Posts with tag heroic

Every week, Raid Rx will help you quarterback your healers to victory! Your host is Matt Low, the grand poobah of World of Matticus and a founder of No Stock UI, a WoW blog for all things UI-, macro- and addon-related.

Next big test on the raid list after taking down heroic Halfus is the heroic multi-face boss (commonly referred to as Chimaeron) in Blackwing Descent.

No, Chimaeron isn't the dragons that are pictured above (although they're all in the same place). I haven't been able to get him down yet, since he is one tough dude. The reason why I've found Chimaeron more challenging than Halfus is because the Halfus encounter is over in a minute, if your raid can survive the initial rush. In Chimaeron, the healers are working overtime. We've been able to consistently get him down to the final phase. I imagine we're not the only ones who are still struggling with him (or it).

This Breakfast Topic has been brought to you by Seed, the AOL guest writer program that brings your words to WoW Insider's pages.

Since every instance in Cataclysm has its own load screen, players know where they are going before they ever set foot in the instance. Some instances are harder than others. Some have awful trash. Some have boss fights that require lots of moving, and some have tons of ambient group damage. Depending on your role, which instance you want to see come up as your random probably changes. Some have that one piece of gear you need or that achievement you really would love to get; others make you feel disheartened as soon as the loading screen pops up.

I currently have two 85s; my main is a tank, and my alt is a hunter. While tanking anything but Stonecore, I am fairly happy. I hate the initial few pulls in Stonecore with Milhouse Manastorm and those damn guys that turn into rock elementals and have that disgusting AoE so much, and the trash pulls with the sentries later on also suck. My tank just runs the one heroic a day for the points so I can get my last piece of tier for feral and start picking up some of the moonkin off-spec pieces, so if I get Vortex Pinnacle every day and just blow through it, all the better.

On the other hand, with my hunter, every time I see The Deadmines I am actually happy. I still need the axe and bracers. Also, my hunter hasn't been 85 very long, so justice points are still useful to me.

What heroics do you hate to see pop up? What makes you hate this particular instance? Which are you actually happy to see?

---

The era of the daily heroic is over! After much speculation that the one run per day random dungeon valor point rewards would turn into seven runs per week randoms instead, it turns out we are all getting exactly what we hoped for.

Blizzard has finally commented on (and explained) the incoming valor point change, which will hopefully make gearing up and gaining valor points easier for players who don't have the time or want to play each and every night to run a random for their points. Lylirra explains:

A bit of new code recently added to the PTR that's been uncovered by MMO-Champion might hint at an awesome new change to the way valor points will be earned from the random dungeon finder. Of particular note is this string:

LFD_RANDOM_REWARD_EXPLANATION1 = "The first seven random dungeons of this tier that you complete each week will earn you:";

What this seems to suggest is that instead of doing one random heroic dungeon per day to gain valor points, the system will be changed so that the first 7 random heroics you do, no matter which days, will grant valor points. This is an awesome change for those of us who do not play every day and instead like to stockpile our heroic dungeoneering on the weekend.

Many of us weekend warriors have been asking for this very specific change to the random dungeon "highest tier" badges/points reward system since the beginning of the random heroic system. Hopefully this wonderful change makes it to live.

---

World of Warcraft: Cataclysm has destroyed Azeroth as we know it; nothing is the same! In WoW Insider's Guide to Cataclysm, you can find out everything you need to know about WoW's third expansion, from leveling up a new goblin or worgen to breaking news and strategies on endgame play.

---

This Breakfast Topic has been brought to you by Seed, the Aol guest writer program that brings your words to WoW Insider's pages.

My grinding had finally paid off: i329, and I was ready. With a trembling hand, I moused over "Random Cataclysm Heroic." I clicked. I had heard the rumors and the tales of woe. Guildies had warned us all of the terrors that lie in the heroic PUG.

