I was doing a bit of WoW Insider reading this morning while I ate breakfast and I happened to see this article about probable changes to Warlords of Draenor racial abilities. Mixed in with all the news about nerfs and buffs was a tidbit about what is happening for Night Elves racials:

Night elves see a bonus to Quickness that adds a 2% passive buff to movement speed and a completely new racial, Touch of Elune, which adds 1% haste at night and 1% crit during the day. Shadowmeld is unchanged.

I was trying to come up with something pithy about a buff that changes based on time of day and how that would be a pain to try to get haste breakpoints correct, but the first comment I read said it so very concisely:

I think raid leaders should be able to make whoever came up with Touch of Elune take a drink whenever someone asks them if they can move the raid forward or backward an hour to get the better buff. Let the true min/maxing begin!

Let me just take a moment and be thankful that I am part of the Horde, and all raids I lead are Horde raids.

Warlords of Draenor

Blizzcon has come and gone with a whole lot of new things announced. I'm actually pretty excited about the next WoW Expansion. There are a lot of things to look forward to.

I have to admit that the thing I'm most looking forward to is the updated character models. The Vanilla and BC races are currently looking a bit tired. It wasn't so bad before, but when comparing an orc or troll to the pandaren is it painfully obvious that there needs to be more polygons for the original races.

The next most exciting thing I saw announced is the changes to raiding. Blizzard has finally entirely caved in and the flex model is going to be here to stay. Current flex will become the new normal. Current normal will become the new heroic, and current heroic will go up to a fixed size of 20 people and be called Mythic. I am overjoyed at both the extension of flex to two gradations of raiding and at the fact that the single raid size Blizz settled on is 20 people. I think that fits perfectly with the 10-25 flexible sizes of the other raids. It basically means that if you're going after Mythic raiding you'll take your entire roster into the flexible Normal level raids.

Something that entirely surprised me about the new WoW announcements was the Garrison. I think the comment I saw that best describes it is that Blizzard decided that Player Housing was boring, so instead they went with a Player TOWN. A full on walled town that you build and populate. This has some seriously awesome potential, especially since you can actually invite your friends to visit. The party or raid leader can allow a full 40 man raid into their Garrison. If I were into RP I'd be dancing for joy about that. I am looking forward to gathering followers and sending them on missions.

The one thing I'm a bit dubious about is the storyline itself. Yes, yes, Garrosh escapes before his trial, and travels into the past to stop his Daddy from drinking Mannoroth's blood. He also gives the orcs a big technology boost, and thus the Iron Horde is formed. I just am dubious about why we try to fight the Iron Horde after Garrosh has mucked about with the past. My rampant speculation is that this is the expansion that we see Nozdormu turn into Murozond.

See, if Nozdormu were still fully and truly on our side he'd help by sending a strike team back in time before Garrosh corrupted the timeline. Maybe he can't stop Garrosh from breaking free, but an assassin team waiting for him to appear in Draenor past would put a stop to his machinations.

We know that in the future Nozdormu turns into Murozond. And we know that Murozond still has the ability to control time. (See events in the End Time dungeon.) So clearly either Noz is holding out on us currently, or he's about to go bat-shit crazy and try to disrupt the time stream in some twisted effort to get his time controlling powers back. Either way I suspect that we'll see an end boss of some raid that is Nozdormu/Murozond.

Flex Raiding

I honestly cannot wait until flex raids are here.

Initially I was a bit dubious about them. Yet another raid format is going to be a pain. Do I now have to run three different instances of the same raid every week? Well, no, I don't usually run LFR, so I'm not seeing that I'll be forced to run anything more than I have time or inclination for. I do understand that raid groups working for any sort of server first ranking will make their raiders run all three lockouts. The chance to get your set bonus faster is really too good to pass up. Fortunately, that sort of rush doesn't apply to me.

I know there will be people who see that the loot from flex raids is not as good as in normal and want to run normal instead. Also the loot for the flex raids is going to be done the same way as in LFR currently. I was originally thinking that was a bad way to hand out loot and really didn't allow the raid leader any sort of control or ability to provide incentive for raiders to show up regularly.

However, I've now thought about the whole situation a bit more. I think that flex raids will solve a lot of problems.

The major bonus from flex raids, of course, is that you can bring whoever you have. Darkfall's common and constant problem is that we'll have anywhere from 12 to 16 or more people online at raid time. That isn't enough to try to pug for a 25man, but it is enough that it really sucks to decide who to have sit out. That large a bench just makes everyone feel bad.

Another bonus is that since you can bring anywhere from 10 to 24 people you don't need to worry as much about setting up the raid to have a 'perfect' class balance. Got three DKs? Bring them all plus everyone else who wants to show up. The need to have specific classes and class balance is something that I really don't like about 10s. Something I like and miss about running 25s is that you can bring doubles (or more) of a class/spec. I still fondly remember running Old Hyjal with 4 or 5 mages in the 25man raid.

