The Mocking Smirk of the Loot Gods

"What's your luckydo?" - Every Grummle ever

There are some days when I just have to shake my head and smile at the weird way that things work out.

The thing about random loot drops is, obviously, that they are random and impossible to predict. You might go for weeks without getting drop, or get three great pieces in a row. Call it RNG Hell, the Loot Gods, Bad Luck or whatever, but blame random chance for that one item of gear that you've been unable to upgrade.

That's where I was last night. My gear was looking pretty good; 522 or better on every single item except for Boots (502 Raid Finder, so at least current tier) and my Shoulders.

The shoulders were embarrassing: [White Tiger Mantle], my LFR shoulders from last Tier that stubbornly refused to upgrade themselves. Weekly LFR runs of Iron Qon and Primordius and almost daily Heroic Scenario runs in the hopes that I would beat the miniscule odds and get a 516 drop with stats that weren't entirely useless.

Nothing. The Loot Gods were displeased, apparently.

I had given up hope completely of ever getting a drop. I was convinced that the drops didn't exist (much like the Shield from Tortos and the Twins, but that's another ranty, Gear QQ post). So I resigned myself to grinding towards Exalted with the Shado-Pan Assault and just buying a set.

And last night, right after Ji-Kun fell over dead into her own green slime, this popped up:

Finally! I was so excited. I wanted to teleport out immediately and buy them, but my raid leader told me to have some damned patience and wait until the end of the raid.

The Loot Gods are bastards, though. After more than two months of waiting and hoping and begging, once I was Exalted and could just buy the damned things and get the suffering over with, what did Primordius drop? Yup: [Spaulders of Primordial Growth].

My raid team all laughed and told me that at least I hadn't spent the money on the reputation gear and would I please finally shut the hell up about shoulders, already?

Now, you're probably saying, "So what?" This sort of thing happens to us all at one point or another. Random is random, after all.

But the Loot Gods have a real flair for the ironic. Guess what Iron Qon dropped? Yup! [Shoulders of the Crackling Conquerer].

I didn't even bother to roll on them. Yes, they're my best in slot and I would absolutely love to have them...

But three sets of shoulders in one night is just too much for any Paladin.

Ahead of the Curve: Lei Shen

Lay the proud Usurpers low!

Tyrants fall in every foe!

Liberty's in every blow! 

Let us Do or Die!  - Robbie Burns, Scots Wha Hae.


I really like my new Raid Team.

I suppose that they're hardly new any more. I have been raiding with them for three months now, and we've been from one end of the Throne of Thunder to the other. We've exulted in glorious victory together and toiled in hardship and defeat at the hands of our enemies. Good times.

Interesting factoid: The Snails on the stairs to Ji-Kun have killed more of us than Primordius and The Twin Consorts combined. Adversity, thy name is Gastropod.

Anyway, I'm really proud to be part of this group. When I joined them—undergeared and ill-prepared—I was understandably nervous about my performance and acceptance into the group. After all, I was replacing the former Raid Leader—also a Holy Paladin—who knew these people, had more experience with the fights and much better gear. Although I would never had admitted it at the time, my greatest fear was that the raid leaders would realize that I was a talentless hack after the first few pulls and ruthlessly relegate me to Non-Raider-Pariah status permanently.

Isn't it always nice when your Worst Fears don't come true?

To their credit, the group (and guild in general) made me feel right at home. To me, at least, Acquired Taste was an instant fit.

It's nice to have a home again.


AHEAD OF THE CURVE

First of all, I'm really glad that Blizzard has finally implemented this kind of Achievement. It's something I have been advocating for a long time. It finally provides a way to differentiate between people who put in a lot of work to kill a boss while it's current, and the Tourist who goes in after the fact to just look around. I love it!

Acquired Taste runs two different 10-Man Raid Groups. When I joined the guild both groups were at a very similar point in their progression and there was a healthy rivalry between the two as to who would get the next progression kill. Sadly, the Prime-Time raid always seemed a step ahead of the Late-Night Crew, but I'm proud to say that both groups have managed to down Lei Shen and are 12/12.

Despite the fact that the Late Night Crew has had a revolving door of people, we've managed to get things done. Doing a quick count in my head I can think of 6 or 7 different tanks we've used, at least as many healers and DPS that come and go before I can even learn their names. But the personality of the group has stayed constant. It's actually remarkable that we've managed to keep steadily progressing with all the turn-over, and (while I hope they don't read this because I wouldn't want to inflate any egos) it's a testament to Ittymar and Amara, our excellent raid leaders.

We actually downed Lei Shen almost a month ago, but I'm posting this now because last week was special. It was the first week that we downed the entire instance without extending the lockout, and it was the week that I personally got my 12/12 achievement as I had been absent when we first killed Iron Qon and The Twins and the group had extended the lockout to tackle Lei Shen. This week we took them down in order.

Now we're going to start playing around with Heroic modes, which will be another first for me.


NO ONE'S DEAD SO KEEP YOUR HEAD OUT OF YOUR ASS

Apparently, our resident Warlock FRAPSes our raiding nights. This is a first for me; I've never been able to watch myself play the game, and it's especially odd seeing it from another's perspective. It's pretty cool, actually.

Here is our first Lei Shen kill. Look for the Paladin in the full Tier 9 transmog running through bad stuff and generally being out of place all the time if you want to find me. I'm the one calling the tanks impatient at the beginning if you're interested in what I sound like.

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: Nerf Acceptance... Sort of

"From the deepest desires often come the deadliest hate." - Socrates

Yesterday, Blizzard announced that Dragon Soul would receive the first of a series of progressive Nerfs, starting on January 31st. They are starting with a 5% reduction in health and damage dealt to all mobs in the instance. As well, there will be a way to toggle the Nerfs off, similar to how Icecrown Citadel's buff worked.

Now, I'm sure that many of you are thinking to yourself, "Oh shit, here he goes again. Another vitriol filled post about how much nerfs sucks and how they're ruining the game. Where's the fucking exit?"

