Resto Druid A-Z

Tinuviel’s A-Z of Hunters was such a great idea, I decided to do one for Resto Druids as well. Feel free to point out glaring omissions …

A

A is for Applebough, Dalaran’s most famous Druid turned fruit seller. Its also for Arbor Day – the day when Hunters everywhere plant trees in honor of their favorite healer class. Ahem … cough … Oh yes its also for me – Anelf .

B

B is for Barkskin. Mostly used in PvP, but can make the difference between being one-shotted and two-shotted, giving your tank a chance to respond to you screaming like a girl over vent. Can be handy when grinding too – Resto Druid grinding is slow at the best of times, so the last thing you want is spell pushback.

C

C is for Cenarius, Lord of the Forest and patron god of all Druids. Guardian of Cenarius is the only achievement worth grinding for as a Druid.

D

D is for /dance. The only dance better than the Tree Dance is the Moonkin Dance. The first rule of Druid Dance Club is you don’t talk about Druid Dance Club. The second rule of Druid Dance Club is …  YOU DON’T TALK ABOUT DRUID DANCE CLUB.

E

E is for Earthmother, as in Gift of the Earthmother. Reduces the global cooldown on your instant cast heals, so you can cast them even quicker … erm …

F

F is for Fandral Staghelm, Arch Druid of the Cenarion Circle, and possibly the most rude and annoying NPC in the game. (Tinuviel makes a point of slapping him whenever she has to visit him on a quest – go slap an Archdruid today .

G

G is for Gift of the Wild, a great raid buff. Tell your Pally to turn off his Frost Aura and use this as your only resistance buff on Sapphiron if you’re chasing the The Hundred Club achievement.

H

H is for HoT, the healing style that separates Druid healers from the others. That is until patch 3.1 gets dumped on us from a great height. H is also for Healing Touch, if you’re into that sort of thing.

I

I is for Innervate, without which we’d go OOM quicker than a naked critchicken.

J

J is for reJuvenation, our most mana efficient single target heal (unless someone overwrites it). … Cough … cough.  Yes, I know that one’s a bit contrived.

K

K is for Kel’Thuzad, one of the few fights where I’ve found Nourish (see N) to be really useful. Its a fast enough cast that you can dither over Grid and still heal the Frost Blasted raider before the four second DoT kills him.

L

L is for Lifebloom, the Resto Druid’s signature heal. Keep them rolling on your tanks until 3.1 hits. L is also for Leather, which Night Elf Druids look really good in, and which Tauren Druid’s skins are made into .

M

M is for MP5 – the more the better. Being civilized folk, Resto Druids like to get their’s from Spirit.

N

N is for Nature’s Swiftness. Macro Nature’s Swiftness with Healing Touch on your emergency heal button. N is also for Nourish, a direct heal that Blizzard are determined we should use. (Should I mention Nerf? No that’s not just a Druid thing).

O

O is for Omen of Clarity, which used to be a PvP talent until Patch 3 brought it into the Resto mainstream. Free cast anyone?

P

P (of course) is for Phaelia, erstwhile Queen of the Trees. Who will take on her mantle?

Q

QQ is for Lifebloom.

R

R is for Rebirth, another Resto Druid defining talent. Allows you to let your tank die once every 20 minutes.

S

S is for Spirit – gives you mana regen and a healing bonus. S is also for Shadowmeld, a lifesaver for Night Elf Druids when the Hunter above them on the threat table Feigns Death and dumps aggro. Not so good for the Priest just below you though . 

T

T is for Tree of Life (Treeform) and Improved Tree of Life. Mana cost reduction for heals and healing bonuses are an added benefit to its primary function – dancing.

U

U is for Ursal the Mauler, a level 12 Furlbog in Gnarlpine Hold on Teldrassil. Night Elves have a quest to kill him cos he’s messing with them Druids of the Fang. Naughty Ursal.

V

V is for Valstann Staghelm, son of Fandral (see F). Got himself ripped apart by the Qiraji boss dude in front of his father, which is probably why Fandral is so bad-tempered .

W

W is for Wild Growth, introduced as part of Blizzard’s initiative to turn Resto Druids into Holy Priests. Initially treated with suspicion, but now a staple for Druids on raid healing duty. Everyone stand a little closer together please.

X

X is for Xarantaur, a level 80 elite Tauren Druid and Horde quest giver at Camp Tunka’lo in the Storm Peaks. He is said to be over 10,000 years old, which is why he smells a bit funny.

Y

Y is for Ysera, the green Dragon Aspect, who is charged with the protection of the Emerald Dream. She’s also known to us Druids as the “Mother” of Cenarius.

