My Shaman wasn't my first character in WoW.
My first was actually a Night Elf Mage called Ragnarok.
He didn't get too far, about level 21 I think, before my girlfriend stole my account. We had been sharing an account but, when I couldn't get her off the computer so that I could have a go, we bought a laptop and she took that account.
My second char was a Human Rogue called Strigon.
I still enjoy playing him and he is usually the first alt to follow my Shaman into each expansion.
My third char was my Draenei Shaman, Solanar.
He has been my main ever since, despite switching realms a few times and even a brief flirtation as a Tauren towards the end of SoO.
His name has had to change a couple of times with realm changes but only very slightly, so it still feels like the same char to me.
I feel an attachment to my Shaman that is probably quite inappropriate for a character in a computer game but I can't help it.
Since switching to main as Shaman, almost all of my alts have been shadows of him... with their names all starting with "Sol" or "Sola".
This even extended into other games! StarCraft 2... Sola, HotS... Sola,
You name it, I'm probably called Sola in it.
Hell, even my battletag is Sola#
By the end of WoD, I had 14 max level chars and 11 of them were named as some derivative of Sola...
Two exceptions were:
Strigon - Pre-dated the whole naming thing
Gronfire - Hmmm... was part of a whole other naming culture I had going on.
All of my bank alts are from the same family, with the original being Gron and the rest derived from that name. Gronfire (Gnome Warlock) is the only bank alt to ever make it to max level.
The final exception was my Mythic Mage, Carudoc.
You are probably wondering where I am going with all of this?
Well my Mage joined my current guild first and raided the end of HFC there... but there was already somebody there called Sola!
Every time his name was called out, I had to stop myself responding. By the same token, I had to remember to respond whenever my Mage's name was called for whatever reason.
All was fine until I decided to stick with this guild for Legion and moved my Shaman.
Now there were two Sola's!
We've had a laugh about it, I call him Sola 2 as my account is older than his, but I can't help but think that he was here first and I should let him have the name.
He has been with the guild for a lot longer than I have and has all of his "Sola" alts in there too (which I don't).
It feels like he is more Sola in the guild than I am.
So I have been considering a name change, and maybe a race change to go with it. I have even thought of some new names depending on which race/gender I choose.
I just can't pull the trigger though :-s
I like being Sola!
Is anyone else so attached to a name?
Should I change it or fight to keep it?
Do female Draenei look better in transmog than male Draenei? :-)
Thursday 29 December 2016
Wednesday 21 December 2016
More PvP Shenanigans...
I enjoyed completing the 4-BG weekly quest so much that, shock horror, I decided to do some more PvP without the added incentive!
I feel like I'm getting the hang of it a bit more now, at least the tactical element of it anyway.
I do get sucked into some pointless 1v1 battles in the middle of nowhere from time to time and I know that I should just ignore it and help the team with whatever objective we're chasing... but it's so much fun! :-)
Most of my PvP time is spent trying to keep to the edges of big battles, picking off people who are already engaged in a fight so less likely to turn around and go for me.
If I do garner too much attention, I run away :-)
This is quite effective for the most part, against random uncoordinated groups, and is particularly good for peeling attackers from our flag carrier... with the aim to annoy them enough so they turn to attack me and follow as I run away.
There is something about 1v1 combat though that is so much fun... unless it's against a warrior.
Is it just me?
Are they designed to just destroy Shaman?
Is it revenge for Thrall beating Garrosh in WoD?
They jump on me and within seconds I'm dead, lucky if I can get a cast off at them... I don't know what I am doing wrong considering I am not really getting chance to do anything at all... perhaps I am just not running away fast enough :-)
If anyone has any tips for beating warriors, please let me know.
I'm going to level my own warrior up just for some PvP fun and to see if I have the same effect on other shaman in the world (spoiler: I'll be just as rubbish as a Warrior)
Against other classes I seem to hold my own a lot better, I even do quite well against a couple of classes so I'm guessing they are in a terrible state at the moment!
I find dealing with most melee very difficult but put me up against a DK and it's a lot of fun, a constant game of cat and mouse as he tries to close on me while I do everything I can to keep him away.
In a stand up slugfest, the melee seems to virtually always win which kind of makes sense but some seem to have far more ways of keeping on top of me than I have of getting away... I'm looking at you, feral druid!
DK and Paladin have less gap-closing capability and it makes for a more interesting fight, for me anyway.
That cat and mouse game can be a lot of fun, I was in Twin Peaks a few days ago and had three melee attacking me (fighting in mid, of course). I knew I was going to lose the fight but I just wanted to keep them occupied while my team got on with doing something that could actually win us the battle...
Thunderstorm to knock them all away, then I ran. They used various abilities to catch up to me quickly so I jumped off the edge a steep hill, they all followed but I had turned in mid-air and used Gust of Wind to get back to the top!
It was hilarious!
I still couldn't kill any of them and I had nowhere to go, they just ran around and back up the hill then killed me, but it was worth it. I just wish I had thought of hitting /sleep while I waited for them to get back :-)
I think it's that side of PvP which has brought me so much enjoyment lately, the need to be creative with using your spellbook, the terrain and anything else available that you just don't get with PvE. Even mythic raiding and high mythic+ dungeons are more about min-maxing and practice rather than creativity.
I'm not sure how long I will carry on with the PvP but considering it began as just trying to clear a quest in my log, I'm now almost finished with the Honor talent tree and looking at artefact appearances for prestige levels... and I still haven't got the bloody legs for my transmog!
I feel like I'm getting the hang of it a bit more now, at least the tactical element of it anyway.
I do get sucked into some pointless 1v1 battles in the middle of nowhere from time to time and I know that I should just ignore it and help the team with whatever objective we're chasing... but it's so much fun! :-)
Most of my PvP time is spent trying to keep to the edges of big battles, picking off people who are already engaged in a fight so less likely to turn around and go for me.
If I do garner too much attention, I run away :-)
This is quite effective for the most part, against random uncoordinated groups, and is particularly good for peeling attackers from our flag carrier... with the aim to annoy them enough so they turn to attack me and follow as I run away.
There is something about 1v1 combat though that is so much fun... unless it's against a warrior.
Is it just me?
Are they designed to just destroy Shaman?
Is it revenge for Thrall beating Garrosh in WoD?
They jump on me and within seconds I'm dead, lucky if I can get a cast off at them... I don't know what I am doing wrong considering I am not really getting chance to do anything at all... perhaps I am just not running away fast enough :-)
If anyone has any tips for beating warriors, please let me know.
I'm going to level my own warrior up just for some PvP fun and to see if I have the same effect on other shaman in the world (spoiler: I'll be just as rubbish as a Warrior)
Against other classes I seem to hold my own a lot better, I even do quite well against a couple of classes so I'm guessing they are in a terrible state at the moment!
I find dealing with most melee very difficult but put me up against a DK and it's a lot of fun, a constant game of cat and mouse as he tries to close on me while I do everything I can to keep him away.
In a stand up slugfest, the melee seems to virtually always win which kind of makes sense but some seem to have far more ways of keeping on top of me than I have of getting away... I'm looking at you, feral druid!
DK and Paladin have less gap-closing capability and it makes for a more interesting fight, for me anyway.
That cat and mouse game can be a lot of fun, I was in Twin Peaks a few days ago and had three melee attacking me (fighting in mid, of course). I knew I was going to lose the fight but I just wanted to keep them occupied while my team got on with doing something that could actually win us the battle...
Thunderstorm to knock them all away, then I ran. They used various abilities to catch up to me quickly so I jumped off the edge a steep hill, they all followed but I had turned in mid-air and used Gust of Wind to get back to the top!
It was hilarious!
I still couldn't kill any of them and I had nowhere to go, they just ran around and back up the hill then killed me, but it was worth it. I just wish I had thought of hitting /sleep while I waited for them to get back :-)
I think it's that side of PvP which has brought me so much enjoyment lately, the need to be creative with using your spellbook, the terrain and anything else available that you just don't get with PvE. Even mythic raiding and high mythic+ dungeons are more about min-maxing and practice rather than creativity.
I'm not sure how long I will carry on with the PvP but considering it began as just trying to clear a quest in my log, I'm now almost finished with the Honor talent tree and looking at artefact appearances for prestige levels... and I still haven't got the bloody legs for my transmog!
Monday 19 December 2016
Raid Leading Shenanigans...
This week our social raid group will attempt to kill Xavius for the first time.
It will 'only' be on normal mode but the majority of the raid haven't done it before so I'm not looking forward to explaining the mechanics.
It's not that the mechanics are particularly complicated, they just sound complicated when you list them out loud.
The kind of awareness and personal responsibility that I enjoy in fights is often difficult to convey to others... for instance soaking the adds in P1 requires an individual to know they are in the dream state and to see the adds spawn, it's not something the RL can micro-manage - people just have to do it!
In an ideal world, we would just take a couple of attempts to familiarise our team with the different mechanics in each phase. I don't feel like we have that luxury though as around half the team will be made up of pugs that probably won't have the patience for wipes.
I don't blame the pugs to be honest. They haven't signed up for progress and are probably expecting a quick farm kill and a chance at some loot, despite my attempts to give them an idea in the event description (does anyone but me even read it?)
So it puts pressure on us to minimise the wipes which has then led to me switching to my Shaman to boost dps.
It feels like a catch 22...
If I switch to my Shaman, we kill bosses quicker but we learn less about the team and our true position.
If I don't switch, we burn through pugs and spend half the night searching for more people... still not learning much.
It's healers that we are really short of so I tried to come in and heal (in dps gear) on my Shaman... what a disaster that was!
I know how to heal.
I know how to raid lead.
Both at the same time? HAHA... no chance!
I ended up doing neither job particularly well but definitely focused more on the leading, making me a liability to the healing team... I would just forget to heal!
We have no healers at all though so pugging 3 or 4 at a time is a bit of a nightmare.
I can't see any way out of it apart from actively recruiting though, and I am not going down that road again!
My best hope is that the team grows organically, with people attracted back into playing as they see the guild more active again... or that some of our hunters get bored of shooting things ;-)
Regardless of the pugging woes, it's been a lot of fun and I'm looking forward to starting the next tier fresh with the team.
It will 'only' be on normal mode but the majority of the raid haven't done it before so I'm not looking forward to explaining the mechanics.
It's not that the mechanics are particularly complicated, they just sound complicated when you list them out loud.
The kind of awareness and personal responsibility that I enjoy in fights is often difficult to convey to others... for instance soaking the adds in P1 requires an individual to know they are in the dream state and to see the adds spawn, it's not something the RL can micro-manage - people just have to do it!
In an ideal world, we would just take a couple of attempts to familiarise our team with the different mechanics in each phase. I don't feel like we have that luxury though as around half the team will be made up of pugs that probably won't have the patience for wipes.
I don't blame the pugs to be honest. They haven't signed up for progress and are probably expecting a quick farm kill and a chance at some loot, despite my attempts to give them an idea in the event description (does anyone but me even read it?)
So it puts pressure on us to minimise the wipes which has then led to me switching to my Shaman to boost dps.
It feels like a catch 22...
If I switch to my Shaman, we kill bosses quicker but we learn less about the team and our true position.
If I don't switch, we burn through pugs and spend half the night searching for more people... still not learning much.
It's healers that we are really short of so I tried to come in and heal (in dps gear) on my Shaman... what a disaster that was!
I know how to heal.
I know how to raid lead.
Both at the same time? HAHA... no chance!
I ended up doing neither job particularly well but definitely focused more on the leading, making me a liability to the healing team... I would just forget to heal!
We have no healers at all though so pugging 3 or 4 at a time is a bit of a nightmare.
I can't see any way out of it apart from actively recruiting though, and I am not going down that road again!
My best hope is that the team grows organically, with people attracted back into playing as they see the guild more active again... or that some of our hunters get bored of shooting things ;-)
Regardless of the pugging woes, it's been a lot of fun and I'm looking forward to starting the next tier fresh with the team.
Tuesday 13 December 2016
Alterac Valley...
I'm a sucker for a quest.
Want me to do anything outside of my normal comfort zone of World Quests, Dungeons and Raiding?
Just put up one of those shiny, gold exclamation marks and I'm there... just have to turn it into a shiny, gold question mark :-)
Put a reward on the quest, anything except just gold no matter how useless the reward may be, and I can't wait to get started!
And this is how I ended up in Alterac Valley.
The weekly 'event' has been random battlegrounds.
After my last PvP adventures, I had actually been looking forward to going back in for more... not enough to just do it, of course, got to have that quest ;-)
The Shaman PvP set looks pretty cool too so I wanted that for transmog -
Quick aside... How annoying is gearing up in PvP?? I've had about 12 necks and 16 rings but still not got the legs.
Anyway... Alterac Valley.
I didn't play back when AV was a thing, I've only heard the stories of those epic 5-day battles.
My experience of AV is Alliance and Horde waving to each other as they pass in the middle of the map, burning down a tower or two, then killing the boss.
Alliance almost always won, no idea why but there must be some hidden advantage in the map for Alliance... like Silvershard Mines for Horde I assume.
This suited me just fine as I was on Alliance so could complete my PvP without any actual PvP-ing.
So when I zoned in to AV over the weekend, charged downfield and came up against massed defence of the first mini-boss... it was a bit of a surprise.
The entire horde team, all Russian which is apparently important, massed at the top of the ramp up to the first tower and slaughtered us mercilessly as we innocently funnelled into the choke point.
I imagine this is how lemmings feel, particularly the ones at the back.
Ooh ooh, we're going for a run.
Where are we going? Where are we going?
Let's all run together, this is fun
Oh dear.
Amid much swearing about Russians (is this really a thing?), orders were issued about taking towers and graveyards.
We had to win this one properly!
So of course those orders were routinely ignored as everyone charged back into the fray to die again.
Not me by the way, I'm all for listening to someone who knows what they are talking about... so I was busy looking at the map trying to work out what ICB could possibly be, and how to take it.
As even the most hard-headed of our team tired of banging their heads against the Russian wall, and we were spread around the map taking various towers, bunkers and graveyards (and a mine!)... the Horde attacked!
It was like that scene from Return of the King when Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli jump off the boat, all the ghosts spawn and they sweep everything before them!
We eventually managed to recover and gather together again but the battle was essentially lost... cue more swearing about Russians.
That wasn't my only trip into Alterac Valley this week though, it seemed to come up more often than all the others.
I would say roughly half of them followed the format I was used to seeing, the run and zerg tactic with an Alliance win.
The rest followed a similar pattern to the first attempt, a defensive Horde holding position then pushing out.
There were some immense battles over towers and bunkers but it also quite often degenerated into a strange stalemate and a war of attrition would ultimately, and inevitably, see the Alliance lose.
I didn't realise it at the time but this battle was being lost long before that point.
Outside the Alliance base is a narrow valley, this falls away on one side but then comes back to another narrow passageway. All this creates one incredibly long chokepoint.
The Horde would push to this position and hold one end but were unable to break the Alliance at the other end.
Likewise, the Alliance could comfortably hold the Horde at bay but couldn't break out at the other end to launch an offensive of their own.
To reach this position required a few specific events...
The Horde had to survive the first wave of attacks comfortably so they were still in quite a cohesive group when they pushed out against the isolated Alliance.
The push out had to happen before the Alliance had finished taking one of the Southern graveyards, forcing reinforcements to run the length of the battlefield and spreading them out even further.
The Horde then needed to take or re-take all of the graveyards in the South whilst moving en masse to the long chokepoint outside the Alliance base.
If the horde reach that chokepoint with sufficient numbers AND control of the graveyards, the battle is essentially over.
Any pockets of Alliance resistance in the south can be taken out at leisure as long as those graveyards are held because the respawn is always at the wrong side of the chokepoint.
The inevitability of defeat dawns on you when you realise that you can't get enough people through the chokepoint alive to re-take another graveyard, while the enemy has taken towers, mines etc. to bolster their reinforcement count.
I can't see any way out of it to be honest...
Can you stealth or "corpse walk" enough people past the chokepoint to start taking objectives?
Or at least enough to force the horde to abandon their entrenched position to deal with the threat?
Maybe, but you don't really get that level of coordination in the random queue.
Some old hands will probably tell me an obvious solution that I haven't even considered but I'm new to all this stuff and still learning how to play, never mind battleground strategy.
Regardless, I won enough BGs to complete my quest and await the next PvP-based event. I am tempted to just do a few... without a quest (!)... I still need those legs after all :-)
Want me to do anything outside of my normal comfort zone of World Quests, Dungeons and Raiding?
Just put up one of those shiny, gold exclamation marks and I'm there... just have to turn it into a shiny, gold question mark :-)
Put a reward on the quest, anything except just gold no matter how useless the reward may be, and I can't wait to get started!
And this is how I ended up in Alterac Valley.
The weekly 'event' has been random battlegrounds.
After my last PvP adventures, I had actually been looking forward to going back in for more... not enough to just do it, of course, got to have that quest ;-)
The Shaman PvP set looks pretty cool too so I wanted that for transmog -
Quick aside... How annoying is gearing up in PvP?? I've had about 12 necks and 16 rings but still not got the legs.
Anyway... Alterac Valley.
I didn't play back when AV was a thing, I've only heard the stories of those epic 5-day battles.
My experience of AV is Alliance and Horde waving to each other as they pass in the middle of the map, burning down a tower or two, then killing the boss.
Alliance almost always won, no idea why but there must be some hidden advantage in the map for Alliance... like Silvershard Mines for Horde I assume.
This suited me just fine as I was on Alliance so could complete my PvP without any actual PvP-ing.
So when I zoned in to AV over the weekend, charged downfield and came up against massed defence of the first mini-boss... it was a bit of a surprise.
The entire horde team, all Russian which is apparently important, massed at the top of the ramp up to the first tower and slaughtered us mercilessly as we innocently funnelled into the choke point.
I imagine this is how lemmings feel, particularly the ones at the back.
Ooh ooh, we're going for a run.
Where are we going? Where are we going?
Let's all run together, this is fun
Oh dear.
Amid much swearing about Russians (is this really a thing?), orders were issued about taking towers and graveyards.
