Here's really the key to killing Gruul. Just don't die. Yeah, I may have oversimplified just a tad. But yes, last night we killed Gruul the Dragonkiller. The shatters really make for an interesting battle. Every 45 seconds or so, you get thrown up into the air in a random direction, and then have about 5 seconds of increasingly slowed movement to get into a position away from other people until you are stoned (no, not that way), and you can't move for 5 seconds. Then, if you've done a great job, nobody's within 15 yards of you and you won't take any damage. If there's too many people next to you (or just 1 too close), you'll die.
There's other mechanics to the fight as well. But I found a great spot where I could run against the side wall just before the Ground Slam (which throws you in the air). Running into the wall usually would result in me just standing in the same place. And as long as nobody else was thrown into me, I wouldn't take any damage at all.
At any rate, the exciting part is downing him. But also is exciting is the loot that is dropped. Our guild got the [Leggings of the Fallen Hero], the [Leggings of the Fallen Champion], [Shuriken of Negation], and something else that I really don't remember. I thought I had my T4 leggings in the bag when I rolled a 96; but, Encore (one of our warlocks) pulled through with a 100. They would have been nice to have, but I'm a patient man. Just one of those things that because I rolled so high, I thought it was mine. But, that's the luck of the roll.
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
So Close on the Dragonkiller
We ventured into Gruul's Lair to take on the Dragonkiller himself, last night. Because of various conflicts in schedule, we took 6 (or 7, I forget) mages with us. We were a little short on healers having only 6 for about an hour, and then 1 had to leave. So, we got Gruul down to about 17%. There were improvements on each subsequent attempt, but we just couldn't down him last night.
Our main problem, obviously, was that we just didn't have the heal power we normally do. Two of our most equipped healers weren't online; and overall, we just couldn't pump out the same HPS. So, all in all it was a valiant attempt. If we had tried a couple more times, we probably could have had it. But we'll try it again tonight, and we should be successful.
One of the things I was kind of baffled about was Scorch. As I've mentioned before, when you have 5 Scorch Debuffs up on the target, everyone does an additional 15% fire damage. One of our mages is Frost, so he doesn't count, but the rest of us are Fire. The odd thing was though that there were only 3 of us that were renewing the Scorches. Ideally, we only have to cast 1 scorch each, and with 5 of us, we've got the full 15%. I really noticed this when two of the other Scorchers had died, and the rest of us were alive. I first noticed that I was the one that kept renewing the Scorch. So, I did a little experiment and let the debuff run out, then I started Scorching it up again. I had to cast all 5 of the Scorches.
In theory, the highest DPS should be casting Scorch the least. Let him hit with the Fireballs to cause maximum raid damage. The lowest DPS should probably be the one to hit with the improved Scorch every 25 seconds or so. Everyone can pitch in at the beginning to get the full 15% and also to maintain a lower aggro at the beginning. I just don't understand how as a fire mage, you would completely ignore this spell. /boogle
Our main problem, obviously, was that we just didn't have the heal power we normally do. Two of our most equipped healers weren't online; and overall, we just couldn't pump out the same HPS. So, all in all it was a valiant attempt. If we had tried a couple more times, we probably could have had it. But we'll try it again tonight, and we should be successful.
One of the things I was kind of baffled about was Scorch. As I've mentioned before, when you have 5 Scorch Debuffs up on the target, everyone does an additional 15% fire damage. One of our mages is Frost, so he doesn't count, but the rest of us are Fire. The odd thing was though that there were only 3 of us that were renewing the Scorches. Ideally, we only have to cast 1 scorch each, and with 5 of us, we've got the full 15%. I really noticed this when two of the other Scorchers had died, and the rest of us were alive. I first noticed that I was the one that kept renewing the Scorch. So, I did a little experiment and let the debuff run out, then I started Scorching it up again. I had to cast all 5 of the Scorches.
