I’d Rather Be Wowing!

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?

1. Coming in, week after week, unable to down the boss (but improving slightly)? Or,
2. Coming in, after performing so well in the past, unable to down the boss?

Yes, I’m sad to say that this week, Gruul was still alive and kicking. It took us 2 tries before getting HKM. And we couldn’t seem to understand what went wrong. First off, we had a really good DPS group. From WWS parsing, we actually put out more DPS this week than last week. The only difference was, one less priest healer (she brought in her prot warrior instead), in exchange to one more druid healer. But, does it really make that big of a difference? *sigh*

Anyway, E started doing heroic again this weekend so she can get her off-hand (and she got it!). We hit Mech first, suffered from a couple of wipe, but nothing too frustrating. Then, we hit SV. For the first time ever, E actually finished that instance in heroic. Yesterday, she went to Arc. Sadly, I played like a big noob yesterday, died from grabbing aggro from the MT. Half of the deaths were not exactly my fault as some of the mobs did an aggro wipe. But I know I could have done better. Also, it doesn’t help if your healer is a druid, which means I have to run back every single time. Arghh!

As for Val, she was doing some BG fun with 4 other guildies. And boy, we rocked the BGs yesterday. We started kinda slow, losing in AV several times. We noticed that the alliance was always to slow to kill Drek because we were waiting for all the Towers to be capped. So, the five of us started to go all the way to get the FWK towers and GY, while leaving the other towers to the rest of the people. I’m not sure if that correlates to that, but we started winning afterward. Then we played EoTS and did good again. We actually pulled a “horde” this time, zerging them left and right before controlling the middle. Next stop was AB. It was a really close game, but at the end we won it. We actually tried to get a farm at the beginning and succeeded in doing that. At the same time, we diverted a couple of hordes that were trying to get them back but unable too. Last stop, WSG. I hated this BG but when we came in, we were lucky to have such a great group to complement us. We did an awesome defense. The other group did an awesome offense. For the first time ever for me, 3-0 for alliance. That sure beats doing dailies

The tangent:

• E is revered to SSO faction. She bought all the new JC recipes and burned about 400g on her pocket Granted that she doesn’t need all of these recipes, especially those BOP useless trinkets for meleers. I can’t help it, I’m a completist when it comes to recipes More dailies I suppose.
• Almost completed my furies deck. Just missing seven of furies which I haven’t seen for these 2 weeks. I bet when it shows up, it’s going to be expensive.
• Farmed enchant weapons: spell power from those etherial spell-thief in Bashir’s landing for both Val and Corro.

The adventure:

• High King Mulgar - The pull was perfect yesterday. We lost only one guy during the whole fight, who got knocked back directly to Krosh’ aoe. The kill order was back to: seer, olm the summoner, shaman dude/Krosh, and then Mulgar. 2 shammy/pally/rogue tokens and 1 warrior/priest/druid token dropped along with the 2-handed mace. No ret paladin or arms warrior, unfortunately.
• Gruul -
  • The first pull was a bit of a mess. DPS was slow. We have new people in the run, so people still need to get used to the fight.
  • The second pull, things were much better…until…ground slam put 4 of us (me, a hunter, a pally healer, and a warlock) at exactly the same spot against the wall. Uh huh…we were all dead.  We managed to get him down pretty well, but then MT went down, Gruul started to do hurtful strikes to everybody else, and we wiped.
  • The third pull, the other OT put on his defensive gear and now tries to be the 3rd in aggro. For some reason, MT went down really fast this time. Although the two OT recovered nicely, we couldn’t down him fast enough. Wiped.
  • Finally, the epic last attempt We started real good. Lost one dps and a healer at the beginning due to shatter. We got him good this time…until…when he reached 10 something %, MT went down. Two OTs took over, we got him to 6%, one of the OT went down. We tried to burn him as fast as we could, while Gruul started to take victims with his hurtful strikes. 1%, the other OT went down. Screams and yells ensued on the vent - healers put all the dots you’ve got. Gruul was in 1% for the longest time, killing everybody he could get his hand on. in my head, I thought this was Shade all over again. In one magical moment, holy shock I was told, Gruul went down with just 3 people left standing, 2 were healers. Vent just exploded with noises. It’s a great time for us.
• ZA. Yes, I finally ventured there. It’s such a great change of view after the dark and dinky cave of Gruul or the purple dominated place of Kara. ZA is just vibrant and alive. Love it. Also, who wouldn’t enjoy the gong hitting time, where all 10 of us just gathered closed and hit the gong with our weapons. Hilarious. The fight, on the other hand, seems anti-climatic than our previous encountered. The trash pulls suck really bad. Our lil magey wasn’t capped on her spell hit rating, so she had a hard time keeping up with the sheep. While the bear-boss was just tank and spank for dps. We didn’t get it under the time limit, which is understandable since it’s most of us’ first time. A cloth healing robe dropped, so grats to our priest healer But 1 badge, only! Are you kidding me !? We didn’t manage to complete the gauntlet to the eagle-boss, unfortunately. We had to call it quit after 2 hours (one of the tank had to leave).

