Zuworty's Raid Information

[Karrock]

Here is my 2 cents.

1) I wouldn't mind trying hard modes, as long as the normal progression is not significantly affected.

2) Your top raiders are, in most cases, the ones that get frustrated at wipes. Going to be very difficult to get rid of these folks and find adequate replacements. Probably not a good threat to make. Get rid of the root cause and it fixes the problem.

3) How can we kick raiders when we have difficulty in finding replacements? Unless a perm spot is an easier sale than a temp spot....

4) Those wanting to do vault should log on 15 min before raid or stay 15 min after raid. It only takes 5. I would be up for it.

5) Go back to gearing healers and tanks first. Save our last attempt on vezax (which is understandable), i cant remember where dps was an issue.

And please do not let people choose their vehicles for leviathan-assign them.

K

[Holyssa]

If I have to find us a new pally tank that keeps aggro

Uh...what? *gives soul-searching Kurinnaxx stare*

I wouldn't mind trying hard modes, as long as the normal progression is not significantly affected

What Waldy, Uncle Ug, and K said. Two or three attempts, and we move on. If we succeed? Rawr. If not? It gives us a chance to look among our team and analyze what the problem is. These are the fights that push a raid to it's limits, and will be ample opportunity to see where peoples' strengths and weaknesses lie.

XT is a good boss for setting this standard: attentiveness (sparks/gravity bombs), damage control, and he's a mandatory kill to move onto the rest of the dungeon. I'd like to see just what the raid can REALLY do to this guy after having a few cracks at his Hard Mode on the 10-man.

The Raid Groupings thing is something I'm glad to see return! This will be a good show of who reads this thread and follows the advice within.

I also agree with cutting out VoA, at least till 3.2 hits (or if people pop on early as Zu suggests, but everyone's time varies...not sure how this will work). The time we cut from people waiting for the WG victory timer, running in, tipping over metal fat people, and flying back can be used to get some practice in on said Hard Mode/progression stuff. And we've killed 4/5 of said bosses which drop these pieces anyway (Yogg being #5), which to me is much better than playing roulette with a chance at getting more PvP/offspec stuff from Emmy that won't give people the stat push they need.

Go back to gearing healers and tanks first. Save our last attempt on vezax (which is understandable), i cant remember where dps was an issue.

I'm not saying this to be biased (duh, tank here), but once again K has a point: DPS from a gear standpoint is the least of our worries. It's when people die, DPS drops. THEN we got problems. If DPS in general was the root of our problem, we'd still be stuck on Hodir's enrage. Then again, the RNG is mocking us (read: f*ck you, Ignis!), and will make this gearing strategy rather troublesome to stay consistent with.

[Calendar]

If I have to find us a new pally tank that keeps aggro

Uh...what? *gives soul-searching Kurinnaxx stare*

In response to this and to all the other comments regarding replacements...

We're not there yet!

I simply want to make sure that everyone understands that:

A) I'm committed to making this raid succeed, whatever the cost! This includes finding permanent replacements (and yes we have issues finding temp replacements, however we actually have folks waiting on the side lines for perm spots).

B) Our current rate of progression does not justify such extreme action.

C) Holy if you think I was referring to you than you re sorrily mistaken my friend

Go back to gearing healers and tanks first.

I'm not sure what you mean by this. We NEVER had a tank or healer first gearing policy. We have 3 tanks (2 OTs) and 7 Healers, should I prioritize them? Assign an order of importance to each player? I think that's asking for more problems than it's worth. I typically view all healers as equal. I try to make sure that Holy and Tyr are well geared and I try to make sure Heiliger picks up a decent amount of DPS gear (since he should be spending most of his time on that).

Save our last attempt on vezax (which is understandable), i cant remember where dps was an issue.

Your right, we have the right amount of DPS for succeeding at doing what we are now. However, we have a lot of content left to get through and increasing our performance (on all fronts) is an important part to succeeding.

In my opinion...

Tanks are mostly where they need to be and are performing well (well most are at least).

Healers are performing well, but I admit to being a little ignorant in that department since Ug has been doing such a great job leading them.

DPS on the other hand varies A LOT! We have folks doing awesome jobs (DPSing, staying alive, being reactive). We have folks who do ok jobs but are very consistent (which in my book is acceptable). We have a good handful of folks doing awful jobs (bad DPS, constantly dieing to stupid ###### and having very poor awareness).

So why do I pick on DPS when we are doing well? Because I know that is where we can improve most.

