The Bottom End of the Learning Curve

In Which the

DWARVEN BATTLE MEDIC

Comes to the

STARTLING AND EMBARRASSING REALIZATION 

That he has Been Playing his Class

LIKE A TOTAL NUBCAKE.

Mists of Pandaria has introduced a lot of changes to all the classes, as is normal with any expansion. When Cataclysm launched I spent hours obsessively scouring each PTR patch note and news release for any change. So I had a pretty clear idea of how the rather fundamental changes to the game, and healing in particular, would play out. 

Come Mists and I did none of that. In fact, since it's launch I've spent far more time in my Protection Levelling/Questing/Pull-Twenty-Mobs-And-Mow-Them-Down spec than I have healing.

So the past few weeks have been spent not only in a frenzied effort to raise my gear level from its former barely-enough-for-LFR level to something that wouldn't completely embarrass me in a normal mode Throne of Thunder 10-Man, but it's also been a steep learning curve to fully understand my class again.

Big things like Talents I had a pretty decent grasp on, at least in the broad strokes, but in reading up on them in the excellent Bossypally Talent Guide I realized that some of my choices were less than optimal. Particularly Hand of Purity, which had been transformed from middling to awesome since the beginning of the expansion, a talent that I had never really considered before that I now consider an essential tool.

I also didn't fully appreciate the effect that normalizing Mana would have on Paladins. In all previous expansions, Intellect was a Paladin's no-brainer, don't-even-think-of-gemming-anything-else-dumbass, best Stat. Not so for Mists. Now the once lamented Spirit is a Holy Paladin's best friend, to the point that the once useless Blue Gems are pretty much all I need now. That was a head-scratcher when I first read about it, let me tell you, and it went against two expansions worth of common sense.

Similarly, Mastery is now such a viable gearing strategy that Ask Mr. Robot considers it the default way to build a Holy Paladin, relegating a Haste-heavy build to the status of the Ugly Cousin that ain't quite right in the head.

I admit, I took the lazy route this expansion: at the start of Mists I didn't do much in the way of homework on my class, and just kept gearing and gemming and playing the same way I had in Cataclysm.

But there's nothing like a Raid Boss to quickly show a person just how bad the lazy way is.


FEET WET IN THE THRONE OF THUNDER

Staring a progression boss in the face for the first time
in a long time. Please ignore the skeletons.

I have officially been a Raider again for three weeks now. My new guild Acquired Taste is full of excellent people who were more than willing to help me get geared up, as well as hand-hold me as I learned the new fights. Their help, as well as some getting some long-awaited good loot-luck in LFR, has seen my iLVL rise from 476 to 501 in three short weeks, still on limited play-time. I'm managing to keep up with the other healers, despite my still-inferior gear.

But lordy, it's been a challenge. Walking on to a raid team that had three bosses on farm that I had never before encountered or even studied, being expected to contribute in a meaninful way and not hold the raid back, all while sporting several blues and one or two PVP gear pieces. Not to mention that this is a brand new guild for me and I'm still in my probation period, so if I don't impress I run the risk of losing not just my raid spot but potentially my new guild as well. But hey, no pressure, right?

In the end I think I've done pretty well. The first week we downed Tortos for the first time, and we followed it up with a last pull of the night, three-people-left-standing Megaera kill the week after. Our third week saw Ji-Kun fall, with the Battle Medic on nest-healing duties.


FEELIN' GROOVY

It's felt great to be back raiding again. The people I'm with are great, the Throne of Thunder raid is excellent and it's nice to finally be caught up with the game again and to feel like I've got things under control.

What? Patch 5.3 dropped today? It's got a whole bunch of new stuff to figure out, two new epic questlines and dozens more dailies to do?

Son of a bitch.

This Week In Raiding: Steady On

"Healthy discontent is the prelude to progress." - Mohandas Gandhi

Being at the forefront of any raid groups advancement - charging blindly into the unknown, so to speak - is by its very nature going to be fraught with setbacks and disappointments. Wipes happen, stress builds up and nerves get frayed regardless of whether the group is a world class progression guild or a more casual one. It's called progression because you're moving forward into new and dangerous territory and success is by no means assured.

This week our progression results were a mixed bag of uplifting positives counter-balanced by maddeningly incomprehensible setbacks.

Mountain Top has made some steady, if unspectacular headway in Firelands to this point, but we're moving slower that some people feel we should be, and nerves are getting frayed. It's less the pace of getting bosses down - 3/7 with only two nights of raiding per week isn't bad at all - but I think that it has more to do with how long it seems to take us to figure out the mechanics of each new fight. It seems as if our attempts at a new boss get only so far and just stall out.

