SSC

Silly SSC Mistakes

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I’ll have to skip out on my usual digest post this week sadly. It’s exam week and as a result, lower time spent. Don’t expect anything else until Tuesday evening.

This is the kind of stuff that can easily turn a 3 hour run into a 6 hour run. Kudos to the folks at Fallen Heroes for allowing us to borrow their instance (Lurker down). In this really short post for today, I’m going to let you in on some of the stupidest mistakes that top tier raiding guilds can make. You look at these errors and mistakes and it seems so plainly obvious. But when you’re actually in there in the heat of the moment, things can go from bad to oh crap at any given moment. We popped into SSC due to the lack of manpower for Hyjal ops.

Hydross

Wipe 1: Shadow Priest stood on the wrong side of the “line of scrimmage”. He didn’t wait the requisite 3+ seconds for our tank to secure Hydross. Sure enough, Hydross crossed and we pulled 8 elementals. Positioning is oh so very important! Make sure you stand on the side that Hydross is on. At least if you pull, you won’t make 4 new friends!

Tidewalker

Wipe 2: Simple miscommunication here did us in. We were at the 27% mark and our bear tank was going to mosey Tidewalker up from his spot and tuck him into the side between the pillar and the wall. Problem? Healer’s didn’t hear the tank. Yeah the onus was probably on our end to move up with him. By the time we realized what happened, he had already parked himself out of line of sight and took several shots to the face. He did call out that he was moving him in vent. Unfortunately, no one heard him. So if you’re in charge of calling out a particularly relevant and important piece of information, make sure you speak up. If you call it out and don’t so much as get an acknowledgment, yell it louder until you do.

Fathom-Lord

Wipe 3: My fault but my hands were absolutely tied. I think the worse time to get a disconnect in WoW is DURING a pull. What makes this worse is that I’m the only healer on the Hunter tank. You can kind of imagine how that worked out. I noticed too late that we were standing around much to long and vent was far too quiet. This was right after a ready check, as well. It just goes to show that players can fail under the most ordinary and routine of situations.

Leotheras

Wipe 4: Oddly enough, we didn’t even wipe to Leo personally. We wiped to his 3 cronies in front that kept him in place. True it had been about 6 – 8 weeks since we last foray’d into SSC. We also had 3 players that we’re trying to key up to increase utility. Like a bunch of sheep, several of the players stacked up in one area attempting to DPS down Leo’s mobs. What they forgot were the AOE mind blasts that those mobs cast. Every once in a while, players need to be reminded that they are not supermen. Just because you’ve picked up flashy T6 level gear does not mean you can stop doing the simple lessons that kept you alive in the first place. In this case, it was to take down 1 at a time.

Lady Vashj

Wipe 5: We breezed through most of phase 1 and half of phase 2 with no real difficulties. As luck would have it, we hit a crimp in our plans when our Strider kiting Warlock bit the bullet and went down. Our Shadow Priest took a multishot to the face. I also think we lost a mage there at some point. It all took place within a space of 10 seconds. The boss took a note of that and called a wipe immediately so that everyone could run to the stairs. What he erred out on was that our Shadow Priest got the call for a battle res and our warlock chewed down a soul stone to get back up. What was a deficit of 3 players was now of 1 player. We might have had an outside chance for that. I think what happened here was that our Raid Leader made a judgment call far too early without ascertaining what kind of resources were free to get the dead players back in action.

Wipe 6: This one takes the cake for the most stupidest wipe of the night. We forgot to change it from group loot to FFA loot. The first core was only lootable by our MT who is busy trying to stave off the Naga’s coming up those stairs. By the time he got to it, it had already despawned. Repeat that another 2 times and you can see that we were way behind the game on that one and would have been eventually overwhelmed. There are encounters where FFA looting is a requirement. Make sure you check to see if the encounter you are doing is one of them!

6 Reasons Why I Will Never Pug A 25 Man Raid Again

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Frustration and anger

Pickup: 1: composed of or employing whatever persons are available on a more or less impromptu basis:

It was a Monday. It was 1800 hours when I got the call. My healing services were need in SSC. The Carnage strike team already cleared it out on Sunday so I tasked myself to bring in my alt, Saphfira.

