So, just yesterday I was fretting on another shaman blog that I feared we had hit a wall with Sindragosa. I don't know if it was the new 10% ICC buff, or just improved raid coordination, but we got her down in just 3 tries last night!
We got to take a peek at the Lich King encounter, which incorporates some unique encounter mechanics, feels dynamic and fun, and has an epic feel to it. I like that his fight seems to incorporate little elements of other WOTLK fights: his Necrotic Plague ability is kind of similar to Rotface's Mutated Infection; healing up a raid after an Infest is similar to healing a target of Lord Jaraxxus's Incinerate Flesh (In fact, I'm thinking of trying to fix up my broken GridStatusRaidDebuff so I can actually make sure the raid is getting Infest taken off).
We got in about 10 attempts last night, and were comfortably getting him into phase 2. Though we're not going to have any more raids this week due to the Easter break, I'm pretty confident that we'll be able to get a hang of those Defiles down, and I'm hoping to see Phase 3 next time I'm in there.
From a resto shaman perspective, I found the healing intense. It's not constant AOE like BQL or Sindragosa, but instead it's sudden bursts of intense raid healing. Maybe it's because it was my first night on the encounter, and maybe I was a little paranoid, and overhealing a bit, but I found myself burning through mana like crazy. I am gonna try to set up my shaman_hep parse for my log to just look at the LK encounter, but as it's such an intense fight, and so much longer than the other ICC encounters, I am thinking I'm going to have to rethink my stat weights and trinket choices for that fight, and I may go back to the mana restore meta gem.
So excited to finally get a crack at this guy!
Showing posts with label icecrown citadel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label icecrown citadel. Show all posts
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Friday, March 19, 2010
Is mp5 irrelevant on progression fights?
I've run into some very strange gearing issues lately. The main problem for me is that the value of mp5 fluctuates wildly from fight to fight. The main reason is that for most of the progression fights, there is either so much raid damage that our Water Shield makes gearing for mp5 on these fights completely inefficient (Putricide, Blood Queen, Sindragosa), or there are mechanics that make mp5 irrelevant (Valithria).
To give you an idea, Water Shield procs every 2 seconds on Blood Queen, which combined with Improved Water Shield gave me about 540 mp5. On Sindragosa, Frost Aura causes Water Shield to proc every 3 seconds, and combined with the forced throttling of Unchained Magic, I never need my mana tide on either of these fights unless I die unexpectedly. Some shaman will carry multiple sets for different fights, and for these fights would opt out of mp5 entirely; I'm too lazy to gem and balance multiple sets myself, but I have to figure that if I'm going to min-max for any fight, it should be the hard progression fights, right?
In my combat log parse last night, my Insightful Earthsiege Diamond got a distressingly low HEP value of about 40 HEP. While most shaman agree that The Revitalizing Skyflare Diamond is the best choice when you have double solace, I'm thinking of switching to this even though I don't even have those. In addition to gaining the crit heal effect, I will be gaining a little haste by replacing the one mp5 gem I have to meet my blue gem requirement with a yellow haste gem.
So I think I'm going to start moving away from mp5 entirely, starting with my meta gem, and then replacing my boot enchant with Tuskarr's Vitality (which I should have done a long time ago). I'm hoping it's not going to be super painful when my guild gets to heroic modes, for fights that won't have these contstant damage mechanics, but I guess we'll see.
To give you an idea, Water Shield procs every 2 seconds on Blood Queen, which combined with Improved Water Shield gave me about 540 mp5. On Sindragosa, Frost Aura causes Water Shield to proc every 3 seconds, and combined with the forced throttling of Unchained Magic, I never need my mana tide on either of these fights unless I die unexpectedly. Some shaman will carry multiple sets for different fights, and for these fights would opt out of mp5 entirely; I'm too lazy to gem and balance multiple sets myself, but I have to figure that if I'm going to min-max for any fight, it should be the hard progression fights, right?
In my combat log parse last night, my Insightful Earthsiege Diamond got a distressingly low HEP value of about 40 HEP. While most shaman agree that The Revitalizing Skyflare Diamond is the best choice when you have double solace, I'm thinking of switching to this even though I don't even have those. In addition to gaining the crit heal effect, I will be gaining a little haste by replacing the one mp5 gem I have to meet my blue gem requirement with a yellow haste gem.
So I think I'm going to start moving away from mp5 entirely, starting with my meta gem, and then replacing my boot enchant with Tuskarr's Vitality (which I should have done a long time ago). I'm hoping it's not going to be super painful when my guild gets to heroic modes, for fights that won't have these contstant damage mechanics, but I guess we'll see.
Thursday, February 25, 2010
The largely unnecessary strategy guide for the Rotting Frost Giant!
I was jealous of Kae's amazing illustrated strategy guides and wanted to post something of my own, but I forgot that:
With those 2 limitations in mind, I present to you my entirely unnecessary strategy guide for the optional weekly boss in ICC, the Rotting Frost Giant!
There are 4 randomly generated weekly raids for Icecrown Citadel. Somewhere in the instance, you will find one of these questgivers. In my opinion, the easiest one is the quest "Securing the Ramparts", which asks you to slay an optional boss in the area before the Gunship battle.
The Rotting Frost Giant has 3 abilities you need to know about.
The first is a Stomp ability that hits everyone for about 12k damage, and throws you up in the air. This will interrupt casting and generally just sucks. Not anything you can do to avoid this damage so keep everyone topped off.
The second is a randomly targeted Arctic Breath ability which will stun and damage all targets in a cone, exactly like Icehowl from TOC. To avoid this, the raid should be grouped in a circle around the boss. This will do about 15k dmg over 5 seconds. This is why it's important to keep everyone topped off, as a combination stomp, breath will nearly kill clothies. It is also important to distribute healers so that no more than one healer gets stunned at a time.
Here is what our positioning looked like for a 10 man raid.
The last, and most complicated ability, is the Death Plague. This will affect a randomly targeted raid member. It lasts for 15 seconds and does a minimal amount of damage and cannot be dispelled. After 15 seconds, it will explode, doing 8k damage to you and all other raid members within 8 yards. All members hit will become infected with new copies of the Death Plague, and the person who just had it receives a debuff called "Recently Infected" which prevents them from receiving the Death Plague for another 30 seconds.
