Of The Nightfall

Both my druid and priest are now proudly sporting the title 'Of the Nightfall'. That's 10 man Sartharion with all 3 drakes up, widely considered the hardest encounter in the game right now. Each of them ran with a different group - the druid with a caster dps group, the priest with a melee dps group. Both runs were from entirely different perspectives, so I'm going to walk through both.


Caster Group (Tanking perspective)

Our caster group wasn't really optimal, tank-wise. My druid was taking the place of our warrior tank, who was unable to make it that night. But our setup was thus:

Healers: Discipline priest, holy priest, holy paladin
Tanks: Feral druid, feral druid, prot paladin
DPS: Shadow priest, boomkin, elemental shaman, fire mage

We had our main tank pull the dragon to the front left corner, while we ran to the back. I was tanking drakes, so I went and parked my furry butt at Tenebron's landing position. Tenebron landed, I dragged him to position for the first fire wall, then we popped heroism and started blowing him up.

This was the first problem we encountered. The DPS all vastly outgeared my druid, and this stage depended on me being able to frontload enough threat to hold off them. I ended up putting on threat gear, and blowing Beserk + trinkets as soon as I got my paws on Tenebron.

After the second flame wall, I moved Tenebron to Shadron's landing position. Shadron would land, and I'd pick her up using a little macro I made for the purpose, that targets Shadron, taunts, then targets Tenebron again, since I literally could not take my focus off Tenebron without losing aggro. I changed my tanking rotation slightly at this point, using swipe instead of lacerate (while still keeping a full lacerate stack on Tenebron). As soon as Tenebron died, I'd move Shadron over to Vesperon's landing spot.

Then came the crucial part. With Shadron, Vesperon and their acolytes up, the raid is hurting themselves fairly badly. The main tank is taking huge breaths. I'm dancing around avoiding void zones and walls, so it's lucky threat is no longer an issue. Dragons are spewing shadow all over my face. This part depends entirely on the healers. For the record, I love my healers. There were a couple of times I dipped really low, and they pulled me back up.

Once Shadron was dead, DPS swaps to Vesperon. I'm not taking the massive hits from double breaths at this point, although the raid is still taking Twilight Torment damage. That meant the healers could take some attention off me and worry a little more about the raid. We could start to stabilize now, the hardest part was pretty much over. As soon as Vesperon died, the paladin healer, myself and the DPS jumped into the portal to take care of the adds.

After the adds were dead, the fight was E-Z MODE. I swapped to kitty and started shredding happily at the boss, while the pally tank continued picking up adds. Kill dragon, collect loot.



Melee Group (Healing perspective)

Our melee team, the second group, got the benefit of better planning since we'd had experience.

Healers: Discipline priest, holy priest, resto druid
Tanks: Feral druid, prot paladin, frost DK
DPS: Unholy DK, enhance shaman, TG warrior, survival hunter

We also had a second pally and a mage sitting outside, to buff us. And we had a rogue instead of the DK for half of the attempts, as they were taking turns.

The main tank got to have the dragon misdirected to his corner, this time. We all ran to the back, and the pally (drake tank) got in position for Tenebron. Because this group was melee, the tank had to move a lot more with Tenebron, to avoid void zones. We'd blow heroism on Tenebron, and have him at about 20% when Shadron landed.

We also couldn't avoid getting a second whelp group, but our DK tank (who did a stellar job, since he's usually a DPS) got very good at picking them up. He kept freezing them all as they spawned. I'm not sure what spell that was, since I don't play a DK, but it was amazing. Once Tenebron died, and the drake tank was moving Shadron, DPS would swap to all the whelps and AOE them into oblivion. They were usually all dead by the time Vesperon touched down.

Then it all came down to the clutch point again. I was healing raid + DK tank, so while Twlight Torment was up I was kept busy. CoH was kept on cooldown, and I used Prayer of Healing more than I've ever used it in a single fight before. I was also required to toss a Guardian Spirit on the main tank during this phase. It took a few attempts to make it through that phase, but once Shadron died it wasn't too bad. The main tank wasn't taking nearly as much damage from flame breaths, and the Disc priest was freed up slightly to drop the occasional shield on the DPS, giving me some breathing room to heal them.

