It's been a few months since Mists of Pandaria has been released and I haven't updated at all. I know, blasphemy. Work has been sapping the life out of me lately. Same old song and dance and all that.
So, how have things been, you ask? Pretty good. I took four days off of work when MoP first dropped. I leveled with Maralia from my guild. She's a bit less experienced than I am, so some of the leveling took a bit longer than others, but we were still within the first 5 in the guild who hit max level.
Then started the reputation grind. I can't even put into words how draining that's been. I haven't gotten Shado-pan or the August Celestials to exalted yet, but I mainly just wanted to unlock all the valor point gear. Then it was just dungeons, dungeons, dungeons.
The first week of raiding went rather poorly and, to be honest, we haven't fully recovered from that abysmal showing. It seemed like not enough of us took gearing up seriously. Many were still undergeared by the first raid night. This just equated to much fail and we didn't down the Stone Guard on the first night. In fact, it wasn't until the second week of raiding that we finally did.
Raiding was pretty tough for the first few weeks. But as people started to replace their blues with shiny purples, it became easier and easier. LFR has been a decent place to get upgrades as well, and it isn't nearly as painful as it was last tier. Eventually we cleared Mogu'shan Vaults and had a decent progression standing on the server. We had issues beating the enrage timer on Gara'jal for a bit, so that slowed us down. Elegon, like with most guilds, gave us a lot of problems as well. But we managed to clear that raid just as Heart of Fear was going live.
The week it did, we manged to clear Mogu'shan Vaults in one night. Practically one-shot every fight. Always a good sign when you can do that! Imperial Vizier Zor'lok proved to be quite difficult for us. Apparently moving to stay alive is difficult for a lot of people *rolls eyes*. For the first few nights of progression on him, I was the tank for the fight with our paladin tank going holy. We ended up switching this up since her gear in holy was a bit low and, despite my dps gear not being great, I could still pull numbers comparable to the rest of the raid. A night or two with this change and he fell.
On to Blade Lord Ta'yak. Here we hit his enrage timer as well. Very frustrating when stuff like that happens. People had a hard time avoiding tornadoes as well in his last phase. Pretty much the same three people reached each side with no problem every time. Eventually we tried a method where we'd use the side walls in phase 2 that would push you back to get to the other side before he flew over to that one when he hit 10%. Usually we'd do this around 11% or so and leave one dps over there to ensure that he'd get to the required health percentage. It didn't take many attempts using this method until we got him.
Garalon proved to be the most difficult boss for us so far. Kept hitting the enrage timer on this one as well. It becomes pretty obvious what our issue is when we keep hitting enrages. On most bosses in MSV (excluding Elegon), we wiped around 20-30 times before our first kill. We finally managed to kill Garalon last night, after 50+ wipes. To top it off, we killed him as he was enraging. So we all ended up dead, but so was he. I ended up switching to dps spec and gear with a tank trinket equipped just for added health. Our druid healer would pop Heart of the Wild at the beginning of the fight so she could do extra damage (usually 3-4 million). Obviously we couldn't have beaten him without it!
To be honest, I'm a little disappointed with our showing so far this tier. I know I'm not the only one. We have some really good players in this group, and I consider a great many of them my friends. But sometimes it's just depressing when people aren't performing as well as they could be or, even worse, making the same mistakes again and again. I'm not talking about perfection here, we are a pretty casual guild after all. Perhaps I'm a bit more obsessive about things than others. I just wish that more people in the guild would put in as much effort as a few of us do.
Tuesday, November 20, 2012
Tuesday, August 14, 2012
Game Design and Difficulty (Then VS Now)
With Cataclysm coming to an end and Mists of Pandaria to be released in a little over a month, things have gotten pretty dull lately. My guildmates and I have been trying to keep occupied by running some older content for achievements, transmog, even just for nostalgia's sake. Ideally I'd like to get all raid/dungeon achievements for Cataclysm done, but not enough people want to go back to tier 11 and 12 to finish a few things up.
During this downtime, I've spent a lot of it reading the official WoW forums as well as the forums over at MMO Champ. What I've been reading has been a broken record of QQ from the community. Comments of "Vanilla was better than Cataclysm" and "the game is too easy now" are extremely common. Well with so many people saying these things, they must be true, right?
Vanilla WoW: The Pillar of Game Design or a Lesson in Fake Difficulty
I really don't think so. As Shanthi and I have discussed recently, vanilla WoW really only seemed to be difficult. See, things weren't very accessible. You had to go on these long attunement quests through multiple dungeons and raids and travel all over Azeroth to complete even a small part of the quest chain.
Even after completing said attunement, you needed to grind for gear in lower tier dungeons and raids before even thinking about stepping in with the big boys. This model continued to exist throughout The Burning Crusade as well. All the guilds who didn't finish content fast enough but couldn't access the new content. Hell, tons of guilds had issues finishing Tempest Keep before Sunwell Plateau was released. But people somehow think this was amazing. It was awesome that so few saw the original Naxxramas too, right?
Blizzard obviously disagrees. Raids are now easily accessible to every person who runs random dungeons. "Welfare epics" give the player the required item levels to raid the current content. But those filled with nostalgia of how "amazing" vanilla was are upset about this. From my perspective, these epic items allow people to see normal mode content and raid casually with their guildmates and friends. I don't see what's so bad about this. Looking for raid exists for those that don't have a schedule that allows them to raid consistently. Or, maybe they don't have enough people in their guild that can actually raid normals. This I feel is perfectly fine also. Heroics are the measure of raiding ability currently in WoW anyways. No one cares how quickly you killed Morchok on normal. Hell, my guild was third on the server in that regard. But normals don't matter in terms of raid progression for "elite" guilds. Not saying my guild is of the type mentioned. We're somewhere in between casual and hardcore.
In the end, it all comes down to accessibility. Vanilla and TBC weren't exactly great in that regard. Some people really enjoyed that aspect. But when the majority of players don't get to actually see any of the content, I don't really see that as a good thing.
What about boss mechanics? Surely bosses have become much easier! ...no. Look at the mechanics for bosses in say Molten Core. 1-2 basic mechanics (don't stand in fire, pay attention, etc) and you win. But why would mechanics be so simple and people would still claim it was harder?
40-man Raiding: A Logistical Nightmare
Oh, that's right. You had 39 other people to worry about when you raided. Wait, that's really it? Organization was the main factor? Ok, so from a raid leader's perspective, that was probably ridiculously difficult. Trying to get 40 people to all work together had to be a nightmare. But that's why mechanics weren't that difficult. See? It all makes sense if you actually think about it. Gearing up was a nightmare as well. I can completely understand that. Fighting with likely 10+ people to gear up. But actual gameplay was not any more difficult than it is today. In fact, I'm 99% sure it was easier.
Look at heroic Spine of Deathwing for instance. Count the number of mechanics. Tell me that's somehow easier than boss fights in vanilla and TBC. It's absolutely not. But hey, it's easier because it requires less people. This is why the 25-man versus 10-man debate is so vicious. I won't go deep into that topic for now, but I will say each has it's own strengths and weaknesses.
To me, the total number of people should not dictate how simple the mechanics are. Blizzard seems to have agreed with me there and has made 25m and 10m pretty close in terms of mechanics.
Players Suck
Another argument I've seen on the forums is that players aren't nearly as skilled as they used to be. Well, I tend to disagree. Sure, a lot of things are now easier in terms of accessibility, as I've discussed. But the thing people have to remember is that a lot more people are playing nowadays. There's easily 2-3 times as many people playing WoW presently than were playing in vanilla. So finding bad players is pretty easy just because of the sheer amount of people playing.
And I use the term "bad players" rather loosely. There's a ton of different types of players now as well, with varying amounts of time invested in the game. At present, it's rare that I find people playing their main character when I run dungeons. Most mains are completely geared at this point so people are working on their alts. Let's face it, you never play an alt quite like you play your main. You just know what ability to use and when to use it with your main. You can feel out the right time to do everything. But on an alt, you might find yourself searching for an ability or staring blankly at all the icons wondering what one does what.
Subscription Decline is Due to Blizzard's Horrible Design!
Clearly. I'm sure it has nothing to do with the expansion ending. Why pay for something you normally would play a ton but there's not a whole lot you want to do for now? How many subscriptions do you think will come with the release of Mists of Pandaria? This is a slow section of the game. Anyone who's every been around for the end of an expansion will agree. At the end of Wrath of the Lich King, Orgrimmar felt like a ghost town. But when Cataclysm dropped, Org completely blew up with players. Lagged the hell out of my computer.
