Of all the things that gets me jazzed about World of Warcraft I think one of the most fun things to do is to create a new character. The feeling of making a new avatar, coloring the hair, choosing the facial features etc – all sorta make my bear heart warm n fuzzy inside. True, there aren’t many options so chances are you’ll end up looking like Butters standing next to Cartman sometimes, but the one defining convention of any RP game is the name you choose.
We’ve all seen and chuckled, or grimaced, at the names of characters running around capitol cities. I’ve seen some downright offensive names and have promptly reported such. I refer to those specifically racist or sexist in nature. I’m not a person who goes about telling people their business but I was taught to stand up against injustice and intolerance so when I see someone running around with a moniker that would make my old platoon sergeant wince, I am not shy about calling in the ban hammers from the GMs.
But that simply illustrates the less inventive or less creative side of the game. I’ve seen innocuous, forgettable names that spark no interest and often I wonder why didn’t they spend a few minutes racking their brains, or maybe hunting down some good references online before choosing Pallytankie as a name?
Before I launch into my ideas on where to get ideas, I’ve got to say that I’m more or less guilty of the offense of innocuousness in naming my toon. Agro isn’t very creative and while I do enjoy the name recognition, I wish I’d spent as much time as I had on my horde-side druid Ursal. But for all that Agro is a great name recognition tool – a lot of other people seem to think so too cause there’s at least one guy named Agro on most of the servers I checked on Armory.
Ursal is a common reference in the historical record. It refers back to many ancient civilizations’ deities – but I liked it because it seemed somewhat common in English – translating roughly into Bear from the Latin “Ursa.” English is based on Latin and we still use a great many Latin words in everyday language.
I often use dead languages to name my characters, or after the deities of dead civilizations – don’t use names from modern deities since you can get into trouble using some of them. I would imagine Native Americans won’t look too highly on anyone usurping the names of sacred lore or rituals for a game. You can argue all you want about freedom of speech et al ad nauseum, but it doesn’t change the fact that this is a game and if you do something intentionally to annoy someone then you’re really only detracting from your fun playing the game – Old Goblin saying, don’t borrow trouble, it’s always paid with compounded interest.
But you can find numerous references on ancient languages or peoples whose everyday common words can fit the bill of needs. The Aether Rays in Blade’s Edge mountains are named for Aether, ether, æther – Greek, roughly meaning or referring to a fifth element in alchemy, that which we now call “space” or “heaven,” once thought to be the medium through which light moved rather than simply a vacuum.
There are common references in the game to such things. All are taken from ancient history or languages or even proper names for long-dead people. Uther the Lightbringer … sorta sounds a bit like the Arthurian legend doesn’t it? Possibly loosely coupled with Judeo-Christian roots as well but you get the idea. Writers often borrow from such sources for inspiration.
When making a new character I often try to imagine a bit of a back story – it’s the RP in me I think that does this. I don’t normally RP when playing the game, but I do often think of this while I’m playing. What would Agro the Bear do when confronted by superior odds defending the body of a wounded comrade, while engaged in exploring the halls of an ancient castle tower, rife with deadly enemies? Why, attack of course! As if Agro had ever run from a fight … pfft.
What would Paladin Defender Thorney, so named because his bleary-eyed father ran smack into a thorn bush when rushing to summon the mid-wife for Thorn’s birth, do upon being confronted by 3 of the evil Horde, after flagging himself blessing a fellow of the Alliance? Stun, Bless, Judge, Consecrate and swing, until they or he dropped. It’s not so hard to do really, the imagination part I mean. (3:1 odds against the horde can be a bit of a pain). Imagination is what you want it to be.
So the next time you roll, take a minute to think of what you’d like people to see. I’ve seen some rather silly ones that really don’t make sense to me, a night elf who RPs as a paladin, uhm… might wanna stick to stuff you can actually do there bud… sorta helps to stay within the confines of the game. But hey – if you wanna go nuts and use the crayons totally outside the lines that’s the great thing about WoW, I don’t have to listen to ya.
If you’re looking for some good reference material then you could start by looking for lists of words in foreign or dead languages. Greek and Latin are great for starters, though you may not wish to stop there. I also read though old histories sometimes – you can find short, down and dirty descriptions on Wikipedia, not the most accurate of encyclopedia reference tools but it doesn’t matter too much when you’re not writing a thesis.
Biblical references work too – though I generally stick to historical names. I used Biblical names for my hunter’s pets. Ancient Egyptian, Eastern or European cultures all have proper nouns or names you can use, the limit is your gut instinct and the amount of effort you wanna put into it.
Mar 20, 2008
The Name of the Toon
Legacy Raids and why we do them
Legacy Raid refers to the old level 60, 40-man raids that were the rage before Burning Crusade hit the shelves. Things like Molten Core, Blackwing Lair, Onyxia, AQ20/40 and Naxx. You may or may not be surprised to learn that those raids are still quite challenging, even if you bring in your level 70 buddies.
The reason is that raiding at any level requires coordination, leadership, listening and no small amount of individual player knowledge regarding their class and abilities and how to use them in conjunction with others.
Let’s take Molten Core for example. It’s a relatively easy raid, can be run comfortably in a couple of hours now- pre-BC raid guilds were doing this in 5-8 hours after weeks of working at it. But I’ve seen uncoordinated groups of level 70s wipe REPEATEDLY on these due to inattention and lack of skill.
I never raided pre-BC. I was on the game for about a year before the expansion hit but I was in a guild that wasn’t into raiding and consequently, I didn’t’. But when Kara came out and I capped my second toon, I felt the need to find something new. So while stealthing the LFG channel one Sat night I ran across a group of pre-BCers who were going to run Molten Core. I grabbed my 70 and headed for Searing Gorge. The rest is history. It was so much fun I specifically leveled a paladin to 55 so I could join that raid and get my Tier 1 set, aka my Bananadin set.
But why do it? I mean Tier 1 gear may be nice for a 55 but for a 70? Why bother? Well, I guess it goes back to a combination of things. Nostalgia is def part of it, RP, and training new raiders is always a good thing – remember there are lots of folks out there who don’t know how to. Also, you find good people from small guilds who want to learn and can be an asset to the ‘real raids’ later on. So it’s sort of a recruitment tool as well.
But I just figured something else out too. Some of the best content written for this game has roots deep within those legacy raids. Ultra-long quest chains that can only be accomplished through the nitpicky world of repeat raids in places like BWL or AQ40. Boring? Perhaps to some, but the essence of getting the full value of the money you spent on this game is getting into the details of what came before Karazhan and ZA – it not only helps you flesh out the lore, it gives you some unique content that most people don’t get to do, and frankly, most will never see.
These quest chains can take months to complete but the end result is fun – world events involving massive raids – up to 100 players defending a village from invasion, while downing a massive dragon and fighting alongside legendary NPCs. Don’t think that happens? We did that last weekend on Feathermoon.