Z

Z is for Zhevra. Druids don’t have a Zhevra form, but we do have Bear, Cat, Travel (Cheetah), Tree, Moonkin, Flight, and Epic Flight forms so we’re doing pretty well really. Z for Zhevra is also a nice link back to Tinuviel’s original A-Z post, which caused me to spend all evening writing this one .

 

(Edit from Tinuviel: Tinuviel takes no responsibility for any anti-Tauren sentiment implied in this blog post. She points out that Anelf is Resto-specced, and therefore not very likely to hurt you if you hunt him down ).

Hunter A-Z

A

Aspects – one of the hunters’ defining tools.  Aspect of the Dragonhawk and hawk gives additional attack power; Aspect of the Viper gives mana back, but at a cost to DPS; Aspect of the Cheetah/Pack makes you run fast unless hit;  Aspect of the Wild gives your raid a nice nature buff.  Make sure you have the right aspect on for the situation.  I am terrible at leaving Aspect of the Viper on throughout boss fights by mistake, even though I have ViperNotify addon that dings like a microwave when I am mana’ed up, and power auras which shows a little icon to indicate I am not in Aspect of the Dragonhawk.

B

Bestial Wrath and Big Red Kitty.  Bestial Wrath is the hunter pet talent that turns you pet into a big red unstoppable killing machine.  Big Red Kitty is the hunter who is a small red unstoppable…err.. dwarf thing.  A hunter legend in his own making he has blogs, podcasts, movies, t’shirts, and pull along toys.  He also knows his hunter stuff

C

Chimera shot – the Markman hunters big hitting 51 point talent.  Deals 125% weapon damage and refreshes the sting on the target dealing an additional effect depending on the sting (e.g. for Serpent Sting, instantly deals 40% of the stings damage).  One of the longest tooltips in the game.

D

Devilsaur – formerly the huge monster than crept up behind you in Un’goro crater and stomped on your head, killing you before you knew what had hit you.  Now the huge monster that stomps along next to many a BM hunter, making enough noise to wake the undead.  Hit bestial Wrath, and you need a flying mount to feed him.

E

Explosive Shot - the survival hunters 51 point talent.  Deals fire damage over 3 ticks, the first hit and for 2 additional seconds.

F

Feign Death – the very best aggro dump in game when used correctly, or an easy way to annoy your group and wipe raids?  The hunter watches his aggro and feigns before he out-aggros the tank, dropping down the aggro list, and hardly breaking his stride in the massive amount of DPS he is putting out.  The huntard, on-the-other-hand,  pulls aggro off the tank, stands their meleeing the mob for a second or two, while the priest, with no throught for their personal safety frantically throws on the heals to keep the fool alive.  The huntard then remembers his nifty feign death button and hits the dirt.  Mob runs straight for the priest, chews her up, and proceeds to eat the rest of the group.  Welcome to the feign death wipe.

G

Gorrilladin – with the changes brought in for WOTLK, hunters found their volley could kill something more than harmless bunnies.  Then they were given Gorilla tenacity pets with improved growl and thunderstomp, and the fun began.  Cue BRK Gorrilladin movie, t’shirts, keyrings, the whole shebang. As of Patch 3.1 all tenacity pets are supposedly getting thunderstomp – welcome to the Turtledin, Bearadin, Crocadin, and Wormadin patch!

H

Hunting Party – Survival hunters replenishment talent.  Gives the raid mana back each time (when 5/5) the hunter crits with arcane, explosive or steady shots.  Survival hunters are one of the three/four classes with replenishment, along with shadow priests, ret paladins and I guess you could count shaman for their mana totems.

I

Ice Barbed Spear – alot of us had one.  You can get it as a quest reward from running one successful Alterac Valley battleground as early as level 51.  The same quest also gives a nice crossbow reward as an alternative option.  Even for power-levelers they are useful, although you may feel a bit sheepish with all that strength on your weapon.

J

Jump Shot – the kiting move, whereby the hunter runs forward and while doing so jumps around and fires a shot at the chasing enemy, before continuing to run.  Something I have never tried to master because of being (guilty secret here) a keyboard mover!  Yes that’s right, I use the Q,E, and arrow keys to move and a laptop with a track pad   I know, I know I should start using a mouse – but I usually play sitting in an armchair, with the laptop balanced on the arm, and a cat on my lap, so there is nowhere for a mouse, as well as a cat to go.  In my defense I can strafe shot kite, I’ve never died on the Heigan Dance (except once when I D’cd but that doesn’t count) or frogger, so I can’t be doing that badly.  Just don’t ask me to do fancy jumps.