Am I saying that some of the lost subs aren't due to Mists of Pandaria? No. I'm sure there's people who aren't interested in playing it. But that happens with every change. Personally, I don't like pet battles. I'm not a huge fan of the Pandaren either. So I'm not really going to participate in pet battles and I'm likely not going to make a Pandaren. Wow, that was a tough decision.
The Root of the Problem
What is the actual issue here? It seems like no matter what, people are going to continue to make these claims. People will resist change and hold on to things that they feel were amazing and the right way to do it. This is nothing different than people who hold on to archaic values in society. It's human nature. In society, if you don't evolve and roll with the changes, you're doomed to be left behind. So, is this really any different? Things are changing constantly. Sometimes it's hard to keep up with them. But at least in the instance of WoW, Blizzard tries to help you adjust to these changes. People will still be unwilling to change and lay claim that the old way was better. But was it really?
People will always find something to complain about. Blizzard knows this, they know they can't make everyone happy. But they try to make as many of their players happy as they can. Overall, I'm very satisfied with the time I've spent on this game. It's been a lot of fun learning things about it and playing with people who have become some of my closest friends. Sure, things have bothered me from time to time in terms of design and such, but Blizzard is constantly making the game evolve. As long as the raiding aspect continues to be engaging and gives me something to work towards, I'll continue to play.
During this downtime, I've spent a lot of it reading the official WoW forums as well as the forums over at MMO Champ. What I've been reading has been a broken record of QQ from the community. Comments of "Vanilla was better than Cataclysm" and "the game is too easy now" are extremely common. Well with so many people saying these things, they must be true, right?
Vanilla WoW: The Pillar of Game Design or a Lesson in Fake Difficulty
I really don't think so. As Shanthi and I have discussed recently, vanilla WoW really only seemed to be difficult. See, things weren't very accessible. You had to go on these long attunement quests through multiple dungeons and raids and travel all over Azeroth to complete even a small part of the quest chain.
Even after completing said attunement, you needed to grind for gear in lower tier dungeons and raids before even thinking about stepping in with the big boys. This model continued to exist throughout The Burning Crusade as well. All the guilds who didn't finish content fast enough but couldn't access the new content. Hell, tons of guilds had issues finishing Tempest Keep before Sunwell Plateau was released. But people somehow think this was amazing. It was awesome that so few saw the original Naxxramas too, right?
Blizzard obviously disagrees. Raids are now easily accessible to every person who runs random dungeons. "Welfare epics" give the player the required item levels to raid the current content. But those filled with nostalgia of how "amazing" vanilla was are upset about this. From my perspective, these epic items allow people to see normal mode content and raid casually with their guildmates and friends. I don't see what's so bad about this. Looking for raid exists for those that don't have a schedule that allows them to raid consistently. Or, maybe they don't have enough people in their guild that can actually raid normals. This I feel is perfectly fine also. Heroics are the measure of raiding ability currently in WoW anyways. No one cares how quickly you killed Morchok on normal. Hell, my guild was third on the server in that regard. But normals don't matter in terms of raid progression for "elite" guilds. Not saying my guild is of the type mentioned. We're somewhere in between casual and hardcore.
In the end, it all comes down to accessibility. Vanilla and TBC weren't exactly great in that regard. Some people really enjoyed that aspect. But when the majority of players don't get to actually see any of the content, I don't really see that as a good thing.
What about boss mechanics? Surely bosses have become much easier! ...no. Look at the mechanics for bosses in say Molten Core. 1-2 basic mechanics (don't stand in fire, pay attention, etc) and you win. But why would mechanics be so simple and people would still claim it was harder?
40-man Raiding: A Logistical Nightmare
Oh, that's right. You had 39 other people to worry about when you raided. Wait, that's really it? Organization was the main factor? Ok, so from a raid leader's perspective, that was probably ridiculously difficult. Trying to get 40 people to all work together had to be a nightmare. But that's why mechanics weren't that difficult. See? It all makes sense if you actually think about it. Gearing up was a nightmare as well. I can completely understand that. Fighting with likely 10+ people to gear up. But actual gameplay was not any more difficult than it is today. In fact, I'm 99% sure it was easier.
Look at heroic Spine of Deathwing for instance. Count the number of mechanics. Tell me that's somehow easier than boss fights in vanilla and TBC. It's absolutely not. But hey, it's easier because it requires less people. This is why the 25-man versus 10-man debate is so vicious. I won't go deep into that topic for now, but I will say each has it's own strengths and weaknesses.
To me, the total number of people should not dictate how simple the mechanics are. Blizzard seems to have agreed with me there and has made 25m and 10m pretty close in terms of mechanics.
Players Suck
Another argument I've seen on the forums is that players aren't nearly as skilled as they used to be. Well, I tend to disagree. Sure, a lot of things are now easier in terms of accessibility, as I've discussed. But the thing people have to remember is that a lot more people are playing nowadays. There's easily 2-3 times as many people playing WoW presently than were playing in vanilla. So finding bad players is pretty easy just because of the sheer amount of people playing.
And I use the term "bad players" rather loosely. There's a ton of different types of players now as well, with varying amounts of time invested in the game. At present, it's rare that I find people playing their main character when I run dungeons. Most mains are completely geared at this point so people are working on their alts. Let's face it, you never play an alt quite like you play your main. You just know what ability to use and when to use it with your main. You can feel out the right time to do everything. But on an alt, you might find yourself searching for an ability or staring blankly at all the icons wondering what one does what.
Subscription Decline is Due to Blizzard's Horrible Design!
Clearly. I'm sure it has nothing to do with the expansion ending. Why pay for something you normally would play a ton but there's not a whole lot you want to do for now? How many subscriptions do you think will come with the release of Mists of Pandaria? This is a slow section of the game. Anyone who's every been around for the end of an expansion will agree. At the end of Wrath of the Lich King, Orgrimmar felt like a ghost town. But when Cataclysm dropped, Org completely blew up with players. Lagged the hell out of my computer.
Am I saying that some of the lost subs aren't due to Mists of Pandaria? No. I'm sure there's people who aren't interested in playing it. But that happens with every change. Personally, I don't like pet battles. I'm not a huge fan of the Pandaren either. So I'm not really going to participate in pet battles and I'm likely not going to make a Pandaren. Wow, that was a tough decision.
The Root of the Problem
What is the actual issue here? It seems like no matter what, people are going to continue to make these claims. People will resist change and hold on to things that they feel were amazing and the right way to do it. This is nothing different than people who hold on to archaic values in society. It's human nature. In society, if you don't evolve and roll with the changes, you're doomed to be left behind. So, is this really any different? Things are changing constantly. Sometimes it's hard to keep up with them. But at least in the instance of WoW, Blizzard tries to help you adjust to these changes. People will still be unwilling to change and lay claim that the old way was better. But was it really?
People will always find something to complain about. Blizzard knows this, they know they can't make everyone happy. But they try to make as many of their players happy as they can. Overall, I'm very satisfied with the time I've spent on this game. It's been a lot of fun learning things about it and playing with people who have become some of my closest friends. Sure, things have bothered me from time to time in terms of design and such, but Blizzard is constantly making the game evolve. As long as the raiding aspect continues to be engaging and gives me something to work towards, I'll continue to play.
Saturday, July 14, 2012
Mists of Pandaria DK Changes...
With all the changes coming in Mists of Pandaria, I've noticed all the QQ about how "My class is being completely changed. It's going to be unplayable." or "My class isn't getting any love." etc. So I figured I'd pipe in with my current thoughts of death knights as of now and what I think of the changes in Mists.
Blood Now
As it stands right now, I feel blood is in a good place. Hell, I'd go out on a limb in saying it's in a great place. For Dragon Soul, dk tanks seem to be the way to go on most fights. There are a few places where other tanks seems to shine a bit better (Corrupted Blood tanking during Spine, Warmaster Blackhorn), but I feel as though I can pretty much completely negate some mechanics with my Blood Shield, some pretty deadly mechanics at that.
Hagara's Focused Assault used to cause complete chaos before I learned how to time my Death Strikes to heal myself back up and put up a shield large enough to absorb the remainder of the attack. Once I did that, the ability became little more than a nuisance to me. Not only that, but I didn't have to move her... at all. So ranged was free to spread around her and take turns blocking the Ice Lances. This cleaned things up quite a bit for our raid group. I can't imagine how much frustration other tanking classes must have running from her each time she does that.
