Friday, July 10, 2009

Orbit-uary: Flame Leviathan Four Towers (Hard Mode) Guide

The ten man group I'm running with two nights a week set our eyes on this hard mode last Thursday. We spent about four hours that Thursday working it, then this Thursday finally clenched it in another hour.

I enjoyed this (and am sure some hate it) - because its nothing like WoW. I could take any computer game savvy person, and they could perform as well as a hardened WoW veteran on this fight.

I won't lie that a decent amount of this fight seems random-esque. Not coin-flip win-or-lose, but there are tons of factors that can make things rough one attempt, and easy the next. That said a group of people with a solid strat, and some dedicated time, can come out on top (and collect three conquest emblems, three pieces of loot, and a good chance at a runed orb / pattern).




How to do it

I'm going to assume you've done FL before, and have basic knowledge of vehicle abilities. FL himself will act the same, but with greatly increased health, increased damage with his normal attacks, reduced damage taken from your Pyrite, and (of course) the addition of four orbital defense systems.

Vehicle Setup (at start) :
Demolisher with Driver & Co-Pilot
Demolisher with Driver, Loaded Passenger (Non-Hunter Ranged DPS) & Co-Pilot (Non-Hunter Ranged DPS)
Siege Engine with Co-Pilot
Siege Engine with Co-Pilot
Chopper Driver.

Hazards All Drivers Must Deal With

Thorim's Beams: These are the stationary white/blue beams. They'll appear randomly scattered around the map, twice during the fight. When they activate, all vehicles will take some damage, but vehicles close to them will take far more. Note that these two beam activations take place early on in the fight, so it will seem like you've taken a ton of "unavoidable" damage (around 40%) early on - but when the second set of beams is done, your incoming damage should drop off dramatically.

Mimiron's Fire: This is a orange beam that leaves a trail of fire. It travels in a diamond shape around the map, and can easily trap someone in a corner. Its easy to avoid damage from this beam in general - its true danger is in limiting your escape options from other hazards.

Hodir's Beams: These blue/white beams are "random", and highly annoying. Each beam will pick a vehicle and attempt to move on top of it - while these are moving, they pose no threat. When the beam stops, however, it starts to send down a ball of ice. If this lands on any vehicle, that person is frozen - taking a large amount of damage until they are broken out with a siege cannon blast, burning tar, boulder, or pyrite. The beams can change targets at any point.

These are most dangerous to Demolishers, that need to keep FL in their sights / stay by pyrite, and are therefore most hurt by needing to move erratically to avoid being frozen. Forward movement will always get you out from under them in time, but reversing can sometimes get you caught.

Freya Adds: These spawn in the corners periodically. Each wave has several small ones, and one large lasher. Left alone, these can take out vehicles rapidly. Drivers with adds on them can attempt to drive in/through lit tar, to damage them (though this isn't required).

Jobs by Vehicle / Position

The Demolisher Driver with just One Co-Pilot has a straightforward job: keep ten stacks of pyrite on the boss. Get ten stacks on him right off the start, then switch to weaving in boulders to conserve pyrite (since its the tick of the pyrite DoT that deals damage, not the actual landing of the pyrite on him, and the DoT lasts somewhere around 6-10 seconds). I alternated one boulder : one pyrite during times that I had to move lots or was far away, but occasional was able to do two boulders : one pyrite when I knew the last pyrite would hit in time to keep up the stack.

Keep in communication with your co-pilot, as to when the area around you is running out of pyrite. You'll want to have a full tank *before* you start moving, so you can keep applying it as you move.

The Demolisher Driver with a Loaded Passenger waits for FL to pursue his first target, -then- launches the first Non-Hunter Ranged DPS. Shoot earlier and the person will fly right past him. After they are on FL, act like the other Demolisher (above). When FL finishes overloading, your current co-pilot (the other non-hunter ranged DPS) will load himself into the catapult, and get fired as soon as FL starts pursing the other person. You'll be without a co-pilot for a short while, while the chopper driver drops off your previous passenger.

