Not to mention the whole assault on the Dark Portal thing, the zombie invasion which transitioned into Wrath, and the elemental invasion which transitioned into Cataclysm.
bump
So the Guild I raid with, which only raids 9 hours a week, is actively recruiting. We need Rogues; we can’t easily make progress without at least one more Rogue who is comfortable playing Subtlety.
Shining Force of Horde-Mal’Ganis; we’ve got Conclave, Halfus, and the BWD bosses pre-Nef down (Omnotron, Magmaw, Chim, Maloriak, and Atramedes) on Heroic. And heroic loot is getting d/e’d left and right, so come take some of it! :)
(We need Rogues, a Warlock, a DPS Warrior, and maybe a Mage.)
If you want in, either throw an application in at www.shiningforce.net/phpBB3/index.php or just toss me a PM and we’ll talk.
Also, if the Balance changes go in as they stand, it could be more DPS for a Balance Druid to sit in Solar full-time with as few as 2 targets. That’s… moderately aggravating.
Ranulf
5843
So, 4.1 thoughts?
Apart from the lag/disconnects and typical patch day nonsense, the new troll stuff seems ok. I’m not real enthusiastic about them but it was sure as hell nice to see 20+ people online at primetime, we even got some 10man raid time in last night.
The omnitron fight was buggy last night. I guess they changed how fast the bosses activate on the energy switch but now its an eternity. 10-20 seconds. We also had electron skipped in the rotation the first time through.
Hope you’ve had good luck in the rogue hunt Aaron and thanks for the offer earlier.
Zul’Aman hits like a goddamn truck. I think that, honestly, it’s a harder instance now in some ways (absolutely less forgiving) than it was in BC.
Which is okay with me, as long as I don’t have to heal it. shudders
ZA was really simple, apart from the fact that some guild members and pugs were imbeciles.
If only that “call to arms” was in effect at least I could’ve been bribed to continue tanking it.
Some fun scripts running in there though, especially liked the dodging boulders part.
To say that ZA was “really simple” is to miss much of the point.
Many things are simple. Playing a Shadow Priest to maximum effect in Burning Crusade was simple; it could be described by a five-line priority rotation and the litany of “Don’t stand in fire”.
That doesn’t mean it was easy. It was frustrating and difficult to squeeze every last bit of DPS out of the spec, to the point where any clearly-competent Shadow Priest had progression, content-clearing Guilds on other servers trying to recruit him.
Likewise, the following things are simple but not necessarily easy:
-Maximizing one’s personal DPS to the extent required to clear the instance in the 4timed timer.
-Pulling fast enough while still picking up every mob and building sufficient threat, to do the same, while not pulling faster than your healer can keep you up.
-Managing the sliding scale of increased DPS from AoE versus the risk of a tank death.
-Healing Halazzi’s Lynx phase (and likewise, Zorkororora or whatever his name is’s Lynx phase).
Particularly, on that last point: It’s simple, sure. The tank taunts as soon as the boss focuses on someone, the healer pumps mad healing onto the tank. Easy? Well, the margin of error is pretty damn low, which often makes simple things hard when faced with even a half second of latency.
I’m liking the new instances. My tank got a Elwynn Lamb doing the Call to Arms thingy.
ShivaX
5848
Its great fun to tank 3 of those things at once.
I by fun I mean… actually kinda fun if a bit unnerving when you see Arcanotron, Electron and Toxitron all running amok at the same time.
Gedd
5849
Interesting. I ran the new ZA for the first time last night and thought the first five bosses were mostly trivial, but I assumed that was because we were all in mostly 359 gear and the dungeon is tuned for something lower (346 or so?). We actually had more issues with the trash leading up to the Dragonhawk boss (missed the ground effect) and Lynx (lotso mobs, stuns, mind controls) than the bosses themselves.
