Terenas - Friday, Oct. 28th

[vor_lord]

NO MORE LEVEL CAP FOR Doomhammer REFUGEES and VOICEMAN!
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Oh, but cap still at 22 for ICP. After WC and Deadmines, we'll be shooting for the Stockades.

Yes -- a Horde party doing stockades at level!

[bonemage]

Well, this is best I can come up with, as far as fitting in wants and desires with possible party combinations. We have enough that still need ST that I think it's insane to not put together a party to get that instance and the class quests there done. Concillian (with one of his many, his choice), Marn, Mogo, and Kosch all have class quests in ST. That's 4 of 5 slots filled on need alone, with Alram suggested as the 5th man.

That leaves khgerg, Xame, VoiceMan, and myself as a healer short of an instance group, so we could snag some of our alts and run through WC with a non-guilded friend as the priest. It might take awhile, as we'll be somewhat under leveled, and it will also be a very instructional run, as our friend is playing his first character.

Again, these are just my thoughts on what we can do, aren't orders, and are wide open for discussion.

[Alram]

I can do the 5th man in ST. I spent some time today getting ST and BRD quests; I doubt that I'll use any of the rewards on the mage items you get for the mage quest. At some point I'd like to get a little help with some of that prep work for BRD. I couldn't solo it all.

[Concillian]

Concillian (with one of his many, his choice), Marn, Mogo, and Kosch all have class quests in ST.  That's 4 of 5 slots filled on need alone, with Alram suggested as the 5th man.
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Damn, that means I need to make a decision. Since I think either would work (Lianne would give a 3rd offtank in blue or a 2nd CC with seduce, Concillian would give enough extra healing capacity to easily allow for Kosch to be a tank instead of DPS.) I guess I need to flip a coin.

I think Lianne would receive the most benefit from completing the quests, so lets try to plan on that.

Should make for some captain insano AoE power with all 5 toons able to contribute AoE.

[VoiceMan]

As always, if I'm online, I'm more than happy to help out wherever I'm needed most. Just say the word if you need to get some BRD prep work done, and Gorkuk will come along with his psycho crazy cat and a mean bow. :D

[Concillian]

I was thinking about how the vast majority of the encounters in ST are pretty much 2-3 elites + some non-elites, and how best to handle it with the group of Kosch, Mogo, Marn, Magead and Lianne.

My current thoughts were Kosch goes shield and 1H (if he has one, I usually see him 2H) and plays tank the whole instance and Mogo heals.

We go into a 3 elite pull with a poly, and Kosch and the cat each take an elite. Void rounds up the non-elites and gets a taunt on each one (this will hold aggro through 1 blizzard, based on experiements I did this morning, about 9xx damage), during which time the elites are pulled back away from the sheep. Kosch should position near the cat, then drop an earthbind to hold both the elites for when they will run (for the trolls). The void coming back from the sheep is the signal that I have a taunt on each one, and it may be good to re-sheep at this point to reduce chances of it breaking, then start AoE once everyone is positioned.

Rain of fire + Blizzard + volley + magmas while the void has aggro. They should break for Magead at the end of the Blizzard, and he can IAE, and I can hellfire to mop them up. Hellfire will catch up to Magead in damage, but assuming Magead doesn't have arcane subtlety, I shouldn't pull aggro until he has had 5 IAEs, which should be way more than enough to have downed the non-elites, even the elites will be low to dead by then. I'm assuming the elites can be held through the AoE, I'm sure Kosch and the cat can hold their single targets.

In doing this, the only heals should need to go out to Kosch and the cat, as the rest of us should be damaging fast enough to kill the non-elites before healing is necessary. With only one elite on each of the 'offtanks', the damage rate should be slow enough that healing shouldn't be a large issue.

The only potential issue I see is frogging, and I'm not sure there's anything we can do about that. I dont know if tremor totem or grounding totem works on frogging, but I don't think so. Tremor should work to ensure something like what I did to Durambar last time doesn't happen on the Prophet, so we need to remember to drop a tremor totem there. Most pulls we can sheep the frogger for last, but sometimes there are two, which may make things a bit more fun. A broken sheep that can frog would be a very bad thing, so I will Curse of Shadow any sheep (lowers arcane resists too) and we can re-sheep before AoE.

These ideas were just running through my head, as I was kinda wondering how we would play things out without a warrior. I thought it would be best to post the thoughts instead of proposing as we were standing in front of a pull.