I main tanked a giant shark - 100ft long in the waters off Azshara. I got to take on a wicked Satyr in Duskwood of all places. And if you think it was easy, well, to a degree it was, but if anyone died the Twilight Corrupter gained LEVELS, not hp or powers but LEVELS. I’ve read that bad attempts resulted in a level 90 bad guy – yeah – 90.
There are others too – rewards for these can be Legendary items – you know, the Orange ones. Who cares if it’s for a level 60 player – it still looks cool as hell and will turn heads no matter where you go. Even the top raid guilds won’t have many people who have those items.
So now you have bragging rights. And if you find a group running those instances you can usually bring your level 60. Getting epics for a level 60 is pretty cool. Sure the outlands gear is better suited to leveling – in most cases, but don’t sell the tier items short. If you can ever get into Naxx before they pull it the tier 3 items can be used all the way to Kara, yeah they’re that good.
So next time you’re wandering around Feathermoon on a Saturday night, right about 6:30 or so, pop into the LFG channel and see if we’re hiring for the night. Anyone can come - based on the raid we’re doing. MC is 55+, BWL and AQ tends to 60+. If there is an attunement requirement we often run that for folks that need it before the raid starts.
Look for Agro, Firac, Teur, Chirax or Thorney. I won’t give out the raid leader’s name ‘cause he’s a high-end raider who spends a lot of time in Hyjal and BT – I’m sure he’d appreciate the enthusiasm but would rather I or one of my counterparts dealt with the details.
Welcome Back
The last few weeks have been crappy in terms of demands on my time. I've been able to get on WoW a few times but so much has happened that I'm barely on - just keeping up my commitments.
Which brings me to a retroactive announcement. I pulled out of my Friday Kara group. There was a whole lotta drama behind that one but for the most part it's history. A quick recap should suffice. I was on the verge of pulling out, sorta hemming and hawing over it when I got into the last run I did with them 3 weeks ago.
During the run our main tank was continuing her BS attitude, publicly calling out mistakes, deriding people and generally being rude as hell. Some of the other raid members were as annoyed with her as I was and a few started answering back. Things quickly spiraled out of control. I'd had a long day, hadn't really wanted to spend the night in a raid that wasn't fun and was tired - yes you can guess where this is going.
This old bear Laid Down the Paw. That's right. Papa Bear got up on his hind legs and knocked the entire raid on its ass, threatened to call the raid right then and there if that nonsense continued and further called out ACTIONS (not people but those doing the actions knew what I meant) that were reprehensible (ya I used that word too - seriously, don't piss off a pissy old bear).
I ended by saying that this was nonsense and that they could find themselves a new OT beacuse I didn't feel like wasting a Friday night I could be spending with my son.
Things sorta got quiet after that. A few of the people privately messaged me with /cheer and a few others I haven't spoken to since. But that was the catalyst for me. I contacted the rest of the officers the following Monday and told them I was done. I didn't have time for juevenile antics and I needed more time to myself anyway. Since then the raid has died. They tried to pug a few people in - 7 last I heard - but their issues with the MT caused that to end in a mess.
I'm happily raiding with my hunter's group - we're moving into ZA tonight for a more serious run than we've done previously. They really want me for Sat nights but I can't commit more than every other week. I've taken to spending every other weekend with my little one exclusively now so that sorta hurts them, but I was always upfront that Sat nights were too difficult for me to do much more than AH or farm mats.
Oh, I manage to get into a legacy raid as a pug - we run them every weekend, but more often than not I end up putting someone on follow for part of the run since my little one will wake up and needs his papa for a bit. Gruuls and Mags would be really nice- but I just can't give up daddy time.
Which brings me to another reason I've been absent - daddy time plus family time. We lost a grandpa recently - sadly we'd seen it coming for a while (inoperable cancer) but still, one needs to take time to care for the things and people that need caring for so WoW definitely took a back seat.
And one other fun thing - I hate my job. Okay, I know I'm in the club now, it's called Everybody and we all meet at the bar on Tuesdays, but I really hate my job mostly because of my inept boss. So I've been spending more time looking for a replacement (job not boss.. well.. boss too I suppose).
But I've set goals and am working on them so I feel that with not raiding as a bear, and with getting my family stuff taken care of I'm ready to get back into playing a bit more.
See you out there! Look for my Paladin Thorney - lvl 62 on Feathermoon!
Pally tanking is serious bidness and man is it fun!
Mar 4, 2008
Well howdy all, Life's been a bit nutso lately so I've taken a short break from posting on a regular basis. It's the standard fare, work, family etc. But I owe you all a continuation on Karazhan and I haven't forgotten, I just haven't had time to write it lately. In fact, things have gotten so tight on time lately that I've given up my Friday night raid in order to spend more time in the real world. So it shouldn't be much longer before I get the next few bosses up here. One other thing that may interest you is that I've started my journey to Zul'Aman on my hunter, and have even gotten a few invites as a bear. So dear readers, look forward to a run down of those bosses in the weeks to come!
Feb 28, 2008
hard to post now
Work and life caught up with me about 10 days ago - I'll get back to updating when I figure out what that big yellow thing in the sky is doing there and why I only see it for a few minutes in the morning.
Type rest of the post here
Feb 12, 2008
Kara - Chess Event
Last time I blogged a bit about Kara bosses I touched on the Chess Event and I mentioned I’d cover the that and perhaps Prince Malchezzar. Well here ya go.
Chess is easy peasy. After you leave the Shade’s room you go down the ramp then up to the left. Your locks need to pop Detect Invis on everyone (locks, get in the habit of doing so without being asked – you’ll find it’s a huge time saver) and your tank will mark up the first of two, 4-mob pulls. These are ghosts, without DI you’ll risk losing LOS on them in the middle of combat unless they are hitting you.
Clear these mobs, then the ones that follow them – pick up the books lying around and move on up the next ramp at the far end of the room. More ghosts here, and once cleared you’re gonna see a new mob – they look like the dudes up in Netherstorm and they are linked to Netherspite, who is actually very close to you now.
These guys can be taken one at a time – there aren’t too many here and they have an agil debuff, but they go down easy enough.
Moving through this room and down the right side ramp (up the left side one leads to Nether) and you’ll have one final room to clear before heading down into a room with a repair guy. You need friendly rep with the Violet Eye to use him, and he also sells reagents – so get em while you can!
After topping off you go through the double doors and down a small ramp into the Gamesman’s Hall – where you see a large chess board and two sets of chess pieces – horde and alliance.
Your side is whatever faction you are aligned with – makes sense eh? Since I’m an alliance player I head to the right side and pick a piece to stand behind. You get the option here of Elemental (rook), Horse (knight) Healer (bishop), Mage (queen), King Lane (King) or one of the pawns. The pieces move as one would expect with some slight cheating as compared to real chess. Once someone talks to the King all players can then talk to their piece and you ‘enter’ them as a player. This means you are now controlling a chess piece on the board and you have a ‘pet bar’ your action bar icons should now reflect a few new choices (check the lower left side of the screen where your attack button and your hot bar items 1-4 are located).