The annoyance: (cause what raid is complete without it)

• We were missing a dps, and the person from one of our ally’s guild said that they could bring in a warlock from their guild. Well, granted that he was only a sub since we couldn’t find anybody (grr…Az…if only you could have come), but when I saw how low his hp/mana are after the party invite, an alarm was raised in my head. True enough, after inspecting his gears, he was full in greens with only a few blues. My heart just aches. Not that I’m really strict with all the requirement gear for raid kinda of stuff - but I’m not sure, with fight like Gruul where everybody is basically a liability with every other person, is it better to have someone that is greatly undergeared or missing a dps? I mean, we are still learning the encounter, we need all the help we need, don’t we?
• The person who was asked to clear vent last week didn’t show up, but in exchange, we got another one of the kind. And might I add, this one is even worse. He couldn’t stop talking, interrupting, offering advice that’s, if I’ll be so boldly say, not necessary. Repeatedly the RL had to say during the fight, if it’s not necessary, don’t use the  vent. It’s really not that we could not joke or comments during the fight, but if you abused it as much as he did, you’ll understand why the RL said such thing.

The complete rant (just ignore this ):

• The worse case was, we went to ZA with him (we had no choice, he asked whether anybody is interested, and he snagged one of the tanker ) and my head literally almost exploded with him kept interrupting and trying to lead the group. Even M, the most patient guy I’ve seen, I can tell that he almost had it with him. For example, he would say meaningless thing like - target your cc before the pull otherwise it would get lost after the pull. Duh! After we wiped the first time during the boss…after M explained why he was late in healing…it’s like he hasn’t been listening the whole time…he asked…so what happened there!? Argh! Or when the MT was explaining what we have to do, he interrupted just to ask whether we want HS or SS or whatever utility that he had to offer. Corro and I laughed when he did this, because it’s just so darn predictable, and Corro mentioned that he should just offered it up instead of asking (he’ll do it anyway). Before we start, he kept asking whether anybody has a flask, repeatedly, even after people said no. It’s like he only listens to what he wants to hear. I somehow wish P was there, he would straight him right. He probably couldn’t help it, but I’ve been spoiled with such a good company during runs, that things like that stood up. With time, I’ll be immune to those, Hah !

High King Mulgar - one shotted

Gruul - downed after 3 tries

Nalorakk - two shotted

Great weekend indeed! No loot unfortunately, but it’s all good

This week, both Curator and Prince dropped token of the fallen hero…again The only up side about that is Ast is now donning in a T4 helmet. I am very happy for her I also decided that I’m going to work for my Spellstrike hood instead.

Post patch 2.4, Prince’s safe spot seems to be no longer safe. Well, our safe spot usually is on the furthest wall of the area - on the 2 nooks. In fact, infernals seems to favor dropping in these area. Out of the 4 tries, where we started in this safe spot, we always have the infernals drop on us - exactly on top of us. From one-shotting Prince in the past, yesterday we had so much problem with Prince that we ended up going to Netherspite before coming back to down him. I am happy that we sticked through it though. The fight with Prince is now to resort to the traditional route of watching/detecting where the infernal would drop and plan accordingly. We started at the middle of the room, with the tank still tanking Prince against the wall. It’s still tie in with a bit of luck, but we won’t be caught in “oh crap…the infernal just dropped on us…just when we were enfeebled” and we have more room to maneuver. Our hunter has been pretty good in detecting the infernals on us and calling out new place. Our number one reason of wiping was the lack of healing when we moved from one place to another.

