So I finally killed Yogg Saron (normal 4 watchers, no uberness here) this weekend. I'm a bit sad that it happened on my disc priest before my paladin, but I'm really happy to see the end of this epic fight. Yogg Saron is, for me, the best fight of Wrath up to now, it's 3 very different phases, there is a lot to do for everyone, and especially in 10-Man none is allowed to fumble as we can't tolerate one death or we won't get the enrage timer.
It's really hard to find enough motivated people to finish Ulduar now, but I happened to get lucky on my priest server. I got invited in a guild group extending its tag when they were on Yogg, they wiped on their first night and we wiped again all night on last Thursday. This Saturday, we went there again with nearly the exact same group, everyone knew the fight and we downed Yogg on our second attempt of the night, only our third time on Yogg phase3.
I was the healer of the brain team during phase 2 which is a lot of fun and rush (you don't have much time to think and I fumbled my first brain phases on Thursday). We barely killed him before the time limit though (only 15s remaining) and our tank had 6 adds on him at the end and survived (I love to heal good tanks).
All I can say is that I really like this encounter. It's original, well designed and it reminds me of C'thun :)
I used the BossKillers guide to prepare my raid nights, and it really helped me to not be surprised especially in phase 3 when these guardians hit to hard on the tank (thank you Pain Supression during the last seconds of the fight).
Showing posts with label Ulduar. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ulduar. Show all posts
Monday, October 26, 2009
Saturday, October 17, 2009
Waiting for IC ...
I don't know about you but I'm seriously waiting for Icecrown Citadel. Not that I've finished
all the content, I've yet to see Yog Sarron die, but that requires several evenings on Udluar and most people don't spend that amount of time on this raid anymore. Too much "free loot" on ToC (normal) or Onyxia or Lolaron to motivate much people about Ulduar.
I still think Ulduar is the best raid from WotLK up to now, despite it being too big, it should have been split in two raids as it was done all along BC. I still have some friends motivated by Ulduar hard modes and we're trying them from time to time, usually one or two nights a week when we are lucky enough to make our suicidal squad (Auriaya with all cats is a crazy fun mess of a fight to heal). If I find ToC hard mode mostly a "gear check", Ulduar hard modes are, at least for some of them, very entertaining.
The first news from the next raid Blizzard is giving us are starting to appear, and the first boss was tested on the PTR these last days (report on Mmo Champion). It doesn't seem super hard, as least on paper, I hope the normal/hard mode gap will be lower then ToC, and my wish is for hard modes to contain more abilities, more strategy than just be a gear check put over a normal difficulty boss.
I guess we'll all see that in IC, hopefully not too long from now, but even more hopefully nicely tested and balanced.
all the content, I've yet to see Yog Sarron die, but that requires several evenings on Udluar and most people don't spend that amount of time on this raid anymore. Too much "free loot" on ToC (normal) or Onyxia or Lolaron to motivate much people about Ulduar.
I still think Ulduar is the best raid from WotLK up to now, despite it being too big, it should have been split in two raids as it was done all along BC. I still have some friends motivated by Ulduar hard modes and we're trying them from time to time, usually one or two nights a week when we are lucky enough to make our suicidal squad (Auriaya with all cats is a crazy fun mess of a fight to heal). If I find ToC hard mode mostly a "gear check", Ulduar hard modes are, at least for some of them, very entertaining.
The first news from the next raid Blizzard is giving us are starting to appear, and the first boss was tested on the PTR these last days (report on Mmo Champion). It doesn't seem super hard, as least on paper, I hope the normal/hard mode gap will be lower then ToC, and my wish is for hard modes to contain more abilities, more strategy than just be a gear check put over a normal difficulty boss.
I guess we'll all see that in IC, hopefully not too long from now, but even more hopefully nicely tested and balanced.
Friday, May 22, 2009
Healing Ulduar - XT-002 Deconstructor
And the guides/tips for healing Ulduar as a Holy Paladin continue. You can find the first two ones here:
Healing Ulduar - Flame Leviathan & Razorscale
Healing Ulduar - Ignis The Furnace Master
And as a reminder, I also wrote some more general articles about healing in Ulduar before:
Ulduar paladin healing guides
Ulduar Paladin Healing Tips (update)
Today I'll talk about ...
XT-002 Deconstructor
You can find details about the boss on its Wowhead page, I won't detail strategies here and only focus on the healer role in this fight.
There are 2 small groups of trash mobs that were put back into the instance after the first two weeks (they were buggy at first). You can find them on the left and right side of the boss courtyard, take care to not pull the boss before having dealt with them (you will see the boss but not the trash mobs when you approach).
Now about XT, the first thing you should know is that he has been severely nerfed since the first weeks of live. The biggest nerf being his Tympanic Tantrum.The version on wowhead on this day is still the old one, when it was inflicting damage equal to 120% of their life to each raid member. You can easily guess that, if raiders were not healed, they will die. Combine that to the potential simultaneous Searing Lights and Gravity Bombs and you had regular deaths during the Tantrums. Now damage was reduced to 80% total life, which means that, if there is no external damage, none will die from a Tantrum. Light/Dark bombs can still be deadly, but it will be much easier to cope with the amount of damage today, this is why most raiders have found as the biggest nerf to XT. He's the one guarding the entrance to the core of Ulduar, and Blizzard wanted to be sure most guilds could go there.
Now that I've ranted a bit about the nerf of XT, and that I've pointed its biggest threat for healers, let see how the fight goes.
You will have 2 tanks, one main tank on XT, and one off-tank for the biggest adds that will not be dpsed. The stress on the off-tank will grow with time, having only one add is a joke, having 4 starts to be much more healing stress, he should keep his cooldowns for the end of the fight, to help with healing.
The main aspect of the fight is its two phases. Each 25% of his life, XT enters phase 2 when he goes inactive and exposes his heart. Phase 2 is also when adds pop. The main aspect is that this is a relatively low damage phase (compared to boss + Tantrums + light/dark bombs). You will be able to use cooldowns like Divine Plea without any risk during that phase, and you should regain a large amount of mana in 30s (Phase 2 lasts for 30s whatever happens, unless you break XT heart but I won't talk about the hard mode).
The MT will take heavy damage, be ready to toss some big heals from time to time, and don't worry too much about your mana if you're the MT healer. You'll have time to get some mana back during phases 2. As always, keep your Sacred Shield up on the main tank, keep your Judgement on XT (Light or Wisdom).
After a phase 2, take care when XT resumes damage on the MT, as you were probably helping with bombs damage or even dpsing (yes, dpsing :p) during phase 2.
If you are healing the off-tank, don't get lazy during the first or even second add phase, he will only have one or two adds and that could seem easy, phase 3 will be harder, and if you are in 25-Man, you'll even need 2 off-tanks as 2 big robots pop each add-phase.
Now, depending on the other healers of your raid, you could need to help during the tantrums (even if you know it was nerfed hard :p). Then simply put your Beacon on your healing target (MT/OT) and raid heal, the usual. If you're healign the MT pay attention though, damage spikes can happen.
Usually I keep my Beacon of Light on me during that fight, so that I don't have to heal me during tantrums, or on a Light/Dark bomb. I can keep a regular and steady healing stream on the main tank and I'm fealing much more secure on his survival that way.
Have fun, next week Kologarn and the Iron Council (that some people are calling the Assembly of Iron, how weird).
Healing Ulduar - Flame Leviathan & Razorscale
Healing Ulduar - Ignis The Furnace Master
And as a reminder, I also wrote some more general articles about healing in Ulduar before:
Ulduar paladin healing guides
Ulduar Paladin Healing Tips (update)
Today I'll talk about ...
XT-002 Deconstructor
You can find details about the boss on its Wowhead page, I won't detail strategies here and only focus on the healer role in this fight.
There are 2 small groups of trash mobs that were put back into the instance after the first two weeks (they were buggy at first). You can find them on the left and right side of the boss courtyard, take care to not pull the boss before having dealt with them (you will see the boss but not the trash mobs when you approach).
Now about XT, the first thing you should know is that he has been severely nerfed since the first weeks of live. The biggest nerf being his Tympanic Tantrum.The version on wowhead on this day is still the old one, when it was inflicting damage equal to 120% of their life to each raid member. You can easily guess that, if raiders were not healed, they will die. Combine that to the potential simultaneous Searing Lights and Gravity Bombs and you had regular deaths during the Tantrums. Now damage was reduced to 80% total life, which means that, if there is no external damage, none will die from a Tantrum. Light/Dark bombs can still be deadly, but it will be much easier to cope with the amount of damage today, this is why most raiders have found as the biggest nerf to XT. He's the one guarding the entrance to the core of Ulduar, and Blizzard wanted to be sure most guilds could go there.
Now that I've ranted a bit about the nerf of XT, and that I've pointed its biggest threat for healers, let see how the fight goes.
You will have 2 tanks, one main tank on XT, and one off-tank for the biggest adds that will not be dpsed. The stress on the off-tank will grow with time, having only one add is a joke, having 4 starts to be much more healing stress, he should keep his cooldowns for the end of the fight, to help with healing.
The main aspect of the fight is its two phases. Each 25% of his life, XT enters phase 2 when he goes inactive and exposes his heart. Phase 2 is also when adds pop. The main aspect is that this is a relatively low damage phase (compared to boss + Tantrums + light/dark bombs). You will be able to use cooldowns like Divine Plea without any risk during that phase, and you should regain a large amount of mana in 30s (Phase 2 lasts for 30s whatever happens, unless you break XT heart but I won't talk about the hard mode).
The MT will take heavy damage, be ready to toss some big heals from time to time, and don't worry too much about your mana if you're the MT healer. You'll have time to get some mana back during phases 2. As always, keep your Sacred Shield up on the main tank, keep your Judgement on XT (Light or Wisdom).
After a phase 2, take care when XT resumes damage on the MT, as you were probably helping with bombs damage or even dpsing (yes, dpsing :p) during phase 2.
If you are healing the off-tank, don't get lazy during the first or even second add phase, he will only have one or two adds and that could seem easy, phase 3 will be harder, and if you are in 25-Man, you'll even need 2 off-tanks as 2 big robots pop each add-phase.
Now, depending on the other healers of your raid, you could need to help during the tantrums (even if you know it was nerfed hard :p). Then simply put your Beacon on your healing target (MT/OT) and raid heal, the usual. If you're healign the MT pay attention though, damage spikes can happen.
Usually I keep my Beacon of Light on me during that fight, so that I don't have to heal me during tantrums, or on a Light/Dark bomb. I can keep a regular and steady healing stream on the main tank and I'm fealing much more secure on his survival that way.
Have fun, next week Kologarn and the Iron Council (that some people are calling the Assembly of Iron, how weird).
Monday, May 18, 2009
Healing Ulduar - Ignis The Furnace Master
The sequel of my first Healing Ulduar - Flame Leviathan & Razorscale tips post, today I'll talk about Ignis The Furnace Master.
As always, Holy Paladin point of view on these fights, mostly from a 10-Man raid perspective.
