Raid Achievements Are How Encounters Were Intended

The more Heroic Achievement Encounters I do, the more I am convinced that they are how designers originally meant them to be done.

Lets look at Patchwerk. The achievement "Make Quick Werk Of Him" wants you to kill him in less then three min. Without the achievement, you have an incredibly generous six minutes - something that makes him accessible to entry level raiders who may be carrying 1000 DPS players. The achievement, however, is only doable by strong groups with somewhat-optimal setups and a high level of play by all involved - something that is close to how the original encounter was.

The difficulty of the achievement fight feels about right for an entry level raid for a "hardcore" guild. LOKI hasn't gotten Make Quick Werk Of Him, but we also run a little healer (7) /tank (3) heavy for most stuff. If we were to buckle down for it and tailor the raid to the fight (like we use to have to for all progression content), we'd have it down (and soon will, I imagine).

This also ties into the "bring the player, not the class" idea. With just about any setup, I'm confident we could clear a no-achievement Naxx. As I said, we usually run the same number of tanks and healers for everything, making swaps only on a per wing basis, if at all. However, to do optional achievements, we may need to insure we have certain numbers of certain classes. Class stacking exists, its now just not a necessity / barrier to killing bosses.

Lets look at some other Raid Achievements...
And They Would All Go Down Together: Removes the option to zerg single horsemen down, which was not possible in the original because of shield walls at 50% and 20%.
Just Can't Get Enough: Adds a higher DPS/Healing/Tanking requirement to P1
Saftey Dance: Everyone needs to succeed at the dance.
100 Club: Its like opting for the aura to hit harder.

Really, non-achievement fights are the optional easy mode. You can skip out on a significant potion of the difficulty, still get loot, and still move on to see the next set of trash/boss models. Also, you can kill everything in an instance while gearing up towards an achievement, instead of clearing bosses one two and three, while gearing up for boss four, and not touching five and six.

What's my take on this? I'm pretty happy, though I'd change two things.

Incentive to repeat achievements - If all bosses typically dropped three pieces of loot, and a fourth with the achievement (of perhaps a slightly higher iLevel), I don't think anyone would complain. It's how OS works, and I get the feeling this is how Uludar will function - Blizzard has indicated that all Uludar bosses are going to have "hard modes". As it stands, there is nothing but personal drive to get guilds to keep getting most achievements they have credit for.

Better Guild Rating based on Raid Achievements - WoWProgress rates guilds based on Naxx, Malygos, OS, and OS+Drake Achievements. While this is a step up from WoWJutsu, I think that it some attention / credit does need to be given to other difficult achievements.

I'd also love an ingame PvE "guild achievement" score - just like you have separate personal and team rating for arenas, have separate personal and guild achievement ratings. Give points to a guild where its 20+ of its members have heroic achievements (or 8+ have non-heroic, in another score), and all of a sudden you can tell how good a guild is by looking at their rating.

So there - I now am completely at peace with this new system, and I would suggest that you be too. Don't complain that content is easy, when your opting to take the easy road - and start cranking up your achievement points - it will be an increasingly important score for how others view you.

Heigan Dance - Tips & Tricks For Phase One

Well, really, there is only one big Tip. Don't Dance in P1.

I saw Oriniwen's post, and just had to publish this diagram (not to mention I'm in an MS Paint mood today).

If you keep Heigan on the corner, and the ranged goes to the opposite corner, you can outrange his spell cast time increase aura for Phase One.

Phase Two is still the same, so everyone still has to dance (this is not a magical-instawin exploit), but your Phase One DPS will be higher. W-a-y higher. And your hunter's pets won't die in P1, leaving them to drop their insta-rez for the second P1 (in which you can easily kill him).

Notes on Executing it: As long as tanks and DPS are on the raised part (even on the slant), they'll be safe. Ranged will need to give themselves a little extra time to run to the beginning of the dance floor for P2

Heroic Naxx Cleared!

The night started out uneventfully. The bulk of the guild went in and finished plague wing, while Tonystarks and I had a man-date, waiting outside Naxx.

Spider Wing got squashed in record time. Sapphirion was one shot. Then, with an hour and a half left - we started KT.

