Ulduar

[Sjofn]

Yeah, the first time we did him, pre-any-nerfs, he was kind of a bastard.

[kildorn]

will-kill-everyone tantrum was a definate healcheck, after that nerf he became relatively easy (which is befitting his position in the instance, but still)

I can see a heroic nerf, but light and gravity frequency nerfs? REALLY? It's not like he got grobb level silly about spamming them.

[bhodi]

I don't know if they need to nerf the Mind Control on Yogg's adds AND decrease their spawn time.  That's kind of over the top.  I think one or the other would make that phase pretty trivial.  I guess it's supposed to be trivial, as it's the first of three phases.  But yeesh.

Also, is this hotfix, or next patch?

Hotfixed last night.

Yogg went from completely impossible to totally doable for us - it took 6 tries, but we finally got him down in 10man - every single try we got past phase 1 no problem. Something not mentioned is that the clouds move at about half the speed they did before.

You kind of feel robbed on Yogg loot - 219 gear and 2 valor tokens :/

[Fabricated]

Tried hardmode XT tonight on 10-man. Was pretty rough.  That's a lot of fucking damage to deal with. I think we could've done it easily if we could get away with 3 healers and still break the heart but we were only beating the timer on the heart by like 3-5 seconds tops.

Also, I forgot to take off my fucking high ilevel DPS gear I threw in most of my slots for Flame Leviathan and I tanked both Ingis AND Razorscale with it on before I noticed. Blargh

[tkinnun0]

Too late for what? 

Too late for those who took one good look at the jump in difficulty and scampered.

[Ingmar]

Also, I forgot to take off my fucking high ilevel DPS gear I threw in most of my slots for Flame Leviathan and I tanked both Ingis AND Razorscale with it on before I noticed. Blargh

Haha, I have done that a few times. I've tanked Kel'Thuzad in frost resist gear like 3 times. 

[Lakov_Sanite]

I don't know if they need to nerf the Mind Control on Yogg's adds AND decrease their spawn time.  That's kind of over the top.  I think one or the other would make that phase pretty trivial.  I guess it's supposed to be trivial, as it's the first of three phases.  But yeesh.

Also, is this hotfix, or next patch?

Hotfixed last night.

Yogg went from completely impossible to totally doable for us - it took 6 tries, but we finally got him down in 10man - every single try we got past phase 1 no problem. Something not mentioned is that the clouds move at about half the speed they did before.

You kind of feel robbed on Yogg loot - 219 gear and 2 valor tokens :/

Yoog with 3 watchers is perfectly doable, the fight isn't much harder it's just a bit more of a dps check. I'd suggest going without hodir or mimiron first.

[Ingmar]

You kind of feel robbed on Yogg loot - 219 gear and 2 valor tokens :/

That's fine with me, it means when the next raid comes out we won't be having to run the entire raid over and over to get the couple nice higher level drops at the end, with all the prior stuff getting sharded.

[kildorn]

I still need (real) epic boots :(

[K9]

Feeling good about stuff. Got Freya down on the 3rd try and made good progress learning Thorim. Not looking forward to learning Mimiron though.

[Fabricated]

Feeling good about stuff. Got Freya down on the 3rd try and made good progress learning Thorim. Not looking forward to learning Mimiron though.

10 or 25 man? If you can do Freya you can do Thorim fucking easily. 100% of that fight is figuring out the group makeups.

P.S. Gauntlet team should be all or nearly all ranged if you can help it at all when it comes to DPS.

[K9]

10-man.

Our main problem was keeping everyone in the arena alive. Next time we'll probably go with a 4/6 split with 2 healers in the arena. The tunnel healing didn't seem to be very strenuous at any point.

Freya trash can go die in a fire though. Quick question, do the Guardian Lashers heal themselves, or is it triggered by damage to the small adds, or is it random? Our zerg and nuke strategy has somewhat mixed results.

[Fabricated]

10-man.

