World of Warcraft XIII: Even Aspects Get Nerfed

[Karoht]

*DING* SHARE THE PAIN!
*DING* OVER 9000

Nice.

[Expf]

The new talents look exciting -- I'm really glad they mentioned what spells Symbiosis will give because I would very much like to have a Hand of Sacrifice :P

Originally Posted by Karoht

Spent the rest of the night on H Zonozz. Regular phase isn't killing us, though it is bloody hard to heal even with 3 healers. Dispelling the debuff isn't the problem. Black phase. Many tentacles, all spread out so we have to heal everyone spread out. As you kill tentacles, the raid damage goes down sharply which is the only saving grace, around 40K down to 16k in short order, but those first few ticks are just brutal. We aren't getting much uptime on the boss during the black phase though.
We need to survive 3 black phases, then bloodlust and kill him on the 4th phase. We were pretty close to surviving the 3rd, which is actually quite a bit of progress. Apparently, if we get him below 50m health before 4th black phase, he'll die in that black phase when we pop 'lust and burn him.

Healing Cooldowns. My Tranquility only hits 3 people during black phase. My Tree Form does actually keep up with the damage rather well. Our Shaman's Life Link won't do us any good for Black phase.

If it helps, stack up for roughly 15 sec (this is the time when we blow raid CDs) around the giant tentacle to ease the initial healing, and then once it dies the raid can spread out more and more as the adds die. We have our DPS split into 3 groups, one stays with boss and cleaves down the big tentacle passively, the other two work on killing adds in two opposite directions (clockwise and counterclockwise), with the ranged mostly on the right side (since there's more adds and more distance to run). One healer is mainly responsible for healing each group.

[Karoht]

Yeah, we made some changes like that. We're making life somewhat easier, problem is that the rest of the tentacles/eyestalks aren't dying fast enough now. We spent an hour, then cleared down. Sunday = Firelands Farm.

H Ultra this week was uber smooth. Dead at 5:10. At the 5 minute mark exactly, he was only at 6 million health. We had him sub 20% mark (excute mark) rather early. I didn't check the logs but I'm expecting to see awesome numbers this week, made only better next week when one of our Warlocks becomes Dragonswrath wielder #2 in our raid group.
But, sadly, we're losing a tank this week. Very little notice too. He took a job with crappy hours, so now we've got to recruit a tank with a solid DPS off-spec. Which comes as rather an annoyance, both to the impact of our group, and the fact we only got both our tanks into their 4pc sets 2 weeks ago. Our Rogue and our Mage were both passing on gear to make sure that happened for this Druid tank. Oh well.

If you're a non-shield tank who's gone 8/8 on Area 52, Horde side, and have a decent DPS off-spec we would love to have you. 385+ ilevel, we only use 2 tanks for H Morchok, H Ultraxion, Blackhorn, and Madness.


@Deathwing/Chromatic achievement
We have 2 more platforms to go. Starting with Blue is the hardest, Yellow isn't that hard so long as you go Yellow Red Green Blue. This means you have Dream up for Elementium Bolt on Red and Green platform, and you aren't doing anything all that different on Blue. When we start on Blue, we're going Blue Green Yellow Red.


@Chromatic Dragon
Isn't it funny how Nefarion was trying to make a Chromatic Flight for ages and 'failed.' Yet Thrall and the Aspects fiddle with the Dragon Soul for a bit, and they appear to make something that looks like one in a matter of moments. The true Chromatic Dragon.
I wonder if the Titans predicted the Aspects uniting as such.
I wonder if we will actually see another Chromatic Dragon in Mists of Pandaria.

[GolemsVoice]

Isn't it funny how Nefarion was trying to make a Chromatic Flight for ages and 'failed.' Yet Thrall and the Aspects fiddle with the Dragon Soul for a bit, and they appear to make something that looks like one in a matter of moments. The true Chromatic Dragon.
I wonder if the Titans predicted the Aspects uniting as such.

It would be pretty silly of them not to forsee this, after all, they basically left them all together as guardians of the world. But on the other hand, they didn't conceive of the idea that one could turn evil.

And as for the chromatic dragon: the power of LOVE/FRIENDSHIP. Deathwing had all, but he missed... heart. Awwww.

