That Guy: Lawful/Chaotic Stupid

Since I spent most of my days RPing lately, you get snarky RP posts instead. Deal with it.

Most people don’t want their characters to die. That’s understandable, I mean, these are our creations and they can take a lot of work!

The problem is that sometimes…sometimes a character really SHOULD die…because he did something stupid.

Let’s say you have a character who is, for all intents and purposes, a villain. In this case, a cultist, because that’s most of the villains I see these days. And let’s say this character decides to…pick a fight in a crowded tavern. Maybe he flings some sort of shadowy, tendril-y spell at a patron.

Not surprisingly, four or five OTHER people are probably going to turn around, go “What the FUCK?” and get involved because…nothing involving tentacles is ever good.

Is it reasonable for the cultists to miraculously escape a tussle with 5-6 other characters unscathed?  No, but I see it happen routinely, because the player of said character doesn’t want to lose them.

It’s exasperating for the others, however, because this is usually accomplished by ignoring or brushing off nearly all of their actions. Before too long it’s no fun to play your little cultists because no one wants to deal with you.

What’s the best solution to this problem?

Simple. If you character doesn’t want to die, he needs to fucking act like it.

My apologies to all the Warhamz fans out there, but Eisenhorn could have avoided a lot of trouble for the whole universe if he's just not been a fucking idiot. Seriously. Have you READ those books?

Play your character INTELLIGENTLY. Don’t pick 6 on 1 fights unless you want to get seriously messed up. Have a plausible back up plan if he does get in over his head. And for the love of all that is holy, get fucking hit sometimes.

Last night my druid, Aedeminar, got in a tangle with a known villan alongside her friend, a priestess named Sarah. Despite it being a two on one fight, the cultist got away–but it was a reasonable escape. Our intrepid heroes weren’t used to working together, so they were sometimes getting in each other’s way, skewing things in favor of the cultist. My feral druid had no idea what to do when the PRIESTESS tackled the target, preventing her from making a leap of her own! When the target got as far as her drake and took the combat to the air, Mina had to bow out, because bird vs dragon never comes out in the bird’s favor. All three were injured to some degree or other–we all took hits as well as gave them.

In other words it was a well-played out conflict that DIDN’T SUCK. You know what does suck? The enemy being unharmed by every single damned thing you did because they have to brute force god mode their way out of their own fucking idiocy.

My druid has been caught unawares–and paid dearly for it. Either embrace mistakes and have your character learn from them (note said druid is now in armor FAR more often than not, what with a cultist RP plot actively moving against her guild–she learned!) or rub their two little brain cells together and don’t box them into stupid situations that should, by all logic, result in them getting their gravestones erected.

Other RPers are often approachable. Don’t be afraid to say to someone, “Look–I got this character in way over their head right now, sorry. Is there some way we can work this out so that my character survives this time? I really need them for later, I’m not ready for them to die.” This will go over much better than “and suddenly, Archnemesis vanishes into the night, despite three fireballs, an arrow, and a sword coming right at him.”

Advice For Venturing Into LFR

Disclaimer: I’ve had a whopping one whole LFR run.

I wasn’t really planning on hitting the LFR. The LFR was scary, after all. I just wanted to do a couple of heroics for VP, but then a bunch of guildies wanted to go, sooo…sure, why not?

Bits of Advice:
-Don’t go with absolutely no clue of what to do, unless you’re confident in your ability to figure it out on the fly.  Watch at least the 10 man videos first (even though it’s 25 man), just realize that a lot of aspects of the fight will sort of fly out the window. I say this becuase I went into it cold, and when I asked what each boss did, I was told to figure it out. When I tried to read the dungeon journal, they pulled the boss. You might get someone who explains, but don’t count on it. On the other hand it’s not TOO hard to figure it out on the fly if you’ve been raiding awhile (at least, for the first 4)–I only died once, I swear! Just follow the other nubs when it seems like they are running away/towards something. Baaaaa.

-Don’t even bother to hope for loot. No really, don’t even bother. There’s 24 other people derping along in there with you, and you’re better off saving your sanity and assuming you’ll get nothing. Becuase you probably won’t.