Our main problem was keeping everyone in the arena alive. Next time we'll probably go with a 4/6 split with 2 healers in the arena. The tunnel healing didn't seem to be very strenuous at any point.

Freya trash can go die in a fire though. Quick question, do the Guardian Lashers heal themselves, or is it triggered by damage to the small adds, or is it random? Our zerg and nuke strategy has somewhat mixed results.

The guardian lashers give a buff to the smaller lashers around them and vice versa. Have one tank take the big lasher away from the group. Burn the big one then aoe the group.

And Thorim we usually have 2 healers in the arena and then 1 tank, 1 healer, 2 ranged in the gauntlet. If you have a hunter or warlock you can expedite the second half of the gauntlet by having a pet go aggro the second mini-boss after you melt the first 3-4 mobs on the stair case (or at least the acolytes). Make sure everyone stays the fuck away from eachother though due to rune explosion.

[bhodi]

It takes a bit more work but our gauntlet group just polymorphs the guys on the stair and runs right past them, keeps them poly'd until the 2nd miniboss is down, then they just vanish. (25man).

We use the 4-6 split for 10man, our holy paladin goes into the gauntlet since the arena is mostly aoe heals.

[Llyse]

Tried hardmode XT tonight on 10-man. Was pretty rough.  That's a lot of fucking damage to deal with. I think we could've done it easily if we could get away with 3 healers and still break the heart but we were only beating the timer on the heart by like 3-5 seconds tops.

Also, I forgot to take off my fucking high ilevel DPS gear I threw in most of my slots for Flame Leviathan and I tanked both Ingis AND Razorscale with it on before I noticed. Blargh

Just a quick question, what kind of DPS/Healing/Gear are you running your 10-man XT hard mode?

My family/friend/casual group is up to Mimi/Freya for 10 man but can't seem to get regular/structured raiding times enough for us to get solid learning runs on Mimi/Freya.

We end up clearing early content (FL/XT/Kolo/Auriya) in a night then drop off focus vs Hodir/Thorim, so I was wondering if it were possible to do XT Hard mode for some easy upgrades

Do you mind giving me your guild name/realm to armory/compare? 

[Fabricated]

Tried hardmode XT tonight on 10-man. Was pretty rough.  That's a lot of fucking damage to deal with. I think we could've done it easily if we could get away with 3 healers and still break the heart but we were only beating the timer on the heart by like 3-5 seconds tops.

Also, I forgot to take off my fucking high ilevel DPS gear I threw in most of my slots for Flame Leviathan and I tanked both Ingis AND Razorscale with it on before I noticed. Blargh

Just a quick question, what kind of DPS/Healing/Gear are you running your 10-man XT hard mode?

My family/friend/casual group is up to Mimi/Freya for 10 man but can't seem to get regular/structured raiding times enough for us to get solid learning runs on Mimi/Freya.

We end up clearing early content (FL/XT/Kolo/Auriya) in a night then drop off focus vs Hodir/Thorim, so I was wondering if it were possible to do XT Hard mode for some easy upgrades

Do you mind giving me your guild name/realm to armory/compare?  

I'm the MT and I'm kinda overgeared at this point for Uld10 since we have a regular Uld25 pug with a couple other guilds. Our OT is usually one of two prot pallies who are more in-line for Uld10 (sporting mostly Naxx10/badge/odd naxx25 piece/Uld-10 gear).

http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Proudmoore&n=Bryce

My guild: http://www.wowarmory.com/guild-info.xml?r=Proudmoore&n=Fell%20Omen

We tend to run two priests (who swap Disc/Holy depending on what we need) and for a third healer we usually have either a resto shammy (Wulffy) or a druid (Caeda) who can swap from feral to resto. One of the priests has a geared holy pally but the entire instance seems to scream "FUCK YOU" to holy pallies so they prefer taking their priest.

