.

The wait was long but we finally got something else to do raidwise than farm ToC. But was it worth the wait? So far my opinion is yes… and holy crap we got trash again! How cool is that?! Anyway.. difficultywise the first four bosses were nothing that special.. once you got the tactic ironed out that’s it. In my guild the first four were all cleared during the first week. But this does not mean they would not have been fun. Oh I absolutely enjoyed all of them..

Lord Marrowgar

On normal mode this comes down to killing the spikes fast enough, which isn’t hard. Fires don’t hit hard and are easy to avoid when you see them slowly creeping up to you. Bonestorm doesn’t hit for much either if you just run away from it. But when you think of it… do you ever completely avoid the Bonestorm? No and the room is very small.. so I would guess doing this on hardmode will be a whole lot different thing.

His model is really, really, really, really cool though.

Lady Deathwhisper

Ok this is my favorite one so far. Trick is finding the right balance between DPS on adds and DPS on boss, switching quickly between targets and getting a smooth transition to last phase.

How we did it was pretty much the casters mainly on boss but helping out with adds from time to time, everyone else.. melee and hunters are full time on adds. This fight brings the evil side in me.. finally after months of ToC where it’s always the ranged who get the annoying job of switching targets constantly while melee happily just sits on boss and tops the DPS meters. Well.. guess what guys.. revenge is sweet. <3

Well okey I am not completely just on boss... what I like to do is as I am shooting the boss I'll be constantly panning my camera around the room to see when transformed adds spawn and be ready to run if you get the green stuff under your feet. Really fun fight where you have to focus on reacting very quickly.

I bet this will be a nightmare on hardmode too.

The Gunship Battle

This was actually one of the fights I was looking forward to most. And well… it’s kinda disapointingly easy. To be honest this is the new ‘chess’ encounter. Everyone remembers it from Karazhan don’t we? It’s fun, but it’s also very easy.

Rocket pack is pretty fun too.. except when I use it my Moonkin form disappears. Hrm. The loot issues are very bad.. if player is on the enemy ship when encounter ends he probably does not get loot. This seriously needs a fix.. done this two times now and both times we’ve had people who were not eligible for loot in the end. How about something simple as when you start the encounter the game checks and tags the people who are on the boat, and when it ends all of those players get the credit if they’re at least somewhere inside the instance.

Not much to this.. just queue up ‘The Airship Pirate’ by Abney Park and have fun.

Deathbringer Saurfang

Now we’re starting to see some difficulty here. The room is very small for 25 people so you don’t have much room to spread which can make it a bit frustrating.. I know I have been. The adds are not a serious trouble if they got at least some sort of slow effect on them. Focused fire can take them down very fast. Other than that there’s not really anything else to it. Swap between boss and adds and keep your position.

I liked the little cutscene after the fight. What kinda confused me was Varian showing sympathy towards Saurfang (the elder, not the one you just killed). This has to be a trick.. he was just trying to fish some ‘hey I’m not that bad’ points. Well d’uh.. I’m not impressed.

All in all it was pretty entertaining start for the new instance and I’m looking forward to the next wing opening in.. err, I’m guessing 6th January. That’s couple more weeks but since there’s Xmas in between it doesn’t really matter since most people are away and we could not hassle 25 together anyway.

Last week me and few others finally completed long journey of Glory of the Ulduar Raider (10 player). I know by now some of the challenge has weared off when everyone is wearing better gear and all that but it still was fun and at least somewhat challenging effort. By the time Trial of the Crusader rolled out I had got really tired of Ulduar… but after not going there for a while it felt nice and refreshing again which made this achievement all the more fun to do. It took fair few weeks since we really didn’t go there more than once a week for 3 hours with maybe couple exceptions. Extended raid lockouts really came handy with this since if we’d had to re-clear every time it would have taken way longer.

Now when I’m not so much tied up with *cough* Dragon Age *cough* anymore let’s take a look on all of the meta achievements required for this one.

Orbit-uary (10 player)

My least favorite fight with the most annoying way possible.. blergh. My role every time was just to be shot up Leviathan and destroy the turrets. Can’t say there’s much to it. I use Wild Magic Potion first time I’m up there but beyond that there’s not much to do than just blast away. When I was back at gunner spot on Demolisher all I pretty much did was shot down Pyrite and loaded it. Can’t really speak for other vehicles and how difficult they were since I’ve never done anything else.

Stokin’ the Furnace (10 player)

Speed kill and hence not much special to do… pew pew.

Iron Dwarf, Medium Rare (10 player)

This is one of those achievements you’d call ’silly’. Razorscale’s flame breath does 15k damage so you need to keep those Guardians alive and under 15k health. What you should do is just have one tank pick all Guardians, have someone DPS them a little but not too much since the NPCs also attack them and if you bring them down too soon you risk killing them. If you do not DPS Razorscale at all you get more tries on flaming the dwarves. You’ll most likely hit the enrage timer once and wipe, but on 2nd pull you miss only few dwarves and can do DPS on Razor too.

