Casual Healin'

I haven’t gotten up to this fight yet, so no strategy from me.

Halcyon Topiary has a great guide tho!

http://halcyontopiary.blogspot.com/2010/01/blood-queen-lanathel-10.html

There is a also a brief guide to the Blood Princes on OP Druid

http://theoverpowereddruid.blogspot.com/2010/01/prince-valanar-shock-vortex-this-is.html

which explains just about everything you need to know.

I loved Plague Wing in Naxx. One of my favourite places ever to raid. Now its been redone, brighter, bigger, and now with added Gluth!

but seriously…

There are three bosses, plus two mini-bosses in The Plague Wing.

Precious and Stinky are two Mini-Gluths. The comedy here is just delicious – see it for yourself! Nothing really hard about these in either 10 or 25. At least, nothing hard once you have seen them a few times and know when to heal like crazy.

Festergut is a interesting combination of mechanics from existing fights. It does not allow DPS or Heal stacking, as it enforces fairly strict tests on both. It is also interesting for your tanks, although not a major tank test.

Setup your raid with all ranged arrayed around one half of the room, with 10 yards distance between every member. Ranged must be able to get back to a central point, and it is wise to nominate a healer as that point, as everyone needs to move to that point a few times during the fight. The need to stack every so often but not constantly is due to the two major (non tank) mechanics in this fight – Vile Gas and Inoculation.  In 25 man, if you have eight or more ranged DPS, then healers and more ranged (like Mages or Locks that are able to function at any range) should stack in the Melee. The number appears to be three in 10 man, but I can’t 100% confirm that. If you have less than this, or if ranged are tardy at getting back to their spots if they bring a spore into the melee, then the vile gas debuff may end up in the melee. Bad juju.

During the fight two Gas Spores will appear over a random raid member. If both are in ranged or DPS, then one player needs to move to where the spore is needed. All ranged need to group at the pre-arranged location. After 12 seconds, the spore explodes damaging all players nearby, but giving them a 25% resist to blight, for two minutes. Two rounds of spores happens between each round of blights – the first round should be the worst, if players work well it is possible (but unlike;y) to get 100% inoculation – 75% is more achievable. Speaking of achievements, one exists for no player getting past two stacks of inoculations. If your healers aren’t amazing (at least 251 ilvl gear and play style worthy of the gear) then don’t attempt it.

In between Gas Spores, a debuff is put on one raid member called Vile Gas. This causes lots of damage, and the player vomits for a radius of 8 yards. Any other player in that space will get the debuff. this one is a raid wiper if it manages to get itself spread, so make sure ranged know to keep clear of each other in between Gas Spores.

Tanks have this fight easy, and hard. You only need two tanks, although three will make it much easier if you can spare the DPS. the tanks take a debuff called Gastric Bloat. Ten stacks of this, and the player dies. It lasts for 90 seconds, and is refreshed each time the a new stack is applied. the debuff does 10% damage debuff per stack as well, meaning the more stacks, the harder the boss hits. This is applied to whichever tank is holding aggro, and drops every twelve seconds. This means that with two tanks, Tank one takes the boss, and holds the boss for ~90 seconds before the second tank taunts and takes over. The first tank then DPS’s until 90 seconds is up, then gets ready to grab the tank as soon as eight stacks is up again. A bear tank is ideal here – change to kitteh for the intervening period and add your DPS – the debuff also increases damage, so it is quite likely that that tank will be able to add 5-6k DPS. With three tanks (in 25 man) you can afford to rotate off at six stacks (or even five) however the DPS loss here will be noticeable. If your guild boasts two or three Bears, then swap them in for this fight, if they can handle it. Otherwise go with two tanks to minimize DPS loss. Tanks also need to be super aware of the debuff timing, and watch thier taunts and threat through the fight to ensure they don’t pickup the boss when they still have the debuff. In our case, this means that our main tank needs to turn off righteous fury until just before he wants to pickup the tank off me, then switch on and taunt. Then when he is ready for me to taunt off, turn off RF again.

Apart from that, the place is a DPS race. Five minutes is not long to down the boss. All players must remain vigilant to the regular changes they need to make, otherwise they will either wipe the raid, or fail to hold the DPS they need to beat the enrage.

Stack as many shadow priests as you can – the added healing from Vampiric Embrace makes a major difference to your healers load. In ten man, two healers and a shadow priest (put into group one with the tanks) is ideal. In 25, five healers, or four with three shadow priests is doable.

As we haven’t downed Rotface and the Professor yet, I cannot post my own strategies. I hope to be able to do so this week.

NERD Has downed Rotty at least… and his (fantastic) strategy is here – http://nonelitistraiding.blogspot.com/2010/01/rotface.html

Much thanks to Stratfu, the first place I head for info.

Lord Marrowgar is (imho) an easy fight. Both on 10 and 25 man modes, this fight is easy to do as long as your heals are up to the raid wide damage during the bone storm phase.

Tanks need to be able to absorb some big hits, and need to stay stacked to absorb his cleave. DPS need to stay behind, and stacked, and be coordinated about taking down bonespikes. And getting the hell out of the fire. Healers… just heal. and run out the fires too!

Lady Deathwhisper has had some little nerfs since the new content dropped. This has made this an easier fight, but mostly experimentation with strategies is what makes this easier.

Three tanks will be needed (Two in ten man). During The first phase, they need to be around the room picking up the adds that spawn. Tanks need to stay away from enraged adds, who need to be kited and killed by ranged DPS only. Phase two, tanks pick up aggro on the Lady, and keep her still.

Good DPS is needed, it is essential to have  a few classes with specific abilities – Retribution Pallies or Rogues for stunning adds, and hunters for slowing and kiting the enraged adds. Death Knights can be useful with frozen chain thingy too.

During the first phase, assign your two or three highest DPS to the boss. Through this phase the boss doesn’t have an aggro table, and doesn’t hit hard – lots of AOE type attacks to all raiders. These DPS’ers are there to burn through the mana shield that the Lady puts up. Good situation awareness is required as well – once the shiled gets down to about 10%, make sure that the current lot of adds are going to be down before dropping the shield to 0% – otherwise the tanks will have to deal with Boss and adds, which probably means wipe.

During the second phase the interrupters need to be queued and ordered to do their thing to interrupt some of the boss’ abilities. Experiment with what works for you, but we use rogues and death knights.

Heals… just heal. Lots of de-cursing and cleansing is also required.

Oh, during 25 man, the boss will mind control a random target around every 30 seconds during the first phase. Use your rogues or pallies to stun them. Yell at raiders who attack them. Again experiment for exactly the right balance.

If you have a mage (or two!) in your raid, then get them to watch for (or get a healer to call out if they see) a Cult Fanatic casting Vampiric Might. If your lacking an arcane brilliant, then get a priest to dispel.

Gunship is back and forth, apart from putting some DPS in the cannons, teaching them how to use them, and splitting your groups to attackers and defenders, there isn’t much to know about this fight. Oh yeah, don’t jump from the ship (Hey Gaz!)

Saurfang is pure craziness. There are a number of mechanics that need to be worked with to successfully make it.

For ten man, it is a relatively simple fight. Phase one has DPS kiting adds and killing the boss, and as a healer you need to go light on during this phase to ensure you have full mana when Phase two starts. Once P2 begins, one player every 20 seconds (or there abouts) will be affected by a debuff that does immense damage. This needs to be healed through and will last the rest of the fight. The DPS race is on at this point, as the mark also heals Saurfang – meaning that eventually he will be being healed for more than you are damaging him. Through everything at him at the very start of the phase and make sure you reduce him as quickly as you can.

For 25 it is much harder. The main thing here is to work out how to avoid the boss gaining health from the blood marks (when a player with blood mark dies, they heal the boss – in 25 man this is 1.5mil hp!) and to stop him gaining blood points from various other mechanics.

The easiest way to stop him receiving healing, is for each of the first four DPS who receive the Blood Mark, to run and jump into a cannon on the gunship. This stops them dying. Its a cheat(ish) and I’m sure blizz will fix this, and then nerf the fight soon, as it is near impossible without using this trick. This is only need in 25 man, you should be able to get through 10 man without a problem. *EDIT* Blizz have now fixed this, once the gunship battle is done you can’t get into the cannons any more. Any well coordinated guild should be able to do this in three or less Blood Marks anyway, and if those happen to be three DPS (I have a theory that at least one of the first two will always be a healer from what I have seen from our raids) then get your Ret Pallies (you have three right!) to use Divine Intervention on them. Make sure those who get DI’ed know to watch the timer too – We had one hit three minutes just as we got Saurfang to 1%… urrgh. Normally you wouldn’t have that problem however. Make sure you soul stone that Pallies too, or have enough druids to battle resurrect.

The other way to slow blood marks is to slow the amount of blood power he gets. He has several mechanics that give him blood power, so it is important to interrupt as many of them as possible. Any mages who get blood boil should ice block. This removes the debuff. Similarly Hand of Protection does it for Pallies – You only get it once, but once may be all you need to change the balance of the fight.

Lastly, move him down the stairs, and tank him about 10-15 yards away from the bottom of the stairs. This makes it easier for the ranged kiters to pickup the adds without the touching the tanks or melee. This does make it very cramped in 25 man, so I would suggest try it out a few ways and see what works.

After the events of the last 24 hours, it was nice to finish out the raid week with a new achievement. We downed Saurfang tonight, grabbed 3rd placed Alliance Guild on our realm (yeah stretching a bit for a relevant placing here)

Very satisfying!

I’ll post up the strategy we used here, plus I’ll add an extra thing I think we need to try next week. For guilds banging their heads against this one, it’s actually not as hard as it seems – more finesse, less brute force required.

So I made my peace with Deadly, and have reached an acceptable compromise. I rejoined the guild, and will be back raiding from tonight.

But if the new kid so much as looks at me the wrong way… well…

So thats’s it. I /gquit from Adept Unity tonight.

We recruited a new resto Druid. Out geared me by a metric shit ton. Was glad to see a new healer arrive, as the more healers in, the more likely I can make a permanent switch to Raid tanking.

I didn’t stay glad long. First boss goes down, and he doesn’t get the caster neck that drops. The QQ started before the loot even gets assigned. Lucky for me… it was me who got it. Guess that inspired him. Then a BoE drops, and he QQ’s some more about how unfair it is that a guildy should have to pay to buy it. That lasts for a while, even through the GM telling him to shut up. I (probably somewhat stupidly) send me a pst telling him that if he was looking to impress people (as a trial raider should be) then that was not the way to go about it. I know (I can hear you thinking it as you read this) I should have left it alone, even when he kept whispering me. But I’m not that guy. The one who laughs and walks away.

He then criticizes my gear. I suggest that him out gearing me should mean he out heals me (Bad move, he was never going to just shut up and get on with it after saying that). End of the next fight he starts with the four letter emphasis, crowing about me dying during the fight, and about how much I over heal.

I whispered the GM, said I’d had enough and was leaving. He assured me he would deal with it. He removes that player from the raid. That was a good start…

Dealing with it meant putting us both in a chat room to talk about it. I don’t need to talk about it. I don’t have anything to say (finally, your saying!) He justifies himself, and the GM brings him back into the raid. So I drop group, hearth, gquit and leave game.

*Self Indulgent Moment* I did a lot for my guild. I supplied the GB with raid stuff, I turned up on time and whenever I said I would. I was happy to run alts to help them along. I also (and perhaps most importantly) topped healing consistently. Yes I am not the best geared. That would have changed if I wasn’t so happy to see stuff I could win go to someone who needed it more than me. I don’t feel that the gear makes the player, and I feel that my performance in raids proves that.

A tip to GM’s. When a trial raider insults, QQ’s and makes a general nuisance of themselves, don’t deal with it. Just gkick and forget about em. Otherwise the core raider they annoy will either harbour a grudge, not just against that newb, but against the guild for not backing them when the chips were down; or they will simply gquit, rather than deal with the nuisance.

I got sick of waiting on LFG so I re-speced feral last week. I haven’t had to wait since.

Actually the main reason I did it was because we changed our raiding schedule to focus on 10 man ICC for the immediate future, which meant our group was short a regular tank. For once we had an over abundance of healers, so I decided the time was high. Over 1k gold later I’ve gemmed and enchanted all my gear (well a lot of the mats I had, but you get the idea) and I chained heroics as much as time allowed to upgrade or get pieces I was missing. Tonight made all that worth it, when I off tanked our 10 man ICC run, through Saurfang and Fetergut.

Saurfang was a real easy one shot, and I picked up I’ve Gone and Made a Mess, which made it all the more rewarding. No loot though, which always leaves a sour taste in my mouth *grin*

Festergut took us four or five tries, mostly for me to figure out what worked and what didn’t. Bear in mind, apart from some Naxx back in the day, I haven’t tanked raid at all. Was happy to see 4.5k DPS come up during that fight, by changing to Kitty and wailing while I waited for the de-buff to wear off. I’m sure I’d do more if only I knew how to kitty!

Rotface is still tough. Tanking him seems quite easy, at least, I stand there and hold aggro… and that’s about it. The MT has a harder time of it, kiting the ooze around. Mostly we are running into problems getting oozes joined properly and not romping the group. I’m sure it will just come together the same way Festergut did… at least I hope it does! Our final wipe was at 9%. things got to hectic with oozes… so a new strat might be required.

BTW, have discovered a band called Explosions in the Sky (thanks Peber!) If you like Ambient/Melodic Rock, then give it a listen.

PS: It seems if your not an Aussie you might not get the “Gone Feral” bit. Sorry about that. It’s a wonderful Aussie colloquialism. Look it up if you really must know.

Not sure what the fuss is, but today a number of blogs I read responded to a guest post on World of Matticus – Tanks and Healers should get the biggest rewards.

I can see both sides of this argument, but I’d actually like to suggest a third. I think that dual spec should somehow be made free to give a healing/tanking and a DPS spec. If you want your second spec for PVP or a different DPS spec, then it should still cost.

The simple reason behind this, is that levelling in either Tank or Heals spec is very hard work. VERY. Well, maybe not so hard now you can do it in dungeons, but still not as quick or easy as retloling your way through to 80. This means that plenty of DPS toons get to 80, then run a few dungeons, and combined with what they picked up during the last few levels, decide to tank or heal dungeons… Which is the worst possible situation, as it means that these players have no idea what they are doing, nor are they inclined to find out easily through this method.

If dual-spec allowed me to have a heal or tank spec at no cost, then levelling as a healer or tank is easy – when questing you can DPS, when in dungeons, change and get practice in. Spending 1k to dual spec is prohibitive for most players until they hit 80, and even then other things like epic flight may still come first. This then limits the enjoyability of play as its harder to get a group for a DPS due to the lack of tanks (and healers, but to lesser extent)

So no, don’t reward us with extra loot. Create a system where by dual-spec is free, but the second spec is locked to a heals or tank tree…

PS – Yes I understand that’s pretty tough to do via the talent tree, but easy enough if you make each class have a stance or form they need to be in to fulfil the roll – ie tree for druid or defensive stance for warriors. Then you can lock the second spec to only allowing the player to function in that stance/form. I’m sure this would be open to abuse still, but come on, it really can’t be that hard to work out a way to do this if it really is a good idea!

PPS – I also really like Honors Code’s idea of allowing every class to tank and heal. It’s something I have said myself (well only in relation to Beast Master and Demonology Tanks, if I am honest) and I think this would really make the game far more interesting! Of course, my idea above probably works even better if you consider this option a good idea too!

Not not mine. Unfortunately…

This vid illustrates what is going on from the healers perspective quite well…

It took us six goes, but Festergut went down.

We changed to two healers for this and downed him in 5:01… one second over enrage. Having said that most of the encounter was minus one dps who needed to have a lie down after missing the spores. This makes us one of the first guilds to down festergut 10 man I guess… who cares – it makes me happy I was there to do it!We didn’t start until after our normal raid time again, but this time we were rudely interupted by Blizz rebooting us. We took that as a sign, had one (very!) quick go at Rotface before the server was denied to us. Tomorrow we intend to start earlier (no scheduled raid) and see if we can finish the last two off.

Lessons for next time:

- Two healers can manage this, and manage it well. A Druid and Pally were our choice this time, and we averaged ~12k hps between us, which was rejuvs up almost constantly and renew on the tank, and nourish when people dropped. Oh, and wildgrowth at almost every cooldown.

- Three tanks would be a distinct advantage, although the loss of DPS might out way it. Play with your raid settings to see what works.

- ~32k DPS is required to get this done. With six DPS, that’s every DPS’er putting up 5.2k through out the fight. Don’t even bother if your raid can’t manage this, and manage it without moving around when needed.

- Shadow priests or other classes with heal themselves heap a lot to keeping your healers sane. Warlocks need not apply… at least, when they intend to life tap, they have to tell the heals and be coordinated about getting them in between AoE damage phases.