Back to the Wulf!

Well last night's Kara with the early shift was interesting. We cleared seven bosses in one evening with no noticable difficulty. Moroes and The Maiden of Virtue managed to confound me by dropping long saught-after tanking items that Ulu would have loved. Still I'm chuffed for the warrior who got them.

That said The Oz event (first time I've seen an opera event that wasn't big Bad Wolf) dropped some nice shoulders for Wulf, the Curator dropped the token for his Tier 4 Gloves and the Shade of Aran dropped a nice Cloak for him! On top of all that, Wulf got Honored with the Violet Eye and got an epic Ring.

I should start bringing my Hunter to raids more often...

Kara and a return to DPS.

I was bored before Karazhan last night, so I tried to get a group together to zerg through Arcatraz. I ended up with Ulu, another Paladin (who I thought was Holy, but turned out to be DPS specced), a Rogue, a DPS Shaman and a Feral Druid. Notice what was missing? That's right, primary healers. After some humming and hawing, I got my healing gear out the bank and with some support from the Paladin and Shaman, we healed our way through the instance with only a few deaths,

After that, it was time for the CD Late Shift to go try Kara. We cleared and took down Attumen fairly easily, but after that we spent the rest of the night making about a 7-8 attempts on Moroes. It was a difficult fight with our composition and ultimately we called it a night from that point. There's an aftermath thread here that denotes the various problems we had, and it has a lot of backseat raiders saying the same things over and over again.

Tonight it's the turn of the Early Shift to give it a go. Given the shortage of sign-ups for that run, I've decided to drag Wulfsblood out of semi-retirement to give it a go. I've respecced him to Trapbitch after a brief flirtation with a Marksmanship build. We'll see how it goes I guess.

Karazhan Last Night.

Prince Malechazar 2 - Ulushnar 0.

*sigh*

We'll get him down one day!

Well it's been a while since I updated. There's been some wanky stuff going on within Chaotic Divinity which will inevitably lead to one of it's internal shifts. Riding that wave hasn't been altogether fun. Still, on with the show:

First of all, Patch 2.1.2 arrived on Wednesday and they fixed the dorky look of my main tanking helm:



Thursday saw me run Karazhan with a group of people who comprise our "late shift", folks centred around the UK who generally look to start around 21:00 Game Time. They'd been struggling for the last few weeks, so I decided to go help them for a change.

The group was by no means perfect, and they were obviously less experienced, but we still managed to kill Attumen and Moroes on the first night.

Friday night and Saturday were spent doing various Heroics and other instances with friends. It's all something of a blur at this point, upshot is that no loot dropped that Ulu needed and he ended up with thirty of the fifty badges for the helm he's saving for.

Saturday Night was back to Karazhan. We went in and killed Big Bad Wolf (again!) and The Curator with no problems. We made about five attempts on the Shade of Aran to no avail before giving up and going to the Chess event. After the chess, we went back to give Aran one more try before calling it a night, and we killed him! Ulu got a nice set of Healing Shoulders and a decent Tanking ring from him.

Sunday afternoon, I went to help Adventure Lovers in Gruul's Lair. As the best-geared tank there, I was given the job of tanking High-King Maulgar. There were a lot of wipes, and it's a hideously complex fight to learn. I was struck again about how much Raid Tanking's like a rollercoaster ride. You hold on tight and pray to god your healers are good. I'd estimate at least 75% of the Tank's job is done before the fight: getting good gear and ensuring it's enchanted/gemmed to it's fullest potential. The rest is down to getting the mob in the right position, and generating enough hate to keep him on you. We didn't get him down in the end, but it was an exhilarating experience.

After that, I did a few 5-man runs with CDers until late. My last run was in Steamvaults where, after about two-dozen runs, I finally managed to get Ulu what is arguably the best pre-raid Tanking tanking cape in the game.

Tonight is Kara again, and I go to face the Prince!

The Birds!

Well last night, I helped a Druid friend of mine complete his Epic Flight Form quest with a run to Heroic Sethekk Halls. We had a good group for it, a Mage, a Priest, a Rogue, the Druid and Ulu.

