Sunday, April 20, 2008

At least we got each others backs

Well our first night in Kara this past week went fine... we downed the first 5 bosses. It was definitely a tanky night in that all of the usable drops went to Jess and Wut. Not a single drop for the healers or casters. And Maiden is still being difficult, keeping her healing drops from us. Grrr. Oh and we finally had something besides Oz for the opera event. We had Big Bad Wolf. It was pretty funny and cute I thought. I think we had 4 people die, but took him down on our first shot. I think Jess did say this was pretty common... that Big Bad Wolf can be a high attrition fight.

Second night we went straight for Shade, but I don't know... it may have just been an off night for us because before we even got there, we wiped a bit on trash. Sad pic of the carnage above. So if we have gotten past Curator already, gear wise should we be getting past Shade? Because we seem to have hit the wall with him. And the wall hurts... its hard... and all brick like. Well to be honest it was only our second night at him, but remember we've become used to taking down these bosses relatively easily... at least by the second night at one! Yes I know, we've become spoiled. Hmmm, I wonder if Im even allowed to call this hitting a wall. How many nights must you wipe on a boss before it is officially deemed a wall?

Well so far in Shade it seems we lose a ranged dps early in the fight or Suzzy and I die when the water elementals spawn. For one try, it ended up being just the two tanks and I left. We lasted a pretty decent amount of time, but its not like Jess and Wut do a lot of dps. Eventually I ran out of mana and we were done.

I think we're also trying to balance casual vs more serious raiding vs how we played the game before. I think we're trying to see exactly where more appropriate talent specs, enchants, and gems play into what we want or need to do. I think we're going through this phase where we're transitioning into a new game for us, different from the game we've been playing... and perhaps even defining for ourselves what this new phase should look like.

I do think we can do it, and if there is one thing we do well, is have each others backs. See below for a pic where Adamas and Jess died. I think it's sorta sweet... its kinda like Adamas wanted to save Jess and tried to shield Jess with his body. What a gentleman. They do make a super cute couple, with their matching white ponytails. All together now, 'Awww'!


  1. "Go Claw" - I agree Shade is a wall I think to begin with at least(speaking from my shadow priests perspective not the druid that you know here), I think that while Curator is a gear check, Shade is the first real challenge to the raids "focus" and co-ordination. Knowing when to move when not to move is ok in theory sometimes, however in practice it can be far trickier to execute (insert random finger twitch causing forward movement by holding 2 mouse buttons down at the worst possible moment). My own old (casual) guild bashed our faces on that very wall for 2 full nights, On the upside I found the rest of the kara fights easier to learn and execute after this. Even when we had Kara on farm now and then Shade would give us the odd problem. But the portal makes it worth it. Keep up the progress "we" cleared Karazhan in almost exactly 4 weeks, looks like The Left Claw is way ahead.

    PS. I've not tried Prince since all the "safe spots" where removed of course.

  2. I agree with Kestra that Aran just requires a lot of concentration and focus. When I was learning this fight it took ma a long time to understand that it was more important to stay alive than to do max dps (I'm a mage).
    My tip would be to tell the dps to ensure firstly that they are not getting any unncessary damage by staying out of the blizzard, not moving in the fire phase and running from the arcane explosion. Then just set up rogues, mages and whoever can interrupt his random attacks to some kind of system that works for you and dps where you can. Don't try to rush it. Aran is not a gear check as Kestra said.

  3. Just a few subtle pointers in case your raid missed.

    - During flame wreath, you cannot move AT ALL. Not only you cannot move up or down, but you cannot TURN left or right either. If you are a healer, you cannot use space bar/movement to cancel your heals. Just let heals land.

    - Wear stamina gears. Everyone should aim to have 8k HP buffed. Try not to wear Primal Mooncloth Set as it gives no stamina. And you don't need mana regen in this fight.

    - Have one healing pot or HS ready. Use it after you come out of sheep+polyblast.

    These will allow you to eliminate all the silly mistakes, the rest is simply execution.

  4. Aran is a coordination check.. it may take time to get down, but it will prepare you for fights like Al'ar, Leotheras, and even Kael'thas...

    What you can do is attempt him a few times, and when you have 30 minutes or so left, go do chess, that way you get free loot and badges every week, while still working on him

  5. Having two warlocks in your raid makes Aran much easier. When he summons the elementals, have each warlock banish one and fear another. You might still have random damage from them, but you won't have four of them beating on you at once.

    The rest of the fight is what's affectionately known as an "idiot check." As long as people don't die or take damage from easily avoidable sources like flame wreath , blizzard, and arcane explosion you guys and girls will have him dead very soon. :)

    Oh and if two days of attempts is a wall, I don't even know what you'd call my old guild's four weeks of attempts on Lady Vashj. I wouldn't wish that "fun" on anyone. o.O

  6. Oh so can the elementals that spawn be CCed? Or is it just warlocks that can do that? I think we are pretty good with not moving during flamewreath. That's not what gets us most of the time. Is the healers dying by the water elementals.

  7. elementals can be banished, feared, stunned, etc, and they despawn after i think 90 seconds.

    Jessika should drop her fear first, when the mobs are tightly packed and then make a fear/stun to keep them occupied until they despawn.

    The other very important thing to keep in mind is the interrupt rotation. ideally none of his fireballs and frostbolts should be going through.

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  9. Eles can definitely be CCed by any class that can fear. I'm not sure how their aggro tables work, as the entire time I was learning the fight on progression we went with the "banish and fear" strategy. They MIGHT be able to be tanked by a prot paladin or a feral druid...

    Word is Blizzard's changing the mechanics of his polymorph in 2.3.2, causing it to NOT regen health. This could make one of the harder fights in Kara even more difficult. Good Luck!!

  10. Normally in regard to the elementals we just kill them, having not always got a lock available for banish... they can be tanked, but are very hard to re-position seeing as they are casters.
    leave a rogue or some kind of interupter on aran to help stop some of the damage he does, and then have the tanks pick up the elementals until the ranged can nuke them down. then switch back to killing aran.

    you can move during flame wreath if you are not actually incased in flame, or next to somebody who is...

    with no offence intended, i would also ignore the comment on not wearing PMC gear if you have it, you need all the +heal and regen you can get, and plus, at this level any other gear you will have will not be anywhere as good as it, seeing that it is easily comparable to t5.
    instead i would suggest wearing some higher stam trinkets/rings or if you are pvp minded, the vindicator gear, which as a priest healer i can't recommend highly enough. the neck, wrist and ring will last you until T5.

    another tip i would recommend, especially for pally healers, is a macro for targeting your targets target and casting a heal straight away. it goes something like target=targetstarget /cast flash of light /targetlasttarget, cant think off the top of my head you can google it im sure.
    basically you can jsut sit with aran targeted and heal whoever he has targeted without having to change targets.

    I think i just used my weekly quota of the word target there...