We had to win this one properly!
So of course those orders were routinely ignored as everyone charged back into the fray to die again.
Not me by the way, I'm all for listening to someone who knows what they are talking about... so I was busy looking at the map trying to work out what ICB could possibly be, and how to take it.
As even the most hard-headed of our team tired of banging their heads against the Russian wall, and we were spread around the map taking various towers, bunkers and graveyards (and a mine!)... the Horde attacked!
It was like that scene from Return of the King when Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli jump off the boat, all the ghosts spawn and they sweep everything before them!
We eventually managed to recover and gather together again but the battle was essentially lost... cue more swearing about Russians.
That wasn't my only trip into Alterac Valley this week though, it seemed to come up more often than all the others.
I would say roughly half of them followed the format I was used to seeing, the run and zerg tactic with an Alliance win.
The rest followed a similar pattern to the first attempt, a defensive Horde holding position then pushing out.
There were some immense battles over towers and bunkers but it also quite often degenerated into a strange stalemate and a war of attrition would ultimately, and inevitably, see the Alliance lose.
I didn't realise it at the time but this battle was being lost long before that point.
Outside the Alliance base is a narrow valley, this falls away on one side but then comes back to another narrow passageway. All this creates one incredibly long chokepoint.
The Horde would push to this position and hold one end but were unable to break the Alliance at the other end.
Likewise, the Alliance could comfortably hold the Horde at bay but couldn't break out at the other end to launch an offensive of their own.
To reach this position required a few specific events...
The Horde had to survive the first wave of attacks comfortably so they were still in quite a cohesive group when they pushed out against the isolated Alliance.
The push out had to happen before the Alliance had finished taking one of the Southern graveyards, forcing reinforcements to run the length of the battlefield and spreading them out even further.
The Horde then needed to take or re-take all of the graveyards in the South whilst moving en masse to the long chokepoint outside the Alliance base.
If the horde reach that chokepoint with sufficient numbers AND control of the graveyards, the battle is essentially over.
Any pockets of Alliance resistance in the south can be taken out at leisure as long as those graveyards are held because the respawn is always at the wrong side of the chokepoint.
The inevitability of defeat dawns on you when you realise that you can't get enough people through the chokepoint alive to re-take another graveyard, while the enemy has taken towers, mines etc. to bolster their reinforcement count.
I can't see any way out of it to be honest...
Can you stealth or "corpse walk" enough people past the chokepoint to start taking objectives?
Or at least enough to force the horde to abandon their entrenched position to deal with the threat?
Maybe, but you don't really get that level of coordination in the random queue.
Some old hands will probably tell me an obvious solution that I haven't even considered but I'm new to all this stuff and still learning how to play, never mind battleground strategy.
Regardless, I won enough BGs to complete my quest and await the next PvP-based event. I am tempted to just do a few... without a quest (!)... I still need those legs after all :-)
Friday 9 December 2016
Dead Dragons...
There is something about fighting a big dragon that feels... Warcraft-ey, especially when it follows the dragon 'rules' and all of the Dragons of Nightmare follow those rules.
Big breath attack? Check!
Tail Swipe? Check!
You've got yourself a dragon there, son.
A dragon?? I've got 4 of the bloody things!
These dragons are, I assume, English dragons... They politely queue up and wait for their turn to tear the raid to pieces.
And once they have had a go, they just fly to the back of the queue and patiently wait for their next turn.
This is vitally important as, even with only 2 on the ground at a time, there are about a million mechanics to deal with!
I'll be honest, based on our experiences on Heroic, I thought this would be our easiest Mythic kill and we should have gone here first.
I was wrong.
There is just so much going on all the time that you can't lose focus for a second!
When I was leading raids more regularly I used to know every fight inside out, reading up and watching countless guide videos to fully understand every moment of each fight for each role.
I've dialled it back a 'bit' since then...
I've done it on Heroic a few times and watched a guide to show the differences for Mythic. It looked pretty similar to me, same mechanics but more frequently and hit harder blah blah blah.
There is the portal group too but I wasn't expecting to be involved in that... typically I got thrown in there because our DK was getting stuck on the loading screen each time but that was only the first night.
The rest is just like Heroic right?
Stand on the flowers to stop them spawning adds.
Avoid the sleepy clouds of gas.
Interrupt and kill adds.
Dispel the debuff, got to keep those healers busy!
What isn't immediately apparent is how quickly these abilities come at you in Mythic, and how frequently they overlap!
Back in the day, I would have known exactly what was going to hit and when.
Now?
Headless Chicken mode!
I felt like I didn't know what was going to happen at any given moment and just reacted to what was in front of me... constantly for 7+ minutes!
With Mythic in general being quite unforgiving, you can understand why it takes so much concentration to play this way.
Having played Ele Shaman for quite some time now, constantly striving to improve (and had a dps lesson from Preach himself!), I can maximise my dps under pretty much any circumstances so the numbers don't suffer too much.
When I had less skill and practice as a player, the ridiculously in-depth knowledge of the fights must have covered my weaknesses to a certain extent.
Following this train of thought, I have some new-found sympathy for those players who haven't (for whatever reason) put that much effort into improving their play, they don't have that knowledge to cover for them (and I certainly don't expect anyone to go to the lengths I did in learning fights).
It must be incredibly intense to need full concentration on the fight mechanics and your dps rotation, possibly even clicking abilities on your action bar.
I used to just think they were bad players, and maybe they were (hehe), but at least I have a bit more understanding of why they were bad ;-)
Anyway, I digress, back to the dragons!
Despite all of the various abilities making you run around, this fight is surprisingly good for the Elemental Shaman... mainly due to the numerous opportunities to unload with Chain Lightning.
A variety of adds spawn so I quickly learned to save Stormkeeper to coincide with a healthy number of targets and the screen would light up during the 'Shade' spawns.
I think I said at the start of the expansion that the Ele Shaman niche, extended AoE, doesn't occur in current raids... well, here it does and boy do we shine!
Once everyone has learned the fight and you are at that stage of trying to pull the execution together consistently enough in one attempt to get the first kill, it all boils down to one point.
There are gas clouds on the floor, add-sprouting flowers all over the place and purple bombs of corruption dropping all over the raid... when Lethon casts Siphon Spirit and spawns a whole load of adds!
They actually spawn from players so we loosely stacked to group them together, then stunned and slowed them with everything we had to give us maximum uptime.
These adds are the absolute priority in the fight... if they reach the dragons, they heal them for a massive amount!
Enter, the Elemental Shaman!
Lightning blazing everywhere, Earthquakes knocking them to the ground, Earthbind Totems slowing them down, Capacitor Totems... er, capacitating (? incapacitating maybe).
This is our moment!
And once you are through, it is plain sailing to four dead dragons.
Big breath attack? Check!
Tail Swipe? Check!
You've got yourself a dragon there, son.
A dragon?? I've got 4 of the bloody things!
These dragons are, I assume, English dragons... They politely queue up and wait for their turn to tear the raid to pieces.
And once they have had a go, they just fly to the back of the queue and patiently wait for their next turn.
This is vitally important as, even with only 2 on the ground at a time, there are about a million mechanics to deal with!
I'll be honest, based on our experiences on Heroic, I thought this would be our easiest Mythic kill and we should have gone here first.
I was wrong.
There is just so much going on all the time that you can't lose focus for a second!
When I was leading raids more regularly I used to know every fight inside out, reading up and watching countless guide videos to fully understand every moment of each fight for each role.
I've dialled it back a 'bit' since then...
I've done it on Heroic a few times and watched a guide to show the differences for Mythic. It looked pretty similar to me, same mechanics but more frequently and hit harder blah blah blah.
There is the portal group too but I wasn't expecting to be involved in that... typically I got thrown in there because our DK was getting stuck on the loading screen each time but that was only the first night.
The rest is just like Heroic right?
Stand on the flowers to stop them spawning adds.
Avoid the sleepy clouds of gas.
Interrupt and kill adds.
Dispel the debuff, got to keep those healers busy!
What isn't immediately apparent is how quickly these abilities come at you in Mythic, and how frequently they overlap!
Back in the day, I would have known exactly what was going to hit and when.
Now?
Headless Chicken mode!
I felt like I didn't know what was going to happen at any given moment and just reacted to what was in front of me... constantly for 7+ minutes!
With Mythic in general being quite unforgiving, you can understand why it takes so much concentration to play this way.
Having played Ele Shaman for quite some time now, constantly striving to improve (and had a dps lesson from Preach himself!), I can maximise my dps under pretty much any circumstances so the numbers don't suffer too much.
When I had less skill and practice as a player, the ridiculously in-depth knowledge of the fights must have covered my weaknesses to a certain extent.
Following this train of thought, I have some new-found sympathy for those players who haven't (for whatever reason) put that much effort into improving their play, they don't have that knowledge to cover for them (and I certainly don't expect anyone to go to the lengths I did in learning fights).
It must be incredibly intense to need full concentration on the fight mechanics and your dps rotation, possibly even clicking abilities on your action bar.
I used to just think they were bad players, and maybe they were (hehe), but at least I have a bit more understanding of why they were bad ;-)
Anyway, I digress, back to the dragons!
Despite all of the various abilities making you run around, this fight is surprisingly good for the Elemental Shaman... mainly due to the numerous opportunities to unload with Chain Lightning.
A variety of adds spawn so I quickly learned to save Stormkeeper to coincide with a healthy number of targets and the screen would light up during the 'Shade' spawns.
I think I said at the start of the expansion that the Ele Shaman niche, extended AoE, doesn't occur in current raids... well, here it does and boy do we shine!
Once everyone has learned the fight and you are at that stage of trying to pull the execution together consistently enough in one attempt to get the first kill, it all boils down to one point.
There are gas clouds on the floor, add-sprouting flowers all over the place and purple bombs of corruption dropping all over the raid... when Lethon casts Siphon Spirit and spawns a whole load of adds!
They actually spawn from players so we loosely stacked to group them together, then stunned and slowed them with everything we had to give us maximum uptime.
These adds are the absolute priority in the fight... if they reach the dragons, they heal them for a massive amount!
Enter, the Elemental Shaman!
Lightning blazing everywhere, Earthquakes knocking them to the ground, Earthbind Totems slowing them down, Capacitor Totems... er, capacitating (? incapacitating maybe).
This is our moment!
And once you are through, it is plain sailing to four dead dragons.
Wednesday 7 December 2016
Plodding Along...
Everything has slowed down now as we await the burst of content that comes with the next patch.
Not that we have finished with the current patch, just all of the non-raiding content.
Aside form raiding, the Shaman just completes his emissary quests and 1 mythic+ dungeon per week for the weekly cache.
I feel like I should be doing more mythic+ dungeons to bring in the AP and finish my artefact weapon but, to be completely honest, I can't be bothered.
I target the World Quests with AP rewards and raiding rewards decent enough AP to keep it ticking over, plus I'm 1/3 on my last trait which is a very disappointing self-heal even at 3/3.
At 1/3, it heals me for roughly 130k HP if I drop below 35% - amazing, right?
1 million AP to make it a 260k heal hasn't exactly got me rushing around to complete it!
The Paladin tank has geared up nicely and is now at the mythic dungeon/normal raid stage... unfortunately, this means he has to use the groupfinder.
I think the groupfinder is a fantastic tool but it's a constant struggle for me to actually apply to join a group, and it's almost a relief if I get turned down.
I know I know, man up and just get on with it... I'm trying
As if reading my thoughts, Preach has just started a series of videos for learner tanks. Apparently, I'm not alone in my fear of the groupfinder and he has been receiving lots of emails asking how to get into tanking.
I was already following Darkmech's advice, who is hilarious by the way, but it's good to have another point of view and I'm always on the lookout for more if you know any?
When my friend got me into WoW it came as no surprise to him how deeply I went into the game, absorbing as much information as I possibly could about all aspects of Warcraft.
Starting with TotalBiscuit (TotalHalibut?)back in the day and Nobbel more recently as I become more interested in the lore, it has always been the personality and opinions that have kept me interested rather than just the content.
And I still consume wow-related content at an incredible rate so am always looking out for new (or new to me) blogs, podcasts and youtubers.
Apologies for rambling a bit today but it is quite representative of my play at the moment, lacking focus and waiting for something to trigger me into action!
Not that we have finished with the current patch, just all of the non-raiding content.
Aside form raiding, the Shaman just completes his emissary quests and 1 mythic+ dungeon per week for the weekly cache.
I feel like I should be doing more mythic+ dungeons to bring in the AP and finish my artefact weapon but, to be completely honest, I can't be bothered.
I target the World Quests with AP rewards and raiding rewards decent enough AP to keep it ticking over, plus I'm 1/3 on my last trait which is a very disappointing self-heal even at 3/3.
At 1/3, it heals me for roughly 130k HP if I drop below 35% - amazing, right?
1 million AP to make it a 260k heal hasn't exactly got me rushing around to complete it!
The Paladin tank has geared up nicely and is now at the mythic dungeon/normal raid stage... unfortunately, this means he has to use the groupfinder.
I think the groupfinder is a fantastic tool but it's a constant struggle for me to actually apply to join a group, and it's almost a relief if I get turned down.
I know I know, man up and just get on with it... I'm trying
As if reading my thoughts, Preach has just started a series of videos for learner tanks. Apparently, I'm not alone in my fear of the groupfinder and he has been receiving lots of emails asking how to get into tanking.
I was already following Darkmech's advice, who is hilarious by the way, but it's good to have another point of view and I'm always on the lookout for more if you know any?
When my friend got me into WoW it came as no surprise to him how deeply I went into the game, absorbing as much information as I possibly could about all aspects of Warcraft.
Starting with TotalBiscuit (TotalHalibut?)back in the day and Nobbel more recently as I become more interested in the lore, it has always been the personality and opinions that have kept me interested rather than just the content.
And I still consume wow-related content at an incredible rate so am always looking out for new (or new to me) blogs, podcasts and youtubers.
Apologies for rambling a bit today but it is quite representative of my play at the moment, lacking focus and waiting for something to trigger me into action!
Wednesday 30 November 2016
Tanking Trials and Tribulations...
One day it will happen.
One day I will be a good tank.
That day is not today.
A push from the Paladin over the weekend took him to 110 and on to the gearing treadmill. It's an absolute god-send that world quests are open immediately so you can crack on with those while finishing off the zones and doing Suramar at leisure.
As per the latest incarnation of the alt plan, I am not doing any of the class order hall quests until 110, when I can do them pretty much in one go for a more cohesive storyline.
So I picked up where I had left off after opening up Light's Hope Chapel to follow the storyline.
I picked up a dungeon quest for Violet Hold but still had other quests so decided to do those first.
A few quests down the line... I began to wonder why there were so many references to Varian Wrynn and Ashbringer.
Isn't Ashbringer the Ret artefact weapon?
Yes, it is. I was on the Ret artefact quest line!
It's fortunate that Wowhead exists or I would probably not have found out until someone actually handed me the Ashbringer!
Despite the temptation to just carry on with nice, comfortable questing I was left with the dungeon quest in Violet Hold.
No way around it so I queued up.
I wondered if my gear would be good enough but it is a levelling dungeon so I figured I would be fine at any ilvl... how wrong I was!
First portal and my health bar is spiking up and down ridiculously, I'm blowing all cooldowns just to (barely) stay alive. As soon as I ran out of CDs, I was done for.
I ran back in quickly, picked up the mobs and died again.
Two others died before I could get back in again and now we were just on a loop of... Res, run in, die.
Every fear I had was coming true.
After a few death loops, and some rather fruity language, one of the dps left which was swiftly followed by everyone else leaving.
First attempt at tanking... disaster.
I checked my ilvl, it was only 747 so I figured (hoped) that the dungeon didn't scale like it does from 100-109 and was tuned for a specific ilvl at 110.
I feel like there should be some ilvl restriction on queueing though if that is the case, just like there is for heroic or lfr.
Regardless, I logged off for the night determined to attack it the next day.
I had no idea how long it would take me to bridge the gap by world quests alone so decided to hit the auction house!
So what piece do I need the most?
Helm... 810ilvl... fine there
Neck... 765ilvl... get the JC to make one
Shoulders... 800ilvl... fine
Chest... 810ilvl... hmmm.
Cloak... 790
Wrists... 795???
Gloves... 810???
Belt... 810???
Legs... 800???
Rings... 750/810
Trinkets... 765/765
How the hell was I only 747ilvl??
It was then that I noticed my weapon slot was blank...
It is supposed to automatically appear with the artefact shield so I can only assume that it bugged out when I started those Ret quests.
I took off the shield and equipped it again... 799ilvl.
The dungeon was a breeze :-s
One day I will be a good tank.
That day is not today.
A push from the Paladin over the weekend took him to 110 and on to the gearing treadmill. It's an absolute god-send that world quests are open immediately so you can crack on with those while finishing off the zones and doing Suramar at leisure.
As per the latest incarnation of the alt plan, I am not doing any of the class order hall quests until 110, when I can do them pretty much in one go for a more cohesive storyline.
So I picked up where I had left off after opening up Light's Hope Chapel to follow the storyline.
I picked up a dungeon quest for Violet Hold but still had other quests so decided to do those first.
A few quests down the line... I began to wonder why there were so many references to Varian Wrynn and Ashbringer.
Isn't Ashbringer the Ret artefact weapon?
Yes, it is. I was on the Ret artefact quest line!
It's fortunate that Wowhead exists or I would probably not have found out until someone actually handed me the Ashbringer!
Despite the temptation to just carry on with nice, comfortable questing I was left with the dungeon quest in Violet Hold.
No way around it so I queued up.
I wondered if my gear would be good enough but it is a levelling dungeon so I figured I would be fine at any ilvl... how wrong I was!
First portal and my health bar is spiking up and down ridiculously, I'm blowing all cooldowns just to (barely) stay alive. As soon as I ran out of CDs, I was done for.
I ran back in quickly, picked up the mobs and died again.
Two others died before I could get back in again and now we were just on a loop of... Res, run in, die.
Every fear I had was coming true.
After a few death loops, and some rather fruity language, one of the dps left which was swiftly followed by everyone else leaving.