Impale from Madness is another mechanic that becomes a small bump in the road. Being able to stack my blood shield to over 200k and combined with smart damage reduction cool down usage, it's almost laughable to see the entire Impale absorbed.
Before the change to Death Strike in patch 4.3, things could sometimes be pretty unnerving. Will Death Strike land and give me that heal and all important shield? No? How about now? No?! Third time's a charm? NO?!?! I experiment with a more hit/expertise heavy build at that time to see if it helped. I took more damage due to having less avoidance and less mastery. But I could almost certainly count on that clutch death strike to land. Although I've enjoyed how over powered blood shield has been, being able to stack it to it's maximum shouldn't be this easy. I think Blizzard realizes this as well, or rather, they always knew. But leaving us as the only tank with the active mitigation model would not work for class balancing. But come Mists, we're all on level playing field.
As a side note, am I the only person in the death knight community that doesn't have a problem with Runic Empowerment? All the hate I've seen in reference to it boggles my mind. I can count on Rune Strike proccing it with somewhat regularity. Yeah, it's not every single time. But it shouldn't be.
New Death Knight Abilities/Changes in Mists
Unholy Blight is back in a somewhat old version. I hadn't thought of a specific use of it until I did some reading on the dk forums over on MMO Champion. People were complaining about how a dk tank's AOE rotation makes it impossible to get a Death Strike off early in the pull since they have to make sure diseases are present as both a threat mechanic as well as survival in the debuff provided. Sacrificing survival for threat is something other tanking classes don't have to think about, is what their argument was. Then it hit me. Pick up Unholy Blight, alternate it with Outbreak at the beginning of each pull. Yes, it's not perfect as the cool downs don't line up, but it certainly helps a ton and allows you to have runes available for that all important Death Strike. But wait, there's more! With the Glyph of Outbreak you can forget about Unholy Blight entirely! So yeah, don't know why none of this was thought of. It doesn't take long for a dk to accumulate 40 runic power.
On a Pale Horse is now passive for all death knights. Can't really say much here. More movement speed is always nice.
Control Undead is an interesting niche spell. Virtually identical to a warlock's Enslave Demon, it's fun to think about where it can be used. But I don't see it being very game changing. How often do you see a lock enslaving demons in raids? Yeah, you don't. I see it being fun to mess around with while questing though.
Soul Reaper is the new death knight version of Execute. Perhaps a bit more powerful, but from what I've gathered, it's cost is one Death Rune and it's on a 6 second cool down. This makes it impossible to spam, which is fine. I don't see a lot of use for blood, obviously, since it's more or less a dps ability. Death runes are better spent on survival. But in a fight where there's a tank swap and the dk is not longer tanking, I could see it being used there.
A recent blue post was brought up where it's being discussed to change the cost of Soul Reaper, possibly to runic power instead of an actual rune. I think this would be pretty ideal.
Death Siphon is another ability that requires a death rune to use. From comments, I see that it scales with frost/unholy mastery, seeing as it's shadowfrost damage, and it also scales from 40% of attack power. So on fights where Vengeance has stacked fairly high, it could prove to be useful.
Conversion is of particular interest to blood dks. Before a few changes, it seemed possible to generate enough runic power to keep this going for quite some time. As my friend Shanthi and I discussed, using it in conjunction with Anti-Magic Shell while standing in fire or some other magic effect seemed like it could easily allow you to generate runic power faster than Conversion could us it up. It has no rune cost and no cool down. As long as you have the runic power to feed it, it can be used. Definitely a must have for any blood dk.
After playing around with Conversion a bit on the beta, I noticed that each tick of health per second uses 10 runic power, but also if you end up with around 7 or so runic power (just less than 10) it will still give you one last tick to bring you to 0. This I think is of particular interest since it gives you the ability to keep it going a bit.
I'm going to wrap things up here for now. I'll likely post more thoughts about the beta in the future. Hopefully people enjoy this a bit.
Blood Now
As it stands right now, I feel blood is in a good place. Hell, I'd go out on a limb in saying it's in a great place. For Dragon Soul, dk tanks seem to be the way to go on most fights. There are a few places where other tanks seems to shine a bit better (Corrupted Blood tanking during Spine, Warmaster Blackhorn), but I feel as though I can pretty much completely negate some mechanics with my Blood Shield, some pretty deadly mechanics at that.
Hagara's Focused Assault used to cause complete chaos before I learned how to time my Death Strikes to heal myself back up and put up a shield large enough to absorb the remainder of the attack. Once I did that, the ability became little more than a nuisance to me. Not only that, but I didn't have to move her... at all. So ranged was free to spread around her and take turns blocking the Ice Lances. This cleaned things up quite a bit for our raid group. I can't imagine how much frustration other tanking classes must have running from her each time she does that.
Impale from Madness is another mechanic that becomes a small bump in the road. Being able to stack my blood shield to over 200k and combined with smart damage reduction cool down usage, it's almost laughable to see the entire Impale absorbed.
Before the change to Death Strike in patch 4.3, things could sometimes be pretty unnerving. Will Death Strike land and give me that heal and all important shield? No? How about now? No?! Third time's a charm? NO?!?! I experiment with a more hit/expertise heavy build at that time to see if it helped. I took more damage due to having less avoidance and less mastery. But I could almost certainly count on that clutch death strike to land. Although I've enjoyed how over powered blood shield has been, being able to stack it to it's maximum shouldn't be this easy. I think Blizzard realizes this as well, or rather, they always knew. But leaving us as the only tank with the active mitigation model would not work for class balancing. But come Mists, we're all on level playing field.
As a side note, am I the only person in the death knight community that doesn't have a problem with Runic Empowerment? All the hate I've seen in reference to it boggles my mind. I can count on Rune Strike proccing it with somewhat regularity. Yeah, it's not every single time. But it shouldn't be.
New Death Knight Abilities/Changes in Mists
Unholy Blight is back in a somewhat old version. I hadn't thought of a specific use of it until I did some reading on the dk forums over on MMO Champion. People were complaining about how a dk tank's AOE rotation makes it impossible to get a Death Strike off early in the pull since they have to make sure diseases are present as both a threat mechanic as well as survival in the debuff provided. Sacrificing survival for threat is something other tanking classes don't have to think about, is what their argument was. Then it hit me. Pick up Unholy Blight, alternate it with Outbreak at the beginning of each pull. Yes, it's not perfect as the cool downs don't line up, but it certainly helps a ton and allows you to have runes available for that all important Death Strike. But wait, there's more! With the Glyph of Outbreak you can forget about Unholy Blight entirely! So yeah, don't know why none of this was thought of. It doesn't take long for a dk to accumulate 40 runic power.
On a Pale Horse is now passive for all death knights. Can't really say much here. More movement speed is always nice.
Control Undead is an interesting niche spell. Virtually identical to a warlock's Enslave Demon, it's fun to think about where it can be used. But I don't see it being very game changing. How often do you see a lock enslaving demons in raids? Yeah, you don't. I see it being fun to mess around with while questing though.
Soul Reaper is the new death knight version of Execute. Perhaps a bit more powerful, but from what I've gathered, it's cost is one Death Rune and it's on a 6 second cool down. This makes it impossible to spam, which is fine. I don't see a lot of use for blood, obviously, since it's more or less a dps ability. Death runes are better spent on survival. But in a fight where there's a tank swap and the dk is not longer tanking, I could see it being used there.
A recent blue post was brought up where it's being discussed to change the cost of Soul Reaper, possibly to runic power instead of an actual rune. I think this would be pretty ideal.
Death Siphon is another ability that requires a death rune to use. From comments, I see that it scales with frost/unholy mastery, seeing as it's shadowfrost damage, and it also scales from 40% of attack power. So on fights where Vengeance has stacked fairly high, it could prove to be useful.
Conversion is of particular interest to blood dks. Before a few changes, it seemed possible to generate enough runic power to keep this going for quite some time. As my friend Shanthi and I discussed, using it in conjunction with Anti-Magic Shell while standing in fire or some other magic effect seemed like it could easily allow you to generate runic power faster than Conversion could us it up. It has no rune cost and no cool down. As long as you have the runic power to feed it, it can be used. Definitely a must have for any blood dk.
