Lack of tanks

[Ironwood]

So what the fuck am I supposed to do now ?

[Fordel]

If the armory ever loads I'll tell you! :(

[Signe]

Ah.  Silly me.  I thought he was asking what he should do about the never-ending loading.  I didn't comment because lately he seems even more angry than usual.  I was afraid I'd inspire more than the usual misanthropic Scottish barrage of what for.  After you post I suddenly see that what I thought was even sillier than what I usually think. 

[Montague]

So what the fuck am I supposed to do now ?

Bitchslap Nightbane till he drops the Panzar'thar breastplate.

[Ironwood]

Well, kinda.   I have a great many Kara runs to do to gear up the other 9 chaps.

But I feel like I've hit another wall where the purples are giving really, really MARGINAL bonuses and even if I can go to ZA, the 25-40 mans are just not going to happen.

This expansion best hurry.

[SurfD]

Spec MS and Arena till your eyes bleed for season 3 gear.  Thats about your only path of gear advancement after Kara / ZA if you cant get into 25 mans.

I have basicly the same problem.  Im stuck with a druid and a mage who are pretty much burned out on Kara, with nearly 0 prospect for further gear upgrades because i hate PvP, and cant get into any 25 mans.

[Merusk]

Spec MS and Arena till your eyes bleed for season 3 gear.  Thats about your only path of gear advancement after Kara / ZA if you cant get into 25 mans.

I have basicly the same problem.  Im stuck with a druid and a mage who are pretty much burned out on Kara, with nearly 0 prospect for further gear upgrades because i hate PvP, and cant get into any 25 mans.

Badge gear provides some fairly decent upgrades, but not a full set unless you're one of the offspecs they were designed around.  But, yes, then you're at a wall of "well, that was fun time to unsub for a bit."

[Ironwood]

Hey !

I can too get into 25/40 mans.

I'm just not going to.  I have no desire at all to go down that road again.

 

[Xerapis]

I'm a raid virgin. 

[Venkman]

Better to stay that way. Almost every bit of drama that comes from a PvE MMO is about raiding in some form (ninjas, can't get in, too required, too stressful, polarized classes, alliances, blah blah blah).

At the same time, it really is a good measure of your compatible personality types. People fall into two categories: they can emotionally handle failure or they cannot. Raids bring that out best because of the aggregate time investment. So it builds character, both symbolically and, err, actually, I guess

[Ironwood]

Yeah, exactly.  I've built my guild up from friends, virtual and RL, that I know can handle it and consider it merely a game.  (You know, the 'grown-up' response).

We have a blast and are enjoying Kara.  Trouble is, I haven't been able to find that many grown-ups....

[MrHat]

Yeah, exactly.  I've built my guild up from friends, virtual and RL, that I know can handle it and consider it merely a game.  (You know, the 'grown-up' response).

We have a blast and are enjoying Kara.  Trouble is, I haven't been able to find that many grown-ups....

What server you on? When do you play? I'm itching to try this 'raid' thing.

[Ironwood]

Europe.

Earthen Ring.

I play all the time.  I'm cursed.  Like Davy Jones.

[MrHat]

Europe.

Earthen Ring.

I play all the time.  I'm cursed.  Like Davy Jones.

Europe.  Gah!

[Ironwood]

Yup.  Thought that might fuck you up.

[Azaroth]

I'm itching to try this 'raid' thing.

It's fun, for a while. A short while.

Then you realize that it takes up entirely too much of your time for gear that is only useful in that exact situation. In essence, you're progressing to progress. PvE and PvP gear is totally separated and not interchangeable at all.

For me, anyway, there has to be a little bit more breadth of usefulness to the gear I collect in a raiding environment than that to validate the time I spend doing it. But as a warrior myself, having to collect three sets of gear really pisses me off in the first place (Tanking, PvE DPS, and PvP - all requiring totally different stats).

When you realize that you've been raiding so you can raid better and nothing else, you also start to wonder why the rest of the game exists at all. Unless you're willing to put a massive amount of time into collecting purple pixels.

