Druid of the Moon » Ulduar

More Props for my 10 man mates!

Jacemora — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 23:32:01 +0000

Last night we once again rocked ToC 10. For the second week in a row no wipes and Anub down with 50 tries left. Still no DPS cloak, this one went to a healer. With all the ToC heroic we have ran we still have people getting upgrades which is nice.

Missed the mount again but at least another druid got it…. jk

So last night… We got another server 1st.

Resilience Will Fix It (10) – Not too tough. A solid game plan and constant communication is all that is needed here.

And the rest…

Champion of Ulduar – I was happy to get this one… as I am a title whore.
Shadowdodger
Upper Back Pain (10) – The team had done this before but I must had missed that night.
Three Sixty Pain Spike (10) – Had this one already but someone needed it so why not.

Next week the plan is to get A Tribute to Dedicated Insanity (10) which will most likely be a server first. And maybe Alone in the Darkness.

What a Night

Jacemora — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 04:46:14 +0000

Thanks and CongoRats to my fellow 10 man raiders! We had an awesome night of fun and focused raiding and it just shows how important playing with not only people you like but the same people every week for continuity can do for success.

We started the night with a 20 minute ToC 10… just blew it up… badges and gear as our regular hunter has rolled a Shammy to help with our raid comp.

Then came ToGC 10 and our first A Tribute to Insanity (10 player). 30 minutes of focused gameplay… It was awesome… and no one died the whole run.

After that we headed over to Ulduar to plow through to Algalon and after not having tried him in over 2 months and with a new healer that has only played a healer for 2 weeks we downed him on our 3rd try… maybe took 10 minutes of attempts. Granted we out geared it (He was actually harder than the Insanity Achievement)… but keep in mind this was the same group of people that either got or worked toward the first kill in Sept for Herald of the Titans.

So I also got some achievements I had missed as well… which was fun. I actually did top DPS on Kologarn mangle spamming and keeping my DoT’s up… that was a surprise. Doing XT without killing the heart was a challenge… although faster than just doing hard mode XT for the umpteenth time it is actually a little harder IMHO…. though not much.

Thursday night we are going to work on Alone in the Darkness (10 player) or at least clear to Yogg while trying to finish up Champion of Ulduar. We only need Iron Council, General, and Yogg with no deaths to finish that up.

All in all another fun night of 10′s. I will be updating my gear page soon… it is really old and I am now really stacked in gear short of a ToC cloak and belt. On normal fights being somewhere between 6K and 7K DPS is the norm and I topped 10K in a twins fight and Hodir for the first time ever.

How to get top DPS on Kologarn

Jacemora — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 11:57:04 +0000

As you already know by now the Kologarn encounter sucks for a feral kitty.

There is no sweet spot where you can stand and get behind Kolo or one of his arms so Shred is off the table and DPS typically suffers because of it.

Well I am here to tell you I tested a method of DPS on Kolo that netted me top DPS honors on my last run. No I didn’t mangle to 5 CP and rip each arm and the body in succession… I have tried that in the past and I still had trouble breaking the top 5. This is what I did…

CHEAT.

Stand right in the middle facing Kolo and in melee range but not too close.
Kitty Swipe Spam, use Berserk for it.
Mangle for CP in order to Savage Roar, get Idol of Mutilation Proc, and Keep 1 Rip up on Kolo… do this right at the beginning and then mainly when his right arm is down and you only have 2 targets.
Swipe spam the rubble once the tank has agro for even more DPS.

Seriously, Kolo is such a fast face roll kill now. No reason not to play around and top the DPS meter on him for a change to illicit some WTF looks from others in the party… lol I honestly didn’t expect swipe spamming would actually work as opposed to mangle spam and alternating bleeds on all the parts… but it did.

Check out the % of damage coming from Swipe… here is the WoL showing the 7700DPS I pulled out.

