ok so here’s the list of the world’s top 6 WoW guilds based on their progression in ulduar with most of them finishing heroic glory of the ulduar raider achievement.

1. Ensidia (EU-Magetheridon) with a score of 513.54 points
2. Method (EU-Sylvanas) with a score of 492.02 points
3. Inner Sanctum (EU-Silvermoon) with a score of 491.64 points
4. Premonition (US-Sen’jin) with a score of 484.28 points
5. Refuge (EU-Aegwynn) with a score of 488.96 points
6. Wraith (EU-Ysondre) with a score of 466.73 points

Congratulations again to the top 6 guilds. Kudos!

I have a confession to make. I freaking HATE being dragged around old raid instances because people have an obsessive tourist urge. Obsess really is the right word here. Even aside from the (pointless) achievement for completing an old raid, players who never ran the places when they were cutting edge can get amazingly worked up about wanting to see them. Zomg  must see content!!

I totally understand the desire to get your money’s worth, but they’re old for a reason. My memory says that if they were fun, it was because of the experience we had running them as progression content. Some of the surroundings are quite pretty, but a mob is just a mob.

Normally I would take the goblin approach and either charge or refuse to help (ie. find an excuse) since I don’t play to do things that will annoy me, but last week some of my friends wanted to run a few old TBC raids and I agreed to go along.

I ended up on my level 70 druid because they were short of healers and she’s fairly well geared since she was my main raid toon. So I added Wild Growth to my quickbars and headed off to The Eye to commence slaughter.

Which old encounters still hold up?

The only encounters which still held much of the old flavour were the coordination fights.

A’lar for example, with his (or her) coordinated tank movements in phase 1, and then all the running out of fires in phase 2. Of course the fight was much easier and more forgiving, but the tourists did get a sense of what it was like at 70.

Kael’thas was more of a disappointment. We did basically follow the usual strategy but it didn’t feel like one of the hardest encounters in TBC. Picking up and equipping legendary weapons mid-fight is still fun in a gimmick kind of way but … it was dull.

We moved on to Serpentshrine. The fights again were  unexciting until we got to Lady Vashj where we actually wiped once. We got her down on the second try.

And Lady Vashj was the highlight of the evening (for me, at least). The signature coordination fight in TBC; phase 2 still requires people to kite striders, tank nagas, run around killing elementals and throw tainted cores around. Afterwards, everyone was impressed that she had been killed regularly by level 70s. People commented, “That must have been an exciting fight!” — they didn’t say that about any of the others we had seen.

It was a good deal more interesting than anything in Naxxramas, even on easy mode (ie. with most people being way overgeared and higher level).

Then a quick romp through Mount Hyjal in which the bosses were dull but the scenery was gorgeous. The waves of adds did at least give people lots to run around and kill, but only Archimonde still really felt like a boss. And even then he was a pretty easy one.

Finally, and I was praying that they’d give up before this point, we went on to Magtheridon. I never thought this was a very interesting encounter anyway and I totally fail to see why any tourist would obsess over seeing him. He’s a big demon, and … that’s it.

We had one tank grab all the adds, and one picked up the boss. We healed through blastwaves. Anything that might have been remotely interesting about that encounter (it used to require 5 people clicking on parts of the room in a coordinated way to stop the blast wave which would probably wipe the raid) was gone, it was a basic tank and spank.

That’s an example of an encounter that is completely trivialised by sufficiently better gear.

So which Wrath Encounters will hold up?

Malygos, the Four Horsemen, and Sartharion with drakes up are the only encounters that will still hold any challenge when we outgear them. They are pretty much the only coordination fights in Wrath at the moment.

I don’t know what will be this expansion’s ‘Lady Vashj’ — Sarth+3 may be it. Although I hope that at least one good coordination challenge lies within Ulduar. Even though we will wipe many times on it if so.

I thought it was  interesting to see which encounters had been totally trivialised. Magtheridon was the best example but not the only one. And the trivialised encounters were very dull.

It occurred to me not to be too upset about tank or healer nerfs in 3.1, if the end result is to make the raid encounters less amenable to being brute forced.

For example, we were able to start brute forcing Naxxramas almost immediately. Does anyone still bother kiting Anub’Rekhan or stopping Faerlina from enraging? Sure, it was easier to just ignore those parts, but it also leeched a lot of the unusual aspects from those encounters.

What else changed since TBC?

It may be unfair to compare the first tier of Wrath raids with the second and third tier of TBC raids. We expect raids to get tougher and more complex across the lifetime of an expansion.

But in general the TBC raids had more for the tanks to do. They also had a lot more trash – not necessarily a good thing but very noticeable when going back.

I still rather resented being dragged back and don’t plan to do it again any time soon. But at least I picked up the T6 hat for my druid I suppose I should think about levelling her now ….

So, I hate DKP.

Hate hate hate hate hate. I spent a lot of time raiding under a DKP or similar system when I was just another grunt raider and not a guild leader. When I became the head of my very own guild, my raid leader and I agreed that DKP was a tool of the Adversary, and we wanted to use something better. So we used a nested loot ladder system.

The basis of the loot ladder system is that all the raiders are ranked from one to whatever. The way we did this was that all the people who showed up to our first raid did a /random 100 and that’s the order they were in. Anyone who showed up after that was placed at the bottom of the ladder. Then, when a piece of loot dropped, the person at the top of the ladder had the option to take it or pass. If they passed, the loot was offered to the person on the next ‘rung’ down and so on. If they took the loot, they were moved to the bottom of the ladder.

