In many respects that hasn’t changed much.  I’m a bit older, I have less crap… so the floor is generally cleaner.  Though my kids seem to suffer from my organizational abilities… which is a bit frustrating… but hey.

However… there is one area that I do function well in organizing thoughts.. and that’s developing raid strategies.  No… I’m not revolutionary.  I’m not on the bleeding edge developing strategies that nobody has ever ever seen.  I’m talking about adapting strategy to the group your running with.

Professor P… and Palatable Placement Process

Professor Putricide as a whole kind of stymied us for a little bit.  Not because I viewed him as particularly hard, but because we got to him right during when we had some people getting married and forming raids was a bit difficult when 4 of your core raiders are out and two of them are healers.

We started with what I’d call the “traditional” strategy of starting on the orange wall and then once the green slime was down everyone runs toward the green wall.. and back and forth.  Just a few minor problems.

1. The setup is stupidly easy, but… that works for the pull, after that everyone is running different paths through the room leading to…..
2. Slime puddles being spread all over the room.  It makes it extremely hard to get them all if you get a bad spread.  Which means you can actually get screwed in the fight because of it.
3. People aren’t good at moving back from the green wall to the orange wall.  You’re first instinct is to stop and DPS when you’re in range of the boss.  Meaning the melee ran all the way across the room and the ranged stopped about half way.  Leading to… the green slime almost inevitably picking that ranged dps standing in the middle of the room where its impossible for anyone to get to them before they get smushed and dead.

This kind of left me in a quandry.  I like the simplicity, but what I determined was that the strategy left us with two major gaping problems.

• There was too little time on DPS.
• There was just too much movement involved.  Too much time running of course meant… less time on DPS.

But inspiration… lands in the most unusual ways some days.

“A Friend of Mine Was Telling Me…..”

So our second tank mentions casually in raid that a friend of his told him they did the entire fight by just moving along the green wall.  My first reaction was….”That’s insane… that’s actually closer to the green slime.  I’m kind of failing to see how that’s helpful as we’ll get blasted around MORE often.”

However… I let it percolate in my brain and then it hit me….. The room is roughly a diamond.  (Yes… I’m going old school ASCII rather than doing something like Microsoft Paint…)

…………________……………..
………../…………….\…………..
………./………………\………
………/………………..\…
……../………………….\
……..\…..O…….G……/
……….\………………./
…………\……………/
………….._______/

What occured to me… is that the distance from side wall to side wall was roughly the same as the distance from where the slimes appear and the front of the room.  We could tank him up by the table at the front of the room and just deal with the slimes there.  For people hit with the green slime, we stand right up front and don’t move.  For people hit with the orange slime, they have a couple of seconds they can stand still while it closes on them, then they can kite it up the green wall.

Benefits:

• We aren’t running all over kindom come.
• The slime puddles are pretty tightly controlled.  So its easier for the abomination driver to deal with them.
• The only time people have to move is for the orange slime.
• The abomination only has to run about two steps out to spit on the slime.
• When phase 3 transitions, you’re all pretty well grouped up.  You can just start kiting him down the Orange wall and blast him into oblivion. 

Well… lets test that theory!!!!

Cleansing Totems SUCK!

The funny thing about the fight… cleansing totems actually affect the giant abomination effect.  It doesn’t appear as a disease on my debuffs, but sure as heck… cleansing totem clears it.  The first two times we tested our theory on tanking him by his experiment bench, we thought there was some effect by the bench that prevented you from doing exactly what we were attempting. 

We moved slightly up the green wall to try it again.  Again, the abomination just disappeared after a few seconds.  I’d grab a new one and boom… suddenly gone.  Ok it MUST be something by the bench… yeah … yeah that’s it.  We’ll go back to the old strategy.  We’ll tank him further back and just go straight across again.. 

BOOM… same effect.  Ok at this point I was pretty frustrated.  I mean I’ve driven the abomination before and this has NEVER happened… what the hell!?!?!?!?!

Suddenly the shaman looks up sheepishly… “Um… sorry… I forgot to change my totems from the Rotface fight… I still had a cleansing totem down…”

Whoops…. That kind of sucked.  Oh well… we learned something important.

Abomination driving 101

One thing I’ve learned is that as simple as it sounds, driving an abomination is not an easy task if you don’t stay on target.  Being the abomination driver is about focus.  You have to priotize your tasks and do them well or you make everybody else’s job that much harder.

First rule:  Thou shalt ONLY drive the abomination…
Second Rule:  Thou shalt NOT call out things to the raid… if you’re watching the raid.. you aren’t doing what the hell you’re supposed to be doing.
Third Rule:  If there’s an ooze (or gas cloud UP) Thou Shalt Spit at it first!!! Above all else.
Fourth Rule:  If there’s a slime puddle up…. thou shalt drink it.. and drink it quickly… spam the drink button as if you’re life depended on it…(it does…)
Fifth Rule:  IF the ooze/cloud has spit on it… AND there aren’t any slime puddles up, give it a good whack with a mutated slash. (or two… or three) 
Sixth Rule:  If there aren’t any slimes you have to deal with… AND there aren’t any slime puddles up… Always keep mutated slashes on Professor Putricide when possible.  It helps the DPS overall.

