Archive for April, 2009
Last night was somewhat unexpected.
No scheduled raid and not enough people to do a run with so I wasn’t expecting much. However one of our guildies has been making overtures to another small guild that don’t quite have the member base to raid, or don’t want to be a raiding guild. We were going to do a few trial runs of heroics with mixed guild runs to see what the other people in the guild were like, when one of our guildies noticed we could put together a 10 man. 7 from our guild and 3 from the other.
So we found our way to outside of Naxx. Gave out vent details and did some brief introductions. The folks seemed nice enough and off we all went.
We had a whale of a time. We did spider wing super quick. Had an unlucky wipe on Faerlina when she was very low on hitpoints, but sailed through it. We then headed on to the plague wing.
Our last run there took out Noth the plaguebringer and we finally downed Heigan after wipes.
This time round we killed Heigan on our second attempt and found ourselves in front of loatheb. Apparently loatheb is a bit of a gear check (similar to the curator fight in Kara).
If you can’t down this guy you need to gear up, it’s as simple as that. It’s a fairly simple tank and spank. Healers have a hard time as they appear to get 3 second windows to heal through, the rest of the time they can’t heal.
We downed Loatheb with no problems at all.
So our joint run was very successfull. The other guild seem to match ours in their attitude. Lots of friendly camraderie, no guilt trips, and no egos in play. So things look bright for fun raiding.
We’ll be hitting up Naxx again on Friday. I’m hoping we will definitely clear at least one of the other wings (if not both)
We’ve done a bit of the construct ring before. Downing Patchwerk but wiping on grobbulus so it will be great if we can take him out this time.
April 30th, 2009
I mentioned recently that I was going to switch my paladin from retribution to protection for my mixed melee team.
I want to run heroics on him (although all of the team isn’t at that stage) and so I wanted to get to the 540 defense rating. For heroics 535 makes you uncrittable to the level 82 bosses, 540 is required for the level 83 bosses found in raids.
A quick search on the internet and I found this really good guide to initially gearing up a paladin.
This site is fantastic and contains everything you need to know about tanking as a paladin.
I was lucky enough to have the titansteel shield and at least 1 epic from Naxxramas 10 mans that had defense on it, but still only had just over 400 defense. Following this guide I was able to go from 400 defense to my target of 540 well within 2 days.
The rep items and crafted stuff that phase 1 suggested was relatively cheap.
I did have to gem for defense, using I thick autmn’s glow gems - or something like that.
Each of them adds 16 defense rating (or about 4 defense).
I also had to put a defense enchant on my chest and a titanweave enchant on my cloa to get to the magic 540.
I’ve only got about 19k health unbuffed so some of the harder heroics will be out, but it’s a great starting point.
April 28th, 2009
After playing my horde paladin (65 currently) I’ve been forced to reconsider my decision to have my druid tank for my team.
I chose the bear tank, primarily because trying to DPS as a feral cat seemed to require watching too much at the same time. This meant I would have to spec my pally as retribution.
One i decided the paladin would make the better tank it was now a case of figuring out a way to get decent feral cat dps whilst multiboxing.
1. The problem.
Feral cat dps relies on a priority of abilties. Add combo point watching to that and it would take much needed concentration from my situational awareness.
2. The solution.
I found out about an addon called Mik’s combat scrolling text. I can modify certain of the triggers in this add on to watch for ability procs on members of my party, not just my main character. So with this in mind I’ve decided on the following.
i) Set up a trigger in MSBT that lets me know when the cat has 5 combo points. I will have one macro that will trigger either ferocious bite, or rip based on which key modifier is pressed.
2. I will set up a trigger for Berserking and the tiger’s fury ability coming off of cooldown. Depending on how much time remains in the fight i can decide if i want to trigger these abilities or not.
3. Set up a trigger for Savage roar dropping off. Savage roar is a huge dps increase, so it’s vital to keep this up at all times. Normally a 2 combo point savage roar will outlast trash mobs, but on a boss fight will need refreshing.
4. I’ll get the mangle glyph for my cat. Solo play I might want to be behind the target but with the positional problems of multiboxing I’ll have a dps macro consisting of mangle, with the odd rake put in there to keep bleed effects going.
I think the pally is easier to play as a tank than the druid (certainly whilst multiboxing) and this will free up quite a chunk of concentration to watch for MSBT proc reports.
I’ll probably turn of 90% of the notifications from MSBT so that I only get druid procs, and the shamans 5 stack of maelstrom weapon.
I think this should result in acceptable dps levels on the cat without compromising the team.
I’ve heard of other addons (such as parrot) that may allow you to assign audible cues as well. I’ll try with MSBT for now though.
April 27th, 2009
I took my paladin and 4 shaman into Slave pens on friday night.
I’ve heard this can be quite difficult to multibox for non Paladin and shaman team but it was quite easy for my group composition.
