Mission started
I managed to get the Northrend Dungeonmaster achievement plus my first heroic under my belt since I posted I would start doing PUGs. Kudos to WoW Armory, a wonderful plugin for WordPress. *points to her sidebar*
Normal Utgarde Pinnacle was alright, but I felt that I wasn’t on top of my game in the gauntlet. I was incredibly rage-starved and the fight lasted forever. Normal Oculus was just as painful to tank as it was to heal, and I don’t think I’ll want to go back on heroic anytime soon. Both of these runs were full guild-runs.
Heroic Nexus was done with 3 other guildies, plus a tree druid we pugged. Instance went fine, though I still want to strangle the hunter who had less than optimal pet control and pulled Commander Stoutbeard early. Full of confidence, I went into Heroic Violet Hold right afterwards, this time we pugged a paladin healer. I came out again with shattered confidence and one emblem of heroism.
As first boss we had Ichoron, whose mechanics overwhelmed most group members completely. It just didn’t work. There were gazillions of adds, I took so much damage, and it was frustrating as heck. It took us four tries to get Ichoron down. On one of the tries, the instance bugged out on us and we had multiple portals open at the same time. Even before the first boss we already had 7 portals open. Eventually we got Ichoron down, fought down waves and what second boss do we get? Zuramat the Obliterator. Again, no one (including me) knew how to deal with him and we wiped spectacularly. When we went back in and it started at portal 1 again, I just folded, as it was past 2 am my time, and I had been in the instance for well over an hour.
Very frustrating, as my last visit there as healer saw us out of the instance in 25 minutes, with Ichoron and Lavanthor as bosses. I will say I believe DPS was a huge issue. 1k DPS just doesn’t cut it in a heroic, no way. Is it that common to come out on top as prot warrior or am I still running with DPS that’s not quite there? Okay, likely a rhetorical question.
Summary: Fail guild groups are more soul-crushing than fail pugs.
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Hmm whenever I have that widget on my site today
http://hudshideout.com/blog/
It says the Armory is unavailable.
Grats on that achievement by the way
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Hello Kadomi,
I tank Violet Hold a lot and would just like to let you know that keeping shield reflect up as a warrior tank is THE way to go for Zuramat the Obliterator if you have the 2 points in Improved Shield Reflect in your tree.
Someone will always have the debuff to see the adds and having your improved reflect up will let them reflect up to 3 or 4 bolts of them, thus killing the adds. It helps tremendoulsy to keep the number of adds under control.
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admin Reply:
January 14th, 2009 at 11:18 pm
I am actually considering getting 2 points in Imp Spell Reflect after this. I’ll have to mess around with my spec in Talented a bit. Thanks for the suggestion!
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There is no way you should be anywhere near the DPS. I do about 1200-1300 DPS over an entire instance and most DPS i run with is easily in the 2ks. Were you running with 3 guild Warlocks. Last guild run I did had two Warlocks and a DK. I out dpsed both of the warlocks.
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admin Reply:
January 14th, 2009 at 11:19 pm
DPS was hunter, moonkin and arms warrior, and I was just below the hunter, above all others. In the previous run we had a shadow priest instead of moonkin, but same results DPS wise.
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Im constantly trying to improve my tank dps in 5 mans and raids. Its a whole new mini-game for to replace what you called the theat mini-game. Not only do you have all the joys of being a tank, but now you get to pore over damage meters like the best of the huntards & deathnoobs out there
And I do think tank damage is much more a part of wow than before.
Yah I hate fail guild groups too. Went with pure guidies to h UP the other night. Long story short: our healer was really really drunk. Lots of runs back, didnt finish the final boss. Got a flash back to the last failed heroic I did with that same healer – again he was really really drunk. He does heal 25 mans too – but I think you can get away with being a terrible healer in a raid much more successfully.
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Hey, as a (girl) pally tank I am excited to have discovered your blog.
