So 3.2 is here, probably a little earlier than we anticipated, and it is still making me cranky. (Cranky enough to not blog, but not cranky enough to stop playing!) Allow me to summarize:

GOOD

• Oracle pet!
• Adorable raptor pets with giant heads!
• New dailies!
• Raid timer extensions!

BAD

• Too many raid settings. Four different versions of Wyrms is not actually four different bosses.
• Three different types of T9. Some need badges. Some need general tokens. Some need class specific tokens. Some need tokens AND badges. I need a flowchart.
• The armor is still ugly. If you’re going to make all clothies wear the same style of gear, at least give us a rad menacing warlock design!

I kind of know what Blizz was doing, at least in part, and I appreciate that new recruits will be able to gear up faster now on their own and get to T8/T9 readiness without us having to run them through Naxx. Still, as one of my guildies said on patch day, the fact that you get three Conquest tokens from three bosses in the new 5-man really devalues the badges we’ve gotten so far in 25-man Ulduar (25 man regular, not 25 man Heroic hahahahahah oh man where am I).

Oh, and the bugs have been outstanding, although that’s to be expected with a patch and doesn’t really bother me. Our server was dead for most of patch day, and last night in Ulduar we had the awesome quintuple bots bug on XT. I’m not sure if everyone found them so amusing, but the sight of an ocean of bots swarming towards us — and the associated cries of panic on Vent — kept me giggling for the next hour. Never have I wished so badly to be DPS and on Mind Sear duty.

Anyway, on the guild front we have been toying with P3 of Yogg, and with the raid timer extension I feel pretty confident that we’ll get him down by next weekend. Then I think we’ll focus on hardmodes and dabble a bit in the new Colosseum. I admit my 21 shards and I selfishly hope the guild spirit is still up to learning Three Lights in the Darkness.

I suppose I can’t really complain too much. Summer doldrums are over, there’s some new content to be had, and I have bets with friends over which one of us will be asked to leave Blizzcon first. And, hey, at least T9 won’t make me look like a paladin.

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Raiding Ruminations, Technical Issues, WotLK Colosseum, gear, patch, raiding, Ulduar

It’s been a tough couple of weeks on the 25-man Ulduar front. Summer doldrums, patch days, and at least one night where we all just had the dumb have combined to mire us in the Keepers of Ulduar, with Vezax perpetually out of reach (not to mention Yoggie). Even our two 10 man groups had developed a bit of lethargy or fallen apart completely in the face of Mimiron.

With that in mind, I set about putting together a Really Kickass Group for u10 this weekend. The key to a good 10s group, I find, is not just numbers or situational awareness — a lot of it is just making sure you have the buffs and class synergy you need. Blizz can chant “bring the player, not the class” all they want, but that’s not going to make me feel any better about attempting hard modes without Kings or Heroism. Some class tricks are still essential. The group I was in on Friday night was Prot Warrior, Feral Druid (cat/OT), DK-of-many-specs (DPS/OT), Enh Shaman, Boomkin, Shadow Priest, Destro Lock, Disc Priest, Holy Priest, Holy Pally. We were lacking any misdirect or tricks of the trade, but otherwise it definitely covered all the basics.

This set up, and the players to go with it, kicked butt. Previously our 10s had focused on just killing as many bosses as possible or scouting new ones for the 25-man raids, so I suggested that we try something different and give the achievements a shot. And we did!

First up was Orbital Devistation, which we got on the second try with ease. We left up the Storm and Life towers. Engine passengers were tasked with shooting plants. For 10s we only use one bike and have one person on Flame Leviathan at a time (in Heroic we use three bikes and two launchees), and rotate so there are Demo passengers gathering pyrite at all times. Keeping up that pyrite stack is really key to this encounter, particularly as you add towers.

Next was our first true “hard mode”, killing the heart on XT. I know this used to be one of the most difficult hard modes in the game before the nerfs, and we.. one-shot it. If you have the raw DPS needed, hard mode is arguably easier than regular XT! We pulled him between the trash piles on the left of his room, facing the wall. Melee moved to one corner with light and gravity bombs. Ranged stayed roughly in a straight line at max range, and moved backwards for gravity and forwards for light. Casters picked off sparks, with a little help from melee when necessary. As for the heart phase itself, we had everyone DPSing, healers included, and were probably about 3 seconds away from not making it in time. Healing was pretty intense — I’m glad we had three of us. Anyway, we nabbed not only Heartbreaker, but also Nerf Engineering.

Kologarn (OOOOOOOOOOOOOOBLIVION!) passed without event, although we gave a half-hearted try for With Open Arms and got dang close. (Hit Kolo’s body, and ignore the arm until he squeezes someone. DPS the arm until he lets them go. You have about six squeezes until his arm dies, so DPS the body hard.)

