(WoW) Last Night was a Good Night to Die
We actually had enough people on WoW last night to get in two heroic dungeon runs with guildies - Utgarde Pinnacle first, then Nexus. It's a commitment of time and concentration I wouldn't want to put forth every night, but I have missed it. We've done relatively few dungeon runs since WotLK came out, and they've been normal mode (usually with some or all characters of higher level than the dungeon was designed for). I won't say it was a perfect performance by any means. It was, however, educational and fun.
Utgarde Pinnacle
It was a little slow starting out, as we were finding out pace and getting crowd controls worked out.
Reaching Svala wasn't bad, and she went down readily enough thought that fight started roughly due to her not initially being in melee range. I wasn't able to reach her to build up threat, so she went after out mage. Taunting her back got things on track and it seemed better at that point.
Gortok was almost dizzying, going through four sub-bosses before him. I can't recall too much in the way of specifics of that fight, though I think we lost our healer at the end.
Skadi was tricky. I tried a little too hard to advance through the gauntlet the first time, losing some of the trash mobs along the way. On our second attempt, we advanced more cautiously. I feel we took longer than we should have, but we got to the end and brought him down. This particular boss is always an odd challenge to me as a tank, because for the first part of the fight I'm not even looking at the boss. Rather, I'm busy trying to pick up the waves of adds so they don't mob the healer (or whoever's closer to the door). Then when he finally lands, he's got a vicious whirlwind attack to watch out for. While spinning, he'll break for someone at random, though I was usually able to taunt him back to me.
I'd only faced King Ymiron once before on normal, so being warned against his summoning "balls" to avoid and the write-up about his "spirit fount" ability weren't clear to me. Oh, I got the theory, but that's different from seeing it. I was expecting shadowy spheres. What I saw was a horizontal disk of radiating white-ish rings. Then, similarly-colored orbs appear there and go after people. I didn't recognize it and it killed me dead the first time. The second time was better, as I could see what was happening and start kiting him away from it. At the end, he started spitting out a lot of damage at the group, too. But we got him on the second try and walked away victorious.
I'm just hoping Ymiron doesn't become my new Laj. That darn plant in Botanica, after many attempts, finally dropped the shoulder armor I wanted a few scant weeks before WotLK came out and rendered them obsolete. Ymiron has an epic tanking sword I want and it didn't drop this time. I'll be back.
Nexus
So then we turned in quests and rounded ourselves back up for a run at heroic Nexus. I don't recall the why of that dungeon in particular, save that it had an extra boss (thus an extra Emblem of Heroism).
Commander Kolurg stopped us dead the last time we tried this. Well, actually, bad positioning pulled an additional group that didn't fully reset and overwhelmed us. This time was much better. Fear was bad, but we had enough room for it. The only really bad thing was he and I ended up too close to the healer at the end and his whirlwind nailed her. I don't feel that was all on me, but I probably could do better.
Grand Magus Telestra wasn't too bad. Tougher than normal mode, certainly. Longer. The only real misstep I recall here was our boomkin catching her fire aspect (I think) instead of arcane the rest of us were beating on in her second split phase, leading to aggro and death. We were still able to power through the rest of the fight, though.
We hit Anomalus next. The fight probably took longer than it should have, but wasn't unduly difficult. I heard mention that we were slow transitioning from attacking him to attacking his portals, but I remember being pretty well on that myself. Of course, I don't have the damage output of DPS in general, so my target-switching there is probably less important than others and I couldn't actually tell what they were on at the time.
Ormorok got ugly in places, even if we got him on our first attempt. I think one or two people got bounced back down the stairs and were killed by adds. I made my stupid mistake of the night here, too, resulting in the death of our mage. One or two people were down and I was taking a lot of damage. I reached for my Divine Protection spell (which reduces damage taken by half for duration) and instead hit Divine Shield (invulnerable to damage for duration). The problem with DS is that it drops aggro, so he made a beeline for the next person on the list - our cloth-wearing friend. I realized it quickly, but by the time I'd dropped the buff and taunted, it was too late.
Keristrasza made for an active fight, but not an overly difficult one really. I did a lot of cleansing, trying to prioritize the healer and myself. You have to keep moving to avoid a stacking debuff.
