WOW GWJA: GWJ Raiding time 1/4/11-110/11 Posted for Tuesday and Thursday

Well as the dates seem to be getting hammered out, if folks could pop over to my thread, I am hoping to get some rated bg rades set Wednesday and/or Sunday.

TrashiDawa wrote:

I'm around ilvl 342 but I need more seasoning tanking cat heroics. I'll be signing up next week.

Thanks to all the guildies that have helped me with tanking strats in heroics. I know its been painful!

Oh you were fine!

Believe me, it was far, far more painful to be in my group before I actually worked out how to heal properly. Ask Lawk =)

And Iso. Poor, poor (perpetually) dead Iso.

Rantin

Heals and cruddy kind of OK ranged DPS

ilvl 342 equipped and audit passed.

Any night I know about it in advance is good for me.

Good luck guys! FYI I am interested in raiding (especially as we learn) but find that guaranteeing availability is difficult in reasonable timeframes. I've scraped to make 7:30pm times in the past but 8pm server us much more realistic.

I'll gear up as I can in heroics and sign up when I am available. Kick butt in the meantime, folks!

To find it BWD is outside cut into the eastern face of Blackrock Mountain.

Whoop, wrong thread

How to get there from SW:
Aim at Blackrock Mountain
IMAGE(http://i140.photobucket.com/albums/r10/jbm_album/WoW/bwd1.jpg)

From the front entrance to Blackrock aim at the cracks on the east side
IMAGE(http://i140.photobucket.com/albums/r10/jbm_album/WoW/bwd2.jpg)

Almost there
IMAGE(http://i140.photobucket.com/albums/r10/jbm_album/WoW/bwd3.jpg)

View of the front
IMAGE(http://i140.photobucket.com/albums/r10/jbm_album/WoW/bwd4.jpg)

With these directions maybe even Grinds can make it there without a summon
Thanks Max!

ELewis17 wrote:

With these directions maybe even Grinds can make it there without a summon
Thanks Max!

I will require a summons at 6:52 please.

maxox wrote:

View of the front
IMAGE(http://i140.photobucket.com/albums/r10/jbm_album/WoW/bwd4.jpg)

Seeing this again makes me cringe.

Wow, thanks for the Archeology color coded pictures! I may be able to make it on time tonight

Im available any day but monday after 5pm est. Arasyn - DK tank currently 345 itl dps off-spec. Is there enough for a second group? Ill be on tonight as reserve also if anyone wants to run heroics.

I just came across this site and it seemed appropriate to mention in this thread.

http://wow.joystiq.com/2011/01/04/wo...

Concise write up on Blackrock Descent.

oilypenguin wrote:

Bastion of Twilight for Thursday?

I think we'll have the AoE needed for Magmaw tomorrow.

ODS is just going to take time for people to get the fight down. One big thing (besides people attacking shielded constructs) that I think we (Bean and myself, really) could really improve on in ODS is to drag the active constructs through Toxitron's chemical cloud to give them the +50% damage debuff.

Thanks Max... I love this stuff

ELewis17 wrote:

ODS is just going to take time for people to get the fight down. One big thing (besides people attacking shielded constructs) that I think we (Bean and myself, really) could really improve on in ODS is to drag the active constructs through Toxitron's chemical cloud to give them the +50% damage debuff.

I do not think attacking shielded contructs was much a issue. I do agree that dragging the guys into the poison and keeping arcano near the buff could definately make the fight shorter.

Ultimately we need people to take less damage. You can not stop Melee or the Inciniration (sp?) from the fire guy. However, you can stop the 3rd most damage delt to the raid.

Also, getting hit by a posion guy is unacceptable considering how slow they move.

I think it might just take some time to get back into the "raiding" mindset. People need to pay attention and be aware and on their toes at all times. Begining new raiding and being undergeared, xp for cata, just means people have to put game faces on.

Also, I personally think it would help if we all took off our cloths before engaging.

Bastion of Twilight for Thursday?

I've also been going through the tankspot forum a bit. What I've gleaned so far:

Magmaw:
The adds are the keys to the fight, everything else is where you stand
2 Tanks are heavily recommended to be switched out after the first one is swallowed (save your cooldowns for that phase)
ideal make-up of the 10 man is: 1 tank, 3 healers, 1 tank/mDPS, 1 pure mDPS, 4 rDPS
The plan of having Zero stand back and trap to slow the adds down was a good one
Do we have a frost Dk with howling blast glyphed? I guess that's supposed to be good.

This is spit-balling on my part but what if we set up where we were setting up last night but I was a bit off to the right (still in melee range). If I'm further away, zero can also be further away which would buy us more time to kill the adds once Pillar of Flame hits. Plus if I stay in kind of the middle, it shouldn't affect my healing the rest of the group either. Why me? slowing totem to aid Zero's trap and instant ghost puppy if I need to bug out.

