World of Warcraft XIII: Even Aspects Get Nerfed

[Karoht]

Well I guess I do have to take everything with a grain of salt. I did notice one of them with the legendary staff who had 6/8 heroic achieves (not the 8/8 the guild supposedly had). Still it is better progression than anyone else on the server. I'm not surprised, realms at the bottom of progression will often attract guilds that want to be on top.

We were thinking of moving to a lower end server to try and chase some server firsts. We immediately realized some issues with this approach.

1-If you ever have to replace someone, the majority of the pool of talent is... [insert non-offensive negative term related to player skill], or the population of active raiders is dramatically low.

2-Even if you do replace someone, once you get them some achievements and gear, what is to stop them from transfering to a better server?

3-Being server first on a poorly ranked server isn't always something to brag about.

4-Being one of the few, or even possibly the only, raiding guild/s on a server, you tend to take criticism just for being one of the few/only. Any screening method you use will be viewed as steep criteria, because you are successful and others are not you will be labeled as elitist jerkwads, if you ever replace someone because they don't perform well, the small town effect basically either blows it out of proportion. Either the person removed gets labeled as a failsauce, or your guild gets labeled as elitist jerks with impossibly high standards.

5-Economy is usually borked/balanced in one of two ways. Either you have a monopoly on something, or someone else does, because there are few sellers and usually few buyers as well. In theory it does keep economies balanced, as lack of demand drives prices downward, but lack of supply can equally drive prices upward. A perfect example for this Tier of content is Epic Gems. If your guild is one of a small handful that are clearing DS every week, there won't be very many gems available to buy. You'll be more reliant on what drops (randomly), or gem prices will be high because of lack of supply.

Just some thoughts. Our guild had this whole discussion at one point. It's something we keep bringing up actually, but largely we agree that it would not be in our best interest as a progression focused guild.

[junglesteve]

Who is in the beta? I'm playing on the US PVP server gilneas.

[Karoht]

Day 1 Beta Access. Aww Yeah.
Loving my Monk. Specifically, I love my Brewmaster.
Also, I goofed off with some of the new healing stuff with Druids. I love all the movement and snares I'm going to have, in addition to healing mushrooms and Cenarion Ward. I like the idea of Healing Treants, but Treeform is just so much utility along with output.


Progression Update
So our Holy Paladin had to be rushed to the ER last night due to a major absess in her jaw. She's diabetic so any infection is a huge deal. Not to mention the bugger hurt like a bugger.
She came back, was constantly gargling with salt water, and still healed her face off. Bravo. So when she rolled a 75 on the mount at the end of the night, no one bothered to roll against her.
We took rather a while to kill H Blackhorn again, and only got about 45 minutes worth of H Spine pulls.
We made it to the third plate. We have the DPS.
We then did a test on the first plate to see if Bloodlust + Trinkets + Pots + Cooldowns would be enough to burn the tendon in one phase. We didn't, but it was crazy close. If we'd handled the grip better (people got carried away with Imaginary Bloodlust and real Bloodlust and DA NUMBARS!!!) I think we would have JUST pulled it off. The plan is to do third plate in one shot, not two.
Healing we have under control, healer mana was looking awesome (75% or better on all 3 healers after second plate, mana cooldowns either unused or just coming back up), tanking is going to need to utilize some kiting on the last plate, dispells are solid, DPS is in an excellent place... yeah, it's all looking good. I think if we manage to put 2 full days of attempts on it, we'll down it. This is exciting.

[Zherog]

I currently need about 370 chocolate to buy the mount. I have everything else I need to wrap up the achievements. With a bit better timing, I'd actually be closer to having the mount. About 10 eggs after I bought the pet, I got another from an egg. Guess I'll hold on to it until after the holiday.

I've also managed to rack up 6 (!!!) wands, two bunny ear head pieces, 3 tux jackets, 2 tux pants, 1 dress, 2 flower bunches, and two robes. I'd really prefer if the BoP stuff (such as the rabbit ears or the robe) only dropped once. At least I can sell the tux, dress, and pet. The rest is just junk once I have one.

[Expf]

At least I can sell the tux, dress, and pet.

The tux and dress are < 1g on my server right now. :p

[Leon]

The tux and dress are < 1g on my server right now. :p

The idea being to sit on these things for several months and then sell them when there is less bloat in the market

[Derjuin]

Is anyone else getting a strange "Patch is required, restart to install" screen where the character screen is supposed to be? I don't think I've seen this since installing vanilla, since most patches are released on Tuesdays and I've been keeping mine up to date...

