Ulduar Feedback Thread

Okay, officially love shammy raiding. Still getting the rotation but I'm to the point where I can look at the screen more than the action bars, and trust me, for me that is a big thing (small hands plus big keyboard = hands getting confused sometimes). I'm also incredibly overwhelmed with your generosity in regards to gear. Wow.

Mana issues are a problem I am facing, which meant that I was having to take it easy on DPSing at some points, especially on Vezax where I ran out of mana so completely that when I self-ressed just before he went down I actually had some sort of mana. I have a good amount of regen, but I've never had to learn to conserve mana before (been a lock, shadow priest and hunter, so mana conservation is a new and shiny thing), though at Vezax I would have appreciated one more vapour down. Also, I noticed when Marv was calling for people to stand in regen puddles, they weren't going down - mostly because I had no mana to splat one - so I think that is why we only used two. I've cycled in some MP5 gear for longer fights, and I'm hoping that will work out better in the long run. And thank you so much for the Innervates at Iron Council They were very much appreciated.

I also actually do need to test before we start FL on Thursday if Mana Stream does stack with Blessing of Wisdom. It was not working in Naxx on Wednesday or Thursday, which was why I was using Healing Stream, but if that was just a quirk, then I would like to see.

And I saw Yogg down <3

But thank you very much, I do hope that my totems made a bit of a difference and that the utility is useful. Hopefully next raid my DPS will start curving upwards, and the mana totem can make an appearance. Again, thank you.

I'll be saying thank you for weeks

/salute

I also actually do need to test before we start FL on Thursday if Mana Stream does stack with Blessing of Wisdom. It was not working in Naxx on Wednesday or Thursday, which was why I was using Healing Stream, but if that was just a quirk, then I would like to see.

It was never ment to stack and does not do so now either. The point with the recent fix was to bring BoW up to 92 MP5 instead of 91 MP5 due to the fact that the totem canceled out the blessing (and it is more favourable having a static buff then a totem one which can be lost due to range or deaths).

Basically if we have all 4 paladin blessing in the raid we dont need totem-of-mana-something. Though in a case of 3 (especially if no paladin have imp BoW, e.g. no healing paladin) it can be usefull.

Meh.

Skathi wrote:Mana issues are a problem I am facing, which meant that I was having to take it easy on DPSing at some points, especially on Vezax where I ran out of mana so completely that when I self-ressed just before he went down I actually had some sort of mana.

I think the problem is just your gear - your armoury isn't showing the updates from last night, but you seem to have mostly heroic gear, which means you're fine in Naxx but short in Ulduar. I wouldn't worry about MP5 so much, rather get Intellect - just my gut feeling after looking at your talents, seems you get loads of regen from Intellect (plus what it gives you via Replenishment), and a lot of your talents are about upping crit and incresing crit bonuses so Intellect will benefit your dps too.

Skathi wrote:.. though at Vezax I would have appreciated one more vapour down. Also, I noticed when Marv was calling for people to stand in regen puddles, they weren't going down - mostly because I had no mana to splat one - so I think that is why we only used two.

Yeah, still not happy with how I'm calling the regen breaks. I think we need to assign dps+healer teams, so each side takes turns. I think what threw me last night was that neither D nor Zuzu needed to regen on the first call or two, which threw my "plan" out of sync (I never really caught up with it later). Seems we only need the first regen break every 3 runs now! This is how we did it according to WWS:

Code:

0-----1-----2-----3-----4-----5-----6----| Minutes since pull
--------------V1-----------------V2------| Vapours
DDDDDDDDDDDDDDrrrrr--------DDDDDDDrrr____| Derky healed
------------MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM____| Marveen healed
ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZrrrZZZZ| Zuzuna healed
-----------------------------------DaDaDa| Dahlaine healed

r = regenerating, _ = Derky DIed Marveen (). WWS says we got hit by 40 ticks of green goo (3 were non-hits as melee ran over them). As far as I can see, we used the first vapour well (D got 6+3 stacks and Jheera 6) - well done! However, the second regen call wasn't clear so (a) the second vapour died very late and (b) we had 2/3 healers going for it at once (D got 5 stacks, Zuzu got 6+4 stacks, Jheera suicided on 7 stacks). This caused Gimi's death as we lost a lot of healing at once. Next time I'll call the vapours to be downed at 3 minutes and 5 minutes, and those who need them get ready in advance. We must have either D or Zuzu on healing at all times, as your big bombheals are faster and a lot more reliable than mine.

