Happenings around the web

Shatner. Um, it’s related. He claimed to be a Shaman once. In an ad…

A quiet Sunday morning begs to be followed by a yawning, lazy afternoon. Hence, a cheapie links post. Enjoy.

First, I’d like to point your attention to Tristan’s renewed series of hard mode boss strategies, annotated with kill videos. Posts are up about Freya with all 3 elders and Mimiron’s Firefighter. And if you aren’t already, you should be listening to his podcast. Nowhere else on iTunes will you find Matticus’ mom freaking out.

Friend of the blog and frequent commenter Windsoar has opened up a blog and really hit the ground running. Jaded Alt, as you might infer from the name, covers a lot of ground. Favorite post: A personal view of what it’s like to go from Horde to Alliance. Some unexpected wrinkles in there, particularly for a former Blood Elf Paladin tank.

Another commenter, Charles, makes good with Planet of the Hats, featuring some surprisingly strong Elemental Shaman coverage. My favorite post talks about his Power Auras setup because it’s entirely different from my own, and therefore rich with ideas to steal.

While I was attempting (and failing) to get my fellow healbloggers to post about why they heal, the sphere instead picked up the gauntlet thrown down by Don’t be that Shaman. Followups include a Matticus-penned post on WoW.com titled Don’t be that Priest. Shortly thereafter, not 1 but 2 Holy Paladin variants went up; HolyPaladin.net beat Horde Review by 2 days. If there are others out there I’ve missed, fill them in the comments.

Matthew Rossi on WoW.com summarizes the (dubious) current state of Enhancement tanking. I was hugely excited when I saw the headline. The article disenchanted me, however. The key tools that were once available no longer are. Those attempting Enhancement tank builds now are fighting an uphill struggle. I’d love to try my hand at tanking, but I am not willing to subvert the designers’ intentions to do it. They have shown a long history of striking out at such unintentional consequences.

I updated GridStatusChainWho to fix the Debugging and Enabled switches. While I was at it, I added experimental support detecting Holy Nova and Circle of Healing, but am unable to test this out myself. If any Priests can try it out, I’d love to hear back. After several false starts, the addon is now available on Curse as well as WoWInterface.

Faction Champions advice

Commenter Slo makes a plaintive request for strategy on handling the Faction Champions encounter. I can make no claim to being an expert, but I can certainly comment on what I’ve seen and tried so far. Vicarious has beaten it twice in 25 and twice in 10, and I have been present for 3 of those kills. Because 25 is basically just an amped up version of the 10-man version, that’s where I’ll focus.

When the encounter begins, 10 enemies (6 in 10-man) will line up against your group. They are composed like a raid group. 3 healers (2 in 10-man) anchor a diverse population of DPS. They won’t aggro immediately, so take some time to assess them and work up a game plan. Keep the Wiki page open so you can look up their names.

Like arena fights, if you can knock out the enemy’s healers while keeping your own alive, you will probably win. The key to this fight is picking a kill order that best enables both halves of that equation. If your DPS races to kill their healers but your own die, you will still lose. You need to assess the threat of the entire group, and compare them against your own capabilities.

First, who are their healers? There are 4 possibilities. There’s a Holy Priest, who has a lot of instant casts and big heals, but is a relatively vulnerable clothie. A tree form Druid, who has outrageously strong instant-cast HoTs, but can be controlled pretty effectively by a Warlock’s banish. A Shaman with one instant, but brings a number of totem buffs to his group. And a Holy Paladin who has no instant casts, but whose plate armor makes him a highly resilient target.

Follow that analysis with who are their riskiest DPS to keep alive? The Shadow Priest can dispel your crowd control attempts and has the group fear ability Psychic Scream. The Warlock can quickly blow nasty debuffs over your raid, and has several fear abilities. He also brings a Fel Hunter to the fight, and it will be spell locking your casters. The Rogue is Subtlety specced; she has a nasty habit of popping up in the back of your group and turning healers into pudding.

Then you have to take stock of what you have for assets. What repeatable crowd controls do you have? Sheep and Fear are the most effective weapons in your arsenal. Also useful are Roots, Cyclone, Banish. Cooldown-based crowd controls are useful for breathers, but won’t be able to keep an enemy locked down. Note that PvP rules for diminishing returns apply here. And even a dispelled crowd control ability counts toward the diminishment effect.

