Thursday, August 18, 2011

Firelands nerfs

This week a series of nerfs were applied to various bosses in Firelands and I got to witness the extent of the nerfs yesterday. Shannox and co deal less damage, Beth'tilac does too, Lord Rhyolith encounter got nerfed so hard I couldn't believe me eyes and Baelroc cannot cast Decimation blade on the first attack.

I can understand that some people may have found some of the encounters difficult, however I do not think that nerfing bosses is the answer. Sure, the healing requirements in a lot of the fights were high and probably the hardest part of Firelands. Tanking didn't seem too difficult on most fights and DPS had their fair share of challenges (Baleroc enrage timer, Beth'tilac phase 1 & 2) where they had to pull their own weight. It felt quite well tuned; not easy but not hard. Bastion of Twilight and Blackwing Descent were much harder in their time, if you ask me.

I am looking forward to seeing Heroic content where I will hopefully get to see some actual challenging content.

We went in to Firelands last night and got five bosses down; an exremely great result for us. The entire rest of the week is new progression and I am looking forward to it. The bosses are now a pushover and I pity the fool that cannot kill any of the first 5 bosses now.

Thursday, August 4, 2011

Progress update

It's been a while since I've posted in this blog and a lot has happened to myself and to the guild. There have been a few people leaving the guild/raid group and were surprisingly promptly replaced. Pft.. like anyone actually wants to be in a guild called "Big Wipe Theory".

We managed to get 12/12 and 1/13 before the patch 4.2. We were very determined to get it and extended both Blackwing Descent and Throne of the Four Winds until we got it. We defeated Nefarian before we even tried to defeat Al'akir.

Lovemontes is now a Worgan Hunter, thanks to the fact that hit rating is so easy to come by (at best, as Dranei, I was at 8.60% hit rating).

With people coming and going we haven't been able to progress as quickly as we'd ideally like to. We've had to make do and do our best for a week or so. But now our feel like our raid group is stronger and more balanced than ever. The guild is currently 4/7 in Firelands and I think it's safe to say we have those bosses on farm.

I, like most people, feel that transitioning from normal tier 11 raiding to Firelands was quite easy and could only imagine how much easier it would have been if we were in more heroic tier 11 gear. This of course, is compared to the Heroic 5 man + crafted/reputation epic loot that was available to us before defeating encounters in the tier 11 content. In terms of item level transition this does not make sense to me.

I don't think that the tier 11 stuff was that hard! I don't see why people were complaining about it. I can see the Nefarian fight causing frustration with it's bugs (that may still exist) and maybe Ascendant Council/Cho'gall getting in people's faces and causing people to be a bit more raid aware than usual but compared to the heroic dungeons that were balanced the way they were pre-nerf they were a walk in the park.

Now those fights have been nerfed and I went into Bastion of Twilight last night to check it out. All I can say now is that it is a freaking joke. I can understand why it's being nerfed; to give the casuals a go at getting some bosses down. I think that they have been so nerfed to the ground that they are a joke. With item level 346,353,365 and even some 378 gear being available to a casual looking in to raiding I don't expect any raid to wipe on any boss in any tier 11 dungeon. If you do you just plain suck and I hope you realise that.

Here are my thoughts of the boss fights that have been defeated with what I feel are equivalent fights.

I feel that Shannox is the equivalent of Halfus. Shannox is somewhat easier because the mechanics don't change week after week (the mechanic that made me enjoy halfus the most, really). With about the same level of raid awareness and probably not as high in gear comparitive gear requirements. No damage increased debuff applied to the boss makes this fight last longer and honestly Shannox feels a bit tedious.

Beth'tilac is kind of like a mix of Maloriak and Ascendant Council, if you ask me. Splitting up and balancing raid dps is so extremely important to get right in phase 1. Phase 2 is a burn phase with high healing requirements similar to phase 2 and phase 3 during Maloriak and Council,
respectively.

Rhyolith is fight unique to his own. Control and raid awareness are key in the first phase with the final phase being another burn phase. Somewhat similar to Chimaeron but different when you expand the depth of comparison.

That's why I think Baleroc is a better comparison to Chimaeron. There's a strong gear requirement with most stress being placed on the healers. Six minutes to drop 42 million health means that you raid needs to be dealing at least 7 million damage a minute is a little under 120,000 dps over your entire raid. Depending on how you do it this can be a little challenging to achieve. A two tank strategy will mean that you raid dps will need to deal approximately 108,000 dps (assuming that your tanks are averaging 6k dps each). For 5 dps classes that means and average of 21.6dps each. This is an achievable number but there are definitely high gear requires to achieve.

Alysrazor is hopefully going down tonight! Woo! Then to drop Majordomo, then Ragnaros... then heroics... then.. hm.. stuff..