Thoughts
Some deaths. A few wipes (well, technically near-wipes as Kyn usually invisibilitied out of certain death). I'm not disappointed by our overall showing, though. There are certainly things we could do better, but there are a lot of things you probably won't get right until you fail at least once (King Ymiron's spirit fount, for example). A few gear upgrades dropped, though most of it was less-than-ideal. I think our druids each got something. Our hunter walked away with epic leather gloves arguably better than what he had on (but probably not as good as a corresponding mail piece). I picked up the plate that dropped - two caster pieces and one DPS. None of that is good for me as a tank, but I'll save them for off-spec sets.
The damage recount indicates the hunter for these runs could use some further gear upgrades. A hunter should probably beat the tank on damage output. But considering he's one of three (I think) level 80 alts, it's understandable, and his freeze traps still work.
We should pull a little more a little faster. I imagine this will come in time as we all get more comfortable with things, but the trash pulls where CC broke or we were surprised and faced with three mobs at once were more involving and cleared areas faster. Of course, some mobs are just so annoying or dangerous they really should be pulled one a time, but most of the time that's not really the case. So there is a balance to be found there.
Personally, it was good practice. And I could use more. A few points of note for myself:
- The Divine Shield mistake was bad. I keep the two abilities next to each other, being similar, but I may have to rethink that a little. I'm not really accustomed to using either one, but I need to be sure I hit the correct one when I need it.
- Similarly, though less importantly, I mis-clicked on Avenging Wrath instead of Consecration at one point. It was a trash pull and not a big deal, but it was still a silly little mistake.
- I realized belatedly that I probably should have swapped my libram and a trinket for serious tanking. Would it have changed any outcomes? Probably not. I don't have the items I really want for either slot yet. Still, that's another simple thing I shouldn't be getting wrong, and every bit of damage mitigation helps.
- My rotation is a bit sloppy. That's not unexpected. I really only have two choices for this: macro things until they're ridiculously simple and boring, or practice more.
- I used my taunts a lot more than I'm accustomed to (which, granted, is very rarely). I should practice more and possibly set up some sort of mouseover macro for them so I can taunt off someone by their portrait rather than switching targets.
- When running with Kyn, I should probably take to judging Wisdom over Light.
Utgarde Pinnacle
It was a little slow starting out, as we were finding out pace and getting crowd controls worked out.
Reaching Svala wasn't bad, and she went down readily enough thought that fight started roughly due to her not initially being in melee range. I wasn't able to reach her to build up threat, so she went after out mage. Taunting her back got things on track and it seemed better at that point.
Gortok was almost dizzying, going through four sub-bosses before him. I can't recall too much in the way of specifics of that fight, though I think we lost our healer at the end.
Skadi was tricky. I tried a little too hard to advance through the gauntlet the first time, losing some of the trash mobs along the way. On our second attempt, we advanced more cautiously. I feel we took longer than we should have, but we got to the end and brought him down. This particular boss is always an odd challenge to me as a tank, because for the first part of the fight I'm not even looking at the boss. Rather, I'm busy trying to pick up the waves of adds so they don't mob the healer (or whoever's closer to the door). Then when he finally lands, he's got a vicious whirlwind attack to watch out for. While spinning, he'll break for someone at random, though I was usually able to taunt him back to me.
I'd only faced King Ymiron once before on normal, so being warned against his summoning "balls" to avoid and the write-up about his "spirit fount" ability weren't clear to me. Oh, I got the theory, but that's different from seeing it. I was expecting shadowy spheres. What I saw was a horizontal disk of radiating white-ish rings. Then, similarly-colored orbs appear there and go after people. I didn't recognize it and it killed me dead the first time. The second time was better, as I could see what was happening and start kiting him away from it. At the end, he started spitting out a lot of damage at the group, too. But we got him on the second try and walked away victorious.
I'm just hoping Ymiron doesn't become my new Laj. That darn plant in Botanica, after many attempts, finally dropped the shoulder armor I wanted a few scant weeks before WotLK came out and rendered them obsolete. Ymiron has an epic tanking sword I want and it didn't drop this time. I'll be back.