Skathi wrote:Meh.

Thankfully if we're both in the raid, then each one us having healing stream (in each seperate group) is more beneficial than mana spring when there is a Paladin along with BoW.

Also, about mana conservation - your gear was pretty low so as Marv said, that's probably part of the problem (Although last night shgould fix some of that ). Also if you need any help with Elemental I suggest asking Taerix - she doesn't raid with us often but she is pretty good at playing an Ele shaman.


Anyway, was a good raid, hopefully can repeat it next week .

Skathi wrote:I have a good amount of regen

Except on Vezax of course!

There's some really useful distilled theorycrafting on elemental shamans here at Elitist Jerks and a not-too-awful thread discussing gear specifically here which might be useful, of course entirely possible you're well aware of both and just haven't had much in the way of luck from heroics/Naxx to fill out gear - I guess if that's the case it's no bad thing to have your luck come through in Ulduar!

Skathi wrote:Also, I noticed when Marv was calling for people to stand in regen puddles, they weren't going down - mostly because I had no mana to splat one - so I think that is why we only used two.

Hmm, my bad for not catching that then I guess - since I was really mostly paying attention for when Marv wanted vapours dead that she could get to (as I was on the left with her) - as I think it was just you and me that were ranged DPS and the right side would've been more depending on you to get the vapours on that side. Shout out if you need a hand

Skathi wrote:I've cycled in some MP5 gear for longer fights, and I'm hoping that will work out better in the long run.

Not really something you want to be doing! From the EJ theorycraft:

mp5 is generally worthless to Elemental Shaman, due to the high innate regen (approx 300mp5 from Water Shield, Mana Spring and Unrelenting Storm alone) as well has the mana reductions given via talents (Convection & Shamanistic Focus) and Clearcasting. Gearing for mp5 is almost as worthless as gearing for spirit (ie: don't do it).

Shaman is definitely a lot of fun to play, not least as you can switch roles around so much; I've been doing a few heroics with my own shaman in enhancement mode of late, though have virtually always raided with him as resto. Fun class

The thing about the MP5 gear that I have, is that I'm also swapping it in because it's vastly superior to the DPS things I was using though I couldn't change them until I upgraded to pieces with more hit on. Finding +hit mail without MP5 on it is like trying to get blood out of a stone, even with badger gear, until getting tier gear, which I didn't have any of until the other night. Yes, my Resto gear (I've raided as resto until the other night, and I'm still learning, so I am sorry if I am coming off as a noob, I really am trying) has MP5, but it's also got a lot more +int on it as well, I should have specified that up in the thread somewhere - might have MP5, but it's got better stats and I actually have some sort of surviveability. I was using 76 and 78 blue rings, for example, because they had +hit on, but since I've been able to gem up the tier gear, I've put on my resto epics that are adding a little more DPS and helping my crit/mana.

I am aware of the threads, and the reason I'm not in more optimum gear is because of being resto for a group, and the people that I have been restoing for have been...odd...in their giving out of gear, and I always end up in heroics where other people want to go, rather than me . I am unlucky, yep. My Naxx group giving +hit rings to a full-time healer for healing purposes, even though I have been asking if I can greed roll for +hit gear so I can switch to elemental in Naxx to try and gear me up there a little bit. The irony of course being that I'm using +spirit gloves as I got bullied into it At the moment (though the gear I had on Saturday has negated this somewhat), it's a case of putting on pieces that I have, that might not have the perfect DPS stats, but are better than my old cobbled together set that I was running with and add mana, a bit of DPS, and surviveability.

Since I'm squashy *hides the cloth gear*

Code:

/tar Field Medic
/script SetRaidTargetIcon("target",1);
/tar Missy
/script SetRaidTargetIcon("target",4);
/tar Elementalist
/script SetRaidTargetIcon("target",5);
/tar Ellie
/script SetRaidTargetIcon("target",2);

Hodir icon-setting macro.

