Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Council



It's been a few weeks since I have joined my latest Raiding Guild. It's interesting how you go from being nervous about performance and how you act in guild, to being comfortable joking around with your fellow guild mates. I have proved myself to the guild and they know what I am capable of. They have come to rely on me and know I can do the take at hand.

It's interesting to see what is most important in the raider depending on your role. After playing tank, dps, and healer its interesting to see what makes you good at those specific roles. As a healer your most valuable asset is your ability to prioritize your job. A lot of damage goes out in most encounters and its your job to figure out what the best heal to use is, what time to use it, and who to use it on. Healing for me is the hardest role to play. I look at the health bars and I want them all to be at 100%. During the encounter you have to decide if its smarter to get the raid back to 100% or use that global cooldown on the the Tank. Good healers are amazing at how well they can manage their mana and keep everyone alive. Finding that balance is what makes the healers so good.

A DPS most valuable attribute is his ability to time his abilities and know his rotation. A healer is going to decide what button to push when the global cooldown is available. A DPS knows exactly what button to push and at what time 3 GCD's from now. He'll be so adapt at his timing that he will be able to react to the bosses abilities without missing a beat. Usually a skilled dps will know what alternate abilities to use if they have to move out of fires or get away from the boss so there dps doesn't dip to much. These people are the ones maximizing their gear, going through spreadsheets, and reading elitist jerks to be number 1 on the recount or WMO.

Then we have the Tank role. This is my favorite role. To be a good tank your best attribute is situational awareness. As a dps I have gone into encounters and not have any idea what to do on the boss and I still did really well. That's not gonna fly so well when you are a tank. While building threat is what you are measured on its how you play the battlefield that makes you a good tank. Being able to pull a boss and position him correctly to make the dps's job easy. Being able to very quickly pick up adds as soon as they spawn. To knowing when to use your cooldowns to make the life if your healers easier. Some fights are easy for a tank because there isn't a lot going on. Most fights require you to be smart and know whats happening and being able to adapt to that situation is why I play the tank. Also its the tanks who usually end up being the leader of the group. A healer looks at his green bars, and a dps looks at his rotation. A tank looks at everybody and everything and can call out and adjust as things happen.

Every role is important and when one side of the holy trinity is weak its going to affect the other 2. You can tell who is good at their role and who is a mindless button masher. What a person chooses to play as their main spec speaks a lot about who they are as a person. While it's never smart to assume anything about a person but when you talk to people and see their characteristics they usually fall in line with what they are playing.

It seems that I always get the unique roles in raid. I am the slime kiter in Rotface and the abomination in the putricide encounter. These are pivotal roles in both the encounters and it's important to do those jobs well. I was half surprised to be picked to do these jobs because I am a recruit into the guild. On the other hand it makes sense for me to be picked for the role considering a paladin is a much better ooze kiter then a warrior, and I was the offtank available the night we attempted putricide. Pro-tip for anyone doing the abomination. You can use both your eat ooze ability and mutated slash if the boss is close enough.

Last Tuesday the Crimson Halls had opened up. With it brought 2 new encounters. The Blood Prince Council is a very cool boss fight. Blizzard just loves throwing so many random things into an encounter as possible. It's my job to tank Prince Taldaram during the encounter. Their is an orb that moves around between the 3 princess that give them empowered abilities. On the first one he will force all melee to move out during his Empowered Shock Vortex. When fighting my target we have to follow an Empowered Ball of Flames so it doesn't 1 shot its target, and for Keleseth the tank needs to run around and collect Dark Nucleus so that his Empowered Shadow Lance doesn't 1 shot him. On top of that their are balls that if they hit the floor will do a ton of damage to the entire raid. It's a lot of things to consider for the raid but when it comes together its a beautiful thing.

We haven't gotten a chance to work on Blood Queen Lan'athel but I've been watching videos and it doesn't seem overly hard to execute. There isn't as much going on during the fight as Blood Prince Council but its all about dps. During the encounter she will bite people and increase their dps by 100% for a limited time. Once that time is up they have only one option and that is to bite someone else and give them the same buff. About 4 minutes into the fight you will run out of people to bite giving this boss a soft enrage timer. On top of that there will people linked together who have to move together and a debuff which forces you to run to the walls. Hopefully we can get putricide this week in 25 man and have some attempts left to give this boss a shot.