This week we pulled Alysrazor (pronounced a-LISS-rah-zor. Get it right) for the first time, and she schooled us on the true meaning of the word futile. Then she went on to further instruct us on all its synonyms: The words abortive, ineffectual, fruitless and unsuccessful all come to mind to describe our night.

We spent the whole of Thursdays raid working on Ragnaros's pet Firechicken to no effect, and by the end tempers were starting to run a bit thin. The tanks were getting frustrated with their mechanics and wanted to call it, the healers were frustrated with being unable to work out how to split themselves up properly and wanted to keep working on it, whilst the DPS were arguing about who, if anyone, should grab feathers and fly.

I always can tell when morale is sinking when the cupcake jokes stop. In the end we called the raid early and agreed to come at it fresh next week in the hopes that a little distance and perspective will help.

"If you're walking down the right path and you're willing to keep walking, eventually you'll make progress." - Barack Obama

Once a progression fight clicks, on the other hand, we don't regress. I wrote a few weeks ago of our struggles with Shannox the Rat-bastard and how we seemingly just couldn't get him down. Well, since then we've killed him with ease in one or two attempts each time we've faced him. It feels like all at once, as a unit, the fight just clicked, and suddenly it was as easy as selling beer at a Dwarven bacon-eating festival.

Beth'tilac has also been handled cleanly since we got her down for the first time. My only complaint with her is that she always drops Holy Paladin gear that our other Holy Paladin always gets. Spider Matron favouritism is the worst kind. And I like her shield, too.

The Gatekeeper is dead, huzzah.

We got our third Firelands boss down this week as well, with Baleroc meeting his end for the first time and marking our first three-kill night for this tier. We pulled him for the first time the previous week, and like Alysrazor this week, he gave us fits while we learned the fight.

If you are unfamiliar with the fight, Baleroc is an encounter where healer coordination is vital. The healers are attempting to keep up with ever increasing tank heal pools and incoming damage. This is done by healing people affected by Torment and gaining stacks of Vital Spark, which turns into the buff Vital Flame which boosts a heal cast on the tank by 5% per stack. It's crucial that all the healers get as many stacks as possible, and so it's incredibly important to know who is healing what and when.

It took us almost two whole nights of working on Baleroc until we got him figured out (which from the perspective of a week later, isn't bad at all, really).

In the end, what really made the difference is having a dedicated Healer channel in Mumble so that would could coordinate our rotation without the DPS and Tanks talking over us. It helped immensely, and within two pulls of changing channels Baleroc fell over dead and we were standing on his crotch taking a screenshot.

AND FINALLY: THE POINT

Mountain Top's progression through Firelands has been slower than other guilds out there, to be sure, but it's been steady. Each raid night brings us closer to figuring out whichever boss we happen to be working on, and there is a great feeling on confidence in the team, even though frustration got the better of us on Alysrazor last week. We're all working hard and waiting for that wonderful click.

Despite our rather casual schedule and the setbacks that we've had, our raid team is coming together really nicely. Certainly one bad night isn't going to stop us. There is a great feeling of inevitability that it's only a matter of time before we're taking a screenshot while standing in Ragnaros's crotch - if he had legs.
 
 

This Week in Raiding: Shannox the Raid Killer

Action and reaction, ebb and flow, trial and error, change - this is the rhythm of living. Out of our over-confidence, fear; out of our fear, clearer vision, fresh hope. And out of hope, progress. - Bruce Barton

Putting together a new raid team can be tough, and I don't envy Raid Leaders who have to do it.

There are countless pitfalls to deal with: Schedules to coordinate, divergent personalities that need to mesh, boss strategies to learn, communicate and change on the fly. Each wipe that occurs is a disheartening experience to a new group, shaking it's confidence in itself.

Unfortunately, that's what Mountain Top is going through with it's raiding progression right now.

I hate you, Shannox. I really, really do.

MOUNTAIN TOP v. SHANNOX
(or, How To Kill Morale in 27 Excruciating Pulls)

Oddly, it wouldn't be so bad if we were wiping early or doing something stupid like standing in traps. Quite the contrary, as once our Tanks got the mechanics of stack-dropping down (The Doggy Dance? The Crystal Trap Two-Step?), the first part of the fight became simple and our raid group is getting through it cleanly and reliably.

