PTR Raiding: Mimiron

So I know I haven't posted in a few days, mainly because I've been really busy, but I have the chance to raid with Matticus again. This time on Mimiron. I really enjoyed doing the live blogging last time we did this so I'm going to do it again. Check back throughout the next few hours to read up on our progress!

7:23 - Finished downloading patch, no que to get online, made it into instance.. Woot they put what looks to be permanent McWeaksauces up next to the portals for our flask and food needs. Of course they don't have any Flask of Chromatic Wonders.

7:27 - We are short one person, preferably a healer. Anyone want in?

7:30 - Well while we wait.. Little explanation as to our surroundings. Mimiron is in a huge room called "The Spark of Imagination". He's a little gnome mechanical dude repairing a vehicle in the middle of his room. Around the outside of his room is some roaming bombs that are easy to avoid.. They hurt. Behind the vehicle that he's on is a big red button that says DO NOT PUSH THIS BUTTON!


7:39 - We're pulling with 9.. We think he's a 1 tank fight so I'm pretending to DPS. When we engage he jumps into his little vehicle.

7:44 - Second attempt I got stuck outside the gate.. he can't be reset.. dumb. I died watching everyone.. fun. He's doing a plasma charge that's hitting the tank for 16k.. no cast bar, not spell reflectable. Looks like we need to heal through it.. We see little yellow particle effects on his cannon when he about to use it.


7:58 - We got kicked offline. when we came back we took a detour and took the tram.. on the other side there was a group of trash mobs.. literally. (pictures later I promise, for everything).


8:03 - Another Pull. He isn't doing his fire things on the ground this time but he laid a crapton of mines all over the place.

8:07 - Pull again... We're not lasting long.. trying to kite him around.. Not sure that is the way to do it. I'm going to try to offtank bear boss style (with the cleaves). to see if we can lower the damage incoming.

8:17 - Just got him to about 38%. He IS tauntable.. DPS classes are broken.. they can do instant pyroblasts every global cooldown.. Aggro tough. Next attempt we are going to try to shield wall on first tank then I'll taunt off and Barkskin + Survival Instincts.

8:20 - We still need another for 10 (need a healer!).. I noobed it up and died to his AOE blast which does 100k in a 10 yard radius.. We timed the Lightning strike.. he does it on a 30 second timer... we did get him to 14% that time.. This is only first phase of 4 mind you.

8:34 - Quick break

8:37 - Well we got him to phase two.. I didn't noob it up and actually tanked but yeah I got owned..

8:48 - We keep trying to get other people in but invite are bugged now for some reason.. We finally had a healer too. hop eit fixes soon. We think the lack of healer is what is killing us during the plasma blast thing.

8:51 - BTW his aggro range is wicked close.. See attached picture (at end of night when I put pictures in).

\
8:56 - Invite bug still crap. I noobed it up again and got caught in the lightning again.. got a rez charged in.. warrior died to the plasma bolt.. I taunted after he died but I couldn't get healed through it even with all my trinkets and cool downs popped.

9:01 - We pulled and I taunted but didn't realize that my cooldowns weren't finished counting down.. We got to phase 2 though. Phase two.. This is a new.. He turns into this gun vehicle in the center of the room.. does not move, has no aggro table.. he points in different direction and just fires.. you move out of it.. there is a lot of raid damage here.. But on our first attempt we got it to 5%.. not bad at all. He does a spinning top spell.. it's castable and when it's done he starts form where he is pointing and moves around about 1/4 turn with high damage a la Lurker. he also randomly shoots rockets off his back which target a raid member.. they land where the person was when they launches so you CAN move away.. They do a lot of damage. This is a very mobile but pretty easy phase.


9:15 - Another attempt.. the shammy pulled aggro before the tanks had aggro.. I taunted so the warrior could taunt off me but he didn't and so I popped all my cool downs right when he started casting the plasma bolt.. At that very moment the warrior taunted.. bad communication.. and I died to the lightning thing again.. Man I am really bad at this tonight. ugh.

9:22 - Mage's computer keeps getting overheated.. when he logged back on his massive dps instant cast pyroblast bug is fixed..

9:32 - Both tanks lived until the very end of phase 1.. as about to use the battle rez when the shammy stepped on the land mines in the room and blew up.. we were down 3 people at that point so saved the battle rez.

