I'm sick of warlocks who are affliction who don't lifetap properly during boss fights.
Yes, its your job to DPS, its also your job to lessen the stress upon healers.
So, I hear you asking already... when do I lifetap Mister Abs?
The answer is: You clip Haunt, and lifetap immediately after you finish casting Haunt. You see, Haunt is NOT a DOT. Its an instant damage spell followed by a 12 second debuff. When you clip it, your little healing ghost starts flying back to you. If you lifetap before that ghost gets back to you, it will heal you up almost to full.
So please, do your healers a favor on boss fights, and use this trick. No lifetapping 3 times and going down to 20% health crap.
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Monday, March 2, 2009
10's vs 25's
So, recently I've made the foray into 25 mans more and more with a guild we've allied ourselves with. All I can say is that 25's are so much easier than 10's its not even funny.
Honestly.
Why do I say this?
Simple. Those who don't perform up to par don't stand out nearly as much in 25's as they do in 10's.
Its very difficult for someone to wipe a raid in 25's, its very easy for someone to in 10's.
One dead DPS in 25's is 1/16th (give or take) of your raid DPS, and in 10's, its 1/5th.
Say what you will about the raids being easier, say what you will about the fights being easier.
25's are easy. The toughest thing about 25's is herding 25 people around instead of 10.
Our guild alliance cleared Naxx 25 this week. We one shotted every boss aside from Sapph and KT, both of them, we two shotted. The only people that died on KT were melee dps who got double-chained.
Now, our healers are amazing, and we have DPS who can bring the pain... but... really, none of the fights are truly challenging. Comparing this to 10 mans, where even now, with our awesome healers, some fights, one death can mean the difference between flying through and having to redo a boss.
Thaddius is a prime example of this. If one of our top dpsers goes down, we're gonna be awfully close to that enrage timer.
"Lrn2play n00b" is not a good response. "People shouldn't die on Thadd" also, not a good response. Of course people shouldn't die, but it happens. People make mistakes. People sneeze during a polarity shift. Now, 4 people died in our last Thadd attempt on 25's, we killed him with a minute to spare.
Sarth+3D on 10's is currently the toughest encounter in the game, and Maly on 10's is considered much harder than Maly on 25's.
So, why am I posting this?
I don't want the gear difference. I prefer to run 10's, I hate that I'm having to gear myself and my guildies in 25's to finish 10 man content. Now, everyone loves 25's too, and the better gear it gives, but I'd bet, if you surveyed most of my guild, they'd much rather run 10's every week and get the same gear, than 25's. The camaraderie is better. The jokes are better.
The individual contributions stand out more. I've got the pleasure of running with amazing healers, one of whom is a priest who switched from Holy do Disc. Healing meters don't show what she does. The week she wasn't there for Loatheb, well, we almost wiped. When she is there? No one ever dies.
I like being able to pick up on things like that. Its easy to tell when someone isn't pulling their weight. Its rare when someone's individual contribution stands out on 25's (although last night, we had what might've been the greatest pickup by an OT in history on Sapphiron).
I've rambled, I wanted to make this a coherent post, but instead, I went all K on you.
Honestly.
Why do I say this?
Simple. Those who don't perform up to par don't stand out nearly as much in 25's as they do in 10's.
Its very difficult for someone to wipe a raid in 25's, its very easy for someone to in 10's.
One dead DPS in 25's is 1/16th (give or take) of your raid DPS, and in 10's, its 1/5th.
Say what you will about the raids being easier, say what you will about the fights being easier.
25's are easy. The toughest thing about 25's is herding 25 people around instead of 10.
Our guild alliance cleared Naxx 25 this week. We one shotted every boss aside from Sapph and KT, both of them, we two shotted. The only people that died on KT were melee dps who got double-chained.
Now, our healers are amazing, and we have DPS who can bring the pain... but... really, none of the fights are truly challenging. Comparing this to 10 mans, where even now, with our awesome healers, some fights, one death can mean the difference between flying through and having to redo a boss.
Thaddius is a prime example of this. If one of our top dpsers goes down, we're gonna be awfully close to that enrage timer.
"Lrn2play n00b" is not a good response. "People shouldn't die on Thadd" also, not a good response. Of course people shouldn't die, but it happens. People make mistakes. People sneeze during a polarity shift. Now, 4 people died in our last Thadd attempt on 25's, we killed him with a minute to spare.