After playing around with Conversion a bit on the beta, I noticed that each tick of health per second uses 10 runic power, but also if you end up with around 7 or so runic power (just less than 10) it will still give you one last tick to bring you to 0. This I think is of particular interest since it gives you the ability to keep it going a bit.
I'm going to wrap things up here for now. I'll likely post more thoughts about the beta in the future. Hopefully people enjoy this a bit.
Tuesday, June 12, 2012
Heroic Madness
So I realized I never updated about downing Heroic Madness of Deathwing. Shame on me, right? Yeah, we killed him the week after finishing Spine. Since then we've gotten 5 kills (did everything on normal the one week due to some misinformation). I've managed to get most of my best in slot gear for both my blood and unholy specs. Never got a normal Gurthalak to drop, but I did manage to snag a heroic one.
But enough about that, I wanted to go over a few things to help my fellow dks out there. I recently read a forum thread on MMO Champ about a paladin tank having issues living through Impale. Now when I say he was having issues, I mean using multiple cool downs (3-4) and still dying to it. This completely dumbfounds me. Why, you ask? Because I solo tank heroic Madness. Now I'll go into the how...
Our platform order is the pretty standard green, red, yellow and then blue order that most guides suggest. The buffs from Kalecgos (Spellweaving and Kalecgos's Presence) have proven to be the most valuable of all the buffs. On the green platform, having Dream is great since it allows me to save my major cool downs for later platforms. So once the fight starts, I open up with disease on the limb and Death Strike as much as possible to build a decent sized Blood Shield. Usually through Runic Empowerment procs, Soulshifter Vortex procs, and Blood Tap, I can end up with 70-100k worth of absorption. I usually try to time a Death Strike right as the timer for the Mutated Corruption hits 2 seconds and then book it to the back of the platform. I open on the Corruption the same on each platform; Dark Command, Dancing Rune Weapon, and pop Fire of the Deep. This is to try to avoid as many attacks as possible leading into the first Impale so I can continue to build up my Blood Shield. So long as the Corruption doesn't use Crush on me, I can usually get up to a max Blood Shield (equal to my max health at the time). When the first Impale goes off, I check if Bone Shield is up (refreshing it if it isn't), use Dream and if my shield was maxed, I take no damage.
Now there will be a second Impale on each platform and obviously, I can't take that one. But we're one tanking it. So what do we do? I'm sure you've read guides that have shadow priests taking them and such. What we do is have all melee, myself included, run out of melee range on the corruption ~4-5 seconds before the next Impale and our hunter runs into melee and pops Deterrence so he doesn't get destroyed by melee attacks. The Corruption will attack whoever is in melee if it's highest threat target is out of range. If no one is in melee range, it starts to cast Impale Aspect. What this does is also forced the Corruption to Impale the hunter now, who uses Feign Death to interrupt the cast and take no damage. Then I taunt while running back in. Timing is key here. Sometimes the timers are a bit off depending on if a Crush is going out. But generally this has worked well for us. Around this time, Deathwing will begin to cast Hemorrhage which brings out the dreaded Regenerative Bloods. I drop Death and Decay on their spawn location to bring them over to me and pop Anti-Magic Shell to prevent too many applications of Degenerative Bite. At this point it's a race to kill the Corruption before the next Impale while trying to kill the bloods before the stacking debuff becomes too much. Once they're all dead, the platform finishes like it does on normal. What I do, is try to maintain my Blood Shield at max by the end. I'll usually time one last Death Strike when the limb is around 4% and immediately start moving to the next platform. Once I get to the yellow platform, which we're just skipping over to get to red, I use Death Strike on that limb once more to keep the shield going. When I get to the red, I open with Death Strike to continue the shield.
For the red platform, the only change is Dream is replaced by Icebound Fortitude. Which means I still take no damage from Impale provided I was able to keep that shield maxed. Everything else is done exactly the same way. I still maintain a max shield going on to the yellow platform as well.
For yellow, I'm without my own major cool down. So we look to one of our discipline priests to put Pain Suppression on me. Again, if I was able to keep my shield maxed and kept Bone Shield up for the Impale, I take no damage from the Impale. This platform goes the same way as the previous two and we move on to the blue platform.
Blue is a bit different due to the Elementium Bolt now hitting the ground which causes Elementium Blast. Also, I could not have maintained a max blood shield going from yellow to blue. So I have to start over again. I also have less time to build that initial shield since the timer for the Corruption begins as soon as you land on the green platform. To combat the possibility that my shield might not be maxed at the start of the Impale cast, I use Raise Dead soon after reaching the Corruption. I still continue to stack my shield as much as possible, and once the Impale cast begins, I use Empower Rune Weapon in an attempt to get a couple more Death Strikes in. Usually this allows me to get close to a max shield before the Impale damage hits. Again, provided Crush didn't hit me right before, which will almost always wipe the majority of my shield away. Icebound Fortitude is used again on this platform and Death Pact is waiting to be used in case I take a ton of damage from some bad RNG. The bloods on this platform are probably the most painful, as I'm forced to use Anti-Magic Shell for the Elementium Blast and not to prevent applications of their debuff. The other change on this platform is that our rogue takes the second Impale instead of our hunter. The reason is our rogue can use Cloak of Shadows to deal with the blast, Evasion so the Corruption doesn't swat him to death, and Vanish to cancel Impale. The rest of the platform goes like the others did.
For the final platform, things get hectic but the buffs all coming back are a godsend. I save Dream for Shrapnel or use it when fighting the Elementium Terrors if I wasn't targeted with Shrapnel. The Terrors are always nerve wracking to tank. I usually wait until I get ~4 stacks of Tetanus and then use Anti-Magic Shell to prevent further applications and make the current duration expire, resetting my stacks. Dream obviously makes this much more bearable. Dancing Rune Weapon and Fire of the Deep are alternated to further help. For the Congealing Bloods, our hunter drops Ice Trap on their spawn location to help slow them. I use Death and Decay and spam Blood Boil as much as I can.
To prevent getting Congealing Bloods while other adds are up, we stop dps before Deathwing hits 15 and 10% and basically power through the 10% bloods and the next ones at 5%. Usually stopping at 17% and 12% allows us to focus on other adds and not worry about Deathwing dipping too low and spawning the bloods early. The Elementium Fragments will likely spawn at the end before finishing him. We just ignore them and kill Deathwing. Same goes with the Terrors. I just grab them so they aren't eating someone's face.
But that's pretty much it. I know that death knights are a bit overpowered for this fight. This fight is one where avoidance isn't a huge factor, but absorption is king. Stacking my shield to max and smart use of cool downs allows me to take no Impale damage for the entire fight.
[22:45:26.791] Mutated Corruption Impale Schriko Absorb (209213)
[22:47:54.511] Mutated Corruption Impale Schriko Absorb (209213)
[22:50:31.049] Mutated Corruption Impale Schriko Absorb (225949)
[22:53:22.543] Mutated Corruption Impale Schriko Absorb (209213)
Those numbers seem kinda low in terms of damage, but that's from our first heroic Madness kill. It's possible our pally healer threw Hand of Sacrifice on me just in case. In addition, my healers are pretty awesome and make sure I'm over 90% health, if not at full health, before each Impale hits me.
And to prove I'm not amazing, this is our most recent kill...
[22:59:44.680] Mutated Corruption Impale Schriko 166791 (A: 78380)
[23:02:12.875] Mutated Corruption Impale Schriko Absorb (196137)
[23:04:50.657] Mutated Corruption Impale Schriko 220667 (A: 73538)
[23:07:34.471] Mutated Corruption Impale Schriko 120098 (A: 125073)
Yeah, I failed a bit there.
Anyway, I hope this helps my fellow dks out there. And I'm still confused why a paladin would die from Impale with 3-4 cool downs on them O.o
But enough about that, I wanted to go over a few things to help my fellow dks out there. I recently read a forum thread on MMO Champ about a paladin tank having issues living through Impale. Now when I say he was having issues, I mean using multiple cool downs (3-4) and still dying to it. This completely dumbfounds me. Why, you ask? Because I solo tank heroic Madness. Now I'll go into the how...
