Game, Set, Match!

The week Part 4 of LFR came out, we tried to get through it.  We got up to and pulled Garrosh a number of times… I think we were up to 4-5 attempts when we just ran out of time.  The group was pleasant enough but we just couldn’t attempt anymore, and the person who’d been leading it had put themselves in charge of the add on the side and missed it a few times, causing most of the wipes.  I wasn’t particularly upset – just assigned one of our people to help after a couple of those.  I mean, it was new of course – so no rage induced there.

I requeued later and got the most fantastic group I’d had up till that point.  We walked through every boss with no more than a few wipes – 1 on Siegemaster, 0 on Klaxxi and 3 on Garrosh.  Everyone was upbeat and excited about the content [an attitude that is contagious by the way though I suppose it would only work for new LFRs] and on Garrosh it was “Okay what did we do wrong?  Okay let’s fix that!”  I think we only had a couple people leave on the Garrosh attempts.  And we had a leader who had done the fights before and knew how to boil it down.

After carefully listening and watching, I was pretty sure I could walk an LFR group through the Garrosh encounter if they’d obey mechanics and listen.

Wednesdays are typically our LFR night but we’ve had people sick and we’ve had to play catch up for a few people who missed earlier sections.  So we caught a few people up in parts 2 and 3 and then hit part 4 last night.  I have to admit, I was a little disheartened when we got to Siegemaster and asked which dps were doing the conveyer belt and got no responses.  I can say I haven’t done that so I can’t explain it.  I probably should sometime so I CAN explain it.  I know one of the three adds has to die and it determines what other two abilities hit the raid.  I know you can die if you get off the conveyer wrong or something, but I don’t know.  Anyway, that aside, Ven assigned a couple of our dps in vent to take care of it.  All good.

Random healer: “OMG CAN WE PULL ALREADY OMG THIS IS TAKING TOO LONG”

Irritation rises for a split second, but I push that away and ignore them.  They’re one person and ironically died every fight multiple times and were by far the lowest on heals [perhaps because they died so much].  Suffice to say a healer we picked up on Garrosh outhealed them overall.  We should probably have kicked them but I didn’t even realize it till after the run was over.

We one shot Siegemaster – messily but done.  All good.  We move on and kill all the Klaxxi trash and before we can blink, someone has clicked the crystal and the encounter is engaged.  Probably would be wise to only permit queued tanks to click that.  But no matter, we one shot it too.  Ven and I threw out enough aoe in the beginning that we both ended up with a couple stacks of vulnerability to our respective targets but 20% extra damage taken didn’t prove to be fatal 🙂

We got to Garrosh – and by the way, the trash to him has been massively nerfed since we were last in there.  Or we had amazing dps and healers.  Or both.  We were able to pull the humanoid packs and not die.  Those reaper stuns are ANNOYING as a tank though!

We get to Garrosh and now it’s time to prove what I’d bragged to the hubby about.  Here’s how I explained it, in case it helps any other LFRs.

I put two marks down on either of the center [where the little points come out] and told the dps and healers to stand on one until a weapon appeared, move to the other and dps the weapon down.  Rinse repeat.  Melee focus on killing the riding add [it heals the boss].  I had one of our dps assigned to the side add.  I did forget to mention that the melee should mind the fel iron star, but they seemed to learn after the first one or two.

When you get sucked into the scenario, run to the end, kill all the things, don’t stand in Garrosh’s smash aoe.

In Phase 2 and 3 don’t be off by yourself.  The boss will MC three people and they will start to MC the raid.  DPS them out and interrupt.  [We almost lost control of that once but the raid recovered very well].

Other than that… don’t stand in bad.  I think that was pretty much it.

We lost a few melee to that first fel iron star and lost one person in a scenario who managed to hit every one of Garrosh’s aoe smashes… how I’m not overly sure.  Because of battle rezzes we ended the fight with two dead and one shot it.

Maybe that’s not a big feat because as people tell me, it IS LFR but my alting friends in vent were saying they don’t want to go back without us there leading it.  The truth is ya’ll were there to back us up and take those utility roles that might kill your dps.  Group effort!

My point is that a little leadership and organization can really make or break these LFRs.  Ideally you shouldn’t have to, but at times it’s been the choice between suffering a horrible extended floundering run or adding just a touch of organization [raid permitting] to just get it done.  And I’ve organized Lei Shen kills on a healer and a dps.  I admittedly haven’t done much Siege on alts but I think the principle applies.  And I’ll grant, if you’re not a tank you don’t automatically have marking and the tools to lead.  And if people won’t listen, it doesn’t really matter what role you are.  And by leadership I don’t mean bossing people around – I mean giving the raid what direction it needs.  Some LFRs need very little  beyond a mark on the floor and clarification of that and some require more handholding.