Knights can move I think 3 spaces, everything else is limited to 1 at a time. You’ll want someone to move the pawn in front of the king so he can get out on the board – everyone else should be able to make their own way.The way to win is to kill the king on the opposing team, some folks try to take down the casters or healers first – I’ve done both and have never lost at chess. Seriously, if you lose at chess then you need to rework your strategy because it’s simply the easiest epics you’ll ever get.
Once you win DO NOT, under any circumstances, talk to anyone in the room – not Medivh or the chess pieces. If you do you’ll place a silence debuff on the raid that lasts a very long time. You can let your raid leader or loot master open the chest at the end of the hall, let them dish the goods then everyone takes a turn opening it for their badges – Free Lootz.
Once done gather on the center of the chess board. I’ll take you up to Prince then we’ll halt for the day – but in reality – you’d want to drive on to Prince and clear that fight, if you can.
At the far end of the hall is a double stair similar to the one you entered through, there are a total of 5 mobs in there, have your MT pull the single pat back to the board – you all DPS him down – MT and OT get the next two, same drill, then you all move on up and into the room they were in to pull the last two from what should be the right side, as you entered the room.
Once cleared there’s a spiral stairs leading up – your choice here – the raid goes all the way up, hugging the inside of the stairs to avoid the hidden mob that’s near the door on one of the landings OR
To be completely safe you can have your tank run up the stairs a bit and get that mob and bring him all the way down into the main room so you can work with some space.
If you elected to pull the odd add, you can stand at the top of the stairs and let your tank take the guy at the very top while you do stand-off attacks, or you can have the tank take him in the top central room and the raid can bum-rush him. Your call, if you didn’t kill the extra add then you have to bring the entire raid into the top room or you’ll pull the loner from below.
Once they are down/bypassed go out the next hall and stop by the door. Your opponent is now Prince Malchezzar – and he’s tied with Nightbane as the hardest boss in Kara.
Cogitations on Cat Gear/Stats for Kara
One of the readers of this blog posited a question for me regarding my interpretation of the table I posted on Karazhan minimum requirements. He asked why I didn’t post a set of stats for feral kitty and since I’ve seen this question a few times I thought I’d write up a formal post in lieu of replying directly in the comments.
There are a number of good items you can get for feral cats and I think when I see this question posed, most people tend to answer it in terms of what gear to get, not what stats you should have. To that end I’ll post a couple of links I ran across from the forums, but later on I’m going to digress deeply into my thoughts on cat gear.
Here are a couple of links I’ve found that can perhaps help out Link 1 & Link 2 .
I’ve read 2.2k AP with 30% Crit is a good target starting place for cats. The basic gear choices for kitty are (one bear’s opinion here) – epic crafted chest from LW, hourglass trinket from BM, Abacus trinket from Arc, The clefthoof hide leggings, the elekk leggings or the x-52 pilot leggings from a quest in Netherstorm, the staff from Bot regular OR the Staff of Beasts from Nagrand, which is easier to get. Some folks like the hammer from PVP better than the staff Illhoof drops – but I hate PVP. I only did it to get my bear shoulders. The rogue gloves from Shattered Halls, Helm of the Claw was my DPS hat for a while (with the +12 agil meta), any decent DPS leather bracers – any of the nice DPS capes – there are several in the dungeon sets. I think I had cloak of the inciter but that wasn’t highly recommended for cats.
Mmm, If you don’t want to waste a lot of time getting gear – get the assassination set – rogue dungeon set 3a. That’s not a bad set to start with you could prob get one in a week or two. Other people will wax philosophically on the virtues of various gearing choices as a start, but I was always more focused on the tanking aspects. I gambled on picking up kitty gear as I went along, and I did.
My Digression
The KZ table I published was based on one I found on TenTonHammer, I freely admit I absconded with their table and I even noted why, because I was annoyed that I couldn’t deep link you directly to it, which in my opinion made their version all but useless – since it was hard to tell people how to find it, Go to this site, search for these words, click the third link, sacrifice a small mammal at the dark of the moon … BAH!
In all fairness I’ve even updated their chart, added color to make it easier to read and a few tweaks of my own and have since altered it based on suggestions from readers, friends and knowledgeable guild mates.
The KZ minimums table is lacking in two notable areas, Survival Hunters and Feral Kitties. I think there’s a reason for the lack of each. I know the survival hunter is a neat spec, you get exposed weakness which is a really nice boss debuff, and you get a solid trap option for CC, but in my experience, the overall consistent DPS output for BM hunters is more desirable than better traps. I know very little of MM, other than it is still a viable spec for KZ.
For feral cats, most of the time I’m in Kara, even when in cat form, I tend to stay in my tanking gear. The reason for this is that I can easily pick up a mob if the tank gets in trouble or if someone decides to pew pew the wrong target by accident. This sort of thing happens a lot to new groups – hell it happens a lot to me and both the KZ groups I run with are experienced raids.
I think the reason it's not on this chart is that you're not going to get into Kara as a kitty - you're going to go as a bear, who happens to have a cat set. A limited point of view to be sure, but perhaps the original was written by someone who wasn't into cats. However, we can correct this through a few modifications to our chart. (ohhhh, my first use of the Royal 'We')
A feral’s strength is “versatility” – it's hard to replace a rogue or lock that knows the job and does it well, but you are perhaps the most versatile class in the game. So yes, I think it's a vaild point to raise and I should make some changes.
But let’s get back to the issue of stats – as I‘ve said, I’ve read 2.2k AP with 30% Crit is the target to start. I don’t know about health pools but I’m guessing if you get the other two, the health pool your left with will be on the order of a geared pre-kara rogue. If anyone has solid info lemme know and I'll tweak it.
From what I’ve seen you’re looking to make your cat set similar to a rogues set – which only makes sense now doesn’t it? I mean, you’re a melee DPSer wearing leather … so sure, rogue sets are among your friends.
Mine wasn’t even close to that when I started, but my tank set was the best a raider could start with – and I had all the right gems and enchants. Both sets improved drastically since I was picking up both cat and bear gear as I went through the first month. I had to wait (and you may have to as well) on some of the kitty gear because our rogue got dibs on DPS leathers. Perhaps this explains the shortcomings on the chart - I was able to run kara in bear gear - almost all the time, perhaps the authors did as well, but that's still no excuse for not doing better.
We’ve all seen a lot of people with narrow minds in this game. So it will be no surprise if someone comes along and trashes my opinion, but I’d like to point out that this is simply that – my opinion. And in “My Opinion” there is no “set in stone” answer to the choice of gear/stats, only a set of guidelines and some general knowledge you can use to improve yourself.
