Oh... so that's where Mythic went!
Our mythic progress came to a juddering halt after Trilliax as the difficult stepped up massively.
We had a very quick look at Krosus, just six pulls at the end of a raid night, and it was decided that we didn't have the dps to beat the enrage timer... which was probably an accurate assessment looking back.
Out of the remaining bosses it was decided that our best chances lay with Spellblade Aluriel...
To say this boss is a step up from Trilliax would be a huge understatement, it is hard!
Very little changes from the Heroic fight. Aside from the usual 'everything hurts more', there is an add that spawns to throw in a few extra mechanics.
The add doesn't really do much but it's abilities add some randomness to that fight that you just have to deal with, it has far too much health to realistically kill it.
The biggest impact of the add is that it needs to be tanked, and due to it's bladestorm-type abilities, it has to be tanked away from the boss/melee group.
To prevent any Horridon style shenanigans with 1 tank keeping it miles away from the raid, it also gains a buff if it moves too far away from the boss.
With 1 tank on the add, that only leaves 1 tank to soak the Annihilate ability from the boss which hurts like hell! Our tanks and healers clearly prepared well for this as I don't remember it ever causing a wipe.
What caused most of the wipes was Mark of Frost.
On Mythic, this needs to be much more controlled.
By carefully positioning specific raiders, you can determine who the debuff jumps to each time players smash together as it will always jump to the two nearest players who don't already have the debuff.
The idea is that you have two groups of 4 people that just pass the debuff between themselves and the healers know who is going to need the healing.
We set up two Shaman on one side and two Hunters on the other as designated 'soakers', they would control the passing of the debuff on their side of the arena.
All good... in theory.
In practice, the first set of Marks of Frost and it's Replicate go out on random people and frequently chose our soakers... this meant that each soaker needed a back-up and we had to quickly adjust positioning to adapt.
Once this was under control, the Marks had to be broken at 10 stacks which was way more than we did on Heroic but you couldn't do it any earlier or it would jump to the wrong people because of another debuff.
The timing was pretty tight too as taking 11 or 12 stacks put your health in danger without a cooldown, particularly when you finally smashed into your partner.
Many of the early attempts failed as each person had to experience having the Mark of Frost and learn how to deal with it, timing the smash correctly (which was actually being called out by me anyway) to clear stacks without killing anyone.
Random people straying out of position or accidental smashes would often result in the Mark jumping to somebody who wasn't expecting it, which seemed to result in all out panic.
This was particularly hilarious if it landed on one of the melee dps, they had no experience of dealing with the debuff and would proceed to do their best impression of a headless chicken, running around aimlessly.
It was a relief as we finally negotiated our way through this phase to the adds spawning... if there is one thing we are good at in our raid team, it is AoE dps!
Those Frost adds melted away (I'll get my coat) in seconds!
We were through the first phase though, the most difficult part of the fight! Or nearly through it anyway...
The transition to the Fire phase was tricky for those dealing with the Marks of Frost, with a smash coinciding with the first fire abilities from the boss and more than a few decent attempts ended here.
The Frost proved to be by far the most difficult phase and it took relatively few attempts to get used to the Fire and Arcane phases... then we had to do it all again! :-(
The reality of the second go round the phases was that we had wiped so many times learning it the first time round that we were masters of each phase!
It was on only the third time through the full cycle cleanly that we pushed on for the kill... only to fall short at 2%.
A couple of sloppy wipes later and we were there... 4/10 Mythic!
I've enjoyed progressing this fight immensely, working through the phases and solving different issues as they arose. It is particularly satisfying to get the kill before the patch where the extra power will indirectly nerf the content.
Despite Shaman probably being one of the worst classes for the soaking role, I was delighted to take on the responsibility and be more proactive in the execution of the fight.
In stark contrast to their suitability for the soaking role, Ele Shaman excel in this fight as dps! The add phases are perfectly spaced to line up with Stormkeeper and Liquid Magma totem (I didn't bother with this) for amazing AoE damage but the real star of the show is Lightning Rod.
It may have quite niche usage but, by god, is it powerful!
14% of my overall damage came from this talent, over 50 million health, and it propelled me to the top of the meters on the kill!
If I have any gripe it is the RNG nature of Shaman AoE dps, which is exacerbated by the new artefact traits coming tomorrow, but that is a whine for another day.