After Vesperon died, we knew we had it. The resto druid, pally and DPS went into the portal to finish up the adds, then came back out to nuke down the fire elementals the DK had been happily gathering. By that point it's a cakewalk. Kill dragon, collect loot, round 2.




Healing or Tanking?

Personally I really enjoy the 3D fight. There's a lot going on, and it's challenging in a way none of the other encounters are. The team matters greatly in the 10-man version, everyone has to pull their weight, and if someone dies it can mean a wipe. I love that you have to work together to pull off the kill. It's an exciting encounter.

I find when tanking it, I get tunnel vision. All of my focus is on the drake, and on the threat meter. I'm so used to flame walls and void zones now, that I'm moving out of them without really thinking about it. I can't break my concentration for fear of losing aggro to Mr Crit Happy Mage. My keyboard gets a beating when I'm tanking.

When I'm healing, I usually help call out fire walls and void zones. I get a bigger picture as a raid healer, as I'm watching what everyone is doing, not just myself. It means I can more accurately assess where we are going wrong, and who's making mistakes, so that we can correct the problem.

I can't say that I prefer healing or tanking on this fight. Both are widely different and are challenging in their own way. I'd prefer to heal it though, since I want the drake for my priest.

Not A Great Job

I answered the plea of a guildmate to heal his Naxx 10 group today. Just for Gluth, Thaddius and Sapph/KT.

Bad idea. Multiple wipes on Gluth made me a snarky healer. People dying multiple times to Frogger on the way back from wipes make me even less impressed. Wiping on the trash between Gluth and Thaddius starts to really gnaw at my patience.

We downed Thaddius half a second after the enrage, and the only reason we did that was because of Guardian Spirit. The only people left standing were the pally tank, two dps guildies of mine, and me.

And then someone says in raid chat "Great job everyone!"

I couldn't believe it. Great job? When half the raid is lying on the ground dead because they don't know left from right? And that's a GREAT JOB? And not just "Great job you guys who actually survived because you can follow simple instructions" but 'everyone'.

I informed the raid that no, it was not a great job. It was a very very bad job, possibly the worst job I've ever seen apart from wipes. They told me to stop being negative.

I decided I'd rather stab myself in the eye than stick around for Sapph/KT, and went to OS-3D instead.

And That's Three

My baby Paladin dinged 80 last night. So that makes my third 80 - two tanks and a healer. I have a hero complex. Equipped my new shinies... And started out with 23k health, 544 defense. I figured that was okay for starting heroics, and promptly got invited to a Violet Hold group.

It went well. No wipes, no deaths, just a nice clean run. I'm willing to admit the healer probably carried me through a bit, but that's okay. I followed that run up with Gun'drak, where I got some new gloves, and Utgarde Pinnacle, where I got a new belt. And then I went to Stratholme.

Now, Strat was the only dungeon I had not done on my pally, not even on regular. So I was a little wary and unsure, but when I was invited to the group, the guy said we weren't doing a timed run, so I figured it wouldn't matter if I messed up. But guess what, we made the timer anyway. Without even really trying, we got to the end without about two minutes to spare. The healer won the mount, and he honestly deserved it, he did an amazing job healing me when I pulled almost half the gauntlet it one go. I was pretty proud, though. It was an amazing run for my first time in there.

I was feeling more confident after Strat and decided I could certainly manage a ten-man Vault of Archavon run. I ended up main tanking one, and while no pally gear dropped, I think I did an excellent job holding aggro off of DPS who were much better geared than me.

I'll probably write another post comparing druid tanking to pally tanking in a day or two, as the styles are so different. It's a lot of fun, actually. But for now, I have an Utgarde Keep run to tank.

Adventures of the Public Test Realm

Myself and a couple of guildies jumped on the PTR a couple of nights ago, just to mess around a bit. Mostly, we explored Ulduar. But before that, a couple of other things.


