Posts tagged progress

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.

Klickers Guild Tracker.

I like the Klickers guild tracker site a lot right now. Wow Progress seems to have lost its way with an ultra-buggy attempt to separate 10 and 25 progression. Guild Ox is still good. But I like the Klickers info design a little better. It’s easy to see my server’s progression at a glance.

10s progression is still way behind 25s, by the way.

Well, hey! Leafie got her first-ever Glory-of-the-Name-Raider drake tonight. We did All You Can Eat tonight (oh god what a pain) and followed up with a one-shot of Been Waiting A Long Time For This. Hooray for the Bloodbathed Frostbrood Vanquisher! (The screenshot is horrible because I wasn’t in the middle of the formation. Woes. Also, it wasn’t exactly a one-shot because we deliberately wiped two LK attempts after the first couple of seconds of engagement.)

Well, hey! Leafie got her first-ever Glory-of-the-Name-Raider drake tonight. We did All You Can Eat tonight (oh god what a pain) and followed up with a one-shot of Been Waiting A Long Time For This. Hooray for the Bloodbathed Frostbrood Vanquisher!

(The screenshot is horrible because I wasn’t in the middle of the formation. Woes. Also, it wasn’t exactly a one-shot because we deliberately wiped two LK attempts after the first couple of seconds of engagement.)

Last night we finished off the job and killed the Lich King in 25-person mode for the first time as a guild. The raid had 21 people from the guild with four fill-ins, most notably a discipline priest to help on Infest containment. Healing the fight was not appreciably harder than for the 10-person size. I think it was scaled up more for the DPS than for either healers or tanks: more Val’kyr, more Vile Spirits. As usual in the 25s, we were carrying a couple of people (the pugged warrior leaps to mind), and the attempts where they got targeted for Defile were the miserable ones. But even so, it only took us three attempts last night, after spending Thursday night wiping while the newcomers learned to handle phase 2. All that practice in ICC10 paid off for many of us. My personal measure of success for the night. Note that it wasn’t that my output was huge, because the other Tree outheals me when we’re both standing still. It’s that I lived to heal. The logs are skewed, however. I got pulled into Frostmourne on our successful attempt, and you can see the huge bump where I healed Terenas but couldn’t see what was going on with the rest of the raid. Dude soaked up almost as much healing as the off-tank. (I tried to interrupt Soul Rip by Cycloning the baddie, but I’m not sure it worked.) Sheesh. Also, man, that overheal is insane, though I wasn’t having mana problems, so there’s no sense fussing about it. I also noticed that people were complaining about inaccurate Defile/Val’kyr timers. I assume they were using DBM. My timers from DXE were dead on. Why people aren’t switching to DXE, I’ll never know. I’ll probably have to reglyph or consider respeccing if we’re going to shift guild focus from the 10s to the 25s, though. I’ll probably want to see if I can get Rawr limping well enough to figure out if Trauma or the Mag’hari Chieftan’s Staff (normal editions of both) give me better throughput on the 25s. I’m built for ICC10 hardmodes at the moment. I’m not sure the guild is ready for ICC25 hardmodes, but I bet we’ll be trying some of them through the next few raid lockouts. We’ll also be going back to DKP as a loot system on the 25s. Bleah. I’m mixed on DKP as a loot system.

Last night we finished off the job and killed the Lich King in 25-person mode for the first time as a guild. The raid had 21 people from the guild with four fill-ins, most notably a discipline priest to help on Infest containment.

Healing the fight was not appreciably harder than for the 10-person size. I think it was scaled up more for the DPS than for either healers or tanks: more Val’kyr, more Vile Spirits. As usual in the 25s, we were carrying a couple of people (the pugged warrior leaps to mind), and the attempts where they got targeted for Defile were the miserable ones. But even so, it only took us three attempts last night, after spending Thursday night wiping while the newcomers learned to handle phase 2. All that practice in ICC10 paid off for many of us.

My personal measure of success for the night. Note that it wasn’t that my output was huge, because the other Tree outheals me when we’re both standing still. It’s that I lived to heal. The logs are skewed, however. I got pulled into Frostmourne on our successful attempt, and you can see the huge bump where I healed Terenas but couldn’t see what was going on with the rest of the raid. Dude soaked up almost as much healing as the off-tank. (I tried to interrupt Soul Rip by Cycloning the baddie, but I’m not sure it worked.) Sheesh. Also, man, that overheal is insane, though I wasn’t having mana problems, so there’s no sense fussing about it.

I also noticed that people were complaining about inaccurate Defile/Val’kyr timers. I assume they were using DBM. My timers from DXE were dead on. Why people aren’t switching to DXE, I’ll never know.

I’ll probably have to reglyph or consider respeccing if we’re going to shift guild focus from the 10s to the 25s, though. I’ll probably want to see if I can get Rawr limping well enough to figure out if Trauma or the Mag’hari Chieftan’s Staff (normal editions of both) give me better throughput on the 25s. I’m built for ICC10 hardmodes at the moment. I’m not sure the guild is ready for ICC25 hardmodes, but I bet we’ll be trying some of them through the next few raid lockouts. We’ll also be going back to DKP as a loot system on the 25s. Bleah. I’m mixed on DKP as a loot system.

Well, that was a surprise.

Yesterday’s partially-pugged ICC25 had only 5 people in it from out of guild, and several of those had run with us before. To say it was a successful run would not quite be saying enough: we cleared 11/12 bosses. Yes, including Sindragosa. The Blood Queen Lana’thel kill was also a first for Leafie, so she now has two ICC25 achievements that she didn’t before the raid.

