Segment 52: Deadly Boss Mods

So now you’re raiding, or at least running instances. It doesn’t matter if you’re raiding old “vanilla WoW” dungeons or Baradin Hold, or anywhere in between; you want to do the best you can, whether you are the tank, a healer, or DPS. That means you need situational awareness, because while a mage doing the safety dance in Naxxramas may be low on the DPS charts, a dead mage is zero DPS.

The NPCs have an advantage over you. They may not be as smart as you (let’s hope not!), but they are inside the computer; there’s no lag between events and their knowledge of those events. Deadly Boss Mods (“DBM”) will help you overcome that advantage.

Right now I have a total of 36 DBM modules installed, including the core module and a totally superfluous “victory sound” module. There are modules for world events, PvP, every existing raid instance, and general modules for Outlands, Burning Crusade, Wrath, and Cataclysm. Other features (cribbed from the DBM Web site) include:

* Boss mods for all raid bosses.
* Colored raid warnings (players will be colored according to their class) with icons – so you will know what’s going on without even reading the message.
* Auto-respond during boss fights. DBM will inform anyone who whispers you during a boss fight that you are busy. These messages contain the name and health of the boss as well as the raid’s status.
* Boss Health-frame: you can enable a simple frame that shows a health bar for all active bosses. This is enabled by default for multi-mob bosses like Four Horsemen.
* Bars can be enlarged with special “notice me!” effects when they are about to expire.
* Crash recovery: you had a disconnect or crash during a boss fight? No problem for DBM! It will request the timer and combat status information from other DBM users in your raid group and you get your timers back.
* Synchronization system for accurate timers.
* No dependencies, no embedded libraries (except for the optional LibDataBroker plugin that embeds LibDataBroker). This means you can use DBM without any other add-ons.
* Modular design – all boss mods are plugins and can be exchanged, removed or updated separately.
* Load on demand – all boss mods are separate AddOns and they will be loaded when they are needed, so they don’t use memory or CPU until you enter the corresponding instance.
* Efficient code: DBM uses less than 250 kb memory and the CPU usage is also very low.
* Special effects like the screen flash effect, huge warning messages and sounds will draw your attention to critical events.
* Bars can change their color over time and flash before they expire.
* Highly customizable: you can change the bar color, size, icon position etc.
* Support for SharedMedia, so you can use any texture for your bars.
* An option to create custom timers, so-called “Pizza Timers” for your pizza or whatever you prefer to eat while raiding. You can also send those timers to your raid group.
* Powerful object-oriented API – you can use it to write your own boss mods!

There are screenshots and a download link, as well as dedicated forums at DeadlyBossMods.com

And you can update DBM with any of the three popular updaters.

Do yourself and your party members a favor; get and use Deadly Boss Mods.

Music for this segment is from FreePlayMusic.com and is entitled “Pushing It” by Eric Darken

Download the MP3: Deadly Boss Mods

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Not to be overly academic, but WoW and Blizzard have essentially formed a relationship with each and every one of their consumers. We have developed norms with the way we interact with each other and when those norms get violated it is always very difficult to navigate a recovery process. I have often said in private to Jason and others that I now feel like Blizzard/WoW and I are navigating a rough stage in our relationship. It’s like when your partner/spouse tell you that they don’t love you anymore but because you so deeply love them you want to try to work it out… I feel like Blizzard/WoW is the partner/spouse who doesn’t love me as a player and a consumer anymore. Yet, my devotion to the game remains even despite its best efforts to get rid of me.

So here is my two cents on what is wrong in WoW, and what Blizzard should do to fix it.

Raiding
I know a lot of you probably cringe when I say that I believe the first tier of Cataclysm raiding is far too difficult for the majority of the player base. I’ll agree that Naxx and Obsidium Sanctum in Wrath were quite easy especially considering that I was able to complete both within 2 ½ months of Wrath’s launch (and I had to level my DK from level 55 in that time). I was also a young and new raider at that time, I knew very little about past raiding ventures and wasn’t experienced in the ways of classic and BC raiding, but I tried my best and did my research and though it wasn’t too terribly difficult it was still time consuming and fun… and I could learn. After all isn’t learning what the first tier of content for an expansion should be all about. So after having done my fair share of heroic modes in ICC, ToC, and Ulduar, and having 2+ years of raiding and raid leading experience under my belt jumping into Cataclysm raiding should have felt like ok… new fights… but lets do this. Instead it feels like everything I learned about raiding has been shattered and crapped on and Blizzard ratcheted the games difficulty up so much that even a now highly skilled player like myself (topping charts even when I pug in with hardcore guilds and players) feels like a complete and utter scrub and I’m left throwing my hands up in the air like did the last 2 years mean nothing?

Finally, this notion of being “spoiled” by a video game is utterly ridiculous in my book. Games are supposed to be fun, and completable by people with some challenge mixed in. Wrath was a challenge for many players but with enough work and effort even if it took them longer they got to do the content, not hard modes, but normal modes. Hard modes are for the hardcore, normal modes are for everyone who has the time and effort to put in. Blizzard should strive to give the hard core players better and more unique loot so they can feel that hard modes really do prove that they’re leet and they have something unique to show for it (not some recolored same model from an easy boss), but still make the loot for normal modes look appropriately cool (just not as cool as hard mode stuff). That’s the way I think it should run.

Dynamic Content
For all intensive purposes Azeroth is about as static of a world as you can get in an MMO. I’ve been a vehement defender of Blizzard on a lot of fronts, but this upsets me now more than ever that I see a number of lesser funded and developed MMO’s having dynamic content.

Take for instance the rifts and invasions in Rift… open world PVE content that actually gives you something for completing them (Rifts version of Justice Points). They encourage players to cooperate and are challenging but do not end up causing players to have to inspect each other’s gear/spec or anything like that before tackling them. Sure it might be slower than raiding or dungeoning… but it’s fun. No stress I get to join a public group of random people and go pwn some monsters and get stuff. The best part is… hardly anyone is judgmental or mean in those groups. Everyone has this attitude of “Yeah! Let’s do this!” You die… so what… run back and keep fighting the good fight. Why doesn’t Blizzard have something like this? In Wrath it could have been scourge invasions of towns and quest hubs or out in the world. In Cataclysm, it could easily work as Twilight Cult invasions… Imagine cultists overrunning Crossroads or Goldshire randomly, or your out running your dailies in Twilight Highlands and uh oh Dragonmaw Port is under attack by a swarm of cultists and twilight drakes so you and everyone else in the zone go rush to fight it off. Click a “Join Public Group” button and go in and save the day. I’m telling you… it could work and in Azeroth it would be awesome.

Community
I’m not sure if this is because of the content or just the maturity of the game but the player base of WoW is unbelievably judgmental and terribly inconsiderate and rude. In Wrath I used to see people pugging raids and dungeons all the time because it was fun even if you didn’t complete the dungeon. Now on a Friday night I log in and barely see anyone talking in Trade Chat… not even the obligatory “Baby” or “Murloc” memes. It’s like a ghost town…. no one wants to talk… no one is pugging. It feels for lack of a better word… empty or hollow.

Not to mention when you do finally get to the stage of getting into a pug or some other groups activity. You are under constant pressure to perform (spec, rotation, gear, ability) and at the first sign of trouble you’re kicked or not invited. Though I realize this is an ever-present and necessary trend in any group wanting to get stuff done, ratcheting up the game’s difficulty has increased the amount of scrutiny given to players and even friends that you have raided with for 2 years… who are good players! Is that what Blizzard wants to do to their community? Punishing people who enjoy playing together by making it so that they can barely get down 2 bosses a week? Making it so that you have to berate your friends about gameplay mechanics when I know that they know what to do? I urge Blizzard not to sacrifice the most important aspect of their game, the community, for the sake of appeasing the few people who enjoy excluding others from the fun, the others whose sense of accomplishment is directly related to the failure of others.

I recall Chris Metzen, in his “Geek Is” statements at Blizzcon 2010 talking about Dungeons and Dragons… and saying “Geek is sitting around a table with your best friends… armed with only graph paper and funny dice… and imagining far flung worlds of your own.” He even said that that was his favorite slide. For me “Geek Is” spending an evening raiding with my best friends enjoying jokes and downing bosses with minimal stress… still requiring skill and a few wipes… but minimal stress. Why does it now feel like Blizzard doesn’t want me to do this anymore?