Our platform order is the pretty standard green, red, yellow and then blue order that most guides suggest. The buffs from Kalecgos (Spellweaving and Kalecgos's Presence) have proven to be the most valuable of all the buffs. On the green platform, having Dream is great since it allows me to save my major cool downs for later platforms. So once the fight starts, I open up with disease on the limb and Death Strike as much as possible to build a decent sized Blood Shield. Usually through Runic Empowerment procs, Soulshifter Vortex procs, and Blood Tap, I can end up with 70-100k worth of absorption. I usually try to time a Death Strike right as the timer for the Mutated Corruption hits 2 seconds and then book it to the back of the platform. I open on the Corruption the same on each platform; Dark Command, Dancing Rune Weapon, and pop Fire of the Deep. This is to try to avoid as many attacks as possible leading into the first Impale so I can continue to build up my Blood Shield. So long as the Corruption doesn't use Crush on me, I can usually get up to a max Blood Shield (equal to my max health at the time). When the first Impale goes off, I check if Bone Shield is up (refreshing it if it isn't), use Dream and if my shield was maxed, I take no damage.
Now there will be a second Impale on each platform and obviously, I can't take that one. But we're one tanking it. So what do we do? I'm sure you've read guides that have shadow priests taking them and such. What we do is have all melee, myself included, run out of melee range on the corruption ~4-5 seconds before the next Impale and our hunter runs into melee and pops Deterrence so he doesn't get destroyed by melee attacks. The Corruption will attack whoever is in melee if it's highest threat target is out of range. If no one is in melee range, it starts to cast Impale Aspect. What this does is also forced the Corruption to Impale the hunter now, who uses Feign Death to interrupt the cast and take no damage. Then I taunt while running back in. Timing is key here. Sometimes the timers are a bit off depending on if a Crush is going out. But generally this has worked well for us. Around this time, Deathwing will begin to cast Hemorrhage which brings out the dreaded Regenerative Bloods. I drop Death and Decay on their spawn location to bring them over to me and pop Anti-Magic Shell to prevent too many applications of Degenerative Bite. At this point it's a race to kill the Corruption before the next Impale while trying to kill the bloods before the stacking debuff becomes too much. Once they're all dead, the platform finishes like it does on normal. What I do, is try to maintain my Blood Shield at max by the end. I'll usually time one last Death Strike when the limb is around 4% and immediately start moving to the next platform. Once I get to the yellow platform, which we're just skipping over to get to red, I use Death Strike on that limb once more to keep the shield going. When I get to the red, I open with Death Strike to continue the shield.
For the red platform, the only change is Dream is replaced by Icebound Fortitude. Which means I still take no damage from Impale provided I was able to keep that shield maxed. Everything else is done exactly the same way. I still maintain a max shield going on to the yellow platform as well.
For yellow, I'm without my own major cool down. So we look to one of our discipline priests to put Pain Suppression on me. Again, if I was able to keep my shield maxed and kept Bone Shield up for the Impale, I take no damage from the Impale. This platform goes the same way as the previous two and we move on to the blue platform.
Blue is a bit different due to the Elementium Bolt now hitting the ground which causes Elementium Blast. Also, I could not have maintained a max blood shield going from yellow to blue. So I have to start over again. I also have less time to build that initial shield since the timer for the Corruption begins as soon as you land on the green platform. To combat the possibility that my shield might not be maxed at the start of the Impale cast, I use Raise Dead soon after reaching the Corruption. I still continue to stack my shield as much as possible, and once the Impale cast begins, I use Empower Rune Weapon in an attempt to get a couple more Death Strikes in. Usually this allows me to get close to a max shield before the Impale damage hits. Again, provided Crush didn't hit me right before, which will almost always wipe the majority of my shield away. Icebound Fortitude is used again on this platform and Death Pact is waiting to be used in case I take a ton of damage from some bad RNG. The bloods on this platform are probably the most painful, as I'm forced to use Anti-Magic Shell for the Elementium Blast and not to prevent applications of their debuff. The other change on this platform is that our rogue takes the second Impale instead of our hunter. The reason is our rogue can use Cloak of Shadows to deal with the blast, Evasion so the Corruption doesn't swat him to death, and Vanish to cancel Impale. The rest of the platform goes like the others did.
For the final platform, things get hectic but the buffs all coming back are a godsend. I save Dream for Shrapnel or use it when fighting the Elementium Terrors if I wasn't targeted with Shrapnel. The Terrors are always nerve wracking to tank. I usually wait until I get ~4 stacks of Tetanus and then use Anti-Magic Shell to prevent further applications and make the current duration expire, resetting my stacks. Dream obviously makes this much more bearable. Dancing Rune Weapon and Fire of the Deep are alternated to further help. For the Congealing Bloods, our hunter drops Ice Trap on their spawn location to help slow them. I use Death and Decay and spam Blood Boil as much as I can.
To prevent getting Congealing Bloods while other adds are up, we stop dps before Deathwing hits 15 and 10% and basically power through the 10% bloods and the next ones at 5%. Usually stopping at 17% and 12% allows us to focus on other adds and not worry about Deathwing dipping too low and spawning the bloods early. The Elementium Fragments will likely spawn at the end before finishing him. We just ignore them and kill Deathwing. Same goes with the Terrors. I just grab them so they aren't eating someone's face.
But that's pretty much it. I know that death knights are a bit overpowered for this fight. This fight is one where avoidance isn't a huge factor, but absorption is king. Stacking my shield to max and smart use of cool downs allows me to take no Impale damage for the entire fight.
[22:45:26.791] Mutated Corruption Impale Schriko Absorb (209213)
[22:47:54.511] Mutated Corruption Impale Schriko Absorb (209213)
[22:50:31.049] Mutated Corruption Impale Schriko Absorb (225949)
[22:53:22.543] Mutated Corruption Impale Schriko Absorb (209213)
Those numbers seem kinda low in terms of damage, but that's from our first heroic Madness kill. It's possible our pally healer threw Hand of Sacrifice on me just in case. In addition, my healers are pretty awesome and make sure I'm over 90% health, if not at full health, before each Impale hits me.
And to prove I'm not amazing, this is our most recent kill...
[22:59:44.680] Mutated Corruption Impale Schriko 166791 (A: 78380)
[23:02:12.875] Mutated Corruption Impale Schriko Absorb (196137)
[23:04:50.657] Mutated Corruption Impale Schriko 220667 (A: 73538)
[23:07:34.471] Mutated Corruption Impale Schriko 120098 (A: 125073)
Yeah, I failed a bit there.
Anyway, I hope this helps my fellow dks out there. And I'm still confused why a paladin would die from Impale with 3-4 cool downs on them O.o
Tuesday, April 24, 2012
Heroic Spine of Deathwing down!
I'm actually quite terrible at keeping up on this, as it turns out. Been busy with work, playing a couple betas (Diablo 3 and Tera), and continuing our heroic progression.
As of last Thursday night, my guild has hit 7/8H progression. Spine of Deathwing, which had been completely destroying us for the better part of 5 weeks, has finally been completed. After the first few weeks, we could consistently get to the third plate, but would just get completely overrun with Corrupted Bloods. Our disc/shadow priest, Zindaria, got an addon to monitor the number of active bloods. Let me tell you how ridiculous having 60-70 up at one time is. When our blood tank would die from just far too much damage, I'd gain aggro on them all and die in about 2 seconds. But after wiping over and over in basically the same part of the fight, we realized something had to be done. Too many bloods were obviously up. So either we aren't killing enough or we aren't getting through the fight fast enough.
When I compared the total damage we did to bloods and divided it by the health of one, we'd end up around 120-130 bloods killed on our longest attempts. This ended up being on par with other guilds on our server. But we still hadn't finished the fight. We'd only have gotten through the first Hideous Amalgamation on the last plate. So more bloods would likely be dying. Probably a lot of them. When comparing our fight length versus other guilds, we were on par with their kills, but hadn't gotten the kill yet. So it was pretty obvious we weren't getting through the fight fast enough.
Despite only having 2 amalgamations per plate, we were still behind. We would try to synch the timing of the amalgamation death up with Fiery Grip to make sure no one would be gripped while the Burning Tendons were exposed. This seemed to work well enough in that we achieved our goal of having no one gripped. But still, we were behind. We'd manage to get the tendons to sub 40% from the first time it was exposed on each plate. So, back to the drawing board?
After a few weeks of a bunch of us looking up different guides and watching videos of first kills, we found something that at least I feel was the key. Don't worry about synching up the death of the amalgamations and the fiery grip being cast. Instead, when the amalgamation is channeling Superheated Nucleus, kill the remaining Corruption. This will reset the timer on fiery grip since a new corruption spawns. It also adds a new amalgamation and thus another Blood Corruption: Death debuff. But if planned for, it's easy to manage and gives another stack of Blood of Neltharion. You end up losing some tank dps on the tendons, but as long as your dps is fairly strong, it shouldn't be a problem.
