and then the same night…

HOLY FUCKING SHIT WE DOWNED MADNESS HC!!!!!!! oh hai there, I’m a tad bit excited

I’ve NEVER had this before – being actually finished an end-game heroic boss in the same tier. (before you say it, I know this is what Blizzard wants. I know)

Let me explain. I’m a hardcore raider (my tank says I skew to an elitist mindset, I respond by asking him if he’s CTC capped). Sure my mindset was always driven to end-game content but somehow we never before had the hc end boss down. Not ragnaros. Not neffy.

Nerfs or not, this all changed last week when we downed heroic Madness of Deathwing after a short 1 week extended lockout. Nothing like that brute of 1 full month of lockout like heroic spine progression.  Here’s our kill video, halfway through you’ll hear all the nerdgasm’s on the kill with the exception of me, it fraps doens’t pick up my own voice on mumble – and plus, I keep my squeeees to my other half. Wait, that’s not what I meant.

After the nerdgasms, I included a little extra fun in the form of the bug we encountered the night before and STILL got the boss down to2 2.3%. Watch it and enjoy the lolz.

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What this fight is all about.

Phase 1 –>

• pretty much the same with the exception of 1 thing – person gets marked with parasite they stand in the bubble to spawn it and dps burns it down.
• more dps required
• more healing required
• we use a different platform order than we did on normal
• timing for impales and cooldowns is even more tricky

Phase 2 –>

• significantly harder than normal
• can you believe it, more adds? bring good slowers + aoe they need to die before reaching the boss to heal
• those big adds will one shot your tanks, ask them to be careful
• oh and pray a lot.

Awesome things to bring — >

• disc priest for pain suppression (and bubbles) on tanks for impales = godly
• hunter for slow trap, mage for stun and cone of cold, balance of ranged/melee
• pala healer to bubble on last platform to keep tank alive through impale + bolt hit

Paladins –>

• use your glyph of diving protection all the fucking time on this fight.
• use divine plea on cd so you have mana for this long ass 15 minute fight
• use hand of sacrifice on tank impales, preferably with bubble lol

p.s  on heroic many things DON’T work on impale such as… bubble, bop, guardian spirit, etc, etc, etc. Thanks Blizz!

I know I’ve not been posting much lately but these fights have had my ass so drained. I will post more soon as we’re going to be doing a weekly HC clear to get the rest of our raiders their hc madness drakes. So that’s 9 weeks, I bet MoP won’t be anywhere near being out yet.

After several weeks of perseverance, we downed Spine of Deathwing on Heroic two weeks ago. This bastard of a fight took us over a month to down – and that combined with major projects at work have had 100% of my time occupied.

Here’s the video of our kill and guild/horde first We’re still top Horde raiding guild and hope to get Madness down on heroic in the coming weeks… that is.. if we can get a second Spine HC kill in our hands. Urgh!

What’s in YOUR game these days?

YAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY I got this!

It’s the mount from Tol’vir digs, Scepter of Azj’Aqir and I’m happy!

Only like 4 rares from archaeology left in the game for me to get now. Urgh I hate grinding!

Do you still enjoy archaeology? Is there ONE that you have your heart set to farm and still not gotten?

It’s been a crazy few weeks for me. In my personal life, I got one on of those phone calls we all are afraid of. I was at work and I heard from my family that my father was ill, very ill, back home in the states and about to go into the hospital.  So, my tank and I jumped in a plane the next day and flew home to be with him.

I spent a very very emotionally heavy week with my dad there, anyone who followed me on twitter then heard a touch of what was on my mind. We’re taking things a day at a time now that my dad is home recovering.

Enter the fun stuff….

I joined one of our member raid teams as a full time healer on my disc priest. Wheee! Again, 2 raid teams! I love this. Last week, I joined them for their first Deathwing kill.

More progression!

While I was gone in the states, our heroic raid team downed Hagara heroic. Go TEAM! Then when we returned, we started straight away working on Blackhorn HC. Ouch this fight hurt! Hello RNG! It took us a few days of progression but we nailed it about two weeks ago!

