Guilds, EoE, and 3.1

Guild changes

After much thought and debate, I changed guilds last week. My original guild was created by my RL friends and myself, so this was not an easy choice. The core group is still in regular contact, and in fact more may join me in my new guild; it's a guild who we've been collaborating with already so it's a natural move.

It's still a culture shock. My old guild was down to 4 or 5 regulars who I'd see most nights, and sometimes less than that. The new guild has 150ish toons and 20-25 online most nights, with more on the weekends when we run Heroic raids. They're good people and I'm enjoying it so far.

Eye of Eternity

I got into my first EoE run last weekend, on normal. It was interesting even though we didn't get Malygos down. It's pretty hard to learn and I made my share of mistakes. We had a couple of early wipes, but mostly ran into the enrage timer, probably because we were slow to get through the first two phases.

You can find complete descriptions of the Malygos fight but I'll give a quick outline. The first phase is mostly a normal dragon fight, with two complications. One are the sparks that show up; if they reach Malygos they buff him, but if you kill them they leave a static patch on the floor that gives you a (stacking) buff. Also, Malygos will toss you in the air at times, which gives you a significant DOT and eventually falling damage. This phase lasts until you get Maly to 50%.

The second phase sees Malygos take off and adds show up on floating discs. Your DPS has to kill the adds, who drop their discs. Melee DPS will grab the discs, and fly up to engage more adds. Meanwhile, Malygos spits out shield bubbles that you have to use for protection. The bubbles shrink over time so you have to run from bubble to bubble. This phase lasts until you kill the adds.

The third phase puts you onto dragons, vaguely similar to the beloved end of Oculus. It's a cool concept but stressful because you have to learn different movement and fighting controls and techniques. The good news is that you can practice this. There's a daily quest near the Nexus that uses the same dragon controls. You can pick up the feeder quest Corastrasza right by the flight point at Transitus Shield. From there you mount and fly waaaaay up above the Nexus. There's a platform there where you meet Corastrasza and pick up Aces High. I would definitely recommend running that at least a few times before trying EoE.

So, it's a complex fight. Not everyone likes it! It's a frustrating fight to learn; don't be surprised if you wipe a lot at first. I'm still interested enough in it to keep trying.

Patch 3.1

We've seen fewer and fewer PTR changes in the last week, and we haven't had a new build in a few days. So 3.1 would appear to be close to completion. There's a tentative date for Noblegarden, starting on 26 April. So my best guess is still that 3.1 will arrive 14 April, with 21 April the backup date if issues pop up.

Obviously Ulduar is the major new content in 3.1, but there's also the whole Argent Tournament concept, an almost-new holiday with Nobelgarden, dual spec capability, multiple new interface features, and a host of class changes. I'm looking forward to it; here's hoping it comes off without major glitches!

T8 set bonuses

I know Lifebloom, regen changes, and dual specs have occupied my attention with patch 3.1. But there's a ton of other stuff going on and some is very interesting. I saw the T8 set bonuses today on MMO-Champion and they're pretty sweet.

DISCLAIMER: All subject to change of course! So don't assume this stuff will really happen. But it's cool enough to think about anyway.

Tier 8 of course will be the new sets that come from Heroic Ulduar. They have an iLvl of 226, compared to 213 for heroic Naxx/OS and normal Ulduar, or 200 for normal Naxx/OS. But the set bonuses are exciting:

T8 Feral Druid

2 pieces: The periodic damage dealt by your Rake, Rip, and Lacerate abilites has a chance to cause you to enter a Clearcasting state.
4 pieces: Increases the duration of Savage Roar and Survival Instinct by 8 sec.

I don't know feral well enough to give a full analysis here. But the Clearcasting proc seems like it could be fairly powerful, depending on how often it procs. Free abilities are pretty cool. The 4pc duration increase isn't sexy but it has punch. For Savage Roar, it depends on how long a combo point cycle takes. If it allows you one more 5-pt finishing move before you have to reapply Savage Roar, that will be a sizeable buff for cats. For bears, adding 40% duration to Survival Instinct sounds like a big enhancement for a major panic button.

T8 Balance Druid

2 pieces: Increases the bonus granted by Eclipse for Starfire and Wrath by 6%.
4 pieces: Each time your Insect Swarm deals damage, you have a chance to make your next Starfire cast within until cancelled instant.

As of WotLK, a big question for Moonkin is how to manage your Eclipse procs. Do it well, and your DPS goes way up. The 2pc bonus really rewards skilled Moonkin with a 6% buff to the talent, which is great. The 4pc bonus could really multiply that even further, depending on the proc chance. If you get a few instant-cast Starfires in your rotation, that's huge. If you can work in 1-2 extra instant Starfires while under Eclipse, that's immense. It also sounds like a fun mechanic to work with. I hope it has a distinctive sound and/or a nice visual effect when it procs.

T8 Restoration Druid

2 pieces: Increases the healing done by your Swiftmend spell by 10%.
4 pieces: Your Rejuvenation spell also instantly heals your target for its periodic healing amount.

The 2pc bonus here is both boring and useful. I have to admit that I'm not great at using Swiftmend, and I need to do more to work it into my rotation. But it's a great spell, and buffing it by a straight 10% is fairly big. Now, the 4pc bonus is slightly vague to me, but it really sounds like it gives Rejuv an instant heal in addition to its HoT component. Really? Because that would be amazing! If Rejuv becomes an instant-cast mini-Regrowth, then you've got a damn powerful tool at your hands. It could be useful for tank healing, but it would make Rejuv the hands-down best option for raid healing, no question.

