Holyssa

I knew it. You DO raid with a Whack-A-Mole stylus! Some little tips to remember for Yogg. P1 - Adds spawn slowly, but increase in speed gradually as the phase drags out. According to Bosskillers, it's roughly 30 seconds between spawns, rapidly increasing to perhaps 10 seconds, until you transition to phase 2. - Use this Yogg Saron P1 Cloud Test prior to entering the room. Touching clouds = bad, as they can force a Guardian to spawn early. - Tanks must interrupt the 35-yard Shadowbolt Volley. MC can't be avoided, as it is instant (but can trinket/bubble/block/WotF out of it) - It takes 8 or 9 Guardians to blow up Sara. Melee must be careful, as the Guardians explode upon death, easily killing any non-tank for around 25k Shadow damage. P2 - Players with Grid/Decursive (or any debuff management tools) should be ready to dispel debuffs on-the-go as they whittle down adds. - Concerning Crusher Tentacles: These spawn every minute. The stackable buff they get can be dispelled by doing no damage for one second. This does not include DoTs ticking. - For a list of spells which reduce Sanity, click here. Battle rezes do NOT work on Insane players, nor do Soulstones or pally bubbles. Zero Sanity is still zero, even if you somehow come back to life. P3 - As soon as phase 3 begins, Yogg-Saron stops spawning any new tentacles. However, any remaining tentacles from phase 2 will persist into phase 3. - Thorim kills any Immortal Guardians reduced to 1% life. When they are low on health, Yogg will try to heal them if they are within 20 yards of the boss. Yogg can heal multiple Guardians at any time. For pictures of the general boss room as well as Cloud pathing, Bosskillers has some good imagery and strat ideas.

NOES! /bullinchinashop From the look of the Optional Boss Loot list, a lot of people still need stuff from him (not just myself). If we do kill him, can we try the fast-burn/4 minute kill? We do this in 10-man by tanking him so he's facing the pool. That way Scorches immediately despawn via the water, and people don't have to run amok avoiding the flame patches/catching up to Holy. DPS can flip out on him while his back is turned as he remains still (except for when he grabs crotch pot people), resulting in a very fast kill with minimal movement. The downside is that we'll need a strong OT to grab every add, which makes it a DPS race. I can normally hold Iggy + 5 or 6 adds on 10-man fine, but on Heroic things scale much differently.

Good job last night all! We sent Vezax back to Red Lobster where he belongs. But we're far from done! http://www.wowhead.com/?npc=33288 Above is Yogg Saron's entry. Ignore the comments, as most of it is Lore-related stuff and not a lot of strategy. It's 3 phases of madness, and a LOT of abilities to study. If you thought C'thun was confusing, think again! http://www.tankspot.com/forums/f206/49663-...yogg-saron.html This Tankspot link contains many videos, as well as tips from StratFu. Please review them so you have a general idea as to what is going to happen during the madness.

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!

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.

A little in-a-nutshell post for jewelcrafters and our amazing friends who want in on the new epic gems coming with Patch 3.2 and don't know where to look. Bear in mind that some of this stuff is subject to change until said patch goes live. Jewelcrafting / Prospecting You can find epic gems by prospecting Titanium Ore, it's probably not the best way to get it because Titanium is already fairly expensive but if you need as many gems as possible and don't want to wait, go for it. Prospecting Titanium will give you an epic gem 25~30% of the time, the droprate for rare gems seems to be the same, and you will always get an uncommon gem. If you're lucky enough you can even get 2 epics on the same prospect. Note: You will also get Titanium Powder 60% of the time, you can exchange 10 of them for a Dalaran Jewelcrafter's Token and get your new recipes even faster. Alchemy New transmutations are available for these gems. (20 Hours cooldown) * Transmute: Ametrine * Transmute: Cardinal Ruby * Transmute: Dreadstone * Transmute: Eye of Zul * Transmute: King's Amber * Transmute: Majestic Zircon PvE - Emblems of Heroism You can buy any of the epic gems for Emblem of Heroism. These emblems do not drop anymore in 3.2 and are replaced by Emblems of Conquest in heroic instances / raids dungeons but you can still exchange higher tier emblems. (Emblem of Conquest -> Emblem of Valor > Emblem of Heroism. * Cardinal Ruby, Majestic Zircon, King's Amber can be bought for Emblem of Heroism x 20. * Ametrine, Dreadstone, Eye of Zul can be bought for Emblem of Heroism x 10. PvP - Honor Last but not least, you can buy any of the epic gem for 10,000 Honor Points. TLDR: Stock up on Titanium Ore, Eternals, badges, or honor.