Demolisher Driver Co-Pilots primary task is keeping their demolisher stocked with pyrite. This is half actually targeting and reeling in barrels, and half communicating with your driver. Your driver needs to know when he can sit in one spot and blast away, and when the surrounding area is empty of pyrite - and they need to start navigating elsewhere. Giving speed boosts is important as well - you'll want them when FL chases you, or when you need to get to a fresh pyrite-containing corner - but your use of speed has to be carefully measured due to its cost. During periods that you aren't scouting for / picking up pyrite, shoot down more of it.

For the two People Being Launched - you'll want to let the first person being launched get in first, and then get into the catapult. When you get shot up, start going to town on the turrets. Call out when you estimate that overload is ten seconds away, and then five seconds away. After you get shot off, look for the chopper driver, and GET IN. Any of FL's abilities will kill you, including flame jets (if he was casting it when he went into overload).

The person remaining in the Demolisher should not load themselves until the overload is over - they should remain in position to collect and shoot down pyrite until ready to be shot. When they load themselves, they should call it out - this is the cue for the other person who's passenger in the chopper to jump out, and immediately into the demolisher. If they jump out before the other person is in the catapult arm, they will not be able to get in - and die.

Siege Drivers have an un-complicated job. Don't get melee'ed by FL, ram adds when possible, and interrupt flame jets. Melee'ing FL isn't worth the danger associated with it, and losing a Siege causes Demolishers to be pursued more (and do less damage) - so don't sweat it. When there is five/ten seconds left till target change, back away from FL. Consider that the target person can then steam rush away, and the one not targeted can rush towards him and int erupt (if needed).

Siege Passengers have an un-complicated job as well. First priority is Cannon Blasting Adds - using mini-missiles on them (or to ignite tar) while its on cooldown . When adds are dead (and they come in waves, so there should be down time) - shoot down pyrite. While FL is overcharged, if there are no adds - you can shoot at FL, but this should be the only time.

Chopper Driver has lots to do. Sonic horn grabs aggro on adds extremely well, and when combined with speed boosts, lets him kite adds around. Laying down tar snares adds, and burning tar damages them also. Adds left on a siege or demolisher will kill it in short order, so protecting them is key. As a bonus, you get to pick up the ejected person during overloads, and ferry them to the demolisher they were shot from. Make sure you raid mark the two people being launched so you can find them easily.

All Passengers: Pre-Shoot Pyrite Barrels from the sky before each pull.

Shoot down pyrite before pulling. Having tons to start out with saves you time during the actual fight. Make sure to get 7+ canisters landed in the two close corners (as you look at him), and lots in the back right. Back left corner just doesn't have much ever fly over it.

That's it

If things go well, you'll go through two to three overloads before he bites the dust. Each job is simple on paper, but performing them correctly while simultaneously avoiding hazards takes some practice. Make sure you set aside a large chunk of time for people to master their jobs, then keep plugging away. Sometimes FL and Hodir's Beams will target your demolishers constantly (bad), and sometimes they'll stick to siege engines (good). Things can go wrong at any point, and sub 10% wipes are very possible (and likely). You won't know the fight is really over until your vehicle falls apart underneath you.

Wednesday, July 8, 2009

Keeping Positive

Still no Yogg-25 kill. I'll talk about that in depth when we get him.

Instead, I'm going to try to focus on the things I am looking forward to in 3.2. Of course there are some changes I disagree with in violent and passionate ways - but I think I need to just let that go, and stay positive.

Shield Spec giving rage on block/dodge/parry.

Warrior 2p T9 set bonus (now -2 sec on taunt CD & +5% Dev damage) is slowly getting better. Slowly.

Devastate damage increase.

Engineering. I thought this day would never come.
- Remote Bank Access (via Jeeves). I can now keep my frost resistance gear (and any other random, highly situational crap) out of my bags.
- Dimensional Folder: Northrend Access on a non-hearth CD.
- Steam Powered Auctioneer: Northrend AH access. My bank alt will see far less action.

