http://trinitycouncil.com/gallery/7

How...

The thing I love about this fight is when we get the pattern down, we're going to crush it.

Like K said, Festergut will target you for about a second before he starts puking, so as long as he's never facing you, you're good to go.  It's not necessarily a DPS race, so if you messed up a rotation to get out of the way, that's cool.

When you get the injection, your job becomes "slime drop off".

At the end of the day, it's back to situational awareness.  Maybe we got a little soft being out of Ulduar for a bit, and with a lot of the fights in ToC being less complex, we'll just have to get back on our A game for this one.

I'm looking forward to my next trip into ICC.  It's going to be fun.

New wing new trash.

Horrah!

Darkfallen Tactician:  Think rogue.  Has a nasty 10 second sap.  Dunno if PvP trinkets break it.  Also will shadow step.  Since we don't have Shackle or Repeantence, I'd suggest burning them down first.  If the tank got sapped, the other tank just taunted and stunned it.  Vice versa.

It can be stunned.  Rogue Kidney shots, hammers of Justice, ETC all worked.  Keep it stunned up and drop it.

Darkfallen Bloodknight.  Kinda boring.  But will put up a Blood Mirror on a target.  (tank?)  So it'll mirror the damage it takes back to it's mirrored source as Shadowdamage.   Heals it'self on attacks.

Darkfallen Commander.  AOE charge.

Darkfallen Lt.  NASTY bleed.  Nasty nasty nasty.  It stacks.  Also puts of a Vampiric Curse on it's target, causing heals to also deal Shadow damage.  Dispel ASAP.  That bleed is nasty though.

Darkfallen Archmage.  Boring, but can suck if you don't dispell the Amplify Magic debuff he puts on people.

Darkfallen Noble.  Shadowcaster.  Can banish supposedly but we never saw it.

Darkfallen Advisor.  Lich model.  Has the best ability in the entire game..... Lich Slap.  I kid you not.  Knock back, Shadow damage.  Also can put up a protective bubbles vs physical and spell damage.

All Undead. 

Given our lack of priests and rets, I think the Tactician and Lt. are the most dangerous atm.

I'm reflecting here.

We don't run content like most folks.  Even going back to the Koga/Irmie days of raid leading we've always used 2 healers for nearly every encounter.  It's something I've always agreed with and I still subscribe to that philosophy for the most part.

It allows us less room for error at times.  It also causes us to lean on our tanks and healers more.  It also allows us to pack an extra DPS in for specific duty and numbers.  It teaches us to work together, tightly and organized.

We have been extremely lucky with our healing team.  We abuse them.  100%.  But I know they can handle it.  Point blank...they are good. 

We take them for granted.  We count on them.  They keep us in the fight. 

***

Our DPS squad has evolved from Random Pew Pew #2 Spammer, to moving, thinking, and active players.  Out of game research, in game actions (people taking control during Festergut Spores), and in game contributions like pots, fish, scrolls are all things that you would have never seen 16 months ago.

We have players who have gone from not understanding basic game mechanics like hit or expertise to these same players often topping the DPS charts.  Players that who could barely play their own class can now jump on an alt or switch to an offspec to help us get around an encounter.

The individual DPS players each deserve the credit.  It's an area where we've improved the most over the last 10 months. 

***

Tanks get no praise from me.  I know they don't want it.  All the FOUR of them want are enemies in front of them and friends at their backs. 

I have the privilege of tanking alongside three other fantastic MAIN tanks.  What happens at Tank Club, stays at Tank Club.

***

We are not a raid guild. 

However we do raid.  We raid content at our pace, and we raid at a level which is fairly successful given our nature.

In fact it's been long believed that we shouldn't be as "good" as we are.  I disagree.  I always think that you should be proud of what you earn.  And I say earn, because nobody is entitled to anything.

In order to get what we have, we have had to maintain an edge.  Call it a sense of being the underdog or even plain old stubbornness.  We don't believe in wowwiki's assessments of the fights and that you need class XYZ to do an encounter.  Part of our edge has been that we all gave a damn about each other and didn't want to let each other down.  Part of it, is an inherient "plucky" attitude we all share.  We pay the price of downing bosses, in wipes, materials, and time. 