I don't think Hakkar will be a problem, nor the bosses. Eranikus is the only one that scares me, because of the undispellable sleep that can really freak out the healers. But I'm sure Treesh is familiar with healing that event. First time I did that as priest our group wiped hardcore because I kept trying to heal slept party members (which fails)

Any other thoughts on how a 2 shaman, hunter, mage, warlock party might deal with ST effectively? Any glaring holes I missed? We should be able to burn things down nice and quick, but will probably have to drink after every pull.

[Concillian]

I can do the 5th man in ST. I spent some time today getting ST and BRD quests; I doubt that I'll use any of the rewards on the mage items you get for the mage quest.
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Yeah, but the headpiece reward for the Hakkar event is pretty nice if you did the prep from Zul'Farrak and Jintha.

Gemburst Circlet

Priest uses it at 60, I don't think you're going to see better until the L60 instances (Dire Maul, Strat, Scholo, Blackrock Spire)

[bonemage]

Some of the harder pulls for this party composition will be the 4 elite dragonkin pulls. They do a pierce armor ability that turns plate wearing protection warriors into cardboard wearers. It's a debuff of 75% armor or something nasty like that. You'll have to split those up, one per tank (voidy, Meowry, Kosch), as more per tank will rapidly exhaust your healers. Splitting up the damage to be sure each tank has aggro on their proper target runs the risk of the fight going too long, so I suggest killing Kosch's target first, and having Meowry switch to that target after locking his down. I suggest it this way for two reasons, killing Kosch's target first frees a shaman tank to be a healer (Gantor, save mana for healing, please), and because I know that GG knows when to switch his target better than most, as he has tanked the most with Meowry. The voidy will have to stay on his target until it's dead, and should be considered the lowest priority, as Meowry is superior in every way. (Nerf hunters!) ;)

I'm quite confident it can be done with this group, but I will be on playing an alt, and will gladly come tank if I'm wrong. Success in ST tonight is my highest priority (even though I'm not currently needed there), so pull me off of my alt if you are faced with failure. But, I'm not worried about your chances.

[Concillian]

Some of the harder pulls for this party composition will be the 4 elite dragonkin pulls.  They do a pierce armor ability that turns plate wearing protection warriors into cardboard wearers.  It's a debuff of 75% armor or something nasty like that.  You'll have to split those up, one per tank (voidy, Meowry, Kosch), as more per tank will rapidly exhaust your healers.  Splitting up the damage to be sure each tank has aggro on their proper target runs the risk of the fight going too long, so I suggest killing Kosch's target first, and having Meowry switch to that target after locking his down.  I suggest it this way for two reasons, killing Kosch's target first frees a shaman tank to be a healer (Gantor, save mana for healing, please), and because I know that GG knows when to switch his target better than most, as he has tanked the most with Meowry.  The voidy will have to stay on his target until it's dead, and should be considered the lowest priority, as Meowry is superior in every way.  (Nerf hunters!)  ;)

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Meowry has superior defense to Kosch, but I imagine the void is probably better in terms of damage reduction because of Master demonologist (-10% damage taken). These pulls may be slow, but I wasn't thinking they would be a problem, as Marn can heal the cat and I can heal the void (at expense of DPS, of course). With so much healing available on these pulls, they shouldn't be terribly difficult.

I agree that Kosch's target should go down first, he should be able to hold early aggro best (with earth shock + lightning shield) unless he gets a resist on earth shock. We should be able to DPS through the first elite pretty quick with our group, and with only two elites things get more simple. Plus once Kosch's target goes down, we have double (triple if you count Kosch) healing available on the other tanks.

#2 should be Meowry's if only because it will be whittled down further... the void does virtually zero damage.

I'm imagining poly + power #1 down, warlock and hunter help Mogo to heal the pets while Kosch and Magead switch targets, then power down #2 and #3 and finally pop the sheep for #4, letting the cat or void tank it.

I've been going under the assumption that Kosch shouldn't need to save mana for healing. He'll probably need to expend it on earth shocks. I don't think that will be a huge issue given how much damage we have in the party plus the fact that masters can help heal pets. After his target falls, there's probably little need for his mana offensively though, so conserving would help after that point.

[bonemage]

Meowry has superior defense to Kosch, but I imagine the void is probably better in terms of damage reduction because of Master demonologist (-10% damage taken).  These pulls may be slow, but I wasn't thinking they would be a problem, as Marn can heal the cat and I can heal the void (at expense of DPS, of course).  With so much healing available on these pulls, they shouldn't be terribly difficult.
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I meant that Meowry is better at holding aggro, and offers DPS, so if the healer is forced to choose, choose the offtank that also has DPS. I wasn't actually getting into the specifics of one stat on one pet vs. the other, just that if I had to pick one to keep alive, I'd take the one that does more damage than a sneeze.