Our strategy is to burn Rageface down as soon as possible, then get Shannox to between 35% and 40% and kill Riplimb. The doggy poop really hits the fan for us when Riplimb goes down and Shannox freaks out; gaining two stacks of Frenzy and doing 60% more damage 60% faster. This is ouch-time for our Main Tank and the time for the Healers to do a gut-check and earn their paychecks. Invariably, it's where we've been failing.

We're so close, though. 9% wipe. 7% wipe. 4% wipe. A freakin' sub-1% wipe. Tantalizingly, terribly close to seeing him die like the mongrel that he is. Getting within a dog's whisker of success means that we're doing something right, but the repeated failures also means that we need to be doing something better. Keeping the Tank alive during the Frenzy phase would be a good start.

Once that last dog dies the healing strategy needs to completely change. Efficiency goes completely out the window and it's Wrath-style healing again: Spam big heals or else your tank is going to die within seconds. Mitigation cooldowns such as Hand of Sacrifice must be utilized, but it's often hard to spare the global cooldown in order to cast it. The reactionary, triage style of healing that we've been trained to use throughout Cataclysm needs to be quickly forgotten; by the time you see and react to damage it's probably already too late. Sadly, the realities of mana management do not make this style of healing practical any longer, and healers with their mana tanks drained can't keep anyone alive.

A fight like this requires very good coordination, communication and rapport between healers, something that a new Raid Group like ours isn't likely to have built up yet. A strong role leader who can analyse problems and implement solutions is also a luxury most new raiding groups - particularly more casual ones - won't have. I'm not going to sugarcoat things, it's been a really difficult and demoralizing test of our new team. We're all good healers, but we don't know each other well enough to really push each other or properly hold each other accountable. I would love someone to tell me, "You suck. This is what you did wrong and here's how to fix it." That's easy; it's much harder to have to try figure it out for yourself.

Of course, the random connection issues and weird happenings that have plagued us haven't helped much either. We've had to call raids two or three times now because of gigantic, crippling lag spikes on our top DPSers. The opening of the final Harry Potter movie cancelled tonight's raid. More than a few pulls have been delayed due to baby aggro from the Dwarfling and our Death Knight's two kids. Not to mention having one raid memorably and frighteningly cancelled due to a real life emergency which ended with an ambulance trip to the hospital. Lady luck, it would seem, is not on our side.

ENOUGH COMPLAINING, ALREADY
(or, So What're You Gonna Do About It, Pally-Boy?)

Keeping the tank up during Shannox's Frenzy is tough, but that clearly is the problem and the main reason we've been unable to down this boss. I think that better coordination of the healers and their cooldowns is all that we need. The Tank simply can't go for more than two seconds without a major heal.

I think I am going to suggest a more coordinated approach. We have two Holy Paladins healing, so you would think that we wouldn't be having this problem, but with both of us healing independently- and using our cooldowns independently - there are gaps in the incoming heals. Looking at the death logs in recount after the fight shows that the Tank can go from full health to a fine, bloody mist in a mere three seconds, so any gap in large, incoming heals will be invariably fatal; especially as the stacks of Jagged Tear begin to mount up.

I am going to do two things: Firstly, I'm going to suggest to our healers that we setup a Cooldown/Heal rotation. I envision having one Paladin spam Avenging Wrath/Divine Favor boosted Divine Lights on the tank while the other uses cooldowns such as Hand of Sacrifice and Aura Mastery to try prevent damage, at the same time healing efficiently with Holy Light and Holy Shock. When the first Paladin gets low on mana, they switch. This should prevent any gaps in the incoming healing and at the same time help prevent both Holy Paladins going out of mana at the same time. This in itself should be enough, but...

Can a Mastery Build Save the Day?

The other thing I am going to do is experiment with a Mastery build. There has been a lot of talk about Illuminated Healing builds lately: Rohan, Enlynn, Adgamorix and this thread on the official forums have all been talking about how it's a great, but incredibly specialized tank healing build that shines in encounters like this at the expense of virtually all versatility. I even talked about wanted to try out it's viability when I talked about the changes to Illuminated Healing.

I think that this build is ideally suited to this fight: Insanely heavy incoming damage where the shields will shine. Enlynn of Bubblespec wrote a great, detailed post on this style of play and has inspired me to finally try it out. I hope it will give us the boost that we need to finally put this boss down, permanently.

How has your raid group dealt with the Shannox Kennel Club? Any tips? Did you make any changes to your healing composition or style that you felt made a difference?

 

This Week in Raiding: Green Bay Wipes Us

This Week in Raiding is a (hopefully) weekly feature discussing the raiding encounters that my guild tackled this week, the lessons learned from them, as well as any news or thoughts on raiding in general. This week I complain about things. Enjoy!