K

Kill Shot - the hunters big execute shot, introduced in Patch 3.0.  Can only be used on targets with less than 20% health.  You get your first rank of Kill Shot at level 71, so don’t forget to visit your trainer when you hit 71 if you are leveling a hunter.

L

Loque’nahak – needs no introduction.  The first spirit beast.  Rare spawn from Sholazar Basin.  One of the most sought after hunter pets in game.  Need to be a 51 beastmaster hunter to tame him and have oodles of luck and patience.

M

Mazzranache – the pink flamingo.  Rare pink tallstrider from Muglore for those who like a different looking pet.

N

Nessingwary – NPC who pops up in Stranglethorn, Nagrand and Sholozar Basin, and singlehandedly helps to keep several animal species on the endangered list.  He also writes trashy novels.  Gives out hunter orientated quests – kill a petting zoo – and nice hunter rewards.

O

Overpowered?  There have been times throughout the game where a well played and reasonably geared hunter can easily top the damage charts in a raid.  Early WOTLK was one such time, and through much of BC, BM hunters were top of the damage meters.  However, more recently nerfs and uncertainties around future changes have meant that hunters are no longer topping the charts.  It seem much more gear dependent now between hunters and other classes, and different hunter specs, and certainly in our raids a well geared a played mage can do significantly more damage than a hunter.

P

Petopia – The hunter pet site on the internet.  Looking for pet information – go there – accept no substitute.  Thanks Mania for this awesome site

Q

Questing, leveling and soloing – the hunter is one of the easiest classes to solo and level.  With your ranged weapon and trusty pet to tank for you, as well as your means of healing said furry friend, you are a mini group – dps, tank and healer all rolled into one.  You can solo high level mobs, elites, and group quests that other classes would not be able to attempt.  I am currently leveling a ret pally, granted her gear is not as good as Tinuviel’s, but while she is very easy to level solo and oodles of fun, she cannot solo all the elite mobs that Tin and her pet could take out at the same level.

R

ranged weapon – other classes can use bows, guns, crossbows, but only the hunter uses them as their primary means of DPS.  A ranged weapon is a thing of beauty.  I would rather run around in blue gear with the best range weapon in the game, than have all reasonable epics.

S

Steady Shot - during Burning Crusade BM hunters could top the DPS charts by doing not much more than spamming Steady Shot.  My blog is called Steady Shot, because at the time that was where most of my damage was coming from.  Several nerfs later, it is now much reduced in power, although still in all hunters rotations.  For a MM hunter like myself, it is the shot you use when no others are off cooldown, but is not longer the shot of choice.

T

Traps.  Hunters are known for the pets, ranged weapon and their traps.  Whether we are cc’ing, slowing mobs, doing extra damage, or wreaking havoc with snakes, traps are a hunter thing.  Most hunters though, wish Blizzard would throw a little more love traps way.  Freezing Trap is not well designed for chain trapping, snakes have not scaled well, only one trap can be shot, and while the trapping talents in the survival tree actually go someway to making them useful, most survival hunters don’t take many of them as there are other higher priority talents to take.

U

Uhk’loc – unique white gorilla.  Rare spawn found in gorilla cave in Un’goro crater and sought after by gorilla lovers.

 

V

Volley – oh how I love thee, let me count the ways.  There was a time when hunter aoe was so pathetic I gave up doing it in raids.  We used to stand on the stairs before Moroes’ room in kara pulling the groups of dancers to AOE.  My group consisted of an uber warlock (Neokia), several mages and me.  My AOE damage and DPS was so pathetic in comparison to theirs, that I used to stand back and watch in awe as they rained firey and icey destruction down on the mobs.  At the end of the night I would still top the damage chart from single target damage, but I couldn’t kill a bunny with my volley.  Now, thanks to a well needed buff to volley (it was nerfed back from an original very powerful buff), it is a very useful tool indeed.  And given I am now a MM hunter with talents in improved volley, I can now out damage and DPS almost every on AOE fights.

W

Wolfslayer Sniper Rifle – I loved this baby.  I loved its looks, its name, its stats, and the fact I pulled it from the belly of a wolf (the Big Bad Wolf in the Karazhan Opera Event).

X

eXpose Weakness – this used to be why it was good to have one survival hunter in a raid.  It was formerly a raid wide buff, increasing everyones attack power by up to 25% of the hunters agility every time the hunter critted.  It is also why agility and crit rating are so important to survival hunters.  This now only affects the survival hunter  

Y

Yellowtail, Spotted – A fish that is a good source of pet food for many levels, and if caught raw and cooked is also a good way of getting your fishing and cooking skills up.  Ok, OK, I strugged with Y   Can you find a better hunter related Y?  