First attempt at tanking... disaster.
I checked my ilvl, it was only 747 so I figured (hoped) that the dungeon didn't scale like it does from 100-109 and was tuned for a specific ilvl at 110.
I feel like there should be some ilvl restriction on queueing though if that is the case, just like there is for heroic or lfr.
Regardless, I logged off for the night determined to attack it the next day.
I had no idea how long it would take me to bridge the gap by world quests alone so decided to hit the auction house!
So what piece do I need the most?
Helm... 810ilvl... fine there
Neck... 765ilvl... get the JC to make one
Shoulders... 800ilvl... fine
Chest... 810ilvl... hmmm.
Cloak... 790
Wrists... 795???
Gloves... 810???
Belt... 810???
Legs... 800???
Rings... 750/810
Trinkets... 765/765
How the hell was I only 747ilvl??
It was then that I noticed my weapon slot was blank...
It is supposed to automatically appear with the artefact shield so I can only assume that it bugged out when I started those Ret quests.
I took off the shield and equipped it again... 799ilvl.
The dungeon was a breeze :-s
Friday 25 November 2016
We're Getting the Band Back Together...
That opportunity for tanking that I mentioned?
Some of my favourite times in WoW were with this group of people back in Dragon Soul and Mogu'shan Vaults. We didn't set the raiding world on fire or anything like that but we had a lot of fun!
Well... we've gathered some of the old crew back together for some fun and games, a bit of relaxed raiding and dungeon-ing. We've even taken up our old setup of co-raid leaders again which I am really looking forward to!
The guild has fallen on hard times recently so I'm hoping this will breathe some life back into it, but I am being extremely careful not to get too drawn into the day-to-day running of the guild... the last thing I want is to repeat the mistakes of the past and burn out on recruiting etc.
We are in the early stages right now and haven't had many turning up to our (two so far) raid nights but I'm hoping that will improve naturally with time as people see events running consistently.
In the mean-time, it's pug pug pug!
It's so easy today, despite it's flaws the group-finder is fantastic and the majority of the community seems to have bought into it.
Some groups still demand ridiculous achievements or gear levels but, as a starting group, I like to set the bar quite low.
We are learning to raid as a group again, why not let other people learn alongside us?
In the short term I am just playing whatever role we need most but really I am hoping this will be the opportunity for tanking that I have wanted for so long.
Even if it doesn't pan out that way I am incredibly excited about the prospect of raiding with these people again.
Some of my favourite times in WoW were with this group of people back in Dragon Soul and Mogu'shan Vaults. We didn't set the raiding world on fire or anything like that but we had a lot of fun!
Well... we've gathered some of the old crew back together for some fun and games, a bit of relaxed raiding and dungeon-ing. We've even taken up our old setup of co-raid leaders again which I am really looking forward to!
The guild has fallen on hard times recently so I'm hoping this will breathe some life back into it, but I am being extremely careful not to get too drawn into the day-to-day running of the guild... the last thing I want is to repeat the mistakes of the past and burn out on recruiting etc.
We are in the early stages right now and haven't had many turning up to our (two so far) raid nights but I'm hoping that will improve naturally with time as people see events running consistently.
In the mean-time, it's pug pug pug!
It's so easy today, despite it's flaws the group-finder is fantastic and the majority of the community seems to have bought into it.
Some groups still demand ridiculous achievements or gear levels but, as a starting group, I like to set the bar quite low.
We are learning to raid as a group again, why not let other people learn alongside us?
In the short term I am just playing whatever role we need most but really I am hoping this will be the opportunity for tanking that I have wanted for so long.
Even if it doesn't pan out that way I am incredibly excited about the prospect of raiding with these people again.
Saturday 19 November 2016
Raar Nom Nom Nom...
In my head, that is the noise the bear makes when it eats Leo DiCaprio* in The Revenant.
Don't give me any of that nonsense about him single-handedly beating the bear, it's just not possible... you need 20 people for that! :-)
Ursoc!
As expected by some people (*cough*), this one took much less time than SpiderBird.
The fight is incredibly similar to Heroic. So similar in fact, that I'm not really sure what the differences are!
There is one rather obvious difference... Ursoc has invited a few of his friends to the party.
An extra bear joins in every now and then, lopes over to us, and we kill it.
Does the new bear actually do anything? No idea. Just an excuse for me to use Chain Lightning.
That is literally the only difference from the Heroic fight, an occasional extra bear that we cleave down in seconds.
That makes the fight sound dull though when it is actually the opposite, it is incredibly intense!
The main mechanic from normal and heroic remains, splitting into two groups and making sure the Focussed Gaze alternates running through each group.
Along with the Miasma pools left behind from Roaring Cacophony (Raar!), that means a rather deceptive amount of movement and you end up using the entire room.
Our biggest problem had nothing to do with movement though, it was that one of our tanks didn't know how, or more accurately when, to taunt.
That sounds bad enough but the reality is even worse... He knew the tactics so knew what he was supposed to be doing, taking one debuff while the other tank took the other debuff.
The problem arose because he couldn't tell when the other tank gained a debuff!
It was somehow hidden on his UI and he had no idea how to make it show up again.
Astounding!
Even with my extremely limited tanking experience, I know it's important to see what debuffs your co-tank has or doesn't have.
How did he even get this far without access to that key information?
Simple answer... he just did what DBM told him to do.
I suppose he's got a point :-)
After a few wipes and various attempts to fix the UI, we resorted to the main tank calling out every time a taunt was needed. DBM mark 2... not ideal but it did the job.
So we had everyone knowing where to run and tanks taunting on cue, now it was time to see if we had the numbers to kill the great bear.
We knew it would be tight, I imagine virtually all progress kills on this boss are tight, so we even had healers pre-potting with dps potions and doing their best to contribute whenever they could.
I said it was quite intense, it's only 5 minutes until enrage and that time just flies by!
We filled the outer circle and had to move into the middle of the room as time was running out.
Another add spawned but we had to ignore it (does it do anything anyway??) and focus the boss.
The 5 minutes were up and Ursoc went crazy!
With each passing second he would 1-shot a player or two but his health was dropping fast and, at 5mins10secs with only 8 people alive, he fell!
The tension had built to such a point, there were old-fashioned nerd-screams on teamspeak when he fell. It was fantastic! :-)
Dragons next!
Should be interesting as we have a healer that can't dispel :-s
*who is not Matt Damon
Don't give me any of that nonsense about him single-handedly beating the bear, it's just not possible... you need 20 people for that! :-)
Ursoc!
As expected by some people (*cough*), this one took much less time than SpiderBird.
The fight is incredibly similar to Heroic. So similar in fact, that I'm not really sure what the differences are!
There is one rather obvious difference... Ursoc has invited a few of his friends to the party.
An extra bear joins in every now and then, lopes over to us, and we kill it.
Does the new bear actually do anything? No idea. Just an excuse for me to use Chain Lightning.
That is literally the only difference from the Heroic fight, an occasional extra bear that we cleave down in seconds.
That makes the fight sound dull though when it is actually the opposite, it is incredibly intense!
The main mechanic from normal and heroic remains, splitting into two groups and making sure the Focussed Gaze alternates running through each group.
Along with the Miasma pools left behind from Roaring Cacophony (Raar!), that means a rather deceptive amount of movement and you end up using the entire room.
Our biggest problem had nothing to do with movement though, it was that one of our tanks didn't know how, or more accurately when, to taunt.
That sounds bad enough but the reality is even worse... He knew the tactics so knew what he was supposed to be doing, taking one debuff while the other tank took the other debuff.
The problem arose because he couldn't tell when the other tank gained a debuff!
It was somehow hidden on his UI and he had no idea how to make it show up again.
Astounding!
Even with my extremely limited tanking experience, I know it's important to see what debuffs your co-tank has or doesn't have.
How did he even get this far without access to that key information?
Simple answer... he just did what DBM told him to do.
I suppose he's got a point :-)
After a few wipes and various attempts to fix the UI, we resorted to the main tank calling out every time a taunt was needed. DBM mark 2... not ideal but it did the job.
So we had everyone knowing where to run and tanks taunting on cue, now it was time to see if we had the numbers to kill the great bear.
We knew it would be tight, I imagine virtually all progress kills on this boss are tight, so we even had healers pre-potting with dps potions and doing their best to contribute whenever they could.
I said it was quite intense, it's only 5 minutes until enrage and that time just flies by!
We filled the outer circle and had to move into the middle of the room as time was running out.
Another add spawned but we had to ignore it (does it do anything anyway??) and focus the boss.
The 5 minutes were up and Ursoc went crazy!
With each passing second he would 1-shot a player or two but his health was dropping fast and, at 5mins10secs with only 8 people alive, he fell!
The tension had built to such a point, there were old-fashioned nerd-screams on teamspeak when he fell. It was fantastic! :-)
Dragons next!
Should be interesting as we have a healer that can't dispel :-s
*who is not Matt Damon
Thursday 17 November 2016
Isle of Conquest...
Yes, those pesky followers sent me out to do PvP again!
Another trip to the battlegrounds!
I zoned into Isle of Conquest and immediately started changing my talents to the ones I like for PvP, namely Icefury. Unfortunately, this didn't work as there was a Tauren Paladin pounding me in the face!
What's going on?
Oh sh*t, we're already going!
Battleground mode activated.
RUN AWAY!
Luckily, Paladins are relatively easy to run away from so I survived and did enough to deter him from continuing his chase... or he just got bored and went for someone else.
This bought me enough time to survey the battlefield and work out what the hell was going on.
It didn't take long, we were losing.
My first clue should have been zoning into a part-done battle. Nobody leaves when they are winning, do they?
My second clue was the giant coo-beastie hitting me in the face, there were enemies in our base.
My third clue was that I deduced, from a quick look at the map, that we weren't in their base.
At this point, I just assumed we had lost.
All other visits to Isle of Conquest have followed a very simple pattern...
Horde and Alliance charge past each other to the opposite base, lay siege and throw people over the walls, open the doors, flood in and kill the boss.
My kind of PvP... one that doesn't involve the opposite faction! It's just a PvE race.
So I thought we had already lost, decided to have fun killing some Hordies and went looking for the Paladin.
Two very strange things happened...
1. Someone cut through the moaning in chat and came up with a plan.
2. People listened!
It was a simple plan.
Clear them out of our boss room before they all arrived.
Defend at the gates.
Attack the horde base and we have lost because they are already so far ahead.
And that's what we did!
Any horde that came up to our gates died under the full force of Alliance might (well, 30 of us) as we repelled attack after attack, each time retreating to the safety of the keep.
It took a little while but the horde realised our strategy and decided to group up and attack en masse.
They suffered heavily under the cannon fire on the approach but forced their way to our gates time and time again.
Each time we pushed them back and held within our keep.
I was having fun, killing the horde from the back, and I could see the strategy working but I did begin to wonder how we were actually going to win the battle if we never left our keep.
I had no idea about 'reinforcements'!
It was just a number at the top of the screen. Obviously, I assumed it had some impact on the battle but had no idea what that was.
I know all (both) of you reading this will think I'm an idiot but I told you, I've never done PvP. I had no idea.
It turns out that when the reinforcements drop to zero, you lose!
I didn't know. I'm guessing the horde didn't know either!
They just kept coming! And dying!
Until there were none left...
Another trip to the battlegrounds!
I zoned into Isle of Conquest and immediately started changing my talents to the ones I like for PvP, namely Icefury. Unfortunately, this didn't work as there was a Tauren Paladin pounding me in the face!
What's going on?
Oh sh*t, we're already going!
Battleground mode activated.
RUN AWAY!
Luckily, Paladins are relatively easy to run away from so I survived and did enough to deter him from continuing his chase... or he just got bored and went for someone else.
This bought me enough time to survey the battlefield and work out what the hell was going on.
It didn't take long, we were losing.
My first clue should have been zoning into a part-done battle. Nobody leaves when they are winning, do they?
My second clue was the giant coo-beastie hitting me in the face, there were enemies in our base.
My third clue was that I deduced, from a quick look at the map, that we weren't in their base.
At this point, I just assumed we had lost.
All other visits to Isle of Conquest have followed a very simple pattern...
Horde and Alliance charge past each other to the opposite base, lay siege and throw people over the walls, open the doors, flood in and kill the boss.
My kind of PvP... one that doesn't involve the opposite faction! It's just a PvE race.
So I thought we had already lost, decided to have fun killing some Hordies and went looking for the Paladin.
Two very strange things happened...
1. Someone cut through the moaning in chat and came up with a plan.
2. People listened!
It was a simple plan.
Clear them out of our boss room before they all arrived.
Defend at the gates.
Attack the horde base and we have lost because they are already so far ahead.
And that's what we did!
Any horde that came up to our gates died under the full force of Alliance might (well, 30 of us) as we repelled attack after attack, each time retreating to the safety of the keep.
It took a little while but the horde realised our strategy and decided to group up and attack en masse.
They suffered heavily under the cannon fire on the approach but forced their way to our gates time and time again.
Each time we pushed them back and held within our keep.
I was having fun, killing the horde from the back, and I could see the strategy working but I did begin to wonder how we were actually going to win the battle if we never left our keep.
I had no idea about 'reinforcements'!
It was just a number at the top of the screen. Obviously, I assumed it had some impact on the battle but had no idea what that was.
I know all (both) of you reading this will think I'm an idiot but I told you, I've never done PvP. I had no idea.
It turns out that when the reinforcements drop to zero, you lose!
I didn't know. I'm guessing the horde didn't know either!
They just kept coming! And dying!
Until there were none left...
Tuesday 15 November 2016
Is it a Spider? Is it a Bird?
No, it's a SpiderBird! And it's dead!
I was amazed when the Raid Leader decided this was our next Mythic boss. It is supposed to be the next easiest after Nythendra but I'm not sure that applies when you struggle each week to kill it on Heroic!
Struggle might be overstating it a little but it is an absolute mess and we've never made it to the end with a full team.
So it came as no surprise to me that it's taken us a while to move from 1/7M to 2/7M.
We have been plagued by other issues along the way which didn't help... main tank holidays and extreme lag issues amongst other things restricted the pure number of attempts we could manage.
Even on our kill night, we had given it up once because 3 or 4 of the team had so much lag they couldn't continue. We jumped into Trial of Valor heroic (reluctantly for some) as we didn't have enough for Mythic without the lag people but it settled down again so we went back to EN.
More time flying than killing bosses!
Anyway, we got back into Emerald Nightmare and stood in front of Elerethe once more.
Following the pattern of incremental difficulty levels, the fight is very similar to Heroic. Aside from the usual extra damage, the small changes to mechanics add a little complexity for those affected but that's about it.
The most interesting change comes from the 'linked' players during Spider form with two sets of two players being connected by a strange web.
Damage is transmitted down the web to the other player so, when the big feeding time damage comes in, you need to coordinate personal defensive cds or you give your healers a heart attack (we missed one and spiked down to sub 10% HP!)
The web itself knocks people back if they run into it so the linked people also need to move together to minimise the chances of running it over someone.
This was honestly the most interesting change from Heroic and, looking back on it, I wish they had extended it to affect more people each time. Ramp up the coordination needed to survive, I think it might have been too much for the healers though.
Progress was extremely slow, needing multiple wipes for us to come to terms with each aspect of the fight.
It often works out this way when you have mechanics that only target a couple of random people... you can look at Fatboss all you want but most people need to actually experience the mechanics once or twice to learn the fight. If only two people are targeted at a time, it takes quite a few attempts for everyone to gain that experience.
Amusingly, this often leads to some frustration from those that mastered it early.
The best recent example is the winds and passing the ball on Iskar... once mastered, everyone finds it incredibly easy but still gets frustrated when the new guy gets it wrong. Makes me laugh :-)
Sorry, back to the fight...
Progress was slow but it was being made on virtually every attempt. We inched our way through the first platform, refining every step, until we had it mastered.
The linked people ran together in specific directions, people dropped the green goo perfectly out of the way, the tornadoes were dropped well away from everything else and the adds killed almost instantly.
Now start again on platform 2 :-(
Well, we had to get there first. I love warlocks!
The tanks and a couple of healers got priority for the feathers with a free for all for the remainder. Mostly, I just left them to others as we had a warlock gateway for half the journey... when he remembered to put it down.
You would think this is the easy part of the fight, just run halfway across then use the portal or fly over with the wings.
That's it.
We had a spate of around 10 consecutive attempts where someone would use the wings' special ability to kill the spiders halfway across the bridge.
I have absolutely no idea why they were doing this.
I have even less idea why they continued to do it for 10+ attempts despite being told not to, under any circumstances, kill spiders on the bridge.
If you haven't done the fight... there are tornadoes on the bridge, they pick up the green goo left behind by a squashed spider and fling it at the raid! It does a ton of damage so you have to constantly dance out of the way, making everything much more difficult.
Once that was sorted, we were back to the incremental progress on platform two. We mastered the bird form then struggled for a while with the spider form again until, in the end (and when our main tank came back from his holidays!), we decided to run with an extra tank for more control.
This change made a massive difference to how smoothly the fight went and I highly recommend it for anyone progressing on this fight. The linked tanks take all the little spiders while the other takes the boss.
Now we had everything working well for two platforms and it was just a case of cutting out silly mistakes and bringing it all together to push on to platform 3.
We had only reached platform 3 once or twice and were a bit hazy about the tactics.
I think they are determined by your dps... if you can burn the boss down quickly, you don't need to deal with the new mechanics on the platform.
We had the dps! Somehow!
I thought the other platforms were a mess, they were nothing!
We somehow gained around 20 spiders while crossing the bridge so one of the tanks decided to wipe them out before they could kill everyone.
This unfortunately place massive amounts of green goo in the path of the tornadoes, there was green stuff flying everywhere!
I could barely cast anything for the final 10% of the fight due to almost constant movement, just had to squeeze in a spell whenever I could.
I think it's fair to say the melee carried us through to the end of the fight, managing to squeeze in enough damage to get the kill before the eggs were broken inevitably and wiped the raid.