This time, I recorded our kill also on video and am happy to share it here.

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What’s next for our team?

We’re healing the shit out of Spine heroic now. I’ve even had to switch out a trinket for the spirit valor point one, mana is just so tight on this 15 minute fight. We’re nearly getting to the third tendon. Next week this fight will be our focus and I am confident we’ll down it. This will put us in the top 3 guilds overall on the server.   I’m proud of my guys and gals on the team!

The Fight Basics

• 2 healers (or if you are a holy paladin with balls, go solo)
• 2 tanks
• enough dps to be “soakers”
• No prio for ranged or melee
• 2 people need to stay out for Hour of Twilight, so you must setup a rotation (you need 6 total including the tanks because after one is taken you get a debuff that locks you from the next 2)
• 2 people, in addition to a tank, need to hit their clicky ability for Fading Light
• In general, massive dps check, more healing needed
• The fight lasts to a 6 minute enrage, but you’ll really need to down him by 5:30 seconds. We cycled raid cd’s as of the 5 min mark
• Have your dps hit bloodlust at the pull, just AFTER your healers hit their clicky. they won’t get sated yay! Then you can use bloodlust again at 5 min into the fight just for the healers at the time THEY need it.
• On our kill, we had me (holy paladin) + a resto shaman. I took the red buff, he took green, then I took blue when it was safe to when it spawned. I think this healer combo is amazing. We also tried for several nights me and a holy priest, but didn’t get the kill.

How To Holy Paladin

Glyphs:

• First, take out that glyph of Light of Dawn for this you want to use LoD to hit as many as possible every time it’s at 3 stacks. You’ll be spamming Holy Radiance

Bacon:

• Bacon your tank, and focus heal your second tank (if needed). Otherwise you’ll be spamming HR on the tanks.

Cooldowns to use:

• Save your big cooldowns, Avenging Wrath, Guardian of Ancient Kings, Divine Favor, etc. for just after the second healer bloodlust mark at 5 min end. This means you can use them at the start, and they (not kings) will be up for the end.
• You won’t need Diving Plea at the end after you get the blue buff, so get a Volcanic Potion (I even pre-potted for our kill) and use it with your big cds at the end.

Aura Mastery and Aura

• Aura Mastery DOESN’T DO SHIT HERE.
• Divine Protection (glyphed) is quite nice (not on HoT)

Mana Regen Cooldowns

• Use your mana cooldowns, Divine Plea, pretty much any time before blue crystal spawns. You wont need much mana at that point so use it early.

Video Time!

Here’s our guild first (and horde side server first) video of this kill.  Note to self, don’t ever again in my entire life click DP when I have the blue buff – I have no idea what I was thinking – just freaking out I think at this point. It was our first pull of the night

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Happy healing out there healbots!

But let’s look back a bit. While we were busy wiping over and over on Zon’ozz heroic for the past 3 weeks, my main tank (and husband paladin) and raid leader sat out in order to take our Death Knight tank. Thank you again Blizzard for making this fight a hundred times harder with anything OTHER than a DK. This is when my stress escalated.

This left me, and only me as the raid leader.

Let me give you a little glimpse into our raid team and how we handle our raids. My husband and I are the raid leaders, he handles the progression leading, confirmations, group assembly, he has this way of knowing what decisions to make (and even switching people in and out) and keeping a very level head through wipes galore. He’s like, the PERFECT raid leader when it comes to the business side of it.  Under normal circumstances, I’m handing  the loot, dkp system, healing setup and strategies, cooldown rotations, uploading logs real-time and evaluating logs between pulls on my iPad, recording video, etc.

I’m irish by blood and boy can you tell. I can get really really angry, and impatient. This is where I make a terrible raid leader, but in combination with my sweetie – it’s a perfect combination. We’re side-by-side and I vent my frustrations to him, he comes up with perfectly awesome solutions and leads the team with them. I keep all of that discussion off of mumble.