Edit: Loader says I'm up to date, and the "restart" button opens a kind of generic Blizzard-themed downloader...am I being paranoid here? x.x

[Gryffon]

Something similar happened to me. Checking the Blizz Technical Support forums said to run the Repair tool. I did so, and everything works fine now.

[Karoht]

It means restart world of warcraft, so that it can pick up the patch from the launcher.
As for why not on tuesday, occasionally the game misses things, and the way the new hotfixing systems works, it is entirely possible to play the game (albeit, with loading issues) and not have an entire patch fully downloaded. And hotfixes go out whenever and where ever. Not all of them are documented because some of them are backend.

Yes, you are being paranoid. But that isn't always a bad thing.

[Expf]

I had this weird patch thing just today. Launcher bugged out though.

The idea being to sit on these things for several months and then sell them when there is less bloat in the market

Thing is, they go extremely slow and they aren't worth the hassle even if they sell for 100g. Considering how frequently they drop they are probably going to be around in fairly large quantities for a while after the event is over.

[Zeb The Troll]

Plugging my Saturday evening achievement run again.

At the very least we'll do OS3D (either 10 or 25) and Onyxia's Lair because they're easy and quick. I'm also looking at doing Throne of the Four Winds and possibly going back to either BoT or BWD for stuff we haven't finished there.

Up for discussion is also doing an Ulduar 10 run for both meta and non-meta achieves.

We obviously won't get all of this done, but we'll see how many show up and who wants to do what.

[Karoht]

On the 1st Tendon, mana should be pretty easy to manage. Everyone has 100% of their normal health, the Bloods spawn very slowly, and the Searing Plasma is well under control except for the first few seconds immediately after the Roll. Expect to get into the 2nd Tendon with near full mana.

Check. So far so good.

On the 2nd Tendon, the "damage" goes up during the Roll and the subsides afterwards, and then once again there is only one Corruption so the healing is still more or less the same. Spirit Link Totem is great for Rolls, but Tranquility / Barrier is decent too. The Bloods spawn somewhat faster and but their population must be kept under control -- they can't be allowed to build up and usually splash/incidental AoE from melee is enough to do that. After the 2nd Tendon is destroyed, mana should still be fairly high (>75% is ideal).

Check and Check. We've got a Resto Shaman and me (Resto Druid) and a Holy Paladin. Between all those we have Roll covered, Searing Plasma is covered. The only time we have had deaths is when Searing goes out someone right as an Amalg is blowing up. Just a healing coordination issue more than anything.

On the 3rd Tendon is where things start to get sketchy. It is advantageous to "Roll off" as many dead Bloods as possible (*) but this must be done very quickly. Bloods will pile up rapidly in this phase so every second counts here. This is where most of the mana gets spent in this fight, since everyone has lower maximum health, Bloods are Bursting frequently, and the Blood tank is taking significantly more damage.

We have our DK tank switching to his Prot Warrior, and his goal is to kite the Bloods as much as is reasonably possible. We've been told that a Bear Druid is quite good for this task as well. Either way, the plan is to avoid the bloods more than kill them. Thoughts?

(*) The idea is to soak up the "throwaway" Amalgamations with as many Bloods as possible before quickly Rolling them off, making sure they don't pulse a single-tick of their Superheated Nucleus. This to ensure that the dead Bloods don't revive themselves when they reach the hole in Deathwing's armor.

That I think is the trick we're going to have to perfect, and we'll probably be fine after that. Excellent.

Hero/BL is typically saved for either the 5th exposure burn or the 6th exposure burn (we prefer to use it about 12 sec before the 5th exposure).

Just to make sure we top everyone up properly through the amalg exploding, I'm going to recommend the same. We'll test timing next week.


So, checklist of stuff to test/make sure we're doing better for next week:
-Blood kiting
-Blood cleanup
-Bloodlust timing
Am I forgetting anything?
I am very confident we will get this if we actually get time to explore it more.


@Zeb
I might be able to make it this week. If you see me online poke me.

[Zherog]

Thing is, they go extremely slow and they aren't worth the hassle even if they sell for 100g. Considering how frequently they drop they are probably going to be around in fairly large quantities for a while after the event is over.

*shrug* For now, I have the space to store stuff in my bank. So -- again, for now -- I don't mind holding on to it for 3 months or so.

Plugging my Saturday evening achievement run again.

Tentatively interested, as always. But at the moment I have plans to run around and do the Noblegarden achieves - plant flowers, lay an egg, etc.

[Expf]

The only time we have had deaths is when Searing goes out someone right as an Amalg is blowing up. Just a healing coordination issue more than anything.

