Well, last night we got Vezax to 7% before the proverbial shit hit the fan. We ran out of cooldowns and one of our healers got knocked out of range by a Shadow Crash during a Surge of Darkness, is the short version of events.
And all this radical change in our luck took was me bringing my Death Knight instead of my Shaman, so we could have a Death Grip for the Saronite Vapors. Bring the player not the class my ass~
7/26/2009
7/23/2009
This Was a Triumph.
Yep. Two hardmodes done last night in Ulduar10. Huge shout out to Cim, our warrior tank. I don't think she gets enough credit for how well she does for our raids. She was pulling the next group in the Gauntlet on Thorim at just the right speed. Enough was dead from the previous pack that tanking everything wouldn't get her killed, but she didn't wait until everything was dead either.
Hodir was plenty of fun too, but a lot of RNG. I feel disappointed that Nejcha (Nechja's partner) wasn't able to participate in either kill. Holy paladins are just crippled on AoE fights, especially in combination with a resto shaman (hopefully 3.2 will up our AoE healing, but CHeal bounces for 1.2k~ on the fourth target are still really insufficient for a fight like Hodir).
All I gotta say is, I'm not looking forward to Mimiron hardmode. :D
7/19/2009
Pokemon? In my WoW?
Normal Steelbreaker, I Choose You acquired, with a four boxing shaman in the raid.
We decided to work on this tonight instead of Vezax. Our continual bane on Vez (on 10) is the pathing behavior of the Saronite Vapors -- and how they like to go wandering off to the backmost areas of the room and be useless over there. Our usual composition lacks a Death Knight, and the clouds cannot be knocked back by Thunderstorm, leaving us prey to their whims. This, combined with regularly lacking interrupts that are not our warrior or me ... well, it's probably going to be a while yet before we get Vezax down on 10. Our 25 is looking promising for killing him though.
We decided to work on this tonight instead of Vezax. Our continual bane on Vez (on 10) is the pathing behavior of the Saronite Vapors -- and how they like to go wandering off to the backmost areas of the room and be useless over there. Our usual composition lacks a Death Knight, and the clouds cannot be knocked back by Thunderstorm, leaving us prey to their whims. This, combined with regularly lacking interrupts that are not our warrior or me ... well, it's probably going to be a while yet before we get Vezax down on 10. Our 25 is looking promising for killing him though.
7/17/2009
Failuremoon.
Short and to the point - Our regular 25 was postponed this week due to Feathermoon undergoing some massive failure. Instance servers were down, then the world servers were taken down, brought back up, and the instance servers didn't return for about three hours after our start time.
But hey, my hunter made it to 60, woo?
Barriers: Transfer Aborted: instance not found.
But hey, my hunter made it to 60, woo?
Barriers: Transfer Aborted: instance not found.
7/16/2009
Flame Leviathan +4, Shaman +5
Flame Leviathan's hard mode has been somewhat of a sticking point for us this week. Various problems have manifested, usually as a result of learning to do the fight with one person being four people. Don't get me wrong, I really enjoy the challenge of finding what works for Nechja and executing the bosses accordingly. It just takes adaptation of existing strategies into ones workable for her.
Generally, what winds up happening is Nechja being the launched player from our demolishers. We've adapted a strategy that works for another Uld10, in which we launch two shaman up onto FL on the pull, then one demolisher (mine) has a permanent shaman that supplies it with pyrite, and the other launches a shaman at the end of every shutdown, then recieves a replacement shaman from our only motorcycle (as two shaman are constantly being cycled on the secondary demolisher). The goal is to maintain ten stacks of the pyrite debuff at all times (for approximately 100-200k DPS, depending on gear level). A fair amount of this fight has been luck for us, as we've been cornered off by Mimiron's Gaze while being chased by FL, and forced to eat 300k damage, or get punched into oblivion, or we have had plants chewing on one person and one person only, mauling their life before anything can really be done.
