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! ^^

Raid Leader’s Woes: A Flowchart

Here I will present to you the original, as my raid leader and main tank presented it to me:

And here is my helpfully edited version:

Call to Arms 5 Player Guide

Many thanks to my guildie and officer James  for letting me repost this.

Hello and welcome to the unofficial Call to Arms 5 player dungeon guide. My name is Temnyi and I will be going over some of the details you’ll need to know with the exciting new Call to Arms encounter. Many people are worried about what Call to Arms will do to pugging, but it’s really not as bad as it sounds. For this encounter I’d recommend three dps, one healer, and one person that’s normally either a dps or a healer but has decided to pick up a tank offspec recently.

Call to Arms is a five-phase encounter, with each phase characterized by denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and finally, acceptance. The second phase is probably going to be the most difficult for most groups, but if you can get past that smoothly you’ll likely see it through to the end.

Right off the bat, you’ll notice everyone has an animosity bar, much like Cho’gall’s Corruption bar. It starts at zero, except warlocks, where it starts at eleven. The higher your animosity, the more likely you are to drop group. At fifty, your character will periodically use Lash Out, which increases another party member’s animosity by 10. The good news is that animosity will gradually decrease over time.

The first phase, denial, is a little tricky. You’ll often find yourself thinking, “Oh no, he’s not going to do that, is he?” or “There’s no way he could be wearing that. Right?” These feelings are entirely normal for this encounter. You might feel the urge to interrupt, to stop the person from doing what you feel is a terrible mistake, but it’s important to let this cast bar finish. As you can see now in the video [Ed. Note: Video not yet available], the group is on the cusp of a mistake, it happens (Wow, that looked like it hurt), and it seems like a wipe. This is much like the Lich King’s Fury of Frostmourne ability and is a normal part of the encounter.

Everyone will be set to 100 animosity and the encounter will immediately transition to the second phase, Anger. The tank will blame the healer, the healer will say he was oom and wasn’t given time to drink, someone will blame the rogue, even if a rogue is not present. The duration of this phase will vary greatly by your group, depending on how long individual party members keep the “Frothing Rage” debuff. Like waterlogged in Twilight Ascendant Council, you can end this debuff early by using its counter, taking a deep breath and counting to ten. You might lose a member or two in this phase but know that they’re nothing special and you can replace them in seconds, regardless of their role. Unforunately, gaining new members may reset the encounter, putting you back in stage one.

When everyone has cleared Frothing Rage, you move on to the Bargaining phase, which will seem a breeze compared to the last one. The trickiest part of this phase is that your animosity bar is probably pretty high, most likely around 75. Communication between group members is essential here, and it’s highly recommended to fully utilize the party chat feature. Talk to the group about what went wrong, focusing less on how it’s one person’s fault and more on how everyone, yourself included, could have done better. Sure, most of your comments might come down to one person, but remain polite and diplomatic about it. Feel free to offer helpful advice, but treat it as a peer-to-peer discussion. “I Know Better Than You” will add 50 animosity, and will likely cause a rage quit, wiping the encounter.

After a minute or two, if you haven’t had too many Lash Outs, everyone should be below 50 animosity, which will cause a phase transition. You’ll feel hopeful about clearing the trash this time, but that’s when Depression hits. You see the same party members do the same things, which puts your group at risk for another Cataclysmic Defeat. Emphasize the importance of their role, while still retaining politeness and diplomacy, and you should be able to pull through. Defeating the enemies that caused the first Cataclysmic Defeat will bestow Renewed Hope upon you, doubling the decay of animosity for the rest of the encounter.

When everyone’s animosity reaches zero, you’ll move into the final stage, Acceptance. Much like sub-10% of the Lich King encounter, this is effectively a loot pinata. You’re acting as a team instead of five random jerks, you’re communicating, you’re identifying where problems are and working them out.