Raiding is more about knowing your class and spec well than it is about what your gear will allow you to do. Any good raider will tell you that good raiders can make up for shortcomings in gear through skill and spec choices – at least until the gear they need drops.
I hope that helps.
Feb 11, 2008
Weekend Raider – Kara, the Shade
Well, it turns out I ended up doing a Kara raid this weekend on my bear, though not with my regular group since I was busy with my son during our regular raid. I managed to pick up a couple of items – new cat shoes, belt from badges etc, which was nice because it means no more green items. (yes you can raid KZ with one or two green items depending on what they are – bears get Manimal’s Belt as a quest reward that should last them until they get enough badges of justice to replace it or run heroic Ramparts for the belt off the last guy.)
But, the real winner this weekend was my hunter. We hit Kara last night and I was practically falling asleep. My little boy spent the weekend running around my house getting into absolutely everything so I was somewhat drained by the time I got back from dropping him off at his mom’s.
But I pressed on, by this time our fights are easy because our gear lets us plow through boss after boss. We soon found ourselves outside Netherspite’s hall. Nether is the only boss in the place that hadn’t fallen to us yet. It took several tries to get everyone in their groove, but we managed to get him down after several attempts. And low and behold what should drop but hunter pants – literally 2/3 of the bosses dropped something I could use or needed, including my T4 helm. That’s going to really make a huge difference when it comes to next week’s run. Now I need to spend some time making money so I can afford to gem those out nicely. If only work would cooperate.
Last time we talked I owed you a run down on the Shade of Aran. You can find a good explanation of the fight over at Wowwiki, which should give you the basics of Shade. I’ve mentioned this in the past but it’s worth repeating. Your Raid leader or assist needs Deadly Boss Mods and/or Bigwigs. Shade has a few different phases and both of those mods can help.
The other noteworthy item to know about the Shade is he likes taking down your weakest player – so your healers need to try to keep everyone topped off. Since it’s not an aggro fight it’s a sort of loosely controlled chaos the MT/OT are mostly DPS/Stunning through the fight. As mentioned, there are a number of phases Shade likes to pull, he alternates fire and frost bolts – which you need to constantly interrupt, as well as arcane missiles (which you don’t interrupt) and an arcance explosion which will one-shot you if you’re within it’s detonation radius. There’s a blizzard affect that roams the room, some elementals that come out at one point and the most significant of all – Flame Wreath. FW is a big pain because due to a number of factors, your graphics card, latency etc – you may not even see it. But if anyone in the raid moves, even so much as turns in place (even if you don’t think it’s affecting you) the entire raid will wipe. When it hits you’re stuck in place. You can auto attack, i.e. shoot, wands, bows, guns, melle can auto attack, casters auto cast, but you cannot change your position in any way or the raid will literally get burned. Melee – if you’re out on the edges, then you need to hold in position until it passes.
Other than that the only thing to clearly watch for is that his mana pool stays above his HP – if it goes under his HP at about 10% or so he’ll polymorph the raid (even those immune to it) and when you come out he’ll blast you. The only way to survive is to have everyone topped off and to use healthstones, pots, bandages etc. as soon as you come out of sheep form.
My last word on Shade is that it’s not that hard of a fight, but it is yet another gear check – your DPS really needs to shine here and your raid leader needs complete command and control throughout the fight. It’s not uncommon for well geared raids to wipe a few times on him, it’s definitely one of those encounters that you need to practice a few times before mastering it.
Next time: we’ll move on to the easiest fight of all – Chess and perhaps discuss the Prince event and the last bosses, Terestrian, Nether and the skeletal dragon, Nightbane.
Feb 7, 2008
Sic transit gloria mundi
It is a Latin phrase that means "Thus passes the glory of the world". It has been interpreted as "Fame is fleeting." One of the more famous versions exists at the end of the film "Patton" and was attributed to the famous WWII general.
"For over a thousand years Roman conquerors returning from the wars enjoyed the honor of triumph, a tumultuous parade. In the procession came trumpeteers, musicians and strange animals from conquered territories, together with carts laden with treasure and captured armaments. The conquerors rode in a triumphal chariot, the dazed prisoners walking in chains before him. Sometimes his children robed in white stood with him in the chariot or rode the trace horses. A slave stood behind the conqueror holding a golden crown and whispering in his ear a warning: that all glory is fleeting."- Gen. George C. Patton
Teacher says she’s just tired of tryin….
That’s one of my favorite Ralph Wiggum quotes. For today, rather than go into a boring diatribe on the Shade of Aran, I’d like to talk about my experiences with casual players and how I think they could fit in a raid structure.
Let’s start with my RP guild. I call it that for lack of a better term but they really aren’t into role playing, they are simply casual players who log in when they have time to kill – like every night. Most of the guild have 70 mains and at least one 70 alt – several of them are working toward their third and fourth 70. There are a variety of players among them, teenagers, college students, mothers, fathers from all walks of life, cops, professionals, students, retirees etc.
It’s an interesting mix and a fun one, but after a while I got bored with just leveling my alts. So I started raiding a bit, found I liked it, then found it was very time consuming and very expensive. So I got an idea, casual raiding? I've heard it can work if you're not into progression, if you like gear and seeing new sights but aren't worried about full clears. So I gave it some cogitation.
But taking the casual player and getting them to understand the needs of a raid isn’t so easy. I have a warrior friend who thought playing his warrior was the coolest thing – though he always said he found it really hard to level up.
I was amazed. I have a 51 fury warrior and I buzz through mobs my own level constantly. About the only breaks I ever take are to wrap a band-aid around my owies and drive on. Then I looked over his spec. UGH. He had points in all three talent trees, and nothing heavily invested in any of them. So I pulled a good DPS spec off the web and sent it to him, along with a list of gearing options for DPS warriors. A week later I checked him again and found he was protection – with all the wrong talents chosen. I mean, if a guy could pick every talent incorrectly – he did it. Instinctively I think. He said he wanted to try tanking and had read up on uncritability, but he was still getting mauled in 5-mans – non heroics. Gosh, I wonder why.
HE’s playing a mage now and says it’s so much easier to level, but he can’t do 5-mans, because he runs out of mana in the boss fights ….
I asked what his mp5 was, (mana regen per 5 secs) he hadn’t heard of it. I asked what his bonus spell dmg was at lvl 70 – it was 289, ‘why, isn’t that good?’
/sigh
Now to be fair, he’s tried. But he just doesn’t “get it.” He’s read some things, he’s tried gearing a little, but he has some blues and some just silly choices for gear, stats and spec and he can’t figure out why he’s not doing better. I’ve done what I can to help him, but I’m done trying
But I’ve gone from the idea of casual players in raid settings to harping on one gearing and talent choice. There are many like this guy, they aren’t theorycrafters and don’t get the game – but it’s really not that hard and you don’t have to get into the details of theorycrafting in order to start something like kara. You just need someone who knows raids, and the bosses to be the leader, someone who can help out to be the assist and someone who can follow the basics of loot rules to parcel out the good stuff. The leader simply needs to be someone who understands what each class does, and how to use the talents available.