In theory, the highest DPS should be casting Scorch the least. Let him hit with the Fireballs to cause maximum raid damage. The lowest DPS should probably be the one to hit with the improved Scorch every 25 seconds or so. Everyone can pitch in at the beginning to get the full 15% and also to maintain a lower aggro at the beginning. I just don't understand how as a fire mage, you would completely ignore this spell. /boogle
Monday, September 10, 2007
Kill the Healers
I did quite a bit of PVP over the weekend, and it got me thinking about all the tools that are available to a mage. Sure, I've known about the Frost Nova/Blink trick since first gaining those two spells. That works great for the melee targets. But what about the casters? What do we do against them?
In most of my PVP adventures this weekend, there was a lot of healing going on. In a few pre-made Warsong Gulch battles, both teams had so much healing that even having all the DPS focus on one person, we still couldn't kill them. The same thing happened with our Arena team, but on our side. By luck of who was online, we had 3 healers in our 5 vs 5 group. While some of the fights took a long time (6 minutes by one fight), we were almost unbeatable.
So, how do you stop those casters? Or more specifically, how do you stop the healers? Two spells immediately came to mind. The first is obviously Counterspell. A well-timed Counterspell can stop literally thousands of health being replenished to your enemies. If you have improved Counterspell through talents, it means a total lockdown of all spells for 4 seconds. Plus, this spell is not a part of the global cooldown recieved after casting a spell, so it's always ready for your use. The 24-second cooldown means you can't spam it all over the place, but that would be a little too over-powered anyway, wouldn't it?
The second spell that came to my mind was that of Polymorph. The 1.5 second cast takes a bit longer, especially when you're in the heat of a battle, but elliminating the enemy from any interaction for 20 seconds (which is what I believe polymorph is in PVP) is just great. Downsides of polymorph is that it heals your target, any damage will break the polymorph, and it can be cleansed by paladins or dispelled by priests. Paladins can also bubble out of the polymorph for themselves. But there's also no cooldown on polymorph, so you can pretty much chain poly somebody, but deminishing returns come into play real quick in PVP.
Then one of the best spells for this comes out of the fire tree. While it is a 41-point talent, Dragon's Breath is just a really great spell. With my +/- 1000 spell damage, Dragon's Breath hits for about 1100 damage. And then the targets are disoriented for 3 seconds. But more importantly than the damage, is that it stopped the heal from being completed. So, sure... not as effective as the Counterspell, but it's not like you have to choose one or the other... you choose both! It's really a great spell to have around to help deal with those pesky healers (and provide some
So, what do you do when you get hit with an improved counterspell or silence? I'm still trying to figure this one out. Sure, you can wand. But I think my personal favorite is to run around screaming like a little girl. Well... you are silenced... so maybe it's one of those too-terrified-to-make-a-sound screams.
In most of my PVP adventures this weekend, there was a lot of healing going on. In a few pre-made Warsong Gulch battles, both teams had so much healing that even having all the DPS focus on one person, we still couldn't kill them. The same thing happened with our Arena team, but on our side. By luck of who was online, we had 3 healers in our 5 vs 5 group. While some of the fights took a long time (6 minutes by one fight), we were almost unbeatable.
So, how do you stop those casters? Or more specifically, how do you stop the healers? Two spells immediately came to mind. The first is obviously Counterspell. A well-timed Counterspell can stop literally thousands of health being replenished to your enemies. If you have improved Counterspell through talents, it means a total lockdown of all spells for 4 seconds. Plus, this spell is not a part of the global cooldown recieved after casting a spell, so it's always ready for your use. The 24-second cooldown means you can't spam it all over the place, but that would be a little too over-powered anyway, wouldn't it?
The second spell that came to my mind was that of Polymorph. The 1.5 second cast takes a bit longer, especially when you're in the heat of a battle, but elliminating the enemy from any interaction for 20 seconds (which is what I believe polymorph is in PVP) is just great. Downsides of polymorph is that it heals your target, any damage will break the polymorph, and it can be cleansed by paladins or dispelled by priests. Paladins can also bubble out of the polymorph for themselves. But there's also no cooldown on polymorph, so you can pretty much chain poly somebody, but deminishing returns come into play real quick in PVP.