Today, I am just going to revel in our latest mythic kill.
Bring on Krosus!
Tuesday 28 March 2017
Monday 20 March 2017
Team 2 Struggles...
My relaxed, social raid team has struggled lately.
We are lucky if we have a full team from the guild and often have to bring in a friend or two from elsewhere. That's not a problem, we have some good friends coming in and the atmosphere stays relaxed.
My aversion to pugging has held us back a couple of times, sometimes I just don't feel like I have the mental fortitude to cope with the negativity that some (most) pugs bring.
Having so few regular raiders though means we very rarely have more than 10 or 11 in the team and the tuning/scaling seems to be way off the mark.
The early signs came on the second boss, Chronomatic Anomaly. We handled the mechanics without any problems but hit the enrage timer... on normal!
At the time I just put it down to low dps, the team was at the right gear level for the content and still learning the fight so it made sense.
As we progressed out of the sewers though, we started hitting issues in all areas of the team...
On Spellblade Aluriel, the damage was extraordinary!
Massive raid-wide damage from the Mark of Frost debuffs which were on the entire raid so that damage was constant. We resorted to building up higher and higher stacks to prevent it spreading too quickly, which then meant more spot healing was required.
Tanks required spam healing through annihilation even with cooldowns up, and still sometimes died anyway.
It was way too much for 2 healers to handle but there is no way you can run with 3 healers in a 10-man group, the dps requirements are just too high.
There were many wipes.
As a last resort, I switched to my Shaman for more healing cooldowns and Val (Team 1 RL), who had been helping us out on his Demon Hunter, switched to his Boomkin main to boost dps.
Even with Val's massive dps, it took almost 3 full rotations through the phases to kill her and we healers were surviving on fumes for half the fight.
Next up we moved to Krosus and I assumed the dps requirements would be the main stumbling block.
Completely wrong, it was the healing again!
The tanks were taking an incredible amount of damage from the big debuff and it was a constant struggle to keep them alive at high stacks, particularly through Slams and Orb detonations.
Any unnecessary raid damage set the healers behind and often resulted in a death further down the line, to the next unavoidable damage.
Liberal use of tank and external cooldowns saw us through in the end but we still lost a tank from time to time, it just seemed impossible to keep them alive.
It was fun working out the puzzle of how to keep everyone alive and I was really happy that we met the dps requirements as it should set us up for the rest of the raid.
Wrong again.
Tichondrius was like going back to Spellblade again.
To be fair, the first two phases were fine unless people made silly mistakes. It was when we reached P3 that all our problems started.
P3 seems to be a burn phase by design, a race to kill him before you are overwhelmed by the damage.
With only 2 healers, it was an absolute nightmare!
The damage was intense but manageable until adds started draining all of our mana. At that point it would very quickly go downhill.
Because there was only two of us, the debuffs would often hit the same healer twice in a row meaning we had to adjust our positioning to stay in range of each other in addition to everything else going on.
Even without the mana drain, the loss of healing for a couple of seconds as we moved away from everyone else then dispelled was putting us behind and struggling to catch up.
It was difficult to handle but we slowly improved and were just about managing to keep the raid alive... far from healthy, but alive.
Then we hit the enrage timer and everyone died.
We were miles off the pace, boss was around 17% I think.
I tried shifting some of the dps to the boss full time, hoping that we could handle the adds ok and less target switching would help overall.
It didn't, and we needed to kill the later adds quickly anyway so it was only an option at the start.
In the end I gave up and switched to my Shaman to boost the dps numbers. It's a great fight for Ele Shaman with periodic, sustained AoE but it was still an enormous challenge to beat the enrage timer, 3 or 4 more attempts getting to sub-5% before we finally got the kill.
Is it really supposed to be this difficult?
It is on Normal mode, we are following all of the mechanics and pretty much doing everything right, why are we having so much trouble?
There had been some mention of the raid being poorly tuned for smaller teams so this week I put it to the test! Overcoming my aversion to pugging, I brought in an extra 10 people to take us up to a 20-man team.
We had a couple of big hitters in the pugs but everything ran much more smoothly than normal, the healing in particular was much less stressful with twice as many in the group.
Everything I've experienced backs up what was said about tuning for small groups and it seems particularly egregious when it comes to debuffs:
Frost on Spellblade
Tank debuff on Krosus
All the debuffs on Tichondrius
It has made me hesitant to go to Star Augur so we will probably try Botanist next.
