Project Lore

So by now we have all heard about the great stuff coming in patch 3.2. While mount changes, battlegrounds, and dailies are fun and all… I wanted to take a second to talk about what, to me, is the most exciting thing about any content patch. The new raid!

As many of you have figured out by now, raiding is really what I play this game for so naturally I want as many details on the new Crusaders Colosseum as possible. Unfortunately at this point, details are a bit lacking. So that just leaves me to do one thing: make wild assumptions based on too little information and discuss possibilities that may have no basis in fact!

So let me first say this. I am a bit skeptical about this whole “ring of blood, but more epic” thing. When we first heard about Ulduar the possibilities seemed limitless. It was a huge dungeon with a great story 14 bosses tons of hard modes. Sounded great! This on the other hand sounds like it could very well be a hole in the wall that bosses come out of.

Perhaps that is what some people want. No trash, no dungeons to walk through, just one room where bosses come and drop their loot. I honestly hope this isn’t the case. To me raiding a new dungeon is more about the experience than just the bosses. It’s no wonder some of my favorite raids of all time are the ones with story and tons of design like Karazhan, Black Temple, and even Ulduar.

In my mind the only basis for comparison I can even think for the new Colloseum would maybe be Violet Hold, or perhaps on a bigger scale Mount Hyjal. Those were both dungeons when the mobs and bosses came to you. But if Blizzard is comparing this to Ring of Blood (which we have already done 3 times by the way), then it makes me question if trash will even be in the equation. Seems a bit lazy from a design perspective.

I guess we can only hope for some really interesting boss fights to hold us over until Icecrown. While I’m not totally discouraged just yet, let me say I can only hope that Blizzard has some good tricks up their sleeve.

Until we get more details all we can do is wonder. So what do you guys think?

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My guild took down Mimiron last week, knocking off the last of the Keepers of Ulduar. It was an exciting kill that took a fair amount of coordination and strategy adjustment. Touted as one of the most challenging bosses in the instance, Mimiron is a complicated encounter, but it shouldn't roadblock a well-prepared guild. When bosses have multiple distinct phases, like Mimiron, they tend to develop a reputation for being extremely difficult. Images of Kael'thas or Illidan begin to cross players' minds. Sometimes players can build these bosses up and place them on pedestals to the point that it actually makes them harder. Is this a tough fight? Yes, I would agree that Mimiron is probably more complex than almost anything we've seen in WotLK up until this point. (I haven't had the pleasure to attempt Yogg-Saron, yet.) However, my "medium-core" guild bested the clockwork gnome and his inventions on the third night of attempts and claimed his incredibly yummy trinket, Pandora's Plea. As a raid leader, I have found the best way to combat encounters like this is to treat each phase as a separate mini-boss. Explain the first phase of the fight to the raid, give out assignments and then go. It's better to get an attempt under your belt before you lose your audience to napping and afk runs for Pop Tarts. While running back after a wipe, go over what you observed and tweak your strategy. The more familiar your raid is with the fight, the better you will do, so make sure you are spending more time fighting the boss, than talking about it. When you make it to phase 2, or know you are close, then go over the basic strategy for the next phase. Rinse and repeat. Make sure your raid members have all read the boss strategies and watched movies of the boss in advance of the attempts. Do not underestimate the importance of having a well-prepared raid. Sure you're going to go over the fight, but it's better to have 25 people with ideas, than relying on one raid leader. On the other hand, written strategies and movies are only going to get you so far. On complex encounters it's the adjustments you make to the basic strategy that will determine your success. Every raid is different and will have different strengths and weaknesses that you must cater to in order to succeed. Here are some of the adjustments and tweaks my guild had to make in order to get this boss down. As I mentioned, every raid is different and some suggestions may have value to you and some may not. These are some of the things that worked for us and perhaps they can help you too. If you don't know the basic strategy for this fight, please click here first, as these tips assume you already know the basic strategy. Phase 1: Leviathan MKII

• When the melee and tank run away from the boss to avoid shock blast, don't run too far. There are three stripes on the ground with circles in them, which divide the room. If the boss is positioned in the center of the room, you only need to run to the second circle on the ground. If the tank is running too far, the boss will get out of position and possibly lay a set of proximity mines too close to the casters and healers.
• The plasma blasts deal an insane amount of damage. Even with a proper cooldown rotation established, all of the healers need to be focused on keeping the tank alive. Every healer that is assigned to use cooldowns on the tank, such as pain suppression, guardian spirit or hand of sacrifice should have another healer near them in case they get hit with a napalm shell at an inopportune moment.
• Your raid members should know their jobs and what to do, however, having someone diligently calling out things over ventrilo can help your raid stay alive. Giving your group a few second warning on shock blast and plasma blast, can make a difference when you're learning the fight.