Then one of the best spells for this comes out of the fire tree. While it is a 41-point talent, Dragon's Breath is just a really great spell. With my +/- 1000 spell damage, Dragon's Breath hits for about 1100 damage. And then the targets are disoriented for 3 seconds. But more importantly than the damage, is that it stopped the heal from being completed. So, sure... not as effective as the Counterspell, but it's not like you have to choose one or the other... you choose both! It's really a great spell to have around to help deal with those pesky healers (and provide someSo, what do you do when you get hit with an improved counterspell or silence? I'm still trying to figure this one out. Sure, you can wand. But I think my personal favorite is to run around screaming like a little girl. Well... you are silenced... so maybe it's one of those too-terrified-to-make-a-sound screams.
Friday, September 7, 2007
Aggro - Defined
For those of you that have played World of Warcraft in any group (which, reading this blog, you probably have) know a little term called "aggro". Each mob (or enemy) has what is called as an aggro table. Whoever is at the top of that aggro table is the person that mob will attack, generally speaking. So, to look at the 3 roles: Tanks want aggro while Healers and DPS generally want to minimize their aggro so that they don't exceed that of the tank. (In some cases, DPS is the tank, but that's not the focus of this discussion.)
Different classes have various ways to deal with aggro, hate, or threat, as it is sometimes called. Tanks (warriors, druids, and paladins) have abilities to increase aggro. They either do this by directly damaging the mob or using a skill that is intentionally designed to make the mob focus on them, called a taunt. I assume you understand this concept, and if you don't, do yourself a favor and take a look at the spells that those classes perform. There's more than a few of them that say something to the effect of "causes a high amount of threat." As a tank, you'll probably want to use these skills a lot.
Some of non-tanks have ways to shed aggro. For example, every 30 seconds, a hunter can feign death, and as long as it's not resisted, the threat towards him is completely erased. Every 5 minutes, a rogue can instantly vanish and erase his aggro. Paladins can help all of the people in this role by casting Blessing of Salvation. And for my final class example, a mage can cast Invisibility every 5 minutes, but it takes 5 seconds to have the full effect in which time you can't cast anything or be hit or you'll have wasted it.
All that should be review for you. If you need more details see Threat or Aggro over on WoWWiki. Today however, I'd like to focus more on two other types of aggro that are just as real and maybe even more dangerous, but I haven't been able to find them listed on WoWWiki yet.
Parent Aggro. Generally caused on school nights when you're up too late. A large amount of threat can also be generated by failure to do chores, homework, or upon obtaining bad grades because of outside factors (especially playing Wow instead of putting forth the needed effort). This is a very specific type of aggro. Generally speaking, you can only get on an aggro table of two "mobs" in the world by generating this threat. Normally it is easier to aggro the female mob vs. the male mob. But once equally aggroed, they're both a force to be reckoned with. This type of aggro can cause you to lose a precious healer at 1 am (healer's local time) on a Thursday when you're about to pull Nightbane.
Spouse Aggro. This is probably more well known as Wife Aggro or generally mispelled as Wife Agro. To keep this post non-sexist, we'll use the gender neutral term. This is the more severe of the two "unusual" aggros. Your parents will always love you even if you "waste you life away playing stupid video games," but your spouse may not. Causing Spouse Aggro can cause long periods of afk, but usually for days at a time. Normally upon pulling Spouse Aggro, one must work hard to repair their reputation with the mob. Gifts can work well, but generally just spending time with the "mob" will raise you from a KoS reputation level. Akin to Spouse Aggro is also the GF/BF Aggro, and to a much lesser extent, the Children Aggro. GF/BF Aggro may need to be assessed, because it may eventually develop into Spouse Aggro, but excessive aggro at that stage may cause one to reflect if said aggro is really necessary at all. Children Aggro varies, but can usually be reduced by bed time, nap time, movies, candy, or other mind detouring activities.
Be more wary of pulling these types of aggro far more than anything else in the entire game. They are dangerous. They need to be avoided at all costs. Work hard on the reputation with said factions, and you shouldn't have an issue.