I don't think it should be like this though on Normal mode, it feels just as tightly tuned as Heroic and even harder at times.
Following all of the mechanics, doing reasonable hps/dps, tanks using their cooldowns and mitigation properly... surely that should be enough?
We are lucky if we have a full team from the guild and often have to bring in a friend or two from elsewhere. That's not a problem, we have some good friends coming in and the atmosphere stays relaxed.
My aversion to pugging has held us back a couple of times, sometimes I just don't feel like I have the mental fortitude to cope with the negativity that some (most) pugs bring.
Having so few regular raiders though means we very rarely have more than 10 or 11 in the team and the tuning/scaling seems to be way off the mark.
The early signs came on the second boss, Chronomatic Anomaly. We handled the mechanics without any problems but hit the enrage timer... on normal!
At the time I just put it down to low dps, the team was at the right gear level for the content and still learning the fight so it made sense.
As we progressed out of the sewers though, we started hitting issues in all areas of the team...
On Spellblade Aluriel, the damage was extraordinary!
Massive raid-wide damage from the Mark of Frost debuffs which were on the entire raid so that damage was constant. We resorted to building up higher and higher stacks to prevent it spreading too quickly, which then meant more spot healing was required.
Tanks required spam healing through annihilation even with cooldowns up, and still sometimes died anyway.
It was way too much for 2 healers to handle but there is no way you can run with 3 healers in a 10-man group, the dps requirements are just too high.
There were many wipes.
As a last resort, I switched to my Shaman for more healing cooldowns and Val (Team 1 RL), who had been helping us out on his Demon Hunter, switched to his Boomkin main to boost dps.
Even with Val's massive dps, it took almost 3 full rotations through the phases to kill her and we healers were surviving on fumes for half the fight.
Next up we moved to Krosus and I assumed the dps requirements would be the main stumbling block.
Completely wrong, it was the healing again!
The tanks were taking an incredible amount of damage from the big debuff and it was a constant struggle to keep them alive at high stacks, particularly through Slams and Orb detonations.
Any unnecessary raid damage set the healers behind and often resulted in a death further down the line, to the next unavoidable damage.
Liberal use of tank and external cooldowns saw us through in the end but we still lost a tank from time to time, it just seemed impossible to keep them alive.
It was fun working out the puzzle of how to keep everyone alive and I was really happy that we met the dps requirements as it should set us up for the rest of the raid.
Wrong again.
Tichondrius was like going back to Spellblade again.
To be fair, the first two phases were fine unless people made silly mistakes. It was when we reached P3 that all our problems started.
P3 seems to be a burn phase by design, a race to kill him before you are overwhelmed by the damage.
With only 2 healers, it was an absolute nightmare!
The damage was intense but manageable until adds started draining all of our mana. At that point it would very quickly go downhill.
Because there was only two of us, the debuffs would often hit the same healer twice in a row meaning we had to adjust our positioning to stay in range of each other in addition to everything else going on.
Even without the mana drain, the loss of healing for a couple of seconds as we moved away from everyone else then dispelled was putting us behind and struggling to catch up.
It was difficult to handle but we slowly improved and were just about managing to keep the raid alive... far from healthy, but alive.
Then we hit the enrage timer and everyone died.
We were miles off the pace, boss was around 17% I think.
I tried shifting some of the dps to the boss full time, hoping that we could handle the adds ok and less target switching would help overall.
It didn't, and we needed to kill the later adds quickly anyway so it was only an option at the start.
In the end I gave up and switched to my Shaman to boost the dps numbers. It's a great fight for Ele Shaman with periodic, sustained AoE but it was still an enormous challenge to beat the enrage timer, 3 or 4 more attempts getting to sub-5% before we finally got the kill.
Is it really supposed to be this difficult?
It is on Normal mode, we are following all of the mechanics and pretty much doing everything right, why are we having so much trouble?
There had been some mention of the raid being poorly tuned for smaller teams so this week I put it to the test! Overcoming my aversion to pugging, I brought in an extra 10 people to take us up to a 20-man team.
We had a couple of big hitters in the pugs but everything ran much more smoothly than normal, the healing in particular was much less stressful with twice as many in the group.