Our first attempt we had some people die shadow fissure right in the beginning of P2, who were still clumped up, and not looking for them (they were looking at adds, unaware that p2 had started). Limped along, got to ~29%. Second attempt, I made a really dumb call. Aertimus had just sat down to eat, and the rest of the raid was ready to go - so I said off vent that she could finish eating while we all ran in. A group spawned right on top of her and killed her - prompting me to challenging shout the ?Why is Aert dead? questions to my logic error. Anyway, that attempt got to 15%.

Third time was a charm. Everyone spread out, moved out of bad things, and healed people that needed healing. It got a little hairy at ~5%, when our OTs died. I ran around trying to grab the adds, as did our feral druid (who had been lolkittying). Needless to stay, we stemmed player death enough to finish the job!

I was hella happy with the throne being available for pictures, as his body was lacking photogenic-ness.

Hail to the king!

Interesting loot from KT was the Healing Mace, that Aertimus spent virtually all her DKP on - an exciting upgrade (Best in Slot), considering we'd been running heroic Nexus for the mace from there fairly often. Now of course, when we go there next to keep farming the Winter Hat - the mace will drop every time. /Sigh. Earlier in the night, I'd gotten the Bindings of Hapless Prey and Heritage.

Anyway, Sunday we'll go roflstomp OS, then do Malygos. Starting next week - I'm going to steel a page from Herc's playbook, and do Naxx/Malygos first (hopefully in just two nights), then spend remaining time working on increasing numbers of Sarathon drakes.

Deep Wounds

I've been reading about Deep Wounds including tank specs, and decided to give it a try last night. I used this spec. EDIT: TS Posts which inspired me Here.

Patchwerk: I was the cursed middle health tank, whom takes the fewest hatefuls, and therefore has the least rage to play with. Still, I pulled 1730 DPS, 8% of (~32,000) which was Deep Wounds. For comparison, Revenge was 11%, Shield Slam was 22%, Damage Shield was 2%. Deep Wounds was enough to push me over the primary hateful strike tank's DPS, despite taking about only 70% of the damage he took, and getting revenge lit up far less.

Grobbulus: Was MTing him, and Deep Wounds was 9% of my Damage. (slightly more then Revenge).

Gluth: Was kiting Zombies, and it made up a decent amount of damage.

Thaddius: I was just DPSing on everything. Deep Wounds made up 17% of my damage, nearly toping Shield Slam at 18% !! This put me 1000 DPS higher (2900) then the other protection warrior who was doing the same job, but without deep wounds. I would imagine the big benefit came from getting high stacks of it while charged, then them being able to continue rolling while polarity shift running was going on.

Razuvious, Gothik, 4H, Noth: Nothing Exciting to report.

Summary?

For an ability I didn't have to think about, it had great results. I can't imagine Cruelty providing that kind of results for 3 points. Deep Wounds also proc'ed off of Thunder Clap, adding some non-trivial bleed damage to AoE groups. I was using a fast weapon, Red Sword of Courage - but I may want to try a slower weapon (Broken Promice) and see if the increased Deep Wounds damage outpaces the reduced number of Heroic Strikes (and if it does, if the reduced rage consumption / increased rage availability is worth it)

What did I give up to go 18 points in Arms? The biggest cut was a point out of improved revenge. Losing Puncture and Imp. Shield Reflect didn't hurt at all, nor did going back to 0/5 Cruelty.

What else did I gain, besides Deep Wounds? Impale, mostly. My crits we're noticeably bigger. I also got an extra 10 rage on Charges and cheaper Heroic Strikes. I could have taken points out of Shield Spec to fund 2/2 Revenge, or some Cruelty if I was feeling really aggressive, but that felt a little too untankish.

Anyway - I think I'll continue to rock this build for a while. I'm happy with its damage/threat output, and I seem to be just as durable as I was before.

Four Wings Cleared

Thad died last night, in considerably longer then I'd anticipated. I was outside the raid, so that we could use the same Warrior tank we had doing him last night, and our Prot Paladin. There were some people whom died more often that I would have liked, and that is something that I will need to deal with, if we're going to be clearing the four wings in an expedient manor.

I had planned to do Military second, but we had only one priest online. I find this absurd, as we have two shadow priests, and four healy priests. That's six potential priests! One shadow priest's computer was down, one holy priest was on vacation, and the others - I'm just not sure on. I'd really rather not subject our hunters to this.