An edge is a very hard thing to keep.  Satisfaction and comforts sneek in.  We know we must apply X amount of Y in order to beat an encounter.  So we apply just enough.  We get distracted and start letting things hamper our playing.  Our edge gets soft. 

Our guild cannot fuction soft and down new content.  That is not how we raid. We cannot rest on rankings, gear scores, or what we've done in the past.  We have to earn what we want every single time.  We have to wipe the dirt off after we get our ass kicked and say, "Hey dickweed...were not done yet".

We need our edge back.

***

I absolutely love raiding with you folks.

Hey guys, just taking a break at work, watching the Rotface videos.

I really feel like tonight's the night...so I'm putting up some random things I noticed in the videos.  If it's stuff we already know, great. But if I don't take time to post something I have to go back to work.  So handle it.

Few things I noticed about the slime floods.

1) The containers animated for about 4 seconds or so before the flood, with the slime pouring out.  For those running around, this should be the queue to get the heck out of the area. 

2) Each quarter of the room is going to flood, before it gets slimed again.  So again, if you're standing near the slime, once a patch gets free, it'll be a bit before it gets slime again. 

3) The slime debufff area is small than the graphic.  It looks like you can still skirt the edges of the goo before you get the slow and damage debuff.  In other words, when working around the slime, you can cut it close to the edge.

Tank positioning.

In the videos I watched, they just keep him smack dab in the center.  I think this helps with two things.  One, the DPS just focus on strafing out of the slime spray and do their thing.  Two, the slimer kiter can always go around the edge of the slime when that quarter's flooded, and still be out of range of the main tank group.  Our hunters will have to be conscious of this, and maybe pay more attention to the slime flood pattern, so they can scoot around to a patch that's not in danger of getting flooded, to give our kiters plenty of room to get by them.

Slime kiting.

Is it possible to slow or stun the slime? Savi, have you tried hammering the big slime as you're kiting it? I know the stun doesn't last long, and has a long CD, but if we can get a couple pauses in the slime time, it could help.

I'm also wondering if dropping my Earthbind totem will help.  It has a 45 sec duration, but only a 30 second CD, so I could easily keep it up all fight, as well as move it around the area to be more effective.  Last week, K and I split up the healing, so he was taking care of the MT, and I was watching the OT and the slimers, so I'll be relatively close to the slime action.  Anyway, it would give a 10 yard radius slowing effect, which again, could help out with the slime madness.

Anyway, some random thoughts on the fight.

But like I said, tonight's the night!

Hey guys.  Looks like we're in for a fresh ICC on Tuesday.  I just wanted to take a bit to recap some of the "lessons learned" over the last couple months, so everyone can be sharp for the raid.  Hopefully, everyone who's coming or in the queue can take a few minutes to review.

1) Pull trash:  A lot of the trash packs have casters that tend to stick back, so Savi uses a lot of Line of Sight (LoS) pulls.  Please remember, when Savi says he's going to LoS pull, to get out of sight of all the mobs.  That means, behind the pillars, in the corner, or around the side wall.  Do not engage any of the mobs until Savi has pulled everything out of LoS of the caster, so they follow and pack up neatly with everyone else.  Please do not have any pets engage, as well. The biggest problem on LoS pulls is when someone engages early or does not get out of LoS for the pull, and we have mobs scattered all over the room.  This can lead to ineffiecient DPS, or worse case, something bumping another group and wiping us. 

2) Traps: We're still trying to pop the traps in a controlled way.  The big dudes have a saber lash that crushes the two nearest targets, so let the tanks get these guys undercontrol and facing away from the raid.  Don't cast when they're doing disrupting shout, or you'll be locked out.  Otherwise, they hit really hard, so be on top of the heals, and not underneath them.