[MrHat]

Ya, I'm really quite over the whole loot thing.  I'm just curious to see the content that I missed.

But I know as soon as I resub I'll be playing FFH2 within the week.  We'll see.

[Azaroth]

Screenshots.

;p


At least that solution doesn't eat away 6 months of your life.

[MrHat]

Screenshots.

;p


At least that solution doesn't eat away 6 months of your life.

Heh.  This is true.

I've also been missing my characters.  If that's possible.

Ye Gods, that sounds sick.

[Paelos]

Raiding is pretty rough right now at the SSC/TK level. The Kara/Gruul/Mags level is now retuned and relatively pain free if you have a group of people that are 75% geared in Kara stuff.

My group has been doing SSC consistently for about 2 months and we're stuck on Lurker at the moment. We're not uber though, so we don't progress extremely fast at our one raid a week for 3 hours policy. I do admit that a lot of the fights at this level are even more technical than they used to be, and explaining them is a gigantic pain in the ass. It makes you want to pull your hair out when you've tried to explain jobs to people twice and they fuck it up the third time.

[Merusk]

Raiding is pretty rough right now at the SSC/TK level. The Kara/Gruul/Mags level is now retuned and relatively pain free if you have a group of people that are 75% geared in Kara stuff.

My group has been doing SSC consistently for about 2 months and we're stuck on Lurker at the moment. We're not uber though, so we don't progress extremely fast at our one raid a week for 3 hours policy. I do admit that a lot of the fights at this level are even more technical than they used to be, and explaining them is a gigantic pain in the ass. It makes you want to pull your hair out when you've tried to explain jobs to people twice and they fuck it up the third time.

What's the problem on Lurker?  He was the easiest boss of all for our group, and he's on "Farm" status while we're still working on consistantly downing Hydross, and haven't gotten any others beyond 30%.   

You might also want to look at doing 'lootreaver' in TK and farm some T5 shoulders.  If you can do VR easy, then Astromancer (the other wing) is equally simple.

As to raiding, yes it takes too long to gear-up everyone, but the fights themselves are interesting while you're learning them... so long as you don't mind losing gold.  (Woo hoo 100g in repairs this weekend as a mail user!)  After that, I agree, it's too fucking tedious.  You shouldn't have to kill a boss for 3 months just to get everyone a chance at their bits (assuming their bits even drop.)

[Paelos]

The problem on Lurker is that we've only tried it twice. Hydross is on farm now as we pressed and pressed until we got it right. Nobody clearly understands the objective yet, and frankly I'm surrounded by a few idiots who cannot grasp how to time jumps at all. These are mostly healers. It'll get better, but I usually have to browbeat some people during technical fights because they makes the same fucking mistakes over and over.

[Merusk]

The problem on Lurker is that we've only tried it twice. Hydross is on farm now as we pressed and pressed until we got it right. Nobody clearly understands the objective yet, and frankly I'm surrounded by a few idiots who cannot grasp how to time jumps at all. These are mostly healers. It'll get better, but I usually have to browbeat some people during technical fights because they makes the same fucking mistakes over and over.

Time jumps?  You mean to get back out of the water after a spout, I assume.  Yeah, it can be tricky, particularly if you've never had "platformer training" on other videogames.     The best is when folks actually get IN the water and the spout still hits them, because they were moronic enough to still be touching the platforms.

But then, I had a shaman drown Saturday night. Yeah.. one of two classes that gets water breathing, and he drowned. Oh it was to laugh.

[Paelos]

Yeah timing jumps in and out. Honestly, I know it's a crass generalization, but the ones who have the most trouble with it are a few women in my raid. I have no idea why this is the case. Anyway, people in the raid don't get into the water in time and get blasted, or the don't get in far enough and get blasted, or they take too many whirls, etc etc. It's just gonna take practice.