Dual Specs

My two specs of choice were Holy and Disc, both PVE specs. Why? I like healing. I'm not supposed to be Disc for progression raids (we already have one of those, and I'm too useful as holy) but I enjoy Disc. So I'll be Holy for guild progression raids, and Disc for everything else. Actually setting up your talents is easy, it's nice that they include Glyphs as part of the deal.

There is one thing I have a problem with. While I think just being able to change at the click of a button will be good, I think being able to make that change should be limited to certain places. For instance - major cities, or even inns. I do not think people should be able to swap specs at will during instances. It's going to make loot distribution a massive pain in the ass and renders certain classes less valuable. Classes who can't tank, or heal, just dps. While this may not be the case in established raiding guilds with a set roster, it will become an issue for PUG groups, and newer guilds. So that's something to be wary about.


Mana Regen

Yeah, it got nerfed. Hard. I won't say I'm happy about this, and I won't say too much because I've yet to have an opportunity to try it in a raid. But my mana regen dropped a lot. More on this later.


Priest Talents - Holy

Firstly, a talent calculator so you can see what I'm talking about.HERE

I'm not happy. I'm three points short of being able to get the things I want for a healing spec. And I have a question. What's the deal with Blessed Resilience? Why, WHY, would they attach a 3% healing buff to an otherwise useless spell? Was this the big idea to make holy PVP viable? Well, it was a stupid idea, and I hate it, and it makes me angry. Put that 3% healing on a useful talent. Don't force me to take Blessed Resilience.

Empowered Renew, on the other hand, is interesting. I like Renew. Giving me a reason to use it more is nice.

Serendipity... while I'll miss the mana regen aspect, the new Serendipity allows for weaving spells, which is a fun mechanic and I enjoy it a lot.


Priest Talents - Disc

Firstly, a talent calculator so you can see what I'm talking about. HERE

I'm liking the Discipline tree a great deal. Soul Warding is awesome, and further amps up the utility of our shields. Improved Flash Heal was a nice touch, considering it's the spell to use when Penance is on cooldown.

Oh, and on the subject of Penance, you can now cast it on yourself. Cool huh?

The change to Grace doesn't hurt too much, considering how common it is to have a prot pally with Blessing of Sanctuary.

Rapture is interesting. They did it to nerf the mana regen of Disc priests, obviously, since they don't rely on dancing the five second rule the way holy priests do. But it'll make Disc priests even stronger healing main tanks, I think. And I don't think the mana thing will be a huge problem for Disc. So that's nice.


Bear Stuff

Another armor nerf and a stam nerf. This one hurts. It hurts bad. I'm not entirely sure how it'll work in raids but I'm concerned about the mitigation I'm going to have on my bear. I didn't think that bears were at the point of taking so little damage that they required this. Bears have different strengths over the other tanking classes, and one of them was to take the big hits. That's why we use a bear to tank Sartharion on 3D, because he has the health to just eat up the massive hits. And honestly, our other tanks are more valuable tanking the little drakes or adds. It doesn't make the bear anymore important.

I don't approve of homogenizing the tanking classes. Different strengths and weaknesses is what makes them valuable.


Ulduar

Ulduar is massive. It's huge. We couldn't even access all of it and we were getting lost and finding all sorts of things. It's all amazingly done. I love the stained glass windows in a couple of rooms. Freya's room is just beautiful.


But it's also buggy. At one point we got stuck in midair in a room full of gears, called the Spark of Imagination. Three of us were stuck up there for a good half hour. Eventually, through some wiggling, we got free, but I'm fairly sure a certain rogue is never going to forgive me for saying "Hey, come over here and jump up and down so you can fly, like me".


Then there's the most difficult boss I've ever encountered: the tram. Oh, the fun we had with the tram. Upon our first ride, it worked fine. We pressed the button, the tram took us to other platform. Easy. But on the way back... The button didn't work. Or the tram would appear, then disappear as it reached us. Eventually we gave up and levitated down onto the rail. Then we ran back to the other side. It's a LONG run.


Then our warrior faced off with the unmoving tram, telling it firmly that it had better behave. All was going well, until someone pushed the button...