It was a ‘nested’ loot ladder because we had a seperate ladder for the tier piece tokens. The ladder for the token might be warrior –priest — druid, and then the first warrior on the main ladder would be offered the loot. If he refused it went down the ladder to all the other warriors. If they all didn’t want it, off it went through the priest ladder and so on. If a warrior did take it, then warriors went to the bottom of their tier token ladder. We also rewarded folks for attending raids. If you came to a raid, you went up one rung, regardless of whether you received loot. We hoped that this would help us combat our huge problem of raider apathy.

This worked pretty well for us while we were still a small guild, running one team for Kara every week, with the odd Gruul’s Lair thrown in. As we got larger, this sort of system became cumbersome and the fiddly work that raid leaders needed to do became a larger and larger task. As well, people started looking at the ladder, looking at their spot on it, calculating that there was exactly a snowball’s chance in Hellfire Peninsula that they’d get loot that night, and not showing up to raid. So we ended up with the same problem we initially had, plus the micro-management of the ladders to boot.

When my guild merged with another, we looked at their roster, looked at our ladder and junked the whole damn thing. It would have been a monumental task to make a whole new ladder for the new, combined guild, and managing it would just consume more time than our officers were willing to put in. So, we needed to find something better. Something that was also not DKP.

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We didn’t want DKP for a few reasons. One because I personally feel its is unfair and subject to too much abuse, including the type of hoarding Larisa talks about. Two because I, and a good deal of our other raiders have a really negative attitude towards it. Actually, it was more of a deep and desperate loathing for the system. Imagine the entire guild squinting one eye, raising a clenched fist in the air and shouting “KHAAAAAAAAAAN!” every time someone says ‘DKP’. People really didn’t like the idea of it. So, the last thing we wanted to do with our brand new guild was to bring this sulphur-scented pile of felhound excrement into our midst. What we decided to go with instead was the EPGP system

EPGP works sort of like a combination of DKP and loot ladder. It’s actually really hard to explain to folks, and we even had one raider ragequit because he just so offended by the mere thought of it. But, in my mind – and in the minds of the rest of the officers that decided on it – it really is the most fair loot system for our guild. I think it might even be worth looking at for your guild! I think it’s just great and I hope you bear with me while I explain it.

The first thing you need to know about EPGP is the terimology. There are three main acronyms: EP, GP and PR.
EP: Stands for Effort Points. These are points you earn by putting effort into the guild.
GP: Stands for Gear Points. Every piece of loot is worth a certain amount of gear points.
PR: Stands for Priority Rating. PR is the ratio of EP:GP.
So, the short and sweet version is that you earn EP, you “spend” GP and your PR goes up and down depending on which you are doing more of.

Now I know all your greedy little goblin minds want to know, “How do I get as much EP as possible?” The answer is simple. EP is earned by putting effort into the guild. The mod can be set up so certain people can award EP (in my case the officers) and they can award any amount at any time to anyone.

How we do it in Impossibilium is like this. We award EP for boss kills – usually 50 EP for non-progression and 100 EP for progression. This EP goes to everyone in the raid. The mod also allows you to do something called Recurring EP, which lets you give EP over a time period. So our raiders also earn by having their butts in the raid. (Usually 10 EP per half hour for non-progression and 15 EP per half hour for progression.) We like to reiterate to folks that boss attempts are an important part of progression as well, so we will give EP for boss attempts when we are learning fights. We don’t always give it out for every attempt, but good solid attempts where people are actually trying to learn and not pissing about or facepulling or anything are rewarded with some EP as well – typically 25% of what a boss kill is worth.

So far, I know this is sounding very much like DKP. But the thing we like best about the EPGP system is that you can reward any effort, not just showing up to a raid (a discussion about how someone who just shows up to a raid isn’t necessarily putting good effort into the guild and its progression will have to wait for another time). We can award someone who goes out of their way to farm up a bunch of flasks to give out at raid. The person who pays for our Ventrilo server gets a small amount of EP every month. Our Webmonkey who pays for and maintains our site and forums gets a bit of EP every month as well. As does the hardworking officer who maintains our guild vault and the system we use to manage it (a topic for another post!) One thing that we in Impossibilium pride ourselves on is being a very human guild. We understand that our raiders are people with lives and families and goals outside of the game and that you can be an important contributing member of the guild without being at every single raid. EPGP is the perfect system for us to reward that ‘extracurricular’ effort that is so important to our success.

Now all those little goblins are counting their EP points and wondering what shiny things they can spend them on. Here’s how! The EPGP mod will set what each item is worth. When an item drops, the mod shows the raid (on a tooltip) and the loot master (on a pop-up window) its GP value, and then we do a secret bid for it. You’re allowed to bid either NEED or GREED and a greed bid must be followed by a percentage from 50-100. If you bid need, that means you need the item and you agree that you will pay the full amount of GP for it. If you bid greed, it means maybe it’s a side-grade for you, or just for certain situational fights, or maybe an offspec, so you want it, but not bad enough to take it from someone who actually needs the item. The percentage after your greed bid tells the loot master how much you’re willing to pay for the item. Anyone who bids need will automatically win the item, and pay the full GP price for it. If no one bids need, it will go to the greed bidder with the highest greed % bid, and they will pay the GP price they bid for it. And of course if no one wants it, we will shard it and the shard goes to the guild bank.

I know you’re all thinking, “But what if there is a tie bid?” That is where the PR comes in. If two people have the exact same bid (need or greed %) then the item will go to the person with the highest PR. The reason for this is that PR is a direct measure of how much gear you have compared to the effort you’ve been putting into the guild. So if your PR is low, you’re either not putting in very much effort or you have already gotten a bunch of gear. So the idea behind giving the the item to the person with the higher PR is to make sure that loot is being spread around equally and in proportion to the amount of effort you’re putting into the guild. If there is a tie in PR (rare, but it happens) then there is either a random roll, or if one of the people in the tie has our special “Dedicated” raider rank, they get the item. (Again, our Dedicated rank is a topic for another post).