Well, stick around; I don't plan on spewing any Nerf hate today. No sir, not me. Nuh-uh.

Now, while I'm no fan of Nerfs (as you may recall from this post from September), I am in a zen-like state of acceptance with this round of adjustments for a couple of different reasons:

Firstly, Blizzard approached these changes differently than previously in that they made no attempt to hide the fact that they were coming. Even before Dragon Soul was released on the live servers, the developers told us that they would be nerfed at some point. As well, they are giving us almost two weeks of notice before they come into effect. Contrast this approach with the sudden onset of the Firelands changes and it makes them a lot easier to accept.

Secondly, they are gradual. Looking again at Firelands, the nerfs that were implemented were savage in their  scope and extraordinarily sudden in their implementation. Such is not the case with Dragon Soul. Starting with a 5% reduction in all damage and health is reasonable and won't have such a jarring effect as the Firelands changes did. Dragon Soul will not turn into pale shadow of itself overnight; the adjustment period will be slow as the nerfs are gradually but progressively increased over the next few months.

Thirdly, they can be completely turned off to experience the fights at full difficulty. This brings back the successful buff system that Blizzard put into place for ICC, whereby talking to an NPC will turn off the Nerfs so a raid group can see the fights at full difficulty. This is a tiny bone to the hardcore players out there in an attempt to keep them happy by giving them the option to make the instance the original difficulty.

However, while it's nice to have I doubt this feature will ever be used—even by the extreme hardcore amongst us. And the reason is that there is no benefit to turning off the buffs other than self-satisfaction. With no way to tell whether a boss was killed with the Nerf on or off, any boss kill after the nerfs are implemented are tainted from a progression standpoint. I can say that I am 7/7 in Firelands, but anyone can look at the date of my Ragnaros achievement and see that it occurred after the Great Nerfening of September. That kill is valued less on a potential guild application than it would be if it had been done the week before. Dragon Soul will be the same.

Lastly, Dragon Soul normal modes are easy enough that it felt nerfed right from the beginning. So in that context, what does another Nerf matter? It's hard to get upset when something goes from easy to slightly easier.

I do have some questions though:

Why a raid-wide nerf? I don't think that a raid-wide buff was needed, honestly. Some of the bosses in normal modes could certainly use some tweaking: Zon'ozz, Ultraxion and Warmaster Blackhorn being the three that gave our raid team the most trouble. I sincerely believe that it's better to balance specific fights that are overtuned rather than nerf the entire instance. If a specific encounter is tuned such that the majority of people with the appropriate gear level cannot beat the encounter then by all means it should be re-balanced to bring it in line, but I feel the raid-wide approach is a bit like using a jackhammer to open a can of beans.

Why so fast? If, as Blizzard says, these Nerfs are being implemented because Raid Groups are hitting "brick walls" and not progressing, we now can gauge exactly what pace Blizzard expects their content to be cleared. These nerfs are appearing 9 weeks after Dragon Soul launched, meaning that Blizzard expects raiders to clear one boss per week at minimum before it considers them "stalled". Apparently, wiping on a boss for several weeks is now considered "hitting the wall" and "getting stuck on progression" and thereby grounds for nerfing the instance. Whereas in previous expansions wiping on a boss repeatedly was called "figuring out how to do shit" and an essential part of the learning process.

As with Firelands (which was nerfed in 12 weeks, giving slightly less than two weeks per boss), Blizzard isn't giving us enough time to figure things out. They continuously make more difficult and more elaborate dances in their encounters and are continually cutting short the time we have to learn them before getting heavy-handed with the nerfbat.

Kurn wrote an excellent article talking about the Dragon Soul nerfs and goes into a lot more detail on the timelines that previous instances have see in regards to difficulty changes. Check it out here: A Sigh of Resignation. She seems... uh... a little more angry about these nerfs than I am.


I AM THE PLAYER THESE NERFS ARE FOR

Matthew Rossi of WoW Insider shares an interesting statistic:

The Raid Finder is head and shoulders above normal mode raiding in terms of popularity. 35% of level 85 players have completed Raid Finder vs. 4% completing normal mode; that's a huge, huge shift. Keep in mind that Blizzard has more exacting statistics available internally, but this serves as an indicator of a trend.

On the surface, that is a shocking number. It seems like a lot of people have jumped in the Raid Finder at one point or another and have succeeded in killing Deathwing, far more than have done it on Normal difficulty. A 29% difference is significant, certainly, but let's think about this for a moment.

First of all, the statistic is for those players who have completed Dragon Soul by defeating the Madness of Deathwing encounter, something that can be done in the Raid Finder in an hour or two. Normal modes require a significantly larger investment in time, so it's not surprising that fewer people have completed it. Not only that, but divergent schedules of the raiders and other factors that aren't a concern in LFR can lead to slower progress. Nerfs can't fix that problem.

I don't know about your guild, but ours hasn't had enough time to even pull the Madness of Deathwing encounter yet after only 7 weeks of raiding, and yet I don't feel that we've hit a roadblock in our progression. In fact, at 7/8 I had thought we were making damned good progress towards our goal—until I heard about these nerfs that is. Now it seems that we're behind the curve and require some divine intervention from the developers.

I think Blizzard is making the classic mistake of underestimating it's user base. We're a resilient, intelligent bunch of people who are very good at figuring out what to do to get an encounter down given enough time.

I would be very interesting to see just how far people are getting in Dragon Soul without the nerfs. If 4% of level 85 characters have cleared Dragon Soul on normal, how many have gone 7/8 like me? How many are 4/8 and stuck on Ultraxion? How many are 2/8 and stuck on Zon'ozz? How many people just need more time to clear 8/8?

If specific encounters can be found that are causing the majority of the problems, then adjust those encounters to help those that are stuck and let the rest of us get back to work.


