25s: wooooo!

So last night, BoO made its return to 25s.

Yaaaaaay!

We still need some solid DPS-we pugged a couple, some of our own still need work, and some alts made appearances.  Of course part of the alt fun was because two nublettes decided that it was okay to take their healer mains to a pug Ulduar25 since OMG we have so many heals right?  …and then we’re short a healer come the night of our run.  

Don’t do that.  You know who you are and you of all people should know better.  :P  Yes, we have more healers than you can shake a stick at.  Yes, you have alts that are capable of going into Ulduar25.  But you have no idea if one of our other healers might have connection issues, wife aggro, kid aggro, or whatever at the last minute.   Save your god damn mains for god damned guild runs. 

Let me tell you, the last thing I want on what is still progression content is Josh healing.  Not because Josh isn’t a fine holy paladin-he is-but because I want him tanking.  

Besides, on his pally Josh gets all up in my healing business.  “I think that not having healing assignments on this was a bad idea.”  Really?  It was a one tank fight  (pummelbot bitch doesn’t really count).  Do I have to explicitly tell you that you’re a tank healer and should therefore be on the tank?  And that the raid healers should be on the raid?  Hello?  /thwack 

If we have an excess of tank healers (and we did, last night) then I’m going to be the one on raid bitch duty.  This is fine with me as I’m the most used to it.  I really want to push the tanks to be comfortable with Celaeno, anyway.  Know the Celaeno, love the Celaeno.  I am not the only disc priest.  I do not want to be the only disc priest.   Feel the warm embrace of the other disc priest’s bubbles…  They seem a bit insecure sometimes because she’s not on vent (with reason), but they’ll have to get over it.  I’ll make them.  >:|  

I’m not sure if my tendency to hand out similar healing assignments is good, or bad.  Familiarity vs boredom?  I’m most likely to assign Kotakh the floating “assist on the tanks but watch the raid”  because I know he’ll be on top of it.  And well…raid is raid.  I could switch up the tank assignments, but…Josh wants me healing him.  So.  You try to work with that and make it interesting, damn it!

Beatstick.

SIGN UP

/thwack

FOR FUCKING RAIDS

/thwack

YOU FUCKING SCRUBS

/thwack

“Oh but the epics in ToC are better!”

/thwack

Fuck you!  We’re up to Yoggy for fuck’s sake!  WHY CAN’T WE COMPLETE THE GODS BE DAMNED INSTANCE?  “O noes Yoggy is hard”? 

/thwack

What the hell are you, a lazy child?  Is the concept for working for epics, or raiding for something other that stupid purple pixels JUST FOR YOU a foreign concept? 

/thwack

IS THAT QQ COMING OUT OF YOUR MOUTH?  THAT BETTER NOT BE!

/THWACK

This post brought to you by sick, angry priests who wanted to chew on Ulduar more last night, not do Ony/VoA because, like, only healers and tanks signed up.  No one wants to do the “hard” part of Ulduar, apparently.

OT: Hunter Rant, Ho

ETA: blah blah, Amber can’t hunter, the point is made

So, I have a hunter.  Her name is Jamethera, and for a large part of BC she was my main.  I luffs her.

She was BM then, but not just because BM was the Flavor of the Month.  No, I’ve had a BM hunter since before the first hunter talent reset-my second character ever, in fact, behind my paladin Ambrosine.   Now that first hunter was actually a russet Tauren lady who sits at level 26 to this day, but my nelfy version is old in her own right.  She was my only other max level character in vanilla, actually, because those were the days when each toon took me over a year to level.  I r scrub.

Anyway.  I raided with her in BC, sponging knowledge from Olgas, a most marvelous hunter if ever I knew one.  This was before I knew of EJ and blogs and other such things, because I was the most non-hardcore hardcore raider ever. 

“What is the hit cap, Olgas?”
“What should I gem for, Olgas?”
“Is this peice of gear good, Olgas?”

…in hindsight, I’m terribly sorry, Olgas!  Anyway, I did manage to become a good hunter, usually at or very near the top of the meters.  I enjoyed raiding with Jamethera, and was happy when I got her to 80 a week ago.

Took her to Naxx…fine, fine.  Aside from the Dance Studio, nothing was god awful for my pet, and I felt that I could perform my job fairly well.   I missed my cat Schneeflocke, who had been my companion since level 12, but the devilsaur Omnomnom amused me. 

Then…Tuesday.  I wasn’t worried about the patch, really, until a few comments from other hunters on Twitter had me rushing home to test pet DPS.

And the wolf won.  We’re talking-in my specific case-a difference of 20 DPS, but still.  A wolf out damaged a devilsaur.