9:37 - We have got to be doing something wrong with phase one.. That plasma beam is destroying us. Course he's not the first boss in the instance so maybe they are assuming to be able to two heal it you'll need to have slightly more gear on the healers and tanks (Patchwerk was the same so that makes sense).

9:41 - Woot.. lagged out on the lightning thing.. so even if I don't screw it up my computer/connection/whatever does it for me.. I am definitely not at the top of my game tonight.. the weak link (minus the 10th person we can't invite cause of the invite bug). Guess I'm lucky I can't be replaced.

9:44 - Just found out that the 25 man version gets emotes on certain things.. the 10 does not.. So at least we can say we tried it the sorta hard way.

9:46 - The DPS keeps stealing aggro off the tanks still.. he's throwing mines all over the place and causing more damage to the raid.. We got through phase one again but with both tanks dead and no battle rezzes available to rez me to rez someone else. They went with it anyways.. Think this is our last attempt tonight.. People need to leave and we can't invite so can't replace. 4 people took him down almost all the way.. one died at 10%.. 3 took him down all the way to Phase 3!! 2 healers and a dps..

Phase 3.. He jumps in a flying head and starts shooting things out of his mouth.. Spawns adds. yeah they got owned.. he had 1.1 million health.. The previous two phases had 1.7m each.


9:54 - We are officially done. Thanks for following if you did. Tomorrow night Hodir is up and I hope to do the same live blogging. Same time. Feel free to join us starting at 6:30pm EST on the PTR.. Just whisper Kreeoni and I'll try to get you in. I'll get all the pictures up within the next few minute's so you can see all the fun we had.

Vote for this article on Massive Blips!

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

New here? Subscribe to Kree's Blog by RSS or by Email.- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

PTR Raiding: Kologarn

Matticus from World of Matticus invited me to test out another boss on the PTR. This time we were able to zone in early so I can actually give you some real feedback on some real attempts. This is going to be fun! I'll be updating this post all night until we are done.

7:13 - Waiting on some people to get here but have a majority of people here already.

7:15 - He has 4.9 Million hit points but his left and right arm are targetable and have 1.3 Million each. His aggro range is just past the grey tile.

7:19 - We pull!

7:20- 50% on right arm, 85% on right arm, full on himself. I was primary tank.. he puts a armor debuff on you.. i ended up with 4 stacks of it which brought me down to 6k armor, we're going to have to have a tank swap on this. When i charged in on the Right hand it put me at his belly. Eye beams were hitting the raid pretty hard.. going to try to avoid them better next time.

7:26 - Lets do eet again.

7:28 - Right arm to 28%, can not taunt arms. I'm changing to tanking Kologarn and we only are going to dps the arms when someone gets grabbed.

7:33 - Rezzed up and here we go.

7:39 - Group member has connection issue so replacing him for now.

7:41 - The pally healer is HOT!!

7:45 - Right arm to 18%, got him down 200k (about 95%). We didn't focus fire on him but the arms still. 9 manned it.. Looks liek he stacks armor debuffs based on proximity. checking on next test with holy pally in proximity.

7:54 - Ok not a proximity thing, he is tauntable and can taunt each time you get debuff as the previous debuff wears off before a second one gets on. We're going to taunt every time we get the debuff. No one saw how far we got the Right arm down, I'm setting up a main tank window now to monitor that. 

7:59 - Quick break for bio's

8:04 - Back and we pull, going well

8:05 - Everyone gets booted offline. Logging back on to umm.. yeah full load bar so far and nothing.

8:13 - I'm stuck on load screen, other's are in but in Dalaran. That last pull looked great, especially considering we had 8. They better not shut us down before we get it back together. GAH!

8:17 - Woot I'm Ulduar, everyone else still not in yet. Some can't get online yet either.

8:30 - Message that he's only up for another 20 minutes.. Looks like everyone logged because of it making us able to zone in. woot we're going for it still!

8:34 - Crap, me and the shadow priest are in a different instance.. running out

8:36 - We're back in.. i threw baby spice at him.. OMG SO FREAKING HILARIOUS!! Screen shot later.

8:39 - the second tank is having trouble logging in. this could spell the end of our fun. QQ

8:46 - He's in. 9 manning it, looks to be our last attempt.. Let's make it a good one.