Everything I've experienced backs up what was said about tuning for small groups and it seems particularly egregious when it comes to debuffs:
Frost on Spellblade
Tank debuff on Krosus
All the debuffs on Tichondrius
It has made me hesitant to go to Star Augur so we will probably try Botanist next.
I don't think it should be like this though on Normal mode, it feels just as tightly tuned as Heroic and even harder at times.
Following all of the mechanics, doing reasonable hps/dps, tanks using their cooldowns and mitigation properly... surely that should be enough?
Monday 13 March 2017
The Alt Plan - Rogue (No Spoliers)
I was impressed with how they captured the Shaman class fantasy during that order hall campaign and they have repeated that success with the Rogue.
A fantastic cast of characters heads up a thrilling story of action, intrigue and suspense, it could be (and maybe is) the plot to a Mission Impossible film... less shooty shooty, more stabby stabby... and more demons.
The pirate rogue is hammed up a bit too much for my liking, and the order hall itself really should have been Ravenholdt Manor (what a missed opportunity that was!) but this doesn't detract from the experience.
The story ties cleverly in with the main Legion storyline too, giving further insight into the events surrounding the failed Broken Shore invasion, and the goblins offer some perfectly pitched light relief to keep it fun.
A couple of minor complaints...
Using this method of hitting cap before running through the whole order hall campaign really shows the follower missions up for the time-gating mechanic they truly are - I wish they could be skipped for alts as they destroy the immersion of the storyline.
Also, the lead up to the finale involves some sneaking around... I was hoping for something similar to the amazing sneak around Gilneas quest in the Fangs of the Father questline but there didn't seem to be anyone there and it made wandering around Suramar City look challenging by comparison.
It was still a fantastic story and an enjoyable romp, highly recommended!
The Specs...
I levelled as Outlaw because it is super easy. Marked for Death and Roll the Bones make a great combo for levelling and are a lot of fun to play around with.
Moving into dungeons and the RNG of Outlaw becomes increasingly frustrating so I switched to Assassination at 110.
I swear Assassination hasn't really changed in years and it is still a nice relaxing spec to play, as opposed to the button-bashing mayhem of Outlaw.
Pooling energy to make the most of Envenom, avoiding clipping each Envenom... I'm sure I was doing the same back in Cata (once I had learned about poisons anyway, but that's another story).
I didn't really try out Subtlety beyond picking up the Artefact weapons and, as I am trying desperately not to get too attached to Rogue-ing (must not raid, must not raid), I think it will stay on the shelf.
Alt Update:
110: 6
Artefacts: 15
Campaigns: 4
Armour Stands: 1 (I'm telling you, I'm not doing them...)
A fantastic cast of characters heads up a thrilling story of action, intrigue and suspense, it could be (and maybe is) the plot to a Mission Impossible film... less shooty shooty, more stabby stabby... and more demons.
The pirate rogue is hammed up a bit too much for my liking, and the order hall itself really should have been Ravenholdt Manor (what a missed opportunity that was!) but this doesn't detract from the experience.
The story ties cleverly in with the main Legion storyline too, giving further insight into the events surrounding the failed Broken Shore invasion, and the goblins offer some perfectly pitched light relief to keep it fun.
A couple of minor complaints...
Using this method of hitting cap before running through the whole order hall campaign really shows the follower missions up for the time-gating mechanic they truly are - I wish they could be skipped for alts as they destroy the immersion of the storyline.
Also, the lead up to the finale involves some sneaking around... I was hoping for something similar to the amazing sneak around Gilneas quest in the Fangs of the Father questline but there didn't seem to be anyone there and it made wandering around Suramar City look challenging by comparison.
It was still a fantastic story and an enjoyable romp, highly recommended!
The Specs...
I levelled as Outlaw because it is super easy. Marked for Death and Roll the Bones make a great combo for levelling and are a lot of fun to play around with.
Moving into dungeons and the RNG of Outlaw becomes increasingly frustrating so I switched to Assassination at 110.
I swear Assassination hasn't really changed in years and it is still a nice relaxing spec to play, as opposed to the button-bashing mayhem of Outlaw.
Pooling energy to make the most of Envenom, avoiding clipping each Envenom... I'm sure I was doing the same back in Cata (once I had learned about poisons anyway, but that's another story).