LEARNING TO ACCEPT REALITY

Frankly, I've come to accept that the days of the exquisitely difficult raid encounter are gone for good. No more will a raid encounter stubbornly refuse to yield to a dedicated and prepared raid group because the developers were feeling really evil when they designed it and just made that particular boss a massive son-of-a-bitch. The hard work, preparation and min-maxing that those encounters required are an out-dated mindset, apparently. And the raiders who enjoyed that type of challenge—the smart, resilient problem-solvers who think figuring out a problem is half the fun—are continually being marginalized.

If Blizzard feels that the raid is difficult enough that it is preventing people from completing it, then they should do what they feel is in the best interests of the health of their game. I can accept that.

Really, I don't much care what difficulty baseline Blizzard wants to set for it's raids. Whether it's incredibly hard, ridiculously easy or walking a fine tight-rope in between, I just want to complete the raid at the same difficulty level as the top-end guilds and everyone else. I don't want help and I don't want charity.

I'm not trying to sound elitist here. I don't consider myself a hardcore raider by any stretch of the imagination. I don't spend hours thinking about my spec or my gear or where I need to stand during an encounter. I have never run a gearing simulation and wouldn't know how to use a spreadsheet to tell me anything about WoW at all. All I do is show up and push buttons and dodge the fire until the boss dies.

If the fights are legitimately too hard, I'm all for nerfing them carefully and thoughtfully until they provide a good balance between challenge and accessibility to everyone. Everyone deserves to be able to play all aspects of this game, including Normal Mode raiding.

But I hope the developers never forget that there is a benefit to hard work. We as human beings learn from failure more than success. And while making raids simpler and easier is a good way to increase the overall number of raiders, allowing people to fail every once in a while—to truly have to work at something before succeeding—will make them better raiders.

This Week in Raiding: Dragon Soul First Impressions

Alrighty, now that the 50,000 Words project is done (and so help me if I see another screenshot again...) I can get back to writing about the game that I've been photographing for the past month. I would hate for Battle Medic to be known as just a screenshot blog.

There will be no screenshots in this post. I think I'm imaged out for a while.

As everyone knows, Patch 4.3 dropped Tuesday. Between a cranky computer that chose a horrible time to have a software glitch, a cranky baby that was overtired and dealing with a cold, and a cranky wife dealing with said baby, I didn't have a whole lot of opportunity to run the new content. I did manage to run End Time twice, once on my Paladin and once on my Shaman. End Time was a lot easier than I was expecting; very straightforward mechanics and what felt like low damage. I didn't really feel pushed all that much on either of my healers. End Time, at least, feels a lot easier than the Zandalari heroics and I am okay with that.

Last night Mountain Top went into the new raid instance Dragon Soul on Normal Mode for the first time. Our realm already has a number of 8/8 guilds, which made me optimistic that we would be able to get through it without too much trouble. From what I've heard, Dragon Soul is a lot easier than Firelands was, so long as the raid can manage the various different mechanics.

Without extensive preparation we managed to get three bosses down before we wiped to the Real Life boss. We spent about an hour and a half in a brand new, never-before-seen raid instance and yet still managed to easily one-shot Morchok and Yor'Sajh the Unchallenging Unsleeping. In addition, Zon'ozz fell after three or four pulls once we got the ball rolling, so to speak.

That's kinda nuts, really.

I really like the new 5-mans; they are short, well paced, absolutely stunning to look at and have the right amount of trash, I think. The boss encounters are easy enough to explain to a random group, and the entire dungeons can be completed quickly enough that they can be farmed without too much hassle. Which is what they are for, after all.

A raid, on the other hand, has to last. There is absolutely no reason that bosses should be killed on the first pull on the first attempt in the first week of a new raid - at least not by the non-hardcore crowd. Hell, some guilds have already 9-manned Morchok.

Now, as a disclaimer, we haven't pulled 5 of the bosses yet, so this may be premature, but I'm really worried that Normal Mode Dragon Soul is going to be easy enough that we'll blow through it in a week or two. And if this raid can be cleared by casual raiding guilds like Mountain Top so quickly, then unless the Heroic Modes are brutally, butt-clenchingly hard, the next five or six months until Mists of Pandaria comes out are going to be boring as hell. How long until we're through Heroic Modes and thinking, "What now?"

Mountain Top has never been a Heroic Mode guild - we have trouble getting the same people together each week and even more trouble getting a decent amount of time to raid. Five hours a week is about all we can manage on a good week, and quite often we're struggling to get more than two or three. With those time constraints, Heroic Modes always seemed out of reach. Now, however, with Dragon Soul it seems like Blizzard has lowered the bar for a guild like ours to get into them.

End game content in WoW has always been gobbled up extremely fast by the top-end guilds, and short of extremely restrictive gating mechanics (releasing the raid slowly over time, as they did with Trial of the Crusader and Icecrown Citadel) that's never going to change. Now, it seems as if Blizzard wants everyone to burn through the content just as quickly. I think this is a mistake.

When the Firelands were nerfed, I brought up the idea of the Tourist, which was received with a bit of controversy. Personally, I thought that the Looking For Raid difficulty level was going to be tailored for those people who couldn't or wouldn't run normal raids and just wanted to see the content to experience the story, but now it feels as if the Normal Modes are going that way as well.

Tonight we go back into Dragon Soul to see the remaining encounters for the first time. I would be very disappointed if we don't end this week at least 6/8, and wouldn't be the least bit surprised if Deathwing falls. Really, the only sticking point is how much time we'll have before we have a raider needs to leave in order to deal with the far more difficult fights with girlfriends, wives, babies and work.

It will be interesting to see where the numbers are in a few weeks. Will there be far more Guilds at 8/8 than Blizzard was expecting? And if Guilds do burn through the content as quickly as I suspect that they will, what is that going to do to the subscriber retention between now and Mists? Or, with the advent of the Yearly Subscription Pass does Blizzard even give a crap anymore, since the bribe of a pretty My Little Pony means that people aren't going anywhere and Blizzard has a free ride until the next expansion.

Time will tell, I guess.