Okay, what?  I’m a BM hunter!  I can tame all these awesome, unique pets!

…and if I care about doing max DPS in raids, I need to use a wolf?  What fucking sense does thatmake?  It’s a mere 20 DPS difference for me, but it’s irritating none the less.  So here’s “slap in the face” number one.  I’m a BM hunter and my end of tree talent is pointless except for 4 mother fucking talent poitns in my pet tree.  What the HELL? 

Fuckity fuck fuck.  Since I convinced my poor guild to let me take my hunter into Ulduar, I went out and tamed one of those ugly tiny-waisted level 80 wolves and trudged on in.

Do you know how many times my pet died on Razorscale?  5 times.

Do you know how many times my pet died on Ignis?  3 times before I said FOR FUCK’S SAKE and kept him near me.  You know, not DPSing. 

Now I’m familiar with the concept of yanking my pet out of shit that hurts, but there comes a point where the shit that hurts is every god damned where all the god damned time and you spend more time moving your pet around than DPSing, and what the fuck is up with that?  Razor was especially annoying because I was on turret duty and not always aware of where my mutt was stupidly standing.

A pet is a major component of the hunter class-all three specs, not just BM.  So let me get this straight, it’s okay to render part of an entire classes mechanic bloody USELESS for large chunks of the instance? 

I’m struggling to remember BC, here.  You had to be quick on the pet controls for Aran, or they’d die, and there were some other fights (o hai, High King) where you had to be pretty aware of where the hell your pet was.   Attack this target, then this one, NOT that one, and here, pull them out of whirlwind.  But it was all doableand my pet was never out of the action for lengthy periods of time.  Even in Naxx, there’s only the one fight where he’s loluseless.

Now Blizzard seems to have grown madly in love with Bad Things On The Floor.  Razor?  Fire.  Ignis?  Fire.  Trash going to IC/Kologarn?  Pokeballs.    That’s already a significant chunk of the instance where I’m fighting to hit 2k DPS when I know damn well I can over 3k because I can’t fucking use this integral part of my class.  IC on easy mode wasn’t bad-he died due to my own inattentiveness once, but management on that fight is fine.  CCL and Hodir were fine, but uh…Mim?  Yeah I can see that going WONDERFULLY.

I left the instance having done subpar DPS and feeling generally terrible about a class and spec I used to love.  I tried to coax out tanks into at least keeping mobs out of fucking pokeballs, but I was basically told “Why?  The DPS can move to the sides and moving stuff more than you have to can cause problems.”   I have to wonder if that sort of attitude isn’t why we wiped so often on IC before-you now, not getting the bosses ass entirely out of the rune?  Yeah, that.  I could just be being bitter, though. 

I don’t really want to play my hunter anymore, and that makes me sadder than anything.  It’s one thing to choose a class that isn’t optimal but at least is FUN and supposedly not that terrible DPS wise, and then find out that due to fires on the fucking floor it’s god awful DPS AND not even fun anymore.

QQ…

Big Ugly Thing: Vezax Strat

General Concepts:

• Don’t stand in shit that hurts
• …except when it’s good for you
• OMG OMG OMG DAMAGE ON THE TANK
• Everyone around you has cooties (ranged)
• Oh look a gimmick

TANK:

You’ll only need one tank unless you are going for the hard mode.  For the most part, it’s a basic tank and spank-stand there and let your face get beat in.  When Vezax starts casting Surge of Darkness, be sure to have some internal or external cooldowns available to survive the OMG WTF BBQ DAMAGE that he is going to inflict on you.   We did it with a prot warrior and a disc priest-cycling warrior cooldowns/trinkets plus Pain Suppression were adequate.

DPS:

You need at least 4 people (9 for 25 man) standing 15 yards or more from the boss.  IF YOU ARE AN INTERRUPTER, YOU HAVE A VERY IMPORTANT JOB.  IF YOU FUCK UP YOU WIPE THE RAID.  No pressure, man, but Searing Flames is OMG BAD.  Set up a rotation and stick to it.

Mana-based ranged DPS will want to be the ones standing out at range, spread out.  You spread out for two reasons-one, to keep too many people going LA LA LA and getting hit by a Shadow Crash, and also to avoid spreading a debuff that heals the boss.  Boss healing is bad, mmkay?

Anyway, back to Shadow Crash. Think back on Hodir for a moment and the Big Snowpiles.  Run OUT of the shadow crash, and then back IN.  It’ll…fuck, screw the technical terms.  It’ll make your DPS go up and your e-penis get bigger, okay?  When not standing in the pretty shadow crash affect, do not DPS.  Wand, auto-shot, WTF ever…just don’t DPS.  Why?  BECAUSE YOU HAVE NO MOTHER FUCKING MANA REGEN.