I gulped and settled in for my long DPS queue. In the middle of killing some Cultists in Twilight Highlands, the dungeon popped. My heart rate doubled. I zoned in to Blackrock Caverns. I knew right away that we were in trouble. The DPS consisted of two mages and a hunter. We wiped on the first pull. Slowly, we made it to Rom'ogg. We cleared the first part of the room, and the tank pulled Rom'ogg. And the healer pulled the rest of the trash. We wiped. We came back to try it again ... and the other mage's Mirror Image pulled the rest of the trash. The tank dropped group. The next tank joined us, announced, "I hate coming in on a wipe," and then called me a Very, Very Bad Name (not to be confused with your Average Garden Variety Bad Name). I determined that I paid my $15 a month to have fun -- and split.

What was your first Cataclysm heroic experience? Was it a complete disaster, or did you miraculously pull an awesome group?

---

<Paragon> was the first guild to successfully defeat Sinestra, the heroic-only boss of Bastion of Twilight. After what amounted to a difficult and sometimes buggy encounter, <Paragon> was victorious against Deathwing's consort. Be warned: There are spoilers for the encounter in the video.

The encounter itself looks hectic and challenging, with constant streams of adds and a pretty epic confrontation between Sinestra and an interesting lore figure from Twilight Highlands. <Method>, the second guild to down Sinestra, has also released their video, which can be seen here.

---

World of Warcraft: Cataclysm has destroyed Azeroth as we know it; nothing is the same! In WoW Insider's Guide to Cataclysm, you can find out everything you need to know about WoW's third expansion, from leveling up a new goblin or worgen to breaking news and strategies on endgame play.

---

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Arcane Brilliance for arcane, fire and frost mages. This week, a public service announcement:

An open letter to the guy who keeps breaking my sheep:

Please stop.

Sincerely,

Christian

P.S. -- Listen. I know it's Christmas and I should probably be doing a puff piece on things I want for my mage for Christmas or something like that. But I Simply can't stay quiet. We wiped 20 times in that heroic Grim Batol run last night, and though I know not everybody who plays this game reads this column, I have to do what I can. Evil triumphs when good men do nothing, or something like that.

I know The Burning Crusade happened like two years ago. I'm well aware that there's a distinct possibility you started playing the game during Wrath. Perhaps you either don't remember or don't have any idea what a "Polymorph" is or why it's not in your best interests to immediately begin whacking whatever I just cast it on as hard as you possibly can. I'm willing to allow for ignorance.

Mages, I can even understand it when you don't sheep things. Polymorph doesn't do any damage; in fact it heals its target! Why would you want to use a spell that doesn't blow things up when there are so many other delightful spells in your spellbook that do? It seems counter to everything we got into magecraft for.

Wrath was a long expansion. For the better part of two years, we spent the majority of our time chain pulling and AoE-farming our way through every instance in sight, concentrating on one thing and one thing only: DPS. Recount gave us a number at the end of every boss fight, and if that number was higher than the warlock's number, we had done a good job. Sure, the fights sometimes had mechanics we needed to pay attention to, but they mostly involved moving from one place to stand and shoot to another place to stand and shoot. We forgot a very important part of our jobs as mages.

We forgot how to sheep.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. Bear is for tank! Spriest is for fite!

It's time for a heartfelt confession. I think I'm done with Cataclysm heroics for a while. Don't get me wrong, they can be fun, but as of late, they've become miserable endeavors.

If you're not running heroics yet, you may not know what I'm talking about. If you are running heroics (through PUGs), you know exactly what I'm talking about. An awful lot of tanks, healers, and DPSers think Cataclysm heroics are the same kind of faceroll instances that Wrath heroics were. Nothing could be further from the case. And as more and more "casual" players reach level 85, a greater percentage of players are just so terribly lost that they don't know what to do.

Wipes on the first pull. Frustrating attempts on bosses with "teammates" who just don't listen. People who AoE when they should nuke. People who use AoE and ... no, no, wait! Don't attack that, it's CCed, and ... well, crud. Now we've got merchants throwing fruit at us now, don't we? Simply put, most people are just not prepared.

