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Healing Naxxramas – Instructor Razuvious (10 man)

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razuvious

Instructor Razuvious is the first boss of the Military Quarter (Death Knight Wing). He’s a rather unique fight in that your tanks don’t actually tank him themselves. Tanks have to hold threat indirectly.

The gimmick

razuvious-orb The first thing you have to understand is that Razuvious hits really hard. He hits harder than normal. He hits so hard he can remold the face of your bear tank and dent plate in others. He has 2 Understudy’s with him. There are 2 orbs on either side. The goal here is for your tanks to activate the orb thus granting control of the Understudy’s to you. Your players have to use their abilities to tank him. They have to taunt off each other and activate their abilities accordingly.

Who should MC? The groups I ran with had both main and off tanks on the orbs. For Guilds going in for the first time, I don’t advise this. I’d suggest having a tank and a random DPS use the orbs. The reason being is that if a mob breaks early and the orb controller can’t get the Understudy back, your tank can blow a taunt and temporarily hold aggro until the orb controller can get it back.

Above: Picture of an orb controller.
Below: Orb controller in action.

razuvious-orb2

Abilities

  • Random throw: Applies DoT damage to players. Need a healer to get them back up. Similar to the Zul’Jin phase 1 mechanic in Zul’Aman.

Releasing control allows the Understudys to gain all of their health back (this may have been changed with recent beta builds). Ranged and healers will want to stand at maximum range. When your orb players lose control, the Understudy will immediately run towards players who have MC’d them. Tank Raz as far away as possible to buy time for your orb players to pick it up again.

If you look at the header image at the beginning, note that room is circular in shape. Tank Raz at the very top part as much as you can.

Understudy’s CAN be healed. But please don’t rely on it too much. I suggest placing 1 healer on the raid, 2 on the Understudys (1 each).

understudy-ability

The Understudy has 3 abilities:

  • 4: Damaging melee attack (I think)
  • 5: Taunt
  • 6: Bone Barrier which reduces magical and physical damage taken by 75% for 20 seconds. You definitely want to use this.
  • 1: Auto-attack

 

Vocabulary

Communication is extremely important. When I took down Raz, I’ve heard successful tanks use the following:

  • “Taunt ready!” (When their taunt cooldown is up)
  • “Taunt now!” (When the tank is about to lose control and needs the other tank to take over)
  • “Debuff is off!” (There’s an Orb debuff that prevents them from using any orb for about 60 seconds)
  • “Losing him in 5!” (Provides a 5 second warning that the MC spell is about to fall off and that the other tank should pick him up while the original tank is going to lose control of an Understudy and has to use an Orb again)

Note: I’m going to re-emphasize this again. Healers can NOT sustain Understudy’s on their own for extended periods of time. Don’t try to tank it with just 1 Understudy the whole way. Tank switching and Orb releasing is imperative. The job for healers in this fight is to help extend Understudy’s for as long as possible.

1 healer on the raid to cover up the DoT damage that’s applied and the other 2 on the Understudy’s should be more than enough. This is a DPS fight more than anything else.

When it’s over

We’re not done yet. We still have 2 of these MC’d mobs up. Have one of your tanks release control and have the other Understudy taunt that. Use the mob to tank the other mob. As soon as you DPS that one down, have your free tank (Main or off tank) taunt the remaining one. DPS that down and you’re home free.

Loot

More guides to healing Naxx can be found here.

Defending Your Faction Leaders with Guardian Spirit

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Aylii pointed this out to me the other day. I thought it was hilarious. It was located in the Bug Report forum.

We were trying to kill the faction leaders tonight, even though they are level 83 and we are 70 we managed to fight are way threw it.

Anyway we were on the bloodelf faction leader and many horde priest were in the room non-flagged.
When we got the boss low they would cast Guardian Spirit on the boss and pretty much he would get healed to full or half health. We brought his health down to 1% at least 4 times only having him be healed to full. It only takes 1 hit and trying to get 40 people to stop damage that quickly is tough. So after about 1hr 30min doing that we wiped out all the rest of the flagged horde left in the room and left.

This should not be allowed to work on faction leaders. It is way overpowered and it’s impossible to kill them if the other faction’s priest cast this spell on the boss.

I’m looking for a nurf to this spell on faction leaders only. Any blue want to comment?

Source: Bug Report Forum (World of Warcraft)

7 Cliche’d Ideas to Jump Start Your WoW Related NaNoWriMo

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nanowrimo

For those of you that might not be aware, November is National Novel Writing Month. So what exactly is it?

According to Wikipedia:

National Novel Writing Month (also known as NaNoWriMo) is a creative writing project in which participants attempt to write a 50,000 word novel in one month.

Unfortunately, I cannot participate this year. School, WoW, and blogging keep me fairly busy. If I were to tackle another project, I know I’d probably get yelled at by a few of my friends.

That doesn’t mean I can’t help participate in my own way, however. In my off time when I’m not thinking about blog posts to write, I think about stories I’d like to tell (Yeah. I know. I can’t find an off button).

So here’s a few ideas Anna inspired and ones that I came up with the other day.