And with such coordination you should have no trouble getting through the other encounters your random dungeon has for you, Call to Arms offspecer or not. Once again my name is Temnyi and I’d like to thank you for watching [Ed. Note: Reading], and best of luck to you with your Call to Arms dungeons! (:

(Sincere apologies and much love to the Tankspot crew.)

Cho’gall Flowchart

Courtesy the Pixie Stix.

Hey look! It’s a flowchart!

“Also include a bonus prize of +1 internets for anyone who deciphers the fine print.”

me:  WTF Does the little text say?
 Pixie:  nope. you wanna play, you figure it out on your own.
 me:  I CANT READ THAT SMALL
 Pixie:  Guess you’ll just have to make use of some other tools then. ^_^

>:|

OM NOM NOM Stormwind

The author of the…very interesting The Gray Place sent this along as a guest post.  <3!

As evidenced by Deathwing sitting atop the majestic towers of
Stormwind (in ur base killin ur dewds…), the Cataclysm is
approaching. This lets me segue into a bit of…*Chris Metzen
voice* “with the Cataclysm, it brings new content, new
races, and new opportunities for players and new guilds, yadda,
yadda.” Neat and tidy writing-type-stuff.

But if 15+ years of online gaming has taught me anything, it’s that
nothing in MMOs is neat and tidy. Lets look around at the current
landscape a bit…

You’ve got your tweaker Wrath burnouts who raided TotC10, TotGC10,
TotC25, TotGC25 every single week, you’ve got your emo-wine cooler
drinking-guild hoppers who have \gquit macroed to every keybind,
you’ve got your disgruntled former GMs and officers who have decided
to enter the witness protection program and become random Huntard #6
in some obscure 25 man team. These players are all looking for a new
home and a fresh start come Cataclysm.

I myself fell into such a situation when my guild of 2+ years
collapsed and I found myself at a crossroads. I came from a guild
that I once co-GMed and where I had built of a solid reputation of a
firm but fair raid leader. My players trusted me and I was used to
being one of the senior officers. Then one day, as all such things
come to pass, our guild was done and over.

It was all gone. My automatic raid spot, my reputation, my social
network, my copious strategies via our forums, everything. I imagine
many folks might be in this situation now that Wrath has entered it’s
last gasps. You might be one of them; Standing atop the lonely hill
of memories, shoulders slumped, with your hands in your pockets, going
“well now what?”.

Now my friend. You start over. Here’s a few things you can do to
help yourself in your new guild…

1. One of the biggest mistakes I think you can make when you join a
new guild is to hold it against them that they aren’t your old guild.
That ship has sailed. It may have been great and you might miss it,
but it is OVER. Don’t make a fresh start on a bunch of emo memories,
you’ll just continue to make yourself miserable.

2. Don’t act like a wussy because they don’t kiss your ass or don’t
remember your birthday. I know in your old guild you were “The
Wo/Man”, but here in your new guild your just the “new app”.

When I joined my new guild the VERY first thing said to me in gchat
was a Rogue who told me “Welcome. Please don’t suck.” Now some folks
might get upset by this or think it rude, but instead give them some
of their own shit right back. I happily responded “Hi! I don’t suck,
but I don’t heal Rogues either.”

3. They do not know you as a person or a player. You may have been
known as the tank who single-handedly could tank every boss plus all
their adds in your old guild, but here in your new guild your just
tank #4. It’s your job to show them your skills and determination.

They are not required to give you an automatic raid slot. You have to
promote yourself. Slip a PM to the guild master, let then know that
you’d like a raid position if there’s one open, what raid encounters
you’ve done, old WoL reports, and what you’re doing to work on your
gear. Offer to run five mans, old raids, anything in gchat. Show
them you know what you’re doing. Get to know the officers, raid
leaders, class leads. You don’t need to be a suck up but let them
know that when they need a tank/healer/dps you’re the person to come
too.