Once we made this change, the number of active bloods during the third plate went down tremendously. I think on our kill, we had around 50 up instead of 60-70.
As of last Thursday night, my guild has hit 7/8H progression. Spine of Deathwing, which had been completely destroying us for the better part of 5 weeks, has finally been completed. After the first few weeks, we could consistently get to the third plate, but would just get completely overrun with Corrupted Bloods. Our disc/shadow priest, Zindaria, got an addon to monitor the number of active bloods. Let me tell you how ridiculous having 60-70 up at one time is. When our blood tank would die from just far too much damage, I'd gain aggro on them all and die in about 2 seconds. But after wiping over and over in basically the same part of the fight, we realized something had to be done. Too many bloods were obviously up. So either we aren't killing enough or we aren't getting through the fight fast enough.
When I compared the total damage we did to bloods and divided it by the health of one, we'd end up around 120-130 bloods killed on our longest attempts. This ended up being on par with other guilds on our server. But we still hadn't finished the fight. We'd only have gotten through the first Hideous Amalgamation on the last plate. So more bloods would likely be dying. Probably a lot of them. When comparing our fight length versus other guilds, we were on par with their kills, but hadn't gotten the kill yet. So it was pretty obvious we weren't getting through the fight fast enough.
Despite only having 2 amalgamations per plate, we were still behind. We would try to synch the timing of the amalgamation death up with Fiery Grip to make sure no one would be gripped while the Burning Tendons were exposed. This seemed to work well enough in that we achieved our goal of having no one gripped. But still, we were behind. We'd manage to get the tendons to sub 40% from the first time it was exposed on each plate. So, back to the drawing board?
After a few weeks of a bunch of us looking up different guides and watching videos of first kills, we found something that at least I feel was the key. Don't worry about synching up the death of the amalgamations and the fiery grip being cast. Instead, when the amalgamation is channeling Superheated Nucleus, kill the remaining Corruption. This will reset the timer on fiery grip since a new corruption spawns. It also adds a new amalgamation and thus another Blood Corruption: Death debuff. But if planned for, it's easy to manage and gives another stack of Blood of Neltharion. You end up losing some tank dps on the tendons, but as long as your dps is fairly strong, it shouldn't be a problem.
Once we made this change, the number of active bloods during the third plate went down tremendously. I think on our kill, we had around 50 up instead of 60-70.
Friday, February 10, 2012
DK tanking in Dragon Soul
For this little guide, I'll assume everyone is familiar with each fight. I originally wrote this out and had explained each part of the fights, but that was just ridiculously long and it seemed like I lost the point of the entry. So basically I'm just going to go over when I used each ability I have, if there's a specific point in the fight I feel is ideal to use them and all that.
Morchok
For this fight, I tank Morchok the entire time while the other tank is on Kohcrom, but I have tanked both. Morchok does 3 Resonating Crystals, and I have to move him near each one to make sure all those soaking them will still be within Stomp range. This isn't hard since it has a 25 yard range. I put up a range check of 20 yards to help out here. Having a hunter in your soaking group sometimes makes this a little annoying since they have that dead zone where they can't shoot at all. I try to time Rune Tap (with Glyph of Rune Tap) after each Stomp if possible. I also use Vampiric Blood right after a Stomp if I see the crystal explode around the same time so the healer gets a little more healing power to bring everyone back up. Obviously I use Icebound Fortitude when the boss is sub 20%. Anti-Magic Shell is used whenever I'm closer to the crystal initially than one of the soakers to ease healing. I've also soaked crystals when people have died while tanking the boss, so obviously it's good for that as well.
Yor'sahj, the Unsleeping
I feel this fight is catered to dk tanks. Deep Corruption I would think would be a problem for a lot of tanks. But none of my self healing adds any stacks to it. It's rare that I even get 1 stack from healing sources; although I know healers are also very aware of which of their spells don't add stacks. I use Anti-Magic Shell usually right before the 5th-6th application of Void Bolt to absorb the initial hit as well as some of the DoT. Icebound Fortitude is usually reserved for the one combo where we don't kill the Glowing Globule since Void Bolt stacks higher and there's just generally much more damage going out. Dancing Rune Weapon is usually used when there's adds out as I can sometimes get a bunch to stick to me (although that's all RNG). Army of the Dead is usually used for the second wave of adds during that combo with the Glowing Globule not killed.
Warlord Zon'ozz
We just recently got this guy down, so I can give a little guide now. Since the introduction of Necrotic Strike, I've been searching for a time to actually use it. In PVP, I'm sure it can be quite useful, but I don't PVP. Enter Psychic Drain, the bane of my existence. I use Anti-Magic Shell and stack Necrotic Strike on the boss in the time leading up to his usage of it. The problem for me always seems to be when he uses it. See, Deadly Boss Mods has a timer for it, but it rarely lines up. Sometimes he uses the ability immediately after the timer runs out, other times it can literally be 7 seconds after the timer reaches 0. But my favorite is all the times he does it 1-2 seconds before the timer reaches 0. Since the cool down on Psychic Drain is shorter than the cool down on Anti-Magic Shell, I alternate it with an old favorite trinket from tier 11, Mirror of Broken Images. Vampiric Blood I use for the start of each dark phase.
Ultraxion
Anti-Magic Shell is my best friend here. Hour of Twilight does around 50% of my health when topped off if that's the only cool down I use. I usually add Icebound Fortitude to it as well. This usually drops me about 10% instead, which is just crazy. Dancing Rune Weapon is used each time it's available if I'm currently tanking the boss. Vampiric Blood is used on cool down as well since the raid damage gets pretty insane. Rune Tap I pretty much use on cool down here as well provided I'm missing any health really. 5% isn't a lot to the other 4 people in my group, but every little bit helps.
One last thing to note here, before Thrall gives the tanks the Last Defender of Azeroth buff, if you're tanking the boss, use all your normal tank cool downs. Don't use trinkets, just your normal cool downs. Why? As soon as you get the buff, it resets all the cool downs on them. Vampiric Blood, Dancing Rune Weapon, Icebound Fortitude, Anti-Magic Shell, even Rune Tap are all effected by it.
Unfortunately that's as far as we've gotten on heroics so far. We've been working on Hagara next. Focused Assault does a ton more damage on heroic, but stacking my Blood Shield up beforehand seems to work well there. Common complaint I'm getting from the ranged in my group is moving her too much. I don't like moving her much to begin with since melee then has issues getting damage on her. I know moving her also makes blocking the Ice Lance beams difficult for ranged as well. At the same time, standing there means almost certain death. I try to keep her around the center as much as possible. But I also have to bring her to the side where we're going to start each transition phase to try to limit the amount of time we spend in it. So yeah, interesting balance I need to find there.
Hopefully this helps out my fellow dk tanks a bit. Again, this is just how I tend to use my cool downs for these fights. If you find a better spot to use any of them, I'm always open to advice.
Morchok
For this fight, I tank Morchok the entire time while the other tank is on Kohcrom, but I have tanked both. Morchok does 3 Resonating Crystals, and I have to move him near each one to make sure all those soaking them will still be within Stomp range. This isn't hard since it has a 25 yard range. I put up a range check of 20 yards to help out here. Having a hunter in your soaking group sometimes makes this a little annoying since they have that dead zone where they can't shoot at all. I try to time Rune Tap (with Glyph of Rune Tap) after each Stomp if possible. I also use Vampiric Blood right after a Stomp if I see the crystal explode around the same time so the healer gets a little more healing power to bring everyone back up. Obviously I use Icebound Fortitude when the boss is sub 20%. Anti-Magic Shell is used whenever I'm closer to the crystal initially than one of the soakers to ease healing. I've also soaked crystals when people have died while tanking the boss, so obviously it's good for that as well.
Yor'sahj, the Unsleeping
I feel this fight is catered to dk tanks. Deep Corruption I would think would be a problem for a lot of tanks. But none of my self healing adds any stacks to it. It's rare that I even get 1 stack from healing sources; although I know healers are also very aware of which of their spells don't add stacks. I use Anti-Magic Shell usually right before the 5th-6th application of Void Bolt to absorb the initial hit as well as some of the DoT. Icebound Fortitude is usually reserved for the one combo where we don't kill the Glowing Globule since Void Bolt stacks higher and there's just generally much more damage going out. Dancing Rune Weapon is usually used when there's adds out as I can sometimes get a bunch to stick to me (although that's all RNG). Army of the Dead is usually used for the second wave of adds during that combo with the Glowing Globule not killed.
