We tried something different tonight - Dudepal as shadow. To be perfectly honest, I'm not sure I felt the benefit -- I got a huge scary threat monster chasing me with no ability to drop it. I wasn't in his group though -- so lets hear it from others. Nightbane is such a punch in the face for a tank (and for healers of course). I think we'll easily down him each time though as we get better and better, I can't think of something more that I can do to mitigate the damage he was causing -- I am making adjustments to my threat chain, since I bound my heroic strike key to my mouse -- I've been consuming too much rage on my rage-dump ability rather than my high-threat. He *almost* ate Fargol -- and I had to beg a lot of people to spare me some threat gap. I think we should assign someone else the "jumping bean" role of the person to huddle up on when Nightbane launches in the air. I've been staring into Nightbane's rib cage for the past 25% and have no idea where the current charred earths are (unless Deady Boss Mods tells me i'm standing in it). Sorry to the people who burned with me. Also I noticed a couple people still got within fear range, we got lucky you weren't feared into a tail swipe / cleave. If/when I have to move this guy, again I'll wait for it to be called out and pull him closer to the healers -- that would be the time to watch out. Other than that - you should be staying at max range. I'll be stationary for the most part.Continuing on tonight .. Shade/Netherspite/Chess/Prince..../Maiden?AttumenShard - Bracers of the White StagShard - Gauntlets of Renewed HopeMoroes Shard - Boots of ValianceMahonri - Moroes' Lucky Pocket WatchRomulo & JulianneChuunks - Blade of the UnrequitedKaittlynn - Trial-Fire TrousersCuratorChuunks - Wrynn Dynasty GreavesDudepal - Gloves of the Fallen DefenderNightbaneChuunks - Ironstriders of UrgencyShard - Scaled Breastplate of Carnage
Although I was not in Dudepals group either, I thought having the extra dps helped us out. Everything went really smooth, only a couple hiccups, and Fargol's DPS was boosted quite a bit. Most noticeable on Curator. If we can get Kaitlynn to land the curses of doom on him next time, he will go down super fast. (No offense to you Kaitlynn, it took Fargol a couple tries to figure out the timing as well). One note on curator - I took a LOT of damage running around with the flares, only the 2 healthstones and healing pots saved me at times, and I am sure I would have died had I not been wearing the epic AR trinket from the quest line. If melee has it, I would recommend wearing it for this fight.
Having a shadow priest in group is a HUGE benefit to *ANY* class that uses mana. I think I only used one mana gem on Moroes the whole time. Mana-using DPS can DPS so much harder with a SP in group, and they don't have to worry so much about mana regen. I messed up my gem / pot / evocation cycling on Curator and was feeling the mana lack as Dudepal got moved out of my group for whatever reason...
I guess I've just been spoiled by the tender ministrations of 3 healers. I'm thinking Dudepal went to the melee group to give the vampiric +healing to the melee classes since they'll be consistantly taking flare damage. Honestly, I've been consistantly impressed with our DPS. The real question for me was whether or not it worked for the other healers .. if they're too taxed in between trash pulls by not having that extra support (having to use big heals vs. medium shared heals -- main healing), we take an extra 15-30 seconds in between trash could add up easily to some 10 minutes before a boss fight. Whether we drop that boss in 3 minutes or 5 minutes will matter in some fights, dont get me wrong. But as far as "overall time saved" -- I think we went a little bit slower. Perhaps if we had another support healer ...
I wasn't feeling that. From my timezone, we started around 9:15 or so. I stopped at 11:47 and ported out, after several minutes of Curator aftermath and decision making. During that time, we killed Attumen, Moroes, Opera event, and Curator, and all their respective trash. We swapped out people twice or three times with interludes and time holdups each time that happened. We also got killed by horde a fair bit and had other interruptions and or time stoppages. I think this was making very good time through these encounters.
Chuunks, are you going to mainhand that new dagger? If you put 3 +12 stam gems in there, that seems like a great upgrade for you. At least if the chess weap doesnt drop this week....
Daggers dont really make good mainhands -- they changed the mechanics so that your "special moves" (heroic strike, mortal strike, execute, etc, etc) are all based on the weapon type not the weapon speed (which you would want slower anyways). When I was fury I tried dual weilding daggers and wasn't putting out near the damage as with a lower DPS slower main hand fist/mace/sword.Sadly this and the boots really only have one fight they're useful for at the moment -- Shade of Aran. This replaces my old offhand claws, and the boots upgrade my Shatari dps boots.
How'd the run go last night? Our band's first gig went great, so it was worth skipping out. I'd like to get back in the mix next week and have been looking at balance/resto hybrid builds again. It seems that I'm not needed to off-tank at the moment. Let me know if that's the case and I'll prob show up as moonkin next week with some resto points for off-healing. That may compliment the caster group well especially if Dude stays shadow.
