pwnwear » Boss strategies

Individual performance does matter

Gravity — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 03:27:36 +0000

We’re chatting in my guild forums about killing the Lich King last night, and the question was asked how tough that fight is relative to others in WoW history. I haven’t killed every boss (didn’t do much Black Temple, for example, and no Sunwell at all, since my casual guild at the time was behind on progression).

I answered the reason it’s a hard fight is because it’s a Type C in Tobold’s classification. To recap, saving you to follow that link, Tobold’s system is basically this:

Type A: challenging the strongest. Example is tank and healers, everyone else could screw up and it doesn’t matter so much (Patchwerk)
Type B: challenging the average, where everyone needs to pull their weight, for example due to enrage timers or to stay alive (Heigan)
Type C: challenging the weakest, where one person can wipe the raid, for example flame wreath in Kara, the Bomb on Geddon, or Thaddius or the Lich King himself.

Type C fights put pressure on every individual raider.

An individual can wipe the raid, even if the rest of the team was doing well. Most wipes in LK are because an individual makes a mistake, and the mechanics of LK are designed such that most mistakes have a catastrophic impact.

Here are the tasks in the LK fight which require faultless execution, since there is very little margin for error, and will lead to a wipe:

dropping defiles away from the middle
others moving away from defiles, so they stay small
positioning yourself for Valkyr pickup so your exit path doesn’t cross a defile nor be too short
killing/healing/interrupting in the Frostmourne room
not failing once on a Soul Reaper (tank or healer)
moving quickly enough with Necrotic Plague to get debuffed near the ghouls
moving on or off the edge for transition phases.

There might be others I could add such as poorly handling a raging spirit by being silenced and unable to taunt, moving the spirits poorly from the edge to centre phase and silencing healers, or kiting vile spirits over healers and getting them killed.

However the point here is not to compile a list, but to show how many opportunities to fail there are, thus to explain why it’s a tough fight: individual performance does matter.

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Video guides ICC heroic

Gravity — Mon, 17 May 2010 00:11:19 +0000

Vox Immortalis have released some new video guides to compliment their already-extensive stable.

Video guide to heroic Putricide is on youtube:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-1SyX-QH1Y

They also recently added Heroic Putricide as well as the Dances with Oozes, Flu Shot Shortage, and Full House achievements. Visit their channel for a full list. Registered users can also download high-res versions.

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Lich King, movement between phases

Gravity — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 00:24:53 +0000

To recap: the Lich King fight has three phases where you are in the centre, and between each of them are transition phases when you move to the edge.

Moving between the phases also requires a strategy

Each time you are in the center he gains a new ability or two like Spell "Soul Reaper" not found. whilst other abilities remain, like Infest. On the second edge-phase he spawns more raging spirits than the first time.

The clever design feature here is that you build up your learning of the fight in layers, which each subsequent phase adding a new feature to learn. You need to know each phase itself in center and edge, plus learn how to move between those phases.

Players need to learn each center phase with the King in its own right, then how to move between it and the edge for the next phase, and back again. Usually a spawn mob will come with you between center and edge phases. You then need to handle the edge phase itself plus kill off the adds who came with you from the previous phase.

I point this out because the raid leader should explain that the fight requires players to learn what to do in each phase and between them (using whatever language you want, numbered phases or edge or center, or whatever, as long as everyone knows what it actually refers to).

Moving from edge to center with a Raging Spirit

Currently my guild is onto the second center phase, often referred to as phase 2, when he has Soul Reaper and Defile for the first time. I’ll refer to its preceding transition phase as 1.5.

One of the simple things we had to work out last night was how to transition from the first edge back into the center whilst you have a Raging Spirit alive. Most guides will say “you will have one up” but do not give specific advice on the easiest path to move between locations. I don’t really know either, but wanted to discuss it.

Here’s a shot with some paths from Lich King last night. I was off-tanking, so often had a Shambler when we moved into phase 1.5, which we handle well now. Movement from phase 1 to 1.5 is that I take my Shambler to the position in screenshot, near icy pillar. They die, I get dispelled, then I move along a path marked in orange at the outside edge to the middle (pink dot) where the main tank has already picked up the first Raging Spirit.