Raid ID extension. On late-instance progression, this will effectively add 3-6 per week of progression boss attempts (we only raid 3 nights at 3 hours each, so a bit is spent clearing early bosses). With the speed at which we've gone to DEing Uld25 gear and giving tier pieces to 2nd and 3rd specs, I doubt many people will mind the accelerated rate at which we can start finish (and then start farming) the whole instance.

Ability to trade BoP's to other people in the raid & eligible for the kill, in a two hour time window. The end of "ooops, mislooted" or "wait, this isn't as much of an upgrade as I thought" tickets.

So for now, I'm going to hope/assume that the positive changes are going to go through, and the ill-contrived ones will be thrown out. Time will tell.

Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Yogg Progress, Alts, Ten Man Achievements

The things I have been up to - let me show you them...

Yogg-25 is just barely evading our defeat. 13% on our best attempt.



We didn't get in as much time on Yogg as I wanted last week, on account of having to get some new recruits up to speed on preceding bosses - but last nights fresh raid ID cleared through all four watchers in three hours, with everything being a clean one shot. We only had about fifteen min at the end, so rather then not get through Vezax trash, I had us do Razorscale as a bonus. Then post raid we had Wintergrasp, so 24 of us mollywhomped that place. Good evening overall.



Finished Fire Festival the other day - putting me one holiday (Brewfest) away from What a Long, Strange Trip its Been. I think this holiday is one of the better designed one - I enjoy its mix of traveling, the resulting light PvP, a handful of fun/silly achievements, and the chance to stock up on some unique (but short lived) consumables. Going into the holiday, Aertimus and I had most of the fires done already. I'm glad we finished off the missing few in Kalimdor/Easter Kingdoms early on - the day after we did, was the day that fires got reset, and achievement progress was lost. That would have been crushing (not in a crusher tentacle sort of way - more in a "oh, someone ate the last slice of leftover pizza" sort of way)



My many alts haven't gotten much attention over Wrath, with so much to do on Yakra (achievements, raid prep, ect), but I finally hit 80 on my warlock. Same as with Yakra, I dinged in Grizzly Hills - having done all quests leading up to it, and as many instances as I could get my hands on. The BoA items were really fantastic for leveling - I was using the Staff (with +30 SP enchant), Shoulders (with stam/resil enchant), and double spellpower trinkets. Those will all get passed off to my 64 mage once they're replaced, and we'll see how fast I can tear up outlands on her.



This is really the first time I've been PuGing content behind the curve. The Naxx10 run I went into Monday was utter fail - people bailed after the second time they wiped on Anub, myself included. I decided to go with some less risky endeavours, and instead cleared Heroic VH and UP with PuGs. The only truly infuriating moment was when I was turned away from a Heroic AN group after getting to the instance, because I "wasn't geared" for it (armory is slightly out of date). I guess I missed the memo where Heroics became srs bsns.



I then went on to get in some VoA action, after convincing some raid leaders that knowledge and ability was greater then gear. I went on to embarrass some fully epic players by out DPSing them. The instance failed in its normal function of giving sweet tier gear to fresh eighties, but such is life.



Ten man Ulduar was on fire this week. We started off with FL+3 - which was a comfortable one shot. Then got a one-shot repeat on Heartbreaker (XT Hard Mode), though it failed to drop the sword that our two-handed weapon users can't stop talking about.



On Kologarn, I figured we would give "With Open Arms" a shot (the achievement to not kill any arms). We just went one tank (since there would be no rubble), popped heroism off the bat, and went to town on the torso. When he gripped someone, we only did the ~20% necessary to break them out, and only broke out four people. I told people to not break out or heal the fifth person gripped (as we'd kill the arm) - and of course was the one snatched up. I watched them finish off the boss from my vantage point on the ground.