8:50 - Right arm killed.. and adds spawned.. we were not ready.. special treat.. when he loses and arm he says "It's only a flesh wound!" Note: The person who is NOT tanking can get picked up by his hand (note: his right hand picks up people, his left hand sweeps the raid)

8:52 - Respawn not available anymore.. We get one more shot. We're switching straight  to DPSing the boss solely.

9:05 - 37%, DPSing the boss is the way to go for sure. Need to switch to the arms when people get picked up but they seem to be more of a soft enrage than anything. We noticed that the boss had a Grobbulus sort of thing where he would pick up people more frequently as he got lower in health. That may have been the case but it felt like it.

9:16 - According to Matticus, we have officially killed the boss but unfortunately we got kicked out of the instance and didn't see any loot. Nuts.

Thanks for following this live blog. This boss was a lot of fun to work on and I hope to do more in the future. Tomorrow Flame Leviathon is up so if I am able to make a raid during that time then I'll blog that one too.

Thanks to all who joined us:

Matticus from World of Matticus

Krinan

Fellina from Wowinsider

Eridan

Mostlycholo from Wowinsider

Aislinana from Northrend Commonwealth

Evangeline

Talid

Apathyinc

Locomexican

Yabanjin

Havokweaver from No Vacancy

Vote for this article on Massive Blips!

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

New here? Subscribe to Kree's Blog by RSS or by Email.- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

A New Build, Not Much Change

A new build has gone out on the PTR for patch 3.1. Aside from taking out the Brew of the Month Club for the Brewfest Meta achievement most of this patch was class based. A few Alliance racials have been changed with Stoneform cooldown a minute less and Gift of the Naaru being instant cast but not dispelling things anymore.

They are still tweaking tanks to get them all to be the same cookie cutter ideal and they are still trying to properly get Mages, Rogues, and Warlocks to be the top damage dealers they should be. Other than that there is nothing really mind boggling in the latest build.

Right now I see nothing that will greatly change the way raids will be run. You may start running with an Arms warrior again but other than that there are no major changes.

In other news, I announced earlier in the week that the Twitterati was going to have another Fun Run on Saturday at 6pm EST. I've done a really poor job at promoting this particular fun run but hopefully we will get some people to show up. Remember, make a Horde Death Knight on The Scryers server and get it through the starter quests and no higher than level 60. We'll be trying to do a PvP style event that I came up with. It should be fun, especially if we get a lot of people to show up. For those who want to promote this fun run I will make a new blog post to link from.

Vote for this article on Massive Blips!

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

New here? Subscribe to Kree's Blog by RSS or by Email.- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Werking with the patch

Patchwerk has been up on the PTR for testing purposes. There are two versions of him, one of which is a tanking test version.

This is a great thread of a guild called Premonition from the Sen'Jin server that did hours of tank tests on the PTR. Of course, this is only with current PTR 3.1 changes and some bugs (Druids don't have our Savage Defense buff we were supposed to get among others) but it's a good read for tanks (and for GM's who want to learn more about their tanks). Funnily enough I am geared almost exactly to the druid in this test so this is a near perfect representation for me to work with.

Doubtful that this type of fight will exist in Ulduar but it gives a good idea as to what damage the tanks should be taking during certain boss encounters.

Dk's are severely overpowered at the moment but only because they have a ton of usable cooldowns that can be kept up at a much higher rate than any of the rest of the tanks. I expect this to come down to a more respectable level (or the other tanks to move up).

This is by no means a such and such class is the best tank test, just how to look at our performance at different stages as well as to see what problems are there that need to be overcome in 3.1.

Vote for this article on Massive Blips!

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

New here? Subscribe to Kree's Blog by RSS or by Email.- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

The Iron Council and Me

So I joined up with Matticus and a few other Twitter people and their guildies to do "The Iron Council" testing in Ulduar. Below is whatever information I was able to garner from our foray done in a timeline style format. Hope it helps you out with your Ulduar info.