To combat this mechanic, we used a "Hot Potato" strategy. First, dps the boss as normal until someone becomes infected:
The infected person would find someone next to them that does not have the recently infected debuff and hug them until the disease expires. Make sure you are only infecting one other person (this is why you spread out 8 yards apart initially).
After passing the disease, go back to your original positioning, and keep passing the disease every 15 seconds to new people.
That disease is then passed onto a third person, with the original infectee's immunity about to wear off:
Keep passing it around the circle among your range and healers in this fashion. Eventually there will be 2 copies of the disease going around, and this should be managed in the same fashion. It may be a little tricky distributing the buffs accordingly, but you eventually want the passing circle to look like this:
You should not need to manage more than 2 copies of the disease in 10 man mode.
The Rotting Frost Giant drops no loot, but he does reward 250 rep with the Ashen Verdict, and turning in the weekly quest will get you a Sack of Frosty Treasures which has 5 Emblems of Frost, some gold, and a chance at a 264 BOE epic.
After I made these slides, I read online that there is a simpler, although probably unintended strategy. You can pair up, and when someone gets infected, they will pass it to their partner after 15 seconds, and then if you stay up, supposedly the partner will pass it back to the original infectee, and the debuff will simply go away (the aoe damage will still occur). I have not tried this strategy, but if it is true, it is much simpler, and trivializes this encounter. Maybe I'll try it next week...
- I have no artistic talent and
- All raiding content that I have seen has been covered to death by other, better blogs and strategy forums
With those 2 limitations in mind, I present to you my entirely unnecessary strategy guide for the optional weekly boss in ICC, the Rotting Frost Giant!
Background
There are 4 randomly generated weekly raids for Icecrown Citadel. Somewhere in the instance, you will find one of these questgivers. In my opinion, the easiest one is the quest "Securing the Ramparts", which asks you to slay an optional boss in the area before the Gunship battle.
Fight Mechanics and positioning
The Rotting Frost Giant has 3 abilities you need to know about.
The first is a Stomp ability that hits everyone for about 12k damage, and throws you up in the air. This will interrupt casting and generally just sucks. Not anything you can do to avoid this damage so keep everyone topped off.
The second is a randomly targeted Arctic Breath ability which will stun and damage all targets in a cone, exactly like Icehowl from TOC. To avoid this, the raid should be grouped in a circle around the boss. This will do about 15k dmg over 5 seconds. This is why it's important to keep everyone topped off, as a combination stomp, breath will nearly kill clothies. It is also important to distribute healers so that no more than one healer gets stunned at a time.
Here is what our positioning looked like for a 10 man raid.
The last, and most complicated ability, is the Death Plague. This will affect a randomly targeted raid member. It lasts for 15 seconds and does a minimal amount of damage and cannot be dispelled. After 15 seconds, it will explode, doing 8k damage to you and all other raid members within 8 yards. All members hit will become infected with new copies of the Death Plague, and the person who just had it receives a debuff called "Recently Infected" which prevents them from receiving the Death Plague for another 30 seconds.
To combat this mechanic, we used a "Hot Potato" strategy. First, dps the boss as normal until someone becomes infected:
The infected person would find someone next to them that does not have the recently infected debuff and hug them until the disease expires. Make sure you are only infecting one other person (this is why you spread out 8 yards apart initially).
After passing the disease, go back to your original positioning, and keep passing the disease every 15 seconds to new people.
That disease is then passed onto a third person, with the original infectee's immunity about to wear off:
Keep passing it around the circle among your range and healers in this fashion. Eventually there will be 2 copies of the disease going around, and this should be managed in the same fashion. It may be a little tricky distributing the buffs accordingly, but you eventually want the passing circle to look like this:
You should not need to manage more than 2 copies of the disease in 10 man mode.
Rewards
The Rotting Frost Giant drops no loot, but he does reward 250 rep with the Ashen Verdict, and turning in the weekly quest will get you a Sack of Frosty Treasures which has 5 Emblems of Frost, some gold, and a chance at a 264 BOE epic.
Alternate Strategies
After I made these slides, I read online that there is a simpler, although probably unintended strategy. You can pair up, and when someone gets infected, they will pass it to their partner after 15 seconds, and then if you stay up, supposedly the partner will pass it back to the original infectee, and the debuff will simply go away (the aoe damage will still occur). I have not tried this strategy, but if it is true, it is much simpler, and trivializes this encounter. Maybe I'll try it next week...
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
First night with T10-4
I spent my first night with T10's 4 piece set bonus last night, and I think it was a little bit of a disappointment. The hot accounted for about 3% of my effective healing for the night, which is way less than in some of the parses I'd seen. I think that it's possible that the fights I happened to be healing for last night were generally not chain heal friendly, and I was also mostly tank healing as the other healer was a druid.
I will be more excited to see my stats from tomorrow, when we will be doing Blood Queen, the fight that was built expressly for Chain Heal spam.
Still, I think I probably will be building 2 sets, one for Chain Heal centric fights, and one for Tank healing fights. I have generally resisted building multiple healing sets in the past, due to bag space, and general laziness, but I think the set bonuses and relic effects have become so specific these days that it may still be necessary.
I will be more excited to see my stats from tomorrow, when we will be doing Blood Queen, the fight that was built expressly for Chain Heal spam.
Still, I think I probably will be building 2 sets, one for Chain Heal centric fights, and one for Tank healing fights. I have generally resisted building multiple healing sets in the past, due to bag space, and general laziness, but I think the set bonuses and relic effects have become so specific these days that it may still be necessary.
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
To 4-piece or not to 4-piece?
It's decision time again, peoples. Back when I made my initial pull list, We were working on Saurfang, and I was considering the first 4 ICC bosses and thinking how underused Chain Heal was. At the time, I couldn't see the value in saving up 160 emblems on top of my 2 piece set bonus to complete the 4 piece set bonus, when I didn't feel like I was even casting Chain Heal that much.
Times have changed. 2 Wings later, we've seen fights like Festergut, Putricide, Blood Princes, and Blood Queen, which featured massive raid damage and pushed aoe healing demands to the limit. Also, early reports for HEP values for the 4 piece set bonus are showing up, and they are quite positive. One report puts it as high as 800 HEP!