Then we went for Crazy Cat Lady. Our DK grabbed the boss, I got the two adds, and we ignored the feral defender entirely. Heroism was popped early, and we just zerked her. I was the recipient of some insane heals that kept me up through sentries stacking DoT ticks (that were up to about 14,000 at the end), and managed to stay up long enough for the job to get done.



We put in some Thorim hard mode attempts, but something just wasn't clicking for P3. Not having a priest for mass dispel hurts. After a while, in the interest of clearing at least the other watchers before the reset, we just did him normal. All our practice paid off though, as we managed to all not stand in lightning on the kill.

In general, things are pretty good. I'm waiting for 3.2 changes to settle at least a little before I speak my peace on them, but I foresee some positive (though mild) changes for warriors, and a few good features being added to the game as a whole.

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Wishlists

Satrina posted a Wishlist on the WoW Forums...

Given the lack of anything in the 3.2 patch notes, I'm guessing they haven't quite figured out what to do with warrior tanks just yet. I don't actually think we need all that much in terms of adjustments to be honest. My list is this:

- Rage on avoidance. Please? Strings of avoidance killing your threat generation sucks. (Bandaid until rage generation can be fixed properly)
- Reduce Shield Slam's innate threat from 770 to 250, increase the average damage to compensate (and maybe a bit more)
- Make Revenge like Overpower in that it cannot be dodged or parried. Remove innate threat and increase average damage to compensate (and maybe a bit more).
- Buff Devastate's damage, boost the 50% weapon damage up to something decent.
- Glyph of Bloodrage. Remove the health cost reduction, replace with 10-15 more initial rage

A couple of others that would need pretty careful tuning:
- Change warrior crit conversion from agility to strength. Would need a lower conversion ratio than the current agility conversion, of course.
- Vitality grants x/y/z% of strength as expertise rating
Rage on avoidance really does seem like a no brainier. Putting in a fixed amount of gain on the Anticipation and Deflection talents (for dodge and parry, respectively) would do the trick nicely, if they don't want to just bake it into defensive stance. Satrina nails this one.

Shield Slam and Revenge Damage - The damage increase wouldn't need to be too significant, and its a far less major change then upping the percent increase granted to these skills through talents. Having revenge not be dodged/parried would be nice, but could lead to a dangerous combination in an arms-heavy revenge-centric build. I'd put these on my wish list, but with a far lower priority.

I don't think bigger devastates is really a big need. Some buttons need to just be filler - that filler doesn't have to be great. We'd also run the risk of DW 0/30/41 builds returning as a top DPS spec (as it did in early, early wrath / beta).

Regarding Str converting into Crit: I love the idea of alternate ways of getting crit as a protection warrior. When agility was gutted from our gear, crit became a memory. I can imagine some more flavorful way of tying crit to dodge or parry, though (some type of general finesse).

My big thought for warriors as a whole - move away from shields/block as a source of static damage reduction, and simply erase the concept of block value. It simply can't scale in a way that makes it not overpowered for five man content, and trivial on twenty-five mans. Take the mechanic of block, and use it to instead solve the above problems.

Have block be an activator for cool abilities or effects...
  • On a block, gain X critical strike rating on your next attack- making shield block rating into a threat stat. Scale the critical strike rating gain as much or as little as you want, from a minor increase, to a guaranteed crit.
  • Have Sword and Board be a talent that refreshes shield slam on a block.
  • On a block, double the armor contribution of the shield for X seconds - mirroring its current damage reduction, but making it into a valued stat that scales - and one that's uptime is based off of SBR.
We have something broken/worthless, and things that could use boosts. Using one to solve the other just seems like the thing that will make the most people happy.

Monday, June 15, 2009

Looks, Arms, Tentacles

I've been having a blast recently...

A look change - the first major one in awhile. New weapon, shield, and helm (which matches the chest and gloves, since you can't notice). The T8 helm is absolutely sweet on a dwarf. I feel like a Satyr from hell, with my beard sticking out perfectly, horns, and glowing red eyes.