Edit: Tree Bark Jacket confirms this as an instant heal for a single tick of Rejuv. That makes a lot of sense but not a "mini-Regrowth". That's still a fairly powerful ability however; Rejuv ticks are sizeable and usually the first one is 3s away.

The only thing depressing about these set bonuses is how difficult they'll be to acquire. I haven't looked yet but it's clear that some tokens are going to drop from some difficult bosses. So, getting to your 4 piece bonus won't be trivial. Of course you want great gear to be hard to get, there's nothing wrong with that. But some of these bonuses — Resto, in particular — can really change the way you play. It seems odd to give game-changing abilities to such a small percentage of Druids.

Stomping on each other's heals

Raid healing. That post is coming Soon. No really!

Before I take that topic on, though, I want to explain one common raid healing issue that I'm not going to discuss. That's the issue of different healers sending heals to the same raid target — and specifically, which heals are better at stopping it.

Heal crowding like this is something you don't want. Most raid damage is low enough that one heal can take care of it. When two or three healers are healing the same (non-tank) toon, it wastes both mana and time. I know that mana in particular is rarely a concern now, but all evidence says that this will change with 3.1. Better to learn good habits now.

Heal crowding is a particular problem for Druids. Healers all react to a low health bar. If every healer sees the same bar, they'll instinctively want to deal with it. Most druid heals are instant cast HoTs, right? So a Druid can react quickly, but his heals won't be effective for several seconds. Meanwhile, a Priest or Paladin will start up a short cast time heal, which will arrive after the HoT but before it ticks much. Group heal spells like Wild Growth, Circle of Healing, and Chain Heal also contribute to the problem, especially because the caster can't predetermine who they will hit.

Now, truth is, many healers are having an easy enough time at this point that it's not worth the effort, and we just stomp on each others' heals without thinking too much about it. It's also part of the alternative game "who can top the healing meters?" But if (when) you find yourself tackling some challenging encounter, you'll have better chances of success if you're cooperating with other healers, rather than competing.

It's a legitimate issue and one that raids should work to avoid. But what I don't want to get into is analyzing Druid heals based on which ones are most likely to avoid the problem. Because, in a nutshell, the problem isn't the heals, it's the healers. If your raid heals are getting stomped on, the answer isn't to change what you're casting, it's to work with your healers to coordinate better.

I've read a lot of analysis of raid heals that comes down to, for instance, "Regrowth is better than Rejuvenation because other healers will heal over my Rejuv, which wastes it." For me, that analysis is both true and misleading. Sure, a direct heal may be more obvious to other healers (the toon's health bar goes up). But the HoT is probably both more efficient and faster to cast. Or, possibly, the other healer's spell is more appropriate to the situation.

There are a few things you can do to avoid the problem. First, work out healing assignments and know who's supposed to be doing what. Second, know your other healers — both the classes and the people playing them. Know what they're good at, what spells they cast, how they'll react (and how fast). And then hold back on that HoT if someone else will be healing the same toon.

Doing that won't help you win the healing meters. But it will help you beat the encounters.

How to PUG a raid

If it's not obvious by now, I'll be clear: this blog is not written by or for elite WoW players. If you're in a guild that has two Naxx teams or Malygos on farm, I'm sure this stuff is old hat to you.

But I write this blog for the rest of us.

For example, take my guild's raiding experience. We have been able to set up multiple Naxx runs for the past 3 weeks or so, and that's been fun. But we also need to pick up other players, as we usually have 8 that can go into the raid. Usually we need another healer and a DPS, though for some fights we can do fine with just two healers.

We've had a range of PUG players in our raids. Sometimes we'll get a geared, experienced player — maybe someone who's running 25-man raids every week but has an off night to help out in 10-mans. That's wonderful and really helps with learning. The other extreme is to bring in someone new to raids entirely, or at least new to the fights you're taking on. And even someone who's been in Naxx before may not have fought (or fought successfully) the bosses you're tackling on a given night.

It's very common to see this. Reading the official forums, it's easy to believe that Naxx is 'too easy' and 'no challenge'. And yet I see numerous players and guilds who aren't able to get deep into it. For us, we have downed 9/15 bosses max, and felt pretty good about that. I don't doubt that many experienced guilds have an easy time. But there's no need to feel noobish just because you're struggling with Maxxena or whatever. If you have the right attitude, and enjoy challenges, you're having more fun than the uber leet crowd.

So, if you're a average joe or jane like us, maybe you want to try some raiding, but don't know how to get started. Obviously you can (and should!) read up on the fights and know what to expect. But how do you set things up so that you have a good chance for success? Here are a few ideas I've found that will help out.

Tips for starting a PUG raid

1. Start with a core group. If you can, begin with a nucleus of players who you know and get along with. This might be the 5 or so players that you run instances with, or the handful in your guild that want to try things out. Things are easier when you know what to expect from even half of your raid.

2. Tackle something that's realistic. This is affected by how good your gear is, how skilled your players are, and how organized your group is. A good place to start is the Archavon raid in Wintergrasp. If you have zero raid experience, try tagging along for this a few times; it's usually PUGged right after a Wintergrasp battle (if your side wins, of course). If you have no trouble organizing Archavon, your next step would be either Naxxramas or Sartharion in Obsidian Sanctum. They're both targeted for about the same levels of gear. The advantage of OS is that it's three mini-bosses and one boss; the disadvantage is that the boss fight is a little bit complicated, and if you don't figure him out, you get no loot. There are Naxx fights that are more complicated, but the first few bosses are relatively simple.

3. Make learning the goal. Loot is good, and it's worth striving for. But depending on who you're running with, it's very possible that you'll struggle with parts of the raid. If you start with an attitude that loot means everything, that can quickly lead to disappointment, whining, and arguments. Instead, you should focus on understanding the fights you're tackling. If (like us) you're adding new players to an existing core, make sure you understand what they know — and try to teach your newer players. On the other hand, if a more experienced player joins your raid, be willing to learn from what they have seen.