Thursday 19th June

We succeeded at getting [Orbital Devastation].. just ! (FL with 2 towers up), and had 12 tries on Hodir hard mode. We downed 5/13 bosses, so we have our work cut out for us on Saturday! In general, Bal's JoL sniped about 1k hps off my healing, which is cool as it saves me work, especially as I had an offnight last night (or I wouldn't have eaten that rocket at Mimiron ). I will update the hps table on the Murloc Healer thread.

Flame Leviathan: see Hard Mode thread!

XT-002: see Hard Mode thread!

Kologarn: We had a few issues with loose rubble as the second arm died unexpectedly and drowned the tree *coughs* Also, after I got gripped I landed on an eyebeam - please keep this area clear to avoid this kind of thing! There's plenty of room for the ranged/healers around the entrance.. Other than that, nothing to see here. Record kill was it?

Auriaya: Nice pull so we had a smooth kill. The fight felt a little long, though it could just be an impression. One curious thing was that we only needed 4.7k hps for this fight, compared to over 5.8k hps in previous weeks - almost a 20% reduction. Any idea what was soaking up damage here?

Hodir: see Hard Mode thread!

Mimiron: We did well to oneshot Mimi after the Hodir experience, a record kill of 8'18'' - [Firefighter] requires 8 minutes to kill him, so I think we should try 2 healers here... soon! Only off thing I noticed here was crosshealing (especially noticeable in P1). I know I don't have the burst to solo heal the plasma blast on Cardinal, so don't leave me alone on the job! We'll have to try the [Glory of the Ulduar Raider] achievement on him again next week.

Lastly, I'm changing my offspec to ranged for Ulduar. Kitty dps is a lot more fun, but fights with moving cripple my dps, plus I haven't been collecting feral gear since Naxx (other than nontier items). I was NOT happy with my performance on Hodir last night - that is getting fixed! *ports to Moonglade*

Marveen wrote:Thursday 19th June

Auriaya: Nice pull so we had a smooth kill. The fight felt a little long, though it could just be an impression. One curious thing was that we only needed 4.7k hps for this fight, compared to over 5.8k hps in previous weeks - almost a 20% reduction. Any idea what was soaking up damage here?


Lastly, I'm changing my offspec to ranged for Ulduar. Kitty dps is a lot more fun, but fights with moving cripple my dps, plus I haven't been collecting feral gear since Naxx (other than nontier items). I was NOT happy with my performance on Hodir last night - that is getting fixed! *ports to Moonglade*

Auriaya - Simply put a lot better control from the raid not standing in void zones and pulling aggro at the start. We had a lot less fuck ups than normal there.

Regarding spec change, how does moving effect feral? Wouldn't it effect boomkin a lot more? Not played a druid intensively for a while but I thought that Feral was more leaned towards moving fights due to the instant casts.

Confused me a bit!

D

Derky wrote:Regarding spec change, how does moving effect feral? Wouldn't it effect boomkin a lot more? Not played a druid intensively for a while but I thought that Feral was more leaned towards moving fights due to the instant casts.

I have to keep at least Savage Roar (AP selfbuff) and Rip, Rake and Mangle up (bleed on target) - Rake and Mangle are on short cooldowns of 9 and 12 seconds each, so if I Mangle, then have to dodge an icicle or get frozen I only just get back to the boss in time to have Mangle drop off.. basically, I spent most of my time applying 2-3 buffs instead of maintaining the full stack of 4. By the time I had full 5-point combos on the target, my SR or Rip were both coming off again. When I succeeded I had high dps (6k on one or two tries), but most of the time I was just failing at having enough claw time to build the full dps stack. Also, I couldn't use Shred as much (behind-only move), having to waste energy on Mangle instead, which means slower combo point generation. A lot of this is a l2p issue (>.<), but such is the nature of cat dps - it is a tough "rotation" to maintain and quite unforgiving.

The boomkin will have to jump a lot or dodge icicles, but I would help build faster stacks of Singed and help maintain them, and if I can use a haste-well I should get very fast Starfires (or instant Wraths) off. Plus, moonkin rotation is a cakewalk, I don't have any short duration buffs to maintain. I'd like to give it a try!