I'm also no longer unpleased with the LFR-style looting that will happen in the flex raids. Originally I didn't like it because I'm a fan of master looting and using EPGP for handing out loot. I also really hate it when I use a charm and get a piece of loot I already have. However, I think that having separate loot for each person outweighs that. With personal loot instead of raid loot, having 8 people on the same token or wanting the same armor type does not matter. Everyone has their own chance at loot, and someone else getting loot doesn't take any away from you.

I would like to see that you could trade the loot you get in lfr or flex raids to other people who were in the same boss kill. It would be super nice if you could trade a doubled item you received to someone else who could use it. I'd also like the ability to trade it to someone to de if you got something that you and everyone else who could use it already had, but I can see not allowing that.

Either way I'm super excited for flex raids. I think that they will really help Darkfall and the other guilds like us that were really hurt by the marginalization of 25man raids.

Dragon Soul: Blackhorn Dialogue

Once you defeat Ultraxion you've got to chase off after Deathwing. Thrall may have hit him with the Dragon Soul, but it was only enough to break one of the armor plates on his back. It wasn't enough to do serious damage to him. And if he makes it back to the Maelstrom and through to Deepholm he'll get that repaired quite easily.


Sky Captain Swayze says: Welcome aboard the Skyfire. You ready to chase down the end of the world?
<Player> responds: We are the Horde. We are always ready.
(Booyah! Horde! /roar)

So off you go on the Alliance gunship. Deathwing, bastard that he is, destroyed the Horde gunship so everyone piles on to the Alliance gunship to follow Deathwing before he reaches the Maelstrom.



The sixth boss in Dragon Soul is Warmaster Blackhorn. He's a Tauren Warrior who flys in on his trusty twilight drake, Goriona. He is accompanied by a variety of twilight drakes, Vrykul dragonriders, and a few goblin sappers. He is here to delay and destroy the gunship so that the Aspects can't use the Dragon Soul again before Deathwing makes it to the Maelstrom.


Sky Captain Swayze says: We're catching up to the dragon! I think I can make him out through the cloud cover!
<Player> responds: Bring us in closer!

And that starts the boss fight! Blackhorn swoops in and destroys the Skyfire's engines.


Sky Captain Swayze yells: All ahead full. Everything depends on our speed! We can't let the Destroyer get away!
Warmaster Blackhorn yells: Hah! I was hoping you'd make it this far. You'd best be ready for a real fight.
Blackhorn rides Goriona around to set all four engines on fire.
Sky Captain Swayze yells: Our engines are damaged! We're sitting ducks up here!
Warmaster Blackhorn yells: You won't get near the Master. Dragonriders, attack!
Sky Captain Swayze yells: All hands to battle stations; get those monsters away from the ship!

Swayze's voice and accent kind of drives me insane. It's excellent voice acting, he definitely has both confidence and a sort of unbridled panic that I'd imagine I'd also have if a dragon had set fire to my airship. I call him a Westfall Redneck whenever I can.

For the first phase of the fight Blackhorn sits on his drake and bombards the boat with a big Twilight Onslaught every now and then. Everyone needs to stand in that big purple swirly to make sure the damage is spread out between the group. The tank holding the cleaving melee add, if it's not dead, should make sure that the cleaves are pointed away from the rest of the raid.

Meanwhile ranged will burn the crap out of the drakes, and melee will take care of the Vrykul who drop to the deck. Everyone has to swap and stun/slow/kill sappers as they show up. The smaller drakes are dropping little purple swirlies constantly. Everyone has to stand in as many of those little purple swirlies as they can. For normal that means making sure that you're at full health. For heroic that means having a buddy, and not standing in one more than every fifteen seconds or the nasty debuff they put on you will slaughter you.

Warmaster Blackhorn yells: Goriona! Give them hell!

Second phase starts when the last of the six twilight drakes dies. At that point the melee mop up any remaining Vrykul adds and kill the last sapper that appears. The ranged will do their best to hurt Goriona until she flies off (or lands in heroic). Everyone will be dodging the fire that Goriona drops and the cone of damage that Blackhorn does. Meanwhile one tank will pick up Blackhorn himself and keep him close to the center of the boat. The tanks will swap off every two stacks of the nasty armor reducing debuff.

Heroic mode has Goriona land on the deck and need to be tanked. This slightly complicates the tanking as the two tanks will need to be speedy with the taunt. Also in heroic there is a nasty debuff. This needs to be healed off, but will aoe the raid for the amount of healing it absorbs. So it needs to be gradually healed off.

Apparently I have never actually managed to get a shot of Blackhorn dropping to the deck. Even now I'm too busy trying to taunt him before he eats a healer. But if I'd managed to get a shot, as he hopped off his dragon, he'd say:

Warmaster Blackhorn yells: Looks like I'm doing this myself. Good!

Warmaster Blackhorn yells: How's THIS?