4. Keep the tone light but focused. Don't sweat things if you're struggling, or if someone gets something wrong. That's part of the learning. Be polite. And, if someone is making things unpleasant for everyone else, don't be afraid to have them leave the raid (but be polite about that too).

Remember, the whole point of playing this game is to have fun. Yeah, it can be intense, but that doesn't make it OK to be a jerk.

5. Try to learn every time. If you wipe, try to understand why. It may well be a mistake by someone. Don't punish it but learn from it. If your strategy is really complex, it can take a long time for everyone to learn it. And don't be afraid to own up if you make a mistake; that helps everyone. (And raid leaders can make mistakes too, by failing to explain things.)

6. Understand your raid lockouts. This is a real pain sometimes, but you have to know about it. Basically, you are (usually) saved to a raid instance after your group has downed a boss, but you can be saved before that too. Once you're saved to an instance, you can't group up with a different group and try things again. Some notes about this:

• All current Northrend raids reset every Tuesday morning (for US players). So if you ran a raid on Thursday, you're saved to that raid until the following Tuesday.
  
• Normal and Heroic raids are saved separately. So if you ran normal 10-man Naxx, you're saved to it, but you're not saved for 25-man Heroic Naxx.
  
• Check your saved raids. This is done in two ways. The nicer way to do it is to use your in-game calendar. You'll have to turn on the "show raid resets" option, but then it will show upcoming raid resets. You can also accomplish this through the Raid interface. Open the Social window (O) and click on the Raids tab. Then click on the Raid Information button at the top of the window. It will tell you what raids you're currently saved to.
  
  Be ready to explain this to any PUG candidates you're bringing on too. It's surprising how many players won't remember what raids they've run this week.

7. Use a standard method to communicate. Voice chat works best when you're explaining things; you can use in-game voice chat or Ventrilo. You don't need everyone to have a microphone, but if they can listen in that will help.

If voice isn't an option, be prepared to type a good bit!

8. Build up a regular group. Not everyone can run your raid every week. But as your regular group gets bigger, things will get much easier. If someone runs with you and you got along well with them, try to invite them back the next time.

OK, those are my tips. Hopefully those will get you started. The raids are fun, and more accessible than they've ever been. Give them a try!

Introduction to Obsidian Sanctum

We did three raids this weekend. Friday we ventured into Obsidian Sanctum again. Saturday we built a PuG for 25-man Archavon, and then kept a few for 10-man, though that one didn't complete before the Wintergrasp battle started. Sunday we put together a 10-man Naxx group and cleared the Spider wing again.

We've had a lot of luck clearing Obsidian Sanctum. It's not a terribly long raid, with three mini-bosses, some trash, and the black dragon Sartharion. The encounters are more complex than Archavon but less complex than Naxxramas. So this is a good entry-level raid. The neat thing about Obsidian Sanctum is that you can choose to add to the difficulty by not clearing all the mini-bosses first. More on the details in a moment.

The Info

• WoWWiki - Obsidian Sanctum (also links to the mini-bosses)
  
• WoWWiki - Sartharion
  
• TankSpot video - Sartharion

Getting There

Appropriately for a dragon boss, this raid is found near Wyrmrest Temple. That will be your flight point and staging area. The temple has repairs, food, water, and reagents, so you can stock up mid-raid fairly easily.

The entrance to the instance is found in an area called the Chamber of Aspects. It's the basement of the temple. To get there, use your flying mount and move south out of the ground floor. There's a major rift that leads underneath the temple; descend into that and turn north to enter the Chamber of Aspects.

When you die, you'll start at the graveyard on the main floor of the temple. Just turn south and jump off the edge of the temple (in ghost form, of course). You'll fall into the rift and run right in.

There are a few instance portals here, but only the Obsidian Sanctum is active. It's the southernmost portal.

10-Man Raid Composition

Two tanks are needed. Your offtank will probably have the harder job, as he has to collect adds that spawn at random locations. For healers, this may be the first raid you'll do with only two, but take a third if you're just starting.

Melee DPS will be disadvantaged on Sartharion due to the lava waves, so if you're choosing, take ranged DPS first. However, melee can be just fine; they'll just have to be more aware than usual about their surroundings. It's good to have at least one AoE class to help deal with the adds.

Fire resist gear can be a bit helpful, particularly for the tanks. Just don't stack too much at the expense of your other stats.

Consult Be Imba! to see whether your stats are up to par. The raid is about on the same level as Naxx.

Instance Layout

When you portal in, don't move too far, as there are trash mobs fairly close. However, it's safe enough to buff up right by the portal. You start on the south side of the instance. In the center of the instance, you'll see Sartharion, on a rectangular island surrounded by lava. The three drake minibosses are on hills to the west, north, and east of Sartharion.

The handful of trash groups are scattered between the minibosses. There are also patrols with two huge dragonkin; time your pulls so that you only get the patrols when you're ready. The trash mobs don't have to be CC'd, but you'll want your two tanks to split them up if possible.

Watch for the lava rivers as you move around, they can damage you (though it's not really significant. You can mount up, though there's usually no point until all the trash is cleared.

Fight Mechanics

The mini-bosses aren't too tough to beat. They're dragons, with the typical breath weapon and tail lash, so the tank should turn them away from the raid. The trick to the fights come when the mini-bosses spawn a portal. All raid members, except the main tank and one healer should head through the portal to defeat the add before it emerges. When you enter the portal, you will phase out and see the add. They're fairly easy to burn down; when its dead you will be back with the mini-boss. You can also use the portal to escape — most useful if the main healer having a hard time healing the tank.

