2% wipe on Chronomatic Anomaly on our last raid night.
We lost a vital player who was tasked with a specific job and couldn't scramble to fill it fast enough.
Another couple of people died and we hit the enrage timer.
It was the last attempt of the night and our best by some distance although the last 4 or 5 attempts had seen some excellent progress.
That was the first of our two raid nights... what do we do on the second night?
After coming so close to the kill, particularly following the progress leading up to the last attempt, we feel like we have the fight won.
We've twiddled and tweaked the tactics (far too much) until we found something that worked for us (the original tactics) and now we just need to execute it properly and the boss will surely die.
Should we go back to push for the kill?
Or should we clear Heroic again for more gear?
We are going to do both!
Jump in on Mythic, kill Chrono (sorry Chrono), have a quick look at Trilliax, clear Heroic... go to The Winchester, have a nice cold pint and wait for this all to blow over.
Not a chance in hell.
Most likely we will take a few attempts to get the kill on Chrono but mainly I am just hoping we don't get bogged down with it all night.
Trilliax is an unknown quantity.
It's supposed to be fairly easy (but so was Chrono), it would be great to have a look at him and see what we need to prepare for next week.
How much time that will leave us for Heroic is anyone's guess but I'm thinking Elisande and Gul'dan will be safe this week.
They are the bosses we really need kills on, the ones that hold the best loot, but also the ones we are least likely to 1-shot.
Not me by the way. I don't need anything from those later bosses, my loot drops from Chrono (trinket) and Trilliax (Tier cloak) so it would probably suit me better to push Mythic.
I can easily see us staying on Mythic for the whole night... take some time to kill Chrono but get there in the end.
Trilliax gives us an early peek at the kill but then strings us along for a while as we try to recreate that early attempt.
No time for Heroic.
I wouldn't even mind if we concentrated fully on Mythic from now on but people need gear from those heroic bosses and we were instructed not to pug.
I'm pretty sure this all stems from us spending too long farming bosses in HFC.
We could have pushed on much sooner and maybe cleared the instance but we were always farming and farming for minor upgrades.
In the end we ran out of time as people burned out on the content.
We almost made the same mistake again in Emerald Nightmare but scraped through on the last night and everyone is keen not to put ourselves in that position yet again.
So now it is a delicate balancing act between farm and progress, even in the same night.
I just hope we can pull it off.
Edit:
The decision was taken out of our hands as two people couldn't make the start time.
We were forced to go Heroic, 1-shot everything up to Gul'dan but had a few wipes on him before we got the clear.
That only left us around 20 mins to have a go at Chrono on mythic and one of our healers DC'ed as we switched.
He didn't make it back before end of raid time.
On the plus side, I got my 4-set and am now 900ilvl :-)
Monday 27 February 2017
Friday 24 February 2017
The AP Arms Race... A Solution?
Watcher gave us some information on the latest upcoming method of protecting hardcore raiders from themselves and the AP grind... it appears the answer is to make it even more grindy!
The marginal gains for each trait from 35-54 were still too enticing and had everyone remotely competitive heading to Purgatory, or Maw of Souls, for multiple runs day after day.
Nobody seems particularly happy about this situation but any potential gain needs to be taken if you are determined to beat your competition (apparently).
Obviously listening to the loud, clear message being sent out by their player base, Blizzard's answer is to reduce those marginal gains even further!
Each marginal gain will now be much smaller than the current 0.5% and, for some reason, it will be a random proc.
After years of hardcore raiders proving that they will grind literally anything to gain character power, are Blizzard just trying to test them? Are they trying to find the Meatloaf point?
I would do anything for more dps... but I won't do that.
My suspicion is that the top guilds will still push for these now miniscule increases in power because, after all, they are still increases in power.
Patch 7.2 and these new traits will release earlier than the Tomb of Sargeras raid, what do you think these guilds will be doing?
This ridiculous arms race leads to the raid being tuned for the max artefact power or we end up with another Xavius, falling on the first night...
Which is where my solution comes in :-)
Lock the artefact weapon for raiding. Simple.
As an example using Nighthold... the artefact weapon would be locked at 35 traits when you entered the raid.
Anything you have gained over 35 would still exist but it would be disabled.
Enabling the traits gradually, maybe 1 trait per week after release, would also act as a natural nerf to the content for those lower down the pecking order.
Blizzard could then tune Nighthold based on everyone having 35 traits and there would be no arms race at all.
The grind would be from 35 to the Tomb of Sargeras cap but it would be done over the entire length of the current patch and would happen naturally with raiding Nighthold and just general play.
PvP has been handled in a very similar way in the past, maybe it still is, and that seem to work quite well.
To be honest, I can't see any possible drawbacks with this system.
Am I missing something glaringly obvious?
The marginal gains for each trait from 35-54 were still too enticing and had everyone remotely competitive heading to Purgatory, or Maw of Souls, for multiple runs day after day.
Nobody seems particularly happy about this situation but any potential gain needs to be taken if you are determined to beat your competition (apparently).
Obviously listening to the loud, clear message being sent out by their player base, Blizzard's answer is to reduce those marginal gains even further!
Each marginal gain will now be much smaller than the current 0.5% and, for some reason, it will be a random proc.
After years of hardcore raiders proving that they will grind literally anything to gain character power, are Blizzard just trying to test them? Are they trying to find the Meatloaf point?
I would do anything for more dps... but I won't do that.
My suspicion is that the top guilds will still push for these now miniscule increases in power because, after all, they are still increases in power.
Patch 7.2 and these new traits will release earlier than the Tomb of Sargeras raid, what do you think these guilds will be doing?
This ridiculous arms race leads to the raid being tuned for the max artefact power or we end up with another Xavius, falling on the first night...
Which is where my solution comes in :-)
Lock the artefact weapon for raiding. Simple.
As an example using Nighthold... the artefact weapon would be locked at 35 traits when you entered the raid.
Anything you have gained over 35 would still exist but it would be disabled.
Enabling the traits gradually, maybe 1 trait per week after release, would also act as a natural nerf to the content for those lower down the pecking order.
Blizzard could then tune Nighthold based on everyone having 35 traits and there would be no arms race at all.
The grind would be from 35 to the Tomb of Sargeras cap but it would be done over the entire length of the current patch and would happen naturally with raiding Nighthold and just general play.
PvP has been handled in a very similar way in the past, maybe it still is, and that seem to work quite well.
To be honest, I can't see any possible drawbacks with this system.
Am I missing something glaringly obvious?
Wednesday 22 February 2017
There's Only One... Sola!
Finally worked out how to change my name on here to Sola!
Yay me!
This has coincided with the other Sola (sadly) quitting our raid team.
To be honest, he wasn't a particularly good player. Back in HFC, he seemed to do ok on his Boomkin but was determined to play Warrior in Legion and has struggled.
He was our Warrior tank who didn't know when to taunt on Ursoc and he was switched to dps for further Mythic progress. Unfortunately, he continued to struggle as we progressed through Emerald Nightmare.
Fast forward to Nighthold and he was at the centre of the whole preparation debate, clearly not having looked at a guide or anything prior to our first run.