So instead of Military, we did Plague next. All one shots, though we had 7 people do Heigan from 20->0. Then we did Spider, and got Anub and Widow down. With only a few min left after that, I decided to just end the raid, rather then push us over for Maexxna. I was very happy with the speed of those two wings.

So updated Sunday plans? Maexxna, Military Wing, Saph, KT. Very do-able, as long as people are fired up and ready about Frostwyrm Lair.

Also - I'm running out of first boss kill type posts, so we should be resuming normal-type tanking style / gear / ect analysis posting shortly. I want to touch on MT priority, as came up in comments a little while ago, ASAP.

Night One in Naxx

Finally, our moment has come. I decided last week that we had enough 80's, and truth be told, plenty of people logged on at the appointed time. Three members that had joined through our sponsorship program got promoted, and our first Naxx raid was underway!

We headed to spider wing first, to knock out easy bosses. I went with a 3 Tank, 8 Healer setup. I know we could have potentially run with less healers, but I figured OOM healers / lack of heals would be out biggest threat. A few raid comp notes - for spider wing, we didn't have an elemental shaman (wasn't in the raid), enhancement shaman, death knight (both our elemental shamans are leveling their death knights, and are behind on levels), Feral Druid, or Prot Paladin (still leveling) - so we didn't have as much good synergy as I was hoping. Things still died, though.


Anub took two tries. The first one, I missed the start of his Locus Swarm cast, and got myself owned. Second time, we nailed it. I didn't intervene anyone, but took advantage of aspect of the pack to give myself some more room. A fun fight to tank, and next week I'll probably be on add duty.

Widow was a one shot. I got wailed on for 20k during her enrage, but the Shadow Priest we had doing MC's had some experience with the fight, so most were over nearly before they began. The interesting part came when one of our tanks got overzealous with his Spell Reflects (and I know he'll read this :P ) - and one of the adds died from damage. We still killed her before the fourth enrage, which was a nice sign for our DPS's performance.

Maexxna was also a one shot. I didn't drop below 60% on non-enrage web wraps, and got through the one or two after the enrage comfortably with cooldowns and an Indestructible Potion (Thanks Kiran :D ). I picked up a Sand-Worn Band as a bonus (one of a few decent tank drops we had over the course of the night, including Heritage, and Cloak of the Shadowed Sun.

Instructor Raz took three tries - mostly dealing with getting our priests coordinated with the add-MC-tanking. One hadn't ever seen the fight before, but had it down pat by our third pull - fairly awesome, if I may say. I felt like I should have tried to DPS more during that fight, but I didn't want to miss an add being released, and have someone die.

Gothik took up the last bit of our night, though he didn't die. We're still getting a feel for what (and how many) DPS/Tanks/Healers should be on what side.

Tonight, we're aiming to mow down Gothik, 4 Horsemen, and as much of Plague Quarter as we can. That will leave just construct quarter, and Frostworm Lair.

Well Fed & 80

Two things came of this extended, holiday weekend...
I ate lots of turkey and pie, enough that I think I'll be imagining a wedge of cheese in a box hovering over my head for some time.
I hit 80, last night, far past when I should have gone to sleep.

First, a look back on leveling.

If you can't tell from the picture, I'm in Grizzly Hills (less then halfway through). The attack plan was Howling Fjord -> Borean -> Dragonblight -> Grizzly Hills. Somewhere between those last two, I started running instances like crazy to get the normal lv 80 dungeon drops, and rep that I wanted (Wyrmrest) - so questing fell by the wayside. In general, the questing in Northrend is the most enjoyable I've experienced in WoW, and I'm looking forward to continuing through it for Lore (and Phat Goldz). I realize that not having unlocked some of the reputations and starting work on their dailies (Sons of Hodir) will hurt, so those are going to be fairly high on my priority list.

I kept alot of gear. I'd like to think that I'm not the crazy sentamentalist whom can't get over blues being better the purples - but I really don't think I've come across replacements for my Pendant of Titans, T6 Shoulders, T6 Chest, T6 Boots, T6 Gloves, Brutalizer, Shadowmoon Insignia, and Girdle of Stability. I think most of them got extended life by having so many sockets, that I could stick +16 Defense / +24 Stamina gems into. There are a few Wrath pieces I want to work in as soon as I don't need that socketed defense, so I can get more armor/HP - but I need to get a few things done before then.