Our DPS can change week by week depending on who's available. Between mains/alts we got a boomkin, 2 warlocks, 2 DKs, 2 rogues (both geared out the ass), the mentioned feral druid who is insane (5k+ dps. That's why they're getting nerfed), 1 mage, 1 shadow priest, 2 hunters, and an elemental shammy to pick from regularly. We got a few more people but their work shedules only permit kinda scattered attendance so they can't always go. Gear level is mostly 10man Naxx/Uld/OS/Maly gear, with Valor badge gear and some people having 4-5 Naxx25 pieces since that place is retardedly easy to pug.

XT felt like it'd be really easy if we could do the following:
1. Break the heart with 3 healers.
2. Drop the sparks faster.
3. Not drop voidzones on anyone.

With 2 healers it felt like the damage was just out of reach in being handled. With 3 it'd be pretty easy to keep everyone up, but your DPS need to be pretty good to beat the enrage.

[Phunked]

Do you mind giving me your guild name/realm to armory/compare?  

I'm the MT and I'm kinda overgeared at this point for Uld10 since we have a regular Uld25 pug with a couple other guilds. Our OT is usually one of two prot pallies who are more in-line for Uld10 (sporting mostly Naxx10/badge/odd naxx25 piece/Uld-10 gear).


One of the priests has a geared holy pally but the entire instance seems to scream "FUCK YOU" to holy pallies so they prefer taking their priest.

[/quote]

Why do you say that?  We had absolutely no problem getting glory with our holy pally healer; for the 2 healer fights either the resto druid would go moonkin or the disc priest went shadow, but the holy pally always stayed to heal. A good one can keep the tank up solo through near anything, which is very handy on a lot of hardmodes since it leaves the other two healers to cover the raid. You def. want this for freya hard, hodir and very definitely for algalon - high, predictable tank damage phases.

[Soulflame]

I'm only halfway through Glory in 10 man with my holy paladin, but I've had little to no trouble keeping up so far on healing.

[Paelos]

Paladins are great healers in their particular niche. The bitching is that they aren't as versatile and can't stand on their own like priests or druids.

[Soulflame]

If I had any complaints about paladin healing, it's all the work I have to put into keeping my mana up.

- Learn a boss fight so I know when to use Divine Plea
- Be ready to burn a mana pot
- Try to keep beacon up so I can kinda sorta raidheal, and pray I don't get sniped
- Melee the boss for sweet delicious seal of wisdom procs
- Try to pace my use of Holy Light, so I don't run out of mana

My mana pool is 292xx when raid buffed, and yet I can run out of mana on any given boss fight.  We're not even doing hardmodes on 25 man.

I would also cite ridiculous amounts of damage done to the tank by the bosses as being a complaint.  If a tank doesn't avoid three times in a row, that's 75000 damage over 5-6 seconds.  Holy Light bombing keeps a tank up through that sort of damage, but it's uninteresting, and it runs the risk of running out of mana.

[Gobbeldygook]

Paladins are great healers in their particular niche. The bitching is that they aren't as versatile and can't stand on their own like priests or druids.

Yes.  Paladins are fine in the sense that their raid slots are not in serious danger, but imagine the hypothetical situation where it's raid time and all of your healers are of a particular class.

[Ingmar]

Paladins are great healers in their particular niche. The bitching is that they aren't as versatile and can't stand on their own like priests or druids.

Yes.  Paladins are fine in the sense that their raid slots are not in serious danger, but imagine the hypothetical situation where it's raid time and all of your healers are of a particular class.

Yeah I would be comfortable doing a 10 person raid with just about any combination of 2 healers, except 2 holy paladins. I dunno if new beacon is really going to change that. And yes I know you *can* do it that way. I can climb the stairs by hopping on one leg too.

[Paelos]

Having your healers be the same class in any 10 man is probably the best way to hamstring yourself. Can it be done that way? Sure, but it's nowhere near as effective on certain fights.

[bhodi]

The exception being a disc and a holy priest; they don't overlap much.

[Sjofn]

Having your healers be the same class in any 10 man is probably the best way to hamstring yourself. Can it be done that way? Sure, but it's nowhere near as effective on certain fights.

You're never going to say "FUCK, we only have druids today," though. You will if you have only holy paladins.