Enter where the problem came – Zon’ozz heroic. Just me as mr. paladin tank was on standby 2 out of 3 of our raidnights per week. I could have cried, panic! Of course I wasn’t alone though. Thankfully I asked some teammates to lend a hand with leading, and they did each night. It helped, but I still felt immense strain and stress.

I spent hours  AFTER our wipefests to peruse the logs, did research, and posted information on strategy changes for the next night in our forums. That’s what I’m good at. But during the fights, I just don’t have a handle of everything going on except for the healing team.

Irregardless of my stress, the guild had to go on. We continued our slow progression. I guest appeared on the Blessing of Frost podcast, slowed down my blog postings. Recruitment for one of our member teams had to start up. It all became way too much for me.  Lately, I have had the burning feeling that I need to find some more zen in my life again. Yes, zen. It seems that running a (now) top raid guild on the server, with three ten-man raid teams with only 3 officers. The fact that my only other raid leader is my husband. What if we go on vacation? We needed some backup.

Enter Today – Putting on the Brakes

We have a phenomenal group of people in our heroic raid team – and damn it if we didn’t get our heroic zon’ozz kill last week. In the blink of an eye, we went from wiping halfway through, to wiping at 3% over and over. At some point, it just clicked (as it usually does in progression). And we got the kill at the last pull of the night on reset day (typical). But it was an eye opener for me with the stress – much of it I probably brought on myself.

Here’s our first kill video for Zon’ozz hc, a guide will be up soon!

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This weekend, we made some changes in the guild. We’ve added 3 new officers (co-gm’s)  to the leadership team to help out with the load  and guild morale.  I’m really pleased with this solution, it is a huge help and relieves some of the pressure I have been feeling. This will be a big help in sharing the responsibilities around.

We also opened up a spot for a full-time raid leader on the heroic raid team. This person would be a full-time raid leader, pretty much taking my spot in what I suck at. I’ll then focus on being the healing lead, logs, and dkp – the things that I don’t suck at

This also means… *drumroll*… at some point me and my tank can take a holiday! We don’t have one planned, but we should take a trip home to the US within the next few months.  

I feel better already! Now, if we get this Ultraxion hc kill tonight, I’ll be a ton better!

Transmog?! OMG TRANSMOG!

I’ve been pretty meh when it came to the transmog feature, I mean it’s cool and all, but never something I wanted to try to spend any time on. I didn’t care much either way. Until today. I made this, and my girl is the hottest thing in town now

Before I go, here’s a touch of  the typical musings in guild chat… see why I love these guys?

Happy healing out there healbots!

This guide will focus on what you need to know to down Morchok heroic on 10 man.

The Fight Basics

• 2 or 4 healers (depends on your dps, it’s easy with 4 so we go with that)
• 2 tanks
• 2 “soakers” are needed (best soakers are plate wearers, or a rogue)
• Prio ranged dps
• At 90% hp, Morchok instantly duplicates and becomes 2 zomg bosses (second boss is Morchok spelled backward, Kohcrom)
• split your raid into 2 mini raids to tackle each boss individually on each side of the main path
• If you are not the soaker, you are on crystal duty, make sure everyone is healed up for the damage – priests, Binding Heal is your friend here and your soaker will love to be bubbled for stomp.
• …thats about it, mechanics on each boss are the same as normal

How to: Holy Paladin Soaker

Holy paladins actually make great soakers, so I always do this for my group. Here’s what I do.

Glyphs:

• First, take out that glyph of Divine Protection for this you want to use Divine Protection for the damage mitigation (not magic) on every other stomp.  Without it will hit for more than 100k.

Bacon:

• Bacon your tank, and focus heal yourself with HS > DL after each stomp and use WoG + DL on your tank if needed. It helps that he’s bacon‘d though since half of what you heal of yourself will transfer to him.

Cooldowns to use:

• If you know you are not going to be full HP to take a stomp, don’t hesitate to use Bubble. Also, Hand of Protection works on yourself as well (stomp is physical damage). So that’s 2 cooldowns at your disposal to negate 2 stomps. If you have a paladin tank with you, also ask him to save HoP for when you need it.