Know that if we were not completely destroying this fight I would not screw around like this. This is a good example of how top DPS is not always a good reflection of a players ability to do what they should and help the raid appropriately. Swipe spamming here is a complete fail if your guild isn’t currently making a complete mockery of the fight and DPSing the right arm down is typically the way to go.

But heck, I could not resist trying it… and I need some good blog material… so there you go… Swipe spam on a boss fight FTW!

An interesting Feral change coming…

Jacemora — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 16:22:14 +0000

According to a blue post on MMO-Champion…

Infected Wounds now reduces the movement speed of the target by 16/34/50% (up from 8/17/25%) and its attack speed by 6/14/20% (up from 3/7/10%).

Let me say as a kitty that just started doing arena again, this is a HUGE change. I am guessing this is also going to be a nice tanking buff as well if you are responsible for the debuff on the target. Of course Blizz keeps discussing the whole “boss big hits” theory of RNG as it pertains to current and future raiding so maybe this puts us as more of an OT again glyphed for maul and holding multiple targets… dunno. Bottom line is swing speed does not seem to be as big a deal as single big hits although I do suppose it allows a little more margin of timing error for the healers.

I try not to think about bear tanking… I have enough on my plate trying to stay competitive with DPS.

P.S. Initial dummy tests looks like 2T9=4T8. I will say that using the Idol of Mutilation is a huge boost to Crit and makes swapping out some gems to ArP and losing the Mirror for the Banner feel fine. The changes still have my target dummy DPS hovering around 4400 using 1 Berserk and DPSing for roughly 3 minutes. This is self buffed with FFF on the target to start the fight. I will say that of my tests I was able to hit my highest test dummy DPS of around 4700… This was once in about 5 different attempts… the rest stayed right around the 4400 mark. Bottom line… small changes are small, until I score some of the better ToC 25 gear my DPS is not going to go up much. I plan on holding on to my 2T8 bonus as long as I can… probably until I get a piece of Heroic ToC 25 gear that would break it… which could be a while.

Nothing new to report.

Jacemora — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 17:37:11 +0000

Nothing new really to write about. Hoping to get Yogg 10 Hard down Thursday night. No new progress in Ulduar 25 hard, except for 2 towers FL which was to practice for all 4. Still only Ignis and XT hard modes down.

I found this video on Youtube, amazing shot by Federer… enjoy.

A very good post on Armor Pen.

Jacemora — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 13:05:53 +0000

Vallen had a really nice post on Armor Pen everyone should read which touches on the upcoming ArP nerf as well as some good rules of thumb.

My personal opinion on ArP is not to gem for it or drive yourself crazy trying to get it. This includes getting 1 of the 2 big daddy ArP trinkets which requires either Hard Mode Thorim in 10 man (not that it is hard once you get it down) or 25 man Naxx (not hard but not fun either).

Without either of these 2 trinkets there really is little reason to stack ArP. I like that Vallen mentions to think about what is reasonable gear you can obtain. So many DPS models take for granted you are just going to fly through the hardest of content and get every piece your heart desires which couldn’t be further from the truth.

My current plan right now as you can see on my gear page is to obtain 2T9. Shoulders and Gloves for 60 Triumph Emblems is the current route I am taking. In RAWR this is about the same DPS increase as keeping 4T8 and going with the Duskstalker Shoulderpads. Nice thing is I maintain my Hit slightly above the Cap which I like.

I have decided that breaking 4T8 for 2T8/2T9 is probably the best idea so I can start gearing up from better non tier gear in ToC 25 normal. First change will most likely be swapping out either Chest or Legs pushing towards eventually giving up the 2T8 bonus altogether and sticking with 2T9 in the Helm and Hands positions somewhere down the line.

If nothing else making the change from 4T8 to 2T8/2T9 will allow me to make some live testing to see how they compare.

And then there was one.

Jacemora — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 12:11:22 +0000

Last night our 10 man group cruised through Hard mode Ulduar and I was able to get 2 of the last 3 hard modes I need for my Reins of the Rusted Proto-Drake. All I have left to do now is One Light in the Darkness. I won the roll on the Archivum Data Disc and hopefully will get the Mimiron’s Sigil and Thorim’s Sigil Tomorrow night.