[Karoht]

Well, there are a few things I want to do before Cata ends now:
-T11 Heroics and Meta
-Kill Sinestra
-T12 Meta
-Kill H Ragnaros
-T13 Heroics -5/8 minimum, and Meta.
-I have 2 from Naxx I would like to finish, and then I would have all of the "Glory of ..." Achievements.
-Score myself a full set of PvP gear, gain myself a minimum of 1000 Conquest Points and 50K Honorable Kills
-"Long Strange Trip" needs to be finished. I just need School of Hard Knocks. Hopefully I'll have my PvP set by Children's Week.

[Zeb The Troll]

Originally Posted by Karoht

Well, there are a few things I want to do before Cata ends now:
-T11 Heroics and Meta
-Kill Sinestra
-T12 Meta
-Kill H Ragnaros
-T13 Heroics -5/8 minimum, and Meta.
-I have 2 from Naxx I would like to finish, and then I would have all of the "Glory of ..." Achievements.
-Score myself a full set of PvP gear, gain myself a minimum of 1000 Conquest Points and 50K Honorable Kills
-"Long Strange Trip" needs to be finished. I just need School of Hard Knocks. Hopefully I'll have my PvP set by Children's Week.

While I'd like to have all of those things done (except the PvP, don't care so much about that), I'm not hopeful about it being that soon. My most likely(?) will be Long Strange Trip. Alarra and I are on a good pace to have that be our only remaining achievement necessary come Children's Week. (Actually, Noble Garden and Children's Week are the only two meta's we don't have, and that's only because we didn't do Noble Garden last year.)

[Dublock]

If you want some easy HK and willing to put up with (almost) everyone on your own team to hate you, play in BGs during Children's Week. The first time I did this holiday I got my school of hard knocks down quickly and I was in AV and I was doing what I was suppose to, I got there first, capped it with my orphan out, got the achievement and killed the incoming Allies to prevent cap. Other horde members came and starting cursing and yelling at me for killing them. I said to myself some word and left. How dare I try to win a BG during some event.

I hate that achievement because it makes pvpers hate it for reasons above, pvers hate it because it forces them to pvp (oh well deal with it lol) and the achievement doesn't even always help to win the BG like EoTS. Oh and I am primarily a pver btw :P

Noble garden is easy if my memory serves me right. Fun, I love the spring rabbits mini pets and when you get two together :p

After getting a Long strange trip I am never getting it again (and hopefully in Mists I don't have to :P)

[Alarra]

My goals before MoP comes out:
- Get Alyarra (pally) and Ashrin (mage) to 85.
- Finish Long, strange, trip.
- Finish the Ulduar (need 1 on 10m and 3 on 25) and Naxx acheivs for Glory to..
- Do t11 and t12 heroics, except Rags, cause frankly, I don't think that's going to happen.
- Get Zeb and Taz their legendary staffs

[Karoht]

Originally Posted by Dublock

After getting a Long strange trip I am never getting it again (and hopefully in Mists I don't have to :P)

As they proved with Loremaster, they'll just grandfather it if they end up changing the Meta.
IE-They add new holiday. Yes, the meta is different, but you still count as having it complete. You complete the new holiday at your own leisure.
Or they'll make the old one a Feat of Strength, and you'll just have lots of credit towards the new one (IE-12/13 of the required achievements), but that is unlikely.

[Dublock]

Thats not what I meant, sorry. I meant I am not going to do them on any alts and hopefully when they share achievements across toons I will get the benefit on my 2 level 85s. Although I doubt I'll get master flying, oh well lol.

[Alarra]

Originally Posted by Dublock

Noble garden is easy if my memory serves me right. Fun, I love the spring rabbits mini pets and when you get two together :p

Yeah, it was a matter of not being in town for much of the event last year, rather than anything difficulty related that resulted in us not doing it.

[TheEmerged]

I posted these on the first page, but here's some updates.

