Jacemora: A rough Sunday/Monday

My blog has moved! Redirecting...

You should be automatically redirected. If not, visit http://www.Jacemora.com/ and update your bookmarks.

Tuesday, June 10, 2008

A rough Sunday/Monday

So we had an interesting 2 nights of raiding. Sunday night was our first venture into Black Temple and our first attempts at High Warlord Naj'entus. I think it went well for a first night there, no wipes on the trash was nice, and I think we have the boss figured out for our next night of attempts. A tip for you ferals out there DPSing this fight, when you hear the call to throw the spike at his shield go ahead and cast Barkskin and a Healing Touch on yourself so right after you take damage you will make most right back up. This will help your healers and keep you alive to continue to DPS. Hopefully if your raid is on the ball (or is passing the moron test as Doom likes to call it) then your Healing Touch will land right after you take the damage... if you want follow it with a Rejuv and a Lifebloom but by then your healers might already have you to full anyway.

So Monday is Hyjal night and some more attempts on Anetheron, well actually my first night for attempts, and I am tanking trash then DPSing. I started out playing it safe using hurricane and making sure the AoE tank had lots of agro before moving in... Ok, this might not have been the best plan since once I was a little too close and got the full force of the oncoming wave before they hit his consecrate... bad move, screwed up the healers timed heals, dead pally tank. Let me explain, the healers are already casting a big heal for the initial impact, oh crap Jace has agro heal him, oh crap now Mili has agro, "Mili down" we hear... DOH.

So testing strategy 2, stand behind the pally, single target a big nasty, moonfire pull... nope, doesn't work... mob hits consecrate and it is all his... feral charge in and take him off.

So then we find out the big strain on our pally tank are the casters in the back firing shadow bolts at him sometimes 4 at a time before they get sheeped or feared. So Strategy 3 which I liked, stealth off to the side and as the mobs run by I target a caster pounce him and then shift to bear and pick him up. Then I bash him to prolong the stun a little more to make sure I give the healers a little more time keeping everyone else alive. This seemed to go much better and I used the same strategy on other single targets even when the casters were not coming. A pounce, mangle, shred, bear, bash, cuts right through consecrate agro and successfully helped lessen the initial blow on the pally tank. Just be careful to give the oncoming mob enough space to not get ran over and detected early.

Ok, so on to Anetheron... 3 tries, 3 wipes, sad panda. I guess we are still having problems getting the infernals managed and I think I heard the pally tank say something about not being able to get on his fire resist gear in time since the trash took too long before the boss came which although not necessary, might have helped at least a little. Another feral druid note, don't forget to change into your dps gear as soon as you are out of combat. Make sure before the trash started you downed your DPS potion, food, and put a Adamantite Weightstone on your DPS weapon because you most definitely don't want to do that between the trash and the boss. When the last 1-2 trash mobs are being killed run away to the back of the action so as soon as you drop out of combat you can make the change.

I really think our next attempts on both these bosses will be successful.

16 comments:

Anonymous said...

In my experience (if you have the mages, which my guild did) you mark one of those casters (can't remember their name for the life of me) skull and you have each of the other mages mark their own sheep and they do that before the pally even has any aggro. Just as the pally gets aggro, you charge to the caster you marked, and pick it up (only one shadowbolt should have been launched). The melee then move in and help you down each of them in succession. This is where I have found the best place to druid tank in the first couple of fights of MH that I have participated.

If there are no casters, and you are picking up Abominations (usually what I was picking up, and usually 2 of them) let them go onto your pally, then taunt one and mangle / lacerate it, save your mangle. Once taunt is up again taunt the other one and mangle lacerate it. You pally tank should be fine with the one abom on him/her for the 10s that taunt takes to CD.

Those are the 2 way I found worked for me when tanking the waves, hope it helps you out.

Jacemora said...

Thanks for the tip, I think the marking would help immensely and I will recommend it. As they run down if we each got to mark our own targets it would probably make things much easier.

Anonymous said...

Another tip that worked for us, if for whatever reason you're not quite ready for when the Bosses arrive, get your Rogues up to meet him in Stealth and get them to Distract them. Believe it or not, it does work. Your tanks can get the required gear changes done, healers/casters can finish drinking, everyone else can get into position.

Jason said...

^^Valthan

I use SimpleRaidTargetIcons as an addon, I don't think it is on either Ace or WOWMatrix, but it is on curse.

You double click on the mob, and if you have Assist (or group lead) a radial dial pops up to allow you to select which icon you want. I found it helped immensly with my targeting

Jacemora said...

Thanks Jason, I am going to add that. I hate having to go up to the frame and miss click the symbol... again... and again...

Jason said...

You have the problem as well eh? I was always so slow and picking the wrong targets (which would get rid of it from another target) all the time before that addon.

In regards to Feral DPS (since I can't comment): It is for the win! You stopped to res someone and still kicked ass?! What does that say? That the Feral Hybrid is awesome! (NOTE: You might actually want to remove that from your post so that people don't think ferals are now imba, and start picking on us as well as our tree-like brethren)

--Valthan

PS. Saw you online last night, but was shy :D

Jacemora said...

Don't be shy! Say hello! I am very social :)

Jacemora said...

...and yeah, feral hybrid rocks. I think the new badge loot and 2.4 went a long way to improving our viability.

Bottom line, being able to tank a raid boss, tank trash, heal myself when needed, heal my party in an emergency, battle rez someone important, and be competitive in dps can't be a bad thing to have in a raid. The important thing is knowing how to manage all these roles through swapping weapons and idols, gear, and consumables at the right times.

s k graham said...

I'm a relative newbie, but what about a tranquility instead of just healing yourself?

If you don't have plans for it, that might take an even bigger load off your healers.

Jacemora said...

Yes, I do tranquility when appropriate but usually it is overkill. Rarely do I see my party in a situation when channeling tranquility is the difference between a wipe or killing a boss.

Tranquility can be helpful in the 1st boss fight of BT but with a 10 minute cool down you can't really strategize around it.

Jason said...

Ok, I will try and be more outgoing tonight if I see you.

Just a shameless plug since I degraded this to an Offtopic of Hybrid, I made a post 2 days ago about how we rock as a hybrid (http://oldnewdruid.blogspot.com/2008/06/feral-hybrid.html)

--Valthan

Jacemora said...

I added you to my blog links Val, dust off that druid more often.

Jason said...

I'm playing a druid on your server now (in an attempt to get back to raiding but as a more casual level *coughACcough*, as all the guilds on my server are hardcore).

Thanks for the linkage, but you may want to change it to the home page of my blog :P

--Valthan

Jacemora said...

ooops. Done.

TeePee said...

umm off-topic, and maybe I'm just having a bad case of the "lost in plain sight" syndrome, but have your comments disappeared on posts since your screenshot of wws post? seems to just be a blank spot where the comments link used to be - i wanted to get on your total damage done bandwagon, that's one i keep arguing with my guild about

Jacemora said...

Fixed it TeePee!

Please post away in the Total Damage ... er ... post... :P