Greetings!
Long day, lots of resumes sent out, lots and lots….
But a whole lot of playing got done this weekend.
Our guild, the friendly and curvacious Sidhe Devils, are going to at the very least face Vault of Archavon and Obsidian Sanctum together this week.
If possible, we’re gonna try to do the Spider Wing of Naxxramas the next night. But who knows?
We’re flowing along right about on track of where we anticipated we’d be in the expansion. Everyone has had the freedom to level at their own pace, play whichever combinations of toons drew their fancy, and there has been almost enough time for those folks with only an eensy weensy amount of time to play to reach level 80.
Some folks have of course have been chomping at the bit to go faster, and have been raiding in pugs or been taken along by friends in other guilds, but for the most of us, once we hit 80, we decided to start whacking away at the Heroics and get the gearing done.
And professions, and rep, and quests, and professions, and professions….
As such, we have players all over the spectrum of gear levels… some have Valorous drops from 25 man VoA, and others are in all crafted. Or working for crafted but broke and in blues and greens.
Amazingly enough, we only had two people since Wrath came out decide that they preferred raiding and getting loot over being in the guild, and leave. I think that’s simply incredible.
I mean, damn, the whole rest of the server seems to have blown through all the content already except us.
But we’ve waited bloody well long enough. It’s time to fart around in some of these here ten man raid thingies all you young energetic puppies been yapping about!
I’ve posted all sorts of stuff on our guild forums about what we hope to do, what we’d like to see people try and reach for gear goals before running, the normal stuff. I’m hoping that, with some folks being overgeared, that everything will even out.
I’ll admit, I was pretty worried reading some of the crazy talk out there on the internet about minimum raid requirements, and stuff like that.
I was pretty much hoping that, if we were all geared and skilled to the point we could kick most Heroics asses, then we ought to be okay. But I was still nervous.
At least, I was until last night.
See, I have this… little project I’m working on. And the project required the expenditure of 200 Stone Keepers Shards in Wintergrasp.
Well, I had the shards… and we didn’t have Wintergrasp.
This situation… this situation required correcting.
I took my flappy bird butt over to Wintergrasp keep, and did my rendition of rattlin’ battlin’ bots, and we took the place back.
Hey, did you know there is an achievement for taking Wintergrasp in under 10 minutes?
Yeah, yeah, everybody knew but me… fine.
At least I read Out of Mana, so I have some clue what Wintergrasp is all about.
Well, that’s actually the only clue I had.
We took da place, I found out that I can kitty claw attacking Hordie vehicles to Shreds (that’s kinda funny, actually… “Check your Six” turns out to be applicable in WoW vehicular combat.. whoda thunk it? Sucka.) and I turned in my 200 shards for my awesome purchase.
And then, all hell broke loose.
See, this was my first time here… and therefore my first time present when Alliance had just secured victory and hundreds of toons were in one place… 50 feet from a raid entrance.
The chat channel exploded with shouts of;
“10 man VoA forming, send me your whispers for invite!”
“Looking for moar healers, 25 man Vault, pst!”
“10 man Vault now now now! Wsp mah!”
I’m like… what?
I’m reading about the VoA and Obsidian Sanctum, I’m seeing how folks are swearing you need a serious DPS presence to beat the 5 minute enrage timer, you need this, you need that… and people are pugging this blind? A LOT?!?
Well, apparently so.
And you know what? I see a golden opportunity to screw up during a raid when it’s not the time of my guild I’d be wasting.
After all, the people forming this run must know what to do, so I can let them teach me. Then I get hands on experience, and I can better lead my guild.
Win!
I whisper that I’m a tank, well geared from Heroics, and with no experience whatsoever in VoA but willing to follow directions.
And I get in the run. Another tank, a better geared feral druid was also invited, and I got my guildie Nighthawque to come in and heal.
We ended up with two feral druid tanks, two resto druid healers, and an assortment of DPS. People kept popping into raid and back out in a mass of swirling confusion, as people realized they were already saved in ten man version, or their UI was borked, or they apparently were slack jawed and silly, I dunno.
In the end, everyone zoned in… well, almost.