-While you’re at it, don’t even look at damage meters, especially after you’ve lost loot. The person who won it will be terrible. That’s just how it works.

Bringing Back the Bubbles: The Disc Priest Journey from 80 Onwards

I was perusing through my search terms today (you people are fucking disturbing) and along with many many searches about how fucking STUPID Rhyo is, there were a LOT of searches for leveling disc priests.

So, hi.  First off, leveling disc priests is awesome. I leveled Lyrandre entirely disc, but I started her off in BC.  Things are so different now that I don’t dare touch the lower level stuff, but I can talk a wee bit about going from 80 on up.

Step One: Spec smite heal.
Step Two: Bubble thyself.
Step Three: Holy Fire!
Step Four: SMITE ALL THE THINGS.
Step Five: Pop wings for the pretty graphic/if you actually need mana.

If I managed to pull multiple mobs then I’ll toss around SWP and DP. Penance doesn’t really get used for questing unless I feel like seeing the pretty graphic, but it’s handy in case something actually manages to hurt you.

I can pull for quite awhile without drinking, but I’m also in ICC gear, so make of that what you will. So far I can quest and dungeon heal effectively with the same spec (my second spec currently sits empty).  I’m well-nigh indestructable questing because I do a pretty good job of healing myself with smite. I just have to make sure I don’t let people die in dungeons while smiting. >.>

And now, to actually comment on anything past level 81 for these posts, I’m going to have to go level my priest…

Amber’s Guide To Inventive Cursing

Note: I am not very PC when it comes to this sort of thing.  I freely throw around words like cunt, etc (in case you haven’t noticed).  If this offends you, you…might not want to read this post.

First, start with a body part. Obviously the “naughty” parts work the best for this, though “face” also has many applications. I use parts regardless of the gender of the person I’m insulting.

Suggestions:
dick
cock
face
cunt
ass
shit
twat
sausage
butt (sometimes it just flows better than ass–depends on what it’s paired with)

Then, take your ‘part’ and smoosh it together with another word.  Often this word is random, though everyone has favorites. Face is one of those words that can pull double duty and go on this list, as well.

Suggestions:
waffle
canoe
batter
weasel
hate
wipe
nugget
cactus
log
button
punch
biscuit
catcher
stain

If you’re really cheesed off, you can always try adding descriptive words like “flaming”.

Jen’s Guide to Healing Nef

My brain is pretty fried when it comes to spitting out words, so I continue to abuse my awesome guildies for guest posts.  Here’s the latest from Jen, who also writes over at Pots ‘n Kettles.

Because we had dedicated this week primarily to Nef, I went and head and respecced to this: http://www.wowhead.com/talent#hhZbh0bZfGbMsbcosd:dbMcmr

Nef isn’t that complex for heals (especially compared to Cho’gall or the RNG clusterfuck that is Al’Akir), but there is a ton of damage going around. Also, thanks to massive dragon noms at the tanks and raid wide damage from electrocute, this is one of the two fights (Chim being the other) where shaman resto mastery really shines.

This is a bit of a longer fight (our kill took just over 7 minutes), so you can use longer cooldowns (like spirit link and mana tide totems) in phase one and have them up again for phase three.

Phase One – Ony and Nef and Adds!

We had an Ony tank, a Nef tank, and a BM turtle-noms-adds tank. Your dragon tanks need to be on opposite sides of the pit (if they’re too close to each other, they get a buff that essentially rips your tanks into bits). Ony and Nef need to be parallel to each other sideways to the raid. While they are chewing on your tanks, they’ll also do standard dragon breath and tail swipes.

This means that your healers do want to coordinate who’s going to focus on which tank, because you can’t reach them both without running back and forth. Ranged can help out heals a bunch by staying near each other in the middle.

Ony, while lying dead in a puddle of lava, has grown lightning globes on her sides. When they start glowing, the tank needs to turn her tail into the raid, or she’ll shoot lightning at the raid instead (and your healers will curse you emphatically). More likely than not, the raid will get hit with a tail lash, which knocks us all over for very minor damage and stuns us for two seconds. Once the lightning is done, kindly turn her tail back out of the raid.