I also finally had a full night just healing, so I had a log I felt comfortable passing through my shaman_hep for updated calculations. The summary is here, but the main takeaway is that I have HEP estimations for my trinkets now. My Ephemeral Snowflake clocked in at around 143 HEP for the night and the Sliver of Pure Ice clocked in at around 211 HEP. Their theoretical maximum HEP values are around 276 and 242, respectively, which may mean that I'm just not using the "Use:" effect on the Snowflake very wisely, and I'm using the Sliver's Use effect fairly well.
In either case I've decided to weigh the 4 piece set bonus at something like 400 HEP, until I hear some more concrete numbers. This still offsets the stat bonus of the non-set emblem purchases, so it definitely shifts up my pull list a lot. I won't actually be purchasing anything until I have enough emblems for both the chest and gloves, so I can go directly from tier 9.2 to tier 10.4, so if I find out soon that the numbers are not quite as good, I can change my plan accordingly. Here goes:
The bolded item costs means that I am factoring in part of a set bonus upgrade. The italicized item cost mean that they are primordial saronite costs, and can be bought with alts or money.
Happy hunting, Shaman.
Times have changed. 2 Wings later, we've seen fights like Festergut, Putricide, Blood Princes, and Blood Queen, which featured massive raid damage and pushed aoe healing demands to the limit. Also, early reports for HEP values for the 4 piece set bonus are showing up, and they are quite positive. One report puts it as high as 800 HEP!
I also finally had a full night just healing, so I had a log I felt comfortable passing through my shaman_hep for updated calculations. The summary is here, but the main takeaway is that I have HEP estimations for my trinkets now. My Ephemeral Snowflake clocked in at around 143 HEP for the night and the Sliver of Pure Ice clocked in at around 211 HEP. Their theoretical maximum HEP values are around 276 and 242, respectively, which may mean that I'm just not using the "Use:" effect on the Snowflake very wisely, and I'm using the Sliver's Use effect fairly well.
In either case I've decided to weigh the 4 piece set bonus at something like 400 HEP, until I hear some more concrete numbers. This still offsets the stat bonus of the non-set emblem purchases, so it definitely shifts up my pull list a lot. I won't actually be purchasing anything until I have enough emblems for both the chest and gloves, so I can go directly from tier 9.2 to tier 10.4, so if I find out soon that the numbers are not quite as good, I can change my plan accordingly. Here goes:
| Best Upgrade | HEP | Cost | HEP Upgrade per Badge | Current | HEP |
| Frost Witch's Handguards | 541.4 | 60 | 3.332 | Thrall's Handguards of Triumph | 341.4 |
| Frost Witch's Tunic | 785.7 | 95 | 2.98 | Thrall's Tunic of Conquest | 502 |
| Waistband of Despair | 491.8 | 60 | 2.89 | Darkspear Ritual Binding | 318 |
| Earthsoul Boots | 512.1 | 115 | 1.818 | Sabatons of Tortured Space | 302.9 |
| Drape of the Violet Tower | 289.7 | 50 | 1.791 | Shawl of the Caretaker | 200.2 |
| Purified Lunar Dust | 215.2 | 60 | 1.95 | Ephemeral Snowflake | 143.5 |
| Lightning-Infused Leggings | 679.3 | 184 | .0922 | Leggings of Concealed Hatred | 509.5 |
| Totem of Surging Seas | 255 | 30 | .7 | Totem of Calming Tides | 234 |
The bolded item costs means that I am factoring in part of a set bonus upgrade. The italicized item cost mean that they are primordial saronite costs, and can be bought with alts or money.
Happy hunting, Shaman.
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Updating Solarian Macros on Deathwhisper for the Lazy Shaman?
So back in my day when we had to walk up the hills in outlands both ways to get to school or something there was a boss in Tempest Keep called High Astromancer Solarian. During one of her phases, the only unavoidable damage came from a randomly targeted arcane missles. Healers that were assigned to that damage would target her and use a macro like
/cast [help,nodead][target=targettarget,help,nodead] Lesser Healing Wave
Now, Lady Deathwhisper is not a hard healing fight, and the majority of damage probably comes from the empowered adds and the Death and Decay. Still, I think tonight when my guild does her, I'm going to try using a macro like the Solarian macro to heal the random damage (when there's no other major death and decay or add damage to heal). I think I'm going to try:
/castsequence [help,nodead][target=targettarget,help,nodead] Riptide, Lesser Healing Wave, Lesser Healing Wave
So I don't think it's that big a deal actually (and I'll probably have to insert some filler heals to get over the riptide cooldown), but that fight is so boring to heal in the first phase I feel like tweaking my macro mid fight may give me something to do tonight ;). I'll let you know how it works out.
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Sticking to the plan?
So I've been pretty much going along with the planned pull list I laid out about a month ago. I got my shoulders first, which were a solid upgrade, are nearly best in slot for the content I do, and look awesome. The next piece according to my plan was the helm. The thing is, 95 emblems is a lot. A lot a lot. I've been on vacation so I haven't gotten my weekly and dailies in as much as I'd like. So I'm only at like 70 emblems now, and last night, and the Ice-Reinforced Vrykul Helm drops! Clear upgrade, and great itemization, but it leaves me in a bit of a quandary...
I really was hoping to get the helm, so I could run with 2 pieces of tier 9 and 2 pieces of tier 10. The T9-2 and T10-2 set bonuses have great synergy, and the helm and gloves are the best pieces, stat-wise, if you're only going to pick 2 pieces; the legs and gloves have horrible stats for a resto shaman, and the chest is nice, but the cloth non-tier emblem chest is MUCH better.
So do I:
Still haven't decided, but I gotta make a decision this week I guess... I guess I shouldn't complain- upgrades are always a good thing ;)
I really was hoping to get the helm, so I could run with 2 pieces of tier 9 and 2 pieces of tier 10. The T9-2 and T10-2 set bonuses have great synergy, and the helm and gloves are the best pieces, stat-wise, if you're only going to pick 2 pieces; the legs and gloves have horrible stats for a resto shaman, and the chest is nice, but the cloth non-tier emblem chest is MUCH better.
So do I:
- Stick with the plan?
I'll just keep this helm as an intermediate until I get 25 more emblems or so? - Change up the plan?