Sindy-25 is easier than Sindy-10 heroic by a long shot, but more chaotic. I spent most of the fight with UM but casting anyway, which felt very weird.

Tonight we reconvene and try the Lich King in 25. That’ll be fun. It won’t be as much fun as trying LK-10 heroic-mode next week will be, but it’ll still be entertaining. And it’ll be a step along the way to heroic modes in ICC25, which will definitely be fun for me.

30 attempts. At least three of them were utterly heartbreaking wipes at 1% or below. But we got her, and now we’re 11/12 on ICC heroic modes!

30 attempts. At least three of them were utterly heartbreaking wipes at 1% or below. But we got her, and now we’re 11/12 on ICC heroic modes!

Oh boy, heroic Sindragosa, oh boy.

I was just reading my notes from our first kill on normal mode, way back in February. It’s encouraging to remember that our first attempts on her felt just like these attempts feel now: we can get to phase 3 reliably, and then it all falls apart.

I was analyzing the logs from last night, and holy crap, all that damage is coming in from her frost aura. 50% of total damage dealt from that one source. Damage dealers in this order: Frost Aura > melee > Chilled to the Bone > Backlash. A third of the Chilled damage is coming in on the main tank. Am curious if he needs to back off a little bit on melee to let Chilled drop more often.

Tankspot hard-mode vid. This Tankspot post has the tactics I think will work best for us, since they’re similar to the ones we can execute in our sleep for normal mode.

What I gleaned from this thread:

  • Have our tanks try out wearing a few pieces of frost resist gear.
  • Continue having casters with UM stop casting in P3.
  • In all phases, casters with UM need to get away from the raid if they intend to cast. Get Hudmap if they can’t figure out how far away they need to be.
  • Put our rogue on full-time ice block duty to reduce the amount of healing he’ll need because of Chilled stacks.
  • Have the non-UMed healers bear down on raid healing.
  • Assign healers to left side & right side to minimize movement.
  • Clear Vent in p3 so healers can coordinate. We need to speak instantly if somebody’s tombed so we can shift tasks. (Consider trying to talk the guild into switching to Mumble to improve voice latency.)
  • First ice tomb goes to the tail. Alternate & flip as before.
  • If a healer is tombed, just break it instantly without waiting for a tank to drop stacks.
  • Hide behind a tomb at 4 secs of the buffet. Leave when 2 seconds are left. Continue spewing mana.
  • Consider bringing 4 healers. No, really, seriously. PlusHeal discusses this tactic. Also the advantage of Holy over Discipline priests.

The other conclusion I reach is that we simply need to invest the time and the practice. Sindragosa felt this baffling and impossible before, when we were killing her on normal mode. We overcame that. I haven’t yet had the moment when the phase 3 in hard mode slows down in my head and reconfigures itself, so I just need to keep experiencing it until it does.

As with so many fights in ICC, this fight is a huge cognitive load on the healers. Move, heal, stay aware of your own debuffs & the debuffs of others, compensate for the tiny mistakes of others while making as few of your own as you can.

Sindragosa down in ICC10! On our first attempt of the night, we got her to 0.6% and then went splat at the enrage timer. There followed a couple of attempts that broke down early, then another repetition of the solid execution of the first shot. Only this time the healers were doing DPS too, early on, and we got her. With only two people standing at the end. But it’s a first kill! Yay!

Sindragosa down in ICC10!

On our first attempt of the night, we got her to 0.6% and then went splat at the enrage timer. There followed a couple of attempts that broke down early, then another repetition of the solid execution of the first shot. Only this time the healers were doing DPS too, early on, and we got her. With only two people standing at the end. But it’s a first kill! Yay!

Friday night with no social life.

Things I did not do in WOW yesterday

• Get more than one attempt in on Sindragosa, thanks to another unfortunate Internet incident hitting a key raid member.
• Get into the alt ICC10 run that substituted, because Soames isn’t ready for ICC yet. I decided to try to get him spiffed up for it, though. I’ll need to work on his dps gear when his tank gear is solid.

Things I did do in WOW yesterday

• Got Leafie her Lunar Festival meta-achievement.
• Got Praet the Pally his Lunar Festival meta, and his Long Strange Trip meta-meta, and his zippy purple mount. Not bad for a character who gets played once a week now.
• Randomed on Soames the DK with friends from my previous guild and bought the excellent Triumph badge tanking ring.
• Randomed into heroic Halls of Reflection on Soames, and successfully tanked it. This is a rite of passage for any tank. I used the entrance hallway position, by the way, which I recommend over the alcove approach. Better visibility.
• Chugged Soames through a bunch of the Lunar Festival achievements, on his way to the meta.
• Read the marvelous Eliot travesties by Charity @ Righteous Orbs.
• Read the PTR patch notes and pondered the early arrival of pre-expansion gear accelerators.
• Decided to be very happy about improved Frost Lotus availability. I never sell mine. I make them into flasks that are used by me or by my fellow raid members.
• Got very curious indeed about this item: Many quests which require vehicles have had their vehicle mechanics updated and improved in the interest of fun.

Two upgrades achieved.

Putrescent Bands to upgrade the wrist slot, with a bid out on a scroll of Superior Spellpower for them. Also, Earthgiving Legguards, with a bid out on spellthread to boost ‘em up.

I also bid on the ubiquitous eternal belt buckle, but I haven’t figured out yet what gem to stick into it. Spellpower and spirit: can I stack enough of them right now? I doubt it. Purified whatever I can afford, probably.

Meanwhile, I continue the daily quest misery.