It's forgivable, of course -- new, more difficult instances mean a new, gigantic learning curve. Even the best Wrath shadow priest can muck things up in a Cataclysm heroic. But that doesn't need to be the case! The shadow priest spec is an incredibly powerful one. Not only do we do get to churn out the DPS, but we have an incredible number of tools at our disposal to make up for the problems that PUG groups routinely face. From crowd control (yes, tanks, we can CC) to mana regen, there's an awful lot we can do to make heroics run smoother. Even if you're saddled with a group of four 12-year-olds from <Mommy's Little Accidents> trying to make the run as difficult as possible.

• three boss encounters
• levels 82-84
• average item level 272 recommended (according to dungeon finder)

This article is part of our Countdown to Cataclysm series, preparing you for Cataclysm launch one day at a time.

The Deadmines has been a classic staple dungeon for any leveling player. In patch 4.0.3, the instance received a complete facelift. Players will no longer be taking down Edwin VanCleef, as the game has progressed forward in time and has been updated to reflect the events that have occurred in the game. The Defias stronghold appears to be housing the next generation of Defias forces. They're being led by Vanessa Vancleef, Edwin's daughter.

At a glance:

• five boss encounters
• level 15 - 21
• Alliance and Horde players both have access to this dungeon via dungeon finder

Last week, we talked about what to expect in the upcoming patch 4.0.1 and how healing felt in the new pre-Cataclysm patch. After that, we also got news of a very important update for us in the latest PTR build, patch 13033, with Mana Tide Totem's recent change to increase our spirit by 200 percent rather than just give a flat percentage of mana back when used. The cooldown of the ability was reduced to 3 minutes, down from 5 minutes. Last week, heroic dungeons were also made available in the Cataclysm beta for us to test out, including heroic Shadowfang Keep and heroic Deadmines.

This week, I would like to talk a little bit more about the changes to Mana Tide Totem and what to expect using it in the next expansion. I would also like to share with you my experiences healing through the new heroic dungeons as a restoration shaman in a new set of blue ilvl 333 gear.

It's time again for Arcane Brilliance, weekly mage column of choice for dress-wearing, warlock-hating Frostbolt slingers the world over. Also, fans of the short musical films of Journey, Short Imagined Monologues, and the sublime, video game-based synth and fretwork amalgams of Sixto Sounds. Seriously, listen to this one. Holy crap.

So over the past few days, I've found myself a broken corpse lying in a spreading puddle of my own bodily fluids a bit more frequently than I'm used to. The reason for this is simple: heroics. No, not the ones on the live servers -- where you can throw together a random group consisting of a ret pally tank, a six-year-old playing a hunter his mom bought him on eBay the day before, a feral druid healer who for some reason came into the instance suffering from nine more minutes of resurrection sickness, a mouth-breathing rogue who may or may not be a serial killer, and an AFK shaman farming badges while auto-following the healer -- and still blast through the place. I'm talking about heroics in the Cataclysm beta.

They're absolutely brutal, guys. Now, granted -- it's still early. The testing process for these beauties is still in its infancy. We're tackling them using premade characters with talent builds we threw together by looking at the talents and thinking, "This looks nice." We're wearing gear that's barely entry-level for heroics (if we're lucky) and using spell rotations that we're basically making up on the fly. We're going into instances we've never seen before, doing boss fights nobody knows the mechanics for, and dealing with crippling, often game-breaking bugs. These places simply aren't finished, not by a long shot.

But then again, that's why we have a beta. We go in, throw our soft, cloth-clad bodies against the long claws of some horrifying beast or another, use the final droplets of our blood to scrawl feedback for the developers ("Landmines ... everywhere ... can't feel ... legs ... fading to black ... tell warlocks ... hate them ... so ... much ... "), and then come back for another round. Blizzard takes the data it gathers from our gruesome deaths and uses it to construct a better game.