Phase 2: VX-001 Anti-personnel Assault Cannon

• We tried having the melee constantly rotating around the boss to avoid rapid bursts, but it didn't work well for us. So we assigned everyone a specific place to stand. The room has three stripes on the floor, which divide the rest of the room into wedges. The positioning we ended up with was dividing the ranged and healers into three groups and assigning each a wedge to stand in. The melee was also divided into three groups and each group was assigned a stripe to stand on. The rapid bursts would then have six distinct targets to choose from and each time the damage would only be hitting 3-4 raid members at a time.
• Have someone watch the back of the VX-001 and call out when they see the rockets launching, so the ranged classes can avoid them. They do five million damage to those that get hit! Fortunately, as of patch 3.1.3, the rockets don't seem to target the melee anymore. Someone should also call out when they see the boss casting spinning up, which will lead to laser barrage. Everyone needs to run around clockwise to avoid getting hit by this.

Phase 3: Aerial Command Unit (ACU)

• Everyone should group up on one side and be as close to the outer walls as possible. The ranged DPS tank for the Aerial Command Unit needs to make sure it is positioned well away from the raid, but it also cannot be directly in the center of the room. We found that the magnetic cores had trouble rooting the ACU when he was positioned in the center. If the ACU gets too close to the raid, it will drop bomb bots directly on top of them.
• The bomb bots can be dealt with by having one death knight using the following macro:

/target bomb bot /cast chains of ice

• When a bomb bot spawns, call for ranged DPS to kill it and the death knight can keep it place by hitting the macro. If a bomb ever gets to close to the raid, the death knight can Death Grip it away from them.
• The raids in our guild usually have a lot of melee DPS in them. We found that saving two magnetic cores and using them in immediate succession allowed for more DPS on the ACU and less running back and forth. You have to be cautious with this strategy, however. After you loot a magnetic core, it only lasts in your inventory for one minute. So I recommend leaving the cores on the assault bots' corpses until you are ready to root the ACU.

Phase 4: V-07-TR-0N

• Phase 4 can be a chaotic mess and all three parts of the gnomish Voltron need to be killed within 10 seconds of each other, otherwise they respawn. We had everyone go back to their assigned positions from phase 2. We asked all of our ranged DPS to focus on the ACU (head) and the melee DPS to focus on the Leviathan MKII (feet). We had them DPS those parts down to around 12% health and then focus on the VX-001 (middle). Once all three sections were around 12% health, we had folks assigned to DPS all three pieces and we coordinated their death over vent.
• The shock blast in phase 4 can be interrupted by the Laser Barrage spin. The shock blast graphic will flicker for a moment and then stop while the laser barrage spin is cast. Be careful! If this happens, as soon as the laser barrage is over, the shock blast will cast and blow up anyone in melee range. If you see this, call it out on vent and have your melee and tanks stay away until after the shock blast goes off.

I hope some of this information proves useful to you and your guilds, as you attempt this unique encounter. Feel free to post your own suggestions for this encounter or ask any questions you may have as well. If these suggestions help you make progress, please come back and let us know!

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Feint, the forgotten skill My fellow raiding Rogues, we've been neglecting one of the biggest buffs to our beloved class that we've had in a while. No it doesn't improve DPS, directly at least, but falls in line with the number one rule of being a raiding rogue, staying alive so you can still DPS! Patch 3.0.8 released on January 20th which is coming up on six months old now. The buff (or change depending on your view) on this skill that generally has been laughable, has now been made a very viable skill, especially in high-end raiding.

Feint: Rank 8 now reduces the damage taken from area of effect attacks by 50% for 6 seconds in addition to its existing effects.