Are there any people out there who aren’t experiencing these woes? Is it confined to my server? Is it just a random series of events that has plagued me as of late? I don’t know the answers to any of these questions, but I ask for help and your opinions. Please keep in mind these are my experiences and opinions and they may be very different from your own. I encourage respectful and intelligent disagreements, but don’t want to see any ignorant comments about “how I suck” or “qq” etc.

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Segment 50: Add-ons for Shaman

I have been informed that, during the per-class segments, I somehow contrived to miss the shaman. Let’s correct that right now.

The shaman is a hybrid support class, providing DPS via spellcasting or melee, or healing. In addition, the shaman can place totems to provide additional benefits to the party or deal additional damage to enemies.

To help your shaman in his chosen role, I’ve put together a list of some well-regarded add-ons. All of these are available from Curse.com – see the segment notes for direct links.

First, we have SpellFlash: ReSham, a module for the SpellFlash add-on. SpellFlash: ReSham will provide visual cues for appropriate spells or abilities duing combat and out of combat. You can easily disable certain talent trees, and also disable it when out of combat.

TribalEnhancement is a lightweight add-on supporting all shaman specs. It provides totem, buff, debuff, and shield tracking using a “least intrusive” philosopy.

Tyler is a Nub is a simple add-on to remind you to reapply your weapon buffs. It also works for rogue poisons and warlock buffs.

SmartRes2 provides intelligent and co-ordinated party and raid wipe recovery. You’ll want every class who can rez to run this add-on, and then hope you never need it.

Lastly, we have Shaman Friend. This add-on is specifically designed for the shaman and provides lots of useful functions for all shaman specs. There are too many to go over here; take a look at the add-on page, as linked in the segment notes.

Music for this segment is from Jamendo.com and is entitled “Deranged” by Fox.

Download the MP3

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Segment 48: Pawn

You’re running 5-mans, trying to gear up so you can level even faster, or run heroics, or raid. You see other people clicking “need” on gear that you think you might want, but you’re not sure if it’s really an “up” for you, and you don’t want to be “that guy.” What do you do? Pawn.

Pawn is an add-on that uses values from Wowhead to quickly compare loot items (or quest reward items) with gear you have equipped, and lets you know if it’s really an “up.” In the case of quest rewards, it will also indicate which item to take to vendor, in the case where none of the items will improve your current outfit.

Pawn can be installed and used immediately without any configuration; or if you’re the hard-core theory-crafting guy who spends days building spreadsheets, reading Elitist Jerks, and who runs Rawr and Atlas Loot, you can customize it for your fine-tuned needs.

Pawn is built to detect your class and optimize gear scores for you; again, you can customize it heavily, but for most players it will be more than adequate as soon as you install it. You can also share your own customizations (called “scales”), and import customizations shared by other players. There’s even a Web site dedicated to sharing them, linked in the segment notes.  And you can set up multiple scales (quite useful for the dual-specced player) and have multiple scores displayed on gear items.

Comparing drops or linked items to your current equipped gear is easy: Just right-click the item’s icon. If you would like to compare items in AtlasLoot, you can set up hotkeys for that purpose (the square brackets are the default, but if you have already bound them to other purposes, you’ll need to choose others).

There’s a pretty comprehensive ReadMe file included with Pawn; it includes almost everything I’ve mentioned here, and more.

One final note, not in the audio segment: the Pawn suggestions for gemming and reforging are also incredibly handy.

You can download Pawn from Curse or install it using Wowmatrix. Other Web sites and add-ons mentioned in this segment are linked in the segment notes at Wowphiles.com.

Music for this segment is from Jamendo.com and is entitled “Pay Attention” by Dead Pawn Company.

If you have a favorite add-on, or you’re looking for an add-on for a specific purpose, please drop me a line via email to AddOns@wowphiles.com or hit me up on Twitter.

Download the MP3

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Segment 46: PlayerScore

The single biggest complaint heard in World of Warcraft is about pick-up groups, usually called “pugs.” Why? Because players join pugs without the proper gear or experience to make a successful run. In the past, group leaders (now called “dungeon guides”) had two add-ons to help them determine the level of readiness a player might bring to his pug, GearScore and SkillScore. Individual players could use them to determine their own state of readiness, and decide how to improve it. Both of those became outdated with Cataclysm.

Now, TenTonHammer has released an add-on that combines the best features of GearScore and SkillScore, called PlayerScore.

I chose to download the add-on only, but there is an option to download the add-on with an updater. Since I already have three updaters, I didn’t see the need; plus, I will be forever paranoid about EXE files in add-ons that don’t come from Blizzard. However, the updater also allows you to download new PlayerScore data from TenTonHammer, and to upload ratings you’ve given to other players, much like the Wowhead Looter. So again, it’s up to you. TenTonHammer makes it easy to choose.

Confusingly, the folder name for PlayerScore is GearScore. If you already have GearScore (or SkillScore) installed, you should remove it (or them) before installing PlayerScore.

Once installed, you may find, as I did, that PlayerScore is disabled. Enable it for the toons you want to use it on.

After you log in on one of those toons, you’ll find a new icon in the center of your screen, a warhammer. Drag it to where you want it. Then click on a toon you’d like to inspect (you can click yourself, which is a good idea for your first look), and either type “/gs” or right-click the hammer icon and choose from the menu.

You will be presented with a largish frame containing quite an array of data, including the old GearScore information and a lot of new data. Dungeon Guides will want to look at the toon’s capability in 5 man, 10 man, and 25 man dungeons.

Rather than go into any more depth here, I recommend you check out the PlayerScore site at TenTonHammer. Look yourself up and see how you’re rated. Decide for yourself if this is an add-on you need. I know I want it.

Music for this segment is from Ska4U.com and is entitled “Explosive” by The Planet Smashers.

Download the MP3

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To add to my series of compilation posts for Cataclysm Pre-Raid gear guides and shopping lists, I’ve found a couple resources for tanks. I lumped the plate wearing tanks together. Death Knights: the first link has some information on 2-Handed weapons for you.

See Also:
Cataclysm Pre-Raid DPS Gear
Cataclysm Pre-Raid Healer Gear

Below are some great resources for tanks. I’ll update this list as more become available.

Death Knights, Paladins, Warriors

Cataclysm Pre-Raid Tank Gear List
Cataclysm Pre-Raid Tank Guide

Druids

Feral Druid Cataclysm Pre-Raid Tank Gear List

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One of my favorite things to do at the beginning of an expansion is search item databases and find out what is the best gear for my character to have in order to successfully start raiding. Yes, I truly am a nerd like that.

I’m sure I will do the same this expansion for my characters, but in addition I’m compiling resources for all classes and specs to help you all get prepared for Cataclysm raid content.

See Also:
Cataclysm Pre-Raid DPS Gear
Cataclysm Pre-Raid Tank Gear

Below are lists that players have put together to get you started healing raids in Cataclysm.

Resto Druid

Resto Druid Cataclysm Pre-Raid Gear List

Holy Paladin

Holy Paladin Cataclysm Pre-Raid Gear List

Disc/Holy Priest

Healing Priest Cataclysm Pre-Raid Gear List

Resto Shaman

Resto Shaman Cataclysm Pre-Raid Gear List

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Thanks to Malekai for the original email for this post.

GDKP, which stands for Gold DKP, is a loot system in which players bid gold on items that drop in a raid rather than rolling on it. The item then goes to the highest bidder and all the money that was bid goes to the raid leader and stays in the virtual pot. At the end of the raid the pot is split amongst the raiders.

These tips are based on experience with GDKP from the server Dark Iron [US] Horde side. GDKPs are generally run by guild that have raid content on farm status and can be a great option for those that have a little extra gold, or would like to make some gold.

How To Run A Successful GDKP Raid:

Once the raid is formed the rules need to be clearly stated up front in the raid chat, NOT just over vent. This way it is written out for everyone to see. This is a must because if the raid leader (or person collecting gold) tries to skip out with the gold, the GMs will intervene; but ONLY if everything was stated in raid chat.

This includes minimum bids, raid leader cut, payout dividends, what is to be done with BOE items and Primordials (if it’s a 25 man and generally 25 man is the preferred format for GDKP), and shadowfrost shards. Generally everything is just auctioned off.

There are GDKP add-ons that will automate much of this and keep track of the gold accumulated and who the highest bidder is.

