Hot Topic: Hard raid hallelujah!

If you're not Finnish, I hope to god you didn't get that reference. If you did, I wish you early onset alzheimers so you may forget you ever heard that horrible horrible song.

So Karthis seems to have set the ball rolling and WoWwiki are trying to pick it up about the current raid content and how mindnumbingly easy it is. When I hear Fusion say they've run all of naxx25 with 2(!) healers and 2 tanks...that just makes me want to cry. But so what? This is entry level raiding, it's going to be entry level even when eventually we've got the sunwell equivalent of wotlk. It's Karazhan for 25man. So what?

Now, you might argue that KZ was, initially, a lot harder than naxx, and I'll agree, the trash required more focus and the fights were relatively speaking more complex. However, when my friends who used to play in Massive rolled a bunch of fresh chars and "returned" in early TBC, they also cleared the original KZ in one night, every boss on the first attempt. Good players who know how to adapt will be able to do this, especially as it's not their first time in this game, or any other. Yeah sure, Blizz could have introduced Naxx, Maly and Sarth as harder than they did, in style with KZ/Gruul/Maggy(which, I'm told, was completely insane when TBC came out). But that's not really the problem.

Problem is the normal dungeons are pointless. In TBC, you had to farm rep to get into heroics. Even more so, you had to farm gear to be able to do said heroics. You had to do the heroics to get into KZ(even if we ignore the atunement quests, which to be honest, no sane person would miss).

Now what we do is get to 80 by questing and then go do Naxx25man. Normal dungeons at 80? HAH! Not done a single one, barely did a few while leveling my main since there was plenty of people from the guild to group with and I had a few quests. But you can literally level to 80 without ever entering a dungeon and go straight into naxx25 now. That's just a bit lame. Yeah there's some ok gear to start off with to be had from heroics, but you don't need it. Naxx is tuned so low, not only is it accessible to everyone, it's accessible without any effort what so ever.

Now while I don't expect there to be content designed for hardcore guilds since day 1 of a new expansion, I do expect there to be some kind of progression even before the first major content patch. Now you may argue that the achievements are the content for the hardcore, but to me, achievements initially seemed like the casual players delight. However, it seems these are being approriated to fill the content hole for hardcore raiders as well, so I guess that's just something I have to live with. And yes, some are useful for keeping people focused while we wait for Ulduar, but the lack of tangible awards from doing most of them does mean a lot of hardcore players aren't terribly motivated. Having said this, Sarth3D seems to be the model for the future, so I guess I should talk about that a bit.

Now, I like Sarth3D as an encounter. It's not as hard as people make it out to be, there's about 3 things to look out for of the "don't stand in the fire" nature, there's some adds so there's actual need for multiple tanks, and there's a real risk of tanks dying so it's somewhat interesting from a tanking/healing perspective as well. But once people stop failing the voids, the flame walls and learn not to just dps like crazy if their on low hp while Vespiron is up, it's a pretty easy fight. 3.0.8 made it a bit harder for those of us not using DK tanks, but that was still cured just by setting up a cooldown rotation on the MT if you weren't allready using one(there really wasn't a need for it before). The encounter is actually somewhat well liked in the guild, since it's not a complete faceroll and we actually have to do more than just show up and loot. The fact that is has extra loot also placates those who don't give a shit about achievements. The fact that it's a lot more fun than the pragmatic Immortal or annoying Maly 6min(which favours dk's and range dps heavily, which again, sucks) is also a huge plus.

Now, when we heard there's going to be tons of hard modes in Ulduar, and they are going to be modeled after Sarth3d, most of our guild seemed to rejoice. Sure, very few of us are actually the least bit syked about vehicle combat, but what the hell. That being said, there are some achivements which have clearly become all-around hated, and which nobody would like to see in Ulduar hard modes:

1. "Ironman" - Sure, when you've cleared everything and content is irrelevant, doing old farm content with as few players as possible is a challenge in itself. But it's not fun to 20man content for a bloody achievement. Make it so you can choose to increase the overall difficulty by 20% instead. Some switch or whatever, make use of the "Epic" setting that allready exists in the game(if you don't know what this is, it's because it's never actually been used for anything). Taking the time out of farming content to Ironman it just sucks for the people who get left outside a raid. It's not fun, it doesn't add complexity, it's just shit.

2. Immortal - Anything that hinges on people not disconnecting or lagging for completion is pretty damn shit. It wouldn't be so bad if the servers weren't lagging, but as it is, the only reason Immortal has only been done by 1% of guilds(according to GuildOx) isn't that it's hard, it's that you have to do it far off peak raidtimes, the guilds on our server who've gotten it have just done it at 23:00-02:00 servertime(most raids on our server are 19:00-23:00). Again, it doesn't add complexity, it just hinges on random shit and lag.