I will say this, though, on a more positive note: I am enjoying the new content. Aside from the ease, I think the mechanics of the new bosses are quite cool, the scenery is beyond gorgeous and the sheer amount of lore that is stuffed into the raid and new heroic dungeons is amazing and engaging. I will be writing a lot more about the good things that Blizzard has given us in the coming days, I'm sure.

This Week In Raiding: The Next Logical Step?

The last couple of weeks have been very exciting for Mountain Top progression. Two lockouts ago we got Alysrazor down for the first time in what can only be described as another "Click" moment. This week marked the first time that we killed all five Firelands bosses that we've downed so far, plus Heroic Halfus in a single night, leaving us a full raid night to work on Majordomo Fandral Staghelm.

I'm pleased to say that, for the first time this tier, Mountain Top took down a progression boss on the first night of attempts. I had heard that the Staghelm encounter was relatively easy, but that the transitions were quite tricky. I think that most of our raid group went into the fight not really expecting a kill, but hoping for some good, solid progress on learning the fight.

It really surprised me, then, when in the midst of a promising pull that was about to turn into a wipe, I look down at the good Majordomo's health and see it sitting at 5%. I was completely gobsmacked. At that point it really felt as if we had really just started working on it, and yet the bastard was already practically dead? For me, that was the moment of emotional elation, and the point that I knew it was only a matter of time before we get our kill. The actual event itself was an anticlimax in comparison.

All that remains.

THE NEXT LOGICAL STEP?

With the death of the Majordomo, Mountain Top is 6/7 and has the end of this tier in sight - at least in the normal modes. This brings up the question: Once a casual guild is 7/7, what's next?

Do we progress into Heroic Modes? Even at this stage in T12, we've only ever attempted Heroic Halfus (the easiest of the T11 Heroic bosses).

Or, do we continue doing regular modes, farming for gear and then bringing in Alts (of which there are plenty in our guild) and less experienced raiders so that they can get geared up?

I think that for a hardcore raiding guild, this question is so easy that it's not even asked. Heroic modes are not just an option, they're the entire point. I have always imagined that for guilds like these, regular modes are merely an inconvenience; a tedious chore that needs to be completed as quickly as possible so that they can get to the real fights.

For a more casual guild, on the other hand, the idea of Heroic Modes gets much more complicated. Questions need to be asked and the Raid Leadership needs to take a critical look at the raid team. Is the team dedicated enough to put in the extra work that Heroic Modes will bring? Will morale hold while relearning a boss that everyone knows can be beaten easily with just the flip of a switch? Does the raid team have enough gear to even make Heroic Modes feasible? At what point do you make the switch? And probably most importantly, Does the Raid Team even want to do Heroic Modes?

For myself, I think that I would like to see this group tackle something really challenging. I'm very impressed with the quality of people that we have in our Raid Team and how far we've managed to come in a relatively short time - despite the many challenges we've faced. We've had to deal with hurricanes, two different medical emergencies, scheduling conflicts, gear drama, raid spot drama and a host of other things that make organizing each raid an epic adventure all on its own. And yet we've managed to make it this far.

I think that we've got enough talent on the roster to make a very good showing on the Heroic Modes if we could get everyone - including myself - committed to working their butts off to sharpen our play.

What I'm afraid of though, is that the desire to do heroic modes - to continue on past 7/7 normal - just isn't there.

I think what happens in a lot of casual guilds is that once the final boss of the instance lies dead at the guild's feet and the rush of emotion dissipates, the idea that "we're done" sets in. Why bother going back once we've already downed the end boss? Oh, the raids continue, but some people take a break, while others start bringing in Alts to get those characters geared up. Raiding continues, but progression stops.

And that's okay, too. Heroic modes aren't for every guild or for every player. If desire and commitment to move forward isn't there, attempting heroic modes isn't going to accomplish anything other than frustrating everybody.

There are many ways to fail at raiding, but there is only one way to succeed: The entire team has to share the same goal, and be willing to put in the blood and sweat needed to make it happen. And this isn't just about raiding, this is true of life in general.


A REALISTIC LOOK AT LOFTY GOALS

At the beginning of Cataclysm, I set myself the goal of finishing the normal modes of each tier while they were still current. I missed out on accomplishing that in Tier 11, but it seems almost certain that my guild and I will succeed in Tier 12.

If Mountain Top does decide to move on to the Heroic Modes, I will be the first one to sign up and will give it every ounce of dedication I have. But I think that if we do simply stall at 7/7 and get no further, I will be satisfied with a job well done. For me, at least, it will be a first and an accomplished goal that I can be proud of.

But I would very much like to test myself against the really hard fights that this game has to offer. I think that doing those fights would make me a better player. Odd as it may sound, I really love working on a new and difficult fight, and there is no sweeter moment than the successful kill after weeks of hard disappointment. I really want to experience that feeling knowing that I'm working on the hardest content in the game.

The real trouble with normal modes is that, no matter how sweet the taste of victory is, there is always the niggling doubt in my head that knows I am working on second tier content. It's like sitting at the kids table at Christmas; you're there and eating the same food, but the experience is lesser.

I would like, just once, to sit at the adults table in WoW. To get the full experience. To look back at a Raiding Tier and say to myself, "Yeah, I've done that shit".

But if I were to look realistically at my ability to dedicate time and effort to working on Heroic Modes, I wonder if I would pass my own criteria for a Heroic Mode raider? Can I dedicate the time, or rather, will the wife and Dwarfling allow me to dedicate the time to be successful? Do I honestly have the skills to be valuable to a Heroic Mode raiding team? Never having tried, I can honestly say I don't know.

But damn, I really want to try.
 
  

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.
 
 

Shannox Down - Identifying the Problem

A lot of people read my whining about Shannox in my last post and offered a lot of great tips on getting through the fight. Thank you everyone for your advice and comments.

Dead.

However, frustrated with our lack of success in Firelands, Mountain Top put together an off-night raid last night to take another crack at Shannox before the weekly reset. Sadly, both myself and our regular Death Knight Tank were unable to attend due to family issues.