Then Yogg-25. We got in one full night Sunday before last, before the nerf's came. Still got to P2 a few times, but it was messy (I got my kiss in). This most recent Sunday, our best was 35% (not quite out of P2, but close).

Add ImageFollowing my mediocre contribution to Vezax-25 this last week, and fueled by the sale of a BoE epic I won in a greed roll in Uld-10 recently, I decided to get my DPS gear up to snuff. After choking on the amount of materials needed to enchant one two-handed weapon (which Aert and I thankfully had accumulated in our alt bank), I decided to try arms. It was the best decision in the end, but for arguably the worst reason : P

Arms is AWESOME. I won't pretend its top achievable DPS is the most ideal, but for my purposes (DPSing occasional boss), I'm having a blast and doing more respectable DPS then I was with fury. I even took the opportunity to shine up my PvP gear (which is entirely from VoA & massive Wintergrasp honor - I still have 620 Resil!) On Vezax, I did 3.2k - in line with our regular Ret Paladin, and only slightly behind our Enhancement Shaman (bear in mind the -20% swing speed debuff on this fight, and lacking of some raid buffs)

Part of what I think is making Arms work for me, is my new obsession with the Power Aura's mod. I'll likely write more on that later, when I feel more comfortable with it. Its application to DPSing is far greater then tanking, but I certainly feel like there is a lot tanking can get out of it.

Following the experience we had on Yogg-25, my 10 man group rolled into his room with a ton of confidence - and rightly so!

He didn't last long at all to the might of ten people that could avoid clouds, keep straight the three different C-Tentacle names, and kill things at a satisfactory rate. We ran 2 tank, 2 healer, 6 DPS (3 ranged, 3 melee).

Its a huge confidence boost for this comming weeks 25-Man - especially for Losti and Myself, who weren't entirely sure what to expect from adds in P3

Friday, June 12, 2009

Raid Leader Auras


So an aura, as far as the various Warcraft's and Diablo's have taught us, is a passive buff that emanates from a person and bolsters the abilities of others around them - usually some bolstering of abilities or resistance to some element.

I'll propose that group/raid leaders have unique auras, which provide similar effects to the people they are playing with.

Think about the last group projects or tasks you've done in your life. In most every case, you should be able to identify the group leader's ability to inspire others to either work longer, strive harder, feel better about the task at hand, be more resistant to roadblocks, or be more efficient.

Now - all leaders need to be pushing their groups to have these virtues. It's just natural that some people will excel in some areas more then others. Think about character creation in a game, where you play with slider bars or allot stat points to determine attributes. The sum ability of two equal level characters is equivalent no matter how you spend them, but they can end up looking and feeling radically different.

When a regular group of people changes raid leaders, it feels different. It may be the regular RL is out for the night, has left the game, or your running a semi-pug with another guild. The net result, is things aren't done quite the same, and it can be unsettling.

What I want to establish, is that this is not necessarily the result of weakness. Vene posted not too long ago, "a [raid] is weak if it cannot function without it's strongest link", and I don't want to confuse what I'm saying, with the phenomenon he notes.

When experiencing a change in raid leadership, one must simply adapt to the new strengths brought to the table. If the new leader is as competent ("the same level as") the old one, then they are both going to bring just as much to the raid. If the rest of the group sticks with their same expectations, however, the result will be weakness.

When your group doesn't have Frost Resist Aura, you drop Frost Resist totem, right? Both have advantages, and both have opportunity costs. But if you don't adjust, and keep dropping Healing Stream totem, you're inflicting weakness unnecessarily.

I'll give a rough example of an actual raid leader situation (and examples for this kind of thing is tough, since the really important stuff tend to be more indescribable gut "feeling" types of things). But lets say Raid Leader A's strength comes in the form of whipping the raid through trash at a breakneck speed. When Raid Leader B steps in, who typically coordinates comprehensive boss assignments during trash - the raid ends up screeching to a halt. The entire leadership is tied up with assignments - while the rest of the raid stares at the trash pacing back and forth. Had the differences in their "auras" been noted, people that normally do assignments could have shifted to directing trash - and the raid would go on and benefit from improved assignment coordination, rather then improved trash speed.