And our little warrior was shunted all the way back to the other side by a vengeful tram, with me watching on through Mind Vision. And when he reached the other side, it picked him up, turned him around, and pushed him all the way back, as we all laughed hysterically on ventrilo.

Hopefully we'll get a chance to actually try out one of the REAL encounters sometime soon.

Discipline Is The New Black

I had a brief and exciting love affair with Discipline. And it wasn't brief by choice - I know exactly what my spec will be when Dual Spec arrives. Yeah, I need two healing specs. Unfortunately, our attempts at Sartharion with three drakes up left us needing the just-incase-of-emergency button that is Guardian Spirit, so I'm still holy for raids. But Discipline, oh Discipline, she is the mistress I visit at night after the GM has gone to bed and I want to play.

Well, I can't argue. Sartharion and drakes are down. My sexy new Twilight Vanquisher title is looking good. And it's very gratifying to know I saved the raid from wiping with a very excellently timed Guardian Spirit on the tank who was playing with some very angry fire elementals. So, not all is lost.

Now then, on the subject of Discipline. The healing style is different from Holy - Disc prevents damage more than anything. Power Word: Shield, which I have always been fond of, becomes incredibly important. And hey - why wouldn't you use it? It's basically a 6k heal that won't overheal. And then there's my beloved... Penance.

Before I really say anything about Penance I want to mention another spell. Prayer of Mending. Yeah, it's awesome. And not just because it bounces around and heals lots of people for me. But because when I cast it, it looks like I'm smacking people with it. Yeah, you take that twirly ribbon! To the face!

Penance looks like I'm hitting people. Three times!

Okay, okay, I'm easily amused. But come on. I'm sure every healer has had those times when they just want to scream at the dps who keep standing in Blizzards and the like. No need to scream. Just heal them and make it look like it hurts! And as for tanks, well, they like being hit. It's what they do. They won't complain.

On a more serious note, I'll talk about some of the other things I love about Penance.

- As far as big heals fast go, Penance can't be beat. The first tick is delivered instantly, so even if you have to interrupt the cast and move, you've still done something.
- Every. Single. Tick. Can. Crit. That is THREE chances to proc Divine Aegis and Inspiration, further reducing incoming damage. It's amazing. With as much crit as I had while Disc, I was almost guaranteed a crit off at least one tick.
- It's only a fraction of the mana cost of Greater Heal and heals for just as much. My mana efficiency as Disc was incredible.
- It'll build up a complete stack of Grace. More delicious buffs on the tank, especially if there's no Blessing of Sanctuary up.
- It seems to bring less overheal. Because it's channeled, the first tick minimum will probably not be overheal... since everyone else has to cast. Just something I noticed, but I like not wasting spells.

I know other healers have been through all those benefits before but I had to reiterate them. Penance rocks.

Moving off Penance and back onto the subject of Disc in general, there are a few other important things that I really liked. For a start, cooldowns like Pain Suppression and Power Infusion. Pain Suppression can be a real life-saver at times. And Power Infusion? After I was done making the casters fight for my affections, I made sure to toss it on our boomkin every cooldown. He told me later that it really upped his DPS.

As I said before, the mana efficiency for Disc is awesome. Rapture is just an incredible talent. I don't have mana problems as holy, either, but regardless, I love how efficient Disc is. I have always been a fan of being more mana efficient.

And last but not least - Disc is so much easier for soloing. I can shield myself and it'll hold for longer, and I tend to do more damage. And I crit more. And I can smack things with Penance. If I had to level a priest again, I'd do it as Disc.

So that's what I have to say on the matter of Discipline.

Wrath of the Lich King - A Belated Update

I am a Bad Blogger. I got so distracted with the pretty lights and shiny new epics of Wrath I completely forgot to post. (Well, I'll be fair here. I've STARTED writing about 15 posts, but I never finish them.)

So. Here we are. My priest is decked out in pretty new epics and my druid's starting to gear up as well. My guild is one encounter away from Beating The Game. (Sarth and friends, we are looking at you. Yes, all of you. At once. Bring it on.) So, what now?