Now once Asshat begins to cast Quake, indicating the shelf is going to collapse and we need to run into the center for phase 2, I will have one or two Spirits. If two, the second one’s nearly dead already. The catch is their directional shockwave which hurts and silences. We settled on this movement strategy between phase 1.5 and 2:

Main tank runs to get Asshat over near the iceblocked Tirion
DPS and healers, having prior been spread out along the green curve, then path in the direction of the green line to their phase 2 spot
As offtank, I paused right on the edge (hoping a Spirit might noob itself and fall off) and also allowing time for others to get at some distance from me
Then I backpedalled the Spirit/s along the pink path, so their cone would not silence a healer or deep
I end up in the middle, Spirit facing away, but I’m near the MT for Soul Reaper.

Discuss

Is there an “I win” strategy for this movement between phases? Any other tips?

I’d like a single conversation on this, so answers into the forum thread. If you’re not registered yet for the forums, it’s really easy and fast, doesn’t require email activation plus includes a fun mini-game to prove you’re a human.

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Lich King 25-man strategy guide

Gravity — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 07:45:07 +0000

One of my favourite strategy bloggers, NER, has now done her Lich King strat. As usual, it’s written with the attention to detail that a raid leader needs.

For example, on Defile and how to learn it. NER says everyone needs to have the Lich King as their focus, and must have the focus’ target shown in their UI. Here’s an extract from the strat guide.

Defile has a 1.5s cast time (this is important) and when cast will drop a big black blob of badness on the ground centred around the person targetted. Defile is on a slightly longer timer than the val’kyrs, but not a lot longer.

Before the fight, practise this:
Get someone to be LK. Have everyone focus that person. Get everyone stacked in the val’kyr position like they were DPSing the LK. Look at the lineup. make sure everyone is stacked up tight, and that hunters are in line with the shortest path to an edge. Get that LK person to cast a 1.5s spell on someone. The person being targetted needs to run TOWARD the stairs/iceblocked idiot and every single other person in the raid needs to run toward the lift in the opposite direction.

Repeat this until everyone in the raid can do it. If you get targetted, run toward the iceblock, if you are not targetted, run away. Make sure everyone understands that you have to move. If you don’t move, chances are you will wipe the raid. I don’t know about you, but I know that we are no high end elitist guild who can rely on the person with defile to get it right every single time without fail.

Ok so got that under control? Excellent.

Here’s the link again to Non-Elitist Raider full 25-man LK strategy.

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Describing a fight in voice or writing

Gravity — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 04:31:59 +0000

When you are briefing a raid team on a fight they have not seen before, or one which they’re not very familiar, you shouldn’t be too wordy.

Before the first pull

I like everyone to have watched a fight video, which you’d linked in guild forums some days before. Ideally you’ve agreed on a strategy framework, if there are alternative methods.

On the night, I think you should give a brief description of the fight, then go in a take a wipe to see it first-hand.

Think about how that might compare to other first-times you’ve had on an encounter. How long does your raid leader talk for? Are people jumping around and getting bored? You can’t even tell whether they’re listening.

I prefer to describe it like this:

“Tank: put him in the middle, facing away.

Melee: spread single-file around the boss.

Ranged and healers: clump at position x and y.

Everyone: on his special ability blah, spread out evenly through room, whilst tank stands still.”

I want each role to have their action called out specifically. I don’t go on about the boss’ abilities much.

People usually need to see a fight from a first-person perspective.

Next pull

Gather up, buff up, then give a more detailed briefing.

Now don’t describe abilities in generic terms, talk about what they mean to the players.

For Marrowgar, say “stand close together so when he bone spike’s someone, you can free them quickly”. Use few words.

No voice comms will let you get away with lots of long verbose descriptions. Sound quality isn’t great, people’s attention spans are limited. Then, if you don’t call out roles, they don’t know when to tune-in.

Generally, I like to describe a fight in terms of our roles, and not by the boss’ abilities. That’s the first principal. The second is to use as few words as possible, to be brief and accurate.

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Guides to Icecrown Citadel

Gravity — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 09:37:18 +0000

Instead of writing my own guide, I’ll compile references to those already written.

I have an index of the guides from those sites most people use, plus have tried to include key posts from the blogging community.

