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.
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