Holy Or Discipline?

So this is the big decision. Up until now I've been specced deep holy for raids. Guardian Spirit is a blast and CoH is still a crutch, 6 second cool down or not. But this week I specced Disc. Not for raids - for PVP. Now, I don't PVP often, but with all the raid content cleared for the week, I decided it might be fun to try. So, a rogue in my guild paired up with me and we clawed our way up to 1600 rating. Not bad at all. And I've been doing battlegrounds to get more marks, so I can get another PVP mount to go along with my pony. And Wintergrasp? It's a blast.

Now, on the subject of Discipline. For PVP, it's great. I'm hard to kill. Unless I get stunned or silenced, I stubbornly refuse to die. Also, Penance is amazing. And all this has got me thinking about a PVE Disc spec. I'll have to fiddle with my gems/enchants a little bit, but it could be fun! So, I'll update soon on what happens with that.



Raiding In Wrath

My guild has cleared everything with the exception of Sartharion with three drakes. And we expect that to drop in the next couple of weeks, because we made two drakes look easy this week. We're down to clearing all our raid content in two nights out of our three night schedule. Not a bad effort, really. But raids so far have been easy. Sure, Malygos took several attempts to get the hang of. And yeah, we wiped on Sarth and drakes while people were learning positioning and how to watch for void zones. But it hasn't been anything like the weeks of wiping while learning Archimonde, for instance. (Which is good).

I'm hoping we have a few more challenges in Ulduar though. There's nothing quite like the explosion of cheering on vent after downing a boss for the first time. The excitement of working together as a team to achieve epic things. Infact, that's why I raid. And it's why I love my guild. We have so much fun raiding, but we still get it done. It's brilliant.


Loot Council?

Awesome switched to a loot council system at the beginning of this year. I was slightly apprehensive at first, but now I can honestly say I'm glad we did it. The council itself consists of the officers and role leaders, along with the GM. And they've been great. Everyone's been getting upgrades and no one I've seen has made a big deal about loot. This is about guild progression, and what's best for the guild, and our loot council has really done an excellent job with it. Infact, the raiding team in general has been excellent about it. It's bringing out the best in the guild.

The benefits are obvious: Loot is going to the people it's best for, not the person with the highest DKP. This is allowing us a guild to progress faster, because the raid is improving, rather than just a player.



On The Subject Of Bears

My druid's been 80 for a few weeks now, and I've been gearing her up in 10-mans and whatever 25-mans I can weasel my way into. I usually tank Naxx10 for the guild (getting down on all fours for the guild, as a certain priest has said). My tanking's improving by leaps and bounds. While I still hate having to position everything in front of me (especially when the DPS is knocking things back, or dragging it around), feral tanking is really strong in WotLK. There will be more on the subject of my bear later, but for now, I'll leave it at this.



So, Now What?

With most raid content being cleared in just a couple of days, I have a lot of free time on my hands. Aside from 10-mans and PVP, most of what I've been doing is mount farming. Attumen, Zul'Gurub, Magister's Terrace... and Stratholme. I'm exalted with the Argent Dawn, now. Still no mount. I DID get the Crimson Felt Hat, though, which is kinda cool. I can now pimp out my Death Knight friend who I've been dragging through old content in my mount-craze.

As well as that, I've managed to get the Elder title for both druid and priest, and the Ambassador and Chef titles for my priest. I have too much time on my hands. Can't wait for Ulduar.

I Feel So Overpowered

So I've had sufficient time to play around with patch 3.0 now. And... well... wow. I wasn't expecting things to change so drastically. I suppose that's what happens when I'm existing in my happy little bubble of here-and-now. (Not that I haven't got Wrath preordered, but you know...)



Druid

Anyway, first things first, I want to share the story of my druid's first trip into Kara after the patch. We group up with a very mix-n-match assortment of players. The offtank is in greens and blues, and dinged 70 about an hour before the raid. Both healers are T5/T6 and could have solo-healed it comfortably. But we don't know what to expect so we head on in.