GDKP in Action:

Once you down a boss the loot master opens bidding at whatever the preset price is, for us it was generally 500-1000 gold (some more popular items start at 2000). People bid in whatever increment they want until no one bids for 5 seconds and the raid auctioneer declares the bidding over and then they exchange the gold for the item.

Generally the groups push on as far into the raid instance as they can. A well put together GDKP run should now be able to do at least 10/12 bosses in Icecrown Citadel with the 30% buff.

The amount of gold bid on items can be quite high. Bidding on some items can go as high as 23,000 gold and there have been reports of items going up to 70,000 gold. (Usually the hosts of the GDKP always post the previous weeks results in the realm forums.)

An average GDKP run on this server grosses around 200,000 gold for anywhere from 8 to 11 out of the of 12 bosses in 25 man ICC, which generally ends being around 7500 gold per person.

Some of the benefits of GDKP

Some of the Cons of GDKP:

A true PUG as a whole will not go this route because you need to have a group that is going to push through a lot of content. There are often people in PUGs who want to reserve something (in my opinion this is worse than a GDKP run). GDKPs are generally only going to be conducted by the best guilds on the server.

For anyone who’s playtime is limited and sporadic, or is in a smaller guild that hasn’t been able to successfully raid, GDKP can be a great way to go. GDKP runs give you a solid chance to get the gear you want, with a much slimmer chance of dealing with a fail PUG.

It is common to be skeptical when you first hear about GDKP but by following the proper guidelines it can be a successful loot format for everyone involved.

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That will buff right out.

RaidBuffStatus is an add-on to check, show and report on the complete buff status (including flasks etc) of a party or raid. It shows the information on a dashboard much like XRS. It can report via whispers and to raid chat. In addition it provides a talent spec window which also shows any special abilities such as improved spirit.

However it is quite unlike XRS, Bigbrother and most other buff checking add-ons. It was the first released add-on to intelligently, in an automagic way, know what buffs to check for. For example only if there is a Mage will it check for intellect buff and it does not check the buffs of those not in the same zone. As much as possible is automatic.

add-ons like XRS require lots of initial configuration. RBS works with no configuration out of the box. However RBS now features a Buff Wizard to help new user non-raid leaders to configure only the buffs they need to be displayed.

RBS can do the buffing for you such as your self and party buffs with a quick alt-click.

RBS supports add-ons like Titan using LibDataBroker.

RBS even has a twitter account, so you can keep up with news about the add-on. There are a number of videos available demonstrating the use of RBS, and it is actively maintained.

You can get RaidBuffStatus from WoWinterface or from Curse.

Music for this week’s segment is from FreeplayMusic.com and entitled “Warriors and Knights” by Scott P. Schreer

Download the MP3

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What is a threatmeter and why do you need one? I’m glad you asked! The threatmeter (“TM” from now on) displays the threat generated by your party members and allows you to adjust your playstyle to stay where you need to be compared to other party members (if everyone in the party is running a compatible TM; this is crucial). If you have ever seen a warlock pull aggro off the tank during a boss fight (almost always followed by a raid wipe), you understand why you need to know where you stand on the mobs’ threat tables.

Omen3 displays the top threat levels in a small window which you can move around the screen, and lets you choose some parameters to customize the display a bit; I’ll leave the details for you to discover, and simply say that the “right-out-of-the-box” experience will make everyone’s life in a party or raid a lot simpler. If you’re the tank, you know you want to be at the top of the threat list; if you’re a ranged DPS type, you know you want to be down around number three. Omen3 lets you see at a glance if you need to step up or back down on threat. It’s fairly lightweight, and can be set to hide itself when you’re not in a party.

Omen3 is available from Curse and WoWinterface.

Download the MP3

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Boston asked for volunteers to sit, and I thought about it, but I knew we were doing Heroic ToC10. I wanted to be in the raid and as one of our geared tanks; I thought I would be needed. Not only that, but if I sat, the team would miss out on my lovely singing voice and vent, and I’m sure nobody wanted to miss out on that.

As an aside, I’m been banned from singing on at least three vent servers. I feel sort of like the guy in the Cantina Scene in Episode IV. “You just watch yourself, we’re wanted men. I’m been banned on three Vent servers!”

Annnnnnnnnnnnyway, we two shot Beasts and three shot Jarraxxus. All night it seemed like I was having threat issues.

Let’s talk about threat for a second. For the entire expansion, the only time I’ve had threat issues as a Paladin is on gimmick fights like Malygos and Hodir where the DPS is getting some ridiculous buff. In a normal fight, I have no problem keeping a very large threat lead. Normally the next closest person will be at around 65 to 70%.

That’s started to change in ToC, especially early on the in the fight. The main culprit seems to be our Destruction Warlock, although our Hunter can ride my threat as well

I don’t know enough about Locks to even guess what the problem is. I can tell what the problem is not though; it’s not a player skill issue. Our Warlock is a really strong player. He knows the encounters and strats backwards and forwards. He’s the kind of guy that can fully explain to you not only his role, but also what every other person in the raid should be doing. I would bet he’s putting every bit as much research into maximizing his personal contribution to the DPS team. I don’t know Corruption from Conflagrate but I bet his 3/17/51 spec is EJ tested, EJ approved, with all the appropriate threat reducing talents.

Hand of Salvation seems to help, but there are many times I want to Salv him and he’s out of my range.

“General Calrissian, our tanks can’t repel aggro gen of that magnitude!”

After Beasts and Jarraxus, we came to our current nemesis, the Faction Champions. Two weeks previously, have we taken on these guys, and verily, it has come to pass, that twice they have smackedeth us down.

The enemy team consisted of a Boomkin, Holy Paladin, Enhance Shaman, Rogue, Mage, and Priest. I think the Priest was Disc because he kept casting Penance.

The plan was to have Blue (Warrior) go Prot and lock down the Holy Paladin. Boston (DK) would do what he could to keep the Rogue off our squishier teammates. We’d rotate crowd control like Cyclones from Lakini and Hexes from Stark (Shaman) on the Enhance Shaman to help our DPS escape. We would try to blow up the Priest, and then start on the other DPS.

Our first attempt, the Priest never got below 80%. It was pretty much what we had seen in our other attempts. On Heroic, the Faction Champions get a trinket and are immune to Taunts.

The next attempt we sent in Danath (Warrior) to fear. The Faction Champs all blew their trinket right from the get go. I popped Wings and laid into the Priest with my Ret DPS. Between Arcane Torrent, Hammer of Justice and Repentance, I was able to stop 3 heals from going off.

More so than just about any other fight, I really have to fight tunnel vision on Faction Champs, but at the same time I need to “stay on target”.

This is also a fight where you notice your own contribution much more than you notice what everyone else is doing. I saw where my Cleanse got Blue out of a sheep so he could get back on the Holy Paladin. I saw where my Hand of Protection saved Blackhaus (Priest) from being killed by the Rogue. I know the rest of the team was using every single one of their abilities to help us try to win this encounter; it’s just that I didn’t see what they were doing or I would tell you all about it.

This time the Priest started to go down, but we must have run out of interrupts because she started to get some heals off. Then she dropped into Execute range and we got her. One Faction Champion down. I glanced up at my raid frames. We were still intact, a good sign.

We changed to the Enhance Shaman, and we were able to burst him down. I checked the Raid frames again. We were down Neo (Warlock) and Ofn (Rogue). Two for two. I figure even if we buckle at this point, we’ve made really good progress in this attempt.

We chose the Boomkin next. We got him down, but it had been costly. We had lost Black (Priest). Lakini (Druid) was Johnny on the spot with a Battle Rez. Okay, so I did notice SOME of the things other people did.

Now it was the eight of us remaining against the Rogue, Holy Paladin and Mage. We went after the Rogue next. He was tricky using Shadowstep to get away from us.

Both our healers were running dry. I switched Stark’s blessing from Kings to Wisdom and waited until Black was completely OOM and hit him with a Lay on Hands. Now I realize 1,950 isn’t a lot of mana, but it was about 1900 more than he had.

We got the Rogue down finally and worked over the Mage. Then all that was left was the Holy Paladin who was so OP that he continued to cast in the air as Boston Death Griped him over to us. Darn, OP Paladins. He popped his Bubble but Blue (Warrior) was ready to take care of that problem.

The crowd roared as the last Faction Champion went down. There wasn’t the exultant cheer in vent you normally get with a new Boss kill. I imagined everyone slumping in their chair and breathing a huge sigh of relief. We had done it. Faction Champion Heroic was down.

