Tag Archives: raids

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.

Jan 25

Achievements Galore!

On Wednesday Osephala put together a group of people who were trying to get the ICC 10man mounts, Reins of the Bloodbathed Frostbrood Vanquisher. This means coordinating 10 people’s need for Heroic kill of each of the bosses, and coordinating which achievements we needed and whether or not it can be done on heroic mode. Granted, being 85 and geared for Cataclysm raids meant that for the most part we were over-geared for the content, especially on normal mode. Prior to Wednesday I only had Boned (10) and I’ve Gone and Made a Mess (10).

Wednesday got all of Heroic: Storming the Citadel (10) except for Lady Deathwhisper, mostly because we were going for Full House (10). Instead of Heroic Deathwhisper we went for Full House. We ended up being forced to wipe it up a few times in order to get the right combination of mos up, but once we got it, it felt good. We then went on to take on not just Heroic: The Crimson Hall (10), but finish off The Orb Whisperer from Blood Prince Council and Once Bitten, Twice Shy for a few of the raiders (including me).

The lot of us went on to attempt Dreamwalker on Heroic. With only two healers and trying to get Portal Jockey we found ourselves needing someone, anyone, to take the 3rd portal that spawned. The problem became that if we let just anyone take the portals, Ose and I weren’t able to get in there and get our healing buff/debuff. Another couple of attempts with only two healers and failing, the next attempt included asking the Boomkin Meleia to switch specs to Resto. Lo and behold, with a third healer Dreamwalker on heroic complete including getting the Portal Jockey achievement.

By the end of the night, I ended up with 8 out of the 16 total achievements on the meta towards the Frostbrood Vanquisher.

Now for Saturday, most of the same group is brought together to try to finish off as many of the achievements as we can get. We all successfully finished off Heroic: The Plagueworks as well as all the achievements associated with that wing. Dances with Oozes (10), Flu Shot Shortage (10), and Nausea, Heartburn, Indigestion… (10) in one shot. It went really well and surprised many of us that we were able to get it without a whole lot of explanation. Some of the raiders hadn’t done much ICC raiding and had even less experience with the mechanics of these fights.

Heroic Sindragosa and trying to get All You Can Eat (10) wasn’t working out so well. There were simply too many people who hadn’t done the fight before. Too many people who didn’t understand where to stand, where to position the dragon, etc. Instead we all go credit for the Heroic kill and we’ll try the achievement another day.

Many things were accomplished on this day, including getting Kingslayer for at least a handful of the people who were there who had no other toons with Kingslayer titles. Now I realize this is older content, but it’s not so old that we didn’t have our issues or our wipes. Since we skipped a few bosses on Heroic, we weren’t able to tackle the Lich King on heroic either. It was better this way for the same reasons surrounding Sindragosa. We did, however, get Been Waiting a Long Time For This (10), which is a much bigger pain in the ass that one might think.  The group of us being overgeared caused one problem. Not enough adds caused another problem. After much wowhead reading, we were able to figure it all out. That was a pretty epic kill. Almost as good as the first time I’ve killed the Lich King.

The funny thing about Lich King is that there is still a lot of worry about Defile and Infest. Don’t get me wrong, these things are still concerns. Anyone can still turn the entire platform where you fight the LK into Defile-fest and wipe the entire rest of the raid by leaving no where to stand. And Infest can still kill you if you can’t get the player’s health up above 90%. I’m pretty sure at one point I ran myself out of mana because I was desperately trying to get the add tank up above 90% and simply wasn’t doing a very effective job of it. A rogue got tossed off the side by a Val’kyr, which isn’t surprising* that someone would end up getting tossed off the side.

In the end, after some confusion regarding what needed to be stacked to 30 and what we were supposed to be doing, we got the achievement. And it felt good.

We went on to kill some Kel’Thezad, Malygos and Halion. It was an amazing night of older content, and a good time with new WoW people. I’m looking forward to getting my dragon and helping everyone else get theirs as well.

* Damn rogues. :P

Jan 17

Valiona & Theralion

I’m gonna go ahead and say it right from the start. This even sucks. It doesn’t just suck, it’s one of the most horrible raid encounters I’ve done in Cataclysm so far. Lemme tell you, there are some pretty horrible raid events that have a very large learning curve. None of them make me want to pull my hair out quite like this fight.

I’m unable to understand how I always get hit by the purple effing fire, but I always get hit. I don’t necessarily die, but I always get hit. It doesn’t matter where I stand, or how far away I am, I always get hit. That damn dragon has a thing against me, I know it. Tonight, after what felt like the one millionth attempt, they got those dragons down while I laid there dead

The worst part is how fail I look on the logs. I apparently like to eat fire… with my face and body, so I am almost always standing in front of the damn dragon when she breaths her purple flames of doom. I didn’t die last night, but I took an awful lot of unnecessary damage (like a damn noob). Then I get stuck in the Twilight realm where there are pink orbs of badness you’re supposed to avoid. Not to mention that while there, you’re taking constant damage. Oh yeah, did I mention that I had no idea what to look for to get the fuck outta that place?? yeah, no. I didn’t. So I wandered around, dodging pink orbs of badness looking for the right corner with my way out.

Admittedly, I seemed distracted. I posted on the forums that next time when I’m not feeling 100%, I’ll ask to be swapped out for a healer who is feeling much more on top of things. Maybe it’s the dynamics of the fight that were throwing me off. Maybe I wanted to log onto my finally-level-75 Inscriptionist and work on that so he could make Darkmoon cards. Maybe I was dreading going back to work. Whatever was bothering the crap out of me seemed to affect my performance.

As an advocate for Stay the Fuck Outta Fire, I sure set a bad example last night.