaves us with 1 reliable healer that can make it to 90% of the raid, 1 healer that can come to maybe 50% of the raid, and me. Yes, I’m back to the healing saddle again. Most of the time, we managed. But I can imagine that we really need to start recruiting healers again. Sigh.

We made several progresses in our 10 man run. This week, we managed to finally get our guild’s first kill on Deconstructor XT-002, Ignis, and, just yesterday, Kalogarn. If our 25 man raid is cancelled this coming Sunday, we plan on tackling the Iron Council. Hopefully by Monday, we can get to Auriya.

As much as I love our 25 run, I still love our 10 man run more. The sense of closeness is different in 10 man group. We open up, talk, and joke more just because we have fewer strangers in the group. We have less downtime. And because of that we can strategize more. Overall, it’s easier to identify and fix mistakes in such a small group. If getting the best gears in the game is not an issue, I would not have cared about 25 runs at all.

On Tuesday, we hatched a last minute plan to give XT-002 another try. Yesterday, on the invite time, we ended up not having the “right” people logs in, heck, we don’t even have 10 people altogether. After scrambling around, calling people to log in, resorting to whoever happened to log, we got the group together. We were planning to at least get Leviathan — to get it out of the way so we can have more time doing the “real” bosses on Monday — and our GL/RL wanted healers to practice on Razorscale. When we gave a short try on Razorscale last Monday, it was a disaster.

We ended up killing Razorscale on the 3rd pull, with clear improvement at every pull. We should be ecstatic, right? Except that we know he was nerfed, by reducing the damage of the fireball, which was clearly our biggest hurdle on Monday. Yesterday, we even got him down with mostly just 2 healers (the other healer eats Devouring Flame and died quite early during the fight). I was happy we got him, but let’s just say, not really satisfied. And yes, I was healing again yesterday on my shammy (I’m trying hard not to rant about this).

We know that we have improved from our first fight. We did more short quick heals, we tried to detect early who is being targeted by the fireball so we can anticipate healing them.  We did much better to group up yet spreading out so that every healer, though we have our assignment, can still reach everybody in the case where we need to heal someone whose assigned healer had to stop casting and move out from the fire. Our dps were so much better in getting out from the blue fire. But were they enough improvement to get him down prior to nerf? We would never know. In that sense, it’s disappointing, because the kill was not really the kill of the boss that has frustrated us, but the lite-version of it.

What should you tell yourself when you killed a post-nerf boss?

We were trying our luck on our 10 man group yesterday. One of our healers ended up unavailable so…I took my shammy Vh instead of E (although E was specced holy as well, apparently totems + heroism > holy priest ><).

We two-shotted Flame of Levi, where our first attempt was deterred with some bugginess and misfortune. We lost one of our siege engines right from the start when apparently there’s an invisible hole in the ramp, and the siege engine just plunged to its death. What a way to start a fight, right? Then, we mis-shot the turret destroyer, and didn’t have any other dps sitting as a demolisher’s passenger. I got to drive chopper this time and it was fun, although I also felt less useful. There were several times where I drop the tar on the course and then Flame decided to change target and completely missed my tar :). But overall, easy fight.

Like on Sunday, after that comes the nightmarish part of the run.

Just because, our RL decided we tried on Ignis trash. Call it revenge if you’d like. It took us 3 times before killing the Colossal dudes. We got the position right, but there were some mishap with healing and silence (on our DK’s tank). When we finally got them, turns out that we got a debuff called something like Unquenchable Fire(?), which is a dot that ticks quite a lot - so the person would need a heal - and jumps around to what it seems indefinitely. The tooltip said that we could only quelch  it in Ignis room. Yeah…that means that we have to go through the Rager guys with the debuff on us. Not.fun.to. heal. I wonder, is there a way that we can get rid of the debuff beforehand? Should we let the person with debuff died? Can you out-range the jump while still healing the person with debuff? I can’t seem to find this information anywhere.