About 10-Man, I don't think they are harder than 25-Man, as they were for Naxx at least at the beginning. Clearly some fights like Kologarn are much easier in 10-Man than 25-Man. But being a paladin, I do feel paladin healing being more and more pushed back to the single MT healing niche (and we are really good at that). Most Ulduar fights are really mobile, and require positioning and movement through the whole fight. You can also combine to that the amount of raid damage that can be pretty high on some bosses (XT, Kologarn, ...). From my point of view that makes a paladin the worst healer class for 10-Man, but that's still the raids I do, so you'll probably have to endure a few rants here and there, 'cause you do know I like to say when I don't like things :P
Anyway, enough with the talk, here is the Ignis guide.
On the way to Ignis, Furnace trash mobs
Your first challenge will be the trash mobs to Ignis. Don't take them lightly or you will wipe a lot on them, even though the flame tornadoes have been strongly nerfed since day one of the live.
The two giants have a stomp/silence unlimited distance aoe. If your healer are silenced, you'll wipe. So position your tanks at the limit of the pillars, and keep 2 tank healers out of line of sight from the giants. It is that simple, but don't do that and you'll never kill them.
Then you have pairs of mobs patrolling.
The constructs are fairly simple, they have a small frontal fire breath attack (turn them away from your raid), and they have a charge (it's more a glide animation which is fairly ridiculous) that will randomly hit someone for about 4-5K.
The fire elementals regularly create flame tornadoes that will target someone and push him back in the air. If you are pushed back, you will take a large amount of fire damage about 5 or 6 hits for 3K, if you were not at full life, or if you're hit by two tornadoes (or the first one send you into the second one) you will die. Only instant casts can be used while in the air, but if you have health stones, or instant heals, use them. The best here is to have as much distance as you can between the 2 elementals (pull them back to the ramp for space) to avoid double tornadoe hits, and when you see a tornado going your way, just run (or blink, or warlock circle teleport ...). As a healer, keep your instant heals for tornado victims (you if needed ;p) and still keep a close look on your tank.
Ignis the Furnace Master
For a description of Ignis abilities, you can check wowhead. I won't comment on the strat, everyone guild has sort of its own views on Ignis positioning. But one thing never change, you'll have one MT (moving Ignis around) and one OT for the adds (running between add pops and waterpools).
If you are healing the main tank, the damage is fairly regular, if you have more and avoidance tank though, when he's moving Ignis (or moving around him) after a scorch is put on the ground damage can spike a little, take care. Keep your cds for the moment several adds are up. If your add team ever miss a shatter, Ignis damage could reach +45% for a short time, which will hurt the tank. Usually when Ignis reach 10% guilds stop killing the adds too to burn him down. As he gains +15% damage for each add up, be ready for pumping out heals on the MT during these last % of Ignis.
If you are healing the off-tank, try to discuss with him and chose one pool, it will be his shatter pool to which he will bring all adds. Then find your spot so that you can always heal the OT, be out of the scorch flames, and have the least amount of movement to do (especially if you're a paladin ;p). The OT won't take too much damage at first, but he will when the add is melting (fire aoe) and if our "add buster" dps even shatter the add too soon, the OT will take the 15K explosion damage. To avoid a wipe on that losy move, always have your OT life capped when he brings the add to the water pool. Healing the OT on Ignis means switching to him at the right time to have him life capped when it can be necessary. You will be helping with slag-pot heal and potential raid damage the rest of the time.
Whole raid damage is low during this fight. But there will be slag-pot victims. Ignis will regularly take one character from the raid, never the MT, and not the OT (*if* he is hit by a non stunned or cced add at this moment). This character will be put into Ignis slag-pot and will endure 5K fire damage per second for 10s. Obviously they will require healing, quick and fast healing. A paladin is perfect for healing slag-pot targets. You also should know that you can cast spells when into the pot, you just can't target Ignis. Any class that can cast heals should heal themselves when in the slag-pot.
As a paladin, I usually use Beacon of Light on myself during this fight, I'm most of the time healing the OT & the slag-pot victim. If I ever end into the slag-pot I can just OT/MT/raid heal and that will heal myself too. I'm also always at full life in case I get add aggro when they pop, or have to move through a scorch to reach my target (the OT has to move a lot in this fight). I try to keep Sacred Shield up at all times (as always). And keep Judgement of Wisdom/Light on Ignis (not on the adds ;p) as much as I can.
XT is next in line for these small guides. I wish you fun in Ulduar, even though nerfs have really toned down everything up to the watchers, it's still much more enjoyable than Naxx.
As always, Holy Paladin point of view on these fights, mostly from a 10-Man raid perspective.
About 10-Man, I don't think they are harder than 25-Man, as they were for Naxx at least at the beginning. Clearly some fights like Kologarn are much easier in 10-Man than 25-Man. But being a paladin, I do feel paladin healing being more and more pushed back to the single MT healing niche (and we are really good at that). Most Ulduar fights are really mobile, and require positioning and movement through the whole fight. You can also combine to that the amount of raid damage that can be pretty high on some bosses (XT, Kologarn, ...). From my point of view that makes a paladin the worst healer class for 10-Man, but that's still the raids I do, so you'll probably have to endure a few rants here and there, 'cause you do know I like to say when I don't like things :P
Anyway, enough with the talk, here is the Ignis guide.
On the way to Ignis, Furnace trash mobs
Your first challenge will be the trash mobs to Ignis. Don't take them lightly or you will wipe a lot on them, even though the flame tornadoes have been strongly nerfed since day one of the live.
The two giants have a stomp/silence unlimited distance aoe. If your healer are silenced, you'll wipe. So position your tanks at the limit of the pillars, and keep 2 tank healers out of line of sight from the giants. It is that simple, but don't do that and you'll never kill them.
Then you have pairs of mobs patrolling.
The constructs are fairly simple, they have a small frontal fire breath attack (turn them away from your raid), and they have a charge (it's more a glide animation which is fairly ridiculous) that will randomly hit someone for about 4-5K.
The fire elementals regularly create flame tornadoes that will target someone and push him back in the air. If you are pushed back, you will take a large amount of fire damage about 5 or 6 hits for 3K, if you were not at full life, or if you're hit by two tornadoes (or the first one send you into the second one) you will die. Only instant casts can be used while in the air, but if you have health stones, or instant heals, use them. The best here is to have as much distance as you can between the 2 elementals (pull them back to the ramp for space) to avoid double tornadoe hits, and when you see a tornado going your way, just run (or blink, or warlock circle teleport ...). As a healer, keep your instant heals for tornado victims (you if needed ;p) and still keep a close look on your tank.
Ignis the Furnace Master
For a description of Ignis abilities, you can check wowhead. I won't comment on the strat, everyone guild has sort of its own views on Ignis positioning. But one thing never change, you'll have one MT (moving Ignis around) and one OT for the adds (running between add pops and waterpools).
If you are healing the main tank, the damage is fairly regular, if you have more and avoidance tank though, when he's moving Ignis (or moving around him) after a scorch is put on the ground damage can spike a little, take care. Keep your cds for the moment several adds are up. If your add team ever miss a shatter, Ignis damage could reach +45% for a short time, which will hurt the tank. Usually when Ignis reach 10% guilds stop killing the adds too to burn him down. As he gains +15% damage for each add up, be ready for pumping out heals on the MT during these last % of Ignis.
If you are healing the off-tank, try to discuss with him and chose one pool, it will be his shatter pool to which he will bring all adds. Then find your spot so that you can always heal the OT, be out of the scorch flames, and have the least amount of movement to do (especially if you're a paladin ;p). The OT won't take too much damage at first, but he will when the add is melting (fire aoe) and if our "add buster" dps even shatter the add too soon, the OT will take the 15K explosion damage. To avoid a wipe on that losy move, always have your OT life capped when he brings the add to the water pool. Healing the OT on Ignis means switching to him at the right time to have him life capped when it can be necessary. You will be helping with slag-pot heal and potential raid damage the rest of the time.
Whole raid damage is low during this fight. But there will be slag-pot victims. Ignis will regularly take one character from the raid, never the MT, and not the OT (*if* he is hit by a non stunned or cced add at this moment). This character will be put into Ignis slag-pot and will endure 5K fire damage per second for 10s. Obviously they will require healing, quick and fast healing. A paladin is perfect for healing slag-pot targets. You also should know that you can cast spells when into the pot, you just can't target Ignis. Any class that can cast heals should heal themselves when in the slag-pot.
As a paladin, I usually use Beacon of Light on myself during this fight, I'm most of the time healing the OT & the slag-pot victim. If I ever end into the slag-pot I can just OT/MT/raid heal and that will heal myself too. I'm also always at full life in case I get add aggro when they pop, or have to move through a scorch to reach my target (the OT has to move a lot in this fight). I try to keep Sacred Shield up at all times (as always). And keep Judgement of Wisdom/Light on Ignis (not on the adds ;p) as much as I can.
XT is next in line for these small guides. I wish you fun in Ulduar, even though nerfs have really toned down everything up to the watchers, it's still much more enjoyable than Naxx.
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
Healing Ulduar - Flame Leviathan & Razorscale
I had this idea for some time now, but needed more raid experience to really start it. First of all, most of my experience comes from 10-Man. Guild stability is an issue lately, with the "post Naxxramass apathy" that fell upon the game, and we're having difficulties to get a regular 25-Man roster.
The idea here is to give a few tips for each boss (and the trash before sometimes). Tips will be for healers, and from my point of view, hence a healing paladin view of them. I hope they can be useful for other healers, but obviously paladins will probably find more info here :)
Most of these guides won't detail the fight themselves, and they'll be easier to read if you've already experienced the fights. But comments are here to collect any question.
So enough with the talk and here start the guides with the 2 first bosses of Ulduar.
Flame Leviathan
This is a semi-joke as most players won't have anything to do in this fight that is linked to their characters. Most of us stay in vehicles and don't even push a heal or dps button for the whole fight.
This is a sure fact for tanks, though 2 (4 in 25-Man) players will be sent on FL to shut down the towers and stun it for a little bit about 2 times during the fight. In 10-Man you'll most of the time send 2 dpsers, in 25-Man you often send 1 healer with 3 dpsers (and the healer can be you).
You have to clearly know who's going to be sent on the Leviathan, and they should be fully buffed (BoK is mandatory !). They could have to endure heavy damage is they stand on the ground a little too long after the Leviathan global shut-down, and before they are picked-up by motorcycles (motorcycle pilots can heal their passenger before giving it back to the Demolishers). Hence, the more health they have, the best chance they have to survive, and you don't want to lose them.
To sum it up, buff the people being sent on the Leviathan, heal if you are part of them.
Razorscale
From a healer point of view there are 3 different "phases" in this fight.
Phase 1 is when Razorscale is flighing.
There will be adds that your tanks will pick-up. Keep your tanks up, and watch the raid that will take heavy damage with whirlwinds and chain lightnings. You also have to watch for Razorscale Fireball and Devouring Flame. I hope for you that people won't stay too much in the blue devouring flame patches on the ground or keeping them alive could start to be difficult.
In this phase depending on raid healers I often keep my Beacon of Light on myself and heals the MT in charge of the Sentinels (one of our tanks take both Sentinels to avoid them whirlwinding the raid). That way I don't really have to watch my health and can keep my MT targeted at all times, and sometimes send Holy Shock here and there in the raid.
Flash of Light and Holy Shock should be your main tools in this phase.
Phase 2 is when Razorscale is on the ground for 30s.
