Solarian down

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Presently, I’m sitting in Solarian’s room waiting for the leaders to say go. They’re talking last minute strategy right about whose tanking which. It seems raid prep time takes five years whereas the encounter itself takes five minutes. But that’s a post for another time…

[20 minutes later]

…And just like that, she’s dead. I couldn’t believe it. The third attempt and she’s down. There’s no way bosses can be THAT easy.  My pants dropped (that sounds bad, I know)! Replaced my Netherspite legs with Soul-Star Breeches.

Now we’re going to try out Alar with four tanks.

Matt’s Three Stars: Week Ending October 19

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1804: Forgot to add this. I got my T5 gloves yesterday. I am now 2 of 5. Although honestly, there wasn’t that big of an upgrade between T4 and T5 gloves. The 2 piece bonus is really nice though (If your greater heal restores the target to full health, gain 100 mana).

The Three Stars of the week is my way of looking back and honoring columns that were published by my fellow WoW playing colleagues. These articles are pieces that I believe should be read by everyone in the community because they are informative, factual, hard hitting, applicable, and have elements of truthiness. Either that, or it’s just plain cool and you should read them anyway.

How to Enjoy the Game: This week’s first star honors goes to a column by Apathy Inc which centers around people’s enjoyment and frustrations in WoW. It’s also been recommended by my other colleagues in the WoW Blogosphere. Simply put, if you’re not enjoying what you’re playing, then don’t play it. You pay 15 bucks a month to play this game. In the end, you are your own boss. You should be the one deciding how you play your character. Does this mean a Guild has the right to force you to do what they want? No, but they can ask you and you have the right to refuse. By that same token, however, that same Guild also has the right to dismiss you from their organization because to put it bluntly, you don’t have the skills or services they are looking for. Here’s a typical example which goes back to the days of Molten Core and Blackwing Lair. Many Priests had grown fond of Shadow. Several priests were adamant about staying shadow and did not want to go into the Holy Tree at all. It’s important to remember that back then, Shadow Priests did not have the kind of utility that they have today and were looked down upon as misfits of the WoW World. The reasoning behind it is that Shadow Priests would be eligible to roll on DPS cloth gear. It’s bad enough Mages and Warlocks would be competing against one another, but to throw in Shadow Priests would further complicate the looting situation. Shadow Priests did have the option of staying Shadow, but agreements were made in that they would forfeit rights to other classes who could utilize the gear more efficiently (mages and locks). T1 and T2 had nothing for Shadow Priests at the time. The gear selection was biased towards the Holy tree. Like Richard Rahl once said:

It’s your life. Live it.

Safely Breaking Crowd Control: Second star honors goes to Karthis who provides us with an excellent table of threat priority and what form of crowd control pisses off mobs the most. Perhaps now I will think twice before Mind Controlling something as it’s what aggravates them the most. I just wish there was a source for the table, although I’m sure it’s accurate (but when you’re at school, you start to become critical and question the source and reliability of research materials).

Summoning the Headless Horseman: The third star and certainly not the last provides a brief summary of the new seasonal Hallow’s End event: The Headless Horseman. He’s a pushover of a boss to any decently geared team. Assemble your crew, and on the flight from Ironforge to the Western Plaguelands, it would do you wise to read over the strategy from GMW.

WWS has caught the public main stream now. I think it’s better then SW Stats and various damage meters and I’ll present my arguments about that tomorrow. I’ll follow it up with a post on how to interpret the readings for us Holy Priests.

Tanking and Healing Prince the easy way

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The Prince engagement is a royal pain in the ass (excuse the pun). A lot of players have difficulty with the randomness. It’s an extra variable that causes unneeded stress and can force the most disciplined of teams to lose focus and scatter Aside from his Enfeeble and Shadownova’s, the boss would be an easy takedown. It’s the damned Infernals which throw everything into disarray. After pugging with a few groups, I’m amazed to still see people attempt to do it how it was meant to be done: running around aimlessly.

But wait! What if I could guarantee you that I could take his Infernal’s out of play entirely? That you would no longer have to worry about Infernal’s affecting your main tank and raid? That would certainly make the fight all that much easier, wouldn’t it?