I used to think leading a raid would be hard. And admittedly it can be difficult, but it doesn’t HAVE to be. It’s like so many other choices in life, it is what you make of it. Be a hard case and you’ll have to deal with resentment issues, be too lax and you’ll have a rowdy unruly bunch who wipe a bit more. Be of even keel and keep your mind in the middle and you might just get by.
I think if my self imposed breaks extend for any real length of time I’ll look forward to pulling together my own KZ raid, just to see if I can get a group of casual players to work out or not. I’ve tried this with the legacy raids, it’s not the same. There’s no incentive for them, no real reward. Maybe KZ is the place to test this out. I’ll let you know.
Burned out by the real world
Man, have I been lazy this week. I’ve been busy with the real world so I haven’t been giving this as much attention lately. I owe you a run down of the bosses following Curator but to tell you the truth, I’m a little burned out this week. :-)
My son and I started early childhood development classes on Wednesday of last week (organized playtime with other dad’s and their kids) and I’m also shifting my weekends around so I’m able to spend more time with him than with WoW and my raid buddies.
Given how irritating and chatty our Friday night raid has gotten lately I’m not all that sorry to be taking a break. If they find themselves in dire need of a Dire Bear I can join them next week, but we’ve had an abundance of people willing to come so I think they’ll be fine.
I talked it over with my raid leader last week and mentioned that as my son grows up I’ll be shifting my schedule to meet his needs. And let’s be honest – a boy needs his dad more than this dad needs World of Warcraft.
But make no mistake, this is a break, a well deserved one I think for all the nonsense I’ve managed with this group over the course of the last two months. I also intend to resume my work here – even if no one reads it I can’t leave a project unfinished.
Feb 4, 2008
Weekend Recap
I got a bit lazy this weekend. I don’t know if it was lack of sleep (dang neighbors) or the sloth of a Sunday induced football game but I didn’t get a lot done. I hardly bothered watching the ‘big game’ either. Maybe it’s the weather that causes this apathy.
I did manage to get my Tier 4 gear for my bear on Friday, but the run was tough. I hate chatty vent servers – it’s annoying. Of course we have a lot of chatty people and after 4 hours it’s beyond annoying. I usually turn the volume down completely.
But we did manage to clear KZ in 4 hours – so that’s something.
I got an in-game note from my hunter’s raid that Sunday’s KZ run was being moved to today, apparently the raid leader is a Pats fan. I thought it was a lame excuse for moving a raid, but eh – I liked the break.
So this weekend, instead of running up to 58 on my pally, which I should have done, I instead got on my lock. He was 51 on Sat and is sitting nicely at 54 this morning. Three toons headed to the outlands at the same time? Huh, I guess I could do it easily enough.
I really need to work on better gear though. My paladin in particular needs better armor and spell dmg. I had forgotten how much fun a lock can be … DoTs ftw. I was busting down tons of mobs a lot higher than I was too. The fights tend to be a bit mana intensive, but for all that it’s not so hard. Life tap works well when you have a tank, but my healer buddy kept trying to heal me, even after I announced I was life tapping /sigh.
As for the rest, I spent a lot of time going through mailboxes and bags, putting stuff up for AH and trying to clear some space. After a couple of months my bags get so disorganized and I have to spend a day cleaning house. I still have a ton of items to DE and sell. Need to get back to work on that.
I’ll put the next Kara boss up soon, but it may not be today. I wrote everything up but I need to spend some tweak time on it yet.
Feb 1, 2008
Kara Part 5
The Curator
When we last parted ways I left you working your way toward the first boss that drops a Tier 4 token, the Curator. Every Kara raider will let you know that the big machine is a gear check, meaning that if your group can bring him down, you stand a reasonable chance at downing the rest of the bosses in Karazhan. The exceptions are Prince Malchezzar and Nightbane. The rest should be doable.
Should be doable … well, you will most likely wipe a few times while you figure out the fights but lets see if I can help when we get that far.
For now what you need to do is what I mentioned last time, either clear the mobs on the far side of the Opera Hall or run back out the front door and cross the river to the side entrance.
Going to the side entrance presents you with an additional opportunity, since Nightbane is summoned on the master’s terrace and if you go in the side door you’re about 50 yds from the place. But it also presents a small challenge. There are ghost mobs sitting on the other side of the door. They aren’t too close, but if you run in and move to either side of the door you can pull one or both. Since your raid is likely setting up at this time it’s usually a wipe – at minimum it’s a few deaths. So the trick here is to open the inner door and run straight ahead to the far wall – all raiders stack on top of each other. You shouldn’t pull anything that way. Alternatively you can assemble between the entrance and the door before opening it.
Once you get set up – crack the door if you chose that option and run to the left, tanks out in front. Take out the ghost mob (only one) and make sure your mage decurses the affected party members. This first mob is purple. Later ones are green. The green ones cannot be taunted so keep that in mind when pulling.
Now you begin a long climb up to the back entrance to the Menagerie. There’s a bunch of ghosts along the way and when you reach the top there’s 2 arcane protectors inside the first room. They should be taken at the same time – MT/OT with attention paid to the debuff one of them tosses out. It affects one party member and while it’s active – that person discharges an arcane blast for 1-2k every couple of seconds – so make the person who has it run away from the raid.
After these are down move up the stairs into the small ante-chamber and gather. Through the only other door is the Menagerie and Curator, and about 7 groups of mobs. These smaller groups have to be taken out first – MT pulls one into the antechamber while curator is on the far side of his patrol. The raid focuses on the giant arcane anomaly first. It will look as if you’re doing no dmg to him but he has a mana shield and your shots deplete his mana – once it’s gone he goes down like a .,. well you get the idea.
Drop his mana worm palls, rinse and repeat for the other mobs. Pull them all into the antechamber. I know raids that do the last 1-2 in Curator’s room but that is a huge risk for a new raid as Curator has a massive aggro range. Use your hunters and mages to pull the mobs, MD, blink etc.
The boss fight can be done two ways. Both ways require the raid to assemble in the boss’ room on the far right wall, line abreast and don’t get off the wall while he’s nearby. Once he moves away you can set up.
The tank will take the boss (boss’ back to raid) at the third diamond shaped pattern on the carpet. In the first method all raiders will spread out in a U shape, with the base of the U on the wall right of the door you came through. Ranged DPS can deal with his add (astral flares) and have to get them down fast. In the second method your melee can help the ranged by following them around.
The first method is less damage intensive as the flares can cast chain lightning for arcane dmg. But if your healers are good you can do it the other way. See the strategy notes on fighting Curator. If your gear is good and your team is well prepped, he can go down in about 4-5 mins.