3. Random component - Right. So this is stuff like Gonna Go When the Volcano Blows. This is, literally, a reward for fucking up. If you actually do what you're supposed to, there's just about nothing you can do to avoid getting hit by a meteor. If you get that lucky, it wasn't that you did anything right, it was just random. This might be the most idiotic achievement EVER! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!

So what should the Ulduar hard modes be like then? It should be pretty obvious from this post, but let me summerize it anyway:

1. Adds! - Force the tanks to work harder, the healers to work harder, the dps to disengage from their task every now and then. Adds add complexity. Complexity is good.

2. Distractions! - Force us to do more than just stand there and wait for shit to happen. Voids, flame walls, beams(think Illidan) and what not. Keep us on our toes, keep us focused. Distracting people makes the fight more complex. Complexity is good.

3. Phases! - Phases change the nature of an encounter. When done right(read: not like the utter boredom of Phase 1 on KT atm) they make for a more complex encounter. Complexity is good.

So what do hardcore raiders want? COMPLEXITY! Because when you're being pushed to your limit having to do 10 things at a time, you actually feel like you've achieved something. And when there's an appropriate reward for doing that, you are actually insentivised to do it. And most importantly, the fight is different, and in this way, it actually creates another layer of real content.

[Edit]Damn, got a bit carried away and forgot to say that, although some seem to be harkening back to how great it was in TBC when there was KZ/SSC/TK/BT/Sunwell and therefore there was something for every level of player, people are forgetting that was the situation at the END of TBC. We're only getting started with WotLK, so ofcourse we're not going to have the same spectrum of content, don't be silly. But at this point in time, that spectrum should be dungeons/heroics/10man raids/25man raids, in that order. The problem is, it's basicly just 25man raids, there's no steps to be done in between. You might have spent weeks, even months, clearing things like SSC and TK. In BT and especially in Sunwell, one single boss might have had you on the ropes for as long as the whole of SSC or TK took you to clear. But you sure as hell didn't take a week to learn Prince(or 'Spite), Gruul or Maggy. The fact that Sarth3D took even a few days to learn for decent guilds(before the videos came out, damn nice work Fusion btw) is shocking for 3.0 content. To expect anything else than to have everything on farm within a few weeks, if you are a good guild, was just dillusional. It's the price we pay for being progression raiders. It also means we get to enjoy life until the next major content patch, or at the very least level some alts(working on my 3rd atm, guildmate is on his 5th or 6th...). Let's be honest, nobody wants to raid 24/7 from 3.0 straight to the end of WotLK. Getting the whole content farmed in 2h each week wouldn't upset me one bit at this point(without lag I figure we could do it in about 2h 30min atm if we tried).[/Edit]

Classification of encounters based on tanking

Khalon's recent Anti-Tank series is an interesting idea as to how the 3.0.8 armour changes might be used to our advantage. However, viewing his talent spec, I realized he hadn't actually changed much of anything compared to a normal tanking spec, which made me question the premiss of his anti-tank gear. Are there really encounters in which it's advantageous to have a cross between feral dps and feral tank gear?

Single Tank Encounter

Examples: Maexxna, Heigan, Loatheb, Sapphiron

These are encounter in which the only circumstances under which a OT will be required to tank is if the MT dies. Pure DPS gear is recomended.

Multiple Tank Encounter

Examples: Razuvious, Patchwerk, Gluth, Sartharion

These encounters require multiple tanks for the full duration(or close there to) of the encounter. OT's will take significant damage during the encounter and therefore full tank gear is required.

Optional Multiple Tank Encounter

Examples: Anub'Rhekan, Faerlina, Noth, Grobbulus, (Kel'Thuzad), Malygos, VoA

These encounters are most commonly done with a limited time OT, or an OT who will take very litle damage. In each case if sufficiently geared, the MT can take the adds which are normaly the OT's responsability, or the OT can be replaced by generic plate-dps who equips a shield for the situation(Malygos, VoA). Even if using an OT, argueably on all of these encounters the OT can wear pure DPS gear for the entire fight(although the advantages of this on Noth are questionable).

Limited Time Multiple Tank Encounter

Examples: (Anub'Rhekan), (Faerlina), Gothik, (Four Horsemen), Thaddius, (Kel'Thuzad)

These encounters are typically phased encounters or encounters with one-time-only adds. During phases without adds or once initial adds have been disposed of, the OT is free to DPS. This type of encounters usually has quite low damage on the OT and therefore the OT can either be replaced entirely, or the encounter can be OT'd in DPS gear.

