« Archives in September, 2013

Sha of Pride 10 Man Normal

Sha of Pride 10 Man Fidelity

Sha of Pride is a particularly methodical boss, almost metronomic. First you get self-reflections, then you get imprison, followed by Manifestation of Pride down the back and finally swelling pride. If you do the stack up and spread out dance correctly (do NOT unstack until swelling pride has actually hit) levels of pride stay under control. Tanks can take care of imprison on one corner, while everyone else takes care of the other.

At thirty percent, pride is reset and you get to do it all over again, only this time with a greater sense of urgency and heroism. Before long, you would sacrifice having heroism if you could cast it on Jaina at the end of the fight to get those portals through to the shores of Durotar just that little bit quicker.

My hat is off to whoever threw the second banana, to make the action shot above!

Norushen 10 Man Normal

Norushen 10 Man Normal FidelityNorushen was the first boss in a long while where we have hit the enrage timer, rather than the raid perishing (which can also be due to not meeting DPS requirements for particular mechanics).

We started out alternating one Tank one DPS to get purified, which is definitely overkill on the tank part of that equation. We tried sending a couple of DPS in at the same time, got overwhelmed with adds and promptly blew up. Then Esta suggested he and Bio kill the adds while being purified in the opposite order. This staggered the Unleashed Manifestation of Corruptions, so that Hagrim could tank and soak the puddle from one, getting to 100 corruption before being purified. I would tank the second UMoC and soak, getting purified as soon as Hagrim was back. This strategy allowed us to have two DPS purified very quickly, and have a lot higher tank uptime on the boss. It is important to note that we also got 6 Unleashed Essences of Corruption quickly, so people need to spread efficiently to soak their bolts initially.

We add our DPS purified by around 50%, and didn’t send any healers in to be purified (something I want volunteers for next time) and then nuked the boss down for the kill. You might notice that there are no players visible in the kill screenshot (although no one commented on it since it’s been up). Since we managed to score a kill just as we blew up, I thought we’d get a nice shot of Norushen doing his thing while we’re all splayed on the ground.

Thanks to Ralstino for a comment on Icy-Veins about spell reflect and mass spell reflect which made my life a lot easier while getting purified as a Warrior tank.

The Fallen Protectors 10 Man Normal

The Fallen Protectors 10 ManNormalFidelity

While The Fallen Protectors wasn’t a lot harder than Immerseus, it has a lot more mechanics. When you have three enemies that all have abilities, each with a phase, that add multiple enemies that all have abilities, it starts to add up.

We forced Desperate Measure in the following order: Rook > He > Sun. For Rook’s desperate measure, it is important to interrupt Gloom, so that the raid can stack up on the Inferno Strike target without getting blasted. Passing around the Mark of Anguish for He’s desperate measure wasn’t too taxing and Sun’s was powered through by killing the adds quickly.

Immerseus 10 Man Normal

Immerseus 10 Man Normal Fidelity

Immerseus, the first boss in Siege of Orgrimmar was a nice gentle introduction to the new raid instance. The major consideration for the fight is positioning, both for healing and dealing with the adds. Essentially, if you spread while ensuring healing coverage, watch your feet for puddles and kill / heal enough adds in the split phase the fight comes to a satisfying conclusion.

It was great to start the new raid with a full guild group, and thanks to Alrius for going heal-mode for the night.

Goodbye Lei Shen, Hello Orgrimmar.

Goodbye Throne of ThunderOnce again, <Fidelity> presents a post written by Esta, our resident expert in the coolest set of magical damages (shadow and frost), and only slightly edited by Borgthor, who carefully left in any digs at post punctuality.

As 5.4 looms on the horizon, we should perhaps recap <Fidelity>’s doings within the Throne of Thunder (Patch 5.2 and 5.3).

5.2 was released on Tuesday, March 5th and will come to a close on Tuesday, September 10th 2013, 27 weeks later. During this time, <Fidelity> cleared all normal content and 5.98 Heroic modes (because Council was that close). <Fidelity> also picked up a number of achievements along the way, noteworthy amongst which were realm first Cretaceous Collector, You Said Crossing the Streams Was Bad  and realm second A Complete Circuit. Fidelity finishes this patch realm 7th on progress and realm 2nd on achievements.