Granted, that would only get us to the first Ignition after which we would need to reset, but that's just a matter of setting up again.

Just tossing it out there. I know a lot of people were frustrated last night but I think it just comes down to destroying those adds as fast as possible.

oilypenguin wrote:

I know a lot of people were frustrated last night but I think it just comes down to destroying those adds as fast as possible.

I was a cranky baby cuz I plowed Monday night and hadn't slept. Needless to say, I wasn't at the top of my game last night. Though the overall somber mood was a bit of a bummer.

ELewis17 wrote:

ODS is just going to take time for people to get the fight down. One big thing (besides people attacking shielded constructs) that I think we (Bean and myself, really) could really improve on in ODS is to drag the active constructs through Toxitron's chemical cloud to give them the +50% damage debuff.

One other thing to work on is our positioning of the constructs when they are about to go dormant. We were trying to keep them in same corner together. I think this may not be ideal as I noticed a few times that the new one would pop as the one I was tanking at 0% energy was still up. If they are too close to each other you can actually be hit by both at the same time. Not a huge deal, just something to look out for to make the healers life easier. Still best to split the adds left and right, just not grouped up in the corner.

Will definitely work on the cloud positioning as well.

Bean wrote:
ELewis17 wrote:

ODS is just going to take time for people to get the fight down. One big thing (besides people attacking shielded constructs) that I think we (Bean and myself, really) could really improve on in ODS is to drag the active constructs through Toxitron's chemical cloud to give them the +50% damage debuff.

One other thing to work on is our positioning of the constructs when they are about to go dormant. We were trying to keep them in same corner together. I think this may not be ideal as I noticed a few times that the new one would pop as the one I was tanking at 0% energy was still up. If they are too close to each other you can actually be hit by both at the same time. Not a huge deal, just something to look out for to make the healers life easier. Still best to split the adds left and right, just not grouped up in the corner.

Will definitely work on the cloud positioning as well.

From a healers standpoint, those fights are a son of a .... Tank healing isn't the issue, it is the aoe and spill damage that kills the mana pool. I know my healing gear isn't as good as it should be, but when Zee is going oom most of the time I know we are taking way too much damage and the fight is lasting too long. He is easily the best geared healer we got and if it is a burden on him, we are needing to do something a bit different. Bean is running the raid on Thursday, so if he wants to bring you back to the 2 bosses we fought already, then that is his call. I believe in the reading I've done, that Bastion of Twilight will be the highest opportunity to down a boss. I want to get us some higher gear levels so we can make things a tad easier in other fights. Good luck on thursday, I'll pop on the server after my bowling league.

Yeah, I hate to be the guy to bring up the elephant in the room, but at our current gear levels and thus relatively low DPS (and survivability, mana regen, etc), we will be needing perfect execution from everyone in order to bring down even the easiest bosses, and we didn't have that last night. Be it my sloppy kiting, or people hitting the shields, or folks letting the slime bombs catch them, there were improvements to be made all around.

That said though, most of us are about as ready as we're going to get from running heroics. If we figure out what boss our comp on Thursday is best suited for and everyone brings their A game I think we ought to be able to kill something, but folks really need to bring it and crank out everything their toon is capable of.

To be prepared, please read up on the first two bosses in Bastion of Twilight. Its not a done deal that we are going there, but it doesnt hurt to have some basic information if we do.

Also, please take some time to do a self audit of your character and consumables. Take some time to make any updates/corrections by raid time. (This is pretty much the same information from ZeroKFEs post found here, just putting here for a checklist as well)

Are you in the best gear possible? I will be around tonight around 9-9:30 server time to help run heroics if people are interested. Would prefer to group with those going on the raid Thursday that may need some JP or a piece or two of gear before then. Personally, I will be trying to hit up HoO and SFK for personal reasons during the night as well. Please check rep vendors to see what is available to you. At revered rep vendors have ilvl 346 pieces and at exalted they have ilvl 359. I know these are not always best for your class/spec, that research will have to be up to you. Also note that we have many crafting professions in the guild to help out. Research if tailoring, leatherworking or blacksmithing is of use to you and see if you can get those pieces crafted.

Please note that for gear, PVP pieces are typically frowned upon due to the poor itemization wasted on resilience. Please replace resilience gear for your raiding sets.

Are you fully enchanted? You don't need the maelstrom crystal enchants, I know those are ridiculously pricey. But please make sure that every piece of gear that can be enchanted is taken care of. There are several enchanters in the guild who should be able to help including myself.

Enchants also include helm Arcanums and shoulder inscriptions. Rep is pretty easy to come by. You only need revered for your helm arcanum. Lower level shoulder inscriptions are at honored with therazane and higher level ones at exalted. Simply by completing the quests in deepholm you will end up at revered, so please make sure your shoulders have spec appropriate inscription on them.