Throughout all of our attempts last night and the night prior, the lowest we ever saw FL+4 was 25%. Generally, because Nechja is spending most of her time on Flame Leviathan, breaking his turrets to shut him down, we have difficulties managing the Tower of Life's adds and obtaining more pyrite for the demolishers (siege gunners do attempt to shoot down pyrite when possible, but they also more-or-less have to kill the adds, due to the deadzone and general business of the demolisher pilots). This only became more evident when we finally decided to move on, killed Freya's tower, and one shotted FL+3 with no casualties.
Barriers to success: ~20 million HP, and plants everywhere.
I feel confident that we'll finally manage this fight, it just remains to be seen what changes we need to make it happen (or if it's going to be all luck). Regardless, multiboxer world first for FL+3, wooooooo~
Generally, what winds up happening is Nechja being the launched player from our demolishers. We've adapted a strategy that works for another Uld10, in which we launch two shaman up onto FL on the pull, then one demolisher (mine) has a permanent shaman that supplies it with pyrite, and the other launches a shaman at the end of every shutdown, then recieves a replacement shaman from our only motorcycle (as two shaman are constantly being cycled on the secondary demolisher). The goal is to maintain ten stacks of the pyrite debuff at all times (for approximately 100-200k DPS, depending on gear level). A fair amount of this fight has been luck for us, as we've been cornered off by Mimiron's Gaze while being chased by FL, and forced to eat 300k damage, or get punched into oblivion, or we have had plants chewing on one person and one person only, mauling their life before anything can really be done.
Throughout all of our attempts last night and the night prior, the lowest we ever saw FL+4 was 25%. Generally, because Nechja is spending most of her time on Flame Leviathan, breaking his turrets to shut him down, we have difficulties managing the Tower of Life's adds and obtaining more pyrite for the demolishers (siege gunners do attempt to shoot down pyrite when possible, but they also more-or-less have to kill the adds, due to the deadzone and general business of the demolisher pilots). This only became more evident when we finally decided to move on, killed Freya's tower, and one shotted FL+3 with no casualties.
Barriers to success: ~20 million HP, and plants everywhere.
I feel confident that we'll finally manage this fight, it just remains to be seen what changes we need to make it happen (or if it's going to be all luck). Regardless, multiboxer world first for FL+3, wooooooo~
7/14/2009
Farst Pozt
Hey, after you start something, it's supposed to get easier, right?
I guess I should start with purpose and me.
My intended goal is to write something about my experiences raiding with a multiboxer in WoW (recently, two, actually, but one of them has not been doing Ulduar10/25 with us). Where we succeed, where we fail, what's easy and what's hard. We're presently at 12/14 on both 10 and 25 in Ulduar, no hardmodes so far (excluding 1/3 on Freya, attempts at Heartbreaker, Dispelling the Illusion, and Orbit-uary on 10). We're working our way to Yogg before we go truly crazy.
This is with a quasi-PUG structure. Weeks rarely go by where we don't have to pick up at least two people from LFG. And we have a four-boxing shaman, Nechja and her three clones, who also leads, organizes, and does primary recruiting for the raid.
We're pretty far from cutting edge, but we also do something few others do. We have a participating multiboxer who plays four characters at once, and not only survives many of the more difficult fights for single players, but thrives, pulling around 20k DPS minimum between all of her characters on gimmickless fights (read: Patchwerk). We're even sitting at 11/14 on Champion of Ulduar, and it's more often than not that all four shaman survive a fight when the tanks and healers are doing their jobs right.
As for myself, I've been playing WoW for about four or so years now. My first server was a transfer server (one that was spawned for multiple other realms to transfer off of to lighten player load) called Norgannon. I started back some time after BWL was released, but before Naxxramas (my first character, an undead rogue, was about 55 at the time of the first Scourge Invasion). My raid experience before TBC was... a few wipes to the first few pulls in MC, getting attuned for BWL (never doing anything in it), wiping terribly on the last boss in UBRS, and wiping terribly in ZG and AQ20 (with limited success in both).