[Fabricated]

I like my current raid group a lot. They're all pretty solid players, but they split into two raids not long ago and that messed up our core a bit so now we have to pull random people from the raid alliance or people who don't consistently raid to fill in the odd 1-2 spots. This sucks since we have ran headlong into the brick wall that is Aran. We're still gearing up since the loot gods enjoy granting us the gift of shammy gear, and everyone is so far satisfied with destroying the first 5 bosses in an hour and a half/two hours on day one, then spending an hour+ clearing to chess before we make 2-3 limp-wristed shots at Aran and call it a week.

We're not gonna get past Aran in a reasonably timely manner unless we just invest the sucktime and put a full trash respawn's amount of wipes into him on each run until we get how we need to do the encounter to get him down regularly and move on to the last 3 bosses.

[Paelos]

How much melee dps are you tossing at Aran? He's very vulnerable to that, and if you've got lots of casters that can cause problems for a new group trying to kill him.

[Ironwood]

We usually take the first night up to the Curator and leave it there (casual, see.)

Then the next night we hit Aran straight away.  We had some real bother with him at first, but it's really about a couple of things :

1 - Gear.  Sorry.
2 - Timings.  The drinking and the Elementals.  Jesus, when we first tried we'd get BOTH these events at the same time ALWAYS.  It was like a RAGE outbreak in a slaughterhouse directed by Danny Boyle as written by Irvine Welsh.  Really, it was bad. 

Once we managed to DPS him much quicker and get the Elementals out of the way before the drinky, it became metric fucktons easier.  Also, like any fight, you need a solid raid leader with a nice mod attached to call out 'What's Coming' and to have a macro that screams BURNY BURNY, DON'T FUCKING MOVE !! and spam it.  :)


Your point is interesting Paelos, I didn't know that.  We have 2 ice mages in the group and now that I'm thinking on it, when our rogue isn't there it IS harder.  Hmmmm.

Currently our group is 'stuck' since we simply run out of 'casual' time before the instance resets.  We can manage almost all the bosses (haven't tried prince or the non-beam summoned dragon) and we killed Beam dragon after two attempts because, well, we're kinda grown up and clever.  (seriously, that fight is easy if you have the method.  A total cakewalk.)

Sometimes I wish that players had some input into Raid reset times.  If not shorter, then at least longer.  But, yeah, yeah, entitlement and all that...

[Fabricated]

How much melee dps are you tossing at Aran? He's very vulnerable to that, and if you've got lots of casters that can cause problems for a new group trying to kill him.

I know that melee DPS rapes his face since he has like 0 armor and melee doesn't have to give 3 shits about the blizzard and can largely still DPS during a flame wreath, but we tend to be pretty caster heavy on our second day due to a couple of our melee players having newly messed up work shedules.

Doesn't help we got me (prot-war, worthless at DPS even with my DPS gear) and now a prot-pally (also worthless DPS) for MT/OT instead of a druid who can just put on kitty gear and kick just as much ass as a rogue. We got enough DPS to get him to 40% before he has to drink but not enough to kill him before he has to drink, so we always have to slam on the brakes at ~45% and let him drink so we don't get elementals + the pyroblast.

I think our interrupts aren't consistent either, since I know I have an incredibly itchy trigger finger on mine and I keep accidentally slamming a spell school I'm not assigned to.

[Chimpy]

I think our interrupts aren't consistent either, since I know I have an incredibly itchy trigger finger on mine and I keep accidentally slamming a spell school I'm not assigned to.

We don't even bother with assigning schools anymore, we just have our interrupters alternate. Seems to work a lot better.

[Merusk]

I think our interrupts aren't consistent either, since I know I have an incredibly itchy trigger finger on mine and I keep accidentally slamming a spell school I'm not assigned to.

We don't even bother with assigning schools anymore, we just have our interrupters alternate. Seems to work a lot better.

Yeah, Chimpy posted what I was going to.  It's worked pretty well for us, as well.

