Thanks to Rolandor for helping me out in Nagrand. Got the finale of the Hessingwary quests and the Ring of Blood too! Nice staff reward. Plus about 4 bars at 66. Dinged 67 shortly after. Couple more RDFs and I should be able to re-join the alt group:D For now I’m taking out some cool quest chains that I didn’t get to do while busting ass towards NR. Looking for Druid-Idol quest rewards.
Great, Bird! The minimum level for the dungeons we’re doing now is 68 so you’re almost there – I’m hoping we can get five guildies to do Arcatraz next week and Magister’s Terrace the week following.
How are we looking for tonight? Will we have 10 folks for ToC? Equally importantly, do we have enough tankage?
Unfortunately I simply could not get enough time on Nahren to get a lot of badges (raid duties plus sheer exhaustion). I have enough to pick up the T9 gloves or else save up for the T9 legs, but I haven’t decided, and either way I’m still not ready for tanking. I tried running normal TOC to pick up the Black Heart, but naturally all the tanks were there for it and I couldn’t Need on it in good faith when I was healing. Plus I had just done a marathon of TOC a week or two ago on my Pally for the healing trinket, so I was a little TOCed out. I could possibly tank Naxx if I got a hold of some kind of tanking trinket, or possibly even Uld, but I doubt it for TOC10.
I should/will be here for tonight’s raid despite ANOTHER meeting that was scheduled for tonight. I plan to bug out early to get there in time, I am shooting to be logged in at 6:45, but may end up closer to 7pm PDT (9pm server time).
I’d have to say Darland is a low probability. Played too much over the weekend and probably can’t justify another raid night to the wife. We’ll see though - if I’m on I’ll definitely be willing to tank it with y’all.
Sure you can–as long as you make it clear from the outset that you’ll be rolling on tanking gear as your main spec. If the group has a problem with it, you can drop and they can wait for another healer.
The main thing as a hybrid is to decide which of your specs will be your main for the purposes of loot on the run you’re doing at that moment. It doesn’t always have to align with your group role–it’s just assumed to be that unless you state otherwise and your party/raid agrees.
Hey, it was fun last night. I hope no one was too frustrated that we weren’t able to get through the first encounter. I think we showed steady improvement.
We seemed to really get the hang of Garmok the Impaler and I think we would have not had too much trouble with Icehowl if we didn’t suffer so many losses from the worms each time. That’s where we really need to focus on what to do when you get poisoned/flamed (and I’m talking to myself as much as anyone – I flailed a couple of times not sure what to do). If we could have reached Icehowl with 10 people up I think we would have been ok.
If anyone doesn’t have Deadly Boss Mobs or another boss addon installed, make sure you get one - they’re very helpful.
Like I said I hope people weren’t too frustrated and are willing to try again next week.
It is a shame we didn’t have anything to show for last night, but the steady improvement was a good sign. Icehowl was the real killer; even with all 10 people up, if he successfully charges someone chaos will ensue shortly.
But god damn that’s a tough raid. Perhaps it’s just that we’ve got newbie raiders and we’re not all geared for it, but even the very first encounter is more punishing than anything I’ve seen yet in ICC. I think I’d be more comfortable tackling Ulduar, although TOC has the advantage that a good run can be completed in one night.
You’re probably right, I’m going to need to get a lot more assertive if I’m going to make any headway.
TOC also has the advantage that Shin is willing to tank it 
I’d be up for it.
I HATE Ulduar!
Yeah I’m up for trying next week, we did pretty good considering it’s a lot of folks first time in there.
I didn’t mean to get so bossy there at the end. I thought that DPS were pulling Dreadscale off me when it was acutally Muz. Sorry about that!
I do kind of wish I had my Holy Pally around to help out. As much as I’ve lauded the awesomeness of Druids, I think adding a Holy Paladin would allow for a significantly larger margin of error than the makeup we have now. It’ll change in Cataclysm, but right now, I can Beacon one tank, heal the other, and keep both alive more effectively than two Druids frankly can (although I find that I miss having a battle rez on the Pally).