When we did this, we assigned a hunter to Crystal Duty.   The wowiki strat has the following: “After every Surge of darkness, a melee or unoccupied ranged dps should go to kill the closest Saronite Vapor. All healers stand in until they have 6-7 debuffs, then step out. If that first regen is not enough, they can step in the vapor for another 6-7 debuffs (once they have lost the first 6-7 debuffs).”  That is…uh…not how we did it.  We had a hunter on Crystal Duty, and he would pop a crystal whenever one of the healers started whimpering and we’d run to it, rather than having the tank drag the boss around to crystals.  Any casters who found themselves needing a hit of mana later in the fight would just join in.

DO NOT PULL THE BOSS OFF THE TANK BECAUSE HE CANNOT BE TAUNTED. 

Healers:

All three of you can heal conservatively and dance in puddles at once, or do what we did-have one healer hold off a bit, and then cycle through healers as you run low.  Please note that your third healer will be whining that he is bored if you chose the latter, though.

You can see our DPS section for the note about wowiki’s strat vs ours on the puddles.  Either way, go puddle dance when you get low on mana.  Either go find the one your  DPS popped, or QQ at someone so they pop one for you.  Oh and uh, priests?  Don’t bubble when you go puddle dance, okay?  You don’t regen mana that way.  :(  We won’t talk about how I found that out, alright?

Although the non mana regen thing sounds scary, even the healers thought this cake was loleasy after Mim.

Note to disc priests in particular: Use Pain Supression for the first Surge.  I suggest this because on one of our initial attempts, the tank called for it while I was puddle dancing.  Using it first improved the timing so that I could om nom nom mana safely. 

Also, you may  want to consider pretending to be DPS and shadow crash dancing. I don’t reccomend this for 10 man, as I found myself still doing direct healing, but for 25s it’s a thought.  Normally shadow crash decreases healing done, but guess what?  Bubbles aren’t heals!  You can cast bubbles at reduced mana cost this way.

 

I am not doing a Yogg Strat…because I don’t need to.  The best one ever is here.  It’s like, someone channeled from my brain and made pictures for it.  WIN!

So about that pattern.

Mim wasn’t a smooth waltz in and one shot, but we still improved by leaps and bounds and he did, eventually, fall.  And drop loot that no one really cared for because we all had better-go figure. 

And as they descended down the shattered hallway, Lyrandre stopped to gape.  In all her years, she’d seen nothing quite like this.  What had rampaged down this hallway with so little care for the timeless beauty?

Oh.  That. 

This fight proved that the healers of BoO are amazing.  Why are we amazing? Because not only did we do a lovely job of keeping the tank up, but we kept the tank up despite one of the DPS failing at shadow crash seven mother fucking times.  And that’s only the one DPS, mind.  A couple of others failed it a less-failtacular but still WTF-inducing 4 times.  Quit staring at the meters, guys.  Seriously. 

Oh and don’t pull aggro.  *stares*

After Mimiron he actually seemed rather easy.

On to Yoggy!

Vezax strat will come out as soon as I…figure out what everyone else was actually doing.

We have a…pattern.

Random conversation with Josh in Target:

“So, I was talking with Steve at work, and he was wondering if you would go holy again.”
“Fuck no! Has he forgotten that I hated it?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Ha!  Ha!  Hahahahahaha!  Besides, the crack elves would see.  No.”
“The who?”
“Nothing.”

But on to that pattern thing I mentioned in the title.  BoO has one when it comes to boss progression.  I find it funny, myself.

1) Meet new boss.  HI NEW BOSS.
2) Wipe.  And wipe and wipe and wipe.
3) Make MASSIVE PROGRESS!  OMG, we could kill him tonight!
4) On the very next attempt, someone will flub something stupid early on and we wipe quick.
5) Shit goes downhill from there and the raid is called.

Then, the NEXT TIME we walk in there:

1) Hi boss, LOLOLOLOL HERE’S YOUR BALLS BACK WE TAKE LOOT NOW KTHX.

There may be one wipe in there if we shifted too many new people in, but generally, after a day or so off we come back like a fucking freight train.  I’ve seen it happen more than once, the most notable  case being Freya.  She stonewalled us and then a couple of WEEKS later when we finally got back to her, we one shot her.  Bwuh?

Obviously I’ll be posting a Mimiron victory shot after tonight’s raid, yes?  Assuming Atropus remembers that tank +mine = bad…

I call the blue lion! Mimiron Strat

“Amber, aren’t you skipping a bunch?”
Yeah but we’re doing this on Monday, so I figured it was time for a refresher. 