Now, go back and read that again; reduces damage of AoE attacks by HALF for 6 seconds. To be honest I had forgotten about this skill until a few weeks ago, it has been on my bar of course but has been on the further side of the keyboard away from more important skills. Now while this may not be a huge deal even in heroic Ulduar, once you start hitting the hard modes this redone skill really shines and a really great example of great use is on XT-002 Deconstructor. I was running normal Ulduar (10 man) with my guild and we went for the hard version of XT-002 Deconstructor. Basically once you activate the hard mode the damage put on the raid (and thus stress on the healers) is increased by 40%! The spell from XT you should be most be worried about is the Tympanic Tantrum, which everyone in the raid needs to be healed from; if you can cut this in half you reduce the stress on your healers and they can worry about getting other people (tanks, other healers) topped off before you (and if you have healing potions and healthstones, you should be using those too). Giving your healers an extra 4-6 seconds to worry about others before you, can be invaluble in a healing intensive fight such as hard mode XT. The skill only has a 10 second cooldown which is very nice as it's only four seconds that you are without the 50% damage reduction, although it is highly recommended to NOT put this into your rotation as it is merely a situation skill at this point. With that said though, am I the only one who forgot about this spell? Have you raiding rogues been using it for a while? Or did it take something drastic like not wanting to stress out your healers during a hard mode? What other fights do you find this to be a good fit for?

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I admit that little of Blizzard's new raiding philosophy has sat well with me, so when details started trickling in about the next major content patch, you can imagine that I had a few beefs. Most notably, this little nugget:

Crusaders' Coliseum: In order to prepare for a siege on Icecrown Citadel, players will be called by the Argent Crusade to test their mettle in the Coliseum. 5-player, 10-player, and 25-player challenges await inside.

With the wealth of raiding content added in Burning Crusade, am I the only one that feels like Blizz has been sort of phoning it in? Sure, Ulduar's a fantastic instance, but Naxxramas really did feel like recycled content. Remarkably few people experienced its first iteration, and it was nice to smash Kel'Thuzad's face in, but the feel and design screamed "hand-me-down." Likewise, before Wrath hit the market, we knew Ulduar was on the horizon and were told that the doors to Icecrown Citadel would creak open with the release of 3.3, but Blizzard also hinted at a mystery raid that would appear sometime in-between. Now they're telling us it's the Argent Coliseum, a raid instance that Blue Zarhym describes as "Ring of Blood or Amphitheater of Anguish, but more epic" is the only bone being thrown? You call that a raid dungeon?! A raider's appetite is voracious (just ask Ensidia), and the meatier the content, the happier we're going to be! I hate to take a Blue's words at face value -- after all, they're just trying to help and don't necessarily represent the company as a whole -- but "another Ring of Blood" doesn't exactly inspire. You've already got three of those in various areas of Northrend! Coliseum-style quest lines are all fine and dandy for a few extra boxcars on the leveling train (as I sometimes describe my experience bar), but as a raid instance? I'm not so sure. Those raid designers are going to have to work some juju to convince me. Really, though, it just feels symptomatic of a greater malady. Hard modes? Who wouldn't want to see whole new encounters as opposed to a few over-charged bosses? It smacks of the same sort of lazy design most developers use to "enhance replayability" in their games by juicing the enemies and nerfing the player. A true Hard Mode works great with well-coded AI that becomes more and more devious as the difficulty scales higher, but the structure of WoW's PvE gameplay doesn't lend itself to those sorts of augmentations. Bosses are clockwork machines that work either on strict timers or random number generators. It's easy to strategize for them, and from there it's mere player execution. The path is not that hard to follow: a raid group encounters a boss for a first time, wipes and wipes to the point of frustration, finally kills that boss, then has it on farm. The "freshness" of any given in encounter doesn't last very long, and Hard modes, at least in my eyes, do very little to lengthen it. Despite my problems, I feel like i'm peeing on the wrong hydrant here. Blizzard's put a crazy amount of effort into this expansion and it shows in the cohesiveness of Northrend. I think it's great that the community can have differing opinions and honest debate about this topic with those that actually have to create the game. It shows a great amount of love and investment on all sides. Perhaps that's why their new raiding philosophy feels do damning to long-time players like myself. The focus has been on expanding the casual content, providing a wealth of quests to work through on the path to 80, dailies galore once you get there, and the opportunity to traverse content you never would have had a chance to in Burning Crusade. But in doing so, it seems to rob successive content (and the lore associated with it) of its impact.  Once terrible fiends in the WarCraft universe have had their rears thoroughly kicked in 5-mans, and as I've discussed here, the raid bosses haven't had it much better. This philosophy would've worked fine if it had been implemented from the ground up, but two expansions in, broadening the base of the content makes for an increasingly flat experience. Perhaps I'm belly-aching too much, though. I do find it weird to make a post like this on a night spent entirely having my face cratered by Mimiron, but it's also strange to know that by this time next week, yet another Titan will no doubt have been toppled. So you, dear readers, does WoW's new raid direction feel like a sweet deal to you, or does it leave a faint, sour taste in your mouth? Will 3.2 serve as a sufficient stop-gap between Ulduar and Icecrown, or is it just another bump in the road for the hardcore set?

