Insane Cloth Posse Adventures!

[castille]

It's cause you're not memorable...  :whistling:

And as soon as the clothies get to RFD, Aileena is getting switched out for Lizzy so they have a real tank...  ;)
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mmm... real tank.. then I can use vampiric embrace more often.

That whole damage + healing aggro all in one spell is dangerous in groups, but oh-so-effective for countering the periodic damage that's going around.

[Quark]

And as soon as the clothies get to RFD, Aileena is getting switched out for Lizzy so they have a real tank...  ;)
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I resent that real tank comment! I've been fine when we don't get 5 adds :P

[vor_lord]

Ragefire Chasm!

Once we hit 16, we stopped leveling and waited for everyone to catch up so we could do RFC at the same level.

Our first fight we have to disqualify -- Demonlurker used the voidwalker and we had to slap his hand. After that we were ready!



Before going in, we discussed some basic tactics to try and simplify things. Given that focus fire is very important in this group, and there are no good choices for a main assist (any of use might be doing CC or healing), we wanted some conventions to help ease target selection, especially in a chaotic fight. Even though we were all on Teamspeak, having unspoken conventions for who to kill next will help us minimize confusion and mistakes.

This lead to some roles being defined. Basic ideas here were developed by Xame (Holylurker) and we used them in RFC.


Party roles and assignments


Sheep mage: Mage role 1

Grimlurker (myself) was designated as the sheep mage. This means that on a two pull, I sheep (and I prefer the left except when one target is more dangerous than another). On a three pull, Cryptlurker would also sheep, but when it came time to break a sheep, his gets broken first, as he is designated as the attack mage.

I also have taken on the job of primary screenshot taker. For this trip I installed PerfectShot to help me with this. It's very nice to automatically take shots during a big fight, but there is a hitch when it happens which was quite disconcerting, especially as I have it set to turn off my UI. I put in a macro which would execute perfectshot so that it would take 5 screenshots, one every seven seconds.


Attack mage: Mage role 2

Attack mage generally pulls while the sheep mage is sheeping. If there are two sheeps, the attack mages sheep target goes down first. We made some exceptions to this due to the timing of resheeps and positioning, but if nothing is said the attack mages sheep is broken first.

If other party members aren't sure which, it doesn't take long to see the attack mage popping his sheep and they could follow suit.


Support priest: Priest role 1

Holylurker was designated as the support priest. Make no mistake this is an artillery party, but Holylurker wanted to play more of a healing role as he hadn't done that before. Holylurker is supposed to be primarily in charge of healing.

Holylurker also is in charge of recording video. Hopefully we'll get some of that posted here in the days ahead.


Nuke priest: Priest role 2

Darklurker was designated as the nuke priest. Since the key to a lot of our strategy is aggro juggling, mind blast is a very effective tool in this. khgerg has a lot of healing experience so he also is quick on the heal.


Warlock

Demonlurker doesn't yet have seduce, so right now his role is to do DPS and give us a nice stamina buff from the imp. CC, run stoppage, and wipe recovery will be added to his role as he gets those skills.


We loosely paired the attack mage with the nuke priest and the support priest with the sheep mage. I don't think this did anything.

During the run, we further refined some things. On a 4 pull, we'd sheep two, frost nova one, and nuke one. Cryptlurker had responsibility for the first frost nova, I had responsibility for the second if it needed to be applied. On these we would sheep pull, so the frost nova would be applied where it wouldn't break the sheep. This tactic can be extended. Anything that can't be sheeped/seduced/shackled/focus fired will be frost nova'd. Sheeping ranged attackers is important as it makes no sense to frost nova a ranged attacker.


Rules of combat

This is a kiting party!

1. If you have aggro and the mob is close -- RUN!
This is of course subject to terrain limitations, but all of us got used to turning a lot to follow the mob as it chased someone who had aggro. You can nearly always run back to where you've previously been.