See, we had about 8 in the instance when the raid leader said “Let’s start pulling trash” and the other tank ran ahead and pulled.
Whoah, damnit!
See, I had been reading, and I knew that you needed two tanks because the trash dumped a +300% damage debuff on the main tank, so the other needed to be ready to taunt it off.
Problem?
I didn’t know what the damn cast warning or indicator was when the tank got the debuff!
I kept right up there tanking and whacking, and staying #2 on aggro, but I watched and watched and never saw a cast signal.
We got the first trash down, but on the next one someone pulled the third trash along with it, and while trying to tank both, I’m watching for cast signals while trying to whisper the other tank asking what the hell I’m supposed to watch for (and by the way, would it freaking kill us to spend 30 SECONDS telling me this shit before a pull?) when he dies and the raid wipes.
Well, we have time to talk about it now, don’t we? Congratulations to me for not freaking knowing. Apparently, even if you SAY you don’t know anything about the instance, people assume you really do.
The other tank, a really nice guy it turns out, whispers me that the indicator is when I see him get knocked back, that’s when I need to be ready to taunt on the trash. Thank you, and now I know. And knowing is half the battle!
No, I refuse to say the rest.
We clear the other trash, get on the boss, and at least this time I know I need to be at number one or two on threat at all times.
It was crazy, there was knockback, charges, spikes from the floor, dogs and cats living together… mass hysteria!
We won anyway. /disgruntled.
We had two tanks, two healers, a mish mash of DPS that, according to my recount, never got above 1500dps, (the other feral tank was actually number one DPS, if that tells you something) and we freaking won.
A couple Tier 7 Plate drops got looted, a chest for fury warriors and healy gloves, and everyone smiled and said “take it easy!” and went our seperate ways.
Not only wasn’t I killed in the big fearsome boss fight, my fur hardly got mussed.
THIS is what I was nervous about?
That shouldn’t even be called a raid, it should be called, like… a light loot snack.
Still… I’m looking forward to going in there with something remotely resembling a clue on Thursday.
Wish us well!
P.S. I’d tell you about my secret project… but then it wouldn’t be a secret, now would it?
It’s pretty damn fun, I’ll tell you that much!
VoA is a blast, quick and easy, though they need to shorten the lockout I think.
Also…OOO, I HATE secrets! :)
Nice bear! yah what a funny instance. I dont do it anymore, dont care much for the small chance to get some pvp gear for my spec, and dont need badges. Its just a bit of a laugh really and its supposed to be super easy. Amazing how many puggers for the raid end up being already saved – or even worse, going into a raid as leader, already saved, when it’s set to the wrong version of heroic/normal. Then inadvertently saving everyone in their group to an empty raid instance for the rest of the week. Watch out for that one!
VOA is easy as… you could go in there with a bunch of good 75’s and clear it lol… Apparently there have been guilds that do the 25 man ones in 2 groups of 12 just for double loot its so easy :P
OS isn’t much harder… Just watch out for the Flame wave and make sure your 2 tanks dont die… Then collect your free epics…
Although, if you leave 1,2,3 drakes up it gets progressively harder… 3 drakes was so hard, our druid MT for that fight almost gets 1 shot with 50k HP
Hmmm… I’m guessing the secret project has something to do with an alt and that you purchased a set of shoulders for the 10% xp bonus. I’m tempted to do the same for one of my secret alts but I’d really like one of those black war mammoths.
“A light loot snack”, with a side of Emblems, indeed.
The raid boss is just a 5-man heroic boss with very clear mechanics that you do with more people. It’s good practice all around for everything you do in the other raids. I have to think Blizzard made it totally PUG-able for this very reason.
Should it drop T7 and the good PvP gear, or just larger amounts of Emblems/Shards? That’s a topic for another day… and other people who want to debate RNG-based gearing vs. traditional raid/PvP gearing scenarios.