Heartbreaker (10 player)

You kill the heart and XT gains damage and health boost, gravity bombs spawn void zones and light bombs spawn adds to be killed. It’s only really about more intense healing, being more careful with gravity bombs and killing the spawning adds asap since they damage the whole raid when they’re up. Really simple all in all.

I Choose You, Steelbreaker (10 player)

Heh what am I going to say about this.. my job is always so easy. The challenge in this is for the healers and tanks.. so I as DPS don’t have much to worry about. Don’t die and dps as well as you can?

Disarmed (10 player)

DPS left arm down to low, DPS middle to less than 30% but not under 15%, keep killing right arm until Kologarn is under 30%, then kill both left and right arm under 12s from each other and you win. Can’t say there is much to it.

Crazy Cat Lady (10 player)

Do what you’d normaly except do not kill the cats. Once again nothing I as DPS didn’t have to worry about.

I Could Say That This Cache Was Rare (10 player)

Oh look a DPS race. Free mage first, try to stack buffs as well as you can, DPS the heck out of it and you win. Use Wild Magic Potion when you got storm buff, moonlight buff and lunar eclipse.

Lose Your Illusion (10 player)

Reach Thorim under 3 minutes, stay spread to avoid chain lightning jumping, stand away from walls to avoid blizzard, when you see lightning charge building up run away from that side of the room. Shapeshift if you got slow effect from Sif’s frost bolt. When running away from lightning charge it’s hard to keep the spread and avoid chain lightning but it would be worse to get hit by lightning charge. Just run back once it’s safe again and keep the optimal spread.

Knock, Knock, Knock on Wood (10 player)

Leaving the Elders alive mostly just means she and her adds will hit harder. You’ll do what you’d do normaly anyway.. just do it better. Although now you also need to free rooted people. As a druid you can just shapeshift out of them but not everyone has that luxury. I found it handy to have a macro with /target strengthened iron roots to quickly get them down.

In my opinion this is one of the harder achievements in Ulduar. It’s not overly complicated or anything but it’s a lot of different stuff you need to do which makes it very technical.

Firefighter (10 player)

Ok this was the hardest by far in my opinion. Very big awareness fight.. there’s tons of stuff that could kill you if you’re not paying attention. Also it is heavy on movement so as balance druid it was a nightmare.. we get very heavy penalty from having to move around and losing eclipse time. I really enjoyed it though. This for me felt greater than anything since Sartharion 3D back in the early Wrath.

I Love the Smell of Saronite in the Morning (10 player)

Err… what the.. This was way way easier than I would have thought. All I did was exactly same thing as on normal mode. Avoiding shadow crashes is very easy, only thing where you really have to shape up is when you got life leech and well.. that’s not so difficult either. My screen lights up like xmas tree when I got it so.. hard to miss and not move. I suppose it’s just how fast you pick a direction to run to. I think the challenge was again on the healers since they could not get mana back with the crystal pools.

One Light in the Darkness (10 player)

Had not seen this guy for a good while so it was somewhat about re-learning the encounter again. But then again… you do not have to do anything special. Do what you’d do on normal mode anyway, just do it better.

All in all it was really fun experience doing all these achievements. Now when they are done we’ve had couple tries on Algalon and so far.. well. It does not feel impossible but it needs some work. I’ll be sure to at least tweet about it if something fancy happens.

Thanks for everyone who participated in doing this stuff, including you special guest stars who filled in few times.

Here we go again. Last Sunday Twilight Hope took down Anub’arak and that concludes the normal ToC 25 for us. It was a little confusing with tactics at first but once we figured out proper way of dividing DPS between Anub’arak himself and the adds it went down rather smoothly. What comes to the encounter itself I really enjoyed it. It’s not complex at all once you figure out what you’re suppose to do but the fun factor is there.

Was anyone else annoyed how they treated Anub’arak in the early Wrath appearance? Being the end boss off a 5man was such a waste for a badass character like him. Personally I was really upset about that. He deserved more and thank you Blizzard for giving him that.

Last time I posted about wrapping up a raid instance I wrote a short guide-ish-thingy for Yogg-Saron. So let’s do that for this too. And again: this isn’t covering everything you must or must not do, just the things what only balance druid does the way they do.

Phase 1: Anub’arak and the Nerubian Burrowers

Before the Burrowers spawn there’s nothing special to do but when they do there’s two ways you can go: kill them or ignore them. First we tried ignoring them until phase 2 but that didn’t really work out – the debuff stacked way too high on tanks. So instead we went halfway there; kill the first two that spawn, go back to the boss and leave the other two spawning later for phase 2.