Things to note about my hunter. I am currently the third most geared hunter on Aman'thul Alliance and fourth most geared hunter on the server (www.wow-heroes.com). I am currently the 20th most geared Alliance character on the server. I am currently ranked 128th Marksmanship hunter on WorldofLogs in the Beth'tilac encounter (for tips, see my secondary spec) and was ranked 58th two weeks ago.

Thursday, March 24, 2011

Caution! Steamrolling!

In the offices of Big Wipe Theory we have designated raid time to three times a week; wednesday, thursday and sunday. Wednesday night is farm night! What's today!? Thursday! Progression night! Sunday is also progression night. Raid nights are at most 3 hours in a night.

Since Wednesday night is farm night I'm sure you're all asking, OMG RaG1n DID YOU GET ANY UBER ITAMZ LAST NIGHT? Unfortunately the answer is no. Some mail agility gear did drop and I don't need them. How did you guys go as a guild!? Amazingly awesome fantasticzein! We killed 7 bosses last night, including Chimaeron; a progression boss for us. This puts us at 7/12 after 3 weeks of guild raiding! If only we had this sooner! WOW! Our group is coming along nicely. There are only 5 bosses to look at this week and if we can get 9 or even 10/12 bosses this week we will be extremely happy.

Big Wipe Theory will be looking at heroic raid dungeons in no time! "BIG WIPE THEORYYYYYY!!! YEAH YEAH!" - Jezzbeca/Aman'thul, resto/ele shaman for 10 man raid group of Big Wipe Theory.

7 bosses in 2 and a half hours I think is good, considering we took two ten minute breaks. This means 130 minutes of raiding which equates to just under ~18.5 minutes per boss. This includes trash clearing, wiping (for whatever reason), loot distribution, travel time between dungeons and waiting for people to come back from the AFK land that is real life.

Good times!

Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Lovemontes' raiding advice!

Hi guys! Time for a constructive post. As a level 85 hunter I am sure that you are at least somewhat interested in end game content! The game never ends at level 85! It starts there :) So, what kind of information do you need to know? Well, there's stacks to learn! There are heaps of websites (I use only www.warcrafthuntersunion.com for my information) to help you out in-depth. So I'll provide advice from a high end perspective.

Lovemontes... raiding... you.... purples.... GET OUT OF THE FIRE!

Now before you raid, there's something that everyone must do and that is understand how to optimise your role in a raid. As a hunter your primary role is to deal damage, widely referred to as DPS. DPS stands for damage per second. DPS is the best indicator of showing how much damage you can do, how hard you hit per attack is not the concern in DPS. To optimise your dps you need to do a couple things:

1) Gear correctly. Gear is where all your stats come from. At this stage agility, haste, crit, mastery and (most importantly) hit all come from the gear you obtain. The best gear you can obtain before raiding content is from Heroic Dungeons, Reputation Factions and your Justice/Valor Point vendors. Better gear means more DPS which means you do more damage which means bosses die faster! It's that simple! Find the best gear that you can and get it. Enchant it and gem it!

2) Enchants & gems. These increase your dps stats like gear does, make sure you gem and enchant correctly!

4) Be hit capped! That means 8% for us hunters! It's really easy to get and I don't want to hear or read excuses about hunters not being hit capped. Missing shots means missing damage which lowers your DPS! Get it or get out of the raid! I mean 8% and not 7.99%! OK! Ok :)

3) Spec Correctly & Dual Spec. Hunters are an interesting class at the moment; our specs benefit us in multiple ways. As I write this BM is the best spec for high movement fights (where your pet can wail on the boss constantly). MM is a great spec for those fights where you're standing still most of the time, dealing damage to a single target for a long period of time and SV is the best spec for when you need to use multishot a lot! So make sure you have two specs! I currently raid as MM and SV.

As for individual specs it is important that you spec correctly. The points are an investment in to increasing your DPS so it is only logical that you get skills that are going to increase your damage output!

Now that you're geared, spec'd, gemmed and enchanted for raids you're ready to get in there and run through some scripted encounters that requires you, as a raid member, to do your best possible and if your best is good enough you'll be able to kill some bosses and hopefully get some items! In turn these items will increase your damage output! Thus making the next bosses easier! WOOT WOOT!

Where do we go from here? Our DPS is optimised and that should mean we can kill bosses now, right? WRONG! JUST WRONG! There are factors in boss fights deliberately put in there to test our reflexes. Being a previously sponsored gamer (nothing special, ok! But I was!) I would like to toot my own horn and say that my reflexes are higher than the person's but that does not give someone else an excuse to stand in the god damn fire that will wipe us and get us killed and give us a repair bill which means we have to start the boss all over again instead you could just do the right thing and not stand in the damn fire like you're supposed to and go stand somewhere else! END RANT.

