Tag Archives: fire

Mar 12

Finally the death of Nefarian

So, it’s been awhile since I’ve been buggered to blog. I know. I had these grandiose plans to find my area on the internet where I would be this amazingly funny writer. Yeah. Well, screw that real life crap. It kinda got in the way. I’m still thoroughly annoyed by it too.

So let’s get down to business. Nefarian. Let’s go ahead and get this out of the way right now. Blizzard decided to sit down and figure out all of the things that have ever been used as a raid strategy in the last however many years and threw them all together for the final boss fights. I can’t even imagine what Sinestra‘s gonna be like, but I’m going to lament about this damn dragon first. Cho’gall is all over the place too, but at least after the first time you kill him (is it a them??) it doesn’t go so badly. There are strategies that help keep healers from going apeshit running around trying to heal everyone.

See, my Raid Leader is a very kind person. She’s effing pretty damn amazing. She knows that I don’t really like tank healing, and so she tries desperately to not assign me as a tank healer. I fell in love with healing when druid were omfg-ah-may-zing raid healers, and I refuse to be pigeon-holed into a type of role. I don’t mind tank healing, and I don’t think I do a horrible job at it, but I love my raid healing. I have this compulsion to heal people anyway, so I guess she doesn’t really have a choice.* Anyway. Cho’gall at least has most people standing in the same general area. Yeah, there are the slimes. Yeah, there’s this corruption crap flying around all over the place. Yes there’s fire. And tentacle butts.** But there is nothing in the Cho’gall fight that compares to the clusterfuck that is the Nefarian fight.

This fight was so bad that we were all truly getting disheartened. I sensed the tension rising amongst my guildmates. I did my own bitching and moaning to my friends about the apparent slacking or perceived slacking. It felt like we, as a whole, had hit our limit. We were pushing and trying and not only were we going backwards (with each attempt being worst than the last one), but there seemed to be an awful lot of finger-pointing. Everyone thought it was someone else. Few people admitted to making a mistake and owning it, but that’s an entirely different blog post for another day.

Today, I want talk about Nefarian. Be is a douche bag. First when you engage Onyxia (omg, can’t she effing die already??!?) it takes a little bit before Nefarian comes down.

ಠ_ಠ

Oh but wait. This shit gets better, you just wait. This time you’re not just facing Onyxia, but Nefarian too. Oh yeah. Yeah. So much shit goin’ on, there’s no time to think!!

In the meantime, while you’re waiting for Nefarian to come down from flying around ominously above you, you’re stuck down below getting hit with electrical shock-y nonsense. Oh yeah, and a tail lash, that is unavoidable… no matter where you’re standing. Really? RLY BLIZRD!?? You had to make this ability unavoidable? And you desperately had to pair it with the electrical shock-y nonsense and then while us healers are already freaking out over OMG LOOKIT THEIR HEALTH!!1! you have to make it so that I can’t cast anything. Fabulous. Thanks. A lot. Not really. DIAF! Whoops, I’m getting ahead of myself now… we’ll get to the fire.

There is a need for 3 tanks on 25-man Nefarian. You need a Nef tank, an Onyxia tank, and an add tank during Phase 1. Healers are going to need to be spread out all over the place with at least one healer on each tank, the add tank healer chasing after the add tank too. As a raid healer, my job is to heal everyone. I will spot heal tanks. Lifebloom whomever seems to be eating the most damage. Rejuvenation, rejuvenation… MOAR REJUVENATION!!***

Oh see, now here’s the good part. After enough electrical-y things nuke the shit out of your raid causing an all-healer panic, there’s a time to kill Onyxia. And then the lava shows up. THE FUCKIN’ LAVA! OMG! Yeah, the lava. 3 pillars. There are 3 mobs who suck to put it simply. They’re like giant imps who cast this absolutely horrible ability that will wipe your whole raid if you’re not good about getting those interrupts off immediately and on time. The groups inevitably have to be split up with a nearly equal number of healers, interrupters and ranged DPS in order for this to go smoothly. Healers will be stressed the hell out all over again, and this is likely the best time to use those healthstones if you haven’t already. Because guess what? There’s more electrocute to go around! Yeah!! I don’t even know where this is coming from, but yeah, it sucks.

Once Phase 2 is over everyone hops down and prepares themselves for Phase 3. We have 3 healers follow our dedicated add tank. For the most part, the entirety of the rest of the fight is trying to keep those adds away from fire and surviving. Eventually the adds will overwhelm your tank and no amount of heals will be able to keep your poor plate-y alive. The hope here is that the rest of your team was able to burn the hell outta that damn dragon.

Collect phat lewts. And you WIN!

The first Nefarian kill was amazing to say the least. It was much anticipated and without a doubt one of the most difficult encounters to have to deal with. Everyone had a job. Everyone has something important to do. Everyone has a role that is vital to the beating of this dragon. I can honestly say, that the Nefarian kill Apotheosis had was sweet and much deserved. Even if that heifer didn’t drop my tier helm token.

Until Sunday… when Nefarian will be found singing his songs while flying around.

ಠ_ಠ

* This is making me more sad because now I think she assigns me to raid heals because my over-zealous need to heal anything moving and top them off keeps me from being very effective at anything else. Crap.
** When you’re in cat form, running, the tentacle attaches itself to your butt. I should have snagged a screenshot of this when a wipe was called and I was running around hoping to get MC’d so I might survive. Imagine my surprise when I saw I had this weird tentacle attached to my kitty bootie instead of a tail. Very unnerving.
*** I don’t actually heal this way, but it’s how resto druids used to heal Pre-Cata and occasionally I’m reminded why we used to heal this way.