One of the best things about EPGP is that it circumvents the hoarding of points you see in a DKP system. For one, it’s a ratio of the effort you put in divided by the gear you’ve already received that determines if you get loots or not, not just a straight amount of points like in DKP. As well, the EPGP mod allows you to apply a decay. You can set the decay to any amount you like, and you need to manually apply it. We have a 10% decay every Monday night, and the decay applies to both EP and GP. Your PR thus does not change, as both the numerator and the denominator in the ratio that determines PR changes by the same amount when you apply decay. Your absolute position on the ‘loot ladder’ portion of the EPGP system does not change, but your ‘purchasing power’, as it were, does. This means that you have to use your points or you will eventually lose them, so don’t hoard them. It also weeds out people who show up to a bunch of raids, collect a load of points, then disappear off the face of the earth for a few months then expect to get all the loots when they get back to raiding.

Another thing I hated with DKP was that it quickly becomes a debtor’s prison. If your guild does not allow you to go into negative DKP, then this can solve the problem, but if you can accrue negative DKP (like the guilds I used to run with) then when someone new comes into the guild, they start at 0 DKP, which is effectively above you. Then not only does someone brand new come in and grab all the loots, but you’re ever furthur down the loot totem pole. And if you’re raiding is sporadic or not as ‘hard core’ then you just get yourself deeper and deeper into DKP debt. With the EPGP system, new people to the guild still start at 0 EP points. However, they are not allowed to bid NEED until they have accumulated 1000 EP points. This means that someone brand new can not take loots from anyone who acually needs it, but will get gear over folks who just want something for an offspec or maybe just for a few restricted fights. This is something inherant to the mod, but you have to tell it what your minimum EP will be.

The EPGP system is that it can also act as a discipline measure if needs be. We can “fine” people EP for breaking rules, and I do have to say that just the threat of losing even 10 or 15 EP is enough to make people sit up and take notice. One of our biggest issues is that folks will sign up for a raid, and we will of course plan on them being there. Then when they don’t show, we’re left sitting around and in some cases the raid doesn’t go at all. So we instituted a 25% EP penalty for a sign-up, no-show (SUNS). Of course if that raider comes to an officer the next day and explains that they had some sort of real life issue that didn’t allow them to raid, we’re not ogres, we give that EP back to them, but it’s a hefty enough amount to make people realize that the rest of the guild is counting on them to be there when they say they will. We also had an issue with people taking extended or unannounced afks in raid. Those are worth -5 EP for every minute afk, with a maxiumum of-50 EP and a boot from the raid. We very rarely have to enforce this policy which says to me that it’s working. It also shows the raiders who are at our raids on time and when they say they will be and don’t waste time by taking unannounced or extended afks that their time is valuable to the guild and people who waste their time will be dealt with.

Something else that I just can’t talk enough about it the amazing flexibility of the EPGP system. Because the officers can award EP for anything we like, we generally do. And because those EP points directly translate to gear, people are willing to go through great lengths to get them. When we were learning the Magtheridon fight, I had a lot of trouble getting our ranged dps to stop pewpewing and to focus on cube clicking. To drive home that point, I would award a whopping 25 EP to the cube clickers if we didn’t wipe due to poor clicking. Not only did we down Magtheridon two attempts after I started doing that, but I had dps just clamouring to be cube clickers. And with WotLK, we knew that some of our raiders would storm ahead and try to get some realm firsts, but that a lot of our raiders were slightly slower at leveling and getting heroic gear. So we started a system we called LAWLs or Little Achievements While Leveling. If someone who was already 80 helped out someone who was levling, then the person who was helped could nominate that helper for a LAWL, which were rewarded with cold hard EP. This gave the people who were already 80 motivation to help the slower folks, as well as gave them a leg up when we did start raiding.

Gevlon over at the Greedy Goblin is several orders of magnitude more clever than I when it comes to working a system and getting the most for yourself. So, I’m sure that he could come up with ways to beat this system as well. The only ‘trick’ that I know of – and one that I encourage my raiders to use – is to bid low when you know no one else wants the item. Let’s say some warrior loot drops, and you’re the only warrior in the raid. You need it, but why bid need and pay full price? No one is going to bid against you, so bid greed 50% and get it for half price! So far the only loot drama that EPGP has created for us is people bidding need on items that other people don’t think they needed, but that was only at the begining of the changes to the ’spell damage’ system. We do have an as-yet-unused officer veto clause in place. For example if a mage bid need on a plate spell caster helm, the loot master would just tell him no. We’ve never had to go that route and I hope we never will have to.

I know that this is a huge post, but there are a lot of subtleties to the EPGP system. It is so malleable to the needs and goals of a guild, that it was just incredible when we stumbled upon it, and I’m really shocked that more guilds don’t use it. The mod itself is not a memory hog, it’s pretty user friendly, it’s very intuitive to use and most of all it’s very fair. You put effort in, you get loots out. And in my mind, that’s what being in a raiding guild is all about.

As I’ve said countless times before, I wasn’t around for pre TBC. I wish I was but.. I wasn’t. However, that doesn’t mean I can’t check out the old raids does it?

The main reason I thought about posting this is because I just read over on WoWInsider that Maghteridon has just been 4 manned! Although that’s an amazing accomplishment, I don’t think it’s the end by far. Although it’s probably not as good as downing Magtheridon, myself and a Mage from my guild 2 manned Onyxia, which used to be a 40 man raid. If in 20 levels you can knock off 38 players, then in BC a 40 man raid you’d knock off 19. (In theory). However, they’re not 40 men they’re 25.. so that means that… well you’d hardly need any. I can’t wait for Illidan to be 3 manned (okay, that maybe optimistic) but still, it would be fantastic.

