Holy Lag Batman!
Welp I must apologize for being so long since I blogged last. It's been a pretty intense raiding experience the last few weeks with raiding 25-man content 3 nights a week and then doing 10-man content another 3 days a week, its just flat out been busy.
Our ten man instances have been pretty smooth well except for the Lag.
our twenty five man instances have been pretty smooth well except for the..you guessed it Lag.
Blizzards pretty much taking the status quid pro quo on the current raid lag but the majority of raiders have some theories.
It appears that certain script heavy encounters like four horsemen and Thaddius in 25 mans especially are huge lag whores. Our 25- man team has been stuck on Thaddius for two weeks now because every time we get into attempt him we experience 3-5 second lag time on all spells and abilities and even on debuffs so we end up wiping each other out with the stupid mech like game mechanics.
Consensus is that this lag is server side, since many guilds have been trying these bosses without any add ons without any improvement in performance.
With so many complaining about the watered down content one must wonder when will it be the last straw for the most dedicated of raiders?
Okay well I obviously at this point have not healed through this fight with mini-bosses up when I do, I will include details about that.
For this fight you generally are going to have 2 tanks. Neither tank takes a whole hell of a lot of damage if everything goes right but its quite possible to have some good burst damage if one or both tanks get's hit by the lava wall which should never happen but can.
We've generally ran this instance with 3 healers in 10 man and we had 7-8 on 25 man.
We assigned 1 healer to the MT and 1 to the OT for 10 man, with the third healer playing raid healer + backup tank healers. This fight can really call for some good old fashion cross healing, so don't let your healers get tunnel vision. Being that the instance is tuned down for ten man there can be times when the ae damage can be quite a bit to keep up with, with two tanks taking damage and only 1 raid healer.
With 25 man we assigned 1 priest and 1 paladin to each tank and a druid to hot them both up. The remaining healers raid healed. I do have to say the number of healers we brought to the 25 man without any mini-bosses up was overkill.
As far as trash is concerned its far more challenging to heal the trash in 10 man than 25 man. It doesn't seem to me that more orbs spawn from casters in 25 man so with more healers and more possible targets it wasnt very hard to keep everyone alive from the stacking beams.
Other then that I can't think of anything else important to mention except that for positioning during the boss fight. Id recommend positioning yourself half way between the two holes in the waves. That way you never have further to run one way or the other. Though by staying in the hole form the right wall, you dont have to move when the right walls spawn. Its a matter of flavor I guess, but its a choice between always having to stop healing and move a little, or every few walls or sometimes all of them having to stop for a longer time to move further.
For this fight you generally are going to have 2 tanks. Neither tank takes a whole hell of a lot of damage if everything goes right but its quite possible to have some good burst damage if one or both tanks get's hit by the lava wall which should never happen but can.
We've generally ran this instance with 3 healers in 10 man and we had 7-8 on 25 man.
We assigned 1 healer to the MT and 1 to the OT for 10 man, with the third healer playing raid healer + backup tank healers. This fight can really call for some good old fashion cross healing, so don't let your healers get tunnel vision. Being that the instance is tuned down for ten man there can be times when the ae damage can be quite a bit to keep up with, with two tanks taking damage and only 1 raid healer.
With 25 man we assigned 1 priest and 1 paladin to each tank and a druid to hot them both up. The remaining healers raid healed. I do have to say the number of healers we brought to the 25 man without any mini-bosses up was overkill.
As far as trash is concerned its far more challenging to heal the trash in 10 man than 25 man. It doesn't seem to me that more orbs spawn from casters in 25 man so with more healers and more possible targets it wasnt very hard to keep everyone alive from the stacking beams.
Other then that I can't think of anything else important to mention except that for positioning during the boss fight. Id recommend positioning yourself half way between the two holes in the waves. That way you never have further to run one way or the other. Though by staying in the hole form the right wall, you dont have to move when the right walls spawn. Its a matter of flavor I guess, but its a choice between always having to stop healing and move a little, or every few walls or sometimes all of them having to stop for a longer time to move further.
I have started to write this post several times this past week and in fairness waited to write this until after last nights 25-man raid for our guild. It was our first time coming together since Burning Crusades and we had alot of new faces as well as probably 30% of our players playing new mains, at least for our raiding scene.
First off getting into raiding in WotLK is quickly becoming a joke and something that blizzard better have an answer for with the release of 3.1 patch.
For the most part the large majority of our raid last night had never been inside Naxx in the past so had no idea what to expect. Roughly 10 of our 24 raiders we took have cleared non-heroic Naxx already. On their second week of raiding Naxx I might add.
We started our second ten man team which I was part of this past Tuesday. We didn't even get to try a boss tuesday because once we cleared the minibosses around Saltharion the zone locked up and we had to wait two hours for a GM to come log us out of the game and port us out of the zone. Those of us whom DCed manually were never able to log back into those toons until the GM kicked them out of the sanctum.
Anyways day 2 we went back with a full 10 man. We had Warrior and Feral Druid tanks. Holy Priest, Resto Shaman, and Holy Paladin Healing. Elemental Shaman, Demo Warlock, Boomkin, Death Knight, and I can't remember what the other DPS was. Anyways...
We killed Satharion on our very first attempt ever for the group. This boss with all the mini-bosses down is cake. I am anxious to see how it goes with some up.
We flew over to the Naxx and we cleared the Spider Wing and up to including Gothik the Harvester in the Military Wing. We had a few wipes from getting usted to the strats but all and all there wasn't any real difficult challenge or gear check.
I can say this with confidence because 1 tank and all 3 healers for sure are fresh level 80s. I was barely breaking 1300 healing buffed on my shaman and the holy priest wasn't doing much better. We did have some great caster synergy going however.