Ony is apparently very squishy for a dragon, and when they had her down to about 40ish%, our melee went and chewed on Nef. Every time you get 10% of Nef’s health down, he will do a raid wide electrocute for 100k. It really helps to know when these are coming, because I had a few seconds to drop a rain puddle and start casting chain heals. The first electrocute is also a good opportunity to drop Spirit Link Totem, and it’ll be off cooldown for phase three. After the first electrocute, I tried to drop a glyphed stoneclaw totem each time for a little extra resistance – any damage reducing abilities are good for these.

While the dragons are chewing on their respective tanks, you also get to deal with adds!  \o/

Our BM hunter MD’ed all the adds to Donatello, and rolling riptides, gift of the naaru, and GHWs kept the little turtle up. You can build up heals as more adds spawn, and there were a few scary moments when they were all up, but then once they start dying off, you can help out with the tanks more. Our hunter helped me out a ton by keeping him near the middle, so that the turtle would get the benefit of aoe heals as well. (Once the adds were all dead, the hunter switched to a dps pet for the remainder of the fight.)

We pushed for two electrocutes in phase one (three made us go smush, mainly because each one ups Ony’s enrage mechanic – you have to kill her before her meter reaches 100) and then finished off Ony (and made her go smush instead).

Once Ony dies, the room fills will lava and you transition into:

Phase two – Nef and Adds!

There are three pillars around the room, and our raid was split up to have a healer on each (you can’t reach the other pillars), along with at least one ranged dps and one melee interrupter. You’ll need to run to your pillar as soon as Ony dies, and swim up as the lava fills the room. The pillars have an obnoxious-as-hell overhanging lip, so you need to jump straight up and then over, or you’ll get stuck on the lip.

Each pillar will have one add. They don’t have an aggro table – they just stand there and continuously try to cast a shadow AoE that will pretty much nuke everyone on the pillar. Their casts HAVE to be interrupted. Our ranged dps nuked away at Nef while melee killed and interrupted the adds. We controlled the health of one of the adds so that we could get Nef down through two more electrocutes. Healers need to make sure that their pillar is topped off before the electrocute hits, and be ready to heal people back up after it.

During all of this, Nef hovers in the middle of the room and casts shadow blasts at random raid members, so you’ll have plenty of healing to top off. It really helps for people to use their self heals or damage reduction abilities (if they aren’t major ones that they need for electrocutes).

This phase ends once all three adds die – the lava will drain back out of the room, Nef will descend back onto the ground, and you can jump back off the pillars.

Phase Three – Nef and (you guessed it) MOAR Adds!

One tank will pick up Nef, and the other will get to run around and collect, then kite, adds (someone should probably follow your add tank around to heal, too). The rest of the raid should group up next to Nef’s side. Purple fire will spawn at the most inconvenient places possible, which everyone needs to avoid until it disappears.

We popped heroism as soon as everyone was in place, and nuked the hell out of Nef. You’ll get electrocutes fairly close together, so raiders want to make sure to use damage reduction abilities, and healers need to get people topped off quickly. Both tanks will take lots of big hits, especially if the adds get too close or play in the fire.

Burn everything you have, and profit! ^^

Cho’gall: DPS Edition

I’m going to break these up into Melee and Ranged, because we do have slightly different jobs for phase one.

Melee Phase One:
Be prepared to rage at tiny hit boxes.

The way we handle this in 10s, both melee peel off the boss to follow the add tank. You’re worried about two things here: 1) interrupting Depravity (OMG IMPORTANT) and 2) not accidentally killing the add before the tank drags him back to the doors.  Once the add is dead, run back to the boss and DPS as normal.

Be sure to keep an eye out for people who are worshipped so that you can give them a good whack as you go by.  With an interrupt, mind you, no matter how tempting it is to do otherwise.  Sometimes your fellow melee will get worshipped on the way back and stand there worshipping away because no one is paying any fucking attention to shit behind them.

