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Once again due to real life we were nine-manning content, and one of those has a broken collar bone (thus proving that retadins can faceroll :))

TotC10 (Beasts and Jaraxxus) – Beasts gave us a little trouble, it was Ari’s first time tanking the worms and they do need a bit of special handling, they’re the hardest part of the fight on normal mode.  Dusted ourselves down a few times, dead beasts, happy skinners.  Jaraxxus got better when ‘wolf went on the adds, Paladin AoE threat is a win on that fight pulling the adds under some form of control.

VoA – By the gods (all worship Yogg!) we have Wintergrasp, so as the bulk of the raid had never seen the bosses we dive into it before we get kicked out.  All three early bosses nuked, no problems and pretty much no gear thanks to the way the RNG was playing with us.  Oh thank you very much Blizz.  We need to go back in to wallop the new guy, I’ve only looked at him once and to be honest I don’t remember much of the encounter.  Emalon I think was the hardest for the team to work out, particularly when I failed to call the charged add (oops), but he died, we didn’t and we’ve learnt another execution fight.

ICC – The trash up to the final pack died without any problems, we then managed to pull pretty much all of the big adds one after the other causing one wipe and a few iffy moments (but the rep is nice).  Marrowgar, two attempts at nine-manning him.  We really did miss the additional ranged dps our resident dps nutter brings to the raid, which made getting the spikes down harder than it should have been.  More in a followup post

Korenwolf finally got his first ICC25 outing last night, unfortunately this means he’s left the AB guild for the raiding one, though Unferth will make the trip back to AB soon.  Generally a good run, we one shotted everything through to Putri, the tanking legs dropped (got better already) and the shoulders from the boat (upgrades ftw, 1 DKP).

Things which need fixing, exorcism on the ret bar needs moving from it’s current keybinding which it shares with taunt on the tank side.  This can cause problems when I’m dpsing in prot.  Similarly Hammer of Wrath needs moving away from the taunt.  Simply put taunt needs to be somewhere I can easily use it without there being a chance of whacking it by accident when hitting something else.

• Ret gear needs bringing up by enchanting and gemming.
• Need to work out why I wasn’t getting alerts on P3 of Putri for the stacks or a better method of monitoring for stacks on the other tanks.
• PowerAuras – needs setting up again so I have a clear visual clue on the key defensive spells
• Enchant the new gloves (stam or armour, that’s the question)

Namtar, now despite what some people thought on seeing her name it is not “ratman” spelt backwards, Namtar is named after the god of death from Mesopotamian mythology.  So let’s get that sorted out right now.

Namtar == deathgnome, bringer of death and decay

Namtar == Stupid reversal of a name

So, now that’s cleared up what is she?  The where I go to smash things around without the pressure of being a tank, I get to wallop and let someone else take on rounding them up and giving me a kill order.  What came as a shock last night wasn’t the dps she’s pumping out (peaked at over 3k in Heroic DTK) but the gear she’s wearing, the chest drop from Novos was an upgrade….  So, time to get her running more heroics for badges, she can pump out so much more I’m sure when some of the lower bits are swapped out and I actually get round to gemming and enchanting her gear

Priority order:

• Gem (she’s a JC, so this is trivial)
• Enchant (talk to swmbo)
• Replacement kit (get running heroics rather than tanking with the ICC25 paladin in 5-man content)

So, another week of raiding is done. I missed out on Wednesday (most of the farm content) due to being ganked by RL, it happens. RL > WoW, always. Anyway Fri was largely a washout, Princes down but no attempts on Putri as we were bodies short. Saturday was better but was a 200g wipe night.

The team was sub-optimal, but we had multiple 1-4% wipes.  So where can things be better?

• Healing
  Trees and Priests rock but they’re not really designed as heavy tank healers, so 4xTree and 2xPriest is possibly not an ideal setup for the group.
• Green mutations (Phase 1)
  Ranged need to be further back from the green one when is spawns, melee need to be camped right on top of the spawn point.  If it’s going to reach the ranged target we need to have as many as possible stacking on that player.
• Green mutations (Phase 2)
  Spread, spread, spread.  Please ranged camp spread out.  The issue here is Malleable Goo (aka ‘flubber’), we’re seeing regularly enough to be a problem a double whammy of the green ooze target getting walloped by flubber which was targeted on a player in close proximity.  So stay spread, stay back until it looks like the green will reach the target then get into close range for the explosion.
• Gas clouds
  The kite path is the key here and don’t get caught, the raid damage is usually enough to take out 3-4 players in one hit with others possibly following as other damage lands before the healers can catch up.
• Flubber (phase 2)
  Dodge it, please dodge it.  If only because getting hit is usually death and if not the casting debuff is a pain and hurts HPS & DPS
• Phase 3
  Avoid the bottle bombs, avoid the flubber, blow cooldowns, pop potions, hit trinkets, nuke and heal for all your worth.  Damage avoidance appears to be the key we’re missing at the moment.

Putri, if we can get that close with a non-optimal raid… you’re going down boyo.

This is flubber, take a good look, know your enemy

Very similar in many ways to Malleable goo as thrown by our current best friend, Mr P. Cide of Icecrown Citadel.  Flubber is green, bouncy and annoying (particularly in the presence of music and Robin Williams), Malleable Goo has the same properties, this is why our Mr Cide is throwing it at us.  Did you think he likes the damm green bouncy rubbish?

Flubber and Malleable goo both cause special effects to happen, one results in an actor bouncing off the walls the other results in a raid inspecting the floor tiles.