Damage Mechanic Multiple Tank Encounter

Examples: Four Horsemen, Kel'Thuzad

These encounters have some mechanic which constitutes a threat to players or a burden on healers the more players are involved in an optional situation.

In the case of Four Horsemen, a tank who has finished with his job on Baron/Thane might decided to run in and start tanking or DPS'ing Zeliek. However, due to the nature of the fight, he now presents one more target for the healers to heal. Also, whilst moving away from Zeliek he may cause further links, increasing the chance of that his Holy Wrath will jump to multiple targets and insta-gib someone.

In Kel'Thuzad, whilst during Phase 2 no OT is required, each additional melee dps increases the number of targets for Frost Blast and increasing chane of Shadow Fissure in a highly crowded area.

What possible additional DPS the OT may provide in said situations is far outweighed by the additonal risks to the raid he constitutes. In such encounters, it is therefore better for the OT to simply stand off to the side than when not needed.

So my findings are that there is no situation, atleast in the current content, where the Anti-Tank gearset which Khalon suggests is actually useful. You are better off having two seperate sets of tank and dps gear.

This just in

Seems Blizzard wasn't all too happy about guilds facerolling Sarth3D(we were 1shotting him weakly without breaking a sweat and so were many others), so they've made the encounter a good bit harder. You used to be able to avoid most giant breaths by removing the twilight torment debuff, but after the patch there's no way of removing it. This forces any guild wanting to do this to keep up a cooldown rotation on the MT. It also means the whole raid is taking a periodic dot whenever they hit anything. And it means that the healers are being taxed more even as they've just been hit by some pretty decent nerfs.

Don't worry too much though, 25man is still doable and I expect 10man to be as well. We added another healer and changed our tactic a bit and added some more cooldowns on MT, but in the end Sarth gave in after about 90 minutes of raiding.

Clean Kill

By now all the information people need to be able to kill Sartharion with 3 adds is out in the open, but what you don't see a lot of are the stories of how these kills have been achieved, and I think it might be interesting for people venturing into the encounter to read how such kills have happened without forcing them to read a bunch of spoilers. This then, is our story(more or less).

Let me begin by saying that there are some things which are likely to hold you back from progressing past a particular point in this encounter, and knowledge of them beforehand is a lot easier than trying to pick up what they do from looking at a WWS. Now as our christmas break was fast approaching, we gathered a motley crew and headed over for one last attempt at the 25man+3 kill. We had 3/4 of the primary tanks, missing our warrior maintank and guildleader. Most of the group was the same core as had been wiping on the encounter for many long hours as we'd worked to overcome the various initial challenges of the encounter. Our first pull promised good things, as only some failures at around the time Shadron went down cost us a wipe. The hard part was clearly within our reach, after that it was simply transitioning into the less frantic Vesperon kill and the ultimate kill of Sartharion. One or two more wipes ensued, memory fails me, but then also Vesperon yielded. Nothing to do but keep the MT up and dps the dragon down then. Except when you go all out for stamina, you inadvertently end up sacrificing a good bit of mitigation and avoidance, and at this point Sarth was hitting like a truck.

Now, obviously we could have swapped in another tank to take the dragon the last leg of the journey. We could have, but we felt confident that the Elu could take the beating. In truth I don't know why, but for some reason the unthinkable happened, and furry Elu went down. Panic, wipe imminent. Luckily we had two tanks(me and Leipis, our paladin) quite idle at this point. Now you might think we'd have a plan in place, who takes the dragon if the MT dies at this point. Well, not quite. So we both scurried off to pick up the evil before all our raid had wiped. After a somewhat hilarious bit of taunting back and forth, I let Leipis have him and ran off to battleres some dead. Now it's worth mentioning our normal raid-comp includes a lot of druids, two boomkins, a tree and 1-2 ferals. That's a lot of battlereses, so we got most of the raid back up. And then it happens again, Leipis went down due to a cock-up with some cooldown I believe. Luckily I was still in bear and twatting around some fireballs that were trying to set my fine fur on fire, so I ran off and picked up the dragon. No more tank deaths at this point, and as we hit 10% I popped my berserking and mangle away happily. Dragon down, all's well. In the end I wonder if it didn't just get tired of trying to figure out who it was supposed to kill. But hey, a kill's a kill, sure we could have probably gotten a cleaner kill on the next attempt, but I'm ok with a messy kill. Next time will be better, and hopefully after next reset we'll be able to confidently declare this farm content.

