Friday, May 29, 2009

Being Frozen Blows

Or, "Raid Composition Matters".

Last night we spent two hours wiping on Hodir, getting him down to 14% on our best attempt. Seeing as last week's group succeeded in taking him down, the task at hand is to isolate the factors which caused our difficulty.

1. There were a couple of people who had never seen the fight before, and were unclear as to how the Flash Freeze/snowdrift mechanic worked. However, this was soon explained and became less of an issue. Last week's group had at least one newbie as well.

2. Ok, the elephant in the room - the types of healers we had. The Hodir fight is a ludicrous piling-on of raid damage; between frozen blows and biting cold, toasty fires notwithstanding, everyone is taking damage all the time. Now, last week's group was ideally staffed to handle this: they had a priest for various AOE heals and a big ol' stamina buff, and a shaman for, well, what shamans do. Last night, on the other hand, we had a druid and two paladins. That means very little multi-unit healing, and two healers who have to stand still to do anything.

That being the case, I applaud our group, and especially our healers, for getting as far as we did. But I must also resign myself to the fact that beyond filling a role, sometimes class still matters. At least until everyone so outgears the encounter that it doesn't anymore.

Thursday, May 28, 2009

Back in the Saddle


In which our hero returns to the villain's lair, and leaves dragging a sack of loot.


Night one of this week's Ulduar was positively overflowing with win. First, it was an official Night of Hunter Loot (TM) - there were three of us, and we each left with at least one upgrade. Myself, I finally replaced the old Nesingwary with this piece of Titan technology, not to mention these imitation tier 8 shoulders!


Even more impressive (as if anything could be more impressive than hunter loot), we scored three deathless boss kills and one o' them cruel and unusual punishments, bringing us that much closer to classy titles and rusty dragons.


Tonight - the Keepers!

Sunday, May 24, 2009

Of Snowmen, Infernal Machines, and Meta Achievements

/wave

Hello! Yes, I'm still here, just lacking much of substance to post. Some hardware hiccups kept me from raiding this week, which means, sadly, I wasn't present for our guild-first Hodir kill!

But, far from being frustrated, I'm actually very happy, and not only for the success of the group that actually took him down. I'm happy because now I can feel confident that Hodir will not be the brick wall to our Ulduar progression that it appeared he was becoming. It seems that last night's group put in several attempts on Thorim afterwards, but never quite made it. Hopefully, I'll be along to describe the situation in grisly detail next time.

And finally, it appears my little blog has reached 200 unique visitors! I hope everyone who has stopped by has gone away better informed, or at least mildly amused. Ya'll come back now, ya hear?

Monday, May 11, 2009

In Before De-claw

It was reported today that, among other things, the latest PTR build has seen the threat of Auriaya's Sentries' Savage Pounce, arguably the most difficult aspect of the fight, cut in half. I could question, as many others already have, the logic behind nerfing content that everyone already seems to be progressing through rather swiftly, but I won't do that.

Instead, I will glory in the knowledge that my Guild and I two-shot the bitch on the first night we attempted it! /flex

After a false start in which our DK tank didn't get behind his pillar quite fast enough after dropping a Death and Decay in Auriaya's path, we went on to achieve a textbook execution of the fight - no one got pounced, no Feral Defenders were left to void zone it up in inopportune places, and everyone stayed bunched up on her crotch like an eager boyfriend.

Hodir... didn't go quite as smoothly. At first, a lot of people couldn't seem to grasp the whole "don't stand in the big circ- NOW! NOW IN THE CIRCLE!" mechanic of avoiding Flash Freeze. Everyone eventually seemed to get the hang of that, but we were still taking too much damage from Frozen Blows for our healers to deal with. It seems frost-resistance gear may in fact be called for.

Overall, for a two-nights-per-week raiding guild, I am quite happy with our progress. I expect us to be knock-knock-knockin' on Yoggy's door three or four weeks from now. Or next week, if Blizzard doesn't get off of their knee-jerk nerfing kick...

Saturday, May 9, 2009

Our Raid Brings All the Dragons to The Yard

And they're like, "rawr rawr rawr rawr."

Last night's Ulduar run was an ambivalent mishmash of highs and lows. We began the night by easily clearing through Flame Leviathan and Deconstructor in order to get in as many attempts as we could stand on the Assembly of Iron. Unfortunately, we never got farther than phase two (doing the normal-difficulty progression); Overloads, and later Lightning Whirls, were just beyond our ability to keep under control. We did, however, do much better than last week, and I wish we would have tried a bit longer last night. In any case, I fully expect us to get them down next time.

But, we finally retreated, and swung back around to clear Razorscale and Ignis. Over the course of the night, we ended up earning a handful of unexpected achievements through sheer badassery. In addition to the dragon murderin' noted above, we also got

Tonight's plan is to do Kologarn again, and then continue working on new content with Auriaya and, depending on how that goes, Hodir.

Thursday, May 7, 2009

What Treachery is This?!


No, your eyes don't deceive you, that's a Beast Mastery at the bottom of that there tree!


I've decided it's high time I experience the one Hunter spec I've never tried. I leveled as Marksmanship back in vanilla WoW, and have been Survival ever since I returned during the latter part of Burning Crusade. Yes, even during its heyday, I just wasn't interested in trying Beast Mastery.


But now I feel the need for a change. I want to see just how different the BM playstyle is from that of SV. As a Survivalist, I treat my pet like a weapon: I basically fire him at the boss and let him do his thing while I focus on my shot rotation and maintaining my DoTs. Beast Masters, on the other hand (at least as my uneducated mind imagines them), treat their pets as extensions of themselves: the pet is responsible for a greater proportion of overall DPS, so keeping it alive is of much greater importance.


I purchased dual talent specialization, so my SV spec is still ready at hand for raiding (at least until I feel supremely confident with BM), but I'm excited to try my hand at some Big Red Pet wranglin'.


And seriously - Spirit Beast!

Friday, May 1, 2009

We Passed


Last night's Ulduar run was a thing of beauty.

Wednesday night's attempts (which I was unable to attend) saw the guild taking down Razorscale in two shots, but hitting a wall with Ignis. So, we went in last night expecting to work on Iggy until we got him, and then make a few attempts on XT-002 Deconstructor just to learn the fight.

Instead, we proceeded to one-shot Ignis, and deconstruct XT in three. Then we spent half a dozen attempts figuring out how best to position ourselves to deal with Kologarn's lazer vision, but he, too, did fall. In the end, we couldn't beat Moe, Larry, and Curly, but we learned the fight, what to expect, and how to deal with it (Brundir can be silenced? Are you shitting me?).

*sigh* Sometimes I wish we did progression raiding more than two days a week. I can't wait to get back in there.