Warmaster Blackhorn yells: Well... done, heh. But I wonder if you're good enough... to best him.

Update

Sorry for the long hiatus, but between work and my family visiting for Thanksgiving both DraNgNon and I have been quite busy. I know all three of our readers were sad. :P

*Raiding*
Darkfall continues to raid. We're 4/6 in MSV, and working on Elegon. We're also still trying to a 25man going. Last week we actually managed to get a 25man formed and had decent success with the Stone Dogs, however, between the server going down, disconnections, and people not being as observant as they should be we didn't get Feng dead. Dropping fire in the ranged group is just as fatal on 25 as on 10, but there are a lot more people available to be unobservant enough to do it.

Monday nights are still fun runs. We are working on the Cataclysm meta achieves. There were a lot of raids in T11, so it's taken a bit to make sure that we get all the necessary heroic and non-heroic achievements. Currently we're only missing Four Play from Glory of the Cataclysm Raider. We did kill Al'Akir with the feedback buff on him, but the achievement is currently bugged. I had been worried about getting the Omnotron achieve, but it is so easy to stomp those raids when you've got a full raid of 90s with current raid gear. On normal the trons died before the second boss activated.

This past Monday we hit up the first few bosses of Heroic Firelands. Possibly it would have been easier if we'd hadn't been doing 25man with only 15 people. But we still did get the first three bosses down. (Shannox, Beth'tilac, and Rhyolith) Alysrazor, however, really does need closer to a full raid, what with all the different things to kill.

*Alts*
Khyrie and Tylara are 88. They have gotten access to the Vale of Eternal Blossoms and are spending some quality time leveling up their professions. We parked them for a bit until Morn and Kuan reached revered with the Shado-Pan and bought the Grand Commendation of less rep slogging. Eeyan and Telt are chillling in Valley of Four Winds and will probably be the next ones to get some love. Viljo and Ikoli are just barely into Jade Forest, but will shortly make the Hozen their friends.

What with all the raiding, and dailies, and pvp, and valor to get it's really hard to make time for the alts. It is important to make time though. I suspect that if I don't start doing fewer dailies my last wisp of sanity is going to blow away.

*Pets*
I've gotten a battle pet team up to level 20. Fang, Clever Girl, and Ember are now trouncing their way through Outland. Kairon, my long neglected hunter, is chaperoning them around. If the pets get too much bigger I'm going to have to level him to keep up with them.

I have some vague ideas that I want to smash through the old Vanilla raids. I haven't had a chance to thoroughly inspect what pets drop where in the vanilla raids, but MC is pretty easy to smash, so I figure it'll be speedy with Kuan and Morn.

I am eagerly awaiting for Pet Theory to be updated. I have to admit that some of my pet battling enthusiasm has slipped away without this addon to make the UI reasonable for finding out what pets I am missing in what zones and what quality pet I already have. Possibly I'll be forced to update it myself if it doesn't get fixed soon.

Ironbound Protodrake!

Lately the Monday Fun Raid has been going after meta achieves that will give us drakes. We're killing the heroic bosses in Bastion of Twilight and fighting our way through Ulduar. Another goal is to kill Sinestra.

A week ago in Bastion we had to pug in a few people and we brought along some new guildies. It was a bit slow to start and our group hadn't gelled all that much, but we did pretty well for half of the raid not remembering the fights at first. We got Halfus and Double Dragons down pretty speedily, but the second phase on Elemental Council/Elementium Monstrostity is just so annoying. It's way too easy for one small mistake when kiting the frost orb to wipe out half or three quarters of the raid. I'm confident we can get it if we practice a bit more, and have a more cohesive group. A few of the guildies who came along got the heroic kill achieves for the first two bosses, but most of us already had them. So my plan the next time we go to Heroic Bastion is to save the lockout and just start at the council fight.

Last night we went back into Ulduar25. Kuanchichi and Mornara were only missing ONE achieve from Ulduar25. They both need the Hodir achievement I Could Say That This Cache was Rare. When we did the rest of our Ulduar25 achieves months ago, too many people got trapped in flash freeze so we missed the deadline by a single second. I tried to set up an Ulduar25 raid a couple of weeks ago, however you do actually need at least 15 people for all the necessary vehicles if you're going to kill Flame Leviathan with all four pillars up. There are just too many sources of damage otherwise. So our attempts with 10 or 12 people were not as successful as one would hope.

But last night I stubbornly pugged until we had 15 people. Then I booted the two people who were saved... And found another person to take their place. But still we ended up with 14 people and handily smashed Flame Leviathan flat. We headed straight for Yogg, skipping Ignis, Razorscale, Iron Council, and Algalon. If it had taken less time to get a full raid we'd probably have been able to come back and kill them all. However we had a few wipes on Yogg and then had to call it at 12:30. I put another Ulduar25 raid on the calendar for 2 weeks from now. We'll come back and kill the last 5 bosses then.