The only other tier piece I could get is the chest really, which would break my t9 set bonus. This is something I'd have to do eventually I guess, although a lot of shaman on EJ are really hanging onto that set bonus. - Wait?
Do I just hold off on acquiring 2 pieces of tier, and use my frost emblems in other slots that are sure-things? This would be the belt, and cloak.
Still haven't decided, but I gotta make a decision this week I guess... I guess I shouldn't complain- upgrades are always a good thing ;)
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Patch 3.3 after 1 week
Here's a big bag of my impressions of patch 3.3 after the first week.
Not many changes for Resto, but the hot sexiness for Elemental came in the form of Fire Nova. Even when I'm healing instances, I find myself watching this cooldown and hitting it on big trash packs if no one is really in need of a heal. LOTS of fun. It's like when I spam Holy Nova for easy 5 mans on my priest. I can see it being a headache to keep up on big aoe raid pulls, as you actually have to get right into the cleave zone and drop a fire totem to get to use it, but so far I find it to be a really nice addition to the shaman arsenal. I haven't had time to tweak my elemental gear/spec (and I should, because I end up 5-manning as dps a lot), but I think my new spec may include the talent and glyph for fire nova, just because it's fun.
So I think everyone is probably in agreement that the darling of patch 3.3 is not actually Icecrown Citadel, but the entirely revamped cross-realm LFG system. It is really refreshing to be able to sit down at your computer, and within 5 minutes of logging in and checking auctions, you're suddenly good to go for exactly the instance you need, or the random heroic, with pretty much no hassle.
The new 5-mans are really well done! They are visually striking, as is all of icecrown citadel. They're actually kind of challenging; you can't just faceroll and expect to collect loot. Like I said last time, I still find that first boss of Halls of Reflection to be a little too punishing as a healer who can't dispel magic, but it's nice to have a challenging 5-man for a change!
A new instance always brings new casually and hardcorely acquireable loot and this was no exception.
4 of my guildies already have Quel'Delar, or some derivative of it. I'll get there eventually...
I was surprised to see people are already selling Primordial Saronite, some for as low as 3500 gold!
So some people on my server farmed trash in ICC for the Ashen Verdict Rings and supposedly some of them already have the improved versions. It's pretty easy to acquire; Marrowgar's trash can be AOE'd down really easily. Maybe if I get some free time... we'll see.
Only got one real night of progression raiding in, though I did get to go back and kill Maly on both my shaman and priest for emblems. On the one night we did in ICC, we got Marrowgar down after a little struggling on positioning issues and dps. Though our raid probably slightly undergeared for ICC, I think we'll be fine. We got in about 2 attempts on Deathwhisper, but then we had to cancel our other raiding night due to holiday party complications.
One of the most interesting meta-games that wow-enthusiasts like to play is reading too much into blue hotfixes and posts immediately following the patch. The ones that made me think a bit were:
I suppose this explains why I saw 3 Battered Hilts drop in the first 5-man I ran, and then I have only seen one since then. Le sigh.
The "inappropriately large amounts of mana" is what I had refered to a few posts back. Some druids were theorycrafting the mp5 value of this trinket to be over 400 mp5. Hehe, good stuff.
Given that we ended up going in with mostly iLvl 232 loot and we downed him after one serious night, and other bloggers were posting that they facerolled him, I was a little surprised to see this nerf so quickly. This certainly will make farming him easier, but I actually thought he was pretty decently tuned, and it was cool to have a tiny bit of a challenge on the first boss there.
Shaman changes
Not many changes for Resto, but the hot sexiness for Elemental came in the form of Fire Nova. Even when I'm healing instances, I find myself watching this cooldown and hitting it on big trash packs if no one is really in need of a heal. LOTS of fun. It's like when I spam Holy Nova for easy 5 mans on my priest. I can see it being a headache to keep up on big aoe raid pulls, as you actually have to get right into the cleave zone and drop a fire totem to get to use it, but so far I find it to be a really nice addition to the shaman arsenal. I haven't had time to tweak my elemental gear/spec (and I should, because I end up 5-manning as dps a lot), but I think my new spec may include the talent and glyph for fire nova, just because it's fun.
LFM/Random
So I think everyone is probably in agreement that the darling of patch 3.3 is not actually Icecrown Citadel, but the entirely revamped cross-realm LFG system. It is really refreshing to be able to sit down at your computer, and within 5 minutes of logging in and checking auctions, you're suddenly good to go for exactly the instance you need, or the random heroic, with pretty much no hassle.
- Nobody talks! You just zone in and start thwacking bosses and it's all good. Once or twice on the new instances I've stopped the tank and made sure that they knew a boss strat before charging in all crazy-like, but for the most part, silence is golden. And that's actually fine.
- People are surprisingly nice! I hope this lasts. The other nice our tank accidentally hit need on a boe green, and then fell over himself apologizing and made me take it.
- The one or two bad apples don't ruin it. I've had the odd unenchanted, ungemmed ret pally pulling 400 dps and generally being a noob, but the Luck of the Draw buff goes a ways in letting the other people compensate for it. When you're well geared guildie warlock is raking down 6k dps on trash packs, you can ignore the non-dpsing pally noob.
- Versatility is key! After the first day of waiting around for a while for a LFM random, a guildie switched his fury warrior to fury/prot so he could get in pugs faster, and discovered that he LOVED tanking. Similarly, I was surprised to find that I'm getting into a surprising number of groups as dps when i select heal/dps on my shaman, and given the recent ele changes, I'm having a blast!
New Instances
The new 5-mans are really well done! They are visually striking, as is all of icecrown citadel. They're actually kind of challenging; you can't just faceroll and expect to collect loot. Like I said last time, I still find that first boss of Halls of Reflection to be a little too punishing as a healer who can't dispel magic, but it's nice to have a challenging 5-man for a change!
Loot
A new instance always brings new casually and hardcorely acquireable loot and this was no exception.
4 of my guildies already have Quel'Delar, or some derivative of it. I'll get there eventually...
I was surprised to see people are already selling Primordial Saronite, some for as low as 3500 gold!
So some people on my server farmed trash in ICC for the Ashen Verdict Rings and supposedly some of them already have the improved versions. It's pretty easy to acquire; Marrowgar's trash can be AOE'd down really easily. Maybe if I get some free time... we'll see.