EDIT: And as a player, I don't find it weird someone with a priest AND a paladin would prefer to heal as a priest if given the choice. Paladins CAN heal every fight in Ulduar, but some of them are WAY more annoying than they should be for a healer like the paladin. Priests are way more flexible.

[Fabricated]

Just about every fight in Ulduar is a "HA HA, FUCK YOU" to pally healers since Ulduar thinks the two tastes of "massive tank damage" and "massive raid damage" taste great together. The only fights where it's semi-nice to have a holy pally are in the first half of the instance (XT, Kolo, Iron Council, Razorscale in 25-man but not in 10 since anyone can heal that while asleep). Gigantic tank heals and blessings don't add up to a compelling reason to not just take a Disc Priest instead.

Why do you say that?  We had absolutely no problem getting glory with our holy pally healer; for the 2 healer fights either the resto druid would go moonkin or the disc priest went shadow, but the holy pally always stayed to heal. A good one can keep the tank up solo through near anything, which is very handy on a lot of hardmodes since it leaves the other two healers to cover the raid. You def. want this for freya hard, hodir and very definitely for algalon - high, predictable tank damage phases.

Massive tank damage fights are wonderful for holy pallies (I love doing Iron Council with them since their gigantic heals are perfect for Steelbreaker), but just because you can do it doesn't make it fun or easy (easy meaning not teeth-grindingly frustrating). Just about everything else in Ulduar I'd rather have druid HoTs or Priest prayer of healing/shields.

Also Pally healing is disgustingly boring. To quote my friend who plays our sole holy pally: "Gee, do I want the class that has 5000 tools for healing, or the class where I get to play whack-a-mole with the big hammer or little hammer?"

[Sjofn]

What pisses me off most is how Blizzard seems so fucking dead set on making any additional tool for the paladin extremely gimmicky and annoying. The FoL HoT thing is, so far, the epitome of this. There's no fucking reason for paladin healers to be in the position they are right now, and there is EXTRA no fucking reason they keep having to take it up the ass because their ONE thing they're good at, they're super duper good at, but continue to suck it raw in any other situation because "omg ur so gud at tank heelz," as if other healers can't fucking tank heal if they have to.

Grrrraaaaaah!

It's awesome, I'll post about paladins as my DK on the WoW boards and without fail some other paladin will say, "You used to be a holy paladin, huh." I'm so transparent. :(

[kildorn]

It's not like I don't have a list of shattered ex-healers behind my priest. No matter the change, being able to react and adapt to phases or new bosses is a key skill a healer needs.

Do I LOVE when our holy pally is the other healer? Fuck yes. It means I can pay attention to everything and never be concerned the tank might die while I'm distracted. Do I think it's fun for her? Probably not as much as it could be with more buttons and things they could do.

I just don't see how giving paladins a legitimate HoT or a highly inefficient or 6s cooldown based group heal would make the class overpowered. They'd just give them other options they'd rarely use.

[Vash]

The exception being a disc and a holy priest; they don't overlap much.

My guild is priest heavy and I do 10 man Uld healing on my priest with another priest and a resto shammy with an elemental off-spec.  The only thing that really hurts multi-priest synergy is Prayer of mending.  Unlike hot's which now coexist peacefully, PoM's cancel or "eat" each other if they are cast on or jump to the same target, no idea how the game determines which one stays and which gets canceled.  No idea if this is intentional or simply a bug that's yet to be squashed, but it happens a ton.

There are a few situations where multiple PoM's can somewhat coexist (raid wide damage with the raid spread out or grouped in separate areas), but a majority of the time you are essentially limited to 1 active PoM regardless of how many priests you have.

[kildorn]

The exception being a disc and a holy priest; they don't overlap much.

My guild is priest heavy and I do 10 man Uld healing on my priest with another priest and a resto shammy with an elemental off-spec.  The only thing that really hurts multi-priest synergy is Prayer of mending.  Unlike hot's which now coexist peacefully, PoM's cancel or "eat" each other if they are cast on or jump to the same target, no idea how the game determines which one stays and which gets canceled.  No idea if this is intentional or simply a bug that's yet to be squashed, but it happens a ton.