4. Be honest in what you want. You may think you want a more
“serious” guild this time around, but can you commit to the tight raid
schedule and the constant performance review? I see this happen a
lot. People always want more than they’re able to give. If your
happy with a beer and pretzels guild then join a beer and pretzels
guild. If you like to role-play then join a RP guild and get your
slurp on in Goldshire. Don’t put yourself in a position your going to
fail at. It’s intellectually dishonest.

5. Just because your new doesn’t mean you need to be meek. I’m not a
hugely talkative guy most days, but you have to make an effort to be
an actual member in your new guild. You don’t need to “entertain”
guild chat with your synopsis on Buffy: The Vampire Slayer season 14,
but just don’t sit there afraid to say anything. I always see people
complain “nobody talks to me in my new guild”, but sometimes
you have to make the first step (HORROR: I sound like mother!). If
you’ve got a question ask it, see if anyone wants to hit a five man,
add a comment to the ongoing “who is hotter…” discussion, hell even
a simple TWSS goes a long way in breaking the ice. You don’t need to
be mister/misses popularity but 90% of the time your guildies will be
more comfortable around you and you around them, if you’ve at least
made the smallest human contact with each other.

Your old guild is dead and gone. Deal with it.

You—-> yourself—-> as a person, will largely be responsible
for how happy you are in your new guild. Don’t set yourself up to
fail. Give it an honest shake (TWSS), if it doesn’t work out then
bail and keep looking till you find something that does work. Life is
too short to be unhappy playing a video game.

Bringing Back The Bubbles

Hi, folks. Arrens here from that other site that hasn’t been updated regularly in far too long. Blame work. And work filters. And whatever else pops into my Sudofed-addled brain this morning.
 
Anyways, I asked my arch-nemesis if I could provide a guest post here. See, I’ve been leveling a priest for the better part of this year. Theodious is my dwarven disc priest, the dispenser of bubbles and all-around cad. (Seriously. I play on an RP server. If you happen upon Feathermoon-Alliance and engage in an in-character discussion with Theo AND you’re playing a female toon, run. Fast.) 
 
Theo isn’t my first attempt at a priest. He’s actually my 6th. (Amber in: it’s a disease; Lyr was 5th or 6th) The previous 5 never made it to level 20 before finding the delete button. They were tedious and boring and GODDAMMIT WHY WASN’T THE LFD SYSTEM OUT A LOT EARLIER?!
 
Ahem. Sorry. But Theo sat at level 12 for months. Seriously. For nearly 6 months, he gathered dust as I couldn’t be arsed to go out and smite my way through gnolls and spiders and the odd troll/yeti hiding in caves. But something happened along the way. I got the itch to level him, something I never could have foreseen. And I did. With great gusto. Full use of heirlooms and the LFD system had me tossing bubbles out left and right. I learned about spamming Flash Heal and have been laughed at time and again for my overuse of Renew as a non-holy priest. But you know what? It worked and I kept my groups mostly alive. (Except mages, who I still let die because my inner warlock chortles.) (FYI: you are supposed to let ROGUES and WARLOCKS die, not mages.  Mages give you noms.  Arrens is doin’ it wrong.)

 

This picture isn't relevent to anything. I'm just breaking up Arren's wall of text. You're welcome.

 
Then along comes patch 4.0.1 and everything gets flip-turned upside down. New talents, new spells, and SWEET BABY ZOMBIE JESUS MY MANA POOL JUST TRIPLED! So I have that going for me, which is nice.
 
Yesterday, Theo hit level 70. He’s been through Utgarde Keep (So.  Tired.  Of that instance.)  about a dozen times now and I’m thankful to largely be away from the new DK tanks who don’t know what threat generation is. (Seriously, guys. Use Blood Presence now if you’re tanking. This is non-negotiable and will cause me to drop group if you pull the first group in anything else.)  (If only it was just the DK tanks.  Oh my god.  Something about UK brings out the fail in tanks.)
 
“But Arrens,” I can hear you say. “What’s the fucking point of this post aside from telling us that you’ve done what everyone and their goddamn brother has done in leveling another toon?” To which I respond, Relax, skippy. I’m getting to that.
 