Z

Zebra – wouldn’t it be cool to tame one?  Other mobs on my ‘I would love to tame that list’ include stags, the other types of dinosaur in un’goro, sharks (aquatic pet only of course), dragon whelpings, and murlocs (I know the last 2 aren’t beasts – but gobbler as a hunter pet, now that I would like to see!!!)

Thought:  This A-Z seems like a bit of an advert for the little red dwarf (aka BRK).  It just shows how much of the basic hunter stuff BRK has covered in his global enterprises.  Thank you BRK and Hobbes for all your efforts on behalf of hunterkind!

Your turn:  What’s in your hunter A-Z?  There were other good ones I left out, and some letters I was stretched to think of a good hunter representative.  Add your comments here.  Write another class blog?  What A-Z sums up your class, link your blog entries in the comments.

Malygos 1 – Anelf 0

This was bound to happen as soon as I started talking about how easy Naxx was . Last night Soldiers of Fortune ventured into Eye of Eternity for the first time. “You live and learn”, they say. In our case we died and learned. And we must have learned an awful lot judging by my armor bill at the end of the run.

Of course, there’s no trash in Eye of Eternity – just straight into the boss fight, so no complaints about AoE trash pulls . And we did it without a Replenishment class, so I had to quickly polish off my rusty mana conservation skills – HoTting up my targets and trying to spend a few seconds here and there outside the five second rule. I even took a few Mana Potions during the night – which is very unusual.

Health is a big issue in the Malygos fight. You take a lot of damage during the vortex phase followed by a big drop damage splash, so I took advice from the TankSpot video and favored health buffs over spellpower and mp5. I took Blessing of Kings instead of Blessing of Wisdom, and a Flask of Stoneblood instead of Flask of Pure Mojo. I also switched in a couple of armor items I had lying around in my bank that had slightly higher stamina than my preferred gear.  This added to the lack of Replenishment to make my mana bar quite an interesting part of the fight. (Mana was still ok, but I just couldn’t go spam crazy like I do for Sapphiron and Kel’Thuzad).

BTW The TankSpot strategy videos are excellent. I recommend them. My only criticism is they make the fights look a little too easy .

The main problem we had through the night was coordinating tanking and DPS so the Power Sparks died in the middle of the room to stack their buffs on us. A Death Knight’s Death Grip makes this easy, but we don’t have any raiding Death Knights in our guild . Instead, we adopted the TankSpot strategy of moving the tank so incoming Sparks had to travel over the DPS group. That’s tricky – especially when you’re disoriented from falling out of the vortex, at which time the Power Spark summoned before the vortex speeds up. We were improving a lot during the night though, so hopefully we won’t burn all our time in this phase next week, and will have enough time for phase 3.

We made it through phase 2 as well. As a healer, that’s just raid healing while running between the purple anti-magic domes. If you don’t hit the enrage timer, then its pretty straightforward. (Probably not so simple for the DPSers, some of whom get to ride around on frisbees).

We also made it to phase 3. But we didn’t last very long because we’d burned too much of the enrage timer on phases 1 and 2. My main advice for this phase is practice the Aces High quest in Coldarra. And don’t just practice alone. Group with one of your designated healers so you can focus on your respective roles in the phase 3 fight.

So the first battle goes to Malygos. But Tin and Anelf will return. And we will win the war. Time is on our side – Malygos only has to die once for us to win .

Anelf’s Resto Druid tip for Malygos:

When you’re swept up in the air by the vortex in phase 1, you can still cast instant spells. But the vortex will take some of the raid out of range. When Deadly Boss Mods (or whatever you’re using) warns the vortex is coming, your first priority is to make sure everyone in the raid is topped off. Hopefully your other healers can take care of this, so you can focus on spreading HoTs around the group.

The important job for, you just before the vortex comes, is to start throwing Lifeblooms on the raid – paying most attention to those with the lowest health. This makes sure that even the players out of range in the air get some healing before they drop.

Up in the air, continue with Lifeblooms on those within range – again, paying most attention to those with very low health (the ones who will die when they land ). Don’t bother with Wild Growth while you’re in the air – you’re not likely to be close enough to the rest of the raid for it to be effective. (Might be helpful if you can cast it just before you’re swept up).

When you hit the ground after dropping from the vortex (and everyone is low on health) is a good time to use Wild Growth.

Has Blizzard killed the art of raiding?

During our weekly raid last Saturday, I was going crazy on healing on boss fights. Rolling full Lifebloom stacks on both tanks, and spamming heals on the raid. It hardly made a dent in my mana. I could have kept going all night without a break (or so it seemed). Admittedly, I did have Blessing of Wisdom, a Survival Hunter, and a Mana Stream totem at my disposal, but should mana really be so readily available that your healer just doesn’t care about mana conservation – even for the longest fight.