3) Marrowgar.  He's no longer resetting threat after Bonestorm.  He finished Bonestorm and then sits for a couple seconds, so the tanks can get back in position.  Please do not be near Marrowgar when he stops Bonestorm, or you will catch a saber lash, and you will be one-shotted.  Also, during Bonestorm, DO NOT RUN TO THE SIDES.  Running to the sides is like running upstairs in a slasher film.  You will die.  Please, during Bonestorm, make every effort to run TO THE CENTER.  If we get too spread out, people are going to die.  Healers can't chase after you and cast heals, and we can't move out of range of the tanks, or they'll get chewed up when the Bonestorm stops.   Please, it is your resposibility during Bonestorm to stay in healer range.

Also, we need to be a little more crisp on the Bonespikes.  We're still letting people take the full 10 seconds, which puts a lot of extra stress on the healers.  Maybe we need everyone to make a "/target Bonespike" macro to help out in phase 1. 

Last point.  We're always well ahead of the enrage timer, so don't be afraid to slow down on the DPS to be more situationally aware.  Avoid the Blue Flames, focus on the Bonespikes, be heads up about your position during Bonestorm.  What kills us on this fight is when we lose our focus and start running around like headless chickens.  We're good on the Deeps.  Bad on the raid awareness.

Recap on Lady D.

Phase one, we need to burn her mana shield.  Generally, Savi will have a DPS focus exclusively on her during phase one to get the shield down.  Sometimes not, depends on the raid composition.

1) Spawns.  Ten seconds in and every 60 seconds, she'll call out three adds.  They are fanatics and adherents.  Adherents are generally anti-magic, so the melee need to focus fire these guys.  The fanatics are generally anti-physical, so the casters need to focus fire these guys.  Sometimes the fanatic will get ressurrected into a giant mutant hulk.  He moves at 50% speed, but will one shot anyone he touchs, even a tank.  These are kited, not tanked and need to be focus fired by everyone as quickly as possible.

2) Death and Decay.  Big green rune.  Appears underneath you.  It can happen anywhere, even right under Lady D.  It does a shit load of damage, so run away ASAP.  If you get caught in the middle, and take a couple ticks of damage, you will not have enough life to run out of the entire rune.  These things should be avoided, and put a lot of unnecessary stress on the healers.  They continue in PHASE 2.  You still need to watch out for Death and Decay.  I see a lot of people standing in D&D in phase 2.  Let's not.

3) Ghosts. Ghosts. Ghosts.  In phase two, every few seconds, Lady D will stream out a purple beam, that arcs and lands somewhere near a raid member.  This is your queue that a ghost is about to form next to you.  They move slow, and disappear after a few seconds. STOP DPS. RUN.  Do not let one blow up next to you.  They do AOE damage, and will take about 90% of your life.  And the life of those next to you.  For all intensive purposes, this is a one-shot kill.  For you, and your buddy.  And his buddy.  And we wipe.  Please, pay attention to the ghosts.  Do not let them blow you up.

4) Frostbolt.  Can be interrupted on phase 2.  Please, please, please take a second out of Deeps to try and interrupt.  They cause massive tank damage, and can help wipe the raid.

5) Frostbolt Volley: It's going to hit everyone.  Not bad to heal through if you're paying attention to 2,3 and 4. But if you're standing in D&D,or you just ate a ghost, or the tank just ate a big frostbolt, and then she Frostbolt Volley"s? People are gonna die.

The biggest problem with Lady D is losing control of the adds in phase one, and losing a DPS or two on phase 2.  If you just stay alive and do whatever else you can to DPS during phase 2, we'll beat her enrage timer.  But if we lose a DPS on phase 2, that's 15-25% of our deeps dead, depending on the person.  So please, don't die on phase 2.  Better to stop for a couple seconds to run from the ghost or get out of D&D then die.

This one is honestly, pretty easy.  But we do make mistakes.

1) Away team.  Do not jump until the tank (Usually Savi) has agro.  Savi's in charge of the away team. If you're not Savi, don't call out something like, "Mage is up" because that sometimes causes a reflexive action for people to jump.  Savi will call jump.  Everyone else just hang out.

2) Away team: DO call when the mage is dead.  Jump back asap.  Opposite of the first jump, Savi is the LAST one back.

3) Big red runes.  Stay out of them.  It's a rocket. It explodes.  So will you.