Some people may be able to ignore number 2.  I find personally, I can’t call things out for people AND drive the abomination.  That tends to lead to me falling behind on sucking up the slime puddles.  Which causes even bigger problems.  Getting behind on slime puddles means you’re highly likely to be overwhelmed and never able to catch up.  As soon as you see three slime puddles on the floor at one time, you’re pretty much fighting a losing battle.

Yes.. I know.. hard to believe.  I do that a lot, but since the announcement of the new POTENTIAL raid structure, people have been all over the board.  So I thought I’d sit down and think about the implications from a 10 man perspective.

I hear you… OMG… not a 25 man player?  What’s WRONG WITH YOU!!!

Actually… we do raid usually once a week on 25 man, but to be honest, we do it because… we feel like we kind of have to.  As Blizzard said, it almost feels manditory.  For the people in our guild who are more loot centric, they want to see the 25 man gear, and to be honest they’d much rather do it with us and people they know then some random PUG which falls apart after the first damned wipe on Marrowgar.

However I wanted to take a moment to break down a few considerations that the sorry… “25 man whiners” haven’t thought about.  Sorry… I know you really think 10 man is EZ MODE, but lets be honest… some of the fights in 10 man ARE harder and when you’re using 25 man gear in 10 man instances?  Well… gee… Its a wee bit easier on you there….

Loot Table Size

Ok I’m picking a few of what I’m going to deem a “non special” boss to look at the loot tables. 

       BOSS    -> 10 man loot options / 25 man loot options

1. Marrowgar  –> 12 Loot in 10 man, 15 loot in 25 man
2. Lady Deathwhisper -> 12/15
3. Gunship Battle -> 12 /15
4. Festergut -> 12/15

Ok a very easy pattern.  Lets assume the loot tables are unified.  Its probably going to shrink those tables slightly, but maybe not.  So we’ll assume since some 10 man loot (which is arguably better than its 25 man counter part for best in slot) gets moved to 25 man and some pieces get shrunk down.  So now we’ll keep an average of 15 loot per boss.

Odds Are?

Simple math folks…. Ok we’ll assume blizzard goes truly bare minimum and only drops 6 loot per 25 man and 2 loot per 10 man.  (though I threw in 7 loot as well just for reference)

10 man Analysis.
2 loot out of 15 possible
Chance of seeing a specific drop:  13.33%

25 man Analysis.
6 loot out of 15 possible
Chance of seeing a specific drop:  40%

OR

7 loot out of a 15 possible
Chance of seeing a specific drop: 46.7%

Ok.  So very simple numbers, but what does this mean?  In 25 man, I’ll concede that you are competing with a lot more people for gear than you were in 10 man.  In 10 man, its more likely we only have 2 melee dps.  In a 25 man, we’re going to have probably 5-6 or more.  So the first time a melee trinket drops in a 10 man, they’ll get up half their DPS right out of the gate.  That’s good, but look at the loot table.  With a much larger loot table, the likelyhood is that we’ll see that trinket a LOT less in 10 man than you would in 25 man. 

So the odds of actually getting it go down substantially.  Not only do you need to get it to drop in a much larger table.  The odds of someone getting something that someone can use goes up.  The table is larger, but to be honest, its going to take a lot longer to gear the entire group up.  There may be specific trinkets which are considered the “god trinkets” for certain classes that could take a 10 man team MONTHs to see, where a 25 man team may see the same drop twice a month.

Millions of Shards!!!

Sharding loot is not that uncommon of an event in 10 man or 25 man.  I’d actually anticipate that sharding of loot might become a bigger issue in 10 man than 25 man moving forward.

For the 25 man, its true you’ll see more drops more frequently.  So in theory, you’re going to see the same drop more often.  So once or twice a month you’ll see a set of ranged dps bracers for a cloth caster lets say.  But you probably have 3-4 casters who can use it. 

In 10 man, the problem might be… you have a single hunter and no casters wearing chain.  Lets assume you’re three healers are a pair of priests and a druid.  Now every single drop you get with plate healing or mail healing is more likely to get sharded or handed off for an off set.  Could gear up an off spec faster?  Possibly, but in a 10 man, you’re less likely to see all of the drops being useful to someone. 

With the additional consideration of the “mastery” bonuses for wearing armor in your proper type, I could see a lot of people prefering to avoid “downranking” to lower gear types unless the mastery bonuses are largely neglibile.  Sure.. people will probably do it for a couple of pieces, but would you as a plate wearing pally downgrade half your set to cloth knowing your losing a bunch of mastery bonus?