I think perhaps I consider them more of an problem pull is because when I went through ST my first time with Durambar, we didn't have a mage, and only had 1 offtanked on a pet. I had to tank 3 of those elites at once, and when your armor gets dropped by 75%, the punishment was almost as bad as having Conc beat on me, and so I have cautious approach to these pulls. Think rogue main tank... With Durambar and Conc (pretending to be a good guy at the time :ph34r: ) together, it was a breeze. The currently expected group tonight shouldn't have nearly as much trouble as a cardboard wearing Durambar did.

[vor_lord]

Whatever you decide for tactics, remember that Kosch has a small stamina pool (~3000 buffed). He's also wearing at least one piece of leather as he has gone for all agility. He does have a good one hander and a very nice shield.

I definitely agree that his target should go down first, mainly due to the stamina issue. I don't believe any of the tanks will have very good damage reduction due to the 75% debuff (voidwalker with the flat 10% is going to be the best as far as reduction for sure) and Kosch will die very quickly when/if that gets applied on him.

[Treesh]

The only potential issue I see is frogging, and I'm not sure there's anything we can do about that.  I dont know if tremor totem or grounding totem works on frogging, but I don't think so.  Tremor should work to ensure something like what I did to Durambar last time doesn't happen on the Prophet, so we need to remember to drop a tremor totem there. Most pulls we can sheep the frogger for last, but sometimes there are two, which may make things a bit more fun.  A broken sheep that can frog would be a very bad thing, so I will Curse of Shadow any sheep (lowers arcane resists too) and we can re-sheep before AoE.

Neither tremor nor grounding totem works on frogging. At least it didn't in Zul. And you are absolutely correct about tremor being down when pulling the Prophet's room. Much love to tremor totem. Fear ward cooldown was my downfall in that room. It was on cooldown on Aleri after hitting a meleer with it, Aleri got feared and ran straight into a pack of three critters in there. Headed straight for it. If anyone else got feared, they just headed to empty corners, but little miss dwarf had to run straight for the last pack to be pulled. :wacko:

I don't think Hakkar will be a problem, nor the bosses.  Eranikus is the only one that scares me, because of the undispellable sleep that can really freak out the healers.  But I'm sure Treesh is familiar with healing that event.  First time I did that as priest our group wiped hardcore because I kept trying to heal slept party members (which fails)

Eranikus will be tough for me to heal through, but 42 points in restoration is teh ubar! :w00t:

Any other thoughts on how a 2 shaman, hunter, mage, warlock party might deal with ST effectively?  Any glaring holes I missed?  We should be able to burn things down nice and quick, but will probably have to drink after every pull.
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I do have mana tide totem, which isn't all that spectacular, but it's better than nothing to help with regen. Once tide is burned during the nastier fights and we still need a bit of regen, I should be able to place a mana spring totem as well. For most of the fights (if I remember correctly anyway), I won't have to have down a poison or disease cleansing totem and while the healing stream totem sort of helps with healing, most of the time it will probably be better for us to have mana for DPS/healing rather than the measly amount of life that healing stream gives. I don't remember how much fire they throw around though. I'll have my memory refreshed soon enough and if needed, the fire resist totem will be up instead.

[Kevin]

I meant that Meowry is better at holding aggro, and offers DPS, so if the healer is forced to choose, choose the offtank that also has DPS.  I wasn't actually getting into the specifics of one stat on one pet vs. the other, just that if I had to pick one to keep alive, I'd take the one that does more damage than a sneeze.

I think perhaps I consider them more of an problem pull is because when I went through ST my first time with Durambar, we didn't have a mage, and only had 1 offtanked on a pet.  I had to tank 3 of those elites at once, and when your armor gets dropped by 75%, the punishment was almost as bad as having Conc beat on me, and so I have cautious approach to these pulls.  Think rogue main tank...  With Durambar and Conc (pretending to be a good guy at the time  :ph34r:  ) together, it was a breeze.  The currently expected group tonight shouldn't have nearly as much trouble as a cardboard wearing Durambar did.
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When we 4 manned ST with 2 mages a warrior and priest those 4 dragons were the hardest but we actually AoE'd them after we tried focus firing them down. Gnolack would get and hold aggro on the 4 mobs while the mages smashed them all down. It was a little rough as I built aggro on all four, but getting that much damage in did give me the rage to just rotate sunders/revenges around them. Treesh would be out of mana and the end and I would generally lose one mob sometimes two (though taunt would help a bit) that would hit a mage but shielding usually worked. We can't do that with this group since we don't have a warrior but we might still be able to AoE them with 3 of them being tanked. I can start a volley and target switch with Meowry if we want to try that.