You can read on the wowinsider post that they just healed through the blast damage from not clicking the cubes. In TBC no matter how well geared your raid was, you had to click the cubes or it was an insta-wipe. For it to now be done with only 2 healers, that just shows how much better the stats are on the new gear that isn’t even end game yet. (No where near!)

Who knows. Within the new year maybe there’ll be tales of Vashj 3 manned or even Kil’Jaeden 5 manned. Actually, thinking about it, Vashj’s adds would be a pain in the ass for any group… Maybe we’ll just stick with the Lurker Below

Goodnight, and watch out for any geysers flying around!
- Xrystal

After seeing Gruul’s, we knew Magtheridon was right around the corner. One of many I have received from Kamaakazy. I’ll be getting the rest up asap, as well as the others I’ve got in my inbox. I always get backed up over the weekend >.< sorry guys.

Who: Kamaakazy of Ner’zhul (70)
Pet: Warfare (70 Gorilla)
Group: Full Raid

Details: Fully raid buffed Warfare will have 18.5k health and 21.7k armor. His TPS peaks at about 2.5k and holds steady around 1.5k. With constant misdirects from 1 or more hunters he can easily hold threat over even most T6 DPS.

Comments: You have to be ready as soon as the last channeler goes down. When Magtheridon was released Warfare was standing at the desired tanking position and I misdirected to him. Due to the mechanics of the Magtheridon fight, every time Magtheridon was banished Warfare would run behind him to DPS. This meant the melee were mostly slaughtered as Magtheridon turned to meet Warfare in the back and began to cleave. In future kills I could have Warfare to stay in position during banishes to avoid this problem.

Other Hunters who have completed this feat:
No additional submission to date

Ich wollte die beiden noch mal in alter Stärke erleben, bevor sie ihren Schwächeanfall bekommen . Irgendwie ist es schade, ich fand sie gerade richtig so, wie sie zuletzt waren. Trotzdem brauchten wir für beide jeweils mehrere Versuche.
Jetzt muß ich nur noch mal sehen, dass ich jede Woche nach Kara reinkomme, wenn es mit der neuen Hose noch klappen soll. Ich habe so wenig Wille, dass es einfach nur erbärmlich ist.

Je joue à divers jeux vidéo sur PC, parfois peut-être plus que de raison, m’enfin, on est geekette ou on ne l’est pas ! Et je ne me sens pas pour autant mal, la culpabilisation me passe vraiment au-dessus de la tête. L’argent que je ne mets pas pour sortir en boîte, aller dragouiller, m’acheter des fringues hyper super fashion pour frimer et faire semblant de pouvoir entrer dans la jet set ( Felipe si tu me lis… Ah non, j’oubliais. Lire c’est has been ), je le consacre à un abonnement World of Warcraft payé tous les deux mois, et à un maximum de livres et de sorties en nature, visites de musées, de sites archéologiques, etc. Et honnêtement je préfère ça.

Je me sens bien dans ma guilde actuelle. On avance vers un groupe de raid assez soudé, discipliné et conscient des objectifs, dont la plupart ont compris que le principe est de looter pour avancer et pas d’avancer pour looter. ( Ce qui peut paraître évident mais quand on voit certaines des prétendues grosses guildes du serveur, par exemple Bl….. Mo… ^^ … On est en droit de se poser des questions sur le potentiel de loisir d’un jeu qui chez certains semble entraîner une voracité digne des plus grands requins de la finance… )

Tout ça pour dire que les raids ces derniers jours se déroulent tout naturellement et qu’on sent comme une atmosphère de forte avancée PvE HL pour bientôt.

Au raid d’avant-hier soir Void a été down très simplement, au premier essai.

Puis nous avons attaqué Solarian, une première pour pas mal d’entre nous, ce qui ne nous a pas empêché de faire un premier try à 60%, un deuxième à 24%, et tout juste pas de troisième try pour cause de péons qui devaient se lever tôt le lendemain . Mais la prochaine fois ce sera une formalité, à 20% ce boss devient extrêmement faible.

Hier une petite soirée tranquille à base de Maulgruulidon ( Maulgar/Gruul/Magthéridon ) m’a permis d’obtenir enfin mon petit titre de Championne des Naaru avec ma Chasseresse. Il était grand temps !

Yeah. The Sunstrider fight…not the 5-man, the 25-man. We blew through Al’ar and Kael trash with some people from Confirmed and Contempt supplementing CD’s raid team (and I got the nice ring from Al’ar!) and made it to Kael in no time.

The fight explanation was one of the most complex things I’ve heard. I thought Vashj was something, but Kael’thas is a very tough fight. Took a lot of concentration.

We wiped quite a few times tonight. The first few were due to transition problems as far as I could tell–we still had the Phase 2 weapons up when Phase 3 started, and we never did get all the adds down before Phase 4 started. All in all, it was a great learning experience, but it’s really intimidating looking at that guy.

Of course everyone running up and hugging him pre-fight was a great stress reliever.

Anyway, the first thing I thought when I saw him was…”Epic!” And yes, the fight was epic. Scared the piss out of me when the first add (who acts surprisingly like that guy from AQ20!) started eyeing me.

In phase 2, I found it difficult to find the staff to loot. It’s a little hard to see against the floor. But I got it okay, and it certainly helped my damage. Upped my gear rating too…L175 items tend to do that. At least temporarily lol.