So, today is April fool’s day. Have you checked Blizzard main page yet? How do you like the joke they prepared for us? I am not going to spoil to you if you haven’t seen it - so go and check it out I personally love and love the screenshots

I almost gave up when I tried to look for a group to go there. It seems that not many people want to bring dps without any CC (well not counting MC). But, one tank that I knew from my past run all of a sudden messaged me and invited me to go to his group. Yay!

MagTer is so pretty It’s like the BElf starting area. Difficulty wise, we did wipe several times. Well, we are still learning about the place and that’s what so fun about it At the beginning the trash was manageable, but toward the end, each pull is about 5-6 mobs. What makes it difficult is the amount of magic damage that doesn’t get mitigated by armor. I can imagine why having a lot of CC makes the run smoother.

Trashes - The one that jumps out during the fight: BloodKnight heals. They “throws” a glaive too, which I seems to get most of the time. When hit, you’ll get stunned for several seconds. Definitely annoying. Etherial smuggler teleport and does a boatload of aoe damage. They become our priority to be cc-ed. The warlock doesn’t really hit hard and as with the case of cloth wearers, they drop like flies. There’s a robot that look like Kara’s arcane protector, but with less bolts coming out of them. The group trash is really challenging, everybody has different ability.

Bosses -

• Selin Fireheart - ocassionally activate crystals. Crystals need to be downed ASAP. When the crystal breaks, he will do some AOE damage. He is not too bad.
• Vexallus - spawn sparks, do chain lightning - just like Curator (except with no evocation ><). We actually wiped once on this guy. Spreading out really helps especially with the chain lightning damage. It can be a bit overwhelming. It really helps to have high stamina gear as well.
• Priestess Delrissa (with 4 adds) - our tank’s metaphor: it’s like doing a 5v5 arena I think we got the shaman, fury warrior, naga warrior, and a warlock for the fight. Don’t get to the water in front of the group, that will aggro them. We made a mistake in doing that and wiped because we weren’t ready. Delrissa doesn’t really hit that hard. On our successful try, we killed her first. Just stay alive, use your fear (hope you clear out the surrounding area), cc, and every survival spell that you got.
• Kaelthas - I think we wiped on him 3 times Mostly because of the phoenix. The general strategy is to kill the phoenix when spawned, then the egg. We actually have the paladin tanker tanked the phoenix. But the phoenix does explode upon death, so it may not be a good idea the tanker is low on health. Wait until the 2nd phoenix is spawned before getting Kael to 50%. When Kael reaches 50%, he would initiate phase 2 in which he took away the gravity and we would be floating in the air. He also spawns 3 orbs that, to tell the truth, really hard to see. The orbs do arcane damage that need to be avoided. But overall, it’s not an extremely hard fight. Just need a little coordination.

Completing the quest on the non-heroic mode will unlock the heroic mode. Overall, the encounters are really fun. The cutscene in the middle of the fight (after clicking the orb) is excellent. I wish I know the story a bit more. Good job Blizz

In our Kara’s run, we usually have one person filling in for the first half of the run because one of regular member is not available on Mondays. Whenever we try to attempt Illhoof, we kept getting comments from our subber: “Wow, you guys are crazy to do this without a warlock”. If I remember correctly, I think this encounter was much nerfed than before and now actually doable without having a warlock, but still, apparently people’s sentiment remains - that we need warlock to do Illhoof.

But, so far we never failed to down him. In fact, on our first try, we one-shotted him without having a warlock. On our worse attempts, it took us 2 tries, and that’s usually without having our paladin healer. I think downing Illhoof works with our group because our group is Melee heavy. In fact, the only casters are me (shadow priest) and all our healers. The hard part of Illhoof encounter is the casting pushback. Since meleers and hunters weren’t affected by pushback, the only dps missing was me (unfortunately really ).

Our most common wipe is actually due to pushback to the healers, especially during demon chain moment. This is what we usually do:

• Have someone lessen the burden with the imps. In our group, we have a fury warrior that deals with the imps and we have a healer dedicated to healing him. It works wonder, really. Fury warrior is like an aoe melee, without the pushback and mana issue. Perfect If coupled with fire resistance aura, he needs so little heal.
• On the subject of imps, as a shadow priest, what I like to do is to absorb the remaining aggro - whatever our fury warrior couldn’t handle. That means that most of the other imps would be attacking me. This strategy is not ideal since less mana returns and group healing, especially much later on the fight where getting too many imps mean a long cast time. But, in my opinion, it’s better for me to get the pushback instead of our healers.
• Druid and priest healers - don’t forget your hots
• Burning down the demon chain asap is completely vital. As a shadow priest, keep your burst cast solely for this. Having boss mod information really helps to know when you need to have your finger off the Mind blast button.

