The Naxxramas Feedback Thread!

My death I blamed on a holy wrath being used wayyyyy to late which caused them to attack the nearest target when they came out of the stun.

I trolled through my combat log last night to try and work out who did it, and to my utter delight all 3 holy wraths were cast in quick succession and I died 4 seconds after the final stun has subsided. So fuck knows tbh. RNG ftw.

KT we have had way more melee than we are used to in recent weeks. It completly changes the fight. Thats why we keep messing up I think.

D

Can't have been all three holy wraths as I was saving mine for the zombies =)

I know that Derky is a born teacher, so.. help me read the log pls :-)
Gluth Decimate hits Derky for 21678 Physical.
.............. a series of JoMs hitting zombies AND Derky .........................
0:02'01.914 Derky Judgement of the Martyr hits Zombie Chow #2 for 7215 Holy. (Critical) #125902
0:02'02.759 Derky Judgement of the Martyr hits Derky for 2333 Holy.
0:02'03.175 Derky died.

That means that Derky slowly but surely commited suicide?

Anyway it was my fault, and the only time I remember losing a person during decimate - I was trying to see Gluth's target (which tank was hit) under a stack of X-perl frames and delayed horribly. Sorry Derky.

As for the Kelthuzad, it was a real mess. I hate having people outside my range, even more because i cant get near Marveen (both iceblocked? Cardinal will kill us) The whole time i was moving towards Kel'Thuzad to be able to reach people on the other side and then back again - but in this manner my reaction time is too low, and my nerves too high. So, pls casters (and also the brave tank of the monstrosities), try to be in reach of the Oracle team - we stay on the NW part of the minimap

zuzuna wrote:I know that Derky is a born teacher, so.. help me read the log pls :-)
Gluth Decimate hits Derky for 21678 Physical.
.............. a series of JoMs hitting zombies AND Derky .........................
0:02'01.914 Derky Judgement of the Martyr hits Zombie Chow #2 for 7215 Holy. (Critical) #125902
0:02'02.759 Derky Judgement of the Martyr hits Derky for 2333 Holy.
0:02'03.175 Derky died.

That means that Derky slowly but surely commited suicide?

Anyway it was my fault, and the only time I remember losing a person during decimate - I was trying to see Gluth's target (which tank was hit) under a stack of X-perl frames and delayed horribly. Sorry Derky.

As for the Kelthuzad, it was a real mess. I hate having people outside my range, even more because i cant get near Marveen (both iceblocked? Cardinal will kill us) The whole time i was moving towards Kel'Thuzad to be able to reach people on the other side and then back again - but in this manner my reaction time is too low, and my nerves too high. So, pls casters (and also the brave tank of the monstrosities), try to be in reach of the Oracle team - we stay on the NW part of the minimap

Interesting. That second judgement is not in my logs. Would explain things. I didn't actually know I could kill myself with Matyr!

Good work Zu! I learnt something new from that.

D

zuzuna wrote:I know that Derky is a born teacher, so.. help me read the log pls :-)
Gluth Decimate hits Derky for 21678 Physical.
.............. a series of JoMs hitting zombies AND Derky .........................
0:02'01.914 Derky Judgement of the Martyr hits Zombie Chow #2 for 7215 Holy. (Critical) #125902
0:02'02.759 Derky Judgement of the Martyr hits Derky for 2333 Holy.
0:02'03.175 Derky died.

That means that Derky slowly but surely commited suicide?

Anyway it was my fault, and the only time I remember losing a person during decimate - I was trying to see Gluth's target (which tank was hit) under a stack of X-perl frames and delayed horribly. Sorry Derky.

JotM is the raiding ret paladin's main seal (selfbuff). It does a percentage of damage done to the target to themselves (a third?). Our rets always have it up, even on Loatheb (bastards! ), simply because it does the most damage - and they know we can outheal it with HoTs. Have a look at Friendly Fire in Recount next time - if our Pink Squad are doing their job, they should all be fighting to top this meter.. :p

Normally our HoTs outheal this selfharming damage, but for some reason we were both distracted doing something else and forgot to heal D before it was too late..

Zuzuna wrote:As for the Kelthuzad, it was a real mess. I hate having people outside my range, even more because i cant get near Marveen (both iceblocked? Cardinal will kill us) The whole time i was moving towards Kel'Thuzad to be able to reach people on the other side and then back again - but in this manner my reaction time is too low, and my nerves too high. So, pls casters (and also the brave tank of the monstrosities), try to be in reach of the Oracle team - we stay on the NW part of the minimap

Yeah, things tend to go belly up when someone runs past as it adds an extra second or two to our reaction time (and KT is a mind reader and just loves to frost block 2-3 melee when we're distracted.. >.>). Here's a hi-tech diagram that shows what Zuzu and I would like:




Zuzu and I try to cover everyone - the melee dps are covered by us both, and so is the MT. The ranged should stand to one side of us - not between us. So you'll get the OT, a healer, a second healer, and the ranged dps. The melee dps and the MT share the middle, in three groups as far from each other as possible (triangle points). The ranged should avoid standing behind the MT as s/he needs room to jump back safely in case of a fissure underneath the tank spot (= yellow jumpzone).