I hadn't either but had a couple of advantages over him... I was playing my Shaman so completely comfortable in a new situation, plus I play as Ranged which I think is more forgiving when you are learning fights.
Sola2 struggled again, frequently dying and always bottom of the dps, until he decided to quit raiding.
I suggested he switch back to his Boomkin but that would only solve some of the issues.
A really nice guy, lots of fun to raid with, and he appears to have fallen foul of our recent shift to a more 'hardcore' approach.
Sad times.
At least I get to keep my name.
Yay me!
This has coincided with the other Sola (sadly) quitting our raid team.
To be honest, he wasn't a particularly good player. Back in HFC, he seemed to do ok on his Boomkin but was determined to play Warrior in Legion and has struggled.
He was our Warrior tank who didn't know when to taunt on Ursoc and he was switched to dps for further Mythic progress. Unfortunately, he continued to struggle as we progressed through Emerald Nightmare.
Fast forward to Nighthold and he was at the centre of the whole preparation debate, clearly not having looked at a guide or anything prior to our first run.
I hadn't either but had a couple of advantages over him... I was playing my Shaman so completely comfortable in a new situation, plus I play as Ranged which I think is more forgiving when you are learning fights.
Sola2 struggled again, frequently dying and always bottom of the dps, until he decided to quit raiding.
I suggested he switch back to his Boomkin but that would only solve some of the issues.
A really nice guy, lots of fun to raid with, and he appears to have fallen foul of our recent shift to a more 'hardcore' approach.
Sad times.
At least I get to keep my name.
Thursday 16 February 2017
Trait 54, where are you?
With a massive 1 Mythic kill under our belt, the guild are already looking nervously at the Krosus dps check.
As you can probably tell, I think it's a bit soon to be thinking of Krosus. Maybe once we switch full time to Mythic it will seem more relevant but we are still farming Heroic at the moment.
We wouldn't be farming Heroic if there wasn't still plenty of gear for us in there and this was backed up by virtually nothing being disenchanted in our run this week.
I don't think we are far off though... one or maybe two more Heroic clears and we're done.
So... Krosus.
The dps check does look tight. You need around 10 million raid dps to avoid a swim which, counting the three healers and two tanks as one dps, equates to 625k dps each!
On our Heroic kill this week, we had a grand total of 2 people (Demon Hunter, of course and a Warrior) above that threshold.
The rest of us were some distance behind so I can see why they are concerned, it just feels to me like Krosus is still some distance and a lot of upgrades away.
I still need one more tier piece for my 4-set which is extremely powerful and will give me around 9% more dps just from the bonus, in addition to the extra stats from upgrading the piece itself (hopefully cloak as mine is currently 865ilvl).
Even if I get no other upgrades that should push me close to the threshold even based on what was a poor performance for our kill this week.
4-set plus better play and I am confident I will be comfortably above the dps requirement.
You have to assume that other people in our raid are in exactly the same position, missing important pieces of gear that will make big differences to their, and our overall, dps.
More Heroic farming plus the kills on Mythic bosses prior to Krosus should give a hefty boost to our raid dps but will it be enough?
Our leadership don't think so.
Now they are pushing for us all to farm Mythic+ dungeons to reach the 54th artefact trait!
There are guild events all over the calendar, every night of the week, to run Maw of Souls.
How the hell did this happen?
We are a relaxed, 2 night per week, raid guild and try our best to clear Mythic raids but now we need to grind out AP or our progress will stop?
The guild's opinion on this is quite varied...
Some people just don't have the time so can't do it whether they want to or not.
Some point blank refuse to do it, saying it goes against all the reasons they play the game.
Others are blaming Blizzard for making it a 'requirement'.
There are a few happy to do it, they apparently love Maw of Souls (can you tell I am not in this group?)
A couple of people said they would just grin and bear it to get it done.
And then there were a few that have already got the 54th trait so couldn't care less.
I am firmly in the second group.
I have absolutely no interest in repeating mythic dungeons over and over, and I can't bring myself to do it.
I'm at 46/54 now so hopefully should be close enough by the time we get there anyway.
Which group would you be in?
As you can probably tell, I think it's a bit soon to be thinking of Krosus. Maybe once we switch full time to Mythic it will seem more relevant but we are still farming Heroic at the moment.
We wouldn't be farming Heroic if there wasn't still plenty of gear for us in there and this was backed up by virtually nothing being disenchanted in our run this week.
I don't think we are far off though... one or maybe two more Heroic clears and we're done.
So... Krosus.
The dps check does look tight. You need around 10 million raid dps to avoid a swim which, counting the three healers and two tanks as one dps, equates to 625k dps each!
On our Heroic kill this week, we had a grand total of 2 people (Demon Hunter, of course and a Warrior) above that threshold.
The rest of us were some distance behind so I can see why they are concerned, it just feels to me like Krosus is still some distance and a lot of upgrades away.
I still need one more tier piece for my 4-set which is extremely powerful and will give me around 9% more dps just from the bonus, in addition to the extra stats from upgrading the piece itself (hopefully cloak as mine is currently 865ilvl).
Even if I get no other upgrades that should push me close to the threshold even based on what was a poor performance for our kill this week.
4-set plus better play and I am confident I will be comfortably above the dps requirement.
You have to assume that other people in our raid are in exactly the same position, missing important pieces of gear that will make big differences to their, and our overall, dps.
More Heroic farming plus the kills on Mythic bosses prior to Krosus should give a hefty boost to our raid dps but will it be enough?
Our leadership don't think so.
Now they are pushing for us all to farm Mythic+ dungeons to reach the 54th artefact trait!
There are guild events all over the calendar, every night of the week, to run Maw of Souls.
How the hell did this happen?
We are a relaxed, 2 night per week, raid guild and try our best to clear Mythic raids but now we need to grind out AP or our progress will stop?
The guild's opinion on this is quite varied...
Some people just don't have the time so can't do it whether they want to or not.
Some point blank refuse to do it, saying it goes against all the reasons they play the game.
Others are blaming Blizzard for making it a 'requirement'.
There are a few happy to do it, they apparently love Maw of Souls (can you tell I am not in this group?)
A couple of people said they would just grin and bear it to get it done.
And then there were a few that have already got the 54th trait so couldn't care less.
I am firmly in the second group.
I have absolutely no interest in repeating mythic dungeons over and over, and I can't bring myself to do it.
I'm at 46/54 now so hopefully should be close enough by the time we get there anyway.
Which group would you be in?
Mythic Chain Lightning - Skorpyron
First one down on Mythic!
An AoE-fest on normal and heroic, not much different on Mythic!
Skorpyron gains some colour-shifting abilities which slightly change the fight at times...
Blue... the regular abilities we know from Heroic
Red... sheds Volatile scales which pulse AoE and explode after Shockwave
Green... sheds poisonous scales which stack a dot on the raid
There are also a couple of colourful new scorpion adds to complicate things, the most impactful being the poisonous green one which drops pools of acid around the room.
These extra mechanics basically amount to making positioning much more difficult, not helped by the scales de-spawning at some inopportune times.
Once you get used to the extra care and planning that's needed to find a safe spot for the Shockwave, it is remarkably similar to Normal/Heroic and it doesn't take long before you are pushing for the kill.