The trickiest boss was actually the first. Mennu the betrayer. It was an endurance fight, it just seemed to go on forever. One of my shaman died early on, and i just kept hitting and hitting the boss and he wouldn’t die.
This boss drops totems at various stages of the fight. A stoneskin, a healing stream and a fire nova. I think my key issue was that i didn’t have a macro to target the two totems that needed to be taken out (healing and stoneskin). I was targetting them manually on my paladin. Eventually the boss died (although I nearly fell asleep with boredom before he did 
)
Other than that this instance was pretty easy, I think the shamans self heal and poison cleansing totems made the last boss trivial.
April 27th, 2009
I’ve noticed from my weblogs that there seems to be a fair amount of interest in keeping your alts facing the target whilst multiboxing and realised that I haven’t put too much information on here to answer that question.
This post should remedy that.
When setting up a fight it’s generally quite easy to get all your team facing the same way. You tend to follow the tank, drop the group off of follow and pull the mobs iwth your tank. However things can sometimes get messy and there are many situations where you may find your team facing a different direction from and you need to get them back on target quickly.
Lets say that my tank gets knocked back through my team so they are now facing the wrong way.
The two approaches I might take, are - run my paladin back through my team so he’s back in front of them, or if there is a bit of room between my alts and the tank I’ll tap my follow key they will turn to follow the tank, and I quickly tap the key I use to break follow (in my case I use my back arrow key to do this).
Another situation I mainly got when I was out questing was when a mob attacked and my team stopped right on top of the tank. Essentially the shaman are unable to cast as the mob was technically behind them, despite the tank being more or less in front of them.
Tapping your follow key wouldn’t help in this case.
I mentioned earlier that my break follow is my back arrow key. I chose that key specifically for the above situation. (all my other arrow keys are on my do not pass list).
I turn my tank to face my alts and press my down arrow key. The net effect is that the tank and my shaman back away from each other and the mob is now nicely positioned to be blasted into oblivion. This works regardless of if the mob is beating on the tank or one of my shaman.
These simple techniques are all I’ve had to use for a caster team.
Melee teams are a different matter, given that you want them to be in melee range and can’t tap follow as they are right on top of the tank. I haven’t done too much with my melee team but have resorted to running my tank forward a few paces (providing he has aggro) and then tapping follow to bring my team back in.
However, Patch 3.1 introduced some nice functionality that might just help with this. I’ve yet to play with this feature but the basics are.
1. In your key bindings there is a new option to bind a key for interact with unit. (something like that). You would set this on all your characters.
2. Enable click to move in your mouse options within wow (this is important).
3. You target the mob with your tank and would click interact with target. This causes the alts to run the alts towards the target if they are out of range. (turning if needed). In this case Interact with target means beat it to a pulp .
Like I say I haven’t actually tried this final method but will do in the near future.
April 24th, 2009
I decided to dedicate a night to my multibox team last night, no raiding, no dailies, no heroics, just good old fashioned burning crusade fun.
After downing the last boss in ramparts it was time to move on from Ramparts and go to Blood furnace instead. It’s quite a fun instance,relatively short and I had a couple of quests to complete in there which required me to collect 10 vials of blood from the orcs (on 4 of my characters).
The second quest was to explore the furnace completely, which just required me to get to the end boss.
The first run was slow, as I had to loot separately on all my characters. (the last patch added an interact with target keybind and if I had set this up this would be easier). The trash can be a handful at times but my team coped with them wonderfully.
I got to the first boss (The Maker) and was able to take him down first try. He got a mind control off on one of my characters but it wasn’t an issue.
Lucky me - he dropped the Diamond Core Sledgemace. A wonderful spell caster mace, and a nice upgrade for one of my Shaman.
The second boss was the one I was dreading (Broggok). You clear the room of trash, then flip a switch. This opens a locked gate and 4 or 5 orcs come running at you. You kill them, then another cell opens and another 4 or 5 come out, then another gate opens and finally a 4th (so 4 waves of orcs)
At this point the gate holding the boss back opens and this ugly floating head demon comes at you.
When I’ve played this solo before there were issues with mana, but my team breezed through.
I had one wobbly moment where I wasn’t quick enough to pick up a group of orcs and they got in amongst my casters but it didn’t cause any significant problems (shaman can take a few hits with their shields and chain armour). The second boss died very quickly, and I remembered to wait for his poison cloud to disappear from his corpse before looting. (I’ve killed characters before doing this).
I worked through the trash again and got to the last boss (Keli’dan the breaker). He’s a caster boss, with a bunch of spell casters round him. You kill them first then he comes at you. He’s not difficult, apart from one point where he goes immune and does this blast wave that does significant damage.
I got my alt’s positioning slightly wrong, and two of my shaman died, but I still took him down. Blood furnace was complete and it wasa piece of cake.