Daakara, on the other hand, gets pretty insane. We got the Lynx/Dragonhawk combo, and he basically alternates between two abilities in each phase…the first being like hitting you with pillows and the second “Oh look I died again before I could react”. The Claw Attack, in particular, requires some pretty extraordinary measures to get through. I’d hate to see that one in 346 gear.
My experience with ZA in TBC wasn’t that extensive. We probably raided it for 8-10 weeks or so before Wrath hit. We managed to down the bosses, but never quite had the stuff for the bear run. I do recall the bosses in general feeling much harder (with the exception of the last one which I only recall being slightly harder).
rei
5850
Alright, quit for the third and final time. Been dry 2 months with no desire to log in. Whee.
Which I did for the first time on my Resto Shammy last night…it was intense.
On one trash fight, the Pally tank (who was actually really good overall) was taking so much damage that I chain cast Healing Surge on him about ten times in a row followed by instant cast Greater Healing Wave to prevent a wipe.
That wipes my mana pretty effectively. Good thing it was only trash O_o
We did beat it after a few tries on the last boss.
Just have the tank taunt him when he does that and maybe pop a cool-down. Easy peasy.
Did ZA and ZG last night. Both are absolutely brutal in PuGs, more like mini raids than anything else. Which makes sense I guess given their provenance.
ZA used to be the easy one, but apparently they hotfixed the first boss, Akil’zon, and now he’s an absolute monster. Probably the hardest heroic boss in the game right now.
None
5854
As an 85 rogue that’s been through all the Cataclysm dungeons multiple times in normal mode, which heroic should I start out with? I’ve got all level 333 gear (except for the ranged slot… I’m so sick of Halls of Origination) and a few pieces of 346 gear from the various faction rewards. I’m guessing Blackrock Caverns?
Marcus
5855
You need a min ilevel of 346 to do the new instances.
Yeah, that sort of wasn’t his question.
I’d say take a look at Wowhead and see which instances drop the gear you need, but keep in mind queuing for random heroics is still the quickest way to get the better upgrades. The difficulty between the heroics seems pretty similar to me, but I’ve just done them a billion times at this point. The hardest ones for PuGs are probably still Stonecore and Deadmines, but the quality of random groups is still a crapshoot.
First round of patch notes up for 4.2!
Balance Druids are getting a bit of a change. As it stands, (and this is confirmed, according to EJ), dots will push us out of Eclipse but not towards the next Eclipse.
It’ll be interesting to see what changes they make to even it out. I don’t know what the numbers would be for having DoT application push us to and from Eclipse, but I feel like this is the wrong path for changing how Balance Druids play; a buff to Moonfury and a concurrent nerf to Mastery could have nerfed multi-dotting and Solarspam while maintaining our (not exactly amazing) single-target DPS.
My husband got an e-mail yesterday informing him he got 7 days of free play. Ofcourse we checked the account management website rather then following the link and the 7 days were there… however myself and my daughter didn’t get those days.
I don’t know why since we’ve always been subscribed for the same lenght of time, and all three of us unsubscribed at the same time.
Anyway, just thought I’d give a heads up in case there are other people we are unsubbed at the moment, but woulnd’t mind checking out the state of the game, they might have a free week too.
idrisz
5860
I ran ZA on Saturday with another guild mage, I was on my arcane mage as well.
we didn’t make the sacrifice time because of a wipe due to sentry trolls, but boss overall isn’t too bad except the last one, we had bear + hawk combo.
our group consist of pally tank/shaman heal/fury warrior/2x arcane mage, and the hawk phase on the last boss is insane on groups with multiple caster, there is no way in hell the shaman healer can keep up with damage deal out by the feather cyclones. we barely beat it after everyone died with boss at 275k health, and our pally tank somehow kill it with 2200 hitpoints left.
during that phase we either not cast any spell and die to totem or we cast spell and die quicker to cyclones.
other than that, it was fairly easy, 2x arcane mage really brings insane dps for boss fights, we were putting out like like 20k average on most of the fights and on the fight with unlimited mana due to mana totems we pull like 30k.