The dps requirement is almost non-existent as the incredible amount of AoE flying around absolutely shreds the smaller scorpions with the slightly bigger ones not far behind.
So it took us a few wipes to sort our movement out, then a few more as some silly mistakes were made... maybe a Shaman was a bit too keen with his Chain Lightning (note to self: Lightning, faster than a Death Knight) and died from aggro a couple of times... but we soon had a clean run and got the kill!
With no Warlock or Demon hunter in our team, this boss is an Elemental Shaman's dream. Showing the flexibility of our talent tree, I specced for more AoE damage, picking Liquid Magma Totem and Lightning Rod.
Both choices did incredible damage, LM Totem hitting around 5 million per cast was amazing but Lightning Rod managed a total of 40 million damage over the fight!
It was behind only Chain Lightning on my damage which is insane for a talent!
Those are nothing compared to Static Overload though... what makes Shaman AoE so powerful is the interaction between Chain Lightning and our mastery, Elemental Overload.
Elemental Overload is a percentage chance, based on our Mastery level, to copy your last spell at 75% damage.
Static Overload is an artefact trait that gives a 10% chance for Chain Lightning to trigger Elemental Overload on all targets hit!
1 Chain Lightning cast procs 5 more Chain Lightning casts!
This is in addition to the normal chance to overload so, if you get lucky, 1 cast can produce 11 Chain Lightnings!
It looks amazing!
Some proper Sith lord shenanigans going on here.
The meters were topped by our other Ele Shaman. The winner between us on AoE fights is usually whoever got the most Static Overload procs but not this time, he had me well beaten.
This fight, despite how comfortably we beat it, has forced me to change my style of play!
I was so handsomely beaten by my Shaman compatriot because I was tab-targeting, this fight was a lesson in frustration for tab-targeting.
The scorpions circling the room which are immune to damage are not immune to being targeted via the tab button, even at times when I was virtually stood on Skorpyron's tail it would choose one of the onlookers rather than the boss (or anything I could actually damage).
I doubt this will be a watershed moment like switching from clicker to keybound but it certainly made the difference on this fight... that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it!
Next up... Chronomatic Anomaly!
Another Heroic clear first though, fingers crossed for that 4-set!
See ya.
An AoE-fest on normal and heroic, not much different on Mythic!
Skorpyron gains some colour-shifting abilities which slightly change the fight at times...
Blue... the regular abilities we know from Heroic
Red... sheds Volatile scales which pulse AoE and explode after Shockwave
Green... sheds poisonous scales which stack a dot on the raid
There are also a couple of colourful new scorpion adds to complicate things, the most impactful being the poisonous green one which drops pools of acid around the room.
These extra mechanics basically amount to making positioning much more difficult, not helped by the scales de-spawning at some inopportune times.
Once you get used to the extra care and planning that's needed to find a safe spot for the Shockwave, it is remarkably similar to Normal/Heroic and it doesn't take long before you are pushing for the kill.
The dps requirement is almost non-existent as the incredible amount of AoE flying around absolutely shreds the smaller scorpions with the slightly bigger ones not far behind.
So it took us a few wipes to sort our movement out, then a few more as some silly mistakes were made... maybe a Shaman was a bit too keen with his Chain Lightning (note to self: Lightning, faster than a Death Knight) and died from aggro a couple of times... but we soon had a clean run and got the kill!
With no Warlock or Demon hunter in our team, this boss is an Elemental Shaman's dream. Showing the flexibility of our talent tree, I specced for more AoE damage, picking Liquid Magma Totem and Lightning Rod.
Both choices did incredible damage, LM Totem hitting around 5 million per cast was amazing but Lightning Rod managed a total of 40 million damage over the fight!
It was behind only Chain Lightning on my damage which is insane for a talent!
Those are nothing compared to Static Overload though... what makes Shaman AoE so powerful is the interaction between Chain Lightning and our mastery, Elemental Overload.
Elemental Overload is a percentage chance, based on our Mastery level, to copy your last spell at 75% damage.
Static Overload is an artefact trait that gives a 10% chance for Chain Lightning to trigger Elemental Overload on all targets hit!
1 Chain Lightning cast procs 5 more Chain Lightning casts!
This is in addition to the normal chance to overload so, if you get lucky, 1 cast can produce 11 Chain Lightnings!
It looks amazing!
Some proper Sith lord shenanigans going on here.
The meters were topped by our other Ele Shaman. The winner between us on AoE fights is usually whoever got the most Static Overload procs but not this time, he had me well beaten.
This fight, despite how comfortably we beat it, has forced me to change my style of play!
I was so handsomely beaten by my Shaman compatriot because I was tab-targeting, this fight was a lesson in frustration for tab-targeting.
The scorpions circling the room which are immune to damage are not immune to being targeted via the tab button, even at times when I was virtually stood on Skorpyron's tail it would choose one of the onlookers rather than the boss (or anything I could actually damage).
I doubt this will be a watershed moment like switching from clicker to keybound but it certainly made the difference on this fight... that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it!
Next up... Chronomatic Anomaly!
Another Heroic clear first though, fingers crossed for that 4-set!
See ya.
Monday 13 February 2017
Ahead of the Curve - Gul'dan!
We've chased him across time and space but finally cornered Gul'dan... atop a giant Night Elf er... hold?
I've enjoyed this raid immensely, the aesthetic is fantastic and the fights have been varied and interesting.
There wasn't much challenge for our team on Heroic, we probably carried too much gear from Mythic Emerald Nightmare to hit it at the right level but it was still enjoyable.
And when I say there wasn't much challenge, there was definitely some in the later bosses.
The first 7 died in a fairly straight-forward manner with only a few wipes to learn the tactics before the kill.
Next came Star Augur Etraeus... and our first real challenge.
It's a fantastic setting for a fight, possibly the best I have ever experienced, like an updated Algalon.
The fight itself is very simple but, rather surprisingly, it turned into an incredibly tight dps check.
We had been plodding along through the fight until phase 3 and the inventively-named 'Thing Which Should Not Be' - Everybody knew to look away at the right time, and DBM shouts at you anyway, but a couple of people got caught out.
Then a couple more people got caught out on the next add.
Before we knew what was really happening, the boss is casting Big Bang and we're all about to die!
It took another couple of attempts and some tweaking of when to cast Heroism but then it all came together and another boss was down.
Grand Magistrix Elisande was another step up in difficulty and could easily have been the final boss in the raid.
To be honest, I think the Magistrix should have been the last boss. She has been the major protagonist in the Suramar chain, her dealings with Gul'dan and the Legion more of an undercurrent to the political maneuvering and ongoing battle with Thalyssra.
Maybe Blizzard agreed, at least in part, as the encounter is epic!
More time-bending shenanigans here as parts of the arena itself alter time, killing adds spawns either a 'fast' or slow' bubble, and how mechanics act.
Early on it is just about gaining a speed buff to do the big deeps but, as the fight goes on, it becomes just as important to use the slow bubble to handle various boss abilities.
So clever and so much fun!
Pools need to be soaked but they do damage if you stand in them... pick up a slow buff from the slow bubble and that pool damage ticks more slowly making it easily survivable.