In 25 man, the amount and frequency of drops makes it much more likely that people will be matching their “class” type of armor along with the ability to get gear at a much more rapid pace.  With a much broader amount of classes available, the likelyhood of SOMEBODY being able to use a drop is much much higher than in a 10 man where the first time you’re lone pally gets their bracers, forever more, if that piece of loot drops, its a wasted drop.

For 10 mans, its  a lot more painful too if you have multiple of a class.  If you have two feral druids, you may find it incredibly difficult to gear them both up effectively over time.    In 25 man, having 3 feral druids and 2 rogues isn’t as big of a deal considering how much more frequently you’ll see the dps/tanking leather dropping.

Students get out of school.  So you get this mixed splurge of people looking to get involved with end game raiding who have been completely tied up with school and those who are busy with family and vacations and all sorts of other committments trying to balance their lives and their play time.

However for WoW, the cracks in the pavement become a lot more prominent in my mind about this time in every expansion.

Tanks and Healers and Burnout O’ My!

It seems to me at this point in every expansion, the tanks and healers start looking for something else to do.  I know I do… I love tanking, its a part of me and I’ve had numerous friends tell me that they can’t see me doing anything else.  They’re pretty right.  I love the challenge inherent with tanking.  There’s something to be said with standing there getting your face beat in so that everyone else can do their job.

However I ran into the same problem in my last expansion too…. I really want to be doing anything other than tanking for a while.  Not full time, but at times, I just want to swap to my off spec or an alt and tear stuff up.  I’ve been tanking the same instances for probably a year and a half at this point… I’m tired of tanking.  Do I find new places like new bosses in ICC exciting?  Yes… but for the start of ICC, I’ve done the same bosses.. the same way… for months at this point.  Its not surprising… its not new… it just… is.

I was talking with our of our primary healers the other day.  He basically expressed a desire to pull out his warlock and just (pardon the expression) “tear shit up” for a while.

Adding Cap Stones

At this point in the expansions I’ve noticed a lot of people getting a bit burned out in general.  I’ve been monitoring other bloggers who have pushed themselves beyond what they wanted.  I’ve seen some struggle with major accomplishments.  I’ve watched some who have accomplished things beyond their wildest imaginings.  I’ve seen still others burned out by taking on too much.

At this point in every expansion, I feel we try to add some sort of capstone to our experiences.  Some people want to know they just completed ICC.  Some want to know they’ve attained the highest possible Arena rating they can.  Some… just want to get their first character to 80 and just see the heroic dungeons.

We all have our own version of capstone that we want add to our play experience.  I personally want to finish ICC.  Sure… I want to get more level 80s too, but lets be honest… most of my experience in this expansion has been focused on raiding.  I don’t do it every day, but I really wanted to make a solid run at getting all the way through ICC… and that goal is in my reach.  I think at the very least Blizzard has proved that 10 man raiding is viable.

Now if I could only convince them that 25 man shouldn’t get ALL of the best upgrades, I’d be good….

Since that time, the Alt became the Main as far as raiding is concerned.  He’s learned by trial and fire how to tank.  He’s discovered that he really likes it.  I mean hell…. who wouldn’t like getting their face beat in day after day. 

Lets be honest, its a very high profile position in a raid.  What’s the first question the healers ask?  “Who’s the tank?”  Who do people pin their hopes on in 25 mans and 10 mans?  The Tank and the healers, but honestly.. tanks are more visual.  When you’re looking at killing the boss, you see the tank.  You half the time don’t notice the guys propping him/her up and keeping their furry …er… plated…. buttocks up and running.  Its not fair to healers, but it is what it is.

We keep in touch from time to time.  He has moved on to tank on the Alliance side on Whisperwind.  I’m of course tanking on the horde side on Thunderhorn.  So as I was babbling on, we got to talking and the conversation kind of progressed like this….

Me:  Rough night in ICC.

Him:  Which boss?

Me:  Not a boss, more of just a general feeling of people being off tonight.  Not terrible, just didn’t quite make it as far as we wanted.

Him:  Yeah?  …. hey do you mind if I ask you a question?

Me:  No sweat

(queue… long wait)

Me: Uh oh.. must be a long question??!!!

Him:  Ok… so I’m pondering is it normal to feel like you want to be the Main Tank and not the Off Tank anymore?  Is that a normal feeling? 

Good question… lets pursue it shall we???

For GLORY!!!

I’ve been tanking for about… (checks the calendar) 4 years.  I started playing vanilla wow back in the day.  It had probably been out for a little over a year (maybe less than a year?)  I loved druids and to be honest I loved feral druids. 