One thing we are forgetting is double freeze traps. Of course to do that Meowry can't be tanking early. But I can freeze a single target for 20 seconds at least. It's too bad I don't have the old spirit bond because then I could tank as well, 30 health every .8 seconds or so is a fair bit of healing. But I don't have that. But it was nice for when the trap broke and the mob went for me.

I do agree that Meowry won't be holding 4 elites without really killing my DPS because I would have to heal all the time. Sunken Temple is getting up to where it gets hard for a pet to tank well without a lot of CC. But I just don't want to waste the freeze trap. 20 seconds of a mob out of commision is a good thing, and if I'm quick enough to trap, pull, freeze mob, FD trap send Meowry in we can get more time. I know that traps helped a lot with Meowry tanking in Zul'Farrak. Though we might be able to have someone else pull into the first trap so my FD doesn't drop the aggro I had from the pull. Give us a bit more time and a 2nd trap.

Eranikus is going to be rough, but then again he is just out of whack for that instance anyway much more difficult than anything else in there. We'll figure something out.

[Concillian]

Whatever you decide for tactics, remember that Kosch has a small stamina pool (~3000 buffed).  He's also wearing at least one piece of leather as he has gone for all agility.  He does have a good one hander and a very nice shield.

I definitely agree that his target should go down first, mainly due to the stamina issue.  I don't believe any of the tanks will have very good damage reduction due to the 75% debuff (voidwalker with the flat 10% is going to be the best as far as reduction for sure) and Kosch will die very quickly when/if that gets applied on him.
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so do we know if the large or small ones give that debuff? If we know we can have void tank one and poly the other that give that specific debuff, as those 4 elite pulls are mostly 2 small and 2 large, right?

~3000 buffed seems pretty small for a shaman, Lianne is at 31xx unbuffed (enough to survive 15 full seconds of hellfire... if she doesn't pull aggro), not sure what my priest is at, but I'm thinking 3xxx unbuffed. Maybe all that agility will result in dodge / parry events when he needs the heal =)

As for healing priority, yeah, definitely void below cat because of the DPS... the void does none. Plus if the void is clearly going down, I can sacrifice him for either a 1500 damage shield or 3% health per tick to make sure I'm no load on the healer.

[Concillian]

I don't remember how much fire they throw around though.  I'll have my memory refreshed soon enough and if needed, the fire resist totem will be up instead.
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Not much, but it may be useful to have a fire resist totem for the AoE pulls, because Hellfire does fire damage to Lianne. That's one of those totems that lasts long enough that it can be put up before the pull so mana can regen, making it zero cost. I'm envisioning a totem farm and drinking just before the pull, at least for Kosch, as he has a pretty small mana pool.

[Treesh]

Whatever you decide for tactics, remember that Kosch has a small stamina pool (~3000 buffed).  He's also wearing at least one piece of leather as he has gone for all agility.  He does have a good one hander and a very nice shield.
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In caster gear, Mogo only has 2795 hitpoints unbuffed. She's also wearing two pieces of leather in that outfit so her defense is only 3365 (39.5% reduction against level 56 critters). And if I'm main healing, I'll have to be in caster gear for it in order to have anywhere close to enough mana to last (4640 mana unbuffed). In her hybrid gear, she's got 3173 hitpoints unbuffed and 3915 mana with a 3408 defense (39.8% reduction against 56s). Only one piece of leather in hybrid gear though. ;) I'm just curious about how it stacks up to Kosch. Granted, Kosch is 54 not 56 like Mogo, but I'm curious anyway. I always feel gimped with Mogo because she's so heavy in restoration. Well, gimped until the massive healing is needed. ;)

[Kevin]

Whatever you decide for tactics, remember that Kosch has a small stamina pool (~3000 buffed).  He's also wearing at least one piece of leather as he has gone for all agility.  He does have a good one hander and a very nice shield.