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!

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!

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.

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

Well, my 2 copper: Thorim P1 was pwnsauce once we shook the cobwebs out from last week, but the transition to P2 seems to be a little crazy. Any adds left from the gauntlet must be dealt with immediately! Healers must also be ready to save bubbles/mitigation spells for the tank who is about to get eaten by Unbalancing Strikes (which aren't really on a predictable timer). Around the 6-8 stack mark, those strikes can be very hard to shrug off with his crazy attack speed. Overall, a much better kill compared to previous nights Rock Lobster General Vezax For our first look at him, we did pretty good! But things to keep in mind for next time: ~ Take advantage of Shadow Crash goop. Yes, it's difficult to see among the fog, but you're looking at a fight where you need to pay 100% attention anyways. Even if we survived our best attempt last night to the fullest, the tight enrage timer would have eaten our faces, and it is one more danger to be concerned about if we plan to kill this guy. There WILL be times when a ranged person will get Mark of the Faceless when standing in said black goop, so beware! ~ Healing Priests: I discussed this with Tizzy, but a little tip on Power Word: Shield usage - a rotation of sorts may need to be set up while everyone else grows used to the spike damage. Tizzy seems to be the only one with the Body and Soul talent, which gives me a nice speed boost upon being bubbled. If any other priest bubbles me during that time, Zoidberg is just going to one-shot me through the barrier while Weakened Soul occurs. My knowledge of how priest cooldowns work is rusty, but maybe you guys can form a plan to prevent little Holy from being lobster chow

Thorim is all that stands between us and battling General Vezax, aka the Zoidberg Boss! I'll explain the fight when we get to him, but save Zu and I the headache by PLEASE skimming through his spell list: http://www.wowhead.com/?npc=33271#comments The general idea behind this fight is to spend your mana wisely while roasting this big green lobster ASAP. Some additional tips from the comments: ~ The siphon range on Mark of the Faceless (his life drain) is 15 yards. He will not cast this on players within 15 yards of him. However, if there are not at least 9 people outside of 15 yards he will start casting it on players inside 15 yards melee and tank included. ~ He will not use Shadow Crash on players within 15 yards of him. During the kiting portion (Surge of Darkness), he's been known to lob Crashes at melee if people run too far away. ~ Here's a list of how much damage/mana refunded the Vapors will do per tick. Healers in particular may want to study this, and use their better judgement as to how many ticks they can survive before the damage becomes scary: 1 stack - 100 mana restored - 200 damage to you 2 stack - 200 mana restored - 400 damage to you 3 stack - 400 mana restored - 800 damage to you 4 stack - 800 mana restored - 1,600 damage to you 5 stack - 1600 mana restored - 3,200 damage to you 6 stack - 3200 mana restored - 6,400 damage to you 7 stack - 6400 mana restored - 12,800 damage to you 8 stack - 12800 mana restored - 25,600 damage to you To my knowledge, this damage is the same on 10-man. DKs CAN grip the Vapors. ~ Warlocks can use Shadow Ward to soak the Vapor damage and still get mana refunded. ~ Dark Runes/Demonic Runes (those things from Scholo) do work here. However, they share a long cooldown with mage gems and warlock cookies. Hunters/Ret Pallies may wish to consider Fel Mana Potions, which restore mana over time at the cost of 25 SpellPower. Use at your own risk! ~ Life Tap doesn't work. Nor does Innervate. The regen effects from Lifebloom, Thrill of the Hunt (survival), Invigoration (BM) work ok. Leader of the Pack also works, but only for the druid supplying the buff. For all you resto druids: punch him until Omen of Clarity procs between healing, and voila: mana-mana! EDIT: Looks like Vezax and other endgame got a nerf-paddle to the a$$: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.h...81949&sid=1 Not very surprising given the impending arrival of the Colosseum (lol Two Worms).