3 debuffs on the raid that will kill everyone if they go off together... 1 person pick up a fast, 1 person a slow, to stagger the detonations.
And various other mechanics could be handled this way.
It is an unforgiving fight though and one particular mechanic killed us many times...
A circle of orbs forms around the outside of the room then contracts on to the boss.
There is no space between these orbs but they follow the same rules as everything else on this fight... hit a fast bubble and move faster, hit a slow bubble and move slower... this creates a small gap around the bubbles due to the speed difference and allows you to escape.
I won't tell you how many times people failed at avoiding these orbs... or the confusion caused by them changing direction in phase 2... but it was definitely the hardest part of the fight for our team.
I think the difficulty came from it not quite being the same each time, particularly in P2 when it was centred on one of the boss's mirror images.
Soaking a puddle with the slow buff could easily leave you out of position, and slowed, when the orbs came...
I lost count of the number of times Ghost Wolf and Gust of Wind saved me so have some sympathy for the raiders that don't have those tools available.
It took us an entire raid night to bring it all together in one attempt and the kill finally came with a famous 'one last go'! :-)
Grand Magistrix Elisande may have deserved to be the final boss in Nighthold but we've chased Gul'dan long enough and there's no way he was going to play second fiddle to anybody!
Progress seemed much more straight-forward on this fight. Not necessarily easier, but more inline with various other multi-phase fights where you learn one phase, master it, and move on to the next.
We had extended the lockout this week to focus fully on Gul'dan and, again, it took us the entire night.
I like how they have experimented with time/speed mechanics in a couple of fights and the last incarnation of this came in the form of a speed 'button' I can only assume we stole from Elisande.
It gives you a massive haste buff but the clever part is that you lose this buff if you take any Felfire damage... and Gul'dan throws a LOT of felfire around :-)
In phase 1 we are just handling Gul'dan's minions while he hides behind a shield. It didn't take us long to push into phase 2. It was just a warm up, you can't win the fight in P1 but you can certainly lose it.
Gul'dan joins the fight in P2 and his abilities are slowly empowered as the phase continues.
The Eye of Gul'dan seemed to be the most dangerous ability, massive damage which sometimes coincided with the empowered roots knocking people back out of range of the action (and sometimes way way back and out of the fight, much to our amusement)
Then Gul'dan absorbs even more demonic power and we move into P3, his body mutating further and is almost unrecognisable (like the Joker in Arkham Asylum)
He begins to harvest souls to gather even more power so we have to absorb them into ourselves... will we end up like Illidan?
Fire everywhere as it erupts from random people then Gul'dan unleashes his terrible power, destroying anything remotely near him.
Empowered Eyes of Gul'dan cause further torment but we push on, soaking as many souls as we can handle before he finally succumbs to face Illidan's judgement.
Are all the best fights multi-phase encounters?
This one followed the trend as Gul'dan absorbed more and more demonic power before taking his final form.
It was epic!
Ahead of the Curve achieved... on to Mythic!
I've enjoyed this raid immensely, the aesthetic is fantastic and the fights have been varied and interesting.
There wasn't much challenge for our team on Heroic, we probably carried too much gear from Mythic Emerald Nightmare to hit it at the right level but it was still enjoyable.
And when I say there wasn't much challenge, there was definitely some in the later bosses.
The first 7 died in a fairly straight-forward manner with only a few wipes to learn the tactics before the kill.
Next came Star Augur Etraeus... and our first real challenge.
It's a fantastic setting for a fight, possibly the best I have ever experienced, like an updated Algalon.
The fight itself is very simple but, rather surprisingly, it turned into an incredibly tight dps check.
We had been plodding along through the fight until phase 3 and the inventively-named 'Thing Which Should Not Be' - Everybody knew to look away at the right time, and DBM shouts at you anyway, but a couple of people got caught out.
Then a couple more people got caught out on the next add.
Before we knew what was really happening, the boss is casting Big Bang and we're all about to die!
It took another couple of attempts and some tweaking of when to cast Heroism but then it all came together and another boss was down.
Grand Magistrix Elisande was another step up in difficulty and could easily have been the final boss in the raid.
To be honest, I think the Magistrix should have been the last boss. She has been the major protagonist in the Suramar chain, her dealings with Gul'dan and the Legion more of an undercurrent to the political maneuvering and ongoing battle with Thalyssra.
Maybe Blizzard agreed, at least in part, as the encounter is epic!
More time-bending shenanigans here as parts of the arena itself alter time, killing adds spawns either a 'fast' or slow' bubble, and how mechanics act.
Early on it is just about gaining a speed buff to do the big deeps but, as the fight goes on, it becomes just as important to use the slow bubble to handle various boss abilities.
So clever and so much fun!
Pools need to be soaked but they do damage if you stand in them... pick up a slow buff from the slow bubble and that pool damage ticks more slowly making it easily survivable.
3 debuffs on the raid that will kill everyone if they go off together... 1 person pick up a fast, 1 person a slow, to stagger the detonations.
And various other mechanics could be handled this way.
It is an unforgiving fight though and one particular mechanic killed us many times...
A circle of orbs forms around the outside of the room then contracts on to the boss.
There is no space between these orbs but they follow the same rules as everything else on this fight... hit a fast bubble and move faster, hit a slow bubble and move slower... this creates a small gap around the bubbles due to the speed difference and allows you to escape.
I won't tell you how many times people failed at avoiding these orbs... or the confusion caused by them changing direction in phase 2... but it was definitely the hardest part of the fight for our team.
I think the difficulty came from it not quite being the same each time, particularly in P2 when it was centred on one of the boss's mirror images.
Soaking a puddle with the slow buff could easily leave you out of position, and slowed, when the orbs came...
I lost count of the number of times Ghost Wolf and Gust of Wind saved me so have some sympathy for the raiders that don't have those tools available.
It took us an entire raid night to bring it all together in one attempt and the kill finally came with a famous 'one last go'! :-)
Grand Magistrix Elisande may have deserved to be the final boss in Nighthold but we've chased Gul'dan long enough and there's no way he was going to play second fiddle to anybody!
Progress seemed much more straight-forward on this fight. Not necessarily easier, but more inline with various other multi-phase fights where you learn one phase, master it, and move on to the next.
We had extended the lockout this week to focus fully on Gul'dan and, again, it took us the entire night.
I like how they have experimented with time/speed mechanics in a couple of fights and the last incarnation of this came in the form of a speed 'button' I can only assume we stole from Elisande.
It gives you a massive haste buff but the clever part is that you lose this buff if you take any Felfire damage... and Gul'dan throws a LOT of felfire around :-)
In phase 1 we are just handling Gul'dan's minions while he hides behind a shield. It didn't take us long to push into phase 2. It was just a warm up, you can't win the fight in P1 but you can certainly lose it.
Gul'dan joins the fight in P2 and his abilities are slowly empowered as the phase continues.
The Eye of Gul'dan seemed to be the most dangerous ability, massive damage which sometimes coincided with the empowered roots knocking people back out of range of the action (and sometimes way way back and out of the fight, much to our amusement)
Then Gul'dan absorbs even more demonic power and we move into P3, his body mutating further and is almost unrecognisable (like the Joker in Arkham Asylum)
He begins to harvest souls to gather even more power so we have to absorb them into ourselves... will we end up like Illidan?