Mists of Pandaria

Askevar is 90… hit it Friday in fact [with Venoym].  This was the fastest and hardest we’ve ever pushed to level.  I know a lot of people like to savor initially, but we both prefer to just get our main to 90 and worry about savoring later with alts.  That’s why they exist after all?  Anyway, Askevar’s main set is going along well.  I do a couple scenarios a day as well as a heroic or two in the evening.  All my pieces, save a 442 blue ring, are 450 or better, with several 463 items.  I’m doing my daily rep grinds and I’ve maxed all my professions both primary [Inscription/Jewelcrafting] and Secondary [Archaeology, First Aid, Cooking, Fishing] and I got access to the end food for the Way of the Oven [aka the tank tree].  I also have all my on server alts parked at Halfhill to farm various veggies to max the other ways or to create the max Oven food.  By the way, if you do this, the Outpost Zhu flightpoint in Krasanger is the one that connects the Jade Forest initial town to Halfhill.

For that matter, I’ve now maxed out every profession on my account except Blacksmithing and Skinning.  Suffice to say, our guild has the heirloom legs already, and not just through my efforts either.  Sadly they are only good through 85, which I think is a little silly, but I was able to buy a pair for my level 20 monk.  Oh, we also have the guild shirts because a group running scenarios last night saw we were only two away and decided to finish.  They’re kinda cute but you can’t see it with my armor on [as it should be for a tank].

My offset gear is crap [its unholy now, gave up frost] and a quarter to half the pieces are still level 85 stuff that I need to replace, but, on the flipside, I’m quite a hardy tank right now.

Honestly, I don’t see any of my alts getting to 90 very quickly.  I’ve got 2 at 86 – my bank alt/gatherer and my horde pally [the horde pally would net me 2 account achievements].  With our guild not even discussing raiding for another two weeks, I might get one leveled but who knows?  My main priority, as always, is going to be getting Askevar’s tank set raid ready – everything else is bonus.

Sundays have become achievement night and due to lack of interest from our guild [a lot of people are still busy leveling and that’s alright], we’ve been pulling from cross realm friends.  We’ve gotten a lot done though and we’ve had a blast doing it.  We even managed to 9 man Heroic Chimaeron just before MoP hit – with 3 healers, 2 tanks and the rest dps – and that’s what we managed to get… we had intended to 2 heal, but with everyone wanting to try out their mainspec, extra heals never hurt :D.

 

I will admit, at times the dailies feel almost endless, but once I get the reputations to max, I’ll be gold.  I’m already revered with Order of the Cloud Serpent and well into honored with most of the rest so it’ll get there 🙂  And I’m not finding these dailies near as painful as some have been in the past either.

 

Goldwise – I’ve already spent a ton between buying the Grand Expedition Yak and speed leveling some professions.  Despite that, I’ve actually managed to make money on Askevar and I’ll make back the rest and then some when I level the alts, so it’ll all work out.  Hey, don’t look at me that way… I saved and ground for that Yak for several months before MoP dropped and I’m darn proud of it!  There is nothing like achieving a goal you set out to complete.

 

Speaking of achievements, for the first time since I was maining a warlock, I have finally passed my husband in total achievement points.  Now, so it’s said, that won’t last as he’ll do all those achievements and catch right back up… but for once it’s nice to be ahead!

It was a GREAT night :)

So, Heroic Yor’sahj died.  Took us about 10 pulls last night I think?

I’ll grant that the buff was up another five percent, but we would have done it anyway.  We are the 20th guild on the server to down Heroic Yorsahj and the 18th to down him on 10 man.  I don’t usually get hung up on server rankings… as a casual guild you can’t really do that, but that’s freaking awesome!

We tried to follow a couple different strategies, but we ended up having to craft our own, pulling from several different guides on what oozes to hit.  Our hunter was having issues being up under the boss and dpsing… it kept telling him that his target wasn’t in front of him [silly glitches]; so we moved him to managing the mana voids and we were able to keep the rest of the dps off of it except when we needed to pop one.