I definitely agree that his target should go down first, mainly due to the stamina issue.  I don't believe any of the tanks will have very good damage reduction due to the 75% debuff (voidwalker with the flat 10% is going to be the best as far as reduction for sure) and Kosch will die very quickly when/if that gets applied on him.
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As a note Meowry has 4780 armor and 3138 HP. But the one big advantage she has right now is that I'm over leveled. She's L55 so with that higher def and the way level differences work she'll have some extra damage avoidance from that.

If we need to Marn can pull aggro and be a damage soak for a bit as well. Only 3052 HP but I do have 17.62% dodge with Monkey up and 4.40% parry. But since I still have a lot of leather armor I'm only 1771 armor (25.6% reduction). But we can have me pull the heat for a little bit burn down some of my HP, then I can disengage or FD to shed the aggro since hopefully one of the better tanks will have their health back then.

Again just another option. I need to remember to get the few good pieces of food I have out of the bank before heading in though. :)

[Concillian]

When we 4 manned ST with 2 mages a warrior and priest those 4 dragons were the hardest but we actually AoE'd them after we tried focus firing them down.  Gnolack would get and hold aggro on the 4 mobs while the mages smashed them all down.  It was a little rough as I built aggro on all four, but getting that much damage in did give me the rage to just rotate sunders/revenges around them.  Treesh would be out of mana and the end and I would generally lose one mob sometimes two (though taunt would help a bit) that would hit a mage but shielding usually worked.  We can't do that with this group since we don't have a warrior but we might still be able to AoE them with 3 of them being tanked.  I can start a volley and target switch with Meowry if we want to try that.
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We can try that, but I still think burning the first one down quick is a pretty good thing. We can't poly Dragonkin, can we, I forgot about that, and that really does make things tougher.

We can power through the first one while meowry and the void work up aggro, then AoE the last 3. That should be enough time that it will work. We have enough DPS that we can really power through the first one, and Shaman are excellent at frontloading aggro with Earthshock and lightning shield, so we should be able to power through that one without as long a delay as if there were a warrior. That should free up healing capability nicely.

If we do it that way, freeze trap is probably not as good, because there won't be aggro on that target, plus you will be busy setting the traps and FD instead of burning down #1. Probably best for you to spend your time bouncing meowry on autoshoot while we tear down #1, then we can AoE. With magead at higher level, it's pretty clear he will get aggro if void or cat lose it, and that is a good thing in that:
1) the healers know it will go to him
2) he can still AoE getting beat on and Lianne can't
3) he can always have a healthstone

[Treesh]

As a note Meowry has 4780 armor and 3138 HP.  But the one big advantage she has right now is that I'm over leveled.  She's L55 so with that higher def and the way level differences work she'll have some extra damage avoidance from that. 

If we need to Marn can pull aggro and be a damage soak for a bit as well.  Only 3052 HP but I do have 17.62% dodge with Monkey up and 4.40% parry.  But since I still have a lot of leather armor I'm only 1771 armor (25.6% reduction).  But we can have me pull the heat for a little bit burn down some of my HP, then I can disengage or FD to shed the aggro since hopefully one of the better tanks will have their health back then.

Again just another option.  I need to remember to get the few good pieces of food I have out of the bank before heading in though. :)
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Spreading around the damage actually helps the healing for Mogo, oddly enough. We learned that early on in the silly duoing of instances we've done. If one of us is taking too much damage too quickly, one of the other two (yes, Meowry counts as a full party member :P ) steps in and takes some damage while I heal the "main" offtank. It only starts to get dicey when I'm having to tank and heal, but that's what the full points in improved healing wave and/or warstomp is for. ;) The other offtank can just bandage up if need be after they've done their offtanking job and the main offtank is back in business. Bandages aren't just for rogues and mages in Molten Core. ;) :D

[Concillian]

Again just another option.  I need to remember to get the few good pieces of food I have out of the bank before heading in though. :)
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Probably not necessary with the free apples at every inn for stam buff (save until the dragon part, or run out to Stonard between the troll and dragon parts for 5 more) and Mage food for regaining between fights.

Unless you meant for the pet. The apples give over 10 stam at our level, which is quite a nice bonus.

It may be good to rotate people out to undercity for the incredibly awesome Wickerman buff too. Lianne is the only one with an issue getting there because it's a long flight back, but with Mage/warlock, we can rotate everyone else there pretty easily just before stepping in the portal by sending 2, then summoning them back and sending 2 more. That buff lasts 120 minutes, but doesn't survive death. I think I'm remembering some huge stam bonus and +25% mana and health regen.