Nothing makes a melee mob more helpless than vainly pursuing a target while 4 casters nuke him down.

2. If you don't have aggro, try to get it! This is of course secondary to role responsibilities such as crowd control and healing, but stealing aggro is a Good Thing in this party.


One of the things that really helped were that Grimlurker and Cryptlurker are both going to be specced identically (for more balanced aggro juggling) in frost. Between the two of us the focus fire mobs will be slowed nearly all the time. Without this, running requires way too much room to be worth it.

Cryptlurker and Grimlurker also use Discord Unit Frames. This is a mod that gives you super configurable frames for self, party, target, pet, and party pets. Cryptlurker pointed out that it also has a frame for your target's target. We found this to be invaluable. Once you start running, just keep an eye on that frame. As soon as it isn't you any more, you know someone else got aggro and you can stop to start nuking again. It's also useful to see that they are going for a buff to themselves too, as they will target themselves (the trogg shamans would heal themselves for example).

I also use Alerter, which like other similar mods will give me big text on the screen upon events. This includes what spell the enemy is casting, as well as what spell your friends are casting. I used the latter feature to help synchronize casts with Cryptlurker.

Next: Combat!

[vor_lord]

Combat in Ragefire Chasm


Things started off pretty sloppily. In particular, if you watch the video you can see me (Grimlurker) running around trying to kite, when I didn't have aggro anymore. It was several fights in when Cryptlurker pointed out the trick of using the target's target frame. Not having much experience with kiting anyway I did a lot of silly running. It sure didn't matter, things were not dangerous at all. The main danger was not getting in much damage before things died.

The troggs were actually tougher than the cultists for this group. They have a very fast run speed, so they would close much more quickly. A cultist caught in a single pull wouldn't reach the party despite being elite.


Oggleflint


Our first named fight was over the lost satchel. We sheeped the two guys in the front, and were planning to focus fire the boss.





But unexpectedly he didn't pull. We hollered on teamspeak not to hit the boss, but Demonlurker's shadowbolt was already on the way.





No matter though, this was easy.





Taragaman the Hungerer


The next boss was Taragaman, a big bad melee boss. Unfortunately I forgot to take screenshots, and Xame forgot to run the video for this fight. Perhaps later I can add some if someone else took some.

At any rate I drew aggro first, and started to run. I figured a good strategy given the terrain was to actually run through him. My friends would be hitting him as he came toward, then again as I went away. Bad idea -- his first hit stunned and he proceeded to hammer me within an inch of my life before I could get away. At least I kept the priests busy.


After he went down, we celebrated a little bit.





We proceeded through the instance. We got much better at sheep nuke frost nova rhythm, handling the normally tricky four pulls with quite a bit more ease than even a normal party.


Jergosh the Invoker


By the time we reached Jergosh, we were in full swing. The battle was on!





We got to employ our favorite formation which is a loose circle around the mob, causing him to run around bouncing aggro.





He fell with far less drama than with Taragaman.


Bazzalan


Really on a roll by now, we also took down Bazzalan.





He was no match for us.





Funnily enough, we killed every last cultist, and we did not get one of the spellbooks for one of the quests. So if we're to complete it we'll have to go back.

Holylurker took some good video clips which illustrate some of the principles we tried to use. Once they are edited I'll be putting them up soon too.

I have to say that being a mage in the ICP is a total blast. As bonemage said, you're CC, puller, tank, and DPS all rolled into one.

Another interesting bit -- I think there was only one item which was an upgrade for anyone. A lot of that is probably due to some pretty heavy twinking of gear. I think Grimlurker has more health than my level 18 warrior :o


Next: Video

[vor_lord]

Video

Xame (Holylurker) put together a short video of some of our adventures in RFC.

You can see as we attempt to follow our strategies, most notably frost nova duties and running when you have aggro.

See the movie! (WMV format)

Next: Wailing Caverns and Deadmines

[VoiceMan]

Ah yes, the memories! ICP ROCKS! B)