Current pre-Mists goals

1> Kill Deathwing in LFR on main\mage
2> Tank all three "Hour Of Twilight" 5-man heroics on the druid.
3> Insert here "ultimate goal" for the hunter\horde alt - toying with "get all the special pets from Firelands"
4> "Re-earn" Loremaster on the LFR main by doing the old-world quest achievements that changed for Cata.
5> 50 exalted reps on the main (sitting at 49 right now with Hydraxian well into Reverred and Netherdrake early in Friendly).
6> Maxed out alchemy on the priest (currently 71 & maxed for WotLK levels).
7> Cataclysmically Epic on the druid in his Feral set
8> Cataclysmically Superior on the hunter (shy only the chest piece, and I'm holding out for the VP one).
9> 85th level w/maxed out blacksmithing on the paladin (currently 80).
10> 85th level w/ maxed out herb & mining on the DK\bank alt (currently 80).
11> Maxed engineering on the hunter - DONE, thanks primarily to the DMF quest.
12> Play through the "newbie" quests for every race I haven't already done during Cata (troll, tauren, forsaken, dwarf, gnome, night elf).
13> Cataclysmically Epic on main\mage (still lack the shoulder)
14> "Earned" Cataclysmically Superior on the druid (he got it between his healing & feral sets before I dropped the healspec, I want this on pure Feral) -- DONE!

X> See if I can squeeze some extra levels into the long-forgotten warrior & rogue.

Given the way I'm lost to Skyrim right now, X isn't looking too good.

[GolemsVoice]

1> Kill Deathwing in LFR on main\mage

That should be as easy as just clicking the LFR and getting into the group. You might have to bring a lot of patience, but it's amazing what stubborn idiocy can achieve.

[TheEmerged]

Originally Posted by GolemsVoice

That should be as easy as just clicking the LFR and getting into the group. You might have to bring a lot of patience, but it's amazing what stubborn idiocy can achieve.

Trust me, my picture ought to be next to the phrase "Sunk Cost Fallacy" on TV Tropes. The difficulty is getting the ~4 hour uninterrupted playtime window, which isn't looking good for at least 3 weeks even if I wasn't semi-lost to Skyrim right now.

[Zeb The Troll]

Four hours? We just did it tonight with our guildies (10 + 2 RealID friends) and we did each half in under an hour. It really shouldn't be taking that long to get it done these days.

Also, since we found lots of conflicting things about what's now allowed with RealID friends, we confirmed that we can also do non-LFR raids with RealID friends. Meaning we got a couple of RealID friends in group, converted to a raid, and summoned them to the inside entrance of Firelands. I don't know if there are any limitations on what can be done this way, but I'm excited about the possibilities!

Maybe we should schedule something with Playgrounders? Achievement runs for older content or something?

[The Linker]

That's... what? We very nearly did exactly that, Zeb. It was just canceled because the patch was postponed. We were all set to run Icecrown Citadel (or was it Black Temple?). Don't you remember?

It's certainly not just for LFR. It's for every instance and raid in the game except for the current tier. I actually didn't even know you could do LFR with it -- I assumed that was covered in 'current tier'.

[Alarra]

Speaking of doing stuff with playgrounders.... We're veeeeery lacking in healers for our Wednesday night firelands raid next week. Anyone interested in coming along?

[TheEmerged]

Originally Posted by Zeb The Troll

Four hours? We just did it tonight with our guildies (10 + 2 RealID friends) and we did each half in under an hour. It really shouldn't be taking that long to get it done these days.

Zeb, it took me nearly 45 minutes just to get *in* the one time I've tried it. Small sample size and all that, I know, but I need to plan for what I've seen on my server.

[Expf]

Originally Posted by TheEmerged

Zeb, it took me nearly 45 minutes just to get *in* the one time I've tried it. Small sample size and all that, I know, but I need to plan for what I've seen on my server.

Try bribing a healer friend to help you shorten the queue. :)

[Zeb The Troll]

Originally Posted by The Linker

That's... what? We very nearly did exactly that, Zeb. It was just canceled because the patch was postponed. We were all set to run Icecrown Citadel (or was it Black Temple?). Don't you remember?

Yes, I was just throwing it back out there since it seemed to have been forgotten. Didn't mean to make it sound like it was my idea.

[Skios]

A bit late to the party, but here are my pre-MoP goals:

- At least Siege HC
- Firelands HC
- See all T11 raid content at least once
- At least ilevel 395 on my ret gear, 400 on prot
- 50 mounts
- Build my own chopper
- Glory of the Ulduar Raider
- Get my shaman up to 85 and cataclysmically epic geared in at least one spec (probably resto)
- Even better looking transmog sets

Speaking of my shaman, I'm at level 73 now. It's only the second time I'm seeing this content, but the early Wrath dungeons are already feeling like some sort of purgatory. The healing is ridiculously easy. If the tank is even remotely competent, it pretty much amounts to applying Earth Shield and going downstairs to make a sandwich. I've gotten so bored with it that I've actually ground out the JP and GP for a full set of agility heirlooms so I can go enhancement to break the monotony. At least queueing for randoms won't get me Utgarde Keep anymore.

