The ultimate Boss fight

Matticus, of World of Matticus, PlusHeal, nostockui and wow.com fame, shared his dream from the other night with his followers on twitter. It led to much hilarity. I was quite amused that every time my twitter warcraft feed updated, there were yet more phases/scary things added to it. Here I’ll share the gradual progression of this epic encounter, and hopefully you’ll get a chuckle at least out of it.

The best part is the representation of it in image form at the end.

@matticus Dreamed of the hardest boss fight. Defile. Doomfire. Has 2 fire elementals that must be tanked in a tangent. Must pass cores. And 360°cleave

@tinkerpriest add in disease spreading and passing polarities

@Technophobia And you have to sit through a 10-minute RP intro and not AFK.

@MoodyDK And top it off with a Safety Dance.

@tinkerpriest add mind control, taunt immunity, and lava walls on heroic

@GamerGaz you forgot the crosshealing adds

@tinkerpriest And Leeching Swarm.

@tinkerpriest ….now it needs to grip 3 people for 110% of hp over 10sec, can’t heal targets directly.

@_Rades Also inbetween phases you have to dance across a floor that spews acid in horrible yet oddly predictable patterns.

@Thiefd Air Phase please?

@Technophobia 5min hard enrage, IMO.

@borskzj What about resist stacking?

@matticus Said boss must also include healing, dps, and tanking beams that must be blocked. Also drops random infernals. Has to be tanked by a mage.

@matticus I think thats what, 8 phases?

@Jezriya phase 9 is all the even numbered phases at once. phase 10 is all the odd ones.

@Kenichan How bout a knockback which throws off the top aggroer where 2nd & 3rd tank has to pickup?

@Loupyn must pass cores to remove stacking debuff on raid member, only 3 per fight and desolves if held >30s or <15s ?

@tinkerpriest 9 minute berserk timer, rebuffs on raid heal boss, stacking debuff (uncleanseable) on tanks that blows them up when it reaches 12.

@krizzlybear hardmode is activated when you heal an imprisoned NPC to 100%.

@pikestaff do we have a positive and a negative side yet?

@krizzlybear the trick is you have to pair up each + with an -, instead of stacking all the similar signs together.

@MoodyDK Four sides. Up, down, charm, strange.

@tinkerpriest achievement: claw cracker: burn each pincer within 10 sec of the other without losing anyone to Pinched.

@_Rades But each time you pair up, it has to be with a different person than the last time.

@tinkerpriest different race, get 45 sec debuff similar to argent tourney ones.

@pikestaff also, two words: Flame Wreath

@tinkerpriest do not move when flame wreath is cast or the raid blows up…

@Eforextinction Also, if it kills a player, it gains a new ability depending on the class of the player.

@_Rades Also the outside of the room is lined with eggs that will hatch & spawn whelps.

@tinkerpriest even better, the boss randomly decides 5 of these to use each lockout.

@krizhek so do we have a phase with cubes to click before he cast a instadeath spell?

@blackbell don’t forget void zones!

@pikestaff boss quote when he kills a player: “to the GROUND, baby!”

@tinkerpriest leeching debuff on any player more than 10 yds out, gas debuff that spreads to players within 7 yds.

@Technophobia And it should be called The Ultimate Raid Boss Of Ultimate Destiny.

@_Rades Rumored to drop the server-unique Pony mount but this has never been confirmed.

@MoodyDK Vehicle phases?

@matticus On phase 11, boss deathgrips everyone to middle, then casts arcane explosion. Flame Wreath. Blizzard. And Thorim like Lightning charge

@tinkerpriest final phase drops 3 legendary crackers and allows ranged to drop molten liquids to slow/snare.

@_Rades The molten only slows the crab adds (cradds?) though, as we know the big Crab is immune to flaming.

@Mcconniff MATT!!! Wake up you’re killing us!!!!!

@chanze and must have rays spitting venom covering the floor and the air phase from KT, and Annihilation

@MoodyDK I hope when GC puts this in he credits us. Then again, maybe I don’t.

@matticus the only bad thing about the encounter is that it will be solo’d by a rogue in 6 months

Achievement/Title for beating this boss?

Crab Slayer and The Deadliest Catch.

Filed under: awesome, blog, Blogroll, epic, general, progression, raid, raiding, warcraft, azeroth, boss, ghostcrawler, raid, twitter, twitteroth, warcraft

Killing time, not dragons (yet)

UPDATE: As of today, Saturday, July 17th, Hootsuite now offers an OptOut button on your Insight tab. I still would like to know how my real name got tied with my username, but I guess I’ll just have to recheck everything I can. This is good. I love my Hootsuite. Makes twitter fun and easy no matter where I am. Can’t wait to try to Mobile Apps. Now if only they had bit.ly integration… then again I do love my bit.ly sidebar.