And please do not let people choose their vehicles for leviathan-assign them.

Already ahead of you, I was planning on doing this tonight. I think that at this point everyone has gotten their fun with the various vehicles, it's time we get a little more serious about this.

Is there a cutoff on the number of attempts per boss we are going to make before moving on?

Yes and no. Typically I'd aim for 2 attempts (in case the first attempt was a fluke failure). But it depends on how well we do...

For example if on Attempt #1 we get the boss down to 50% and Attempt #2 we get him down to 20%, I'd be more inclined to try Attempt #3.

If we do a decent Attempt #1 and only get the boss down to 80% than I wouldn't be so inclined to try again.

It's a judgment call.

Edited July 28, 2009 by Calendar

[Calendar]

Audit Results

So I performed an audit of our raiders today. I used the be.imba website which isn't great but at least gives me a good amount of data to parse through. I try not to make too many assumptions since sometimes what is deemed "proper" doesn't necessarily fit the situation. Also, not everyone logs out in their raid gear.

Here are some of the results:

Evila -- GOOD

Anamarie -- GOOD

Druze -- Can upgrade chest enchant

Bralor -- Can upgrade shoulder and pant enchants (potentially cloak too, that would be specific to class/role)

Draegloth -- GOOD

Tizaria -- GOOD

Zeniita -- Can upgrade weapon enchant

Lorgan -- Can upgrade cloak enchant

Hingon -- Can upgrade chest enchant and 8 low quality gems (yikes!)

Markenhoof -- GOOD

Ascoli -- GOOD

Jestin -- Not sure why you have stam to boots, but I guess you die a lot so that's ok

Kelea -- Unknown you logged out in your Elemental gear (However your enchants all look good! You set has low hit rating but that's expected I guess)

Foroshell -- GOOD

Karrock -- Missing chest enchant

Holyssa -- Missing cloak enchant

Uglutz -- Unknown you logged out in your Elemental gear (I can however upgrade your chest and cloak enchant which should help your DPS)

Orcala -- WTF? PvP Set? I hope so!

Kailand -- GOOD

Tyrandius -- GOOD (Reports low spell hit 13% < 17% don't know if that matters)

Kadiana -- GOOD (Reports you should have Vitality not Icewalker on your boots -- just FYI doesn't really matter)

Elrikk -- GOOD

Zuworty -- GOOD

Heiliger -- Caught in Ret gear...however since you should be DPSing most of the time this gear should be in MUCH better shape. 3 missing gems, 1 missing socket in your belt and 4 missing enchants. Your shoulders are for your Prot set and can have their enchant upgraded.

Taidenewy -- Can upgrade your chest enchant. (Reports low spell hit 13% < 17% don't know if that matters)

Well I hope that helps a bit. There are a lot of upgradeable enchants. I suspect folks are not investing in top enchants because they don't think its worth it. However, if everyone made sure their gear was in top shape it'd make for a pretty significant improvement.

[Holyssa]

Holyssa -- Missing cloak enchant

Whoops! I've been meaning to fix that. I forgot the cloak I had was brand new, and didn't think of re-enchanting it. I think I got Titanweave mats laying about.

[Waldonnis]

Tyrandius -- GOOD (Reports low spell hit 13% < 17% don't know if that matters)

Taidenewy -- Can upgrade your chest enchant. (Reports low spell hit 13% < 17% don't know if that matters)

It's a toss-up with spell hit for DKs. Ideally, we should always gear/gem/enchant for it until we're full capped, but other stats often give much better benefit (stam/avoidance in my case, and str/AP/crit/ArPen for dps depending on spec). What matters most is melee hit and expertise, which I'm sure we're both very good on. I know it's not in contention, but just wanted to clarify that 99% of DKs aren't overly concerned with spell hit cap unless they can easily attain it without sacrificing in other departments (again, melee hit and expertise caps aside).

Kadiana -- GOOD (Reports you should have Vitality not Icewalker on your boots -- just FYI doesn't really matter)

The crit makes Icewalker more attractive currently (I have it on Jary's second pair of boots). I'm sure Vitality will be a better option when we get smacked with the Illumination nerfbat.

I'm working on fixing up my dps gear enchants now and have already added a non-tanking spec as my secondary. It won't all be ideal, but it should be a significant improvement over what I was facing before (mostly because I'm not gaining pieces very often).

