# World of Warcraft General Discussion **URL:** \ **Category:** The Game Room\ **Created:** [March 4, 2009, 5:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/world-of-warcraft-general-discussion/488294 "2009-03-04T17:44:08Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 432
**Author:** ![aktep](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/f0a364/32.png) [@aktep](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aktep)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2010, 5:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/world-of-warcraft-general-discussion/488294/8621 "2010-01-25T17:21:51Z")
> [@Ferret\_Herder](#): > > We did do the “stand on the butt” tactic, though according to my husband, one strat he found says you should stand further back. (Looking it over, I think he misread it.) I think one of our problems is that you need to run far, far away ASAP during Bone Storm, and we’d just been concentrating on dodging him if he comes at you, and dodging the fire. > > Is there some kind of addon that lets you mark stuff such that only you see it? I’d like a big-ass arrow pointing down at my tank assignment. We do the stack-on-the-back strat, and it works quite well. If you stand close enough, the coldflames will appear behind the raid and not hit anyone. The sweetspot seems to be just inside the targeting circle that appears under him when you have him targeted. The only problem is for hunters, who have to stand 8 yards back and dodge the flames, and are really annoying when they get spiked. We mark both tanks and we mark one dps to be the stack point. After bone storm, you just make sure you’re on the other side of the boss from the marked tank, then find the stack point and go from there. With DBM installed, there’s pretty good timers for when bone storm is about to happen, and we start to scatter a few seconds before so the whole raid doesn’t take a big whack at once. It’s my understanding this strategy will be total fail when heroic mode is released, as stacking like this will mean the first bone spike graveyard impales the whole raid. ---
**Author:** ![Ferret\_Herder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e47774/32.png) [@Ferret\_Herder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ferret_Herder)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2010, 5:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/world-of-warcraft-general-discussion/488294/8622 "2010-01-25T17:23:19Z")
> [@Skammer](#): > > FH, is your priest Holy or Disc? Can you link your spec? > > I’ve been raiding Holy but I’m not 100% sure my spec is optimal (Kene on Cairne if you want to look it up). I have both specs, actually. I use my Disc/Holy spec for tank healing, and Holy/Disc for raid healing. I try to follow the recommendations at the [Elitist Jerks](http://elitistjerks.com/f77/t83203-wotlk_healing_compendium_v3_3_arthas_downfall/) website, though my gear obviously isn’t up to their standards. [Here’s me on the Armory](http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Sen%27jin&cn=Suweerti). I’ve spent a while trying to gear up my druid tank, I guess it’s time to go back to gearing up the priest! ---
**Author:** ![Mister\_Rik](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mister_rik/32/491_2.png) [@Mister\_Rik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mister_Rik)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2010, 5:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/world-of-warcraft-general-discussion/488294/8623 "2010-01-25T17:38:01Z")
> [@Shot\_From\_Guns](#): > > Woo! Well done, sir. Gonna go for the uber-Loremaster now? You get a reaaaally hideous tabard! 😃 Oh yeah, that’s one of my long-term goals. > [@](#): > > With the last patch, Blizzard added in a way for your client to query the server to see which quests you’re listed as having completed. Various addons can now tell you what you have and haven’t done. Yup - I have the EveryQuest addon. I’d disabled it on this character a while back because she was lvl 80 before I ever installed it, and by that point it was pretty useless for her. But I remembered hearing about the new functionality in 3.3, so I re-enabled it and it helped me out a bit. ---
