Post-patch Raiding

[Mordekhuul]

Post-3.0.2 raiding is a hell of a lot of fun, from what I've seen of it so far. Post here some of the ridiculous things you've seen or your general impressions.

First, as I said elsewhere, raid-wide buffing is a hell of a good thing. No more odd men out that are stuck in groups without synergy, including poor little me. As a tankadin I jumped from 1100 or so attack power pre-raid to over 2000 AP mid-fight. Also, raid wide blood pact, improved devotion aura..the list goes on.

Second of all, I HIGHLY recommend doing Gruul as a warmup to post-patch raiding. We killed him just as he started his 3rd growth, which for us was ridiculously fast.

Tankadin Perspective

I can really feel the buff from this patch. My threat, dps and mitigation were all considerably buffed. Throw in raid bosses dealing a bit less damage, and wow...

Here's an illustration of how different life is for tankadins post-3.0.2:

Rage Winterchill:

I have always tanked this guy. Pre-patch I would have to put on the Illidari Runeshield (elem shaman shield with no mitigation) and use the spell power boosting book from A'lar instead of my mitigation trinket in an attempt to take enough damage to support my mana use and to keep my threat high enough. Even then, and running over 600 spell power base and adding wizard oil and flask of blinding light threat would be an issue AND I would get low on mana even after mana potting as the fight wore on.

Post-patch, I tanked Rage last night. I was at full mana the whole fight, while hitting every ability I could even including Exorcism on every cooldown, generated double the threat (nearly) of our top DPS, who put out 2450 DPS, dealt almost 1000 DPS personally and barely took damage myself.

Heck, I even tanked Kaz'rogal just to try it, and his constant mana drains couldn't get my mana down far enough to blow the raid thanks to SA mana returns + BoS + replenishment + whatever.

I can't wait to tank some harder hitting bosses where I might actually use some of my other new tools, like being able to lay on hands every 20 minutes with no penalties, use Divine Protection every 4 minutes, etc.

[Sir_Die_alot]

Black temple was about as hard as Karazhan. Took about as long too.

[RTM]

Speaking of Karazhan, we blew through the entire instance in ~100 minutes last night, and that was with a 5 minute break and a 10-minute summoning mixup. Poor Frag and his mutilate spec- could hardly get a finisher off. I had considered bringing my affliction-spec lock but that would have been even worse. Netherspite went down before his first banish wore off- we just stayed in and wailed on him. Acalan was #2 on the damage meters (and was #1 for the 1st half of the place)... as the tank. You could seriously 5-man the place now.

Best 22 badges ever!

[Swiss Mercenary]

Illidan's getting pugged now on my server (Gorefiend)... (A shadow priest from Death and Taxes wanted his staff for his warlock alt, so he put it together) My group had the main tank tank him, as well as the Flame of Azzinoth, with no fire resist gear. If anything, watching people who have never done the fight before try to avoid the eye beams was comical.

Illidari Council's much the same as it they used to be, although, with the significantly shorter length of the fight, there's fewer chances for people to screw up. Mother is doable with half the raid not wearing SR gear. Nothing to say about the rest of the bosses, although Bloodboil still wastes people during Fel Rage, and based on doing Hyjal the night before, Archimonde remains as just a retard check, as opposed to that and a main tank gear check.

If the instance servers weren't down, we'd have been pugging Sunwell last night... Seeing if we can do it today.

[Mordekhuul]

Random 10 mans of my guildies that have never done a bear run before are beating the 4th chest timer now.

I tanked a run over the weekend that beat the 4th timer by some 20 minutes or so.

35-40 minute ZA clears ftw?

[Mordekhuul]

Ok, things are even crazier than I imagined, after having a full night to raid with no "Instance not found" errors.

Pre-patch our best BT run was killing the first 7 bosses in one night, leaving IC and Illidan for another night.
Pre-patch our best Hyjal run was a 1.5 hour clear of the first 4 bosses, plus wipes on Archimonde, leaving Archimonde to die the next raid night.

Last night in our usual 4 hour run we cleared 9/9 BT and 5/5 Hyjal. We chain-pulled everything in BT, used zero CC the whole night, one-shotted everything, and our only wipe of the night was a single Archimonde wipe.

Illidan was RIDICULOUS. We pushed him into phase 5 before he ever entered phase 4, and then he died before he could cycle from phase 4 to phase 5.

Also, he dropped a main hand warglaive for our longtime rogue (Zarianna), as a nice bonus.

What a rush...

http://wowwebstats.com/1qzhba5hynmtw

[shoju]

well... I'm not sure how impressive it was, but tuesday night, when we did TK we killed Al'ar (the first time) at the 4th platform, and then it was just a quick walk in the park before he dropped.

On Void Reaver, he just stood there, and died. I don't know if it was an impressive kill, but I know that it was not anything difficult from the way TS sounded.

Solarion: A bunch of the melee got punted into the air, and she still dropped quickly.

I hadn't done much of TK before then, but it just seemed to be a stomping of the first 3 fools. We had wipes on trash, but no wipes on bosses. We even had a couple of times where we had more trash than we should have, and it never seemed to matter.

[Tal]

I hadn't done much of TK before then, but it just seemed to be a stomping of the first 3 fools. We had wipes on trash, but no wipes on bosses. We even had a couple of times where we had more trash than we should have, and it never seemed to matter.