We made a couple of pulls on Twins to see the differences. Raid damage is just ridiculous. We tried a couple of different strats but nothing seemed to work well for us.

We decided to extend the Raid ID. While there are some upgrades from the first three bosses for people, we’d like to try to clear the place, maybe before 3.3.

Boston also made what I feel like is a smart move of dialing us back to just two raid nights. He doesn’t want people to get too burned out on raiding right now. We’ll take an extra night off and be ready to hit Ice Crown “full throttle” when it opens.

I think my initial guess of 11/17 was probably too optimistic. It looks like the loot tables are still being finalized so it could be another couple of weeks before it drops.

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Being that I don’t have a guild to help me with heroics/ToC, that leaves me forced to PUG everything, which is also a tough situation.  It seems as if everyone in the LFG channel wants to see your achievement for the instance/raid they’re trying to put together, and/or have you doing 5k+ DPS.  Which is ironic, seeing that I found my way into a VoA25 run and only 2 folks were doing 5k DPS.  We cleared the place without any problems.

I guess in some way I can understand why people are being so “elitist” about PUGs.  Nobody wants to wipe and nobody wants to carry some random player who’s completely over their head.  I understand that.  However, sometimes you have to think about the player and their class.  Quite frankly, in ToC, I’ve done more DPS than people better geared than me, in full epics nonetheless.  They’re either paying the hybrid tax, weren’t paying enough attention, or didn’t know how to play their class.  Either way, I led the chart in my mix of epics, blues, and a few greens.

I’ve mostly been running the daily heroic/heroics for emblems and farming regular ToC for gear.  That will have to continue until I’ve swapped out all of my greens, at a minimum.  I only have 3-4 of those left.  Hopefully I’ll have full purples in a week or so, which will open doors to raiding guilds on my server.

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The guy is a math genius, but he also knows how to unpack his findings and make them understandable to meatshields like me.

He did a lot of math, made some really cool looking charts, and then he unpacked his findings.

I give you now Theck, Bringer of Numbers and Pounding Headaches

So to tally it up:

* The value of avoidance is unchanged in terms of raw rating->% conversion
* The value of dodge is unchanged relative to parry in all reasonable circumstances
* The value of avoidance for reducing total damage intake is weaker, because we’re effectively hitting DR earlier than we would be in the absence of IR.
* The value of avoidance for reducing spike damage events (i.e. N consecutive hits) is noticeably increased, by more than a factor of 2 for N=2 (0.49% per point at 60% avoidance compared to 1.1% per point at 40% avoidance), and even higher for N>2

I’d say GC was pretty spot-on with his assessment that if you liked stamina before, you’ll like stamina after, and if you liked avoidance before, you’ll still like avoidance after.

(http://maintankadin.failsafedesign.com/forum/index.php?f=6&t=26556&rb_v=viewtopic&start=120 page 9)

Another one of the top MainTankadin posters, Wrathy, put it this way

With the current information we have, your gearing philosophies and methodology will not change with Chill of the Throne, only your avoidance in the raid zone will.

Wrathy also has a really good blog that you should check out.

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Yes, after talking about how much the Developers hated having to use it and how they would be super careful to not let themselves get into this situation again…

For Icecrown Citadel, we are implementing a spell that will affect every enemy creature in the raid. The spell, called Chill of the Throne, will allow creatures to ignore 20% of the dodge chance of their melee targets. So if a raid’s main tank had 30% dodge normally, in Icecrown Citadel they will effectively have 10%.

Why are we doing this?

The high levels of tank avoidance players have obtained is making the incoming damage a tank DOES take more “spiky” than is healthy for raiding. Ideally, tanks would be receiving a relatively constant stream of damage over time. This allows healers to better plan their healing strategy, broaden their spell options, and simply give more time to react. Tanks could use their cooldowns more reactively. Instead, the current situation is that if we make a hard hitting melee boss and a tank doesn’t avoid two successive swings then the tank could very well be dead in that 1-2 second window. The use of reactive defensive abilities instead becomes a methodically planned affair, healers have to spam their largest heals just in case the huge damage spike happens.

We’ve been trying to do a fair amount to mitigate the effect of high tank avoidance on the encounter side of things during this expansion with faster melee swings, additional melee strikes, dual wielding, narrowing the normal variance of melee swing damage, and various other tricks. There’s a limit to what we can do, however. So to give us a bit of breathing room we’ve implemented Chill of the Throne. Going forward past Icecrown Citadel, we have plans to keep tank avoidance from growing so high again.

Which is pretty much what they said when they implemented Sunwell Radiance. True to their word, they introduced harsh Diminishing Returns in Wrath of the Lich King.

Why didn’t it work?

A tank needs a certain amount of defense to be uncrittable. Defense grants dodge, and parry in addition to lowering your chance to be critically hit. So you already have a nice head start on avoidance. Then you need some way to make Tank Plate gear attractive to Tanks but not to DPS. So you load it up with Defense, Parry, and Dodge.

Enter Hard modes. At the outset of Wrath, they were an experiment in the form of Sartharian 3 Drakes. Then they became a larger experiment in Uludar and a core mechanic in Crusaders Coliseum. These hard modes needed to give better gear than ‘normal’ modes and thus the mudflation of item levels went up much more each Tier of raiding than originally planned.

What do we know for sure?

We know the 20% is taken after Diminishing Returns. That basically doubly penalizes avoidance.

We know that the conversions aren’t changing. Your trinket with x dodge rating is still giving you the same y% dodge.

What does it mean?

You are going to hear a lot of opinions, and some will be told to you with very authoritative voices.

Some will harken back to their Sunwell days and figure what happened then (Tanks still valued Avoidance and on some fights geared specifically for Avoidance) will happen now. But the game mechanics have changed drastically. Tanks have for more short duration cooldowns than they did in Sunwell and Healer Mana goes a lot further.

For the immediate future, I’m not going to change anything. By the time 3.3 actually arrives on servers, the theorycrafters will have come up with a good plan for all tanks. I tend to be a StamStacker anyway.

Now allow me to throw my Honorshammer’s Prediction of the Patch 3.3 Live date. I’m going with November 17th. This is the first Tuesday after the mandatory Battle.net merger for all WoW accounts.

So I advise you follow the various threads and blogs. Eventually a consensus will form.

Official Forums (go there at your own risk) http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=20677632379&sid=1&pageNo=1#0
MainTankadin http://maintankadin.failsafedesign.com/forum/index.php?f=6&t=26556&rb_v=viewtopic
Tankspots thread: http://www.tankspot.com/forums/f56/57472-chill-throne.html
ThinkTank (Druid) http://wowthinktank.blogspot.com/2009/10/general-druid-icewell-radiance-bears.html
Pwnwear (DK) : http://pwnwear.com/2009/10/29/icecrown-20-percent-aura/
Avenging Wrathy (Paladin): http://avengingwrathy.wordpress.com/2009/10/29/the-death-of-avoidance-the-loss-of-a-soap-box/

So relax, and continue to enjoy 3.2. By the time 3.3 gets here, we’ll know how to handle it.

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We didn’t have the group composition we needed last night to continue working on Firefighter. One of our top healers was MIA.

So we decided to go play with Sartharion. We ran a matrix of 1 tank, 2 healers, and 7 DPS.

Tanking Sartharion himself during Sarth3D was one of those fights that Paladins really struggled with during the early days Wrath of the Lich King. We only had 1 cool down, Divine Protection, and Ardent Defender had not bee fixed yet, so we were a very poor choice. Now, to be fair, we were great tanks for the Whelps and Fire Elementals, so we had an part of the fight where we excelled, but Death Knights and Druids were the best choice for Sarth himself.

I always wanted to tank Sarth. There must something in the Y chromosome that causes you to desire to do just that thing that you are told you can’t do.

Last night I got my chance. We employed a ‘zerg’ strategy whereby we would try to DPS Sarth down before the second dragon landed and made Sarth immune.

This is hardly cutting edge content anymore, but knowing my DPS was going to go full bore with Hero…err…Bloodlust right from the get go certainly got the blood flowing.

The first half of the fight was no problem. The first dragon landed, and I taunted him. I held both Sarth and Tenebron (I think, I constantly get the names of the Add dragons mixed up). When Sarth hit 30% health he enraged Tenebron. I popped everything I could, Divine Protection, both Trinkets, Lay on Hands.