I never ran Halls of Stone (awkward level, no rep) or Utguard Pinnicle (nothing Aertimus was interested in). I ran Oculus more times then I'll admit (fun, short, and dragons). The five mans were nice for leveling, and I'll want to get all the heroic achievements eventually, but I might need a break from them for awhile after I get at least some of the heroic drops I want.

I made a ton of money. Then I spent it, getting mats for my Armor Plated Combat Shotgun, Titansteel Shield Wall, Durable Nerubian Cloak, and leveling Engineering to make my Goggles. Having those boosts to my gear when I dinged 80 was worth it, though - and there is tons more questing I'll be doing that will get it all back in reasonable time. I also need to remember that the hojillion sonic boosters I made got DE'ed, and we should now have a comfortable stash of dream shards.

So what does the future hold?

Tuesday LOKI is going to aim to restart 25 man raiding. I'm very confident that by Sunday, I'll have to look back at screenshots to be able to list the bosses that we've killed. I know we've had members pugging bits and pieces of Naxx 25, but I look forward to being able to offer regular full clears.

We're going to try switching to a primarily hourly-based DKP system. Our old system favored boss kills, which made farm content more attractive. An entirely hourly based system doesn't provide insentive for people whom don't need loot to raid / use consumables / get repair bills - but I'm anticipating the massive quantitys of loot being insentive enough for Naxx, at least. Come the next tier of raiding, we may reconsider how we award DKP.

I'm really going to be pressuring our DPS / DPS officers, to make sure that we set our high standards early. I'm sure that we could get through most of Naxx with "meh" DPS, but I'd rather address it now. I'm not as worried about tanking or healing, since that tends to get corrected immediatly within the raid time period.

I'd opened up some of the GBank to raiders/core for wrath leveling, and it seemed to be really popular. I'll be looking to restructure the tabs again soon, and try to make that a permanent feature.

Finally, on a personal level, I need to finish getting updated enchants. +20 defense on my shield comes to mind, as does Wrath Head and Shoulder enchants (lol @ head & shoulders).

Number Of Tanks in Naxx-25

By Boss, These are the predicted number of tanks that are needed. 

(According to my understanding)

Anub'Rekhan  -Three Tanks 

Faerlina - Three Tanks 

Maexxna - One Tank 

Noth - Three Tanks 

Heigan - One Tank 

Loatheb - One Tank 

Razuvious - One-Two Tanks 

Gothik - Two-Four Tanks 

4HM - Two Tanks 

Patchwerk - Three Tanks 

Grobbulus - Two Tanks

Gluth - Two-Three Tanks 

Thaddius - Two Tanks 

Sapphiron - One Tank 

Kel'Thuzad - Three-Four Tanks 

Five One Tank Fights

Five Two Tank Fights

Five Three Tank Fights

What is a raid leader (or tank officer) to do? Switching members between each boss, with so many bosses, just isn't an option if Naxx is going to get done in any sort of timely fashion. And even if you do, you have to have enough tanks at the ready to perform on the three tank fights, while not having so many that it could take a month to get a tank in for a single tank fight.

I think LOKI's plan will be to run with three tanks - Two being more pure Protection, and a third being a more offensive/threat/OT type. We currently have three protection warriors, one protection paladin that's out with computer issues, and another protection paladin who is swapping over from holy.

I issued the following note to our tanks earlier today... 

I'd just like to put it out there, that decisions regarding what Protection tanks are brought, may be influenced by their ability to DPS when not tanking, in order to justify a full three spots.

That's really what it comes to. It wouldn't be such a big issue if Dual-Spec's had been released yet, but they have not been. 

Regardless, I would suggest that all tanks stay current on their DPS gear/rotations. Cozy up to a friendly neighborhood DPS warrior and pick their brain, gem and enchant your DPS gear as if your raid spot depended on it, and know what buttons to press when - because as long as there are bosses that only need one tank, you may find yourself scrambling to justify getting to stand behind the boss instead of outside the instance.