Saturday 20th June

Well, not our finest raid.. Thorim took 9 pulls to conquer, Hodir needed 6, and that's after we gave up on hardmode tries and did them the normal way. It wasn't poor tactics getting us, it was execution. The way I see it, our biggest problems last night were lack of dps and healing.

On Thorim, we simply lacked the dps to do a hardmode try, and we kept losing the raid to lightning discharges. I put each pally in charge of healing a tank (with crosshealing for unbalancing strikes), with me on the raid, but I struggled to keep zapped people up - time to reglyph perhaps? Maybe I don't need [Glyph of Rebirth] after all ("Players resurrected by Rebirth are returned to life with 100% health", instead of 6.4k hp). Hmm.

On Hodir, the good news are that you can walk up to the circle without aggroing him, so dps can get in position and ready to pounce on the frozen NPCs the moment the boss is pulled. The bad news: healing was painful! I haven't used Regrowth this much since.. ever! What worked in the end was putting one paladin on tank healing, the other in charge of the remaining 4 people in group 1 (tank + 3 melee + 1 healer) and me on group 2 (3 ranged + 2 healers). That, and people not getting hit by icicles on this try. One question - why didn't we lose Cardinal to big 20k+ instagibs from Frozen Blows? Just luck?

We went and hit Razorscale and Ignis after that, both were a oneshot (Ignis a bit messy at the end, but it was a given - our strategy is not very forgiving of anything less than stellar dps ). Finished the night off with a rush to Archavon, minutes before a new battle - in case someone still needed an adrenaline shot after the raid!

In other news, I've installed EKinspect and given it a try, it's fairly simple to use out of the box and gives a quick view of raidwide iLevel. Can even check which pieces to compare (say you only want to compare the tier pieces, or weapons) - recommended!

Monday 22nd June

Very fast first half of the raid with quick kills of Freya (first [Knock on Wood]) and Vezax, and a slower second half with some trouble getting into P1 on Yogg-Saron, plus a bad streak on Iron Council hard mode (ended up doing it normal style in the end).

Freya: see Hard Mode thread!

Vezax: the regen worked a lot nicer for the ranged this time - we used 4 vapours. I'd like to try either longer breaks between clouds next week (2 -> 3 minutes?), or 2 healers only. Thoughts?

Yogg-Saron: Phase 1 was giving us trouble - I think people weren't standing exactly on top of Sara, and kept triggering the inner cloud. This is the hardest phase to heal, by far. At the moment, P1 is lasting 2 minutes (can't really go much faster with our strategy unless we trigger an extra Guardian early), P2 is over quickly thanks to our brain team (I think we had only 2 brain phases) at 4 minutes, and P3 lasts 4 minutes.

The adds in P3 do damage according to how much health they have. They swing for nearly 20k on plate when they first arrive, then drop to about 2k a swing. Their only trick I can see is a Drain Life that will steal 10k hp if allowed to run (interruptable?).

Iron Council: we spent half the raid trying to do this hard mode, but with the proposed rank system in place we wouldn't have tried any hard modes tonight The way I see it, we had two issues here which were (1) threat on the little guys and (2) cleansing on Steelbreaker's tank. I'll let the tanks/Coastrunners discuss the former.

I don't understand the cleansing problem. As I can't dispel magic, they're not showing up for me and I can't see what's going on. Do we need to assign one healer to only cleanse, or is it a matter of having a few double espressos/red bulls before the raid? I have a bad feeling it's the latter.. Zuzu and D, I want your feedback! Also, until D gets new and improved Beacon in 3.2, we need to watch our crosshealing on his targets (goes for me too ).

A request from a tree to our ranged Coastrunners - try not to spread out too far. Ideally, stay between the two tanks so you're in range of healing. Not a biggie on the first phase, but once damage goes up in P2 I start having to run a lot to cover everyone - and if I'm not sharp I'll end up running into an Overload sooner or later and I'll have to BLAME BAL! Btw, thanks for pointing out DBM turns this warning off if you don't have him targeted, that really helped me here!

Also, people were taking WAY too many chances on the first 2 bosses - when we take on Steelbreaker last, healing becomes massively intensive in the end and the Oracles need to enter this phase with as much mana as possible. Stop getting zapped :mad: - we are not racing a timer until after the first 2 bosses are down!