Much like our heroic kills, an absolute clusterf*ck! Only 8 survived as the boss fell but we are now 2/7 Mythic! :-)
For an Elemental Shaman, the only chance to shine is to use Stormkeeper on the small spiders but it takes impeccable timing to get it right. You need to use the first cast just as Elerethe ascends for Feeding Time, then run across the room and hope the tanks have gathered the spiders into a nice tight group.
If you time it just right, it comes back up just after you have run across the platform for the second Feeding Time.
Stormkeeper + Chain Lightning = HUGE damage!
If you get a lucky proc of overload, it can virtually 1-shot the spiders.
Unfortunately, on our kill, I got it all wrong :-(
Not just the Stormkeeper but everything!
I missed the window completely on the first platform casting my first SK way too late but then compounded that with other dps mistakes.
Twice (Twice!!!), I popped Ascendance just as I got the tornado debuff and had to run across the room essentially wasting the cooldown each time.
I got the link every time and had to focus on that rather than using CL on the spiders.
My dps was way lower than it could have been by the end of the fight.
Luckily for me, almost everyone else was dead so I still finished 3rd :-)
On to Ursoc!
I was amazed when the Raid Leader decided this was our next Mythic boss. It is supposed to be the next easiest after Nythendra but I'm not sure that applies when you struggle each week to kill it on Heroic!
Struggle might be overstating it a little but it is an absolute mess and we've never made it to the end with a full team.
So it came as no surprise to me that it's taken us a while to move from 1/7M to 2/7M.
We have been plagued by other issues along the way which didn't help... main tank holidays and extreme lag issues amongst other things restricted the pure number of attempts we could manage.
Even on our kill night, we had given it up once because 3 or 4 of the team had so much lag they couldn't continue. We jumped into Trial of Valor heroic (reluctantly for some) as we didn't have enough for Mythic without the lag people but it settled down again so we went back to EN.
More time flying than killing bosses!
Anyway, we got back into Emerald Nightmare and stood in front of Elerethe once more.
Following the pattern of incremental difficulty levels, the fight is very similar to Heroic. Aside from the usual extra damage, the small changes to mechanics add a little complexity for those affected but that's about it.
The most interesting change comes from the 'linked' players during Spider form with two sets of two players being connected by a strange web.
Damage is transmitted down the web to the other player so, when the big feeding time damage comes in, you need to coordinate personal defensive cds or you give your healers a heart attack (we missed one and spiked down to sub 10% HP!)
The web itself knocks people back if they run into it so the linked people also need to move together to minimise the chances of running it over someone.
This was honestly the most interesting change from Heroic and, looking back on it, I wish they had extended it to affect more people each time. Ramp up the coordination needed to survive, I think it might have been too much for the healers though.
Progress was extremely slow, needing multiple wipes for us to come to terms with each aspect of the fight.
It often works out this way when you have mechanics that only target a couple of random people... you can look at Fatboss all you want but most people need to actually experience the mechanics once or twice to learn the fight. If only two people are targeted at a time, it takes quite a few attempts for everyone to gain that experience.
Amusingly, this often leads to some frustration from those that mastered it early.
The best recent example is the winds and passing the ball on Iskar... once mastered, everyone finds it incredibly easy but still gets frustrated when the new guy gets it wrong. Makes me laugh :-)
Sorry, back to the fight...
Progress was slow but it was being made on virtually every attempt. We inched our way through the first platform, refining every step, until we had it mastered.
The linked people ran together in specific directions, people dropped the green goo perfectly out of the way, the tornadoes were dropped well away from everything else and the adds killed almost instantly.
Now start again on platform 2 :-(
Well, we had to get there first. I love warlocks!
The tanks and a couple of healers got priority for the feathers with a free for all for the remainder. Mostly, I just left them to others as we had a warlock gateway for half the journey... when he remembered to put it down.
You would think this is the easy part of the fight, just run halfway across then use the portal or fly over with the wings.
That's it.
We had a spate of around 10 consecutive attempts where someone would use the wings' special ability to kill the spiders halfway across the bridge.
I have absolutely no idea why they were doing this.
I have even less idea why they continued to do it for 10+ attempts despite being told not to, under any circumstances, kill spiders on the bridge.
If you haven't done the fight... there are tornadoes on the bridge, they pick up the green goo left behind by a squashed spider and fling it at the raid! It does a ton of damage so you have to constantly dance out of the way, making everything much more difficult.
Once that was sorted, we were back to the incremental progress on platform two. We mastered the bird form then struggled for a while with the spider form again until, in the end (and when our main tank came back from his holidays!), we decided to run with an extra tank for more control.
This change made a massive difference to how smoothly the fight went and I highly recommend it for anyone progressing on this fight. The linked tanks take all the little spiders while the other takes the boss.
Now we had everything working well for two platforms and it was just a case of cutting out silly mistakes and bringing it all together to push on to platform 3.
We had only reached platform 3 once or twice and were a bit hazy about the tactics.
I think they are determined by your dps... if you can burn the boss down quickly, you don't need to deal with the new mechanics on the platform.
We had the dps! Somehow!
I thought the other platforms were a mess, they were nothing!
We somehow gained around 20 spiders while crossing the bridge so one of the tanks decided to wipe them out before they could kill everyone.
This unfortunately place massive amounts of green goo in the path of the tornadoes, there was green stuff flying everywhere!
I could barely cast anything for the final 10% of the fight due to almost constant movement, just had to squeeze in a spell whenever I could.
I think it's fair to say the melee carried us through to the end of the fight, managing to squeeze in enough damage to get the kill before the eggs were broken inevitably and wiped the raid.
Much like our heroic kills, an absolute clusterf*ck! Only 8 survived as the boss fell but we are now 2/7 Mythic! :-)
For an Elemental Shaman, the only chance to shine is to use Stormkeeper on the small spiders but it takes impeccable timing to get it right. You need to use the first cast just as Elerethe ascends for Feeding Time, then run across the room and hope the tanks have gathered the spiders into a nice tight group.
If you time it just right, it comes back up just after you have run across the platform for the second Feeding Time.
Stormkeeper + Chain Lightning = HUGE damage!
If you get a lucky proc of overload, it can virtually 1-shot the spiders.
Unfortunately, on our kill, I got it all wrong :-(
Not just the Stormkeeper but everything!
I missed the window completely on the first platform casting my first SK way too late but then compounded that with other dps mistakes.
Twice (Twice!!!), I popped Ascendance just as I got the tornado debuff and had to run across the room essentially wasting the cooldown each time.
I got the link every time and had to focus on that rather than using CL on the spiders.
My dps was way lower than it could have been by the end of the fight.
Luckily for me, almost everyone else was dead so I still finished 3rd :-)
On to Ursoc!
Friday 11 November 2016
The White Whale Rises Again...
Welcome to my annual attempt to gather enough courage together for some tanking!
An opportunity has arisen, which I won't go into right now, that might just give me the platform I need to finally overcome my fears of tanking... so the rush is on to be ready as quickly as possible.
'Fear' is probably overstating it a bit, and it's not of the tanking itself, it's the random people you have to group with that are the issue.
There is so little patience in the LFD that it can be quite daunting and it's certainly not an atmosphere conducive to learning a new role.
The Paladin is up to 105 and has completed the 'end of zone' dungeons for Azsuna and Valsharaj... Eye of Azshara and Darkheart Thicket.
These are two dungeons I have done plenty of times on my Shaman, particularly DHT, so I know them quite well and wasn't expecting to have many issues tanking them.
In DHT I did lose my healer when he accidentally pulled an extra pack of trash near the start, I couldn't get them all off him quite quickly enough and he died. I managed to stay alive until he ran back in which was nice and he apologised so I'm calling it shared blame.
EoA was very simple, there isn't really much that can go wrong in this dungeon on normal mode.
As I said though, tanking itself is not the real issue. The EoA run had a feral druid who was a little bit... keen.
He moaned that I wasn't going fast enough. I'm not really sure how I could have gone much faster to be honest, I've done the dungeon many times and did the same pulls as every other tank I've seen.
Maybe I was waiting too long before moving on to the next pack but I was going just before they died... I'm not really sure what the problem was and the druid just moaned rather than enlighten me.
Bear in mind that this was in a normal, levelling dungeon so the tanking was never even an issue. Fast forward to the more challenging content at max level, where I am actually trying to learn how to tank properly and that attitude just intensifies.
If mistakes on how fast to pull are not tolerated, what reaction will actual tanking mistakes provoke?
Regardless, I really want to be a good tank. And the only way to become a good tank is by pushing through this fear and getting in some practice.
Most people at this point would just suggest developing a thicker skin, not caring what random people on the internet say or think, but that is easier said than done.
I am working on it all the time though and improving, the aim is to reach a level of confidence in my tanking ability that allows me to step in and run content with friends at the level of my dps and healer alts.
I'm not talking about pushing mythic raid progression, just being able to run normal/heroic raids or mythic dungeons.
Could this be my year?
An opportunity has arisen, which I won't go into right now, that might just give me the platform I need to finally overcome my fears of tanking... so the rush is on to be ready as quickly as possible.
'Fear' is probably overstating it a bit, and it's not of the tanking itself, it's the random people you have to group with that are the issue.
There is so little patience in the LFD that it can be quite daunting and it's certainly not an atmosphere conducive to learning a new role.
The Paladin is up to 105 and has completed the 'end of zone' dungeons for Azsuna and Valsharaj... Eye of Azshara and Darkheart Thicket.
These are two dungeons I have done plenty of times on my Shaman, particularly DHT, so I know them quite well and wasn't expecting to have many issues tanking them.
In DHT I did lose my healer when he accidentally pulled an extra pack of trash near the start, I couldn't get them all off him quite quickly enough and he died. I managed to stay alive until he ran back in which was nice and he apologised so I'm calling it shared blame.
EoA was very simple, there isn't really much that can go wrong in this dungeon on normal mode.
As I said though, tanking itself is not the real issue. The EoA run had a feral druid who was a little bit... keen.
He moaned that I wasn't going fast enough. I'm not really sure how I could have gone much faster to be honest, I've done the dungeon many times and did the same pulls as every other tank I've seen.
Maybe I was waiting too long before moving on to the next pack but I was going just before they died... I'm not really sure what the problem was and the druid just moaned rather than enlighten me.
Bear in mind that this was in a normal, levelling dungeon so the tanking was never even an issue. Fast forward to the more challenging content at max level, where I am actually trying to learn how to tank properly and that attitude just intensifies.
If mistakes on how fast to pull are not tolerated, what reaction will actual tanking mistakes provoke?
Regardless, I really want to be a good tank. And the only way to become a good tank is by pushing through this fear and getting in some practice.
Most people at this point would just suggest developing a thicker skin, not caring what random people on the internet say or think, but that is easier said than done.
I am working on it all the time though and improving, the aim is to reach a level of confidence in my tanking ability that allows me to step in and run content with friends at the level of my dps and healer alts.
I'm not talking about pushing mythic raid progression, just being able to run normal/heroic raids or mythic dungeons.
Could this be my year?
Tuesday 8 November 2016
Very Demanding Followers...
I remember a much simpler time, not that long ago, when I had followers at my beck and call. I would send them out on dangerous missions and they would bring me back some loot or gold... lots and lots of gold!
I've left those followers behind now, even Garona the legendary follower, to rest after their exertions in Draenor... or maybe they are stuck in a different timeline or something. Who knows?!
Fear not though, I quickly started gathering more followers to my cause back on Azeroth!
Despite my notable achievements on multiple worlds, I could only muster a grand total of 8 followers so they will have to work extremely hard to match their Draenor counterparts.
Off you go guys, bring me some loot!
Oh, you've brought me an egg! Where do I equip it?
What... you want me to go and raid with it??
Ok, I suppose I am raiding anyway so just this once...
But it didn't end there!
Dungeon after dungeon, raid after raid, I am being sent out to gather my own loot!
Every time I get back, they have another vicious beast for me to kill.
I am an adventurer though, killing vicious beasts is my speciality! Well... killing vicious beasts and collecting squirrels, apparently.
So the cycle continued... I sent my followers out, they came back and sent me out...
Until... they decided to up the ante. They sent me out to do PvP!!!
Four days that quest sat in my quest log but I couldn't ignore it forever so, with more than a little trepidation, I queued for a random battleground.
My PvP experience consists mainly of a brief foray into 2v2 with my friend playing his Fury Warrior towards the end of MoP. We were routinely slaughtered, usually whilst stunned, and finished with a rating... well, I can't remember exactly what it was so let's just call it a low rating.
My biggest problem was dealing with melee, it felt like I was constantly stunned or interrupted and barely got a cast off before I died.
It wasn't much fun to be honest, I like to actually play my shaman.
So this time round I devised a fiendishly cunning plan for dealing with melee... I was going to stay away from them!
Not really possible in 2v2 arena but in a battleground I can just hide at the back!
And it worked! Sometimes.
PvP as an Elemental Shaman is great fun but it is definitely not easy!
It works as a strange game of cat and mouse...
I would stay at max distance and just tickle them with a Flame Shock and a couple of Lightning Bolts.
If that didn't attract too much attention, I would start to unload the Lava Bursts.
This would hopefully build up enough Maelstrom for when their attention inevitably turned my way.
At that point... I would run away!
Blizzard has blessed us with some great tools for running away.
Icefury is fantastic, hugely buffing Frost Shock, giving us the ability to simultaneously run away, do some decent damage and slow the enemy!
Stormkeeper gives us 3 more instant cast spells which actually hit for a decent amount too.
The crowning glory though, the spell that has actually led to me immensely enjoying my latest foray into PvP, is Gust of Wind.
For those of you poor, non-shaman types out there, this is basically a forwards version of a Hunter's Disengage.
It might not seem like much, Mages and Druids have better, Disengage is arguably better itself, but it is the movement spell we have been crying out for... and it is so much fun to use!
I have been using it everywhere all expansion long but, in a PvP context, it gives us the ability to run away. I don't always make it, I've been stunned in mid-air more than once, but I feel like there is at least the possibility of escape when those pesky melee catch up with me.
Don't expect any guides popping up in this neck of the woods any time soon but I'll be sure to let you know how I get on next time my followers send Brave Sir Robin here out to PvP again.
I've left those followers behind now, even Garona the legendary follower, to rest after their exertions in Draenor... or maybe they are stuck in a different timeline or something. Who knows?!
Fear not though, I quickly started gathering more followers to my cause back on Azeroth!
Despite my notable achievements on multiple worlds, I could only muster a grand total of 8 followers so they will have to work extremely hard to match their Draenor counterparts.
Off you go guys, bring me some loot!
Oh, you've brought me an egg! Where do I equip it?
What... you want me to go and raid with it??
Ok, I suppose I am raiding anyway so just this once...
But it didn't end there!
Dungeon after dungeon, raid after raid, I am being sent out to gather my own loot!
Every time I get back, they have another vicious beast for me to kill.
I am an adventurer though, killing vicious beasts is my speciality! Well... killing vicious beasts and collecting squirrels, apparently.
So the cycle continued... I sent my followers out, they came back and sent me out...
Until... they decided to up the ante. They sent me out to do PvP!!!
Four days that quest sat in my quest log but I couldn't ignore it forever so, with more than a little trepidation, I queued for a random battleground.
My PvP experience consists mainly of a brief foray into 2v2 with my friend playing his Fury Warrior towards the end of MoP. We were routinely slaughtered, usually whilst stunned, and finished with a rating... well, I can't remember exactly what it was so let's just call it a low rating.
My biggest problem was dealing with melee, it felt like I was constantly stunned or interrupted and barely got a cast off before I died.
It wasn't much fun to be honest, I like to actually play my shaman.
So this time round I devised a fiendishly cunning plan for dealing with melee... I was going to stay away from them!
Not really possible in 2v2 arena but in a battleground I can just hide at the back!
And it worked! Sometimes.
PvP as an Elemental Shaman is great fun but it is definitely not easy!
It works as a strange game of cat and mouse...
I would stay at max distance and just tickle them with a Flame Shock and a couple of Lightning Bolts.
If that didn't attract too much attention, I would start to unload the Lava Bursts.
This would hopefully build up enough Maelstrom for when their attention inevitably turned my way.
At that point... I would run away!
Blizzard has blessed us with some great tools for running away.
Icefury is fantastic, hugely buffing Frost Shock, giving us the ability to simultaneously run away, do some decent damage and slow the enemy!
Stormkeeper gives us 3 more instant cast spells which actually hit for a decent amount too.
The crowning glory though, the spell that has actually led to me immensely enjoying my latest foray into PvP, is Gust of Wind.
For those of you poor, non-shaman types out there, this is basically a forwards version of a Hunter's Disengage.
It might not seem like much, Mages and Druids have better, Disengage is arguably better itself, but it is the movement spell we have been crying out for... and it is so much fun to use!
I have been using it everywhere all expansion long but, in a PvP context, it gives us the ability to run away. I don't always make it, I've been stunned in mid-air more than once, but I feel like there is at least the possibility of escape when those pesky melee catch up with me.
Don't expect any guides popping up in this neck of the woods any time soon but I'll be sure to let you know how I get on next time my followers send Brave Sir Robin here out to PvP again.
Monday 31 October 2016
Mythic Progress Up and Running...
Expectation is quite high in the guild this expansion, with clearing Mythic while it is still current content being the main aim.
We made the first big step to wards that goal this week!
Heroic was cleared with relative ease, taking less than 2 hours with a break in the middle. SpiderBird is still a mess but the rest are no problem at all.
That left us with an hour to have a go at Nythendra Mythic!
As is the way with Mythic fights now, it is pretty much the same as Normal/Heroic but with a twist to add complexity (and a boat-load of extra damage, of course).
The twist for Nythendra is that she will periodically mind control anyone with 10 or more stacks of the rot debuff. Thankfully, this wipes the slate clean and you can start again.
As there is no other way to actually drop the Rot debuff, it means that, sooner or later, everyone will be mind-controlled.
Dealing with this is straight-forward enough... everyone stacks just before the MC comes in and we AoE to break them out.
The key to the fight becomes making sure that there are never too many people MC'ed at the same time.