While on the boss, there’s really nothing special to consider except interrupting worshippers when you can. Oh and not standing in things. But really, should I have to include things like “don’t stand in fire and dark puddles on the ground” at this stage?

Ranged Phase One:
When the adds die up by the door, the dark puddles they drop on the floor will spawn oozes.  The oozes need to die.  The melee should, ideally, never even know they exist!  Otherwise pay no attention to the ugly adds that SPAWN the oozes–that’s the melee’s job. If there are no oozes up, DPS the boss.

Interrupt any and all people worshipping when you can. 

Don’t stand in things on the floor.

Phase Two, Both:
Kill all the stalks and interrupt their casts.  Once they are dead, flail wildly at the boss until there’s more stalks.

This is a good time to blow Army and other tasty cooldowns.

If you have corruption sickness, do try not to vomit on people, they don’t appreciate that.

Cho’gall: Tank Editon

Rather than doing one big post with all sections of the strat, I’m going to try to break this up into thirds. Besides, if I post one part then guilt will compel me to finish the rest.

This post is brought to you by Fuzzbutt, who has actually tanked this more than once (unlike me). I did edit it to my heart’s content, however.

General Notes

Cho’gall is a 2 tank fight. The first tank to grab Cho’gall will end up being the add tank. The second tank will kite Cho’gall himself.

(/slaps wordpress and reclaims her image)

Abilities You Need To Pay Attention To

Fury of Cho’gall – aka AMG LASERS – 3 giant frickin laser beams shoot out of Cho’galls heads and give the active tank 2 debuffs. One increases melee damage taken by 20%, and the other increases shadow damage taken by 20%. It stacks. 
This is your cue to swap tanks.
When it comes time to swap back, you will still have roughly 10 seconds left on your own debuff… that’s normal. Deal with it and pray for no worship stacks.

Summon Corrupting Adherent – This should (theoretically) happen AFTER the taunt swap. He spawns an adherent at one of two portals on either side of the room. I’ll go into more details of the Adherent’s later.

Shadow’s Orders/Empowered Shadows – This will empower Cho’gall’s weapon to do an aoe shadow burst every time the tank is hit. This is a good place for your avoidance trinkets, to cut down on the raid-wide damage.

Flame’s Orders/Empowered Fire – This will empower Cho’gall’s weapon, causing his melee swings to deal fire damage instead of physical damage. This is the heavy-hitting portion of your tank swap, so feel free to use minor, short duration cooldowns (barkskin, anti-magic shell, etc) to help mitigate this. Also, every time he hits you during this time, he will spawn a patch of flame on a random spot on the floor. They will invariably end up in the least convenient places ever.

Also Going On During All That Shit

Cho’gall will cast “Conversion”, MCing 2 (3 in 25 man) raid members and causing them to buff Cho’gall. This adds 10% more damage each stack. The rest of the raid should be handling this, but feel free to throw out a death grip/avenger’s shield/what have you to interrupt them as well. This is a raid-wiping mechanic if it’s not handled properly–the tanks will just take too much damage. If he gets more than 2 stacks of worship, blow a major cooldown (shield wall, icebound fortitude, etc), ESPECIALLY if he has Flame’s Orders up at the time.
(Been there, died during it, OW.)

Back To Those Adherents – Adherent Tank, This Is For You!

The Corrupting Adherent will need to be kited to a predetermined point to die (in our strat, this is the door–see image above). When he dies, he will leave a pool of blood behind, which will in turn summon 5 miniature adds. Those are for the ranged to play with.

While you’re kiting the son of a bitch, he has two abilities that he’ll be using:

Corrupting Crash – Will target one raid member and do AoE shadow damage where it lands. Has about a 3 second travel time. Causes 10 corruption.  Hey guess what! The damage area is bigger than the graphic. Surprise surprise. If he’s really being a prick he’ll target the other tank with it repeatedly.