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While I've always considered myself a strong raider, I've always done my best to keep a handle on the amount of time I dedicate to the game. It is after all, just a game, and it is very important to not spend too much time playing. That being said I am a total completionist, and I'll admit, a bit of an addict when it comes to this game we all know and love. This is why I am beginning to struggle with the new content patch. I know in a matter of months I will likely be QQing about the lack of content available... but for right now, I am overwhelmed! A big part of my problem is I can't decide if I would rather do 10-man progression or 25-man progression. So I do what any good WoW fanatic would do, and try and do both, which in my guild equals out to about 6 nights a week of raiding. That is a pretty large jump up from what I am used to, and the first few weeks I tried to make that happen it started taking a toll on me. Now don't get me wrong, I am not some helpless junkie that can't get a grip on his time... I can quit anytime I want to :) ! But the fact is I want to see both versions of Yogg go down, and there are plenty of loot upgrades for me in both versions on the instance. Fact is I am just stuck in that rare window of new content where 10-mans are still important to farm, and 25-mans still need work to progress. Eventually I know that I will completely outgear 10-mans and have no reason to go back, but I fear the hard modes will extend that window further than it usually gets extended. At this point it is clear to me I am going to have to start making some choices. What is important now, and furthermore where am I having the most fun? 10s or 25s? I realize I can't do it all no matter how bad I want to! How are you other raiders doing in this department? Are you accomplishing everything you want to? Or do you find yourself in the same place where there are not enough hours in the day (or at least enough gaming hours)? I'd be curious to know your choice, because it is time for me to make mine!

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When Ulduar first hit I made a post asking when we all thought Algalon the Observer (the true final boss of Ulduar) would go down. Well it appears that Ensidia has answered my questions, well, at least for 10 mans.

The super guild announced on their web site that one of their 10-man teams had finally downed him (and also buried a note that another had completed world first Alone In The Darkness).

While I know it will be quite a while before I get to wear the Starcaller title, it is very exciting to hear their impressions of the fight. They of course comment on the added challenge of the one hour timer, but they also claim it is “not quite as hard as Blizzard made it out to be.” I’m taking that with a grain of salt because I imagine their idea of difficult is quite a bit different than mine!

For those that are interested they also provide a link for the loot they obtained as well as some screenshots of the quest chain. They promise video is on the way in short order.

It is encouraging to me to see it took them as long as it did, because in Ensidia time, this took a while! After all they certainly didn’t waste anytime getting world first Yogg, or any other world first for that matter!

So now the only question is how long until we see Algalon-25 go down? Or how about some of the Algalon hard modes? It pretty clear Blizzard intends to keep us all busy for a while.

If you want to keep track of the world first Algalon-25 progress for yourself I recommend you keep an eye on Ensidia’s site… I have a feeling that the news will break there!

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Now that 3.1 has been out for a while, and the dust is at least starting to settle, I think its time to take a step back and discuss how much impact the patch has really made on the game.

While the introduction of the Ulduar raid was obviously a big deal, I want to take a moment to examine how dual-specs has changed the way that we play. This feature, after all, changes the basic mechanics of how we play and will affect the game well past Ulduar and into future expansions.