Outlands Bound … this time on a paladin
Last night I was helping one of my guild leaders level his paladin. He had a series of quests in Maraudon and was having trouble finding a team. Sheesh I wonder why – it’s only a freakin nightmare of an instance. I have only done parts of Mara a few times in the past, I’d forgotten how screwy that place is. An entire clear would take a level appropriate team a long time.
So, Chirax and I hit Mara for some ‘fun.’ I guess it wasn’t all that long – maybe 90 mins or so, but even on my 70 hunter it was a pain. Those stupid knockdown effects from the Thrashers got on my nerves.
While underground one of our feral buddies got on and said he was bored and could he please run us through something.
Never one to turn down such an offer Chirax and I both said we’d be happy with a BRD run.
So I jumped on my tankadin, dumped my bags and headed for Burning Steppes. PL runs are fun once in a while, so long as you don’t beg for them or get constantly asked to run someone. An open invitation is too good to pass up. The funny thing is, I never really enjoyed playing a paladin. I was a horrible healer and I could not figure out the ret combos. Everything seemed to take forever when comparing it to my mage or druid. So I had left this toon parked for a long time. But not so long ago I started taking an interest in him again and recently spent some time leveling him up a bit more.
In this case I was sitting at 55 on my pally and I’ve been trying to hurry up to 58 so I can use him as a teammate with Cam – my shadow priest friend from TSS. That mana regen is awesome for tankadins. I really should have thought ahead when I chose my mage instead of my pally.
The end result of our little excursion was a full level and a half of xp – I’m sitting nicely on the positive side of 57 and have the first set of quests done for BRD. I need to hit Burning Steppes quick to start my Ony attunement chain, but I’m not too worried and besides, I love killing dragons. Our main tank from Kara even showed up on her mage for a bit, though she DC’d after the bar and never came back. Sad, she missed a ton of good cloth gear.
I totally hosed up a quest for the shadow key, I forgot you have to talk to the dead guy twice. Oh well, I can always do it the hard way. The good news is I’m attuned for MC this weekend. Can you say epic pally gear?
The only downside from last night was that I ran out of rested XP. Since my mage has only been parked for a week he hasn’t save up enough of his own yet, so I’m left with a choice.
Chirax and Mageblast (MT’s mage) are both at 47-49. Mageblast has 251 spell damage, un-freakin-real. She farmed up two epic rings in Winterspring on her own and you can’t believe the DPS that girl puts out. But since they are sitting under 50 I suppose I could grab my own shadow priest and bust him up from 44 to meet them. That would give Chirax a nice mana pool to tank with while us clothies pound the mobs. Alternatively I could pull out my warlock. I love playing him in groups but I pull so dang much aggro I was getting frustrated playing him.
Decisions, decisions.
Wouldn’t that be a trip, three characters sitting in Honor Hold awaiting my free time? I’d be beside myself. I think I’d have to give up sleeping for a while.
Tonight is Kara, so no PLing for me. Our tank is coming back (if she doesn’t DC) and we’ll get yet another chance to see the same T4 tokens drop. Maybe my boots will drop tonight.
Jan 31, 2008
KZ Minimums (by talent tree)
Kara Part 4
When last we left our series on the opening moves of Karazhan we had cleared the Maiden and the trash along the way to the Opera Event. Now that my posts aren’t taking the entire freaking page (unless you clicky the little Read More button) I think we can pick up where we left off and describe one of the more interesting fights in this instance.
As we parted ways the other day I left you standing on the ramp leading up from the orchestra pit aka Opera pit, below the stage. You may not have realized that was where you were, because there isn’t an orchestra there, but that’s where you were moving through.
Once on the ramp you’ll want your ranged casters and healers standing about a third of the way up on the stairs, and your melee closer to the top. The tanks can move out into the open area head. This is the backstage part of the Opera Hall and there’s a few mobs to clear. The first is a 2-pull pat(rol) that can be easily face pulled (letting them get close enough to you that you aggro simply by letting them see you). Many groups will inadvertently face pull these and if not done properly, you can pull one of the stationary mobs nearby as well. These guys hit hard and have debuffs that will mess you up. So please, let your tanks be the only ones out in the open and the rest of you stay on the ramp.
Each tank takes a target and once engaged the raid should focus fire on the kill order. At some point each of the bad guys will pop a column of white light, it’s very important to move the mobs out of the light or Very Bad Things result. So for you folks in the ranged department, be aware that the tanks will be deliberately moving the mobs around a few feet when the light shows up, and you’ll need to adjust accordingly.
The mobs in this area aren’t too hard to defeat. Once you clear your way to the immediate backstage area you’ll see an NPC named Barnes, the Stage Manager ahead. Don’t go to him yet. There’s a wooden stairs off to your left, send a tank up and pull the mobs back down (sometimes they like to pat back down and can nail your raid while your prepping for the boss fight. There’s a couple on either side at the top of the stairs. NOTE: it’s not a necessity, just a safety precaution.
Once cleared take a short break to call for full raid buffs. Include food buffs, lock cookies but you shouldn’t need flasks for this next part.
The Opera Event is a unique fight in which one of three “plays” is selected for you randomly. Your choices are Hood, Oz and Romulo & Julianne. Each is handled very differently. A lot of raids will send in one person stripped of gear who will begin the event by speaking to Barnes and then run through the side door out onto the stage in front of the curtain. The rest of the raid waits, either in the pit below or simply in the room you cleared before you got to Barnes.
I’ve been in several raids that just position themselves out on the stage and take whatever comes without doing this. New raids should use the first method as it increases your opportunity to explain what will happen next and minimizes confusion and deaths.
Hood is basically Little Red Riding Hood and the boss is the Big Bad Wolf, linked above. He turns a random raid member into Little Read Riding Hood and chases her around the room til he kills her. He also has a fear and stun capability and cannot be aggro’d off Red during this phase, but DPS and tanks can and NEED to keep building threat on him or when Red goes down or fades he’ll turn on whoever is highest on the threat table. It’s best to tank him left rear stage away from the raid when possible. The Red Riding Hood debuff turns you into a little girl with zero armor. To stay alive you need to run the perimeter of the stage in a SQUARE, not an oval or a circle. BBW chases a spot just in front of the runner and if you don’t run in straight lines he can catch you.
Oz is the Wizard of Oz – there’s Dorethy, Tito, Roar, Tinhead and Strawman – see the wowwiki notes on strategy – easy fight – bring a lock and a mage for it. Kill order Dorethy, Tito, Roar/Strawman, Tinhead. Keep the straw guy feared and fire DoT’d and he’ll go down fast.