The Corruption should be killed as the Amalgamation is exploding and the AoE pulse should only tick at most twice. This ensures that there won't be any new Searing Plasmas during the Nuclear Blast and the damage is healable.

We have our DK tank switching to his Prot Warrior, and his goal is to kite the Bloods as much as is reasonably possible. We've been told that a Bear Druid is quite good for this task as well. Either way, the plan is to avoid the bloods more than kill them. Thoughts?

Block tanks are best for tanking the large packs of Bloods, so Bears and DKs are at a disadvantage for this. Bears are arguably the best Amalgamation tanks though, due to their high DPS potential and the ability to nuke Tendons in Cat Form.

Kiting is very useful to buy time towards the very end of the fight (last minute or so), but doing it too early will cause problems, since without a 3rd backup tank, the non-tanks (typically healers) can easily get wrecked by any loose, newly spawned Bloods while the Blood tank is still at the far back of the spine. Once the Blood tank starts kiting, the Amalgamation tank will have to help pick up Bloods to prevent that from happening. What we used to do at around the sixth Nuclear Blast: the Blood tank starts kiting and BoPs one of the healers before leaving, then the Amalgamation tank would start picking up the loose Bloods. If the number of Bloods is high but still healable, then consider chaining defensive cooldowns instead, and leave kiting as a last resort once all cooldowns are exhausted.

If DPS is sufficiently high and are able to splash a steady amount AoE on the Bloods it will take a fair amount of time before the Bloods start piling up (usually just before the sixth exposure). We have our Bloods tanked only a few yards from the Amalgamation tank, to allow Howling Blast, Explosive Trap, and other AoE effects to damage the Amalgamation and Bloods simultaneously. This also makes it very easy and quick to gather all 9 Blood Residues for the explosion.

[Zeb The Troll]

Pretty good raid night tonight. We got our first current tier heroic kill with Morchok and Alarra got the Deathwing mount.

Which DS boss would normally be the next one in heroic progression?

[Expf]

Which DS boss would normally be the next one in heroic progression?

Yor'sahj (mostly a coordination + healing fight) or Ultraxion (DPS check). Both are about equal in difficulty.

[Karoht]

Strong recommendation for Ultra. If you can already do the fight, odds are you can push the DPS higher and kill it fine. When abouts are you killing Ultra now? IE-On heroic we drop him at the half way point between Blue Buff and Gold Buff.
As for coordinating the soaking of Hour of Twilight, use 6 people, and just rotate two at a time. Tank1 + A, Tank2 + B, C + D, repeat. You'll probably cycle it twice.

Yorsahj on Heroic...
The easiest Combo to deal with is Purple Blue Black or Purple Blue Green. Red Yellow Black Green, you kill green and have everyone stack up, this is when healing/raid cooldowns go out.
If you have a Resto druid, get that resto druid to throw Lifebloom on a pet. This way, they can keep getting their important mana regen even with the purple debuff. Also, Efflorescence doesn't stack the purple debuff, so they can swiftmend that pet as well, and people can stand in that. That trick makes purple blue black pretty easy.
Lastly, mana. Do not pop every mana void on the same phase it drops. Save it for when you need it. On purple blue black, have a single DPS whittle the void down to about 400K. On the next combo with a blue phase, you finish off that void (AFTER the new one spawns and not a moment before) and start working on the new one.

That's the first of the tips I can offer you, everything else after that is 'as you trip over it' kind of stuff.
The best guide for it I've found has been www.icy-veins.com
There is also an addon you can get to rapidly coordinate which slime to kill, I'll get the name for you later.

H Hagara isn't too bad now. It's more of a movement/coordination check really.


EDIT: I got my livestream all figured out. I'll try and let you guys know in advance if I'm going to stream something.
I'll probably stream on Tuesday, at least for a few farm bosses. Entirely depends on how stable my connection and framerate remain while streaming. H Zonozz I might have to turn it off for, maybe not. I should be fine all the way up to H Ultraxion.

[Zeb The Troll]

Awesome, guys. Thanks.

EDIT: Ultraxion right now is going down either right before or right after the blue healing gem comes out. (It happens a little later when some idiot fire mage doesn't realize until after Ultraxion is dead that he hasn't had a weapon equipped for the entire raid to this point [including H Morchok]. *facepalm*)

[Talesin]

I should definitely stop reading this thread. Just makes me want to come back and play..

Haven't raided properly since Ulduar though and I ran a 10 man only guild. Fifth highest 10 man progression on my previous realm, EU-Daggerspine, despite having a fair few higher end 25 man guilds, not bad given we only ran for a month or two.

