Raiding

All things related to instances and raids.

Team Deadeye Clears Heroic Nexus

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Hello again all you happy hunters! As I began gathering interest with this endeavor in my guild, we’ve formed a regular group of hunters and one gutsy healer. “Team Deadeye”, as we lovingly call ourselves, has made a few Heroic 5-man runs so far. Today we’ll be following our journey into the Nexus. It began simply enough, MD pulls of …

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Gear Score vs. Skill

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Night Elf HunterNames have been obliterated to protect the innocent. The subject we’re about to tackle is fraught with misconceptions, half-formed opinion and occasionally a self-satisfied, self-serving attitude that’s both completely unjustified and (in the worst cases) completely silly.

We’re talking gear score vs. skill. Here’s the typical trade post: “LFM 25 ONY MUST HAS MIN 2500 GEAR SCORE OR DON’T PST KTHXBAI”. Practitioners of the gear score philosophy know only numbers, and believe that given enough gear, any scrub can handle any sort of content. Much to the chagrin of the evident multitude of acolytes to this laughingly false idea, they’re wrong, and I’m going to use a couple of methods to illustrate this fact.

What we can learn from the NFL Draft.

I may lose some of you here, so I’ll keep this brief, but I’ve learned that using multiple types of examples to illustrate a point can be helpful.

Let’s quickly discuss 3 quarterbacks: Peyton Manning, Tom Brady and Ryan Leaf. You most likely have heard of the first 2, even if you’re not a big football fan, the last guy, maybe not so much.

Peyton Manning and Tom Brady are two of the better (if not the best) quarterbacks in the game today. Peyton Manning was drafted #1 in his draft class, no one else was picked ahead of him, he had the highest “gear score”. Tom Brady was picked #199 in his draft class, so 198 guys were picked ahead of him, his “gear score” was terribad. Ryan Leaf was picked #2, right after Peyton Manning, same draft class, they went 1 and 2. Ryan had an unbelievable gear score, and was almost picked ahead of Peyton.

Here’s where I make my (now lengthier than I would have liked) point: Tom Brady and Peyton Manning are two of the best, Ryan Leaf is out of football fighting addiction to painkillers, has been indicted for burglary and is basically of very little use to anyone. These guys were picked based strictly on their “gear score” coming out of college, and it shows that just because it looks like you have all the tools on paper, real world application of said tools can be a little more difficult to pull off.

Gear Score vs Skill

Okay, let’s move on quickly, that may have been a stretch for some of you, but think of it as broadening your horizons a bit, it builds character.

Let’s discuss an example from the last VoA 25 I PuG’d.

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Why didn’t I think of this..?!

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This is an excerpt from an e-mail I’d received from one of my site visitors, and probable future contributors, regarding the Deathbringer Saurfang encounter. …I got invited to a pug that a guildie was in on. Unfortunately, I was only invited on the last boss, but regardless we put him down with a very unique strat. Hopefully it was allowed. …

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ICC: Week One

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As you may have learned from my previous post, my guild has nearly cleared the first wing of Icecrown Citadel 10 man. Our 25 man did manage to drop Lord Marrowgar this past Thursday, but struggled on Lady Deathbringer. Not enough people were clear on their roles, which is a sure fire ingredient for fail when dealing with the amount of adds in the 25 man encounter.

Anyway, I figured I’d offer up a brief recap of the 10 man versions, along with a few tips from a Hunter’s perspective. We’ve completed 3/4 of the encounters and have gotten pretty close to dropping Deathbringer. That’s a difficult fight, but I feel we’ve got a good shot at getting him before the raid reset. We shall see.

Lord Marrowgar

As a Hunter, this fight isn’t all that tough as long as you pay attention to these things:

  • Get out of the path of Coldflame – Lord Marrowgar sends out a Coldflame which travels towards a random person in the raid. It can be easily avoided if you’re paying attention, as it moves moves fairly slow. 18K frost damage over 3 seconds if it gets you, so be mindful.
  • Call out and DPS down the Bone Spikes – Marrowgar will hurl a spike at a random player, which will then cause all players between the intended target and Marrowgar to be stuck in the Bone Spike Graveyard. These Bone Spikes must be dealt with immediately. Getting the Bone Spikes down ASAP is the most important part of this encounter. The Bone Spike itself causes an instant 9K damage when the player is impaled, followed by additional damage equal to 10% of the player’s remaining health for 10 seconds. What makes the Bone Spikes especially dangerous is the fact that the affected player is unable to move, which makes them a sitting duck for Cold Flame. He’ll emote just before tossing down the Bone Spikes, so be looking for them. Ideally, the range should be spread out to one side of him so that anyone impaled can be reached easily. If people start running around all fancy crazy trying to avoid Coldflame and then get impaled on a Bone Spike a good distance from the DPS & heals, then it causes problems.
    • It’s not too hard for us Hunters to see the spikes as they appear, but if you find you’re not getting to them quick enough, spamming tab target or creating a /target Bone Spike macro could come in handy. It’s also important to let your raid know if you’re impaled. If you’re not on vent, then a macro letting the group know: >>> [YOURNAME] IS GETTING BONED <<<, can be clutch. 😉
  • Avoid Bone Storm – Throughout the fight Marrowgar will go into a 20 second Whirlwind type attack, then charge random players. After attacking them for a few seconds, he’ll go after another player, damaging everything in his path. Bone Storm by itself isn’t lethal (only does 6K over 2 seconds), but if you happen to get hit by a Coldflame followed by Bone Storm, then you may have issues. If you do happen to get caught in a Bone Storm, then Deterrence will help out here.
  • Apply Misdirection following Bone Storm – Bone Storm resets Marrowgar’s aggro table, so it’s imperative that the tanks pick up threat once it’s over. If not, he’s likely to target a healer or DPS and send them to the GY. Stop DPS before the timer runs out and then cast a Misdirection and resume DeePS.
  • Rinse and repeat ’til he’s dead.
  • Celebrate and distribute loots.

Lord Marrowgar

Lady Deathwhisper

The key here is making it to the second phase. The second phase is pretty much a DPS race. If you can make it past the first phase, it’s relatively smooth sailing the rest of the way provided you have the firepower.

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