Well, we were much successful for the trashes. Afterward, we only wiped at the last set of trash because everybody was so eager to get into the tank and forgot about running out from the Tornado. That might be thanks to the hotfix that Blizz put, to reduce the speed of the Tornado. We were also heavy on range that day.

We put most of our effort then on XT-002, though we still failed after too-many-to-count wipes. On two occassions we get to 25% only for him to enrage soon after. We shuffled some dps afterward, and we lost a range and gain a melee. Afterward, we never got that closed again. Maybe because the new dps need to adjust with our strategy, and at that point we just have way too many wipes to be patient to stupid mistakes. Additionally, the adds phase was chaotic with two ranges, and I ended up having to dps the boombots.  I am not sure whether that’s a correct strategy. Healing was hectic. I have to put everything I got while still being aware of mana, feeling frustrated, and constantly evaluating what I did wrong and how can I improve. This is what progression fight is all about.

Though we can’t still beat him yet, we did a better job in keeping people alive during Tantrums. Except when there’s still light bomb alive during Tantrums (urgh…I hate that very much). And I need to learn to…

1. Forego my chain heal a bit more when people are spread too far apart and not to constantly forgetting Riptide. I tend to panic and fill up people with quick LHW, forgetting to weave Riptide in between.

2. Know how much heal is sufficient to get someone alive out of Tantrums. He does 10% damage every 10 second, for 12 seconds. Theoritically, we just need to heal everybody, except the two tanks, at least 50% evenly throughout the tantrum, it would be okay.

3. Watching Tantrums cooldown better and get ready with a chain heal when that happens. In that matter, I need to setup my timing bar so that it is closed to the party’s healing bar.

4. Utilize my instant critable CH macro a lot more, especially at then end when we were so melee heavy.

I know that my raid group is frustrated right now. We are supposed to be able to tackle Ulduar 10 with the gears that we have. I think in a sense, DPS needs to minimize their downtime a lot more. I don’t know if I can wait until another week before giving this guy another try.

Last Thursday and Sunday, our raid alliance set foot to Ulduar for the first time. We killed Flame of Leviathan after three pulls. It might sound bad for not being able to one-shot him, but it was mostly because we pulled before destroying the towers, sending the wrong characters up to the turret, and things like that. Let’s say, bad research :). I have no doubt that we won’t have any problem the next time we fight him.

But then, everything went downhill. We wiped many times on the Ragers guy on the way to Ignis (which was a bad idea to start with), spent many attempts on Razorscale, and finally moved on to XT-002 (and wiped for 3 times) before we called it.

But it weren’t the wipes that frustrated me the most from this week’s runs, as I  fully understand and accept wipes during progression raid. There were some changes during this week’s raid and I’m not yet certain that as a raid group, we have fully adapted to these changes. We lost the leader of our raid alliance due to real life issues about 2 weeks ago. Our guild’s leader, who is usually 2nd in command, took over. And to accommodate for less than full attendance, we merged with another raid group from our ally’s guild (this guild has 2 raid groups, only one run regularly in the original raid alliance group - but now the other raid group wants more consistent group as their number is also dwindling down).

Yesterday, the raid leader from this group was leading the run as our “usual” leader was not available. And I felt like being in a PuG.  The raid members from our guild have nobody to represent us. Worse, when we tried to chime in the raid chat before pulls or after wipe to address our concerns about the strategies we were using, there did not seem to be any indication that the raid leader was even acknowledging them. We don’t know the raid leader enough, the only person who has interacted with him was our GL, which wasn’t there.  The members from their guild that were in the original raid alliance, do not seem to speak up often. Not in the raid chat or vent, at least.