4) Gunners.  If you're a gunner, please remember to get in your gun as soon as the away team kills the mage.  Don't get too distracted with the adds that we lose gun time.  Also, 1-1-1-1-1 until you're at 90% heat, then 2.  One builds up the heat, two releases it based on how much heat is in the gun.  More heat = more damage = faster kill.  Do not get to 100% or the gun will lock.  Don't think we've ever had this problem, but just wanted to mention it.

5) Gunners, Part Two:  Should be first, but whatever.  As soon as the encounter starts, start shooting to build heat.  When you see your shots starting to damage the ship, go all out.  You can give a few % damage in before the dialog begins, so don't feel like you have to wait for Muradin to start blabbing before you blow his POS bird out of the air.

Again, we've been sloppy at worse on the Gunship, but it's easy mode compared to eveything else.

Ok boys and girls.  This one is hard.  It's always been hard, and it stays hard.

1) Rune of Blood.  Cast regularly on a tank.  Leaches heath from the target every time he hits, healing Saurfang for 50-60k.  That's a fuck load of healing.  Generally, we're ok, but the tanks need to be really crisp on the handoff.  Last time we killed Jr., we were 5 seconds away from a wipe.  A couple hits of this could be that difference.

2) Tank switch. During the first couple tank switches, please watch your agro.  Last time, we had  some melee dps catch agro during the first swap.  Please, please watch your threat for the first couple swaps.  If we lose a dps to start, we can't win this one.

3) Bloodbeasts. Focus fire by the range, kill them before the hit anyone.  If you're not in melee range, you need to avoid getting whacked by the beasts.  We'll do our best to slow these guys, but any time they're taking a chunk out of you, Saurfang is getting more blood power, which is very bad.  Please, if you see a Blood Beast coming towards you, run away.  The rest of the team has to do their best to slow or stop these things, but if you can't do anything, don't just take hits.  That's bad!

4) Bloodbeasts in melee:  During this fight, do everything you can to avoid a lot of AOE around Saurfang.  If we get Bloodbeasts stuck in our melee pile, not only do they do a lot of damage, but that gives Saurfang a lot of blood power.  Which, again, is bad.  If you need to adapt your rotation to compensate, start reading about how to do it tonight.  Don't wait until 10 pm tomorrow to try and figure it out.  Figure it out now.

5) Mark of the Fallen Champion.  We just have to heal through it.  Saurfang will gain blood power faster for every mark, and at three marks, we're going ot start wiping.  Ideally, we need to have Saurfang close to 40% before the first mark.  In the 30's is ideal.  If he's above 50%, then it's basically a wipe. 

6) Bloodnova.  Hits you and everyone within 12 yards for a lot of physical damage.  Again, also gives more Blood Power to Jr.  Do not stack up on top of each other.  Please, watch your movement.  If you have to get close to someone, do your thing, then move back.  If we have too many people getting hit by Blood Novas, that's a lot of extra blood power to Jr.  See point 5...too much BP too fast, and we wipe.

Overall, our execution has to be very tight on Saurfang.  There's not a lot of room for error.  Last thing to note, is everything here is physical damage.  If you have armor, a spell or something that reduces your physical damage, that'd be a huge help here.

Nice recaps Dhozer.

Re: Gunship:
As a primary gunner, locking up your gun once will mean one more cycle of ice blocks.  Twice will mean two more cycles.  At three, the enemies have been alive long enough we start having deaths from throwing axe and such.  The Gunship battle's 'enrage' timer is that the mobs escalate in difficulty and strength the longer they live.

If you are feeling froggy as a gunner, you can target the mobs on the other ship.  You will do the same damage to them as you do to the ship.  I always try to lob a heat shot at the mage as he's about to take position.  An extra 18k damage at the start of the mage becoming active can't hurt.

Re: Trash:
I'm a warlock.  I can AOE with more tools than almost anyone.  Please believe me when I say that AOE is nearly useless on the trash pulls.  Unless your AOE does more single target damage than anything else you do (mindsear? death and decay/spreading diseases, fan of knives posion?) then you should be single targeting.  Yes your damage overall numbers will go down and your dps won't get the epeening of AOE, but the mobs will die faster meaning everyone takes less damage.  And Savi will be in a better mood because the raid will feel more controlled   The reason for this is simply because every single trash mob in ICC has as much health as a normal dungeon boss, in some cases as much as a heroic dungeon boss.  At 25k mana, I don't have enough mana, without a lot of life tapping, to make AOE effective on those pulls.