On the second mini-boss, Tenebron, we've never found it necessary to go into the portal. Just wait for the eggs inside to hatch and burn down the adds.

Sartharion himself is an interesting fight. You can read the WoWWiki guide and watch the video for details. The basic facts however are these:

• The tank needs to grab Sartharion and turn him right-angle to the raid, so that he faces east-west.
  
• Sartharion does a flame breath, so you need to keep everyone but the tank away from his head. He also does a tail whip; it doesn't hit for much but it does a 2-sec stun. That will be important because of the....
  
• Lava waves. These form on either the west or east side of the island and move across. Raid members need to dodge the waves by finding gaps in them. These walls will do a big chunk of damage to anyone caught, so you need to avoid them.
  
• Fire elemental adds will enter the fight; the offtank needs to pick them up. It's good to have DPS work to burn the adds down. If the adds are hit by the lava walls, they will enrage and do 400% damage, so you need to drag them to the gap too.

The key is the lava waves, and the gaps in them. The waves can form on either the east or west sides. The gaps are determined by which side the wave forms on, so the east-side gaps are always the same (and likewise for the west side). So if you know where the wave is forming, you know where to run.

X Drakes Up

As I mentioned earlier, you can try to kill Sartharion without killing all the mini bosses first. This will grant you an achievement, but it will also get you more loot. The problem is that each drake will grant extra abilities to Sartharion, so the fight gets a lot harder. I wouldn't recommend this for your first try, but as you get more comfortable with the fight, you can leave more drakes alive before attempting the boss.

Loot

The mini-bosses don't drop gear, but they do drop Emblems of Heroism. Make sure to loot them!

Sartharion drops loot like usual, of course, including the T7 glove tokens. He also drops the [Satchel of Spoils]. Every raid member should roll on this item. It will contain 5 [Emblem of Heroism] and a good amount of gold (~40g). The emblems are of course soulbound. You could in theory just share the gold, but we have left it with the winner of the bag.

Don't confuse the Satchel with the [Dragon Hide Bag]. That's a 22-slot bag that he also drops. Of course all raid members should roll on that as well (though you can only have one).

In the 10-man raid, "one drake up" will get you an extra iLvl 200 epic. "Two drakes up" also gets you an extra iLvl 213 epic, while "Three drakes up" adds the [Reins of the Black Drake].

It's a good raid to try out with your guild — simpler than Naxxramas but not as easy as Archavon. Give it a shot and have fun!

Introduction to Naxxramas

Talon Guard had a busy and productive holiday season. The capstone however all happened after New Year's Day, as we've been able to do quite a bit of raiding. We took 5 TG members into a PUG for Archavon, which went so well that we stepped into Wyrmrest Temple and killed Sartharion in the Obsidian Sanctum. Both runs were successful, and we were able to down all bosses.

We also got our first taste of Naxxramas. Friday night we put together a run that included 6 TG members, our good friends Hazek and Humansheild, and two other pick-up players. After some group adjustment (including swapping a mage for a resto Shaman), we were able to clear the Spider wing in Naxx. We had so much fun that Hazek came back to Talon Guard. Welcome back!

Last night we took on our second venture to Naxx, this time trying out the Plague wing. We downed the first boss but had a hard time learning the Heigan Dance. We got better at it each time, but it got late before we completed it. We'll try again.

There are great guides for Naxxramas, starting with the WoWWiki Naxx page and the Tankspot videos. For boss fights, those are the two places to look first. Check the WoWWiki page and read up on the fights, and if the fight is more complex (cough Heigan cough) check out the Tankspot video. But here are a few basics to get you started.

Getting There

Naxxramas is located in eastern Dragonblight, close to the border with Grizzly Hills. Alliance will fly into Wintergarde Keep, while Horde will stage at Venomspite. Both towns offer a full range of vendors, including reagents and ammo.

You'll need a flying mount to get to Naxxramas. As you fly towards it (it's on your zone map), you'll see the giant floating necropolis. Fly underneath it. The entrance is on the bottom center of the ziggurat — the base of the pyramid. As you get close you will see fairly small balconies; just land there. There's a small staging room with a summoning stone; there's not much room in there, so on a busy raiding night things will be hectic.

A plea to my fellow players: Please. Just dismount. I know you think it's clever to mount your Mammoth in the middle of the room, but you're about the 10,000th person to think of it. Surely there are more creative ways to be annoying.

Instance Layout

There are four instance portals around the anteroom. It really doesn't matter which one you enter; they all go to the same place. Once inside, you'll find a relatively safe ring that leads to four hallways. These are the four wings (quarters) of Naxx:

• NE: Spider Quarter
  
• SE: Plague Quarter
  
• SW: Military Quarter (aka Death Knight wing)
  
• NW: Abomination Quarter (aka Construct wing)

Each wing has three bosses except the Abomination quarter, which has four. From what we've seen, there aren't too many trash pulls in any quarter, in keeping with WotLK-esque design. You should be able to do the wing in about the same time as a 5-man instance — if your group is up to the task.

When you kill the final boss of a wing, a portal-looking sign will light up in the central ring; when all four bosses are dead, a portal will open to allow you access to the final bosses, Sapphiron and Kel'Thuzad.

10-Man Raid Composition

Two tanks are needed. Entry-level raids should probably take three healers. Poison cleansing is important in many places, so you'll probably want either a druid or a shaman tasked with doing that, ideally a healer. For your remaining 5 players, bring a mix of melee and ranged DPS. We have not yet found crowd control to be important.