So, an admission: since 3.1 came out, I have wanted the Crazy Cat Lady achivement. My guild is the Cats, I am, technically, a lady, and frankly we’re all crazy. It just seemed like the achievement made for me. So when we got to Auri, I knew what had to be done. And indeed, this achievement is insane! We had a tank on each Sentry keeping them separate but not TOO separate so as to be terminally feared away from the healers. DPS made killing the Feral Defender their top priority (usually we ignore it on regular mode) because healer interrupts were extremely bad. It took probably an hour or so to get this achievement, and a healthy dose of luck. Get feared at the wrong time, or damage spikes on all three tanks at once, or an interrupt on the wrong healer and everything tumbles.

We capped off the evening with a few attempts at Thorim’s hard mode. We were worried at first that we wouldn’t even be able to start it, but with five people down the gauntlet Sif was still waiting for us with 30 seconds to spare. (And an achievement for our troubles, Siffed.) That was where our luck ended, though, as the raid got torn to pieces within moments. I think our best attempt saw Thorim down to about 40%, which is nothing to sneeze at. This achievement needs a little more research and maybe more frost resist gear. That Sif is a mean apparition!

Even more important than the achievements is the fact that everyone was in great spirits after this run. It was nice to get together with friends in the more relaxed 10-man environment and just kick the stuffing out of everything. And the good mood spilled over to Sunday, where the same group with a few switches finally killed Mimiron on 10s (and Freya+1) — a one-shot, no less! Often I curse the tandem 10 / 25 / hard mode setup that Blizz favors now, but I have to admit that occasionally it works out pretty well.

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Achievements, Raiding Ruminations Achievements, raiding, Ulduar

So we’ve killed 9 of 14 bosses in Heroic Ulduar. While I think this week we’re going to be defeated by the gruesome duo of patch day and a long weekend in the US, up until now we’ve killed at least one new boss a week. I am quite pleased with the rate we’re going through Ulduar. It’s steady progress, which is my goal. Back in the good old days of SSC and TK we averaged a boss every two weeks — given that content is easier now, I think our current pace is reasonable.

As I’ve mentioned in the past, we raid nine hours a week, so a few stumbles (like patch day lag, grrr) on one night can severely impact how much time we have for new bosses. We’ll get faster, of course, and in fact we already have, but time is of the essence.

The new hot topic is hard modes, or semi-hard modes to be precise. Folks have started asking about them: FL+2, Freya+1, Runemaster last. And I have, thus far, been asking folks to be patient. It’s not that I’m afraid of the challenge or I think we can’t do it. I’m just not sure it’s the best use of our precious raid time right now. If we average a boss every 45 minutes, and a boss drops three upgrades, then every 45 minutes we work on a hard mode is -3 drops for the team that week. This early in Ulduar, upgrades are everything. (I still don’t have a single Ulduar-25 drop, and I suspect I’m not alone in that.)

What I’d like to do, if I can stave off the requests, is focus on doing the regular old bosses until we’ve killed Yoggie once or twice. By that point we should have the first two thirds of the instance pretty well farmed, and most people will be sporting at least the 2-piece T8 bonus. THEN we can go back and spend a night wiping on hard stuff, and I will be very happy to do it.

Folks have suggested we just try a pull or two of the semi-hard modes, and I’ll probably relent on that front. It’s a compromise. However, even just two pulls and the accompanying wipes and buffs can quickly eat up 45 minutes, and the internal counter in my head starts ticking down upgrades for the week. It’s a really fine line, and I’m not entirely sure yet how I want to cross it.

I like hard modes. I think it’s a neat mechanic, and ideally a good challenge. And maybe I’m old school, worrying about bosses over achievements. Flat boss progression doesn’t exist anymore, granted, and even the server tracking sites have mostly switched to counting achievements more than anything. And yet, still, when we spend an hour wiping on FL+2 I have this antsy little voice in my head telling me to push on, move, move, move. There are dark gods ahead, and I want to see them die.

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Guild Management, Raiding Ruminations Achievements, guildleading, raiding, Ulduar

A guild’s balance between achievements and progression is best individually tailored for each group. On our server we have competitive guilds who have slammed through Ulduar AND many of the achievements. We have guilds who are ignoring achievements and just working on bosses. And then there are guilds that thrive better on achievements than with strict “who killed what first” progression. We’re the latter, I think. We’re not the fastest guild by far, or the most uber skilled, but as I’ve said before when it comes to taking on a challenge: sign us up! Let’s do this thing!

The result is that we’re “late bloomers” on the realm guild rankings, not that I worry too much about those things. We’re routinely in the top 12 based on strict boss progression, which is great, but often closer to the top 6 for achievements. So given that my guild clearly has certain strengths, which means we have skills and some prestige in this area, do we focus on getting all the bosses in Ulduar down now, or dither around a bit and look at achievements?

Thus far I’ve been moving us towards downing new bosses, which has been great fun. After some chats with officers, though, it seems like now might not be a bad time to also start working on the achievements for those first, easier nerfed-all-to-heck bosses. Dragging dwarves to Razorscale’s head during DPS phases should be easy enough and will eventually get us Heroic: Iron Dwarf, Medium Rare, and I think we could probably tinker with Heroic: Nerf Engineering a bit. I wouldn’t want to spend an entire raid night working on achievements at this point, but it seems an appropriate time to fold some of them in with farm content.

