After getting everything in order I went raiding with my baby-alt druid and her guild downed LK25 for the first time, and later that night downed Heroic Sindragosa 10 man for the first time.  I was happy to be restored in time to be a part of that, congratulations Pandemic  Plus, you’ve been waiting a long time for a heroic Sindy video.  I know… my original ten man fall apart after getting drakes, the ten mans in my new guild were almost non-existent, and then I got hacked.  Who’d have though that the video would finally come in the form of my alt-druid?

So anyway… before I give you the video let’s get back to my tragic story.  I got an email today reading this:

Account Name: XXXXXXXX

Reason for Closure: Terms of Use Violation — Exploitative Activity: Abuse of the Economy

This account was closed because one or more characters were identified exchanging, or contributing to the exchange of, in-game property (items or gold) for “real-world” currency. This exchange process negatively impacts the World of Warcraft game environment by detracting from the value of the in-game economy.

Even if this behavior is the result of a third party accessing the account instead of the registered user (for example, a friend, family member, or leveling service) then the account can still be held responsible for the penalty because of the impact it had on the game environment.

We’ve found the above behavior is many times directly related to groups responsible for compromising World of Warcraft accounts; we take these issues very seriously. To better understand our position against exploitative activity and the risks involved, please review this article:http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/basics/antigold.html

The exploitative activity that took place on this account violates the World of Warcraft Terms of Use. We ask you take a moment to review these terms at http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/legal/termsofuse.html. Any recurring subscriptions on this account have been suspended to prevent further monetary charges.

For any disputes of this action, please visit the Exploitative Activity FAQ and Contact page here: http://us.blizzard.com/support/article/exploitfaq

Regards,

Blizzard Entertainment
www.worldofwarcraft.com

Well… my-oh-my am I surprised.  I am aware that it is possible to hack an authenticator, but that is really really really uncommon.  Also, I armoried myself and my characters still have all their gear.  They haven’t been stripped like they were when I was hacked.  I didn’t do anything weird last night.  I didn’t send or receive any gold, and I only listed about 5 gems on the AH.  I have absolutely no idea what I could have done to trigger this…. *shrug* So, naturally I sent in a mail and got the standard “We received your mail and will get back to you” reply.  I guess we’ll see huh?  It’s like they want me to quite WoW

Heroic Sindragosa Instructional Video

Well the good news is that in the one day I did have my account back I got this video, so here it is

To summarize:

When you have unchained magic, get 20 yards away from everyone to explode, run back, and DON’T cast.

Be pro at LoS in the air phase or you’ll get one shot

In the second phase, fight the temptation to cast while you have unchained magic!!

And on a personal note, I hope this account thing gets resolved sooner rather than later.  It makes me a very sad tree.

Deathbringer Saurfang gains blood power a lot faster on heroic.  Your tanks need to be spot on with their taunts, and nobody can get hit by blood beasts.  Five seconds after the beasts spawn the raid will be slowed by 80% so bear that in mind when choosing kiters/stuns/etc.

So… healers… you’re going to have to deal with healing a lot more marks than you are probably use to.  Plus, if someone with the mark does die he gains 20% life (not the 5% in normal) so it will be a wipe.  We tried to delay the first mark as long as possible.  We ran with 6 paladins so the first 6 bloodboils could be HoPed off.  We would save HoP if it was on a mage (iceblock) a rogue (cloak) or another pali (self bubble) and use it on people in the third round of bloodboil.

We then had an order for all marks.  Pali 1 beacons the first ranged mark, Pali 2 beacons the second ranged mark, Pali 1 pulls off the tanks and heals the third ranged mark along with the first (beacon), Priest 1 heals the forth ranged mark…. you get the idea.  A lot of it was RNGish too, because a shaman’s chain heal is defiantly OP if you get several marks in melee.  As a druid I was HoTting everything with a mark, or a blood boil, or a tank.  Between my hots, pali’s splash heals, judgements and chain heals, melee was fine with no specific healers assigned to them.

I have healbot setup to show “Mark of the Fallen Champion” as a different color, and all bloodboil victims were marked by DBM which also shows on my healbot.  Having those things very visible helps a lot, especial at the end when you may be rolling HoTs on 9-10 people.

Save all cooldowns till that last few percentages when you have a lot of marks.  Our priests all hymned in turn, including our shadow priests.  We also blew divine sacrifice near the end of the fight.

If you have other tips, please leave them in the comments, I’m sure people would love to hear what you did!