**Author:** ![Shot\_From\_Guns](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ccd318/32.png) [@Shot\_From\_Guns](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shot_From_Guns)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2010, 5:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/world-of-warcraft-general-discussion/488294/8624 "2010-01-25T17:50:40Z")
**Ferret** , here’s what we do for Marrowgar: 1.) Everyone stacks inside his hitbox. Basically, you click to target him, then everyone stands inside the red circle on the ground that shows he’s your target. (This is smaller than his hitbox, but it’s a good visual cue.) Hunters stay as close as they can without going into their dead zone. Everyone needs to make sure to stay firmly in the back 180, or they’ll risk taking Lashes meant for the tanks. 2.) This means that all or almost all of the flames are going to be heading straight at your tanks. They are going to have to move **a lot**. I mean literally every few seconds, and sometimes even more frequently (I’ve had times where I’ve moved to the side, only to have a new line of flame spawn where I’ve just moved, so I have to move again). So be sure they know how to strafe. They don’t need to move that far–just a couple of steps–but they need to do it fast. The tanks should also agree ahead of time which way they’ll be moving first, then alternate directions (e.g., left, right, left, right, left, right). 3.) However, this also means that all of your bone spikes will be right in the middle of where the DPS and healers are already standing. Target switching should be trivially easy, since the melee won’t need to move, and no one will ever be out of range of the healers. 4.) Everyone scatters for the WW phase, so he’s hitting a minimum number of people. Scattering is more important for Cloth than for Plate. 5.) A couple of seconds before WW ends, all DPS stops. This should be called out by the RL. 6.) The tanks pick Marrowgar up where he’s landed, face him toward a wall, and you start over at #1. > [@Ferret\_Herder](#): > > People not using flasks/elixirs. They’re expensive. If there’s no consequence for not using them, people won’t. What they don’t think about is that wiping repeatedly will cost them much more than just buying the damned flask. IMO your RL needs to grow a pair and tell people that if they don’t have a flask buff, they’re not raiding. Even if it means calling the raid. If it comes down to it, you could just supply flasks from the gbank. Have “farming parties” where people with Herbalism compete to see who can bring in the most herbs in, say, an hour, with fun prizes like vanity pets, clothes, etc. This also works for other mats, gold, etc. Then your guild’s Elixir Masters could convert those to flasks, which the RL could bring to raids. They could be free, or they could be available for purchase (required if you didn’t bring your own) for a rate discounted from what you’d pay at the AH. > [@](#): > > People not bringing food for buffs. Again, if there are no consequences, people won’t bother. Fish Feasts are great 'cause they’ve sped it up (and made it cheaper), but they’ve also made people lazy. It might work well to keep a few stacks of Fish Feast in the gbank, so that the RL can hearth out and get some if it comes to that. > [@Ferret\_Herder](#): > > Is there some kind of addon that lets you mark stuff such that only you see it? I’d like a big-ass arrow pointing down at my tank assignment. Not AFAIK, but there’s no reason you couldn’t ask the RL to mark your tank for you. (Or do it yourself, if you have assist.) Don’t forget that you can /focus your primary target, too–which you should probably be doing anyway, if you’re assigned to be a tank healer for a specific person. > [@aktep](#): > > It’s my understanding this strategy will be total fail when heroic mode is released, as stacking like this will mean the first bone spike graveyard impales the whole raid. Yeah, I think it’s something like, the bone spike hits the person targeted AND anyone in LOS between Marrowgar and the target. ---
**Author:** ![Ferret\_Herder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e47774/32.png) [@Ferret\_Herder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ferret_Herder)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2010, 5:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/world-of-warcraft-general-discussion/488294/8625 "2010-01-25T17:59:02Z")
We hadn’t done the face-the-wall method before last night - we did do it on the last try, though. Unfortunately the raid leader/main tank was one of the unflasked people last night. :smack: I would contribute more flasks but I’ve seen the worst “drop” rate for Frost Lotuses (evar!) since the last patch or so. I used to send my husband a dozen Frost Lotuses or so since they were “extra”, for his alchemist, and now I’m lucky if I have 8-10 in my bag at once. The lotuses were going for about 70 g each on the AH last night. I’m going to start requesting Tank 1/Tank 2/DPS “Target” marks. We have DBM marking the spiked person with a skull, so we’ll just pick another. I always have my tank set as my focus, but it’s hard to pick them out amongst the chaos after the Bone Storm/WW, even with that person physically targeted. ---
**Author:** ![Shot\_From\_Guns](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ccd318/32.png) [@Shot\_From\_Guns](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shot_From_Guns)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2010, 7:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/world-of-warcraft-general-discussion/488294/8626 "2010-01-25T19:41:07Z")
> [@Ferret\_Herder](#): > > We hadn’t done the face-the-wall method before last night - we did do it on the last try, though. Wait, you just had him facing any which way? How did that even work? Wouldn’t you end up with a bunch of DPS in front of him, taking massive Lash damage? ---