Then I stepped into Heroic CoS for a quick badge run. I was stacking HoT’s on the tank, healing splash damage, dispelling poison, and throwing in Hurricanes to help AoE the mob waves. In the run between each wave, my mana was back to full without any drinking, potions, or Innervate.

That got me thinking about other aspects of raiding/instancing. I remember the careful pull planning in Kara and ZA: Entrigan carefully marking the mobs to be CCed; Tinuviel practicing her chain trapping, and wearing her BeastMaster set to reduce trap cooldown so she could help us get over our lack of Priests (and Shackles). If anyone messed up their role, then we wiped.

(BTW A good chain trapper is beautiful thing to watch).

Now when we raid Naxx, the two tanks just dive in, gather up the mobs, and the whole raid throws in as much AoE as they can. Occasionally we have to remind the tanks to pull the mobs together so we can AoE everything at once.

I used to really enjoy a well executed multi-mob pull – and took great pleasure in the clinical dissection of our enemy through careful CC and kill order. That art seems to be gone now.

Don’t get me wrong – this isn’t all QQ – I find the Naxx boss fights are still interesting and varied. (I’m even starting to enjoy the Heigen dance). And I do realize that Naxx is WOTLK entry level raiding. But the trash pulls are just brute force AoEing. (Seriously, I can’t remember the last time a DPser pulled aggro from our tank). And the massive mana regen takes away one of the core skills (mana conservation) of BC raiding for healers and casters.

That said, I’m not in favor of all of Blizzard’s proposed changes to mana regen for 3.1.

The 5 second rule is a useful tool for the skilled healer – planning your heals so you spend some of your time at full mana regen (IMHO) requires sufficient skill to achieve that it should remain a tool for the better healers to outshine the mediocre ones.

The changes to the mana cost of a Druid’s Lifebloom force Druid healers to change a way of healing that I really enjoy. I view it as a skill to be able to time your raid heals so your tank HoT stack doesn’t expire. Moving to a situation where you have to time the bloom in order to maintain your mana is a step too far (and seems to be most valuable for PvP where you’re less likely to be stacking).

My suggested solutions?

For mana regen:

Don’t nerf individual mana regen. Get rid of raid Replenishment instead.

Blizzard want us to bring the player, not the class. Yet they’re planning raid content with the assumption that someone is specced for Replenishment. Beastmaster and Markman Hunters get to spend more time fishing if the raid needs a Survival Hunter to fill their Replenishment slot. 

Individual mana regen is fine. A Hunter switching into AoV to replenish mana mid-fight is part of the game play – do you manage your DPS to conserve mana, or do you go all out and have a low DPS period during the fight where you’re regenning your mana?

For AoE tanking:

I have absolutely no idea.

Sapphiron and Kel’Thuzad – a Resto Druid’s view

Thought I’d post a few notes I had on these fights for the benefit of other trees while they’re still fresh in my mind. Maybe I’ll extend this to a Resto Druid’s view of all of Naxx-10 in due course. (Hunters – make sure you tell your tree what to do before the fight starts ).

Raid make up

Right now we’re taking 3 healers to the Naxx end bosses (although we’ve started doing the easier fights with 2). The three healers are usually: Resto Druid (Anelf), Discipline Priest (Neombra), Resto Shaman (Thepatient). The rest of the raid is (of course) tanks and DPS. On our first Sapphiron fight (and kill) we had 4 tanks in the group (a Prot Warrior and 3 Prot Paladins), on Kel’Thuzad we had 3 tanks. That’s not because we think so many tanks is a good idea, its because those were the only raiders in our guild that were available that evening. 

Sapphiron

Sapphiron has 2 phases.

Phase 1

For phase 1, its straightforward healing with the added complexity of having to dodge the blizzard that continually wanders around. And don’t run behind him – he has a tail swipe. He also casts a curse on a random player that you have to dispel quickly, as it heals Sapp. Druids excel at this fight – its all about healing while almost constantly on the move, for which our Lifebloom and Rejuvenate are perfect.

Phase 2

Phase 2 comes every 45 seconds. Sapphiron takes to the air, and hits 2 random players with Ice Bolt. This causes damage and encases them in ice. (It also causes splash damage to nearby players, so the raid needs to be slightly spread out at this point – although pre-patch 3.1 mana regen makes the extra damage pretty trivial).

Now all the raid has to run to get one of the ice-blocked players between them and Sapphiron before he casts Frost Breath – even if that means running into a Blizzard. (Make sure you raid isn’t so spread out that someone can’t make it to the ice block in time). If you’re out in the open when Frost Breath comes, then you will die.