In an amazing turn-around from everything I have ever learned about raiding, this involves people deliberately standing in the bad stuff to push their stacks higher!
The best part of this whole mechanic is that it is up to the individual player to work out when to push their stacks and when to hold back. You have to be aware, not just of your own stacks, but of most of the raid's stacks too, and make a judgement call in the space of a few seconds before the MC.
I love this kind of personal responsibility in fights!
Needless to say, we got this wrong quite a few times :-)
The results varied wildly, sometimes as few as 1 person MCed and, at other times, around 10!
Eventually we got it under some semblance of control, mainly by pushing earlier and earlier to get people cleared in the first round of MCs.
We were still a bit short though and it looked like we were going to miss out on the kill. While we were improving all the time with the MCs, it seemed to be the Heroic mechanics holding us back!
Too many times we would come out of a dancing phase with a few people dead... or just surviving but with very high stacks, making the next MC phase impossible.
There was some debate as to the cause...
Was it people just not being good enough at dancing?
Was it people just getting unlucky?
Was it just too much damage?
I would like to say that people should just be better at dancing but I know from experience, sometimes it just feels like those bugs are out to get you!
It is like something from a cartoon nightmare, giant bugs rising up everywhere you turn, herding you towards inevitable death... that's my excuse anyway.
In the end, whether it was preventable or not, it was decided that there was too much damage for our 4 healers so our priest switched to his Disc spec to help out.
It gave us the breathing space we needed and two attempts later, on our 'famous last go', Nythendra lay dead at our feet!
Nythendra turned out to be a really fun fight. The added mechanic was enough to set it well apart from the heroic version and even allowed a moment for the Elemental Shaman to shine by using our artefact ability to great effect.
Stormkeeper buffs the next 3 lightning spells by 200% (also now makes them instant!) so timing it's use with the mind controls was incredible! With a bit of luck (there is a LOT of luck in shaman AoE), it would break everyone out in a single cast!
The huge effect it had was shown when I looked at the logs and compared to the other Ele Shaman in our guild. He had used his artefact ability on cooldown to maximise the number of uses.
Fair enough in a purely single target fight but Stormkeeper is far more effective with Chain Lightning than Lightning Bolt... I ended up doing over 11 million more damage with the affected spells on each attempt, despite only using it 5 times compared to his 7.
I told him my findings so expect it to be a lot closer next time :-)
Tonight, if we can gather 20 people (more on that another time), we are going for SpiderBird!
With it being an absolute clusterf*ck on Heroic, it should be fun :-)
We made the first big step to wards that goal this week!
Heroic was cleared with relative ease, taking less than 2 hours with a break in the middle. SpiderBird is still a mess but the rest are no problem at all.
That left us with an hour to have a go at Nythendra Mythic!
As is the way with Mythic fights now, it is pretty much the same as Normal/Heroic but with a twist to add complexity (and a boat-load of extra damage, of course).
The twist for Nythendra is that she will periodically mind control anyone with 10 or more stacks of the rot debuff. Thankfully, this wipes the slate clean and you can start again.
As there is no other way to actually drop the Rot debuff, it means that, sooner or later, everyone will be mind-controlled.
Dealing with this is straight-forward enough... everyone stacks just before the MC comes in and we AoE to break them out.
The key to the fight becomes making sure that there are never too many people MC'ed at the same time.
In an amazing turn-around from everything I have ever learned about raiding, this involves people deliberately standing in the bad stuff to push their stacks higher!
The best part of this whole mechanic is that it is up to the individual player to work out when to push their stacks and when to hold back. You have to be aware, not just of your own stacks, but of most of the raid's stacks too, and make a judgement call in the space of a few seconds before the MC.
I love this kind of personal responsibility in fights!
Needless to say, we got this wrong quite a few times :-)
The results varied wildly, sometimes as few as 1 person MCed and, at other times, around 10!
Eventually we got it under some semblance of control, mainly by pushing earlier and earlier to get people cleared in the first round of MCs.
We were still a bit short though and it looked like we were going to miss out on the kill. While we were improving all the time with the MCs, it seemed to be the Heroic mechanics holding us back!
Too many times we would come out of a dancing phase with a few people dead... or just surviving but with very high stacks, making the next MC phase impossible.
There was some debate as to the cause...
Was it people just not being good enough at dancing?
Was it people just getting unlucky?
Was it just too much damage?
I would like to say that people should just be better at dancing but I know from experience, sometimes it just feels like those bugs are out to get you!
It is like something from a cartoon nightmare, giant bugs rising up everywhere you turn, herding you towards inevitable death... that's my excuse anyway.
In the end, whether it was preventable or not, it was decided that there was too much damage for our 4 healers so our priest switched to his Disc spec to help out.
It gave us the breathing space we needed and two attempts later, on our 'famous last go', Nythendra lay dead at our feet!
Nythendra turned out to be a really fun fight. The added mechanic was enough to set it well apart from the heroic version and even allowed a moment for the Elemental Shaman to shine by using our artefact ability to great effect.
Stormkeeper buffs the next 3 lightning spells by 200% (also now makes them instant!) so timing it's use with the mind controls was incredible! With a bit of luck (there is a LOT of luck in shaman AoE), it would break everyone out in a single cast!
The huge effect it had was shown when I looked at the logs and compared to the other Ele Shaman in our guild. He had used his artefact ability on cooldown to maximise the number of uses.
Fair enough in a purely single target fight but Stormkeeper is far more effective with Chain Lightning than Lightning Bolt... I ended up doing over 11 million more damage with the affected spells on each attempt, despite only using it 5 times compared to his 7.
I told him my findings so expect it to be a lot closer next time :-)
Tonight, if we can gather 20 people (more on that another time), we are going for SpiderBird!
With it being an absolute clusterf*ck on Heroic, it should be fun :-)
Thursday 27 October 2016
Being a Draenei Finally Pays Off...
I've never really paid much attention to the racial perks.
I've almost exclusively played on Alliance so missed the exciting ones like Berzerking. Even my human rogue barely used his Every Man For Himself as I've never been much into PvP.
Suddenly, and quite surprisingly, in Legion I have found myself incredibly thankful to be a Draenei!
I lost count of the number of times I used Gift of the Naaru whilst levelling, it without doubt saved my life countless times against rares or bad pulls. I still use it now while I am out doing WQs to reduce downtime and even in the raid for a free, instant-cast heal.
Gift of the Naaru is not the real reason I am thankful to be a Draenei though, can you guess what is?
+10 Jewelcrafting!
Yep, that's right. +10 JC has been incredible for me!
The profession overhaul has been met with mixed reviews... personally, I love it!
Fun little questlines and amusing NPCs add some depth and flavour to the usual grind to the next cap, do daily cd, gather recipes etc.
Jabrul crashing his way into the serene JC shop in Dalaran still brings a smile to my face :-)
With the usual start of expansion drain on raw materials, having two crafting professions (JC/ENCH) on my main made it extremely expensive to level them. Enchanting wasn't too bad in the beginning, having HFC raid gear meant every drop and quest reward was disenchanted for the first few levels.
Jewelcrafting though, was a bit of a nightmare.
The new prospecting method meant that you often didn't receive any gems at all, just some practically worthless Gem Chips. With the price of the ore at 20g each for Leystone and 75g each for Felslate, it was quite an investment for potentially no gain.
Two things then happened at roughly the same time...
First, I decided to throw some gold at prospecting to see what the returns would be like. I wanted to work out what was going on with these gem chips and see just how many of the rare, valuable gems I would produce. So I spent around 100k split between the two types of ore and prospected it all away!
Second, my GM asked me to craft a load of gems and enchants to kit out the poorer members of the raid team. The guild would pay for me to level my professions!
GM: Hey mate, would you mind crafting a load of gems and enchants for the raid team? Take the money out of the guild back to buy the mats.
Me: (YES!YES!YES!YES!)... I'll see what I can do.
A captive market for my JC experimenting! :-)
I didn't make any profits from my own guild of course but using their gold to buy mats meant I could level up essentially free of charge, I even made them a little profit on the side selling the surplus.
All was good until my JC hit 780.
There were no (none. zilch. zero) recipes left that could increase my skill. I thought it must be a bug, tested out a couple of recipes with no luck, and scoured the internet for the answer.
There are 11 class-specific 815ilvl necklaces. The recipes were grey for me but, apparently, at rank 3 they were green... and the only way to level from 780 to 800!
These recipes were all hidden around the world or gated by long rep grinds and, even if you managed to find one, the materials were incredibly expensive.
I studied the list, the mats and the various drop places, until 1 stood out. The Druid neck recipe dropped from Shade of Xavius in Darkheart Thicket which I was running daily for the BiS trinket anyway, and the mats were predominantly the blue gems! Fantastic!
Nobody wants the blue gems anyway!
It only took me a couple more runs to get the recipe and it had by far the cheapest mats. By cheapest, you have to bear in mind it is all relative. It would still cost around 10k per craft and it would probably take around 40 (or more) crafts for those 20 skill levels.
400k for 20 skill levels!
And that was the cheapest one!
As it happens, I only needed 14! They only took me to 790 but the racial was enough to make it 800 and, at 800, is the holy grail of jewelcrafting... the Saber's Eye epic gem cuts!
Still expensive to craft, mats roughly costing 5k direct from the AH, but they sold almost instantly at 14-15k each! Even now, weeks into the expansion, they are selling for 10-11k each (albeit not quite as quickly).
The only reason I can think of to explain the price staying so high is the difficulty and expense of those last 20 levels.
People must not appreciate the riches that await you if you push through to the Saber's Eyes and it must seem like a huge obstacle. I hope they continue to shy away from it so the gold can continue to roll on in.
I may have to put up with weird hooves, tentacles on my face and my tail sticking through my cloak, but being a Draenei has finally paid off!
I've almost exclusively played on Alliance so missed the exciting ones like Berzerking. Even my human rogue barely used his Every Man For Himself as I've never been much into PvP.
Suddenly, and quite surprisingly, in Legion I have found myself incredibly thankful to be a Draenei!
I lost count of the number of times I used Gift of the Naaru whilst levelling, it without doubt saved my life countless times against rares or bad pulls. I still use it now while I am out doing WQs to reduce downtime and even in the raid for a free, instant-cast heal.
Gift of the Naaru is not the real reason I am thankful to be a Draenei though, can you guess what is?
+10 Jewelcrafting!
Yep, that's right. +10 JC has been incredible for me!
The profession overhaul has been met with mixed reviews... personally, I love it!
Fun little questlines and amusing NPCs add some depth and flavour to the usual grind to the next cap, do daily cd, gather recipes etc.
Jabrul crashing his way into the serene JC shop in Dalaran still brings a smile to my face :-)
With the usual start of expansion drain on raw materials, having two crafting professions (JC/ENCH) on my main made it extremely expensive to level them. Enchanting wasn't too bad in the beginning, having HFC raid gear meant every drop and quest reward was disenchanted for the first few levels.
Jewelcrafting though, was a bit of a nightmare.
The new prospecting method meant that you often didn't receive any gems at all, just some practically worthless Gem Chips. With the price of the ore at 20g each for Leystone and 75g each for Felslate, it was quite an investment for potentially no gain.
Two things then happened at roughly the same time...
First, I decided to throw some gold at prospecting to see what the returns would be like. I wanted to work out what was going on with these gem chips and see just how many of the rare, valuable gems I would produce. So I spent around 100k split between the two types of ore and prospected it all away!
Second, my GM asked me to craft a load of gems and enchants to kit out the poorer members of the raid team. The guild would pay for me to level my professions!
GM: Hey mate, would you mind crafting a load of gems and enchants for the raid team? Take the money out of the guild back to buy the mats.
Me: (YES!YES!YES!YES!)... I'll see what I can do.
A captive market for my JC experimenting! :-)
I didn't make any profits from my own guild of course but using their gold to buy mats meant I could level up essentially free of charge, I even made them a little profit on the side selling the surplus.
All was good until my JC hit 780.
There were no (none. zilch. zero) recipes left that could increase my skill. I thought it must be a bug, tested out a couple of recipes with no luck, and scoured the internet for the answer.
There are 11 class-specific 815ilvl necklaces. The recipes were grey for me but, apparently, at rank 3 they were green... and the only way to level from 780 to 800!
These recipes were all hidden around the world or gated by long rep grinds and, even if you managed to find one, the materials were incredibly expensive.
I studied the list, the mats and the various drop places, until 1 stood out. The Druid neck recipe dropped from Shade of Xavius in Darkheart Thicket which I was running daily for the BiS trinket anyway, and the mats were predominantly the blue gems! Fantastic!
Nobody wants the blue gems anyway!
It only took me a couple more runs to get the recipe and it had by far the cheapest mats. By cheapest, you have to bear in mind it is all relative. It would still cost around 10k per craft and it would probably take around 40 (or more) crafts for those 20 skill levels.
400k for 20 skill levels!
And that was the cheapest one!
As it happens, I only needed 14! They only took me to 790 but the racial was enough to make it 800 and, at 800, is the holy grail of jewelcrafting... the Saber's Eye epic gem cuts!
Still expensive to craft, mats roughly costing 5k direct from the AH, but they sold almost instantly at 14-15k each! Even now, weeks into the expansion, they are selling for 10-11k each (albeit not quite as quickly).
The only reason I can think of to explain the price staying so high is the difficulty and expense of those last 20 levels.
People must not appreciate the riches that await you if you push through to the Saber's Eyes and it must seem like a huge obstacle. I hope they continue to shy away from it so the gold can continue to roll on in.
I may have to put up with weird hooves, tentacles on my face and my tail sticking through my cloak, but being a Draenei has finally paid off!
Tuesday 25 October 2016
More Elemental Buffs...
New patch, new buffs!
Not many this time so this will be brief.
15% buff to Earth Shock.
Pretty small buff to our single target damage, equating to about a 1% increase overall.
Earth Shock is in a pretty strange place at the moment. It is supposed to be our big Maelstrom spender but, unless it crits, it feels incredibly weak.
15% sounds quite substantial but I think it is just to keep it ahead of Earthquake in our single target rotation, which shows just how weak it is currently!
Stormkeeper tweaks.
The live version is an instant cast spell that buffs the next 3 Lightning Bolts or Chain Lightnings.
The new version is a 1.5 second cast that still buffs the next 3 lightning spells but ALSO makes them instant cast!
Now this is a change I really like!
It's not massive but it helps us in two of our weakest areas, target-switching and movement, while also adding some depth and decision-making to the gameplay.
The Stormkeeper buff doesn't really amount to a lot on Lightning Bolt so it can be used to manage movement a little easier with some planning. There's a lot of RNG involved in working out at what point using it for movement is a gain even if you end up missing out on a cast over the fight, I'll leave that to the mathemagicians.
It will definitely be useful though. Off the top of my head, I'm thinking of the repositioning on Ursoc and running to cleanse on Cenarius but I'm sure there will be many more opportunities.
The main strength of Stormkeeper is using it with Chain Lightning, particularly alongside Lightning Rod. The synergy of these spells is incredible!
(Progressing on Nythendra Mythic in our last raid, I was lining up Stormkeeper for as many of the mind controls as possible. If I timed it perfectly, with my CL cast finishing just as everyone turned hostile, it was awesome!)
Shaman AoE - Also in a strange place at the moment.
There are so many random factors that go into our AoE that it is either completely underwhelming or utterly devastating, and everything in between. I'll go into that more another time.
The other use of the buff is here, burst AoE.
Shaman has pretty good AoE after the last round of buffs but the ramp-up time means it has very few uses in raiding. Now we have burst AoE on a 1 minute cooldown, very handy for things like the MCs on Nythendra or the Bloods on EyeTree boss.
That is the trade-off of course, we can't use it for movement and save it for AoE phases so it will need some planning for each fight.
There's nothing wrong with that though, having real, impactful decisions to make is often what makes the game interesting.
Will the buffs make any difference?
The overwhelming opinion of the shaman community is that the buffs are nowhere near big enough to make us competitive at the top level. Added to that, the classes and specs floundering alongside us at the bottom of the rankings are receiving much bigger buffs.
I'm not at the cutting edge and do ok in my raid team so I'm just happy with the playstyle improvements.
Not many this time so this will be brief.
15% buff to Earth Shock.
Pretty small buff to our single target damage, equating to about a 1% increase overall.
Earth Shock is in a pretty strange place at the moment. It is supposed to be our big Maelstrom spender but, unless it crits, it feels incredibly weak.
15% sounds quite substantial but I think it is just to keep it ahead of Earthquake in our single target rotation, which shows just how weak it is currently!
Stormkeeper tweaks.
The live version is an instant cast spell that buffs the next 3 Lightning Bolts or Chain Lightnings.
The new version is a 1.5 second cast that still buffs the next 3 lightning spells but ALSO makes them instant cast!
Now this is a change I really like!
It's not massive but it helps us in two of our weakest areas, target-switching and movement, while also adding some depth and decision-making to the gameplay.
The Stormkeeper buff doesn't really amount to a lot on Lightning Bolt so it can be used to manage movement a little easier with some planning. There's a lot of RNG involved in working out at what point using it for movement is a gain even if you end up missing out on a cast over the fight, I'll leave that to the mathemagicians.
It will definitely be useful though. Off the top of my head, I'm thinking of the repositioning on Ursoc and running to cleanse on Cenarius but I'm sure there will be many more opportunities.
The main strength of Stormkeeper is using it with Chain Lightning, particularly alongside Lightning Rod. The synergy of these spells is incredible!
(Progressing on Nythendra Mythic in our last raid, I was lining up Stormkeeper for as many of the mind controls as possible. If I timed it perfectly, with my CL cast finishing just as everyone turned hostile, it was awesome!)
Shaman AoE - Also in a strange place at the moment.
There are so many random factors that go into our AoE that it is either completely underwhelming or utterly devastating, and everything in between. I'll go into that more another time.
The other use of the buff is here, burst AoE.
Shaman has pretty good AoE after the last round of buffs but the ramp-up time means it has very few uses in raiding. Now we have burst AoE on a 1 minute cooldown, very handy for things like the MCs on Nythendra or the Bloods on EyeTree boss.