**Author:** ![Ferret\_Herder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e47774/32.png) [@Ferret\_Herder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ferret_Herder)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2010, 7:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/world-of-warcraft-general-discussion/488294/8627 "2010-01-25T19:44:32Z")
> [@Shot\_From\_Guns](#): > > Wait, you just had him facing any which way? How did that even work? Wouldn’t you end up with a bunch of DPS in front of him, taking massive Lash damage? We fought him almost in the middle of the room (DPS complained about extra lag from the glacier wall, so we stayed more away from that, near the circle edge on the floor), tanks on one side, Marrowgar looking at the wall we came in. It made it hard to figure out where the tanks would be when you ran back after the Bone Storm, because they would just pick him up wherever and point him more or less at that wall, but you could be off by 45-90 degrees either direction. ---
**Author:** ![Infovore](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/infovore/32/420_2.png) [@Infovore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Infovore)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2010, 7:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/world-of-warcraft-general-discussion/488294/8628 "2010-01-25T19:47:57Z")
> [@Shot\_From\_Guns](#): > > Wait, you just had him facing any which way? How did that even work? Wouldn’t you end up with a bunch of DPS in front of him, taking massive Lash damage? That’s the only way we ever do him–the tanks just pick him up wherever he stops, and it’s the DPS’s responsibility to get away from his front end. It’s always worked for us. We mark at least one of the tanks, though, so it’s easy to figure out where they are and stay away from them. ---
**Author:** ![Shot\_From\_Guns](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ccd318/32.png) [@Shot\_From\_Guns](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shot_From_Guns)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2010, 7:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/world-of-warcraft-general-discussion/488294/8629 "2010-01-25T19:54:07Z")
Yeah, we mark the tanks. But when we pick him up where he stops, we (the tanks) flip him so he’s facing the nearest wall. That means that the majority of the room is always behind him, which means that it’s much more likely that the DPS and healers will already be out of the radius that Lash will hit. ---
**Author:** ![Ferret\_Herder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e47774/32.png) [@Ferret\_Herder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ferret_Herder)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2010, 7:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/world-of-warcraft-general-discussion/488294/8630 "2010-01-25T19:55:34Z")
I interpreted the “face the wall” commentary as squishing him face-against-a-wall. After all, he’s looking at some kind of wall no matter where you’ve got him, if he’s just wherever in the room. 🙂 Yeah, he’s more or less (sometimes less) pointed at the way we came in after he’s picked up again. ---
**Author:** ![Shot\_From\_Guns](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ccd318/32.png) [@Shot\_From\_Guns](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shot_From_Guns)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2010, 8:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/world-of-warcraft-general-discussion/488294/8631 "2010-01-25T20:09:52Z")
Nah, we don’t bother to back him up–just face him toward the \*closest \*wall. Less repositioning time = more DPS time. But it’s rare that he’ll land in the \*exact \*center, so we’ll spin him to face whichever wall’s \*relatively \*the closest. Just makes setting back up that much easier. ---
**Author:** ![lizardling](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/f4b2a3/32.png) [@lizardling](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lizardling)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2010, 9:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/world-of-warcraft-general-discussion/488294/8632 "2010-01-25T21:48:35Z")
Eeee. My baby hpriest finally made it to Outland, courtesy of a helpful guildie who ran me through Strat and half of Scholo. Good times. On the other hand, I’m also encountering the horror that is an instance run with deathnoobs. I know there are a few good DKs out there, but good lord. I’m also trying to recruit more for our little guild which lost a number of people recently. ☹ But we did pick up a couple of new folks via pugs – I hope that they both decide to stick around as we really could use good tanks. I’m kind of bummed atm since part of the reason is that our retention rate bites due to the fact that ours is an extremely quiet guild – there’s often less than 5 people on at any given time. /sigh I hope this improves. ---