Are there other types of aggro that I missed?
Different classes have various ways to deal with aggro, hate, or threat, as it is sometimes called. Tanks (warriors, druids, and paladins) have abilities to increase aggro. They either do this by directly damaging the mob or using a skill that is intentionally designed to make the mob focus on them, called a taunt. I assume you understand this concept, and if you don't, do yourself a favor and take a look at the spells that those classes perform. There's more than a few of them that say something to the effect of "causes a high amount of threat." As a tank, you'll probably want to use these skills a lot.
Some of non-tanks have ways to shed aggro. For example, every 30 seconds, a hunter can feign death, and as long as it's not resisted, the threat towards him is completely erased. Every 5 minutes, a rogue can instantly vanish and erase his aggro. Paladins can help all of the people in this role by casting Blessing of Salvation. And for my final class example, a mage can cast Invisibility every 5 minutes, but it takes 5 seconds to have the full effect in which time you can't cast anything or be hit or you'll have wasted it.
All that should be review for you. If you need more details see Threat or Aggro over on WoWWiki. Today however, I'd like to focus more on two other types of aggro that are just as real and maybe even more dangerous, but I haven't been able to find them listed on WoWWiki yet.
Parent Aggro. Generally caused on school nights when you're up too late. A large amount of threat can also be generated by failure to do chores, homework, or upon obtaining bad grades because of outside factors (especially playing Wow instead of putting forth the needed effort). This is a very specific type of aggro. Generally speaking, you can only get on an aggro table of two "mobs" in the world by generating this threat. Normally it is easier to aggro the female mob vs. the male mob. But once equally aggroed, they're both a force to be reckoned with. This type of aggro can cause you to lose a precious healer at 1 am (healer's local time) on a Thursday when you're about to pull Nightbane.
Spouse Aggro. This is probably more well known as Wife Aggro or generally mispelled as Wife Agro. To keep this post non-sexist, we'll use the gender neutral term. This is the more severe of the two "unusual" aggros. Your parents will always love you even if you "waste you life away playing stupid video games," but your spouse may not. Causing Spouse Aggro can cause long periods of afk, but usually for days at a time. Normally upon pulling Spouse Aggro, one must work hard to repair their reputation with the mob. Gifts can work well, but generally just spending time with the "mob" will raise you from a KoS reputation level. Akin to Spouse Aggro is also the GF/BF Aggro, and to a much lesser extent, the Children Aggro. GF/BF Aggro may need to be assessed, because it may eventually develop into Spouse Aggro, but excessive aggro at that stage may cause one to reflect if said aggro is really necessary at all. Children Aggro varies, but can usually be reduced by bed time, nap time, movies, candy, or other mind detouring activities.
Be more wary of pulling these types of aggro far more than anything else in the entire game. They are dangerous. They need to be avoided at all costs. Work hard on the reputation with said factions, and you shouldn't have an issue.
Are there other types of aggro that I missed?
Thursday, September 6, 2007
Karazhan Speed Runs
I'll be honest, as a mage, I like to start fights with 100% mana. It doesn't matter if it's a trash pull or boss pull.
In theory, you never know when you're going to get an extra mob by accident or let the mob get off an extra heal before the interrupt (see also: kill). A mage (and a shadow priest for that matter) without mana can do a maximum of 184 DPS (non-crits) and that's with one of two Black Temple drops. You want to get less crazy, you can get the [Merciless Gladiator's Touch of Defeat], but again, that's only 179 DPS. Since mages have Evocation (every 8 minutes) and mana gems (every 2 minutes), for this analysis, I'd probably group mages with Moonkin Druids (Innervate every 6 minutes) or Shadow Priests (Shadowfiend every 5 minutes). Other classes can life tap (assuming a healer still has mana) or still sustain some dps through weapons or auto-shot.