Things tend to go chaotic when the adds come. Usually the spiders go straight for the healers, so the OT can go to the alcove behind us when the time is near and be close to grab them. They should be tanked either behind the healers (in an alcove) or in the pale grey zone to the side of one healer (opposite side to the ranged dps). The latter position has the advantage that the MT can grab the guardians quickly if things go bellyup.

Naxxramas, 2nd April:

Eh.. interesting run. We were short 2 dps for most of the run, D was shaking the dust from his healer plate (it didn't need much dusting after all) and I was facerolling as dps in a spec I haven't really played in years... Add to that the lack of all of Taq, Bal, Dahl and Akari and I think we did alright.

Naxx has a lot of poison damage, so running without a resto/balance druid OR a shaman makes things a bit too spicy. Maexxna in particular was punishing us for this.

Very nice first tanking job by Blobb - also kudos on getting the dance down pat first try and very quick to react midfight. The Gods of Loot approved and decked the gnome with a full new set of tanking plate as a reward.. I might need therapy for the sand gnome impersonation at the start of the raid though.

With hindsight, I should've gone as boomkin instead of feral - we had a mage AND a warlock AND two holy healers, so the extra spellcrit would've been more helpful than the leader of the pack aura. I do prefer to dps as a kitty over being a boomkin (plus owls look retarded >.<), so I'll stay in this form for Monday's clear. Loatheb, Gluth, Thaddius, Sapphiron and KT await!

I had quite a fun night, despite the slow beginning. If we're doing Naxx as 8 we need our best geared/specced people around it seems, but worth having a bash anyway. I wasn't sure if we were even going to get a raid going at the start.

I am growing unhappy with my threat output and have made several brand new gear sets maximising hit. Things aren't as bad as they were before WotLK, but I spend half my time taunting mobs off somebody on trash packs. Bosses aren't so much of a problem, provided I can beat the frostfire bolt to the boss... I have also re-gemmed and replaced several of my pure stamina gems for strength & stamina.

This is all out nerf to my survivability, but for trash packs it should help a lot. We'll see if I've overdone it next raid.

Cardinal: "This is all out nerf to my survivability..."

On the last raid, Cardinal died on:
Faerlina (On our first time, I underestimated the danger)
Maexxna (coordination problems and nasty small spiders interrupting casting)
Heigan (2 amazons failed on the first steps of the dance)
Razuvious (tanking problem)

I think we can afford a nerf if this helps our dps to concentrate more on the targets and decrease kill time - and if we dont experiment now, when will we do it?

I really liked the run, it was challenging and fun. It seems we will have the opportunity to do it again

Cardinal wrote:I am growing unhappy with my threat output and have made several brand new gear sets maximising hit. Things aren't as bad as they were before WotLK, but I spend half my time taunting mobs off somebody on trash packs.

Is this a recent developement or has it been going on for a while?

- If the former... I don't know how to word this without appearing self-important, but I hope you understand it the way I want you to.
Usually, what I do when we raid is that I buff either tank with Tricks of the Trade just prior to a pull. This causes all threat made by me within six seconds to be transfered to the one with the buff. Honestly, on trash packs I am sometimes able to reach 10.000 DPS within those six seconds (depending on the size of the pull), and the threat that amounts to is probably not very low, which may explain why it's harder to keep aggro on trash without that threat assist.

- If the latter, forget what I said.

I think I managed to sound self-important afterall... This was not my intention, I just thought I'd share my thoughts on the matter.

Don't worry Akari, you didn't sound big-headed.

It's been going on for a while, but it gets more and more noticeable as the DPS gear up. Dahlaine is dying more and more often, and I am having to taunt off Kayte and Taqwa more often. This is only on trash packs though, except for Malygos (with his spark buff) I'm usually 50% ahead of everybody else on threat when it comes to bosses. I only lose aggro on bosses when somebody accidentally taunts the boss off me!

It seems tanks in general are starting to think about threat again nowadays from the forums I read, but yesterday I raided with Vigilance on me (-10% threat) which exasperated an issue I was already unhappy about.

It just feels harder to keep aggro then it used to, and as I had 1.5% hit in my old gear set, that might be the reason. If my new gear set doesn't make any difference, it's just a case of buying 6 gems again though.

I've noticed that very few tanks can keep aggro off me, with exceptions... *points at Card* Which is why I'm hating pugs lately. My soulshatter needs a faster cooldown for those, but it IS useful in situations like that... I hadn't noticed really much aggro problems on my part, except for the newly-aggroed or newly-summoned mobs running afoul of my facemelting awesomeness that is my aoe. So... don't feel SO bad about your threat, it's a lot better than most. But then again, so's our group's dps.

Since 70% of my damage comes from spells and my Spirit Weapons talent currently only reduces threat on melee attacks that could explain some of the lost aggro. Hopefully that will be dealt with in 3.1 when the talent is changed to cover spells and melee damage.