They one-shot Shannox and killed Beth'tilac as well for good measure. Grats, Mountain Top!

The difference, as it turns out, was changing tanks. The Protection Warrior that replaced our regular DK tank was able to block a great deal of the incoming damage that was insta-gibbing our DK, which made the healing in the last phase a lot smoother and easier to deal with.

Also dead.

Don't get me wrong, our DK is a great tank and there is no one I would rather heal when the going gets tough, but reading the Blood DK forums over on Elitist Jerks confirms that a lot of DK tanks are having problems coping with the damage spikes in this encounter. The self-healing that the Blood spec uses to tank is seemingly less effective during intense, burst damage than the reliable mitigation from blocks that a Paladin or Warrior can expect.

It's no excuse, and it doesn't really change anything for next week when our Death Knight will be back getting beat on by Shannox. We'll still need to figure out a way to prevent him from dying.

But the bastard and his dogs are dead, and that makes me a happy Paladin.

Next up: Admiral McSpinnypants

 
   

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?

 

An Accusatory Slash and Five Harsh Letters

Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn't matter with me now, because I've been to the mountaintop. - Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

I posted a month ago about the difficulties that Shadowgarde was going through as this tier of raiding winds down. I'm sorry to say that things haven't gotten any better.

Since that post I feel like I've tried everything I could think of to get my guild raiding again. I attempted to recruit and organize a new raid team, which proved only marginally successful. We did manage to get a few raids off the ground by utilizing a fairly random cross-section of PUGers as getting guild members to show up was near impossible. The results were not quite disastrous, but hardly high-end progression. I really felt like we were spinning our wheels and sliding backwards.

Short of cattle-prods or cash bribes, I don't really know what else to do to get people motivated and raiding again. Shadowgarde has always been a casual and social guild that raided, but it seems as though almost all of the core group of raiders have drifted away from the game or from raiding to other things, so staying is not an ideal situation for someone who still has the Progression Bug. Moving my main to a more active raiding guild was the logical choice, rather than trying to turn a guild into something it's not.

However, I am glad that I decided to try to get raiding back on track. I feel like it would have been discourteous to sneak out in the middle of the night when our raiding stumbled without at least giving it a solid effort to turn it around.

Typing /gquit felt decidedly harder than I thought it would. That slash at the front of the word seemed very accusatory, and the five letters that followed it have a nasty, unsavoury look about them.

END OF AN ERA

"Today is your day! Your mountain is waiting. So... get on your way." - Dr. Seuss

I admit that I've been quietly shopping for a new raiding guild since I wrote Unfamiliar Waters, just in case things didn't work out. Even before writing it I had started paying attention to the Guild Recruitment spam in Trade Chat again, and I had been checking out the odd guild website but not really finding anything that really intrigued me enough to put in an application.

However, the real impetus to actually make the move was when my good friend and Shadowgarde guildie mentioned to me that he was thinking of finding a more active raiding guild as well. Having some support really kicked things into high gear, and two days, one Mumble interview and one exceptionally smooth run through five of the Blackwing Descent bosses, I am now a member of Mountain Top. 

Mountain Top is a new guild created by a couple of people that I've come to know from the WoW Twitter community: Gniesha and Mylindara. I approached Gniesha (who is a regular reader and commenter of Battle Medic and Dear Dwarfling, a blogger, and a very flirty Twitterer) about her new guild and before long, we were in their Mumble channel chatting away like old friends. These folks seem like a lot of fun to be around, and seemed to be genuinely excited about having me come on board, which fells really great.

"We will stomp to the top with the wind in our teeth." - George Mallory, English mountaineer who died climbing Mount Everest.

One of the nice things about joining a newly formed guild is the opportunity to get in on the ground floor. While it seems as if Mountain Top's goals and attitudes are compatible with my own, there is a much greater chance to have an influence on the direction of a new guild than there would be if I joined up with a large guild that already had their culture, policies and attitudes established for a long time. This new guild will evolve and grow as it establishes itself, and I get to be there from the beginning (well, practically, they started two weeks ago) to see where it goes and perhaps nudge it's direction now and then with a suggestion or two. That's almost as exciting as starting my own guild, but without all the paperwork and ulcers.

A POTENTIAL CATCH

If there is one thing that I'm worried about, it's that their raiding schedule is not yet set. When my guidie and I talked about leaving Shadowgarde, we made a pact that no matter where we went, we would go together. His schedule is even more hectic and uncertain than my own, so finding a raiding guild that will not only welcome both of us together, has the attitude and skill we are looking for, and yet still works for both of our schedules is a daunting challenge. Time will tell all, but I'm hoping Mountain Top is that guild.

Mountain Top

This Week in Raiding: Unfamiliar Waters

I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.

The Litany Against Fear from Frank Herbert's Dune

In recent weeks my guild has run into a wall.

Shadowgarde needs healers

Call it the summer doldrums or boredom from running the same raids for four months, but our raiding has pretty much stopped in its tracks. The raid group that began the expansion with such promise and progress has fallen to the attendance boss for the past three weeks: A boss that is impossible in its mechanics, and has a very poor loot table.

Our Raid Leaders have given up on trying to get raids together after losing a few people. Our tanks have disappeared. One of our healers wanted to switch and start raiding with his warrior, and then quit the guild when he felt that that wasn't going to happen. Our Raid Leader is leaving for the summer.

Nine bosses out of twelve down and we give up. Speaking personally, it’s very frustrating to see my goal so close and then see progression ended simply because the weather has improved.

It has left me with a few options if I want to continue raiding before the next tier becomes a reality in Patch 4.2:

1. Continue as is and hope that the raid group reforms. 
2. PUG or run with a different guild.
3. Quit Shadowgarde and join another guild, hoping to get a roster spot. Not an encouraging prospect.
4. Suck it up and lead my own raid group.