I didn't really try out Subtlety beyond picking up the Artefact weapons and, as I am trying desperately not to get too attached to Rogue-ing (must not raid, must not raid), I think it will stay on the shelf.
Alt Update:
110: 6
Artefacts: 15
Campaigns: 4
Armour Stands: 1 (I'm telling you, I'm not doing them...)
Thursday 9 March 2017
It's the little things...
Sometimes you stumble upon something in WoW that serves no purpose whatsoever apart from being cool, I think it's part of what makes this game so great.
There are loads of these little touches all over the game of all sizes and scopes but I found something in the game that captured my imagination and had me hooked for a while.
I literally ran into one of these in my order hall and couldn't work out what they were. A quick visit to wowhead told me everything I needed to know.
Each stand would hold parts of the tier if you collected every piece. How cool is that?
Next I was a little confused as I was sure I must have collected some of the sets over the years but all of my stands were empty. I read the fine print and everything has to be collected on 10 man normal (where appropriate) and all for the same spec.
I immediately set off to Molten Core to start collecting!
Those two sets took the longest to gather.
Massive loot tables on each boss and not many dropping each kill mean the odds are against you.
It was great to run back through Black Temple with Illidan back in the spotlight at the moment but, on the other hand, Battle for Mount Hyjal was just a bore.
It is actually my favourite set and I was sure I had it in my bank but I had accidentally picked up an Enhancement piece and a Resto piece...typically, it took forever to replace them with Elemental pieces.
The ICC set can be purchased from a vendor in Dalaran which irritated me beyond any reasonable level. I almost felt cheated that I didn't get to farm ICC for the pieces which makes me laugh (now).
Ulduar and Naxxramas still have that epic feel as you run through them. Even when 1-shotting every mob they are a lot of fun.
It took a while but I collected all 10 sets!
But, wait!
What's this?
Obviously, I had to find out what the missing one was.
Oh no... PvP!!!
My order hall is determined for me to do PvP!
I'm still going at the moment so the collection is not quite comlete... but I've just noticed another empty stand which isn't even available until 7.2 so I'm not in any rush now.
I have really enjoyed collecting these sets despite (or maybe because) there being no tangible reward.
Pointless, but utterly cool :)
Now I'm desperately trying to resist the temptation to collect them on all the alts...
There are loads of these little touches all over the game of all sizes and scopes but I found something in the game that captured my imagination and had me hooked for a while.
 | |
| Armour Stand |
Each stand would hold parts of the tier if you collected every piece. How cool is that?
Next I was a little confused as I was sure I must have collected some of the sets over the years but all of my stands were empty. I read the fine print and everything has to be collected on 10 man normal (where appropriate) and all for the same spec.
I immediately set off to Molten Core to start collecting!
 |
| Molten Core and Blackwing Lair |
Massive loot tables on each boss and not many dropping each kill mean the odds are against you.
 |
| Outland Raids |
It is actually my favourite set and I was sure I had it in my bank but I had accidentally picked up an Enhancement piece and a Resto piece...typically, it took forever to replace them with Elemental pieces.
 |
| WotLK Raids |
Ulduar and Naxxramas still have that epic feel as you run through them. Even when 1-shotting every mob they are a lot of fun.
 |
| The Full Set (and me!) |
But, wait!
What's this?
 |
| Artefact Weapon skins! |
 |
| Balance of Power |
 |
| Hidden Artefact skin - Amani |
 |
| It's missing! |
Oh no... PvP!!!
My order hall is determined for me to do PvP!
I'm still going at the moment so the collection is not quite comlete... but I've just noticed another empty stand which isn't even available until 7.2 so I'm not in any rush now.
I have really enjoyed collecting these sets despite (or maybe because) there being no tangible reward.
Pointless, but utterly cool :)
Now I'm desperately trying to resist the temptation to collect them on all the alts...
Monday 6 March 2017
Trilliax Disappoints the Master...
Cakebro doesn't change much from Heroic...
The fight is still about eating cake, got to eat the cake, and jumping on exploding robots.
We split the room into 4 quarters and had each group cover a specific area. Exactly what this was supposed to achieve I have no idea, as the cakes didn't get the memo and still appeared wherever they felt like.
This led to a couple of strange wipes as people stuck to their assigned positions while other areas were overflowing with cake.
We ended up splitting into our groups then having to move all over the room to make sure all the cake was eaten, it seemed rather pointless to me.