Depravity – 3 second cast, will hit any raid member in the room with shadow damage and give them 10 corruption. MUST BE INTERRUPTED. In my experience, he always does a depravity right after a corrupting crash. The melee should be following you and helping you interrupt, but he has a tiny ass hit box and they may be worshipped, so be prepared to do any interrupts you can do yourself.

You have roughly 45 seconds to kite the add to the door and kill him before Cho’gall casts Fester Blood. If the adherent isn’t dead by then he’ll do a Shadow AoE and…well…we don’t want that.  He’ll cast roughly 4 Corrupting Crashes and 3 depravitys along the way.

Don’t stand in the black puddles on the ground from previous adherents, they give you more corruption points. These black puddles don’t vanish until phase 2 and are part of why you try to kite everything to this nice, out of the way spot.

Phase 2 – < 25% .

Any adherents still alive will melt away–if you know you’re close to phase 2 you can ignore your final adherent. Whoever has Cho’gall near phase change puts Cho’gall against a wall beforehand, to make it easier for the raid to kill the stalks.

This is a strict burn phase. There’s no more Empowered Shadow/Fire, no more adherent summons, no more fester blood, and no more conversion. He will still do Fury of Cho’gall, so keep an eye on that for taunt swapping. If you’re not tanking the boss then you get to go play with eyeball stalks. They have only one ability, Debilitating Beam. It is teh suck and should be interrupted (stalks can be stunned). Army of the dead is win, etc. Hopefully Cho’gall falls over dead before you do!

BoT: Ascendant Council

First off, the trash before this boss is complete ass.  Expect to wipe on it as much as you wipe on the god damned boss. 

Secondly, there’s a lot of shit going down in this fight (o hai, WELCOME TO CATA) so I’ll break it down as best I can without confusing myself.  I’ve also only had a few attempts on this fight so feel free to correct anything you see wrong in the comments! 

Important note: the elemental monstrosity of the final phase appears with the combined health of all 4 bosses, which is why it’s important that each pair of bosses be DPS’d as close to equally as you can manage.  The phase changes at 25%. 

Phase 1:

The bosses in this phase are Feludious and Ignacious.  From here on out they shall be called Water Boss and Fire Boss.

Tanks
If you’re the water boss tank, interrupting hydrolance is key.   You will also wish to tank him away from everyone else because Glaciate damages everyone around him and sucks balls.

If you’re the fire boss tank, be prepared to help the DPS interrupt rising flames after his fiery shield is down.  Don’t position him too far away from the fire he’ll periodically leave on the ground because the melee will need quick access to it.  Speaking of said fire, every so often the boss will charge off, but he’ll charge right back, trailing the fire behind him.

Healers
Heart of Ice and Burning Blood will be two debuffs put on the raid.  While you do want to cleanse these you don’t want to do it immediately, as a few ticks can provide a DPS buff.

Hydrolance should be renamed Hydropunchtotheface.

Melee
You will be on the fire boss.  This phase is cake for you compared to the next one.  If you get Waterlogged, briefly step into the fire.  Try to not cross in front of the boss while getting to said fire because he also does a frontal cone of fire and, well, your healers like their mana.

After the fire shield (which needs to be DPS’d down ASAP) you need to interrupt the hurty flamey thing he’s channeling, Rising Flames. 

If you get the Burning Blood debuff and a ranged you like is near enough for a hug,  go ahead and g ive them one because it will increase their DPS on the water boss.  I wouldn’t run halfway across the room for it, though.

Ranged
You will mostly be on the water boss, though the two bosses should be kept as near in health as possible.*  One of you should probably be designated to switch if necessary.

If you get the Heart of Ice debuff, run and give the melee a hug.  Yes, that’s right–if you get that DEBUFF, run and give your guildies a hug.  It’ll increase their DPS on the fire boss.

If you get waterlogged, dart through the fire that the other boss is leaving on the ground.  If you don’t the water boss will freeze the blood in your veins and well, that just doesn’t sound very pleasant.  Your healers will probably let you die for your fail.

