Better late than never

Last week our little hard mode team (put together for Ulduar 10 hard modes) threw themselves at the Vezax hard mode for a couple of hours. We learned a lot but were unable to down the General. Yesterday we were at it again. We warmed up with a speed kill of Ignis which was probably our smoothest ever. I tanked Ignis and our warrior tank took care of the adds.

We moved on to the Descent of Madness, cleared some trash and then started on Vezax. Our first attempt had some problems that cropped up during the Animus phase - when kiting Vezax in the that phase we had some Shadow Crashes hit the melee group (due to kiting) and some ranged (because warnings were not getting through.) Just to clarify, in the hard mode no Saronite Vapors are killed and they coalesce into a Saronite Animus, a mob with 1.6m health that needs to be killed while still dealing with most of Vezax’ normal abilities. Our second attempt went really smoothly, we had Vezax down to less than 20% when the Animus spawned, we finished the Animus with no problems and downed Vezax – another step closer to Rusted Protodrakes.

Next we faced an Old God – Yogg-Saron. Our guild had not managed to kill Yogg on either 10 or 25. We’ve had some attempts on Yogg in the past. I thought we lacked either healing or coordination then but now I think we lacked the melee dps/experience to take out the brain room in the second phase. Experience there really is the key. We probably had more than enough dps all along. Most of our attempts last night were effectively spent learning the portal/brain room – getting that right is what made it possible for us to beat the encounter. Once we got that down (literally the first time we reached phase 3) we downed Yogg-Saron as well.

Three achievements remain – Flame Leviathan with four towers up, Firefighter (Mimiron hard mode) and Yogg-saron with only 1 keeper assisting.

Extending the lockout

So this week, thanks to 3.2, we'll be extending our lockout on Ulduar 25 for an extra week. So far we've cleared Flame Leviathan, Razorscale, Ignis, XT-002, Assembly of Iron, Kologarn, Auriaya and Thorim. Would have been more but on at least one night we had less people online at raid time then we had sign ups. So it goes.

With an extra week, we can clear the remaining Keepers and Vezax on one night and spend another learning and hopefully downing Yogg-saron. Then we reset for the next week. In general I think the option to extend is a very good one. without the option doing hardmodes was very diffcult for us. We had only one week to kill as many bosses as possible. Doing a hrd mode is having to learn the encounter again or some more so tends to require a bunch of wipes.
It meant we could clear a lot of content or do hardmodes. Now we can do (/at least try) both.

I've not been running heroics or the daily heroic quest as much as I had anticipated, looks like it will be a while before I start getting my T9.

I also just can't seem to get used to Exorcism having a cast time. Only realised now How often I used it. It was the perfect thing to cast if a mob got away or bounced you some distance, also very useful for pickups in case of mutliple mobs. The new mechanic for Hand of Reckoning seems ok, but it feels I've lost some threat compared to Pre-3.2. That or I'm getting less sleep.

Ulduar Gear?

As most of you might know, the new offset gear, even some set gear is really all about MP5. Now as a Paladin, I never really bothered with MP5. I did a bit back in TBC, but now I’m INT + Crit + haste all the way. Our new set seriously nerf our + crit with only stacking up haste and mana per 5 seconds. But this has to be done for a reason, I don’t think blizzard really wants us to soak up all the Elemental shaman gear. All the Paladins would run around in a mail suit, with only one or two pieces of Aegis.

On the EJ forum, I saw a topic a while ago about the spell crit coefficient. What it basically stated was that once you hit over 50% crit rating (and this is raid buffed). You can stop stacking it. Because 50% is “Either You crit or you don’t.” Stacking it up even more doesn’t make you crit more; hell it might even make you crit less.
So having MP5 to back you up while you are casting, since casting is all we do.

My last recount showed that I have 51% crit chance with Holy Light. And during the raid period, It actually did crit 51 times out of a hundred. That gave me an X amount of mana back, but recount also showed me that most of my mana returns are either by other people’s buffs (Retloladins, Huntards) or when I used Divine Illumination. Third on the list was my Meta socket. (Change on spell cast to return mana). Now they are nerfing the mana regen for us, so having a steady MP5 really helps. Without the shamans totems stacking with out buffs, we will lose a serious amount mana. (I think about 110 mp5) and I am quite sure we will notice this downfall. With the new Ulduar gear, for example the BoE craftings, I’m sure we can get around 3-400 MP5 (while casting). Can you imagine what would happen with a let’s say: 45% chance to crit – solid 400MP5 (unbuffed) – 500 haste (without our own buff).

That way, we will never get oom. Or at least we shouldn’t.

Lol, as if we do now. Hahaha.