posted by Jindi at 8:48 pm
I was still on hiatus through the end of Sunwell, and never did get a KJ kill…
When wrath started getting close, I took a brief look at it via the public test realm, however it was basically unplayable for me since I didn’t have the needed mods to rig up my Nostromo N-52. Once it launched, I was excited enough for the new content that I leveled pretty quickly, even though I ended up being out of town for several days during launch week.
Once Agony started gearing up for raids, it seemed like a good time to jump back into raiding, so I did! We plowed through all the initial content pretty quickly and completed pretty much everything except for those achievements which require precise stellar / planetary alignment (read: luck), such as Immortal.
Regarding Immortal, Bliz has revised this achievement style for Ulduar such that the Immortal equivalent for Ulduar does not require that 25 people stay online without disconnections (or realm problems!) for multiple hours on end; instead, breaking it down into the individual encounters whose requirements can be met across multiple raid lockout periods. Under the updated logic, we would have won Immortal many times over in Naxx, but whatever. I’m not pissed :P
Anyway, as I write this we’re preparing to take another whack at Yogg-Saron at the end of Ulduar. Our best attempt to date brought us to about 40% in phase 2, so we’re close-ish.
There are lots of new videos to look at! I learned a new trick for controlling the camera, and just last night finished the first full-length video utilizing this technique, covering the Freya encounter. Also notable are first-kill videos for both Mimiron and Vezax.
Also started doing 2s now that I’ve got OK PvP gear again. Here’s a video of me and my ret pally partner working our way up during our first week.
Recent loots:
Steamcaller’s Totem
Conquerer’s Worldbreaker Handguards
Conquerer’s Worldbreaker Legguards
Freya’s Choker of Warding
posted by Jindi at 9:47 am
We were doing ok on this boss for a bit. See if you can spot what goes wrong ;)
Quicktime Video
posted by Jindi at 3:19 am
Netherspite’s green beam provides a buff to +healing spells at the rate of 5% per tick (ticks are 1 second). There is also a cost reduction of spells / abilities at the rate of 1% per tick, and a debuff that reduces total mana by 200 per tick. Don’t worry, though, all of the (adjusted) mana pool is refilled at each tick. Effectively, this means you can take mana pool size and divide by 200 to get the max number of seconds you can stay in the beam before reaching 0 mana, and losing the ability to retain the beam. Somebody else (e.g. a tank) should be ready to take over the green beam, or else netherspite gets leet heals.
Â
While in the green beam, spam heals, focusing on spells with low cast time. Pretty soon, the healing buff from the beam will make even cheap spells heal for quite a bit. There is essentially no mana cost here, so go as hard as possible, taking as much load as possible off of other healers.
Â
Just before running out of mana, drop a healing stream totem. In my case, this will tick for around 450 for the next 2 minutes, pretty much taking care of portal phase damage for my group.
Â
Let’s have a look at a graph of a netherspite encounter where I used this strategy.
Â
Â
With my current gear, my healing throughput normally tops out around 1400 HPS or so when I pull out all the stops and have enough targets to soak it all up (little or no overhealing). I find it fairly interesting that this amount is very close to the amount of actual healing I was able to provide in this encounter *while in the green beam*. In effect, the bonus is almost completely wasted on overhealing.
Â
One problem with the green beam that might not be obvious is that once you stop receiving the buff, you have a smaller mana pool combined with normal mana regeneration. If you let the green beam tick all the way down to 0, you are now completely oom. Hope you saved mana tide and your pot cooldown :)
Â
Taking all these factors into account, I prefer not to own the green beam for the majority of any portal phase. I will step into it for a few seconds to get some regen, though, making sure that the primary owner of the beam isn’t out long enough to get exhaustion.
posted by Jindi at 12:39 am
Â
Â
He was pretty easy. Between the tank’s damage mitigation and my +healing bonus, and the fact that it’s an old-world boss… it’s pretty much infinitely sustainable just between the tank and I, so then it’s just a matter of getting some dps. We were cruising along fine with just three of us, but after about 15 minutes we decided to invite more to speed the process along :) He drops so much stuff! None of which is useful to me now, though he could have dropped a rare alchemy recipe, [item]Recipe: Elixir of Dream Vision[/item] that might be fun…
posted by Jindi at 11:27 pm