Feb 5

Atramedes probably deserved it

The first time I saw Atramedes he was a little tiny whelpling. I don’t play with sound, so I likely missed a lot of the storyline behind it, but all of a sudden, the little guy gets zapped. For at least twenty minutes I couldn’t stop myself feeling sorry for the little guy. Oh ho ho! That little guy eventually becomes Atramedes, the blind ass dragon who is a giant pain in my ass.

Atramedes

Well, y’know what? Atramedes is a douche bag. Blind ass dragon is a pain in the damn ass dragon.

Don’t get me wrong, I realize that the majority of the dragons in WoW are douche bags. I mean, what’s the point of playing a game in which you don’t kill internet dragons?? Yeah, I can’t think of one either.

This one in particular, sends these really pretty sonic rings all around the room, originating from underneath his belly-ish area. The problem with the pretty rings is that I want to stand in them and see what happens? Don’t know what happens? He breathes fire on you. Not only does he breathe fire on you, but you get a hand debuff called death.

Throughout my WoW playing, I’ve always (generally speaking of course) been really good at avoiding all the junk on the ground. Purple circles, rocks falling, brown circles, white circles, blue circles, fire circles, fire patches… you name it, I probably stepped out of it*.

Unlike the horrible time I have staying out of Valiona’s face-eating purple fire of doom, I actually don’t do too badly avoiding Atramedes’ sonic rings of “omg I wanna stand in it” and, yes, of course the fire.

Y’know what I have a problem with? It seems it’s Searing Flame. Not even when it’s cast on me, but when it’s cast on others and I stand there like a dumb ass and don’t move to the left while they’re running right. Oh, no, why would I move when I can just hit 100 sounds and get devastated all over the place. It seems I do my best raiding with my face on the ground, honing in on my awesome skills of death buff. o.O My Raid Leader, however, might beg to differ about being really amazing dead on the floor.

With a monetary incentive, the RL offered 50 gold to the person who didn’t get hit with any of the pretty sonic rings, before 11:30 pm EST. We didn’t reach the time limit, cause, let’s face it, Atramedes was a hungry mutha-effer that night.

I’m fairly certain that by the end of the night Tuesday, everyone was pretty pissed off at Atramedes. I went from feeling really sorry for him to wanting him to die horribly and take his damn sonic discs with him. I keep telling myself that maybe he was just a mean bully of a whelpling and that’s why he was blinded, thus deserving what he got.

* This includes the good things, like Healing Rain, and Efflorescence the first time I’ve seen them. Don’t judge me.

Jan 31

Things to not fail at

So, when your raid leader tells you that you’re a nubcake and need to stop standing in the fire and dying like said nubcake, what do you do? Try to be better about not dying to face-eating-fire and move, right?? Right.

Well, as an advocate of the Don’t Stand in the Effing Fire club, I need to hand over my card and start back over at the intro level courses. How am I supposed to be upset about someone standing in fire when I myself can’t seem to get the hell out of it?

See here’s the thing. Last week (and I’m actually referring to the 18th of January) of raids, we were in Bastion of Twilight. I was there. I was told to stop going into the Twilight realm and stop dying to easily avoidable face-eating-fire breath. I was doing better… that night. As a guild, we hadn’t been to Bastion of Twilight since that Tuesday, and it seems I immediately went back to my nubcake-old self and died, early on, to face-eating-fire.

I’m already not a huge fan of the dragon twins. They’re whores. I have now deemed them the whore dragon twins.

whore dragon twins

Whore dragon twins

Mind you, there are so many effing more things to dislike about different events. Like the Council stuff Apotheosis started on last night. Wanna talk about a clusterfuck of insanity?? It was trying to do Council last night. It was insane. The dead tanks, the aoe damage, the fire and the waterlogged, and running through fire to remove waterlogged, but not stand in fire. I think the first attempt took all of a few seconds. I said I was ready, but it seems I had no idea just how insane the whole thing would be.

Back to the face-eating-fire part. Don’t stand in it nubcake. Fire is bad for you. This isn’t even the kind of invisible fire that you can’t see. It’s damn purple for christ’s sake, and I still died to it. Part of my problem was not being a tree, I think. As a tree I’m much more resilient to not die to fire.* It’s like not actually being made of wood or something. And I’m purple with an ‘fro. Fire can’t touch the purple ‘fro, man!

Another things (on a more serious note) is that I forget to get away from her face to avoid face-eating-fire. It is such a habit to try to run left or right out of fire simply to get out of it as soon as possible, but really what I want is to high-tail it away from her face. To avoid face-eating-fire. Get it?? I’ve been told this, but practice makes perfect, and it had been awhile since I had practiced. Though truth be told, as often as I face-eat the fire, I don’t understand why the RL even bothers to take me along in the first place.

In the end, I did better about not going into the Twilight Realm, probably one of the only good things about that death buff you get for taking face-eating-fire to the face. There’s no way to screw that up.

Wanna know what the worst part is? When trying to do Council later, I was told “If you get the Waterlogged debuff, just run through the fire, don’t stand in it, just run through it, that way you don’t freeze when the next *whateverbadthingcomesnext* hits.” So I get waterlogged and guess what I do? Run through the fire and get waterlogged off. What happens when Valiona takes her sweet ass time turning to face a direction in which she’s going to breathe her face-eating-fire?

I sit around and wait. I needed that death buff something fierce.

Moral of the story?? Face the dragon that breathes face-eating-fire so that you can see which direction she’s turning before she breathes fire, so that you can gtfo.**

* I’m totally being sarcastic, btw, in case you can’t tell.
** Something, if I get invited along on raids anymore, I will have to be uber-diligent to be better about. Though at this point, if I were demoted to friend and not promoted to raider, I can’t really blame the RL. I fail at this fire so hard.