If there are still adds, let them live, and heal the tanks. The whole raid should concentrate on Razorscale. When she will take flight again, she will do two things. She will flamebreath in front of her, probably killing the remaining adds and doing heavy damage to your tanks. And she will Wing Buffet, aoe knock-back interrupting your heals. The wing buffet happens a few seconds after the breath, be ready to have your tank fully healed in these few seconds. There should be very little raid damage during this part. If you have two tanks, put your Beacon on one, heal the other.
Flash of Light and Holy Shock should be your main tools in this phase, with an occasional Holy Light on a tank if too many adds were left alive.
Phase 3 is from 50% life of Razorscale to its death, when she's definitely on the ground.
Two tanks switching on Razorscale regularly, heavy damage on the tank, a bit of raid damage mostly avoidable (the Fireballs and Devouring Flames or phase 1 are back). These are the characteristics of this phase, mostly a burn-her-down and hope you make the timer (which shouldn't be too hard now ^^).
It's probably not very usefull to heal "both tanks" at the same time as only one will take damage at some time. Once again, chose how you use your beacon depending on your raid (if you're helping with raid healing or purely tank healing mostly). I often use it on myself if I'm confident in our healing, just to ensure I don't die stupidly on a double fireball while I'm casting Holy Lights on the tank. If there is need of me on raid healing, then Beacon on my tank is the way to go.
You'll most probably use Holy Light much more in this phase than the two first ones. Use your Divin Plea whenever you can during the fight to try being full mana when you start this phase. Having a Light's Grace buff stacked during this phase can help you a lot to react quickly to Razorscale tank changes.
For all fights
As always, keep Sacred Shield up at all times on your tank, and Judge often (Wisdom, or Light if you're the only paladin) to keep your Judgements of the Pure up at least (each 20s should eb your aim when you can to maintain the debuff up).
That's it for today. Ignis soon, and you can expect at least up to Freya next week. I'll keep all the posts linked in the upcoming ones.
The idea here is to give a few tips for each boss (and the trash before sometimes). Tips will be for healers, and from my point of view, hence a healing paladin view of them. I hope they can be useful for other healers, but obviously paladins will probably find more info here :)
Most of these guides won't detail the fight themselves, and they'll be easier to read if you've already experienced the fights. But comments are here to collect any question.
So enough with the talk and here start the guides with the 2 first bosses of Ulduar.
Flame Leviathan
This is a semi-joke as most players won't have anything to do in this fight that is linked to their characters. Most of us stay in vehicles and don't even push a heal or dps button for the whole fight.
This is a sure fact for tanks, though 2 (4 in 25-Man) players will be sent on FL to shut down the towers and stun it for a little bit about 2 times during the fight. In 10-Man you'll most of the time send 2 dpsers, in 25-Man you often send 1 healer with 3 dpsers (and the healer can be you).
You have to clearly know who's going to be sent on the Leviathan, and they should be fully buffed (BoK is mandatory !). They could have to endure heavy damage is they stand on the ground a little too long after the Leviathan global shut-down, and before they are picked-up by motorcycles (motorcycle pilots can heal their passenger before giving it back to the Demolishers). Hence, the more health they have, the best chance they have to survive, and you don't want to lose them.
To sum it up, buff the people being sent on the Leviathan, heal if you are part of them.
Razorscale
From a healer point of view there are 3 different "phases" in this fight.
Phase 1 is when Razorscale is flighing.
There will be adds that your tanks will pick-up. Keep your tanks up, and watch the raid that will take heavy damage with whirlwinds and chain lightnings. You also have to watch for Razorscale Fireball and Devouring Flame. I hope for you that people won't stay too much in the blue devouring flame patches on the ground or keeping them alive could start to be difficult.
In this phase depending on raid healers I often keep my Beacon of Light on myself and heals the MT in charge of the Sentinels (one of our tanks take both Sentinels to avoid them whirlwinding the raid). That way I don't really have to watch my health and can keep my MT targeted at all times, and sometimes send Holy Shock here and there in the raid.
Flash of Light and Holy Shock should be your main tools in this phase.
Phase 2 is when Razorscale is on the ground for 30s.
If there are still adds, let them live, and heal the tanks. The whole raid should concentrate on Razorscale. When she will take flight again, she will do two things. She will flamebreath in front of her, probably killing the remaining adds and doing heavy damage to your tanks. And she will Wing Buffet, aoe knock-back interrupting your heals. The wing buffet happens a few seconds after the breath, be ready to have your tank fully healed in these few seconds. There should be very little raid damage during this part. If you have two tanks, put your Beacon on one, heal the other.
Flash of Light and Holy Shock should be your main tools in this phase, with an occasional Holy Light on a tank if too many adds were left alive.
Phase 3 is from 50% life of Razorscale to its death, when she's definitely on the ground.
Two tanks switching on Razorscale regularly, heavy damage on the tank, a bit of raid damage mostly avoidable (the Fireballs and Devouring Flames or phase 1 are back). These are the characteristics of this phase, mostly a burn-her-down and hope you make the timer (which shouldn't be too hard now ^^).
It's probably not very usefull to heal "both tanks" at the same time as only one will take damage at some time. Once again, chose how you use your beacon depending on your raid (if you're helping with raid healing or purely tank healing mostly). I often use it on myself if I'm confident in our healing, just to ensure I don't die stupidly on a double fireball while I'm casting Holy Lights on the tank. If there is need of me on raid healing, then Beacon on my tank is the way to go.
You'll most probably use Holy Light much more in this phase than the two first ones. Use your Divin Plea whenever you can during the fight to try being full mana when you start this phase. Having a Light's Grace buff stacked during this phase can help you a lot to react quickly to Razorscale tank changes.
For all fights
As always, keep Sacred Shield up at all times on your tank, and Judge often (Wisdom, or Light if you're the only paladin) to keep your Judgements of the Pure up at least (each 20s should eb your aim when you can to maintain the debuff up).
That's it for today. Ignis soon, and you can expect at least up to Freya next week. I'll keep all the posts linked in the upcoming ones.
Monday, May 11, 2009
Is Val'anyr, Hammer of Ancient Kings, good for you?
GK on Gesundlight asked me for my views on the healer epic weapon that you can get in Ulduar (well if you're in an awesome raiding guild and are raiding like crazy ;p).
This topic has already been covered extensively on MMO Champion or World of Raids when the blues gave us details on it. And I wasn't really going to talk about it but well, if it can be useful, here is my share on it.
First, how do you get Val'anyr ?
You have to collect 30 Shattered Fragments of Val'nyr. Then you'll get a quest, and you have to beat Yogg-saron in heroic difficulty with at least one of the watchers not assisting you (that is not an easy task).
Now, beside its amazing stats, we'll discuss here about its equiped effect.
The proc is 10% on any direct heal or hot tic (it is not clear yet if a Judgement of the Light proc will make it proc or not and I think it probably doesn't proc on a glyph of Holy Light splash heal) that does not result in 100% overheal (it has to heal at least 1 hp).
If the proc happens, you get a buff for 15s. During these 15s, each healing spell you cast will proc a 8 seconds duration shield on the target which will absorb up to 15% of the full value of the heal you just cast. If you cast other heals on the same target, they will renew the duration of the shield and stack up to 20000 damage absorbed.
Now that we have identified the shield effect and how it works, the big question asked is: which class would benefit the most of this effect?
We have to consider two aspects: the chance of activating the effect, the power of the shields given.
Blessing activation chance
It's a flat 10% on any direct heal or hot tick. Let us see what is means for a paladin.
A paladin roughly cast a spell each 2s, considering Holy Lights, Flash of Light and Holy Shock and movement. That's about 30 direct heals a minute, about 3 procs a minute, the blessing lasts 15s. It shows that we would be mostly 75% of the time under it's effect if we could have it proc as soon as it's down, which will not happen. We have to consider that healing while under the blessing will not proc it again.
So it's mostly the time need to proc it between each of the blessings. 10% proc chance means you need about 10 heals or hot ticks to proc it. That's 20s for a paladin, that will be nearly instant for a healing druid with hots already ticking all around.
I am assuming here that the blessing proc can't happen on Judgement of Light, or that, as a good holy paladin, you're judging wisdom if there is a protection or retribution paladin in your raid.
Shield Effectiveness
Now, how much shield can be generated in 15s ? With a full Light's Grace active and haste buffs, I'll count 1.5s casts for Holy Lights. On my wss parses, they are around 12K medium (counting crits). That will result in 120K healing with the buff, giving us a total 18K shield. Still not the 20K limit but definitely something good. Add to that the shields will have "proced" on anyone not being full life and hit by a glyph of Holy Light splash heal.
If we consider what most other healers will do in 15s it's probably less than 120K healing. Or at least not without some serious mana issues. Without cooldowns, these 10 Holy Lights cost 12740 mana. With the Libram of Renewal, it's 1130 less mana. With 50% crit and Illumination it's 3822 less mana for 7788 mana total. (I'm not taking into account things like Glpyh of Seal of Wisdom, which reduces these costs by 5% more). With a 15s duration and 20s between blessings, that's about two times this "crazy heals" by minute, hence a little more than 15K mana a minute, which is a lot even for a Holy Paladin. Using Divine Plea will be necessary for about 6K mana each minute, reducing the cost to 9K mana (though you have to continue outputing Flash heals during the off-blessing time). With our other coold down abilities, we should be able to go crazy on Val'anyr shield for 3 to 4 minutes, resulting in 6 to 8 full shields of 18K strength. I think all people on Mimiron right now can see the use of such crazy healing periods.
To resume things
A hot class or aoe healing class will have the blessing up nearly all the time, while a direct single target healing class like a paladin won't (unless Judgement of Light counts, but that would be bad style as a Holy Paladin Judgement of Light is weaker than the one of other paladins).
But a paladin will most probably outputs much bigger shields and can go crazy if needed for a few minutes resulting in nearly capping the shield potential during that time. From my rough calculations, we can expect 18K shields two times a minute for 3 to 4 minutes from a Holy Paladin. That being for a moderately itemized Holy Paladin (like myself in tier 7 raid 25 gear), and without special mana regen abilites used but the regular talent ones.
Similar analysis for druids and priests (both disc & holy) would be necessary to compare the numbers, but I feel confident in saying that Val'anyr will be more effective in the hands of a Holy Paladin.
Now, for your raid, I say: give it to your most reliable healer, the one that is in your guild for years and is always here when you need him/her :P
This topic has already been covered extensively on MMO Champion or World of Raids when the blues gave us details on it. And I wasn't really going to talk about it but well, if it can be useful, here is my share on it.
First, how do you get Val'anyr ?
You have to collect 30 Shattered Fragments of Val'nyr. Then you'll get a quest, and you have to beat Yogg-saron in heroic difficulty with at least one of the watchers not assisting you (that is not an easy task).
Now, beside its amazing stats, we'll discuss here about its equiped effect.
Your healing spells have a chance to cause Blessing of Ancient Kings for 15 seconds allowing your heals to shield the target absorbing damage equal to 15% of the amount healed.I will add information from blues.
The proc is 10% on any direct heal or hot tic (it is not clear yet if a Judgement of the Light proc will make it proc or not and I think it probably doesn't proc on a glyph of Holy Light splash heal) that does not result in 100% overheal (it has to heal at least 1 hp).