Aura Mastery and Aura

• For a third cooldown, use Aura Mastery with Devotion Aura (actually keep this up, there’s nothing to resist anyway) when it’s up – on a stomp.

Mana Regen Cooldowns

• Use your mana cooldowns, Divine Plea and Potion of Concentration, when running out of the black goo. Plenty of time for regen then.

Video Time!

Here’s a recent video of our guild doing this kill a few weeks ago, with me soaking! Too funny that our tank pulled morchok nearly to the next zone AND we pull an add group at the end lol.

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 Happy healing out there healbots!

I had a blast last night recording episode 48 of Blessing of Frost. Through thick and thin, power outtages, and EST / CET time differences, we persevered! There were no hickups I swear *whistles*

It was 10pm and I was camped out in my bedroom. Specificially so I could hide from my parrots and dog’s annoyances. I had 2 laptops, 1 iPad, and 1 iPhone in front of me, siked to guest appear on the Blessing of Frost podcast to talk about the Dragon Soul nerfs!

I kind of sort of messed up my time difference, so was an hour early. You’d think I ‘d remember it’s 6 hours and not 5, right? Since I am originally from that time zone? Urgh! Well through this and Majik’s power outage - including a  change to Skype – we finished off the evening of recording. And now….

It’s live!

The episode just went LIVE at http://www.blessingoffrost.com/episode-48-nerfs-and-power-outages and don’t forget you can subscribe via iTunes also!

Huge thanks to my 2 fabulous hosts, plugs below:

Kurn

Kurn on her site http://kurn.apotheosis-now.com or follow her on Twitter at https://twitter.com/#!/kurnmogh

She’s a badass holy paladin blogger and fellow healbotess, if you don’t already follow her blog, uhmm what rock are you living under? Go check  it out and support her!

Majik

Majik on his site http://www.majiksmissives.com or follow him on Twitter https://twitter.com/#!/Majjity Now comes free with extra power outages :) and if you are REALLY lucky, maybe a decurse!

Thank you both for the great fun last night!

During the scheduled server maintenance on the week of January 31, the Dragon Soul raid will become enveloped by the “Power of the Aspects” spell, reducing the health and damage dealt of all enemies in the raid by 5%. This spell will grow progressively stronger over time to reduce the difficulty and make the encounters more accessible. The spell will affect both normal and Heroic difficulties, but it will not affect the Looking for Raid difficulty. The spell can also be disabled by talking to Lord Afrasastrasz at the beginning of Dragon Soul, if a raid wishes to attempt the encounters without the aid of the Dragon Aspects.

So, the nerfs are already starting a mere 2 months since the raid landed – and this makes me a very sad panda

Here’s why.

Let me tell you how hard recruitment was in December. It was PAINFUL. We were just a few short on our 10 man (woman) HC team to have a large enough roster to build the optimal groups for specific encounters. It was a nightmare of spamming all recruitment and marketing and it drained me and took a lot of the fun out of raid/guild leading for me.

I’ve seen a few months now of  our server’s number dwindling down. I’ve even seen a few of my server friends move to the highest pop server in our battlegroup.  Actually seen a lot of people just leaving lately. I have heard from others that our server isn’t the only one.

Is wow dying?

Is wow dying?

Enter today. Our team is full, with a 14 person roster of high quality raiders that are all integrated into our tight knit guild family. Since the first of the year, we’ve also been progressing really well in Dragon Soul! We’re working on our third hc boss this week – and this news of the tiered nerfs incoming really has me overwhelmed with an intial feeling of failure and sadness for the game.

I don’t want it to get easier.

I feel a sense of disapointment and I’m sorry for my raid team. Sorry I didn’t push us harder, faster, and get us more HC kills.

I don’t want it to get easier yet. 

So, as a raid team we have to look at our options.

Option A)

Turn off the buff. Fall behind on progression because everyone and their mother is using the buff. Fall behind on server leaderboard. Now 5% nerf isn’t exacty making the bosses faceroll but still.  But after a bit, it will be 10%. Then 15%. Then 20%. So we continiously would fall behind. Does it matter that we clear it without the nerf? Not so much, leaderboards don’t show the difference unless you look at clear dates.