Anyway, cake issues aside, there is one major change on Mythic difficulty... the addition of a mini-Cakebro!
In what I hope to be a homage to Austin Powers, Trilliax has his own little mini-me!
Mini-Cakebro builds up energy as the fight goes on and, if it reaches full energy, performs one of the big moves of Trilliax himself depending on which phase it is.
One of them can even cast his own mini version of Annihilation!
There is some passive energy gain but it mainly comes from a buff applied to the add. Luckily, this buff can be purged and that was my job (Shamans is useful see, bring them to your raids) so I was fully prepared for this fight.
I didn't need to bother.
The fight played out exactly like Heroic.
Mini-me did kill a couple of people the first time we saw him as the tanks weren't ready to pick him up but, after that, he was completely irrelevant.
I did purge him but I'm not even sure it was necessary as he was being cleaved down so fast he could barely build up any energy anyway. The most one of them managed was around 25%.
It was such an anti-climax, the add barely had any effect on the fight. Maybe it is different if you have no Shaman in your raid to purge (or Priest to dispel... or Mage to Spellsteal...) but it was far too easy to handle.
6 attempts and we were 3/10 Mythic!
That took us to Krosus which is certainly a step up in difficulty!
We didn't get very far but it was enough to resurrect the 54th trait debate all over again.
Oh joy.
The fight is still about eating cake, got to eat the cake, and jumping on exploding robots.
We split the room into 4 quarters and had each group cover a specific area. Exactly what this was supposed to achieve I have no idea, as the cakes didn't get the memo and still appeared wherever they felt like.
This led to a couple of strange wipes as people stuck to their assigned positions while other areas were overflowing with cake.
We ended up splitting into our groups then having to move all over the room to make sure all the cake was eaten, it seemed rather pointless to me.
Anyway, cake issues aside, there is one major change on Mythic difficulty... the addition of a mini-Cakebro!
In what I hope to be a homage to Austin Powers, Trilliax has his own little mini-me!
Mini-Cakebro builds up energy as the fight goes on and, if it reaches full energy, performs one of the big moves of Trilliax himself depending on which phase it is.
One of them can even cast his own mini version of Annihilation!
There is some passive energy gain but it mainly comes from a buff applied to the add. Luckily, this buff can be purged and that was my job (Shamans is useful see, bring them to your raids) so I was fully prepared for this fight.
I didn't need to bother.
The fight played out exactly like Heroic.
Mini-me did kill a couple of people the first time we saw him as the tanks weren't ready to pick him up but, after that, he was completely irrelevant.
I did purge him but I'm not even sure it was necessary as he was being cleaved down so fast he could barely build up any energy anyway. The most one of them managed was around 25%.
It was such an anti-climax, the add barely had any effect on the fight. Maybe it is different if you have no Shaman in your raid to purge (or Priest to dispel... or Mage to Spellsteal...) but it was far too easy to handle.
6 attempts and we were 3/10 Mythic!
That took us to Krosus which is certainly a step up in difficulty!
We didn't get very far but it was enough to resurrect the 54th trait debate all over again.
Oh joy.
Thursday 2 March 2017
Chrono- no more!
Full team available so back to Mythic!
Well, it was almost a full team.
Our Resto Druid was running late so we started without him, figuring we could 19-man Skorpyron.
It didn't quite go to plan as out main tank had an absolute stinker of a fight and was thrown into the scorpions on multiple occasions. His play is normally close to flawless so I certainly won't begrudge him one bad pull.
Our druid arrived in time for the next attempt and it was a comfortable kill.
On to Chrono...
Getting so close last time meant we didn't want to change anything tactics-wise but a couple of tweaks were made.
The main difference in the Mythic fight is that two of the adds spawn each time, forcing you to split the raid to deal with them and the main difficulty comes from balancing the groups for each add.
That sounds really simple but, on the 3rd and 4th set, you need one of the adds to die really quickly so you can interrupt the boss. This means overloading the dps on one side for these adds then having everyone run around the room to help on the other add.
It is extra movement but necessary or we all basically die.
We split the raid evenly for the first two sets of adds but the boss is tanked on top of one so we can cleave. The group going for the other add then have miles to run to reach the boss again... A Warlock would have been amazingly useful on this fight but, unfortunately, we don't have one.