If the proc happens, you get a buff for 15s. During these 15s, each healing spell you cast will proc a 8 seconds duration shield on the target which will absorb up to 15% of the full value of the heal you just cast. If you cast other heals on the same target, they will renew the duration of the shield and stack up to 20000 damage absorbed.
Now that we have identified the shield effect and how it works, the big question asked is: which class would benefit the most of this effect?
We have to consider two aspects: the chance of activating the effect, the power of the shields given.
Blessing activation chance
It's a flat 10% on any direct heal or hot tick. Let us see what is means for a paladin.
A paladin roughly cast a spell each 2s, considering Holy Lights, Flash of Light and Holy Shock and movement. That's about 30 direct heals a minute, about 3 procs a minute, the blessing lasts 15s. It shows that we would be mostly 75% of the time under it's effect if we could have it proc as soon as it's down, which will not happen. We have to consider that healing while under the blessing will not proc it again.
So it's mostly the time need to proc it between each of the blessings. 10% proc chance means you need about 10 heals or hot ticks to proc it. That's 20s for a paladin, that will be nearly instant for a healing druid with hots already ticking all around.
I am assuming here that the blessing proc can't happen on Judgement of Light, or that, as a good holy paladin, you're judging wisdom if there is a protection or retribution paladin in your raid.
Shield Effectiveness
Now, how much shield can be generated in 15s ? With a full Light's Grace active and haste buffs, I'll count 1.5s casts for Holy Lights. On my wss parses, they are around 12K medium (counting crits). That will result in 120K healing with the buff, giving us a total 18K shield. Still not the 20K limit but definitely something good. Add to that the shields will have "proced" on anyone not being full life and hit by a glyph of Holy Light splash heal.
If we consider what most other healers will do in 15s it's probably less than 120K healing. Or at least not without some serious mana issues. Without cooldowns, these 10 Holy Lights cost 12740 mana. With the Libram of Renewal, it's 1130 less mana. With 50% crit and Illumination it's 3822 less mana for 7788 mana total. (I'm not taking into account things like Glpyh of Seal of Wisdom, which reduces these costs by 5% more). With a 15s duration and 20s between blessings, that's about two times this "crazy heals" by minute, hence a little more than 15K mana a minute, which is a lot even for a Holy Paladin. Using Divine Plea will be necessary for about 6K mana each minute, reducing the cost to 9K mana (though you have to continue outputing Flash heals during the off-blessing time). With our other coold down abilities, we should be able to go crazy on Val'anyr shield for 3 to 4 minutes, resulting in 6 to 8 full shields of 18K strength. I think all people on Mimiron right now can see the use of such crazy healing periods.
To resume things
A hot class or aoe healing class will have the blessing up nearly all the time, while a direct single target healing class like a paladin won't (unless Judgement of Light counts, but that would be bad style as a Holy Paladin Judgement of Light is weaker than the one of other paladins).
But a paladin will most probably outputs much bigger shields and can go crazy if needed for a few minutes resulting in nearly capping the shield potential during that time. From my rough calculations, we can expect 18K shields two times a minute for 3 to 4 minutes from a Holy Paladin. That being for a moderately itemized Holy Paladin (like myself in tier 7 raid 25 gear), and without special mana regen abilites used but the regular talent ones.
Similar analysis for druids and priests (both disc & holy) would be necessary to compare the numbers, but I feel confident in saying that Val'anyr will be more effective in the hands of a Holy Paladin.
Now, for your raid, I say: give it to your most reliable healer, the one that is in your guild for years and is always here when you need him/her :P
Thursday, May 07, 2009
Ulduar Raid Healing, part 3
I have already discussed healing in Ulduar and what we need to change from our Naxx routines in two previous articles:
Ulduar Paladin Healing Guides
Ulduar Paladin Healing Tips
After a few raiding nights, and advancing a little more in Ulduar myself (up to Thorim), I'll try to update my views. You can probably expect a "trash healing guide" I'll write during the weekend, as I find sometimes trash more surprising than bosses :P
I've said earlier to use Beacon of Light on yourself. That's still very valid for most bosses I've seen. On Ignis, Razorscale, XT, Kologarn surely, on other bosses (Iron Council, Auriaya) that is more of a discussion and that can depend on your assignment.
Now I've really seen trashs where Beacon should be on you or not, these are the trash mobs before Kologarn (antechamber) and before Auriaya.
When you pass XT, you'll be in front of packs of 3 sorts of mobs, sheep and ban can really help you a lot but expect to take some damage spikes on you (there are chain lightnings), while if your raid does good cc, and if your tank for the giants don't stand on charged punches, there should be only one tank (2 in heroic) tanks taking damage. This is a perfect time to use Beacon on you to ensure your survavibility while keeping a constant focus on your tank for reactivity on damage spikes.
Once you've down Kologarn, you're going to face the iron giants duos on Auriaya ring. These guys can output huge damage spikes on your tanks, while the rest of the raid should take very minor damage. That's the perfect set to have your beacon on the tank that you're not healing (they require a tank on heal infusion on each of them). That will allow you to heal both of the tanks at the same time, and help a lot with these bad and dealy damage spikes while your raid takes care of the lightning orbs and giants.
Clearly, these two settings are very different, and that's what I like the most in Ulduar. Bosses, but even trash mobs have very different strategies, require cc, require different healer assignments ...etc
Adaptability is a real raiding strength and knowledge, something you don't just get with loot. That is what I like in raids that push you to play a little better than just heal/damage spams.
I surely wish to see more of Ulduar soon, the deeper I go, the better it becomes. Please don't nerf the third part of it too soon, Blizzard :P
Ulduar Paladin Healing Guides
Ulduar Paladin Healing Tips
After a few raiding nights, and advancing a little more in Ulduar myself (up to Thorim), I'll try to update my views. You can probably expect a "trash healing guide" I'll write during the weekend, as I find sometimes trash more surprising than bosses :P
I've said earlier to use Beacon of Light on yourself. That's still very valid for most bosses I've seen. On Ignis, Razorscale, XT, Kologarn surely, on other bosses (Iron Council, Auriaya) that is more of a discussion and that can depend on your assignment.
Now I've really seen trashs where Beacon should be on you or not, these are the trash mobs before Kologarn (antechamber) and before Auriaya.
When you pass XT, you'll be in front of packs of 3 sorts of mobs, sheep and ban can really help you a lot but expect to take some damage spikes on you (there are chain lightnings), while if your raid does good cc, and if your tank for the giants don't stand on charged punches, there should be only one tank (2 in heroic) tanks taking damage. This is a perfect time to use Beacon on you to ensure your survavibility while keeping a constant focus on your tank for reactivity on damage spikes.
Once you've down Kologarn, you're going to face the iron giants duos on Auriaya ring. These guys can output huge damage spikes on your tanks, while the rest of the raid should take very minor damage. That's the perfect set to have your beacon on the tank that you're not healing (they require a tank on heal infusion on each of them). That will allow you to heal both of the tanks at the same time, and help a lot with these bad and dealy damage spikes while your raid takes care of the lightning orbs and giants.
Clearly, these two settings are very different, and that's what I like the most in Ulduar. Bosses, but even trash mobs have very different strategies, require cc, require different healer assignments ...etc
Adaptability is a real raiding strength and knowledge, something you don't just get with loot. That is what I like in raids that push you to play a little better than just heal/damage spams.
I surely wish to see more of Ulduar soon, the deeper I go, the better it becomes. Please don't nerf the third part of it too soon, Blizzard :P
Monday, May 04, 2009
Ulduar is going down, it's nerf time.
For all of you that raid regularly since Ulduar opening, last week and even more this weekend made it clear. Ulduar nerf has started.
Two waves of nerfs have already hit Ulduar, detailed on MMO Champion on the 29th and 30th of April. First ones seamed to be more fixes, balance nerfs, there are detailed here. But the second wave, linked to patch 3.1.2, is a clear downgrade of Ulduar difficulty. I first thought they were only lowering a bit 10-Man difficulty, which was a bit too high compared to 25-Man for me. But now the nerfs hit everything, 10-Man and 25-Man alike, from the first bosses up to Vezax (last boss before Yogg-Saron).
I'm a bit sad to see a difficult raid instance that was promising weeks of fun to master and finish being nerfed to a Naxxramas plus. I'm expecting more nerfs to come in the next weeks or at most months. If they start so soon, they won't stop, finally nerfing Ulduar down so that anyone can go there, without need of guearing or anything.
Let's have fun as long as it lasts. Soon only hard modes will promise any sort of challenge (at least these ones are not nerfed).
Two waves of nerfs have already hit Ulduar, detailed on MMO Champion on the 29th and 30th of April. First ones seamed to be more fixes, balance nerfs, there are detailed here. But the second wave, linked to patch 3.1.2, is a clear downgrade of Ulduar difficulty. I first thought they were only lowering a bit 10-Man difficulty, which was a bit too high compared to 25-Man for me. But now the nerfs hit everything, 10-Man and 25-Man alike, from the first bosses up to Vezax (last boss before Yogg-Saron).
I'm a bit sad to see a difficult raid instance that was promising weeks of fun to master and finish being nerfed to a Naxxramas plus. I'm expecting more nerfs to come in the next weeks or at most months. If they start so soon, they won't stop, finally nerfing Ulduar down so that anyone can go there, without need of guearing or anything.
Let's have fun as long as it lasts. Soon only hard modes will promise any sort of challenge (at least these ones are not nerfed).
New Ulduar Poll, Is Ulduar too Hard ?
My last poll on the site (right side bar) indicated that, over the 15 persons that answered it 13 were ready to rush into Ulduar, 2 were not yet completely sure of it but none was expecting to delay it for long.
Though 15 people isn't a lot, I'm pretty sure most of the raiders were really awaiting Ulduar, tired of this long boring time with only Naxxramas.
Now that we've have Ulduar for nearly 3 weeks, what do you think about it ? According to recent changes (read nerfs) by Blizzard, Ulduar is too hard for most guilds. I must accept the fact that only one of our 10 men groups was really able to advance up to Mimiron before last week nerfs. But I think that most of our raiders were "not preapared"(©). The end of BC, with the patch 3.0, the new talents and the general raid nerf, followed by 6 months of "free loot easy raiding" really made raiders dull.
From my point of view, we are not as good as we were. But perhaps for the top guilds, most probably suffered these months from the apathy that easy raiding is pushing on us.
What do you think of that ? Do you need these nerfs ? Were you happy of Ulduar difficulty, hoping as I was that it would shake your raid back to skill ?
Feel free to comment here and answer the poll.
Though 15 people isn't a lot, I'm pretty sure most of the raiders were really awaiting Ulduar, tired of this long boring time with only Naxxramas.
Now that we've have Ulduar for nearly 3 weeks, what do you think about it ? According to recent changes (read nerfs) by Blizzard, Ulduar is too hard for most guilds. I must accept the fact that only one of our 10 men groups was really able to advance up to Mimiron before last week nerfs. But I think that most of our raiders were "not preapared"(©). The end of BC, with the patch 3.0, the new talents and the general raid nerf, followed by 6 months of "free loot easy raiding" really made raiders dull.
From my point of view, we are not as good as we were. But perhaps for the top guilds, most probably suffered these months from the apathy that easy raiding is pushing on us.