I was forced to PUG 5 mans and even way back in the day people always needed tanks.  So I tanked and I tanked.  Its kind of a glorious position.  In 5 mans though once you get over geared for an instance, it kind of starts to wear on you.  You find it easy.. or you start doing things like grabbing 4 packs just to see if the healer is awake.  Hell you figure the healer is bored and NEEDs the excitement.

However in a raiding situation, tanks take a whole different role.  In a raid, you’re the guy with 40k+ health who is sitting between the bad guy with 3million + health just trying to stay alive long enough to see them keel over first.  Yes… its glorious.  Its very visual.  You’re the person standing between the raid and death!!

Understanding the Main Tank

Main Tanks are chosen for a variety of reasons.  Lets look at a few shall we?

1. Skill
2. The MT is the GM/Raid leader of the guild
3. The MT is a friend/sig other/whatever of the GM of the guild
4. Health
5. Gear
6. Drama….

Some people are chosen for skill.  Yes… we all like to believe we’re the bees knees when it comes to tanking, but we all have strong and weak points.  I’m exceptionally good with dealing with large packs of mobs.  I tend to do fights like Ignis where I’m the only tank and I’m picking up the adds and the boss and just saying “SCREW IT!  I’ll tank em all!!!”

I’m not as good at single target threat.  I don’t suck at single target threat, but I’m always doing four things at once when I’m raid leading.  So my rotation isn’t as perfect as it could be.  I have a partner tank in my guild who has the opposite.  His single target threat is fantastic.  His aoe threat?  Not so good.  But that works well.  We compliment each other well in this situation.

Main tanks are chosen for plenty of reasons.  Its not always personal.  I’ve been a main tank quite a bit in my time.  I main tanked in Karazhan.  I off tanked in SSC and The Eye.  I’ve OT’d in Mt. Hyjal.  I’ve MT’d in Zul Aman.  I have main tanked Naxxramas and Ulduar and TOC. 

At the end of the day, what I have to say about being the main tank?  It can get boring.  Why you ask?  well… to be honest, its very repetitive.  Take this boss… stand in this one spot.  Do your maximum threat rotation.  Move the boss at this point… do this… do that….  Honestly it gets a bit tedious.

Lets look at some of the fights.

Marrowgar:  Tank boss, stay next to the OT and move out of flames.  Intercept after he stops bone storm.

Lady Deathwhisper:  Oddly an interesting fight for all tanks involved.  Pick up adds, tank stuff.  move a lot.

Gunship:  Tank the adds on your ship or go tank Muradin (why the hell we don’t kill him with only 2.4 million health is beyond me.!!!!)

Deathbring Saurfang:  Stand in one spot… taunt.  DPS a little… Taunt

Festergut:  Stand in one spot.  Tank… swap tank, DPS a bit… Taunt… Tank… blow cooldowns in proper sequence.

Rotface:  Tank boss in middle… Rotate 90 degrees periodically…..

Professor Putricide:  Tank boss on left.  Tank boss on right… rinse repeat…. Kite boss to avoid killing entire raid.

Understanding the Off Tank

When I first went over to my current home, I had to admit it was a bit of an adjustment for me.  I realized that I was coming into a previously set up raid program.  It wasn’t my program.  I was coming into a program with two tanks already.  Tanks that had worked together quite a while actually.  So I was walking into a situation where I knew.. I wasn’t familiar with their tanking style.  I wasn’t familiar with their kill strategies. 

Off tank has a very interesting role.  Its a learning opportunity.  When you’re the off tank, you typically have a slightly different view on the fight.  You may not be staring at ankles the entire time.  You also get the opportunity to learn the style of strategy the group uses. 

Off tank does not mean unimportant.  On plenty of fights, the off tank can be critical to the successful completion of the fight.  In the Festergut fight, the OT needs to know when to taunt and has to be able to dish out some serious DPS in the off times.  In the Rotface fight, if you don’t kite the adds properly, everyone’s dead… period end of story.  In the Lord Jaraxxus fight, if the off tank doesn’t pick up the adds, everyone dies.  Rinse repeat.

Yes… some days your job is just as important as… stand next to the main tank so he/she doesn’t get one shot!.  Other times its… Taunt the boss so this debuff doesn’t do anything.

I’ve personally found my time as an off tank has been more fun than the times I was the main tank.  I typically have to move… A LOT.  I get to see more of the battlefield. 

Tank Envy… the Guys and Gals that Tank Stuff

Tank envy is completely understandable.  As a raid leader, I’m usually looking for who can tank what.  If I have a tank that generates obscene amounts of threat right out of the gate on a very DPS sensitive fight?  That tank is my tank for the fight. 

If I have a fight where its critical that adds get picked up and pulled to a specific location, I”m going to pick the tank for that assignment with the best reflexes.  I’ve known tanks that just seem to have a near perfect sense of timing with picking up adds.  It almost borders on precognition. 