So… no Sindragosa for you, but lets roll with Putricide!

Professor Putricide Heroic (10 Man)

There are two major changes to this fight in the heroic version.  The first and most challenging of these changes is the casting of the Unbound Plague.  This debuff lasts 60 seconds, and increases its damage with every tick you take.  Because of this it will eventually one-shot you, so you want to pass it off to another player after about 12 seconds.  To pass if off you simply pass within 3 yards of the player, they will then get the plague and you will get “Plague Sickness”.   While you suffer from Plague Sickness any plague damage you take is increased by 300% so you don’t want to contract the plague again until this debuff wears off.

You need to stay spread out to not accidently pass the plague around.  You also need to be VERY vocal on vent, so the entire raid knows who has the plague, and who they plan to give it to next.  Adding Plague Sickness to show on your grid or healbot will aid in choosing targets, but they are best chosen based on audio cues.

The other change is that during transitions you are no longer stunned.  Instead he releases an orange and green ooze at the same time.  Make sure your abomination has enough energy going into transition to stun both.  Also, be sure to control when the transitions occur to avoiding having 3 slimes up at a time.

On the video we are using two tanks and three healers.  I know it can be done with two, but we choose to be cautious and use three  Hopefully the video is of some use when your guild tackles this fight!

I’m going to start off with heroic Blood Queen Lana’thel, who from everything I read was suppose to be a healing check.  Basically everything about this fight is the same as it is in regular mode with one exception.  In heroic mode, Blood Queen Lana’thel gains a stack of Presence of the Darkfallen for each vampire present. Each stack of this buff increases the power of her Shroud of Sorrow for 5%.  So towards the end, you have quite a few vampires, and the damage is significantly more intense than it is in regular.

That being said, we did this with five healers, and I honestly never felt like the healing was stressful.  Obviously some of that can be attributed to the fact that the other four were all very good healers.  The other thing was that we saved all of our raid cooldowns until the end of the fight.  For example, we usually have our paladin D-sac during the first flight phase, and both of our priest hymn for the second flight phase.  For heroic we had to survive the “stupid check” of spreading out without help, so these cooldowns could be burned at the end, usually during a Pact of the Darkfallen.

As far as druid healing goes on this… honestly…. rejuv, rejuv, rejuv, rejuv, rejuv, wild growth…. repeat.  I think I throw out a regrowth or two on really low people during flight phase.  But for the most part, if the other healers in your group are competent, then you serve the raid best by spamming raid heals.

Heroic Festergut

I thought about this for a bit… is it a healing check or a DPS check… in the end I concluded it was just a stupid check.  The difference between this and the regular version is that Professor Putriced throws down Malleable Goo throughout the fight.  And of course, the goo has the same effect it does on the PP fight, it slows down your attack speed and casting speed.  So of course, if most of your DPS is getting hit with it, their DPS will go way down, and it does become a DPS race to the enrage timer… or if most of your healers get hit, their heals go out a lot slower, and then it becomes a struggle to keep people up.

If interested we did this with two tanks and five healers.

See, when this heroic first came out, it was a bit of a challenge to judge where the goo was headed.  And because of that, this fight was a bit more challenging.  But recently they changed it so that a puddle will show on the ground where the goo will ultimately land.  So now it just becomes a “move out of the circle of bad stuff” normal everyday mechanic.  By adding a graphic, they really nerfed the fight.

A few things to remember.  For the most part it’s just like the normal version of the fight.  It is more important now that you actually get all three of your inoculations.  Move out of the green puddles on the ground… the effect of malleable goo is larger than the circle on the ground so stay way clear of them.  Keep up range check so you don’t chain puke.  And that’s all!

A Poll

Heroic Gunship

As much as gunship is LOL lootship in regular, the same applies to the heroic version of this fight.  Ok, the rockets knock you back, and the ship and mage have more health… but it’s the same basic show up and get your free loot fight.  I made a video of our last heroic gunship showing how seriously we took this fight, I hope it makes you smile

Heroic Rotface

After the gunship (the obvious first heroic), the next on the list is probably Heroic Rotface.  I can tell you that we’ve one-shot this every time on 10 man… and something like 3-shot it our first week in 25 man.  So, yeah there is a slight idiot-factor like any fight, but it’s really not a lot different than regular Rotface.