What do you think of that ? Do you need these nerfs ? Were you happy of Ulduar difficulty, hoping as I was that it would shake your raid back to skill ?
Feel free to comment here and answer the poll.
Thursday, April 30, 2009
What loot should you aim for, and why ?
I've already written a post (if not several) here about Holy Paladin Loot in Ulduar. And Pallymar compiled an Ulduar Best-in-Slot Guide too with additional discussion on the items.
If these guides are quick easy reference guides, you could always ask the question: but why this guy is saying that item is better ? If I hope you'll give us enough credit to believe in our choices, sometimes you will have to make your own choices and I would like to give you tips for that.
It happens that Sailan at Banana Shoulders just posted the perfect post for that:
Choosing Your Attributes. You can read there a very detailed and well written discussion about the merit of each stat for a holy paladin, spell power vs. spell crit, you'll find all of that there. And I definitely agree with Sailan who, once again, deliver us a very good piece of work.
I'll be off for the weekend, so I wish you all a very good weekend, and see you on Monday for a new post.
If these guides are quick easy reference guides, you could always ask the question: but why this guy is saying that item is better ? If I hope you'll give us enough credit to believe in our choices, sometimes you will have to make your own choices and I would like to give you tips for that.
It happens that Sailan at Banana Shoulders just posted the perfect post for that:
Choosing Your Attributes. You can read there a very detailed and well written discussion about the merit of each stat for a holy paladin, spell power vs. spell crit, you'll find all of that there. And I definitely agree with Sailan who, once again, deliver us a very good piece of work.
I'll be off for the weekend, so I wish you all a very good weekend, and see you on Monday for a new post.
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Ulduar Holy Paladin loot update *04/28*
Ulduar cleaning by the top guilds is giving us more loot, we should not be far from the complete loot table for Ulduar, but for Algalon that will require a bit more time.
As always, the Full Ulduar Holy Paladin Loot List will be updated, I'll post a new clean one once Ulduar loot is complete.
Until then, new loot is here, most of the items are from hard modes:
Cable of the Metrognome (Plate Waist - Spell haste MP5) - Mimiron 10-Man *new 04/28*
Faceguard of the Eyeless Horror (Plate Head - Spell crit MP5) - Yogg-Saron 10-Man *new 04/28*
Pendant of the Shallow Grave (Neck - Spell crit haste) - Thorim 10-Man hard *new 04/28*
Sif's Remembrance (Trinket - Spell power, mana regen) - Thorim 10-Man hard *new 04/28*
Shawl of Haunted Memories (Cloak - Spell crit + spirit) - Yogg-Saron 25-Man *new 04/28*
Sanity's Bond (Ring - Spell haste MP5) - Yogg-Saron 25-Man *new 04/28*
Gauntlets of the Thunder God (Plate Hands - Spell crit haste) - Thorim 10-Man hard *new 04/28*
Sapphire Amulet of Renewal (Neck - Spell haste + spirit) - Iron Council 25-Man hard *new 04/28*
Fire Orchid Signet (Ring - Spell haste MP5) - Freya 10-Man hard *new 04/28*
Conductive Seal (Ring - Spell haste + spirit) - Mimiron 25-Man hard *new 04/28*
Show of Faith (Trinket - Spell power, mana regen) - Yogg-Saron 25-Man hard *new 04/28* (basically a good upgrade of Sif's Remembrance)
Aesuga, Hand of the Ardent Champion (1H Mace - Spell crit haste) - General Vezax 10-Man hard *new 04/28*
Signet of Soft Lament (Ring - Spell crit + spirit) - Yogg-Saron 10-Man *new 04/28*
and finally
Val'anyr, Hammer of the Ancient Kings, for those who don't know yet, it is the legendary weapon of Ulduar that you forge by using 40 shards.
As always, the Full Ulduar Holy Paladin Loot List will be updated, I'll post a new clean one once Ulduar loot is complete.
Until then, new loot is here, most of the items are from hard modes:
Cable of the Metrognome (Plate Waist - Spell haste MP5) - Mimiron 10-Man *new 04/28*
Faceguard of the Eyeless Horror (Plate Head - Spell crit MP5) - Yogg-Saron 10-Man *new 04/28*
Pendant of the Shallow Grave (Neck - Spell crit haste) - Thorim 10-Man hard *new 04/28*
Sif's Remembrance (Trinket - Spell power, mana regen) - Thorim 10-Man hard *new 04/28*
Shawl of Haunted Memories (Cloak - Spell crit + spirit) - Yogg-Saron 25-Man *new 04/28*
Sanity's Bond (Ring - Spell haste MP5) - Yogg-Saron 25-Man *new 04/28*
Gauntlets of the Thunder God (Plate Hands - Spell crit haste) - Thorim 10-Man hard *new 04/28*
Sapphire Amulet of Renewal (Neck - Spell haste + spirit) - Iron Council 25-Man hard *new 04/28*
Fire Orchid Signet (Ring - Spell haste MP5) - Freya 10-Man hard *new 04/28*
Conductive Seal (Ring - Spell haste + spirit) - Mimiron 25-Man hard *new 04/28*
Show of Faith (Trinket - Spell power, mana regen) - Yogg-Saron 25-Man hard *new 04/28* (basically a good upgrade of Sif's Remembrance)
Aesuga, Hand of the Ardent Champion (1H Mace - Spell crit haste) - General Vezax 10-Man hard *new 04/28*
Signet of Soft Lament (Ring - Spell crit + spirit) - Yogg-Saron 10-Man *new 04/28*
and finally
Val'anyr, Hammer of the Ancient Kings, for those who don't know yet, it is the legendary weapon of Ulduar that you forge by using 40 shards.
Monday, April 27, 2009
Ulduar Paladin Healing Tips (update)
Pallymar took the time to write an answer to my previous healing post on his blog, you can read the complete version on Pallymar's Take.
I'm going to discuss here the three previous points I mentioned and try to answer Pallymar with a little more Ulduar experience for myself.
I did Ignis 10, Council of Iron 10 and XT-002 25 this weekend, they are strongly different fights in term of healing. I think that one very interesting thing in Ulduar is that you have to be very adaptable, and change your healing startegy with each boss.
On the use of the Beacon of Light
Previous to Ulduar, I've already used it on the MT, or OT, depending on who I was assigned to heal and depending on the raid damage. If I expected to raid heal from time to time, it was on my main target (MT or OT). If raid damage was low enough to not need me, I'll put it on the MT or OT that was not my main target, to help its assigned healer.
The tip I got from the two guides I mentioned in my previous post was saying to use the Beacon on yourself, I found that change worth mentioning, as it was a strong change of style from pre-Ulduar. Pallymar disagreed with that tip, advocating a more classical use of the beacon (in the line of the ones I just talked about). I should say that, from my experience before Ulduar, that was really the thing to do ... now ...
In all my 3 boss fights (10 and 25 Man) I tried to use Beacon of Light differently, tried to see it's effectiveness, and how were other healers going. After several tries, I find putting it on you the most effective use, even though it'll make it generate about 60-80% overhealing ... (hopefully you are taking much less damade than the tank you are assigned to).
That defense of this strange and hps ineffective use could sound very weird to you, I don't doubt that. Please try it in Ulduar and tell me what you think of it. I'll illustrate why I think it's a good idea in a lot of fights with a few examples:
Ignis, if you ever end in the slag pot, you can continue to heal the MT without problem, and survive the pot, as you'll get a lot of heals on yourself with the beacon.
Iron Counsil, during most of this fight, raid damage is relatively low, and you won't have to think about it as a paladin, besides keeping your tank or off-tank up will be a challenge, burst damage in this three bosses encounter is extremely high, and triple chains of Holy Light are sometimes required. You should never untarget your tank, and having the beacon on yourself allows you to not bother about healing yourself, always be full life, and not die stupidly to an aoe burst (wether it is an arcane buble explosion or a green patch of death).
XT-002, this can depend on your assignment and your raid strategy, but once again, using the Beacon on yourself will guaranty that you're always full life, which prevents you from dying on unlucky damage procs, I have seen too many healers dying because they were mid-life when hit by a Light Bomb for example. An exception to that could be Tympanic Tantrum, if you need to raid heal (that depends on your raid) using the beacon on your assigned tank (probably the MT) could allow you to raid heal and keep him up at the same time. Though, take care, this is not Naxramass and if you happen to overheal on raid healing (overhealing is not duplicated by the beacon) that could mean his death, as XT-002 damage is not to be taken lightly.
To sum-up, it all depends on the fight, and I think that:
if your life is safe (considering the amount of raid damage in Ulduar that means that your raid healers are on their top),
if you can have a good target for your beacon, like healing two tanks at the same time,
then don't use the beacon on yourself.
In all other situations, use it for your own good, that will ensure two things:
you'll stay alive in most situations, which means you'll maintain the heals on your tank (a dead healer heals not much),
you'll keep your tank on target, which means faster reaction when these deadly damage bursts happen.
Sacred Shield is your MT friend
Pallymar agrees with that statement. Considering Sacred Shield efficiency has not changed, and it scales very good with your spell power, keep it up at all times.
What should you do with this weapon in your hand ?
Judgement of Wisdom should be up on the raid boss at all time, with the mana regen nerfs (spirit, blessing of wisdom/mana tide totem) it is a clear statement. The only reason for it to not be up is that you're ponly having one paladin in the raid and Judgement of Light is prefered for that encounter.
So hitting the boss a few times with your weapon will give you a few mana procs, for free as you'll swing between your casts, without any sort of slow down on your casting.
Pallymar disagrees with that statement, saying that it is mostly worthless, and should not be necessary.
With a bit more raid experience, I would not say it is wortless. I was having real issues with mana on the Iron Council, keeping the off-tank (tanking the 2 "small" dwarves while the raid kills Ironbreaker) by myself. But if you need these mana procs, that probably means, as Pallymar says, that you or your raid is not up to the task.
I will add to that point that going up to melee can also be very dangerous, there are a lot of point blanck aoe damage, and the time you need to run to melee and run back to healing position can be too much as we mostly can't heal while moving.
To conclude on that, if you feel like you have the time, and don't really need to heal for a little, hit your Divine Plea and go melee for a little. As Pallymar mentioned XT-002 Tympanic Tantrum is a good example of such moments. But whenever you are not sure of the situation, stay far from aoe damage and don't take any risk for so little mana regen.
I'll try to put more healing advices here when I'll have more Ulduar experience and perhaps some boss healing guides. Thanks to Pallymar for adding some good insight to my previous post.
I'm going to discuss here the three previous points I mentioned and try to answer Pallymar with a little more Ulduar experience for myself.
I did Ignis 10, Council of Iron 10 and XT-002 25 this weekend, they are strongly different fights in term of healing. I think that one very interesting thing in Ulduar is that you have to be very adaptable, and change your healing startegy with each boss.
On the use of the Beacon of Light
Beacon of Light: The target becomes a Beacon of Light to all targets within a 40 yard radius. Any heals you cast on those targets will also heal the Beacon for 100% of the amount healed. Only one target can be the Beacon of Light at a time. Lasts 1 min.Simply said this skill duplicates all your heals to a specific target on which you have put your beacon.