It ended up taking about an hour and a half to clear. We died a few times, but generally, the instance didn't feel too hard. Then again we were a well-geared and experienced group who were used to raiding together.

The quest itself involved summoning a third boss after you've cleared and killed the second one. The boss itself is arguably the easiest boss in the instance.



Still it was a fun evening and another three badges towards the Faceguard of Determination. That's me got 20 badges banked and I "only" need another 30!

Gearing up.

As it stands, Ulu's raid-tanking gear is pretty much as good as he can get atm. That said, it wasn't good enough for the Prince, so I'm going to have to look harder. Looking at what's out there, I'm going to need to put pedal to the metal to upgrade my tanking gear to Prince-level.

The following slots are stuff I need to upgrade, which are obtainable from pre-raid instances:

*Ring: Andormu's Tear is fine for crushing avoidance, but it lacks stamina so it sucks. Elementium Band of the Sentry from The Arcatraz would be best, but I've had about seven or eight runs in there and it's failed to drop thusfar.
*Wrist: Three options I can think of. Bracers of the Green Fortress are arguably easiest to get if I can find someone with the pattern and grind 6 Hardened Adamantite Bars, 20 Primal Life and pay them whatever they want for the Nether and crafting. Bracers of Dignity are my next-favoured option from the last boss in Heroic Mana Tombs. Then there's Amber Bands of the Agressor from Heroic Steamvaults, not brilliant in the stamina department, but more mitigation so I can stack stamina elsewhere.
*Belt: There's Girdle of Valorous Deeds from the last boss of Heroic Black Morass or the Lion's Heart Girdle from the last boss in Heroic Ramparts, although, like the Amber Bands, they seem to be more designed for an off-tank/DPS hybrid.
*Cloak: No real option here. Need the Devilshark Cape from Steamvaults. No cloak currently available comes close to the mitigation it offers. But like the Eternium band, it never drops for me.
*Shoulders: Fanblade Pauldrons from first boss in Heroic Auchenai Crypts offer a lot of Mitigation and Stamina if gemmed right. There are also the Spaulders of Dementia from Heroic Sethekk Halls, but they too seem to be designed more for a DPS/Off-Tank Hybrid than a full tank like me.

So that's it. A lot of time gonna be spent in Heroic Auchindon grinding I think, along with Arca and SV zergs.

Heroic Deeds and Cockblocking Princes.

Friday night was Karazhan, cleared Attumen, Moroes, the Maiden of Virtue, Big Bad Wolf(again!) and the Curator in one evening. Also made three attempts on the Shade of Aran, but failed to get him down. Loot was of a distinctly Caster-y variety.

On Saturday, I did some Heroics, to start saving for my Helm. First up was Underbog, which we cleared fairly painlessly and I got a nice trinket off the last boss.

Later in the afternoon, I did Heroic Auchenai Crypts and Mana Tombs. The pulls in the first room in Crypts are utterly insane, but after the first boss proper, the difficulty tapers off to a more managable level. After that, we moved on to try Heroic Mana Tombs, which was a lot easier. It helped that most of the mobs were casters, which meant they didn't hit that hard. Sadly, the loot gods didn't smile on Ulu on either run, still he got another five Badges of Justice.

I was offerred a space in a Heroic Shattered Halls run in the evening, but I passed in order to go on a couple of regular five-mans with some friends who aren't quite at the hardcore heroics farming stage. First up was Shadow Labyrinth, and then Arcatraz. Neither proved to be a significant challenge, but it was nice to relax with friends.

On Sunday, I did a Heroic Slave Pens run. Was reasonably smooth, and we got all the bosses down first time despite a couple of wipes on dodgy trash pulls. Four more badges for the collection, but no loot of note.

After that, it was regular Steamvaults with some friends. Run was smooth, but the last boss resolutely refused to drop the cape I saught.