There are no attunement requirements for Naxx. I don't know if level 80 is required, but it's certainly recommended. If you can't quite handle Heroics yet, you're probably not ready for Naxxramas.

This Naxxramas Raid Minimums page provides a good guide for minimum gear requirements. You can also consult Be Imba! and see what it recommends for you. These aren't absolute guidelines. I was probably at the bottom or slightly below those requirements when we started, and never felt that my gear was holding me back.

Fight Mechanics

From what we've seen, the boss fights will generally be a bit more complicated than Heroic boss fights; you'll also have to coordinate twice as many players. So if you're not experienced, plan to spend some time learning the fights. There usually seems to be a twist or an important detail that you have to manage. For example, here are the three boss fights in the Spider wing:

Anub'Rekhan: The boss will send out a ray of spikes from himself to a player; any players in this line or nearby will be hit by the spikes too. So your players have to spread out. He also casts a Locust Swarm that will do a lot of damage; you have to decide whether to kite him to avoid it or just heal through it. You'll also get a lot of adds that the offtank must pick up.

Grand Widow Faerlina: She starts the fight with four "worshipper" adds. Your offtank will have to pick them up and tank them, but not kill them. Faerlina will periodically go into a Frenzy effect, increasing her damage and haste. That's bad... but killing a worshipper will dispell the Frenzy. So the raid has to kill a worshipper as soon as the Frenzy arrives. (Obviously all the DPS needs to kill the same worshipper.) You'll have to save the other worshippers for subsequent Frenzies. So, use raid icons and mark a kill order for the worshippers. The offtank will have to treat them with care; ideally they'll be at 15% health or so when it's time to kill them, but you definitely don't want them to die early!

Maexxna: This giant spider has the annoying habit of periodically cocooning one of your players. You need to DPS the cocoon down to free the player. She will periodically stun the entire raid and continue to do damage, so you can't let anyone get low on health. She also puts a poison on the tank that reduces healing received by 90%, so that must be cleansed ASAP.

So there's a lot to learn for each fight. Some (like Patchwerk) are a lot simpler, but most have lots of details to track. Be prepared to learn (and possibly wipe in the process). Even if you've read a lot about the fights, it can be tricky for everyone to know what to do at what point, either because they miss cues or because they forget what happens in Phase VI or whatever.

Deadly Boss Mods can help with that. It's an addon that tracks a lot of these special abilities and announces them. By default it will announce them to you, but you can set it to announce to the whole raid. Open up the GUI (type /dbm config), open the specific Naxxramas sections, and click the "Announce to Raid" checkbox for each boss. It's a huge help to know (for instance) that the next Frenzy will come in 15 seconds.

Of course your players still have to know what to do, and that's the learning aspect. But that's the fun part! If you go into a raid like this expecting it to be a loot piñata, and expect everything to go perfectly, you'll probably be disappointed. Stick to heroics! Raids like Naxxramas are most interesting when you're doing something different and challenging. And challenging means that you'll wipe. Accept the frustration, try to always learn from your mistakes, and keep a positive attitude, and you'll find that you're having a lot of fun.

Raiding Zul'Aman

Not much playing time last night, there was some other stuff going on. But I still haven't talked about my ZA run on Sunday night.

Let me take a step back first. Before October, I had not raided much at all. I had been in a handful of Karazhan runs and a single attempt at Zul'Aman. Because I wasn't raiding, I did a helluva lot of research on what kinds of gear improvements I could obtain. Over time I was able to build up a good set, roughly on par with T4 or so for PvE. Anyone in TK or SSC would be ahead of me, but otherwise I was doing pretty good.

With the 3.0.2 patch and boss nerfs, people are a lot more willing to PUG raids, so I've been asked along on a lot of things. So in a month I've now had runs into Karazhan, Gruul's Lair, Magtheridon's Lair, Mt. Hyjal, and now Zul'Aman. Along the way I've performed about the way I would expect given my gear: excellent in Kara, good in the middle stuff, and a bit behind the curve in Hyjal.



So how did Zul'Aman go? It was work. We did the eagle boss first (Akil'zon), and struggled for a while. It's the kind of fight where one person messing up will wipe the raid. There was one poor noobie, a warlock I believe, who couldn't get the encounter right. I don't know if he was inexperienced or what. After the second wipe he got pretty much harshed on and kicked from the raid. He really was pretty clueless but I still felt bad for him, it's not easy learning this stuff. We also lost a hunter and a priest at that point. The priest was our second healer, but we needed to add to that the healing split was 70/30 which is waaaay too much. So we got replacements and kept going. The paladin healer that came in was good, I ended up #2 to him, with more like a 53/47 split. (So he was better but I was still pulling my weight.)

It wasn't easy but we made progress. I think we wiped once more on that boss but then we got him. We also downed the Bear, Dragonhawk, and Lynx bosses. I think those four bosses overall resulted in 5-6 wipes. We fought up to Hex Lord Malacrass, and wiped two more times on him. By the second wipe it was midnight and I had to get to bed, so I bailed out. I haven't heard whether they got past him or not.

So as a healer, it was a good experience but a lot of work. I tested all my healing skill to keep up with the incoming damage. Rolling Lifeblooms and Rejuv on the tanks. Wild Growth on incoming raid damage. Swiftmend and/or Regrowth to save gravely wounded toons. Nature's Swiftness + Healing Touch for times when the grim reaper was nigh. I cast everything I could, kept pressing myself to do better, and very rarely felt like I could coast.