DISCLAIMER: I haven’t actually DOWNED this boss yet.  We’ve gotten through a few phases but I was too busy going OH MY GOD OH MY GOD OH MY GOD HEALS to really pay attention to nuances.  In other words, I have no idea what the fuck goes on because OH GOD THE TANK DIED WHAT THE FUCK BREZ BREZ OH LORD THE OTHER TANK DIED WHAT THE HELL.

Basic Concepts:

• Don’t stand in shit that hurts
• DPS what you’re told WHEN  you’re told, mister
• AMG HEAL THE TANK
• LOL DAMAGE EVERYWHERE
• Oh look adds

PHASE 1 – Mini Lootmobile

In this phase, he does stuff, and this stuff stings.  He drops mines on the ground, and they hurt like a bitch, so avoid those.  He also does something called Shock Blast, which is an AoE, so tanks and melee need to GTFO.   Your rogues are probably going to die, because…they’re rogues, and that’s what they do.

The tank and healers need to have cool downs ready for when he uses Plasma Blast  every 30 seconds or so.   If you don’t, your tank will probably die, too, and then you’ll have to listen to him bitch and no one wants that.

Spread out slightly (5 yds) so that napalm shell doesn’t splash damage onto anyone else.   Your raid healers need to keep their eyes peeled for this icky bit of fire damage.

PHASE 2

Keep spread out, dorks.

Healers, he’s going to be spamming random shit on the raid.  Randomly.   Try to keep people topped up for when he decides to randomly hit the same person with everything, as per Normal Boss Operation. 

Tanks, you get to lol DPS.  Enjoy.  :P

When he “spins up”, everyone needs to get their asses away from his front end.  He’ll cast a laser barrage and unlike your disc priest’s lasers, you don’t want these.  Run away from it.

Circles on the ground are bad.

PHASE 3

LOL WARLOCK TANK.  I mean, er.  He’s airborne in this phase so you need a ranged DPS who can soak some damage.  A warlock is actually a good choice, though.  A hunter works, as well.

Due to the fact that you’re dealing with ads, you might want to clump into a range group, and a tank/melee group, so that things aren’t total chaos.

Tanks, put away your loldps weapons.  You get to play with Assault bots!  They hit like a train and oh, they root you too.  Someone should play cleanse bitch to clear off the snare they put on the tank, and they’ll take a good amount of damage.  In 25s these actually have to be kited by some ranged DPS who can snare.   Apparently this is not the case anymore.  Dear “real strat” websites, please to be updating your shit, kthx. 

There will be junk bots who wander around aimlessly.  These can safely be ignored and will probably die to incidental AoE.  Bomb bots are a wee bit ouchy, though, so you don’t want to give them hugs.  They can be kited and killed.

Put loot on free for all.  When assault bots die, they drop a Magnetic Core.  Picking these up and dropping them underneath the boss will cause him to descend and take more damage for a brief period of time.

PHASE 4 – ONCE MORE, WITH PIRATES ROBOTS

All that shit but together.  Don’t step on the mines, don’t stand in the lasers, and don’t hug the boss during Shock Blast.  The head and body have separate aggro tables, so you’ll again need a ranged to “tank” the head while your tank tanks the tank.  I mean, the bottom.  The mini lootmobile.  Whatever.   They maintain their aggro tables from earlier in the fight.

Oh, and they all have to die at about the same time.  Enjoy!

Obviously, DPS will have to be coordinated.  Pay attention to what you’re told and not the damn meters.

No Tantrum Required: XT Strat

Basic Concepts:

• LOL DAMAGE EVERYWHERE
• DPS what you’re told WHEN you’re told, mister
• Don’t spread the cooties

We use two tanks for this fight.  One tanks the boss, and the other gathers up big robots (Pummelers).   You can tank the boss directly across from the entrance if you wish (we do), or you can tank him on one of the junk piles.

DPS, you…DPS the boss.  Except when the heart is down, then you DPS the heart.  If you’re AoE you may be assigned to watch a pile and take care of the adds.  If the little robots reach the boss, they heal him, which is bad, mmmkay?  Bomb bot thingys go asplody, so 1) don’t stand near them and 2) make them asplode so they asplode the little bots. 

Spread out.  Everyone around you can potentially have cooties.  For shiny white cooties, 5 yards away is safe.  For purply glowy cooties, you need to be 10 yards away.  If you do not have a means of showing distance (/range for DBM), then GTFO my raid, scrub.  That or go stand in a god damn corner.