Also fell out of love with Arena in cata after notching up around 3-4k games in TBC, WotLK and early Cata. Not sure I can really spare the time.

[Karoht]

Awesome, guys. Thanks.

EDIT: Ultraxion right now is going down either right before or right after the blue healing gem comes out. (It happens a little later when some idiot fire mage doesn't realize until after Ultraxion is dead that he hasn't had a weapon equipped for the entire raid to this point [including H Morchok]. *facepalm*)

Okay, it sounds like your DPS is high enough. Given his new hit point total, you're probably okay with 33K as an average. Two heal it if you aren't already, and Heroic is probably a free kill for you guys.

Give H Yorsahj a few pulls and see what happens. It's also a bit of a DPS check.
My advice, when you have a purple combination of any type, make sure your Healers know whom they are healing during the phase. Tank healer really just needs to heal tanks, tank needs to drop a cooldown or two, one raid healer takes group A, one raid healer takes group B. No one else touches the tank, period.
Also, there are two ideal times for Spirit Link and Barrier. Purple slime combo (damage reduction is very good for that part) or the 'brutal' combo. Brutal is Red Green Yellow Black. Kill Green and have everyone stack, and keep your finger on the trigger of those cooldowns.

Last tip for now, Druids and Barkskin. Essentially, Barkskin will be up and available for every slime combo. Hit it about 5 seconds after the slimes touch the boss, it should be up for the worst of the damage, and it will refresh in time for next combo. Every druid should be doing this, Resto and Balance especially. Enhancement Shamans can use Shamanistic Rage at that time as well if my memory serves me correctly. Disc Priests can Pain Suppression every second combo, so it's better to save that one.

[Alarra]

Okay, it sounds like your DPS is high enough. Given his new hit point total, you're probably okay with 33K as an average. Two heal it if you aren't already, and Heroic is probably a free kill for you guys.

We're already two healing it. We're two healing most everything, except spine and madness, though we have two healed madness once. I assume we'll want 3 healers for h yorsahj?

[Karoht]

We're already two healing it. We're two healing most everything, except spine and madness, though we have two healed madness once. I assume we'll want 3 healers for h yorsahj?

Yes. It's just safer that way, too much RNG in there, especially if you get a Yellow + Black combo of any kind, which you will get at least once unless you are extremely lucky.

For all the Heroics, here's my suggestions
Morchok-3 heal or 4 heal if needed.
Yorsahj-3. Just for safety sake.
Zonozz-3. Too much raid damage and too many people spread out. How the guys in the Fatboss raid guide managed to 2 heal that on heroic before the nerfs, I have no clue. Also, bounces, 7-7-7-5, Bloodlust on 4th bounce on last phase.
Hagara-3. Too much RNG with Ice Lances and Frost Tombs
Ultraxion-2, but it does depend a bit on your healers.
Blackhorn-3 if your range DPS on the Drakes is high enough. 2 if you are behind. It's worth it just to have the capacity to blast the everloving stuffing out of those drakes faster. Faster drakes die, less fire, less swirlies to soak.
Spine-3. No question.
Madness-2 or 3, totally depends on comp and capabilities from what I hear.

[Expf]

We're already two healing it. We're two healing most everything, except spine and madness, though we have two healed madness once. I assume we'll want 3 healers for h yorsahj?

Honestly, I would vote for 2 tanking (with 2 healers) as it is more controllable than 3 healing (with 1 tank). Hell if your DPS is superb just go 2 tank and 3 heal. :P

I digress, 2 tanking allows your tank to drop the stacks midway which is a huge boon when it comes to purple (and your tank can contribute some DPS at least). There is little reason to have 3 healers because the healing is primarily limited by the purple debuff for 80% of the fight, not to mention coordinating two healers is much easier than coordinating three. The only difficult portion is when you get Red+Green+Yellow+Black, and that's when it hurts the most, but a couple raid cooldowns (your tanks should have 4pc already by now), BL/Heroism, and some personal cooldowns should be more than enough to deal with the damage. Having good DPS is essential to making sure adds, Mana Voids, and the boss itself dies in a timely manner.

Unless, of course, you have a good Blood DK tank. In which case you might as well 1 tank 2 heal because they are just that good for that fight.

How the guys in the Fatboss raid guide managed to 2 heal that on heroic before the nerfs, I have no clue.

That reminds me ... there was this exploit (was eventually fixed) that allowed the damage during Black phase to be significantly reduced, simply by leaving a certain Eye up for the remainder of the fight. I don't really know if they used this glitch, but some guilds have indeed used it to their advantage (you can dig up old forum posts about this on MMO-Champion Raid & Dungeons forums).

