Welp, we haven’t had any DPS or healing problems with using three tanks instead of two.
I think our way of doing it might have been just based on “let’s try it and see how it works” (or else one of our raid leaders read or devised the strategy back when we started doing Valithria) and it seemed to work well so we just stuck with it. At this point, our team is geared well enough that we blow through the encounter on heroic with nary a casualty, so it’s just kind of habit now.
Yeah, three tanks is not strictly necessary, but it does make things a little less hairy especially if your DPS are getting a little overwhelmed in spots (like when everything comes out on one side!)
BTW, I meant to ask you: did you try out the two-tank strat for HM Marrowgar, and did it work okay for you?
Yeah, I agree with both of you - VDW (heroic and normal) has many viable options, and doing what works is always the best. Just throwing out some other ideas in case someone was wondering what was eating their tanks alive.
Made a little ICC10 heroic progress on my DK last night, but only had two healers which kinda limits how far you can go. Hopefully we’ll get a third in there and try one more night Sunday or Monday.
We really need to re-work the raid comp a bit though. We’re currently using two DK tanks, and have no AP debuff or physical damage reduction. So we were both getting hit pretty damn hard on Festergut (something like 35k per swing at three inhales). We still got the kill, eventually, but it was a lot harder than it needed to be. And I’m not sure how well we can do LK without at least one of those raid buffs.
Even worse when you realize the other DK is primary DPS, Unholy, which would provide a very nice buff to our top ranged DSP (mage and warlock)… :dubious:
I believe someone told me long ago (when I first began playing) that I’d meet up with Ol’ Blanchy again?
Well, I did, over in Westfall Brigade where I am now. But I thought he was supposed to be mean this time?
Also what’s up with this? Changed Channel: [4. Stormwind - wolkie]
How’d they know Wolkenlaufre’s short nick?
Thanks
Q
When do you guys start? I wouldn’t mind being a back-up to a back-up provided I get on at the right time…
Nah, RL never bothered. We always rip through plenty fast, even with three tanks.
No Warriors at all, even one not specced into Imp Demo? Do you have any Holy Priests who’d be interested in going Disc for the talent that gives 3% damage reduction?
Nope, Ol’ Blanchy just came along for the ride. 
He’s still his friendly old self.
… Don’t ask what’s on the agenda for him in Cataclysm, though. I found out by accident and I’m not a happy camper. 
Weird–sounds like you somehow created yourself a custom chat channel with that name. I doubt anyone else is in there to talk to–you can just type /leave 4 and it should get rid of it.
Don’t know about that, but there are a couple of other places you can meet up with Blanchy as well–in the Escape from Durnholme instance, if you wander over to Southshore there’s a whole lot of cool old lore stuff, including “Young Blanchy.” And…
Spoiler for Cataclysm
Apparently there’s a CSI-style Alliance quest in Cataclysm–Old Blanchy and her human owners have been murdered, and you have to figure out whodunit.
Nope. It’s a 10-man with no warrior and no priest. And our Ret Pally apparently doesn’t even have Vindication. So basically none of the damage reduction debuffs or the damage mitigation buffs.
If we could get a warrior or bear tank in there, and have the other DK go unholy dps (which he is geared for), the raid comp would look a lot better IMO. Doesn’t seem to be an option right now though.
How casual is the group? Could you persuade the Ret Pally to respec to help everyone else out, even if it means a small personal DPS loss?
Yeah, we can, and will, do that. Considering he has Heroic Bryntroll he should still be doing OK damage-wise for ICC10.
As far as the casualness of the group, I’d say it’s a casual alt group with about half non-casual players if that makes sense. One guy has a toon working on LK25 HM. A few of the others (myself included, and the ret pally) have mains working on ICC25 hard-modes. But a few of the players are definitely more casual.
Now that we have the core of the group together though, I’d kinda like to push it for a few weeks and see if we can’t get our Frost Wyrms, or at least most of the HMs down. From what I’ve seen so far (this is the first week we’ve had the group together) there’s no reason we can’t be effective. We’d have cleared everything but PP and Sindra on heroic last night if the third healer could have made it… :mad:
The question was pretty much aimed at, “How easy will it be to convince the Pally to respec?” With casual players, it can be hard enough to convince them to try out a new spec to *up *their DPS… trying to get a casual to change to a spec that might *decrease *their DPS could take some doing. 
