I’d Rather Be Wowing!

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.

But I can’t help it, I’m so happy when I realized (after wasting several candles) that Prayer of Shadow Word Protection is now raid wide!!!

And really loving the buff for elemental shammy, it’s going to make switching Vh back to resto really difficult :).

Another two goals scratched from the list. Val got her swift gryphon and has been enjoying farming for herbs since then. And Vhe, the little shammy, has just recently ding-ed to 30.

I am one of those people that could level a character really really fast, if I put my head around it. Because I tend to use Jaime’s Alliance leveling guide, I remember a lot of the quests that would bring me from 30-60. But because of that, I’ve disregarded a lot of the back stories from these quests, and just zip through the quest as soon as I can. As a change of pace, I leveled Vhe and F (this is my little druid) without using any guide - just using QuestHelper addon so that I can identify the quest locations quickly - and purposedly try to level them in separate beginning area. Vhe took the regular quest route but occassionally stopped to smell the roses. Some not by choice, for example the various totem quests that had to be completed in timely manner, but some just because she can. For example, she tried to figure out to how to reach Foggy MacKreel upon noticing the yellow question mark on the way to Arathi Highland. I remembered being curious when I was leveling Lem, but never really pursue it. After unsuccessful attempt to jump across, Vhe ended up falling into water. But, the effort didn’t prove useless because Vhe ended up doing Sully Balloo’s Letter quest, another one of the quest that I’ve never done before (which has a really sad story line, if you care to do it).

F, on the other hand, stays around the night elf area. I haven’t done questing in that area for a long time, mostly because I really dislike the traveling involved in these areas. Unfortunately, upon doing the mushroom quest, where you are supposed to collect some mushrooms in the cave - and upon dying several times doing it, I am reminded once again how much I dislike the quests in Auberdine. But I intend to keep leveling her up there.

On another note, I am beginning to like playing enhancement shaman more and more. I know that I said that I will level Vhe as an elemental. But I just can’t stand having to drink after every several pulls. Not too mention, the itemization for leather armors in the lower levels have not been very supporting to the caster’s build.  Very rarely that the quest reward involve anything with int or spell damage. I still plan to respec her when the gears start to support her build. Anyway, I found that shaman is incredibly lucky when it comes to utility. They have water breathing and pseudo-personal soulstone (incarnate), just like warlock. They have water walking, just like priest. And although not as convenient as Mage’s teleport, the 15min “hearthstone” just makes traveling a breeze. Plus, traveling form starting from level 20. Just wow!