Other tanks are just amazing at feets of AOE tanking.  My personal opinion is that if you’re going to put a program together, develop what I call a Tank Corps.  The goal is to have a group of people that works together, trains together and swaps in and out of roles.  The reason being that the one night your adds tank decides they need to spend time with their wife in the Bahamas, you’re gonna be hurting. 

Don’t get hung up on what you get to tank.. just enjoy it and learn.. and be the best damned tank you can be.

I think when I started this blog, it was for an entirely different reason than why I write now.  I won’t ever be a Matticus. 

I won’t ever be hard core theorist.  What I am… is a 30 something disorganized raid leader with a little bit of whit and a whole hell of a lot of sarcasm.  Plus I have some good friends who watch here looking to see what I am doing from time to time.  Which is encouraging.  I’m not an expert at anything in particular.  Some people would say I probably don’t give myself enough credit, but to be honest, I believe in thinking you always have group to grow and learn.

I am… I am Not

What I am…

I am… a good tank.  That’s my own opinion of myself.  If you tank, you need to be confident in your own abilities.

I am… a raid leader.  Its just how I’m wired.

I am… a druid lover.  I fell in love with the class before I logged in the first time and its been with me ever since.  I doubt I’ll ever love another class better.

I am… disorganized.  I’m not the most organized person in the world.  I keep a lot of things straight in my head, but overall, I suffer a bit from a wandering mind… oo… look… shiny??!!!

What I’m not…

I’m probably not a guy to put together a comprehensive guide on how to do everything under the sun for raid leading. 

I’m knowledgeable… its just that I’m disorganized.

I’m probably not a guy who’s going to give you an in depth theoretical analysis of what’s the best druid rotation.

Where to next?

Well to be honest I’m going to do what I do best.  I’m going to let my wandering mind wander.  I’m going to write when I feel like it.  I’m going to write about what’s relevant and every once in a while I’ll probably end up with some simple little gem that will suddenly slaughter my server with thousands of hits from people over at Wow.com.  I usually pull that off a couple of times a year.

You can probably expect a couple of posts a week.  Some weeks more.. some less.  If you have a desire to write and you feel this would be a good home for you, I’m looking at the possibility of having other writers onboard.  So if you want to give it a go, just email me with a sample of your work and we’ll discuss from there.

What the hell have you been up to?

Wow where do I begin…. Yes… K$… this ones’ for you.

I’ve been relatively busy.  My wife is nearing the end of the RAF program.  So I spend a decent amount of time working with her to try to play catch up on her characters.  She holds firmly to the thought that she doesn’t want to transfer her level 80 mage.  So… we’re leveling a couple more for her.  She now has a level 66 mage and she’s working on multiple druids (ANOTHER CONVERT!!!), and a hunter.  By the end I think she’ll have 3 or 4 characters at or really near to 60 which gives her a lot of choices of characters to play.  However doing a lot of speed leveling kind of grinds on you.  So I really haven’t been wanting to do a whole heck of a lot else for my own characters.

I did transfer my mage to Thunderhorn, and I have enjoyed working on him.  Its nice when you spend most of your time tanking to have a character that you just have to stand back and blow stuff up.  Plus you can compete with yourself and other people to see how far you can push your undergeared character.  Of course being undergeared doesn’t last long.  With the way heroics go, its just a hop skip and a jump to gear with the badges and the new 5 mans.

Raiding has been going well.  We have been clearing regularly up through Festergut.  We haven’t been really working on the Crimson Halls yet.  We’ve been determined to nail Rotface as a 10 man guild.  Its interesting to see how many of the strategies out there for 10 man are written assuming you’re a 25 man guild killing it in 10 man.  In our case, the fight is complicated by the fact that we’re a 10 man guild with 10 man gear killing the boss.

I’m fairly certain we’re one of the first guilds who do strictly 10 man progress who have downed Rotface on Thunderhorn.  Checking sites like Guildox, only one other guild has completed the Plagueworks and nobody has completed the Crimson Halls or anything else (though it just came out yesterday).

We’re looking at scaling up.  We’ve inherited a few raiders lately and to be honest they are all good.  So we’re in that position where now I’ve got extra healers (only one.. but still) and extra DPS.  So if everyone shows up… we’re going to have 5-7 people sitting out on a given night.  That being said, we’re looking at scaling up into 25 man.  Its not going to be overnight, but we’re going to make a shot at it.  Worse come to worse we’ll have two solid 10 man teams.  So if you know solid players hanging around on Thunderhorn who want a new home, let me know… idiots and primadona’s need not apply.

So expect to see a bit more on how we approach ICC and what tips and tricks we’re using to get through.

Now… why?

Well lots of reasons.  Not the least of which is… I am a very busy man.  I have a lot going on with my kids.  I’m extremely busy at work, and I find my free time in the game filled with a million details as we work our way through Icecrown Citadel.