I got a Lionseye today, so I have officialy started socketing for Arcane! Very happy to finally get around to doing that; should be at 14k+ mana soon.

Most eventful event: I ran Mag’s after over a month of trying to pug. We took a bunch of ppl from our TK raid, threw in some overgeared puggers like Annoyance (BT shadow priest) Envvy (T6 pally tank with Thunderfury!) Umbrae…and rocked that guy. Burning him down by keeping the channels on him more during Blast Wave interrupts makes that fight very fast.

I didn’t get any gear from Mag’s of course, but I am now:

VELINATH, CHAMPION OF THE NAARU.

Incidentally with that kill I have officially downed at least one boss in EVERY end-game instance in BC. (3 in ZA, 2 (the 2nd and 3rd) in BT, and 1 in Hyjal). Exciting business.

Penultimate murloc

Originally uploaded by Nimcraft

Dead (OT–> MT *flex*), dead, 8 of 9 on the needles, 283 unread (down from 984).

I’m almost caught up with my life since moving 2 weekends ago. Whew.

Well I continued my moonlighting for Cloudy Day last night in Black Temple (!) after Kara; wiped a couple times on Supremus while we learned the fight. All sorts of fun, I’ll tell you what! I’m really enjoying the occasional glimpses at endgame, and Pwni/Thenino is a really good RL from what I’ve experienced. =) Running with those guys is just awesome. It’s really gratifying to look at my DPS meters afterwards and see that while I was alive I was putting out over 1150 DPS too–behind the 2 locks in raid, of course. =)

For the first time recently that I can remember, a majority of our drops in Kara were usable. Was really nice! I really hope that that keeps up tonight when we down Netherspite and Prince and then move on to ZA first boss. =) Hopefully we’ll be ready to start 25-man raids soon, I’m really excited to get on that track!

I’m hoping also for a Mag’s run tonight with Cloudy Day, if things work out I’ll be “Velinath, Champion of the Naaru” later tonight!

PLEASE comment this post if you’d like me to write a specific post e.g. more Kara boss strategies, or some specific nuance of magery–I’m totally willing to try and help out.

EDIT: Well Kara tonight…was interesting. We started raid with only 7 people, and ended up with 10 eventually. Every drop was usable tonight too, which was kind of nice

Well, I hit 1400 DPS today in H-SP during a boss fight. Very exciting. =D

In more significant news, I’ve chosen to retitle the blog *TEMPORARILY* to reflect my respec. I will probably be respeccing back to Fire at some point however.

Also, I’m getting a lot of badges every day now-6 or more daily. Having some great runs, and looking forward to getting a huge upgrade for my gloves soon, like tomorrow-ish. (Still using the Attumen gloves from forever ago.)

Tried Mag’s for the first time. Terribly geared pug; I was like 4th best geared behind a tank and a couple healers, and was outDPSing people by like 200. One of our DPSers, a rogue, had a 77 gear rating and also pulled Mag once. >_> Poor raid leadership, no Ventrilo or TS, and poor off-tanking and DPS caused it to fail; sad, because I’m trying for Champion of the Naaru!

My druid dinged 38 today too–very exciting!

Mages, I posted this a good 3 months ago, and it still works great. Please check out my post about Polymorph macros if you haven’t already.

ueno, pues pongo un recopilartorio de los últimos logros que habéis hecho posibles. Enhorabuena a todos. Estas dos fotitos abren las puertas de SSC y TK.

Aquí Gruul (sip, lo de las fotos aun no lo tenemos controlado)

Aquí el más reciente, el señor Magtheridon (o lo poco que quedó de él)

Y otra de bonus, Kthulhu, Newtonisi, Habaseca y yo a las tantas de la mañana matando un bicho estúpido con demasiada vida xD.

Adaptación de BossKillers.

En el parche 2.4 se hicieron algunos cambios que no se contemplan en otras guías:

- Ahora el debuff de los cubos es de 30 segundos, por lo que ya no hacen falta 2 grupos preparados para rotarse, aunque sí es recomendable tener resevas por si los muertos xD.
- Los brujos ya solo invocan un infernal por minuto, ahora nuestros locks lo tendrán más fácil
- El boss ahora tira una bolsa de 20 casillas.

Preparación
Magtheridon es un encuentro en 3 fases, siendo la primera la más dificil de todas.

La situación es la siguiente:
- Boss en el centro de la sala
- 5 brujos en circulo en posiciones S,SO,SE,NO y NE.

La fase 1 termina a los 2 minutos de atacar al primer brujo. La fase 2 termina cuando el boss está al 30%.

Se recomienda llevar pociones, especialmente para los tanques. Los healers consumirán bastante maná en la fase 1, pero será suficiente llevar algunas pociones de maná.

Composicion del grupo.
5 tanques con buen equipo
4-5 brujos
Clases con posibilidad de interrumpir hechizos.
8-10 healers

Habilidades de los brujos
Shadow bolt volley: Rango de 30 yardas, 1063-1437 de daño de sombras para el primer brujo. Este daño aumenta para los siguientes. Se puede interrumpir.

Dark mending (Alivio oscuro?): El brujo puede sanarse a si mismo o a cualquier brujo en un rango de 30 yardas. Solo lo lanzan si están por debajo del 50% de salud. Se puede y se debe interrumpir.

Invocar demonio: La invocación crea 2625-3375 de daño de fuego en un radio de 10 metros alrededor del demonio. Los demonios lanzan bolas de fuego a una distancia de 20 yardas que hacen 2700-3300 de daño de fuego, además de hacer daño melee. Se desvanecen en un minuto. Desde el parche 2.4 cada brujo solo tendrá un demonio activo a la vez.

Habilidades de Magtheridon
Melee: El golpe normal hace unos 6k de daño físico.