Here's my advice for raiding:

1) Get out of the fire, unless ordered to stand in there! Jump into Aspect of the fox on the run and get your hunter ass outta ze fire!

2) Misdirection, Feign Death, PEW PEW. Not really in that order. Use misdirection as long as the tank is having threat issues. Macro's help. MACRO's, that's another mini tip! Cooldown blowout macros, misdirection macros, tranquilizing shot macros! They are good. Use them!

3) Use your cooldowns as often as possible! I think this one's a simple one but it seems that people seem to skip my point too often! Let me give you a hypothetical scenario. Boss RaG1n for your guild is typically ~7 minutes long. At ~6 minutes your raid leader calls for heroism! What does heroism mean!? BLOW MY COOLDOWNS FOR HUGE DPS BOOSTAGE OMG LOOK AT THOSE BIG NUMBERS AND OMG I AM SHOOTING LIKE SO FAST RIGHT NOT EVEN A GM COULD TAKE ME ON! But for god's sake, man! In 6 minutes you can use all your dps cooldowns! So what do you do? Misdirect, blow your cooldowns and pump into that boss immediately! Show everybody who's boss in your raid during Careful Aim range with a ~97% crit change on Aimed Shot! AIMED AIMED STEADY STEADY AIMED STEADY STEADY AIMED STEADY STEAD AIMED AIMED AIMED... if you're MM the start of the fight will do something like this until the boss is under 80%. With heroism and that rotation I have reached ~29k DPS on the Omnotron Defense System. Back to Boss RaG1n though! Youv'e blown your cooldowns and they're ready to go again. Do you have time to run through another set of cooldown blowage of uber dpsingness!? Well, that's up to your judgement. At 3 minutes into the boss fight Readiness will be ready to go again. But you're not 100% sure if at 6 minute mark your raid will blow heroism! Well, that call is up to you, my friend. If you have some DPS down you will take longer to defeat Boss RaG1n and acquire his awesome purple itamz! Well, in that case blow your cooldowns again! WOOT LOOK AT ME SHOOT AT THIS BOSS WITH EXTREME SPEED PEW PEW PEWPPEPWPWEPEW!

4) Listen to instructions, whether you like it or not. As a leader of various teams in my time it's tough to coordinate people, especially because people are independent beings; they want to do their own thing! The problem with this is that in a team where everyone is reliant on coordinating with each other there is no room to go rambo. You're a part of a team and need to act as a team. If you want to go do your own thing go play pokemon or something. In boss fights where target switching, stacking and spreading are common you need to listen and react quickly and according to your raid leader otherwise wipes can and will happen. There are too many instances I can think of where team mates doing the wrong thing (i.e. doing what wasn't instructed) have failed the team in that instance. Work as a team! Be a team member, not just a person that's part of another team!

5) Research boss fights, patch changes. Enough said.

Thursday, March 17, 2011

Update and Opinion

Since the guild has had a full 10 man team things seem to be coming along quite well. I'm really happy with how progression is going and I'm looking forward to a full progression raid night.

After the learning process of particular fights the team does a really great job of keeping things consistent. We deal with mechanics very well so far and I am really happy and proud to be a part of the team and contributing in my own way.

I've been very blessed with gear that I am receiving where there is only 1 item that eludes me from the current bosses that are being killed (N Halfus Wyrmbreaker Polearm). So I'm at a 356 Average Item Level and I no longer need Valor Points for my hunter's gear. I feel like it is the reward to the dedication I have put in to gearing up my toon and contributing to the guild.

As a guild 10 man raid it's so easy to cap daily guild experience on raid nights, each boss gave us 78.6k * 2 or 78.6k * 3 or even 4! Multiply that per person and it's an amazing reward.

We haven't killed Maloriak as a guild yet, though I have killed Maloriak before. There isn't much to Maloriak in the end but an interrupt at the wrong time basically means that we want to reset due to the fact that we're trying to execute a particular strategy.

High hopes are with me when we raid tonight. I hope to have at least Maloriak and Chimaeron down tonight. It would be absolutely amazing to kill Atramedes tonight as well so we can dedicate some time to learning/killing Nefarian.

If there was anything I could say that could improve in the group is the DPS. But when comparing to my own I don't think that's entirely fair. In an ideal world all DPS classes would be at each other's throats, struggling to top damage where the only variable of advantage/disadvantage would be the random number generator. Unfortunately it's not easy to balance a game like WoW, where there are so many factors and scenarios involved. I'll include a screenshot of my damage spread in various boss fights to show how I'm dealing with Marksmanship in my next post. Hopefully my next post I'll be reporting that Nefarian is dead :D Kick ass guys.