When I I first started this blog to be honest I was bored at work, I had a lot of free time and my kids were younger.  Since then my son’s in Karate 4 days a week and we’re trying to juggle everyone’s schedule and I have a different situation at work. 

I love to write, but its just not something I feel I have the time to do well…  I’ll give it a couple of weeks to just kind of mull over, before I put my final decision here.  In that mean time, I may post… or I may not.

*salute*

Happy raiding folks.

So we headed on in to Icecrown Citadel.  I suspect there was a bug as we were granted 8 attempts at Saurfang, but I’m not going to complain… we downed him.  Lets crank it up and see what we learned about Deathbringer Saurfang.

The Basics…..

Deathbringer Saurfang is at its core level… a denial and burn fight.  Deathbringer Saurfang builds one key power called Blood Power.  He gains it when:

• He casts Rune of Blood on someone and then he damages them
• He casts Blood Boil on someone and every time that DoT ticks.
• He casts Blood Nova and anyone hit by the blood nova
• He summons blood beasts and anyone hit by a blood beasts gives him one blood point.
• He casts Mark of the Fallen Champion on someone and they take a tick from the damage.

So the theory is… the more blood power he gains, the more damage he does… the more ugly the fight becomes.  So.. you have to deny him blood power and burn him as hard as you can.  The longer the fight lasts, the more blood power, the more Marks of the Fallen Champion… the more Blood power… you get the idea.

Denial Strategy

For our group, we used two bear tanks and ONLY two healers.  Our third healer went DPS.  Realistically if you do the fight correctly there isn’t that much damage going on the tanks.  Its completely healable and a third healer is probably going to be a waste and drag this fight out too long.

To deny him blood power everyone is going to have a job.  If your a tank, you need to be on your toes watching for Rune of Blood being put on the other tank.  You need to taunt him as quickly as you can to limit two things… One he heals for 10 times the damage he does to the tanks when the rune is active.  Two… he gets blood power during that time if he hits the other tank.  So you have to be quick on the taunt.

The healers have kind of a unique job… for anyone with Blood Boil, if you have a way to cleanse it (say Hand Of Protection), you’ll prevent a lot of blood gain this way.  The second thing you have to do is…. well…. let someone die.  If someone gets Mark of th Fallen Champion… you need to let them die… do not battle rez… do not collect $200.  Yes you heard me… go against your better judgment and just let them keel over dead.  If you keep them healed, you’re going to generate blood power for as long as they are alive. 

Now… how on earth can you deal with Mark of the Fallen Champion?  Well we stumbled upon a method that may be a bug and unintended, but it worked… so I’m not bitching…

First and foremost… this is completely subjective and random and well… no guarantees.  If he casts it on a rogue, they should vanish before he finishes casting.  However you need to vanish at almost the end of the cast.  If they do, they WON”T have the Mark.  Based on that, I think theoretically it will work for Feign Death.  My next theory is also that you MIGHT be able to DI (divine intervention) someone as he’s casting it.  If you’re prepped with battle rez’s, it might be worth it.  We have three in our raid.

Of course… if that doesn’t work.. you can always just let the person die… which I recommend (unless its one of your two healers… which it might be.)

Blood Beast… wherefor art though..

Blood Beasts deserve their own special attention.  If your DPS isn’t up to the task, the fight will drag on entirely too long and you’ll have a nightmare time dealing with the blood beasts.

Tanks have a special role in dealing with these guys.  First and foremost, you have to time the use of AOE abilities to avoid agroing the Blood Beasts.  Saurfang generates blood power when the blood beasts do damage.  So nobody should get hit.  The theory we went with was to use all the tricks we had to keep them slowed… rooted etc.  Anything you can do to kill them fast, slow them down and get back on the boss is helpful.

For us, we used hunter frost traps, druid roots and a DK pulling mobs back and using Chains of Ice to avoid mobs getting to the ranged.  Our melee (except for the DK) kept primarily on the boss.  Other good abilities to use include:

• Thunderstorm with the knockback from an elemental shaman
• Typhoon with the knockback from a boomkin

Maximizing DPS via Tanks

For our fight, we decided we wanted to shorten the fight as much as possible.  So what we did was have the tanks go kitty form after every taunt.  As the off tank really isn’t doing anything (I mean seriously… you’re just standing there…) you might as well dish out some damage.  For feral druids we went full bore kitty DPS.  I would save my Berserk cool downs for when I was DPSing.  You have to watch carefully to shift back to bear and taunt, but overall, you can cut a TON of time off of your fight if the tank goes into a DPS mode.

For warriors it might be worth having a macro to swap weapons and stances.  For DK’s I’d imagine you could swap prescence and gain a little bit of DPS.  Pally’s… well you might be able to swap weapons around as well to gain a little extra DPS. 

Depending on the firepower of your ranged, you might need the extra boost from your tanks to keep the fight sufficiently short.