6:33 - Joined raid. In Stormwind and since Dalaran is laggy going to go to Ulduar by way of boat.
6:35 - Boats are inoperable, instead you are supposed to talk to the Dockmaster to get a port over to Borean Tundra. Faster at least but I like boat rides. I hear this is only a PTR thing to make things less laggy (or something like that).
6:37 - O Geez this flight is going to take forever.
7:36 - Just made it past Dalaran. SOOO many world server crashes. Decided to jump on mount instead of flight paths. Group is experiencing the same frustrations. No one has made it into Ulduar from my group yet.
8:10 - Still in same place as I was before.. Can't even get online anymore. But MMO-Champion has a live steam of Fusion's attempts on the boss. Much frustration that we can't even get online and these guys are able to attempt the fight.
8:24 - Woot I'm online again! Gogogo get to Ulduar before another crash!
8:27 - Flew into portal.. Fatal Error! Log back in.. in a Que now.. 2069.. 30 Estimated time.. QQ 8:38 - Well in Que but we're watching the movie and trying to find out some info. Little guy casts chain lightning which is interruptible. It hits about 5 people and hits for a ton so must be interrupted.
8:44 - Some sort of channeled thing happens approximately 30 seconds into the fight and then it says Peasant has crossed the line followed by a huge lighting orb thing. They keep resetting the event at this time (resettable by running back through the door).
8:53 - Ok they switched to killing the large guy first, which made a huge leap in progression. Got him down on first attempt as well as the medium sized guy. The little guy is where the fight is at I guess. That dude does some serious damage.
9:08 - OK I'm in ULDUAR!!
9:14 - I see the Iron Council!

9:25 - 9 of us so far.. I'm the only tank though :/
9:33 - Derv gave me G.N.E.R.D.S!
9:40 - We pulled anyways with just me as tank. Didn't last long.
9:45 - They are shutting down testing momentarily.. Sigh
9:50 - Death and Taxes Downs the boss according to chat.
9:53 - We called it.. Can't get another tank in. O well I guess there's always next time.
9:58 - Went to explore.. fell off a cliff and died just as they kicked everyone out of Ulduar. Which of course crashed the server once again. At least when I logged back in I was back in my body.

O well failed attempt but not our fault as people just couldn't log in all night. I did get some screen shots but that is the only thing I was able to get from the whole foray. Better luck next time.


Interesting note - Apparently one of the people in our raid was none other than Angelie from the Guild Loot Distribution Systems post on WoW Guild Relations forum, whom I posted a little about during my DKP section last month. Maybe I can get them to guest post sometime about DKP.

Vote for this article on Massive Blips!

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

New here? Subscribe to Kree's Blog by RSS or by Email.- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

PTR, No Vacancy, and a new Fun Run!

As most of you know patch 3.1 is now out on the public test realms (PTR) as of sometime this past weekend. I am well behind the 8-ball on posting anything PTR related as all the major blog's and fan-sites have already had their say, so I have no intentions of beating dead horses. I will try to post based on newer things that I find out and specifically guild leader and raid leading related items.

However, No Vacancy and I are bringing in at the very least a 10 man team to learn a little more about Ulduar. We would love to bring it up to a 25 man team but from the sounds of it a majority of our own 25 man team can not make it due to either not wanting to or lack of hard drive space (the PTR is 13-16gig of space). With that in mind, if you are not coming over with your guild and you would like to join us in Ulduar we would be happy to have you. We plan on raiding either from 12am-3am on weekdays or evenings on weekends (or both). I am Kreeoni on the PTR and No Vacancy is the guild name. Anyone in the guild has invite ability and if I am not busy otherwise if you message me on Twitter I can hop over and toss an invite.

And speaking of other events, the next Fun Run will be held March 7th at 6pm EST. This time, however, it will be a PvP event. Make sure to get your Death Knight up to 58 and no higher than level 60. You will be competing against other Death Knights of the group. I would like to get at least 25 people to attend this event this time so invite your friends, pvp partners, etc. This event will once again be held Horde side on The Scryers server. There is already a guild set up that you can join, just whisper any member of the guild or grab me on Twitter. More details next week as we get closer (don't want to ruin the surprise).

Things I've noticed so far on the PTR:
- My Traveling Tundra Mammoth expensive 20k mount now does not let me discharge my vendors so that I can carry passengers making it less desireable. Boo!
- While Dual Spec is cool in that it doesn't need a reagent anymore it does rob you of all your mana every time you use it.
- Not only can you swim under water on a mount, you can mount up under water too. Although the mounts still move at swim speed.

Vote for this article on Massive Blips!

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

New here? Subscribe to Kree's Blog by RSS or by Email.- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -