Posts tagged kill shot

Our first heroic Ultraxion kill, from Jan 25. Definitely one of those “stumbling over the finish line” wipes in progress kind of kills. Our second kill was much cleaner.

Oh hai there. I still seem to be GM of a 10-person raiding guild. More on this topic soon.

Our first kill of heroic Baleroc.

I haven’t been posting, I know! But I’m still here and still playing and still druid healing and still GM of a 10-person raiding guild. We’re now 6/7 in Firelands heroics, thanks to the nerfs. We’d have reached this stage eventually, I’m sure, but we got there almost immediately once the content got nerfed.

The vid above shows a typical first kill. Baleroc is a fun fight on heroic. It requires close coordination and communication among raid members, because the link mechanic means that the Tormented debuff gets spread around randomly. I wish I could record our Mumble conversation as well as the game footage here, just so you could hear how it worked for us.

This particular kill is easy to repeat. We’re still capable of wiping on heroic Alysrazor, but we one-shot Baleroc the week after killing him the first time. Once you get the concept, the kill is just a matter of smooth execution. So if you’re still working on Firelands heroics, give this guy a shot! He might be easier than you think.

We’ll be pulling Ragnaros on heroic this week. Nobody on our server has a heroic kill of him yet, and the top guilds have been working on him for a while now. I don’t think much of our chances. About half the raid really wants to put in the time, though, so we will be. I confess that normal-mode Ragnaros has become a bit of a snooze-fest. I say this even though we’ve been two-healing it and I’m the healer who has to scurry around keeping the raid healed up.

Majordomo dies for the first time! Here are my notes on how we did it. I will assume that you’ve read the basics about the fight.

The fight is about controlling how often and when Staghelm switches forms. He has two major forms: scorpion (does a high-damage aoe cleave; in this form when the raid is clumped up) and cat (leaps on random targets leaving a flame pancake; in this form when the raid is spread out). The attacks come faster every time he repeats them, so you will eventually be forced to make him shift. Every third swap he does a special that depends on which form he’s switching to. The scorpion -> cat special is flame orbs & it’s particularly difficult to handle. Your goal, therefore, is to make that special happen last, and ideally to have the boss die while he’s still in that phase.

You’ll want strong AOE healing. Our team was holy pally, resto druid, resto shaman. It was significantly harder on the attempts where we had a disco priest instead of the shammy.

Scorpion first. Pop Heroism/BL/TW almost immediately, because this is your best shot at uninterrupted DPS. Take 8 cleaves. Have a plan for raid cooldowns on the last two, which will come very fast.

Cat form second. Spread out fast before healing up after the 8th cleave. Have the raid position itself in a circle around where the boss is tanked. Take 7 leaps. The problem with trying to push an 8th is that the 9th leap might come while you’re still trying to move into the center. It might happen even after 7, so move in as soon as you see him start the leap.

The next transformation will proc the special. People should run out, explode, and run back in again as quickly as possible. Don’t run out early. Nine people should be enough to soak the cleaves; 8 is dicy. Try to push it to 8 cleaves again if you have the cooldowns to heal it. 7 cleaves is fine.

Repeat until he procs the scorpion -> cat special. Have a plan for pairing up & swapping off on the flame orbs. At least 1 healer will need to help on this. Healing can get painful. Our plan was to have him die in this phase if possible, and if not force the transformation to scorpion as soon as the orbs went down.

We didn’t quite manage this, as you can see. We started falling apart a bit when the flame orbs came out. We got through the phase, however, and he died only a few seconds into scorpion form.

Baleroc first kill. It was a wipe in progress, as you can see. A healer mis-cast a heal on a DPS soaking torment stacks. We lost the dps, and the wipe commenced. We got him down though. If you look closely at the end, you can see that I gave up on healing and just started moonfiring & wrathing the boss.

We killed a spider last night! Here’s our Beth’thilac kill video. We worked out tactics for this fight quickly then had some execution messups. Even the kill was a little messy. Despite that, this is one of the easier fights in the what’s feeling like a more forgiving T12.

We repeated the Shannox kill last night, giving our new tank recruit a solid tryout. Tonight we’ll try Baleroc. Rhyolith will be Thursday’s kill, most likely, because it’s two-healable and I’ll be out of town. Annual trip to Vegas with friends. Heh. I’ll enjoy the break.

I’ve been far too busy playing the game to blog about it much. The new dailies are chewing up my time, particularly because I was trying to do them on 3 characters for a while. That was 1 too many. I’ve cut back to just doing them on Leafie and Aegidius, who are my mains on each faction.

Valiona & Theralion heroic are down, leaving us at a likely 6/13 for the release of tier 12. The screenshot isn’t our killshot, but instead it shows us assembling our army of killer penguins before we charged in. We spent two nights working on the “one Subtlety rogue in the Twilight Zone” tactic, since we have a rogue and he was willing to respec Subtlety to try it. Our best attempts were mid-30%. Too much RNG: he’d be doing great then take a bomb to the face. If he died, it was a wipe. If he popped out for healing and had to spend anything more than 30 seconds out of the TZ, it was a wipe. We ultimately succeeded with the usual 10-person raid tactic of sending 1 healer + 2 dps (preferably ranged) down in shifts. This put a huge burden on the 2 healers remaining topside to keep the raid up. Mind you, healing in the twilight wasn’t a cakewalk either. It took constant mana spew to keep people alive. I sort of enjoyed how difficult it was to move around in there, though. I might need mental health assistance for feeling that way, I realize. It took a bunch of wipes for us to stabilize everything topside, learn to survive in the twilight, and then put together a solid attempt in which nobody died to mistakes. Log parse for the kill, maddeningly incomplete because it’s missing whatever was happening in the zone I wasn’t in. I have a kill vid, too, that I’ll upload later today. That’s more for my guild’s analysis, though.

Valiona & Theralion heroic are down, leaving us at a likely 6/13 for the release of tier 12. The screenshot isn’t our killshot, but instead it shows us assembling our army of killer penguins before we charged in.

We spent two nights working on the “one Subtlety rogue in the Twilight Zone” tactic, since we have a rogue and he was willing to respec Subtlety to try it. Our best attempts were mid-30%. Too much RNG: he’d be doing great then take a bomb to the face. If he died, it was a wipe. If he popped out for healing and had to spend anything more than 30 seconds out of the TZ, it was a wipe.

We ultimately succeeded with the usual 10-person raid tactic of sending 1 healer + 2 dps (preferably ranged) down in shifts. This put a huge burden on the 2 healers remaining topside to keep the raid up. Mind you, healing in the twilight wasn’t a cakewalk either. It took constant mana spew to keep people alive. I sort of enjoyed how difficult it was to move around in there, though. I might need mental health assistance for feeling that way, I realize.

It took a bunch of wipes for us to stabilize everything topside, learn to survive in the twilight, and then put together a solid attempt in which nobody died to mistakes. Log parse for the kill, maddeningly incomplete because it’s missing whatever was happening in the zone I wasn’t in. I have a kill vid, too, that I’ll upload later today. That’s more for my guild’s analysis, though.

Fleetfoot earned her Defender title in our alt run last night. We were giving a trial to a tank candidate who didn’t have any T11 raid experience before last night. So we threw him in the deep end & made him tank Maloriak adds, Onyxia & then Nef adds in phase 3. You see the result: a kill! He made mistakes but that kill was no mean feat. I was a little sad I didn’t get to tank Nef myself, but I did at least have the non-trivial job of rounding up & kiting the Bone Warriors in phase 1. I did my best to climb that learning curve quickly. The trick is to have them die in a pile without letting them hit you much, which isn’t easy because they do not die all at once. I got closest to a neat pile on the pull that ended up in our kill. My notes on that task: Throw on a sword & shield and swap to Defensive stance. The Animated Bone Warriors spawn from purple swirlies on the ground. Watch for the first one then head over and wait for the meteor to hit & the warrior to spawn. The others will spawn from swirlies one by one moving counterclockwise around the edge of the circle from the first. There might be some gaps. Use Charge to close up gaps and heroic throw to pick up the last. Save heroic leap for later! I used Sunder on the first few to build some threat, then Thunderclap once I had a pile. You might be able to get away with popping shield block & cleaving a few times early. Then kite them back & forth across the hunter frost trap/other slow zones, using Intercept & Heroic Leap when you want to move to the opposite side of the pack. They do more damage as their lifespan ticks on, so be ready to pop shield wall once your mobility options are on cooldown. Project PUG Tank: no runs yesterday.

Fleetfoot earned her Defender title in our alt run last night. We were giving a trial to a tank candidate who didn’t have any T11 raid experience before last night. So we threw him in the deep end & made him tank Maloriak adds, Onyxia & then Nef adds in phase 3. You see the result: a kill! He made mistakes but that kill was no mean feat.

