It’s Madness I tell you!

Deathwing, Madness of.

My guild has downed Madness of Deathwing (final boss) in 10 man normal mode this week.  We spent a total of about 4 hours wiping on this particular.  In comparison we spent close to 6 weeks wiping on Blackhorn, and about 5 hours on Spine.  Our group makeup made this fight very interesting.

Tanks:

Blood DK (wifey!)

Protection Paladin (Me)

Healers:

Holy Paladin

Holy Priest

Restoration Druid

DPS:

Retribution Paladin

Combat Rogue

Shadow Priest

Arcane Mage

Survival Hunter

 

Yes, you read that right.  We 2 tanked and 3 healed Madness of Deathwing.  Using a 2 tank/3 heal strategy and the dps makeup the best order to down the platforms in is… drum roll please!

 

LFR!

yes.  Ysera, Nozdormu, Alexstrasza, and then Kelecgos

This puts the onus on the dps for platform 4 to down the blistering tentacles in order to reach phase 2.  With our healing core most of the time the Elementium bolts on Alexstrasza and Kalecgos were manageable… in addition to both healer and tank raid cooldowns.

Gearing:

Now, to view this from the Protection Paladin Tank perspective you want, rather Need, your 4 piece set bonus.  The set bonus of Divine Guardian out to 70 yards AND cooldown of 2 minutes makes it very useful.  This mitigates a huge amount of the tick damage from both elementium bolts that land, as well as the 5% corrupted blood in phase 2.  This alone can spell the difference between the healers losing someone and downing the elementium bolt.

Tanking Order:

In our raid I took the first impale and the DK took the second impale on each platform.  A paladin can easily use Hand of Sacrifice on any other tank to help spread the damage out… for number crunchers out there you will take between 25K and 60K with the average being around 40K damage from Impale.  It also means the other tank has much more survivability, which becomes very important as you down the platforms faster and the tank cooldown timers become problematic.  In phase 2 the DK tank had the first Terror we killed and I had the second.  We probably should have switched that around as she would do better as a Dodge tank than I do as a crunchy tank.

Cooldown usage:

1. Ysera “green button”.  Use this cooldown for Impale on the first platform.  You can use it several times on that platform, but be sure to use it for the impale.

2. Ardent Defender + Divine Protection.  On platform 2 use this combination of cooldowns to survive the impale.  You have to give it an extra few seconds before Impale goes off so that both will pop.  I would recommend removing the Divine Protection glyph as Impale is physical damage.

3. Divine Protection + Guardian of Ancient Kings.  On platform 3 use this cool down to survive Impale.  This is almost a must since you will have the elementium bolt landing and the healers need to conserve mana.  Ardent Defender might be up, if it is… use it when the Bolt lands.    I would recommend removing the Divine Protection glyph as Impale is physical damage.

4. Divine Shield.  Use this on Platform 4. You take no damage and have no threat, since the other tank has taunted  the corruption it doesn’t matter if you have no threat.  Makes the healer job very easy for this one.

5. Phase 2.  Use 1 cooldown for the terror, wait til you have a couple of stacks or the terror is at 50%.  If possible you can use 2, but it depends on if you need the ysera button for shrapnel or not.

 

Mistakes of the past

Sometimes you know you are right and nothing else matters.  Other times you don’t know enough to know you are wrong.  In the last several months I’ve discovered that what I used to think was entirely wrong.  I didn’t know what was being done to two people who I considered friends.  In this case those two left WoW a year ago, I had understood it to be because of work, moving, and a bunch of life issues.  I now know that it was because I supported someone who was doing them a great disservice without knowing it.  The main problem I have now is… I don’t know how to track down these two as we have drifted apart for the last year.  I’m hoping that I can, through this blog post and retweets, contact them to say that I was wrong and that I’m sorry for what happened back then.  I owe them a lot for my successes back in WotLK and I want to make things right.

 

So, Vorastrix and Lynnaia, if you are lurking.  Let me know I want the chance to not only explain but apologize.

 

Raiding is srs bznz

There are at least 3 main types stereotypes of raiding, with tons of sub types.  So where do you fall in the spectrum?  read on to find out

1. Casual/Fun raiders.  This type of raider is more focused on social activities than on raiding.  When cracking a joke is more important than healing a tank, you have a place here.  Prolonged AFK’s with no warning and no explanation, also sometimes has a “gogogogo” attitude if they are a PVP’er.  This type of raider will usually be called “baddie” by other types of raiders.  Symptoms to watch for: excessive talking, random AFK’s/DC’s with no explanation, less than 7K dps at level 85 (if dps’er), less than 6K hps (if healer), less than 150K hp (if tank), lack of raid awareness, lack of care about any progression.

2. “Professional” raiders.  This type of raider will have a lot of fun… when the damage isn’t flying to NPC’s or bosses.  When the damage hits the fan, this raider buckles down and pushes as hard as they can.  Post mortem analysis is usually used with kid gloves in order to exhort other raiders to higher performance.  Performance will increase the longer this raider raids with the same group as each member “learns” the other members.

3. Hardcore raiders.  This is the GTFO/STFU raider.  If you can’t put out X amount, you GTFO and STFU.  Very little compassion or understanding is exhibited by real life issues.  If someone is being stupid you call them a moron/idiot and keep moving through the raids.  These raiders don’t need to run with other members of the raid to keep the same high level of performance.

Everyone will fall somewhere in the middle of two of the above.  So where do you fall?  For myself I find that the Professional level is about where I want to be, exhort your friends to higher levels of raiding and be exhorted by them in the same fashion.  When the damage flies, let your toon do the talking and beat down on the boss.  You gain more satisfaction from downing a boss after overcoming by struggle than you do by most other interactions in the raid.

Enter Sappy Title Here

Greetings world… here’s the sappy cliche “Place for my pally thoughts” post.  Basically this is a rumination (not needing to use the bushes!)  on being a paladin in all 3 spec’s and general gearing of early T12, late T11 (i.e. current normal mode content).

Test

Test 2

Hello world!

Hello World, Time to Live and Die… and Live again.