[Karoht]

So after some additional testing, Livestream system is pretty much idiot proof. I plan on improving it later, but for now, it is solid.

That means tonight is my first ever Livestreamed Raid! Dun Dun Daaaaaah!

We start 2230 and run until 2am Calgary time. I think Alarra and Zeb are 3-4 hours ahead of me

Warning. Vent conversations are definately for an adult/mature audience. Also, I promise NOT to sing the guild theme song. At least, not on the first stream. Imaginary Bloodlust could happen though.

[subanark]

Spent a good 2 1/2 hours on heroic zon. Still couldn't get him down (currently healing issues). We've gotten to the point where we can kill all the adds before the first ball spawns, so hopefully we are on track for dps. We might be able to do more attempts on Sunday, but we've just been having attendance problems (all it takes it 1) all month for some real solid time on attempts.

[Karoht]

So, my first ever Livestreamed Raid...

We only cleared 5/8 H, and it took us 3 hours to do that much. Why?
Attendance issue and sloppy play. Seriously, we wiped on H Yorsahj and H Ultraxion. That's incredibly odd.

Zonozz was killing us for rather a while. Healing issues I think were tripping us up, a few attempts had issues bouncing the ball (one time it bugged on Shaman totems), and one attempt had several people way out of position.

Hagara was sloppy as heck. I haven't seen us have that much trouble in a long time. It's to the point where our Hunter isn't allowed guild repairs until he survives Hagara, because he dies to Ice Wave every week. We also had a DC chain that stopped us for about 30 minutes.

As for the stream itself?
I had a few viewers. It was pretty positive. I've been in productions since I was 4 years old and I've never ever had the wicked bad stage fright before. I actually couldn't tell if the nervousness I had prior to streaming was stage fright or excitement.
Then the patch wouldn't download, 30 minutes to show time. Panic!
Then I fixed it. Great.
Then we had missing people, and didn't actually get underway until 2300.

But, quality was okay, sound was okay, no major lag on my end. I have some technical issues to sort out, namely mic sensitivity and volume but otherwise it was problem free on my end.
I'll probably be streaming every tuesday, at least until MoP. When MoP comes I'll try and stream just about everything, and I'll definitely be streaming Diablo 3 as much as possible. We'll see how well that goes.
Also, Xsplit is an excellent piece of software for streaming, worth every penny, and it is actually rather cheap. Just saying.

Next project, get the Laptop up and running, use the Laptop to capture the screen and stream it, hopefully that will take the load off of the desktop, and give me a use for the Laptop that is otherwise collecting dust.

[Alarra]

What's the link to watch that?

[Karoht]

www.livestream.com/karoht

I have last night's stuff up, but you'll have large gaps to fast forward.

[subanark]

We ended up having enough people for heroic Zon toady. We got him to around 20ish% but things fell apart at the end (we had someone DC and bounce the ball an extra time). The healers are still having issues, and we can't consistently get to any phase, sometimes we die before the first black, others we make it though 3. Hopefully everyone will be on tomorrow and we can see if we can push the deeps to finish him off.

Personally I respeced out of earthquake for 4% more damage reduction for this fight. Also, one of the mages is going to reforge into arcane for that 3% damage boost to the raid.

[Karoht]

With the Debuff, it is possible to go 5-7-7-5 now, if that helps ease things along. Or 7-7-5-5. If you think your tank and healers can deal with it, 9-5-5-5 is supposedly doable.


H Blackhorn is a really annoying fight when you have a DPS sub in for tanking duty, and have 2 pug DPS, none of the above who know what they are doing. Props to our DPS who switched to tank, the other two have no excuse, but man that was 4 hours of pounding our heads on a boss we've killed a few times already. I could have done without that.


So in preparation for MoP and this battleground which is supposed to resemble DotA, I went out to try and figure out what that actually meant.
League of Legends is Free to Play, it's a DotA clone, and even if all you do is go through the tutorial you will grasp the concept. It is extremely simple even for those who have never ever played an RTS. I wouldn't even really call it an RTS anymore either.
After a few games of that, I really do think that this Battleground will hook me back into PvP. I'm curious how they are going to emulate certain aspects such as the store (if the 'store' works the same way but with purchases like buffs and special unit strikes, this could bring back all of my favorite parts of Alterac Valley) and neutral camps/quests, but ultimately I am really looking forward to this. Can't wait to see testing for it.
If it's a 5 person battleground (League of Legends uses 5 heroes per side), that could be great for Arena teams looking for something to do together other than 5v5 Arena, and I think a 10 person map would be just nuts. Combined with all the new movement/snare stuff, this could just get crazy.