You know that the Infernal’s AOE strikes deal damage in a circular fashion. The platform is a square (kinda) with a few odd cracks along the sides. If you can position the tanks and the raid into such a position, then you would be free from the random variables being thrown at you.

Placement

best shot I could take of prince and the raidI’m sure many of you are already aware of the Prince’s M.O. (Modus operandi), therefore I won’t comment too much about that. If you examine the various screns littered throughout the post, it should give you a rough idea of were to position yourself and the raid to avoid infernals. When you’re running into the room, the raid stands on the far left wall with the tank placed further up. You’ll need to wiggle and adjust a bit until you can find that sweet spot.

Might take you a wipe or two to get it.

An infernal between the raid and the MTIf you have unfortunate cases where an Infernal lands between the MT and the raid, your melee guys are to fallback to the rest of the group and sit out for the fight until the Infernal’s gone. Have them throw knives or bandage or something. But whatever they do, ensure they pull back. There is a small margin of error in this positioning. As healers, too close against the wall means you do not have line of sight with the tank. Too far out puts within range of Infernals. If your tank can find the spot and your raid can get to the right location, you will take no damage from Infernals whatsoever and will not be required to move.

Healing

Where the raid isPhase one is a walk over. I advise you to put a Paladin on Dispel duty. You want to conserve your mana for more important parts of the fight later. Maintain your hots at all times. Refresh them when necessary as soon as the last tick hits. The moment you go into Phase 2, coldowns should be blown. This needs to be the fastest 60% -> 30% takedown ever. I have seen cases where tanks can eat 20000 damage within seconds.

Overheals are important. Do it. When you get down to 70% mana, use your shadowfiend. Mana potions need to be used to help supplement when necessary. Don’t go into each encounter with less then 4 mana potions (I blow no more than 3). The most important thing is to get out of phase 2 as fast possible. You’re still going to have Infernals drop on you, but they should not be damaging you.

Tango down

Once you push into phase 3, ease off the gas pedal for a little bit because the worse part is over. With Prince’s damage output back to phase 1 levels, there isn’t the feeling of panic or terror. However, his axes start chopping away at your raid team. Assuming your team consists of three healers, ensure that you have at least two people on the MT and one healer on the raid. Ideally, the axes healer will be the person with the lowest amount of mana greater than zero (a healer with no mana is generally useless). The axes don’t deal a lot of damage, so it should be no problem for healers with 10% – 20% mana in THEIR gas tank.

The most crucial change listed is your tanking position. With the Infernal’s out of play, then running around the room is no longer required. Rinse, repeat, acquire phat loot.


On another note, I met another girl today in real life who plays WoW. Go figure. Addenum: I found a map which displays what I’m talking about perfectly. Courtesy of flavaguild.com.

About Cooldowns

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My Raid Leader made a comment about cooldowns the other day that I thought I would share with everyone,

Use them. Please.

In SSC, it takes about 10 minutes to clear Hydross. Heroism is on a ten minute cooldown. Our Priestly minion is on a five minute cooldown. Innervate’s on a 6 minute cooldown. Cooldown mechanics were thrown in by Blizzard to be used in a limited basis so they could not be abused. That doesn’t mean that they should not be used. In the past, I’ve treated cooldowns like superweapons from Red Alert 2: To be used in case of emergency or in a game breaking situation. Upon further reflection, I realized that they’re not really game breaking.

A fight like Hydross has an enranged timer of nine minutes. Our Shadowfiend cooldown has five. That means we pretty much have free spells to cast for the first 2 or so minutes. For example, in the opening pages of Hydross, I would open up with Shadow Word: Pain, renews, several smites, and maybe a few heals here and there. After that, I’d drop a shadowfiend to get all that mana back. Because really, in the first part, the tanks aren’t taking a lot of damage anyway that a couple of flash heals can’t mitigate.

On trash, there might be a few tricky pulls. A well timed Heroism could cut through trash like a Kansas tornado. It makes for quick takedowns. You’ll still have the cooldown available for the boss anyway because you’re not stupid enough to blow it on the last trash pull, RIGHT?!

But yeah, gauge the time it takes for you to go from boss to boss. Be liberal about the use of your cooldowns.

Five more minutes until my Criminology Midterm. Panicking is a very viable option.