Pallies can also aid in DPS when healing isn’t strictly needed (hell, even a Holy Pally needs to judge constantly, and every bit of damage helps). I’m starting to see Blizzard’s rationale in changing Resto druids from primarily-tree to primarily-caster form; I wanted to help DPS every second I wasn’t actually healing, but that would have been seriously dangerous.
What’s going to change about BoL in Cataclysm?
Honestly, I think we just need a couple more shots at Icehowl, even if we only have 6 or 7 people there - once people have the “strafe out of the way” thing down, we’re set.
(Then we get to learn about switching to the gates on Jaraxxus, but oh well).
They don’t like what’s effectively two full-strength heals for the price of one. They haven’t decided on a plan yet, but a couple of options they were considering were reducing the effectiveness of the heal (so both people would receive healing at half or 3/4 strength of the normal heal) or making it cost more in mana per cast.
Or just giving BOL a stupidly high cost. Right now it costs only a little more than a single Holy Light; over a period of 90 seconds of intense healing, that initial cost is absurdly small for the effective healing it provides.
This is one of the reasons I really love my bossmod–Deus Vox Encounters (DXE). On NRB, when you get the bile, it gives you an arrow pointing to anyone who’s paralyzed, letting you quickly run to them. I’ve used all of the “big three” at one point or another (Bigwigs, DBM, and DXE), and IMO DXE is *far *superior (unless you need a bossmod for 5-mans or BGs–DXE only does raids). In addition to lots of features, it’s almost infinitely customizeable, meaning that you can turn alerts for boss abilities on and off, change how the alerts display (sounds, screen flashes, etc.), enable extra alerts for some abilities (e.g. /say alerts for certain debuffs on you, such as Defile on LK in ICC), etc.
Also, IMO, no one should even be allowed to set foot inside a raid without a bossmod installed. It’s incredibly rude to your fellow raiders.
NRB is tricksy because it’s a gauntlet. There’s no save point–either you beat all three bosses, or you have to start over. That’s a whole lot of different boss mechanics to get used to.
How Icehowl’s slam should be dealt with:
1.) Watch the timer on it.
2.) At ~5 seconds to go, position yourself so that you’ll get thrown back into a wall, not into a doorway or against a pillar.
3.) As soon as you hit the wall, hold down your right mouse button and place your fingers on your left and right strafe keys (by default, Q and E, though you may have rebound them–mine are A and D, e.g.).
4.) Do a quick location check to make sure that you’re not up against or near anything that will require you to move forward to clear it–a pillar or a doorway. If you messed up #2, you’ll need to be aware of what you might get caught on.
5.) As soon as you see Icehowl spin and face someone, hold down the strafe key for the direction away from that person (while still holding down your right mouse key). This means that as soon as you’re unfrozen, you’ll start moving in that direction. (Holding down the right mouse button means you can keep yourself oriented toward the center of the ring by keeping your camera facing it, even as you keep strafing.)
This is the strat I learned for Heroic, where you don’t get a speed boost. On regular, there’s no reason for anyone to get hit by his charge, even if you’re a little sloppy.
Not unless you’re doing ToGC. On regular, you don’t have to DPS the portals or the volcanoes. They just spawn a set number of adds.
DBM (I think) gave me a ping on my minimap for which guy IceHowl was going to run into, which was helpful.
Huh. Did not know that - my first run through ToC was as a healer so I hardly knew there was anything happening out in the world there; my second run (which failed badly at Jaraxxus) was as DPS so I became very much aware of the need to blow up the gates.
I think this is what folks were having trouble with, as well as facing their back to the wall before getting KBed. I saw one guy strafe for all he was worth…right at Icehowl, because when he got KBed, he had his side pointed to the wall.
Personally, I never saw the point of that. Why have to look up at the minimap, see the ping, figure out where you are, and then figure out where you are in relation to the ping, when you could just look straight up at which way the boss is facing?