Month: October 2010

Cataclysm Beta: Experiments in tanking – Blackrock Caverns

Firstly I would like to say, “ouch, that hurt”.

Korvenwolf is currently geared in a mix of levelling greens and ICC25 264/277 kit, so I’m not sure how much of the problems I was seeing were down to non-ideal itemisation.  Though I’m sure a stack of them were down to not really understanding the changed rotations yet, and as I have since noticed (it’s been a few days since I started this post) the lack of spent talent points won’t have helped one bit.

So actually I think it was pretty bloody amazing I could keep the mobs under control at all (thank you dear party for your patience), on the plus side I do have a better idea of which of the skills I had were useful as threat tools and which were less effective.

Rom’ogg Bonecrusher – Providing the trash is cleared he’s not too much of a problem, however fail to clear the trash and you’re going to be toast.

Corla, Herald of Twilight – So much easier than last time I was in, the number of adds has been halved and the control of the debuff on them went a lot smoother than previous attempts.  Though she’s still a bit of a chaotic fight.  I reckon that it could be tuned up a bit yet to make her more of a challenge.  Clear the trash first, particularly the patrol.

Karsh Steelbender – Nice mechanic, moving him in and out of the pillar of fire effectively is the key, we wiped on the first attempt thanks to me leaving him in the fire too long causing far far too much AoE damage. The trash in this room is a bit on the painful side

Beauty – Watch the fear, watch the breath and other stuff, keep away from Runty and boss is dead.

Ascendant Lord Obsidius – Actually this boss was a bit of a let down, he was a faceroll, I AoE tanked anything which moved and the DPS nuked.  I suspect more tuning is required here.


So on balance I quite like the instance but it could do with being a bit more of a challenge, either upping the boss or as part of the overall tuning of our gear.  However ‘wolf is possibly not the ideal test candidate as he’s still packing most of his ICC25 (264/277) gear and can soak more punishment than a tank geared in the kit from levelling.

Cataclysm Beta: Dalaran portals, be prepared

A side effect I hadn’t twigged until it was mentioned on the beta forums, but is blindingly obvious when I think about it.  For those players who have had a friendly mage portal them to Dalaran, make sure you move your alts back to old Azeroth prior to the 7th of December or expect to have some “interesting times” moving them through Northrend as a level (something very low).

I don’t expect Blizzard to “fix” this for us, for those who have moved a level 20 to Dalaran we know it’s a high level zone which we could not get to by ourselves, therefore it is up to us to make sure we can get back out again if the world changes.

Let’s face it the world does change so doing things which are outside the capabilities of your alt are always a risk.

This will not affect me as I am already planning on moving all my alts to Stormwind or Ironforge prior to the patch dropping, the ones with flying are likely to be parked right by the trainer in Stormwind with a few hundred gold in their back pockets.

Raiding Guilds

It remains a period of change in Warcrack at the moment, with players coming and going, mostly going to be honest.  Yet again I join a guild and one of the core officers drops a few weeks later, so just bad timing or is the universe conspiring against me.  Does this actually change anything, well that’ll depend on whether the feel of the raids themselves alters in a manner which I’m not comfortable with.

Onward tanks, you only have your durability to loose!

A message from your tank

Patch 4.0.1 is coming soon, with it are some major changes in the way tanking and the other roles work.  Shortly after (7/Dec/2010 to be precise) things change even further with the new content, where that shiny gear you’ve been building will rapidly become just so much purple junk.

Now, given these changes I give you some wise words from a Crab we’re all rather fond of (except when he talks about nerfing Paladins to the ground…)

“Right. If you are trying to AE tank and a bad dps is attacking the wrong target and dies, we call that justice.” – Ghostcrawler

So you’ve heard it from the eight legged wonder, AoE zergfests are dead, pick the target the tank marks, focus down that target, use CC on the marked targets.  Behave, don’t be a dick or you will have a repair bill.

Oh and as a final parting thought, the durability costs are being levelled, you’re going to have the same repair bill as the tank, suck on that one for a while.

Let’s hear it for Direbrew!

Only a mad, crazy & drunk dwarf could have put up with the beatings which were dished out to him this holiday without handing in his notice and relocating somewhere more hospitible.  Though to be fair, it was his own fault for spending the year getting rat arsed, swearing about the other dwarves and how no one loves him and then finding more beer.

If he had spent the year working out in ICC like the rest of us then he too could have had the twin joys of beer and shiny plate.

So, Direbrew, here’s to you.  I’ll see you again in 12 months please take it easy on the ale, and work out a bit.

Wrathful endings

I’ve been listening to the WoW.com podcast and they’ve just made a decent point, now is not the time to be farming ICC (or any raid) for gear.  Let’s face it even on the most pessimistic estimates we’ll have a new expansion within the next three months, all our gear will be replaced before we see the first tier of raiding content at 85, we’ll have new mechanics and approaches to learn in how we handle levelling, dungeons and raid content (well hello there cc, nice to see you back in the game).

This does tie in with what Team Pirate is up to, we aren’t looking grinding the raids on our Sunday slot for gear or rep at the moment, the focus is shifting to “let’s actually kill this thing, we want to see the end of Ulduar”.  While some of the team will be able to use some upgrades from the place the bulk of the drops are going to end up as gold or shards, what we will be getting is the kills, some achievements.  Knowing that we can work as a larger group to clear possibly the best raid instance Blizz have put together.

It is a strange time we’re working through, ICC has been done to death, and then some, realistically the only reason to go there is for completeness on achievements, particularly the heroic mode ones.  Which is why guilds are imploding left, right and center or where they’re strong enough going on hiatus until Cata drops.  Even those putting themselves on hold will have problems with those raiders who do want to keep kicking a boss where it hurts leaving and heading off to pastures new hunting for some form of solid raiding action.  Rebuilding good solid teams with high attendance / standby rates is going to be a challenge in the early part of Cataclysm.  As one of the officers of the now defunct raiding guild pointed out, Wrath brought lots of new raiders into the game the capabilities were variable, not entirely surprising but it’s a useful datapoint.

Does this mean the death of raiding, or that it’s been dumbed down too far, or any of the other QQ which always flies around when a group thinks that they’re no longer in that nice elite slot on the bell curve.  No.  There are mistakes in wrath, where’s my CC!, but I’ve managed to see all the content where with the TBC model I would probably have got bored and cancelled my subscription 6-9 months ago and gone off to another game.

Where does this leave us as we peer into the coming darkness, hopefully Blizz can tune the casual / hardcore raiding balance further, both groups need to be catered for and throwing the major part of the resources into raid instances which only a minority see is a design decision which doesn’t really match the whole userbase.  Moving to keeping purples as “epic” (ie, raid loot), on balance I think it keeps some people happy without actually affecting the gearing, let’s be honest it’s only a damm colour.

Where’s the conclusion?  Dammed if I know, I’ll probably mumble on about this sort of thing again in the future.