Previous to Ulduar, I've already used it on the MT, or OT, depending on who I was assigned to heal and depending on the raid damage. If I expected to raid heal from time to time, it was on my main target (MT or OT). If raid damage was low enough to not need me, I'll put it on the MT or OT that was not my main target, to help its assigned healer.
The tip I got from the two guides I mentioned in my previous post was saying to use the Beacon on yourself, I found that change worth mentioning, as it was a strong change of style from pre-Ulduar. Pallymar disagreed with that tip, advocating a more classical use of the beacon (in the line of the ones I just talked about). I should say that, from my experience before Ulduar, that was really the thing to do ... now ...
In all my 3 boss fights (10 and 25 Man) I tried to use Beacon of Light differently, tried to see it's effectiveness, and how were other healers going. After several tries, I find putting it on you the most effective use, even though it'll make it generate about 60-80% overhealing ... (hopefully you are taking much less damade than the tank you are assigned to).
That defense of this strange and hps ineffective use could sound very weird to you, I don't doubt that. Please try it in Ulduar and tell me what you think of it. I'll illustrate why I think it's a good idea in a lot of fights with a few examples:
Ignis, if you ever end in the slag pot, you can continue to heal the MT without problem, and survive the pot, as you'll get a lot of heals on yourself with the beacon.
Iron Counsil, during most of this fight, raid damage is relatively low, and you won't have to think about it as a paladin, besides keeping your tank or off-tank up will be a challenge, burst damage in this three bosses encounter is extremely high, and triple chains of Holy Light are sometimes required. You should never untarget your tank, and having the beacon on yourself allows you to not bother about healing yourself, always be full life, and not die stupidly to an aoe burst (wether it is an arcane buble explosion or a green patch of death).
XT-002, this can depend on your assignment and your raid strategy, but once again, using the Beacon on yourself will guaranty that you're always full life, which prevents you from dying on unlucky damage procs, I have seen too many healers dying because they were mid-life when hit by a Light Bomb for example. An exception to that could be Tympanic Tantrum, if you need to raid heal (that depends on your raid) using the beacon on your assigned tank (probably the MT) could allow you to raid heal and keep him up at the same time. Though, take care, this is not Naxramass and if you happen to overheal on raid healing (overhealing is not duplicated by the beacon) that could mean his death, as XT-002 damage is not to be taken lightly.
To sum-up, it all depends on the fight, and I think that:
if your life is safe (considering the amount of raid damage in Ulduar that means that your raid healers are on their top),
if you can have a good target for your beacon, like healing two tanks at the same time,
then don't use the beacon on yourself.
In all other situations, use it for your own good, that will ensure two things:
you'll stay alive in most situations, which means you'll maintain the heals on your tank (a dead healer heals not much),
you'll keep your tank on target, which means faster reaction when these deadly damage bursts happen.
Sacred Shield is your MT friend
Sacred Shield: Each time the target takes damage they gain a Sacred Shield, absorbing 500 damage and increasing the paladin's chance to critically hit with Flash of Light by 50% for up to 6 sec. They cannot gain this effect more than once every 6 sec. Lasts 30 sec. This spell cannot be on more than one target at any one time.This spell was strongly nerfed in 3.1 with the addition of the last sentence. The reason was that "it was too strong" on a raid mitigation point of view. In fact, that was our real raid healign ability. So is it still worth it ? Oh yes, it is ! Keep it up at all times on your assigned target, or perhaps the MT if your target is not receiving constant damage (which would be a surprising assignment for a paladin).
Pallymar agrees with that statement. Considering Sacred Shield efficiency has not changed, and it scales very good with your spell power, keep it up at all times.
What should you do with this weapon in your hand ?
Judgement of Wisdom should be up on the raid boss at all time, with the mana regen nerfs (spirit, blessing of wisdom/mana tide totem) it is a clear statement. The only reason for it to not be up is that you're ponly having one paladin in the raid and Judgement of Light is prefered for that encounter.
So hitting the boss a few times with your weapon will give you a few mana procs, for free as you'll swing between your casts, without any sort of slow down on your casting.
Pallymar disagrees with that statement, saying that it is mostly worthless, and should not be necessary.
With a bit more raid experience, I would not say it is wortless. I was having real issues with mana on the Iron Council, keeping the off-tank (tanking the 2 "small" dwarves while the raid kills Ironbreaker) by myself. But if you need these mana procs, that probably means, as Pallymar says, that you or your raid is not up to the task.
I will add to that point that going up to melee can also be very dangerous, there are a lot of point blanck aoe damage, and the time you need to run to melee and run back to healing position can be too much as we mostly can't heal while moving.
To conclude on that, if you feel like you have the time, and don't really need to heal for a little, hit your Divine Plea and go melee for a little. As Pallymar mentioned XT-002 Tympanic Tantrum is a good example of such moments. But whenever you are not sure of the situation, stay far from aoe damage and don't take any risk for so little mana regen.
I'll try to put more healing advices here when I'll have more Ulduar experience and perhaps some boss healing guides. Thanks to Pallymar for adding some good insight to my previous post.
Friday, April 24, 2009
Ulduar paladin healing guides
And back to the blog after a few days out of town and far from the game. How are you all doing in Ulduar ? Having fun, I hope.
I've not raided this week so I won't give my own view of Ulduar, but I've read two really good healing guides and I'm inviting you to read them too:
As for paladins, well, aoe damage and mobile healing isn't our forte, as you know. So expect to be "reduced" to tank healing again.
Now a few first basic advices, that you can find examples of in the guides I've linked.
Especially in 10-Man, use Beacon of Light on yourself to stay alive.That point could be the strongest change from "Nax style" healing. As being non mobile healers, we have to stand in the fire sometimes to toss that heal, and we're confronted to the choice of moving & surviving, or staying & dying. And in such cases, the first choice which is the obvious one, can mean the death of the character we are assigned to heal. That's were the bacon will save you and your assignement. Aoe damage and mobility in Nax were much less an issue, you will feel they are in Ulduar.
Keep up that Sacred Shield. Mitigation is the new deus of healing. Spikes are very common and very strong in Ulduar, Razorscale blue fire patches and fireballs will probably be the first ones you encouter. Disc priests obviously have the edge on mitigation and shielding, but even if it has been strongly nerfed, keep your Sacred Shield up on the player in danger of spikes (if you ues a fireball "tank" on Razorscale it will be him for example).
My last advice, try to hit that boss a few times with your mace/sword/stick to get some mana back. With judgement of wisdom on it, you should be able to get some good mana regen even if with only a few hits during the whole fight. Most bosses have phases in Ulduar, and some of them are less healing intensive and will give you the opportunity to do that. Learn your bosses and try to find the right times to get these mana regen hits.
I've not raided this week so I won't give my own view of Ulduar, but I've read two really good healing guides and I'm inviting you to read them too:
Healing Guide to Ulduar, on the Munch LandBoth are 25-Man (aka heroic) views about healing, but they are still good pointers about Ulduar, for both 25-Man and 10-Man.
Paladin Healing in Heroic Hulduar, on World of Matticus
As for paladins, well, aoe damage and mobile healing isn't our forte, as you know. So expect to be "reduced" to tank healing again.
Now a few first basic advices, that you can find examples of in the guides I've linked.
Especially in 10-Man, use Beacon of Light on yourself to stay alive.That point could be the strongest change from "Nax style" healing. As being non mobile healers, we have to stand in the fire sometimes to toss that heal, and we're confronted to the choice of moving & surviving, or staying & dying. And in such cases, the first choice which is the obvious one, can mean the death of the character we are assigned to heal. That's were the bacon will save you and your assignement. Aoe damage and mobility in Nax were much less an issue, you will feel they are in Ulduar.
Keep up that Sacred Shield. Mitigation is the new deus of healing. Spikes are very common and very strong in Ulduar, Razorscale blue fire patches and fireballs will probably be the first ones you encouter. Disc priests obviously have the edge on mitigation and shielding, but even if it has been strongly nerfed, keep your Sacred Shield up on the player in danger of spikes (if you ues a fireball "tank" on Razorscale it will be him for example).
My last advice, try to hit that boss a few times with your mace/sword/stick to get some mana back. With judgement of wisdom on it, you should be able to get some good mana regen even if with only a few hits during the whole fight. Most bosses have phases in Ulduar, and some of them are less healing intensive and will give you the opportunity to do that. Learn your bosses and try to find the right times to get these mana regen hits.
Friday, April 17, 2009
Ulduar paladin loot update *04/17*
So Ulduar is live, and Guilds have started cleaning it on 10 and 25-Man. As expected new loot appears and I'm going to try to keep the Full Ulduar Holy Paladin Loot List updated. For me there is only one clear change to best in slot list, Thorim 25-Man hard mode shield which is just perfect for paladins.
New loot today :
Wisdom's Hold (Shield - Spell crit haste) - Thorim 25-Man hard *new 04/17*
Shawl of Haunted Memories (Cloak - Spell crit spirit) - Yogg-Saron 25-Man *new 04/17*
Shawl of the Caretaker (Cloak - Spell haste MP5) - 10-Man *new 04/17*
Unfaltering Armguards (Plate Bracers - Spell haste MP5) - Kologran 25-Man *new 04/17*
Legplates of Flourishing Resolve (Plate Legs - Spell crit MP5) - Freya 10-Man *new 04/17*
Pendant of Endless Despair (Neck - Spell crit MP5) - General Vezax 10-Man *new 04/17*
Good loot time to you all :P
New loot today :
Wisdom's Hold (Shield - Spell crit haste) - Thorim 25-Man hard *new 04/17*
Shawl of Haunted Memories (Cloak - Spell crit spirit) - Yogg-Saron 25-Man *new 04/17*
Shawl of the Caretaker (Cloak - Spell haste MP5) - 10-Man *new 04/17*
Unfaltering Armguards (Plate Bracers - Spell haste MP5) - Kologran 25-Man *new 04/17*
Legplates of Flourishing Resolve (Plate Legs - Spell crit MP5) - Freya 10-Man *new 04/17*
Pendant of Endless Despair (Neck - Spell crit MP5) - General Vezax 10-Man *new 04/17*
Good loot time to you all :P
Ulduar, you thought it was going to be easy ?
It is not ! :)
Or at least not for the second 10-Man raid of my guild. We have decided to start Ulduar on 10-Man, because we wanted to keep us some fun in the 25-Man version for later (though we are going to do it once a week as a guild party).
So we made 2 raids of 10 people, one better geared, one less geared, knowing the second group (that I lead) will be a little slower.
Results of that ? Both groups downed the Flame Leviathan first night in about 1 hour, once we figured the vehicles, and all that. I posted about that yesterday.
Both groups (with one or two out of guild because we were a little light in numbers last night) went back there to try the 3 bosses after the Leviathan. None of them fell :P
Ignis is very very hard, extremely random, the trash before him is the hardest I've seen since Kael trash (I've not raided BT or SW before nerf and after it wasn't the same).
The trash repop is short (45mn I think) which means relatively few attemps on Ignis before it repops, and it's so hard that we really don't want to clean it twice in a night.