There are a few situations where multiple PoM's can somewhat coexist (raid wide damage with the raid spread out or grouped in separate areas), but a majority of the time you are essentially limited to 1 active PoM regardless of how many priests you have.

Spellpower at time of casting. The holy priest's PRoM should stay the duration, even if it only as 1 jump left and a 2sp lower one has 4.

That said, most of the time PROM will hate other similar spells, since they follow the exact same leaping logic. Multiple Priests work well due to group assignments for raid damage healing, though. Even without PROM, you can all use Prayer of Healing on your assigned groups to immediately counter large predictable raid damage spikes.

That said, the priiiiiiiiiiing means it's working!

[Vash]

The exception being a disc and a holy priest; they don't overlap much.

My guild is priest heavy and I do 10 man Uld healing on my priest with another priest and a resto shammy with an elemental off-spec.  The only thing that really hurts multi-priest synergy is Prayer of mending.  Unlike hot's which now coexist peacefully, PoM's cancel or "eat" each other if they are cast on or jump to the same target, no idea how the game determines which one stays and which gets canceled.  No idea if this is intentional or simply a bug that's yet to be squashed, but it happens a ton.

There are a few situations where multiple PoM's can somewhat coexist (raid wide damage with the raid spread out or grouped in separate areas), but a majority of the time you are essentially limited to 1 active PoM regardless of how many priests you have.

Spellpower at time of casting. The holy priest's PRoM should stay the duration, even if it only as 1 jump left and a 2sp lower one has 4.

That said, most of the time PROM will hate other similar spells, since they follow the exact same leaping logic. Multiple Priests work well due to group assignments for raid damage healing, though. Even without PROM, you can all use Prayer of Healing on your assigned groups to immediately counter large predictable raid damage spikes.

That said, the priiiiiiiiiiing means it's working!

In my limited observation it doesn't appear to simply be spell power at the time of cast, or number of charges.  I have often accidentally thrown a ProM at the tank (out of reflex) immediately after our other priest who has a slight gear edge on me and 2 piece T7.25 giving his an extra charge and cringed as mine still overwrote his wiping it out completely.  It almost seems like the more recent one gets precedence regardless of the charges or spellpower which is pretty unfortunate if true.

[kildorn]

Did they change it (again)?

It was initially "new cast overwrites", then "spellpower wins", and I'd assumed it stayed "spellpower wins", because PW:Shield runs under that stupid, stupid rule still.

In that if anything I have procs for spellpower, and I cast PW:Shield, take a 6k hit, and try to reshield after the weakened soul wears off (less than 1k remaining on shield), I'll get a "more powerful effect exists" error because in theory the current shield would be stronger if it wasn't almost burnt anyways.

I'll have to test with our other priest at some point. I have the gear edge right now, but holy priests cheat spellpower like nobody's business (when I switch specs I gain 200-250 sp :( )

[K9]

Honestly I'm not too bothered if it overwrites or not. I'll still be chain casting it on someone on CD, and with the amount of raid damage in Ulduar it'll be getting used somewhere.

[kildorn]

In uld if you stagger them they tend to be fully used. Mine rarely get used up slowly by bouncing as people take minor damage. It goes ballistic during large raid hits and procs all at once and dies.

But those are the fights I can totally cheat as Disc and whore out rapture for half a dozen 60ish mana PW:Shields.

[Vash]

The only problem with high raid dmg situations where everyone is within range of each other is that since they try to seek out the lowest health nearby target they will often meet up and merge/cancel after only 1-2 jumps regardless of who you start them out on.  Still not a dealbreaker by any means but it would be nice if they just got along like most other healing spells do these days.  Especially since the spell works quite well with multiple tanks all taking dmg and off-tanking is now a requirement in nearly every fight (trash and bosses) for Wrath.