Famous last words
Posted 11-02-2009 at 01:38 AM by Shortypop
This morning's blog was meant to be about my trials and tribulations over the weekend of installing and setting up Grid exactly how I wanted it, but the events of last night threw all my plans (and I suspect our RLs plans for the next while) off-track. I will still blog about Grid, complete with some screenies but let's start the week on a high note.
On my drive into work this morning I was contemplating various titles for this blog that ranged from "What a night" to "Totally unexpected". But before I get to last night I need to mention our first Freya+3 kill on Thursday night and the fact that with a change to a macro I'm back happily heroic striking!
So .... last night it was a normal run through TotC, which took us 50minutes and during which we lost 3 people to random deaths and one-shotted everything. Shorty got her second Trophy and promptly bought a new set of shiny tank gloves. Having got our second HM beasts kill on Thursday we re-convened after a short break at Jaraxxas.
We'd gotten several attempts in on a previous week and I was quietly confident that we would be able to down him. Unlike last time I was tanking adds --- those infernals are a pain! -- six wipes later and he was dead! So were six guildies, but all in all I feel it was a very repeatable kill.
Now comes the crux of this entire blog, with 50 minutes left of our raid night our RL summons the horde faction champions - resto druid, resto shammy, holy priest, shadow priest, hunter, rogue, warrior, DK, mage and ret pally. After a cute little two-line speech that went something like "This is going to take us a while, don't get disappointed or frustrated" a minimum amount of cc rotations were given out and we were off ... to our deaths.
Take 1: Decision made to kill rogue and then hunter .. just over a minute later and they were all still standing and we are well on our way to wiping!
Take 2: Lasted over 4 minutes with one dead rogue on their side and regular deaths on ours.
Take 3: We decide to change over to killing the holy priest first (not actually 100% sure what caused this decision), we manage to kill him before everything unravels pretty quickly.
Take 4: With just over 10minutes left of our raid time we pulled again, our feral druid dies within the first minute but is soon followed by the holy priest. Rogue, warrior and ret pally all follow, with vent quiet apart from requests for dispels and the occasionally "who's next?" - I'm not sure exactly when but eventually someone asks "How are we doing this", a quick glance at my UI shows 24 of us still standing! A few seconds short of 9minutes after the pull they are all dead and we are ressing our only casualty (the feral druid).
Unlike on Jaraxxas and most other progress kills, you could definitely sense the complete feeling of disbelief on vent that with less tries than either Jaraxxas or hardmode beasts we had killed a fight that I am sure most of us were secretly dreading!
Next up in terms of progress kills are Vezaxx and Twins, but for now I hope you'll forgive us if we remain a little shellshocked at the events of last night!
On my drive into work this morning I was contemplating various titles for this blog that ranged from "What a night" to "Totally unexpected". But before I get to last night I need to mention our first Freya+3 kill on Thursday night and the fact that with a change to a macro I'm back happily heroic striking!
So .... last night it was a normal run through TotC, which took us 50minutes and during which we lost 3 people to random deaths and one-shotted everything. Shorty got her second Trophy and promptly bought a new set of shiny tank gloves. Having got our second HM beasts kill on Thursday we re-convened after a short break at Jaraxxas.
We'd gotten several attempts in on a previous week and I was quietly confident that we would be able to down him. Unlike last time I was tanking adds --- those infernals are a pain! -- six wipes later and he was dead! So were six guildies, but all in all I feel it was a very repeatable kill.
Now comes the crux of this entire blog, with 50 minutes left of our raid night our RL summons the horde faction champions - resto druid, resto shammy, holy priest, shadow priest, hunter, rogue, warrior, DK, mage and ret pally. After a cute little two-line speech that went something like "This is going to take us a while, don't get disappointed or frustrated" a minimum amount of cc rotations were given out and we were off ... to our deaths.
Take 1: Decision made to kill rogue and then hunter .. just over a minute later and they were all still standing and we are well on our way to wiping!