Important leaders kidnapped

A summit meeting has been planned by all major faction leaders. They have all agreed to use Shattrath as the meeting point. The war against Illidan has taken its toll. Neither faction can unseat him without the help of the other. Suddenly, a leader from the opposing faction has been intercepted and kidnapped en route which has sent talks to a virtual stand still. Not only that, but a bomb plot has been discovered. Explosive Mana bombs have been planted in various capital cities in Azeroth. You have to uncover the plot and rescue the captured dignitary (Inspired by 24).

Special teams working together

You are the leader of task force Echo, one of your faction’s special forces units. Your unit was important in the take down of Kael who subsequently disappeared. New intelligence from SI:7 (or the Horde equivalent) has reported that Kael is still alive. Your team has been asked to lead the charge in establishing a beach head on Quel’Danas. The catch? You’ll be working with the opposite faction. Can both teams work together and overcome their differences? (Rainbow Six)

Framed for murder

Several officials arrive at your residence, serve a warrant and proceed to arrest you. Taken to court, you discover that you have been framed for a murder you did not commit. You suspect that one of your rivals are behind this but you don’t know which. You must escape from the Stockades and find out the truth to clear your name.

Doomsday scenario

When you get to Illidan and you look up, you can sort of see Azeroth. It looks rather large, doesn’t it? And it’s getting closer. Gnomish and Goblin scientists have independently verified that Outland is about to intercept Azeroth’s orbit. Time is running out. You have to find a way to save both Azeroth and Outland from destruction before the world’s collide (literally). (Armageddon)

Unstoppable monster

A sentient Ooze-ling from Wetlands has been gaining strength and momentum from devouring other Oozes and creatures. After traveling through the zone and absorbing (eating) just about everything in its path, it has set its sights on the closest township. It’s a race against time as you and your friends must come up with a way to stop Oozezilla from wiping Menethil Harbor off the map. (Random monster movie)

Vengeful hero

All your life, you have been nothing more than a simple farmer. You dreamed of a life of glory and adventure but the love you had for your family has prevented you from pursuing this opportunity. You return home one day from business in the city to find your home destroyed. Your wife and child have been mutilated and murdered. With nothing more than a pitch fork, you swear vengeance intending to bring these brigands to justice.

Forgotten evil

An expedition has been commissioned by your faction to explore the Maelstrom closely. You are a retired veteran who has been chosen to lead your team and explore it. A ship is being built combining the brute strength of Goblins and the ingenuity of Gnomes. A crew needs to be assembled to venture into swirling unknown. When you arrive, you discover that a great and terrible evil has been awakened. With no hope of backup and reinforcements, its up to you and your crew to contain and banish the threat back where it came from.

Good luck to everyone who is participating this year! I know there are a number of WoW bloggers that are involved (Ego, Bre, and Ratshag at least, though I’m sure there are more).

Do you plan on taking part this year? Have you gotten your story ready?

Undisputed Method of Earning Damage Control

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damage-control

You can earn the Damage Control achievement by either dishing out 300000 points of damage or healing 300000 points of health. Now you could always just grind AV in the hopes of getting lucky and having the game last long enough.

I think my way is a little easier but no less frustrating. Warsong Gulch will continue to be the undisputed stalemate of BGs for a long time to come even at level 80.

Don’t Worry, it Gets Harder

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I just finished doing a partial Black Temple clear on my Priest. I decided to swap Priest specs for the night and try my hand at full Discipline. I really like it a lot. Would I switch to it full time at 80? That’s going to depend on the healing corps we have then. I’m grown comfortable between deep Discipline and deep Holy specs that I don’t foresee it being any trouble at all. I think every healing Priest should take the time now where it doesn’t really matter to try out both sides of the coin and become fluent with both types of specs.

Yes, it really doesn’t matter.

I’m being outhealed by Retribution Paladins and Healing Stream totems. But that doesn’t bother me at all one bit. The game has fundamentally changed and raid instance difficulty has been toned down a lot to the dismay of some and the delight of others.

Karazhan now takes an average of 1 hour.
Zul’Aman bear runs can be done with 17 minutes left remaining on the clock.
Black Temple? Illidan down within 2 hours.

And that’s a good thing.

But don’t take the current game in stride. Don’t assume that things will be this easy at level 80, because it’s not going to be. You get yourselves new bosses, new mechanics, and new challenges to toy with. Relax now while you can and have some fun. It’s back to work when you ding 80. Allow yourself to get complacent for a while, but keep it in the back of your mind that things will only get harder from here on out.

Some guild’s are pissed off because all that they worked hard for means nothing. Some guild’s are happy (and back together) because they were able to get over the hump that stopped them from raiding in the first place. My guild was able to take down Kalecgos and Brutallus for the first time this week. We still have some time remaining in order to bring down the rest of Sunwell. I know I’ll be working hard to get that Kil’Jaden achievement (I’m up to 2175 points).

The clock is ticking. Now is the time to hurry and explore the game. Visit the bosses that you thought you’ve never seen. Raiding guilds should trial players for the time being. Swap players around and bring in alts.

It will get harder. Don’t take it for granted.