As a Resto Druid for this stage (if you’re not iced), use Wild Growth while you raid is clustered around you to heal, and throw HoTs around if you’re in the Blizzard.

That’s all you have to do – rinse and repeat.

Kel’Thuzad

Kel’Thuzad has 3 phases (although phases 2 and 3 are essentially the same).

Phase 1

The whole raid group stands together in the center of the room . There’s a load of mobs all standing around the outside. A few at a time, they start to walk in towards you. The skeletons can be one-shotted by the ranged DPS. The tanks take it in turns to grab the abominations before they hit the group (taking care not to get too close to the perimeter of the room or they’ll pull more adds and wipe the group). Whenever a banshee starts coming, all the DPS have to burn her down before she gets to the group, or she hits several players with a huge knockback. The knockback invariably causes adds and leads to a wipe.

As a resto Druid, you need to know that the abominations stack a -10% healing debuff on the tanks, so healing will be harder if one tank keeps pulling all the abominations. This causes a really big problem if a knockback or badly positioned tank pulls a bunch of extra abominations. If you avoid pulling extra mobs, then this part of the fight is quite easy (although a little hectic). Use Wild Growth liberally for easy healing, as your ranged DPSers will be clustered around you.

Phase 2

Phase 2 is when Kel’Thuzad enters the fight. There will normally be mobs still alive from phase 1 when he does, so one tank needs to engage him while everyone else finishes off the mobs. But now K’T is here, everyone has to spread out to be more than 10 yards apart. This is because of his Frost Blast, which will chain to other players within 10 yards of each affected player. Spread your healers out equally just outside the central circle and get the DPSers to spread around them – this will make sure everyone is within range of at least two healers. (Deadly Boss Mods and BigWigs both have a display of who is within Frost Blast range of you, so you can shout at them to move away).

Frost Blast is the usual cause of a wipe. It damages for 104% of health over 4 seconds, so healers have to act quickly or the player dies. I found the best resto Druid heal to be Nourish. (At last! A use for Nourish!). Regrowth was too slow, Rejuvenation and Lifebloom weren’t healing quickly enough, and Rejuve+Swiftmend was also too slow. Best of all, get your priest to Shield the affected target as their first heal. We played whack-a-mole on affected players, with all healers jumping to get a heal in. If no-one is standing too close together, then you only have to heal one person. (The main tank is immune to pimary Frost Blast, but not to the chained effect). 

Again, resto Druids do great in this fight, because your HoTs continue to keep the tank nicely topped off while you whack out a heal on the Frost Blasted player.

K’T's other spells are:

Void Fissure – move out of the big red ring within 5 seconds of it appearing under you. And shout at others who don’t – you can’t heal through the damage when one of them goes off.

Mana Detonation – cast on a mana user. Hurts people within 10 yards of you, and drains ~2000 mana from you.

Frost Bolt Single and Multiple – easy enough to heal the raid through as long as everyone is topped off. Remind your DPSers that they can interrupt the single frost bolt.

Phase 3

This is exactly the same as Phase 2, except K’T summons two Crypt Lords. Best get the MT to grab them, because the OT may get Frost Blasted while tanking. They don’t hit for much, so healing is no harder than Phase 2.

And that’s it – grab your loot and get some sleep.

Hunter AOE grinding after patch 3.1

If you have been reading the inter-nether you will know by now that Thunderstomp is being changed; it will no longer be a Gorilla only family skill, but will be a talent that can be learnt by all tenacity pets.  Gorillas will have a family skill called Pummel instead, which will be a spell interrupt.  Gorillas will of course be able to access Thunderstomp as a tenacity pet.

A lot of hunters have already found the fun of gorilladin grinding, but those of you who have not trained a gorilla, being bear or turtle lovers, are going to find yourselves with access to the skill.

AOE grinding is different from how we normally kill things.  In my post on How to be a Good Hunter the Easy Way, I suggested you did not use a Gorilla for this reason.  Some people have taken to it successfully, others have struggled, finding it takes too long to round up the mobs, or pulling aggro off their pets when they do.  However, it is pretty easy to learn to do successfully.  I don’t claim to be the worlds best Gorilladin hunter, but I do pretty good, so here are a few tips, to help those thinking of having a go (commentators feel free to add your own):

So which pets will be the best for tanking multiple mobs?  Tenacity pets that have a family skill which is a multi-mob ability like bears with swipe and crocodiles with bad attitude, will now have 2 skills to do damage and generate threat on multiple mobs.  I would suggest the bear as the best multiple mob tanking pet after 3.1.  (Swipe has a shorter cooldown than bad attitude).  The other pet you could consider is the Turtle.  Turtle’s shell shield gives them great survivability, meaning that can absorb the damage of multiple mobs beating on them. 