Sarth+3D on 10's is currently the toughest encounter in the game, and Maly on 10's is considered much harder than Maly on 25's.
So, why am I posting this?
I don't want the gear difference. I prefer to run 10's, I hate that I'm having to gear myself and my guildies in 25's to finish 10 man content. Now, everyone loves 25's too, and the better gear it gives, but I'd bet, if you surveyed most of my guild, they'd much rather run 10's every week and get the same gear, than 25's. The camaraderie is better. The jokes are better.
The individual contributions stand out more. I've got the pleasure of running with amazing healers, one of whom is a priest who switched from Holy do Disc. Healing meters don't show what she does. The week she wasn't there for Loatheb, well, we almost wiped. When she is there? No one ever dies.
I like being able to pick up on things like that. Its easy to tell when someone isn't pulling their weight. Its rare when someone's individual contribution stands out on 25's (although last night, we had what might've been the greatest pickup by an OT in history on Sapphiron).
I've rambled, I wanted to make this a coherent post, but instead, I went all K on you.
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Doomguard - Get it while its hot
If you're a warlock, and you haven't done this quest line, go out and do it. Right now.
Especially if you're a raiding warlock and you have a pesky mage and hunter you want to beat on the DPS meters.
Why? Because a buffed Doomguard does over 1000 DPS. ONE THOUSAND! Thats about 750 more than your average fel hunter (if you're affliction spec'd like me).
And in case people freak out, they should know that Doomguard no longer kills party members. He just does a bit of damage when he's summoned.
The quest line, for a level 80, is really very easy. I only died once, and that was my own doing.
Here's my brief guide:
First, go to Stormwind.
Second, fly out to Nethergarde Keep in the Blasted Lands.
I suppose you could also go to Shattrath, and then fly to the Portal and just go through backwards. Might even be quicker.
So, then you run out to the Tainted Scar, and head north, and go find Daio the Decrepit and get the two quests from him.
One which sends you to Winterspring, and one which sends you to Dire Maul.
Now, Winterspring is straight forward, so I won't go over that beyond, fly there, run south, kill mobs.
Since Dire Maul can be a bit tricky, here's Abs's guide:
You see, what you might not know is that there's a back door to DM, that's due north of Camp Mojache.
You don't have your key, you say? No problem.
Lifetap down as far as you can, and self-suicide with hellfire. Run past the door, and rez on the other side of it.
Walk right in, and you'll find the demon mobs you need to kill right by that door.
Once those two quests are done, you can head back to Tainted Scar, where the same fellow will give you one more follow up quest -- still pretty easy if you're careful, don't go pulling 8 mobs at once.
Then, all you gotta do is be very careful, find one of the guys you need to trap, and do a 10 second channel on him.
Why careful? Because you really don't want to aggro the other mobs around there, they have a ton of HPs and they'll still smoosh ya good.
Anyway, once you get your Doomguard, get some friends to summon it, it lets you do things like this:
Especially if you're a raiding warlock and you have a pesky mage and hunter you want to beat on the DPS meters.
Why? Because a buffed Doomguard does over 1000 DPS. ONE THOUSAND! Thats about 750 more than your average fel hunter (if you're affliction spec'd like me).
And in case people freak out, they should know that Doomguard no longer kills party members. He just does a bit of damage when he's summoned.
The quest line, for a level 80, is really very easy. I only died once, and that was my own doing.
Here's my brief guide:
First, go to Stormwind.
Second, fly out to Nethergarde Keep in the Blasted Lands.
I suppose you could also go to Shattrath, and then fly to the Portal and just go through backwards. Might even be quicker.
So, then you run out to the Tainted Scar, and head north, and go find Daio the Decrepit and get the two quests from him.
One which sends you to Winterspring, and one which sends you to Dire Maul.
Now, Winterspring is straight forward, so I won't go over that beyond, fly there, run south, kill mobs.
Since Dire Maul can be a bit tricky, here's Abs's guide:
You see, what you might not know is that there's a back door to DM, that's due north of Camp Mojache.You don't have your key, you say? No problem.
Lifetap down as far as you can, and self-suicide with hellfire. Run past the door, and rez on the other side of it.
Walk right in, and you'll find the demon mobs you need to kill right by that door.