Nexus
So then we turned in quests and rounded ourselves back up for a run at heroic Nexus. I don't recall the why of that dungeon in particular, save that it had an extra boss (thus an extra Emblem of Heroism).
Commander Kolurg stopped us dead the last time we tried this. Well, actually, bad positioning pulled an additional group that didn't fully reset and overwhelmed us. This time was much better. Fear was bad, but we had enough room for it. The only really bad thing was he and I ended up too close to the healer at the end and his whirlwind nailed her. I don't feel that was all on me, but I probably could do better.
Grand Magus Telestra wasn't too bad. Tougher than normal mode, certainly. Longer. The only real misstep I recall here was our boomkin catching her fire aspect (I think) instead of arcane the rest of us were beating on in her second split phase, leading to aggro and death. We were still able to power through the rest of the fight, though.
We hit Anomalus next. The fight probably took longer than it should have, but wasn't unduly difficult. I heard mention that we were slow transitioning from attacking him to attacking his portals, but I remember being pretty well on that myself. Of course, I don't have the damage output of DPS in general, so my target-switching there is probably less important than others and I couldn't actually tell what they were on at the time.
Ormorok got ugly in places, even if we got him on our first attempt. I think one or two people got bounced back down the stairs and were killed by adds. I made my stupid mistake of the night here, too, resulting in the death of our mage. One or two people were down and I was taking a lot of damage. I reached for my Divine Protection spell (which reduces damage taken by half for duration) and instead hit Divine Shield (invulnerable to damage for duration). The problem with DS is that it drops aggro, so he made a beeline for the next person on the list - our cloth-wearing friend. I realized it quickly, but by the time I'd dropped the buff and taunted, it was too late.
Keristrasza made for an active fight, but not an overly difficult one really. I did a lot of cleansing, trying to prioritize the healer and myself. You have to keep moving to avoid a stacking debuff.
Thoughts
Some deaths. A few wipes (well, technically near-wipes as Kyn usually invisibilitied out of certain death). I'm not disappointed by our overall showing, though. There are certainly things we could do better, but there are a lot of things you probably won't get right until you fail at least once (King Ymiron's spirit fount, for example). A few gear upgrades dropped, though most of it was less-than-ideal. I think our druids each got something. Our hunter walked away with epic leather gloves arguably better than what he had on (but probably not as good as a corresponding mail piece). I picked up the plate that dropped - two caster pieces and one DPS. None of that is good for me as a tank, but I'll save them for off-spec sets.
The damage recount indicates the hunter for these runs could use some further gear upgrades. A hunter should probably beat the tank on damage output. But considering he's one of three (I think) level 80 alts, it's understandable, and his freeze traps still work.
We should pull a little more a little faster. I imagine this will come in time as we all get more comfortable with things, but the trash pulls where CC broke or we were surprised and faced with three mobs at once were more involving and cleared areas faster. Of course, some mobs are just so annoying or dangerous they really should be pulled one a time, but most of the time that's not really the case. So there is a balance to be found there.
Personally, it was good practice. And I could use more. A few points of note for myself:
- The Divine Shield mistake was bad. I keep the two abilities next to each other, being similar, but I may have to rethink that a little. I'm not really accustomed to using either one, but I need to be sure I hit the correct one when I need it.
- Similarly, though less importantly, I mis-clicked on Avenging Wrath instead of Consecration at one point. It was a trash pull and not a big deal, but it was still a silly little mistake.
- I realized belatedly that I probably should have swapped my libram and a trinket for serious tanking. Would it have changed any outcomes? Probably not. I don't have the items I really want for either slot yet. Still, that's another simple thing I shouldn't be getting wrong, and every bit of damage mitigation helps.
- My rotation is a bit sloppy. That's not unexpected. I really only have two choices for this: macro things until they're ridiculously simple and boring, or practice more.
- I used my taunts a lot more than I'm accustomed to (which, granted, is very rarely). I should practice more and possibly set up some sort of mouseover macro for them so I can taunt off someone by their portrait rather than switching targets.
- When running with Kyn, I should probably take to judging Wisdom over Light.
So, how's the tactics of working as a group on WoW different from doing tactics in GW? How do you keep people coordinated in WoW? Using voice chat, or just doing what you think you need to do? How are wiped in WoW different from wipes in GW?