In practice, however, I think I rarely use more than 50% mana on typical trash pulls. And the 50% is probably only when we have heavy AoE fights. So, in reality, I really don't need to have much down-time between each of the trash fights. I can drink while the trash is being pulled and controlled (assuming no sheep), which should be sufficient to sustain my mana to acceptable levels if not full. I tend to save the evocation for the boss fights because of the long cooldown; but, worst case scenario, I could use that on trash mobs too if need be.
I bring this all up because of what we are now doing in Karazhan. We've pretty much distributed the people into two hopefully equal teams. And both teams move very quick. We did through Curator last night, and then tonight should be another semi-easy walk in the park to clear the rest. It's fast paced, so it feels a lot like the 45-minute Baron runs. Which leads me to think... why were we going slow before? Yeah... I'd say we have Karazhan on farm status.
In theory, you never know when you're going to get an extra mob by accident or let the mob get off an extra heal before the interrupt (see also: kill). A mage (and a shadow priest for that matter) without mana can do a maximum of 184 DPS (non-crits) and that's with one of two Black Temple drops. You want to get less crazy, you can get the [Merciless Gladiator's Touch of Defeat], but again, that's only 179 DPS. Since mages have Evocation (every 8 minutes) and mana gems (every 2 minutes), for this analysis, I'd probably group mages with Moonkin Druids (Innervate every 6 minutes) or Shadow Priests (Shadowfiend every 5 minutes). Other classes can life tap (assuming a healer still has mana) or still sustain some dps through weapons or auto-shot.
In practice, however, I think I rarely use more than 50% mana on typical trash pulls. And the 50% is probably only when we have heavy AoE fights. So, in reality, I really don't need to have much down-time between each of the trash fights. I can drink while the trash is being pulled and controlled (assuming no sheep), which should be sufficient to sustain my mana to acceptable levels if not full. I tend to save the evocation for the boss fights because of the long cooldown; but, worst case scenario, I could use that on trash mobs too if need be.
I bring this all up because of what we are now doing in Karazhan. We've pretty much distributed the people into two hopefully equal teams. And both teams move very quick. We did through Curator last night, and then tonight should be another semi-easy walk in the park to clear the rest. It's fast paced, so it feels a lot like the 45-minute Baron runs. Which leads me to think... why were we going slow before? Yeah... I'd say we have Karazhan on farm status.
Wednesday, September 5, 2007
The Hard Way
It has come to my attention that sometimes I do things the hard way. I think, in a way, I'm also what you would call a "pleaser". I work fairly hard to help my friends, no matter what the situation. I always remember back in high school on a Friday night when a friend called me because his car was stolen. So, I left the group of friends I was entertaining at my house to drive the 5 miles to find that my friend had simply misplaced his car, and had since found it in my travel to his aid. (Before the days when everyone had a cell phone, obviously.) I was not angry; in fact, I was relieved that he still had a vehicle. And it became a running joke between friends.But I also recognize the importance of completing goals and accomplishing tasks. Especially when I'm leading others, I have a strong desire to do the job right and fair. From the little "hard core" raiding experince I have, it seems that the typical Guild Master or Raid Leader (certainly not in my guild) tends to have this lofty attitude and isn't usually willing to listen to others, or just be mean or harsh in general. Sure, it's a pain to get whispers from 24 different people in a 25-man raid. But sometimes, there's valid input. "Hey, maybe this strategy might work better... just a thought." -or- "What do you want me to do?" -or- "Cat's on fire, gotta go." And for a guild that seems to have a surprisingly large amount of "mutes" on Vent, it's usually much easier for me to track the whispers then the goofing off that can happen in raid chat.
On Monday night, the group we had going into Gruul's was pretty solid. We had enough of each for role in the fight. I think High King Maulgar was taken down about 20 minutes after the first trash mob, and there were plenty of attempts on Gruul himself. Last night, however, it was a different story. We had to be a tad creative in our attempt. There was 1 less tank, so we had a rogue tank Blindeye (the priest and first to die). Our 1 warlock did a great job taking care of the felhounds, but they still ran rampant every once and awhile. (We usually use at least 2.) Not to mention that some of our key people that live in the same area were having connection problems like no tomorrow. (Just hope the storms gone now.)