After TBC was released, I leveled a paladin as quickly as possible and started gearing it for holy. I felt frustrated by the lack of utility rogues had (as Blind was much worse back then, stuns did nothing in raids, and Sap was a joke before Imp Sap became baseline. It didn't help that I liked combat fists, and no fist weapons existed outside of very rare drops back then, either), and looking at the talents for paladins really interested me. Throughout all this time I was bouncing between a number of guilds, finally winding up in a fairly stable one that could barely kill Attumen.
Eventually I made it into a decent guild that could full clear Kara, and got geared up on my paladin. Unfortunately we made very little progress in SSC and TK, and eventually I got so fed up with officer apathy (or what appeared to be) that I made my own guild with the support of a few other people.
Unfortunately one of the people who came with me almost immediately quit back to an old guild, that basically treated him like a second class citizen. We gradually lost some of the better and more geared players, until eventually the guild just folded and I moved over to Feathermoon Alliance, where my sister had been playing with friends.
I rerolled a druid at this time, since it was the only class I hadn't leveled past 60, and I really wanted to try out druid healing, in part because it looked more interesting than Flash of Light spam, and in part because there was this one terrible druid on Norgannon who I wanted to one up...
Regardless. I made my way to 70 from scratch, then poked my way into raids gradually, a rather nice group of people accepting me in and getting me through Kara to a point I could start healing for other raids. They had just transitioned out of SSC and TK, so Kara and ZA were the limit of what I did for a while, then I got sub spots in MH and BT. Things progressed fairly well for a while, we went 3/5 the first week we did Hyjal, and 4/5 not long thereafter. Unfortunately, the trend was downwards from there.
There was some severe tunnel vision on getting Archimonde on farm, so much so that we'd spend 2-3 hours after killing everything else bashing our heads against him repeatedly. We had a number of people rotating in and out per night, with about 18 or so static people. Repeatedly, it was stated that if "Nobody screws up" we'd kill Archimonde, because we had managed to at one point with an ideal circumstance (and two non-healers respec'd to healing). A lot of blame got placed on healers when people would run out of range, or repeatedly fail to doomfires, or repeatedly fail to use tears properly. Nearly every attempt wound up with someone massively failing at 60% or so, and then the raid being killed by his I Win buttons.
Despite a few of the earlier bosses in BT offering better gear with substantially less time investment, we kept working on Archimonde, week in and week out, because the experience with Vashj had been that switching to TK to kill Kael every other week ruined their Vashj strategy. "Gear isn't an issue, we've done this before" was the response given when BT was mentioned. Eventually this endless blaming of healers and endless headwalling lead me to take a week long break from raiding, at the end of which I was told I wasn't wanted back.
I will admit, I tend to get a bit chatty on Vent, and this tends to be a problem for more "srs" raiding guilds. I also speak my mind a lot, another thing that tends to lead to trouble, as most people can tell you. I can see why they made their choice, and would have rather had a more open discussion with officers, instead of getting occasional complaints in tells from one person and one person only, but the past is the past.
After that I only did periodic raiding in TBC, Kara here and there in PUGs. I worked my warlock towards 70, and 3.0 hit when he was 66. I finished off 70 and did the second Scourge Invasion (which I felt was absolutely awesome -- and I trolled more than my fair share of "I'm quitting due to terrible zombie event that only lasts three days" posts) and managed to get a full set of Undead Slaying gear for him.
I then decided to level my warlock to 80 first when I got Wrath, and did that. My side projects were my DK and Shaman, my DK making 80 shortly after my warlock, then falling by the wayside. Sometime after my DK hit 80, I started raiding again, first with the group that had evicted me (mostly due to lack of association with my warlock being mine~), and then with an "okay" Naxx10. About this time, my sister had picked up a Naxx25 with Nechja, which I constantly bothered her to get me a spot in.