*drum roll* ...Sam Raimi. http://www.blizzard.com/us/press/090721.html Place your bets: who's gonna play Saurfang? >.>

I'm with Karrock on this. Much easier on the eyes than WWS is, but I'm sure some still prefer WWS. Next raid, can we vote on using it as the standard from now on? On Flasks: this was discussed last night, but as a friendly reminder: please bring and use them as much as you can. ~ If you're having trouble getting your hands on some? Ask raiders/guildies. If anything, people will bite your head off for NOT asking for help. AH prices can be intimidating, but I'm sure there's plenty of our crack-lab scientists alchemists who would be happy to brew a bundle to help you survive the week. ~ Do dailies. Shouldn't even have to mention this. The money can at LEAST help with buying the more difficult herbs needed to create the drinks. ~ Flasking makes things die faster with the boost they provide. Even on 'farm' content (Archavon/Flame Leviathan aside), it never hurts. More flasking = moar stats = MOAR CARNAGE (for the enemy)! RAWR~! /bullinchinashop ~ I shouldn't even have to link this either, but here's a list of the flavors of Froot Loops...err, flasks commonly seen at end game, so you can see what herbs are needed: - Flask of Endless Rage (aka "Oh-Mah-Gawd Orange") - Flask of Pure Mojo ("Lawl-icious Lime") - Flask of Stoneblood ("Put-yer-face-in-it Purple" or "Godammit Grape") - Flask of the Frostwyrm ("Sonnova-BEEEECH Blueberry")

Happy Birthday to our Volcano/Fire/Void Zone/Meteor Lady! *big hugs*

With regards to Evokers, grabbing aggro from them was an utter pain in the @$$. Barriers made threat buildup nigh impossible unless it was the initial hit, and even then it didn't last all that long without ignoring other targets. I know you have Ana listed as having Silencing Shot duty, but can he weave in Tranq Shot somewhere in there? The Runic Shield they use is supposed to be dispellable and Spell-stolen too (if there's too many), and may make burning them down a lot less annoying. Seems very chaotic to micro-manage enemy buffs among the mosh pit, but I like the ideas presented so far, and anything to help push us forward at this point is good. Like waffles.

As if WoW account ninjas weren't bad enough? Now a new scam has popped up related to Blizzard's patent on the name "Cataclysm". Click the red text for info. As for the scam itself? Found it on Worldofraids: http://www.worldofraids.com/forums/showthread.php?t=24260 Even if you got an Authenticator, keep your eyes peeled. That's one clever looking scam to the naked eye!

Very pointless boo-boo/factoid: On the DKP site, you have Rune Edge awarded to Anamarie, yet it links to the green axe from a time long ago when such weapons were cool. Scary, I know! This link is the correct/epic version, which has been correctly re-named on PTR to Stormrune Edge. Silly Blizzard and their copy-pasta tricks!

http://www.mmo-champion.com/index.php?topic=72361.0 A new build is out. I won't go over the specific class/glyph changes, but here's a few highlights: Oh, there's a new Heirloom: sick of pissing off mages on an alt for a port to Dalaran? Spend 1000g, and voila. You get to fly nine levels earlier. More fun ways to make alt grinding less of a...well, grind. And while I don't know where this mount comes from, it just screams "Zuworty".