Both are undesirable.

So remember, if Putricide or Robin Williams offer you something green and bouncy, run away, very very fast.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXMoBTB5WEQ&hl=en_GB&fs=1&]

Thanks to a combination of events (taxi service for the short one to have his head checked on Wednesday[1]) and being short on heads, particularly team heal for Friday & Saturday I’m going to be raiding on Unferth this week.  So Team Heal, you’ve got the epic tree with you for another week, maybe a Putri kill will be his swan song.

So… Guys… (and girls)

Learn to dodge the bloody flubber.

[1] We should hear soon if there is a brain inside the head, I’m betting on “no”

Lord Jaraxxus is the second boss in TotC, one of the demon lords he’s a bit of a pain but on balance a simpler fight than the beasts.

The keys to the fight are target switching (adds must be nuked down quickly), situational awareness to get out of the bad and targetted healing. Ranged (inc healers) need to spread around the boss, Fel lightning can chain to keep a reasonable distance between each other, the fireball should be interrupted (DKs I’m looking at you).

Every 60 seconds, Jaraxxus alternately spawns a Nether Portal or a Fel Volcano. Nether Portals spawn a Mistress of Pain, while Volcanoes spawn 3 Felflame Infernals. Both types of adds must be tanked and nuked down by ranged as fast as possible. Melee should stay on the boss.  So ranged, save your damage cooldowns for the adds.

Jaraxxus will randomly cast Incinerate Flesh on one raid member. This debuff absorbs all healing on that target until a certain amount of healing has been done, if the debuff wears off, the target blows up, causing a Burning Inferno to hit the entire raid for large amounts of damage over time, this can be a wipe (it’s a insta-wipe for heroic mode).

Legion Flames is the other nasty, if a member gets this cast on them they should run outside of the raid and then run around.  As the debuff ticks down it will drop green flame on the ground, so while running a line of green fire is left behind the target.  Therefore it is essential to be careful with the path to avoid running through the healers or ranged dps.  The Nether Power debuff will need dispelling by the priest to reduce his dps.

So, hit the boss, hit the adds, get out of green, heal the bad debuff, dispell the other debuff, win, loot, /cheer.

Then… faction champions…

[Edit: Legion flames updated]

A short series of articles covering totc10 ready for the AB weekly raid quest this weekend.

Beasts is a three phase fight

• Gormok the Impaler
• The twin worms
• Icehowl

Gormok
This fight is about tank swapping and heavy healing and quick target switching by the DPS. Gormok casts “impale” on the current main tank, this is a stacking debuff, in 10 man the switch is generally done at two stacks, with the taunt back coming as soon as the stack expires. Depending on the gear level the tanks may need to pop indestructable pots and mitigation cooldowns (divine shield, barkskin etc) at crucial points.

Melee will pound on the boss.

During the fight Snobolds will jump from the boss and leap on someone’s back. Ranged will nuke these down as quickly as possible, doubly so if they’re on a healer. Once the boss drops any remaining snobolds need nuking by all dps quickly before the worms spawn. Hand of Protection can be useful at this point as well to clear any remaining debuff stacks on the last tank.

During the fight fire will be thrown out under the ranged camp, so spread out and strafe if it’s on you.  There should be no fire in melee.

Worm club
Acidmaw & Dreadscale. The worms cycle through mobile and static phases. Their abilities vary depending on whether they’re mobile or not.

Mobile worm: Will always drop a slime pool, the tank will be kiting the mobile boss around the edge of the room, all dps need to be behind the boss as both will do an aoe / cone spray to all targets in front of them (this should only be the tank).

Static:
Dreadscale – fire spit (ranged stay spread), whirlwind like attack (melee impact), burning spray (causing Burning Bile)
Acidmaw – acid spit (ranged single target attack) whirlwind like attack (melee impact), Paralytic spray (causing Paralytic Toxin)

Acidmaw is static first, spawning on the left hand side of the doors as we face them, dreadscale comes through them and moves to the right. DPS will focus all damage on Acidmaw until it’s dead and then move to dreadscale.

At the mobile/static switch both will burrow, the tanks will pick up the same boss as before (ie stay with dreadscale) and change their tanking style in accordance with the phase the boss is now in.

Things to watch for.

Those with burning bile need to get out of melee as it does a aoe damage effect on all those near. If someone is hit with Paralytic Toxin someone with burning bile needs to get as near to them as possible to clear it. Non-tanks with toxin should head for the center of the ring. If a tank is affected someone needs to clear them as quickly as possible, healing needs to be prioritised on them first.

When dealing with a mobile worm look out for green slime on the floor, get out of it. Do not get in front of the boss.

Once the first worm is down the second will enrage doing more damage, so lots of pewpew.

Icehowl…
The final boss is the giant yeti (skinners sharpen those knives) Icehowl. This is mostly a tank and spank fight, stay spread as he does a breath attack freezing players and causing a lot of damage. At various points he’ll move to the center and perform a massive crash sending all players flying to the edge of the ring. Someone will be targetted, this player (and all those near) need to strafe away as quickly as possible, to avoid his charge. If successful he’ll stun himself on the wall (more pewpew time), however if unsuccessful he’ll do a mini-enrage, hunters with tranq shot are useful here.

Repeat until dead, loot, skin.

What is Korenwolf going to be doing when he’s not mashing down bosses?

• Diplomat
• Cenarian rep the title
• Loremaster (120 or so to go)
• More gold!