Warlord Zon'ozz
We just recently got this guy down, so I can give a little guide now. Since the introduction of Necrotic Strike, I've been searching for a time to actually use it. In PVP, I'm sure it can be quite useful, but I don't PVP. Enter Psychic Drain, the bane of my existence. I use Anti-Magic Shell and stack Necrotic Strike on the boss in the time leading up to his usage of it. The problem for me always seems to be when he uses it. See, Deadly Boss Mods has a timer for it, but it rarely lines up. Sometimes he uses the ability immediately after the timer runs out, other times it can literally be 7 seconds after the timer reaches 0. But my favorite is all the times he does it 1-2 seconds before the timer reaches 0. Since the cool down on Psychic Drain is shorter than the cool down on Anti-Magic Shell, I alternate it with an old favorite trinket from tier 11, Mirror of Broken Images. Vampiric Blood I use for the start of each dark phase.
Ultraxion
Anti-Magic Shell is my best friend here. Hour of Twilight does around 50% of my health when topped off if that's the only cool down I use. I usually add Icebound Fortitude to it as well. This usually drops me about 10% instead, which is just crazy. Dancing Rune Weapon is used each time it's available if I'm currently tanking the boss. Vampiric Blood is used on cool down as well since the raid damage gets pretty insane. Rune Tap I pretty much use on cool down here as well provided I'm missing any health really. 5% isn't a lot to the other 4 people in my group, but every little bit helps.
One last thing to note here, before Thrall gives the tanks the Last Defender of Azeroth buff, if you're tanking the boss, use all your normal tank cool downs. Don't use trinkets, just your normal cool downs. Why? As soon as you get the buff, it resets all the cool downs on them. Vampiric Blood, Dancing Rune Weapon, Icebound Fortitude, Anti-Magic Shell, even Rune Tap are all effected by it.
Unfortunately that's as far as we've gotten on heroics so far. We've been working on Hagara next. Focused Assault does a ton more damage on heroic, but stacking my Blood Shield up beforehand seems to work well there. Common complaint I'm getting from the ranged in my group is moving her too much. I don't like moving her much to begin with since melee then has issues getting damage on her. I know moving her also makes blocking the Ice Lance beams difficult for ranged as well. At the same time, standing there means almost certain death. I try to keep her around the center as much as possible. But I also have to bring her to the side where we're going to start each transition phase to try to limit the amount of time we spend in it. So yeah, interesting balance I need to find there.
Hopefully this helps out my fellow dk tanks a bit. Again, this is just how I tend to use my cool downs for these fights. If you find a better spot to use any of them, I'm always open to advice.
Sunday, January 15, 2012
Heroic Yor'sahj Down
That's right, my guild is now 2/8 heroic. After a major hiccup in terms of dps output (roughly 40 million damage behind), with some respeccing and a change in raid composition, we managed to get the dps required to finish him off. Previously we had been attempting to three heal that fight. But with the tight enrage timer this proved to be impossible. So we went with a discipline priest and holy paladin. It seems that a holy paladin is almost required to heal that fight properly. In addition, our marksmanship hunter respecced to survival and our frost dk specced to unholy. Also, our other healing priest went shadow.
On our first attempt with this new setup, we hit the enrage timer and wiped with him at 2%. Had we just ignored the last set of oozes, we probably would have gotten him. But hey, hindsight is 20/20, right? I've experimented with my spec a little to help with overall damage. Seems tank dps makes a bit of a difference on heroic. I managed to increase my dps output to around 17-19k on most attempts. I'm no bear tank, so I'm pretty happy with that. I changed out the Glyph of Death Coil for the Glyph of Death Strike a little while back and haven't bothered changing it. Seems to really help when I can hit a Death Strike for an 80-90k crit. I experimented with helping to bring the Mana Voids down in health while the rest of the raid went to kill each ooze. It definitely seems like the key to that fight is managing those. Leaving the first one up but bringing it low in health, then killing the first after the second has spawned and drained mana again.
Our composition for our kill was:
Tank
Blood Death Knight
Healers
Discipline Priest
Holy Paladin
DPS
Survival Hunter
Frost Death Knight
Feral Druid
Arcane Mage
Fire Mage
Demonology Warlock
Shadow Priest
One thing I've been thinking of writing about has been tips for dk tanks for each encounter, such as when I use each cool down. I honestly don't know how many people actually read this anymore. I see referring links from Repgrind a lot as well as some other sites that I haven't even been to. I really do appreciate that. I didn't think anyone would really want to read what I have to say.
If anyone has any suggestions on what I should write about, feel free to let me know in comments. Also, let me know if dk tank tips would be something that you would find interesting as well.
On our first attempt with this new setup, we hit the enrage timer and wiped with him at 2%. Had we just ignored the last set of oozes, we probably would have gotten him. But hey, hindsight is 20/20, right? I've experimented with my spec a little to help with overall damage. Seems tank dps makes a bit of a difference on heroic. I managed to increase my dps output to around 17-19k on most attempts. I'm no bear tank, so I'm pretty happy with that. I changed out the Glyph of Death Coil for the Glyph of Death Strike a little while back and haven't bothered changing it. Seems to really help when I can hit a Death Strike for an 80-90k crit. I experimented with helping to bring the Mana Voids down in health while the rest of the raid went to kill each ooze. It definitely seems like the key to that fight is managing those. Leaving the first one up but bringing it low in health, then killing the first after the second has spawned and drained mana again.
Our composition for our kill was:
Tank
Blood Death Knight
Healers
Discipline Priest
Holy Paladin
DPS
Survival Hunter
Frost Death Knight
Feral Druid
Arcane Mage
Fire Mage
Demonology Warlock
Shadow Priest
One thing I've been thinking of writing about has been tips for dk tanks for each encounter, such as when I use each cool down. I honestly don't know how many people actually read this anymore. I see referring links from Repgrind a lot as well as some other sites that I haven't even been to. I really do appreciate that. I didn't think anyone would really want to read what I have to say.
If anyone has any suggestions on what I should write about, feel free to let me know in comments. Also, let me know if dk tank tips would be something that you would find interesting as well.
Sunday, January 8, 2012
On to hard modes!
Hello everyone... ok, maybe it's like 5 people who read this, but whatever. I haven't had a lot of time to update this in the last few months, as you've probably noticed. Work has been keeping me busy (remote start season), and with the new tier of raiding, I've been spending a lot of time doing that, reading up on fights, sifting through world of logs and all that good stuff.
So, how has my guild been doing you ask? Not too bad. Currently we're 1/8 heroic, in like a 10 way tie for third on the server. Took us 62 attempts to finish Madness of Deathwing. That was a little discouraging, but then we one shot it the following week. So, at least we retained all that knowledge.
Heroic Morchok seemed so easy on paper...or, internet text rather. Splits in two, divide the raid, designate a Stomp soaker, keep the boss moving towards each Resonating Crystal so all those soaking that will remain in range of the Stomp. Not so bad. But man, did it not go well. Since that fight is much shorter than Madness, we had almost as many wipes (57) in just two nights of work on him. But we eventually got him. Some of the info on websites like Icy Veins may not be entirely accurate. For example, we noticed the double share of Stomp that the tank and someone else takes doesn't seem to be based on proximity to the boss like most sites state. Rather it seems it's based on proximity to Morchok's (or Kohcrom's) main aggro target. So stacking on the corresponding tank seemed to work well in controlling who received that double hit. Let me tell you, a clothie taking a double Stomp is devastating. We also noted that Morchok ends up summoning three crystals each phase before channeling Earth's Vengeance and starting to cast Black Blood of the Earth, while Kohcrom only gets to summon two crystals. This makes the tank on Morchok have to move the boss more often.
On some attempts, it was noted that the healing required to keep me alive wasn't a large amount. That whomever was healing me could take a little extra time to heal others. Some of those attempts the healers died and I was left to survive without them, which apparently I could do very well. This played a part in our final strategy. We decided to put me on Morchok and only had one healer on that side. See, because this week we only had 3 healers. Most guides recommend two or four healing this fight. So, two healers on the Kohcrom side and only one on the Morchok side. This seemed to work well. Now this isn't to say that it's ideal to divide healers that way, rather that since I didn't require as much healing, only one healer was required to be in my group. This last raid lockout, we had a hilarious downing of him when the Kohcrom side died with the boss around 1-2% and we finished Morchok off. Not realizing that despite their shared health, Kohcrom didn't die when Morchok did. Instead, while looking at the loot, Kohcrom came over and killed most of my group. Luckily I was able to finish him off before he could kill me.