They usually start around 9 server time, I think – but last time they started at 8. I just get on as early as I can and /w the RL to see if they need a healer. If you’re around I’ll see if I can get you a dps invite, although (to warn you) they usually seem pally-heavy. I think they had six pallies last time, which stinks for me because pallies and priest have to roll for the same tokens.
You know, that’s actually a sort of relief - given all the horrific things that COULD happen in WoW having Old Blanchy’s fate being something that mundane, sad as it is, is not the worst of all possible outcomes.
But still sad - even for someone Horde like me. I mean, she’s an Alliance horse but I never had anything against her personally.
Not sure what the rest of the healers in your raid are running with, but as a favor to a raid healer, please don’t take Trauma over pretty much anyone as a paladin. It can be around 4-6% effective healing for a raid healer, whereas for a tank healer the proc might not even have anyone in range. Obviously, if no one needs it and you could use the spellpower upgrade, that’s fine. Just saying.
Yeah, seeing different guild’s strats is very interesting. We use a 2 tank strat as well, with melee DPS stun-locking and then killing all the Archmages and taking out Suppressors, hunters kiting the Blistering Zombies, everyone getting on the Blazing Skeletons, and Abominations last on our DPS priority unless Rot Worms are out, in which it’s a priority to AOE. We tank everything in the middle, with usually one tank assigned to Aboms, and the other picking up anything else that may be loose. So, similarities and differences. Cool to see.
My hard drive failed on me recently, so I wasn’t really able to raid this week (though, I will be in for Heroic LK 25 on Monday). Our guild has decided to put Halion on the back burner until we get Heroic LK down. We can get to P2 fairly consistently, but a lot of mistakes from individuals are making it harder to progress, especially as people start to get demoralized from wiping on the boss for hours at a time. For the raiders out there, how do your guilds cope with the potential for burnout in raiding? Anything in particular that you all do or find works for you personally in helping to combat feeling burnt out? Any tips/suggestions would be helpful, because we’re finally going to make our big push for LK (our MT finally came back after moving to his new home), and I’m afraid some of our members are susceptible.
Burnout: Do something different ingame. Roll different classes, play the AH, work on non-raid achieves, pvp and tear the other side’s face off. That’s what I did – all of the above keep me interested in the game
Fair enough, and it did go to a Druid. I’m still dragging around Seethe, so an upgrade is an upgrade. Though, Seethe and Trauma have equal amounts of Int, so it’s not even that big of an upgrade. Lockjaw from the 10-man is actually better for Holy than Trauma.
ETA: Well, Windows 7 is installed. Unfortunately, I botched my backup of WoW. Interface and WTF are safe, but the rest of it is irreparable. I’ll just have to reinstall tomorrow.
Well, I didn’t get to join the ICC25 raid I was hoping for (they seem to start earlier now) but I did get in a 10-man later on that downed 5 bosses plus the weekly (and I got an Eye of Zul in my reward purse!). So that gave me enough badges to get the T10 Crimson Acolyte Robe which meant I could keep the 4-pc bonus and still replace my gloves with the Gloves of Ambivalence I’ve been carrying around in my bags. I also got the last rep I needed to be exalted with Argent Vanguard, so I got to upgrade to the Exalted ring. So three quick upgrades which is nice.
Suddenly now I feel no more pressure to keep doing ICC – I think I just wanted to complete the tier set and get my exalted rep. I’ll still pug ICC25 when I get the chance, but I’m not feeling like somethings missing. My only goal now is to get some of the ICC crafted recipes and get the crafted boots for myself, which will just take money and/or more badges.
Which is good, maybe I can finally spend some more time on my pally who has been 73 for quite a while now.
Glee. Now that I don’t have to jury-rig a solution for WoW in Linux, it’s running so much better. I’ve been running around in Northrend for about an hour today, and even though I cranked my graphics up my FPS hasn’t dropped below 20 even when flying into Dal.
Okay, so the chick in the Amberpine Lodge transported us to Dalaran and we learned how to use the crystal for transport there, but what were we doing there? There weren’t any yellow exclamation points to be found?
Also we’re 74.
Thanks
Q