Fire everywhere as it erupts from random people then Gul'dan unleashes his terrible power, destroying anything remotely near him.
Empowered Eyes of Gul'dan cause further torment but we push on, soaking as many souls as we can handle before he finally succumbs to face Illidan's judgement.
Are all the best fights multi-phase encounters?
This one followed the trend as Gul'dan absorbed more and more demonic power before taking his final form.
It was epic!
Ahead of the Curve achieved... on to Mythic!
Thursday 9 February 2017
The Alt Plan - Tanking Shenanigans...
Mythic dungeon week, perfect excuse to do some tanking on my Paladin.
His gear is in a bit of a mess at the moment with a mixture of stats as I switch him from role to role. Crit is king for Holy while haste is the worst stat and, of course, the reverse is true for Prot/Ret.
As my overall plan with this char is to heal our social raid, all the gems and enchants are Crit. I figure that this shouldn't make too much difference to my tanking as I have no intention of pushing into difficult content any time soon.
Eventually I will need two sets of gear but there is no rush for that and it definitely isn't needed to run 4 Mythic dungeons.
So I was expecting a nice easy ride to complete my quest and obtain a Heroic shiny. When I logged on, some guildies were already running Mythics so I waited to join their group. Unfortunately, they had already done a couple of 'normal' mythic dungeons and wanted to step it up to Mythic+ to use their keystones.
Ok... so not quite going to be as easy as I was expecting but it should be fine.
I insisted on starting with the lowest one, to see if my tanking could hold up to the extra damage, which was Black Rook Hold on a gentle +2.
I know BRH fairly well, where the difficult parts are and where you can save a bit of time, so was happy with that side of things. It was just the overall damage, particularly on those more difficult pulls, that I wanted to check.
The fact that it took them over 10 minutes to get to the instance should have been a warning of what was to follow... Nah, only joking, it wasn't that bad.
There were a few deaths that were definitely avoidable... Spider poison, rolling boulders, barraging hunters... that kind of thing, but I was happy with how the tanking side of things was going.
Then we got to the gauntlet near the end, where you run up the stairs with all the bats flying around.
This bit may have been my fault but hey ho...
When we killed the two mobs at the bottom of the stairs my spells picked up every bat that was flying nearby... virtually every Prot Pala spell is AoE!
I decided the best course of action would to run, without stopping on the middle platform and getting swamped with bats, all the way into the boss room and kill the mobs in a bat-free environment.
I've seen it done before and figured a Warrior, DK and MM Hunter would have plenty of AoE to kill everything before I ran out of cooldowns.
It turns out there are a couple more of those mobs than I remembered so it was going to be a bit trickier. I still think we would have been ok but the hunter hit Barrage as we ran up, pulling all of the bats in the entire world.
/sigh
Everyone else was running straight up to the boss room so she got aggro and died almost instantly, leaving us about a million bats to deal with and 1 less dps to do it.
The mobs were massively enraged because (in what was to become a recurring theme of the evening) I was the only one interrupting but, luckily, they were almost dead by the time I finally succumbed to the onslaught and our melee finished them off.
I'm not sure if that is the best approach for the gauntlet but I think we would have been fine with less bats and more dps.
What is the 'correct' way to do it?
The rest of the dungeon was fine and we got two chests. Maybe I could have gone faster in parts but I felt constrained by the dps, it was probably all the running from the avoidable deaths that really cost us the extra chest though.
Overall, happy with the tanking side, so we moved on to Maw of Souls +3.
MoS... probably the easiest of the Legion Dungeons, what could possibly go wrong? :-)
It started well, I even did the big pull up to the first boss which was fun!
I'm not sure our healer agreed as people failed to move from the various cleaves and soaked up all her mana, but we got through ok.
The inside of the boat wasn't too bad either but I noticed that our recurring theme had continued and nobody was interrupting the two big mobs just before you go outside.
Knowing the deck was full of mobs casting fears and heals that would need interrupting, I made a point of stopping and telling the rest of the team that we would need more interrupts...
60 seconds later, we have pulled the entirety of the deck as nobody managed to interrupt any of the fears...
the mobs are all at full HP because, of course, nobody managed to interrupt the heals either...
and we wipe.
Paladins are amazing for interrupting with Avenger's Shield and an AoE stun on top of their regular interrupt but I couldn't get everything on my own and we crawled our way down that deck to the next boss, it took forever.
Even on the last boss, it couldn't just be easy...
Our amazing Monk healer was oom before the fight started.
This time it was definitely my fault! I jumped down thinking she could drink while Helya did her RP bit but it didn't work that way and she was on fumes from the start.
the fight itself started badly with both melee ignoring the destructor tentacles and just hitting the ones at the side, so much so that the 2nd and 3rd were up together... it was just lucky they were close together and I could tank them both at the same time.
We reached P2 and, knowing the healer had no mana, I was hoping for some help on the interrupts.
The DK died to the very first breath so wasn't going to get much help from him but I didn't get any help from the other dps either... and then they died together to another breath.
Me and the oom Monk limped our way to the end of the fight and 1 chest.
I mentioned again the (lack of) interrupts, the DK moaned that he was dead so couldn't interrupt... fair point I suppose, not something I would be shouting about but accurate.
I linked the total interrupts for the two dungeons we had completed:
Me... 58 (Paladins are OP)
Warr... 14
Hunt... 4
DK... 1
The Warrior is happy with the 14 and the DK was strangely silent while the Hunter responds with... "I don't see them on my screen"
Now I've known this hunter for a long time and heard many comments like this but even I was confused... and I'm hoping she won't mind me having a little fun at her expense here.
The Warrior asks "What don't you see?"
"What I need to interrupt is off my screen" she replies, explaining everything.
"What is off your screen?" the Warrior bravely continues.
"I don't know, I can't see it." Eh? "I just interrupt when I can and hope it hits something"
Yes, you have read that right.
I called for more interrupting and our Hunter decided to start blindly casting Counter Shot on cooldown in the hope that it would interrupt something.
/facepalm
I needed a break after that but when I returned the group wanted to do a +4, we had a choice between Halls of Valor and Eye of Azshara.
I picked EoA as I know that one better and didn't fancy the drinking hall part of HoV, it was my first experience of tanking an affix (Sanguine this time) so wanted it to be as smooth as possible.
The first boss took an absolute age to die but it was all going pretty well so far... I worked out what Sanguine looked like on the first pack so just had to keep an eye out for that and kite the mobs a little.
Moving down the hill, we come across one of the witches. We are killing her but pick up some stray wildlife and the witch ends up in a Sanguine puddle left behind by a dead turtle.
Typically, both of my interrupts are on cooldown so the witch stays in the pool casting away and healing back up to full. I decided to wait for a few seconds to see if anyone would do anything about it... it just stayed in the pool at full HP.
Oh well, interrupt and move on.
After poking a bit of fun at my team-mates, obviously the next fail would be mine :-)
There are a few blobs around the pool of the second boss. I have seen other tanks pull them, I just assumed it was so they didn't accidentally get pulled during the boss fight, but didn't know what they did.