What to learn from this? Don't stop until it's over. You might not get a clean kill, but atleast you learn something from it, and you might just down it after all.

-Shamad

Edit:

I recently found a similar post on the subject by the Trouble/Kyth from Fusion, although be aware that their account does contain a lot of spoilers. But if you're ok with spoilers, they also made a video which explains what goes into the encounter. By the time said video came to our attention we'd allready figured out what we needed for our kill, but it should help avoid much drama for those who come after.

RE:Bears are OP - An introduction to an opinion

This post, and in fact this blog, is a response to Kalon's recent post's (original and follow-up) about the current state of bear tanking. Well, not quite. As I've been reading Kalon's posts and as I've been experiencing the new content in WotLK as a newly rolled bear tank in a top-end guild, I've felt a growing urge to voice my opinions on what I see, read and perceive. The forum that I've chosen for this particular discourse is to be this blog. And now, the introduction that I've promised.

My origins as a gamer are far back, I got a C-64 when I was maybe 5 or 6 years old, followed by a Sega Master System and my first PC. I began playing MMO's at the start of the decade with the browser based kind, most notably Planetarion, Unitywars and Planetia. I was rather known both as a player, forum goer, moderator(planetia) and ultimately staffer(planetarion and planetia) under the nickname of Sun_Tzu. I'm also a long time fan of Blizzard games having played Warcraft 1-3 as well as Starcraft. I was hugely looking forward to WoW until it became clear it would be a fully online game(I was hoping for a game in the style of Heroes of Might and Magic series). I felt it silly to play online PvE when I had my massive PvP browser based games to play. However, a fair few of my friends did begin playing, eventually ending up being the backbone of the highly successful guild Massive. Right about now you'd expect me to say I later joined them in that guild. I did get the offer, but by the time I started playing wow(out of boredom one christmas holiday right before TBC launch), most of my friends had quit and Massive was in the process of being reformed into what is know known as Legacy.

TBC for me was a learning period. I thought I knew what I wanted, but as I leveled up characters I tended to top out at lvl40, after which I got bored and started a new. I finally settled on a priest, and joined my cousin in a alt-guild for a larger guild on Tarren Mill, EU Horde. I was a holy raiding priest, I'd quickly decided that WoW PvP was not for me, and that what I liked was the teamwork involved in raiding. After some time as a priest, my friend and former member of Massive(Damocran, Warrior DPS/Tank back then) told me he'd rerolled to Eonar, EU, Alliance and was playing as a Holy Paladin(Nalien) for then EU top100 guild The Logical Cube. I myself rolled a Resto Shaman on the server with the intention of eventually in WotLK applying to join him in TLC. In the mean time, I joined a casual raiding guild which showed some promise, and got to see most of the content bar SWP as a resto shammy. By the end of TBC, Nalien had migrated to join a Finnish guild on another server, I was applying for TLC and pondering my future in WotLK. At this point another old friend told me he was assembling a guild of mostly Finnish players on Twisting Nether, EU, Horde. It was to be known as Chapter 3.

Now I'd never tanked before, and I knew I distinctly disliked DPS, but what Chapter 3 needed at the time was feral druids, with the expectation of them becoming tanks, so that was what I rolled. I hit 70 the day before WotLK, and was 80 a week later. About two weeks later we'd cleared all 10 and 25man raids. At the time of writing we've downed Sartharion with 3 adds up being third on server to accomplish this on 25man, and are working on the same for 10man(the absence of many of our best players over the holidays means we've not gotten around to complete this yet).

So much for my background, I realize that was no short read, and I hope you are still with me. Don't worry, now begins the actual response to Kalon's post(s).

Kalon writes that at his gear level, he feels quite OP for raid tanking. I'll agree with him, druids get a lot of things from talents, crit immunity being the most notable. Add a few good armour drops and you have an insanely effective early tank. My view however is that of those who are getting very close to the best possible current gear. I'm missing a armor cloak and staff, but otherwise I dare say few bears have the level of gear both I and my furry friend Elumarom have. We both peak at around 36k armor, 40k health and around 45% dodge raidbuffed(from memory). We both get to about 50k HP in our sarth MT gear. We're massive. Survivability is not a problem. But how do we compare to the other tanks at a similar level of gearing? I'd say we're slightly better at taking big hits, a good bit worse at taking small hits. This makes sense, it's to be expected because of how armour and block work. We're heavy on armour, and our higher percentage mitigation scales better on bigger hits. Block is static, which mean's it's better fit for negating small hits. In terms of aggro on a single target, we're about the same as the rest. Many people mistake patchwerk to be a decent gauge of this, but due to the extra threat from taking hatefuls we're easily surpassing other tanks on this because of how well we deal with large hits.