Other assets on your side include anti-healing skills like Mortal Strike, reliable interrupts such as Wind Shear, defensive Tremor and Grounding totems, a Discipline Priest blasting Mass Dispels, a Hunter dropping Frost Traps, and so on. Every class has their bag of tricks in a PvP encounter. Use them.

With all that in mind, you need to come up with a kill order. As long as the healers are active, killing DPS will be hard. How reliable is your crowd control? Can you afford to kill a particularly vicious DPS first?

BobTurkey had some success recently killing the CC-dispelling Shadow Priest first, then going after the healers. But depending on how well controlled they are, you may need to take out the Holy Priest or Resto Druid first. Removing the Warlock and Rogue from the playing field will give your incoming damage a healthy break.

After you have assigned a kill order, find ways to lock down dangerous enemies. Put a Warrior on the Holy Paladin to keep him shut down. Have your Discipline Priest ready to dispel their Shaman’s Bloodlust. Assign crowd control duties to everyone who can use them. Have someone knocking down their totems. Sleep the Hunter’s pet.

A poster in my guild forums made a wise suggestion recently. Designate a focus target for each of your healers. This gives them a head’s up to incoming damage. If a Priest sees their Hunter target someone, they can lob a shield their way. If I see their Warrior target our Rogue, I can queue up a Chain Heal in advance of the upcoming Whirlwind.

Above all, think on your feet. Your number one job is to stay alive. After that, heal, dispel, Purge, Hex, and stay aware. The more of them drop while your group lives, the easier this fight gets.

Good luck!

Raiding update

As Arulaeh notes, we downed Yogg on our second night of attempts. The classic “Ok, this will be the last try tonight” kind of kill. Suddenly everything goes like clockwork, and all the little lessons you’d learned over the night assemble into the final picture.

That was a cocktail of metaphors!

I’m hoping to get Aru to do a writeup for the phase 1 cloud trick she figured out. That was one of keys to unlocking this fight, and a non-obvious way of optimizing the raid’s healing and DPS.

While I was starting to get data together for a General Vezax strategy, I discovered that the gals at Earth Shields and HoTs beat me to it. Did a better job of it than I would have, too. I don’t know why I wasn’t subscribed to their RSS feed from the start. That error has been corrected.

While you are poking, you Restoshams be sure to check out their detailed rundown of the Totem Bar changes in 3.2.

Mimiron Strategy

Mimiron (or Mimsy, to his friends) is a rotten, little robot Gnome. He smokes. He drinks. He has atrocious personal hygiene. But he does tell a great “Yo mamma” joke, so people keep inviting him to parties. When Yoggy was getting some friends together for his Ulduar bar mitzvah, of course Mimiron showed up.

This fight goes through 4 very distinct phases, as Mimiron jumps around between various vehicle hosts, all in an attempt to make healers cry. This is one of those fights they describe as “healing intensive.” Steel yourself. They mean it. The biggest challenge in this fight is teaching people how to not take damage in the first place.

Instead of simply separating the abilities from the strategy, I am going to combine them. Because in this fight, dealing with the abilities is the strategy.

Phase 1 — Leviathan MKII

Proximity Mine — He spits out rings of mines in melee range. The mines last about 30 seconds and explode on their own, or can be triggered by getting too close. Remember the Mine Sweeper area of Storm Peaks? Don’t get too close to the mines. WoWWiki says 20k damage from the explosion. I was seeing values of 15-16k without fire resistance, 4k with fire resistance. Lesson: Use fire resistance aura or totem. Also, the mines are a useful way to wipe early and get back in for another try. Experience has shown that the mines tend to be invisible unless your Particle Density setting is all the way up.

Shock Blast — Melee-range nature damage blast wave. 100k damage and long cast bar make this a “melee have to run out of it” ability. Running out is complicated by the presence of mines, but that is exactly what they have to do. When the mines spawn, melee must mentally plot a course that will safely lead them out, and then thread the mines to get back into range. Casters/healers should be standing far enough away that they need never worry about either of these abilities.