/end of demands

The cleansing on phase 3 is rather ludicrous. Both D and I used our cleanse on Card as -soon- as the Fusion Punch became dispellable yet it still whacked him for a sheet load. There isn't much more we can do on this apart from pray he has the health to live through the punch.

I have to admit I was sucking ass on IC last night, my HPS was shit and it would turn out my laptop was on power save mode again which would explain a few FPS problems I had.

Regarding the cleansing, I was watching Recount during the fights, it was counting the cleanse cast as cast, and yet Card still took huge damage burst seconds after.

Regarding the way I do it, once the Fusion Punch is announced by my mod I stop healing and spam cleanse until its gone, as my mod is a pre 3 second warning to the CD of the spell. But still, Bal was cleansing it before me. Not sure how you do it Bal, mod? Could also be my FPS playing up.

Also, my mod announces the thing you need to run away from if you are targeting it or not. Its a RW warning. Not much reason to miss that to be honest.

D

I have a little mod called SmartDebuff. It basically give you a small moveable window with a little square panel for everyone in the raid which, when someone gets something that can be cleasned/decursed etc etc highests either an L or an R in the panel. L meaning left click and R meaning right click. I probably don't do the addon justice so take a look for yourself.

http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/smart-debuff.aspx

It's highly customisable so don't base the looks off the screenshot which makes it look sheet!

I have to admit I was sucking ass on IC last night, my HPS was shit and it would turn out my laptop was on power save mode again which would explain a few FPS problems I had.

Regarding the cleansing, I was watching Recount during the fights, it was counting the cleanse cast as cast, and yet Card still took huge damage burst seconds after.

Regarding the way I do it, once the Fusion Punch is announced by my mod I stop healing and spam cleanse until its gone, as my mod is a pre 3 second warning to the CD of the spell. But still, Bal was cleansing it before me. Not sure how you do it Bal, mod? Could also be my FPS playing up.

Also, my mod announces the thing you need to run away from if you are targeting it or not. Its a RW warning. Not much reason to miss that to be honest.

D

I would suggest something different here.

As Cardinal (or whoever is tanking Steelbreaker) is tanking him from the start, aggro will close to NEVER be a problem. This meen a tank can afford to only use defensive skills (which is to keep holy shield up and posibbly to judge light for a paladin).

What i've done on Steelbreaker is that as soon as i see him casting fusion punch i press Holy shield if it's not up, and then I THE TANK spam cleanse.

My reasons for this is:

1. The tank wont loose any vital aggro, and defensive skills are taken care off
2. The healers can instead "prepear" a giant heal when they see the warning of fusion punch.

This meens we get both the cleanse and a quick heal just after the effect hits.

This is up to Cardinal as well though, and if it's something he feel comfortable doing.

Gimilkhâd wrote:

I have to admit I was sucking ass on IC last night, my HPS was shit and it would turn out my laptop was on power save mode again which would explain a few FPS problems I had.

Regarding the cleansing, I was watching Recount during the fights, it was counting the cleanse cast as cast, and yet Card still took huge damage burst seconds after.

Regarding the way I do it, once the Fusion Punch is announced by my mod I stop healing and spam cleanse until its gone, as my mod is a pre 3 second warning to the CD of the spell. But still, Bal was cleansing it before me. Not sure how you do it Bal, mod? Could also be my FPS playing up.

Also, my mod announces the thing you need to run away from if you are targeting it or not. Its a RW warning. Not much reason to miss that to be honest.

D

I would suggest something different here.

As Cardinal (or whoever is tanking Steelbreaker) is tanking him from the start, aggro will close to NEVER be a problem. This meen a tank can afford to only use defensive skills (which is to keep holy shield up and posibbly to judge light for a paladin).

What i've done on Steelbreaker is that as soon as i see him casting fusion punch i press Holy shield if it's not up, and then I THE TANK spam cleanse.

My reasons for this is:

1. The tank wont loose any vital aggro, and defensive skills are taken care off
2. The healers can instead "prepear" a giant heal when they see the warning of fusion punch.

This meens we get both the cleanse and a quick heal just after the effect hits.