I don't have any meters from that night to see how I did with my gear but I never had problems with my own perosnal assignment. The only real challenge for me was on Gothik where I was left to heal the Human side by myself while the other two healers healed dead side. I did get some help from the boomkin at one point but other then that the average damage was healable.
So onto our 25-man experience last night.
Blizzard what the hell is your problem?! I mean seriously - the trash was an utter joke. It felt like the trash was there for nothing other than a time sink and warlock soul shards. I never raided 40 man naxx but I will say that several folks in our guild who had kept commenting on how sad the trash made them feel. That it was rediculously easy compared to 40-man Naxx.
Now I can understand that this is an entry level dungeon so it should be easier than folks remember but do you remember Blizzards comments about not just waltzing through AEing trash?
Well with only a week of 10 man Naxx really under half our raiders belt we were AE pulling two sometimes three packs of trash at a time. It was that easy. In dungeon blues and quest rewards. The only time we had problems with this method was the trash in front of Grand Widow Faerlina. We pulled the last 3 packs at once and the entire raid just fell dead to a huge wall of purple shadowbolts as each of the casters did a shadow bolt volley sorta deal it was actually rather ammusing.
All in all it was a easy but fun night.
I managed to squeeze by as 4th out of 8 healers. The difference in EffHealing between me and #3 was less than .1% of healing done. The top two healers are from the group that has cleared naxx twice already in ten man and have been running heroics for two weeks already and their gear far surpasses the rest of ours by a long shot. They each did about twice as much effective healing as myself and the #3 healer. That just goes to show you that how quickly your gear jumps in quality from heroic drops and badge gear.
Welp I was going to include some healing breakdowns in here but this has gone rather long and I will make that it's own post!
First off getting into raiding in WotLK is quickly becoming a joke and something that blizzard better have an answer for with the release of 3.1 patch.
For the most part the large majority of our raid last night had never been inside Naxx in the past so had no idea what to expect. Roughly 10 of our 24 raiders we took have cleared non-heroic Naxx already. On their second week of raiding Naxx I might add.
We started our second ten man team which I was part of this past Tuesday. We didn't even get to try a boss tuesday because once we cleared the minibosses around Saltharion the zone locked up and we had to wait two hours for a GM to come log us out of the game and port us out of the zone. Those of us whom DCed manually were never able to log back into those toons until the GM kicked them out of the sanctum.
Anyways day 2 we went back with a full 10 man. We had Warrior and Feral Druid tanks. Holy Priest, Resto Shaman, and Holy Paladin Healing. Elemental Shaman, Demo Warlock, Boomkin, Death Knight, and I can't remember what the other DPS was. Anyways...
We killed Satharion on our very first attempt ever for the group. This boss with all the mini-bosses down is cake. I am anxious to see how it goes with some up.
We flew over to the Naxx and we cleared the Spider Wing and up to including Gothik the Harvester in the Military Wing. We had a few wipes from getting usted to the strats but all and all there wasn't any real difficult challenge or gear check.
I can say this with confidence because 1 tank and all 3 healers for sure are fresh level 80s. I was barely breaking 1300 healing buffed on my shaman and the holy priest wasn't doing much better. We did have some great caster synergy going however.
I don't have any meters from that night to see how I did with my gear but I never had problems with my own perosnal assignment. The only real challenge for me was on Gothik where I was left to heal the Human side by myself while the other two healers healed dead side. I did get some help from the boomkin at one point but other then that the average damage was healable.
So onto our 25-man experience last night.
Blizzard what the hell is your problem?! I mean seriously - the trash was an utter joke. It felt like the trash was there for nothing other than a time sink and warlock soul shards. I never raided 40 man naxx but I will say that several folks in our guild who had kept commenting on how sad the trash made them feel. That it was rediculously easy compared to 40-man Naxx.
Now I can understand that this is an entry level dungeon so it should be easier than folks remember but do you remember Blizzards comments about not just waltzing through AEing trash?
Well with only a week of 10 man Naxx really under half our raiders belt we were AE pulling two sometimes three packs of trash at a time. It was that easy. In dungeon blues and quest rewards. The only time we had problems with this method was the trash in front of Grand Widow Faerlina. We pulled the last 3 packs at once and the entire raid just fell dead to a huge wall of purple shadowbolts as each of the casters did a shadow bolt volley sorta deal it was actually rather ammusing.
All in all it was a easy but fun night.
I managed to squeeze by as 4th out of 8 healers. The difference in EffHealing between me and #3 was less than .1% of healing done. The top two healers are from the group that has cleared naxx twice already in ten man and have been running heroics for two weeks already and their gear far surpasses the rest of ours by a long shot. They each did about twice as much effective healing as myself and the #3 healer. That just goes to show you that how quickly your gear jumps in quality from heroic drops and badge gear.
Welp I was going to include some healing breakdowns in here but this has gone rather long and I will make that it's own post!
Here is a link to the lootrank I have been using for heroic and raid gear.
Resto Shaman Raid Gear
I am using the following rating system:
Intellect=4.29
CritRating=1.92
MetaSocket=59.1
Mp5=5.69
HasteRating=3.19
SpellPower=4.29
Which happens to be the exact same rating I am using ingame for Pawn.
Resto Shaman Raid Gear
I am using the following rating system:
Intellect=4.29
CritRating=1.92
MetaSocket=59.1
Mp5=5.69
HasteRating=3.19
SpellPower=4.29
Which happens to be the exact same rating I am using ingame for Pawn.
( Pawn: v1: "*Shaman healing": Intellect=4.29, RedSocket=28.6, CritRating=1.92, MetaSocket=59.1, YellowSocket=20, Mp5=5.69, HasteRating=3.19, BlueSocket=20.3, SpellPower=4.29 )