On that note, if I'm going to stick to dps on fights like XT, we might need to position Heiliger a bit better to pick up adds from either of the back two junk piles. I sometimes run back there to pick up a bot and drag it to him because it ends up out of his taunt range, so I often wear some tank gear on that fight even when dealing damage (I usually just swap weapons). If it's a problem, I could tank the adds instead and he can go ret on fights like that, though...either way works and I'm flexible.

[Kalea]

Okay. Logged out in healing spec and gear. I'm open to suggestions.

I've been gunning for Kadiana in a siege engine, but I'm game for any place you want to put me.

I'd love to do 25 man VoA before or after the raid, Karrock. I still want my pants, gloves and that mount.

Edited July 28, 2009 by Kalea

[Calendar]

Kalea -- GOOD

Whoops! I've been meaning to fix that. I forgot the cloak I had was brand new, and didn't think of re-enchanting it. I think I got Titanweave mats laying about.

Holy, just pop open a trade with me at the start of the raid and I'll take care of the enchant.

That goes for everyone! If you're missing an enchant, I'll gladly fill 'er up until I run out of mats.

[Tepheris]

Through icewalker on my shoes....

[Holyssa]

Thank you Zu

Two things before tonight:

- Would it be worth assigning a warlock to perma-Curse of Weakness duty for specific encounters (Hard Mode XT, Kologarn, Steelbreaker, Giant Enemy Crab, err, Vezax)? Last night we had Evila do this, and while we lost a smudge of DPS, the damage reduction was rather surprising, shaving off about 4k - 7k damage per swing. Not sure if it interfered with Faerie Fire or other debuffs, and I can't find logs from the Sunday Vezax battle...but it's an idea. :\

- Mini FYI for folks. I'm going to make a permanent modification to my build after thinking about the results of Sunday's 10-man:

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#sZA0xA0uMusIufdts0hbc

For those that don't speak Paladin: I took 2 points out of Conviction and tossed them into Pursuit of Justice. Hopefully this will help out with Vezax kiting and monster-catching in general.

TLDR: Holy is 15% faster. Please keep up with your vertically-challenged tank!

[Calendar]

Would it be worth assigning a warlock to perma-Curse of Weakness duty for specific encounters (Hard Mode XT, Kologarn, Steelbreaker, Giant Enemy Crab, err, Vezax)? Last night we had Evila do this, and while we lost a smudge of DPS, the damage reduction was rather surprising, shaving off about 4k - 7k damage per swing. Not sure if it interfered with Faerie Fire or other debuffs, and I can't find logs from the Sunday Vezax battle...but it's an idea. :\

I'm sold on the idea. I'd rather have Draegloth do it however, I want to enable and encourage Evila to do more DPS.

On another topic...

Assignments are up for the Flame Leviathan. General rule-of-thumb:

If you are a tank or melee DPS you'll likely be in a Siege Engine.

If you are a healer you are either driver a Chopper or a Devestator.

If you are range DPS you are likely a Devestator Gunner.

I did a bit more research...healers should NEVER find themselves inside a Shador Crash while fighting General Vezax. While the Crash puddle will buff range DPS, it will inhibit healers. Positioning in the Group Roster has been modified to reflect that.

[Martok]

Audit Results

Uglutz -- Unknown you logged out in your Elemental gear (I can however upgrade your chest and cloak enchant which should help your DPS)

The eye of Uglutz resists your penetrating gaze

[Calendar]

Audit Results

Uglutz -- Unknown you logged out in your Elemental gear (I can however upgrade your chest and cloak enchant which should help your DPS)

The eye of Uglutz resists your penetrating gaze

My penetration beats your resist!

[Waldonnis]

- Would it be worth assigning a warlock to perma-Curse of Weakness duty for specific encounters (Hard Mode XT, Kologarn, Steelbreaker, Giant Enemy Crab, err, Vezax)? Last night we had Evila do this, and while we lost a smudge of DPS, the damage reduction was rather surprising, shaving off about 4k - 7k damage per swing. Not sure if it interfered with Faerie Fire or other debuffs, and I can't find logs from the Sunday Vezax battle...but it's an idea. :\

Yes, it definitely would help, especially since we don't have a demo shout available now. Boss AP is significantly higher than the average player, so it's scaling is much better on bosses. I've been toying around with suggesting this as well. As for whether or not it interferes with Faerie Fire, they both provide different effects, so there's no reason why it wouldn't stack (demo roar and demo shout are the only things that share a debuff type with Curse of Weakness). For any boss that hits like a building or healing is limited, I highly recommend Curse of Weakness use to reduce incoming damage to the tank (and subsequently, reduce healing required).