After that, it was back to Karazhan. We managed to get the Shade of Aran down first time, then we cleared the Chess and moved on for some training on the Prince:



Ulu was main tank for the Prince attempts, and his entire responsibility was to get the Prince in position, keep his attention and mitigate enough of the damage that the healers can keep him alive.

The last one proved to be problematic. At every fight, we'd get him to 40% and all of a sudden Ulushnar would die in two hits. I'm having problems at the moment maintaining 490 Defense (to avoid Critical Hits), 102.4% Avoidance (to avoid Crushing Blows) along with a decent amount of health (16.5k raid buffed doesn't seem to be cutting it). This is something I'm going to go into in more depth later, but I'm going to need to work like a mofo to upgrade some of my items before the next time I tank him. However, I'm going to leave you with a tanks-eye view of a typical boss fight:



Nuthin but feet and crotch! ;)

Acquisition

I have entered into the realm of the dangerously geeky:



Quite impressed, one week's delivery from the States. Done a crapload of heroics today, will update details on Monday probably.

102.4%

Had a quick discussion with a ex-Warrior tank friend of mine last night about the comparative benefits of my current Eternium Greathelm vs the Faceguard of Determination from Heroic Badges. Where I was (jokingly) accused of "min-maxing" by working towards the FoD whilst I had the EG.

Whilst it's true that the Eternium Greathelm will outdo Faceguard in the Stamina stakes if it's stacked with 3x +12 stamina gems, in doing so, you lose out on a lot of Crushing Blow immunity over the Faceguard. Whilst this is no big deal for a Warrior, since even the most poorly-geared tank can get Crushing immune with Shield Block (+70% to Block Chance) and can afford to stack up the Stamina from that point.

A Paladin, on the other hand, only has +30% Block from Holy Shield, which means he has to make up a considerable difference in miss/block/dodge/parry to reach the combined 102.4% figure needed for crushing immunity. With 24 Block Rating (+3% to block) and 24 Dodge Rating (+1.25% to Dodge), the Facguard helps with this a lot, especially since I doubt I'll see the T4 Helm any time soon. Plus, it has no wasted points on Strength, unlike the Eternium helm.

Now all I need is another 48-ish Heroic Badges *sigh*. On the plus side, at least the EG is getting a visual upgrade next patch along with the rest of the Karazhan tanking epics. It'll be nice to have a cohesive-looking set if and when I manage to collect them all.

Well That Was Painless.

All the entries have now been labelled correctly for easier reference. I probably use more tags per entry than may be advisable, but long-time readers will know this is because I ramble interminably.

Apologies again for any feedspam out in RSS-land.

A Night of Heroic Lessons...

So last night, it was back to Heroics.

First we tried a run in the Black Morass on heroic. This instance can be tricky even on normal, since it's both an endurance test and a DPS test. You have to kill the main elite mobs quickly to close the portal they guard before you become overwhelmed with the smaller mobs the portals spawn, and before the next portal spawns.

We had a decent group for it, Ulushnar tanking, a Healing Druid, Rogue, Mage and Shadow-spec Priest. The biggest challenge however was when someone other than myself needed healing. the big mobs do a lot of damage, and if the healer takes their attention off the tank for even the six seconds it takes to heal one other character and shoot back to you, it can be a wipe. And it did cause a wipe, repeatedly.

After the third wipe, the Shadow Priest had to leave, so we got a Hunter in and shited our sights to the Underbog. It was later on by this point, we were all tired and we became sloppier as a result. We wiped a few times, but managed to clear to the first boss and some of the trash beyond. After that, we called it a night.

Not quite as amazing as Monday night then, but I'm not too bothered. A few more tries and we'll have mastered these ones as well.

A warning of sorts.

Those of you who read this blog via LJ or some form of RSS reader may get spammed a bit over the next few days. Apologies in advance, but I'm going back through the blog and applying tags to my entires. All 128 of them.

Why didn't I do this sooner?