I’ve recently become a devoted hootsuite.com user for my twitter needs. It has a way to add “team members” to a twitter account (Guild twitter account, and team members=PR/Morale/News Officers?) and I’m wondering if anyone has tried that out for their Guild yet. How’s it working? Maybe I’ve missed a review of this elsewhere?

My hesitation about it arises from something called the Insight tab.

I have yet to get an answer from @hootsuite_help on what the Insight tab is, how it gets it’s information, and how I can control what is shown there.

WTF where'd these connections come from?

In warcraft news: I’ve developed a serious case of alt-itis lately. My paladin was successfully transferred to Ner’zhul to join @Asros and @cavaliersguild. I started levelling a sexy draenai warrior there, and I ran through every single Draenai-zone quest there. Tabard of The Hand is damn sexy. (I’m kinda wishing I had made it male instead of female. Boo). I’m leveling that with my buddy @xparanormalityx who has accompanied me on at least 3 levelling adventures so far (all the way to 80, too, though he tends to level 3 in the time it takes me to level 1). I’ve also rolled a yummy troll hunter. I really wanted to see all the quests for trolls as they are now before Cataclysm hits.

It’s interesting but uncomfortable to have to regrow the guild/raidteam cohesion in a new area. Especially when really NONE of us has any cohesion together yet. Much different from adding one new person, we just added ten. While we knocked out TOC10 not horribly, it wasn’t necessarily pretty.

Now I’m left to wonder how to turn a ragtag group of strangers that know the instances, aren’t necessarily used to the same strategies (even on trash.. Bad trash pulls = ouch), know their roles, into a cohesive team. I’m pretty sure the only way to do that will be through repetitive practice. Joy.

Also, check out RaidWarning’s Shaman Roundtable: Totem Recall.

Filed under: alts, raid, raiding

Being bad

Check this out, guys!

Hell week is over! Finally

So indeed we accomplished something. Sadly it took us 3 continued raidIDs to do it. And now they want us on Lich King. I was dpsing on my priest, sadly, because I have to say I am not doing so hot with her. I’m much better on the shaman nowadays. After pugging before this with my priest and other people on my server, seeing 5k dps on that fight made me cry. And explained the difficulty level we faced.

Basically I don’t think we’re ready for Lich King. And I don’t want to spend 5 weeks wiping to get that through the raid’s head.

Now I feel horribly guilty about this. I am the one that hates on guildies that bail on farming raids for gear for new people. But it’s quite different to farm something then it is to wipe endlessly. I hate to say that, but it is. In my opinion at least. We need to be capable of killing Sindragosa the night we see here before we waste time wiping on Lich King.

Filed under: guild, raid, raiding

The NEW UI

I finally got my act together, and stumbled upon a great UI in the comments of Big Bear Butt’s latest post about a screwy addon happenstance. It is Blacksen’s UI, and while sure I pillaged it and tossed out a lot of the heavy memory hogs, I loved the basic pitbull setup and the general look of it.

So, here we have it. This is from our guild meeting. Notice the raid down the left? My tip tac addon in the bottom left above the chat frame is aggravating me. The druid target is a balance, but I am tree spec in this shot. Get the talents right! On the bottom right is my cellular tabs window for whispers. I can minimize it and that’s also where Omen threat meter and Recount are, during real raids, when I want the info. (When I’m healing I usually don’t have omen up, and I almost always open recount after a fight, rather than stare during).

Filed under: addons, druid, raid, UI, warcraft

The NEW UI

I finally got my act together, and stumbled upon a great UI in the comments of Big Bear Butt’s latest post about a screwy addon happenstance. It is Blacksen’s UI, and while sure I pillaged it and tossed out a lot of the heavy memory hogs, I loved the basic pitbull setup and the general look of it.

So, here we have it. This is from our guild meeting. Notice the raid down the left? My tip tac addon in the bottom left above the chat frame is aggravating me. The druid target is a balance, but I am tree spec in this shot. Get the talents right! On the bottom right is my cellular tabs window for whispers. I can minimize it and that’s also where Omen threat meter and Recount are, during real raids, when I want the info. (When I’m healing I usually don’t have omen up, and I almost always open recount after a fight, rather than stare during).

Filed under: addons, druid, raid, UI, warcraft

A new home for me

I’ll be changing my link soon, as I am no longer part of Unbound on Sentinels.  It had changed too much, and I really was exhausted at the prospect of being the lynchpin keeping the few raiders there happy and focused.  I wanted to be happy myself.