But we wiped at sub 10%. We tried a couple of more times, each time getting closer. We had a really frustrating 1% wipe where Sarth despawn at 0% health. Ugh!

But we knew we could do it. All the cooldowns were up, Rapid Fire, Army of the Dead, Bloodlust. I hit my rotation better than I had in long time. We were at 4% and I died. The guys were able to dot ‘em up and run long enough for Sarth to die.

I am now Honorshammer of the Nightfall. Mega congratz to Jag for snagging the mount.

I know Sarth3D isn’t a huge deal anymore and the achievement is pugged on many servers. Regardless, for me and my guild this was a challenging fight, even given the 232 and 245 gears we had obtained. I’m excited to have killed it and obtained the title. For out little band of heroes it still felt good.

Next week we’ll knock out ToC and Ony and then get back to Hard Mode Ulduar. Only Mimiron, General V, and Yogg+1 stand in the way.

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Arthas laughed, a deep chilling laugh. “The Light?!? You forget, Paladin, I was once a follower of the Light, naive and blind like you. But now I know. I know its power and I know its weakness. The Light held me back from my righteous vengeance, and from my true power.”

“Your… reign of terror… is at an end.” The dwarf summoned the last of his strength and lifted his mace over his head and charged at Arthas. “FOR BOLVAR!!!!”

Arthas brought up Frostmourne and parried the dwarf’s overhead smash, then arced the blade and tore an open the dwarf’s midsection. Honorshammer fell back and slumped down.

“It is only now, at the end, that you understand. Your feeble skills were no match for the power of the Lich King. You, Honorshammer, are now…MINE!”

“NEVERRRRRRR….!!” Honors fought to stand, then fell, his mace rolling away from his limp hand. The Lich King stood over his inert body.

“Kelesth!”

“Yes, milord!”

“Take this dwarf down to the Fleshworks and throw him in a ghoul pile. Once he is ready, transport him to Zeramas to be raised. He will make a powerful ally.”

“As you wish, my King.”

——————————————————————————————————–

“Where did you find him, Shaman?” asked the stunningly beautiful High Elf.

“In a ghoul pile, Lady Alexstrasza.”, the Draenai answered, “Can he be saved from the Plague of Undeath?”

“It will not be easy, Shaman.”

“But we were able to save Crusader Bridenbrad…”

“Who was only infected by the plague! Your friend has been wounded, mortally, by a cursed blade.”

A night elf, who had accompanied the Shaman interjected, “Please, Life-Binder, there must be something that can be done.”

“Fate can be a cruel master, former servant of the Lich King, but in this case she has chosen Irony to be her consort. Bring the Paladin’s body and follow me.” Alexstrasza led the Shaman, Death Knight and the rest of their friends to an inner chamber on the middle level of Wyrmrest Temple. On a dais lay the body of a Blood Elf.

“Who is that, milady?” Another in the party asked.

“His name is of no consequence, Hunter, but he was a Blood Knight.”

“It’s one of the Blood Elves who were torturing a Naaru to gain the powers of the Paladins.” explained yet another.

“That is only partially correct, Rogue. Muru allowed himself to be drained in order to win back the Blood Elves. His sacrifice allowed the Sunwell to be relit. A’dal himself forgave the Blood Knights and recognized them as full paladins. Your friend here believed that if A’dal accepted the Blood Knights, he could as well. But that didn’t stop him.”

“What are you talking about, Alexstrasza?” the questioner was a gnome.

“You see, Mage, this Blood Knight was slain by your fallen comrade at Uther’s Tomb. He was there to desecrate the tomb as part of his initiation ritual into the Blood Knight order. Your friend found him there and slew him on the spot.”

“Honors loved Uther and would never allow anyone to desecrate the Tomb.” The Shaman declared.

“You are correct, Shaman. But that act bound your friend and this Blood Elf. Now, the only way to save your friend is to impart his spirit into this Blood Elves body before the cursed wound corrupts not only his body but his soul as well. “

“What!?!?!?! Honors would die before he became a Blood Elf!”

“But that isn’t the fate of this noble Dwarf, should we fail, is it, Death Knight? No, his fate is far worse and one you know only too well. He will awake aboard one of the Lich King’s dread citadels, as a Death Knight! Perhaps he will break free from the Lich King’s control as you did, but perhaps he will not.”

“No! We can’t let that happen.” The friends all agreed.

“It will take all of your strength to assist me. Call forth all of your powers. Release their energy in this room.”

Each of the heroes began to recite words of power, summon forth the power of the elements, shouts of battle, blessings, and prayers. The mutterings reached a crescendo and Alexstrasza called out. There was a blinding flash and everyone was silenced. The body of the Dwarf was silhouetted for a moment against the bright white and then crumbled into dust. The Blood Elf cried out in pain and sat straight up, only to fall back again against the pillow on the dais.

Everyone was physically and emotionally drained.

“Will he have any memory of his former life, his former friends?” asked a fellow dwarf.

“No, Priest. He will have snatches of memory, like a dream within a dream, but he will not remember. Such is the high price that has to be paid for what has been done. Now, go down to the lower levels and rest. You have done a heroic service to your friend and deprived the Lich King of what would have been a powerful ally.”

Quietly and mournfully, one by one the friends exited Wyrmrest Temple.

———————————————————————————————————

“Where…where am I??” the Blood Elves asked as he came to consciousness.

“You are safe, Blood Knight. You are in Conquest Hold in Northrend.” the High Elf replied.

“How did I get here, High Elf? I don’t remember a thing, not even my name.”

“You were wounded in battle. Rest now. Your friend, ally, and fellow Blood Knight, Grimadin, Champion of the Frozen Waste, will be taking you back to Silvermooon City to recover. When you are healed, you will return to Northrend and continue your battle against the Scourge.” The High Elf steeped aside and the Blood Elf saw another of his race dressed in full Blood Knight Regalia.

“Man, you look like hell.” the Blood Elf said.

“Excuse me, Sir Elf, but do I know you?”

“You got your bell rung pretty good if you don’t recognize ole Grimadin. We’ve been friends and allies for years.”

“I have no memory of you or anyone else, Sir Grimadin.”

“It’s actually Crusader Grimadin, if you want to get all formal on me, Knight-Lieutenant Honorshammer.”

“Knight-Lieutenant Honorshammer? Is that my name?”

“You betcha, but, you know, we’ve never been much for formal titles. Now you listen to the High Elf here and get yourself all patched up. I’ll take you back to Silvermoon and see if we can’t jog that memory of yours.”

“Thanks, Grim.”

“No problem, Honors.”

“Is there anything I can get for you, Honorshammer?” The High Elf asked.

“No, I’m alright at the moment.” Honors swung his legs over and let them dangle.He shook his head to try to loosen the cobwebs from his brain. “But I tell you what, I have the strangest craving for some Dwarven Stout.”

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So here’s how it goes…

3.2.2 just dropped and you’re looking for a group to go try out the new Onyxia fight.  Problem is your still in item level 150 blues and greens.

If you’re asking for my advice here it is… DO NOT MAKE A GROUP PUT UP WITH YOUR LACK OF GEAR!

I mean even Samurai Mike thinks that’s wack…

In my opinion it’s considered pretty selfish to think you can join a group and have them drag you through an endgame raid (unless they know they’re doing it), just so you can go from iLevel 150 to 232 in one fell swoop.  There’s plenty of ways for you to get endgame geared really fast nowadays anyway so if you have a blue or green on you… replace it.

Here’s what you can do…

- Run heroics… get 226 helm, chest, pants, hands, waist, neck, relic…. 213 cape, boots, rings

- Run regular ToC and fill in gaps with 200 level epics (and awesome trinkets)… run it multiple times a day.

- Run heroic ToC for 219 weapons and gear everyday

- Run the heroic daily every day… in 15 days you can have a piece of 232 tier 9.

- Run Naxxramas to learn raiding mechanics.. it’s simple and will get you some 200 level epics and lots of badges.

Not only will doing this help you get gear… it will get you experience and make you a better player.

Now by no means do I call myself an elitist… I’m simply a realist.  In 10 man raids there’s really no room for slack on dps or tankage or heals… because of the limited numbers you all have to be at the top of your game.

For all those raid leaders… don’t let these people in… tell them to do their due dilligence, get their gear, then come back to you in a week or two… it shouldn’t take them any longer than that.