It is better to Tank in Hell than Autoshot in Heaven

My apologies to Milton for paraphrasing and to Chaotic Divinity for referring to them as Hell. I just liked the phrase and CD're definately more like Purgatory in any case. ;)

A week ago, I was tempted to leave Chaotic Divinity. CD have been a constant in my playing now for about 21 months give or take. I've seen them through highs and lows, and we've stuck together as a loose confederacy of friends who wanted to try and see the end game content together. As a single guy with no dependants, and an undemanding job, I can arguably afford to be more "hardcore" in my playing style than those with spouses, partners or kids. As a result, I do spend a lot of my time backtracking through content I was finished with weeks ago to help folks catch up with me. Most of the time, it can be fun, but occasionally, it gets wearying.

Anyway, a week or so ago, I noted an old friend of mine was recruiting Hunters for their raid group, one of the older and more established groups on my server. Given the rarity of Hunter slots in the endgame guilds, and the fact that the aforementioned friend was the reason I started playing the game, I thought about offerring them Wulf's services. I can't deny it was a tempting chance to see some of the later stuff.

I started playing Wulf again to get a feel for him. It was bizarre to play a ranged class again. I felt removed from the action, and after months of AoE grinding with my Paladin, it was frustrating to only be able to fight one or two mobs at a time.

On Friday, I even went as far as to announce my intention to leave CD and posted an application to the other group. It seemed only fair to let them know the situation before I went on any more raids with them. They were upset, but supportive in general.

Then an applicant who was shaping up to be a good Main Tank for us basically announced that he didn't think CD was good enough for him and quit. I can't adequately describe the thought process at that point, but it made me realise where I belonged. CD needed a tank, and I realised I didn't really, truly have my heart in playing a Hunter anymore.

I asked to reverse my resignation and retracted Wulf's application to the other group simultaneously. I might spend the next few months on Karazhan and Heroics with these guys, but I'm honeslty not bothered. When I go to the big instances, I want to do it with sword and shield equipped, standing in the shadow of some hulking monstrosity between it and my friends.

A Night of Heroic Deeds

So as soon as I logged on with Ulushnar last night, a friend asks me to come to Steamvaults as their tank had just left. It turns out that they'd just cleared past the first boss, so I honestly couldn't refuse. Group turned out to be a Shaman and Warlock from Suprised Survivors and a Druid and Hunter from another guild. We just zerged the place easily and dropped the last two bosses. Ulu even scored the chestpiece of the Righteous Armor set.

After that, a quick call out on the Cd chat channel and I got a group going to Heroic Mechanar. It was Ulu, a Priest, a Warlock, a Mage and a DPS-specced Paladin. It mostly went relatively smoothly, except for the waves of mobs that spawn before the last boss. They always come in three waves: four humanoids, one superhard robot and three humaniods, and there's two of these waves, with a brief break before the boss. The problem is that the robot hits like a freaking truck! I've fought bosses on Heroic mode that were easier than this guy! Ultimately the DPs paladin relented, strapped on his healing gear and things went smoother. After about half-a-dozen wipes, we managed to get past the waves and kill him. Ulu was rewarded with the helm of the Righteous set, an amazing tanking sword and the last badge he needed to get the Libram of Repentance.

After that, with no time to rest, I went straight into a Heroic Slave Pens run. Group this time was a little eclectic: Healer Paladin, DPS Paladin, Ulu, a Rogue and a Mage. Still, we got through it suprisingly well. Mage was fire-specced and kept on dying to his own aggro, and out pulls were a little sloppy, but the instance wasn't significantly harder than a normal level 70 instance. I guess the main difference between heroics and normals is that a newly-geared level 70 couldn't do much good in a Heroic, but could hold his own in a regular instance. After you've run the regular instances enough to get geared, then Heroics offer the next challenge. there was no loot for ulu this time, but three badges got added to the fund for his next item.

And after last night, ulu completed the Righteous set, which looks pretty pimp:



Sadly the stats make it near-useless for raiding. Still, I fully intend to use it for soloing and for tanking regular instances, where's it's actually preferably to not outgear the instance too much.

Not a Bad Weekend.