Last night we did Shade -- Netherspite -- Chess. We had about 4 attempts at Prince, but gave up -- a couple mistakes, a couple bad infernal drops. We had a lot of melee dps and that fight is really rough on them to dps since they have to keep running out. So we were light I think -- spent way too long in phase 2 on most of our attempts ...The main reason we're running out is because we were losing people to the shadow novas; people weren't getting out in time when enfeebled - or they would get knocked back into who-knows-where and an infernal requiring extra healing. IF melee DPS could get it together to stand in the right spot (that is either with their backs to the wall with me (Prince does not cleave) or lined up between the prince and ranged to "control" the knockback) -- I think that the ideal situation when we have 3 healers is to have them stay in -- at least when we have 3 rogues / 1 fury warrior. Netherspite took 2 attempts to sort out the cycles -- we tried rogues on the beams but I honestly think they should only take it for about 10 tics, because he can really clobber a non-mail wearer. Also, specicifally -- Amulec, get a macro to swap your offhand for a shield so you can be set while you're in the beam and switch back to a full DPS mode when out. Let me see if I remember loots....Shade of AranShard -- Steelspine FaceguardKrikor -- Saberclaw TalismanNetherspiteShard -- Rip-Flayer LeggingsKillean -- Shining Chain of the AfterworldChessMahonri -- Bladed Shoulderpads of the MercilessDudepal -- Headdress of the High Potentate
Prince - Rogues should have no problem switching to his front side and getting knocked into the wall. Also, cloak of shadows will resist it once every 60 seconds. Netherspite - That first time I took the red beam, I must have missed that initial +31k HP tick or not recieved it before he hit me, because the second time I took it for more than half the time and even when evasion was not up, it was fine. Killean and I did a bad job on the handoff each time, mainly because I was nervous that if I was too far back, he would move when I got the red beam, so I was RIGHT up in his face, and so killean couldn't walk straight forward to hand it off since he would have walked through him and potentially into another beam on the other side.
As far as Netherspite went -- one of the things I loved (sorry Amulec!) was that even though someone died early (bad beam switch I think?), in between phases we were able to switch up the order of who took what beam. We'll only get better with confidence and experience.This is a fun fun fight I think ...
RE: Prince .. something I dug up in the forums.Melee should NOT attack him from the front, apparently when he parries he gets a hasted attack. Best bet would be to align yourself between Prince and the ranged group.Additionally -- we need to keep Curse of Weakness / Scorpid(? - the hit reducing one) Sting up on him in phase 2. Should keep me from getting crushed completely with my avoidance gear at this point.
Full clear!Glory!Birthday Cake!Great run last night. Feels good to have a full clear -- especially that Prince fight. We really should just embrace moving him, whenever we do we end up on a side that's almost completely devoid of infernals. The thing of it is -- most of that moving happened in Phase 2 -- when he's putting out the most damage, we weren't even able to get that focused DPS. I know I'm probably going to regret saying this -- but I think our big "burn" needs to happen in Phase 3 instead when the infernal drops are going nuts.Illhoof we tried repeatedly without an offtank -- we might have gotten it as we honed down the strategy of DPSing Kil'Rek down first. Thankfully Myrdinn logged in and saved us from ourselves, made the fight an easy rinse/repeat. The key to that fight is the fast macro to target the demonic chains -- also, making the *decision* to kill Kil'rek instead of letting him die after the 2 - 5 - 8 sacrifices I thought was brilliant.Prince:Blastine - Helm of the Fallen Hero (Happy Birthday!)Miramel - MalchazeenQuani - Jade Ring of the EverlivingMaiden of Virtue:Shard - Bracers of JusticeShard - Mitts of the TreemenderTerestrian Illhoof:Blastine - Malefic Girdle (Happy Birthday!)Killean - Breastplate of the Lightbender
I wasn't in his group though -- so lets hear it from others. Nightbane is such a punch in the face for a tank (and for healers of course). I think we'll easily down him each time though as we get better and better, I can't think of something more that I can do to mitigate the damage he was causing -- I am making adjustments to my threat chain, since I bound my heroic strike key to my mouse -- I've been consuming too much rage on my rage-dump ability rather than my high-threat. He *almost* ate Fargol -- and I had to beg a lot of people to spare me some threat gap. I think we should assign someone else the "jumping bean" role of the person to huddle up on when Nightbane launches in the air. I've been staring into Nightbane's rib cage for the past 25% and have no idea where the current charred earths are (unless Deady Boss Mods tells me i'm standing in it). Sorry to the people who burned with me. 
Also I noticed a couple people still got within fear range, we got lucky you weren't feared into a tail swipe / cleave. If/when I have to move this guy, again I'll wait for it to be called out and pull him closer to the healers -- that would be the time to watch out. Other than that - you should be staying at max range. I'll be stationary for the most part.Continuing on tonight .. Shade/Netherspite/Chess/Prince..../Maiden?AttumenShard - Bracers of the White StagShard - Gauntlets of Renewed HopeMoroes Shard - Boots of ValianceMahonri - Moroes' Lucky Pocket WatchRomulo & JulianneChuunks - Blade of the UnrequitedKaittlynn - Trial-Fire TrousersCuratorChuunks - Wrynn Dynasty GreavesDudepal - Gloves of the Fallen DefenderNightbaneChuunks - Ironstriders of UrgencyShard - Scaled Breastplate of Carnage