**Author:** ![Shot\_From\_Guns](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ccd318/32.png) [@Shot\_From\_Guns](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shot_From_Guns)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2010, 10:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/world-of-warcraft-general-discussion/488294/8633 "2010-01-25T22:36:40Z")
Grats, **lizardling**! And good luck on the recruitment. It can be such a vicious circle: hard to get people to stick around long enough to really start filling the ranks when the problem is population. ---
**Author:** ![Mekhazzio](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b38774/32.png) [@Mekhazzio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mekhazzio)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2010, 8:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/world-of-warcraft-general-discussion/488294/8634 "2010-01-26T08:16:35Z")
I’d recommend strongly against a casual guild enforcing a flask check for a raid. All flasks do is let you simulate a slightly higher quality of gear. With as much high-quality gear as is readily available to everyone these days, even someone who just does heroics can be easily kitted out with enough high-grade loot to pass the gear check of any content currently in the game. If your raid is going to wipe to the first four bosses of Icecrown, bosses which are intentionally undertuned, it’s going to be a wipe entirely due to a failure in execution. Imposing a 50-100g barrier to entry of a casual raid is going to rapidly kill attendance without actually helping you progress. Flasks & dps/armor potions are for edging you past actual gear checks like an enrage timer or massive tank spikes, and even in that limited scope, their effect is not nearly as substantial as simply improving your game. You’d be much better served by encouraging your raiders to go to one of the many raid help websites like tankspot and spending a few minutes there with critical thinking than spending a half hour farming up materials. ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2010, 8:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/world-of-warcraft-general-discussion/488294/8635 "2010-01-26T08:59:46Z")
Had a pscyho huntard in a PUG yesterday. I was bear tanking Old Kingdom, and just couldn’t keep aggro. It turns out Huntard the Insane was casting misdirect and throwing the mobs on the _healer!_. 😕 He also keep pulling additional adds during fights 😕 and pulling aggro off me. Needless to say, he had he pet on aggressive and kept howling 'GOGOGOGOGO!" Then, our tree healer got disgusted on the 3rd needless wipe (somehow, we managed to get through most of the place, perhaps the rest of us were geared/skilled enough to defeated some of what Huntard the Insane was throwing out) and dropped. Huntard started yelling “GOGOGOGOGO!” while folks were still running back, healing up, buffing up, etc. Multiple cries of “We aren’t ready”. He’s still yelling “GOGOGOGO!” I point out we lost our healer Huntard proceeds to pull one of those guys in OK that are followed around by those pet elementals, you know, wind and fire. “WE LOST OUR HEALER YOU MORON!” He pulls a _second_ group of them! Kick-vote-vote-passes-group-wipe. After we got a new healer and a competent, sane DPS (another hunter, but someone who knew WTF to do and NOT do) the rest of the place was easy. Even when for an achievement on the Crazy Lady Boss. Oh, and for some _mysterious_ reason I stopped having problems with aggro control. WHY do people do such moronic, ignorant, stupid, insane crap? ---
**Author:** ![Ferret\_Herder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e47774/32.png) [@Ferret\_Herder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ferret_Herder)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2010, 11:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/world-of-warcraft-general-discussion/488294/8636 "2010-01-26T11:25:56Z")
> [@Mekhazzio](#): > > You’d be much better served by encouraging your raiders to go to one of the many raid help websites like tankspot and spending a few minutes there with critical thinking than spending a half hour farming up materials. Yeah, well, they don’t do that either. It was all a bunch of whining about why couldn’t we do it now because we’d done it before easily, then a few people scoffing at the “easily” thing because we’d never killed that boss quickly, and my husband going to post the strat straight to our guild forum. Second boss goes down easy in comparison, at least for our guild. Third boss is pretty darned easy. Saurfang is a bitch but I gather he went down after only a couple tries on the last time we went through. None of these raiders are gold-poor. Most of them have more than one 80. I don’t think having some kind of potion is out of the question (considering wipes, flasks are actually cheaper than other potions, sometimes), and it’s certainly not new for us - back in our Kara days it was a requirement as well. ---