Take 2: Lasted over 4 minutes with one dead rogue on their side and regular deaths on ours.
Take 3: We decide to change over to killing the holy priest first (not actually 100% sure what caused this decision), we manage to kill him before everything unravels pretty quickly.
Take 4: With just over 10minutes left of our raid time we pulled again, our feral druid dies within the first minute but is soon followed by the holy priest. Rogue, warrior and ret pally all follow, with vent quiet apart from requests for dispels and the occasionally "who's next?" - I'm not sure exactly when but eventually someone asks "How are we doing this", a quick glance at my UI shows 24 of us still standing! A few seconds short of 9minutes after the pull they are all dead and we are ressing our only casualty (the feral druid).
Unlike on Jaraxxas and most other progress kills, you could definitely sense the complete feeling of disbelief on vent that with less tries than either Jaraxxas or hardmode beasts we had killed a fight that I am sure most of us were secretly dreading!
Next up in terms of progress kills are Vezaxx and Twins, but for now I hope you'll forgive us if we remain a little shellshocked at the events of last night!
Total Comments 3
Comments
-
I think Fac champs is very much down to indivdual performance on whether the raid as a whole is successful. Those small decisions each player makes like say a mage using iceblock and just the right time to avoid his death all add up to make it either a solid kill or a drawn out wipe.Posted 11-02-2009 at 03:01 AM by Mr.Winkle 
- Congrats
Posted 11-02-2009 at 07:48 AM by hbombs - Several myths and truths abound faction champs. I do it regularly with 4 different guild runs. Let's start with the bad:
1. "Healing will be easier after one dies." Healing does not necessarily get easier when one of them dies. I had a raid leader say "as soon as we kill the resto druid it'll be much easier." I spent the next 10 minutes explaining that it only gets easier when the dps dies. I even had to use flow charts and stuff to the point where his own guild was curious how thick this player was. (and he's a healer to boot!)
2. "CC isn't important." CC is VERY important. If you sheep something for even 2 seconds, that's 2 seconds that they're not focus targeting a player and healers can catch up on the erratic burst damage. Remember: it takes about 2 seconds between a player taking damage, and the first heal has the chance of landing (unless you've got a resto druid rolling hots on the right people etc etc) so anything you can do to smooth out that burst will make the fight easier. Considering they bloodlust off the hop, ignoring CC just makes the raid ask for damage. Often, when I play my moonkin, I do NOTHING but CC. Cyclone, root, typhoon a melee, cyclone something else, and so on. Cyclone is one of the most powerful CCs if used right because it blocks everything. It turns 10vs6 or 25vs10 into 9vs5 or 24vs9 on that ability alone.
3. "Heals > Dispels." Actually it's the other way around. Dispels prevent so much damage in this fight. Often having a paladin and a resto shammy doing nothing but cleansing is fight changing. (Dispelling UA is worth the silence and expected damage.)
Some things not done that should be:
1. Long term cooldowns should be used. I know many classes often forget them (I never use them on my resto shammy) but you should throw down with what you've got because the fight should get 'easier' as it progresses.
2. Mash that resto druid to kingdom come. Most successful groups have used this strategy. most of the other healing classes can have a rogue, or tank warrior watch and knock out of heals (resto shammy and holy pally are extremely gullable for this) However that resto druid rolls some nasty HoTs.
3. Stay out of AoEs. The AI seems scripted to find congregations of players and AoE (the warlock does this often, and then usually the rogue cuts in with a few Fans) The warrior bladestorm seems especially neglected, and I've seen so many people die to the tag-team combo of ret pally+warrior when they aren't even the major target - they just happened to be in the vacinity of a double-storm.
4. Consider powers not often used in PvE. Warrior intimidating shout off a charge is the best way to get the ball rolling and everyone all seperated so there's less of a chance of focus damage.
I'm sure I can think of more...but I've been commenting too much lately as I wait for pugs to finish up some triumph emblems on my alts.Posted 11-02-2009 at 05:51 PM by Conreeaght