So what is different? Well for one, Putricide casts Vial Gas on people throughout the fight.  If you don’t recall, vial gas is the spell that’s usually cast during Festergut that makes you vomit and chains to nearby players.  Well the same principals apply, as far as spreading out so that you don’t chain the vomiting. Use /range or proximity. He’ll only cast it on the ranged, as long as you have enough.  So where we use to have everyone stacking in melee on this fight, we now sent a few out to ranged deal with this.  But this vial gas is MUCH weaker than the stuff you get on Festergut.  It doesn’t hurt as much, it doesn’t last as long.  It will still kill you if you chain it in melee, but it’s not an issue for the ranged.

The other thing that’s different is that the mutated infection reduces healing by 75% instead of 50% on normal.  We dispelled them right away when people got them on heroic.  You just have to be careful to get out quickly, so you don’t accidentally form big-slimes in the middle of the raid.    How ever many healers you use on normal should be fine for heroic.  For us that’s two and five.

Wow… you go unguided for less than one week and you feel like you’ve fallen so far behind!  Yikes!  Well… I found a new home and am raiding again, so all is well on that front.  Even did some hard mode 10 mans last night with the new guild, and remembered to take some videos… more on that later in the post

First, I wanted to say thank you to a few people: Youki, Cerenitee, Martos, Contrite, Dierdrea and Piptooth.  You guys were awesome to raid with, and to hang out with.  My time in LoD was not wasted because it gave me the opportunity to meet all of you.  I know we aren’t all going in the same direction now, but I wish you all the best of luck in game and out, and I hope we’ll all continue to stay in touch.  And I’m incredibly happy that my favoritest, bestest, awesomest priest in the whole world has gone to the same guild as me, Hi Youki!  Of course he has a new name and a sexy new blood elf body… and I’m stuck being a… cow.  Moo?

Hard Mode Blood Queen Lana’thel

Well it seems that, at least on 10 man, heroic Blood Queen Lana’thel isn’t all that… heroic.  Ok, she does more damage to the tanks and to the raid.  And yep, at the end that damage got to be… well… a lot.  But we very nearly one shot it, and that just sits a bit wrong with me.  I’m linking a video below, however the basic strategy is the same as before.  This is just a kill video:  watch regular mode strategy video instead.

Hard Mode Festergut

This fight is a pain in the ass for one reason… Malleable Goo!  Yep, that fun stuff from Professor Putricde is back!  Basically the professor stands on the balcony and throws goo down the entire fight at you.  It has the same effect as it does when you fight putricide.  It does a lot of damage, and slows your attack/casting speed by 200%.  You have to get quite far away from it too, if you watch the video you’ll see I run away but still get hit by it  Despite my failure, the video might be helpful to give you a look at this ability!  Other than that, the same basic principals of the fight apply, including stacking the inoculation and the damage changing between mostly raid wide and mostly tank damage.

As I mentioned at the end of my previous blog, our ten man got the Nausea, Heartburn, Indigestion achievement this week.  I was a bit worried going into it, but we ended up getting it on our second try!  Probably would have one shot it if not for a string of bad luck.  This being the case, I was a bit dumb and didn’t get any of the important parts recorded… sorry!  Anyway… you probably want to know how we did it!

In our setup we had two tanks and two healers.  I’m not entirely convinced you can’t do this with three healers, but I guess it depends on your DPS.  In our setup it was me and a holy priest… I also think a disc priest would be amazing on this fight, but any good healer should work!

Most people’s strategy for Professor Putricide involves a lot of running back and forth across the room depending on what color slime will be dropping out next.  When we do this fight normally that is what we do, however for the achievement we chose to camp under the green faucet.  When the green slime came out, we assumed we would probably get hit. The most important thing to remember here is to stack with your backs facing towards the wall! The reason for this is that when the green slime explodes, you will all fly in generally the same direction.  If someone is facing a different direction, and flies off alone, you most likely won’t have time to re-stack on that person before the slime reaches them if they are chosen as the next target.  All and all this really wasn’t that bad.  Sometimes the slime didn’t even explode… and when it did, the raid was all pre-hotted and the damage was very bearable.

When the orange slime spawns you are already at nearly max distance since you are on the green side.  You will still need to kite, those suckers go FAST!! Us druids can kitty-form and dash, rogues can sprint, engineers can blow their rocket boots, priests could spec into body and soul, you can enchant minor run speed… etc, etc, etc… you get the idea  Any speed increase helps!  Also, although the abomination was not slowing the ooze at all, he was DPSing these orange ones so they would die faster!