It was 3 hours of hell that I wish I had back. It didn’t help that my beloved Canucks were getting stomped on by Minnesota (was listening to it on the radio).

Anyway, this is definitely the last time I ever sign onboard a pickup raid of any sort in the 25 man region, and here’s why:

Incompetent/Knowledgeless Raid Leader: The guy quarterbacking the raid clearly did not know the entire details of the Tidewalker encounter. He did not know that the Naga patrol behind Morogrim can be despawned by aggroing him. There’s a little tip for you budding SSC Guilds. If you want to clear out a quick group of Naga’s behind him, send in a Hunter with control of his pet and aggro Tidewalker. Make sure your raid is safely out of the way by falling back to the wooden bridges on the way in there. Once the pet dies, the patrol behind him will despawn saving you about 4 minutes worth of trash. He also did not know about Tidewalker’s ~50 yard Water Tombing ability. And when your Paladin tank is in the same area as Tidewalker lighting up consecrate and suddenly gets tombed…

Lack of Common Sense: Warlocks DoTTing up sheep targets. Tanks not grabbing targets fast enough. Not following instructions to move when asked to. Not running back when your corpse is literally on a boss. Shall I go on?

Attempting to Shortcut Mobs: Normally I’m a huge proponent of optimizing raid time. But when you’re pugging a difficult 25 man instance like this, it’s way better to be safe than sorry. In this case, we circumvented some of the Nagas by swimming underneath the wooden bridge towards Tidewalker and got up on to the platform on the other side. Naturally someone pulls a Boglord, which chain pulls nagas, which chain pulls murlocs. Time to break out the toilet paper. It’s another wipe. Rather than trying to skip 4 pulls, it would’ve been better to regroup on the bridge and just plow through them. 5 minutes of dealing with trash is better then 20 minutes of wiping twice and running back.

Inefficient Use of Time: Looking for people instead of actually raiding. A good hour and a half was spent trying to find the necessary players geared enough and willing enough to go in. The problem with SSC and TK right now is that most players only have one main that’s even anywhere close to being able to try out this content. Rarely are they ever going to have 2. Players on their mains are more than likely to raid T5 instances with their own Guild instead of a pug.

Lack of Consistent Work Ethic: People were asked to bring pots and flasks and other consumables to a raid. Clearly not everyone did. If some people aren’t going to be putting in 100% then they should not be there.

The Murphy Factor: If anything can go wrong, it will go wrong. And yeah it went wrong in a very big way.

In other news, Carnage will not be raiding on next Sunday. There are only 3 weekends in the entire year that we do not raid on.

1: Christmas
2: New Years
3: Super Bowl

It’s going to be a short week but a good week.

The Chain of Progression in Raids

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Raid members ready to go and do something

In case you’ve ever wondered what raid bosses and instances to do in what order, I’ve compiled a list here from Karazhan onwards. This list is aimed mostly at Guilds who have started raiding and aren’t sure what’s best for them or their Guild. Obviously you can do them in any order that your Guild likes, but there are some bosses which should be done first before going into other instances.

Edit: Rankings are based largely on difficulty level and convenience for Guilds.

Karazhan

Attumen, Moroes, Maiden, Opera, Curator, Shade, Chess, Prince.

Once you’ve taken down Prince a few times and you think your 10 man team is up to snuff, you can go proceed to go after Nightbane, Illhoof and Netherspite.

You’re also ready to start tackling the first 4 or so bosses in Zul’Aman.

Mallet with a wolf

At this point, your Guild is now officially ready for the 25 mans. Your first 25 man test?

Gruul’s Lair and Magtheridon

Take down High King Maulgar then follow up with Gruul. Once you’ve gotten them down easily, consider going after Magtheridon.

Magtheridon himself

There’s quite a few Guilds that I know of that have completely skipped Mag in favour of launching right into TK and SSC thinking that Mag is too much of an effort required. To them, I say Mag is a piece of cake compared to boss fights at the Tier 5 level.