That is the trade-off of course, we can't use it for movement and save it for AoE phases so it will need some planning for each fight.
There's nothing wrong with that though, having real, impactful decisions to make is often what makes the game interesting.
Will the buffs make any difference?
The overwhelming opinion of the shaman community is that the buffs are nowhere near big enough to make us competitive at the top level. Added to that, the classes and specs floundering alongside us at the bottom of the rankings are receiving much bigger buffs.
I'm not at the cutting edge and do ok in my raid team so I'm just happy with the playstyle improvements.
Friday 21 October 2016
Xavius...
The final boss of the first raid, who has taunted and menaced us throughout Val'sharah, has been considered quite undertuned by most people.
I wondered if this opinion was based on the mythic 'race' to world first and didn't really apply to us mere mortal raiders.
I'm not even convinced it applies to Exorsus et al who approached this boss with unprecedented gear levels for early expansion content.
We are used to seeing the world first race fought in dungeon blues with a smattering of raid gear, this time the winners were fully decked out in mythic+ gear better than heroic raid level!
If the current gearing model continues, this could spell the end of the world first race as we know it, with the number of Mythic keystones the top guilds can lay their hands on being more important than raid performance.
Even now, a lot of the wonder has gone for me. I used to be astounded that they could produce such amazing results from such meagre gear, I used to know those players were just flat out better than me! Now though, it's all about the gear... honest :-P
World first races aside, the rest of us are just plodding along at our own pace.
So how did you find Xavius?
I still haven't worked out what the whole grey room thing is about, I really should pay more attention. Nobbel has a Xavius lore video out so maybe that will shed some light on it.
The main mechanic (gimmick?) of the fight is Corruption. It's mostly your typical 'don't stand in the bad stuff' check but it has some really nice aspects that set it apart with further mechanics being introduced as your corruption rises.
At 33% giant corruptors appear at the edges of the room and occasionally throw out balls of corruption which cover about a third of the floor.
At 66% there are even more adds which throw smaller balls of corruption but much more frequently and they can land anyway, often making you dance to stay alive.
At 100% corruption you briefly become more powerful until you succumb to the corruption and it controls you, forcing your friends to kill you.
I particularly like how it affects each individual separately rather than the whole raid, you can't even see the mechanics affecting the other people until 100% corruption, and how this then plays out with the other positional mechanics.
On top of the accidental corruption, there are some mechanics to deal with that are guaranteed to give you corruption.
This is where the 'dream' state comes in...
Half the raid are pulled into the dream state which has no effect that I can tell apart from resetting your corruption when you wake up and return to the real (nightmare?) world.
It has the nice bonus of resetting your cooldowns too.
All corruption mechanics should therefore be dealt with by these people as it will be reset, and this makes the fight much more interesting. Reaching 100% corruption in the dream state even gives you the power boost and you return to the real world instead of being mind-controlled when it ends.
This is much more difficult than it sounds though, I've tried to reach 100% in phase 1 but there doesn't seem to be enough corruption to go around!
Phase 2 is probably the most interesting but the hardest to deal with as a shaman. It's the old weaknesses coming to the fore again... low health adds and high movement. I'm always tempted to ignore the adds, they die so quickly that it hardly seems worth switching to them and some classes are just so much better suited to killing them than the elemental shaman.
Our raid leader rages about switching to the adds all through the phase. They die almost instantly so it's never an issue, soaking the pools they leave behind is the only issue that really comes up, but the raging continues.
It's quite amusing to be honest :-)
Phase 3 is just a straight sprint to the finish line. Can you kill him before he kills you or too many people are mind-controlled?
For some reason, one of our healers is always mind-controlled quite early. It's always the same guy, no idea what he's doing wrong but his corruption just rises so much faster than everyone else's.
We killed Xavius on heroic for the first time on Monday then repeated it on Wednesday as part of a full heroic clear.
Our first kill... Xavius Heroic
How does Xavius compare to other 'final' bosses?
Visually, he is far superior. Even in a grey, featureless room, the fight looks fantastic! It is almost the antithesis of the grand arenas from MoP's Mogu'shan Vaults but it uses that bland background as a blank canvas.
Demons from your nightmares slowly march from the fog, while others stay on the periphery as ghostly images to assault you from afar.
It's all done superbly and adds to the nightmare feel of the instance.
While it appears to draw mechanics from some past bosses, corruption/mind control from Cho'gall in BoT being the most obvious but not the only one, there is enough of a twist to keep them fresh.
Unfortunately, it doesn't offer the same challenge as any final bosses that spring to mind...
Even if we just stick to the first raid from each expansion, how does the challenge measure up?
Highmaul - Imperator Margok? A gruelling fight
Mogu'shan Vaults - Will of the Emperor? Arguably similar but we also had to contend with Empress Shek'zeer and Sha of Fear.
Cataclysm - Cho'gall, Al'Akir and Nefarian? Not even close.
You might have to go all the way back to Kel'thuzad in Naxx'ramas for a comparable challenge.
Am I judging it too harshly though?
Are we over-gearing it much as Exorsus over-geared the mythic version?
Am I just better now than when I failed all those many, many times on Nefarian?
Probably yes to all three.
Bring on the Mythic!
I wondered if this opinion was based on the mythic 'race' to world first and didn't really apply to us mere mortal raiders.
I'm not even convinced it applies to Exorsus et al who approached this boss with unprecedented gear levels for early expansion content.
We are used to seeing the world first race fought in dungeon blues with a smattering of raid gear, this time the winners were fully decked out in mythic+ gear better than heroic raid level!
If the current gearing model continues, this could spell the end of the world first race as we know it, with the number of Mythic keystones the top guilds can lay their hands on being more important than raid performance.
Even now, a lot of the wonder has gone for me. I used to be astounded that they could produce such amazing results from such meagre gear, I used to know those players were just flat out better than me! Now though, it's all about the gear... honest :-P
World first races aside, the rest of us are just plodding along at our own pace.
So how did you find Xavius?
I still haven't worked out what the whole grey room thing is about, I really should pay more attention. Nobbel has a Xavius lore video out so maybe that will shed some light on it.
The main mechanic (gimmick?) of the fight is Corruption. It's mostly your typical 'don't stand in the bad stuff' check but it has some really nice aspects that set it apart with further mechanics being introduced as your corruption rises.
At 33% giant corruptors appear at the edges of the room and occasionally throw out balls of corruption which cover about a third of the floor.
At 66% there are even more adds which throw smaller balls of corruption but much more frequently and they can land anyway, often making you dance to stay alive.
At 100% corruption you briefly become more powerful until you succumb to the corruption and it controls you, forcing your friends to kill you.
I particularly like how it affects each individual separately rather than the whole raid, you can't even see the mechanics affecting the other people until 100% corruption, and how this then plays out with the other positional mechanics.
On top of the accidental corruption, there are some mechanics to deal with that are guaranteed to give you corruption.
This is where the 'dream' state comes in...
Half the raid are pulled into the dream state which has no effect that I can tell apart from resetting your corruption when you wake up and return to the real (nightmare?) world.
It has the nice bonus of resetting your cooldowns too.
All corruption mechanics should therefore be dealt with by these people as it will be reset, and this makes the fight much more interesting. Reaching 100% corruption in the dream state even gives you the power boost and you return to the real world instead of being mind-controlled when it ends.
This is much more difficult than it sounds though, I've tried to reach 100% in phase 1 but there doesn't seem to be enough corruption to go around!
Phase 2 is probably the most interesting but the hardest to deal with as a shaman. It's the old weaknesses coming to the fore again... low health adds and high movement. I'm always tempted to ignore the adds, they die so quickly that it hardly seems worth switching to them and some classes are just so much better suited to killing them than the elemental shaman.
Our raid leader rages about switching to the adds all through the phase. They die almost instantly so it's never an issue, soaking the pools they leave behind is the only issue that really comes up, but the raging continues.
It's quite amusing to be honest :-)
Phase 3 is just a straight sprint to the finish line. Can you kill him before he kills you or too many people are mind-controlled?
For some reason, one of our healers is always mind-controlled quite early. It's always the same guy, no idea what he's doing wrong but his corruption just rises so much faster than everyone else's.
We killed Xavius on heroic for the first time on Monday then repeated it on Wednesday as part of a full heroic clear.
Our first kill... Xavius Heroic
How does Xavius compare to other 'final' bosses?
Visually, he is far superior. Even in a grey, featureless room, the fight looks fantastic! It is almost the antithesis of the grand arenas from MoP's Mogu'shan Vaults but it uses that bland background as a blank canvas.
Demons from your nightmares slowly march from the fog, while others stay on the periphery as ghostly images to assault you from afar.
It's all done superbly and adds to the nightmare feel of the instance.
While it appears to draw mechanics from some past bosses, corruption/mind control from Cho'gall in BoT being the most obvious but not the only one, there is enough of a twist to keep them fresh.
Unfortunately, it doesn't offer the same challenge as any final bosses that spring to mind...
Even if we just stick to the first raid from each expansion, how does the challenge measure up?
Highmaul - Imperator Margok? A gruelling fight
Mogu'shan Vaults - Will of the Emperor? Arguably similar but we also had to contend with Empress Shek'zeer and Sha of Fear.
Cataclysm - Cho'gall, Al'Akir and Nefarian? Not even close.
You might have to go all the way back to Kel'thuzad in Naxx'ramas for a comparable challenge.
Am I judging it too harshly though?
Are we over-gearing it much as Exorsus over-geared the mythic version?
Am I just better now than when I failed all those many, many times on Nefarian?
Probably yes to all three.
Bring on the Mythic!
Tuesday 18 October 2016
The Emerald Nightmare... Style over Substance?
Ahead of the Curve: Xavius!
Visually striking from the outset, you can tell that a tremendous amount of effort has gone into the look and feel of Legion's opening raid and it is incredibly impressive.
The highlights include the corruption visibly flowing through Nythendra's body and the ghostly form of Ursoc swiping mercilessly at those who dawdle in the Miasma void zones.
Even Xavius, which is set in an empty grey space (if someone could tell me what all that is about I would appreciate it), has nightmare images coalescing in the fog to quite chilling effect.
Unfortunately, the innovation doesn't stretch to the fights themselves which are, for the most part, a little unimaginative. I'm still enjoying the raiding immensely but I think that is more down to the fun group of raiders we have than the raid itself.
There are a couple of notable exceptions...
Elerethe Renferal (aka - SpiderBird, SpiderBird, Does whatever a SpiderBird does!) is a fantastic fight!
I can't even put my finger on why I enjoy it so much... it might be the personal responsibility aspect of the fight... or it could be the variety of mechanics... or it could be the complete and utter mayhem when it all goes wrong :-)
Crossing the web 'bridges' without hitting the eggs or tornadoes is a challenge in itself for most of our team but it's on the second platform that we tend to lose our shape and positional sense, particularly when it comes to the tornadoes.
A poorly placed tornado can spell disaster for the raid but even if they are all placed perfectly, it can still go downhill spectacularly fast.
You are forced to watch impotently as a wilful tornado slowly wends it's way across the room towards the (also perfectly placed) pools of Necrotic Venom, praying that it alters course before reaching them... I imagine it laughing at our prayers as it careers into the venom, flinging it all over the raid.
Malicious tornadoes and the laughable ineptitude of some of our raiders when it comes to crossing those bridges has meant that each time we have killed this boss, half the team has been dead! Even on our kill video recorded by the GM, he is dead for the last 30%
Cenarius also stands out for me... I've always enjoyed fights like this, where you have some control over how it plays out and can adapt it to your raid's strengths and weaknesses. Yeah yeah whatever, we just do what Fatboss tells us to do anyway :-)
While the other fights feel a little shallow they look fantastic, I can't help feeling that most of the design focus was on the spectacle rather than the experience.
If it was, they certainly excelled themselves but I'm hoping the fights really come to life in Mythic!
Visually striking from the outset, you can tell that a tremendous amount of effort has gone into the look and feel of Legion's opening raid and it is incredibly impressive.
The highlights include the corruption visibly flowing through Nythendra's body and the ghostly form of Ursoc swiping mercilessly at those who dawdle in the Miasma void zones.
Even Xavius, which is set in an empty grey space (if someone could tell me what all that is about I would appreciate it), has nightmare images coalescing in the fog to quite chilling effect.
Unfortunately, the innovation doesn't stretch to the fights themselves which are, for the most part, a little unimaginative. I'm still enjoying the raiding immensely but I think that is more down to the fun group of raiders we have than the raid itself.
There are a couple of notable exceptions...
Elerethe Renferal (aka - SpiderBird, SpiderBird, Does whatever a SpiderBird does!) is a fantastic fight!
I can't even put my finger on why I enjoy it so much... it might be the personal responsibility aspect of the fight... or it could be the variety of mechanics... or it could be the complete and utter mayhem when it all goes wrong :-)
Crossing the web 'bridges' without hitting the eggs or tornadoes is a challenge in itself for most of our team but it's on the second platform that we tend to lose our shape and positional sense, particularly when it comes to the tornadoes.
A poorly placed tornado can spell disaster for the raid but even if they are all placed perfectly, it can still go downhill spectacularly fast.
You are forced to watch impotently as a wilful tornado slowly wends it's way across the room towards the (also perfectly placed) pools of Necrotic Venom, praying that it alters course before reaching them... I imagine it laughing at our prayers as it careers into the venom, flinging it all over the raid.
Malicious tornadoes and the laughable ineptitude of some of our raiders when it comes to crossing those bridges has meant that each time we have killed this boss, half the team has been dead! Even on our kill video recorded by the GM, he is dead for the last 30%
Cenarius also stands out for me... I've always enjoyed fights like this, where you have some control over how it plays out and can adapt it to your raid's strengths and weaknesses. Yeah yeah whatever, we just do what Fatboss tells us to do anyway :-)
While the other fights feel a little shallow they look fantastic, I can't help feeling that most of the design focus was on the spectacle rather than the experience.
If it was, they certainly excelled themselves but I'm hoping the fights really come to life in Mythic!
Wednesday 28 September 2016
Shaman buffs Incoming...
Just a quick post about the upcoming changes in the balancing hotfix this week...
As you (and everyone else who would listen to me) know, I thought the Elemental Shaman was 'slightly underpowered' going into the first raid.
Well, it looks like Blizzard agrees :-)
World of Logs released their rankings based on the first week of raiding with only Frost Mage and Subtlety Rogue sat below the Elemental Shaman. Those can be explained to a certain extent by the fact that almost all of the top players for those classes will have switched to the incredibly powerful Fire and Outlaw specs, an option not really open to the Elemental Shaman.
Anyway, quite substantial buffs coming in which go some way to bridging the gap to around the middle of the pack. Other specs in the lower half of the rankings are also receiving buffs so we might not actually climb so high up the rankings but the difference should be a lot smaller.
The buffs are interesting because they illustrate the synergy between certain spells in the Shaman toolkit.
Chain Lightning damage increased by 23% - A flat damage buff, which is always nice.
Chain Lightning maelstrom generation increased from 4 to 6 per jump - it might seem like a small point but this has a big impact on AoE ramp-up time. At 5+ targets, even if you are horrendously unlucky with Mastery procs, it only takes two casts to generate enough maelstrom for an EQ Totem.
In practice, there will always be Mastery procs and it should take even less time to get those EQ Totems out... If you are really lucky with procs, it can take just one cast of CL to reach the 50 Maelstrom required.
And to help out... Mastery effects increased by 12.5% - I am going to assume this is on the proc chance rather than the damage as that seems more in line with Blizzard's normal thinking.
Already, it is fairly clear that these buffs are greater than the sum of their individual parts.
More CL damage translates to more overload damage, happening more frequently due to the Mastery buff and generating more resources thanks to the maelstrom buff.
A substantial increase in our AoE dps already but it also increases the power of our artefact trait and the viability of some of our talents.
The artefact trait boosts the damage of our Chain Lightning and Lightning Bolt so an obvious increase there.
The talent options are also quite interesting...
Lightning Rod was already good on cleave fights, also applying a portion of CL/LB damage to the affected target. It's difficult to maximise it's effectiveness during play, I think it could do with a small increase to it's duration, but more CL damage obviously means more damage is transferred.
I am wondering if Aftershock, which refunds 25% of all Maelstrom spent on any cast, becomes more viable on fights which have enough AoE to merit EQ Totems. In theory it should be good, but practical uses of it might be few and far between due to the nature of raid fights. Sustained AoE is just not really needed right now.
It might work out to be a better choice in Mythic+ dungeons though, where trash packs are generally more dangerous than bosses and sustained AoE is needed much more often.
The final two buffs relate to our single target damage, 23% increase to Lightning Bolt and 5% increase to Lava burst.
We had decent burst but it relied on using 3 specific talents and stacking all cooldowns (Elemental Mastery, Primal Fire Elemental and Ascendance). Outside of these cooldowns, we felt particularly weak so these buffs go some way to addressing that issue.
The Lightning Bolt increase benefits from the same synergies as CL which means Lightning Rod becomes even more viable, particularly if you can't guarantee a 15 second window with no movement for Ascendance.
Lava Burst on the other hand, doesn't really synergise with anything, not based on damage anyway, so this is just a straight buff to our single target damage.
Overall, the buffs are extremely positive. It won't catapult us to the top of the rankings but, if all of the class buffs work as intended, there should be a lot shorter distance between top and bottom.
I'm looking forward to testing it out in tonight's raid!
See you soon!
As you (and everyone else who would listen to me) know, I thought the Elemental Shaman was 'slightly underpowered' going into the first raid.
Well, it looks like Blizzard agrees :-)
World of Logs released their rankings based on the first week of raiding with only Frost Mage and Subtlety Rogue sat below the Elemental Shaman. Those can be explained to a certain extent by the fact that almost all of the top players for those classes will have switched to the incredibly powerful Fire and Outlaw specs, an option not really open to the Elemental Shaman.
Anyway, quite substantial buffs coming in which go some way to bridging the gap to around the middle of the pack. Other specs in the lower half of the rankings are also receiving buffs so we might not actually climb so high up the rankings but the difference should be a lot smaller.