It was with that in mind that we went for Heroic: Orbital Bombardment last night, and it was remarkably easy. You get an extra badge for the tower, which comes in handy now while people are still eager to get badge gear. Keep in mind that we’ve done this once, so this strategy lacks refinement and we might be missing something.

When you leave up any number of towers on Flame Leviathan, the boss increases its health by 25%, and its damage by 15%. We left up the Storm Tower, which is associated with Thorim. This tower increases FL’s physical damage even further, particularly when it hits your vehicle. It also means FL can use Thorim’s Hammer (he’ll announce when he’s using it). This creates beams of blue light around the room. These beams are bad news, and will damage you more the closer you are to them. Stay away from the light!

There are two key points we found to defeating FL: Shutdowns and pyrite stacks. Send three ranged DPS and a melee/healer hybrid (we used an enhancement shaman) on top to destroy turrets and stun FL. Mark the catapultees and their assigned rescue vehicles, making them easier to spot. One of our cycle drivers recommended looking up in the air when catapultees are thrown off FL so you can track them right away.

The majority of your damage is going to come from pyrite stacking. One of our demo drivers, who had a steady supply of pyrite as his passenger wasn’t being catapulted, did over twice as much DPS as everyone else. It is extremely powerful. Much like phase 3 of Malygos, ideally you’ll have a rolling stack of 10 pyrites on FL as much as possible, but it’s critical during Overload. We’re still figuring out the balance between catapulting people as quickly as possible for faster Overloads and restocking demos with pyrite. I think at a bare minimum demo passengers who have been ejected should grab some pyrite before loading themselves in the catapult again. Theoretically a rotation of pyrite-boulder-boulder-pyrite will keep the stack alive while not burning through ammo too quickly. (Thanks to guildie Hamilinde for the awesome pyrite insights!)

You’re not going to have to execute all these concepts perfectly to kill FL+1. However, it’s excellent practice for adding more towers in the future, when DPS and coordination really, really do matter. We tried FL+2, with the Tower of Life also left up, and although those plants ate our lunch we got it to about 44%. Soon!

Anyway, if your guild regularly one-shots basic Flame Leviathan, I highly recommend trying a tower!

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Achievements, Raiding Ruminations Achievements, raiding, Ulduar

A hugely popular topic on WoW blogs this week has been the continual nerfing of Ulduar, in particular this last round that made changes like extending XT’s enrage timer from 7 to 10 minutes. I have to say that I’m pretty proud of my fellow bloggers from what I’ve read so far — very few are in a cutting edge hardcore guild, and yet every single post has been in favor of keeping the challenge in Ulduar. No one wants another sleepwalk like Naxx, even if it does come with easy achievements and a rain of epics.

Machiavellis Cat is not hardcore. We’ve killed six bosses in Uldar so far, and while I am very proud of every kill it hardly puts us on the map of uberness. We weren’t on the PTR trying out fights, and we didn’t increase the number of hours we raid each week. Sometimes people stand in bad things, or I bork up a strategy and everyone dies (Dear Hoppy Giants before IC: You suck.), or someone falls off the Kologarn balcony. It’s not that we’re those infamous “bads” — I actually think we’re pretty good. But we’re also not a honed, unified killing machine.

Given all that, my guild, and apparently many other guilds, love a good challenge. Ulduar has made the Cats come alive again in ways that only satisfying content can. We’re theorycrafting strategies on the forum, working hard to fill in gear gaps that could slide by in Naxx, and honing specs and class techniques. And nothing speaks more to a happy and excited team than having everyone in the instance ready to go 10 minutes before raid time.

So it’s not really surprising that nerfs make me nervous, even if they would enable us to cruise through Ulduar easier. And it’s even more unsettling when they happen beneath our feet. Last week we killed Leviathan and Razorscale in one night, with a bit of work. This week we stomped those two AND XT AND got a first kill off on Ignis, all on Tuesday, with no more than 3 attempts per boss at the most. It was slightly underwhelming, to be honest. How much of it was us being more experienced, and how much of it was nerfs? It’s hard to say.

It was with some trepidation that I stepped into Ulduar on our second raid night this week for Iron Council (2nd kill!), Kologarn (1st kill!), and Auriyaya (her cats ate our faces!). And, I have to give it to Blizz: for our guild, the fights were still pretty challenging, or at least not Naxx facerolling. Will they stand up over time as we improve our skill and strategy? I don’t know. And honestly for both kills we were sloppy and I admit to lamenting a bit that some of the bite was lacking in the bosses. But for last night, at least, they still presented a satisfying challenge.. although not as satisfying a one as last week.

Now to get in and start killing some of the Watchers before they get their dose of the nerf bat!

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Raiding Ruminations raiding, Ulduar