Fab - Your Prot Pally should be taking their healing set into Kara with them, and help heal/ cleanse on Aran and definitly on Prince.  (Cleanse is even more important on Prince, for Shadow Word Pain, since Priest Dispel didn't get extended to 40 yards while Pally Cleanse did. )

99% of 10-man boss fights, if the MT goes down, the OT isn't going to reaquire aggro, so you're all fucked weather the pally heals or not.  Better to have them heal and try to avoid the death.   If their ego is too damn big to put aside their own glory, well that's a bigger problem.  I've got no problems stepping aside as "MTing Pally" on our alt runs when we've got a warrior, but I do notice other folks who Primarily tank do have that problem.

Also, what Ironwood said.  Folks think Curator is a gear check, but he's more of a coordination check. (Aka, leave the curator fucking alone and kill the adds until he evos you fecking noobz. And don't clump together!)  Aran was the big gear check, imo.

[Paelos]

How much melee dps are you tossing at Aran? He's very vulnerable to that, and if you've got lots of casters that can cause problems for a new group trying to kill him.

I know that melee DPS rapes his face since he has like 0 armor and melee doesn't have to give 3 shits about the blizzard and can largely still DPS during a flame wreath, but we tend to be pretty caster heavy on our second day due to a couple of our melee players having newly messed up work shedules.

Doesn't help we got me (prot-war, worthless at DPS even with my DPS gear) and now a prot-pally (also worthless DPS) for MT/OT instead of a druid who can just put on kitty gear and kick just as much ass as a rogue. We got enough DPS to get him to 40% before he has to drink but not enough to kill him before he has to drink, so we always have to slam on the brakes at ~45% and let him drink so we don't get elementals + the pyroblast.

I think our interrupts aren't consistent either, since I know I have an incredibly itchy trigger finger on mine and I keep accidentally slamming a spell school I'm not assigned to.

Yeah, if you're not getting elementals well before he's close to drinking, it's never going to work well. You need two melee dps minimum, I'm a prot warrior and it's still better than nothing in my dps gear, because those melee can stop certain schools from casting. A warrior pummel makes it impossible for him to cast that next school, so if you knock off frost and fire in a row, it's obviously going to be arcane next. The longer you can keep that up, the less mana he uses and the more time you have to get to elementals.

In the raid I do now for badges, we can 2 warriors, a druid, and a rogue. We melt his face off before he can drink usually. It's really really so much easier with melee.

[Chimpy]

In the raid I do now for badges, we can 2 warriors, a druid, and a rogue. We melt his face off before he can drink usually. It's really really so much easier with melee.

What is this "drinking" phase you guys talk about?

I didn't get back into the game/start running Kara until it was an alt run for my friends/guild and have never seen Aran do anything special after the adds disappear. Is there some regen phase that comes after the elementals have been despawned for a while?

Not trying to sound elitist, just wondering about a mechanic that I never had to learn about.

[Ironwood]

When Aran runs out of mana, he sheeps the whole raid and then drinks up.  Like a boring evocate.

Then he starts a super fireball that brings you outta sheep with a lot less health....


But you wouldn't know because you're zomg.

;)

[SurfD]

Just out of curiosity, are you interupting EVERYTHING?  Most Aran strats i have seen, and for pretty much all aran fights we do, we try to avoid interupting arcane missiles.  Interupt Ice / Fire, but let him channel the missiles (has something to do with the amount of mana it takes vs damage done and ability to spam, or something).  The general concensus seems to be that if you let him cast AM, and beat on him while he is doing it, you take more of his health off while not letting him use enough mana to get to the drinking stage. Also, since there really is NO tank on aran (he 100% randomly chooses a target) everyone should be in dps gear wailing on him.

another thing i have noticed, is that if you DO have an incredibly itchy trigger finger on the Interrupt button, it is possible to have him locked out of all 3 schools for a brief period, at witch point he runs off and stands somewhere weird, messing up all your dps (especially if he does it in the middle of a flame wreath)

[Chimpy]

We only interrupt frost/fire, and the healers keep the AM punching bag healed up.