Tag Archives: strat

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 21

Valiona & Theralion: Revisited

So after much frustration from Sunday night’s ridiculous failure of trying to down Valiona & Theralion, and my inability to stay the hell out of the Twilight Realm, we all came back on Tuesday with some pretty amazing attempts. So our fearless leader decided to change things up a little bit when we got there. This required some explanation because of the changes to how we were going to deal with the Blackout‘s that are being dished out.

Last week, the way we were attempting to deal with these two dragons requires two different marked guild members. One in melee and one ranged. When the blackout went out, if you were ranged you’d stack up on the ranged target, and if you were melee you did the same but staying near the dragon. The problem this was causing was that there weren’t enough bodies to distribute the damage, usually resulting in at least one death (and possibly more). One of the major problems with Bastion of Twilight is the ridiculous quantities of trash mobs that need to be dealt with. By ridiculous quantities of trash I mean so many mobs per group that you run out of raid markers and have to designate “left unmarked” and “right unmarked” or the “unmarked behind circle”, etc. Get the idea?? It’s ridiculous. The first time the guild went through there I was not around to see what “epic trash” actually was, so I had no idea what to expect. Sadly, when I get asked to do something like hibernate a dragonkin, I freeze.

“You want me to what?” Hibernate that mob. “What’s a hibernate??”

I’m kidding. I know what hibernate is, and have actually used it quite a bit during Grim Batol while grinding Heroics, but I hadn’t used it in awhile. It’s just not something I’m used to doing. Ever wonder what happens when your hibernate fails? The raid ends up with a dead druid, that’s what.

One of the problems we were having outside of people just being off their game* there simply weren’t enough melee to soak up the damage. For the first couple of attempts we lost a couple of melee dps. Some of the ranged were told to run up and help soak up some of the blackout damage, but by that point the loss of bodies meant that a wipe was called.

Now, I am not even going to lie about being one of the few people to consistently eat face to Devouring Flames like an effing nubcake. There are few excuses to taking so much damage (and luckily not dying, but that also meant my poor healer or I was spending time healing me when we should have been healing other people) and I knew this needed to be changed. The worst part is that the hooker Valiona actually turns to cast it, so I can see what direction she’s facing. Still I ate it. Mind you, I didn’t know you could just run away from her an take less damage. Apparently the closer you are to her the more damage you take. I didn’t know this, and so I kept trying to run around towards her backside in an attempt to get out of it. Sometimes dying, sometimes not. Either way, avoidable damage that I wasn’t being very effective at avoiding very well.

Something else to remember is that ranged is supposed to be so many yards away from each other. Okay. I can do this. I know I can do this. Except, I ran into melee for blackout and upon running back out again I stopped paying attention to the direction Valiona was facing. I was only paying attention to who was near me and making sure I was within range to heal, but away from people to avoid unnecessary damage. Then there’s my healing.

Ah, fak, Devouring flames to my face!

On Tuesday’s raid, we decided to all collapse on melee. This meant the priest(s) were able to drop lightwell’s near the center, within clicking range for everyone. This also meant that we had the entire platform to spread back out again. The difference between how things were on Sunday versus Tuesday is that all ranged went into melee, not just the ones who chose this time to run in. There weren’t areas of the platform already occupied by people upon the run-out phase. I didn’t spend precious seconds looking for a clear area of ground. We all moved out together. This also meant that we were able head towards her tail.

The guild had a few wipes, but overall I had a much better experience with how things went on Tuesday’s raids. I also felt that I wasn’t nearly as distracted and was able to concentrate on what was going on on the computer screen. Mind you, it’s often hard to give WoW my undivided attention while at home, no matter what room I’m in.**

All in all, I don’t hate the event nearly as much as I did on Sunday. It’s still not one of my favorites since the swirlies that suck you into the Twilight realm have a much bigger reach than their graphic shows (and I have all my graphics turned up). Or not knowing what the portal to get out of the Twilight realm looked like. Or the north, south and middle flames. Ugh, actually, on second thought, these dragons are hookers still.

I did get Drake of the Twins off them, so I can’t hate them too much.

* I was definitely one of those people. I even said so on the guild forums with an apology. I felt as though I were completely distracted nearly the entire night and should have asked to be swapped out with a healer that wasn’t so completely and utterly distracted. Although I was not the only one, according to guildie’s posts on the forums as well.

** I have started playing while in bed, there is another who pays in the same room and a 13-year-old running around the house somewhere. Usually asking fairly ridiculous questions and talking loudly causing me to not hear stuff going on in Mumble.