The Burrow

Hopefully a short series of posts, partly triggered by my own experiences of joining a 25-man progression alliance, a Guildie joining for a trial and random ponderings.

So, you’ve decided that raiding is going to be your thing, you’ve committed to spending some of the hours which previous have been dedicated to questing, playing the AH and 5-man content to beating up the big bad bosses of Azeroth (and associated floating chunks of destroyed planets). Being one of the happy few with shiny achievements ahead of the bulk of the population of the game and pretty (or indeed ugly) epic gear.

Welcome, you need your head examined.

The first big leap is the mindset change, this is progression content so squeezing the last drop of heal / damage / threat out of your toon is what we’re about. It’s about learning where to stand and often more particularly where not to stand. When to move, where you should be moving to, clustered? Spread out? Stood in groups? What addons are considered mandatory, which ones are just “a good idea”?

So let’s started with some addons.
ora2: Get it, install it, move everything around.
DBM: Or the equivalent, keep it updated particularly in the period after a major content patch as it’ll be updated regularly.
Omen: Good idea, particularly for dps

Turn off addons which you don’t need when raiding. That bag mod? Not needed, questing mods, bin them and so on. Some addons do a lot of communication in the background in a raid, it might make sense to bin those as well.

The aim here is to lower the load on the system because tracking 25 players and mobs and handling communication is going to put a serious load on your machine.

Next… consumables

Nadine Dorries was on the radio earlier whining on about the current part of the expenses scandal and came out with the line that this is just like a tax code being changed and retrospectively applied for several years. So her argument is that financial matters such as tax and expenses shouldnt’ have any form of retrospective element.

Funnily enough this isn’t the line the government & parliament take when it comes to the ordinary Joe Public.

The pre-owned assets tax (“POAT”) was introduced in the tax year 2005/06 and levies a charge to income tax on some previously successful inheritance tax planning schemes which were within the rules.

It can be applied to transactions entered into since 17th March 1986.

So Nadine, up yours. The rotten parliament you and the other 645 troughers are in set the precedent here.

3.3 PTR goes live (Oct 2nd), for a patch this size I reckon 4-6 weeks of testing before it hits the live. So we’re looking at Icecrown being live by mid-November, so that’s our Christmas content for everyone except the uber-l33t progression guilds who will have Arthas nailed in the first day. I hope they enjoy their break from raiding while the rest of us work on him.

Where does that leave us for Cataclysm?

I reckon we’ll see the open beta by mid-Feb at the latest, probably sometime in Jan 2010. With a planned release somewhere between Easter and Summer. I’m personally pitching it closer to Easter.

I was in the middle of writing a post pondering on whether 3.3 was going to be hitting the PTR very soon.

Pity it’s still in draft, I think it’s been somewhat overtaken by events overnight.

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/patchnotes/test-realm-patchnotes.html

Information is dropping about the loot to expect in the Icecrown 5-man content.

This is definitely another stage of the gear reset to give players a chance to gear enough to make the jump into IC raids easier without having to grind all the way through Naxx, Ulduar and the Tournament. In short grinding the IC 5-man heroics will give gear of a suitable level to mash into the normal versions of the CC raids and probably just about good enough to have a pop at IC 10 man.

It’s been a long time coming but we finally have cleared “Share the love” in TeamTinCan. A bit on the messy side but we got him down with everyone impaled.

One more achievement on the way to the red drake.

http://www.ctrlaltdel-online.com/comic.php?d=20090916

Yoggie +3, I am expecting a rather large repair bill tonight.

1. Rhino skin

   Get one, make sure there are no flaws in it and slap on some of that armour the leather manglers make.

   Part of the problem is morons, you’re going to have to deal with them when pugging, I have mental filters which I throw into effect when I encounter one and I’ll generally ignore certain type of comments because to be frank life is too damm short to get into a battle of wits with someone who is unarmed. Â An example for the pile, it’s a tincan run + 1, we’ve pugged in the tank because I need the badges on unferth. Â One of the whispers I get is “let’s drop the dps after this run and go and so some others”. Â This is one person who hits the “doiknowyou” files as a moron, his tanking wasn’t that epic and I know the dps and given that (from memory it included the mage and DK) none of the dps was too shabby he was being a moron.

2. The pug doesn’t have to love you

   This is particularly true when it’s a completely random pug, or you’re joining a guild run. Focus on filling the role you’ve been invited to handle.

3. Trust your toon

   One of the issues which I’ve had to learn to get over is a bit of a hangover from the original TinCan runs where we were undergeared and having serious problems.

   No pull was attempted unless everything was topped up.

   For a more normal party setup this isn’t needed, trust that you can handle a trash pull on 30% mana, drop and drink at every opportunity, pop whatever cooldowns are needed to keep rolling. Â Don’t worry if the tank pulls before you’ve finished drinking, just get on with keeping them alive when it seems prudent (this includes continuing to drink while the pull is happening)

4. Life at “the speed of PUG”
   
   Generally people pug for two reasons.
   1. Need a quick run for farming badges
   2. Can’t get a guild run going
5. Keep on rolling

   If it’s a good group, and everyone is happy to keep going just roll with it if you have the time. Â It’s quicker than trying to find a new party and with the added advantage of knowing what the tank’s pulling style is.

6. Did I mention Rhino skin?

   PUGs are to a large degree a means to an end, the target being badges with the minimum of time spent. Â Making sure the daily dungeon is mashed into submission and practice.

“Chaos Theory” & “Split Personality”

Split Personality is the simpler to deal with but will require dps control and monitoring of relative health of all three adds (name plates will help here). Blow down all three of the adds within 5 seconds of each other on both splits.

Chaos Theory is more difficult to describe but I think is easier to achieve. Firstly we need to clear the lower area of all trash as we’re likely to be kiting him around a fair bit (how long depends on boss dps). This is going to be hard on the healer.

It’s a dps race and a positioning job.

The boss is pulled and maximum dps is loaded onto him, ignore all rifts, this is where things get interesting with the number of adds we’re going to be dealing with. I would reckon we ignore the adds (other than keeping the healer clear) until he shields. Probably stacking the healer on the tank / melee is going to make life a little easier for picking them up.

When he shields everyone backs off, the tank keeps “close” to the boss, probably the top of the ramp, and everyone else (including melee) pulls back to at least 15 yards from the tank. The lighting from the rifts is a chain effect, so if the tank is taking them and melee is within 15 yards of the tank they’ll get clobbered as well.

The tank will attempt to collect the adds but will not run back to the healer to clear them, that’s a job for the dps. When he unshields (45 seconds) he’s tanked in the new position, with dps focusing on the boss.

This process repeats with the party working back down the ramps to the base level and then around the area until he’s dead.

Easy.