Our healers were beastly.  Our pally healer micromanaged healing on purple phases to exquisite detail.  Our druid healer had everyone topped back off once the debuff was gone.  [Our priesty healer went shadow and was doing a great job with the rest of the deeps :)]

What Ven and I really loved was the fact that everyone had some input about one of the first couple of wipes… about problems they were having or foreseeing.  Ven took all that in, made a decision and everyone went with it.  It turned our 50% wipes immediately into 20% wipes :).  As raid leaders we can’t see every problem people or having, or how the healing is, so input is fantastic.  But when it comes time, Ven makes a decision and we do it 🙂  I’ve told him he’s crazy for ideas more than once.  However, I went with his decision only to find it worked.

The funniest thing about the kill?  Our guild vent died.  But the raid took that as a challenge rather than a detriment!  Venoym had gone dps, so he just marked himself and they followed him to the ooze he’d selected.  Everyone did their job to perfection!

To say we were jazzed after that would be an understatement.  We had already gotten H-Morchok, had a silly wipe on regular Zonozz and one shot Hagara, H-Ultraxion and boat.  The raid chatter got a little silly but hey… killing a new boss does that.

I actually need to do a post about my Heroic Ultraxion strategy as a death knight tank because I do a couple things that are completely counter-intuitive to being a tank [at least in my estimation] but I may do that later today.

I’m so proud of you guys!  FAN-TAS-TIC job!

 

Yay for Multishot 🙂

 

Achievementy Week [Image Heavy Post]

I’ve felt a little off this week and so I’ve devoted the time I’m online to grinding those few annoying achievements I hate [ie: rep grinding].

But first, look who I found out at Netherwing Ledge!

 

DEATHWING IS DEAD!

We killed 8/8 tonight in 3 hours!  WOOT!  What a Valentine’s present to ourselves!

Group Makeup:
Tanks: Paladin/Death Knight
Healers: Paladin/Druid/Holy Priest
DPS: Paladin/Rogue/Hunter/Mage/Priest

 

Gratz guys and fantastic job!  Go Firestorm!

How to Survive LFR and Keep Your Sanity

Here are some tips for making your LFR experience more pleasing and less designed to make you tear your hair out.  My hubby and I have run LFR every week since it came out, both parts [minus the week the second part wasn’t available] and occasionally on multiple toons on random days.  We have yet to leave an LFR raid for “being fail” but we by being us have eliminated several of the most potentially devastating problems [and yes, all of our raids have been completed in a timely manner].

1. If you can lead, DO.  Hubby and I have commented to each other more than once that a halfway decent raid leader can probably pull an average group through the first 7 bosses with minimal wipes.  There is the small issue of “human errors” and true “bads” [bads here being defined as people intentionally causing problems via malice, not through ignorance].

2. If someone else can lead, don’t be afraid to let them.  Don’t need to lead so badly that you can’t let someone else bear the burden.  An epeen war of the raid leading variety can be epicly nasty.

3. Give directions.  Don’t just tell people “don’t fail”.    Yes, I agree that everyone should read up on the fights in advance, but I’d rather give a five second explanation than spend 5-10 minutes wiping and running back.

3a. Simplify, simplify, simplify.  Don’t try to get into lengthy boss explanations.  In LFR as it stands, healers really don’t need much instruction on most fights.  Whisper tanking instructions to the tanks if they don’t know the fights.  Keep directions to dps in raid very simple.  For example, on Ultraxion “Stack, hit button when Hour of Twilight comes”.

3b. There will always be griefers and people intentionally causing issues or people who refuse to listen.  In LFR there is enough leeway on most fights to either heal through the problem [And I have healed in LFR so I know how annoying that is], or to just let them die.  Most people don’t care to be dead for most of the fight, so they may learn through repetition.

4. Controlling the tanking seems to lend itself to an easy raid, and I don’t mean being controlling of random tanks.  If you can supply your own tanks, who know how to do their job, it will lend itself to a smoother raid [adding a couple of healers in there wouldn’t be amiss either… and some powerhouse dps never hurt – just sayin’].  Tanking the LFR may not be particularly complex, but a bad tank can mean much bigger problems than a poor healer or a low dps.

5. If someone is being obviously problematic, ask in raid for a kick.  We got kicks for a couple of AFK people and a blood dps dk in full pvp gear, in blood presence, griefing the raid.  [Psychic drain on the whole raid because of a taunt = bad].  You don’t have to be particularly mean about asking either.  “Please kick Arthasdklol for being AFK”.

6. There’s really no need to heckle people.  If dps is too low, as kindly as possible point out that those below the tank or below a particular threshold need to up their game for future encounters.  Many times people in that category will step it up or bow out, without the need of name calling and shaming [I would do that on any alt that fell into that category].  Perhaps they thought they would be fine or would do better than they are… perhaps they are simply out of practice.  Who knows?  If they won’t and are particularly problematic [ie doing nothing or doing 2k or something], ask for a kick.