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Tuesday was the day that Trial of the Crusader opened fully. We blasted through the first four bosses fairly quickly, but not flawlessly. After defeating the Twin Val’kyr we were treated to a visit from his Deadness, Lord Arthas. Apparently, he’s been having a grand old time watching the Argent Crusade build their building right over the Nerubian Empire, and now he’s going to throw you to the wolves so to speak. The floor breaks an you fall. Arthas was kind enough to put a pool of water under you to break your fall.

Once you swim out of the water, you walk a little ways before coming face to…mandible with Anub’arak. Yes, the same Anub’arak you killed in the Azjol-Nerub 5 man dungeon. I guess Azjol-Nerub was ‘merely a setback’?

As an aside, if you don’t get the ‘merely a setback’ joke, it’s a reference to Kael’thas’ speech in Magister’s Terrace. You killed him in Tempest Keep (25 man raid), yet here he is back again in the 5 man. When you pull him, he tells you that Tempest Keep was ‘merely a setback’.

Like most of the other fights on Normal, Anub’arak posed little difficulty for Team Ellevis. We understood the very basics of the encounter. I know some people are getting tired of hearing about how our team one shots the new boss every week. I don’t tell you that to brag, I’m just telling you what happened.

If it’ll make you feel better, imagine we had an epic struggle with Anub’arak and it came down to me (Prot Paladin), Donk (Mage), and Blackhaus (Disc Priest). Anub is sub 5% and I blow everything, Divine Protection, Trinkets, Healthpot, and even get an AD proc. But it’s too much and I die. Black throws what DoTs he can before Anub one shots him. Then just before he gets to Donk, Donk goes into an Iceblock and just before it wears off, Anub dies from a combination of Black’s Shadow Word Pain and the last tick of Scorch!

That would make a better story wouldn’t it?

How ever it happened, Anub’arak was dead, and Trial of the Crusader (10 man) was defeated. GuildOx says we are third guild on our server to complete it, and the first Alliance Guild. This is a testament to the outstanding job that Ellevis is doing leading the raid group and the job that each and every member of our team is doing in their respective roles.

To my Raid Team: You guys rock! It’s an honor to be part of your Tanking team.

Well, Normal Mode is defeated, bring on Heroic. We switched it over and got the skull. Here we go.

It was a completely humbling experience from the first pull. Tank damage was intense. The first Phase of Northrend Beast is of course Gormok the Impaler. His Impale DoT ticks for a lot more and we had to be really careful to switch at 2 stacks.

Hand of Protection is really nice for Gormok, as you can clear stacks from your fellow tank. You could clear your own stacks with Divine Shield, but usually I was locked out of Divine Shield by Forbearance triggered from using Divine Protection.

Gormok gets a damage buff for each Snobold out. It was usually around 60% by the time we got through Phase 1. The Snobolds and Fires were really rough and if one of our healers got a Snobold, we could easily lose a tank. A 3 stack with 60% extra damage ticks for about 10k. Impale (the attack, not the DoT) can hit upwards of 25k. All my plate started to feel like paper.

After several unsuccessful attempts, we began to wonder if we needed to farm more gear from Normal ToC to give us a better shot at Heroic. But Thursday night, we pressed our luck again.

You get a little counter at the top of the screen letting you know how many attempts you have remaining.Our team communicates really well post wipe. People try to identify problems, and correct them as best they can. No one seems to take this personally, or get defensive. We discovered part of our problem was DPS not switching fast enough to the Snobold that was out, and people not spreading out enough letting the fire damage really add up.

Heroic had another little surprise for us. The Twin Jormunger Worms show up on a timer, not when Gormok dies. So usually they come rolling through the doors with Gormok sub 10% and either myself or both Ellevis and I both still bleeding from Gormok’s Impale DoT.

It was slow but we continued to make progress. After one of our wipes, we had a Snobold bug out. He stayed there the whole night and we started calling him our good luck charm.

We were getting through Phase 1 better and working on our transitions to Phase 2. Everything the worms do hits for more damage and you less time to get someone out of Paralytic Posion. As the Dreadscale tank, that usually falls to me. Eventually we got Acidmaw down, and then started working on Dreadscale. Dreadscale had just gotten into ‘execute range’ when Icehowl shows up. He’s on a timer, too.

Ellevis picked up Icehowl, but we messed up the charge. He’ll one shot even tanks when he’s enraged. Finally we got to Icehowl and successfully managed the Charge.

It was a long hard battle, but Northrend Beasts was defeated on Heroic.We took a moment to compose ourselves. Lord Jaraxxus was up next. Again, everything seemed to hit for more damage. If people don’t get healed through the DoT Jaraxxus puts on them they explode. It doesn’t kill them but does major damage to all around them.

Our first surprise came when the Portal spawned to bring out the ‘chickadee’ with all the arms, a Sister of Pain. I noticed the Portal had its own lifebar. Then I noticed there were two Sisters, then three. SPLAT!

Hmm, maybe we need to DPS down the portal. If you switch quick, you’ll only get one Sister out.
Same deal with the Infernals. The Volcano has to be DPSed down. We made several solid attempts but didn’t quite get Jaraxxus down. I think our best attempt was about 50%.

It was a really good couple of nights. The team did a great job and we had a lot of fun in the process. We’ve come to the conclusion that we may need to buy some of the iLevel 232 gear to give us some more breathing room in Heroic. Our healers are really feeling stressed. Tank damage is intense and raid damage is everywhere. Our healers do a fantastic job, but I’m sure at times, they must feel like Atlas trying to keep our raid on their broad shoulders.

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But first we had to take care of the previous two Bosses. We felt like we had Northrend Beasts ‘on farm’ as the saying goes. So we decided to try for the achievement where you keep two Snobolds alive through the whole fight. That was fine for Gormok, but when Tweedle dee and Tweedle dum showed up, it got to be a bit much.

We lost a couple of people during the Jormungar Worms, and it took everything I had (both trinkets, healthstone, healthpot, Divine Protection, Lay on Hands and Ardent Defender) to survive Dreadscales enrage.

We were left with just 1 healer and 4 DPS still breathing for Icehowl. Since Ellevis (Blood DK) had picked up Icehowl, I threw him a couple of Holy Lights. Because my mana pool is so constrained in tanking gear, I have to ‘cancel cast’ whenever I want to help out with healing. This means I start casting a big ole Holy Light and if Ellevis hadn’t taken much damage I hit escape before it goes off to cancel the cast and save the mana.

At some point during Icehowl, I seem to remember our Resto Shaman coming back to the fight. I don’t know if he used his ankh or got a battle rez from our Boomkin. It was a slow kill, but we managed to one shot Icehowl.

This is the first time since Patch 3.2 went live that I can say without question that Ardent Defender saved us from a wipe. Of course it’s not necessarily true that any other tank class would have died as they all have different cooldowns and ways to get through a tough spot. The difference with Ardent Defender is you KNOW you would have died otherwise.

I did a double take when the loot came up. Those couldn’t be tanking bracers, could they? After 3 months farming Flame Leviathan and never seeing the bracers drop, I had resigned myself to the same fate with Northrend Beasts. But there they were, Dreadscale Armguards. (I took the screenshot right after I got them and didn’t have them enchanted yet.)

I had previously been stuck with Bindings of Hapless Prey. Ellevis was using Bracers of the Unholy Knight. One of the problems with Block not being a great mitigation stat, is that Block Tanks (Paladins and Warriors) tend to not value Block gear against avoidance gear. The result is that all 3 Plate Tanks pretty much want the same offset pieces. If Block was truly the mitigation stat it needs to be, I could let Ellevis (Blood DK) have the non Block stuff, then I would go for the Block stuff. But that’s just not how it works right now.

Ellevis was kind enough to pass the Bracers to me, and you better believe I’m going to return the favor next chance I get.

With the Northrend Beasts taken care of, we prepared for Lord Jaraxxus. I love the intro to Lord Jaraxxus. This gnome comes out and summons him for you, then the first thing Lord Jaraxxus does is wtfpwn the gnome. It’s pure comedy gold. Maybe on Hordeside, it’s an Orc Warlock who summons him or maybe they get to cheer the Gnome’s demise.From a tanking perspective, this fight falls into the Tank and Spank with Adds category. I was assigned to Add duty. There are two types of Adds that spawn during the fight. The first is a Mistress of Pain. She spawns from a huge square portal that looks exactly like the ones we used during the Level 70 daily quest in Blades Edge Mountains. It was pretty simple to stand under the portal, drop a Consecrate and pick her up.