Knockback: Te hace rebotar 5 veces en 5 segundos, interrumpiendo cualquier hechizo canalizado. Cooldown de 50-60 segundos.

Blast nova: Pondria daño y tiempo, pero basicamente significa WIPE.

Conflagration: Bola de fuego sobre el suelo que lo incendiará durante varios minutos. Los jugadores alcanzados reciben un dot de fuego, se aturden y hacen 300 de daño de fuego a cualquier jugador cercano.

Cleave: Ataque frontal que hace 8k de daño en placas, de 10 segundos de cooldown.

Estrategia (parte interesante, vaya xD)

Buffs:
Los típicos de sacerdote,druida y mago, y además Protección contra las sombras. Si no hay suficientes paladines, Reyes/Poderío y Reyes/Sabiduría es más importante que Salvación. Los brujos y los paladines deberian ayudar a los tanques con diablillo y aura de devocion. Sobre todo para quellos tanques que mantienen a los ultimos brujos.

Posicionamiento:
Os dejo las imagenes de bosskillers Posicionamiento inicial
INICIAL

Los tanques deben mantener a todos los brujos lo más separado posible para minimizar el daño de las shadow bolts y evitar que los brujos se curen entre ellos. Inicialmente, los brujos se pueden tanquear en sus posiciones, pero una vez que el primero ha caído, es recomendable mover los brujos SO y SE hacia el sur, para separarlos aún más de los brujos NO y NE.
FASE BRUJOS

Muertos dos brujos, el tanque que se encarga de magtheridon debe prepararse y colocarse junto al boss, y sus healers estar preparados
Pre Magtheridon

Una vez que magtheridon se libera, lo normal es que aun queden 2 brujos vivos, asi que lo mejor es mover al boss a la pared sur de la sala, donde ya no quedan brujos.
Magtheridon

Se le puede mantener en esa posicion hasta que muera, lo cual reduce el riesgo de que los melees reciban el Cleave.
Fin Maggy

Además, para la fase 1, es buena idea que los dps a distancia mantengan una distancia de 10 yardas entre ellos, para minimizar el daño de la invocación de los demonios.

FASE 1
Cuando comience el evento, los DPS deben matar brujos tan rapido como sea posible, empezando por el brujo Sur. Los offtanks se encargarán de interrumpir los shadow bolts de los brujos para que los healers no gasten demasiado maná en ellos mismos.

En el caso del brujo que esté siendo atacado por los dps, los picaros y magos deben interrumpir shadow bolts y SOBRE TODO curas, que empezarán a partir del 50% de salud. Los brujos se encargarán de poner Maldicion de las Lenguas en cada brujo enemigo, para reducir el tiempo de casteo. También funciona el Mind Numbing Poison (no se como se traduce el veneno este, supongo que los picaros sí).

La otra tarea de los brujos será controlar el demonio que invocan los brujos enemigos.

Se espera que el primer brujo caiga en menos de 40 segundos, y el mismo tiempo es suficiente para el segundo.

Una vez muerto el primero, los brujos SE y SO pueden moverse un poco hacia el sur. El tercer brujo debe tardar otros 40 segundos o menos en caer, antes de que el boss se libere.

FASE 2
Cuando magtheridon se libere, un tanque debe cogerlo y moverlo en la posicion SO, con la espalda del tanque pegada a la pared.

40 segundos despues de liberarse, Magtheridon lanza el primer knockback. Este hechizo es “complicado” puesto que los healers solo podran lanzar curas instantaneas y los melees seguramente se quedarán fuera de rango de su objetivo. No es mala idea que los sacerdotes le pongan escudo a los tanques. En este momento es cuando magos y chamanes deben encargarse de cortar hechizos de brujos (puesto que los picaros ueden estar sin rango).

Cuando quede poco para un knockback, asegurate de que estás lejos de cualquier foco de llamas que haya en el suelo.

Este es el punto crítico de la raid: Magtheridon suelto y 2 brujos vivos. Los venenos y maldicion de lenguas facilitan la interrupcion de hechizos. Los healers que esten libres (aquellos asignados a los tanques que ya no estan tanqueando) deben ayudar con los tanques encargados de los brujos restantes y también con el MT, que estará recibiendo daño de Magtheridon.

CORTAR EL BLAST NOVA
Un minuto despues de su liberación, Magtheridon intenta castear su hechizo wipeador xD, y nosotros intentaremos interrumpirlo. ¿Como? Con los malditos cubos.

Hacer clic en un cubo implica:
- 10 segundos canalizando (Se puede y debe interrumpir)
- 800 de daño por segundo al que lo toca.

Si los 5 cubos están activos:
- Magtheridon se queda tonto y se corta el blast nova
- Magtheridon recibe un 300% de daño.

Dejar de canalizar implica:
- Dejas de recibir daño
- Tienes un debuff de 30 segundos que te impide volver a clicarlo.
- Podemos parar de canalizar moviendonos, por ejemplo.

Clicar el cubo y soltarlo antes de tiempo implica WIPE.
Clicar los 5 cubos con mucho desfase implica que los que clicaron primero tendrán que mantenerlo más tiempo y recibiran más daño.
NO clicar a la vez no implica que mueras, pero es bueno que el desfase sea de 1 o 2 segundos.

Puedes mantener el cubo durante (VidaDispoible/800) segundos. Más te mata xD. Es decir, que gente con menos de 8000 de vida no es muy resistente a los fallos xD.

Dicho esto, ya podemos intuir cómo se hace lo de los cubos, que a mi modo de ver es lo que peor se hizo la ultima vez. (Yo tambien me encargaba de ellos, así que yo también la cagué).