It turns out they slow movement speed and, with enough stacks, you can't move at all!
Ploughing into them regardless, I ended up rooted as they all died and Sanguine pools on the floor...
Never mind, I hear you say, you are a Paladin so can just use Blessing of Freedom or Blessing of Protection to remove the root/debuff and get out of the pool.
And yes, that is exactly what most Paladins would do.
This Paladin is really a Shaman and didn't think of it until about an hour later... so just died in the pool.
Numpty.
At this point, I realised I could have used Cleanse on the poison from the spiders in the first dungeon.
Double numpty.
2nd boss died easily and we were clearing the trash on the 3rd when the DK decided he had had enough of trash and pulled the boss.
Tanking the boss and all of the surrounding trash was great fun!
Our Monk, as usual, did an amazing job to keep us all alive through the mess of boss abilities, trash hydra abilities and random seagulls.
We moved on!
Clearing the small packs of crabs before the tunnel, the DK asks why I am pulling extra.
I'm busy tanking so just carry on but he asks again as we pull more inside the tunnel, and the Hunter joins in asking (and this one really made me laugh)...
"Don't you know this is a timed run?"
I can't tank and type at the same time, which is probably for the best, so this went on for a couple of minutes until the Warrior and Monk explained the concept of the mob counter... reinforced by the fact that, despite all my 'unnecessary' extra pulls, we finished on 99% and had to go hunting for a crab.
And people wonder why I don't tank...
His gear is in a bit of a mess at the moment with a mixture of stats as I switch him from role to role. Crit is king for Holy while haste is the worst stat and, of course, the reverse is true for Prot/Ret.
As my overall plan with this char is to heal our social raid, all the gems and enchants are Crit. I figure that this shouldn't make too much difference to my tanking as I have no intention of pushing into difficult content any time soon.
Eventually I will need two sets of gear but there is no rush for that and it definitely isn't needed to run 4 Mythic dungeons.
So I was expecting a nice easy ride to complete my quest and obtain a Heroic shiny. When I logged on, some guildies were already running Mythics so I waited to join their group. Unfortunately, they had already done a couple of 'normal' mythic dungeons and wanted to step it up to Mythic+ to use their keystones.
Ok... so not quite going to be as easy as I was expecting but it should be fine.
I insisted on starting with the lowest one, to see if my tanking could hold up to the extra damage, which was Black Rook Hold on a gentle +2.
I know BRH fairly well, where the difficult parts are and where you can save a bit of time, so was happy with that side of things. It was just the overall damage, particularly on those more difficult pulls, that I wanted to check.
The fact that it took them over 10 minutes to get to the instance should have been a warning of what was to follow... Nah, only joking, it wasn't that bad.
There were a few deaths that were definitely avoidable... Spider poison, rolling boulders, barraging hunters... that kind of thing, but I was happy with how the tanking side of things was going.
Then we got to the gauntlet near the end, where you run up the stairs with all the bats flying around.
This bit may have been my fault but hey ho...
When we killed the two mobs at the bottom of the stairs my spells picked up every bat that was flying nearby... virtually every Prot Pala spell is AoE!
I decided the best course of action would to run, without stopping on the middle platform and getting swamped with bats, all the way into the boss room and kill the mobs in a bat-free environment.
I've seen it done before and figured a Warrior, DK and MM Hunter would have plenty of AoE to kill everything before I ran out of cooldowns.
It turns out there are a couple more of those mobs than I remembered so it was going to be a bit trickier. I still think we would have been ok but the hunter hit Barrage as we ran up, pulling all of the bats in the entire world.
/sigh
Everyone else was running straight up to the boss room so she got aggro and died almost instantly, leaving us about a million bats to deal with and 1 less dps to do it.
The mobs were massively enraged because (in what was to become a recurring theme of the evening) I was the only one interrupting but, luckily, they were almost dead by the time I finally succumbed to the onslaught and our melee finished them off.
I'm not sure if that is the best approach for the gauntlet but I think we would have been fine with less bats and more dps.
What is the 'correct' way to do it?
The rest of the dungeon was fine and we got two chests. Maybe I could have gone faster in parts but I felt constrained by the dps, it was probably all the running from the avoidable deaths that really cost us the extra chest though.
Overall, happy with the tanking side, so we moved on to Maw of Souls +3.
MoS... probably the easiest of the Legion Dungeons, what could possibly go wrong? :-)
It started well, I even did the big pull up to the first boss which was fun!
I'm not sure our healer agreed as people failed to move from the various cleaves and soaked up all her mana, but we got through ok.
The inside of the boat wasn't too bad either but I noticed that our recurring theme had continued and nobody was interrupting the two big mobs just before you go outside.
Knowing the deck was full of mobs casting fears and heals that would need interrupting, I made a point of stopping and telling the rest of the team that we would need more interrupts...
60 seconds later, we have pulled the entirety of the deck as nobody managed to interrupt any of the fears...
the mobs are all at full HP because, of course, nobody managed to interrupt the heals either...
and we wipe.
Paladins are amazing for interrupting with Avenger's Shield and an AoE stun on top of their regular interrupt but I couldn't get everything on my own and we crawled our way down that deck to the next boss, it took forever.
Even on the last boss, it couldn't just be easy...
Our amazing Monk healer was oom before the fight started.
This time it was definitely my fault! I jumped down thinking she could drink while Helya did her RP bit but it didn't work that way and she was on fumes from the start.
the fight itself started badly with both melee ignoring the destructor tentacles and just hitting the ones at the side, so much so that the 2nd and 3rd were up together... it was just lucky they were close together and I could tank them both at the same time.
We reached P2 and, knowing the healer had no mana, I was hoping for some help on the interrupts.
The DK died to the very first breath so wasn't going to get much help from him but I didn't get any help from the other dps either... and then they died together to another breath.
Me and the oom Monk limped our way to the end of the fight and 1 chest.
I mentioned again the (lack of) interrupts, the DK moaned that he was dead so couldn't interrupt... fair point I suppose, not something I would be shouting about but accurate.
I linked the total interrupts for the two dungeons we had completed:
Me... 58 (Paladins are OP)
Warr... 14
Hunt... 4
DK... 1
The Warrior is happy with the 14 and the DK was strangely silent while the Hunter responds with... "I don't see them on my screen"
Now I've known this hunter for a long time and heard many comments like this but even I was confused... and I'm hoping she won't mind me having a little fun at her expense here.
The Warrior asks "What don't you see?"
"What I need to interrupt is off my screen" she replies, explaining everything.
"What is off your screen?" the Warrior bravely continues.
"I don't know, I can't see it." Eh? "I just interrupt when I can and hope it hits something"
Yes, you have read that right.
I called for more interrupting and our Hunter decided to start blindly casting Counter Shot on cooldown in the hope that it would interrupt something.
/facepalm
I needed a break after that but when I returned the group wanted to do a +4, we had a choice between Halls of Valor and Eye of Azshara.
I picked EoA as I know that one better and didn't fancy the drinking hall part of HoV, it was my first experience of tanking an affix (Sanguine this time) so wanted it to be as smooth as possible.