Saturday, January 9, 2010

The Citadel Awaits



It's been a few weeks since 3.3 has hit. It has been an incredible patch. I am really liking the way Blizzard has decided to deal with loot. I think what keeps most people playing at the highest level is getting new loot. I know for me it gives me an incentive to get in there and become the best geared I can be. When I had last left Bladez he was geared in almost all 226 gear from Ulduar. I had stopped raiding and there was no real point in playing him because I had the best I could get without raiding full time. Now that the new patch came out I saw all this gear that I could get readily since Emblems of Triumph were dropping from heroics. Also I could get Emblems of Frost for even better gear but with a bit more restriction on how much I could get at a time. This is incredibly smart of Blizzard. I see myself logging on in the morning before I go to work just to get my heroic daily in before I set off to work.

That being said I absolutely love the new Dungeon Finder system. Being able to click one button and be instantly transported to a heroic dungeon with everyone knowing their assignments is great. No more days of searching through a list of no healers, 6 death knights 2 hunters a rogue tryping to put a group together is over. I've made it my personal challenge to finish every instance before my dungeon finder debuff wears off.

Ofcourse it wouldn't be a good patch without a full raid instance to defeat. Every time a new raid comes out I'm excited to see what new boss mechanics the raid team can come up with. My hard work paid off and I am in one of the top 5 guilds on the server as one of the tanks. I thought this would be almost impossible to do after being gone for so long. Most guilds have their tanks set since you only need about 3 of them out of 25 people. If you do get in you are probably gonna be benched if their regular guys show up. This usually means you keep falling behind on the gear curve and sitting out is never fun. I was prepared for it though but it hasn't really happened much.

I have just been very lucky when it comes to gear. In the first 25 man raid I ran the main tank already had the 264 plate tanking legs and the other tank didn't want it so I was able to upgrade my legs super fast. The second week I was in for ICC 25 man none of the guilds regular tanks were online. This is pretty surprising for a Tuesday since it is loot pinata day. The 3 tank initiates were the tanks for the night and it was raining tank gear. I lost the roll on the bracers but luckily the helm dropped off the second boss and I was able to snag that up. On top of that I got the shield, weapon, and cape out of the 10 mans. When 3.3 came out I was at 33k unbuffed health. By the time I got accepted to last hope I was at 40k health. Now with all these amazing upgrades I am at 44.5k health unbuffed at over 55k raid buffed.
The thing about gear though it sometimes feel likes overkill when you don't have anything that you need it for. 50k is not necessary for a heroic where he healer never even hits a button. Progression is what its all about. Icecrown is the final content of this expansion pack and as such the requirements are high. Bosses hit for over 30k, dps checks are high and healers have a lot to take care of. Luckily Last Hope succeeds in all these areas. We know how to coordinate well, how to move, and how to do our jobs while dealing with all the factors the boss throws at us.
The first 4 bosses are pretty unique but we make it look easy. Within an hour we clear them out as if we have been doing it for months. This last week the new plague wing opened up giving us 3 new bosses to try at. Festergut is supposed to be the new patchwerk. You have 5 minutes to burn the boss down while dealing with high healing and making sure everyone gets inoculated. DPS is where our guild shines at. I've heard this boss is incredibly difficult for most people but we killed him on our second attempt. Rotface is another story.
I've had the pleasure of playing the pivotal role of being the kiter of the big slimes. The fight isn't overly difficult in terms of execution. Everyone stand in the center of the room. If he turns and faces you then go through him so you don't get hit with slime spray. If you get a mutated injection run out to me and wait for it to combine with another ooze that I kite around the room. Its pretty simple especially at the beginning. The injection happens every 12 seconds and once 5 oozes combine they explode and the raid just has to make sure they don't get hit with it. The problem is that as the fight continues on the rate of mutated injection goes faster. At 30% it happens every 6 seconds so there are a ton of oozes and it gets chaotic and hard to control. We've had so many attempts where he is below 10% but ooze control is difficult and it ends up killing key people.
Next week we will be trying out the final boss which is Professor Putricide. This boss is supposed to be incredibly difficult and you only have 15 attempts on him per week. In 2 weeks we will have another wing open up and new bosses to take down. I am pretty excited to have a new home and new challenges that await. It'll be awesome to see what the citadel holds and what new loot awaits. My goal is to one day be at 60k health raid buffed.