Simply waiting for the problem to solve itself is not an option because it simply won't happen and everybody involved knows it. If history has taught me anything with this guild it's that Raiding runs hot and cold, and after an intense hot patch to start the expansion we are moving into a lull.

Option two or three would be the easiest option in many ways. It's easy to run away from a problem and join another guild, but all I would be doing is moving from a group with known issues to one with unknown problems. And it would mean abandoning the effort that I have put into this guild. I have been there for over a year now, and I like the people in it very much. I have worked very hard to fit in to the guild and to become a respected member. Leaving Shadowgarde is something that I really don't want to be forced to consider, but if eventually it turns out that my goals are incompatible with the guild's then it may eventually be my only option. Frankly, it sickens me to even have to be thinking about it.

I admit, out of all these choices, leading my own group is by far the most intimidating. I have never led a raid before, nor have I ever really even considered it. Do I have the situational awareness to successfully manage a raid during a fight? Do I have the ability to get people dancing to the right tune without becoming a shrill, demanding dictator? Will anybody even listen to me? Hell, will I even be able to find enough people to fill a raid?

I have always been the guild cheerleader in many ways. I've always been the guy who offers up the "Good attempt, we'll get him" encouragements after a wipe and the one who cracks jokes and tries to keep the mood light when things are getting tense. But I rarely get into discussions regarding the strategy beyond talking about healing assignments. An actual leadership role is entirely foreign territory.

All that being said, I am jumping somewhat blindly into the unfamiliar waters of Raid Leading. I guess I'll learn if I can swim once I'm submerged into it.

Our first raid is scheduled for this coming Sunday, so I have a full week to prepare myself and assemble my team. I think we'll be okay for Tanks, even though our Bear off-tank is a little rusty and not geared as well as I would like to see. Our DPS will be fine as well, I think; with a mix of newer raiders and (hopefully) a couple of seasoned people who have been raiding with this group from the beginning.

The big concern I have is healers. Aside from me, I have no idea where the other healers are going to come from. I am likely going to have to do some heavy recruiting this week and see if I can snag a raid-ready healer or two.

And then there are the fights themselves. I've always studied the fights from a healers perspective, but now I'm going to have to explain them to everyone and give people assignments. Which mean I'm going to need a great deal more detailed knowledge about what's going on. And I'm going to need to learn how to communicate what is going on and what I need people to do clearly. "Avoid the giant purple puke" isn't going to cut it.

Luckily I have the help and support of my friend and co-leader, Medea, who is an experienced raid leader and our main tank. So I'm not doing this entirely alone.

I have to admit that I am exited and terrified at this new challenge. I honestly never thought that I would be doing this. Does anyone have any advice for a fledgling Raid Leader about to take the dive?
 
 

This Week in Raiding: Healing Omnotron Defense System

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 we have the Omnotron Defense Council encounter from the perspective of the Holy Paladin, although much of this article will be useful to all healing classes.  This is not a strategy guide, but everything that you need to know to heal this encounter successfully.  If you would like a more detailed description of the fight and overall strategy, please check out Tankspot's write up and video.

The Omnotron Defense System is a group of four Golems that make up what is typically considered the second boss encounter in Blackwing Descent.  It is a Council style fight; the bosses share a health pool and have a lot of abilities, making this a complex and chaotic fight.  Environmental awareness from the raiders and clear communication from the raid leader are keys to downing this fight reliably.

My raiding team uses the following raid composition for this fight:  Two tanks, three healers and 5 DPS.  A typical raid composition for 25 man would be Two tanks, six healers and seventeen DPS.

IN THIS CORNER, THE BOSSES

Magmatron is the fire boss.  He has two abilities that are going to make a healers life difficult: Incineration Security Measure and Flamethrower.  

• Incineration Security Measure is a raid-wide area-of-effect flame ability.  It has a very obvious flame graphic that is impossible to miss.  You can't avoid this damage, even thought the graphic makes it look like you can, so don't try.
• Flamethrower is a single target ability that shoots a jet of flame, does a lot of damage and is preceded by Acquiring Target, which projects a very large and obvious red laser beam at it's target for four seconds.  The raid needs to run away from the path of the laser beam, and the person targeted needs to stand still so that they don't spread the damage to other people.  The healers should start precasting heals or use mitigation cooldowns on the target in order to ensure survival.  As a Paladin, if you Divine Shield yourself while the laser is targeting you it will cancel the effect entirely, and Magmatron will not cast his flamethrower.  Hand of Protection has no effect on this ability.

Toxitron is the poison boss.  His bag of tricks consists of Poison Cloud and Poison Protocol.

• Poison Cloud. Toxitron will periodically spew poison clouds at a random target that gives whoever stands in them a 50% increased damage debuff.  This includes the boss, so it's likely that your tank will try to stand the boss in the cloud, so be ready to heal through the extra damage if your tank isn't positioned perfectly.
• Poison Protocol is the ability that caused my raid group the most difficulty.  The boss will release 3 poison slimes that will randomly target a player and move towards them.  If they reach their target, they explode and create a large poison puddle.  Getting hit by a slime is instant death.  They are untauntable and need to be burned down by the DPS as quickly as possible.  Avoid them at all costs (See below).

Electron is the lightning boss.  He does Electrical Discharge and Lightning Conductor.

• Electrical Discharge is a fairly straight-forward chain lightning ability.  Spread out a minimum of 8 yards and be mindful of other people moving close to you.  It is not hugely damaging unless it's being spread to a lot of people.
• Lightning Conductor is placed on a random raid member and will do electrical damage to that person and anyone around it.  If it is placed on you, run out of the raid.  As well, be aware of other people around you who have it and stay away from them, especially if it happens to be on the tank.

Arcanotron is the magic boss and he is responsible for Power Generator and Arcane Annihilator. 