At this point, I feel many of us have seen both the advantages and the pitfalls of this is action.

First the good, the increase is raid utility is undeniable. Instead of needing to sub people out for encounters because we need more heals, DPS, tanks or whatever we now just need to ask people to switch specs. I have found this to be particularly useful in 10 mans, where we can balance for 2 or 3 healers depending on the encounter.

Beyond that there are some unexpected advantages. For example the shaman who dual spec’d enhancement/elemental. While initially I thought this was the worst idea ever (great you can be DPS or DPS), it has turned out to be incredibly useful on several occasions. Sometimes having DPS at range vs melee, or having an extra buff can make all the difference in a close encounter.

There have been drawbacks too. As I think we all expected loot has been an issue. There are some players that are legitimately splitting their time between two specs. But does that mean they have a right to accumulate two sets of tier pieces while everyone else is working on their first? I certainly don’t think so, but they can make some convincing arguments. Additionally this added flexibility leaves some of the “bubble” players out of raids. Players that are used to being number 1 on the standby list are getting used less and less, as more people can fill more roles.

Personally I find myself changing specs much less often than I expected. While I can now go ret at anytime, I still find I am a tank 99% of the time, and often forget I can switch if need be. Although, being able to PvP whenever I want is certainly nice.

What do you guys think? Have dual specs been working out they way you imagined? Or are you using them much less or more than you expected?

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If you look back at my blogs since the launch of Wrath of the Lich King and compare them to my collection of thoughts from the The Burning Crusade days, you may notice a trend.  During Illidan's and later Kael'thas' respected reigns my posts were more often focused on news and game updates, rather than discussions and dissections about our favorite MMORPG.  The reason for this is quite simple really, I wasn't participating in World of Warcraft as much then as I am now.  For the longest time I couldn't pinpoint the exact reason for is.  It had nothing to do with why I quit WoW in the first place, and I still followed the lore almost as closely as I do now, yet, I was hardly ever pulled into the game. It took me a few months of play, up and downs and a new guild, but I had an epiphany while biking around Philadelphia the other night.  The reason I am more drawn to WoW now is that I don't feel left behind.  Thanks to the new expansion Solidsamm was put on a level playing field with every buddy else.  No longer was I three tiers of gear behind, thousands of rep in the hole or penniless because I hadn't been doing dailies for over a year.  Solidsamm was on equal footing, grinding his way to level 80 with the majority of players and entering the same raids that many other toons ran on a weekly basis.  Sure, he still hasn't seen Ulduar yet, but it's only been available for a few weeks. The irony here is that this ability to catch up was one of the reason I was annoyed with the first expansion.  TBC's opening quest rewards were good enough to replace some of the AQ40/Naxxramas gear that players - including myself - had spent months collecting.  As a hardcore raider I felt that all the time I had put into the game would be tarnished since a player with less than a third of my playtime could now be as geared as I.  How naive I was. It was odd being on the exact opposite end of the spectrum for the second expansion, but it made me realize that the changes are necessary if the game is to grow at all.  That being said, I would argue that the replacement rate of The Burning Crusade's gear wasn't nearly as drastic as vanilla WoW, which was a very smart move by Blizzard. Now that we are almost 6 months from Wrath of the Lich King's release, how is it treating you?  Are you enjoying it more than The Burning Crusade or is it pretty much the same to you?  Personally I think the questing is far better than TBC, but itemization at the high end (normal vs. heroic vs. hard mode loot) seems to be a bit screwed up.  What is your take?

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I kid, I kid.  If there is one thing in a guild that can cause drama, it is who gets the privilege - that's what it is after all - of wielding the first copy of a Legendary item.  The fact that Val'anyr is another "crafted" orange makes it that much more exclusive, thanks to the random number generator playing a roll in its creation.  Now that Bornakk has explicitly laid out the details of the weapon's proc , the discussion can begin on who "deserves" the healing mace. Before we dive into the class breakdown, it's important that we understand exactly how the proc works.  Juggynaut laid out the basics yesterday, but one major point was glossed over, the internal cooldown.  Everyone knows what a cooldown is, once used the ability/spell/proc takes x seconds to be usable again.  For the HotAK, once the proc is triggered it will not be able to proc again for at least 45 seconds.  This is important because to maximize the legendary's benefit during an encounter, you need the item to proc as much as possible.  It's not that simple though, healers also need to max out the shield as much as possible. The discussion over who can reap the most benefits from the tank-healing item already started in the comments section of Juggy's post.  Every healing class can trigger the effect relatively fast.  The benefits of one class over another becomes more clear when we look at who can efficiently cause the proc, and maximize their shield.