We went on and blitzed through regular 10 man ToC getting a couple of achievements there as well. Normal ToC 10 is a complete pushover for a 10 man group capable of 1 shoting most of Ulduar Hard, I can’t wait to start working on Heroic 10… should be fun.

Koralon Down, XT 25 Hard Complete

Jacemora — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 14:33:37 +0000

Last night we downed the new boss in VoA, Koralon. He is a big pansie and just another loot pinata in Wintergrasp. We promptly 25 man 1 shot him to end our night and he is as melee unfriendly as the other bosses in VoA.

We also 1 shot XT Hard mode in 25. I only turned around to DPS sparks if my rotation allowed it. Basically if I had just done a 5pt refresh of SR, a 5pt Bite, or 5pt Rip. Otherwise I let the other DPS handle them which worked fine as even when I did turn around the sparks were usually dead or I was just able to get a hit or 2 on them.

I know having to come off XT is not ideal but our raid was melee heavy and I was still able to maintain 7K DPS through the fight.

Due to a lack of certain raiders we didn’t get to even try Heroic ToC this week. Hopefully I will have something to report back on this front this week.

Tonight I am hoping to get back into Ulduar 10 and get my Hard modes wrapped up by doing FL, Freya, and Yogg hard and joining my guildies flying around on Rusted Drakes.

Not sure if downing Algalon is in my stars (no pun intended) which is unfortunate cause my favorite thing in game to collect are titles (“Herald of the Titans” would be really cool, but looking even more unlikely than “Starcaller”). Bottom line is with limited playing time I can’t raid 10 man content on off nights forever and 25 man content continues to be my focus until 10 man raiding gets the same recognition/upgrades as 25… which I assume will never happen.

Server FIRST – Herald of the Titans

Jacemora — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 02:49:04 +0000

A huge Gratz goes out to Aetherial Circle for a 10 man server first Herald of the Titans!

Quite a few people worked toward this achievement (myself included) but here are the 10 folks that Ultimately made it happen…

Sad I missed it but RL > WOW, hope to get it on it next time.

It looks like the trick for us to getting him down was having the one ranged DPS on the sparks also DPS Algalon when possible. That made for the extra damage needed to beat the enrage. In this case it was the lock pulling double duty that did the trick.

Gratz to everyone on their new titles and achievements!

A cry for help to other Druid Kitties out there.

Jacemora — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 12:48:38 +0000

My damage output on Hodir is just sucking.

I must be doing something wrong. Last nights results…

I was top 5 DPS on Razor while being responsible for the turrets (5.7Kdps)
#1 damage to Ignis @ 6.5Kdps
#1 on XT (of course) with 8.6Kdps
2nd on Auriaya with 5.2Kdps (the tank died and guess who was next on the threat meter… 2 shot ftw… I need to lrn2meld faster)
3rd on Assembly of Iron with 6.3Kdps
4th on Mimiron with 5K dps (I started lagging real bad on this fight so my damage dropped a little).

Hodir results: 9th with 6.2Kdps and behind every rogue and other melee I believe. I had Storm Power 4 times to the top DPSing rogue who only had it 3, and I had more uptime on it as well. I got Freeze 3 times and Biting cold once… the top rogue got freeze 4 times and biting cold once. So I don’t think the disparity is due to buffs or debuffs. Keep in mind I was a good 400K damage behind the top rogues total.

I will say this after last night, I am a firm believer in the FBN model. My shred idol, even on mobile fights seems to increase DPS over the rip idol… this also means I believe the ARP theory as well but I am still a little uneasy swapping all my agility gems to ARP as I use some of that gear to tank.

So if anyone could give me a little insight to this fight I would really appreciate it. Each week we get closer to downing him at 3 minutes and getting my damage higher will go a long way to help us achieve it.