[Kailand]

*curses loudly while typing from the office* My ISP is down, and has been since this morning. I just called and they say that it probably won't be up again until tomorrow morning (which sounds like somebody cut some cables or blew up some server hardware), so that means I won't be able to be there tonight . Good luck in there tonight.

[Holyssa]

Holy's 2 copper regarding last night with all the changes / Zu's pep talk:

~ Flame Leviathan +2 was awesome. Once people grow used to their new roles, I feel this is going to get even simpler, and we can get to work on +3 in no time. Grats all!

~ Less trash deaths FTW! Though people still need to learn about the more dangerous stuff like the Hardened Iron Golems along Kologarn's path. If Holy's backing away, it's probably for a VERY good reason!

~ Curse of Weakness worked like magic! On fights like Kologarn (where Holy usually takes a spike damage nosedive), I noticed it shaved a massive chunk of damage off whoever we applied it to, and the plethora of debuffs I'm usually plagued with didn't seem so scary. *gives Draegloth a waffle*

~ I still think we should stick to Hodir -> Freya -> Mimiron -> Thorim for Keeper kill order. Yes, we have to kill each pair of those stupid giants. But Mimi has given us far less of a hassle in the past, whereas Thorim is much more chaotic given that each player has more responsibility (besides tank & spank roles, like on Mimi adds).

~ Read up on Hard Mode Freya here: http://www.wowhead.com/?achievement=3179#comments. This is with all 3 Elders up (yes, I know we're working on +1) and refers to the 10-man edition, but it's the only link I could find which lists the specific spells the sexy tree lady gets from each Elder. Healers will need to eat their Wheaties for next time!

~ Remember to enchant/gem your stuff!

[Karrock]

Anyone in our 10 man that needs abyss crystals for enchants, please let me know we have a few. We also picked up a cloth BOE something that someone can have if they need-I'll send them to Zu.

K

[Calendar]

Audit Update

I ran the audit again today here are the results:

Evila -- Missing glove enchant (It's new gear so I'll likely let it pass), low spell hit 13.95% vs 17% that's a good 3.05% missing (not sure how important that is for Warlocks)

Anamarie -- GOOD

Druze -- GOOD

Bralor -- GOOD (good job! Considering you had to work up your Hodir rep, I'm impressed!)

Draegloth -- Low spell hit 14.22% vs 17% that's a 2.78% missing (not sure how important that is for Warlocks)

Tizaria -- GOOD

Zeniita -- GOOD

Lorgan -- Can upgrade cloak enchant

Sneekeh -- GOOD

Markenhoof -- GOOD

Ascoli -- GOOD (Caught in Prot gear -- I'll assume your Ret gear hasn't changed, it was good last time)

Jestin -- GOOD

Kelea -- GOOD

Foroshell -- GOOD

Karrock -- GOOD

Holyssa -- GOOD

Uglutz -- GOOD

Orcala -- Missing shoulder enchant and head enchant seems wrong

Kailand -- GOOD

Tyrandius -- GOOD

Kadiana -- GOOD

Elrikk -- GOOD

Zuworty -- GOOD

Heiliger -- Caught in Ret gear...however since you should be DPSing most of the time this gear should be in MUCH better shape. 3 missing gems, 1 missing socket in your belt and 4 missing enchants. Your shoulders are for your Prot set and can have their enchant upgraded. You have not done ANYTHING yet to address these issues.

Taidenewy -- GOOD

Summary:

You guys have done an AWESOME job improving your gear!!! Only the following people have stuff to resolve:

Evila, Lorgan, Orcala and Heiliger (BIG TIME!).

Edited July 30, 2009 by Calendar

[Calendar]

I'm reading up on Vezax strategies...

What are the pros and cons of having Tyrandius tanking Vezax instead of Holy?

Could we avoid the kiting through Icebound Fortitude? Would our healers be able to keep up?

Is this a viable strategy that could benefit us?

[Kailand]

My internet is back up, so I will be around tonight

As for Evila and Draegloth.... Don't shadow priests/balance druid provide a spell hit debuff of 3%? That would mean that evila and draegloth are fine, and that our other DPS casters are 3% over their hit cap.

[Holyssa]

I'm reading up on Vezax strategies...

What are the pros and cons of having Tyrandius tanking Vezax instead of Holy?

Could we avoid the kiting through Icebound Fortitude? Would our healers be able to keep up?

Is this a viable strategy that could benefit us?