I’ve thought about the whole thing about getting legendary gear for an alt, but I got to say, after trying several alts out, what could I possibly roll? Just through doing heroics I’m already geared out and ready for Naxx and beyond in Tank, Healer, and working on DPS sets for my druid. The only possible thing I would want an alt for is for gathering professions since I dropped skinning and took up JCing to go with my LWing. And for this I just used my DK. I suppose I could send him some gear so when he out grows his starting gear when he goes to Out Land he would be good. Actually, now that I think about that, I might just do that.
Also, I find it pretty funny to see my Undead Death Knight running around on his demon horse and stopping…..to pick flowers.
Hehe nice day for you then? :D
I remember my first time in there xD
Almost wiped the raid with the cloud thingy :P
OS HC was a bitch for me to OT… Adds got hit by the flame wall and when they do they get 300% more HP and damage… :S
But we still made it :D
Never got any loot in those places yet tho.. :’(
Well good luck then in the other raids ;D
Congrats Bear to your first raid experience in the new expansion!
Sorry to hear you get all in a tizzy about VoA…I was much the same way when I had to run in and heal. That place is seriously wham, bam, thank ya ma’am…let’s loot the body and leave. Perfect for a guild to get together and learn the basics of what it is to Wraid in Wrath. Here’s to you and yours with continued success.
I think you’ll tank everything fine BBB. It’s awesome that everyone stuck around. I hope you guys have good time running through contents!
Bear… buddy. you gotta come talk to me about these things. we woulda had you running vault in quest greens. i’ve run it every week since hitting 80 on both normal and heroic and:
a) i’ve only been with one group that wasn’t able to beat the enrage timer (because more than half of the dps was under 1k)
b) i’ve never had a piece of druid gear drop. i actually started keeping track after my third week running it and with the exception of a warlock piece nothing but mail or plate has ever dropped when I run it.
(Quick thing I thought was funny, I normally play resto, but I respec’d boomkin for the weekend just for fun. Me, a mage and a enh shammy from my guild all grabbed a quick 10 man vault. With 0 +hit I was able to nab third place behind my other guildies and the nearest DPS pug was almost 1k behind. They were both around 2600, i pulled 2400 and the 4th place rogue was pulling 1500. I think I love my boomkin.)
PS – you should run vault whenever you can, extremely puggable and even if you dont have gear, someone will carry you. Also be aware that vault is FILLED WITH DRAMA. I have never seen more ninja complaints than out of that instance. Make sure you trust your master looter. Also, Bear, trust me, OS – go do it. Almost as easy as Vault as long as you kill the drakes first. I ran a quick 25 man since I missed my guild run this week and with more than half the raid dead after the first lava wave we still killed him in one shot. So as long as at least half your raid knows what they are doing you will be just fine.
Seriously… Bear… run it tonight before the reset if you havent already. I expect a post tomorrow. :P
Eh VoA is BS.
Stupid 800 dps mages walking off with 2 213 epics…
And the wipes are even worse… 400 dps rogues? Wtf?
I seriously wish they’d put a 3 day timer on VoA. It’s definitely easy once the people are out of greens. It takes about 10 minutes once everyone’s actually in the instance.
Just an outsider’s opinion on the whole raiding scene… I stress raids I’m not familiar with too. However, the only raid I’ve seen that really is any worry about is Eye of Eternity. Naxx 10 is probably the next hardest (standing in bad things is bad), Naxx 25 is easier. OS 10 and 25 with all the drakes down is a cakewalk as well. Blizz posted that they made this level of raiding insanely easy so everybody could experience it. THey didn’t want it to be the roadblock that Kara was to a lot of guilds. Word is to not expect Ulduar to be nearly as easy.
All the best with your job hunting, Big Bear!
Gen
Tank-in-training
Nagrand
The biggest challenge of VoA seems to be to get Wintergrasp. When I was in there, and the boss went down (like you said, a mish mash of all kinds of things, and once again, I’m glad my guild needs me as a shadow-priesty) and we were standing around with a general “What now?”-face…
Got to agree with you BBB, Archavon is very easy and the sort of thing guilds should do as soon as they get a group of 80s together. We hit it for the first time last week, and Obsidian Sanctum and had very few problems with any of it. Once we’d learned the tactics it was easy purples for the guild and something we’ll be doing every week before Naxx runs.