R&J – strangely enough I rarely see this fight. I know Blizz has said the events are random, but I don’t think I believe that. I think they are more likely to happen on certain days of the week, but then that’s just my subjective opinion. The unique thing on R&J is that you kill one, then the other then you fight both and they have to die within 10 secs of each other or they rez again. She’s a caster and he’s a DPS warrior. Good Luck!
Once you clear whatever Opera Event you get you now have an interesting option. You can either head through the door leading to the area ahead, which is the noble’s balcony. In there you can clear the mobs for some phat gold. I’ve been told each raider can get as much as 20g in there. You have to clear the area all the way up to the door that leads to the back of Kara, out on the Master’s Terrace.
If you don’t feel like risking it you can head back down and out the front door go to your left diagonally, crossing the foundation of the ruined house, across the river, up the bank and to the stairs leading up to the side entrance. It’s a long climb and you end up on a narrow bridge in front of the side door. I think you have to clear Opera to use it but I’m not sure. Here endeth Kara Part 4. Your next fight is another gear check and your first chance at a Tier 4 token.
Woot! Figured it out!
Many furry thanks to the Big Bear Butted one John P. for the tip on making my blog more readable. I've debated going back and changing older posts so everythign lines up nice and neat, call it the OCD part of me. But I've decided to let the previous ones stand since the comments would be lost. However going forward I'll be using a new method that links to the main pages of each post and should make this mess a little easier to read.
Kara - part 3
The Maiden of Virtue
Okay, you’ve handed Attumen his head, crashed the party in the banquet hall and silenced about half the people doing the Hokey Pokey in the dance hall (no lie, they really do the HP).
You’re back on the stairs and ready to drive on. Depending on whether or not you pulled the AOE non-elite pack on the right side of the top of the stairs, you need to clear it – so if you didn’t yet do so now – same drill as last time. Pull to stairs, AOE em down, focus heal the cloth cannons. One of your tanks will hug the right wall heading down to the far right corner of the dance hall to whack the mob standing there. Once engaged the raid should follow. There’s another non-elite AOE pack in the center-right of the dance hall – they die too. Watch for the elite mobs sitting along the walls – sometimes they come along with the larger pulls – just mark them for death first and hold the mob.
Clear the singles on either side of the door on the opposite side of the room, watch for any patrols that might pop through and send in your stealth to verify the area is clear.
Head into the next area – its an open space with many of the same mobs as the dance hall – AOE packs, both elite and non-elite. As well as single elite mobs. Use basic tanking procedures here – Line of Sight on the bigger mobs as they are needed. Leave the elite AOE pack over there alone – you can move without aggroing them, but take down all pats and the big non-elite pack in the middle of the room – tank hint: tank runs up to them and kites them away from the elite pack, then back to the raid while hugging the wall farthest from the elites and lets them stack on him, use a corner to hide in so they bunch up before DPS sets in.
Ahead on the far side of the room is another doorway with pillars, on the right wall is a single small doorway – head for the small one. Stealthies can peek to see where the pats are in there, if clear the raid can go in.
The raid moves in and to the left – there’s a long narrow hallway here and the raid should stack in there for the next pulls. There’s a few guards close by in the main hall, and some wandering hookers patrolling the halls. The respawn time is 1 hour in the hall – do not go into the side rooms. Those spawn on a 20 min timer. We’ll come back to that in a moment. Clear the halls 1 set of mobs at a time. There’s a 5 pull off to the right – leave them until both the pat and left side guards are down – but if the pat is a ways off you can pull the guards on the left, just do so that they run along the left wall.
On the pat – our raid calls it the whore (whoor) pack, I forget if there's one or two - think it's only one set. It’s a demon and an undead. Banish the demon if you can, or shackle the undead. Take only one at a time. One of them will try to charm the melee, the other will use a banshee howl – burn em down.
Note: everything here until you get the 5-pull gets pulled into the hall and burned there. The guards summon dogs so melee, watch your casters. Now, the 5-pull. You need MT and OT for this, shackle banish, etc. Clear those and there’s 2 guards at the end of the hall – shackle or OT one and burn them down.
Stop
Do Not Pass Go, Do Not Collect $200.
Ahead of you is the Maiden of Virtue, your next boss encounter. I asked you not to go into the side rooms, which probably sounds reasonable unless you need to for one of the quests for Kara. Well, it’s still reasonable even if you need to ‘cause you can simply wait 5 hours for the packs to despawn once the boss is dead. That's right Snoopy, once a boss dies, all mobs associated with that boss despawn in 5 hours - since the raid resets only once a week - you can come back another day and freely wander the areas you've cleared. How? Form a group with another player and convert it to a raid, then walk in – by this time the dance hall and stables and the whoor’s quarters are all empty IF you killed the bosses.) Besides – no need to make the raid wait for you. There’s killin ta be dun.
Maiden isn’t hard, but she sure seems so at first. The link to Wowwiki describes the fight and the abilities she has. But the most important thing to know is that positioning is key. One SUPER important thing to know is her aggro radius is quite large. So hug that outside wall!
So here’s how it all goes. She’s in a circular room (she’s a mini-Titan btw) and there’s pillars surrounding her – she’s in the center on a slightly raised platform. Your raid leader will mark out or walk you to your spot. You’ll be hugging the outside wall AT ALL TIMES – hunters put your pets on passive and MAKE SURE THEY STAY WITH YOU. I’ve seen pets pull Maiden = insta wipe.
The raid leader will generally split the raid up so the healers are evenly spaced with DPS. Melee and tanks will stay put at the entrance and well outside aggro range.
Maiden does a few unique abilities, holy fire, repentance (stuns the raid for 12 secs – dmg breaks this). The key element here is to get your melee into a max-range triangle or square around her as soon as the tank picks her up – no OT needed here – go full out DPS.
As soon as the fight starts you can do one of two things, everyone can stand in the center of the space between the pillars AND on the edge of the dias (raised part), or can stand in front of the pillar they are on. However you all need to pick the same stance or she’ll holy chain fire you down because you'll be too close together to avoid it. She drops holy ground (holy dmg in the 300s every 3 secs – its not too bad) and she Holy Fires random people – that has a DoT that needs to be dispelled – make sure your clothies are removing it quickly. Keep melee alive and kicking and the rest of the fight is gravy.
Just make sure when you go back to the hallway you hug the side away from the whoor’s rooms. Make your way back out into the larger open room and to the door (now on your right) with the pillars, don’t get too close now – there’s baddies there.
There’re two skeletal guards here, both the MT and OT need to take on the same target – CC the other. ALL DPS holds for a moment because the guard will Ice Tomb the person highest on the threat table (Get OMEN, Seriously) and will go for the second person on the threat table. Now that had better damn well be a tank or your health monkey is gonna be eating floor. Once the Ice Tomb hits and your tank is safely encased – DPS opens the floodgates and down he goes.