I have to admit that all my logic for skipping the bosses we did was mostly to head stright for Hodir. It was selfishly motivated, because I wanted that last Hodir achievement! But even if I hadn't needed the Hodir achieve I'd still have skipped the bosses we could. It's easy to come back and get the early bosses later. But it's a lot harder to get Yogg and two keepers later. Plus I think a number of people have the early achieves already, just because it takes time to get through Ulduar and the early achieves can be really tiresome. Especially the one for Razorscale where you have to wait for her to toast dwarves.

Regardless once the raid was done Kuanchichi and Mornara checked their mail. Brann had mailed them again, the exact same letter as before and there were lovely ironbound protodrakes waiting in their mailboxes.

Don't ask me how it fit in the mail box.

Dragon Soul: Zon'ozz Dialogue

Warlord Zon'ozz is either the second or third boss in the Dragon Soul raid. I tend to do him third because his mechanics are such a monumental pain in the ass.

Warlord Zon'ozz whispers: Once more shall the twisted flesh-banners of N'Zoth chitter and howl above the fly-blown corpse of this world. After millennia, we have returned.

Similar to Yor'sahj he starts whispering to you as soon as you mount the green drake to head to his lair.

Once you get to his lair you've got three groups of tentacle trash to kill. This trash used to be brutal, but with nerfs and increasing gear it's just mildly annoying now. It's all spaced out so that you must do single target damage, aoe won't hit more than one mob at a time anyway.


Zon'ozz uses the same giant cockroach/lobster model that General Vezax and Erudax do.

Zon'ozz switches between two phases. Ping pong phase and black blood phase. He starts out in ping pong phase and the raid controls when phase change happens. The transition is triggered by allowing the Void of Unmaking to hit the boss. Then he'll do a relatively short black blood phase before going back to ping pong phase.

Ping Pong Phase

Warlord Zon'ozz whispers: Victory for Deathwing. For the glory of N'Zoth!
Warlord Zon'ozz whispers: Gaze into the heart of N'Zoth.


Warlord Zon'ozz whispers: The will of N'Zoth corrupts you.

For ping pong phase the raid is bouncing a Void of Unmaking back and forth between the ranged and melee camps.


Warlord Zon'ozz whispers: Your suffering strengthens me.
Warlord Zon'ozz whispers: Your skulls shall adorn N'Zoth's writhing throne.

The raid is also getting hit regularly with Disrupting Shadows, a rather nasty dot with a knockback component.


Warlord Zon'ozz whispers: Your agony sustains me.

Black Blood Phase

For the normal Black Blood phase everyone stacks up to make heals easier and beats the crap out of Zon'ozz since he'll take more damage the more you bounced the ball. On heroic mode there are a lot of tentacles to kill. Those need to go down asap, since they buff each other.


Warlord Zon'ozz whispers: To have waited so long... for this...

This fight is my least favorite fight in Dragon Soul. The ball bouncing is just such a massive pain in the ass. Far, far too often we've had a ball go sideways for no apparent reason, or, even worse, have a ball double bounce on one of the camps. I'm sure that there is some logic, but as tank all I see is the ball careening sideways as I frantically try to maneuver the boss to the right location...

Though I don't enjoy the mechanics, they are creative, and I immensely appreciate seeing his dead body on the floor.

Dragon Soul: Yor'sahj Dialogue

Depending on order Yor'sahj is either the third or second boss in the Dragon Soul raid. Personally I prefer to kill him second. He's not a particularly hard fight, and I am not a fan of Zon'ozz.

Yor'sahj starts talking to you as soon as you hop on the bronze drake to head to his area.

Yor'sahj the Unsleeping whispers: Our numbers are endless, our power beyond reckoning! All who oppose the Destroyer will DIE A THOUSAND DEATHS!

Before you can actually engage Yor'sahj you need to clear his room of sets of slimes. It's a bit of a warmup for what his abilities will be.


Yor'sahj the Unsleeping whispers: You will drown in the blood of the Old Gods! ALL OF YOU!


Yor'sahj the Unsleeping whispers: SEE how we pour from the CURSED EARTH!

Yor'sahj's abilities change depending on which slime he absorbed. You do get a chance to kill one of the slimes that pop out, so you can remove one set of new abilites. On normal mode you get three slimes at a time, and on heroic you get four slimes at a time. This means that the slime kill order between the two modes is almost entirely different. Fortunately the Yor'sahj Automatic RaidWarning addon is here to save the day. It's a VERY handy addon that turns this fight pretty trivial. Or at least turns the raid leading part of the fight trivial.


Yor'sahj the Unsleeping whispers: All praise Deathwing, THE DESTROYER!

And at least he doesn't taunt you when you die...


Yor'sahj the Unsleeping whispers: O, Deathwing! Your faithful servant has failed you!

Yor'sahj is a fun fight. It's a nicely dynamic fight, that changes every slime phase.