7. Do YOUR best.  Don’t go in and AFK constantly or only move when a boss fight is going on, or ignore mechanics and raid calls.  Nothing is more annoying than a leech.  Life does happen and if you need to AFK just say something like “AFK just a moment, I’ll be right back”.  You can give a reason or not.  They may read it or not but by that notice you’ve done your due diligence in terms of that [barring emergencies – RL does take precedence of course].  Don’t nerdrage over loot, and don’t let yourself be bothered if someone else does.  If they’re harrassing you, put them on ignore.  In other words, all the common sense stuff.

LFR requires a measure of patience to complete and frankly, probably always will.  Keep in mind that this was designed for those who don’t or cannot raid, not for hardcore or even necessarily the casual raider [who can also benefit from it].

For some people this could even be their first experience with raiding, so the mild amount of encounter training will only ease the frustration of the LFR.  Imagine if they learn and pay that forward, and so on… it might even feed back into a more pleasant LFR for you down the line.

All this said, if you can’t handle patience – don’t queue, or if you reach your limit, leave.  It’s not worth sacrificing your sanity for the 250 valor that can easily be attained in 3 HoT randoms.

A Dirty Little Secret of GMs and Raid Leaders…

As a former GM and a former and current Raid Leader, I’m going to let you all in on a small dirty little secret.  Retro runs are more than just “fun times” for people in those positions.  And if you’re new to a guild, it’s in your best interests to go to a few and to take it somewhat seriously.

For many GMs and Raid leaders, it’s a chance to see how new people perform.  While a certain amount of goofing off is expected [and even encouraged], things that you do can get you a progression raid spot, or cost you one.  Over the years of my experience I’ve seen a lot of things in these runs and I’ve watched people cross themselves off the list of folks I would call on for a progression run.  I’ve also seen people impress me so much that I pursued them for a spot in my raid.

Now I’m not saying it’s the end all/be all, or that one true mistake will cost you.  But there are some things you just DON’T do.

1. Wiping a raid on purpose “for fun”.  No one cares for a wipe.  Wipes can still happen in old content if you have too few people, if people are careless, or if people don’t know some of the fights [hard modes in particular].  But doing it on purpose?  Likely not going to score you an invite to the progression run.

2. Refusing to listen to the raid leader.  Yes, these runs are often LOLfaceroll, but listening to and respecting the authority of the person in charge of the raid is something you should do.  Deciding you don’t have to follow what they’re wanting you to do just because you want to be stubborn?  Not good.  Intentionally messing up an achievement because you take the notion to disobey the raid leader?  Not a good impression.

3. Standing in Bad/Refusing to Obey Mechanics – This is what I always looked for most.  The first two items are automatic red flags, but this one was also quite important.  If you’re dying to “bad stuff” in old content, what’s that going to spell for your ability to avoid it in an actual stressful situation [ie progression]?  If you’re the one standing in every defile/etc or getting a debuff on you and killing half the raid time after time – outlook: not good.  Telling the raid leader that you can stand in [insert bad here] because this is lolfaceroll shows not only a lack of respect for the raid leader but for the raid in general – and your healers specifically.  Making mistakes in this category happen but I’d venture that most raid leaders and GMs are saavy enough to know the difference most of the time.

4. How you react when you make a mistake and do wipe the raid/kill people [we all do it at one point or another].  Seeing someone say “I’m sorry about that, won’t happen again” makes me happy.  You know X was a problem and you’re taking responsibility for it and are going to correct it.  Then just do.  You’d be amazed how that kind of attitude will stick with a raid leader.

4. General Obnoxiousness.  Enough said I suppose.  Having fun is one thing.  Being obnoxious is something else.

Raid leaders and GMs are watching and it’s not a bad thing either.  They’re watching where you fall generally on the dps meter [on retro runs your numerical dps really doesn’t matter but they’ll watch where you are relative to current raiders particularly on boss fights] as well as how you move out of bad.  They’ll be looking at what spells you use as a healer and how your threat is and how hardy you are as a tank.

For me, new people get slotted into about 5 categories in terms of progression – 1. Ready to Raid; 2. Has Potential/Almost There; 3. Major Work Needed/Red Flags Sent Up; 4. Undecided/Unknown; 5. Heck No.  No, not all of them are interested in raiding and it may not be the most fair thing to view things through these lenses but a few retro runs will definitely leave an impression.  What impression do you want to leave?