Plasma Blast — Is a tank-killer. It deals 20k damage every second for 6 seconds, and there is no avoiding it. This must be absorbed by scheduling a series of saves. Everyone must know the schedule, their place within it, and be ready to execute. Save abilities include: Last Stand, Shield Wall, Icebound Fortitude/Blood Strike, Barkskin, Pain Suppression, Guardian Spirit, Hand of Sacrifice/Divine Protection. Use one save per Plasma Blast. He uses this on a 30 second cooldown, and we needed 3 saves to get through this phase.

Mimiron tends to use Shock Blast immediately after Plasma Blast. Sometimes the preparatory animation for Shock Blast coincides with Plasma Blast, so the tank must be ready to run from Shock Blast right after the Plasma Blast. And then you’ve got a decision to make. Do you run back to Mimiron after Shock Blast, risking Proximity Mine hits, or let him come to you? For a Warrior or Druid tank, Charging back in is an obvious solution, but others may want to let the boss come to them. There are pros and cons to each. Our Death Knight tank ended up kiting Leviathan along a line in phase 1, but there were problems with ranged being pulled through the mine field. In 25-man I think it will be necessary to keep the boss still.

Napalm Shell — Targets a random raid member (including the tank) with a direct fire damage component for about 8k damage (about 6k with fire resistance) and a subsequent DoT component. Will attempt to spread to targets in a 5 yard radius, so the entire raid needs to spread out. This is the main source of raid damage, and should have a fast, dedicated healer. While the DoT is present, the victim will be standing in fire. The victim should not move during this time, to prevent the fire from spreading. Pets can be infected, so take care. In 25-man we will probably need a few Napalm healers to cover the expanded raid setup.

I gave myself responsibility for covering the napalm, treating it like Kel’Thuzad’s Frost Blast. I added the ability to Grid’s debuff list to track the effect and pounded victims with a quick Riptide and Lesser Healing Wave. Usually there would be enough time to lob a Healing Wave on the tank during Plasma Blast, but like any healing assignment, your target takes priority.

Aside from the Napalm Shell healer, all remaining healers should be focused on the main tank. No one else should be taking damage, and the Plasma Blast makes heal-sniping a dangerous sport.

Phase 2 — VX-001

Rapid Burst — Or what I call the Squirt Gun. Targets randomly around the raid, pasting anyone in front of him. If there are multiple targets within the narrow cone, it will hit all of them. Does about 8-10k damage before moving on. This is the main source of damage in this phase, and is why everyone rings around him in the diagram. Pick a spot on the circle that no one else is in and stick to it. After Laser Barrage, get back to your spot.

Laser Barrage — Is like The Lurker Below’s spout, it hoses anyone standing in front of it, but rotates slowly along a predictable (clockwise) path. When you see it coming, get out. There’s no good reason for anyone to take damage from the Laser Barrage.

Heat Wave — A pulse of fire damage on everyone. With fire resistance, the damage is pretty minimal. At least on 10 man it is. Reports suggest this will be a fresh source of tears in heroic mode.

Rocket Strike — This fight’s void zone. Don’t stand in the red targeting circle. No save in the world will get you over a 5,000,000 damage hit. Yes, 5 million. Mitigated that comes out to about 4.6 million. There’s plenty of warning, so again, there’s no good reason to lose people to this. Watch your feet.

The raid damage during phase 2 is pretty intense. You will be chain casting the whole time. As a Shaman — Chain Heal. We brought everyone in close for a reason. We didn’t have specific healing targets during this phase, but if I’d had two priests, I probably would have given each PoH groups. Many strategies call for using Heroism during phase 2 to end it quickly. I chose to save mine until phase 4 though. You’ll see why below.

Phase 3 — Aerial Command Unit

I should note that between each phase there is a healthy chunk of time to reposition and regen some mana. Don’t short heals during early phases to conserve mana. Keep everyone alive. Unless they’re walking into avoidable damage, in which case they deserved to die.

