Posts with tag omnotron-defense-system

The Warcraft Hunters Union raid team has downed Omnotron, the first Cataclysm boss kill by a 25-man team made up of only hunters. The WHU team, which includes cross-realm players, made several attempts, wiping many times, but was able to defeat the Omnotron Defense System without healers or traditional tanks.

Their strategy involved using BM hunters with turtles for tanks and required all of the raiders to have the Spirit Bond talent for at least some self-healing. A very detailed and informative breakdown is at the Warcraft Hunter's Union website.

The hunter raid team is a product of the Warcraft Hunter's Union blog, owned and written by WoW Insider's own Brian Wood, aka Frostheim. WHU plans to progress and will be raiding again this month.

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Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. Dawn Moore covers healing for discipline and holy priests, while her archenemy Fox Van Allen is busy looking in the mirror instead of playing a proper spec. Dawn also writes for LearnToRaid.com, produces the Circle of Healing Podcast.

In previous weeks, Spiritual Guidance has tackled how to heal the various raid encounters in tier 11. This week, we're going to revisit each boss on heroic difficulty. Once more, I'll be examining which spec is better equipped to handle the fight while also examining the differences in the new encounter and how to deal with them. We have a lot to talk about, so let's get started.

First, I want to point out that a major difference between any heroic and normal mode encounter is that abilities in heroic do an increased amount of damage. In order to avoid being redundant, please keep in mind that when I point out the differences between modes that the need for more healing will be assumed. If the increased damage significantly impacts the strategy of the fight, however, I will explain how.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. On Wednesdays, the shadowier-than-thou Fox Van Allen takes over, trying to undo the damage caused by Dawn Moore's healing-oriented Monday edition.

I've been pleasantly surprised with raiding in Cataclysm. It's pretty well-balanced -- raids like Blackwing Descent have a good mix of bosses with varying levels of difficulty. The statistics speak for themselves: While about 94% of raiding guilds have downed Magmaw (or so says WoW Progress), only 20% have made it to and beat Nefarion. That's a pretty wide gap.

My discipline-oriented nemesis Dawn Moore has been spending her last few columns covering Blackwing Descent raiding strategies for Maloriak and Nefarion and for Chimaeron and Atramedes. All the while, you poor raiding shadow priests have been on your own while I laid out the law in Shadow 101. Well, no more -- it's time to talk raiding.

We have to start at the beginning, though -- and that means taking on Magmaw and Omnotron Defense System. (Hey, everyone needs a couple of easy wins now and then to build confidence, right?) They're pretty easy for experienced raiders, but for those just cutting their teeth on Cataclysm raiding, they can still pose a real challenge.

Over the next few weeks, we'll build our way up to the exceptionally challenging Nefarion and even dabble in some serious heroic mode strategies. For now, though it's time to smash some loot piñatas right in their ugly little (Mag)maws.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Shifting Perspectives for cat , bear , restoration and balance druids. Welcome to our weekly feral cat edition, brought to you by Chase Hasbrouck, aka Alaron of The Fluid Druid blog. Let the face clawing begin!

So, you've done all the prep work, and you think you're ready to raid. You've geared yourself appropriately; you have the right enchants, potions, and consumables; and you've set up your awesome UI. Well, congratulations, you did your homework. Now comes the test. Think of everything you've done to this point as building your potential; now comes the time to activate that potential.

I'll go over each encounter in the current raiding tier and give you what you need to know to maximize your contribution to your raid. (Hint: That doesn't always mean maximizing your personal DPS.) I'll only briefly cover fight elements that are not feral-specific; for more detail, I highly recommend reading through Tyler's posts on raiding as a balance druid. I'll tackle the fights roughly in order by difficulty (easiest to hardest), as most guilds generally follow that path for progression.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Totem Talk for elemental, enhancement, and restoration shaman. On Saturdays, Josh Myers (now returned from last week's emergency vacation to Narnia) tackles the hard questions about enhancement. Can we tank? Can we DPS with a two-hander? How does one shoot web? The answer to the first two is "no," and I have no idea about the third.

As I've mentioned before, I'm a Burning Crusade baby. This means I missed out on a lot of things: two-handed enhancement, FROST SHAWK, and both Onyxia and Nefarian as challenging raid bosses. While 40 people were beginning to come together and work out raid strategies like "Many Whelps -- handle it!," my young mind was congratulating myself on being awesome enough to beat the main storyline of Morrowind.

Cataclysm can't do anything for the first two points, which I don't mind in the least. However, Cataclysm does bring us back Nefarian and Onyxia as challenging raid content. Even better, they're together in the same fight as the climactic ending to Blackwing Descent, one of the three raid instances in tier 11 content. This week, I'll be focusing on looking at the first three bosses of Blackwing Descent from an enhancement perspective.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. Dawn Moore covers healing for discipline and holy priests, while her archenemy Fox Van Allen dabbles in shadow and shovels his way out of a snow storm that Dawn has absolutely nothing to do with (the cookies are in the mail, Christian.) Dawn also writes for LearnToRaid.com and produces the Circle of Healing Podcast.

So at this point, you've probably restored the world pillar, been solely entrusted to protecting Hyjal by a demi-goddess, and made off with several dozen pigs (or pumpkins) from the poor farmers of your faction's capital city. You've probably also ventured into countless enemy strongholds and slain everything from wind dragons to rock monsters -- or at least had a panic attack trying to heal the guys doing the slaying. You sure are amazing, and everyone knows it (except the Guardians of Hyjal reputation vendor), so it's not surprising that about now you've been called upon by other heroes to delve deep into the deepest, darkest lairs of Azeroth so you can fulfill your destiny of spamming Prayer of Healing on groups 1 and 2. Sound good? Excellent.

If you haven't guessed already, during the next few weeks, the healing side of Spiritual Guidance will be taking a tour of tier 11 raid content and discussing how to best approach it as a holy or discipline priest. If you're ready, let's get started.