The randomness of the flame tornadoes, and the sheer amount of damage they do added to the push-back than can send you in another one resulting in an instant death, is just enough for me to tell that 3 packs with 2 tornadoes launchers is not something I want to do twice in a night :P
Razorscale is more manageable, we only did 3 tries on him, as we spent so much time going to Ignis, figuring it's trash and then trying on him. I think we mostly got set for the dragon, but now people in the raid need to pay more attention to the blue flames of death that pop on the ground. The amount of damage in this fight can be very high, and (once again) healers have to keep up everyone topped at all times because someone can just endure nearly 20K damage in 3s (double fireball and blue flame pop).
It is a much less random fight than Ignis, and I'd advise you to go on Razorscale before the Furnace Master. But I can't say I like this "healer challenge" which consist in creating damage spikes so high that you need to mash your heals (while moving yay ... happy paladin) to keep everyone topped.
Now XT-002, we only did one try to finish the raid night, just for fun. He's really not that hard, he doesn't hit too hard, as long as you're not too close from your raid when you get the white/black light damage is manageable.
Now there is its hearthquake ... and that is a baaaaaad thing. Full raid damage that can't be avoided, it's a pain to heal, really. I guess aoe healing is the key here, so we'll need to figure some movement to allow for that during the quakes.
It should be better than Ignis though.
So all in all, a much harder instance than Nax. Some things are a lot of fun, but as a "stationary single target healer" I can already feal that I'm going to suffer in Ulduar. A lot of raid damage, a lot of movement, cast interuptions (Ignis) ... no that is not a holy paladin heaven for sure.
I hope you'll all have fun in Ulduar and not suffer to much from the servers. Numerous raids last night including both of ours had several mass dc, and ensuing wipes ... that is not the best part of a raid, as you can guess.
Or at least not for the second 10-Man raid of my guild. We have decided to start Ulduar on 10-Man, because we wanted to keep us some fun in the 25-Man version for later (though we are going to do it once a week as a guild party).
So we made 2 raids of 10 people, one better geared, one less geared, knowing the second group (that I lead) will be a little slower.
Results of that ? Both groups downed the Flame Leviathan first night in about 1 hour, once we figured the vehicles, and all that. I posted about that yesterday.
Both groups (with one or two out of guild because we were a little light in numbers last night) went back there to try the 3 bosses after the Leviathan. None of them fell :P
Ignis is very very hard, extremely random, the trash before him is the hardest I've seen since Kael trash (I've not raided BT or SW before nerf and after it wasn't the same).
The trash repop is short (45mn I think) which means relatively few attemps on Ignis before it repops, and it's so hard that we really don't want to clean it twice in a night.
The randomness of the flame tornadoes, and the sheer amount of damage they do added to the push-back than can send you in another one resulting in an instant death, is just enough for me to tell that 3 packs with 2 tornadoes launchers is not something I want to do twice in a night :P
Razorscale is more manageable, we only did 3 tries on him, as we spent so much time going to Ignis, figuring it's trash and then trying on him. I think we mostly got set for the dragon, but now people in the raid need to pay more attention to the blue flames of death that pop on the ground. The amount of damage in this fight can be very high, and (once again) healers have to keep up everyone topped at all times because someone can just endure nearly 20K damage in 3s (double fireball and blue flame pop).
It is a much less random fight than Ignis, and I'd advise you to go on Razorscale before the Furnace Master. But I can't say I like this "healer challenge" which consist in creating damage spikes so high that you need to mash your heals (while moving yay ... happy paladin) to keep everyone topped.
Now XT-002, we only did one try to finish the raid night, just for fun. He's really not that hard, he doesn't hit too hard, as long as you're not too close from your raid when you get the white/black light damage is manageable.
Now there is its hearthquake ... and that is a baaaaaad thing. Full raid damage that can't be avoided, it's a pain to heal, really. I guess aoe healing is the key here, so we'll need to figure some movement to allow for that during the quakes.
It should be better than Ignis though.
So all in all, a much harder instance than Nax. Some things are a lot of fun, but as a "stationary single target healer" I can already feal that I'm going to suffer in Ulduar. A lot of raid damage, a lot of movement, cast interuptions (Ignis) ... no that is not a holy paladin heaven for sure.
I hope you'll all have fun in Ulduar and not suffer to much from the servers. Numerous raids last night including both of ours had several mass dc, and ensuing wipes ... that is not the best part of a raid, as you can guess.
Thursday, April 16, 2009
Ulduar is up, Servers are not ...
... not up to the task.
Yes, it's been a long time you didn't have a rant post on this blog. Today will be one ...
Yesterday was patch day in EU. Ok, I know, we all know too well the catchy "Patch Day, No Play !" But don't tell me you were not eager for Ulduar and didn't want to try it right away, from the number of people having answered the poll (to the right of this very site), and even if few have, a large majority of raiders want to raid Ulduar.
Patch time was extended in EU, it is usually until 11am, it was announced to last until 3pm. As said on WoW Insider, we all expected it was to include in the EU patch release the maintenance that already was added to the US real during the night ...
So my guild had a small team-speak meeting in the evening and we made two 10-Man groups and went to Ulduar. Our idea was to keep it to 10-Man at first, have fun with that size, and then go to 25-Man hoping for new challenges. Why do we do that ? Because we hope to keep the content interesting a little longer like that. Ulduar is big, but it's only one instance, and once we'll have finished it we all already dear the long wait for the next raid instance.
Anyway.
Both groups entered Ulduar around 9:30pm (GMT+1). Both groups downed the Flame Leviathan pretty quickly, with the "mandatory" achievement to not have used the trick to stun it ... when you don't know the switch is destroyed by the air missiles, there is no chance you activate it :P
The fight is fun, really easy, but we did it in normal, 10-Man, without any tower destroyed, so in its most easy incarnation. Let's hope it'll be a little more interesting in the other modes. But all in all I4m not that interested into a vehicle fight, so I don't care.
Now, we arrived at the crossing and the choice for Ignis/Razorscale/Deconstructor. It's strange how little trash there is in this part of the instance ... not that I'm fond of trash, but there is 0 trash to Razorscale or XT-002 ... it feels empty. I hope there will be more inside Ulduar itself.
We went for Ignis, because it was looking like there could be some fun trash, and we pulled the flame giants at the entrance. Ok, let say these babies hit hard, and have a bad aoe stun/silence. We were surprised, we wiped. And then things got ugly ...
Two of our members were out of the instance. One had to go visit the angel, his corpse being too close to the giants, one had a dc and relogged in ... Dalaran. And in front of the instance were ... 200 people waiting to go in, because the raid instance server was full (I'll post a picture tomorrow of the crowd at the raid entrance, but it looks like the picture on this WoW Insider article) ... yes the raid instance server was full ! We didn't have any message, as when you can't go into an instance since Blizzard patch about that. But the behavior was exactly the same, loading screen, waiting for 2mn without the loading bar moving, returning in front of the raid instance entrance.
Nice ! Happy !
We made two tries on Razorscale with only 8 people, one dps warrior respecing to tank on the fly, and only 2 healers ... first one wasn't too bad, we nearly got him to 50%, second one wasn't as good, I got flame bombed 3 times in a row (for more than 7K each) and died after 30s of fight.
Half an hour later, still impossible to enter Ulduar ... we stopped there.
So not even 2 hours of raid, simply because the servers were not up to the task. There were no lag, oh no ... simply because Blizzard decided to limit the number of raid instances on their servers ... and so limit the number of people who could play the game, as simple as that.
Add to that the instability and numerous people crashing out of Ulduar (we were lucky we only had that happen 4 times and the 3 first were able to come back). Looks like this is a problem everywhere, as reported here.
I'm saying servers stability and size is going to be what I'll rant about for the next weeks ... and lag has already been an issue in WotLK for months, thank you Blizzard but limiting the number of players to solve lag is not going to make happy customers.
Yes, it's been a long time you didn't have a rant post on this blog. Today will be one ...
Yesterday was patch day in EU. Ok, I know, we all know too well the catchy "Patch Day, No Play !" But don't tell me you were not eager for Ulduar and didn't want to try it right away, from the number of people having answered the poll (to the right of this very site), and even if few have, a large majority of raiders want to raid Ulduar.
Patch time was extended in EU, it is usually until 11am, it was announced to last until 3pm. As said on WoW Insider, we all expected it was to include in the EU patch release the maintenance that already was added to the US real during the night ...
So my guild had a small team-speak meeting in the evening and we made two 10-Man groups and went to Ulduar. Our idea was to keep it to 10-Man at first, have fun with that size, and then go to 25-Man hoping for new challenges. Why do we do that ? Because we hope to keep the content interesting a little longer like that. Ulduar is big, but it's only one instance, and once we'll have finished it we all already dear the long wait for the next raid instance.
Anyway.
Both groups entered Ulduar around 9:30pm (GMT+1). Both groups downed the Flame Leviathan pretty quickly, with the "mandatory" achievement to not have used the trick to stun it ... when you don't know the switch is destroyed by the air missiles, there is no chance you activate it :P
The fight is fun, really easy, but we did it in normal, 10-Man, without any tower destroyed, so in its most easy incarnation. Let's hope it'll be a little more interesting in the other modes. But all in all I4m not that interested into a vehicle fight, so I don't care.
Now, we arrived at the crossing and the choice for Ignis/Razorscale/Deconstructor. It's strange how little trash there is in this part of the instance ... not that I'm fond of trash, but there is 0 trash to Razorscale or XT-002 ... it feels empty. I hope there will be more inside Ulduar itself.
We went for Ignis, because it was looking like there could be some fun trash, and we pulled the flame giants at the entrance. Ok, let say these babies hit hard, and have a bad aoe stun/silence. We were surprised, we wiped. And then things got ugly ...
Two of our members were out of the instance. One had to go visit the angel, his corpse being too close to the giants, one had a dc and relogged in ... Dalaran. And in front of the instance were ... 200 people waiting to go in, because the raid instance server was full (I'll post a picture tomorrow of the crowd at the raid entrance, but it looks like the picture on this WoW Insider article) ... yes the raid instance server was full ! We didn't have any message, as when you can't go into an instance since Blizzard patch about that. But the behavior was exactly the same, loading screen, waiting for 2mn without the loading bar moving, returning in front of the raid instance entrance.
Nice ! Happy !
We made two tries on Razorscale with only 8 people, one dps warrior respecing to tank on the fly, and only 2 healers ... first one wasn't too bad, we nearly got him to 50%, second one wasn't as good, I got flame bombed 3 times in a row (for more than 7K each) and died after 30s of fight.
Half an hour later, still impossible to enter Ulduar ... we stopped there.
So not even 2 hours of raid, simply because the servers were not up to the task. There were no lag, oh no ... simply because Blizzard decided to limit the number of raid instances on their servers ... and so limit the number of people who could play the game, as simple as that.
Add to that the instability and numerous people crashing out of Ulduar (we were lucky we only had that happen 4 times and the 3 first were able to come back). Looks like this is a problem everywhere, as reported here.
I'm saying servers stability and size is going to be what I'll rant about for the next weeks ... and lag has already been an issue in WotLK for months, thank you Blizzard but limiting the number of players to solve lag is not going to make happy customers.
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Patch 3.1 is aliiiiive, it's aliiiive ! (take care, first bugs)
It's coming in Europe today (soon, soon). It's alive on the US servers already and the patch build is 9767 (Release). For those that remember the latest build on the PTR, discussed here on april 7, it was the version 9757. So not much was changed, we already knew that Yog-Saron and Algalon were part of the latest PTR build. We can amuse most bosses will be exactly as they were in this last build, so raiders, all information you could have found before up-to-date with build 9757 should be pretty accurate.