**Author:** ![Skammer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/skammer/32/143_2.png) [@Skammer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skammer)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2010, 2:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/world-of-warcraft-general-discussion/488294/8637 "2010-01-26T14:38:01Z")
Monday night is really my only night to raid, so I usually see if I can get into a PUG or a guild group that needs an extra healer. Last night I thought I was lucky and got into an ICC-25 raid with a group (looked like 2-3 guilds) who looked like they knew what they were doing. We spent some time clearing trash and then wiped on Marrowgar – I died instantly at the beginning of the fight somehow but I wasn’t the only one. I’m pretty sure I was standing in the hit box but it’s hard to tell exactly since as a healer I don’t have the boss targeted. We reset the raid and cleared all the trash again (for rep, I guess), but by the time we got to Marrowgear folks started dropping. Oh well. But hey! Here’s a VoA-25 raid looking for a healer! I join, we go in and take down Koralon without much trouble - I nice cloth belt drops but I have to roll against 8 other people so my 91 is only third highest roll. We move on to Emalon and are doing pretty well, but apparently many of the DPS don’t switch to the add who’s about to explode, which he does and we wipe. Then - WTF - people start dropping group like crazy. What the hell? I know wipes are annoying, but at this point YOU’RE ALREADY SAVED to the raid and the group has been pretty strong - you’re going to quit after one wipe? Only thing I can figure out is 1) people only need Karalon; the other two bosses don’t drop worthwhile gear and 2) reset is the next morning anyway. Still it was plenty of annoying. So, two failed raids for me this week ☹ ---
**Author:** ![Infovore](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/infovore/32/420_2.png) [@Infovore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Infovore)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2010, 3:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/world-of-warcraft-general-discussion/488294/8638 "2010-01-26T15:57:29Z")
> [@Skammer](#): > > Then - WTF - people start dropping group like crazy. What the hell? I know wipes are annoying, but at this point YOU’RE ALREADY SAVED to the raid and the group has been pretty strong - you’re going to quit after one wipe? > > Only thing I can figure out is 1) people only need Karalon; the other two bosses don’t drop worthwhile gear and 2) reset is the next morning anyway. Still it was plenty of annoying. Sorry about the failed raid, **Skammer**. But you’re exactly right–most people only want Koralon if they want anything (especially on 25) because he drops T9.5 gear (which you still can only get otherwise by doing ToC25 and getting lucky enough to win a roll for a trophy). Getting base-level T9 these days is easy as falling off a truck–most people just consider it a waste of time to bother with a boss who only drops T8.5. ---
**Author:** ![Skammer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/skammer/32/143_2.png) [@Skammer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skammer)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2010, 4:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/world-of-warcraft-general-discussion/488294/8639 "2010-01-26T16:07:10Z")
Yeah, now that I think about it – there is really no reason for me to do the other bosses either, except to upgrade PvP gear I never use. I already have the achievement. I just hate leaving them standing there 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![aktep](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/f0a364/32.png) [@aktep](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aktep)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2010, 4:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/world-of-warcraft-general-discussion/488294/8640 "2010-01-26T16:11:25Z")
There might be some value to clearing the older bosses in VoA - last week we ran VoA10 more or less for the express purpose of gearing up our newer 80s, and our raid leader was pushing for not doing Archarvon, as the run to the end of his hall wasn’t worth the gear and we could get to Ony that much faster. I pushed for taking him down on the notion that the two badges still had value for our new 80s, and lo and behold he also dropped the Mammoth! [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/world-of-warcraft-general-discussion/488294.md?page=431) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/world-of-warcraft-general-discussion/488294.md?page=433)