I decided to start farming the instance, no longer doing full clears, but just running up to the first boss and running out to reset. I wanted the diamond core sledgemace for my shaman dps’ers .
I ran the boss a few times. Got one Sledgemace drop, and a libram of the saints departed for my pally. My pally dinged 63 in there and is now 63 and a half, and 3 of my shaman dinged 64. (my 71 shaman healer wasn’t getting any XP).
I’m thinking I’ll get them to 66 in instances then start Nagrand. Do all the nesingwary quest chains, ring of blood, and elite kills and perhaps instance a little to get to 68, then it’ll be Northrend for super quick levelling to 70 and fun in Northrend instances.
But I’m getting ahead of myself - first I’ll run Bloodfurnace to get that last mace, then do underbog and slave pens.
April 21st, 2009
I’ve heard a lot about the Heigan safety dance recently, but last night I got to experience it for the first time on my feral cat druid and I have to say it was great fun.
Only our main tank had any experience of this fight and that was as a dps on another character, so the majority were learning this together.
At first it seemed impossible. Wipe after wipe. We were trying to follow the tank as he moved, but if you are playing catchup you are dead. My first attempt I was dead within seconds, but each subsequent attempt I survived longer.
We got one of the engineers to make smoke flares, and prior to kicking off the fight we marked up the four positions to move to. Each Lava flare we moved on to the next smoke flare, back and forth across the room.
It was the final attempt of the night and we downed that boss. We ended up with the tank and about 3 dps on the boss and our two healers still alive. My son and I were two of the remaining dps and what a wonderful sense of achievement we both got out of downing this boss.
It’s funny - but I’m sure for future runs we will be able to one shot this boss.
I always thought I had two left feet, but it seems I can do the Heigan safety dance
April 20th, 2009
I am so glad i chose to ressurect my original multiboxing team.
I’d never done a full instance with them, I’d run them through the starting section of the ramparts beforeparking them prior to patch 2.3
So it was back to Hellfire ramparts for the team. The group composition is a 1 paladin prot tank, 3 elemental shaman and a resto shaman. For most outland instances it would be easily possible to run 4 elemental shaman and have them all heal when needed, but as one of my shaman was 71 I didn’t want him doing any dps. I wanted to try and get as authentic a run through as possible, without putting the instance in to easy mode. (my previous runs pre-parking had the then 70 shaman dpsing and it did make a difference).
I did a number of runs over the weekend, and had great success. It really allowed me to get a feel for multiboxing instances, learning my team, learning how much healing my paladin would require and tweaking my setup.
I decided to have my resto shaman just heal the tank and I would only use lesser healing wave - as I said earlier I wanted to limit the impact of having a 70 in there.
I tweaked the healing setup later by adding a macro to earth shield the tank.
At the start I was a bit panicky. I was non stop spamming healing on the tank, would sometimes forget to dps at the same time and struggled to reaquire aggro if the tank got knocked back.
After a few runs though I found I could get away with only putting a heal on the tank occassionaly during large trash pulls (although I had to heal harder through the rain of fire the casters in there do).
A few green upgrade items meant that one shaman that had some enhacnement gear in some slots got spell power and intellect items and was no longer needing to drink all the time.
On all runs I easily managed to one shot the first and second boss. However the third boss is a nightmare. It’s one of the harder bosses, and very hard for it’s level.
There is a “trick” multiboxers used to use that meant you could avoid fighting the rider and dps the dragon while it flew around but I wanted to do this fight as intended.
I had a decent number of wipes - a server shutdown didn’t help on one run.
However on my final run last night I successfully downed the boss. A great sense of achievement and I’ve learnt a lot. I guess it’s time to head on over to the Blood furnace.
April 20th, 2009
So, today is patch day in Europe and it appears that shaman (especially elemental shaman) have been given much love in this latest patch.
Earthbind now gives a decent crowd control element, and Stoneclaw has some form of shield. There is also instant cast lava burst, which will be insane.
My horde paladin and 4 shaman team has been languishing for months at 61. (I parked them prior to the patch that nerfed the XP requirement to 70).
I think that all the factors are coming together to make me want to play this horde team again. Full rested bonus. Extra abilities. Nerfed 60 - 70 Xp requirement. Northrend at 68.
April 15th, 2009
Finally, my poor little priest has hit 70, and I instantly respecced him to Holy so that my melee team has a dedicated healer.
So my team is now ready to set foot in Northrend instances, and the process of learning how to get them working together as one big unit will begin.
Will having 3 80’s in the group make it easy mode, or will my poor little priest be swamped trying to keep the tanks 30-35k health topped up. I don’t know but i’m looking forward to trying it out.
I’m just not sure when I’m going to get a chance to try it out though. My guild’s heroic and Naxx runs mean I have very little time to actually multibox now (and I wouldn’t have it anyother way).
April 14th, 2009
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