Dragon Soul: Morchok Dialogue

Lord Afrasastrasz yells: Advance to the front!

Lord Afrasastrasz yells: The siege must be broken. Wyrmrest Accord, defend the line!
Morchok yells: I will turn this tower to rubble, and scatter it across the wastes!

As soon as you zone in the raid is greeted by Afrasastrasz and Morchok yelling at each other and you. This continues as you make your way closer to Wyrmrest tower and Morchok.
It's very jarring that they had the same voice actor for Lord Afrasastrasz and Tirion Fordring. I'm always half inclined to start reciting "We'll grant you a swift death, Arthas."


Morchok yells: No mortal shall turn me from my task.
Lord Afrasastrasz yells: Wyrmrest Accord, Attack!
Image of Tyrygosa yells: They have broken our defenses... the very earth turns against us in Deathwing's name.
Image of Tyrygosa yells: You must hurry... Wyrmrest falls as we speak... all... is lost...
Lord Afrasastrasz yells: Tyrygosa yet lives! We must press on, to the temple!
Morchok yells: Cowards. Weaklings. Come down and fight or I will bring you down.

Having fought your way to the base of Wyrmrest Tower you can now engage Morchok. He's a rather stolid stone giant.

Pretty much the only interesting things he says are when he does his Black Blood of the Earth ability.


Morchok yells: The surface quakes...
Morchok yells: ... and you drown in the hate of The Master.

Morchok yells: The surface quakes...
Morchok yells: ... and there is no escape from The Old Gods.

Morchok isn't a terribly interesting a fight on either normal or heroic. Big stone giant has crystals and is stompy. He'll yank you all in for the aforementioned Black Blood and you need to run from that. If you have the misfortune to be in LFR you'll be able to snicker at the person who fails to run all the way out of it. If you're on heroic you'll meeds to make sure your group stays together for stomp soaking.

As is usually the case, Morchok was not expecting his own death. Too bad for him!

Morchok yells: Impossible. This cannot be. The tower... must... fall...

Lord Afrasastrasz yells: The Twilight's Hammer is retreating! The tower is ours; fortify your positions within!

Ulduar: Algalon Defeat Dialogue

Long and long ago I got the key for Algalon's room. I killed him a short time after but forgot to get shots of the dialogue. When we went back and killed everything on 25man a couple of months ago I remembered to take screen shots.


Algalon the Observer yells: Your actions are illogical. All possible results for this encounter have been calculated. The Pantheon will recieve the Observer's message regardless of outcome.


Algalon the Observer yells: Witness the fury of the cosmos!
Algalon the Observer yells: Behold the tools of creation!


Algalon the Observer yells: I have seen worlds bathed in the Makers' flames, their denizens fading without as much as a whimper. Entire planetary systems born and razed in the time it takes your mortal hearts to beat once. Yet all throughout, my own heart devoid of emotion... of empathy. I. Have. Felt. Nothing. A million-million lives wasted. Had they all held within them your tenacity? Had they all loved life as you do?


Algalon the Observer yells: Perhaps it is your imperfections... that which grants you free will... that allows you to persevere against all cosmically calculated odds. You prevail where the Titan's own perfect creations have failed.
Algalon the Observer yells: I've rearranged the reply code - your planet will be spared. I cannot be certain of my own calculations anymore.


Algalon the Observer yells: I lack the strength to transmit the signal. You must... hurry... find a place of power... close to the skies.


Brann Bronzebeard yells: I know just the place. Will you be all right?
Algalon the Observer yells: Do not worry about my fate, Bronzen. If the signal is not transmitted in time, re-origination will proceed regardless. Save... your world...

Amusingly enough, we actually did this with only 10 people, even though it was the 25man raid. Ulduar has some tricky spots still, but Algalon relied on a big hits from the boss to make it a hard fight. With 85s and current gear he's not a hard fight anymore.

I don't remember who ended up getting the reply code, but I was back in Dalaran in time to hear Rhonin yabber on about it.


Rhonin yells: Citizens of Dalaran! Raise your eyes to the skies and observe!
Rhonin yells: Today our world's destruction has been averted in defiance of our very makers!
Rhonin yells: Algalon the Observer, herald of the titans has been defeated be our brave comrades in the depts of the titan city of Ulduar.
Rhonin yells: Algalon was sent here to judge the fate of our world.


Rhonin yells: He found a planet whose races had deviated from the titans' blueprints. A planet where not everything had gone according to plan.
Rhonin yells: Cold logic deemed our world not worth saving. Cold logic, however, does not account for the power of free will. It's up to each of us to prove that this is a world worth saving.
Rhonin yells: That our lives... our lives are worth living.