What? No Heart-Attack Modes? Godammit. Shall we put together a list of stuff we need from these guys? We did something like this for TK/SSC before moving on to Hyjal, and it seemed to work out okay. (Damn you Ignis, drop that trinket!) Some I had in mind: Flame Leviathan + 2: We had SOME experience with this in Kailand's run. It just requires constant movement if you leave up Hodir & Thorim's pillars like we did. XT-002: Hard mode seems do-able for this. He wasn't that hard to tank in 10-man, but it took some getting used to when it came to the new adds, and we had a lot of mana issues near the end. Except mama moo. She saved my life here. lol Iggy: Stokin' the Furnace: We did this on 10-man by tanking Iggy so the Scorches despawned in the water pools, and just pig-piling adds on me. Healers flipped out on MT, and we nuked. Should be even easier with multiple offtanks, and will make the fight less tedious, as it becomes a DPS race and less about add-killing/running amok. Iron Council: I Choose You, Runemaster Molgeim!: This was a pain in the a$$ on 10-man due to a lack of AoE. Might be able to pull this off with our increased numbers, but all it gives is the Algalon quest and extra badges. Extra loot only comes if you kill the fat one last. Kologarn: With Open Arms: A DPS race, sacrificing people to the "squeeze" debuff, although it involves a bit of luck because he grabs three people on 25-man. If important folks get gripped (tank healers, etc), then DPS on the arms needs to be very careful and not blow them up. If Looks Could Kill: This affects pets according to Wowhead. Just run from the him when he .Auraya: Nine Lives: Kill the Defender 9 times. Will probably require extra trash clearing to make kiting room, but it doesn't sound all that bad.

More Heirlooms incoming! Now you don't have to farm Majordomo or some rare mob for the coolest mace model in the game! And yea, it's currently bugged. A slow weapon for enhancement shammies? Neat!

The Blue People hath spoken....sorta. Some Q&A is now on the above sticky: I'm hoping if this mucks with item transitions, mounts will follow the same model as the Orb of Deception does..although people may not always get the color they like (unless you have every vendor-mount already, in which case it won't even matter then): Humans (Horse) <-> Orcs (Wolf) Trolls (Raptor) <-> Dwarves (Ram) Undead (Warhorse) <-> Night Elves (Saber) Gnomes (Mechano-strider) <-> Tauren (Kodo) Draenei (Elekk) <-> Blood Elves (Hawkstrider) For PvP trinkets, they should just remove the race listings entirely and rename them to be non race-specific (see this Arena Trinket), considering vendors already sell trinkets with no race listing, yet the same stun-removal function (like the Titan-Forged trinkets from WG tokens). Quest items COULD follow the same model, I suppose. One example is the old Warrior mail quests: same item, different name and side of the faction fence: http://www.wowhead.com/?compare=7133;6972. I'd like to see how they handle things like Loremaster achievement progress. Hopefully their code monkeys don't bite off more than they can chew. But then again, it's Blizzard!

*Dr. Weird voice* BULLSH*T! ...just kidding. It's real, but may not be around for a LONG time if it's as complex as Blizzard claims. http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.h...79410&sid=1 Huh...a "roughly equivalent" character? I suspect the kinks mean they won't copy everything, like faction-specific quests/progress (the Barov Family quests for Scholo come to mind almost immediately). But if this works the way I think it does, I can finally convert my ancient mage and scrub the Alliance germs off of it.

http://blizzcon.rayv.com/Pages/en/FAQ.aspx Blizzard is taking pre-orders for the Blizzcon Live Stream. I figure I'd post this because I know our guild (and it's amazing friends) has some die-hard pet collectors out there. $40 doesn't sound bad, considering how horrendous Ebay prices tend to be for these things... For footage of Grunty, go here: http://www.wowtcgloot.com/gruntys_rifle.htm

http://www.wowhead.com/?npc=33350 The Wowhead entry for this weirdo has a very detailed list of his spells and tricks. Like Zu said, please read it. It's a LOT better than explaining it, which is probably gonna take forever ala Reliquary of Souls due to all the crap we will be fighting off at once. EDIT: Blizzard has weird timing. Mimi got nerfed, but it's Hard Mode (aka "Push the Big Red Button" mode), so it doesn't really apply to us just yet: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.h...14070&sid=1