So I’ve joined some great people in a guild I stumbled upon in my forays as a pug-fanatic (I do it a lot.. and I only have 3 80s).  They’re a guild well established and older than my druid’s guild!  Wow!  But I just love the personalities and the philosophies.  AMP > DKP, imo.  Great raiders and no DKP system = win.

So, yeah. There’s that.  I didn’t fix my UI, thus no shnazzy screen shots.  My 4day weekend will most likely be spent away from the computer, at least half of it, so I’m not sure if I’ll do UI stuff or clean or what not.  The end of the year is fast approaching and I’m panicking about a summer job.  Positive thoughts, positive thoughts…

Filed under: guild, raid, shaman

Raid week off

So what do you do when there are no scheduled raids?

Wintergrasp.  And join pugs.  (That’s how to build a good guild rep on the server, IMO)  Not dumb pugs, but smart ones.  The enhancement shaman we pull into our 25man Naxx runs (because he likes our times/days) needed some heals for 25m OS.  Me and the other resto shammy went.  We were top 2 heals overall, and a druid that raids 25m Naxx with us spanked us on Sartharion, but we were right after him.

I really need a way to copy/paste recount into the blog.  I guess that’s what screenshots are for, eh?

Oh and I’m leveling fishing on the priest.  She was at 163.  Now she’s at 200! (All other toons are ZERO and happy)

Filed under: fish, pug, raid

Heroic Raids!

My guild has steadily increased in size from our modest beginnings to last night having the entire online group in Heroic Naxx (22 of us). This is great! We fielded five healers: Me, a deep Disc priest, a disc/holy priest, a tree and a paladin. We carried four tanks, because that’s what we have in the guild and sub-25 people, we’ll take what we can get. There was a paladin, two warriors (one of which is our go-to MT) and a DK tank. Spider fell without much trouble, and we only hiccupped once on Heigan, so Plague fell, too. It was fabulous. Took us a smidge over two hours.

Everything was fine, heals were a tad rough especially on the Widow in Spider Wing with all those poisons, and Noth with all those curses, but I think we killed Loatheb with everyone still alive, so I was quite proud of the team. Me and the tree were working extra hard on those debuffs, which hurt overall raid healing a tad since both of us dominate the raid healing.

Until we ran into a few Loot QQs.

Our guild’s typical raid policy, especially 25man raiding, is one loot per person for that raid, and usually that includes tier pieces. This, combined with open loot counciling (in raid chat, too, because I just go there *RAWR*) where we quickly analyze who gets the biggest upgrade from an item, works pretty well. Everyone bar one got loot yesterday. That’s a fabulous way to improve the overall raid, imho.

But the hiccup happened at the last boss. The topic came up that “I wouldn’t have rolled on that earlier item (and won it) if I knew I wouldn’t get to roll on the tier piece later”, coupled with our ret paladin who hadn’t won anything and a misloot by the master looter to the shadowpriest (who won the roll off before we clarified they already had received loot). That attitude in quotes just ticks me off, especially by people who would pass on other upgrades that are clearly upgrades just to ensure a chance to win later (I mean did they really /inspect the whole raid to see if anyone they share a tier token with also needed a tier piece?). With a raid predominantly pug, I can understand that it happens and I don’t begrudge pugs their choice to do that: they want badges and a winning raid, they can take their chances on their one and only roll. But when personal greed takes precedence over an obvious upgrade, just UGH. Sacrificing our overall raid improvement for said greed bugs me. Then again, I’m the only resto shaman, so maybe I don’t struggle for loot as often. I don’t raid much on my druid… The end result was one of the tanks offering the shadowpriest the “option” of putting in a GM ticket for the tier token to go to the ret paladin, in lieu of that paladin getting a free loot item at the next raid. This didn’t appeal to me and a few others, as that would start off the next raid on an unbalanced footing. Today I’m going to find out if the ticket was submitted or not, and decide how to proceed from there.

The other loot QQ happened when fabulous caster boots dropped, our warlock was wearing blues but had already won something, and our elemental shaman pug wanted them for his best in slot gear. Our loot policy also prioritizes that items with said armor go to classes that wear said armor, best in slot or not. I’m a fan of that myself: Blizzard Devs wouldn’t grant you the ability to wear mail if you were supposed to wear cloth to do your job. The decision to upgrade the warlock’s blue boots wasn’t too hard to come to, thanks to my relationship with that shaman, and the fact that he is a member of a major server raiding guild and can easily spend dkp on them the next time they drop for his guild.

Those two instances did give us a chance to see a few issues in our loot system, but overall I think it serves us pretty well. I’ll link our wowwebstats later on. Should I anonymize or not?

Filed under: heals, loot, raid