To make matter worse, people, especially from the “new” raid group - but there were some people in our old raid alliance that were guilty for this as well - came into the raid without being ready with flasks. Do they think we are on farmed fights? Or do they think that we don’t even have the chance that it’s not even worth popping some flasks? The excuses were: “I’m broke”; “I didn’t know that I will be going in today’s run” (but nobody except one was invited at the last minute, and that’s because he was in an instance and we waited for him for more than 5 minutes to find replacement — it’s as easy as porting to an AH to buy some flasks); and the best excuse from them all — “I don’t need a flask, healers are keeping me alive anyway, only when dps were dropping that I died.” And guess who’s that coming from. Suddenly the other excuses make sense, if you have a raid leader who does not even think it is important to make the most preparation, how can you expect the members to do the same?

I mentioned earlier that we did some attempts for Razorscale  before moving to XT-002. The decision seems to be prompted from being tired of wiping. Hence, the question of the post, when to move on to another boss in case of wipes?

I have to say that I’m slightly disappointed that we moved on, though it’s probably a good move in general as XT-002 seems to be more doable than Razorscale (at least in strategy). I understand wipes from not having the right tool in the group — too low of dps, not enough healing, not enough gears — or other circumstances like lag during Heigan’s dance. Basically, we know that because of that lackness, no matter how many times we attempt to do it, it is unlikely to succeed. But because we know it, we can make changes to it.

But yesterday, when we decided to move on, I couldn’t pinpoint what we were missing and I felt without it, I don’t know how we can improve as a group. Is it because our strategy is not working? Then, why don’t we work on gelling the strategy for next week. Do we just not have the right make-up of healers? Are we too low in DPS? Are people not dodging fire fast enough? It is making me worried when venturing here again this coming week, that we will repeat the same mistakes.

I love the preview talent feature and the clean simple interface for dual-spec.

I hate that dual spec breaks my Yata.

I love the new quest tracking system where I don’t need to look all over my bag for the quest item.

I hate how the new dailies seem to send you all over the map (more time wasted for traveling).

I love the renaissance feel of Argent Tournament.

I hate mounted combats.

I love fishing in Wintergrasp.

I hate the way inscriptionist can learn/discover new glyphs is implemented (I’ve lost hope of ever learning them on my inscriptionist).

I love being thrown up to Flame of Leviathan to destroy the turrets.

I hate trashes to Ignis (yeah, we have a melee heavy raid group).

Some of my thoughts as the patch looms over the horizon.

I wish I’ve done this…

Sarth+drakes (1+).  Reading about it, it sounds like a fun and chaotic fight and I wish I could have experienced it. If the patch comes up  next week, the focus of our raid group will shift to Ulduar and most likely we’ll never end up attempting this.  I know that in the future there are probably pug groups forming trying for achievements. But I don’t think it will be the same rush as when our gears are on par for the encounters.

My most (and least) anticipated things in patch…

Excluding the new raid content (because that’s a no-brainer), it is a toss up between dual-spec feature and the new fishing content (dailies and new turtle mount) :). It just happens that the two specs that I play the most — my shadow priest and resto shaman — don’t really get new things to play with. Sure, E will get an improve DP, but that barely changes her rotation (tangent question: does the initial instant damage for DP crittable?).  V, my resto shammy, doesn’t even get any new spell. It’s hard not to be envious with other specs that seem to get at least one new thing.

When dual-spec comes out…

E will be specced as Shadow and Holy.

V will be specced as Resto and Ele.

Val will be specced as Prot and Ret. Her chance to raid seems to be slim to none (our guild is starting to have a lot of guildies leveling tanks as their alt). It would be kinda nice to spec Ret just for dailies or to go along when they need dps, but I don’t think I’m cut out to be a melee dps :).

My new talent builds will be…

Ahh, finally we might see some different builds for shadow priests.   E’s tentative build will be this. It’s a toss up between taking off IF and putting the point to Veiled Shadows, it will boil down to whether mana regen is an issue or not. It’s really hard to take points off from Imp VE from the view point of survivability, especially with the rumor of having a lot of AoE dmg, but I am hoping that the magic dmg reduction from Imp SF and additional stamina from imp PW:Fort can somewhat compensate it.

I am not seeing any change with V’s build and I haven’t spent my time looking at the new talent tree for Prot pally.