I'm still quite dubious that it was the right thing to do to defeat Algalon. Between Deathwing and the Old Gods it might not be a bad idea to have the Titans come back and help fix things up. Of course by this point the Titans are going to come back, take one look at us and what we've done to kill Old Gods, beat up Algalon, kill two of the Dragon Aspects and strip the others Aspects of their power, and they will just straight up destroy Azeroth. If the Titans are smart they'll nuke it from orbit and never give us, whatever level we are by the time they get here, a warning or a chance to fight back. If they aren't smart... well perhaps at level 100+ we'll be fighting Aman'Thul and the rest of the Titans.

Baradin Hold: Alizabal Dialogue

With the 4.3 patch a new boss was added to Baradin Hold. Her name is Alizabal, and she hates. She's not particular in what she hates. Though most of it is directed at the raid, since we're right that and easy to hate on.


Alizabal yells: How I HATE this place. My captors may be long-dead, but don't think I won't take it all out of you miserable treasure-hunters.

The hate starts before you even get to her.


Alizabal shares a model with Mother Sharazz and Dalliah the Doomsayer.


Alizabal yells: I hate adventurers.
Alizabal yells: My hate will consume you!
Alizabal yells: I hate armor.

Alizabal puts a nasty damage spell on one of the non-tanks. If everyone isn't grouped up to split the damage that person is going to die horribly.


Alizabal yells: I hate martyrs.

She also requires a tank swap due to frequently skewering the current tank to the ground with one of her swords.


Alizabal yells: I hate standing still.

Alizabal does a whirlwind effect similar to Bonestorm from Lord Marrowgar


Alizabal yells: Feel my hatred!
Alizabal yells: I hate you all!


Alizabal yells: I hate... every one of you...

Almost, I feel a little bad for her. She hates everything so much. Bah, who am I kidding, she drops purples: kill her!

Fangs of the Father

Tuesday night the 15% debuff to Dragon Soul went into effect. It's a very massive buff. So massive that even though we had to pug to fill out our 25man we killed all eight bosses that night. There was one wipe on Spine because we had a few people not get locked down and a few other people die to not getting out of the blast radius of the first Amalgamation. But we went on to one-shot Madness. And seven different people got achieves for killing Deathwing.

Admittedly the raid ended at 12:30 instead of midnight, but that was due to me running late and the time it took to pull in the pugs. I did make Saruke, our ranged officer, give out loot so that Earthen and I could keep pulling what little trash there was. And that helped make up a bit of the lost time.

I was pretty excited the whole night. Dragon Soul is a relatively fun instance and I was very proud of everyone that we killed all of it in one night. However, my excitement was entirely due to our rogue getting his last Elementium Gem Cluster. He has had some very nice luck with very often getting 2 gems when we run 25man.

After he got is last gem the only item that Swifty was missing for the legendary was a Fragment of Deathwing's Jaw. This of course drops from Madness, which was why the raid went 30 minutes over the usual time. We all wanted him to get the legendaries.

And get them he did! The Fangs of the Father, Tiriosh, Nightmare of Ages and Golad, Twilight of Aspects, are now one more guild achieve that we've completed. I'm so pleased and proud of everyone in Darkfall for helping make this happen.

Dragon Soul Progress

Blackhorn

Sunday night two weeks ago Darkfall killed Blackhorn on 10man.

We'd been following a strategy where we tried to burn the drakes as fast as possible. But we kept losing people to all sorts of bad stuff: melee adds charging, purple swirlies big and small, or sapper not dying in time. We'd only gotten to phase 2 twice and while one of those was close to a kill it wasn't really repeatable.

So we changed up the kill priority. Three dps were assigned to the melee adds, and a fourth was to swap and help kill them if we called for them to be burned. Of course everyone was still supposed to swap to the sapper as soon as it appeared. We made sure that there were never more than 2 melee adds up at a time. It drastically cut down on the random amount of death due to charge. Only having two melee adds up at a time also reduced the tank damage a lot. And as a final relief for the healers we told everyone to only hop into a small purple swirly when they were at full health and it was close to them. That increased ship damage a fair amount, but as long as we got every single sapper the boat got low but didn't explode.

Somehow this worked. I can't tell if we were super lucky and happened to be able to kill the last 2 drakes before they could drop off a 4th pair of adds, or if the mechanics were fixed so that we'd only ever get 3 pairs of melee adds. Either way, after the 3rd pair of adds were killed the last drake or two was killed and we pushed through to phase two. We had a couple of snafus with the shockwave and devastating roar. But once people remembered to get out of shockwave while the casters stayed more than 10 yards away from the boss to avoid the silence of the roar the kill went reasonably smoothly.

Zon'ozz

Two weeks ago Tuesday night Darkfall had enough people to do DS25. The first two bosses are pretty easy. We had a wipe on Yor'sahj because people didn't listen and stacked when the boss had the green buff. There were a few people not on vent and that made it pretty hard. Honestly the only thing that saved us was the Yor'sahj addon that DraNgNon found for me a couple of weeks ago. The auto announce for slime kill target and stack/no stack and add kill order of that addon is just fabulous. And I really need to add a vent requirement to my raid advertisement macro.