[Zeb The Troll]

Soooooo close. We got Madness down to 9M health tonight. I know for many of you that doesn't sound like much, but Alarra and I had never seen the final phase of Madness on Normal mode before.

We have a rogue as our raid leader on this one, so even discussing extending the lockout isn't gonna happen for a bit. Not that I've ever seen one of our raids decide to extend the lockout for any reason any way.

[Fleeing Coward]

The 9 mill attempt here, we wiped at 12:33 so we're well within the berserk timer. I'm thinking maybe we can afford to go with 2 tanks with abit more gear/practice since that spike from the 2 Elementium Terrors at the end felt almost unhealable - currently doing it with 2 heals, 1 tank outside of Ultraxion and Morchok.

2 healing the whole dungeon does make things more interesting though since I actually oom'd for the first time in a long time for Madness at the end there and I came close to ooming on Spine (the first 6 bosses still feel as easy if not easier than Firelands excluding Rags )

[Expf]

My (somewhat optimistic) goals before Mists, listed in rough order of likelihood:
1. Stock up plenty of gold for the new expansion, since I'm likely to burn a lot of it leveling professions. I'm not giving myself a specific number though. :)
2. Do Loremaster. Tedious, and with how busy I am it'll probably have to wait until summer.
3. Finish grinding the remaining few BC reps (again, so tedious) and Hydraxian too.
4. Farm gear for my Holy PvP paladin so I can do arenas with my friends.
5. Finish off the remaining meta achievements in DS (once everybody gets all the loot they wanted of course).
6. Finish off the bosses in T11 that I never got to kill when it was relevant (Nef/Conclave/A'A/Council) to complete the meta.
7. Join -- or if I feel masochistic, "lead" -- some pug raids to finish off my remaining Wrath achievements. A bit easier now that we have cross-realm raiding.
8. Farm a complete, purple Dark Phoenix look-alike set on my druid. Unlikely due low drop rate (also no guarantees if we would do FL every week).
9. Get phase 2 daggers on my alt rogue by pugging DS. Not holding my breath for this to happen, since it's so difficult to find a group without a rogue these days.

Originally Posted by Fleeing Coward

2 healing the whole dungeon does make things more interesting though since I actually oom'd for the first time in a long time for Madness at the end there and I came close to ooming on Spine (the first 6 bosses still feel as easy if not easier than Firelands excluding Rags )

Is there a reason why you guys are 2 healing Madness? (Lack of 3rd healer?) It's a lot easier done with 1 tank + 3 heal (or 2 tank + 3 heal).

Originally Posted by Skios

At least queueing for randoms won't get me Utgarde Keep anymore.

See, that's kinda the problem with low level dungeons. Most of the time there's only one or two that are level-appropriate, so one could end up getting BRDs back-to-back, or Maraudon (*shudder*).

[The Linker]

Originally Posted by Expf

See, that's kinda the problem with low level dungeons. Most of the time there's only one or two that are level-appropriate, so one could end up getting BRDs back-to-back, or Maraudon (*shudder*).

Are those so bad now that they're split into different sections?

[Zeb The Troll]

Originally Posted by Expf

Is there a reason why you guys are 2 healing Madness? (Lack of 3rd healer?) It's a lot easier done with 1 tank + 3 heal (or 2 tank + 3 heal).

We weren't given an explanation why we two healed the raid at all. Alarra said "Are we two healing this?" and the lead said "That's the plan." It's not for lack of healers either. The shaman with us was enhancement specced for this run, but is a strong healer too. He could easily have switched before the fight.

[Fleeing Coward]

Originally Posted by Zeb The Troll

We weren't given an explanation why we two healed the raid at all. Alarra said "Are we two healing this?" and the lead said "That's the plan." It's not for lack of healers either. The shaman with us was enhancement specced for this run, but is a strong healer too. He could easily have switched before the fight.