Planning for Marks and 30%

There are two really dangerous times for tanks.  When a Mark of the Fallen Champion is coming up, your tanks will take more and more damage.  Saurfang gains 1% damage for every blood power he has.  So at near 100 blood power, Saufang is doing 200% damage to the tank.  So you want to save your trinkets for that time to maximize your survival.

The second thing you need to watch for is when he hits 30%.  At 30%, he soft enrages and starts dishing out considerably more damage.  The tanks need to save long cooldowns for this time.  I recommend burning your bloodlust/heroism after the 30% mark.  This will really help you speed that last 30% down. 

Overall, the fight is straight forward and pretty much the same from start to finish.  You need to just execute on slowing down his blood gain and saving cool downs for the right time of the fight.

The goal of the 15 minute challenge is to see if you can turn your party loose on the world faster than the cooldown on the LFG tool.  So in theory, the second you accept, and it teleports you into the instance, your 15 minute debuff starts that prevents you from going to a new instance using the tool.  So your goal…is to beat that timer.

Rule #1:  All BOSSES MUST DIE

You can’t just walk into some place like Halls of Stone, kill the one boss, kill the final boss and out.  Every boss must die.  You don’t have to kill every bit of trash.  The goal is all bosses.. period end of story.

RULE #2:  Timer stops the second the final boss keels over dead.

Yes… you beat your way through all mobs.. look up.. is the debuff on you?

Here are some quick tips and tricks.

1. Be overgeared.  Expect that you’re going to not need anything in the instance.
2. Looting is Optional…. it will slow you down.  Loot’ is stuck to green when you use the tool… so…. you’ll see it if someone clicks on it anyways.
3. Pull, Pull, Pull…. I only recommend stopping if your healer is running on empty.  Most heroics do not require everyone to be at full mana before you pull the boss.
4.  Burn cooldowns… don’t hold them for a rainy day… if you can hold two packs of mobs and AOE tank them if you burn a cooldown, DO IT!
5. Consider dropping a healer.  Have your healer DPS and just hard burn the instance.

Now some instances won’t lend themselves to a speed run.  COT Stratholme?  Not gonna happen.  You spend so much time waiting in between waves, or waiting for Arthas to catch up to you, that you’re not likely to pull it off.  The new instances would be hard to pull off unless you’re doing Forge of Souls. 

Otherwise… challenge yourself… challenge your group… pull pull pull and have a blast!!!

But what is it that has made the newer instances like Pit of Saron so interesting?  Why do they seem like they are a hell of a lot more fun?

The Story Factor….

I’m not here to ruin anyone’s fun… honestly if you don’t care, then don’t read it, but I think what really sells the new five mans is the story.  Its not just… here is a big dungeon.. go kill bosses till you get to the end guy.  There is a story.  You enter, and either Jaina or Sylvannas has brought an attack force… they are suddenly killed and poof… you need to get some reinforcements.  There’s a reason for you to battle through.  There’s a reason to need to free some slaves. 

Blizzard provided a reason for you to be doing something.. its not just an instance… its not something lame like… stand in this one room.  You watched this guy on a protodrake slaughter a whole assault squad… its payback time.

From then on out, events get shaped around scripted events.  The instance feels alive.  The story jumps out at you and draws you in…

Hard = Fun

I realize the five man on normal isn’t particularly hard if you have some decent gear.  The heroic version can be a really pain once you get to the gauntlet, but that’s part of what makes it so much more interesting.  The packs of mobs are mixed.  None of this… “its all melee mobs and they’ll all just come to you” junk.  You can’t just rely on multimob tanking everything and burning it down.  Blizzard is retraining us to use a little bit of CC.  Sure.. you CAN just multimob tank everything, but I found that to be less effective than just CCing one or two mobs and then burning the rest down. 

The other thing that I really want to applaud blizzard for is that Heroic Pit of Saron actually teaches applicable skills for raiding.  The bosses use raid like abilities.  Frequently there are effects that… hmmm you need to hide behind an object to avoid.  This was really helpful on Sapphiron (and Sindragosa from my understanding…).  There’s a boss with junk on the ground.  There’s a boss with poison novas you need to run out of.  There’s a lot of practice moving so you don’t get yourself killed. 

Also you get to the final boss via a guantlet.  Teaching people to move constantly and dodge damage.  See the big white spots on the floor?  That’s gonna be you flat as a pancake in a minute.  Keep moving… DPS when you’re in a safe spot… hit em hard.  As one person pointed out to me…. “You know… the trash in these instances has as many hit points as the bosses in other heroic dungeons?”  Um… wow I hadn’t even realized… Mobs with 500k HP.  Yes… that’s boss level.  We’re killing bosses with 1.1 million hit points.  Thats insane in a 5 man.