Once those two quests are done, you can head back to Tainted Scar, where the same fellow will give you one more follow up quest -- still pretty easy if you're careful, don't go pulling 8 mobs at once.
Then, all you gotta do is be very careful, find one of the guys you need to trap, and do a 10 second channel on him.
Why careful? Because you really don't want to aggro the other mobs around there, they have a ton of HPs and they'll still smoosh ya good.
Anyway, once you get your Doomguard, get some friends to summon it, it lets you do things like this:
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Malygos, how I loathe thee
We spent nearly two full hours wiping on Malygos-10 tonight. Our biggest issue being, lack of DPS in Phase 1.
Deaths were not a problem, aside from stupid tank deaths when I moved too far away from the healers a couple times ;)
All I can say, is this fight was the most intense fight I've had to do as a tank. Spacial and raid awareness is at its peak, as instead of worrying just about mob placement, I'm worrying about Sparks, gigantic dragon placement, raid placement, strafing, and threat.
We only managed phase 3 once, but its a big long learning experience, and I think we're getting closer and closer to getting that all-important phase 1 down.
Our biggest issue was stacking the sparks right on top of one another, so if anyone out there has input on Maly, and spark stacking in ten man (that doesn't involve "bring more Deathknights") please, share.
Also, we run a melee heavy raid (had 2 hunters, and 4 melee dps and me tanking along with 3 healers), is that going to be a problem for us in phase 2?
I don't know.
All these questions, yet, after a night of personal frustration, after thinking about it... we did pretty well to get as far as we did.
Each attempt we improved. Each time the sparks got smoother and smoother, and my kiting the big dragon in circles got better and better.
Maybe our overall DPS was a bit low. Maybe it was because I still haven't upgraded my titansteel boots. STILL.
Deaths were not a problem, aside from stupid tank deaths when I moved too far away from the healers a couple times ;)
All I can say, is this fight was the most intense fight I've had to do as a tank. Spacial and raid awareness is at its peak, as instead of worrying just about mob placement, I'm worrying about Sparks, gigantic dragon placement, raid placement, strafing, and threat.
We only managed phase 3 once, but its a big long learning experience, and I think we're getting closer and closer to getting that all-important phase 1 down.
Our biggest issue was stacking the sparks right on top of one another, so if anyone out there has input on Maly, and spark stacking in ten man (that doesn't involve "bring more Deathknights") please, share.
Also, we run a melee heavy raid (had 2 hunters, and 4 melee dps and me tanking along with 3 healers), is that going to be a problem for us in phase 2?
I don't know.
All these questions, yet, after a night of personal frustration, after thinking about it... we did pretty well to get as far as we did.
Each attempt we improved. Each time the sparks got smoother and smoother, and my kiting the big dragon in circles got better and better.
Maybe our overall DPS was a bit low. Maybe it was because I still haven't upgraded my titansteel boots. STILL.
Friday, February 13, 2009
Revamping the UI
I've taken to revamping my UI, right now still playing around with a few things, but here's the current setup:
Addons I'm currently using:
PitBull: Portraits, party, group bars
Quartz: Cast bars and swing timer
Elk's Buff Bars: Buffs and Debuffs
Omen
Recount
CT Viewport: Gives the nice black background on the bottom
Simple Minimap: Minimap addons
Dominoes: Buttons, bars, etc.
Minimap Button Frame: Pulls all my minimap buttons into the frame on the bottom right
And I use Addon Control Panel to manage all of them.
Now, to put all my tanking buttons in the right spots...
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Being a better tank
So, while I'm standing in one spot, speakers turned up, waiting for tiny hearts to fly over a Night Elf's head I thought I'd write a blog post.
Since I'm going to be revamping my UI tomorrow (when I finally have time), I wanted to blather on and try to make sense of all my buttons.
I've been tanking bigger and badder things lately, and I've really been trying to "use all my buttons" as a warrior. The problem is, there's 12 of them.
Yes.
12.
Shield Slam
Shield Block
Revenge
Shield Bash
Devastate
Heroic Strike
Taunt
Thunder Clap
Demo Shout
Shockwave
Concussion Blow
Cleave
Now, this does not include, Charge, Intervene, Heroic Throw, Berserker Rage, Shield Wall, Last Stand, Enraged Regeneration, Healing Pots, Healthstones, Trinkets, "Shoot"....
What does this mean? Why do you care?