A few weeks went by, and finally I got a spot in Nech's Naxx25, and gradually became a permanent member. A few months later, after the release of Ulduar, Nech expressed some healing concern to myself and my sister (remember how I mentioned we're quasi-PUG? Solid healing and solid tanking were two big concerns for Nechja -- tanking we had, healing we didn't, due to only having about 4 healers that regularly showed). My shaman had been parked at 79 with about 6 bars of experience to 80 for a few months. At first I offered my druid, remembering how well I (percieved) myself healing in Hyjal, but then remembered my shaman being the closer one to 80. I got her last few bars of EXP that night and immediately started gearing.
A few more months later, and here we are.
I'm a self-taught healer. I browsed EJ briefly to see their opinions on various abilities, but gradually settled upon my current talent build and gearing style - Balance of haste and crit, and a fair deal of MP5. The common accepted shaman healer method seems to be something along the lines of holy paladin healing currently -- stack intellect, spellpower, crit, and haste, ignore MP5 pieces -- so I think it's safe to say I deviate from the norm.
And I do actually use Chain Heal.
Shocking, I know.
I guess I should start with purpose and me.
My intended goal is to write something about my experiences raiding with a multiboxer in WoW (recently, two, actually, but one of them has not been doing Ulduar10/25 with us). Where we succeed, where we fail, what's easy and what's hard. We're presently at 12/14 on both 10 and 25 in Ulduar, no hardmodes so far (excluding 1/3 on Freya, attempts at Heartbreaker, Dispelling the Illusion, and Orbit-uary on 10). We're working our way to Yogg before we go truly crazy.
This is with a quasi-PUG structure. Weeks rarely go by where we don't have to pick up at least two people from LFG. And we have a four-boxing shaman, Nechja and her three clones, who also leads, organizes, and does primary recruiting for the raid.
We're pretty far from cutting edge, but we also do something few others do. We have a participating multiboxer who plays four characters at once, and not only survives many of the more difficult fights for single players, but thrives, pulling around 20k DPS minimum between all of her characters on gimmickless fights (read: Patchwerk). We're even sitting at 11/14 on Champion of Ulduar, and it's more often than not that all four shaman survive a fight when the tanks and healers are doing their jobs right.
As for myself, I've been playing WoW for about four or so years now. My first server was a transfer server (one that was spawned for multiple other realms to transfer off of to lighten player load) called Norgannon. I started back some time after BWL was released, but before Naxxramas (my first character, an undead rogue, was about 55 at the time of the first Scourge Invasion). My raid experience before TBC was... a few wipes to the first few pulls in MC, getting attuned for BWL (never doing anything in it), wiping terribly on the last boss in UBRS, and wiping terribly in ZG and AQ20 (with limited success in both).
After TBC was released, I leveled a paladin as quickly as possible and started gearing it for holy. I felt frustrated by the lack of utility rogues had (as Blind was much worse back then, stuns did nothing in raids, and Sap was a joke before Imp Sap became baseline. It didn't help that I liked combat fists, and no fist weapons existed outside of very rare drops back then, either), and looking at the talents for paladins really interested me. Throughout all this time I was bouncing between a number of guilds, finally winding up in a fairly stable one that could barely kill Attumen.
Eventually I made it into a decent guild that could full clear Kara, and got geared up on my paladin. Unfortunately we made very little progress in SSC and TK, and eventually I got so fed up with officer apathy (or what appeared to be) that I made my own guild with the support of a few other people.
Unfortunately one of the people who came with me almost immediately quit back to an old guild, that basically treated him like a second class citizen. We gradually lost some of the better and more geared players, until eventually the guild just folded and I moved over to Feathermoon Alliance, where my sister had been playing with friends.