Yes, that’s for the sound of cricket for the time that I have been neglecting this blog. I’m still here. It’s just that real life “grinding session” for this rep that I have been working on for almost five years has to happen if I ever want to hit exalted with them Thereby, there goes most of my WoWing time. Thank goodness it’s almost over…or I hope at least *crosses fingers*.

Since my last post was more than a month ago, I think it’s only appropriate to start by summarizing where are things currently stand.

In the raiding department, our raid alliance had started our 25-man excursion. We (or shall I say they) reached our high point about a week ago with clearing up Naxx and Maly. We were supposed to work on Sarth with drake this week, but with some absentees of some of our regular, we ended up being stuck in Thadd this week, to much of my frustration. Our 10-man guild runs are now limited to doing Maly and Sarth, which saddened me a bit since I still haven’t gotten the trinket of Maexx yet. We are currently working on getting Sarth+2drake.

In the achievement department, I’m happy to note that E can finally wear her guild’s tabard once again. And after enduring H. Occ run (have I ever mentioned that it is my least favorite instance??), E now adorns Champion of Frozen Waste title (I know I know, I’m behind from everyone else :)). Finally, E is also a proud owner of the bronze drake, thanks to my nice guildies that are willing to run that place over and over to accommodate to my unluckiness in rolling. Now, if only that mysterious egg would hatch me some green proto-drake :(.

What an exciting day with all the new information about what’s coming up in patch 3.1.

With respect to shadow priesting, I could list all the changes in 3.1 and what I think about it, but Merlot over at the Misery has done a spot on job on it :). So head there instead.

One of the more controversial change is the removal of extra damage component in our dots in lieu for change for crits in each dots tick. The fellows in shadowpriest.com are currently discussing and theorycrafting this change.  Unfortunately, so far the verdict is that it’s at best a “side-grade”, assuming that shadow power will eventually affect the bonus damage from crits (which does not reflect in the tooltip). But everything is not set to stone, and I am optimistic that we will see something good from it.

So how about those new glyphs, heh? Or the lack of it ><.  The ones that are relevant to shadow priests are as follows (courtesy to MMO):

• Glyph of Mind Control — Increases the duration of your Mind Control spell by 30 sec. (Old:  12 sec.)
• Glyph of Dispersion  — Your Dispersion ability now also clears movement impairing effects and makes you immune to them for its duration.
• Glyph of Mind Sear *new*  — Increases the radius of effect on Mind Sear by 5 yards.

Is it just me, or the Glyph of Dispersion does what “new” dispersion is supposed to do?  I wish that Glyph of Mind Sear is a minor glyph, because I kinda like it, but I don’t like it enough to swap any of my currently equipped glyphs. If it is a major glyph, it’s interesting to see that we have this choice, similar to that what mages have, to be better in AoE or in single target dps.

I know that the screenies of T8 have been floating for a while, but I still don’t like how priest set looks, it reminds me of rogues with the face mask and all. I want to keep my halo :). And how about the new waist and boots that we can get from tailoring (BoE), and the possible legendary mace!?  It’s time to start saving up for ebonweaves and spellweaves again.

For the past 2 weeks, we have been doing Naxx10 with 2 healers, where I am the only hybrid in the group. While I am familiar with other ways of doing the encounter with only 2 healers, the strategy that our group used was to have me and an affliction warlock tank the back bosses, where I usually started on the right back corner (holy damage) and my lock friend started on the left back (shadow damage).

I know that I would need to pop some healing, but I didn’t expect that VE doesn’t seem to do anything and that I would be doing some frantic healing. I notice, however, that my lock friend usually fares better, that he would be okay if I don’t heal him for a while, even when we swap position. I’m usually close to being out of mana when the front bosses go down (after fiend, dispersion, and mana pot). I even try putting up my healing gear, but that doesn’t seem to be helping.

Am I missing something here? Or is this normal? Any hints or tips so that I can be more in “control” of the situation instead of hoping that the dps is strong enough to kill the other two bosses before my mana is completely drained?