You will find it easier to aoe grind as a Beastmaster hunter, as you pet will do more damage, have higher health, and be able to hold aggro better.  It is possible to do it with other specs, but you will just have to watch your aggro more.  However, with duel-specs coming in in 3.1, you may want to have a Beastmaster soloing spec, and save a survival or marksman build for raiding, grouping or pvp.  Beastmaster is still the best spec for soloing, pet tanking, and AOE grinding with your pet.

1.  Rounding up the mobs.  Find an area where there are several mobs fairly close to each other.  As with all AOE grinding you don’t want the mobs to be caster or range dps types, but melee types that will chase after and gather around your pet once agroed. (If there is one caster in amongst the others, target the caster last and pull the melee mobs to the caster.)  The way I do it is to let the pet auto cast Thunderstomp, swipe, growl, and then target a mob and use hot keyed petattack button to make it attack that mob (I have a macroed /petattack button but you can use the key binding for the pet attack on the pet bar if you like).  I let it get a shot in, then target the next mob and do the same.  I will run the pet around gathering up 3-8ish mobs.  

1b.  For lower level mobs, a quicker way to round them up is either on your mount, or by putting you pet on passive and follow, and then running through them aggroing them yourself, when you have a bunch, hit the defensive button on the pet toolbar, the pet will spring into action and defend you, growling and thunderstomping, you can hit feign death, and then jump up ready to burn down the mobs.

2.  Burning down the mobs.  I start with a misdirect onto my pet (see my 13 macros post for the macro I use to do this with I button press) and then burn them down with volley.  Re-volley until dead.  Watch your pets health and throw a heal on if you have to.  Watch Omen or your chosen threat meter, or the new helpful threat messages in your combat text, and if your threat is getting too high compared to that of your pet, either throw in another misdirect (if the cooldown is up) or hit feign death.

3. Collect all the lovely loot, rinse and repeat!

Personally, my gorilla is going to be released back into the jungles of Stranglethorn (or maybe Sholizzar), and my white bear Beren is going to get more play time.  I am pretty sure I will select a Beastmaster pet tanking/soloing spec as my second spec, and may also level a Turtle.

Au revoir Kel’Thuzad

This will be old hat for many of you, but Tinuviel and I were really excited tonight to finally down Kel’Thuzad and get our The Fall of Naxxramas achievement. We normally only raid on Fridays and Saturdays, but we just had to get back in there tonight with only the end boss left – even though we only started at midnight for our east coasters.

From a healer’s perspective, the fight is really exciting. Even more fun than Sapphiron. I was almost disappointed when I realized KT was going to die and the fight was going to end. Almost .

I know a lot of people complain that Naxx is too easy. But for a small, casual raiding guild like ours, I think Blizzard got the level about right. It was hard enough that we had to spend a little time in Heroics improving our gear before we could really hit the ground running, but not so hard that we had to farm one or two bosses again and again to slowly get the gear we needed to progress. And making it quite a short instance gives us Weekend Raiders a reasonable chance of clearing it over a couple of nights before we get to the stage where we’re totally overgeared for the instance.

Anyway – many congratulations to the Soldiers of Fortune ‘Weekend Raiders’ team who killed the end boss (with only 3 tanks tonight ):

• Anelf (Healer/Druid)
• Carys (DPS/Mage)
• Cornerback (Healer/Shaman)
• Entrigan (Tank/Paladin)
• Heartthief (DPS/Rogue)
• Keeferblah (Tank/Warrior)
• Kimbipal (Tank/Paladin)
• Kzin (DPS/Mage)
• Neombra (Healer/Priest)
• Tinuviel (DPS/Hunter)

And congratulations and thank you as well to those who helped clear the instance over the weekend:

• Cannibal (DPS/Hunter)
• Haqq (Tank/Paladin)
• Thepatient (Healer/Shaman

Here’s the ubiquitous screenshot of us sitting on Kel’Thuzad’s throne. Tinuviel and her trusty Raptor (Letin) are at the front, Anelf is the wooden looking one

 

Soldiers of Fortune celebrate clearing Naxx

 

Tinuviel’s hunter perspective on the fight:

The Kel’Thuzad fight has three phases.  In the first, the group stands in the center of the circular room and waves of adds attack.  There are three types – Abominations, low health skeletons, and Banshees.  My main priority here was to focus on the banshees, followed by helping out with the Abominations and one-shotting the skellies.