Raiding
Only got one real night of progression raiding in, though I did get to go back and kill Maly on both my shaman and priest for emblems. On the one night we did in ICC, we got Marrowgar down after a little struggling on positioning issues and dps. Though our raid probably slightly undergeared for ICC, I think we'll be fine. We got in about 2 attempts on Deathwhisper, but then we had to cancel our other raiding night due to holiday party complications.
Blue reactions?
One of the most interesting meta-games that wow-enthusiasts like to play is reading too much into blue hotfixes and posts immediately following the patch. The ones that made me think a bit were:
Quote from Crygil
Recent In-Game Fixes - Decmeber 2009 - 12
(Source)
- The chance for epic items to drop off trash mobs in the Frozen Halls 5 player dungeons has been reduced.
- The Ephemeral Snowflake trinket now has a very short cooldown to prevent it from restoring inappropriately large amounts of mana.
(Source)
I suppose this explains why I saw 3 Battered Hilts drop in the first 5-man I ran, and then I have only seen one since then. Le sigh.
The "inappropriately large amounts of mana" is what I had refered to a few posts back. Some druids were theorycrafting the mp5 value of this trinket to be over 400 mp5. Hehe, good stuff.
Quote from Bornakk
Recent In-Game Fixes - Decmeber 2009 - 12/14
Lord Marrowgar will now do significantly less melee damage in both the 10 player normal and 10 player heroic difficulty. (Source)
Lord Marrowgar will now do significantly less melee damage in both the 10 player normal and 10 player heroic difficulty. (Source)
Given that we ended up going in with mostly iLvl 232 loot and we downed him after one serious night, and other bloggers were posting that they facerolled him, I was a little surprised to see this nerf so quickly. This certainly will make farming him easier, but I actually thought he was pretty decently tuned, and it was cool to have a tiny bit of a challenge on the first boss there.
Friday, December 11, 2009
Who gets your innervates?
Back when Innervate was spirit-based, you had basically 2 choices. You could give your innervate to a holy priest and let them go nutty with circle of healing (pre-nerf), or you could give it to an arcane mage and let them rack up the deeps. Now that innervate is based on the casting druid's base mana pool, any mana user (probably a healer) will benefit from it.
We got our first boss down in ICC10 last night, and I found myself getting all the innervates (from a resto and feral tank druid). Now, the funny thing is, I actually think my mana regen is pretty great right now compared to a while back. I got a usable mana regen trinket, and the new 3.3 gear has been mostly itemized for haste/mp5, so I've been able to pick up mp5 along with my delicious delicious haste.
Compared to the other healers, though, shaman have the fewest mana regen tricks. Other than mana tide totem (which affects all healers really), we live and die by our own mp5 and the mana we get back from critting a Improved Water Shield bubble. Pallies have Divine Plea/Divine Illumination, Priests have Shadowfiend/Hymn of Hope/Inner Focus, Druids just don't seem to have that bad mana usage, and our resto druid is glyphed so that her innervate gives her mana back too. Right now our mage is trying out a frost spec to see how the 3.3 changes affected him, so that's not really a valid option either.
So this shaman is sitting on mountains of mana, chain healing his ass off. Woo!
We got our first boss down in ICC10 last night, and I found myself getting all the innervates (from a resto and feral tank druid). Now, the funny thing is, I actually think my mana regen is pretty great right now compared to a while back. I got a usable mana regen trinket, and the new 3.3 gear has been mostly itemized for haste/mp5, so I've been able to pick up mp5 along with my delicious delicious haste.
Compared to the other healers, though, shaman have the fewest mana regen tricks. Other than mana tide totem (which affects all healers really), we live and die by our own mp5 and the mana we get back from critting a Improved Water Shield bubble. Pallies have Divine Plea/Divine Illumination, Priests have Shadowfiend/Hymn of Hope/Inner Focus, Druids just don't seem to have that bad mana usage, and our resto druid is glyphed so that her innervate gives her mana back too. Right now our mage is trying out a frost spec to see how the 3.3 changes affected him, so that's not really a valid option either.
So this shaman is sitting on mountains of mana, chain healing his ass off. Woo!
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
Playing with the new 5-man Healer Trinket!
When I finally got on to Borean Tundra last night, some guildies and I blew through the 3 new heroic 5-mans, and I got 3 upgrades! Also, 3 Battered Hilts dropped, but I didn't roll on them because I had already gotten some phat loots, and since they were dropping so readily I figure I'll get mine soon enough.
One very interesting upgrade I got was the new trinket, the Ephemeral Snowflake. In addition to a kickass on-use haste proc, it also gives you back 11 mana every time one of your healing spells heals someone. This is incredibly interesting to me. What I've found from half an instance of testing is:
On Elitist Jerks, they've modeled it to be about 147 mp5 in ideal Chain Heal spam situations, assuming 2 riptides rolling. Obviously this would only be sustained by constant damage to be healed, and assumes perfect Chain Heal jumps and Riptide target selection. It's still not as good as either of the Solace of the Fallen trinkets from TOTGC, but it is very easy to acquire, and a lot of fun. And I just love weird trinkets.
I am dying to get it on my priest, to see if it procs on every target of CoH, every target of PoH, AND the PoH glyph hot? I can't imagine it does for that last one because that would be insane, but it's not like I really have mana probs on my priest anyway?
Speaking of which, the new 5-mans were really fun, but also REALLY healing intensive. Even with a pure guild run, we had some wipes on some bosses in there. The hardest one for me was the first boss in the Halls of Reflection, Falric. He has a really nasty AOE horrify that will do 10,000 shadow damage to all party members, and can be amplified by various debuffs he puts on you; he also has a magic debuff that can stun you if not removed in time. Like Violet Hold, if you wipe on this boss, you have to reclear the waves of trash up to him, which is non-trivial. The packs spawn all around the room and have a lot of caster mobs that have to be LoS'd to stick to your tank.
Anyway, despite some server trouble, yesterday night was great fun. I didn't get to play with the random heroic tool yet, but my guildies all said it was pleasant and easy to use. So far, 3.3 wins!
One very interesting upgrade I got was the new trinket, the Ephemeral Snowflake. In addition to a kickass on-use haste proc, it also gives you back 11 mana every time one of your healing spells heals someone. This is incredibly interesting to me. What I've found from half an instance of testing is:
- It procs off heals from hots and directly applied spells. For shaman, this is Lesser Healing Wave, Healing Wave, Riptide (including its hots), Chain Heal (including jumps)
- It does not proc from passive heals, like Healing Stream Totem, Earth Shield, Ancestral Awakening, or Earthliving Weapon.
- The proc is maximized for multi-target spells and hots. Riptide can return up to 66 mana (88 if glyphed). Chain Heal can return 44 if glyphed.
- The proc does NOT happen on overhealing, so it will only shine in heavy raid damage situations where hots are not overhealing and your AOE heals are actively healing all of their targets.
On Elitist Jerks, they've modeled it to be about 147 mp5 in ideal Chain Heal spam situations, assuming 2 riptides rolling. Obviously this would only be sustained by constant damage to be healed, and assumes perfect Chain Heal jumps and Riptide target selection. It's still not as good as either of the Solace of the Fallen trinkets from TOTGC, but it is very easy to acquire, and a lot of fun. And I just love weird trinkets.
I am dying to get it on my priest, to see if it procs on every target of CoH, every target of PoH, AND the PoH glyph hot? I can't imagine it does for that last one because that would be insane, but it's not like I really have mana probs on my priest anyway?
Speaking of which, the new 5-mans were really fun, but also REALLY healing intensive. Even with a pure guild run, we had some wipes on some bosses in there. The hardest one for me was the first boss in the Halls of Reflection, Falric. He has a really nasty AOE horrify that will do 10,000 shadow damage to all party members, and can be amplified by various debuffs he puts on you; he also has a magic debuff that can stun you if not removed in time. Like Violet Hold, if you wipe on this boss, you have to reclear the waves of trash up to him, which is non-trivial. The packs spawn all around the room and have a lot of caster mobs that have to be LoS'd to stick to your tank.
Anyway, despite some server trouble, yesterday night was great fun. I didn't get to play with the random heroic tool yet, but my guildies all said it was pleasant and easy to use. So far, 3.3 wins!
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
3.3 patch excitement!
Yigi's original predictions were correct! While we're all waiting for the servers to come up, what are you planning to do when you get on first?
As a rule, I don't like to raid on patch days- there are too many possible headaches, and it's been a while since I've been in a guild that was really competitive for server rank. I think I am definitely going to try to hit up the daily random heroic on both my shaman and my priest, and if I have time, I probably want to run the regular and heroic 5 man as many times as possible for new loots and triumphs. And remember, the MOST important patch note if you plan on going for perky pug?
Learn it, live it, love it.
I also want to get some battleground dailies in, now that they grant arena points. But there's also the Kalu'ak fishing daily...
And of course, just staring at my new totems...
PATCH IS HERE!
As a rule, I don't like to raid on patch days- there are too many possible headaches, and it's been a while since I've been in a guild that was really competitive for server rank. I think I am definitely going to try to hit up the daily random heroic on both my shaman and my priest, and if I have time, I probably want to run the regular and heroic 5 man as many times as possible for new loots and triumphs. And remember, the MOST important patch note if you plan on going for perky pug?
Quote from Zarhym
Fall of the Lich King: Patch 3.3.0 Notes
- A Player will not be placed in a group with people on his or her Ignore list.
Learn it, live it, love it.
I also want to get some battleground dailies in, now that they grant arena points. But there's also the Kalu'ak fishing daily...
And of course, just staring at my new totems...
PATCH IS HERE!
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
3.3 Release predictions
With the coming of Thanksgiving, I can't help but wonder when 3.3 will be released. The gating system and (almost) completion of testing on the PTR realms leads me to believe that it will be very soon. However, a WoW Dev DID hint a few days ago that:
Does this mean that 3.3 is still a month away?
If 3.3 dropped exactly 1 month after that announcement, it would make the release date December 22 (23rd on EU realms), which is the week of Christmas. I have a very hard time believing that Blizzard would release a major content patch, even if it isn't the full instance, that close to Christmas.
My best guess is a few weeks earlier; either next week (December 1) or the following (December 8). This will give us December to work through the first 4 bosses and adjust to any buffs/nerfs and also give Blizzard enough time to finish off the Arena season. I would think that wing two of Icecrown would then drop right after New Year's, with Arthas FINALLY coming near the end of January.
Although I cannot WAIT for 3.3 and to finally face Arthas, I have to say that in this case anticipation is half the fun.
I will leave you with my guesses:
Patch 3.3 launch: December 8th
2nd wing unlocked: January 5th
3rd wing unlocked: January 26th
Arthas unlocked: February 16th
Quote from Daath
Re: is there a mirror for 3.3.0?
We only provide mirror links for full client patches. Background downloads do not count. You have around 1+ month to download this file so we're not really worried about your speed. :) (Source)
We only provide mirror links for full client patches. Background downloads do not count. You have around 1+ month to download this file so we're not really worried about your speed. :) (Source)
Does this mean that 3.3 is still a month away?
If 3.3 dropped exactly 1 month after that announcement, it would make the release date December 22 (23rd on EU realms), which is the week of Christmas. I have a very hard time believing that Blizzard would release a major content patch, even if it isn't the full instance, that close to Christmas.
My best guess is a few weeks earlier; either next week (December 1) or the following (December 8). This will give us December to work through the first 4 bosses and adjust to any buffs/nerfs and also give Blizzard enough time to finish off the Arena season. I would think that wing two of Icecrown would then drop right after New Year's, with Arthas FINALLY coming near the end of January.
Although I cannot WAIT for 3.3 and to finally face Arthas, I have to say that in this case anticipation is half the fun.
I will leave you with my guesses:
Patch 3.3 launch: December 8th
2nd wing unlocked: January 5th
3rd wing unlocked: January 26th
Arthas unlocked: February 16th
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Icecrown Gate System Info Released
Blizzard has just announced the exact gate system they will be using for Icecrown Citadel:
Basically, this means that we'll get the Icecrown wings at 4 different times. When Patch 3.3 first drops, we will get The Lower Spire:
Lord Marrowgar
Icecrown Gunship Battle
Deathbringer Saurfang
Lady Deathwhisper
And we'll only get a chance to kill these bosses on normal mode. This will last "several weeks" until The Plagueworks is released:
Festergut
Rotface
Professor Putricide
Also of note, we will only be allowed 5 attempts per week on Professor Putricide before we are locked out.
After several more weeks, The Crimson Hall will be released:
Blood Princes
Blood Queen Lana'Thel
At this time, we'll have a total of 10 attempts for Putricide and Lana'Thel, and our attempts on Blood Princes will not be limited.
Finally, after several more weeks, we'll get The Frostwing Halls:
Valithria Dreamwalker
Sindragosa
The Lich King
And we'll get a total of 15 attempts to kill Putricide, Lana'Thal, Sindragosa, and The Lich King.
After Arthas is killed on normal mode, heroic modes will be unlocked.
The FINAL catch is that in order to get to the Lich King (heroic) on ANY given week, we will have to kill Putricide, Lana'Thel, and Sindragosa ALL on heroic. Remember that our attempts will still be limited to 15 total for the 4 bosses. Over time, the number of attempts will be increased.
This will be good for prolonging the time until The Lich King heroic is finally killed, but in what I feel is a VERY superficial way. It will be at least 6-8 weeks until the Lich King is even unlocked, and then the following week we'll finally get a chance to try hard modes. After that we will have 15 attempts a week to kill Putricide heroic and continue on to Lana'Thel, Sindragosa, and finally, Arthas.
Personally, I dislike this system, even though I don't think my guild will personally be held up too much by the gates. Whether or not I am personally affected, I feel this will kill the race for world first Arthas heroic by just making it take too long until it is released.
I will reserve my final judgment until I see how difficult each of these encounters are, but I'm not holding out a lot of hope.
Quote from Daelo
Icecrown Citadel Raid Access Progression
As we're now getting closer to the release of 3.3.0, we wanted to talk about our plans for access progression within Icecrown Citadel. Icecrown Citadel is going to be broken up into four distinct sections: The Lower Spire, Plagueworks, Crimson Hall, and Frostwing Halls. We plan on releasing these four sections of Icecrown Citadel over time and not all immediately when patch 3.3.0 goes live. At this point we can't give precise dates for these release dates as they are determined by when patch 3.3.0 goes live. Once dates are known with more certainty, I'll update the community so they can plan appropriately. (Source)
As we're now getting closer to the release of 3.3.0, we wanted to talk about our plans for access progression within Icecrown Citadel. Icecrown Citadel is going to be broken up into four distinct sections: The Lower Spire, Plagueworks, Crimson Hall, and Frostwing Halls. We plan on releasing these four sections of Icecrown Citadel over time and not all immediately when patch 3.3.0 goes live. At this point we can't give precise dates for these release dates as they are determined by when patch 3.3.0 goes live. Once dates are known with more certainty, I'll update the community so they can plan appropriately. (Source)
Lord Marrowgar
Icecrown Gunship Battle
Deathbringer Saurfang
Lady Deathwhisper
And we'll only get a chance to kill these bosses on normal mode. This will last "several weeks" until The Plagueworks is released:
Festergut
Rotface
Professor Putricide
Also of note, we will only be allowed 5 attempts per week on Professor Putricide before we are locked out.
After several more weeks, The Crimson Hall will be released:
Blood Princes
Blood Queen Lana'Thel
At this time, we'll have a total of 10 attempts for Putricide and Lana'Thel, and our attempts on Blood Princes will not be limited.
Finally, after several more weeks, we'll get The Frostwing Halls:
Valithria Dreamwalker
Sindragosa
The Lich King
And we'll get a total of 15 attempts to kill Putricide, Lana'Thal, Sindragosa, and The Lich King.
After Arthas is killed on normal mode, heroic modes will be unlocked.
The FINAL catch is that in order to get to the Lich King (heroic) on ANY given week, we will have to kill Putricide, Lana'Thel, and Sindragosa ALL on heroic. Remember that our attempts will still be limited to 15 total for the 4 bosses. Over time, the number of attempts will be increased.
This will be good for prolonging the time until The Lich King heroic is finally killed, but in what I feel is a VERY superficial way. It will be at least 6-8 weeks until the Lich King is even unlocked, and then the following week we'll finally get a chance to try hard modes. After that we will have 15 attempts a week to kill Putricide heroic and continue on to Lana'Thel, Sindragosa, and finally, Arthas.
Personally, I dislike this system, even though I don't think my guild will personally be held up too much by the gates. Whether or not I am personally affected, I feel this will kill the race for world first Arthas heroic by just making it take too long until it is released.
I will reserve my final judgment until I see how difficult each of these encounters are, but I'm not holding out a lot of hope.
Monday, November 2, 2009
The fight where HPS is DPS
Hehe... Right after I soft-whined that healing becomes less fun as the raid gets more gear, I read about this new fight that just got tested on the PTR: Valithria Dreamwalker. This fight is backwards, in that you find an NPC that is at 50%, and your raid's healers have to heal that NPC before adds can take her down. They do a lot of nasty healing mortal-strike stacking debuffs too, so the adds have to be managed carefully.
Basically, they turn the tables- in normal fights, the dpsers do the measurable work while healers support them by keeping damage off them and healing them through the unavoidable damage. In this fight it's now up to the healers to get an NPC from 50% to 100% health, while the dpsers take on a support role, and manage the adds to let you do your job.
And the achievement for killing her quickly? Healbot.
I love blizz sometimes. Cannot WAIT to see this fight on live! I think I'll make a macro "/ra cna some1 link healing meterz plz?". Yep, I'm gonna be THAT GUY.
-Zigi
Basically, they turn the tables- in normal fights, the dpsers do the measurable work while healers support them by keeping damage off them and healing them through the unavoidable damage. In this fight it's now up to the healers to get an NPC from 50% to 100% health, while the dpsers take on a support role, and manage the adds to let you do your job.
And the achievement for killing her quickly? Healbot.
I love blizz sometimes. Cannot WAIT to see this fight on live! I think I'll make a macro "/ra cna some1 link healing meterz plz?". Yep, I'm gonna be THAT GUY.
-Zigi
Friday, October 30, 2009
Healing is most fun when everyone around you is dying
OK, this is going to start off a little unfocused, but I kind of want to make a big generalization based on some somewhat unrelated items I've been thinking about lately
So where I'm going with this is; when you first encounter new content, tanking and healing is very dynamic and exciting. However, once everyone in the fight knows the encounter really well, is avoiding the predictable damage and interrupting the spells and moving out of fire, healing becomes really easy. Similarly, tanking becomes boring when you have enough stam and avoidance to survive the bosses super power move without needing to use cooldowns.