Healers, I’m sorry.  You’ll need to watch for a couple of things this fight.  Watch for people with cooties.  Keep everyone as topped off as you can because the boss with pitch a fit every so often.  He will tend to do this while you also have cooties, just to be a dick.  Use bubbles/AoE heals/liberally sprinkled hots/whack a mole/whatever to keep everyone up.  If you have mana to spare and are a dork like me, you can run into the adds and HOLY NOVA! for shits and giggles.  Just uh, dont’ get yourself blown up by bombs.  Not that I’ve done that, or anything.

The Healers Will Take Over the World

…or at least, the guild.

Historically, the officers in Brotherhood of Oblivion have been tanks.    Sidearm, Zlord, Atropus, Macharious, Zoja-all tanks at one point or other.  Even I was a tank when I first transferred over to the guild, though I’d gone healer again by the time I was promoted.

Last night, we had a little officer chit-chat and decided to replace our two departed officers with people who will actually do stuff.  While little miss tree-bear doesn’t ENTIRELY break the pattern, Ky is Mr. Heals With Everything That Can Heal.

It would be easy to draw parallels between healer/tank types and leadership positions-so easy, I won’t bother.  But I will congratulate Kyr and Mikata on their new shiny titles, and publicly LOL at the bloggers taking over!

I will also thank them for two healing Freya last night so that I could go shadow and make up for the fact that several of our DPS seem oblivious to trees.   :P 

Recruitment is kicking into high drive, so it’s my time for…

SHAMELESS GUILD PLUG O’ RECRUITMENT

BoO is looking for DPS and healers primarily.  Shadow priests, hunters, and elemental shamans would be especially welcome, but any solid DPS who knows what “Kill the mother fucking trees!” means will be considered.  We do have room for sets of friends/couples/etc, though due to raid composition we can’t promise you’ll get to do every run together, especially as we transition back up from 10s to 25s.  Good tanks will also be considered, as we currently have only 3 on the active roster.  Healer-wise I’d like to add both raid healers and another tank healer.

We’re up to Mimiron in Ulduar10, and Crazy Cat Lady in 25s (with only two weeks in, at that).  ToC 10 is something we’re just starting on off-nights, and we still run the periodic Naxx25 for gear/badges.   Main raid nights are M-W, 7-10 PM  CST.  Thursday is our primary off night (lol?) and keeps the same hours, roughly.   We’re on Azgalor, and yes it’s a PvP server, but if this RP-server scrub can hack it, I promise you it’s not so bad.

Oh, and we’re crazy.  I’ve mentioned that, right? 

 

…Seph, did we scare you off?  We’re fine, I swear!  XD  I mean look, we promoted useful officers and everything.  Mikata didn’t even get promoted because she’s Steve’s GF, but because I wanted a secretary!  She keeps being nosy and doing my HR bitch job anyway, so she might as well stop making me look bad and do it officially, right?

And the wheel of life-and guild rosters-rolls on

I have, if unofficially, become the healing lead.  This means I get the special pleasure of herding our healer cats, handing out healing assignments, and naming ourhealer channel LetHuntDie. 

We had until just recently a holy paladin named Yarp.  I’m not ashamed to say that Yarp’s skill kicked the shit out of mine, and he was on near-perpetual MT duty because of his sheer awesome.  Hell, he did an amazing healing job for awhile with two broken wrists.  I could make some jokes about pally two button healing there, but never mind that.

I had no issues taking the OT/flex duty myself.  In fact I rather relish that position and all of it’s variations. 

Well, Yarp was burning out and left the game.  I’ll miss him!   I missed him ton and tons when we walked into Ulduar and proceeded to wipe on Ignis over and over and over.  Naturally many people were thinking: was Yarp THAT good?  Can we really not do this without him?

The thing about a healer core is that it’s a complex assembly of pieces.  Yes, losing an excellent healer sucks, especially when you don’t have a near-identical piece to slide in.  Our other holy paladins are Zy, an alt, and Kyr, who is more often raiding on his holy priest.  Our only other holy priest is only available in two week blocks due to work, so I’d kind of rather keep him there.  That means I step up into the MT role, which is fine, but…

…now we’re losing people to the pot.  People that I, as OT/flex healer, often personally took care of along with the raid healers.  We can do this without Yarp, I just have to beat the other healers into multitasking, that’s all.  But see what I mean about it being complex?  Merely shuffling one person into another role can change more than expected.

Healing assignments are rather like stat juggling-a complicated, confusing, sometimes frustrating game within a game. 

If I put this here, then I need someone here, but this person can’t do this job well so he has to go over here, but now I…oh, fuck.  God damn it people just heal whoever is dying, okay?