In phase 2, Kel’Thuzad teleports to the center of the room.  I misdirect to the main tank to help him pick it up.  The group needs to spread out to be 10 yards apart.  Both Deadly Boss Mods and Big Wigs Addons have a range indicator, which is really helpful for this.  Finish burning down any final adds and then turn your attention onto the boss.  There is a lot to watch out for, and a number of reasons to move or need to call out on vent.  It is also not a pet friendly fight because of the voids that open up and do massive damage; with 4 melee classes, my main tank was tending to pull the boss away from any voids, leaving the void behind him – just where the pet was.  I successful recalled him out of the void a couple of times – but he died on each fight.  Watching to see whether I was about to be engulfed in a void (a red circle opens around you, and you have a couple of seconds to move), encased in ice (need to shout out on vent, and pray a healer gets to you in time), mana exploded (you need to make sure you are well away from everyone), really affected my shot rotations and therefore my DPS.  I don’t use a shot-rotation macro these days, finding I can get more DPS without it, but its hard to keep up the timing when you are watching the fight so intensively and moving about a lot.  It is also a long fight, I found I had to go into viper twice with no replenishment in the party.  I hope that once I am more familiar with the fight, I can improve my DPS.

In phase 3, 2 crypt-lord beetles appear.  I misdirect these onto the tank (with the help of readiness to reset my misdirect, I was able to ensure I helped glue both to him).  Towards the end of one attempt, our main tank died, again I was able to use misdirect to quickly help the off tank pick up the boss and the adds.

And that’s about it, it’s great to be able to say we have finally cleared Naxx.  And it’s great that we did it with an all Soldiers of Fortune group.  We have a fantastic group of raiders, and it’s true what they say, ‘bring the person not the class’, we were able to get Sapphiron down with 4 tanks in the party and Kel’Thuzad with 3, I think there should be an achievement for that too!

All quiet on the western front

Steady shot has been a little quiet recently. Our apologies for the hiatus. 

Some of this has to do with real life taking us away from Azeroth – Tin and I are in the process of moving apartment, so we’re spending a lot of our time sorting through old stuff to see what we can throw out and packing what’s left into boxes. (And trying to ensure zero break in internet access ).

On the WoW front, we’ve both been busy leveling alts. Tin and Anelf are mostly just getting dragged out at the weekend for raiding or to help one of our alts with a tricky group quest. Tin’s Retadin – Hollie – just hit 68, so she’s on the boat to Northrend. Leveling through the Outlands is amazingly fast now – which at least means less time spent in Hellfire Peninsula. Stormshadow – my spriest – is 62, so she’ll have to wait a little longer. She actually got to the Outlands first and waited for Hollie to catch up. Then Hollie just carried on going (she does that to a lot of my alts ).

I suspect Tin will be posting a Retadin easy gear guide soon as she starts researching pre-raid gear for Hollie.

The downside of the Outlands is that its infested with Death Knights – to the extent that its really changed our perception of the class. The typical scenario now is you’re running into an area to do a quest and see a DK running the other way. You know before you arrive at the mobs you’re supposed to grind on that the DK you saw has just killed everything in the area. So now, to us, a DK means sitting around waiting for the stuff he just killed to respawn. Tin was enjoying her DK, but I suspect Kibeth is now in danger of being retired. (Besides, Tin’s face was getting sore from rolling it across her keyboard – the standard DK play style ).

On the raiding front, you’ll recall that Tin and I are part of our guild’s new raid organization committee. We got a team together to coordinate raiding because we had a good number of level 80 guildies kicking their heels in Heroics. Ironically, the week we scheduled our first raid (which went really well), about 5 of our 80s decided to leave so they could raid more (go figure). That changed the raid committee’s job from selecting a balanced raid each week, to scrambling to get ten 80s of any class together at the same time.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, things are finally starting to go well for the raid group. Last night we managed to down Sapphiron for the first time (also the first time we’ve cleared all the quarters). Unfortunately, by then it was 2am PST, and our east coasters were missing their beds, so Kel’Thuzad got to live this week. Just to emphasize the strange raid mixes you get when you don’t have many raiders, by the time we reached Sapphiron we had four tanks in our party of ten – one Warrior and three Prot Pallies. (Its a good job Prot Pallies can lay down decent DPS these days). The Sapphiron fight was so much fun as a healer – I had a big smile on my face the whole fight .

Our aim now is to start speeding up our raid runs so we can have more time on the final bosses (our guild only raids on Fridays and Saturdays starting at 8.30pm, so time is of the essence). We’re adopting some of the techniques described on Stratfu to get the team moving along faster between bosses. I’m hoping we’ll manage to get the Arachnophobia achievement sometime soon.