Warriors have a TON of buttons to press. I can't speak for the other tanking classes, but sometimes, it gets a little overwhelming.
So, here I go trying to reduce things down a little bit:
Heroic Strike is for (single target) boss fights. Cleave is for trash. So I swap those on my hot bar.
I want to improve. I want to do more DPS while I'm tanking these bosses. My threat is plenty high for the DPS I run with, but I still want to jack it up even more.
Ways I can improve:
-Use Concussion Blow. I basically use it as a stun on trash now. Never on boss fights. This will change.
-More Heroic Strikes. I try to hit it for every melee swing, but I miss quite a bit. I can get better at this
-Less devastates, more other threat moves. I should use shockwave every time its off cooldown.
-Keep Commanding shout up more. I'm terrible at this.
-Keep Demo shout up. Why do I keep Thunderclap up no problem, but always forget Demo?
If anyone has suggestions on keyboard layout, macros, etc that they use for tanking for all these buttons, please, feel free to share.
Since I'm going to be revamping my UI tomorrow (when I finally have time), I wanted to blather on and try to make sense of all my buttons.
I've been tanking bigger and badder things lately, and I've really been trying to "use all my buttons" as a warrior. The problem is, there's 12 of them.
Yes.
12.
Shield Slam
Shield Block
Revenge
Shield Bash
Devastate
Heroic Strike
Taunt
Thunder Clap
Demo Shout
Shockwave
Concussion Blow
Cleave
Now, this does not include, Charge, Intervene, Heroic Throw, Berserker Rage, Shield Wall, Last Stand, Enraged Regeneration, Healing Pots, Healthstones, Trinkets, "Shoot"....
What does this mean? Why do you care?
Warriors have a TON of buttons to press. I can't speak for the other tanking classes, but sometimes, it gets a little overwhelming.
So, here I go trying to reduce things down a little bit:
Heroic Strike is for (single target) boss fights. Cleave is for trash. So I swap those on my hot bar.
I want to improve. I want to do more DPS while I'm tanking these bosses. My threat is plenty high for the DPS I run with, but I still want to jack it up even more.
Ways I can improve:
-Use Concussion Blow. I basically use it as a stun on trash now. Never on boss fights. This will change.
-More Heroic Strikes. I try to hit it for every melee swing, but I miss quite a bit. I can get better at this
-Less devastates, more other threat moves. I should use shockwave every time its off cooldown.
-Keep Commanding shout up more. I'm terrible at this.
-Keep Demo shout up. Why do I keep Thunderclap up no problem, but always forget Demo?
If anyone has suggestions on keyboard layout, macros, etc that they use for tanking for all these buttons, please, feel free to share.
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
KT. Down. Dead. Kaputz.
Yeah, its 10 man, yeah, it took us 4 wipes to get him down. Yeah, it sucked having 5 melee in the raid on that fight.
But, we did it.
Once again, as raid leader, I'm immensely proud and sold on our group's success. We're not a hard core guild. We don't raid for 4 hours at a time. We just plug along, we have fun, we banter -- but raid time is raid time.
People concentrate, bunker down, ask questions, remind me when I forget stuff (like - stay out of the red swirling circles of doom)
When we downed Sapp (with no bugged Raid ID like last week... srsly!), my guildies overwhelmingly wanted me to have the first Maly key. It surprised me. I'm just glad it didn't go to Boon.
He's evil.
I've got a bunch of posts in my head, that I need to write. Including some tanking insights, and some raid leading insights.
Hopefully I'll post more regularly with the coming days.
Right now, I'm thinking I need to revamp my UI. Fun times!
But, we did it.
Once again, as raid leader, I'm immensely proud and sold on our group's success. We're not a hard core guild. We don't raid for 4 hours at a time. We just plug along, we have fun, we banter -- but raid time is raid time.
People concentrate, bunker down, ask questions, remind me when I forget stuff (like - stay out of the red swirling circles of doom)
When we downed Sapp (with no bugged Raid ID like last week... srsly!), my guildies overwhelmingly wanted me to have the first Maly key. It surprised me. I'm just glad it didn't go to Boon.
He's evil.
I've got a bunch of posts in my head, that I need to write. Including some tanking insights, and some raid leading insights.
Hopefully I'll post more regularly with the coming days.
Right now, I'm thinking I need to revamp my UI. Fun times!
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