Our last run through we accidentally pulled both dragonhawk packs in Al'ar's room which is usually a guaranteed wipe. We wafflestomped it with some healers not realizing we got both.:)

[Mordekhuul]

Our last run through we accidentally pulled both dragonhawk packs in Al'ar's room which is usually a guaranteed wipe. We wafflestomped it with some healers not realizing we got both.:)

Trash is just hilarious now, no doubt.

We did all of BT without sheep last night, for once, and when Bulwincle accidentally pulled two 6-packs out of Akama's room we just AOE tanked them all.

Its all really so much fun. I wish they had put BT and Hyjal on a 3 day reset so we could do them twice a week =)

[Tal]

We did all of BT without sheep last night, for once, and when Bulwincle accidentally pulled two 6-packs out of Akama's room we just AOE tanked them all.

We were doing that before the patch. >.>

[Frag]

We were doing that before the patch. >.>

And I'm willing to bet we still might not be able to.

~Frag<_<

[Mordekhuul]

We were doing that before the patch. >.>

We used to be more timid, though we had started using less CC the month before the patch. Our elemental shaman (one of our officers) is frustrated by any kind of trash pull where he can't just liberally punch chain lightning every cooldown =)

I think the most shocking fight for us last night was Illidan. We expected it to be easier and for phases to go faster, but we really didn't expect to just flat out never see a phase 4 occur. Our shadow-resist geared warlock was gimped for nothing.

[Tal]

Postpatch the Lurkers and Avarice Alliance went from 4/9 BT and 4/5 MH to 7/9 BT and 5/5 MH. We rolled into BT, took more time explaining fights and distributing loot than we did actually fighting the bosses. We had seen RoS previously and one shot them last night (despite n00bkick/bash on a deaden) and procceeded to Bloodboil who we had only pulled once and one shot him as well. We then proceeded to Mother Shaz, wiped due to n00bmaintank tanking her on the platform and then killed her second pull for shiny T-6 shoulders for folks.

It blows my mind that we may be able to see Illidan this lock - something I had given up as a goal a long time ago.

[LavCat]

Postpatch the Lurkers and Avarice Alliance went from 4/9 BT and 4/5 MH to 7/9 BT and 5/5 MH. We rolled into BT, took more time explaining fights and distributing loot than we did actually fighting the bosses. We had seen RoS previously and one shot them last night (despite n00bkick/bash on a deaden) and procceeded to Bloodboil who we had only pulled once and one shot him as well. We then proceeded to Mother Shaz, wiped due to n00bmaintank tanking her on the platform and then killed her second pull for shiny T-6 shoulders for folks.

It blows my mind that we may be able to see Illidan this lock - something I had given up as a goal a long time ago.

We too got Mother Shahraz last night, in spite of almost no shadow resist gear. (I knew I carried the Ultra-Flash Shadow Reflector for something.) Unfortunately we wiped a few times on the Ilidari Council, but we will be back with a full raid.

[Mordekhuul]

Talk about one thing that completely trivializes a boss fight.

Someone on maintankadin was posting his excitement at finally killing Vashj, and mentioned that during phase 2 their feral off-tank spammed roots on the striders.

No need for net rotations and probably no need for even a slowing effect if roots has no diminishing returns on it. Strider kiting was definitely one of the decisive chaotic factors in learning Vashj, in the past.

[Tal]

Postpatch the Lurkers and Avarice Alliance went from 4/9 BT and 4/5 MH to 7/9 BT and 5/5 MH. We rolled into BT, took more time explaining fights and distributing loot than we did actually fighting the bosses. We had seen RoS previously and one shot them last night (despite n00bkick/bash on a deaden) and procceeded to Bloodboil who we had only pulled once and one shot him as well. We then proceeded to Mother Shaz, wiped due to n00bmaintank tanking her on the platform and then killed her second pull for shiny T-6 shoulders for folks.

It blows my mind that we may be able to see Illidan this lock - something I had given up as a goal a long time ago.

And now we're staring at Illidan.

[Swiss Mercenary]

Its all really so much fun. I wish they had put BT and Hyjal on a 3 day reset so we could do them twice a week =)

That's what alts are for. :shuriken:

Otherwise, the Sunwell Pug did 5/6 in one night. Kalec, Brut, and M'uru pretty much rolled over and spit out purples. Felmyst and Twins are the hardest fights in the instance, now - Twins gave us a pretty good run for our money.

Going to take down KJ tomorrow.

[Skandranon]

That's what alts are for. :shuriken:

Otherwise, the Sunwell Pug did 5/6 in one night. Kalec, Brut, and M'uru pretty much rolled over and spit out purples. Felmyst and Twins are the hardest fights in the instance, now - Twins gave us a pretty good run for our money.

Going to take down KJ tomorrow.

Yeah. We killed KJ pre-patch, returned post-patch for a ninety-minute romp that felt like we were taking the guild on a 25-man Heroic Mech.

I would recommend a Sunwell trip for everyone. Two weeks is plenty of time to clear the place in its current form, even if you've never seen any of the fights before.

[Tal]

And now we're staring at Illidan.

Illidan fell before our might.

We've cleared Mag, Maulgar, SSC, TK, BT, and MH.

[Mordekhuul]

Illidan fell before our might.

We've cleared Mag, Maulgar, SSC, TK, BT, and MH.

Grats!

On our side, we killed Kalecgos (no, wait....saved Kalecgos) last night and got Brutallis to 1%. We'll push deeper next week, after our obligatory single night romp through hyjal + BT.