The buffs are interesting because they illustrate the synergy between certain spells in the Shaman toolkit.
Chain Lightning damage increased by 23% - A flat damage buff, which is always nice.
Chain Lightning maelstrom generation increased from 4 to 6 per jump - it might seem like a small point but this has a big impact on AoE ramp-up time. At 5+ targets, even if you are horrendously unlucky with Mastery procs, it only takes two casts to generate enough maelstrom for an EQ Totem.
In practice, there will always be Mastery procs and it should take even less time to get those EQ Totems out... If you are really lucky with procs, it can take just one cast of CL to reach the 50 Maelstrom required.
And to help out... Mastery effects increased by 12.5% - I am going to assume this is on the proc chance rather than the damage as that seems more in line with Blizzard's normal thinking.
Already, it is fairly clear that these buffs are greater than the sum of their individual parts.
More CL damage translates to more overload damage, happening more frequently due to the Mastery buff and generating more resources thanks to the maelstrom buff.
A substantial increase in our AoE dps already but it also increases the power of our artefact trait and the viability of some of our talents.
The artefact trait boosts the damage of our Chain Lightning and Lightning Bolt so an obvious increase there.
The talent options are also quite interesting...
Lightning Rod was already good on cleave fights, also applying a portion of CL/LB damage to the affected target. It's difficult to maximise it's effectiveness during play, I think it could do with a small increase to it's duration, but more CL damage obviously means more damage is transferred.
I am wondering if Aftershock, which refunds 25% of all Maelstrom spent on any cast, becomes more viable on fights which have enough AoE to merit EQ Totems. In theory it should be good, but practical uses of it might be few and far between due to the nature of raid fights. Sustained AoE is just not really needed right now.
It might work out to be a better choice in Mythic+ dungeons though, where trash packs are generally more dangerous than bosses and sustained AoE is needed much more often.
The final two buffs relate to our single target damage, 23% increase to Lightning Bolt and 5% increase to Lava burst.
We had decent burst but it relied on using 3 specific talents and stacking all cooldowns (Elemental Mastery, Primal Fire Elemental and Ascendance). Outside of these cooldowns, we felt particularly weak so these buffs go some way to addressing that issue.
The Lightning Bolt increase benefits from the same synergies as CL which means Lightning Rod becomes even more viable, particularly if you can't guarantee a 15 second window with no movement for Ascendance.
Lava Burst on the other hand, doesn't really synergise with anything, not based on damage anyway, so this is just a straight buff to our single target damage.
Overall, the buffs are extremely positive. It won't catapult us to the top of the rankings but, if all of the class buffs work as intended, there should be a lot shorter distance between top and bottom.
I'm looking forward to testing it out in tonight's raid!
See you soon!
Friday 23 September 2016
Shaman Highs and Lows...
Okaaay... so I'm just going to pretend it hasn't been months since I last posted and crack on.
Everyone fine with that?
Good, let's go.
I was excited by the changes being brought in to the Elemental Shaman so happily agreed when my RL asked me if I would switch back to my shaman for Legion.
The Mage had been fun, and I had become quite attached to it, but it was only an alt after all.
The Shaman is my main, has been for a long time now, and these changes promised to go a long way towards solving the playstyle issues that had plagued us for years and robbed me of my enthusiasm for the class.
So how is the Legion Elemental Shaman?
First... the good.
There is only one word to describe the Shaman class order hall... Epic!
Much has been made of class fantasy in the lead up to this expansion and, in this case, they got it right to spectacular effect.
Hewn from the rock of the Maelstrom itself, with your artefact forge precariously perched on a sliver hanging out over the abyss, you are engulfed by the elements.
I haven't seen many of the other class order halls (only Mage, Rogue, DK so far) but I doubt any can match the sheer spectacle of the Shaman's new home.
It is breath-taking!
Which leads me nicely on to the class quests... I've said is before but probably my favourite (solo) content from WoW was the Fangs of the Father legendary questline for Rogues back in Cata.
When content is tailored to your class or spec in this way, it adds so much more depth. You can design based around a particular set of skills (insert Liam Neeson meme here) because you know they are available.
The Shaman quests were not designed to match the challenge of that legendary questline but they made up for that with some fantastic flavour and storytelling, again living up to this ideal of class fantasy.
It was so good it has made me re-think a plan I had to cut back on alts in this expansion. Now I want to see ALL the questlines!
The Talent Tree...
Some shaman have been quite vociferous in their complaints about the talent tree but I think that is more to do with tuning (more on that later) than the talents themselves.
There is so much flexibility with the talents it is astounding! You can build for virtually any playstyle you desire...
Want more AoE?
There are talents that refund maelstrom allowing more Earthquake totems, or have Lava Burst spread your Flame Shocks, or straight-up Magma Totem for an extra AoE spell.
Want more single target?
Ascendance is now a talent choice, Primal Elementalist is still here, Elemental Mastery for your own mini-Heroism on a 2-min cd.
Want more cleave?
Lightning Rod to make more of your Chain Lightning
An add that needs to die fast?
Pick Icefury to massively buff your Frost shock and just unload them as soon as the add spawns.
Need more instant spells to cover some movement?
Icefury again, having 4 big-hitting instant casts up your sleeve can be amazing for those times that Lava Surge just won't proc.
The options are almost endless and the whole tree offers some amazing flexibility.
Which brings me on to the bad...
Ability Tuning...
The base AoE of Elemental, Chain Lightning and Earthquake Totem, feels so incredibly weak that it often doesn't feel worth it to use them.
Earthquake Totem in particular, with it's 50 Maelstrom cost, just feels like wasted time and resources. You need multiple of them down at the same time (and 5+ targets to stay in them for the full duration) to gain any tangible benefit.
It just doesn't happen in a raid environment.
Any time you get enough adds to make it worthwhile they have very low HP, like the hands on Kormrok, and die very quickly to Bladestorm, Barrage etc.
I can't even think of an example where there are 5+ high-HP mobs in a fight all stacked together... maybe Nefarian back in Blackwing Descent but those adds were just kited anyway.
You may think the answer is to select talents that minimise this weakness, and we can improve our AoE to a certain extent, but it comes at the detriment of our single target damage.
The talents are in direct competition with each other, you can buff single target OR AoE OR Cleave. So you have to pick your poison depending on what is most important in a fight and stick with it.
Not necessarily a bad thing, and at least there are options, but a fight rarely stays as one type unless it is single target and even 'add fights' have a strong single target element to them.
And finally... Class Balance.
Not entirely confined to the Shaman but it certainly influences your choices heavily.
The single target burst build has been calculated as the best overall dps (no surprise given the weakness of CL/EQ) but even with all talents chosen to buff this gameplay, it still isn't close to being competitive with other dps specs.
All of those options in the talent tree for more movement, cleave, AoE, or whatever are a further dps loss compared to other classes.
It is so demoralising to feel like even your best option isn't good enough, even when you have thrown all the other tools away to focus on it.
Even levelling was a challenge at times, pulling multiple mobs or trying to solo a rare often resulting in death, or at the very least a protracted balancing act of healing, kiting and dps.
Everyone moans about their class, right? Buffs pls Blizz FFS!!!1!
Often the class is fine and it's the player that is lacking and maybe that's true for me but watch Naesam's heroic Xavius kill.
He gets the big dps buff in that fight and destroys it, posting the 2nd highest Elemental Shaman parse in the world... and finishes 13th on dps in his own raid group!
Summary...
The Elemental Shaman is still great fun to play and is visually stunning, as is it's class order hall. A couple of changes that have been made (Gust of Wind, removal of shock cd) have allowed for some fun kiting playstyles which weren't really open to us previously.
There is an incredible flexibility of playstyle available and you can tailor your Shaman to fit in with however you want to play.
However, in challenging content of any type, the Ele Shaman really struggles. Some of the issues could be solved with better class balancing but there are still gaping holes in the Shaman toolkit compared to other classes.
Particularly since I played the mage, saw the other side, these holes in the toolkit have caused me more and more frustration. So much so that, even if Blizzard suddenly buff our dps through the roof, I am seriously considering switching my main character.
Sad times.
In the next post, I will talk more about Legion itself and I promise it will be much more positive! Despite the disillusionment I have with the Shaman, I am still loving every minute of the expansion.
See you soon!
Everyone fine with that?
Good, let's go.
I was excited by the changes being brought in to the Elemental Shaman so happily agreed when my RL asked me if I would switch back to my shaman for Legion.
The Mage had been fun, and I had become quite attached to it, but it was only an alt after all.
The Shaman is my main, has been for a long time now, and these changes promised to go a long way towards solving the playstyle issues that had plagued us for years and robbed me of my enthusiasm for the class.
So how is the Legion Elemental Shaman?
First... the good.
There is only one word to describe the Shaman class order hall... Epic!
Much has been made of class fantasy in the lead up to this expansion and, in this case, they got it right to spectacular effect.
Hewn from the rock of the Maelstrom itself, with your artefact forge precariously perched on a sliver hanging out over the abyss, you are engulfed by the elements.
I haven't seen many of the other class order halls (only Mage, Rogue, DK so far) but I doubt any can match the sheer spectacle of the Shaman's new home.
It is breath-taking!
Which leads me nicely on to the class quests... I've said is before but probably my favourite (solo) content from WoW was the Fangs of the Father legendary questline for Rogues back in Cata.
When content is tailored to your class or spec in this way, it adds so much more depth. You can design based around a particular set of skills (insert Liam Neeson meme here) because you know they are available.
The Shaman quests were not designed to match the challenge of that legendary questline but they made up for that with some fantastic flavour and storytelling, again living up to this ideal of class fantasy.
It was so good it has made me re-think a plan I had to cut back on alts in this expansion. Now I want to see ALL the questlines!
The Talent Tree...
Some shaman have been quite vociferous in their complaints about the talent tree but I think that is more to do with tuning (more on that later) than the talents themselves.
There is so much flexibility with the talents it is astounding! You can build for virtually any playstyle you desire...
Want more AoE?
There are talents that refund maelstrom allowing more Earthquake totems, or have Lava Burst spread your Flame Shocks, or straight-up Magma Totem for an extra AoE spell.
Want more single target?
Ascendance is now a talent choice, Primal Elementalist is still here, Elemental Mastery for your own mini-Heroism on a 2-min cd.
Want more cleave?
Lightning Rod to make more of your Chain Lightning
An add that needs to die fast?
Pick Icefury to massively buff your Frost shock and just unload them as soon as the add spawns.
Need more instant spells to cover some movement?
Icefury again, having 4 big-hitting instant casts up your sleeve can be amazing for those times that Lava Surge just won't proc.
The options are almost endless and the whole tree offers some amazing flexibility.
Which brings me on to the bad...
Ability Tuning...
The base AoE of Elemental, Chain Lightning and Earthquake Totem, feels so incredibly weak that it often doesn't feel worth it to use them.
Earthquake Totem in particular, with it's 50 Maelstrom cost, just feels like wasted time and resources. You need multiple of them down at the same time (and 5+ targets to stay in them for the full duration) to gain any tangible benefit.
It just doesn't happen in a raid environment.
Any time you get enough adds to make it worthwhile they have very low HP, like the hands on Kormrok, and die very quickly to Bladestorm, Barrage etc.
I can't even think of an example where there are 5+ high-HP mobs in a fight all stacked together... maybe Nefarian back in Blackwing Descent but those adds were just kited anyway.
You may think the answer is to select talents that minimise this weakness, and we can improve our AoE to a certain extent, but it comes at the detriment of our single target damage.
The talents are in direct competition with each other, you can buff single target OR AoE OR Cleave. So you have to pick your poison depending on what is most important in a fight and stick with it.
Not necessarily a bad thing, and at least there are options, but a fight rarely stays as one type unless it is single target and even 'add fights' have a strong single target element to them.
And finally... Class Balance.
Not entirely confined to the Shaman but it certainly influences your choices heavily.
The single target burst build has been calculated as the best overall dps (no surprise given the weakness of CL/EQ) but even with all talents chosen to buff this gameplay, it still isn't close to being competitive with other dps specs.
All of those options in the talent tree for more movement, cleave, AoE, or whatever are a further dps loss compared to other classes.
It is so demoralising to feel like even your best option isn't good enough, even when you have thrown all the other tools away to focus on it.
Even levelling was a challenge at times, pulling multiple mobs or trying to solo a rare often resulting in death, or at the very least a protracted balancing act of healing, kiting and dps.
Everyone moans about their class, right? Buffs pls Blizz FFS!!!1!
Often the class is fine and it's the player that is lacking and maybe that's true for me but watch Naesam's heroic Xavius kill.
He gets the big dps buff in that fight and destroys it, posting the 2nd highest Elemental Shaman parse in the world... and finishes 13th on dps in his own raid group!
Summary...
The Elemental Shaman is still great fun to play and is visually stunning, as is it's class order hall. A couple of changes that have been made (Gust of Wind, removal of shock cd) have allowed for some fun kiting playstyles which weren't really open to us previously.
There is an incredible flexibility of playstyle available and you can tailor your Shaman to fit in with however you want to play.
However, in challenging content of any type, the Ele Shaman really struggles. Some of the issues could be solved with better class balancing but there are still gaping holes in the Shaman toolkit compared to other classes.
Particularly since I played the mage, saw the other side, these holes in the toolkit have caused me more and more frustration. So much so that, even if Blizzard suddenly buff our dps through the roof, I am seriously considering switching my main character.
Sad times.
In the next post, I will talk more about Legion itself and I promise it will be much more positive! Despite the disillusionment I have with the Shaman, I am still loving every minute of the expansion.
See you soon!
Monday 11 April 2016
Mythic Magery: Socrethar and Zakuun...
There seems to be so little to do in-game at the moment that I have hardly been playing at all.
As a consequence, my enthusiasm for writing about WoW has drained away too as I don't really feel like I have anything to write about.
I envy bloggers like Navi and Mrs. Alt who always seem to have something to say, and are entertaining with it too.
I could talk about the issues of the day but they rarely seem to affect me... who really wants to listen to my (white/male) opinions on Tracer's bum?
I don't care about her poses, sexy or not.
Her accent... that's the really irritating part! Can I claim to be offended by that?
So... it's just the raiding at the moment which, to be fair, has been going pretty well.
After bull-dozing our way through the wall of Gorefiend, we have been making short work of the Upper Citadel.
Iskar was permanently grounded with barely a whimper and the next two didn't offer much resistance either!
Socrethar...
The main changes to the fight come in the Construct phase.
Mostly it is more incoming damage to keep the healers busy, including a Fel Bomb that needs to be avoided. It's simple enough and easily healed through unless people stand directly under the bomb.
The other big change is a bit more interesting... The Voracious Soulstalker!
An add that fixates on the nearest player, chasing them down and using a deadly frontal cone attack. Sounds like a hunter job to me!
This add has 12M health so it is fairly substantial but, even with that health pool, the recognised strategy is to burn it down.
We don't do that.
At 50% HP the add heals back up to full health. To kill it, you need to stun it during the heal cast and finish it off.
Our leaders have deemed this to be too much hard work so we have a hunter kite it out of the way and CC it for the rest of the fight.
The only way we can get away with this is by killing the boss in one phase.
Thankfully, the Soul of Socrethar phase is almost exactly the same as Heroic with the only difference being 2 extra people affected by the Man'ari debuff each time.
This is a strange turn-around for our guild. On Heroic, we always deliberately cut the Soul phase short each time to ensure a good transition back into the Construct phase.
Now we are pushing dps as far as we can to prevent this scenario, just so we don't have to stun a fire-breathing dog.
It's worked so far, our gear again changing the fight, so the leaders are incredibly reluctant to try anything else. So reluctant in fact that, when we didn't have two hunters available for the kiting job, our RL switched to his extremely under-geared hunter alt to do it. (He failed miserably and we didn't kill it that night)
Even with the hunters to kite the dogs, the fight is not a gimme.
Despite countless Normal and Heroic kills, many people still don't understand the concept of making the ghosts walk down the line of fire.
This one mechanic, which has never changed, still wipes us more than anything else.
Zaku'un...
I am always on Cavitation-soaking duty on this fight so it is exactly the same as Heroic.
For the others, Mythic forces them to join the tank in the other realm.
I've been in there once, by accident when the turned the boss at the wrong time and it seems straight forward enough... just dodge the waves as you do in the normal realm.
Unfortunately, that's about it for this fight.
There are assigned position to drop the Seeds but that just makes the fight easier... I wish we had done that on Heroic!
If you soak the right pillars, and those with the debuff from soaking can avoid the waves, then the boss dies. Just like Heroic.
Next up... Tyrant Velhari.
As a consequence, my enthusiasm for writing about WoW has drained away too as I don't really feel like I have anything to write about.
I envy bloggers like Navi and Mrs. Alt who always seem to have something to say, and are entertaining with it too.
I could talk about the issues of the day but they rarely seem to affect me... who really wants to listen to my (white/male) opinions on Tracer's bum?
I don't care about her poses, sexy or not.
Her accent... that's the really irritating part! Can I claim to be offended by that?
So... it's just the raiding at the moment which, to be fair, has been going pretty well.
After bull-dozing our way through the wall of Gorefiend, we have been making short work of the Upper Citadel.
Iskar was permanently grounded with barely a whimper and the next two didn't offer much resistance either!
Socrethar...
The main changes to the fight come in the Construct phase.
Mostly it is more incoming damage to keep the healers busy, including a Fel Bomb that needs to be avoided. It's simple enough and easily healed through unless people stand directly under the bomb.
The other big change is a bit more interesting... The Voracious Soulstalker!
An add that fixates on the nearest player, chasing them down and using a deadly frontal cone attack. Sounds like a hunter job to me!
This add has 12M health so it is fairly substantial but, even with that health pool, the recognised strategy is to burn it down.
We don't do that.
At 50% HP the add heals back up to full health. To kill it, you need to stun it during the heal cast and finish it off.
Our leaders have deemed this to be too much hard work so we have a hunter kite it out of the way and CC it for the rest of the fight.
The only way we can get away with this is by killing the boss in one phase.