IBF is on the same cooldown as the Surge, which is a plus. Obviously CoW will still need 100% uptime to reduce Zoidberg's damage and relieve healer stress, and there is zero room for error with regards to interrupts (duh). I personally do not mind spending the extra moolah to maximize my Ret offset (which consists of Uld10/Naxx25 hand-me-downs). And it's not the first time we've done a main-tank swap before for one specific encounter (Leotheras anyone?).

I personally would not mind giving it a try! But it's up to Tyr and the healers.

Edited July 30, 2009 by Holyssa

[Calendar]

My internet is back up, so I will be around tonight

As for Evila and Draegloth.... Don't shadow priests/balance druid provide a spell hit debuff of 3%? That would mean that evila and draegloth are fine, and that our other DPS casters are 3% over their hit cap.

You are correct Kailand. The site checks that the player has reached their hit cap INDEPENDENT of target debuffs. If I keep Misery up (+3% chance to hit) and Druze keeps his Improved Faerie Fire up (another +3% chance to hit) that means folks can save up to 6% on hit gear (or more depending on their talents).

I can't speak for Druze, but I have no choice but to keep my debuffs up since they activate the second I start landing spells on the boss.

If folks want to reduce their hit gear in consequence that's fine with me, however if you do so make sure you keep an eye on the WWS stats. If you're hitting targets I'm not than you're SOL in regards to my debuff.

IBF is on the same cooldown as the Surge, which is a plus. Obviously CoW will still need 100% uptime to reduce Zoidberg's damage and relieve healer stress, and there is zero room for error with regards to interrupts (duh). I personally do not mind spending the extra moolah to maximize my Ret offset (which consists of Uld10/Naxx25 hand-me-downs). And it's not the first time we've done a main-tank swap before for one specific encounter (Leotheras anyone?).

I personally would not mind giving it a try! But it's up to Tyr and the healers.

Ascoli has mentioned that the IBF ability will get nerfed to a 2min cooldown following the 3.2 patch. Going this route might not be sustainable. However, if Tyrandius has other abilities that could mean "no-kite Surges" than I'm still up for giving it a try.

[Karrock]

The surge is 10 secs-any way to have another tank range taunt the boss and run (similar to the freya add)? 10 secs burns fast, especially if hes slowed...

K

[Waldonnis]

I'm reading up on Vezax strategies...

What are the pros and cons of having Tyrandius tanking Vezax instead of Holy?

Could we avoid the kiting through Icebound Fortitude? Would our healers be able to keep up?

Is this a viable strategy that could benefit us?

It has benefits and detriments, along with a big "3.2 incoming" caveat. The biggest benefit for a DK tank on this fight currently is that we could avoid kiting altogether with proper timing on IBF/Bone Shield/etc, which of course, means the raid doesn't have to move around as much. The downside is that it's more mana spent on healing damage that wouldn't be taken if Vezax were being kited. So it ends up being a "more dps time at the expence of healing mana" tradeoff. On a side note, it does eliminate the kiting bug problem that we ran into a couple times, which is handy.

The 3.2 caveat is this, though, and probably is a good reason not to get used to this strategy: IBF's cooldown is being significantly lengthened to match that of Shield Wall, making it so that it will not be available every time once the patch hits and forcing either some kiting or some raid cooldown assistance to bolster Bone Shield and AMS/4pc T8 bonus. Also, DKs are losing a decent amount of stam, avoidance, and armour, so we'll be taking more damage than previously and have 500-2k less health in frost presence (mine worked out to be around 1.5k health and 850 armour lost) to soak damage. DR is being increased on dodge as well, so all tanks will likely feel some impact.

If we were only looking for one kill, I'd say let's try it, but 3.2 is getting very close and we may as well try to get used to our current strategy in light of that.

[Holyssa]

The surge is 10 secs-any way to have another tank range taunt the boss and run (similar to the freya add)? 10 secs burns fast, especially if hes slowed...

Vezax is immune to taunt. This is to prevent ping-ponging him during the Surge to begin with (Buck Flizzard!!).

We did try Chains of Ice on him last 10-man attempt with Christra, and it DID affect him. Not sure how much of a difference it made (I couldn't pay attention while running for dear life), as he seemed to keep bugging out and ignoring the run speed penalty.

All I can think of is to have hope that my spec modification will give me the survival boost I need. But remember folks: if Holy happens to eat a Mark during kiting, it's important that melee watch out and stay back till it's safe. Remember: the debuff is only problematic if too many people get close to the affected individual!

Edited July 30, 2009 by Holyssa