This is up to Cardinal as well though, and if it's something he feel comfortable doing.

We've / I've raised this before, its the way it should be done. The last time it was discussed it was down to Card not having the time / GCD to cast it, with your very valid point above this is now an option.

D

That's exactly what I did do on phase 1 and 2. Those phases are so boring I'm actually glad fusion punch exists just to give me something to do.

However, when we first started learning the Council on normal, it was a different matter. I had threat, death and new tactics to worry about.

The problem is on hard mode phase 3, Gimi's idea won't work. The damage is so intense on phase 3 I need to keep all my global cooldowns and reflexes available for my life-saver buttons. I can easily go from 100% to 0% in 1.5 seconds. I also have to maximise my damage to make the best of the 200% buff.

So it's not an option for a pally tank to cleanse himself on hard mode phase 3. Not until we're so good at it we have it on farm anyway.

I'd still disagree (partly due to the simple fact
that it's what i was doing on our hard mode kill so i think it's possible at least).

Oh shit buttons: We only got 2/3 oh shit buttons and all on about a 2 min CD, which meens we get to blow them ones during the last part of the fight at the best. Also there's no use in blowing them 'just after' fusion punch as this is instant-gib when it goes bad, if one is to use a o-shit button for fusion punch i allways pop i just before.

DPS: Fusion punch is a 3 sec cast, bascically you use 1GCD to ensure that Holy shield is up, and then start spamming for up to 3 seconds. I believe we can afford to loose 6-7000 potential damage ;P

Lastly, surviving. The reason for why i think this is a better way for surviving i've mentioned earlier but i'll say it again:
Heal + cleanse at the same time >> cleanse and then start heal from the healer cleansing

I'll also argue that:

Heal+cleanse at the same time > cleanse and then start heal from healer + tank more prepeared to push oh shit button.

I agree it's possible, but I didn't cleanse myself on our hard mode kill, so it's equally possible not to do it.

The question is—what is the least risky strategy? Getting the healers to do it (as they do on every other fight, and how any non-pally tank raid groups would do it) or getting the tank to do it?

If a Ret paladin is present however - this is a non-issue. Hopefully we both agree a Ret is the ideal person to cleanse the tank without any significant drawbacks.

If a Ret is not present I believe a combination of Derky and Zuzuna are best. There are 3 potential people able to heal the tank. There is only 1 person with shield wall, et al.

I prefer to focus all my attention on my survival in phase 3. Steelbreaker is doing 50% more normal damage by this stage. A tank can die in a few seconds without fusion punch even occurring. I'm not saying I can't cleanse, but I can't be relied on to do it. This might be my own failing.

I think getting the healers to cleanse me is fine, unless they're having big issues with it? Even Blobb managed to survive phase 3 without dying to a fusion punch.

All valid points, but one thing we seem to be forgetting is what happens after the fusion punch.

Example, and completly inaccurate but you'll see what I mean

Code:

Card at full health

20:59 59s Melee hit for 13k
21:00 0.0s Big illterate dorf casts Fusion Punch
21:00 1.3s Fusion Punch is dispelled by X person (Possibility of 2 healers 1 DPS casting the clease spell)
21:00 3s Melee hit for 15k
Dead tank


My point being that removing 1 or 2 healers to spam the cleanse button on Fusion punch -can- (Yes not always!) be suicidal. As our healing set up is weak on fights like this as we only have one tank healer by nature, I am the one cleansing.

Sure groups do it with warrior tanks and they will have 3-4 people in the raid cleansing by default I bet also. Its a raid stacking fight just no-one intentionally stacks it.

I would make a decision before we get there, who is doing what. If I am cleasning Marv will need to change her spells same for Zu. Using HOTS as primary aint an option on a fight with no tank healer healing for those crucial seconds during the fight. Which in turn makes it more dps crucial, due to mana.

If we have Zu do it then the mitigation she provides is lost during those few seconds, again another issue.

If we have Bal do it, then we loose dps. Probably not a staggering amount no, but that puts pressure on the rest of the raid.

I personally think we should have a paladin DPS doing it, if we aint got one then it should be Zu / Tank doing it themselfs.