However, Zon'ozz continues to be a thorn in our side. I do not understand how to control the direction of the ping pong ball. And that consistently fucks us. We've got the damage to kill him. We've got the heals to survive his tank damage and his aoe phase damage. But when the ball goes sideways everything gets screwed. We got him to 4% last night. 4%! But we didn't manage to kill him.

I think that I need to step up and tank him so that he is facing directly away from the ranged camp. I have been reluctant to do that, due to healing considerations. But on 25man both of the tank healers are standing in the melee group anyway so they are close enough regardless of how the boss is pointed. However, if we do that the ranged group can't be too far back, both for healing/dispelling reasons, and so that I have time to get the boss in position if the ball goes sideways.

Either way Zon'ozz makes me want to tear my hair out. We've been so close so often and a seemingly random ball bounce will screw it all up.

LFR Thoughts

I'm not sure how I feel about the new LFR tool.

On one hand it's very handy. I don't really get fights until I've seen them. So what I used to do was look up strats and then have them make no sense until after the first few wipes. And then I'd have to look them all up again now that I have a bit of a mental model of what is going on. But with LFR I can go into there and then look at a strat, and it's not usually too bad to add a new mechanic or two. It's also nice to actually see all the fights and cut scenes. I've taken so many screenshots of the dialogue it's hard to sort through for posting.

On the other hand, I truly think it's the final death knell for 25man raiding guilds. Having seen how things went between Wrath and Cata I think that the only reason Wrath had so many 25s is because that is where the better gear was. And now that the gear is equalized very few people are willing to do 25s rather than 10s. 10s require a finer tuned balance of classes, but its a lot easier to find 10 non-idiots than it is to find 25 non-idiots. It also seems that many of the newer fights in FL and DS have a tendency for a mistake by anyone in the raid to wipe the whole thing. With 25 people it's a lot harder to get a mistake free pull that leads to a boss kill.

I do like that the LFR is such a handy way of gearing up any missing items and your offspec. It's been a few weeks and I'm still hoping that I can win a hat token to replace Mornara's Daybreaker Helm. Yes, she is still wearing a helm from Bastion, but nothing else has dropped! Hopefully she'll win the token from LFR or we'll kill Blackhorn soon. But aside from that she's gotten a whole lot of pieces for her dps set.

One bad thing about LFR is that it's such a low bar people can basically face roll through it. When I bring Mornara in there with her initially crappy dps gear and a PVP unholy build I expect to be hovering above the tanks on the dps meters. I don't expect to be 6th or 7th on damage every fight. And it's really quite sad when people spew abuse at the dps or heals after a wipe where mechanics were misunderstood. I have not yet seen a wipe in LFR that was caused by lack of dps or healing. I have however seen many wipes caused by confusion about how the fight needs to be done.

I think that in general LFR is going to get more people into raiding LFR but it won't increase the number of people doing normal raids. It will, however, kill the last few 25man guilds out there. I am not going to be the least bit surprised if in Mists of Pandaria the only options for raiding are 25man LFR and 10man normal and heroic.

Tired

Perhaps now isn't a great time to be making this post. Perhaps I should wait until I'm calmer and in a more reasonable state of mind. Perhaps if I were able to chill the fuck out enough to do that I wouldn't need to make this post at all.

However it is not the case that I am calm. It is not the case that I am feeling reasonable.

Let me say it again: I AM NOT CALM.

I'm tired, sick and fucking tired, of having people second guess every single raid call I make. I'm unhappy to hear that people aren't enjoying the raids. Especially since the people complaining most loudly are actually the ones causing the raids to be so excruciating. And I can not stand it when no matter what strategy I use for a fight someone doesn't like it. Often the same someone who whined about the original strategy until I changed it to the new one.

It saps my will to lead raids when I hear that the guild raids suck, or are run badly, or use strategies that are terrible. Fuck, it saps my will to play at all, when I get constantly get told how terribly hostile the guild is by the very person who is making it such a hostile environment to begin with.

Sadly, I'm not drunk and won't post this to the guild boards. But I'm having a really hard time looking forward to my imminent guild leadership with any thing other than horror.

This week in Raiding

This week the Firelands nerfs hit pretty hard. A week ago Darkfall was at 4/7, and we'd only killed Shannox and Rhyolith on 25man. By the end of last night we were 6/7.

On Tuesday we had 22 DF people in the raid suddenly. I'd like to think that all of this was due to the super recruitment efforts of everyone, and for sure we did have a bunch of new people show up. However, the suspicious part of me also considers that some people were motivated to show by news of the nerfs.

Anyway, my suspicions aside, we had a very awesome raiding week. That first night we killed Shannox, Rhyolith, and Beth pretty handily. Our only slowness was due to having to pug a few people in, and to needing to swap people around later in the evening. We even had time for a few pulls on Baelroc.

