Traffic!
Construction crews just started working on the main road leading in town from home - a nice little stretch by an intersection that's getting a light put in as I understand. This is a mostly-unrelated precursor to the major improvement project sceduled (that probably won't begin in earnest 'til next year). Still having a chunk of the road down to one lane through most of the day is an inconvenience. Cars backed up in both directions. I left work just a little early yesterday, probably avoiding the worst of it, and it still added about 25 minutes to what's normally a 10-minute drive or less. @whee.
Quick WoW note: The guild now has heroic Azjol'Nerub under its collective belt. Considering how we got stomped when we poked at it before, I was surprised. It's still not easy, but it's doable. Having an off-tank baiting the skirmishers are the beginning probably helped a lot. Anub'arak caused some deaths, but not a wipe. And speaking of belts, I got an upgrade out of it. No Essence of Gossamer, though - I suspect we'll be back.
Quick WoW note: The guild now has heroic Azjol'Nerub under its collective belt. Considering how we got stomped when we poked at it before, I was surprised. It's still not easy, but it's doable. Having an off-tank baiting the skirmishers are the beginning probably helped a lot. Anub'arak caused some deaths, but not a wipe. And speaking of belts, I got an upgrade out of it. No Essence of Gossamer, though - I suspect we'll be back.
RE: Skirmishers - I think any plate-wearer or a tough hunter pet would do the trick. Mirrormere took hits on one of the pulls and I had no trouble healing her until the Skirmisher went down. I think the key is keeping them off the clothies and healers. RE: Anub'arak - I thought that the fight lasted too long, and we had a bit of bad luck, and I made a bad decision too. Shorter fight will come with bigger DPS. Bad luck was I decided to use Tranquility at the exact moment he was going to tunnel up underneath me. Bad decision was I tried to run. I got hit with the spikes anyway, and that led to my demise, which caused a cascade as I was rezzed and had to work to return Sash to health, which led to Mir's death. I should have let my Tranquility tick until I was thrown. I would've gotten 1, or 2 more ticks (and they are BIG ticks) and been able to take the spikes better, and the rest of a group as a whole would've been in better shape, allowing me time to heal myself from the throw before returning back to the rest of the group. Lesson learned :)
ReplyDeleteThat and avoiding the backstab. I'm not fully clear on their movement patterns, but it's their backstab ability that destroys cloth-wearers instantly. That being the case, I would theorize that even a clothie could take a couple frontal hits. That said, it's always better to have any potentially-heavy hits coming in against someone who has as much armor, life, and applicable defensive traits as possible. The better it is, the better it is. ;) Hmm. Yes, the Anub'arak fight seemed long to me, too, though I'm not overly surprised given it was our first heroic attempt. I didn't quite see what happened that led to you going down, so I'm glad to hear that side of things. As I usually do when the healer dies, I went into "Oh crap. Is this still winnable? Okay, focus on extra defense" mode - which means Holy Light-ing myself if there's opportunity and trying to pick the best time for Lay on Hands. As I recall, you were back up before I felt I was where I absolutely needed to pop LoH. Thank goodness for druid in-combat rezzing. Higher DPS makes everything faster. Yay! Higher DPS is good. Yay! And yet, I've only really started watching DPS fairly recently. As a tank, I know I won't be topping Recount reports, so I didn't pay much attention to it. Getting a DPS spec, though, I've been watching a little more. Tanking, I feel a little concerned when I top anyone (save the healer) on the chart. And even so, I seem to see numbers in the 1000-1500 range which seems... low? I don't know. I don't have the best frame of reference. Most of what I read is more raid-oriented, so probably involves better gear than most of us have, but they seem to say "good" DPS should be more in the 2000-3000 range. While maybe we, as a guild, aren't to that level, where we are is hurting a little - I'd point to our fight with Jedoga in Ahn'Kahet as a good example, when the sacrifices were reaching the circle. But then, I don't know enough about DPS classes to offer direct, concrete suggestions to people other than "try to get some better gear." I'm certainly not about to go around judging the talent specs of our DPS guildies. What I'd like to see would be some of them stepping up to say "Hey, I'd like to get Item X from Boss Y" or similar. That would give us something we could focus on. And with a lot of upgrades coming from heroics, others of us would still have emblems and/or championing rep to look forward to there, too. Tangentially, I'd have to say I think we've been pretty good as far as sharing crafted gear. I am quite proud of the guild in that regard.
ReplyDeleteRe: RE: Anub'arak - There a way to speed that fight? I thought his submerges were tied to % health, so you're stuck waiting for the things to trundle down the ramp and engage as well as the adds to jump in. As I was busy running around and trying to stay alive myself, I didn't see what all was going on save for one moment we were beating things up fine and then the next, you were dead. o.o;
ReplyDeleteI want gear from the elf mage in H. Nexus, the end boss of H. Violet Hold and Loken in H. HoL
ReplyDelete*peeks* Those phases do seem to be at % health. So I suppose that means we wouldn't end up fighting much less in any case - still have to deal with the adds while burrowed. But more damage output on the boss and the adds still means getting through the phases quicker.
ReplyDeleteLet's go! ... Heh. And today's heroic is Azjol'Nerub again? o.o; Still, doesn't mean we have to just do whatever the daily is. I'm running out of specific drops to go after... though there are probably a couple Ret-things I should add to the list. Hmm. Need to find a good Ret pally gear list. For Protection, I think it's mostly trinkets, which are sorta hard to come by. Hadronox in Azjol'Nerub can drop Essence of Gossamer - a high-stamina and, IIRC, proc shield trinket. I'm not sure, but this might be a little better for Elly - do bears get form-bonus to trinket stamina? Loken on *normal* drops a defense trinket. :P on him. I believe it's the core hound in heroic VH that drops a block-based trinket that looks good. I might should put this one on my wish list, actually. I didn't really realize that was there. There's an Emblem of Heroism dodge trinket. Somewhat lower priority, given that my dodge is to the point where it's starting to feel diminishing returns. And I'm a single Five of Nobles (and a visit to the Darkmoon Faire) away from a Darkmoon Card Greatness (Str), which would be good for Prot and Ret. That one I have some small bit of control over without a group, so I sort of "expect" to end up with it. This leaves room for one of the others listed above to be equipped, though it might be good to have a couple different ones for situational fights.
ReplyDeleteOn another topic, I might be sold on Divinity. I did Sash's latest Prot build based on something done by someone who wanted more options and favored Divine Sacrifice. The more I look at that, though, the more I think I'm not very likely to use it as a tank, and doing/receiving more healing is generally not a bad thing. So... maybe. Specs still subject to change.
ReplyDeleteI can't help but feel Project Lore may have the strat to that. Park two people outside (Or one who can DPS like mad and self heal) to catch the ramp elites. Faster they burn down, faster the submerge phases go and you don't have to slog through as many adds.
ReplyDelete