We are also lacking a Feral Druid so all Shaman were forced to use Wind Rush Totem... I hate giving up my Gust of Wind but it had to be done :-(
The tweaks we made were quite interesting... They put all of the stronger dps into the groups that were moving less and had the boss to cleave. The ones who are regularly lower on the dps were forced to do all of the extra movement.
The idea clearly being that we would sacrifice less dps to movement...
...and it worked a treat!
We were now way ahead of the enrage timer and only execution would keep us from getting the kill.
There is one mechanic that relies on personal responsibility in this fight, the Time Bomb. If it goes off in the group it does horrific amounts of damage but you have an absolute age to react and move away from the raid.
If you haven't already guessed... this caused us many problems.
It's one of those random-target mechanics that people seem to struggle with all the time. It must be because it happens to each person so infrequently that they forget that it can happen... or something like that.
I have some sympathy due to the random nature of the mechanic but, when your character pulses bright white light for the final ten seconds before the explosion, that sympathy doesn't last long.
We resorted to calling out every player with the bomb when they reached that ten second mark so they could move out.
I really dislike this level of micro-managing in a team that is supposed to be aiming for Cutting Edge achievements but it was necessary.
Maybe people just needed to see it more? Have it target them a couple more times?
Nah, I'm not having that.
When it's been pointed out that this mechanic is repeatedly wiping us, one with a response as simple as moving away from the raid, I think everyone should make sure they are prepared for it. I have a TMW set up specifically for that debuff.
Am I being too harsh?
Calling out did the trick and we smoothly ran to the kill.
2/10 Mythic!
Time for some cake!
Well, it was almost a full team.
Our Resto Druid was running late so we started without him, figuring we could 19-man Skorpyron.
It didn't quite go to plan as out main tank had an absolute stinker of a fight and was thrown into the scorpions on multiple occasions. His play is normally close to flawless so I certainly won't begrudge him one bad pull.
Our druid arrived in time for the next attempt and it was a comfortable kill.
On to Chrono...
Getting so close last time meant we didn't want to change anything tactics-wise but a couple of tweaks were made.
The main difference in the Mythic fight is that two of the adds spawn each time, forcing you to split the raid to deal with them and the main difficulty comes from balancing the groups for each add.
That sounds really simple but, on the 3rd and 4th set, you need one of the adds to die really quickly so you can interrupt the boss. This means overloading the dps on one side for these adds then having everyone run around the room to help on the other add.
It is extra movement but necessary or we all basically die.
We split the raid evenly for the first two sets of adds but the boss is tanked on top of one so we can cleave. The group going for the other add then have miles to run to reach the boss again... A Warlock would have been amazingly useful on this fight but, unfortunately, we don't have one.
We are also lacking a Feral Druid so all Shaman were forced to use Wind Rush Totem... I hate giving up my Gust of Wind but it had to be done :-(
The tweaks we made were quite interesting... They put all of the stronger dps into the groups that were moving less and had the boss to cleave. The ones who are regularly lower on the dps were forced to do all of the extra movement.
The idea clearly being that we would sacrifice less dps to movement...
...and it worked a treat!
We were now way ahead of the enrage timer and only execution would keep us from getting the kill.
There is one mechanic that relies on personal responsibility in this fight, the Time Bomb. If it goes off in the group it does horrific amounts of damage but you have an absolute age to react and move away from the raid.
If you haven't already guessed... this caused us many problems.
It's one of those random-target mechanics that people seem to struggle with all the time. It must be because it happens to each person so infrequently that they forget that it can happen... or something like that.
I have some sympathy due to the random nature of the mechanic but, when your character pulses bright white light for the final ten seconds before the explosion, that sympathy doesn't last long.
We resorted to calling out every player with the bomb when they reached that ten second mark so they could move out.
I really dislike this level of micro-managing in a team that is supposed to be aiming for Cutting Edge achievements but it was necessary.
Maybe people just needed to see it more? Have it target them a couple more times?
Nah, I'm not having that.
When it's been pointed out that this mechanic is repeatedly wiping us, one with a response as simple as moving away from the raid, I think everyone should make sure they are prepared for it. I have a TMW set up specifically for that debuff.
Am I being too harsh?
Calling out did the trick and we smoothly ran to the kill.
2/10 Mythic!
Time for some cake!
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