This week in raiding... was cancelled. Apparently last Sunday there was an important broadcast of some sort coming from the telly that had a lot of our raiders transfixed. I'm not exactly sure of the nature of this broadcast, but from what I have gathered so far, I think it was a new episode of World's Funniest TV Commercials, since that seems to be all anybody was talking about afterwards. However, there was a lot of buzz on Twitter about a rather grandiose soup bowl of some sort, so that might bear some investigation as well.

Seriously, though, our Sunday night raid did not go off as planned due to some, err, unannounced absences due to the Superbowl. Oh well, I did my heroic and a couple of dailies and spent some time with my wife. It worked out well, really.

Monday night our regular raiders returned, acting all innocent and, "Waddaya mean yesterday was raid night?" It proved to be an interesting night.

Our biggest nemesis (aside from the elevator, which has wiped us more times than Arthas) was lag. The connection was terrible on Monday night, which likely had something to do with the 4.0.6 patch being downloaded. I noticed multiple occasions where my screen would freeze for a couple of seconds and then race to catch up with me. It's very interesting trying to heal when you're watching a photograph instead of a movie.

In the end we did manage to get our three Blackwing Descent bosses down in the one night. Magmaw actually took us a great deal more time that I would have expected. The lag was causing massive problems mounting him and getting the chains attached properly, resulting in numerous wipes on a boss that I thought we had cased. In one rather unique wipe, I accidentally clicked on Magmaw during the chaining phase and ended up on his back. I was surprised, to say the least, and tried my best to get him chained down, but the tank ended up becoming worm munchies and we called the attempt.

Tuesday morning I had quite a few people hit my blog after searching for "Problems Mounting Magmaw" on Google, so I don't think we were the only ones having this issue. I suspect that this is a temporary issue, so I wouldn't worry about it too much.

On we went to Omnotron, who was one-shot. I know, I was surprised too.

Maloriak gave us a bit of trouble, but we ended up getting him down on our last attempt of the night. What is the magic of saying, "This is the last attempt of the night"? Is it just me, or does it seem like as soon as that phrase is uttered your odds of downing the boss get better? It's like searching for hours for your car keys and giving up, grabbing a beer from the fridge, going back to the couch and sitting on them.

Afterwards, I pugged a last minute Baradin Hold run with Oath, our main tank. Pit Lord Lootbag dropped my Holy tier gloves, which represented the first raid loot for my holy spec that I've seen in the month that I've been raiding. It was very exciting. Or rather, it would have been if I didn't already have the World Keepers Gauntlets from Earthen Ring already. You know, Argaloth, I could have used those pants that you have on you somewhere. Those would have been very helpful, thankyouverymuch. I'll save the tier gloves, of course, until I have another piece of tier gear. If Omnotron Maloriak drops the Flash Freeze Gauntlets next week I think I'll cry.

How was your raiding weekend? Did the Superbowl or the lag cause you any issues?

This Week in Raiding: Progression Road Kill

This Week in Raiding is a (hopefully) weekly feature discussing the raiding encounters that my guild tackled this week, the lessons learned from them, as well as any news or thoughts on raiding in general.

PROGRESSION ROAD KILL

In the past several weeks, Shadowgarde has been doing very well when it comes to progression, especially given some of the restrictions that are inherent to a casual raiding guild.  Even with a lack of healers and a raid composition that is never the same twice, we have managed to down bosses consistently and haven't regressed on any of the encounters that we have downed previously.

This week was our first look at three new encounters that completely kicked our ass.  And I don't mean 20% wipes or Oh-My-God-We-Almost-Had-Him-If-Only-That-Guy-Hadn't-Had-His-Head-Up-His-Ass type of wipes.  No, we're talking the 20-Seconds-Into-The-Fight-Holy-Fuck-What-Just-Happened wipe.

GOOD NEWS FIRST

There was some good news this week.  Our Sunday/Monday raid group went into BWD and took down the three bosses that we've killed so far with little trouble.  Magmaw was one-shot perfectly, Omnitron was taken down quickly with only a couple of wipes, and Maloriak was defeated for the second time after about an hour or so of working on it.  After a couple of attempts on Halfus we wrapped up our first raid night with very high spirits, as it was significant progress given that we hadn't managed to get all three bosses down in one night previously.