ReplyDeleteWith respect to Skadi - the fight is challenging because it's so chaotic... there are adds running about that have to be picked up, DPS has to find those adds and kill them, then the DPS has to pick out a sparkling harpoon out of the various other pixelated effects and snag it before it disappears. The real problem is they're random drops. Yes, over the course of the fight you'll see many... enough to bring the boss down, but sometimes RNG rears up and you won't see any at all. How it went the 2nd time for us is how it always has been for me, even with uberly geared folks... the fight is more about how you can adjust to changing situations and handle randomness in the encounter rather than following a well-rehearsed battle-plan. So in my opinion, if everyone survives it was a complete success.
ReplyDeleteWell... let's see... - General Tactics: In WoW the tank/DPS/healer trinity is much more clear to me. As a tank, I have the means to keep enemies (especially single-targets like bosses) on my instead of others. In GW, if there's a way to do that, it's a mystery to me. Technically, you can physically block people in GW, but usually there's so much room and so many enemies that it's not feasible to block them all from getting to your healer or "softer" party members. GW seems to me much more chaotic. Maybe I'm just missing something. - Coordination and Communication: Text chat mostly. There's voice capability in the game these days, but not everyone I play with uses it. I usually don't. "Serious" raiders almost insist on voice chat. In general (and this is some benefit of working with guildmates repeatedly rather than strangers), people know their roles and any specific assignments can be discussed quickly before a pull. - Wipes: A wipe in WoW resets the surviving mobs and leaves everyone to run back into the instance to where they were (a couple minutes on the extreme end), re-apply buffs, and go at it again. Worn equipment takes some durability loss on death, but that usually just means a repair bill after the run that's more than offset by dropped loot/gold. A wipe in GW usually leaves me feeling far more frustrated as there's a death penalty that actually weakens you, making another wipe even more likely in most cases.
ReplyDelete*hmms and nods* Yeah, I miss out on the spear collection. Playing tank, I'm entirely occupied by the additional mobs as they spawn. I barely even notice the glittery spears or look at the harpoon throwers. It's definitely a different perspective.
ReplyDeleteNow, of course, you don't have to go with the death penalty thing. If the group is seriously set back, re-do the mission. The death penalty is for 'continuing on without a reset'. A lot of people don't bother with that though, they push ahead until the entire group has died. Different mentality there, I think. Though apparently, there are methods of just obliterating the death penalty -- cupcakes, for example. I think Rin has a few left. The guild could shell out for materials to make the missions or trips easier, they just usually don't bother. I handed over an Armour of Invincibility to Rin today in fact, would make any mission you're about to take a lot easier on you. Save it for those really, really, really annoying missions.
ReplyDeleteI've seen the candy canes and such. Nice little ways to get rid of some of the death penalty, though usually not all - especially if you're dying repeatedly. They seem reasonably rare, seasonal, and hard to get reliably (as opposed to stopping by a vendor who can repair in most areas). And yes, you could restart, but then you have to go through everything again. I die less often than most in GW, but after a couple wipes at a tricky area, I usually feel throwing ourselves against it repeatedly is like slamming our heads into a wall. And restarting, while sometimes better, really isn't appealing either. Then again, part of that frustration may be tied to what is probably my biggest dislike of my GW experience - constant re-running of the same content to catch people up. Over. And over. There's very little sense of progress when we do about one new mission every two or three weeks and I don't really have much to look forward to in the way of any new abilities, equipment, or... anything. >.> But that's a little off-topic, I think.
ReplyDeleteOn the flip side of that, being run through GW content that's low-level for your companions is a bit like being a lowbie running around behind a high level guildie as they clear out a WoW dungeon for you. You *kind* of get an idea what's going on but not really, and your role is pretty minimal, if at all.
ReplyDeleteTrue in most MMORPGs, I imagine. I have seen a relatively-new (introduced last year, I think) system in City of Heroes/Villains that brings down the effective level of a person to match a lower-level companion to adventure together. And there is in GW: Eye of the North a buff that increases lower-level people stats to level 20-ish while in some zones. Thusfar, those seem to be exceptions to the rule. That'd be more difficult to enact in a game where stats are highly gear-dependent (like WoW).
ReplyDelete