« Archives in March, 2013

Tortos 10 Man Normal

We started out the usual way on Tortos, with one tank on Tortos, and the other picking up the adds. We tried Noondez turning on Righteous Fury so that the bats would head to the same healer each time…

… but then we realised while Hagrim is pretty short… he’s a whole lot of Paladin.

P A L A D I N.

So let me hit you with some numbers real quick.

DPS: 280k. More than double any of the DPS.

HPS: 64k. More than any healer. More than a PALADIN healer!

With a Hagrim putting out that volume of heals, the bats head to him like him like a drone heading to a very attractive queen. Only with consecrate. The vengeance stacked from tanking both the bats and Tortos is huge for overall DPS, but also DPS into Tortos, with Hagrim doing more than 2.8 times the DPS into Tortos than the cleaving melee.

The downside is the burst into our lone tank.

Some of those spikes while tanking bats and getting hit with Snapping Bite are a little scary, and can lead to a dangerous vampire activity from the bats with Drain the Weak. For our kill, our healers did a great job keeping that to a total of 245k for the whole fight.

Other than that we had ranged on turtle duty. It was nice to have a fight where they had to be conscientious, and we (melee) could just AoE like nobodies business. Velletara (Survival Hunter) pulled turtle kicking duty, and scored many a GOOAAAL! I finally caved, after having some luck with one handed weapons and tried out fury for the very first time ever, and picked a great fight with a ton of AoE (I still didn’t manage to keep up with Esta who used Unholy to wreak some havoc on that fight). Thanks to Skil and Aviola for coming in for the kill too.

Council of Elders 10 Man Normal

Council of Elders can be a pretty hectic fight, with lots of sources of damage. We’ve also had experience doing this boss with between one and three melee, and having the job as the third melee means a whole lot of target switching.

For Frostbite, we put up two flares on opposite sides of the inner circle as nominal stack points for two teams of three characters. Quicksand can interfere with the stack point, as can characters standing not even close to the flare… but unless you say something over mumble, that’s not going to change… so you’ll just have to chase them down.

A large source of significant random damage is Sand Bolt from Sul. Esta (Carboxylate, Frost DK) parked on Sul, and between he and Hagrim (Prot Paladin) took care of interrupts. On our first kill, Noondez (Holy Paladin), Tarnus (Elemental Shaman) and Whipshamazin (Elemental Shaman) handed out interrupts as well.

Another benefit of this strategy is that Sul dies a lot quicker. We still need to deal with two casts of Sandstorm, but we can finish him off well before he becomes empowered again. The downside of this strategy is that the four other DPS need to kick it into high gear to ensure that we get through each empowered boss before Dark Power.

We didn’t tank swap for the majority of the fight, and Hagrim would be healed through Frigid Assault and the 15 second stun. The only time I would taunt (Borgthor, Prot Warrior) Frost King Malakk was at the start of Sandstorm to ease the damage into Hagrim and avoid a stun when overall raid damage is also very high.

Tanking High Priestess Mar’li all fight gave me a chance to change my set up significantly. My damage taken was over 80% magic, so I focused on interrupts and shield barrier, taking Disrupting Shout and dropping Glyph of Heavy Repercussions. Since I couldn’t take Piercing Howl for the Loa Spirit, I grabbed Glyph of Hindering StrikesĀ  / Glyph of Incite for a slow, and Storm Bolt / Shockwave for stuns.

Thanks to Praka for coming in to heal!

 

Horridon 10 Man Normal

Horridon is all about nuking adds. Aside from having the luxury of two Paladins to remove the Triple Puncture debuff from tanks, the fight progressed as it usually does.

The fight taxes healers quite a bit with a lot of dispelling required, some of which can be reduced by good interrupts on the Gurubashi door. Each door takes a some practise to execute cleanly and our kill came when we were familiar enough with each door that we could enter the next door without having too much from the previous door to clean up.

Horridon is the type of fight (as many are this tier) that when you hit a certain threshold of DPS, the fight becomes much, much easier. Blizzard wanted gear to matter, and for most raiders, the tuning is high enough on normal mode that week to week the additional power from gear (as well as improved execution) makes a big difference.

For the last phase of the fight, we stack on a flare beside the boss, nuke War-God Jalak there and finish off Horridon. It’s definitely worth saving a tank cooldown or two for Jalak and enraged Horridon, for while it is the easiest part of the fight, there can be some exciting tank damage to contend with.

 

Jin’rokh the Breaker 10 Man Normal

Jin’rokh the Breaker is a nice introductory boss to tier 15, and it’s always nice to steamroll something when you first enter a new instance.

There is an art to kiting Focused Lightning away from the Conductive Water, and avoiding Implosion by kiting it through an existing Lightning Fissure. Otherwise there is a good amount to heal for Lightning Storm, a slightly different tank swap mechanic and then loot to collect! We blow heroism when all the ranged DPS comfortably have the fluidity buff for the first time, which is delightfully timed for proc based trinkets.

It was a treat to have Dambrath back in the mix for our first kill of the new raid, and I got to beak out the DPS gear .