Kologarn and Melee

A quick post for my melee friends, on Kologarn and how to do AWESOME WTF DPS on him.

If you follow my simple guide and use your uber aoe attacks (whirlwind, sweeping strikes, DnD, consecrate, whatever rogues do...) you'll finally beat those mages on the DPS meters.

Kologarn has 3 targets, his body, his right arm and his left arm. His right arm will be your constant focus, when its up, but... the important thing to realize, is all 3 of his hit boxes are stacked up on one another, and if you stand right by the tank, and face his chest, you will be in range and able to see all 3 targets without moving. You can even stand right beneath his left arm and hit all 3 targets as well.

Poorly drawn diagram:



Hope this makes sense to everyone! I am not sure if Hunters can trapdance and drop their trap right under his chest... but it might be worth a try!

Pos's guide to Flame Leviathon

There are 5 different jobs on flame levi, each with its own requirements.

Siege Drivers: Pilot the siege engines, drive 'em around to where ever you're supposed to.

Siege Gunners: Anti air and anti ground gunners. The anti-air can light the oil slicks on fire **this is HUGELY important, it does a TON of damage**. Probably the best spot for those who aren't used to, or don't enjoy vehicle fights.

Demo Drivers: Pilot the demo's, launch pyrite barrels for major damage when Flame Levi is stunned

Demo Gunners: Most unique position, get launched onto Flame Levi's back, probably want to ranged dps and a healer (hunters are a bad choice, though)

Motorbike drivers: 2 jobs: 1) lay oil slicks on the path of the boss, and 2) pick up the parachuted demo-gunners when they get tossed from the back of flame leviathon.

Now, you can find strats elsewhere, but I've made a diagram, the idea being, to show how to properly kite flame levi.



Now, the first panel shows the initial setup. And, in this theoretical, I'm only dealing with when a demo is picked to be chased.

At the intiial aggro, the person being chased heads to the corner opposite where you start. You'll go a tiny bit south once you get there, but thats okay.

In the second one, you can see where the Demo's should have set up, right along the kite path to his NE, at max range of their guns.

If one of them is picked, they go right to the corner, and just wait. This entire time, motor cycles are laying down oil slicks and he's getting burnt to a crisp.

As he's chasing that Demo, the other demo's slide around, behind him, once again moving to max range.

Now, obviously, this isn't perfect, if he gets stunned at a bad time or in a bad place, he'll end up chasing someone on a short side, and catching them pretty good... but, if you can keep a solid kite line, and keep running him over oil slicks, he should die quick.

When he doesn't die quick, its because he's being kited all over timbucktu in a circle because no one moves to the right spots!

Pos's guide to Valiant Jousting

I know a lot of people are having problems with the Jousting to get your valiant coins, so I'm going to make a quick and dirty guide to how I've figured out how to do it.

Step 1) Get 3 shields up on yourself. Whenever you lose one, hit that shield button. The damage reduction is huge.

Step 2) begin the match. When the match starts the valiant will walk towards the center. Let them do this, and start mashing your 3-key (charge). As soon as they are far enough away, you will charge at them and hit them for a good chunk of damage.

3) As soon as you start to charge, start mashing the 2-key (Shield Breaker), because what happens is, you'll charge past them, run in a small half circle (you may have to use mouse-look to spin just a bit to get off the Shield Break) and bam, you've got your opponent down to 0 armor.

4) get back into melee range and mash that 1-key, putting your shields back up if you need to.

Rinse and repeat steps 2 through 4 each time your opponent moves away from you, remembering to keep your shields up as well.

Blizzard Hate

I'm not one to rag on blizzard, but I'm sick of getting saved to cleared instances.

I mean, you should at least need to kill a mob to get saved, right?

Not in Eye of Eternity.

You see, I was raid leading a second group for 10-man Malygos. We had our guild leader there -- not zoned in, not going to zone in, he was saved to our previous run, and wasn't assist, wasn't raid leader, he was there to make flasks for the raid, I zoned in, so did another healer... yep. Saved.

No mobs. Nothing available to kill in the zone.

Still. Got. Saved.

Ridiculous.

Oh well, we did one shot him on the early raid. That was awesome.

Naxx Flash Cards

Naxx Boss Flashcards

This will be a 5-part post (one for each wing), and I'm hoping to ilicit a guest post from a healer to finish these off.

I'll be posting flash cards for each boss from a tanking, offtanking, and DPSer perspective. What are these flash cards? 3-4 important things to remember for each boss.

Starting off with the Spider Wing:

Anub'Rekhan:

Tank: If you're kiting during locust swarm, strafe kite. Don't walk backwards.
Remember the timer for Swarm is a cooldown timer, not an exact timer.
Offtank: Be ready to pick up the adds, quickly and pick up grubs as needed.
DPS: Stay spread out. Anub's spikes are a directed aoe.
Melee: Back out when the cooldown for Locust Swarm is up. You don't want to be caught in that.
Switch to the adds when they spawn.
Be prepared to AOE the grubs if needed.

Grand Widow Faerlina:
Tank:
Have cooldowns ready for her enrage.
Decide if you're pulling her to the adds or vice versa.
Keep her seperated from her adds so your DK and paladins can do their aoe thing.
Offtank: Keep aggro on her adds, and burn one down at a time, getting it low so it will be a quick kill once she enrages.

DPS: Stay out of rain of fire.
Switch to the add as soon as she enrages and burn it quick.

Maexxena:
Tank: Save your cooldowns for when she web wraps on enrage.
Offtank: Don't taunt the boss. Use aoe abilities to pick up tiny spiders.
Be ready to grab the boss if the MT goes down on enrage.

DPS: Burn down the webs as people get wrapped.
Burn down spiders if you're on spider duty.
Save cooldowns for below 30%.

Haunt Clipping

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.

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.