The reason you go after High King, Gruul and Mag is that these 3 bosses are idiot checks for your Guild.

Can the people in your raid handle being in the spotlight with important jobs?
Can your warlocks enslave and kill simultaneously?
Is your mage quick enough on the spellsteal?
Do your healers trust each other enough to not overlap each other and just do their jobs?

For Gruul, the question you want to ask is if your raid members are able to work together and cope with shatters. Are the tanks geared enough to do their job? Do players know how to run away from each other?

As I’ve mentioned before, a lot of Guilds skip Mag initially. Don’t be one of them. I highly advise giving Mag a few shots. Here, you’re testing the discipline of your raid and the endurance of your healers. You also want to discover how quick and effective your DPS is in a 25 man unit. Mag also sets your guild up to have 4-5 skilled and geared tanks. Once you get past the initial phase 1 hurdle, it’s up to the healers and your 10 volunteers to click cubes. If 10 people can’t click cubes properly and time it, you’ve no business being in SSC or TK.

Tier 5 Instances (SSC and TK)

There’s essentially 2 ways you can go about it. You can go into SSC and clear straight to Lurker. The alternative is to crash TK and bring down Lootreaver Voidreaver followed by Solarian.

Hydross in SSC

While your working on those 3 bosses (in any order), your tanks should be gearing up for Hydross.

Now at this stage, I suggest working through the T5 raid’s in an order like this:

  • Voidreaver/Solarian/Lurker
  • Hydross
  • Tidewalker
  • Fathom-Lord
  • Leotheras
  • Al’ar

At this point, you’ll be at the coveted 5/6 SSC and 3/4 TK mark. Take your pick between Vashj or Kael.

I’d say give Vashj a couple of shots but that’s because I find her a little little easier as compared to Kael who I think is a whackjob.

T6 Raids (Hyjal and BT)

I don’t have a clue here. I heard it’s Rage Winterchill and then straight into BT for the first 3-4 bosses.

Does anyone have an idea of what should come next?

Now I can Heal in Style

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Cowl of the Avatar

Does it not reek of complete and utter awesomeness? I finally got my Cowl of the Avatar! What good timing too since Carnage will no longer be running SSC as much anymore. We’re going all in on Kael.

The T5 helm now brings me up to having 3/5 T5. I also picked up another item to replace my Ribbon of Sacrifice. From Lurker, I managed to collect Earring of Soulful Meditation (it’s the class trinket at the T5 level). I lose a slight drop in healing (a whopping 7) but if I manage to remember to activate the Earring, I’ll gain 300 spirit for several seconds to further increase my longevity in combat. Combine the earring with Pendant of the Violet Eye and I will be able to sustain myself for a long time.

Before and after effects of Earring of Soulful Meditation

Yikes that’s a substantial increase!

My First Date with Vashj

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As with most of my past dates, it didn’t turn out so well =(.

It all started after we cleared out the keep. We slept through the Voidreaver job and took him down without breaking a sweat. Solarian took a bit more effort but she was down after the fourth try. People still weren’t realizing that they had received the explosion debuffs even with people screaming at them to move. Therefore, the third attempt we took a page from operant conditioning and punished people with DKP removal if they didn’t move. It generated immediate results. She went down thereafter.

There were another three hours to kill in the sunday evening. Instead of going after Mag, we took a jaunt towards SSC and gave the Lady herself a few tries. The DPS’ing down to 70% was not a problem. Phase 2 is a whole new story. She put up this shield around her which can only be removed when an item called a Tainted Core is placed in one of four shield generators. But all four generators need to be deactivated before her shield goes down. Tainted Cores drop randomly from spawning Tainted Elementals (Theres a Tainted and an Enchanted Elemental). Not only that, when you pick up a Core, you cannot run with it. It’s a giant game of European Handball which involves players passing from one another until it reaches a person within range of a shield generator who can then deactivate it.

Now how’s that for a PvP sport?

Unfortunately I had to leave part way through the encounter. I had family over for dinner and I could no longer stretch the playing limit.

Anyways, keep an eye here during the next few days…