You are Here

Tag: raid

Daily

Daily Thoughts: It Was My First Time and…

No, I wasn’t tanking this boss, but some accidental fire mishaps ending up with us writing a letter. Besides, I don’t usually include a screen shot, be grateful.

So it was my first time and I rocked it! Just a few days ago we’re about to start forming up our raid for the night and noticed our sign-up list was lacking some key features. Namely, we were missing a second tank. I actually could have taken the easy way out and let our shaman take his alt Paladin. He is completely capable and geared almost completely in epics. If you’ve been reading, I did have a series of blogs about being scared to tank. This shaman of ours really wanted to gear his main and also really doesn’t like tanking. I decided to take up the challenge and let big ugly things beat on my face for the next 3 hours.

And beat my face they did. As I can recall, there was only 2 wipes during the night caused by my tanking. First was a death during the Omnitron encounter. You could also blame that on the healers for not keeping me up, but with relatively sub-par gear, my CD usage could have been a lot stronger. The only other wipe was a complete result of my fail. We were working on Throne of the Four Winds and I was tanking the frost boss. Never before had I been subject to such a constant slowing effect while switching to the other platform and started running for it too late. Missing the tank swap can be (and was) pretty fatal. Outside of that, things went pretty smoothly. Of course, I was the off tank so I had the pleasure of raid DPSing on my DK for 3 of the 6 bosses we fought that night. All in all, raid tanking – both bosses and trash – was dramatically easier than tanking a heroic. I’d be willing to wager this is due to having a group of competent players as opposed to a random collection of potential douches that don’t expect to
 ever see you again. Whatever the reason, I won’t have any qualms with tanking some more in the future.

It can be pretty nice occasionally, though, to not tank or heal some raids. Just getting to pewpew/smashsmash a boss and move out of stuff occasionally is a lot more relaxing.

Share
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Linkedin
4.1 News/Updates

4.1: No Raid?

According to Eurogamer and their interview with Blizzard lead producer J. Allen Brack, the “players were not sufficiently advanced through the raid content that shipped with third expansion Cataclysm in December to handle the challenge of Firelands”. So myself  along many others falsely predicted this raid coming out in 4.1. The interview says they’ll probably release it with patch 4.2, but they’re also considering having smaller content patches instead of just big ones. Of course, we’re still getting the new Zul’Aman and Zul’Gurub as 5 man heroic dungeons that will drop 353 item level loot.

Share
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Linkedin
Daily Shared Topics

When a Raid Becomes the Perfect Storm: A Blog Azeroth Shared Topic

 

Naithin over at Fun In Games started this topic about what causes a raid to just come together. His Post can be found HERE and is definitely worth a read. For those who don’t know about Blog Azeroth already, check them out.

Every so often something amazing happens. There are always forces at work, sometimes they are small, seemingly insignificant and others can be quite powerful in their own right. When these forces coalesce we see extraordinary things happen. The right combination of social and economic factors that came together at the right time destroyed the soviet union; the right mix of chemicals and energy (might have) created life on earth; the unfortunate timing of air pressure, temperature and electrical charge can turn a tropical storm into a devastating hurricane, and a random group of players from across the world can get together and kill a WoW boss 400 times their size. There are a ton of factors that can happen while forming or during a raid that can cause a frustrating wipe or sweet, sweet victory.

(more…)

Share
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Linkedin
Cataclysm Daily

Daily Thoughts: Argaloth

For those who were worried that cataclysm wouldn’t be hard, my repair bill after the Omnitron encounter in Blackwing Descent would serve to lessen those fears. There are also, though, quite a few who are now worried that cataclysm is too hard. For those people, I’d like to refer Argaloth. He is the first boss in Baradin Hold, the new VoA like boss area in Tol Barad. He drops current tier pvp pieces along with, you guessed it, a couple pieces of PVE tier. I’m not entirely sure if he has a stronger bias towards PVP, as so far after 3 kills and 6 epics, my guild has only seen 1 tier piece. Even better, it was for a class not represented in that raid. Either way, we still have a way to get some epics without too much trouble. Argaloth does serve the function as acting as somewhat of a gear check. Think of it as the entrance examto cataclysm raiding. In 10m at least (and I’d guess 25m would be similar) each dps player must average 10k dps during the encounter to not hit his rage timer. This really isn’t hard with basic heroic/badge gear and some cheap gems/enchants.

Wowhead was nice enough to put up a little description as well as strategy for Argaloth. Check it out after the break.

(more…)

Share
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Linkedin
Cataclysm Daily

Daily Thoughts: Predictions Pt.1 – Deathwing

I first got the idea for this article while I was standing outside Gamestop on Cataclysm release night with a friend of mine, waiting to pick up my copy and for my significant other to return with some ‘tex-mex’ coney’s from sonic. Freakin’ delicious, let me tell you. I can’t quite recall the lead in to the conversation, but I decided to make some predictions on the deathwing boss fight come patch 4.3 or 4.4.

The Sure Bets: I’d actually consider putting money on some of the following, but this is easy stuff. First, there’ll naturally be multiple phases to the fight. There will be a tail to worry about and a cleave/breath mechanic to not stand in front of. There will be adds and fire on the ground or things falling from the air (probably all of the above). I think most of us can agree on this basics of a big dragon fight. Follow me after the break for how I think the phase breakdown will be and the long-shots I’m calling for this fight.

(more…)

Share
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Linkedin
1 2 3 4 5