Points to take: never make the lack of warlock be your excuse in not trying Illhoof

I (accidentally) cast Shadow Word:Death when I was enfeebled. Hah I think what happened is that the hit back occurred when enfeeble was cast, and I happened to be one that gets it. That was embarrassing *blush* Of course they are laughing after finding out why I died.

Well, Kara was cleared again. Illhoof gave us a lot of problem last night. We couldn’t one shot him, but we finally downed him after two tries. For some reason, this fight without our paladin healer becomes much harder for for us. We also still couldn’t one shot Netherspite. On the first tries, we lost so much dps that we couldn’t cover the blue beam for the whole period. Then, we hit enrage again.

My dps was still bad. There’s only about 40dps improvement from last time. Our BM hunter was still tearing up the dps chart. Is Kara really that friendly for BM hunters, I wonder? Or the rest of us just slacking off? According to the WWS report, he actually hit about 1.2k of DPS on one of the fight. And he’s still wearing a lot of greens with no enchants. Granted that he was stacked on an enh shaman/fury warrior group.

It took us 1 and 1/2 hour, 5 tries, 2 trash clearing, but we finally did it But oh boy, that was one expensive repair bill.

The group:
1 Rogue
1 Mage
2 Warlocks
3 Hunters
5 Warriors (3 Prots and 2 Fury)
2 Druids (both Resto)
3 Paladins (2 Holy and 1 Ret)
3 Shamans (3 Enhancements)
5 Priests (3 Holy and 2 Shadow)

The pull:

• MT - prot warrior - would tank Maulgar around where he was at.
• The mage would tank Krosh at the upper side of the cave’s entry.
• OT1 - prot warrior - would tank Seer on the lower left side of the cave.
• OT2 - prot warrior and two warlocks using summon felhound - would tank the Olm on the upper left side.
• Two hunters would range tank Kiggler (not sure where, they just move diagonally I believe).
• All dps positioned themselves on the left bottom of the cave.
• The kill order: Seer, Olm, Krosh(range), Kiggler(Melee), Maulgar

Here’s the breakdown

• 1st Attempt: The pull went fine. Seer was downed. Felhound run loose and bad timing on MT’s heal after arcing smash. Wiped.
• 2nd Attempt: Almost similar to the 1st pull. But Olm went down as well. MT didn’t get enough heal due to the same problem. Wiped.
• 3rd Attempt: Something went amiss here, MT’s healer got deathcoiled. Then, MT’s got deathcoiled. A very short attempt here. Wiped.
• 4th Attempt: Same deal with the 3rd attempt. Wiped.
• 5th Attempt: Strategy was changed. Instead of tanking Maulgar on his spot, Maulgar was tanked near the entry to the area. Warlock got new macro to enslave the pet. Much better try this time. Seer downed. Olm downed. Lose some people at this point. Kiggler was downed but our mage that tanked Krosh died as well. Krosh continued to one shot all the ranges and the healers while Melee continued on Maulgar. Finally, 1 tank and 1 dps and 2 healers left, and we called it a wipe.
• 6th Attempt: Last attempt of the day. After a rough trash clearing time, were finally ready. Used the same strategy and the fight went much smoother. The mage lasted till the whole fight this time and Krosh was easily downed. Finally, it’s Maulgar time, he went down without much resistance.

Ahh…the great feeling of victory. We are going to try this again next week and hopefully with much shorter attempt so that we can try Gruul

Yes!! Finally!!

(Get ready for a super long post - rant included)

I logged in the game in a pissy mood yesterday. I was not feeling very well too. We were trying to get 7 bosses down tonight. We did very messy last Thursday. And most people logged in late, some with pvp flag turned on. We proceeded to the back door, and…glitch. I couldn’t open the damn door! Even when someone opened the door for me, in my “game”, the door was not opened and I couldn’t go in. I have to completely restart the game before being able to go in.

But luckily, things were going okay afterward. One shotted Curator, Illhoof, Prince, and Chess Events. Two shotted Aran (I know you moved during flame wreath! Yeah, I’m looking at you! *stare evilly*). Also two shotted Netherspite. We could have one-shotted him, mind you, but the person in the red beam just had to move him, the person in green beam was not aware of him loosing the beam, and yes, the dragon went back up to 100%. We “almost” killed him twice and lost to him enraging at only 9% left. Argh. But in spite to all the wipes, we still have enough time to attempt Nightbane.