HALFUS

The trouble started with Halfus and the lovely drake combination that was up last week:  Nether, Storm and Slate.  Everything that I have read on this fight says that this is the worst possible threesome, and it's a hellish way to get your first look at this encounter.  What with the stacking healing debuff, the increased attack speed and Shadow Nova knocking everyone back and interrupting everything, most of our attempts didn't get very far before people started dying.  We tried it twice this past week, with two different raid groups and didn't really get very far.  At least people have now seen the fight and have an idea what to expect.  I'm hoping that with this little bit of experience and a slightly easier drake combination that we'll make some headway this week.  

I am honestly a little astonished that this boss is considered an "entry level" raid boss on par with Magmaw.  He hits freaking hard.

CHIMAERON

Walking in to this encounter on Monday evening was a bit of a shock, honestly.  I figured that we'd keep working on Halfus, so I was quite unprepared for this fight.  And as a healer, this fight is a complete and utter shock the first time you try it.  

If you haven't seen this fight before, it has a really interesting and unique mechanic.  The raid gets an buff that prevents them from being one-shot as long as they are about 10,000 health.  This is very good, since the boss will periodically hit the raid for 280,000 damage.  As long as everyone is above this level the raid is fine and it's the healer's job to get them back to 10k but no further, which puts a unique twist on healing.  Small, fast heals and mana efficiency seem to be whats needed here, and any heal that goes out while someone is over 10k health is utterly wasted.  It really made me take a long, hard look at my healing spell choices.

At the same time the Tanks are going to be taking a huge amount of damage and need to be topped off.  They have the same buff preventing them from being one shot as long as they're over 10k health, but often they will be struck with a double attack that can kill them if their health is too low.

And of course the buff will periodically disappear and everyone needs to rock their biggest AOE heals to keep up with the damage.  This fight seems to be designed to really test the healers mana management skills.

Our attempts on this boss ended badly.  We had two Holy Paladins and a Holy Priest, which didn't seem to be a very good combination for this fight.  My heals seemed to be coming in too slow to help keep the raid up, and the tanks seemed to need everything we could throw at them to keep alive.  By the end we had one Paladin on the tanks, the Priest on the raid and I was bouncing in between them, which seemed to work better.  It looks that we need a lot of work on this fight yet.

BE VEWY VEWY QUIET, WE'RE WIPING ON ATRAMEDES

After about an hour of solid futility with Chimaeron, we decided to take a look at Atramedes.  The trash packs of Dark Iron Dwarf Spirits in his room caused us a great deal of trouble, particularly the group on the left.  Chain Lightning is nasty, and make a mental note that these guys don't reset and have no leash.  During one rather unique wipe we ended up accidentally kiting them back up the elevator to the entrance where they immediately attacked anyone who zoned into the instance.  I was laughing my ass off, even as I did my second corpse run of the pull.

At this point in the night, we had pretty much chaulked this night up to a learning experience anyway, so our attempts on Atramedes only lasted for about half an hour.  We did get a good sense of the fight mechanics, and it looks like he will be the next boss that we tackle.

I love the mechanics that this fight brings to the table.  The sound bar and the gongs are very cool.  And the visual effects of his special abilities are unique and beautiful.  I am looking forward to working on this fight; it looks like a lot of fun.


THE LESSON:  PREPARATION IS KEY

This raid week really showed me the benefits of preparation.  We were prepared and ready to tackle Magmaw, Omnitron and Maloriak and we got them down quickly and efficiently.  We struggled on the bosses that we weren't prepared for, even though the Raid Leaders knew the strategy and communicated it to the raid.  Obvious as it may seem, reading up on the bosses beforehand and watching videos on the fight makes a world of difference.  As well, during progression, Raid Leaders need to communicate which bosses will be tackled next so that the raid can have an adequate chance to prepare themselves.  Surprises in a raid setting will lead to wipes, repair bills and drama.  Do everything you can to minimize them. 

UPDATE 4.Feb.2011

Last night our Tuesday/Thursday raid group went into Bastion of Twilight to continue working on Halfus.  Due to the lack of healers that I've talked about before it took them a long time to get the raid together, and had a couple of alts subbing in the healing spots.  I listened in on Ventrilo and our healer channel and it seemed like they were making some good progress.  With about an hour left in the raid, I was asked to sub in for one of the healer alts.  It caused a little drama with my wife, but I agreed.

The fight went so much better than last week.  I was assigned the tanks and we started making some real progress towards the fight, but were still wiping pretty consistently before the drakes were down.  On our very last attempt, however, we had a really good one going; the tanks were up, my mana was good (I had tunnel vision bad enough that I have NO idea how the other healers were managing) and the drakes went down.  It's amazing how much easier this fight gets once the drakes start falling.

With literally one second left until the enrage timer, Halfus fell.  It felt good.