It was a learning curve, that's for sure. I'm certain we could have pulled it off if we didn't have so many lag/connection issues. There were some issues when we first started the attempts, like getting the pull down, but we worked them all out. Just not a lot you can do when one of your tanks goes offline mid-fight. So, that was the hard way, I suppose. A few other players had logged on in the last 30 minutes or so of our attempts, and we brought them in and substituted out a few people. Also to change it up, another raid leader took over. Not that anything at all was done or conducted differently. After the change, we took them down on our second attempt. I guess that was the easy way.
I got a number of complimentary whispers thanking me for doing a great job with what we had to work with, which I really appreciated. I think I got one smart alec comment after we downed him that our previous failures were "Lei's fault". Oh well, boys will be boys.
Tuesday, September 4, 2007
What a Difference a Day Makes
I've been working on getting some badges to purple out the last few things I've wanted and help some guildies get geared up as well. The fastest, "easiest" way that we know of is Heroic Mechanar, and the general consensus tends to agree with us. So, myself, a rogue, a prot. warrior, and a feral druid all grouped up to go to Mech. In case you didn't catch that, we were short a healer. The LFG channel conjured up a resto Shaman that agreed to go with us.
If you've ever been in a group that has a know-it-all that didn't really know anything, you'll understand what this Mechanar run was like. Most of us have a lot of experience running that instance, but I'm always open to suggestions. Of course, after that run, I'm less inclined to try something new. We wiped a number of times. It got so late that I started to fall asleep. On top of the that, the Shammy wasn't geared very well at all. We ended up skipping the second to last boss, Nethermancer Sepethrea and wiping numerous times on Pathlaleon the Calculator. Overall, just a really painful run.
The next night, our same group of 4 found itself again needing a healer. As the night before, there were no guild healers available. So, off to the LFG channel again. After my first "LF Healer for Heroic Mech" post, I got a response that a level 33 had a level 70 priest that could come. Call me a skeptic, but it was almost as if he was a bit too eager to come. I imagined him in greens with maybe a couple blues from quest rewards. I pretty much imagined a repeat from the night before, but with a priest instead of a shaman. Boy, was I wrong. This guy was decked in mostly purple. Not even sure why he wanted to run Mech, to be honest. lol. It wasn't a perfect run, but it went so much smoother. We easily took down the bosses with minimal deaths. We did skip Nethermancer Septhrea again, but we gave her a couple attempts before we decided we were just too tired to try again. But we probably could have done it.
It's not really "when good groups go bad". It's just always amazing to me how the key elements like a tank or healer can make a, well... a good group go bad. (Ugh, how cliché.)
If you've ever been in a group that has a know-it-all that didn't really know anything, you'll understand what this Mechanar run was like. Most of us have a lot of experience running that instance, but I'm always open to suggestions. Of course, after that run, I'm less inclined to try something new. We wiped a number of times. It got so late that I started to fall asleep. On top of the that, the Shammy wasn't geared very well at all. We ended up skipping the second to last boss, Nethermancer Sepethrea and wiping numerous times on Pathlaleon the Calculator. Overall, just a really painful run.
The next night, our same group of 4 found itself again needing a healer. As the night before, there were no guild healers available. So, off to the LFG channel again. After my first "LF Healer for Heroic Mech" post, I got a response that a level 33 had a level 70 priest that could come. Call me a skeptic, but it was almost as if he was a bit too eager to come. I imagined him in greens with maybe a couple blues from quest rewards. I pretty much imagined a repeat from the night before, but with a priest instead of a shaman. Boy, was I wrong. This guy was decked in mostly purple. Not even sure why he wanted to run Mech, to be honest. lol. It wasn't a perfect run, but it went so much smoother. We easily took down the bosses with minimal deaths. We did skip Nethermancer Septhrea again, but we gave her a couple attempts before we decided we were just too tired to try again. But we probably could have done it.
It's not really "when good groups go bad". It's just always amazing to me how the key elements like a tank or healer can make a, well... a good group go bad. (Ugh, how cliché.)
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