Boss	TankSpot	WoWWiki	StratFu	NER	Bloggers	MMO-C
Marrowgar	#	#	#	#	Hinenuitepo Divine Plea	#
Deathwhisper	#	#	#	#	Hinenuitepo TRM	#
Gunship	#	#	#	#	Lujanera	#
Deathbringer	#	#	#	#	TRM	#
Festergut	#	#	#	#	Lujanera Everblue QQ Hinenuitepo	#
Rotface	#	#	#	#	Rhidach TRM 2fps on kiting Hinenuitepo	#
Putricide	#	#	#	#	Divine Plea Rhidach Resto Druid with video Hinenuitepo	#
Blood Princes	#	#	#		Divine Plea Resto Druid with video Divine Plea 10-man trick Hinenuitepo	#
Blood Queen Lana’thel	#	#	#		Resto Druid with video Divine Plea Hinenuitepo	#
Valithria	#	#	#		Resto Druid Divine Plea Hinenuitepo	#
Sindragosa	#	#	#	#	Divine Plea Leafhead (healing)	#
Lich King	#	#	#	#	Wrathy Divine Plea Clique’s 10-man definitive guide	#

The MMO-Champion and WoWWiki guides include loot and abilities. TankSpot is to their videos.

If you’re a tank or strategy blogger, and have written a guide of quality for one of these bosses, please let me know so I can include you. I don’t link out to bloggers who have lots of ads though.

Achievements

If I come across guides on how to do specific achievements, I’ll add them too. Currently the only author I’ve found is resto druid, she’s pwning everyone else!

Boss	Achievement	Blogger strategy
Festergut	Flu Shot Shortage	Resto Druid
Deathwhisper	Full House	Resto Druid
Rotface	Dances with Oozes	Resto Druid
Putricide	Nausea, heartburn, indigestion	Resto Druid

To comment

please use the forums on this topic.

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Collection of good reading

Gravity — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 19:00:22 +0000

I read a number of blogs. You can download a file containing them all from my sidebar, which can import to Google Reader. I sometimes read on the train, or like today, when I’m back at work for the first day of the new year and cannot be stuffed to do anything much. So, I did some catching-up with blogs.

Here are some of the best posts selected from all the writers I follow, with a bias to content I would have liked to write myself, written over the last month, that is still useful and informative.

On gear, Emblem pick orders and lists

How many emblems per hour can you get? Cold Comfort calculated it.

Wrathy gave his Icecrown citadel gear set for pallies and on equipment management as a loot whore tank

Rhidach’s gear list and pick order is well-considered for ICC and Frost emblems

TMR goes on to post his philosophy and gear selection choices

A list of the new 5-man drops from Kadomi is helpful

Vene lists out his warrior Frost emblem pick order

Boss strategies

Hinenuitepo gave how to minmax your Unholy DK DP on Marrowgar and Deathwhisper

Non-elitist raider with complete strategies on Marrowgar and Deathwhisper

Wrathy wrote about how to pull the Icecrown raid trash and has a section on the site about ICC raid

Ironshield also described how to trash farm in Icecrown for rep

Divine Plea has a guide on how to win Oculus and a cheat sheet for ICC Lower wing

Everblue has off-tank tips for Anub’arak 10-man hard mode

On Shadowmourne and Sister Blade

srsbusiness is the nominated recipient of the legendary, and he’s a tank

Rhidach wrote about forging his Quel’Delar (awesome)

Guild management

Cold Comfort asked about the importance of guilds now we have LFD, and his top ten posts of 2009

Tanking in general

Spinks wrote a helpful post for new tanks, about getting over the fear to tank and another on the roles in a LFD

ThinkTank had a good ol’ rant about leading Randoms

Tankadin-oriented guides 201 on heroic 5-mans, 301 on being an OT and 401 about becoming the MT

Honors sent a polite reminder that LFD won’t be like this forever

Kadomi wrote her pre-raid gear shopping list for new tanks

Professions

plagued candles wrote about professions for tanks in their usual entertaining style, part 1 and 2

MMORPG industry

A wide-ranging retrospective from that’s a terrible idea

Other classes

Mage: levelling guide and new to L80 guides from the ladies of empowered fire

WHU tanked heroic Forge of Souls with a hunter tank pet!

pwnwear posts

I’ve written a fair amount over 2009, but I think my navigation system makes it reasonably easy to discover them. I won’t do another list for you here, try tag navigating or the ‘find stuff here’ menu above. Happy new year!

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