The first boss took an absolute age to die but it was all going pretty well so far... I worked out what Sanguine looked like on the first pack so just had to keep an eye out for that and kite the mobs a little.
Moving down the hill, we come across one of the witches. We are killing her but pick up some stray wildlife and the witch ends up in a Sanguine puddle left behind by a dead turtle.
Typically, both of my interrupts are on cooldown so the witch stays in the pool casting away and healing back up to full. I decided to wait for a few seconds to see if anyone would do anything about it... it just stayed in the pool at full HP.
Oh well, interrupt and move on.
After poking a bit of fun at my team-mates, obviously the next fail would be mine :-)
There are a few blobs around the pool of the second boss. I have seen other tanks pull them, I just assumed it was so they didn't accidentally get pulled during the boss fight, but didn't know what they did.
It turns out they slow movement speed and, with enough stacks, you can't move at all!
Ploughing into them regardless, I ended up rooted as they all died and Sanguine pools on the floor...
Never mind, I hear you say, you are a Paladin so can just use Blessing of Freedom or Blessing of Protection to remove the root/debuff and get out of the pool.
And yes, that is exactly what most Paladins would do.
This Paladin is really a Shaman and didn't think of it until about an hour later... so just died in the pool.
Numpty.
At this point, I realised I could have used Cleanse on the poison from the spiders in the first dungeon.
Double numpty.
2nd boss died easily and we were clearing the trash on the 3rd when the DK decided he had had enough of trash and pulled the boss.
Tanking the boss and all of the surrounding trash was great fun!
Our Monk, as usual, did an amazing job to keep us all alive through the mess of boss abilities, trash hydra abilities and random seagulls.
We moved on!
Clearing the small packs of crabs before the tunnel, the DK asks why I am pulling extra.
I'm busy tanking so just carry on but he asks again as we pull more inside the tunnel, and the Hunter joins in asking (and this one really made me laugh)...
"Don't you know this is a timed run?"
I can't tank and type at the same time, which is probably for the best, so this went on for a couple of minutes until the Warrior and Monk explained the concept of the mob counter... reinforced by the fact that, despite all my 'unnecessary' extra pulls, we finished on 99% and had to go hunting for a crab.
And people wonder why I don't tank...
Monday 6 February 2017
The State of the Shaman...Nerfs Incoming?
The great class (re)balancing of 7.1.5 has left the Shaman in a fantastic place!
Three massive buffs have improved our single target dps immensely and we have lost none of the Cleave/AoE.
The Lava Burst buff, while much enjoyed, is a straight buff to our dps and doesn't alter our gameplay much on it's own.
The biggest, and most welcome (by me anyway), change was to make Elemental Blast the best option for raiding.
It is a fantastic looking spell, one of the best in the game, and is on a medium-length cooldown which slightly increases the complexity of the rotation.
It was pretty lacklustre beforehand but now hits quite hard and gives a hefty buff to one of our secondary stats.
In a fit of unparalleled generosity towards us Shaman, Elemental Blast also benefits from our Mastery!
This is epic!
Not only do we see two casts flying towards the target, we can also benefit twice from the resulting buff!
The final 'major' buff was to Icefury.
Another interesting buff, which also came with a buff to Frost Shock damage making this talent viable (or even best) for raiding.
A medium cooldown of 30 seconds for a hard-hitting spell which massively buffs the next 4 Frost Shocks cast within 15 seconds... sounds like a mouthful even on paper!
Where Elemental Blast added a little complexity to our simple rotation, Icefury completely transforms it!
The fact that we use them both together makes the rotation absolutely mental!
Having to keep Elemental Blast, Icefury, Stormkeeper and Lava Burst constantly on cooldown and making sure none of the buffs are wasted, while managing Maelstrom and Flame Shock is one hell of a juggling act!
A juggling act I haven't quite mastered just yet but I'm having a lot of fun trying! :-)
When I gather my tier 4-set I will also need to ensure my Elemental Focus procs are used effectively which will add even further complexity and the true min-maxxers will even optimise Power of the Maelstrom procs... I fear this may be beyond my plate-spinning skill level though.
Aside from the increase in pure damage, the buffs (and talent reshuffle) have also opened up more variety in the talent builds.
At the start of the expansion, I was extolling the virtues of the talent tree and the options it gave us.
It may have taken a few months but that has now been fully realised with almost every level giving us (close enough to) equally powerful yet diverse choices to make, some which radically alter our gameplay.
All these choices to make mean we can adjust our build very effectively for whatever fight we are facing...
Skorpyron's AoE-fest? Lightning Rod and Liquid Magma Totem.
Trilliax's high-movement? Icefury for more instant casts.
Krosus' short dps race? Ascendance times out really well.
High Botanist's cleave? Maybe Elemental Fusion gets a run-out
The list goes on...
Icefury even covers one of our notoriously weakest areas, low-HP adds and target-switching, with up to 4 booming Frost Shocks ready to unload on them.
It suddenly feels like we don't have any weaknesses!
But it is more than that... we actually feel powerful in every situation!
Running round Trilliax as his laser beam keeps us moving and I am the only caster able to maintain my dps!
One of the worst situations for the WoD Shaman is now a strength!
It feels like I can turn every situation into a strength... which is why I think the nerfs will come at some point.
Being powerful in some, or even most, areas is fine as long as there are weaknesses as a counterpoint but they just don't exist right now.
This doesn't quite translate to the top level where we still sit mid-table on some fights whilst excelling on others.
I am not sure what makes the difference to those raiders.
Perhaps other classes have a level of min-maxxing that is available above what a Shaman possesses, and only the top echelon of players are capable of accessing that level?
I don't know but it might be enough to protect us from the nerf bat.
Either way, I am just going to enjoy it while it lasts! :-)
Three massive buffs have improved our single target dps immensely and we have lost none of the Cleave/AoE.
The Lava Burst buff, while much enjoyed, is a straight buff to our dps and doesn't alter our gameplay much on it's own.
The biggest, and most welcome (by me anyway), change was to make Elemental Blast the best option for raiding.
It is a fantastic looking spell, one of the best in the game, and is on a medium-length cooldown which slightly increases the complexity of the rotation.
It was pretty lacklustre beforehand but now hits quite hard and gives a hefty buff to one of our secondary stats.
In a fit of unparalleled generosity towards us Shaman, Elemental Blast also benefits from our Mastery!
This is epic!
Not only do we see two casts flying towards the target, we can also benefit twice from the resulting buff!
The final 'major' buff was to Icefury.
Another interesting buff, which also came with a buff to Frost Shock damage making this talent viable (or even best) for raiding.
A medium cooldown of 30 seconds for a hard-hitting spell which massively buffs the next 4 Frost Shocks cast within 15 seconds... sounds like a mouthful even on paper!
Where Elemental Blast added a little complexity to our simple rotation, Icefury completely transforms it!
The fact that we use them both together makes the rotation absolutely mental!
Having to keep Elemental Blast, Icefury, Stormkeeper and Lava Burst constantly on cooldown and making sure none of the buffs are wasted, while managing Maelstrom and Flame Shock is one hell of a juggling act!