I rerolled a druid at this time, since it was the only class I hadn't leveled past 60, and I really wanted to try out druid healing, in part because it looked more interesting than Flash of Light spam, and in part because there was this one terrible druid on Norgannon who I wanted to one up...
Regardless. I made my way to 70 from scratch, then poked my way into raids gradually, a rather nice group of people accepting me in and getting me through Kara to a point I could start healing for other raids. They had just transitioned out of SSC and TK, so Kara and ZA were the limit of what I did for a while, then I got sub spots in MH and BT. Things progressed fairly well for a while, we went 3/5 the first week we did Hyjal, and 4/5 not long thereafter. Unfortunately, the trend was downwards from there.
There was some severe tunnel vision on getting Archimonde on farm, so much so that we'd spend 2-3 hours after killing everything else bashing our heads against him repeatedly. We had a number of people rotating in and out per night, with about 18 or so static people. Repeatedly, it was stated that if "Nobody screws up" we'd kill Archimonde, because we had managed to at one point with an ideal circumstance (and two non-healers respec'd to healing). A lot of blame got placed on healers when people would run out of range, or repeatedly fail to doomfires, or repeatedly fail to use tears properly. Nearly every attempt wound up with someone massively failing at 60% or so, and then the raid being killed by his I Win buttons.
Despite a few of the earlier bosses in BT offering better gear with substantially less time investment, we kept working on Archimonde, week in and week out, because the experience with Vashj had been that switching to TK to kill Kael every other week ruined their Vashj strategy. "Gear isn't an issue, we've done this before" was the response given when BT was mentioned. Eventually this endless blaming of healers and endless headwalling lead me to take a week long break from raiding, at the end of which I was told I wasn't wanted back.
I will admit, I tend to get a bit chatty on Vent, and this tends to be a problem for more "srs" raiding guilds. I also speak my mind a lot, another thing that tends to lead to trouble, as most people can tell you. I can see why they made their choice, and would have rather had a more open discussion with officers, instead of getting occasional complaints in tells from one person and one person only, but the past is the past.
After that I only did periodic raiding in TBC, Kara here and there in PUGs. I worked my warlock towards 70, and 3.0 hit when he was 66. I finished off 70 and did the second Scourge Invasion (which I felt was absolutely awesome -- and I trolled more than my fair share of "I'm quitting due to terrible zombie event that only lasts three days" posts) and managed to get a full set of Undead Slaying gear for him.
I then decided to level my warlock to 80 first when I got Wrath, and did that. My side projects were my DK and Shaman, my DK making 80 shortly after my warlock, then falling by the wayside. Sometime after my DK hit 80, I started raiding again, first with the group that had evicted me (mostly due to lack of association with my warlock being mine~), and then with an "okay" Naxx10. About this time, my sister had picked up a Naxx25 with Nechja, which I constantly bothered her to get me a spot in.
A few weeks went by, and finally I got a spot in Nech's Naxx25, and gradually became a permanent member. A few months later, after the release of Ulduar, Nech expressed some healing concern to myself and my sister (remember how I mentioned we're quasi-PUG? Solid healing and solid tanking were two big concerns for Nechja -- tanking we had, healing we didn't, due to only having about 4 healers that regularly showed). My shaman had been parked at 79 with about 6 bars of experience to 80 for a few months. At first I offered my druid, remembering how well I (percieved) myself healing in Hyjal, but then remembered my shaman being the closer one to 80. I got her last few bars of EXP that night and immediately started gearing.
A few more months later, and here we are.
I'm a self-taught healer. I browsed EJ briefly to see their opinions on various abilities, but gradually settled upon my current talent build and gearing style - Balance of haste and crit, and a fair deal of MP5. The common accepted shaman healer method seems to be something along the lines of holy paladin healing currently -- stack intellect, spellpower, crit, and haste, ignore MP5 pieces -- so I think it's safe to say I deviate from the norm.
And I do actually use Chain Heal.
Shocking, I know.
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