Sunday, September 27, 2009

Gang of Miscreants Declare God is Dead!


When reached for comment, Friedrich Nietzsche said "told you so!"


Yes, after eight weeks, and at least as many hours, worth of attempts, The Pig and Whistle Society of Kirin Tor has defeated the Old God of Death!


...I was not present for this raid. FUCKING HEADACHES.


But nonetheless! I am profoundly proud of my guild. Where some might have jumped ship in frustration, we went back, week after week, until we got it right. And it never became a matter of banging our heads against a wall; every week saw marked progress. We went from wiping on phase 1, to wiping due to missing the brain-room timer, to making it well into phase 3, until finally... we just didn't wipe at all.


Now, on to hard modes!

Thursday, September 24, 2009

You Are Going to DPS Very, Very Slowly...

Some might call me a masochist, but sometimes it feels like a victory just isn't worth claiming unless it's been preceded by hours of futile, mind-numbing failure.

That's what we encountered in Onyxia redux Tuesday night. We had enough interest to put together two 10-man raids, each led by someone who was at least familiar with the encounter at level 60. And, truth be told, our strategy seemed sound: phase 1, burn the dragon while standing well away from her huge ass; phase 2, group up around two tanks to AOE the whelps, dodge Taco Breath, and kill the Guards from range to avoid their Blast Nova; phase 3, burn the dragon while positioning ourselves so as to avoid being feared into the pits-of-many-whelps. E-Z.

Only, not. We spent three hours regularly dieing at the phase 2 -> 3 transition. From my perspective, it seemed that we were losing too many people to Blast Novas and Deep Breaths. This led to an overabundance of adds due to lack of DPS, or, when a healer or tank was the victim, well, we know what happens then. Eventually, we just had to give up.

The odd thing is, when we gave it another shot last night, with many of the same people from Tuesday and a basically identical strategy, we took her down in one try. The only difference I could detect was perhaps a marginal increase in DPS over night one, as the Guards seemed to be dispatched slightly more cleanly than before.

Anyway, after banging our heads against a wall all night, victory was that much more glorious once we found the door. Now, mount farming!

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

How I Learned to Stop Worrying

Ever since the Blizzcon '09 announcement that, in Cataclysm, "focus" will be replacing mana as the resource that Hunter abilities draw upon, there has been much speculation and commentary in the Hunter blogging community about what this will mean for our shot sequences, talent choices, and overall DPS. As with most changes that have ever been announced for this game, the reaction has been overwhelmingly negative.

Now, I'm not about to say I'm totally confident that the developers will be able to implement this change in a balanced way right off the bat, but there are a few things I'm keeping in mind that have kept me firmly at "wait and see" on the RAINBOWOFOPTIMISM <--> SLAPINTHEFACEWHERE'SMYPONY spectrum.

First, the majority of complaints about the proposed system are based upon the assumption that the key abilities of each talent tree (i.e., Explosive Shot, Chimera, etc.) and their relative power levels will remain the same as they currently are, and we will be dependant upon the sub-optimal Steady Shot for focus regeneration. However, it has been stated that talent trees will be massively overhauled, as part of a trimming of passive-bonus talents. So, why should we assume that the primary abilities we have now will remain as such? And with five more levels and a tree-pruning, I can easily see room for re-scaling attack-power coefficients, to say nothing of the possibility of new abilities. Steady shot will likely remain a 1x or 2x filler shot, only now it will be recovering focus rather than killing time during cooldowns.

Now, admittedly, I generally welcome changes to the game; the opportunity to learn and optimize under a new set of conditions is one of the things that keeps the game interesting for me. At the same time, I can see that a change of this magnitude won't appeal to everyone; the same kind of playstyle preferences that lead players to choose Beast Mastery or Survival or Marksmanship will likely divide those who prefered being cooldown-constrained to being resource-constrained.

But I don't think focus is going to sound the death knell of the class.

Monday, September 7, 2009

Inching Ever Onward

Saturday night saw us take on (and one-shot!) the last boss in ToC10, Anub'arak. Like most of the Trial's encounters, this one incorporated some interesting mechanics, but was not a significant challenge. Ice bubbles were popped, adds were dragged onto frost patches, and the peasants rejoiced.

Immediately afterward, we decided to try Heroic mode, just to guage our prospects. It was established fairly quickly that we are probably slightly undergeared (being in mostly normal Uld10 gear), and will have to better coordinate healing assignments (e.g., more than a single healer paying attention to the tank).

After a couple shots at Heroic Northrend Beasts, we headed back to the Ulduar run we'd begun earlier in the week, with only Yogg left stand- er, floating. We spent quite some time working on the fight, and by the end of the night had mastered phase 1, and gotten well into phase 2. The group assigned to stay outside Yogg's head gradually got the hang of sticking together as we moved around the room to take down tentacles. I wasn't with the portal group, but there were apparently a few timing issues with people getting out before going insane. There are few things so terrifying as staring down an angry moonkin.

The tentative plan for this week is to utilize the raid lockout extension, and then lock ourselves in Yogg's room until he surrenders <_<