• Arcane Annihilator is a large damage, single target ability that will be the responsibility of your tanks and melee damage dealers to interrupt.  As a healer, be aware of sudden health dips when Arcanotron is up.
• Power Generator is a hugely important mechanic for all casters, including the healers.  Arcanotron will put a puddle underneath his feet which will increase his damage significantly.  It's the tanks job to move him out of this.  The ranged DPS and the healers should stand in it for a damage boost and mana regeneration (See below).

Shields:  Two bosses will be active at any given time (except the very beginning), one active and one protected by a shield.  It's vitally important not to attack the boss with the shield active.  Each shield has a powerful effect that will go off if it is damaged, so target switching is extremely important.  Even a stray Judgement can cause a ridiculous amount of damage to the raid.

The only exception is Toxitron's Poison Soaked Shell, which will put a stacking damage-over-time debuff on anyone who attacks it, but also gives a large burst damage increase.  This debuff can be Cleansed, but many raiders will pick up a couple of stacks intentionally for the extra damage.  Ask beforehand if your raid leader wants it cleansed, but in my experience, just leave it if the person who has it is in no danger of dying.  Watch their health closely though, in case they get a bit overzealous in grabbing stacks.


JUDGING

As always, Judge as often as you can for the mana regeneration.

If you are using your Focus Target to determine your Judgement targets, it's important to put it on the right person in this fight.  It is not optimal to Focus/Judge on a tank on this fight because 50% of the time the tank is going to be targeting a boss with his Shield up.  It's better to Focus on a Ranged DPS who is reliable at switching targets, and it's even better to focus on the Raid Leader who is calling out the switches, if possible.

Judging the wrong target on this fight could potentially cause a lot of damage to your raid.  Be careful of your targets!


MANA MANAGEMENT

(or Using Power Generator for Fun and Profit!)

Arcanotron will create a blue puddle on the ground which will give him or whoever is standing in it a damage buff.  Your tank will move him out of this puddle.  You need to stand in this puddle as much as you can, as it regenerates mana while you stand in it.   

Power Generator also grants a damage buff as well, so your caster DPS is going to want to jump in the puddle with you, which most of the time is fine.  It gets problematic when Arcanotron and Electron are up at the same time, however, the chain lightning will cause an insane amount of damage if half the raid is stacked up, costing more mana to heal than will be gained from the puddle.

It's best to keep the DPS out of the Power Generator in this case, and let the healers regenerate their mana.  The damage caused by Electrical Discharge chaining to the 2 or 3 healers (5 or 6 in 25man) is very easy to heal through.  Talk to your raid leader about this if it becomes a problem.


DIVINE PLEA

There is no excellent and obvious period of low damage in this fight to regenerate mana using Divine Plea, so I recommend using Guardian of the Ancient Kings to offset the 50% healing reduction.  Since GAK has a 5 minute cooldown, you can only do this combination once during the fight.  If you are having major mana problems, use Avenging Wrath and Divine Favor in combination with Divine Plea throughout the fight.

If I am on the ball and using the Power Generator wisely, I find that I only need to use Divine Plea once during this fight, so GAK is a perfect offsetting cooldown.  Use your discretion based on your own mana needs.

If you have any Spirit trinkets - like Core of Ripeness - use those on cooldown.

LIGHT OF DAWN OR WORD OF GLORY?

In the 10-man version of this fight, your raid is going to be spread out a lot making it difficult to hit the 5 (or 6, glyphed) people needed to really make Light of Dawn worth it, so Word of Glory is a stronger choice most of the time.  With the increased amount of people in a 25 person raid, Light of Dawn would be the go-to Holy Power heal much of the time.  Just be mindful of how many people you will hit with your LoD before you cast it; if it looks like you won't hit 5 people (pets count too, remember), then go with WoG.

When everyone stacks in the Power Generator, Light of Dawn will be much easier to use effectively in 10-man.

WHERE THE HECK IS EVERYONE?

For a healer, range awareness is key to this fight, as everyone will be moving around a lot and can easily get out of range at a crucial time, causing a death. Stay in the middle of the room as much as you can, and be prepared to move to either side as the situation warrants. Keep an eye on your tanks and make sure that you keep them in range.


USING BEACON OF LIGHT

One of the tanks will get the Beacon of Light. There will be only one boss when the encounter begins, so put your Beacon on that tank.

If you are finding that one of the tanks is out of range a lot, put the Beacon on him instead. Beacon of Light has a 60 yard range, far greater than any of a Paladin's heals. This way you can ensure that if a tank is out of range he is still going to be receiving some healing while you reposition yourself to get within range again.

Unless your raid has incredibly high DPS, this fight will last longer than the five-minute duration of your Beacon, so be prepared to reapply it as needed.


HELP! THE SLIMES WANT TO EAT ME!

Probably the single most frequent cause of wipes on this encounter will be Poison Protocol.  It sounds simple in theory:  Avoid the Slimes.  It's a bit harder in practice, however.

• First thing to do is position yourself as far away from Toxitron as you can while he's active.  Space can get a little tight when both Toxitron and Electron are up, but I'd rather let an Electrical Discharge chain once or twice than be too close to the Slimes when they spawn.
• Set up your Raid Frames to show Aggro.  I have a big, menacing looking red box around my frames to indicate aggro that is hard to miss.  Hopefully your Raid Leader will call out the Slime targets as well.  Either way, once you realize you are targeted by a Slime, start running away from it.  The Slime will only explode if it hits it's target, so it's absolutely vital that it doesn't get to you.  Healing does not matter as much at this point.
• Run around the outside of the room to give your DPS the most time to burn down the Slimes.
• Use the Speed of Light speed bonus from Holy Radiance to put some distance between you and your Slime.  This will also spread some heals around the room as you run.
• Do not let it get too close to you.  It has a much larger range than it would seem.

AURAS AND COOLDOWNS

Try to have Resistance Aura up so that can use Aura Mastery during Magmatron's Incineration Security Measure AOE. If you can time it correctly, you can have double resistance for the entire time this ability is active, substantially reducing damage.

Devotion Aura is much less useful for a Holy Paladin in this fight, as the incoming physical damage is very light. Let another Paladin or a Shaman put that buff on the raid.