Five minutes later Attumen goes down. Apparently I tanked both him and the horse when they were separate, but I didn't notice. I thought the warrior was tanking him. Oops. Moroes is a joke, and Opera is surprisingly easy considering we didn't have a mage or a lock and we got Oz. The resto shammy flameshocked Scarecrow. When we get to Curator, we pop a heroism and burn him hard. We ignore the flares. Curator doesn't make it to an evocate, he's down in 1 minute and 4 seconds. Aran, Illhoof, what a joke. Netherspite is down in 58 seconds. He has a banish phase? Say what? Prince took us two minutes because three of the melee forgot they had to run out of shadow nova range and died.

In short, Kara was a complete joke. Chess is now the hardest encounter in the instance. And I'm being dead serious when I say that.

And then ZA. We got four chests with 22 minutes left on the timer. The other tank had never even been to ZA before. I understand why the Amani War Bear is no longer obtainable now.

So. Some things to note.

• Beserk is awesome. AWESOME.
• Having a rez is really, really nice. Everyone can cry as much as they want but having another rezzer available is a buff for every raid.
• Being able to main tank without worrying about crushing blows is such a relief.
• The armor nerf? Didn't really notice.
• I have Oh-Shit buttons now!
• I don't need the Bearpot macro anymore. Woo!

Anyway. In terms of Glyphs, I'm currently rocking with Glyph of Maul and Glyph of Frenzied Regeneration as my majors. Glyph of Thorns is the only minor I have so far cuz I'm not willing to pay AH prices for the others. So I'm waiting for my mage to discover some other ones.

The conclusion to that wall of text, of course, is that I'm loving my bear tank right now. We've never been stronger. And it's a huge amount of fun.



Priest

My guild downed Gurtogg Bloodboil on our first attempt yesterday. We'd not downed him before. And we did it so easy, we didn't even lose anyone. I wasn't raiding today, but apparently they downed Mother. So much for me thinking we were going to be stuck at Bloodboil till expac. Maybe I will get to see Illy-D before Wrath. It's not nearly as satisfying as I would have thought.

I chose to spec deep holy for now. Giving up Meditation is not something done lightly, but I don't feel like I've been having mana problems. Granted I have not been raiding much (achievements, horseman, alts...) but when I did raid my mana was fine, even with me spamming CoH.

I also take back everything bad I ever said about Guardian Spirit. It's fun. It's pretty. It's saved my ass a few times. Surge of Light? Yes please. Lightwell is still a waste of a point, but the rest of the holy tree is not bad at all. Also, Serendipity? It's amazing. I love it.

Gear is my only problem with my priest right now. I have to reevaluate everything, and then fight with the mages and warlocks. Not so happy about that. But okay. I'll handle it. After all, they'll be stealing my loot, but I'll be stealing theirs too.

The thing I've been having the most fun with on my priest is achievements. I'm working on the 50 pets right now. I'm at 47 and the only ones left for me to get are the low-drop-rate pets. The whelps, the firefly, the hyacinth macaw etc. So I have a lot of grinding to do.



Pros and Cons

The worst thing about the new patch is how buggy the servers are. Medivh spent a whole day offline because of some sort of terrible bug. But, server issues aside...

• People getting overconfident. Yes, I know we have new abilities, and I know we're OP. But please, don't pull four packs of elites and expect to live through it. I'm looking at you, hunters.
• Raids are just TOO easy. There's not much of a challenge anymore. Hence, it's not as satisfying to down a boss.
• No War Bears. I never did get one. Oh well.
• AH prices are INSANE for herbs.
  
• The new pot cooldowns. Hate. What if I need mana?
• I have to update addons. A lot.
  

On the bright side...

• Progression! ...finally. Even if it's not so sweet anymore.
• Glyphs. Yay, I can be more OP!
• New content. I like new things.
• A reason to revisit old content. I love you, achievements.
• Rewarding my packrat habit. Oh yes, all those herbs I saved up, and all those mini pets I kept, they serve me well now.
• Fun new spells. Enough said.

All up I'm pretty happy though. Just waiting for Wrath to arrive.