For the first time in a long time, mana management was a serious issue too. I was low on a few fights, particularly Lynx, and I went essentially OOM on the Hex Lord fight, both times. I'm sure this is because I've never had to learn to be mana efficient. (For example, my fondness for Regrowth can burn a lot of mana.) Also, the druid+paladin healer combo can lead to a lot of overhealing, especially with a PUG where we're not used to working together. So I used Innervate on almost every boss fight, and drank more mana pots in one night than I've used all month.

That kind of struggle is great! It's really interesting to feel like I have to work to learn my class better. Frankly, this kind of experience is why I'm still playing so much WoW: I am still having a lot of new experiences. But it's also kind of daunting, and hints at the whole reason why I didn't raid between March and October. In short: the hill was too steep. Not for me, but for our guild.

The first part of the hill was getting attuned for Karazhan. It wasn't a huge barrier, but it was time-consuming. Since this was all before the 2.3 patch, we had to run every toon through three instances. Different people were ready at different times, so this mean dozens of instance runs. Many players who were already keyed had to spend their time running Shadow Labyrinth and Steamvault in particular. By the time we had a plurality ready for Karazhan, people were just burned out. That was the biggest factor.

The second part though was Zul'Aman. After a few Karazhan trips, we took one step into ZA and it was obvious we were totally outgunned. The gap between the two raids, both in required gear and in tactics, was immense.

That left guild members with a big sense of despair. We were built around 10-man raids. We were making steady progress in Kara, but eventually that would top out and we'd be running the same content over and over. The logical next step would be ZA, but it was clear we couldn't step right out of Kara and be successful in ZA.

Also, these are big, long, complicated instances. Kara has 11 or 12 bosses and a helluva lot of trash pulls. ZA has six bosses. Unless you're highly overgeared, you'll spend hours getting through them. Compare that to Mags and Gruul's, with 1 and 2 boss encounters respectively, and few trash pulls. You can easily get through these in an hour, if you know the encounter. Moreover, the 25-man raids are inherently more forgiving. If you have 1 or 2 slackers, you're probably still OK. Even 2 people AFK only loses you 8% of your raid. One person missing (or undergeared, or clueless) in Kara is already 10% of your capability. And the 10-man raids seem to have more of the encounters where nobody can make a mistake — Shade of Aran or Akil'zon require everyone to do the right thing.

The result was strange and unfortunate. It was easy to be a big casual guild and run the 25-man stuff. But a small guild had to be pretty intense to get through Kara and ZA. You had to schedule 3 or 4 raids a week if you wanted to progress. For us, we just didn't have enough people. If more than one person took the night off, the raid was probably called, and that made for a lot of frustration on everyone's part. There was a lot of tension there and most of the players ended up leaving for bigger guilds.

I have high hopes for Wrath of the Lich King. For one thing, every raid can be run with 10-man or 25-man participation. That already gives 10-man groups a lot more instances to run; at launch there will be 3 (4 if you count the PvP-connected Vault of Archavon) with two more slated. That also allows for an easier progression path too.

It does come at a cost. If you eventually switch to 25-man raiding, you'll be looking at the same instances. They do drop better loot, so they're still worthwhile. But it will be more of the same in encounters and storyline. I'm a bit concerned that this will make the 25-man stuff seem less elite. Even if I don't plan to run it, I would like to know that there's some seriously hardcore stuff out there, even if I never see it.

My hope is to tackle 10-man progression in a semi-casual fashion. I don't want to raid four nights a week or feel like I'm obligated to show up every time. I do want to be able to progress, and do more than just 5-man instances. My hope is that this is easier to start and has room for everyone to grow. And I'm a lot more hopeful of that in Wrath.

Headless Horseman and Magtheridon

Happy halloween everyone! We've been running a lot of Headless Horseman of course. It paid off for me, as I won a roll when the mount dropped. Sweet! But I still want to get a squashling; it's the only thing preventing me from getting the Hallow's Eve achievement.

I also had my second Mr. Pinchy drop. Cool! I've used one wish and got the blessing; here's hoping for the remaining wishes to get me the pet.

But I've been doing some more-meaty stuff, too. I joined a PUG into Magtheridon's Lair yesterday — another first for me. These 25-man PUGs are starting to feel familiar. First, it takes forever to get organized. Then, the big fights usually take a couple tries to get right. And then there's chaos at the end.

This wasn't an exception. We had a wipe on the trash, because someone didn't realize they were sitting in a bad spot and pulled both a patrol and another group. Then we wiped again on Mags, when we had poor coordination on our cube-clicking. The second attempt actually started with a messed-up pull, but we fought past it and got the big guy down with no deaths.

Here's the healing meter information. To be honest, I'm shocked that I did as well as I did, given that I was learning the fight. Fortunately that's easier for healers than anyone else. But there were chunks of time when I was just waiting and looking for damage — probably not being entirely useful. The splash damage was dominant of course, so it's no surprised that the Shaman led the meters. But Wild Growth did a decent job at helping too.

Name       Class    +SP   Tot H    HPS    % of Tot
Sophiablue shaman   1101  922061  1449.6  23.2%
Om         druid    1131  848356  1222.6  21.3
Alamein    druid     932  781601  1082.5  19.7
Diemaggots paladin     ?  560411   753.8  14.1
Ironjaw    paladin  1078  371442   767.1   9.3

I don't have good data for Diemaggots. The Armory shows him in Ret spec and gear, and I'm not sure how he healed last night — whether he respecced, put on Holy gear, or both. Otherwise though I was pretty happy with where I came out, given the gear levels.

Here's a look at how my spells worked out. I used a lot of Wild Growth for raid healing, and it worked pretty well. I should have pulled similar stats for Om but forgot; I know he used even more WG than I did (it may have even topped Lifebloom for him if I recall correctly).