Friday night was Karazhan. We ended up clearing Attumen, Moroes, the Big Bad Wolf (again!) and up to the Curator. Sadly the Curator didn't wanna drop to our group, (which lacked some burst damage) and after three attempts, we called it a night. Ulu got some healing gloves, but no phat tanking lewt.

Saturday was spent helping folks in a lot of different instances. Helped with runs to Arcatraz, Shadow Labyrinth and Mechanar in the afternoon, and in the evening did a Heroic Mechanar run and finished up with a quick zerg of Sethekk Halls normal for a mate's lvl 67 alt.

On Sunday, I pretty much focussed on getting the last 4.5k rep I needed for Exalted with the Sha'tar. After one-and-a-half Mechanar runs and a Botanica run (which amounted to something like four hours altogether), Ulu ended up at Exalted, and got a rather pimp new shield!

After that, it was on to Karazhan, with 70% of the same group from Friday. We cleared to and killed the Maiden of Virtue in about 20 minutes. Loot was a tanking necklace (which our Druid tank got) and tanking gloves, which Ulu got.

After that, we moved on to the Curator, who fell first time this time, and from there, we moved on to clear the trash to the Shade of Aran. Aran's a chaotic fight, basically untankable. We made four attempts on him, but our best saw him at about 19% health. That's a kill for another day. Between attempts three and four, we cleared our way to the Chess event for some easy lewt. It's a fight which is hard to lose and impossible to wipe on (your remotely controlled chess pieces die, not you).

Another weekend, another massive set of upgrades to Ulu's gear. It's ridiculous how well-geared he's becoming so quickly. I really need to get him to do some heroics quickly, as none of the five-mans offer a challenge anymore.

Depressing how hard it is to come up with a decent title.

Did a Kara run on Friday, one of our best yet in that we killed Attumen, Moroes, The Big Bad Wolf, The Curator and completed the Chess event in one night. This basically let the next lot have a clear run at the Shade of Aran and then onto the Prince. Got some nice drops though, a nice tanking helm, a tanking sword and the token for Ulu's Tier 4 gloves.

I feel kinda guilty about taking the last two, since neither is incredibly useful for me atm. Even with a spelldamage enchant, the sword probably won't be used that much. Whilst it has good stats for a warrior tank, the lack of a decent level of spelldamage limits Ulu's ability to generate sufficent threat. As for the gloves, they're not that useful to Ulushnar yet for raid tanking due to a serious lack of block, parry or dodge rating.

And whilst we're on the subject, why has Blizzard loaded up the raid-level Paladin tanking gear with so much Block Value? Whilst it's nice, even agreeable to be able to block 3-400 damage out of a hit anywhere in the 700-1500 damage range, it becomes much less relevant when you're tanking a mob that hits for upwards of 4000. In that situation, Parry and Dodge are your friend, with the occasional block to maintain threat.

*Ahem*, rant over. Saturday and Sunday I was away visiting friends. When I got back on Sunday, nothing was happening that required me, so I took a night off to go see the new Pirates movie (not bad, not brilliant either, although the "Telescope Envy" gags raised a chuckle).

Was off work on Monday, so spent the day questing, and fitted in one quick Shattered Halls run (for my final Heroic key) before we made an attempt at Gruul's Lair. The paucity of CD sign-ups meant we had to draft in some help from another friendly group, Adventure Lovers.

All in all, it would be a lie to call the night a success. CD and AL proved to be something akin to oil and water, and the two sides never really gelled into a whole. Coordination was a problem for us, as was the length of time we took to get going. I think it would be better for us to leave off on Gruul until we can get a full CD group.

Yesterday, I was off again and I spent most of the morning doing quests solo with Ulu. In the afternoon, I got a group together to try out an applicant Priest on runs to the Black Morass and the Arcatraz. The Priest performed admirably and both runs were completed with no wipes or deaths despite our occasionally reckless pulls.

After that, I tried Heroic Underbog with another group, but we ended up disbanding after the first boss due to time constraints. Heroics are fun, but it seems getting a good group for them is hard.