Phase 2:

A few words about gravity wells and cyclones, as these apply to everyone:
The air boss summons a cyclone you’re going to want to find it.  Yes, run TO the cyclone, those things you avoided on every other boss encounter ever.  Yeah.  It’ll give you a levitate buff that you need to not get gibbed by earthquake.

After earthquake, you need to run to a gravity well so that you get lose the levitatey thing so that you don’t get thundershocked to death. 

Each of these much-needed buffs will probably be all the way across the room from where you are.  Or on top of each other.

Also:  if you get lightning rod, get away from everyone else.

Tanks
The earth boss tank should try to keep an eye out for Harden Skin to interrupt it.  Your melee will be doing this as well, but with everyone running around willy-nilly, it’s best to keep all eyes on it.

The air boss tank should…tank the air boss.  He teleports around the room just to piss you off.

Healers
There’s a lot of damage being tossed around.  You should heal that.
(Do you have people in your guild who state the obvious like that?  We do.  Do you want to slap them?  I do.) 

The only thing of note that I recall for this phase is the Lightning Blast that is thrown at the air tank after the boss teleports.

Melee
Find your way to the earth boss.  Don’t forget to pull out your razors as you go, because this phase blows (see here). 

Try to interrupt Hardened Skin.  You know, during all that time you’re not running around looking for a cyclone or gravity well. 

Every so often the boss will cast Eruption, shoving spikes through the floor around him.  Try to not be standing there.

Ranged
You will mostly be on the air boss.  He teleports around like a dick.  If the earth boss tank/melee miss a Hardened Skin interrupt, you should help those scrubs DPS through it.

Phase 3:

Tanks
The one of you that can do the best gimped DPS while in tank gear should try to do that, because this is a 1 tank, DPS race phase.  The tank-tank should drag the boss out of puddles (think blue defile).

Healers
Quote from Kotakh, SiB Resto Druid: “omfg all that damage incoming wtf heal heal heal heal oom /dies fuck that noise”

So, in essence: don’t stand in puddles, heal the fuck out of people lifted off the ground in Gravity Crush, and flail madly at your healing buttons.  Remember, let your least favorite people die first!

Melee
Don’t stand in puddles.  Don’t stand on things that look like flares.  Blow any self-heal or damage reduction abilities that you have.  DPS the fuck out of shit.   Use any major DPS abilities (heroism, army, etc) in this phase as well.  DPS the fuck out of shit HARDER.  BEFORE YOU ALL DIE.  If you get lifted up in gravity crush, I hope you bribed your healers well.

Ranged
Spread out to minimize damage from lightning.  For the rest, you can actually see the melee section above.

A Melee DPS Visual Guide To Council

BWD: The Elevator Boss

Don’t mock me for writing this strat.  The Elevator Boss has claimed many lives, including several members of SiB.  It may have even claimed some of them more than once.

Tips and Tricks:

As I discovered personally, the engineer’s habit of reaching for his parachute in times of crisis will not serve you well here.  While it’s true you will not splatter on the ground, you will slowly…casually…glide right into the lava.  Where you will die.  And you will not be able to be rezzed by a snickering guildie and you will have to run your arse right back into the instance to brave the elevator again.  I can only imagine that levitate or slowfall will have the same result without perfect timing.

Trying to heroic leap off the elevator early to show off how awesome you are will, more often than not, result in you making an awesome blood smear.  Right Pix?

For the highest chance of not dying, stop on the edge of the elevator platform and wait patiently.  Do not tab out–this is not a dawdling elevator.  By the time you belatedly look over from your 2nd monitor and 4chan to realize that it’s there, you will wander off the edge only to find that it has already left.  Wait and run onto the platform as soon as you see it, especially if you’re laggy.

Levitating someone else to make them float into the lava pit/splatter is cruel.  Hilarious, but cruel.  Lifegrip can also be abused in amusing ways, proving that priests are OP and need to be nerfed.

Someone else with more forethought than I was kind enough to provide images for this tough boss encounter!  You can find them here.  Or here, here, and here if the WoW forums are blocked but you can see imageshack.

Remember, avoiding higher repair bills can be as good as loot!