The other adds come from a volcano he drops that spews out Infernals. As soon as I heard about volcanoes I started having flashbacks to Supremus. They are much more difficulty to corral but luckily they don’t have much health and we burned then down without much problem.

The team had defeated Lord Jaraxxus last week when I was on vacation. In fact, they one shot him. So we were going for an achievement of leaving the Mistress of Pain adds up.

I have to agree with my raid leader. Lord Jaraxxus could use a little more health. Just when things were starting to get interesting, the fight was over.Now came the moment we had all be waiting for, the new Boss, the Faction Champions. Faction Champions is a PVP/Arena type fight. The mobs don’t have a traditional aggro table, so I switched over to Retribution.

There’s a little dialog between Tirion, Varian and Garrosh where basically Garrosh ends up sending down his little contingent of Hordies to kill you instead of Tirion’s Grand Champions.

You face off against 6 NPCs. They jump down and get into two neat lines and wait for you to initiate the encounter. This gives you a chance to identify each one and see what ‘matrix’ you got. We were concerned they would just jump down and start attacking.

We got Boomkin, Rogue, Warlock, Priest, Shaman, and Ret Paladin.Ellevis got the ball rolling by Death Gripping the Priest over to us after Ofn (Rogue) sapped the Shaman. Then I feared the Fel Hunter, Donk (Mage) sheeped the Rogue. Ofn (Rogue) moved to stun lock the Warlock while we poured DPS into the Priest.

At least I think that’s what happened. This was the most chaotic and exciting Boss fight in the Coliseum so far. Vent was alive with people communicating. When I heard the Rogue had gotten on our Disc Priest, I quickly put him in a Hand of Protection. I lost track of the Warlock’s Fel Hunter at one point but Dottiez (Warlock) was able to banish it.

Then someone announced the Priest was down, so we moved over to the Shaman. I threw Repentance on the Ret Paladin and Hammer of Justice on the Boomkin. Then the Shaman was down and we moved onto the Rogue. Then to the Boomkin, the Lock, and the Ret Paladin.

Usually new boss kills are accompanied by an exultant cheer on vent. This was found more of a bemused chuckle. For the second week in a row, we had one shot the new boss.

The predominant feeling in vent was that we were really bummed out we would have to wait a whole week to do that fight again. It’s easily the most fun fight in Trial of the Crusader thus far.

Is Trial of the Crusader supposed to be this easy? I can’t imagine we overgear the place.

We are mostly Ulduar 10 geared, and we’ve killed Yogg. We’ve even done a couple of Hard Modes (Hodir, XT, FL+4, Freya +1).We still haven’t gotten Lose Your Illusion (Thorim Hard), or Firefighter (Mimiron Hard), or Knock, Knock, Knock on Wood (Freya +3) or Saronite In the Morning (Vezzax Hard).

Is this level of gear/skill supposed to be able to basically one shot the new tier on ‘normal’ mode? With the 4 different flavors Trial of the Crusader comes in, guilds have a great opportunity to find their level.

From what I’ve read of Big Bear Butt’s guild, Sidhe Devils, they might be really happy with Normal 10 man. My guild looks like we are going to be a 10 man Heroic guild. My friends over in Limitless will likely be a 25 man Normal guild, while my old Tier 6 guild Dominion will probably be a 25 man Heroic guild. The real beauty of the design is that each guild gets a real shot at clearing all the bosses in Trial of the Crusader. So if you are finding Trial of the Crusader a bit easy right now, it might be because your ‘mode’ hasn’t opened yet.

It is my sincere hope that Blizzard will continue with this approach in future tiers of content. A guild can choose what kind of guild it wants to be and players can find a guild that fits what they want to do in the game. Everyone gets to ‘see the content’ and clear the dungeon playing their own style and with as large a group as they are comfortable with.

I can’t wait for next week, bring on the Twins!

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I have been very pleased with the way Blizzard has been handling raiding in recent expansions and patches. I absolutely love how they have made raiding more accessible to all players and I also love the new changes to heroics so that they drop Emblems of Conquest to help everyone gear up. It’s no surprise they are doing this so that a larger percentage of players will be able to experience the battle at Icecrown Citadel and fighting The Lich King.

My biggest problem with WoW had always been that I loved the story lines but never got to experience them in raids. When Wotlk was released my fear was that I wouldn’t get to experience fighting The Lich King and this story line. That fear is no more.

The battle in Icecrown Citadel will definitely prove to be a monumental epic battle that many players can experience and I for one can’t wait for it.

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That sorted out, Ellevis (DK) explained to us what he knew about the fights which was pretty much just the abilities of the mobs that had been posted on MMO. I had the added benefit of having read the World of Matticus healing guide, so I knew just a little bit more. Other than that, we were flying blind.
We buffed up, ate our Fish Feast, and got ready. Ellevis went and talked to the NPC. He said his little speech and soon Gormok was headed into the ring with us.

I don’t think of Northrend Beasts as 3 separate encounters. Instead, I think of them as 3 phases of the same fight. Gormok is Phase 1 in this line of thinking.

Gormok is a Magnatur, and will periodically throw a Snobold at one of your raid members. This is sort of like Iron Roots from one of the Freya Elders. Your DPS has to target the Snobold and burn him down. Ranged DPS seems to have an easier time of this than melee.

Meanwhile your tanks are getting a stacking bleed put on them. We were two healing his fight and decided to do a taunt switch at 3 stacks. Your healers need to keep in mind that previous tank will still be bleeding while the new tank is under attack from Gormok. It looked like the stack could fall off, but good luck going 30 seconds and not taking a melee hit. Even blocked hits will proc it.

Ellevis and I traded him back and forth and we got through Phase 1 on the first pull. Gormok is just sort of a warm up. the Now we would have to deal with not one, BUT TWO Jormunger Worms! You get a very brief break while the announcer introduces your next opponents, so mana based classes can try to get a couple of ticks of their favorite drink. Tanks pretty much start moving into position immediately. The Worm’s names are Dreadscale and Acidmaw, but you’ll likely know them as Fire Worm and Acid Worm.

I had Fire Worm, while Ellevis tanked Acid Worm. Both worms have a spray attack in their frontal cone, so you’ll want them pointed away from the raid. Neither hits really hard, but when you start adding up all the little damage they do, it’s every bit as dangerous as the one big swing.
Each worm throws out a debuff. Dreadscale’s is a fire DoT while Acidmaw uses a nature DoT. The nature DoT will being to slow the movement, cast and swing speed of its victim. It can stack to the point that you just can’t do anything. The person who gets the nature DoT needs to find the person with the Fire DoT. When the Fire DoT ticks it does a small AoE like a Lightbomb. That AoE needs to hit the person with the Nature DoT. That’s there get out of jail free card.
We wiped a couple of times to these guys. When you wipe, you have to repeat the entire encounter. So it was back to Gormok.

We dispatched him again and started back in on the worms. This time we managed to get Acidmaw down, and made an interesting discovery. These two worms must have a ‘thing’ going because Dreadscale enraged when Acidmaw died. He still didn’t hit really hard, but it was a combination of melee hits, plus the Fire DoT if I had it, plus his fire breath. The death of a thousand cuts.

We finally get Dreadscale down, and Icehowl came running in. Here’s your heavy hitter. He smacked us around good. After a couple of tries, we got a handle on what he was doing. He’ll jump up in the air and come crashing down. Everyone in the raid gets thrown the wall and stunned. Icehowl will pick one person and go all toro toro on them. You better olle or you’ll be one shot. If you manage to olle him, he’ll go crashing into the wall and stun himself. While stunned, he takes double damage. Make good use of this time.

We managed to evade him the first time. Then when he got back to me, he went all Big Red Yeti on me. I would spend the rest of the encounter doing a quality inspection of the tile job on the coliseum floor. Ellevis picked him up, and the team executed another successful dodge and burned him down.

The Northrend Beast encounter had been defeated!
We still had a little time left on the evening, but there were no more Bosses in the Coliseum for us to battle. So we headed back to Ulduar and took care of some unfinished business!

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Let’s get to the change:

Dodge Rating: The amount of dodge rating required per percentage of dodge has been increased by 15%. This is before diminishing returns. Combined with other changes, this makes dodge rating and parry rating equally potent before diminishing returns apply.