Thursday we killed Baleroc and then Alysrazor. Despite about half of the raid not having seen Aly before and all of us having to learn the fight together as a 25man we still killed Aly the first night we actually saw her on 25man.

As a side note, my new trick for getting the raid to kill stuff is to tell them not to worry about dps and just focus on getting the mechanic down. It worked like a charm for Bael.



In preparation for Sunday night I watched both the Majordomo and Ragnaros fights. But honestly I figured we'd be really lucky if we got Domo down. The mechanics are deceptively simple, and it's one of those fights were one person can easily wipe the whole thing.

At raid time last night we had 25 people on and ready, plus a few more people who logged on after we'd started. It was fortunate we had some extras, because we needed to make some replacements as the evening wore on and a thunderstorm took out one person's connection while general lag/bad connection from Australia took out another person's.

We killed Domo on the last pull of the night. It was the thirteenth pull. Again it was our first night of seeing the fight as a group, or for most people, seeing the fight ever. And given that and how unforgiving some of his mechanics can be I'm super proud of how well we did. Really, when I think of how long it took to kill Lurker or Leo or Yogg or the Lich King, I'm absolutely awesomely impressed with us. I am super proud of Darkfall for getting to 6/7.



***
All that said, there was a lot of tension in and after the raid last night.

There has been a tendency in the last couple of our raids for people to argue about strategy on vent. I and others have suggested that people keep it to whispers. However either way, there are a lot of people with their own ideas on what we'll be doing. This is fine, I like suggestions. I like that people are engaged. But I want to keep vent clear. And I don't always see or have time to respond to all the whispers I get.

*I am not going to change what the raid is doing every single time someone has a new suggestion*

*I* am running the raid. The officers are helping me. As raid leader it is my job to delegate and get input to determine what we'll be doing. I need to work on delegation, but in general things are NOT going to be improved by changing them every pull. Darkfall is not a bad guild, but we're not world or server first guild either. And I'm sorry, but we have a variety of skill levels present in the raid. Darkfall has never used the cookie cutter strategy for our kills, we don't usually have the "ideal" raid composition to do so anyway. So we try and fail and progress until we've got our own strategy that works for *us*.

We have made phenomenal progress in Firelands, and I'm sad for anyone who isn't proud of that.

Kel'thuzad

Last night a bunch of us Darkfall people did our usual Monday night fun run. Yesterday's destination was Naxxramas 25, and associated achieves.

Most people were missing a fair number of achieves. In fact Mornara hadn't even completed Naxx on 25man ever before. So there was much achievement dinging through the evening.



The above picture includes Morn (tanking), Vikai and Earthen meleeing the boss, and Kuan and Klasky (Klasky and a mirror image?) off to the right attacking from range.

After we'd killed Kel'Thuzad we headed over to slaughter Sartherion and then Malygos. And it turns out that Malygos once again drops blue and Azure drakes. So we'll be hitting my Malygos on a regular basis for that drake.

Firelands: Shannox dialogue

Shannox is the first boss that Darkfall killed in Firelands. He's a big flamewalker (or fire naga as I say when my brain stops and my mouth keeps going) with two hellhound pets.

The basic strategy for killing Shannox is to have one tank for him and one for his dog Riplimb. Rageface, the third dog, will randomly attack people and needs to be focused down ASAP. Shannox will also drop traps on the raid and throw his spear for Riplimb to fetch. Riplimb needs to be kited over the crystal prison traps to freeze him so that tank debuffs can drop, and Rageface should be kited over the immolation traps for extra damage on him.


Shannox yells: Yes, I smell them too, Riplimb. Outsiders encroach on the Firelord's private grounds. Find their trail. Find them for me, that I may dispense punishment!

To get Shannox to spawn you have to kill a bunch of raid trash. Then he patrols around a fairly large area of the raid instance.


Shannox yells: A-hah! The interlopers! Kill them. EAT THEM!

Once you've actually pulled him though you've got to keep the group of them all fairly close together. Shannox and Riplimb will enrage if they are 60+ yards apart.


Shannox yells: Go for the throat!
Shannox yells: The Firelord will be most pleased!

Every so often Shannox will tell Rageface to eat someone's face. If that someone had done something like stand in an immolation trap or the healers weren't on top of their game you've now got a dead raider.


Shannox yells: Oh, you murderers! Why? Why would you kill such a noble animal?

Of course once you kill Rageface, Shannox is extra angry that you killed his dog.



Shannox yells: Riplimb! No... no! Oh, you terrible little beasts! HOW COULD YOU?!

And he gets even angrier when you kill Riplimb.


Shannox yells: Twist in flames, interlopers!
Shannox yells: Ohh... the pain. Lord of Fire, it hurts....



Darkfall's first kill was on 10 man, but we have now killed him on 25 as well. If the trapping of Riplimb doesn't go perfectly it can be really hard for tanks to drop their stacks of the nasty debuff without leaving the healers out of range.