« Archives in May, 2012

Warmaster 10 Man Heroic

Heroic Warmaster is a challenging fight, mostly due to the cooridination required. We had many, many pulls before the nerf stick hit Deathwing and his minions to the tune of 20%, but couldn’t quite get over the line. One of the highlights of the combination of normal mode achievement – Deck Defender and heroic mode, is that for once, performing for the achievement is actually great practise for the heroic mode. With nerfs, you can more easily solo soak barrages but at least it puts the activity of soaking front and center in people’s minds.

Our strategy for soaking the barrages was to have a healer and two ranged DPS on each half (longways) of the boat, and have all three scramble for as many barrages as possible. The theory (and practise) here is that if someone doesn’t make it, there is every chance that at least two people WILL make it, avoiding anyone getting one shot. Some dedicated go getters (you know who you are) also went out and purchased [Mirror of Broken Images], that combined with personal cooldowns would allow for solo soaking where necessary.

While soaking the barrages is serious business alone, the combination of other mechanics is really what causes issues. Soaking a barrage leaves you with a debuff that increases your shadow damage taken. Two barrages in quick succession leaves you with two stacks of the debuff, which means you will likely die if you join 9 other people soaking an onslaught. The issue here is that not only do you need to be aware of your own debuff, but you can’t ignore how high the debuff is on other players who you might otherwise assume are going to help you soak. Then you add to the equation the charges from the big burley dudes trying to whack your tanks brains through their well encased skulls… and then add in the fire… oh the fire! Buggy as $#@^. It all adds up to some brain melting multi tasking, and some pretty funny two shot deaths. After a while, they aren’t so funny any more… but you persist because this is progression raiding and the joy is in overcoming these obsticles.

In running with two melee DPS on this encounter one of the joys of having a roster that is going through the end of expansion blues was convincing ranged DPS to hit the right freakin’ drake straight off the bat. The quicker you kill a particular drake, the less barrages you have to soak, the less damage into the boat and your fellow raiders, the easier the encounter becomes. It does make you appreciate your regular roster and those raiders that like to put all that damage in the right spot at the right time… we’re experiencing how important that is on Heroic Spine right now.

We have one shot the encounter a few times since our first kill, even to the point that on our last kill when that buggy as $#@^ fire refused to go out for the last phase, we just dispersed all over the damn boat with shockwaves going in delightfully random directions to persist for the kill.