As I've continued to gear up in this tier, I've noticed that Blizzard seems to have done a pretty decent job in terms of making sure dk tanks are still quite viable. The PTR had me quite worried, but they did a great job fine tuning everything. As it stands right now, my survivability is incredibly high. For the Madness fight, I can sometimes completely absorb an Impale while using a damage reduction cooldown.
[22:55:22.345] Mutated Corruption Impale Schriko Absorb (155664)
[22:58:09.026] Mutated Corruption Impale Schriko Absorb (124531)
[23:00:53.396] Mutated Corruption Impale Serãphyn 184719 (O: 71570, A: 2911)
[23:01:29.147] Mutated Corruption Impale Serãphyn 118164 (A: 43836)
[23:03:54.337] Mutated Corruption Impale Serãphyn 112100 (A: 211900)
[23:04:30.470] Mutated Corruption Impale Schriko 155664
[23:48:17.795] Mutated Corruption Impale Schriko 45552 (A: 92816)
[23:48:53.550] Mutated Corruption Impale Amahk 191994 (A: 2406)
[23:50:52.413] Mutated Corruption Impale Schriko Absorb (124531)
[23:51:28.515] Mutated Corruption Impale Amahk 123299 (A: 71101)
[23:53:42.604] Mutated Corruption Impale Amahk 129772 (A: 64628)
[23:54:18.740] Mutated Corruption Impale Schriko 57009 (A: 83088)
[23:56:46.919] Mutated Corruption Impale Amahk 115732 (A: 59228)
[23:57:23.064] Mutated Corruption Impale Schriko Absorb (50435)
During our last downing of Madness, I died to an Impale because my Icebound Fortitude hadn't come off of cooldown yet. A problem when we kill things a bit faster than usual. This was definitely my error for not realizing before the Impale was being cast. But a battle rez solved that problem. Only issue then was when the other tank died on the final platform after the first wave of Elementium Terrors. Somehow the healers were able to keep me alive through the second wave of them. I don't know how, but it worked very well. I don't see Guardian Spirit in there, so I'm at a loss as to how I survived.
The last thing I want to talk about is how things have changed since coming to the guild. When I first came here, I was obviously an outsider. But I've gotten to know most of these people and they're fun to play with. True, it's not peachy all the time. But that's to be expected. I came in to be the second tank, essentially. But after the first weeks of Dragon Soul, whether it be to gear or otherwise, I've become the main tank. I have a 395 item level now. I know part of that is due to me being present for every raid and the raid leader making sure I got my four piece bonus early. The utility of an extra raid cooldown is pretty great. As it stands right now, my tanking partner (warrior) is at a 387 item level. Still very respectable, but obviously a bit behind mine. Unfortunately he's a busy man as well. Poor guy is always so tired from work. But at the same time, it seems as though his class is at a disadvantage compared to mine. He has reached full CTC, but there are so many times where the damage is magic or unavoidable. That's where my class shines with all that self healing. Before this patch I thought about going back to playing my warrior tank as my main. But now, I think I've made the right choice sticking with my death knight.
So, how has my guild been doing you ask? Not too bad. Currently we're 1/8 heroic, in like a 10 way tie for third on the server. Took us 62 attempts to finish Madness of Deathwing. That was a little discouraging, but then we one shot it the following week. So, at least we retained all that knowledge.
Heroic Morchok seemed so easy on paper...or, internet text rather. Splits in two, divide the raid, designate a Stomp soaker, keep the boss moving towards each Resonating Crystal so all those soaking that will remain in range of the Stomp. Not so bad. But man, did it not go well. Since that fight is much shorter than Madness, we had almost as many wipes (57) in just two nights of work on him. But we eventually got him. Some of the info on websites like Icy Veins may not be entirely accurate. For example, we noticed the double share of Stomp that the tank and someone else takes doesn't seem to be based on proximity to the boss like most sites state. Rather it seems it's based on proximity to Morchok's (or Kohcrom's) main aggro target. So stacking on the corresponding tank seemed to work well in controlling who received that double hit. Let me tell you, a clothie taking a double Stomp is devastating. We also noted that Morchok ends up summoning three crystals each phase before channeling Earth's Vengeance and starting to cast Black Blood of the Earth, while Kohcrom only gets to summon two crystals. This makes the tank on Morchok have to move the boss more often.
On some attempts, it was noted that the healing required to keep me alive wasn't a large amount. That whomever was healing me could take a little extra time to heal others. Some of those attempts the healers died and I was left to survive without them, which apparently I could do very well. This played a part in our final strategy. We decided to put me on Morchok and only had one healer on that side. See, because this week we only had 3 healers. Most guides recommend two or four healing this fight. So, two healers on the Kohcrom side and only one on the Morchok side. This seemed to work well. Now this isn't to say that it's ideal to divide healers that way, rather that since I didn't require as much healing, only one healer was required to be in my group. This last raid lockout, we had a hilarious downing of him when the Kohcrom side died with the boss around 1-2% and we finished Morchok off. Not realizing that despite their shared health, Kohcrom didn't die when Morchok did. Instead, while looking at the loot, Kohcrom came over and killed most of my group. Luckily I was able to finish him off before he could kill me.
As I've continued to gear up in this tier, I've noticed that Blizzard seems to have done a pretty decent job in terms of making sure dk tanks are still quite viable. The PTR had me quite worried, but they did a great job fine tuning everything. As it stands right now, my survivability is incredibly high. For the Madness fight, I can sometimes completely absorb an Impale while using a damage reduction cooldown.
[22:55:22.345] Mutated Corruption Impale Schriko Absorb (155664)
[22:58:09.026] Mutated Corruption Impale Schriko Absorb (124531)
[23:00:53.396] Mutated Corruption Impale Serãphyn 184719 (O: 71570, A: 2911)
[23:01:29.147] Mutated Corruption Impale Serãphyn 118164 (A: 43836)
[23:03:54.337] Mutated Corruption Impale Serãphyn 112100 (A: 211900)
[23:04:30.470] Mutated Corruption Impale Schriko 155664
[23:48:17.795] Mutated Corruption Impale Schriko 45552 (A: 92816)
[23:48:53.550] Mutated Corruption Impale Amahk 191994 (A: 2406)
[23:50:52.413] Mutated Corruption Impale Schriko Absorb (124531)
[23:51:28.515] Mutated Corruption Impale Amahk 123299 (A: 71101)
[23:53:42.604] Mutated Corruption Impale Amahk 129772 (A: 64628)
[23:54:18.740] Mutated Corruption Impale Schriko 57009 (A: 83088)
[23:56:46.919] Mutated Corruption Impale Amahk 115732 (A: 59228)
[23:57:23.064] Mutated Corruption Impale Schriko Absorb (50435)
During our last downing of Madness, I died to an Impale because my Icebound Fortitude hadn't come off of cooldown yet. A problem when we kill things a bit faster than usual. This was definitely my error for not realizing before the Impale was being cast. But a battle rez solved that problem. Only issue then was when the other tank died on the final platform after the first wave of Elementium Terrors. Somehow the healers were able to keep me alive through the second wave of them. I don't know how, but it worked very well. I don't see Guardian Spirit in there, so I'm at a loss as to how I survived.
The last thing I want to talk about is how things have changed since coming to the guild. When I first came here, I was obviously an outsider. But I've gotten to know most of these people and they're fun to play with. True, it's not peachy all the time. But that's to be expected. I came in to be the second tank, essentially. But after the first weeks of Dragon Soul, whether it be to gear or otherwise, I've become the main tank. I have a 395 item level now. I know part of that is due to me being present for every raid and the raid leader making sure I got my four piece bonus early. The utility of an extra raid cooldown is pretty great. As it stands right now, my tanking partner (warrior) is at a 387 item level. Still very respectable, but obviously a bit behind mine. Unfortunately he's a busy man as well. Poor guy is always so tired from work. But at the same time, it seems as though his class is at a disadvantage compared to mine. He has reached full CTC, but there are so many times where the damage is magic or unavoidable. That's where my class shines with all that self healing. Before this patch I thought about going back to playing my warrior tank as my main. But now, I think I've made the right choice sticking with my death knight.
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