Of course it's equally as likely that I'm just getting sloppy :p. It's a shame my only threat reduction spell; Wind Shock does hardly anything except interrupt my DPS without reducing threat, particularly on fights like Malygos.

It'll probably be a lot different in Ulduar anyhow when CC comes back in to play. At the moment our general trash mob attack pattern is 'kill Card's target' then kill whichever one is going to die next.

Threat is a problem with mage frostfire builds (compare the 40% arcane threat reduction to the 10% available with burning soul). My strategy for boss encounters is the standard one - i.e. open up with the low threat living bomb DOT and double scorch for the 10% crit debuff (to be reduced to 5% in 3.1!), then nuke with FFB and pyro when HS procs, refreshing scorch and LB as necessary. It's a highly crit-dependent, streaky build, but I keep a close eye on Omen, and as Cardivent says, over-aggroing isn't usually an issue. (Iceblock, mirror image and invisibility come to play during those oh%&^$ moments)

Trash is simpler - no scorching, just LB/FFB and AOElol. Aggro here is usually due to Kayte screwups, and I take full responsibility for getting smeared over the floor.

I only have 4% frost threat reduction at present (from a maximum of 10% via talents). The reason for this is that I essentially only have 2 'spare' points in my current build, one of which goes to Improved Blizzard (the snare is useful) and the other into Dragon's Breath (again, a useful non-targeted snare). These can be shuffled back into frost channeling if need be for Ulduar.

Regarding Ulduar, I'm considering dualing (is that a word?) with the cookie-cutter arcane build for boss encounters, but mana is going to be a serious issue. We'll see

9th April:

We did the Faerlina achievement and figured out a strategy for the 4H achievement. After the first death on Anub (the locust swarm silence?), I figured we could try doing the Faerlina achievement. Got a bit worried when I saw a follower right on the boss, but it wasn't killed, so we got it done. Must've been an epic healing job to keep Gimil alive, though the hyper dwarf did the craziest firedance I've ever seen a tank do there.. Wouldn't recommend doing this achievement without a fire aura and poison totems.

Next we decided to work out a strategy for the 4H. After a few tries we came up with a simple tactic with stationary tanks and healers, and a roaming kill group. A (pally/disc) healer and a ranged dps'er (ideally a shadow priest, self heals ftw!) tank Zeliek and Blameux, and the two "real" tanks take Korthazz and the Baron. The other (raid) healer goes with the 4 dps and the one tank, and an offspec healer sticks to the Baron tank. Start as normal, bring the Thane/Baron down and swap sides every 3 marks. When the Thane is at 10% (?), stop running to him, but work on the Baron (down to 10%). Once he's low too, move down to Zeliek and work on him, then get Blameux down. Now you should have Blameux at 10% or so, and the other at a lot less (as the tanks are working on them). THIS IS THE TRICK - when someone says NUKE on raidwarning, the 4 dps split up and go to a tank each, and finish the 4 off asap.

So: Thane to 10% (?) -> Baron -> Zeliek -> Blameux to nuke % -> Zeliek -> Baron -> Thane.

Once we figured this out, the whole thing took just under 5 minutes - the offspec healer needs to be able to last that long! It also really helps to get Deadly Boss Mods (DBM) as you can follow all 4 bosses' health in realtime. We were 8 seconds short of the kill, mostly because we forgot to kill Blameux fast enough. But it should be in the bag for next time unless we have a less friendly group combo.

Blobb's charge across the slime and into Patches was novel. We seemed to react fast enough and it was a clean kill. Perhaps the influence of his new Minion Bracers - it's Gimil's influence. Not sure what Gimil was doing on Grobbulus either, but it was.. interesting. I blame drunken dwarvery..

I messed up on Gluth - there seemed to be 2-3 zombies being spawned for each I managed to grab. I tried the bear Demo Shout and taunt on cooldown, but it didn't seem to be enough for this - and my Swipe doesn't reach behind me so when I tried to use that I had to turn around and then I got bitten. So maybe a feral druid (especially one with crappy tanking experience) isn't so good - the DnD and Consecrate seems to work much better at grabbing stragglers! Tips are welcome..

Otherwise grats to Taerix on first real Heigan (and successful dance!), to Blobb for his new staff, and to all for a relatively clean oneshot on KT.

Marveen wrote:9th April:
We were 8 seconds short of the kill, mostly because we forgot to kill Blameux fast enough.

This was my fault, after offering to "stay" at Blameux I died from damage which I now realise was because of the number of stacks I had from already being near her, this can be solved next time by one DPS following a slightly different path to the others so that there is one availible with out Blameux stacks to kill her.

Aside from that it was a good raid

In other news, we also only had 4 deaths to bosses for the whole night! There was the unfortunate start with Anubrekhan, then two deaths at Sapphiron (he doesn't like shamans apparently) and a frost blast from KT was the last. That's awesome work, Oracles.