I was a little sad I didn’t get to tank Nef myself, but I did at least have the non-trivial job of rounding up & kiting the Bone Warriors in phase 1. I did my best to climb that learning curve quickly. The trick is to have them die in a pile without letting them hit you much, which isn’t easy because they do not die all at once. I got closest to a neat pile on the pull that ended up in our kill.

My notes on that task: Throw on a sword & shield and swap to Defensive stance. The Animated Bone Warriors spawn from purple swirlies on the ground. Watch for the first one then head over and wait for the meteor to hit & the warrior to spawn. The others will spawn from swirlies one by one moving counterclockwise around the edge of the circle from the first. There might be some gaps. Use Charge to close up gaps and heroic throw to pick up the last. Save heroic leap for later! I used Sunder on the first few to build some threat, then Thunderclap once I had a pile. You might be able to get away with popping shield block & cleaving a few times early. Then kite them back & forth across the hunter frost trap/other slow zones, using Intercept & Heroic Leap when you want to move to the opposite side of the pack. They do more damage as their lifespan ticks on, so be ready to pop shield wall once your mobility options are on cooldown.

Project PUG Tank: no runs yesterday.

Heroic Magmaw falling dead! I recorded a Quicktime movie of this kill. I’ll have to figure out how to edit it and do all that nice stuff. Though I’m not entirely sure it’s worthwhile because I forgot to turn on recording of my user interface. What you see in the movie is a pretty view of me & my worg pup running around casting while spell effects zoom around us, but no tactical information or data about the state of the fight. I have the record-UI feature turned on for next time. To make up for this, the screenshot I chose for the killshot here has lots of annoying UI! Next time will probably be heroic ODS. We killed Magmaw on our third pull of the night, so we had a lot of time left to spend wiping to the robots. Wow, that’s a complex fight. We’re going to have to have a plan for every combination. It’s been a great two weeks: 3 new heroic bosses down.

Heroic Magmaw falling dead!

I recorded a Quicktime movie of this kill. I’ll have to figure out how to edit it and do all that nice stuff. Though I’m not entirely sure it’s worthwhile because I forgot to turn on recording of my user interface. What you see in the movie is a pretty view of me & my worg pup running around casting while spell effects zoom around us, but no tactical information or data about the state of the fight. I have the record-UI feature turned on for next time. To make up for this, the screenshot I chose for the killshot here has lots of annoying UI!

Next time will probably be heroic ODS. We killed Magmaw on our third pull of the night, so we had a lot of time left to spend wiping to the robots. Wow, that’s a complex fight. We’re going to have to have a plan for every combination.

It’s been a great two weeks: 3 new heroic bosses down.

It was definitely a good week to inherit a guild! As promised, we cleaned up our execution a little bit and heroic Atramedes went down easily. We followed that up with a one-shot of Nefarian and then we were all out of bosses to kill. To cap it all, we found a new ret pally to join us! A little of the recruiting pressure is off now.

It was definitely a good week to inherit a guild! As promised, we cleaned up our execution a little bit and heroic Atramedes went down easily. We followed that up with a one-shot of Nefarian and then we were all out of bosses to kill.

To cap it all, we found a new ret pally to join us! A little of the recruiting pressure is off now.

Best title ever. My first week at the helm is turning out to be a good one: we killed heroic Maloriak tonight! Not that I can take credit, because we’d done all the hard work learning the fight weeks ago before attendance issues kept us away from it. Now that we’ve got our main raiding team together, we’re doing well. We repeated our heroic Chimaeron kill, which felt good. Then we put in our first attempts on heroic Atramedes and saw 39% before the raid ended. We should be able to clean up our movement and have him down pretty soon. (It feels like one of the easier heroic modes. Definitely consider it before Maloriak if you’re contemplating which to kill next.) I put up the guild group shot at our nifty new guild web site. We’re now 3/13, and while that isn’t really good enough to help us recruit, it is forward progress. I’m in favor of that.

Best title ever.

My first week at the helm is turning out to be a good one: we killed heroic Maloriak tonight! Not that I can take credit, because we’d done all the hard work learning the fight weeks ago before attendance issues kept us away from it. Now that we’ve got our main raiding team together, we’re doing well. We repeated our heroic Chimaeron kill, which felt good. Then we put in our first attempts on heroic Atramedes and saw 39% before the raid ended. We should be able to clean up our movement and have him down pretty soon. (It feels like one of the easier heroic modes. Definitely consider it before Maloriak if you’re contemplating which to kill next.)