Other than this, all the same basics of the fight apply.  Avoid flasks, avoid flying ooze, don’t stand in green puddles, etc.  If you reach phase three, it is identical to the non-achievement version of the fight.

Good luck everyone!

After downing Festergut we decided that we really really wanted to get this Dances with Oozes achievement the first week on Rotface.  We messed with a couple of different strategies on a couple of nights before finally deciding on one that seemed to work the best for our group.  Also… I do know what you’re thinking: “ZOMG Angela, where is the Professor Putricide Post?!?!?!”  Well… we are taking our time with him, and have not used up all of our attempts yet.  I’ll get back to you later in the week when we have

The Fight in General

Ok, so here is the deal with Rotface… a lot of the damage is avoidable and takes place in the form of a “slime spray” that will happen in a cone shape in the direction of whomever he targets.  We spent the entire fight hugging Rotface’s ass, and once a target was picked and he turned, we’d run though him to again be behind him, were we continued to kill him.  I’m going to say right away, that anyone getting hit by slime spray deserves to be smacked in the head  Pay attention, and you can avoid it, because it really does do a lot of damage and us healers have better things to worry about!

During this fight, the room is also being partially flooded with green goo you don’t want to stand in, as it slows you down and does a lot of damage.  There will also be circular green goo piles that can be avoided (your basic circle of death mechanic.)

The other thing that is happening during this fight is people are randomly being chosen to have a DoT (Mutated Infection) applied to them, which not only deals lots of damage, but reduces healing received by 75%.  When this is cleansed or runs out its 15 second duration, you will get a little ooze that will be fixated on you (not tauntable, that baby’s yours!) that will go around hitting you.

When two little oozes get near each other they form a big ooze.  The big oozes hurt, and can not be tanked, they must be kited.  This big ooze will then envelop more oozes, each time gaining a stack until it reaches 5 stacks.  At five stacks, the ooze will explode and send out rockets that will hit where you were standing, so once launched everyone flees from the center of the room to somewhere safe till they hit, then returns to what they were doing.  You then start fresh with two little oozes forming a big ooze with 1 stack, kiting it, adding to it, ect ect till Rotface is dead.

As a healer you need to keep up heals on the tank, keep heavy healing on the people with the DoT, and spot heal raid members that are getting hit with slime spray.  Oh, and pay attention so you’re not the one getting hit with the avoidable damage!!

Dances with Oozes

The achievement for this requires that you never let a big ooze explode, or essentially that you never let it reach five stacks.  The first thing I want to mention is that a big ooze that envelopes a small ooze will gain one stack.  But, a big ooze that envelops another big ooze that has one stack, will also gain one stack.  So essentially, if you choose to do it this way, instead of getting one stack per ooze you are getting one stack per two oozes if you have them form up a big ooze first before dragging it to the existing big ooze.  Hopefully this diagram will help you better understand what I’m saying:

As you can see, one method we explored was never letting a small ooze touch a big ooze.  Always let two small oozes create a big ooze first, so that you get the maximum number of small ooze spawns out before your big one reaches five stacks.  Ultimately we didn’t go with this method, but it may be something that works for our group.

The next thing we tried was to spread the entire raid out around the room and have people hold their little ooze as long as the could, never letting them reach another ooze to form up.  This resulted in a lot more people accidently getting hit by slime spray, as well as occasionally having an accidental big oozes spawn and wipe people out unexpectedly.  I think this strategy is valid at the end of the fight to burn down, but probably shouldn’t be implored from the beginning as your main method.

What we ended up settling on was a burn method.  We went with one tank and two healers for this fight.  The tank went in fully hotted and we popped heroism a couple of seconds later.  Everyone, healers included, went full out damage.  Once he started sending out the DoT we switched to healing while the DPS burned.  We ignored the first small ooze, and once the second person got the DoT we took them to the edge of the slime pool filling the room.  When the first large ooze spawned our elemental shaman started to kite it.  We had a paladin giving him freedom whenever he would call for it.  When he got to three stacks on his ooze we then started on a second large ooze.  This second ooze was kited by a boomkin (who could shape shift out of any slowing debuffs) and followed behind the first large ooze at a safe distance.  The reason we formed this at three stacks instead of four stacks was to give ourselves a little margin for error incase the shaman got a little ooze, or someone ran too close to this first big ooze with their little ooze.  We continued to burn Rotface and he was dead well before a third big ooze was needed… however in theory you could add a third kiter as it became necessary.