The tank doing it himself is the easiest way to do it, but its not the only way to do it. Thats for sure.

D

Cardinal died 10 times on Iron Council. He was buffed with Fusion Punch 102 times, and 20 times it ticked - I've done some trawling in the combatlog and found those ticks:

#1 20:20: 1x FP tick, but dies to a regular swing
#2 20:32: 1x early FP tick, plus 3x (!) FP ticks before death
#3 20:38: 3x FP ticks in a row
#4 20:44: 3x FP ticks in a row
#5 20:58: 1x FP tick (after an unusually high 24k hit, BAD RNG?)
#5 20:59: 1x FP tick (42k hit, no buffs after a res)
#6 21:08: 2x FP ticks in a row
#7 21:21: 1x FP tick, but dies later to Meltdown
#7 21:21: 1x early FP tick, plus 1x FP tick (32k, no buffs after a res)
#8 21:27: 2x FP ticks in a row, dies to a regular swing

Looks like he died every time he got combat ressed due to lack of buffs (from 15k to 24k+ FP hits). Lesson learned: buff the fallen tanks FAST! Other than MotW, what buffs are key here?

I also looked at incoming heals. On the 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th wipe he got no healing other than HoTs before he died (they were also the fights were cleansing was the biggest failure*). On the 5th, 6th and 7th tries he died in spite of spam heals - we even achieved a proper Meltdown transition. On the last wipe healing failed, but I think we were tired and out of time by then. So looks like it took us 4 warmup wipes to get into the stride of how much healing was needed (regardless of cleanses or not). That's something we can work on!

Steelbreaker hits hard but not impossibly so, and FP is a tank killer unless the dispels come fast and the healing stays heavy. Overall it looks like we had a bad healing assignment - something easily fixed! Why I can't spot this mid-raid and save us a few wipes is just ... meh

--
*I do believe on the first few wipes it was the little bosses giving us trouble and the dps dying early, before we get into P3 properly - so "failure" is probably too strong a word.

Thursday 25rd June, Ulduar

I've posted most of my feedback in the hard mode thread (Flame Leviathan, XT-002 and Razorscale).

We've done Kologarn and Auriaya so many times on normal there's not much more to say about it - good wipe avoidance when Blobb d/c'ed on Kologarn!

Nice first raid by Taminak - you lasted very long on Mimiron considering it was your first time there!


Just some drama to end it off: I was in a foul mood after FL because I felt I was messing up too much, and I tried my hardest to spread that mood to Card (thankfully he's quite resistant) and the rest of the raid. Totally uncalled for - I am very sorry about that! The murlocs do so many things so well (like managing to fit in 13 tries in 2 hours) that I sometimes take our efficiency for granted and that's not fair. The fact we wipe A LOT when we have a wipenight is part of that efficiency and must be praised.. Guess the heart of it is we've run out of easy hard modes (except maybe Freya + 2?) - welcome to the second level of Ulduar, Marveen.

Thank you, for the first raid with WMD and how much I enjoyed it!

FL + 3
24% was the lowest I believe and that was with the nuke tactic (without throwing anyone onto him), with the launch I believe we got 25%, so both tactics work to a degree.

But as we wiped more we did get his HP down each time by 10-20%. I believe we had Mimirion to thank for the dreadful attempts, as it seems the fire wall does some AoE damage and DoT once you have moved through it.

XT
Funny, because killing the heart seems to be that little less hassle then doing it normally. Anyways, my problem here was swapping my damage between XT and the Spark of Doom. I couldn't click the god dam thing, so I was targetless for seconds at a time!

My damage also seemed a bit low, if it was due to the 12 attempts of FL or just not back into the swing of raiding yet, but that shall vastly improved

Note to self: make macro for spark

Kologarn and Auriya:
I didn't wipe the raid on Auriya I swear!

Mimirion:
If only I had my sound on, so I could hear his voice *sigh* In truth, it seemed easier then I imagied (but I suppose thats down to you murlocs having done it numerous times and his numerous nerfs)

And I failed when it came to the third and actual last laser blast used in the encounter, which sucked.

Other then that I managed my mana fine, swapping to viper at moments (fighting mobs or taking care of adds in a boss encounter) So... as I say. Onwards and upwards.