Parry Rating: The amount of parry rating required per percentage of parry has been reduced
by 8%. This is before diminishing returns. Combined with other changes, this makes dodge rating and parry rating equally potent before diminishing returns apply. Parry still diminishes more quickly than dodge.

The Developers noticed that every tank was going for Dodge over Parry. Parry get penalized because it has a positive side effect. When you parry a Boss’ attack, you swing faster next time theoretically making Parry a ‘threat’ and ‘avoidance’ statck. Don’t confuse this with parry-hasting where YOUR attack gets parried and the Boss hits you faster causing an increase in damage taken.

Boss swings, you parries, you attack faster is what we are talking about.

The Developers simply overestimated how much of an extra benefit this was. Tanks didn’t care, they just wanted avoidance and flocked to Dodge.

So now the two are equal, but parry still punished harder by Diminishing Returns.

The theorycrafters at both Tank Spot and Main Tankadin went to work. MathLab simulations were written and spreadsheets were produced. If you are mathmathically inclined you might enjoy reading the threads: MainTankadin, Tankspot

I love that there are people who are without question much smarter than me.

So what is the bottom line of this change? How should it change the way you look at your gear?

The answer will be different for every person, but let me give you a couple of approaches.

First from Theck:

• Take current ratings and subtract out 689 def, 96 dodge, and 64 parry
• Figure out your current ratio of dodge:def:parry
• if one of these is higher than the ideal ratio of 2.4:1.8:1, swap out some of the rating that’s above the target ratio for a rating that’s below or at the target value.
• Recalculate and lather, rinse, repeat.

So let’s look at ole Honorshammer. Papa got a new pair of shoes last night thanks to some deft rolling and some kindness by our Elemental Shaman who would have surely outrolled me.

Defense: 701 – 689 = 12
Dodge: 519 – 96 = 423
Parry: 314 – 64 = 250

That gives me a ratio of 1.7:.04:1

Basically, this means I need a ton more Defense, and less Parry in order to have the most efficient use of my Avoidance stats.

Another way to distill this down to ‘what does it mean to me’ is to look at the advice from Xenix. He was leading the Tankspot thread and is another of these math geniuses.

1. Stack defense rating until you reach a number that has a minimum of wasted in the defense rating -> defense conversion. (728,787,846,910 and 969 are the best possible ones to hit).
2. Stack dodge/parry rating from there so that the post-DR portions of your Dodge% and Parry% are in a 1.875:1 ratio
3. If your total dodge+parry rating is getting anywhere near your defense rating, try to hit the next good number of defense rating (while adjusting your dodge/parry rating to maintain #2) as the diminishing returns on miss will be such that you will notice a slight difference.
4. If you can’t hit the next good number of defense rating, don’t worry – keep stacking dodge/parry in the aforementioned ratio and you’ll be fine.

So by Xenix’s advice, I haven’t even done Step 1 yet. I need about 27 more Defense Rating to get there. That also lines up with Theck’s advice that I need more Defense.

My Dodge/Parry are actually pretty close with a ratio of 1.7.

I don’t have any parry gems, or enchants so it will be basically impossible to reduce the amount of parry I have. I’m already enchanting for Defense where it’s available on my Shield, and Back. I’m already using Enduring (Def/Stam) gems in my yellow slots.

The bottom line is that my avoidance isn’t ideal or efficient, but I really don’t see any way I could change it at this point.

EDIT: The Math Genuses continued their work and added this important detail.

• At low gear levels ( defense rating + dodge rating + parry rating
• At higher gear levels (defense + dodge + parry > 1150 rating), gear so that your post-DR dodge and parry percentages come out as close to a 1.88:1 ratio as possible. In other words:
  (character_sheet_dodge_% – 11.65) / (character_sheet_parry_% – 10) = 1.88

Hammer is definately at the ‘higher gear levels’ with a dodge,defense, and parry of around 1500.

His character sheet dodge % is 26.34%. His character sheet parry is 19.95%. That gives him a ratio of about 1.48. So either more Dodge or less Parry would get him closer to the 1.88 ratio. The advantage to this approach is you use your character sheet percentages which will already include contributions from Defense. Most of my Reds are filled with prismatic stamina gems which I will probably have to change to red Dodge/Stam gems in 3.2 and replace three of my blue stam gems with the JC gems.

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I have my Resto Shaman in there to get some practice for my raid group and a premade Paladin so I can be prepared to tank once my current Pally dings 80.

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At the end of the day, their foundation is that of a casual, family-like, raiding guild. My interest lies in raiding, which is why I joined them in the first place. At that time, I had no experience in end-game raiding and RA provided me with that opportunity. I enjoyed it. Currently, I want to experience raiding from a more serious approach. A casual raiding guild won’t provide that.

I’m happy to say I’ve joined The Dark Side, also on Exodar. Yes, both are Star Wars inspired and yes, it’s ironic that I’ve gone to “the dark side”. I thought that was a rather funny side effect myself.

TDS is a raiding guild very seriously focused on progression, currently in Ulduar25. I’m happy to join their group and learn and grow with their team. Being a serious group, I was pretty nervous to join them and learn how they operate. I felt the same way when I first joined RA. It has similar effects of starting a new job, where you hope you made the right decision. Of course there’s no real issue here, because I can just as easily leave if it’s not quite what I expect. But it’s still somewhat stressful as you want to make the right decision.

One thing about TDS that I really respected was the application process. When I joined RA, it was, “are you 80?” and “does our raiding schedule work for you?”, and that was about it. With TDS, it’s a far more selective process. It’s heavily dependent on raid composition. Then on your experience and ability to contribute to the raid. Luckily they were looking for a Death Knight. They also appreciated some of my gem choices and eventually I got the “thumbs up” from the group.

Now that I’ve begun my probationary period, I’ll essentially need to prove I’m worthy of taking up a raid spot. That was honestly my biggest concern. Could I put out the DPS on par with everyone else? There would be nothing worse as a first impression than showing up as #12-15 on the DPS chart. I figured I had a few days before I’d need to truly prove myself, seeing as their raid had already begun for the night and the next one wasn’t until Sunday night.

Or so I thought. Upon getting my guild invite, I quickly received a raid invite as well. I was summoned to Ulduar25 and asked to hop right in to the XT fight. I was so unprepared and didn’t even know it at the time. It happened pretty fast. I didn’t have a Flask of Endless Rage on me, which is standard for a melee DPS in a raid. Nor did I have a lot of gold on me to repair. I don’t even think I had repaired from the previous night’s battles either. I was very unprepared.

The results of the fight spoke for themselves really. I couldn’t have been happier with the DPS meter, even though we all know that’s not the measuring stick for a fight. But for a newb to the guild during his probationary period, on his very first boss fight with the guild, it certainly does matter. I ended up with 5,309 DPS, which gave me #6 on the list. I couldn’t have been happier. No flask, completely cold, and a solid performance on a fight I had only done on 10-man. What I was truly impressed by were the other numbers on that list. The top 17 positions all had over 3,500 DPS and the top 11 had over 4,200 DPS. That’s a refreshing sight to see.

Overall, my first night with The Dark Side went really well. We took down XT, Kologarn, Auriaya, and spent a lot of time wiping on Thorim. It was my first time seeing the Auriaya and Thorim fights in person, so that was some nice experience gained. I really had a blast, even during our 6 wipes on Thorim. It was nice to see a “wipe to pull” in about 5 minutes of downtime. We got a lot of attempts in over only a 2 hour stretch of time. I’m really happy with my decision thus far and look forward to running with TDS.

What are your guild experiences like? Have you experienced changes as your play style and habits changed?

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The main example that comes to mind is in the Thorim encounter. Most guides give a good explanation of the fight, and TankSpot as always makes it look easy, but none of the guides seem to mention the reduced casting time that occurs after Thorim’s hammer hits the ground. Casters have their cast times reduced by 75%. To me this is no small detail to overlook. For healers like myself, having your cast time reduced so drastically can be the difference in success or a wipe. So why is it that none of us had expected that to happen?

Is there a better resource for Ulduar guides that I have been missing, or is everyone overlooking details that may be crucial to these encounters? I realize that people creating guides are generally not making money from them and are doing so only to help the community, but it just seems to me, and others in my raid group, that there are important elements missing from the guides we are finding.

If anyone knows of a site for quality guides that I may not know about please let me know.

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