Better gear for dps means bigger numbers and more procs; better gear for tanks means less need to manage cooldowns efficiently; better gear for healers means more overhealing and standing around. As my raid members have gotten better at avoiding stray damage and my tanks have gotten better at mitigating the boss's damage; I find more and more that I am spending fight time dpsing and arranging my bags.
This is just an observation, I don't really know what the game designers could do to make it so healing and tanking stays interesting as you gear up and have the encounters memorized. Any ideas?
-Zigi
- One thing I love about the healing blogs is there is a real sense of dialogue and community between them; Jessabelle's questionaire being a recent example (and not a meme). The topic of "making healing fun" has come up a lot recently, and I've said in general that I enjoy healing and would probably be bored dpsing in endgame.
That being said, the raids I'm in are currently on a "farm" state of the instances we can comfortably clear, while we gear up for the achievements and heroics that are slightly out of our grasp.
- Blizzard recently announced that the new patch will introduce a debuff in Icecrown Citadel that will reduce your tank's dodge chance. It is basically Sunwell Radiance 2.0.
Quote from Blizzard staff
Chill of the Throne, Tanking, and You!
For Icecrown Citadel, we are implementing a spell that will affect every enemy creature in the raid. The spell, called Chill of the Throne, will allow creatures to ignore 20% of the dodge chance of their melee targets. So if a raid's main tank had 30% dodge normally, in Icecrown Citadel they will effectively have 10%.
Why are we doing this?
The high levels of tank avoidance players have obtained is making the incoming damage a tank DOES take more "spiky" than is healthy for raiding. Ideally, tanks would be receiving a relatively constant stream of damage over time. This allows healers to better plan their healing strategy, broaden their spell options, and simply give more time to react. Tanks could use their cooldowns more reactively. Instead, the current situation is that if we make a hard hitting melee boss and a tank doesn't avoid two successive swings then the tank could very well be dead in that 1-2 second window. The use of reactive defensive abilities instead becomes a methodically planned affair, healers have to spam their largest heals just in case the huge damage spike happens.
We've been trying to do a fair amount to mitigate the effect of high tank avoidance on the encounter side of things during this expansion with faster melee swings, additional melee strikes, dual wielding, narrowing the normal variance of melee swing damage, and various other tricks. There's a limit to what we can do, however. So to give us a bit of breathing room we’ve implemented Chill of the Throne. Going forward past Icecrown Citadel, we have plans to keep tank avoidance from growing so high again. (Source)
I think in general people are pissed about this because it was considered a hack back in BC, and it's a hack now; Blizzard planned gear itemization wrong, and now tanks overgear content. That being said; I agree that at current levels of tank avoidance, they would basically have to make the mobs deal so much damage that they would 2-shot a tank if it lands, or else the tanking and healing would be super boring.
So where I'm going with this is; when you first encounter new content, tanking and healing is very dynamic and exciting. However, once everyone in the fight knows the encounter really well, is avoiding the predictable damage and interrupting the spells and moving out of fire, healing becomes really easy. Similarly, tanking becomes boring when you have enough stam and avoidance to survive the bosses super power move without needing to use cooldowns.
Better gear for dps means bigger numbers and more procs; better gear for tanks means less need to manage cooldowns efficiently; better gear for healers means more overhealing and standing around. As my raid members have gotten better at avoiding stray damage and my tanks have gotten better at mitigating the boss's damage; I find more and more that I am spending fight time dpsing and arranging my bags.
This is just an observation, I don't really know what the game designers could do to make it so healing and tanking stays interesting as you gear up and have the encounters memorized. Any ideas?
-Zigi
Friday, October 16, 2009
PTR Testing Notes: Lord Marrowgar
Last night, the US PTR saw it's first Icecrown Citadel boss:
Lord Marrowgar.
I wanted to try him out personally, but by the time I was able to get on and get a raid together, he was bugged out and untestable. This is the information I have gleaned from MMO-Champion and videos and such:
This boss looks pretty simple and doesn't seem like he'll be much of a road block. I look forward to seeing more ICC bosses and hopefully even testing them myself.
~Yigi
Lord Marrowgar.
I wanted to try him out personally, but by the time I was able to get on and get a raid together, he was bugged out and untestable. This is the information I have gleaned from MMO-Champion and videos and such:
- There are 3 trash pulls up to the boss. They are all very easy and nothing that could really ever kill anyone unless a DPS pulls aggro.
- The boss has 18M health on normal 25 man, which means he should have ~5M on 10 man. This is a REALLY low amount considering Ignis has 5.6M on normal.
- He only has 4 abilities, and none of them look like anything too hard to handle.
- He has a cleave called Saber Lash which will hit the tank and an off tank for 300% weapon dmg (not 100% sure what he even hits for, so this isn't much information). As a result of this, the tanks should stack. This ability seems like what Halazzi or Koralon does.
- He will emote (not sure what the emote is as of yet), and begin to Whirlwind around the room for ~15 seconds, dealing damage and leaving a DoT on anyone he comes in contact with. This is just like what Leotheras the Blind from SSC did, and is pretty easy to avoid if everyone spreads out and melee runs out after the emote. He also drops aggro after the WW and must be taunted.
- He will target a random raid member and impale them and anyone within ~5 yards of them with an ability called Bone Spike Graveyard. This will become an attackable target (much like a Flash Freeze on Hodir) and must be killed by the ranged ASAP, as it will incapacitate whoever is impaled as well as deal 10% of total health every second.
- The last ability is Coldflame, a fire that will start at Marrowgar and head towards a random raid member, much like a Doomfire on Archimonde or Legion Flame on Lord Jaraxxas. The fire does 7000 damage every second for 3 seconds (not sure if this is a DoT it leaves, or if this only continues while standing in the fire). Also, it should be noted that 7000 dmg/sec is the 25 man number, and the 10 man will likely be lower. Basically, the targeted raid member and anyone else in the fires path should turn and run in a straight line so as to not bend the flames.
This boss looks pretty simple and doesn't seem like he'll be much of a road block. I look forward to seeing more ICC bosses and hopefully even testing them myself.
~Yigi
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