See, Amber’s blog is titled “For The Bubbles.” Yet, when’s the last time she talked anything about bubbles? She hasn’t in a long, long time. No, she’s almost all hunter, all the time. (Do you know how many disc priests you can have in a raid?!  THE ANSWER IS NOT THREE.)  Which is great and all, but the snark’s gone. (Gone my ass.  Wit’s as sharp as ever, baby.) She’s lost her bluster. (LOL) The fight between my arch-nemesis and I isn’t so much a fight anymore as it is a roflstomp on my part. (LOLOLOLOL.  Delusions!  So cute!) So as a means to get back to our roots, I’m going to provide her with some snark on this here blog and give the leveling tips from a Disc Priest’s perspective in the post-4.0 universe. Some of these are obvious no-brainers. They’ve been around since the dawn of WoW. But others? Well…some folks need could use a smack to the back of the head when they queue in the LFD. This is for them.
 
1.) I need mana. No, really. I need mana. Tanks, if I sit down for a drink because I’ve only got 1/4 of my mana left after you opted to pull the entire bloody instance, please let me fill it up before going back for more. I know you’re sadistic sonsabitches taking whacks to the head for the greater good, but I can’t heal you unless you see blue under my green health bar. If you continue to run all willy-nilly and we wipe due to your impatience, I will leave. (Sidenote: Priests need Life Tap. Serious.)

2.) Power Word: Barrier is a pretty cool mechanic. It’s like a giant bubble for the whole group. You stand under it, you don’t get hurt and any heals I cast on you are increased by 3%. So melee? STOP RUNNING OUT FROM UNDER IT, YOU FUCKTARDS! I have two level 80 rogues. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many inappropriate uses of Sprint as when I cast PW: Barrier. You’re all giving my second favorite class a bad name. I hate you.  (I’d say that it’s because we’ve trained them SO WELL to not stand in things, but anyone who heals knows that no, they haven’t absorbed that lesson, either.   So really they have…no excuse.  Except not understanding the AWESOME that is PW: Barrier.)

 
3.) Prot Pallys, I don’t know what’s happened to you since 4.0. You used to be my favorite class to heal, what with your awesome AOE threat generation and your, what I can only guess was, fantastic dodging and parrying abilities. But that’s all changed. Every pally I’ve healed in the past week has been taking some pretty incredible damage. Stop that. Please. You make me go into an anaphylactic shock all the damn time now.
 
4.) Warrior tanks, you have replaced Prot Pallys as my favorite tanks to heal. Keep it up, guys and gals. 
 
5.) This one isn’t so much a tip or even an observation I’ve seen happening frequently as it is just (what I hope was) a singular event that occurred yesterday in UK. I’m in a group with one of those aforementioned prot pallys that couldn’t keep threat on more than two mobs at a time. We had a rogue, a fury warrior, a frost mage and myself filling out the group. All the DPS were pretty decently geared for upper-60’s, low-70’s toons and were constantly pulling threat. The frost mage, on several occasions, kept pulling entire groups off the pally and would proceed to run. Not to the tank. Not to me, the healer. No, he would start running backwards as fast as his gnomish feet would carry him. Well out of LOS of me and way to far for the pally to lay down a consecrate. When he died for the sixth time in that run, I was laughing so hard I had tears streaming down my face. Nothing makes me giddier with glee than seeing a mage die. Make it a gnome? Well hell. It’s like my birthday and Christmas all rolled into one.  (Isn’t it DELIGHTFUL when they do that?  Their repair bills are like a stupidity tax.)
 
So there ya have it, folks. My tales of leveling as Disc in the post-4.0 apocalypse. Any tales to share of your own? Toss ’em in the comments.

Friday Flowchart: Feral Tanking

Friday Flowchart!

Our own dear bear tank @Achloryn offered to flowchart for me this week, so here you go.  :)

Friday Funnys

I am posting this against my better judgement.  >:|