Thankfully, the Soul of Socrethar phase is almost exactly the same as Heroic with the only difference being 2 extra people affected by the Man'ari debuff each time.
This is a strange turn-around for our guild. On Heroic, we always deliberately cut the Soul phase short each time to ensure a good transition back into the Construct phase.
Now we are pushing dps as far as we can to prevent this scenario, just so we don't have to stun a fire-breathing dog.
It's worked so far, our gear again changing the fight, so the leaders are incredibly reluctant to try anything else. So reluctant in fact that, when we didn't have two hunters available for the kiting job, our RL switched to his extremely under-geared hunter alt to do it. (He failed miserably and we didn't kill it that night)
Even with the hunters to kite the dogs, the fight is not a gimme.
Despite countless Normal and Heroic kills, many people still don't understand the concept of making the ghosts walk down the line of fire.
This one mechanic, which has never changed, still wipes us more than anything else.
Zaku'un...
I am always on Cavitation-soaking duty on this fight so it is exactly the same as Heroic.
For the others, Mythic forces them to join the tank in the other realm.
I've been in there once, by accident when the turned the boss at the wrong time and it seems straight forward enough... just dodge the waves as you do in the normal realm.
Unfortunately, that's about it for this fight.
There are assigned position to drop the Seeds but that just makes the fight easier... I wish we had done that on Heroic!
If you soak the right pillars, and those with the debuff from soaking can avoid the waves, then the boss dies. Just like Heroic.
Next up... Tyrant Velhari.
Wednesday 23 March 2016
Mythic Magery: Shadow Lord Iskar
After completing the 'easy' lower citadel, we decided to extend the lockout this week and take a look at the harder Upper Citadel bosses.
No Gorefiend for a week! Woohoo!
Iskar was our first port of call and it really is very similar to Heroic...
The main difference is an extra add in the add phase, Phantasmal Resonance!
This add has a cool mechanic which forces the raid to weave in a few extra throws of the Eye in between interrupts and dispels.
It casts a spell, Chains of Despair, which joins together 3 groups of 2 people with invisible chains.
The only way to remove these chains is for the two chained people to stack together but if you stack with the wrong person, you explode!
And, you guessed it, the only way to see who you are chained to is with the Eye.
It's a really simple mechanic but dealing with it while all the other stuff is going on and timing the extra throws of the Eye properly adds enough complexity to make it challenging.
It's also one of those mechanics that everyone needs to experience for themselves so they know what they are looking for and learn how to react.
We didn't bother.
We very quickly realised that we had the dps to burn down the new add before it could even cast the chains.
This basically made the fight the same as Heroic.
BORING!
OK, there are a couple of differences...
The debuff from holding the Eye is permanent so we need to spread the stacks around the raid a bit more.
And occasionally (just before each Phantasmal Winds, I think), Iskar knocks the Eye out of your hands to a random spot in the room.
Blink/ Heroic Leap etc. made sure this was not an issue.
After suffering through 117 wipes to kill Gorefiend, we needed just 11 to kill Shadow-Lord Iskar.
Yet again, gear has massively diminished a Mythic fight into barely a challenge at all.
No Gorefiend for a week! Woohoo!
Iskar was our first port of call and it really is very similar to Heroic...
The main difference is an extra add in the add phase, Phantasmal Resonance!
This add has a cool mechanic which forces the raid to weave in a few extra throws of the Eye in between interrupts and dispels.
It casts a spell, Chains of Despair, which joins together 3 groups of 2 people with invisible chains.
The only way to remove these chains is for the two chained people to stack together but if you stack with the wrong person, you explode!
And, you guessed it, the only way to see who you are chained to is with the Eye.
It's a really simple mechanic but dealing with it while all the other stuff is going on and timing the extra throws of the Eye properly adds enough complexity to make it challenging.
It's also one of those mechanics that everyone needs to experience for themselves so they know what they are looking for and learn how to react.
We didn't bother.
We very quickly realised that we had the dps to burn down the new add before it could even cast the chains.
This basically made the fight the same as Heroic.
BORING!
OK, there are a couple of differences...
The debuff from holding the Eye is permanent so we need to spread the stacks around the raid a bit more.
And occasionally (just before each Phantasmal Winds, I think), Iskar knocks the Eye out of your hands to a random spot in the room.
Blink/ Heroic Leap etc. made sure this was not an issue.
After suffering through 117 wipes to kill Gorefiend, we needed just 11 to kill Shadow-Lord Iskar.
Yet again, gear has massively diminished a Mythic fight into barely a challenge at all.
Tuesday 15 March 2016
Mythic Magery - Wipefiend!
OH.
MY.
GOD.
Where the hell did this guy come from??
You hear the stories, you read the QQ posts on MMO-C, you watch all the guides,
NOTHING prepares you for this!
We watched all the videos and read all the guides.
We discussed target priorities, sorted out positions and assigned roles.
What then followed can only be described as a disaster which slowly turned into a farce.
Sixty (60!!!) consecutive wipes at 91%, roughly 90 seconds into the fight!
We would pull, hit the boss for a bit, some mechanics would start happening then it would all fall apart... over and over and over again!
It was a nightmare!
All of the focus in the build-up was on the main change from Heroic.
When you go into the stomach, no longer can you run into the middle to go back to the normal realm. Instead, you leave behind a 'Soul' which must be killed to bring you back.
It changes EVERYTHING!
Or perhaps that is where we went wrong...
The focus shifted almost completely to making sure people were broken out of the stomach at the right time and it let us down in other areas.
People were dying to the Heroic mechanics that we have dealt with so many times.
The basics... Doomwells at the edge, stack on the rooted person, slow and kite the construct, etc.
And, once people start dying, the fight rapidly spirals out of control.
Each extra person inside the stomach can help stem the flow of constructs but they can do nothing about the ones already unleashed.
Those remaining outside the stomach now have to deal with all of the mechanics plus kill the extra souls.
More deaths very quickly follow until there are actually more people inside the stomach than outside!
The last few people die completely and the boss resets.
60 times in a row that happened.
In the beginning it honestly felt like we weren't making any progress, and couldn't even see where progress was actually going to come from.
The deaths and wipes would just keep coming, different people affected each time before the downwards spiral began.
We made some changes... Not to our tactics but to our attitude and approach.
Our two assigned people (DK and Warrior) for killing Souls were left to do the job completely on their own.
It was bound to cause even more wipes but we needed to know if they could handle it, and under what circumstances they needed a bit of help.
DPS on the boss was stopped completely! Opening burst was allowed but 10-15 seconds into the fight all dps stopped on the boss.
There was a deliberate break between stopping on the boss and the first adds spawning so all the DPS had itchy trigger fingers by the time they arrived and picked them off almost instantly.
What it really allowed us though, was the breathing space to think about the basics again. We had been caught up in the new mechanics too much but, with them taken away from us, survivability increased dramatically.
We had people alive, taking out the adds quickly and only the right people in the stomach.
The next step was to give our assigned DK/Warrior combo the help they needed to stay on top of the Souls.
It turns out, they rarely need help at all!
Only if they were targeted by something that took them out of range did they fall behind, so we had them call out for help as they ran to drop a Doomwell or stack for Shared Fate.
The progress now was almost tangible but there were still silly mistakes forcing the 91% wipes quite frequently.
The good attempts though, were pushing into the second Feast of Souls phase.
Handling the Feasts of Souls themselves was just a exercise in rotating healer cooldown. We are blessed with fantastic healers and they always seemed to be in control... although our best attempt (at the time) was cut short at 32% when our Resto Shaman missed his Healing Tide.
Healer issues are few and far between for us though, on this or any other fight.
And so it went until last night...
We were in confident mood as we cleared the trash.
Two or three quick wipes to blow away the cobwebs then we were in!
Our best attempt yet at 22%... Not even at the third Feast phase so we knew we definitely had the DPS if we could get there.
A couple more quick wipes... Don't worry, get back in there! We could sense it was close and didn't want to lose the momentum.
Feast 2 wipe
Feast 2 wipe
Feast 2 wipe
Consistency at last, we are definitely closing in!
A couple more silly wipes... Why is there always someone that releases??
Approaching Feast 2 and everyone is alive
Shaman goes down as we lose focus for a moment trying to reposition for the Feast. No Ankh, Res him up!
Smoothly through the Feast of Souls, Gorefiend at 20%
Stay calm, get through the normal phase.
Warlock dies to some fire on the ground, save the Res.
We're closing in though, 19 still alive.
Feast 3 starts...
Kill the Constructs!
Break everyone out!
Ignore the Big add!
Tanks on the Sparks, everyone else just hit the boss!
Execute power from our two Warriors pushing us towards glory until finally...
after 117 wipes...
Mythic Gorefiend dies!
MY.
GOD.
Where the hell did this guy come from??
You hear the stories, you read the QQ posts on MMO-C, you watch all the guides,
NOTHING prepares you for this!
We watched all the videos and read all the guides.
We discussed target priorities, sorted out positions and assigned roles.
What then followed can only be described as a disaster which slowly turned into a farce.
Sixty (60!!!) consecutive wipes at 91%, roughly 90 seconds into the fight!
We would pull, hit the boss for a bit, some mechanics would start happening then it would all fall apart... over and over and over again!
It was a nightmare!
All of the focus in the build-up was on the main change from Heroic.
When you go into the stomach, no longer can you run into the middle to go back to the normal realm. Instead, you leave behind a 'Soul' which must be killed to bring you back.
It changes EVERYTHING!
Or perhaps that is where we went wrong...
The focus shifted almost completely to making sure people were broken out of the stomach at the right time and it let us down in other areas.
People were dying to the Heroic mechanics that we have dealt with so many times.
The basics... Doomwells at the edge, stack on the rooted person, slow and kite the construct, etc.
And, once people start dying, the fight rapidly spirals out of control.
Each extra person inside the stomach can help stem the flow of constructs but they can do nothing about the ones already unleashed.
Those remaining outside the stomach now have to deal with all of the mechanics plus kill the extra souls.
More deaths very quickly follow until there are actually more people inside the stomach than outside!
The last few people die completely and the boss resets.
60 times in a row that happened.
In the beginning it honestly felt like we weren't making any progress, and couldn't even see where progress was actually going to come from.
The deaths and wipes would just keep coming, different people affected each time before the downwards spiral began.
We made some changes... Not to our tactics but to our attitude and approach.
Our two assigned people (DK and Warrior) for killing Souls were left to do the job completely on their own.
It was bound to cause even more wipes but we needed to know if they could handle it, and under what circumstances they needed a bit of help.
DPS on the boss was stopped completely! Opening burst was allowed but 10-15 seconds into the fight all dps stopped on the boss.
There was a deliberate break between stopping on the boss and the first adds spawning so all the DPS had itchy trigger fingers by the time they arrived and picked them off almost instantly.
What it really allowed us though, was the breathing space to think about the basics again. We had been caught up in the new mechanics too much but, with them taken away from us, survivability increased dramatically.
We had people alive, taking out the adds quickly and only the right people in the stomach.
The next step was to give our assigned DK/Warrior combo the help they needed to stay on top of the Souls.
It turns out, they rarely need help at all!
Only if they were targeted by something that took them out of range did they fall behind, so we had them call out for help as they ran to drop a Doomwell or stack for Shared Fate.
The progress now was almost tangible but there were still silly mistakes forcing the 91% wipes quite frequently.
The good attempts though, were pushing into the second Feast of Souls phase.
Handling the Feasts of Souls themselves was just a exercise in rotating healer cooldown. We are blessed with fantastic healers and they always seemed to be in control... although our best attempt (at the time) was cut short at 32% when our Resto Shaman missed his Healing Tide.
Healer issues are few and far between for us though, on this or any other fight.
And so it went until last night...
We were in confident mood as we cleared the trash.
Two or three quick wipes to blow away the cobwebs then we were in!
Our best attempt yet at 22%... Not even at the third Feast phase so we knew we definitely had the DPS if we could get there.
A couple more quick wipes... Don't worry, get back in there! We could sense it was close and didn't want to lose the momentum.
Feast 2 wipe
Feast 2 wipe
Feast 2 wipe
Consistency at last, we are definitely closing in!
A couple more silly wipes... Why is there always someone that releases??
Approaching Feast 2 and everyone is alive
Shaman goes down as we lose focus for a moment trying to reposition for the Feast. No Ankh, Res him up!
Smoothly through the Feast of Souls, Gorefiend at 20%
Stay calm, get through the normal phase.
Warlock dies to some fire on the ground, save the Res.
We're closing in though, 19 still alive.
Feast 3 starts...
Kill the Constructs!
Break everyone out!
Ignore the Big add!
Tanks on the Sparks, everyone else just hit the boss!
Execute power from our two Warriors pushing us towards glory until finally...
after 117 wipes...
Mythic Gorefiend dies!
Tuesday 8 March 2016
The Alt Plan: Jim Raynor??
Playing time has been quite limited lately so the Alts have not ventured out much.
The Hunter has ventured into a couple of normal mode HFC pugs but not killed much.
Whenever I go back to the Hunter after a short break from playing her, I'm always surprised all over again at how easy it is to play. I don't necessarily mean the rotation, I'm bound to be far from optimal on that, but the freedom of movement takes all of the stress out of playing.
The hunter just glides around the battlefield (completely ignoring her Sniper Training) picking off targets as they focus their attention on Deefer (Dog - still got her starting zone pet) without a care in the world.
She is actually the only character I play that I feel completely confident when soloing the Throne of Kil'Jaeden daily in Tanaan.
Actual raiding though, she has struggled to get into groups due to her low ilevel.
The last pug failed on Kil'rogg (Pugs generally fail at 2 points, Kil'rogg and Iskar) as they were trying to carry a couple of low-geared guildies, two Warlocks who struggled to reach 10k dps. It was a small group and I was the only other ranged, we couldn't kill the adds in time.
A couple of drops has now taken her up to 692ilvl though so that should make it slightly easier to get a group.
The Priest has also ventured out a couple of times recently and I've enjoyed it immensely!
It's mostly quite 'spammy' with PW:Shield, Solace and Penance but it's worth it for the rush you get when you press the Archangel button!
The wings and the glowing light both add to the almost heavenly feeling as you are transformed into an angel of the light with the power of life over death at your fingertips.
Who will you choose to bless with your massive crit shields? Not the Hunter that laughed at me being a male Pandaren (dressed all in white, he does look ridiculous to be fair), that's for sure!
A bit of luck has taken him to 705ilvl which sets him up nicely for future pugs.
The Rogue has been twiddling his thumbs in his garrison waiting for a new opportunity to stab something.
Having recently completed Val'anyr, Hammer of the Ancient Kings on my Shaman, I am thinking the Rogue's best hopes for adventure may come once per week in Black Temple.
The commitment, mainly time but also patience, needed for pugging has put me off lately and I have been trying a few other games which led me to...
Heroes of the Storm!
I had been watching Bay's adventures over at FinalBossTV and it looked like a lot of fun so I played through the opening tutorials and a couple of AI games.
Jim Raynor is the introductory Hero and he seems fairly easy to play, doesn't have a lot of buttons to worry about (although I still keep trying to move with WASD at the moment).
The quick queues and games are extremely appealing compared to LFR/Pugs in WoW so I want to take it further and see if I can learn to play properly.
And what an Altoholic's dream! All those Heroes!
Logically, my aversion to pugging should keep me well away from a 5v5 PvP game but it does look like a lot of fun... and who wouldn't want to play as Jim Raynor?
Or even Arthas!
My Paladin looks on forlornly from his garrison...
The Hunter has ventured into a couple of normal mode HFC pugs but not killed much.
Whenever I go back to the Hunter after a short break from playing her, I'm always surprised all over again at how easy it is to play. I don't necessarily mean the rotation, I'm bound to be far from optimal on that, but the freedom of movement takes all of the stress out of playing.
The hunter just glides around the battlefield (completely ignoring her Sniper Training) picking off targets as they focus their attention on Deefer (Dog - still got her starting zone pet) without a care in the world.
She is actually the only character I play that I feel completely confident when soloing the Throne of Kil'Jaeden daily in Tanaan.
Actual raiding though, she has struggled to get into groups due to her low ilevel.
The last pug failed on Kil'rogg (Pugs generally fail at 2 points, Kil'rogg and Iskar) as they were trying to carry a couple of low-geared guildies, two Warlocks who struggled to reach 10k dps. It was a small group and I was the only other ranged, we couldn't kill the adds in time.
A couple of drops has now taken her up to 692ilvl though so that should make it slightly easier to get a group.
The Priest has also ventured out a couple of times recently and I've enjoyed it immensely!
It's mostly quite 'spammy' with PW:Shield, Solace and Penance but it's worth it for the rush you get when you press the Archangel button!
The wings and the glowing light both add to the almost heavenly feeling as you are transformed into an angel of the light with the power of life over death at your fingertips.
Who will you choose to bless with your massive crit shields? Not the Hunter that laughed at me being a male Pandaren (dressed all in white, he does look ridiculous to be fair), that's for sure!
A bit of luck has taken him to 705ilvl which sets him up nicely for future pugs.
The Rogue has been twiddling his thumbs in his garrison waiting for a new opportunity to stab something.
Having recently completed Val'anyr, Hammer of the Ancient Kings on my Shaman, I am thinking the Rogue's best hopes for adventure may come once per week in Black Temple.
The commitment, mainly time but also patience, needed for pugging has put me off lately and I have been trying a few other games which led me to...
Heroes of the Storm!
I had been watching Bay's adventures over at FinalBossTV and it looked like a lot of fun so I played through the opening tutorials and a couple of AI games.
Jim Raynor is the introductory Hero and he seems fairly easy to play, doesn't have a lot of buttons to worry about (although I still keep trying to move with WASD at the moment).
The quick queues and games are extremely appealing compared to LFR/Pugs in WoW so I want to take it further and see if I can learn to play properly.
And what an Altoholic's dream! All those Heroes!
Logically, my aversion to pugging should keep me well away from a 5v5 PvP game but it does look like a lot of fun... and who wouldn't want to play as Jim Raynor?
Or even Arthas!
My Paladin looks on forlornly from his garrison...
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