Same deal for the CC’d mob and the next 3 guys – including the one pat – wait for him and burn him the same, then there’s 2 up ahead – you can skip if you want, but we always burn em to be safe. Now you’ll see that you’re in the theater area (stage not screen). Go up to your right – hug the wall and head backstage and down into the pit, across and then up the ramp – stop before you get to the top. I’ll leave it here cause the next part leads into opera – however you wouldn’t stop a raid here normally. But this is getting long.
Jan 30, 2008
Still figuring out blogs
I have to apologize for the length of my posts. I'm not smart enough yet to figure out how to do what BBB and the other bloggers do regarding linking these to pages all on their own. I'll keep at it and when I do manage to wrap my paws around the method I'll go back and clean everything up nice n neat.
Thoughts and musings on Kara – part 2
Moroes the Steward
Moroes is a pain for beginning raiders because the fight is a real test of your ability to manage multiple targets under a tight deadline. Once you get the knack of it though, he’s not so tough. As a bit of lore, he was the personal servant to Medivh while the master mage ran the tower. Medivh was the son of one of the guardians who fought Saragas in ancient times and was born possessed by the villain – long story. Toward the later stages of his life Medivh cum Saragas killed off Moroes and the castle cook, named … Cook. They are buried outside near where you rez. NOTE: you have to kill Moroes or you cannot proceed to the Opera Event – he’s a required boss. Attumen isn’t, nor is the next boss the Maiden of Virtue.
First of all your raid should gather on the stairs near the door leading out of Kara. We usually group near the base of the second flight of stairs. Up ahead of you – which you can’t see – is a large dance hall with a mess of non-elite AOE packs and a few single elites as well as some smaller elite AOE packs. Off to the left is the banquet hall, to the right is a door leading to the prostitute’s quarters.
Get a rogue or cat to stealth up and start marking targets. The single elites will be patrolling around – mark them up first. Toss a mark on each of the nearest AOE packs as well – one mark for each pack.
Once everything is marked – specifically watch those patrolling elites, you can pull one of the nearest AOE non-elite packs to you. Pull them down the stairs and let your casters go to town. Focus heals on the cloth cannons so you don’t lose too many – we usually end up with at least one dead.
Now that you’ve cleared the annoying non-elites, start pulling the single pats as they come by – take your time – the respawn on this area is a lot longer than on the stable trash. Kill each, pull the next, rinse and repeat. Now you should have a clear field within about 30 yds of the top of the stairs. It’s not necessary to clear the room – just anything that might wander into your raid or that is near enough to aggro on them.
You have the option here of doing the next pulls 2 ways. What needs to happen is this. There’s a banquet hall off to the left of the top of the stairs and in it are several tables, each with a non-elite AOE pack. There’s also some wandering single mob, elite Stewards (waiters). Your choice is to have the raid remain on the stairs and have your tank pull them to you OR have the raid hug the left wall, bunch up in the corner at the immediate top left of the stairs and have your tank pull the mobs there.
I’ve done both and each has its plusses. I like the stairs best ‘cause it lets me see more, but you also get a scatter effect as well. At any rate – the mobs at the table and the patrolling elites all need to be cleared (one group at a time!) Once you clear the near portion of the banquet hall you can move the raid inside -- MAKE DAMN SURE NO ONE PULLS THE AOE ELITE PACK standing nearby in the dance hall. It’s all too easy to do and can cause a wipe.
As you enter the banquet area, there’s two elite mobs standing on the right wall – their counterparts are on the far left wall – leave them alone for now. Also – there’s a raised stage at the back wall (the boss is there with his buddies) and there’s a table on either side of the raised area – more non-elite AOE packs. And finally there’s a couple more elite single mobs patrolling the area between the long table and the two smaller ones. There is also something called a Brittle Bones debuff the patrolling mobs give out when attacked – make sure if your tank has it that he isn’t the one pulling the next mob – let the OT handle.
To clear the room you want to mark up the patrolling elites and the non-elite AOE packs at the small tables. Pull each individually and burn em down. Next pick on one set of the paired up elite mobs standing on the wall on either side of the room. Each tank takes 1 each – focus fire on one til it’s down then shit to the OT’s target. Healers watch VERY CLOSELY to the drunken debuff the tanks can get – it’ll screw them up bad if you don’t dispel it fast. I’ve seen a lot of raids wipe on these.
Now we come to the boss fight.
Moroes is a rogue – not that he isn’t likable but he has Vanish, Gouge, Blind and Garrote capabilities and wields two daggers. His friends are worse.
From Wowwiki: The Moroes encounter tests your raid's ability to control several targets while also maintaining high DPS. Success requires a solid control strategy for his four dinner guests. If allowed to go free, they will quickly put an end to the squishies. Control must be established immediately on the pull and maintained throughout the fight.
Once control is established, the encounter becomes a race between the raid's damage output and the building damage caused by Garrote. Each time a Garrote is applied, the strain on the healers increases. Moroes must die before the healing needed becomes too much to handle. (interpretation – healers need big mana pools)
In fact – so this doesn’t get too long just go read the strategy page at WoWwiki that I linked at the top. About the only thing I’ve done on this fight that is different is changing up tank roles. New raids will want to have both tanks on the boss at all times – since either can be stunned or blinded and will lose aggro for a second or two – dispel the affects when you can and it should go smooth. We usually have the MT pull the boss and both MT and OT gank him while keeping him on the right wall of the room. You’ll want one of your melee nearby because both tanks can be stunned/blinded – doesn’t happen a lot but it does happen. Keep a melee near so Moroes doesn’t go for a healer.
The casters need to go down fast – esp the Spriest if she’s there – her mana burn can wipe your raid. A good rule here is to shackle/trap/sheep all but one of the adds, leave a priority cloth target out and have your melee and ranged DPS burn the add down. Recast your shackles and other CC every 10 secs (or chain trap/kite) or so to keep them locked up. Then take the next that doesn’t need a tank. Keep anything CC’d that might require a tank to kill. You should be able to burn 2 mobs, leave the others CC’d and turn ALL DPS on Moroes, healers are gonna get a work out if you dilly dally around due to the garrote ability – they basically have to heal through it. Shammy healers can mitigate this threat nicely with chain heal, but any good healer can make it happen. Pallys can BoP someone out of it – Divine Shield themselves if needed.
Once the boss is down get the raid out of the room and back on the stairs ASAP (without pulling the dance hall mobs) and let the tanks break CC and kite the adds to the door – no need to kill them, they will reset if pulled to the door. Once they do go get your loot. And get your fannies back on the stairs outside.
The alternate way I’ve done this fight was to have a single tank on Moroes and let the other tank the un-CC’d adds one at a time. This is an okay way of doing it – the non-boss tank needs a few shots on the boss to register on the threat meter – but it’s more risky if your tanks are less than ideally geared. I do like the method though because you can use a tank to bash the cloth around and that helps protect the raid. Just remember – the longer the boss is up, the more dmg your healers have to deal with due to Garrote.