Plasma Ball — You designate a ranged tank for this phase. Someone with a lot of health and a lot of threat. We chose a Warlock. He’ll be soaking these 10k hits that pulse every 3 seconds or so. Your ranged tank requires a dedicated healer. He was my target, in fact. Because the phase 1 tank doesn’t take much damage this phase, I switched my Earth Shield to the Warlock for the remainder of the fight. 10k damage is just an Earth Shield proc and a Lesser Healing wave. That leaves some time to spread some heals to the rest of the raid.

3 kinds of adds spawn during this phase, and you want two tanks pulling them away from the ranged/healer group.

Assault Bots have a lot of health and need to be tanked. They will make a beeline for the healers, so their tank needs to be ready for them spawning. They show up in columns of yellow light in the circles that punctuate the black strips dividing the room.

Bomb Bots blow up on contact, doing about 20k damage. They spawn underneath the chopper roughly every 30 seconds. A second tank needs to be ready for them and take one for the team. This tank does not need a dedicated healer. A bomb that reaches the ranged group will wipe you in one go. Alternatively, you could root the bomb and DPS it from range.

Junk Bots spawn in green circles of light. Either tank should pick them up to keep them from slugging clothies.

Typically what happens in this phase is DPS concentrates on killing the Assault Bots quickly to loot a Magnetic Core from its body. It can be used to pull the Command Unit to the ground in range of melee. While grounded the group gets a DPS bonus against it. What we did instead was have the ranged focus entirely on the Command Unit until it died, then cleaned up the bots during the lull before phase 4.

Phase 4 — V0-L7R-0N

All three vehicles from the previous phases make their return in phase 4, in a giant stack of death. The combined unit possesses most of the abilities he has had before. Including: Proximity Mines, Shock Blast, Hand Pulse (the squirt gun), Laser Barrage, Rocket Strike and Plasma Ball.

That is a lot of damage flying around. Most of it is avoidable, but in the chaos of phase 4, people will probably eat a mine or two. Even more than the previous phases, positioning is critical to aid avoiding damage. Most critical is the offtank positioning at 4 o’clock, to the main tank’s 6. This is a complex exchange so pay attention.

The main tank is holding the base, Leviathan MKII. The Laser barrage comes from the middle segment, which is not directly tankable. However, the laser barrage always initially points at the main tank. He still can’t soak the barrage, so he needs to dodge it. But knowing that the slow, clockwise rotating barrage is going to start at 6 o’clock tells you something important about its route. It will sweep half the circle up to 12 and then stop.

All anyone has to do to stay out of the barrage is be on the right side of the circle. But, the middle section is attached to the bottom section. And if the main tank makes a line for the right side of the circle, the base section is going to follow him. And that will make the barrage unpredictable. So as the barrage is spinning up, the offtank, standing at 4 o’clock taunts the base section to him. Now the whole unit stands still during the barrage. When it ends, the main tank returns to 6 o’clock and picks up again with the base.

Spread the raid out, keeping everyone in the 10-5 o’clock segment of the circle. During barrage everyone has a short trip to safety. And you have a section of the circle that requires no movement. That will be important for the healers, because you’ll be hard pressed to keep up during this phase. The main and off tank will require a dedicated healer, and the ranged tank from phase 3 keeps taking Plasma Balls, so he still needs moderate healing. Given 3 healers, that’s 1.5 for raid healing through the heavy squirt gun damage.

But wait, that’s not all! All three sections must die within 15 seconds of the first one’s death. So in addition to avoiding damage at every step, the DPS must coordinate the kills. It’s pandemonium. We held on tight, stretched ourselves thin, blew Heroism, and bested that foul robot.

Update on Saturday, June 13, 2009 at 2:19AM by Llyra

After some more time spent with my favorite Mechagnome, it has become clear that his Laser Barrage does not always face the tank in phase 4. This may have changed after my first kill; Blizzard changed the Barrage so that it would stun the bottom portion, keeping the raid-wiping Shock Blast from firing at the same time.

The raid should spread out around the boss like they did in phase 2. And just be extremely careful to watch for him Spinning Up (4 second cast), because a Laser Barrage is coming. Get out of its way.

Mimiron Down

Quick post tonight to report that after a couple weeks resisting his rightful death, Mimiron is finally down. I’ll do a strategy post tomorrow describing what we did. It’s a healing grinder.