After 2 attempts, we finally got him. Woohoo!! The hardest part of Nightbane’s fight is in the transitioning. The first attempt, we kept losing our druid healer (he was ressed and died again) when the dragon enter the flight phase for the first time. At the next attempt, we had him changed into bear form at least until things were manageable. I really feel bad for the healers on this fight. I can tell from the vent that they were frantically healing (or trying to find the person being debuffed before they died). Still, they make the fights seems easy. Kudos to you, guys!! The second attempt, we lost our druid tank/feral from the get go. He was standing in a bad position when the dragon landed, the dragon one shotted him, and the rest was history. Note: if you are not a tanker, stay away from the dragon landing place until the tank secure it in its place. It was actually not too bad, we managed to get him until the 2nd flight phase, where the dragon ran amok on the landing and one shotted our healers. Boo! The third attempt, we loss one of our hunter quite early. We loss our priest healer because of the smoking blast (thank goodness for combat rezz). But everybody else held up. Minor mistake during the 3rd (and last) landing due to no more misdirect and missed the shield slam. And Nightbane is finally history.

So…now the rant part. I was checking my wws again and found out that I’m at the 4th on dps chart - after the two hunters!! (I’m usually the 3rd after our shamy and our fury warrior). And I felt terrible and frustrated. How can I, with fully enchant, gemmed (not the best gem though), and consumables, lost with a hunter that doesn’t have all his gears enchanted and best gemmed and comes to the fight without any consumables? My dps is awfully low, especially during Aran’s fight. I think there may be several reasons to why this happen:

1. I moved too much during the fight while the hunters can usually stay in their place. For example on Prince’s fight, I had to move in and out during enfeeble due to my range. On Shade, I moved a lot to avoid blizzard and repositioning myself so I didn’t get silenced during flame wreath. While the hunter, just need to step in, take the silenced buff, and continue to auto shoot like nobody’s business. Same thing with Netherspite, I think I spent most of my time looking for portal instead of casting, not too mention repositioning myself everytime the beam moved, while the hunter can sick in the pet while he’s finding the portal. With Nightbane, I had to moved in and out to give our tank his fear ward, and mostly my own fault, I got feared multiple times.
2. Not enough mind blast. The percentage of mind blast is awfully low. I know that during Curator, I couldn’t use mind blast because my threat was so closed our tank (thanks to VE ><). But on other time, I didn’t use mind blast because I’m running out of mana way too fast. On the topic of burst damage, I couldn’t use my SW:D in most fight too because I’m afraid to burden our healers.
3. Not keeping track of my dot. I think several times, I reapplied SW:P even when it’s not finished ticking. And on several times, I let VT dropped before reapplying it (should have reapplied it when it’s closed to being dropped).

So, what can I do?

• The easy one - learn to manage my mana a bit more. One, I need to get a macro to linked my inner focus with mind blast. That way, I can more liberally apply mind blast. Two, just chain potting, prayer of hope, and shadow fiending a bit faster, so I can use them twice. I did good on prayer of hope usually, but I’m still bad on chain potting.
• Be more attentive to my dot timer. I need to be less trigger happy on SW:P and more trigger happy on every thing else that is on cooldown (such as MF).
• Redo my talent tree (again). I think it’s time to take away one point of VE and put it on shadow weaving (it’s 4/5 right now) or shadow power (it’s 3/5). That way I’m not such an aggro bomb and I can do more burst damage.
• Reduce unnecessary movement. I think this is my weakest point yet. I’m not sure what I can do during Aran’s fight. Maybe I can just take the silence debuff (as long as not with flame wreath) and try to fit in my dot when I’m not silenced and shoot with my wand instead? That doesn’t seem to be optimal. On Prince, I have to remember that I don’t need to run very far and try to save MB and SW:D (when not enfeebled) when I have to be out of range of MF. On Nightbane, I can be out of range when fear is going to happen so I don’t get feared. On Netherspite, I have to “trust” the blue beam taker and instead of running toward blue portal all the time, I only run toward it during the phase that I’m responsible at.

I guess I’ll have to check on the next run whether by doing this, I can improve my dps. Wish me luck.