I put up the guild group shot at our nifty new guild web site. We’re now 3/13, and while that isn’t really good enough to help us recruit, it is forward progress. I’m in favor of that.

It’s been a while since I’ve been able to post a kill shot. Here’s ours for heroic Chimaeron! And he dropped his leather caster bracers, which we’d never seen before on normal. Leafie is now entirely epicked out at last. The kill was on what would have to be our last pull for the night. We’d already seen three phase 2 wipes, at around 10%, 3% or so, and 0.1%. Yes, that’s a tenth of a percent. That one was agonizing. Our kill was definitive, however: we had lots of people up when he fell over. Our tactics were not the recommended ones, by the way. We went with two tanks swapping roles as break tanks & double attack tanks. That is, one tank held the boss and took the break debuff. The second tank stayed clean & handled double attacks. Then that tank would handle the first feud. They’d then swap roles. This meant that for a little while we’d be healing a tank with break stacks, but they’d fall off pretty fast. The advantage of this tactic is that you don’t need to have somebody gimping their DPS to be half a third tank. Healing setup: holy pally, disco priest, resto druid. The resto druid stayed on the double attack tank at all times, doing incidental raid healing on massacres. The pally & the priest each had a symbol to handle for slimes. They did raid healing and tank healing as they had time. Beacon was on the break tank. On Feuds, the pally was our collapse point. He healed the Feud tank 100%, no raid healing unless he was sure the tank was stable. The druid was on the tank 100% for the first few seconds, then mixed raid healing & tank healing. The disco priest raid healed. After the last Massacre pre-phase 2, we stopped DPS while the healers got the raid topped off. Tranquility was used here. We had a cooldown rotation that turned out not to be all that critical. We handled back to back feuds reasonably well. We also needed practice at this tight-tolerance healing. Every GCD matters during the first few seconds of a Feud, while you’re struggling to get the tank up to 100% and stabilize the raid, while also moving to the collapse point. We also had fun with the very first tank swap, which was prone to mess-ups because of weak threat & miss streaks.

It’s been a while since I’ve been able to post a kill shot. Here’s ours for heroic Chimaeron! And he dropped his leather caster bracers, which we’d never seen before on normal. Leafie is now entirely epicked out at last.

The kill was on what would have to be our last pull for the night. We’d already seen three phase 2 wipes, at around 10%, 3% or so, and 0.1%. Yes, that’s a tenth of a percent. That one was agonizing. Our kill was definitive, however: we had lots of people up when he fell over.

Our tactics were not the recommended ones, by the way. We went with two tanks swapping roles as break tanks & double attack tanks. That is, one tank held the boss and took the break debuff. The second tank stayed clean & handled double attacks. Then that tank would handle the first feud. They’d then swap roles. This meant that for a little while we’d be healing a tank with break stacks, but they’d fall off pretty fast. The advantage of this tactic is that you don’t need to have somebody gimping their DPS to be half a third tank.

Healing setup: holy pally, disco priest, resto druid. The resto druid stayed on the double attack tank at all times, doing incidental raid healing on massacres. The pally & the priest each had a symbol to handle for slimes. They did raid healing and tank healing as they had time. Beacon was on the break tank.

On Feuds, the pally was our collapse point. He healed the Feud tank 100%, no raid healing unless he was sure the tank was stable. The druid was on the tank 100% for the first few seconds, then mixed raid healing & tank healing. The disco priest raid healed. After the last Massacre pre-phase 2, we stopped DPS while the healers got the raid topped off. Tranquility was used here.

We had a cooldown rotation that turned out not to be all that critical. We handled back to back feuds reasonably well. We also needed practice at this tight-tolerance healing. Every GCD matters during the first few seconds of a Feud, while you’re struggling to get the tank up to 100% and stabilize the raid, while also moving to the collapse point. We also had fun with the very first tank swap, which was prone to mess-ups because of weak threat & miss streaks.

Halfus down on heroic! On our first pull tonight we lasted about 5 seconds before it all went out of control and I was thinking it was impossible. But we slowly worked out how to do it and when he went down it was a no-doubter. And for a refreshing change, we didn’t shard any of the loot. Instead it went to happy homes. I still enjoy progression fights, apparently. I am a sucker for a learning curve.

Halfus down on heroic! On our first pull tonight we lasted about 5 seconds before it all went out of control and I was thinking it was impossible. But we slowly worked out how to do it and when he went down it was a no-doubter. And for a refreshing change, we didn’t shard any of the loot. Instead it went to happy homes.

I still enjoy progression fights, apparently. I am a sucker for a learning curve.