• Druid:  Sorry to all the other healers out there, but the shapeshifters seem to be the best suited class for the item.  A well-played healing druid can almost guarantee that the proc will pop whenever the cooldown is completed, and add a substantial amount to his shield over the 15 second interval.  As an added bonus, the druid doesn't have to change their playstyle to do this.
• Paladin:  These plated healers are fantastic single target support.  On the flip side this means that their ability to get the proc off is more of a challenge.  While they may miss a few procs over the course of an encounter, the class' gigantic heals will make for a large shield, giving them the edge over holy priests.
• Holy Priest:  An arsenal of various group and single target heals allows the holy priest to consistantly score the proc.  Once triggered, the priest can then focus on Greater Healers to maximize the shield, or raid heal, depending on the encounter.  Their abillity to adapt to either situation enables them to maximize their sheild, while remaining efficient.
• Shaman:  Resto Shammies get the worst aspects of the Paladin and Holy Priest.  Like the paladin, they will miss a few procs.  When the shield does activate it's unlikely that they will be able to maximize its potential absorption, the knock against holy priests.  Seems that handing a shaman the Hammer of the Ancient Kings is not the best choice.
• Discipline Priest:  Plan and simple, you guys got the shaft.  Since Disc is based on mitigation and not actual healing - also why they fail to be ranked fairly in healing meters - the proc won't trigger for many of the spec's spells.  A Disc priest would have to play their spec poorly to make sure the proc stayed up as much as possible.

No matter which class in your guild ends up with the item first, there is one thing to be concerned about, a change in their playstyle.  Many players will have to modify the way they heal in an effort to maximize the benefits of Val’anyr.  During the early learning curves it will be to the detriment of the raid. In an effort to force the proc, or to increase the size of their shield, I expect players to be spamming heals when they aren't needed, causing mana issues for the tank's healer.  It almost makes Val’anyr a double-edged sword.  Sure, it'll increase your worth and healing, but the raid may pay as you learn the fine balance of maximizing its benefits and keeping a healthy mana pool. In my eyes Val’anyr is best fit for a druid (sorry Juggy), but there is one other major point to consider.  Perhaps a Paladin is the raid leader, GM, or just a player who never misses a raid.  If that is the case, then the guild as a whole should see that toon as a more appropriate candidate. Has your guild decided where the first Val’anyr is going?  Is it going to the most dedicated healer, the character who will can benefit highly, or both?  If it was my decision, I'd award the most consistent and talented druid, paladin or holy priest with Val’anyr.

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The stats on Val'anyr, the new legenary healing mace that is obtainable in Ulduar, were revealed a little while ago, but the special proc that is on the mace has been a bit of a mystery since its tooltip was discovered. Ferraro over at Paladin Schmaladin has been posting over the past few weeks about the mace, and the discussion sparked a couple of developers - Bornakk and Ghostcrawler - to let the community know exactly how the proc works. The basics are these: There is a 10% chance on any heal for the weilder of Val'anyr to gain the blessing from the mace, as long as the heal is not completely overhealing (ie the target is not at full health when you heal them). It is a 15 second effect with a 45 second internal cooldown. For the next 15 seconds, all of your healing spells will create a shield on their target(s) for 15% of the heal. This includes overheal and spells that do no actual healing. The shield will stack with itself, and will max out at 20,000 damage absorbed. Bornakk gave a few examples of how it actually works and Ghostcrawler has answered many of the questions that have come up since then. Check out their posts on the official forums for the complete details. Unfortunately I won't be seeing one of these in my guild for a long time (and we haven't even seen a shard drop). Anyone out there close to collecting the 30 shards needed for it?

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