Good luck with the job hunting.
” Tristan says:
January 19th, 2009 at 4:15 pm VOA is easy as… you could go in there with a bunch of good 75’s and clear it lol… Apparently there have been guilds that do the 25 man ones in 2 groups of 12 just for double loot its so easy”
I find the 12-man VoA25 VERY hard to believe.. That only leaves 8 DPSers and to reach the needed 33,333DPS to kill Archavon, they would each have to put out 4,166.67 DPS for a full 5 minutes. I know that number isn’t unrealistic but 8 DPS putting out that much, they would have to fully geared with the best that’s available right now and even then..Archavon is jumping around out of range and you’re avoiding gas clouds.. I just don’t see how someone could maintain over 4K dps with all of that going on. I could be wrong though :p
VoA is a ton of fun. Basically from a tanking perspective there are 2 critical times. On the trash when they punt the OT needs to taunt and on Archavon when it says he lunges at the tank the OT needs to taunt. By the way when Archavon “lunges” at the main tank take a look at his right hand. The tank is actually being grabbed by the boss. As a bear he was actually grabbing my face and then he tossed me in the air. It is really funny to see :)
Don’t worry about gear minimums. Seriously. OS and VoA are easymode as long as you’ve got a group that can follow directions (as you saw in VoA). Things get a little more complicated in Naxx, but again, the focus is on player skill and not gear level.
I do have one reccomendation for you though. If you can field the players for a 25-man group, DO SO! 25-man is easier than 10-man simply because there’s more room for error. You’ve got more bodies and the fights are less ‘tightly tuned’. When we stepped into 25-man I don’t think we killed one boss without at least someone being DCd, often more than one someone. In a 10-man, if you’re coming in with minimum gear (I consider quest blues and greens to be minimum) then absolutely everybody needs to bring their A-game, there’s not much room for little mistakes (which always end up happening, but that’s part of learning)
Good luck though! I can’t wait to see how it goes.
Can’t wait till Thursday!!
Good luck for the spiders!
If you get through the spiders without too much difficulty I’d recommend that it’s well worth going for at least one boss in one of the other three wings:
Military Quarter: Instructor Raz — this fight is tricky on the tanks (Matticus actually recommends using a tank and a DPS to do the controlling, and having the other tank around in case of problems), but fairly simple for the rest of the raid. Expect to wipe a few times whilst the controllers get the hang of the interface, but perseverance should produce a kill
Plague Quarter: Noth is a fairly simple phased tank-and-spank/lots-of-adds-to-control fight so long as you have a good team of decursers doing the whack-a-mole thing.
Construct Quarter: Patchwerk is a fairly simple DPS check, all the damage is essentially shared between the two tanks so provided your healers have enough endurance (which they should if you got through the spider quarter) it’ll just come down to whether or not you can achieve the 12,000 sustained DPS necessary. Unless you’re very close on the first attempt (or something goes wrong) it’s probably not worth trying again. If you’re running with three healers you may find you have an excess of healing in which case it’s well worth getting the priest (if you have one) to wand except when they’re needed, for the extra 250dps or so that’ll give you.
What we did the first time we got through Spiders was to go and have a look at Patchwerk expecting to be rather short on DPS (we were, but it gave us an idea of how far off we were) and then went off and did Noth.
The second boss in each wing is a tactics fight of some description and I wouldn’t recommend going that far unless you’re really on a roll — In my experience most people would rather end with a boss kill than after multiple wipes on an unfamiliar boss. I expect I’m preaching to the choir here though :-).
We all know what assumptions do.
25 man Vault is my only raid so far. Got lucky and won the roll on the pally tanking gloves.
Sadly, they are better than any DPS gloves I have access to. Not better for tanking, that would be expected… these things are better for DPS than anything I have access to.
I when I run heroics I just pray no one inspects me and looks to closely at the +Defense on my gloves. :|
@Glissa
Your assuming 2 tanks and 2 heals. If your group is geared you can easily use a Plate wearing DPS as an OT and one Healer. But you are right, it would be a lot easier to bring at least 15.