It seems a few bugs are still plagging Ulduar, list here on World of Raids. For those that are raiding/are going to raid Ulduar, take care to :
It seems a few bugs are still plagging Ulduar, list here on World of Raids. For those that are raiding/are going to raid Ulduar, take care to :
Siege Engines that use Steam Rush while on a ramp sometimes fall through the world.More info on Ignis & XT-002 on World of Raids too:
We currently have no fix for this, the workaround is simply to not cast Steam Rush on the ramps. The ability works fine in the Flame Leviathan fight and other flat ground.
The two trash pulls in front of XT-002 Deconstructor are linked.
We're working on a hotfix for this now.
Shattering an Iron Construct in the Ignis the Furnace Master encounter does not properly reduce the number of stacks of Strength of the Creator on Ignis.
We're also working on a hotfix for this now.
Both Ignis the Furnace Master, and the trash leading to XT-002 Deconstructor seem to be bugged. Ignis should still be killable, but you have to kill the Iron Constructs instead of turning them into Molten Constructs if you want to remove Strength of the Creator. XT-002's trash, on the other hand, is currently unkillable in all conventionally tested methods -- though apparently you can get lucky while fighting him as long as no bots spawn near the trash during the heart phases.Some US guilds have already passed Auriaya despite these bugs, so if you really want to rush Ulduar you should be able to. Personally I hope my guild will take its time and have fun. We're set with only this content for several months after all, and I'm not really eager to experience the not so fun period we just had with nothing to do on our hands.
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Ulduar doors open, rejoice !
So Ulduar is finally here, we did wait, we did get bored, we nearly despaired, but it's here. So let's rejoice and hope we'll all have a great time in Ulduar.
Official announce by Zarhim, here.
Complete preview of patch 3.1 on MMO Champion, with Ulduar bosses guide, Argent Tournament, complete patch-notes, profession changes, and much more ...
I'm plugging directly the complete Ulduar guide, and the full instance maps. For all of us that are going to prepare for our first Ulduar raids. (all from MMO Champion, thanks Boubouille !)
Another great info from StratFU, the Ulduar interactive map. Though not alaways very clear about the "layers" of Ulduar, it shows the connections between the maps and which boss is where.
Official announce by Zarhim, here.
Complete preview of patch 3.1 on MMO Champion, with Ulduar bosses guide, Argent Tournament, complete patch-notes, profession changes, and much more ...
I'm plugging directly the complete Ulduar guide, and the full instance maps. For all of us that are going to prepare for our first Ulduar raids. (all from MMO Champion, thanks Boubouille !)
Another great info from StratFU, the Ulduar interactive map. Though not alaways very clear about the "layers" of Ulduar, it shows the connections between the maps and which boss is where.
Tuesday, April 07, 2009
Patch 3.1 Ulduar PTR testing, part 22
Probably one of the last patch 3.1 post before live (who said next week ?).
All of the Ulduar bosses on MMO Champion, though Algalon and Yogg-Saron loot are not given, they were not tested and their capacities were probably extracted from the patch files.
About Yogg-Saron, if some of you don't know yet, it is completely inspired from Yog-Sothoth, one of the Old Ones from H.P.Lovecraft Cthulhu Mythos. If you don't know his work, I'd advise reading The Colour out of Space, and At the Mountains of Madness. Lovecraft work is sometimes disturbing, but quite unique and he has inspired many authors after him.
Back to wow news, a new build on the PTR, build 9757 on MMO Champion, not much was changed, some bosses a few achievements and a very small number of class skills. Blizzard is close from the end, I'd say.
On another note, they announced that the equipment changing tool won't be in 3.1, it is still too bugged and will be introduced into a later minor patch. Don't delete your Outfiter yet :P
To end these news, MMO Champion also wrote a full list of all new items from the patch 3.1, either Ulduar or Arena, ...etc, go give it a look.
All of the Ulduar bosses on MMO Champion, though Algalon and Yogg-Saron loot are not given, they were not tested and their capacities were probably extracted from the patch files.
About Yogg-Saron, if some of you don't know yet, it is completely inspired from Yog-Sothoth, one of the Old Ones from H.P.Lovecraft Cthulhu Mythos. If you don't know his work, I'd advise reading The Colour out of Space, and At the Mountains of Madness. Lovecraft work is sometimes disturbing, but quite unique and he has inspired many authors after him.
Back to wow news, a new build on the PTR, build 9757 on MMO Champion, not much was changed, some bosses a few achievements and a very small number of class skills. Blizzard is close from the end, I'd say.
On another note, they announced that the equipment changing tool won't be in 3.1, it is still too bugged and will be introduced into a later minor patch. Don't delete your Outfiter yet :P
To end these news, MMO Champion also wrote a full list of all new items from the patch 3.1, either Ulduar or Arena, ...etc, go give it a look.
Friday, April 03, 2009
Is Ulduar a real gear upgrade ?
Pallymar posted a very insightful article on his blog about Mana Pool vs. Crit Rate and the reason Ulduar paladin T8 is so badly itemized.
It refers to this post on the Elitist Jerks forum in the The Holy Paladin Guide for WotLK.
Reading these numbers, paladins are not far, fully raid buffed and itemized in full T7.25, from reaching the point of being able to chain cast Holy Light without pause, just using Divine Plea and our other mana reducing talents.
At 30K mana (a number some paladins are nearly if not reaching, I'm at more than 25K myself and not at all fully itemized), 56% crit is enough to reach this "chain cast" cap.
As Pallymar notes, this is the obvious reason for the crit nerf of the Holy T8 for paladins. But it doesn't mean that, with 4 pieces T7.25 and all other items from Ulduar 25 we can not reach it (see my post on Ulduar Holy Paladin loot).
Let's take the 4 pieces Valorous T7 (without the crappy chestpiece):
57 int 55 crit Valorous Gloves (blue gem)
77 int 51 crit Valorous Headpiece (met gem, red gem)
77 int 55 crit Valorous Greaves (red gem, yellow gem)
57 int 51 crit Valorous Spaulders (red gem, yellow gem)
add to that the best Ulduar gear (that we know up to now)
(I use actuel best in slot for comparison in the () they are in italic letters is considered still best in slot)
92 int 76 crit Breastplate of the Devoted (Chestguard of Bitter Charms 67 77)
42 int 36 crit Horologist's Wristguards (Bracers of Liberation 43 41)
57 int 49 crit Girdle of Unyielding Trust (Girdle of Unity 57 43)
62 int 48 crit Greaves of the Rockmender (yellow gem) (Faithful Steel Sabatons 50 43)
43 int 41 crit Frozen Tear of Elune (Life-Bender's Locket 48 35 yellow gem)
37 int 39 crit Drape of the Spellweaver (Shroud of Liminosity 43 38)
108 int Pandora's Plea (Forethought Talisman 0)
87 crit Eye of the Broodmother (Sould of the Dead 95)
42 int 46 crit Pyrelight Circle (Signed of Manifested Pain 49 46)
42 int 36 crit Ring of the Faithful Servant (Seized Beauty 43 38)
now take the shield & sword from Kel'thuzad 25
49 int 46 crit Voice of Reason
50 int 37 crit The Turning Tide
add gems, yellow as +crit gems, red as + spell power gems and blue and half +crit
you add +4*16 +8 = 56 crit
total of 912 int and 843 crit (+145 int +10 crit)
1043.05 int from gear (15% bonus to int from talent)
18.14% crit from gear (45.91 crit rating for 1% crit at lvl 80)
7.92% crit from int (0.759% / int)
final with BoK and Divine Intellect
1147.36 int from gear (+183.4 int from Ulduar gear)
26.85% crit from gear (+1.61 crit from Ulduar gear)
As you can see from the analysis of the Ulduar loot, several items will be kept from the T7 Heroic raids .... we don't have all the loot from Ulduar, but a lot items are really badly itemized for us.
The only items you will change :
Chestplate, Waist, Boots and one Trinket ... for +183.4 int and +1.61 crit
(most of that comes from Pandora's Plea, our only real target in Ulduar)
It refers to this post on the Elitist Jerks forum in the The Holy Paladin Guide for WotLK.
Reading these numbers, paladins are not far, fully raid buffed and itemized in full T7.25, from reaching the point of being able to chain cast Holy Light without pause, just using Divine Plea and our other mana reducing talents.
At 30K mana (a number some paladins are nearly if not reaching, I'm at more than 25K myself and not at all fully itemized), 56% crit is enough to reach this "chain cast" cap.
As Pallymar notes, this is the obvious reason for the crit nerf of the Holy T8 for paladins. But it doesn't mean that, with 4 pieces T7.25 and all other items from Ulduar 25 we can not reach it (see my post on Ulduar Holy Paladin loot).
Let's take the 4 pieces Valorous T7 (without the crappy chestpiece):
57 int 55 crit Valorous Gloves (blue gem)
77 int 51 crit Valorous Headpiece (met gem, red gem)
77 int 55 crit Valorous Greaves (red gem, yellow gem)
57 int 51 crit Valorous Spaulders (red gem, yellow gem)
add to that the best Ulduar gear (that we know up to now)
(I use actuel best in slot for comparison in the () they are in italic letters is considered still best in slot)
92 int 76 crit Breastplate of the Devoted (Chestguard of Bitter Charms 67 77)
42 int 36 crit Horologist's Wristguards (Bracers of Liberation 43 41)
57 int 49 crit Girdle of Unyielding Trust (Girdle of Unity 57 43)
62 int 48 crit Greaves of the Rockmender (yellow gem) (Faithful Steel Sabatons 50 43)
43 int 41 crit Frozen Tear of Elune (Life-Bender's Locket 48 35 yellow gem)
37 int 39 crit Drape of the Spellweaver (Shroud of Liminosity 43 38)
108 int Pandora's Plea (Forethought Talisman 0)
87 crit Eye of the Broodmother (Sould of the Dead 95)
42 int 46 crit Pyrelight Circle (Signed of Manifested Pain 49 46)
42 int 36 crit Ring of the Faithful Servant (Seized Beauty 43 38)
now take the shield & sword from Kel'thuzad 25
49 int 46 crit Voice of Reason
50 int 37 crit The Turning Tide
add gems, yellow as +crit gems, red as + spell power gems and blue and half +crit
you add +4*16 +8 = 56 crit
total of 912 int and 843 crit (+145 int +10 crit)
1043.05 int from gear (15% bonus to int from talent)
18.14% crit from gear (45.91 crit rating for 1% crit at lvl 80)
7.92% crit from int (0.759% / int)
final with BoK and Divine Intellect
1147.36 int from gear (+183.4 int from Ulduar gear)
26.85% crit from gear (+1.61 crit from Ulduar gear)
As you can see from the analysis of the Ulduar loot, several items will be kept from the T7 Heroic raids .... we don't have all the loot from Ulduar, but a lot items are really badly itemized for us.
The only items you will change :
Chestplate, Waist, Boots and one Trinket ... for +183.4 int and +1.61 crit
(most of that comes from Pandora's Plea, our only real target in Ulduar)
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