Spell       #   Tot H   % of Tot
Lifebloom  645  369050  47.2%
Wild Grow  514  176002  22.5
Rejuv       95   97188  12.4
Regrowth    70   87717  11.2
Swiftmend    5   23496   3.0
Healing T    3   16969   2.2
Living Se    6    6843   0.9
Glyph Rej    9    4336   0.6

It's nice to see Living Seed work a few more times. The healing is still not huge, but by definition it works when it's most needed. The Glyph of Rejuvenation is in the same category.

I also saw a bit more use for Replenish. The Pally tank I was healing got something like 4000 mana out of it, which seems better than before. I wonder, was it hotfixed? I hadn't seen anything. Maybe it's just a case of keeping Rejuv up more.

I'm hoping for more interesting runs like this in the next couple weeks. I'll post back!

Edit: I forgot to add a crucial story about the raid: the loot rolls were totally f'd up. People failed to pay attention and ended up rolling on items they didn't need. Then, the loot master failed to verify who the loot was going to. The T4 Chest token for Druid, Warriors or Priests ended up with a Mage. And the Eye trinket went to a healer who can't really use it.

Fortunately I got lucky and won the [Pit Lord's Satchel] with a 98 roll. I've been extremely lucky with loot rolls on these PUGs. Who knows if it will last...

3.0.2 Druid healing: Gruul and Hyjal

Yesterday I talked about my runs into Gruul's Lair and Mount Hyjal. I wanted to give some stats about how I was healing through these runs, to provide more data on how Druids are healing.

First, some background. My Druid is Alamein. Unfortunately the Armory doesn't seem to have updated in weeks, so don't read much into what you see today. (Maybe after today's maintenance.) Her gear is roughly at T4 level; the Gruul's run replaced a couple PvP pieces (helm and shoulders) with roughly T4 equivalents, which slightly boosted her for Hyjal. She should be reasonably geared for Gruul's and somewhat undergeared for Hyjal. And as I had mentioned, I'd never been into either encounter.

I also recognize that the encounters have been nerfed quite a bit with 3.0.2. I believe the stat is that boss health is down about 30%. Certainly we did better than we should expect. Gruul's was a total PuG. Hyjal was mostly a guild run, with four from my guild joining Seditio and a few other additions. This was their first attempt at Hyjal.

So that's all for level-setting. How did the numbers stack up? I have details for Gruul and a quick summary for Hyjal.

Gruul's Lair

As I described yesterday, we had an abortive attempt on Maulgar before restocking the raid with PuGgers and trying again. I reset Recount with tne fresh attempt, which went through all the trash as well as both Maulgar and Gruul. Here's the report:

Character     Class      Tot H     HPS    %Heal
Thaddx        Paladin    689198   1242.9  18.8%
Doireann      Shaman     529918   1136.6  14.4
Alamein       Druid      525971    717.3  14.3
Stastris      Paladin    511488   1034.1  13.9
Maxxus        Shaman     446992    701.2  12.2
Humansheild*  Paladin    317886    410.7   8.7

*Humansheild is a tank, so this represents the first non-healer. He did quite a bit of off-healing for the encounter.

Armory is borked so I don't have a good way of comparing all of us. But I would judge that we were all roughly close in gear levels. Given that — and given that I didn't know the encounters — I feel reasonably good about the healing meters. Obviously the HPS numbers are pretty low, but I suspect that's due to a lot of instant-cast spells and rolling HoTs rather than more bursty heals.

What did I cast? I started with rolling Lifeblooms on the main tank (a warrior named Avith). He was the Maulgar tank for that encounter, and the MT for Gruul. I did 51.9% of my healing on him, mostly from rolling Lifeblooms and Rejuv. He died early in the Maulgar encounter — I'm not quite sure why — and I did a Rebirth followed by some big heals to get him back into the game.

I also did raid healing in between refreshing the above. A lot of that was Regrowth, which I use probably more than I should, and Lifebloom. I also tried to use Wild Growth where it made sense.

Here's the data:

Spell         Count  Total    %
Lifebloom      504  273284  52.0%
Regrowth        85  122565  23.3
Rejuvenation    92   85352  16.2
Wild Growth     78   26043   5.0
Healing Touch    2    9723   1.8
Living Seed      6    5139   1.0
Swiftmend        1    2828   0.5
Glyph of Rejuv   2    1037   0.2

My thoughts on this:

• Lifebloom still works darn well.
  
• I like Regrowth a lot! I'm sure those crits are what spawned the Living Seeds that did proc.
  
• My overhealing was 17.6%, which doesn't seem like a lot, though I don't really have a point of comparison.
  
• I didn't get much from the Glyph of Rejuvenation. But that's 1000 points of healing that came when the tank needed it the most.
  
• Wild Growth is pretty powerful, but I still need to learn it better.
  
• Mana was not an issue, though I had to watch it more closely than previously. I used Innervate a couple times, but I don't believe I needed a mana pot at all.

So a bit more on Regrowth. I like it a lot for raid healing, because it gets a good chunk of health back in the initial heal and then keeps working through the HoT. The big problem is that it takes too long to cast. That's a delay in healing received, as well as an opportunity cost in the other spells I could cast. (Note, however, that it's still faster than casting a Rejuv followed by Swiftmend, due to the two GCDs you have to eat.)

Life will be a lot more interesting at 80. On the one hand, we'll have Nourish. That may be the go-to spell in a lot of these situations. On the other hand, we'll have a good shot at taking Nature's Grace in a Resto build. That proc will shave casting time off either spell, making for a fast Regrowth or a blinding-fast Nourish. I suspect we'll be using Nourish a lot, and watch for Nature's Grace to proc; when it does we'll drop a Regrowth into the mix.