Are you gemmed properly? There are a wide variety of jewelcrafters in the guild. Some have the spellcaster cuts, some have melee cuts and bhumpy has the majority of tank cuts and is working on getting more. The uncut rare gems are between 25-75 gold each. Please make sure that your equipment is properly gemmed.

For gemming, this includes belt buckles as well. I know they can get expensive, but a few dailies or smooth dungeon runs will wash away the cost of a buckle.

Are you bringing adequate consumables with you? Proper food buffs and flasks are expected/required. During progression we will likely be spending a lot of time dying, so make sure you bring enough buff food with you for the entire time. There are plenty of high level cooks in the guild. If you can't cook something yourself, just farm the mats and have someone cook them up for you. Our raid times are typically scheduled for 2-3 hours. So plan accordingly and bring at least 3 flasks with you to each raid. There are alchemists with flask mastery in the guild that can make these for you (with chance to proc extra ones) if you can acquire the mats through farming of the AH.

Im sure there are some people already putting out incredible numbers that are missing a gem or enchant thinking you don't need to worry about it. We are not going to debate the needs of being prepared on a character by character basis. What we are asking is that everyone take the time needed to make sure they meet the above character audit and we are here to help in anyway we can (no, i will not do the deepholm quests for you!!)

If there are any questions, please catch up with me in game or through a PM. Thanks

tundra wrote:

...Bastion of Twilight will be the highest opportunity to down a boss.

The few minutes I've spent looking up the first few fights in BoT support this. Halfus brings a bit of a learning curve, but Dragon BFFs after him look relatively simple and devoid of the RNG that ODS brings to the table.
Its all gonna die sooner or later, so I don't care what order we start going in or whether we jump around or what.
Edit:
We should try and run Baradin Hold again. Tonight, if possible. Might take 25 minutes? If we brought a varied make-up of classes in there we'd be looking at a ~25-30% chance to get someone in the group a 359 piece. Most of the 359s look to have about a 1-1.7% drop rate. 3-4 pieces of 359 per class @ two drops per kill...

Bean wrote:

Please note that for gear, PVP pieces are typically frowned upon due to the poor itemization wasted on resilience. Please replace resilience gear for your raiding sets.

I know its better to stay away from PvP gear, but starting out there's some pieces that just seem better. I know the shoulders i have i gain very little like 10 haste and some +hit. I'm already hit capped and even after reforging i'll be way over the cap and the extra haste isnt enough to edge out the extra dmg i get from more Agil.

Of course this is just starting out and it'll all get replaced soon.

When in doubt, Ran, I'd suggest running some numbers over at http://www.femaledwarf.com/. It's not going to be 100% accurate, but you can get a decent idea of the general effect that changing a few pieces will have.

Yes, that 70 agi set bonus on from your PvP gear is pretty big, and it may not be a gain to change out just one piece for a PvE focused item. However, I suspect that changing two or three should be able to give you some noticeable gains. Sure, the crit, haste, or mastery you will gain may not be as valuable as the 70 agi you might loose, but it is worth infinitely more than the resilience. (And the non set pieces will almost certainly be worth replacing, even if you you are dropping from a 352 PvP piece to a 346 PvE one, or maybe even a 333.) As for the extra hit, you should be able to always reforge that down to where it needs to be if you are way over cap.

Of course, stick with your current set if you don't have the JP or the time to run heroics to make the changes before tomorrow night -- but as I was saying in my previous post, we need every extra bit of DPS we can get right now since we are all just barely geared enough for the content, so if you can improve your DPS by swapping PvP gear for good PvE gear, that would be excellent.

Just a side note- I have a max level alchemist, blacksmith, jewelcrafter, engineer, and enchanter. If you need anything, please look me up. I have several blue gems and some enchanting mats. I will help you out if you are willing to put the time into raiding. Additionally, if you have mats or gear that can be put into the guild bank to help with the raid process, please do. I know I've personally contributed several truegolds and enchanting mats to the cause. If you have the time, please contribute to the gbank to help with raiding. Investing now will reap rewards in the future.

I've also got a bunch of rare gems that I've been stockpiling for my final push to 525. Bug Nomexx in game if you need some.

How can we track our individual EP:GP ratios? In the future, it seems like it'll streamline the loot process if the individual raiders know if they have the currency to get specific gear drops before they even drop.

ELewis17 wrote:

How can we track our individual EP:GP ratios? In the future, it seems like it'll streamline the loot process if the individual raiders know if they have the currency to get specific gear drops before they even drop.

http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-a...

That's the addon to use. Also, the last time we used EPGP Reap periodically updated this site:

http://www.epgpweb.com/guild/us/Blac...

Not sure if we will still be able to do that though.