On multiple targets swipe, assuming it hits, is a quite decent aggro tool, especially post +50% threat fix. The problem is the nature of swipe, it's a relatively hard tool to use, and this becomes ever more pronounced as the situation becomes more and more hectic. In the current raid content, this doesn't really show, but heroics do definitively show up the relative weakness of druids. We all know the kind of AoE-fest heroics are atm, and for my guild that's been the case basically since we dinged 80. Most of our players came into WotLK with T6 gear and some had already cleared most of the 10man content by the time I dinged(I had an unfortunate absence of a few days right after release). Blizzards saying that threat would be a non-issue sure did not apply to me as I was franticly trying to learn the ropes of Druid tanking with dps who were expecting me to be able to perform equivalent to our Warrior and Paladin tanks. Even now, I still struggle to hold aggro against the top geared dps in my guild. That's just how it is, sometimes awkward pathing of a mob lands him behind me, sometimes a ranged mob runs off to cast or shoot, but at any rate it's not uncommon for swipe to loose contact on one or more mobs in the larger pulls. With highly geared DPS, that's not something I can afford to have happen. This situation is slightly better after the fix, but I still don't feel I'm on a level where I can compete with the other tanks in this respect.

The other major situation where this matters, is Sartharion. More specifically, if your guild chooses not to kill the eggs from Tenebron while doing Sartharion with multiple adds, you need a tank snapping them up as they spawn. This requires fast multi-target aggro. First times tried it with 2 adds(Tenebron and Vespiron), I was asked to do this job. I failed. Horribly. I've heard some druids have been able to do it, and my hats off to them, at this point it's not a feat I am willing to attempt nor feel confident I could manage. It might sound odd when I say our Paladin tank also doesn't like the job. Sure he could do it, but because consecration isn't snap aggro, he feels the whelps often get away before consecrate has a chance to glue them to him. We've resorted to using our Warrior tank for this, as his Thunder Clap is just so powerful for picking up the whelps fast and easy. From what I understand, DK's are also good for snapping these adds to them. The Paladin handles the fire adds and after Tenebron is down they both move to the fire adds and one(I'm not quite sure who actually) tanks the portal add(s). We've decided on using furry druids for MT'ing Sartharion, but this job has mostly gone to Elumarom as at the time we started working on the 3 adds(prior to that our Warrior had been tanking Sarth) he had slightly more HP than I did. I've effectively been tanking Tenebron/Shadron/Vespiron every time we've done Sarth with multiple(2 or 3) adds in 25man and I've been the MT for the 10man attempts on multiple adds.

I'm confident that any tank can do each of the jobs I've described in the encounter, although whelp tanking for druids is extremely difficult. On the other hand, Druids are well adapted to taking the bigger hits in the encounter, so I really don't think it's a wise decision to use the druid on the small adds. And personally, I find that the job I do(tanking the 3 dragon adds), is perhaps the innately hardest and therefore entertaining of the tanking jobs in the current content, although much of this is to do with the erratic behavior of these adds(they tend to fly about a bit as they want, so it takes a while to figure out where and how to tank them so you have the room you need to move about when they do decide they want to go chill behind your back for a bit). But it does bug me that there's something I feel I can't do in a reliable way. It's also clear that Druids and DK's have the easiest time tanking Sartharion with 3 adds up, Druids by simply stacking insane healthpools and relying on soaking the flamebreaths, DK's by using their multiple cooldowns and their anti-magic shield. Other tanks require more outside help, relying strongly on rotations of various damage reduction abilities from priests or hunter tenacity pets.

Our current tanking team is as follows:
Linus (Orc Warrior, Guild Leader, Maintank)
Yrtsí (Orc Warrior, secondary warrior tank)
Leipäkone (Belf Paladin)
Pienirinkula (Belf Paladin, second GL's alt and mainly a 10man tank)
Shamad (Tauren Druid, mostly off-tank)
Elumarom (Tauren Druid, mostly off-tank)
Sèvras (Troll DK, latest addition to the tank team)

The reason the druids mainly off-tank is because we're the best DPS in our tank-specs so it's easy to make us go DPS when only one tank is needed. I don't mind tanking adds, I mostly find it quite enjoyable as it's more engaging than MT'ing much of the current content. I'm not a big fan of DPS though, so I'm highly awaiting dual specs(I'm going to off-spec healing, already have a full iLvl200 gear for it).

Sorry this post became a bit awkwardly structured, as in effect it's two posts in one. I'll try to clean it up next time, hopefully I'll manage to rant about one thing at a time then.

-Shamad