Replenish Watch: Like I said, I kept Replenish up on the tank about 90% of the time. The result? 80 rage gained, over the course of the whole raid. Still not worth it.

Finally... I also did 6 rezzes. Yay, Revive!

Mount Hyjal

As I mentioned, I'm rather undergeared for Hyjal. So I wasn't expecting to lead the meters, and I was right. I was #7 on healing done, for 7.9% of the total. I did however do 872.9 HPS. That's up more than 150 from what I did on Gruul. That's probably partly because I had gear upgrades, and mostly because I was just using a lot more of my GCDs. We had no shortage of damage!

There were two resto Druids in the raid, and we were tasked with raid healing. A bit unusual, but I gave it my best. I don't know how it works for more experienced Hyjal guilds, but for this one there was a ton of raid damage. Since I was so busy I used a lot of Lifebloom as a first response to damage. I also tried to keep Lifeblooms rolling on at least a couple of the tanks. That lead to Lifebloom doing almost 70% of my healing — much more than Gruul's. Regrowth was #2, followed by Rejuv. I tried to use a lot of Wild Growth too, but here I think it fell down a bit because it's difficult to spam. I would cast it once, but as I wasn't sure who would receive it, I didn't want to cast it again without knowing who'd been hit by the first. I think there will be WG mods for Grid which will help with this.

On the other hand, I had more Living Seed healing, especially considering how much I used Lifebloom. Regrowth plus Living Seed combines nicely for this type of crazy raid damage. Also, it was nice to be able to rez with Revive between waves. It seems to take a long time though, and I'd find that someone else had already rezzed before Revive finished casting. That's a lack of experience from me as much as anything.

I also did a ton of Remove Curse — more than 100 I believe. I'm not sure how painful that curse is, but I felt it was a useful task for me since I wasn't the most powerful healer there. Hopefully I did some good damage mitigation through that.

All in all, Hyjal was an interesting experience. I certainly felt that I wasn't quite doing the healing I needed to for the raid. On the other hand, I didn't feel useless either. It's a difficult encounter and I can see why it takes some time to learn.

So that's my raiding story. The TLDR reaction: I still feel like Druids can do a lot of good healing. We're still disadvantaged on healing meters, but that doesn't represent our true healing strengths anyway. And despite the Lifebloom nerf, it still works quite well.

Weekend Fun

Talk about progression! As of last Wednesday, I hadn't been in Kara in something like 6 months, and that was the most raiding I'd done. Now that's all changed.

As I wrote earlier, I was asked to participate Thursday night in a Kara run. It went well and we got through to Illhoof. I intended to join up with them again Friday night, but instead had a nice long dinner with friends, so I missed the last part of the run.

Still, it was fun to be back in Kara.


Saturday night, I was goofing around when I got another request from my pally tank friend. This time they wanted to pull together a PUG for Gruul's. I'd never done a 25-man raid before, so I thought it would be a great experience. Firegrin and I took part.

It didn't start all that well. We took two tries at High King Maulgar, and wiped both times. At this point things looked bleak and we lost about 7 people from the raid. Firegrin and I hung in while the leaders tried to recruit more — including recruiting in trade chat. We weren't very hopeful, and I expected they would call the raid.

After half an hour of recruiting, they were able to reform the group, and we tried again. Trash had respawned so we had to redo the whole instance (not that this is a major hassle). Whether it was because of better gear or better players or just better efforts, we were able to get High King on the first shot. We then moved forward and also one-shotted Gruul. Quite impressive for us and a lot of fun too.


It was a ton of fun and we got very lucky too. Firegrin won his T4 pants from Gruul, and I won both my T4 shoulders ([Shoulderguards of Malorne]) and the [Cowl of Nature's Breath]. So quite a success for all!

Then on Sunday, four of us (me, Firegrin, Cargarios, and Wyrmm) joined another guild for a run at Mount Hyjal. So, wow... in one weekend I've gone from Kara to Hyjal! More than anything this points to how much the raids have been nerfed; they are a lot more accessible now. This guild had never taken on Hyjal before, so it was new to them. The raid leader (who used to lead our Kara runs, months ago) knew the fights and had a good sense of what to do and how to instruct us.

The good news is that after one unsuccessful attempt we were able to kill Rage Winterchill. Everyone seemed pretty laid back about it, but that's actually quite impressive for a first attempt. We took two cracks at Anetheron and couldn't really make a dent in him. I believe we had positioning issues and needed to individually learn the issues and tactics involved. It's one thing to know that Carrion Swarm is coming; it's another to recognize what it looks like and know how far you have to run. We were learning rapidly, but with the night growing late we called it a successful night and packed up.


So how did my healing go? I'll post a look at the Recount reports tomorrow, with the full details. In general though it's about what you expect. When I looked Alamein up on Be Imba (before the Armory went kaplooie with 3.0.2), she'd be rated to perform well up through Gruul's or Magtheridon. And that's exactly what happened. I was near the top for healing on Gruul's, with no serious problems. On the other hand, I was well behind in healing for Hyjal, coming in about 6th place overall on the meters. I'm pretty sure I was useful — I know I did about a hundred Remove Curses, and I still did around 2 million points of healing using mostly Lifebloom and Regrowth.

Spells worked pretty well for the most part. Wild Growth is not giving me a huge boost, but it's somewhat useful; I expect it'll be even better for 5-man runs. The main problem is that it's unpredictable, making it pointless to spam and not very helpful for widespread raid damage. Replenish is still not helping at all; I'm curious to see if that will get buffed, because I'm certain now I won't bother with it.

I'll post more detailed thoughts tomorrow. But for today, I'm going to enjoy memories of my first 25-man runs. Good stuff!