All Stories

It was certainly quite the intense campaign. The first several wipes of the night were my fault. 3 wipes, and I suffered 8 deaths. Why? Because I’m way too slow and sluggish and I got suckered by the Rogue several times. No big deal before I repositioned myself on the far right on top of the stairs and just did laps around the area.

Highlights of the Night

Our first kill involved one of our Warlocks being locked out because he was on the wrong side of the door. Ergo, we had no choice but to 24 man him. I thought we were going to wipe because we had one less DPS but it turns out I had nothing to worry about.

This is nothing more than a straight up survival and endurance fight. As a CoH Priest, I was uniquely suited to run around and heal ranged DPS or melee DPS if it was needed.

After the kill, we paid a quick visit to Hyjal…

…and wiped to Rage. After being in BT for so long, it seemed as if we had lost our raid legs in Hyjal. No worries! Got him down in the next attempt after our Holy Paladin randomly DI’d a Druid. Thank goodness it wasn’t the main tank.

And now it all ends here. I started Karazhan last year around February. I did not expect to see Illidan at all. I’ve trained long and hard for this opportunity. Every boss up to this point had a lesson to teach. It won’t be easy, but we’ll sure as hell give him a bloody nose.

I want to give a very special shout out and thank you to reader Wynthea. She stayed up late last night helping me plan the different healing roles. She talked me through the encounter as it was happening ensuring I didn’t lose my cool. Without her help, Illidari Council will have taken another week or two. I’m in your debt.

So. Whose got some Illidan Priestly pointers?

Mother is too easy. We 2 shot her. If anything, the trash leading up to Mother was a pain. How quaint and ironic it is that we downed her on Mother’s day. Having capped our Shadow Resist helped incredibly.

Installing EasyMother made this fight a piece of cake.

Illidari Council

When Carnage first started raiding, we had minor difficulty on High King. We entered the caverns of Serpentshrine and manhandled Fathom-Lord and his lackeys. Following that, we infiltrated Tempest Keep and surprised Kael along with his advisors. Now we end up at the last of the multi-mob encounter before Sunwell: Illidari Council.

Healer Arsenal

2 Holy Priests (1 CoH, 1 Imp DS)
1 Resto Druid
4 Paladins
1 Resto Shaman

After 3 hours of wiping, I can say with absolute certainty that I want to bring in another healer for the time being.

2 Paladins and 1 Resto druid assigned to Gathaios tank
1 Imp Ds Priest on the mage tank
1 Paladin on the Rogue tank
1 Paladin on the Priest tank
1 CoH Priest on the melee group, the raid, and the tanks whenever possible
1 Shaman on the raid

And we’re still dying. Even after I devote myself to paying more attention to the Divine Wrath and Poison damages that ensue, we’re still dying. This is an endurance encounter, it appears to me. The enrage timer is like 14 minutes.

Cause of Wipe

The two things that lead to our demise:

• Tank death: Specifically, the Paladin tank can dish out 17k damage within 1 second. He gets gibbed.
• Raid buckling: We lose a player to a blizzard or a flame strike, or a combination of the Divine Wrath and poison. This player is usually someone important who is kicking or interrupting. Another player tries to compensate before another one goes down. Eventually, we lose this battle of attrition and our raid starts to slowly buckle before a wipe is called seconds later.

I really want another healer. I think that would help ease the pressure a little.

 

Still haven’t started using it yet? You might want to consider it now. More WoW bloggers have begun to use twitter as a way of keeping in touch with each other and for the purposes of micro-blogging. It’s also a nice distraction and a quick way for me to get fast responses from other WoWers.

For example

 

 

As you can see, it’s a great way for me to interact with other players and bloggers. If I need to ask a quick question which isn’t worth launching WoW for, I turn to the community. Right now, the WoW twittering community is fairly small. But if you use twitter, here’s a few bloggers that you might be interested in following:

@justanna – Too Many Annas

Favourite tweet:

if I were queen of the world for a day: 25 engineers = Doomwalker, Voidreaver, and 23 FelReavers vs. Illidan.

@LadyJess – Lady Jess

Favourite tweet:

PS: My shadow priest was raid healing!

@Fimlys – Asleep at the WoW

Favourite tweet:

Falling asleep at my desk!