My challenge is this - Consider what you/your raid leader's aura is. What do they help groups do, that you find noticeably absent in groups without them/PuGs? How can identifying this help the raid shift its efforts when not under that person's command?

Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Cooldowns

Cooldowns are great, and are one of a tanks best friends. The simple definition of a cooldown (as far as we're concerned here), is a thing that helps the tank not die.

And we don't like dying, do we?

But beyond that wonderful (and eloquent) explanation, there are several types of cooldowns, and several different considerations to be made when choosing a button to help not become a permanently empty health bar. The net goal may be to help the tank not die, but the route for getting there requires foresight, as different cooldowns give different results.


Flat Damage Reduction Cooldowns

These are the primo-cooldowns. When you press this button, there is no doubt in your mind that you will take less damage.

Warrior Cooldown: Shield Wall
External Versions: Pain Supression (Disc Priest), Hand of Sacrifice (Paladin, when used in conjunction with Divine Shield).

When these are ideal...
-You know a big burst is about to hit, and it's going to either exceed your maximum health in one shot, or do damage at a rate higher then your healers can heal. (ex, Plasma Blast)
-You are picking up a mob unexpectedly, and need to give healers time to react. (ex, current Thorim Tank dies).

When these are weakest...
-When you are critically low on health, and not expecting a heal to land. Taking even 10% of a 20,000 damage hit will still kill you when your at 2000 health.

Maximum Health Increasing Cooldowns

These are great, in the effective health sense. You won't take less damage (heals will still need to be greater then incoming damage) - but in most cases, you'll be able to take an extra hit (or two) when avoidance fails.

Warrior Cooldown: Last Stand
External Versions: Battlemaster's Trinkets

When these are ideal...
-In preparation of spike damage. They have long durations, during which you have a much larger pool of health to fall back on.
-When heals just need another swing's time to land in an emergency.

When these are weakest...
-When damage increases, but healing can't increase to match.
-When heals are not expected to be comming.

Avoidance Increasing Cooldowns

There are no native warrior cooldowns that increase avoidance (they always come from items). They are generally weak, but have a place.

Example Sources: Heart of Iron, Defender's Code, Monarch Crab, Valor Medal.

When these are ideal...
When your trying to give healers a little break, while they are busy (Feared, Raid damage spike).
When your trying to avoid a certain debuff being applied (Ex, Overhead Smash)
When you need to be a little more lucky (Thorim at high charges, where two consecutive hits will simply kill you).
When your already critically wounded, and really really are hoping you dodge the next swing.

When these are weakest...
When you absolutely need something to happen. An 8% avoidance increase guarantees nothing.

Armor Increasing Cooldowns

Armor cooldowns are along the same lines as max health increasing cooldowns, but on a physical-damage only side. While they are more mild in overall effect (compared to last stand, for example), they have the benefit of actually reducing the damage you take - resulting in heals being more meaningful.

Examples: Furnace Stone, Indestructible Potion, Stoneform

When these are ideal...
-In preparation of spike physical damage or soft enrages.
-When healing is compromised, and you need to get further on what your getting.

When these are weakest...
-When your taking magic damage.
-When your already critically low on health.

Health Recovery Cooldowns

Healing isn't a tanks job. We just aren't nearly as good at it as the people with mana bars waving their hands in the back. Health Recovery Cooldowns are the weakest ones out there. While they are more effective in five man content, their effect on ten and twenty-five man raids is minimal.

Warrior Cooldown: Enraged Regenration
Item Examples: Healthstones, Healing Potions

When these are ideal...
Your just under the amount of health needed to get though a potential fatal swing, and not confident a heal is going to land.
Your in the middle of sustained high damage, and need to give heals time to keep landing.

When these are weakest...
When your in the middle of being healed anyway.