Como hacer lo de los cubos
¿Quien?
Gente “prescindible” y con mucha vida, esto es: tanques que ya no están tanqueando y posiblemente aquellos brujos que ya no estén encargados de controlar demonios.

Magos y picaros no son NADA recomendables, puesto que somos blanditos y además
estaremos cortando casteos a los locks hasta que mueran todos.

¿Cuando?
Cada jugador atento al Magtheridon debe empezar a canalizar cuando este empiece a
castear su Wipe Nova, y AUN MÁS IMPORTANTE, PARAR en cuanto se le corte. Que Magtheridon reciba el triple de daño ayuda al DPS, pero arriesgar la vida de los “cuberos” no es una buena idea.

NOTA: Esto es en teoría, en la práctica es normal aguantar bastante los cubos y que se cure a los responsables para no cometer errores.

¿Donde?
Situarse es importante, puesto que el knockback puede alejarte bastante del cubo. Una buena idea es estar pegado a la pared segundos antes de que se haga el knockback.

Desde que se redujo el tiempo de debuff, 5 personas son suficientes para encargarse de los cubos, teniendo un grupo de suplentes predefinido, por si muere el cubero principal ^^.

FASE 3
Empieza cuando el boss está al 30%. El gordo cabrón se carga las paredes y los jugadores reciben 5k-7k de daño. El primero en recibir curas será el MT, y después el resto de la raid. Este es un momento cojonudo para usar piedras de salud y potis.

Es IMPORTANTE que todo el dps pare cuando el boss está al 31% (32% mejor para que se entere todo el mundo), y que la raid espere el siguiente Blast Nova. De otra manera, corremos el riesgo de que se nos junte un blast nova con el comienzo de la fase 3. Este momento es tambien bueno para subir la salud de toda la raid al máximo.

En esta fase caerán escombros. Podemos saber donde caeran porque caera polvo del
techo. Si te pega un pedrusco, estas muerto. Si un pedrusco va a caer cerca de un cubo, gira y colocate al otro lado de este, puesto que se pueden clicar desde cualquier direccion.

Por lo demás, esta fase es igual que la fase 2.

COMENTARIOS SOBRE LAS CLASES
Tanques:
Tanque del brujo Sur: Generar mucha amenaza muy rapido, para tirar al brujo a full dps.
Otros tanques: Pueden seguir una tactica mas defensiva, y su prioridad sera interrumpir Shadow Bolts. Con 2 brujos muertos, es buen momento para usar Pociones que reduzcan daño.

El mejor tanque (con mejor equipo y manos) será el encargado de tanquear a Magtheridon. Los 2 ultimos brujos serán tanqueados por los tanques que estén preparados para recibir y mitigar más daño.

Sanadores:
En un principio es suficiente un healer por tanque, y es importante ahorrar maná.

Cuando queden 3 brujos, es recomendable tener 2 healers por tanque.

Cuando queden 2 brujos, es recomendable tener 3 healers por tanque (3 para cada tanque de los brujos, y 3 para el MT).

Mientras haya demonios activos, es posible que vayan a por vosotros, puesto que ganareis aggro con ellos. Encargaos de tener un brujo asistiendo o tirad miedo si sois sacerdotes.

Con los brujos muertos, el unico que debería recibir daño es el tanque principal. En este momento es una buena idea tener healers para la gente encargada de los cubos. Esto hará que puedan canalizar más tiempo si alguien se retrasa, y también tener a Magtheridon un par de segundos adicionales recibiendo el triple de daño.

Clases DPS.
Pegad fuerte a los brujos. El aggro solo debería ser un problema con el primer brujo, los offtanks habrán generado mucha amenaza para cuando el primero haya caído. Lo mismo ocurre con magtheridon.

Rogues: Guarda energía para cortar casteos.

Mago: Asegurate de tener el cooldown del Contrahechizo preparado, sobre todo en la fase de knockback.

Chamán: Lo mismo que el mago, asegurate de tener listo el choque de tierra.

Brujo: Tu prioridad son los elementales, y después el DPS, asegurate de poner maldicion de las lenguas para ralentizar casteos.

Cazador: Los brujos son inmunes a vuestro silenciar. Podeis ayudar con el control de demonios mediante trampas. Las pets pueden dejarse sobre Magtheridon o cualquier objetivo que requiera dps.

Well it has been an eventful first week of college. Fortunately I still had time to play WoW, as is obvious from my new loot from our near-successful Kara clear–the [Nathrezim Mindblade] from Prince. I didn’t get the HR wand that dropped, but it did help a member of our guild that really needed it, so I’m happy. =)

We’ve been working on gearing up a couple of our tanks recently so we won’t have to PUG tanks for Kara again–this week our pugged main tank didn’t have Omen, so things were a bit trickier than usual.

I’ve been getting a lot of gear upgrades recently, really happy about it. As far as I know, I’m gonna be running ZA tonight too. Very exciting!

I’ve also been down in SMV recently starting the Champion of the Naaru quest chain. Hoping to finish the heroics in the next week and then try to get into a Mag run. =)

Hemos empezado a sacarle provecho al nuevo server. Muchos buenos jugadores se han unido a nuestros rangos y ya están los resultados. Aquí les traigo, con dedicacion especial y bautizo, los últimos minutos de vida de Mag.

And i die a little inside /cry

Sunday night i got a really rare chance to run an uber win ZA run with some of my friends from another guild Ordo Veritas. We got 3 timed chests and basically one-shotted <—(not sure that’s and actual word btw) every other boss in the instance except bird which we wiped on gauntlet (but still managed timers 0.o)

Anyway, Since monday is the day that they usually do clean up they just happen to have a free night for raiding so what better way to spend it then taking a shot at Mags!…or so me and Tyrannis thought anyway. The thing is Ty didn’t really want to lead it so he kinda suggested maybe i lead?  i thought, “hey! i have been to Mags several times how hard can it possibly be to tell mostly experienced people what to do and when? huh? huh? sure.

dun dun dun….