One thing I tried here was saving treants until Burrowers come and help down the first two faster but of course it didn’t work. Even if you damage the add and click the treants right on top of it they’ll just dash right off to Anub’arak. Sigh.. so just use them on Anub right at the start.

Phase 2: All adds must die

Once Anub’arak submerges it’s time to really start with killing adds. The small scarabs do not start spawning right away so you got time to help melee with the remaining two Burrowers. However when the scarabs do start spawning switch to them immediately. Look for one that has the most range between you and it so you get as much DPS time as possible on it before it reaches you. If it seems it’s not going to die before reaching you kite it into frost. After the first add I tried to pick ones that had got to melee range of some unlucky player and tried to kill them asap before the debuff gets a chance to stack very high.

After this it’s phase 1 again – finish off whatever adds are left from phase 2 before going back to phase 1 strategy. First and second phase will rotate until you get Anub’arak to 30%.

Phase 3: The final push

Time to finish the boss. Only thing you have to do is give it your damnest DPS.

And the loot goes to…

Chestguard of Flowing Elements – grats Kharn!
Maiden’s Favor – grats Borham!
Signet of the Traitor King – grats Andor!
Trophy of the Crusade – grats Brkomir!
Pattern: Bracers of Swift Death – grats Wacka!
Leggings of the Deepening Void – grats guild bank!
Crusader Orb – another for the bank!

Actually, I could briefly go trough what I do in the three phases. Not a guide but.. guide-ish? Will not go trough everything though (dodge lasers, watch your sanity and brainlink…) just the things for a balance druid.

Obviously how you deal with these depends on what kind of strategy your guild uses. We don’t tank guardians right at Sara unless the clouds are in optimal position. So, there needs to be a dps off time. I’ve noticed stopping at ~300k is good and I do not use dots at all. Often the mobs just barely make it to Sara before blowing off so.. better to ease down and lose some dps than have one detonate prematurely.

Phase 2: Tentacles

First of all as ranged your priorities are the Crushers – if those are all down then Corruptors. What comes to Constrictors we use melee to take down those. Nothing much to Crushers, use your standard rotation. I like to pop Starfall whenever there is few any type of tentacles on range to add some dps. And while you’re running to a new Crusher, use Insect Swarm on the tentacles you go past. This should give you some nice 4 piece tier 8 procs. Now I don’t personally have it yet but I’d assume it would be helpful. Treants aren’t so handy in here but they can do some work too. On Crushers they would get annihilated instantly but instead I like to pop them on Constrictors to help freeing people from them and then just continue with the Crushers.

Phase 3: Immortal Guardians

We use the ranged dps to kill guardians and melee focus on boss. First finish whatever tentacles there might be left (should not be many) and go stand in front of him and face away. I did not move or turn from my initial position at all on whole phase and I found it kinda funny how crazy angles you can still shoot the targets, even if it seems you’re not directly facing them. Keep very close eye on your main assist and be ready to swap target when she does. What comes to spell rotation forget Fearie Fire – mobs die way too quickly. Start with the dots, and what is so great about them is that the time it takes you to apply them gives tank precious time to get more steady aggro. No Starfall here either, I bet I would have just aggroed a freshly spawn guardian and got myself killed. Treants however are good to use on Yogg.

That’s about it I think. P3 doesn’t sound so hectic when I explain it like that but man… the amount of guardians spawning and the speed you have to swap to a new again and again was just plain nuts. In addition to that I had no idea at what % the boss was. Nobody on the main tank list was targeting him. So I just kept going with guardians and more guardians for a time what felt like 15min or something. Then the achievements popped on screen and I just kind of freezed for a moment because I had no idea it was coming. In my previous post I talked about encounter difficulty. Yogg-Saron was pretty much what I’d expect all encounters to be.

Very nice fight. Actually I think this is my new favorite encounter in Ulduar (sorry Mimiron). And very nicely done guildies, we rocked that night. Also I would like to give thumbs up to our guild master Aremag who passed his spot to another melee on this raid. You’re a great guy. /hugs

Ah yeah.. loot!

Fragment of Val’anyr – Grats Gynter!
Mantle of the Wayward Conqueror – Grats Moredan!
Mantle of the Wayward Protector – Grats Kharn!
Chestguard of the Fallen God – Grats Brutuzze!
Godbane Signet – Grats Wacka!

To conclude this post I would like to mention few other things. My website host has had some problems so the site has been down pretty much whole yesterday and as I am writing this it still keeps going up and down. Hopefully it will be sorted soon.

In other news the Epic Dolls podcast had a new episode released earlier this week and I really recommend everyone to check it out. Great stuff about gaming relationships and super hilarious are you a casual player part that everyone should hear. Even if you’ve never listened podcasts before I highly recommend checking it out.

I had a little something else planned for todays post but thanks to Yogg kill it got moved. So stay tuned for next time for a little word about history of playing a balance druid.