We saw this all before in ICC. Did anyone turn off the buff? No. So this isn’t REALLY an option.

It’s like.. if you beat a 10 year old at boxing, that doesn’t make you Mike Tyson

Option B)

Succumb to the buff, get totally demotivated (/sigh), and let it hang over your head that you cleared from 3+ on HC after the nerf and had to do it with the buff or fall farther behind.

So, in the end I’m not really liking these options.  Yes, tell me that I’m bitching and whining because I am – but these are my facts These sort of things have slowly been taking the fun out of the game for a lot of people I know. It’s like the LFR debacle, it was launched too early in my view.

I really hope that we aren’t sitting in Dragon Soul for the next 6 months farming it with it getting easier and easier, just waiting on Pandaland to launch. It makes me wonder where WoW will be in 1 year.

What do you think?  Will you be embracing the nerfs? Turning off the buff? Taking a break?

This is the next in my short rundown (and videos) of our boss kills in Dragon Soul. As of now, we’ve been knee-deep in progression and gone 2/8 heroic modes. In this quick and dirty guide, I’ll be focusing on the new airship battle, called Warmaster Blackhorn  If you are looking for other bosses, check here. 

Warmaster Blackhorn Basics

This encounter was one of the first fights we found in DS that was actually a tad bit harder. Here’s the quick and dirty guide:

First, let’s start off with what we NORMALLY always tell you. This.

What we always say.....

BUT on this boss, you NEED TO STAND IN THE POO…

This time, get in the BIG poo

This time, get in the SMALL poo too

Phase 1

• You’re on an air ship! If it dies, you die too (this is important to know)
• 2 tanks + 2-3 healers
• 2 big adds – each tank will pick up one
• purple drakes that ranged dps will kill
• 1 top prio add called a Twilight Sapper (sneaky little rogue dude) that drops down on the boat. Imperative that he dies before reaching the end of his walking path! He can be stunned and deathgripped to buy you more time. This is prio #1 if he’s up because if he hits, he’ll do 20% damage to the ship.
• 1 big huge drake that only throws big purple swirly things on the ship.
• STAND IN BIG PURPLE THINGS – technically called Twilight Onslaught . Yes, EVERYONE has to stack in that swirly to share the damage so it doesn’t hit the ship. See picture above!
• Setup a raid cooldown rotation for each big swirly. We typically use Aura Mastery on first, Divine Guardian on second, Hymn on third, Bubble on fourth, etc.
• Also stand in the small purple swirly things – technically called Twilight Barrage. In addition to the big swirly that the big drake throws on the ship, the smaller drakes will also pelt the ship. 1-2 people should stand in these to take the damage also – but don’t jump in there if you are at 50% hp or you’ll kill yourself!
• Big adds will mark the ground for Blade Rush . It’s indication that he’ll charge that target in like 5 seconds and two things have to happen now. 1: you must move out of his charge  and 2: everyone should get the fuck out of his charge path
• Rinse
• Repeat

Phase 2

Holy Paladin / Healing Tips

• You don’t have to move straight away after the big swirly aoe hit, you can stay long enough after to fire off a HS > HR > LoD then move to help heal up the group
• Bacon one tank, heal the other
• Glyph Divine Protection and be sure you use it on every single swirly.
• You can also use DP to take a small swirly solo
• You can also help out your dpsers but doing the first stun with HoJ on the little Sapper when he lands.
• in Phase 2 there will be tank swaps, so be sure you know who’s tanking when
• Don’t hesitate to bubble if you are going to get stuck in a shockwave
• in phase 1 it’s safe to use Divine Plea in between the big swirlies
• in phase 2 don’t use Divine Plea during a shockwave
• Use Aura Mastery in the cooldown rotation for big swirlies

Once you get down the fight in terms of eliminating damage to the ship, handling sapper quickly, and getting into P2 its an easy kill after.

Kill Video