Save using your first cooldown until the second boss activates. Aside from Magmatron, the damage caused by a single boss is very minor - Toxitron especially. Divine Favor and Avenging Wrath should be used as often as you can, unless you are saving them to offset Divine Plea (see above). I prefer to save them and hit them just after a boss switch. Magmatron is the big AOE damage dealer in this fight, so if you are assigned to healing the raid, save your cooldowns for when he's active.

Hand of Sacrifice is best used on the target of Flamethrower, or on a tank that is taking extra damage from standing in a Poison Cloud.

Save Divine Shield for Flamethrower. If you are targeted by Acquiring Target, hit your bubble and the flamethrower will not go off at all. If Divine Shield is on cooldown, use Divine Protection to help mitigate some of the damage.

Guardian of the Ancient Kings should be saved to offset the Divine Plea debuff (see above).


THE PAYOFF

Omnotron Defense Council drop two items that are good for Holy Paladins: Security Measure Alpha and Life Force Chargers. Both are worth getting.


* Big thanks Ophelie and Leetsauced for answering a few questions on Omnotron 25, and Rades for helping me get the Wowhead hoverlinks working.  Thanks, everyone!

This Week in Raiding: How Long is Your Raid

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 the lovely and talented Ophelie from Bossy Pally and the Giant Spoon offers a guest post on Raid Lengths, proving that it is possible to be so full of awesomesauce that it could be bottled and sold in very upscale boutiques.


Hi everyone, Ophelie here from Bossy Pally. I'm helping entertain you keep things moving here while Fannon is spending time with his new family.

Since Fannon writes quite a bit about raiding, I thought I'd keep with the theme and write about raid lengths. That's right, lets forget about the size discussions for awhile. It's all about length today. (I'm fully aware of all the possible dirty jokes I could make here, but I'll be a good guest and spare you all my juvenile sense of humour.) 


HOW MUCH DOES LENGTH MATTER?

When shopping for a raiding guild, the raid schedule is most likely one of the first things you try to dig up on a guild website. (Why so many guilds bury their raid schedules under pages of uselessness, I'll never understand.) You check which days of the week they raid, how often they raid, if they raid at times where you'll be occupied with your real life dailies... But how much importance do you attribute to how long they raid?

Me, I'm really picky about raid lengths. Too short and the raid will be over by the time we get warmed up, too long and I'll inadvertently wander off, like a bored child in a shopping mall.

From my guild shopping experience, I'd estimate that most teams raid for 3 to 4 hours. Yet you'll occasionally come across some guilds that raid for less than 2 hours, and others with 8 or more hour long raids.


Making the most of your time

Do you have trouble starting on time? Do people randomly go afk? Do you frequently have players leaving before the raid ends?

If you notice a lot of time wasting, chances are your raids are too long. Your teammates are taking their precious raid minutes for granted. Or maybe your teammates just have the attention span of a newborn goldfish. Either way, too long, too long, too long. Cut, cut, cut.

Not the players, the raid. If you can't start on time, consider pushing back raid start-time by 30 minute. If a lot of people are leaving before finish time, think about chopping 30 minutes from the end of the raid. If people are wandering off outside of breaks, cut whichever side of the raid you prefer. You goal is to make sure that your team is able to sustain interest in what they're doing, newborn goldfish or not newborn goldfish. They need to be able to appreciate the time they spend getting smacked around by virtual monsters.

Obviously, be reasonable here, if you only have 1 or 2 players who are unreliable, and they're consistently unreliable, maybe the raids are too long for them but changing everyone's schedule is silly. If you really like those people and you're of the accommodating type, guilds who do those scary marathon days often swap players in and out after a few hours. If you have a few goldfish raiders, there's nothing stopping you from setting up a similar arrangement for your goldfish to relay each other (breaks make for great hello/goodbye time).


Time Perception: It's Like One of those Visual Illusion Thingies

Pretty much every team I've raided with had 3 hour raids. Most of the time, that's way longer than my attention span (I confess to being a goldfish) and this happens:

Me: ....
Me: ....
Me: Sorry was alt tabbed out.

But sometimes this happens:

Me: WHAT DO YOU MEAN LAST PULL?

What makes time fly during a raid?

• Limited dead time (in other words, fast recovery from wipes, no waiting around)
• Being encouraged to participate in strategy adjustment discussions
• Novelty (this includes new approaches to an old fight)
• A feeling of learning something
• A feeling of teamwork or, at very least, camaraderie (according to my very unscientific and highly biased personal experience, the perceived length of raids is inversely proportional to the number of times the /flirt emote is used)

The Time Spent Raiding Sweet Spot

My paladin grew up on a PvE, fairly casual server during BC and early Wrath. There was one guild that aimed to be "hardcore". They had 6 hour raids several times a week (note: I don't know for sure if this was true or not, but for the sake of the moral of the story, we're going to pretend it was true). Rumour had it that they did all the "hardcore" things: forcing standby players to stand outside the instance during raids , raid kicking anyone who screwed up, imposing unreasonable farming quotas.

"Wow", I used to think. "They're so hardcore."

Then, one day, I transferred to a more progressive server. I quickly realized that the "hardcore" guild was only hardcore in attitude. Their boss kills were nothing out of the ordinary. Despite raiding about 20 hours a week and treating their players badly, they were hardly progressive.

At the other end of the spectrum is Imperative, one of those super intimidating top world guilds. Even though they only raid for 3.5 hours at a time, they cause heroic bosses to seize up and topple over dead wherever they go.

It's like that "Studying for Exams Curve", where the more you study, the better grade you get, up to a certain point, where studying more stops having much of an effect. Everyone plateaus out at some point, and the key to being efficient means finding that sweet spot.




Time, the Elusive Resource

Whether you're raid scheduling or you're shopping for a raid team, keep the sweet spot in mind. The team's sweet spot and your own. Time is a rare, special thing, and you want to make the most of it.