I would say about VH – don’t sweat it, getting even one boss down is great for a first attemp- we tried it once every day for a week (wiping before the last boss every time) until we nailed it. BTW, your group shouldn’t be worrying about the adds, especially you or the melee – they die>go explody and everyone takes damage. Or use the lantern to take down some of the little water dudes.
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admin Reply:
January 14th, 2009 at 11:20 pm
Welcome, always glad to have other girl tanks over here.
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“Fail guild groups are more soul-crushing than fail pugs.”
Absolutely. This is why my prot warrior hasn’t touched an instance since an all guild UK run blew up in a fit of “OMG YOU CAN’T TANK” by a guildie.
*hands you a soul-inflator, and a cookie*
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Hi Kadomi,
1000dps really doesn’t cut it in heroics, sadly.
A good healer/tank can carry 1, maybe 2 low DPS’ers, but without two at 1400+ it’s really, really hard. If it’s a guild run that’s giving you issues it’s probably better to admit that you’re a bit short on damage and try gearing everyone up a little in normal mode/burn lots of cash in the AH.
When you get 3 dps doing 1200+ you can start to get through Heroics.
Good luck (and don’t give up!)
p.s. WRITE MORE!
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Heroic VH is an odd beast, you can run it 9 times in 25 minutes and think its easy then hit trouble in the tenth run. The ‘kite around the top’ boss is very unpredictable with his buggy summons even though you are in los.
I tend to use the lamps on Ichorons adds (only time i have found them useful). As for the Void, its just a matter of having decent dps and a really solid healer. Everyone, tank and healer included, must know to down those adds if they get void shifted.
As for dps. I usually find that a group total of 5k will cut it in the easer heroics. For the tougher ones I wouldnt want any of the dps to be below 1.5k really.
Ta ta for now!
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Ichoron becomes really easy once you start using the instance defenses when he splits into all the adds (triggered by the small red candle holders on the wall, there’s four of them in the room). If you’re not sure where they are, then have a look around before you start the event so you can find them easily and designate one person to use one when the boss splits (5 sec cast timer on it).
Zuramat can be a bit trickier, as your dps will need to pay close attention and realize when they should be nuking the adds instead of the boss.
In general, VH can be tricky or easy, Xevozz for example needs to be kited along the balconies, to make sure that the orbs don’t get near him. If they do, he will start dishing out incredible amounts of damage. I had a nice group setup recently, with a retri pala a warlock and a healing priest, which buffed my health up to 36k when commanding shout was up. I made a wrong choice in the direction that I started kiting Xevozz and got caught on a baclony with an orb coming from both directions. One orb reached Xevozz and he did 30k damage in two seconds. The priest was there for the first time and didn’t expect that sort of burst damage, and so we wiped.
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Ran it last night and got the voids for the first boss and Xevozz for the second. Talk about bad luck. I was on my Shammy healer and we pull through put it was not easy and it sucks to have to restart after a wipe.
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I think that for those two bosses, especially for a group with less DPS, blowing the defenses in the instance helps a ton. I haven’t seen Zuramat since our attempt to do the achievement (we totally zerged it, almost wiped, but barely made it through… blew Heroism early etc, our DPS was higher than 1k each though).
You can’t get the achievement for not hitting the levers if you do this, but it’s way better than banging your head against a wall over and over.
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My first heroics were painful. But then many heroics became easy when the dps’ers started doing 2K instead of 1K. Many encounters that seem like your failing as a tank are really the result of low dps.
Read up on all the bosses in VH so you’ll know what to do for each one. It is one of the easier heroics if you know what to do for all of the bosses.
Heroic Pinnacle, the Skadi fight in particular, is a pain. I’ve been with groups that couldn’t get through the fight no matter how many times we try. It seems like the failure is due to the tanking. But when I go in with different groups we one shot the fight and it seems easy. Same tank. Hmm, maybe it isn’t the tank failing? Or maybe it is, I dunno. 7 successful runs of Pinnacle and too many runs of Naxx to count and I still have a blue quality sword.
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