Still, there is much we can learn -- even in this unfinished state -- from the first incarnations of these heroics. Join me after the jump, won't you?

Every Friday, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting balance druids and those who group with them. This week, we are exploring two of the four wings in Heroic ICC. Be prepared to face some of the most challenging content the game has to offer, folks -- it only gets real from here on out.

Here we are -- it's another week and another great time at the office. Well, the office is merely an internet myth, but my room is comfortable enough as is; it even has a sweet "Life's a Beach" coffee mug and everything. Last week, we talked about the first two wings of heroic ICC, the Lower Spire and the Crimson Hall; this week, we'll continue with the next two wings. Unfortunately, I won't be able to cover heroic Lich King since, well, I haven't yet been able to complete the encounter, and I think it would be remiss of me to try and give out information on an encounter that I'm still working on. If you have any questions on the Lich King encounter, I'd be more than happy to talk shop about it, so just send an email or leave a comment and we can get to it; otherwise, it won't be something that's likely to appear in this article.

Last week, I forgot to issue a fair warning, and for that I do apologize. Everything that I discuss here is my opinion based upon how my guild has completed these encounters and the things that I have experienced while doing them. There are multiple ways to complete every encounter, and your guild may have a completely different strategy depending on group composition that works for you. This doesn't make either you or me any less wrong, just different. That's the beautiful thing about WoW; even in the rigid isolation of PvE encounters, there are always multiple methods to deal with every encounter or boss ability depending on the resources that a guild has available to them. I cannot promise that the methods I describe will work for your guild, but I will try and offer as many different options as I possible can and allow you to make the best choice for yourself.

Every Friday, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting balance druids and those who group with them. This week, we are exploring two of the four wings in Heroic ICC. Be prepared to face some of the most challenging content the game has to offer, folks -- it only gets real from here on out.

I know, I know: No one cares about ICC any more ... Everything is all about Cataclysm ... So why bother talking about it? That's far from the truth, though. ICC still matters to many people. However, if you happen to be of the more pragmatic sort, then hear me out for a little bit. Most of the server-first and world-first kills may have already been claimed, but there is always loot to be had, gear that can be helpful for either soloing things now or leveling in the expansion. Beyond simple gear, heroic ICC is simply fun. People have argued that hard modes aren't quite the same as a truly difficult raid encounter because they are the same as the standard encounters -- perhaps true to a point, but heroic modes are really fun when they are done correctly. Heroic Putricide feels like a completely different encounter when done on heroic mode and is extremely fun.

Perhaps this issue is a little bit late in coming, and for that I apologize -- but it's better late than never, aye? To start with, the first order of business is to ensure that your guild is prepared to go against heroic encounters. The ICC buff can be very intoxicating to some players, and it may make you feel more prepared than you really are for these encounters. Perhaps, in some cases, you are, and perhaps in others, you are not. Not all heroic encounters are created equal; some are far more difficult than others. Since this issue will deal with the opening Lower Spire and the Blood wing, the three encounters you'd want to start with would be Marrowgar, Gunship and Blood Princes; Deathwhisper, Saurfang and Blood Queen Lana'thel would be the three more difficult encounters in these two sectors.

I love the picture of Velen shown above for a couple of different reasons. It's a gorgeous piece of artwork, but the bigger reason is the expression on Velen's face -- he looks mildly baffled, like he's shrugging his shoulders and saying "Uhhhh, I don't know!" To me, the thought of an alien over 10,000 years making that noncommittal grunt of vague confusion is just endlessly entertaining. It's OK, Velen. Today we've got a few how-to posts from around the blogosphere. Maybe these will clear up a few things:

• Falling Leaves and Wings fills us in on how to grind Timbermaw reputation.
• Revelart's Druid Reliquary talks about how to design a heroic encounter.
• The Healz Squad has a guide on how to stream music through Ventrilo.
• I Sheep Things discusses how to keep your sanity.