Re: Deathwhisper:
As caster DPS, if things start to go south due to a shortage of physical dps (it happened once, really it did) you can do AOE spells and affect the Adherents.  I suspect Fan of Knives and Volley(?) would work on the Fanatics also.  Area of Effect damage seems to bypass a lot of normal resistances.  Usually this isn't an effective way to get much done, but in a clutch situation, it does help out.

Re: Marrowgar:
I'm putting a line into my shadow bolt macro (/tar bonespike) so the spell I cast most often will automatically target any available bonespike.  I may put a @lasttarget in at the end so it goes back to Marrowgar at the end, to prevent downtime, but we'll see how that goes.  For the non-macro illuminati, what this would do is check to see if there is a bonespike, if yes target it, if no leave the current target active and cast shadow bolt.  The @lasttarget would switch back to the previous target (the question on the last part is whether it would shift off Marrowgar to my soulstone target if there wasn't a bonespike.  I'll probably not risk that and leave it off).

Re: Deathbringer (St. Saurfang the Younger in my DnD game)
On the blood beasts, speed killing is very important.  As affliction, I can kill a slowed blood beast without an issue and do a lot of self healing, but it will probably get a hit or two in on me or my partner.  As Demonology, I can have my fel guard intercept, causing the blood beast to be stunned for a few seconds and kill it before it gets to me 80+% of the time and help on the other one if needed, or if not needed get 3 or 4 free Soul Fires on Deathbringer, which hit for shadow bolt crit damage at normal and can crit into the 24k range with luck and procs.  As Demonology I have to have faith in the healers (generally easy to do around here) so Demonology is the best spec for me here.
Demonology has the additional affect of providing as much as 400 (300 is typical) additional spellpower to the other casters in the raid.

{Edit}
Question, do you think the 1500'ish armor and +26% healing from Demon Armor would be more important than the +300 or more spellpower provided by Fel Armor?

Great stuff Dhozer.

On Marrowgar, yeah we get everyone running nine different directions.  We should be focusing on what we can do to reduce damage during his bone storm too.  Deterrence, Feint, Ice Block, Bubbles, Anything.

Tanks should keep an eye out for healer's being spiked and pop a CD to mitigate some of the incoming damage, since the other healer has to cover the tanks, raid, and spiked healer.

Marrowgar is a fight that people seem to run around like chickens with their heads cut off.  Dunno why.  It's laggy as hell in there, I feel it too.  Like running in slo-mo sometimes.

***

Overall.  It's time to get back to basics and get stuff streamlined.  I hate ToC10 with a passion.  It's total face roll bullshit.  Going from Ulduar to it was very disappointing to me.  I liked the design of many of the Ulduar encounters, with each role and player having a specific part to play.

I think ToC is a lot of standing still and DPSing and at best maybe some moving and DPSing.  I think the Faction Champions is the only encounter that stands out to me in terms of group effort.

I think we have three modes of play.

1.  On edge but determined.  Remember that first night in ICC?  We try an encounter.  Wipe.  Then come back and kill it.  We approach stuff with an edge and a bit of a chip on our shoulder.  We "pitbull" it.  If it takes three wipes it takes three wipes, but we get back in there and get it done.  Effort, effort, effort.  You make the shit happen even if it "isn't supposed to".

2.  Relaxed but efficient.  These are the nights where we get in, move quick, joke a bit, but handle content super smooth.  Everyone knows what they are supposed to do and they do it.

3.  Fun but halfass.  Mistakes compound on top of each other.  People talk in guild chat during pulls.  People go AFK in the middle of a run and aren't focused on the task at hand.  (I'm not talking about real life here).  Focusing on rankings and numbers yet taking steps backwards in playing ability.

I try and keep us at #2 and kick us into #1 when we need to pick it up. 