<Fidelity> raids 3 nights per week, 8pm to 11pm server time. As life goes on, things will crop up and interfere with our players’ ability to attend the requisite ~85% of raids. When these things are a permanent change, then often raiders will step down and allow their slot to be filled with another more capable of making the raid times.  A short list of those who stopped raiding this expansion: Dambrath, Tinytee, Whipshamazin. For those keeping score, that’s 3 players, or 30% of our roster.

As such, not a great deal of raiding could have taken place without a reasonably deep pool of locums and guests from which to draw to fill our normal raiding requirements while people are away, sick, moving, having internet issues or just about any other conceivable cause of absence. Firstly, hats off to Helly (who was previously a core member on his rogue, and since stepping down to locum has transitioned to his priest). We ask him (sometimes even beg, or apply a good old fashioned puppy dog face) to brave content that outstrips his gear, and compete with mains that posses the latest in trinket fashion and legendary meta gems. He has saved many a night doomed to trolling trade chat, and nerves fraying as the latest hopeful navigates the intimidating maze of connecting to mumble.

On reflection, the rest of our regular locum crew are mostly alts of people attached to a friendly bunch of guilds on Dath’Remar. Praka recently brought his priest alt to the guild from <And His Educated Rodents>, we have Avi from <Twisted Haven> and Maanu (or Widget as we knew him from way back when) from <Crimson> has brought his monk to play. Many of our guests from outside the guild have come from this network of guilds, and from people we’ve raided with in the past (Hi! to Dries and Cierndanis to name just a couple). While you’d be tempted to think missing a raider is pain personified, we have managed to meet some great people as guests in our raids, most recently I’m thinking of Dathramis, a rogue that knew Bio from his druid days who was a fabulous addition to our last battles against Heroic Council.

Fortunately, <Fidelity>’s stability is an attractive characteristic, not to mention Noondez’s smashing dress sense and Kalus’ laugh. <Fidelity> had had a couple of key signings during the mid-season transfer window, not least of which is our stoic bearded mountain Hagrim. Signing on Hagrim was key as it seems that the way to raid in 5.2-5.3 was:

Step1) Acquire Prot Pally

Step 2) Acquire 9 other players (preferably fire mages/warlocks)

Step 3) Profit.

Additionally, <Fidelity> now enjoys the delightful company and rolling multi-dots of our resident Shadow priest Alrius. Word has it that there exists a good number of cleave fights in SoO, so I’m sure his DPS will be greatly appreciated.

Lastly, but not least(ly?), <Fidelity> is looking forward to the contributions of Realpesky, our one time guest. Realpesky joins us as the obligatory healthstone making, portal placing warlock that has been so missing from our heroic Iron Quon kills. Real was with <Fidelity> for the first Durumu and Primordius kills in April, and will be full-time pain bringing again from mid-September (Check your guides for local times and appearances)

Going into 5.4, Kalus has elected to bench his discipline/holy priest in favour for his restoration shaman.  This can only be a good thing, as our blog can attest to the unnatural abilities of resto shaman in heroic progress kills. This brings the total for people no longer playing their original class to 2, and can only serve to confuse guests going forward.

Despite repeated threats, Borg will continue to raid on his protection warrior and not on his brewmaster monk. The local tote is also paying a measly $1.02 that Borg will continue to be engineer-less at least until 6.0.

Wrathion’s legendary quest line continues to progress, with some amazing capes available for player’s dedicated efforts. This patch saw players collecting rocks and tokens, killing Lei Shen and that’s about it. The toughest phase is the current one: Wait for 5.4

5.2-5.4 was arguably the patch for mages and warlocks to reign supreme. With a new pass at balancing, hopefully things will be a bit more uniform over the dps classes as a whole moving into 5.4. Bioderm is already bemoaning the nerfs to his much-loved fire mage class.

Going forward into 5.4, it will be great to see hunters lifted off the floor of the DPS charts, DW frost DKs rocking the cleave charts again, and Jondy might even get a tick of some sort of heal in with the number of shields being flung around reducing slightly. Stay tuned to this space for more developments as they arise (well, within 4-6 weeks of them arising. Usually. With some additional prodding required.)