@gamedame – Game Dame

Favourite tweet:

La la laaaa LA la LLLLaaaaa! (My American Idol audition.)

@Aylii – Shamanistic Rage

Favourite tweet:

A Resto shaman fighting an elemental shaman is the new prot warrior fight.

Talk about being uber late this week. I blame it on the technical difficulties! In any case, it’s up now.

EDIT: Oh yes, you’ll probably have noticed that I’ve made a grammatical error. It’s intentional. Because at the end of the year, if you add up all the extraneous words you’ll find a secret message.

Or I’m yanking your chain. Up to you guys to decide which is which.

This is one of the fastest progression kills we’ve had in a while. It only took 3 hours before we were able to take him down.

Notes

• It helps to know which rogue is eating the enrage during phase 1 first. Once that’s established, then shield that rogue about 10 seconds before hand so the Weakened Soul debuff wears off.
• Feel free to DPS a bit during the 2nd phase if you can get away with it.
• Ranged guys ought to be stacking together during phase 2 to maximize CoH and Chain Heal.
• For the healing group in phase 3, put your Imp. DS priest in there and have them prayer of healing that group while the other healers work on the raid and the tanks.

From Wynthea

A frequent commenter produced a useful list of tips for trash and the boss that I’m going to duplicate here:

Trash:
Put your MT on follow, shield yourself, and spam CoH. There is a niche close to the last pull – your raid can stand there for a second, get out of combat, let all the mana users drink, and then have only one or two little pulls before engaging the boss. Pot as you run in, so you’re at full mana.

Phase 1:
PW:Shield anyone and everyone taking a fixate. Early, and often. Don’t be afraid to take a fixate yourself (as long as it’s not an enrage, obviously). SW:P the boss. Every little bit helps.

Phase 2:
CoH. Nothing but CoH. 400 mana for 2k heals on 5 people. Tell your shadow priests that SW:D is off-limits. No matter how much you want to, do not pot during this phase. Pop your earring, pop your fiend, but do not pot. You’ll need your cooldown. Save your Inner Focus ’til the end, and your Vial of the Sunwell. You may go oom, and need the heals. I have been told that you can Mass Dispel the last shield using your Inner Focus, so I save mine for that, but we’ve never needed it. Pray that your rogues are smart.

Phase 3:
Bosskillers said (when we were reading) to take a cauldron of Nature’s protection pots. Not sure why, the nature damage is minimal. Our guild uses Shadow Protection pots. Take them at 80%. (This is why you couldn’t mana pot in phase two.) Make sure everyone has one before you start the trash.

Pally’s on the tank, priests CoH everyone. Druids saving Tranq for this phase is not a bad idea.

Things I’ve found helpful:
Golden fish sticks if you have 10k health. Stam/regen food if you don’t. Don’t be afraid to take a fixate – no one has any armor anyway, so unless it’s an enrage, you’re not going to take more damage than a tank would. Rogues can also evade-tank enrages. Don’t flask for this. Wait until you’re ON PHASE THREE, then take draenic wisdom and healing power.

The more balanced stats are really, insanely helpful compared to Raw mp5. But you’re going to die a lot on the first couple of phases ’til you learn it, so don’t go broke wasting elixirs until people learn how to take fixates from one another.

Frequent Issues:
Trash: Mages like to AoE and kill themselves. Shield and renew them.

Phase 1: People being nervous to get in there and take a fixate, or not being smooth with the transitions = dead people. Watch those who are exceptionally low on health, and dispel them first.

Phase 2: S.priests, warlocks, Mages critting themselves to death. Rogues & interrupters interrupting badly or not at all.

Phase 3: Don’t. Let. The. Tank. Die. Everyone else is expendable. Especially you, if you have Spirit of Redemption. In fact, if you go Oom, just let yourself die, so you can keep healing.

The phases are very short, with full mana regen afterwards. Don’t be stingy with your mana.

Phat loots

Naturewarden’s Treads
Boneweave Girdle

Not sure what’s going to happen this week. The Guild will need to bust out the Shadow Resist stuff and all that. I’ve got the SR Neck, Cape, Boots, Belt, and Bracers crafted. I hope that’s enough.