I never chew anyone out, I admit when I screw up, when I ask people what happened, it's not because I'm trying to blame anyone, I'm trying to fix it.  I take us wiping or taking a step backward 10X harder then anyone else.  I feel personally responsible for my guildies and what we get done.  It's not an Emo thing, it's about getting your "team" to play the best you know they can.

We won't be hardcore about stuff.  Nobody gets sat because they have 100 less DPS then the person in front of them on the meters.  We don't HAVE to progress at a certain pace.

But one thing WE can't afford to do is #3.  We can't afford to expect stuff to fall into place and to take steps backwards.  That isn't us.  That isn't our style.  We take what we want.  We work hard for our kills, even if it means getting stuck on a boss for weeks.  We may not move forward but we sure as HELL don't move backwards.

I love being in a guild where I can look at my guild mate, know them personally and enjoy them as people, and be proud of the stuff we accomplish together.

Back to basics.  We go in.  We have fun.  We get our loot.

E posted, before me.  Good stuff E.

***

Side note about the melee pulling aggro during the tank hand offs.

That's the tanks' (read both of them) fault.  I realize we are running a lighter rotation and not using lots of AOE.

Still at that point we should have a hefty threat lead.  No excuses. 

If it would have been a situation where we just started the pull, I'd blame the DPS for not waiting a split second but it wasn't.

We may not want to start out with the rogues Tricksing each other at the start or Chemok putting Vig (reduces threat but decreases damage taken) on me anymore though.

 Surpirsingly enough, this is the fight we have the least trouble on.  Or maybe not.  It's a DPS race tank and spank with a little spice.

The rooms starts with a bunch of gas, and the raid is taking a lot of damage.  Festergut will inhale the gas, reducing the raid damage but increasing the tank damage.

Our current strategy is working great.  But I want to suggest two things.

1) Innoculations.  I want one of the outlying range folks to call out innoculations.  Sometimes, we have one in melee, and one at range.  Those are easy.  But if we get two in melee, and one has to run to the range, I want the ranged leader to call out who, so we don't double up somewhere.  Should be pretty easy.  I think the call out should go ranged DPS->Melee DPS-> Healer.  Meaning, if we have a "ranged" DPS in "melee", then he goes first, so hopefully he can continue to pewpew while waiting for the spore to explode.  Next would be a melee person, so our healers can stay focused on keeping people alive.  Last would be healers.

2) Cookie Time! After his third inhale, he'll exhale.  Even if everyone is innoculated at 90%, we're all going to take a ton of damage.  Compound this with the fact that we've just moved back into the heavy raid damage phase.  After the exhale, I think we should have group cookie time. Everyone. EVERYONE eats their cookie.  We should only have to do this once, and I think the 5k+ extra healing will help everyone live.  Basically, if everyone survives the exhale, the fight is easy mode.

That's it on Festergut.  He's a chump if we do it right.

A few comments.

About Saurfang Jr, yes he can still be a pain and still need us to not make mistakes. But he isnt the same prick he used to be. I've been in a 10 man group of ppl in similar lvl of gear/skills as we are who simply had the current OT grab the beasts and everyone zerged them down. And that didn't generate so much blood power. On 25 man, keeping marked ppl alive was unthinkable. In a Sunday group we didn't let anyone die. And still got the achiev for having few marks.

I like doing the fights taking them seriously, respecting the mechanics. But we aren't too far away from the "just tank Iggy's adds" point. If we want to.

Festergut can still slow us down. We should only see one gas explosion, so save surviving CDs for that. Druids can use barkskin. Enhance shammys have their enrage. Other classes must have something as well. I remember on our last attempt Ess was dying to that everytime. Then he simply saved an enrage for it and was far from being in dunger.

Also, I don't know how long aura mastery lasts, but we shouldn't need to use it right when he is casting it, we can use a few seconds early to make sure it doesn't come late. Lastly, if one day we would want to try the achiev, I was thinking that the paladin bubble/absorb raid damage strat we had on Hodir would do great.

Marrowgar jsut wanted to say that my barkskin is up everysingle time he does his bladestorm. If you are a druid or have a similar 1 minute CD, use it.

That's it.