A juggling act I haven't quite mastered just yet but I'm having a lot of fun trying! :-)
When I gather my tier 4-set I will also need to ensure my Elemental Focus procs are used effectively which will add even further complexity and the true min-maxxers will even optimise Power of the Maelstrom procs... I fear this may be beyond my plate-spinning skill level though.
Aside from the increase in pure damage, the buffs (and talent reshuffle) have also opened up more variety in the talent builds.
At the start of the expansion, I was extolling the virtues of the talent tree and the options it gave us.
It may have taken a few months but that has now been fully realised with almost every level giving us (close enough to) equally powerful yet diverse choices to make, some which radically alter our gameplay.
All these choices to make mean we can adjust our build very effectively for whatever fight we are facing...
Skorpyron's AoE-fest? Lightning Rod and Liquid Magma Totem.
Trilliax's high-movement? Icefury for more instant casts.
Krosus' short dps race? Ascendance times out really well.
High Botanist's cleave? Maybe Elemental Fusion gets a run-out
The list goes on...
Icefury even covers one of our notoriously weakest areas, low-HP adds and target-switching, with up to 4 booming Frost Shocks ready to unload on them.
It suddenly feels like we don't have any weaknesses!
But it is more than that... we actually feel powerful in every situation!
Running round Trilliax as his laser beam keeps us moving and I am the only caster able to maintain my dps!
One of the worst situations for the WoD Shaman is now a strength!
It feels like I can turn every situation into a strength... which is why I think the nerfs will come at some point.
Being powerful in some, or even most, areas is fine as long as there are weaknesses as a counterpoint but they just don't exist right now.
This doesn't quite translate to the top level where we still sit mid-table on some fights whilst excelling on others.
I am not sure what makes the difference to those raiders.
Perhaps other classes have a level of min-maxxing that is available above what a Shaman possesses, and only the top echelon of players are capable of accessing that level?
I don't know but it might be enough to protect us from the nerf bat.
Either way, I am just going to enjoy it while it lasts! :-)
Thursday 2 February 2017
The Race!
Is anyone else delighted to see Gul'dan hold on into the second week?
Star Augur Etraeus has seen off most of the US contingent and Grand Magistrix Elisande held the mighty Method at bay for a long time but, at the time of writing, three EU guilds are bashing their heads against the final boss in Nighthold, Gul'dan.
Even though it wouldn't bode well for my own chances of killing him further down the line, I want the race in every tier to last at least into the second week and maybe even the third (if the difficulty curve is quite smooth, not in this case).
It feels so anticlimactic when they die in the first week, particularly if it is a lore-laden character like Gul'dan.
Keep fighting Gul'dan!
Raiding as an e-sport...
There has also been a lot of debate about how to market and broadcast the world first race and, as usual, I'm late to the party but have some thoughts on the subject...
Who would even watch it?
Up to this point, these guilds have put in well over 100 hours of raiding each and killed 9 bosses with wipes numbering in the thousands!
How do you make that worth watching?
The first thought that springs to mind is... Golf!
At first glance, you may not see many similarities between mythic raiding and golf but stick with me on this one.
Golf suffers from some very similar issues when it comes to broadcasting:
1. There are long periods of inactivity or standard play between each moment of greatness.
2. You have no real idea when those moments of greatness are going to come.
3. A complete tournament encompasses many hours of playing across multiple days.
Golf gets round these issues by a system of mass simultaneous broadcasting of every golfer and every shot they play, while only showing one at any time to the audience.
This must be a nightmare for the producer but they do a fantastic job of showing as many 'live' shots as possible while slotting in some recordings of recent shots they missed.
This works by focussing on the leaders of the tournament, or some superstar, for almost all of their shots while jumping around the course to other players in the downtime in between.
It flows incredibly well on screen as the coverage continues almost non-stop. When there is an inevitable lull in the action, it is filled in a variety of ways... scoreboard and recap, golfer interviews, previews of upcoming holes and replays of great play earlier in the day amongst other things.
This is the model I would use as a base.
There would clearly need to be some tweaks though, to both the coverage style and the approach of the competitors.
The privacy walls between guilds would come tumbling down for a start but this may make the race both tighter and faster as tactics are copied and iterated upon much more quickly.
The sheer scale of an event which runs pretty much continuously (if you can get into the raid instance hehe) for a week or more, across so many timezones, could make it virtually impossible to cast but a major problem would be having no idea when it would actually end!
Xavius died in a die while we are now on day 9/10 for Gul'dan.
It would clearly be a massive undertaking demanding incredible resources which makes it highly unlikely to be done by any third party. If it's going to be done, Blizzard will probably have to do it themselves.
Before they consider allocating so many resources though, they would still have to answer the question...
Who would even watch it?
Star Augur Etraeus has seen off most of the US contingent and Grand Magistrix Elisande held the mighty Method at bay for a long time but, at the time of writing, three EU guilds are bashing their heads against the final boss in Nighthold, Gul'dan.
Even though it wouldn't bode well for my own chances of killing him further down the line, I want the race in every tier to last at least into the second week and maybe even the third (if the difficulty curve is quite smooth, not in this case).
It feels so anticlimactic when they die in the first week, particularly if it is a lore-laden character like Gul'dan.
Keep fighting Gul'dan!
Raiding as an e-sport...
There has also been a lot of debate about how to market and broadcast the world first race and, as usual, I'm late to the party but have some thoughts on the subject...
Who would even watch it?
Up to this point, these guilds have put in well over 100 hours of raiding each and killed 9 bosses with wipes numbering in the thousands!
How do you make that worth watching?
The first thought that springs to mind is... Golf!
At first glance, you may not see many similarities between mythic raiding and golf but stick with me on this one.
Golf suffers from some very similar issues when it comes to broadcasting:
1. There are long periods of inactivity or standard play between each moment of greatness.
2. You have no real idea when those moments of greatness are going to come.
3. A complete tournament encompasses many hours of playing across multiple days.
Golf gets round these issues by a system of mass simultaneous broadcasting of every golfer and every shot they play, while only showing one at any time to the audience.
This must be a nightmare for the producer but they do a fantastic job of showing as many 'live' shots as possible while slotting in some recordings of recent shots they missed.
This works by focussing on the leaders of the tournament, or some superstar, for almost all of their shots while jumping around the course to other players in the downtime in between.
It flows incredibly well on screen as the coverage continues almost non-stop. When there is an inevitable lull in the action, it is filled in a variety of ways... scoreboard and recap, golfer interviews, previews of upcoming holes and replays of great play earlier in the day amongst other things.
This is the model I would use as a base.
There would clearly need to be some tweaks though, to both the coverage style and the approach of the competitors.
The privacy walls between guilds would come tumbling down for a start but this may make the race both tighter and faster as tactics are copied and iterated upon much more quickly.
The sheer scale of an event which runs pretty much continuously (if you can get into the raid instance hehe) for a week or more, across so many timezones, could make it virtually impossible to cast but a major problem would be having no idea when it would actually end!
Xavius died in a die while we are now on day 9/10 for Gul'dan.
It would clearly be a massive undertaking demanding incredible resources which makes it highly unlikely to be done by any third party. If it's going to be done, Blizzard will probably have to do it themselves.
Before they consider allocating so many resources though, they would still have to answer the question...
Who would even watch it?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)