We have 4 healer choices actually (our balance druid's better at healing than dpsing too) and I think that's where the problem lies - while their dps isn't terrible, our balance druid and shaman averaged about 5-6k dps less than our 4 specialist DPS during our last run because they havn't spent as long working on their dps set and rotations.

Even though the lead didn't say it, the main reason we stuck with 2 healers was to meet the dps reqs. I mean we barely managed to kill the tendons in 1 shot on Spine with 2 healers plus a single tank and we'd lose 33k dps on Madness if we went with 3 healers which would probably mean the berserk timer beats us.

That's why I'm thinking we can go with 2 heals, 2 tanks on Madness as that won't cost us as much DPS as going 3 heals, 1 tank.

[Skios]

For our first Madness kill, we went with two tanks (druid and paladin) and three healers (two shamans and a priest). The druid's gear is currently gemmed for stamina (agi/sta gems in red sockets, pure sta in blue). Even with the three healer setup, it took us a very long time to figure out how to minimize damage when the terrors were up. I think I already described it elsewhere in the post, but basically what we ended up doing was having the druid take both terrors first, holding them for three seconds while cycling through his CD, then having me take them for the remainder while doing the same.

[Karoht]

Originally Posted by TheEmerged

Trust me, my picture ought to be next to the phrase "Sunk Cost Fallacy" on TV Tropes. The difficulty is getting the ~4 hour uninterrupted playtime window, which isn't looking good for at least 3 weeks even if I wasn't semi-lost to Skyrim right now.

We clear out 8 bosses in 2 hours on normal mode, LFR only takes longer than 2 hours if the group is especially bad.

Originally Posted by TheEmerged

Zeb, it took me nearly 45 minutes just to get *in* the one time I've tried it. Small sample size and all that, I know, but I need to plan for what I've seen on my server.

The LFR queue is game-wide not server wide. LFR and LFD queues have been game wide for quite a while now.

Originally Posted by Fleeing Coward

The 9 mill attempt here, we wiped at 12:33 so we're well within the berserk timer. I'm thinking maybe we can afford to go with 2 tanks with abit more gear/practice since that spike from the 2 Elementium Terrors at the end felt almost unhealable - currently doing it with 2 heals, 1 tank outside of Ultraxion and Morchok.

2 healing the whole dungeon does make things more interesting though since I actually oom'd for the first time in a long time for Madness at the end there and I came close to ooming on Spine (the first 6 bosses still feel as easy if not easier than Firelands excluding Rags )

As someone who currently 2-heals Madness, there are advantages and disadvantages.
Advantage:
-Higher DPS means shorter phases, quicker burn on the little adds, last phase goes quick, etc.
-Tentacles die faster, meaning less raid damage for most parts of the fight, elementium bolts die faster, etc.
-DPS has less target swapping to do overall.
Disadvantage:
-More drain on healer mana
-More susceptable to 'spikey' damage. Like from Impale for example, or the Elementium Bolt exploding, or shrapnel, or the terrors.
-Less defensive cooldowns.

Overall, if you are wiping on Madness and are 2-healing and 1-tanking it, switch up to 3-heal 2-tank. You'll get your kill.


Permission to critique your World of Logs entry?

[Zeb The Troll]

Originally Posted by Fleeing Coward

We have 4 healer choices actually (our balance druid's better at healing than dpsing too) and I think that's where the problem lies - while their dps isn't terrible, our balance druid and shaman averaged about 5-6k dps less than our 4 specialist DPS during our last run because they havn't spent as long working on their dps set and rotations.

Even though the lead didn't say it, the main reason we stuck with 2 healers was to meet the dps reqs. I mean we barely managed to kill the tendons in 1 shot on Spine with 2 healers plus a single tank and we'd lose 33k dps on Madness if we went with 3 healers which would probably mean the berserk timer beats us.

That's why I'm thinking we can go with 2 heals, 2 tanks on Madness as that won't cost us as much DPS as going 3 heals, 1 tank.

I see. I didn't realize we were so narrowly making the DPS requirements. That doesn't seem right to me though. Our gear level isn't the issue. That means that if we're not getting it, it's because we're not as good at being DPS as we think we are. (Reviewing the logs, I'm definitely not as good as I thought I was. Time to do more research on why, I guess.)

Originally Posted by Karoht

Permission to critique your World of Logs entry?

By all means. If nothing else, it's a little overwhelming and I'm not sure what I should be looking at for my part.