The long and the short of it was we took 3 fail attempts at Mags before i called it. I chalked it up to the fact that i am just a really terrible raid leader but there were other forces at work that i didn’t find out about until much laters.

A source who shall remain nameless divulged all last night and my eyes were opened to many things i would never expect from the people we were raiding with.

The entirety of group 5 decided they “had never been there before” when several of them actually had and when confronted about it by someone replied, and i quote “dude, if you act like a noob they won’t ask you to do anything complicated.”

Then again I guess they couldn’t be expected to anything too complicated like clicking cubes or interrupts because apparently all the hot Nøvus chicks on vent were too distracting o.0 and besided when will they get to AFK for beers if they actually have to DO something?

and that is the story of how my raid got turned into a sorority party without a single boss downed.

So Ty wants me to do this again? Not so sure anyone will ever want to come to another one of Psy’s raids after all that   I don’t even know if i want to be there! LOL! If nothing else it was a lot of fun and reminded me of how much i miss raiding with certain people *cough* OV *cough* that i haven’t gotten to raid with in months. IDK maybe i will do it again…with someone else doing all the vent talking so certain anonymous peoples can focus solely on downing the boss

Thanks for adding enjoyment to my week everyone that was there! I’ll be laughing over this for quit some time =D

love ya’ll,

psy

Thursday night I participated in my first raid! A very impromptu PuG of mostly noobs (including myself) took a crack at Magtheridon’s Lair, knowing full well that our badly-geared team was doomed to failure. But most of us didn’t care. We wanted the experience and the fun of giving it the ol’ college try.

It was weird being in a group of 25 people after all the other instances I’ve been in only had 5 people. I was in Group 5 and we had no tank. The raid leader and a few others in the group had successfully beaten Mag before and were very helpful talking the rest of us through the pulls.

We were giddy with success after the first pull! Then came the second pull — a total wipe. On the trash mobs, no less. My first raid wipe — woot! Don’t ask me why we wiped. Nobody did anything OBVIOUSLY stupid; we were just outgunned, I think.  We killed those mobs on our next try and made it into the room with Mag.

The leaders spent about 30 minutes explaining the fight to us. Very complicated. Since there were five summoners + cubes and we only had 4 tanks (all of whom were new to tanking this fight), we knew a wipe was a foregone conclusion. But I admired how everyone knew it, saw the crappy gear of the noobs, but still had a very positive outlook on the whole thing.  They even entrusted assigning a Clicking Of A Cube to me.  I volunteered to do it when no one stepped up because I figured what the heck, not likely to make it much worse, am I? In any event, we never got as far as Cube Clicking because the channelers ate us alive. I’m not even sure if we killed one of them. Probably, but it was so much chaos that I couldn’t tell.

The best part of the night was that I had a healing priest in my group named Whelz and we just hit it off whispering jokes back and forth about how it is to be a girl playing this game. She even LIKED the fact that I played a male toon because, as she said, “I bet the tools bother you a lot less.” I agreed, saying, “Yeah, until they hear my high squeaky voice on vent.”

Which reminds me: we didn’t have access to a vent server so we did a voice check on the in-game chat system… and then never used it! The entire raid was done via the text chat panel. I’m thinking that probably was NOT one of the points in our favor.

Murmur down!

On Wednesday night I had another first. I did my first Outlands instance: Shadow Labs. It was a very good PuG, I must say. We had a person new to tanking but he did a very good job despite working with FOUR CASTERS! Two warlocks, a priest, a mage, and me (elemental shaman). The mage bailed on us after we wiped twice on Grandmaster Vorpi but luckily another warlock joined us about 1 minute after the mage shined us.  So, going into Murmur we had no crowd control at all. The priest was very knowledgeable and patient in teaching us about each of the pulls. We wiped once on Murmur, but got him down the second time. A very cool fight.

And this time we rocked Prince with a feral druid and 3 paladins. =) We just straight up pwn.

Got some new shoulders-[Mantle of the Mind Flayer] – and the [Uni-Mind Headdress] which will be nice for my HR. Still kinda want [Fel-Tinged Mantle] from H-MgT though–it’d help me a lot more than the Kara shoulders will.

Even so, I had a great run personally, and of course full-clearing 2 weeks in a row is nice for the guild as a whole. We’re starting Gruul’s at the end of this month, and until then I’m thinking about pugging it and Mag’s just to get a feel for it. There’s no way I can mage-tank, though–just not enough stamina atm. Hopefully Nathan’s got a set of greens, lol.

8/5/08: NEW NETHERSPITE STRAT UP! WITH PRETTY PICTURE! ZOMG CHECK IT OUT, 2 POSTS DOWN!

If my Kara strategies are coming in handy for you, let your friends and guildmates know where you got them! I <3 getting views!

You may call me Loronar, Champion of the Naaru.

We logged in today to get an invite from Knights of Redemption for a 25-man raid. Since we didn’t have enough for either Hydross or Void Reaver, we went ahead and PUG’d a few people for Magtheridon and Gruul’s Lair. The token for [Demon Stalker Shoulderguards] dropped, but we lost the roll. But we were happy with the title!

Be Imba! also says we’re in top shape for raids.

Wrath of the Lich King can come any day now.

Gruul fiel im ersten Versuch, Maggi auch nach dem zweiten nicht. War trotzdem mal wieder ganz nett.