Wiping = Learning

I think the thing that really struck us as we have progressed in the new 5 mans is that we’re learning.  We’re learning about the instances.  Its not like TOC where there was one or two new mechanics and the rest was just… ok… kill the next boss… lets get it over with.  The entire instance is about learning… working on skill and occassionally wiping.  I mean I’ve had nights where I’m doing raid style learning in a five man.  Yes… I’ve had 80g repair bills.  Its not a bad thing.  It means Blizzard is teaching a modicum of humility before we move on to the real challenges in ICC. 

Yes… wiping can be frustrating, but overall, I love the new five mans.  Plus they are just graphically cool…

I’m sorry if you disagree, but Blizzard in my opinion has proved why they deserve the king of the hill for MMOs.  With the release of 3.3, they’ve redefined what it is to play WoW… again.

Forge of Pit of Reflection

Our guild likes to pride itself on how fast we can clear most heroics.  Its like a speed run where you basically say… “aw screw it.. we aren’t even going to take a healer lets just burn it.”  Well we’re a might be more cautious on newer instances, but I have to say… the new 5 mans were really impressive.  They thoroughly kicked our butts on heroic..

I’ve never been more happy to pay for a repair bill out of a five man instance than I have after coming out of those three instances.  Forge of Souls is your straight forward of the three.  It has a few difficult trash pulls where you might consider using some CC, but only because there are a large number of casters in the group.  Its hard to AOE tank a mob that stands 15 yards away from you and pelts the ranged/healers.

The bosses are pretty straight forward in Forge of Souls, but it is your intro story.  I think what really sold it for me was the storytelling Blizzard crafted into the instances.  All three have very distinct and beautiful art styles and flow nicely from one to another.

They are sufficiently hard that they keep you interested.  I’ve both tanked and healed them.  Tanking them requires in some cases just simple AOE tanking, but there are plenty of pulls where you’ll not be able to quite reach all of the mobs so you’re juggling some taunts and keeping the DPS alive.  I’ve run with both PUG and complete guild groups.  These dungeons on heroic are not for the faint at heart. 

I was blessed enough out of my third run through Pit of Saron to walk out of there with the broken hilt that people are lusting after.  One of our DPS won it, but decided that since I was still using a tanking staff from Naxxramas, that it was a much bigger upgrade for me.  And it is… my threat generation has gone through the roof since I got my new shiny mace.

Halls of Reflection.. now that deserves a post all of its own…

LFG…. redux

The new queuing system for dungeons in my opinion is unbelievably cool.  Not only does it basically reduce your time to get your daily badges down to like 15 minutes, it makes it so you can basically head out into the world and farm your heart out.  You  can queue for a dungeon, sit there farming till it pops and then teleport right there.

Of course if you’re a healer or a tank, you won’t even have to wait.  I’ve never waited longer than about 5 seconds before the LFG tool said… “DING>>>>> YOUR INSTANCE IS READY!!!”  Now that’s not to say that I haven’t had to wait for the instance servers to actually have space on them, but a group was formed super quick.

DPS… you’re milage may vary.

We beat him when he was hard!

This is the obligatory…. “hey… we get to QQ because we beat Marrowgar before he was nerfed… Blizzard… you suck… you are dissing our skills because we downed him before you reduced the damage….

Naw… I honestly don’t care.  Its been a good week of raiding.  In our two nights of working on Icecrown Citadel, we consider ourselves to have killed 3.5 of the bosses.  Our first night was just absolutely brutal.  Learning Lord Marrowgar is quite an experience when you’ve been bored off your gourd for 2-3 months farming in TOC… you kind of lose your edge, but once you shake that little bit of rust, there’s a nice keen razor’s edge to be found just waiting to be honed a bit.

However the team bucked up and we downed him our first night in which is probably not that uncommon.  Our raid times are short.  So downing the mountain of trash in front of him (and bear in mind you can see the guy from the front door practically….) and getting him down I still think is a great accomplishment.  Our second night in we downed Lady Deathwhisper and the Gunship battle and got 4 solid attempts on Deathbringer Saurfang. 

On our best attempt we got him down to around 30% before we lost control of the blood ability.  That’s pretty close for me.  That tells me we need to tune a little bit, and then we’ll probably nail him.  Get the DPS a bit more familiar with the fight, work on timing of abilities used and just go nuts.

On leading raids…

Yes… I told you … I wouldn’t be able to stay away.  I had a bit of time on Monday leading the raid and it felt good to get back in the saddle again, but interestingly enough what I liked best about it was that the team actually functions as a very solid team.  They openly discuss tactics and present feedback on what’s working, what isn’t and basically suggestions on where we might go next.  As a tank, I can’t always see what’s going on everywhere and it helps a ton to have that extra feedback from the people in the trenches.  It helped a lot with our success on getting down three bosses in our first week.  Sure… they’re the early bosses.  Sure… there will be a gateway, but you know what… It was hella fun… all 120g of repair bills… worth every single… penny…