13/13 Guilds Skipping Bosses

In most dungeons there was a natural progression of bosses.  In order to get to the next hardest boss you would have to kill the hard boss in front of you.

The late Wrath model changed this.  However in Wrath people still did everything on heroic.  It was often seen as a sign of weakness if you didn’t parse your logs or if you didn’t do everything on heroic.

Something is changing in this expansion though.  Guilds are killing 10-man bosses once and then never again, specifically Omnitron Defense System, Chimaeron, Nefarian, Twilight Ascendant Council and Al’akir.  For whatever reason people are just happy killing each of these once and just doing them every now and then.

It’s kind of a shocking development and largely a failure in design.  Generally speaking boss encounters should become easier as you gear up.  The incentive of gearing up is that gear will make things easier.  If getting gear just increases an unimportant number (DPS/HPS).

Certain encounters may just be too hard or have too many randomness factors to be worth farming consistently.  For example heroic Omnitron adds random hard mode combination efforts IE: mass death grip into ooze with lightning conductor.  Or on Nefarian getting a tail whip and a crackle together.  Given how many times these will occur during progression it kinda makes sense why people don’t farm these.

All the while everyone farms Bastion of Twilight heroic so that they can get their shots in at Sinestra.

It may ultimately be necessary to have more boss encounters like Bastion of Twilight in which you are required to kill them instead of these optional wing dings like Blackwing Descent in future content.

When Blizzard made the first Kael’thas nerf it was because the two guilds that killed it could not/did not want to repeat their kill.  It was deemed that farming Kael’thas was simply, not worth it’s time.  How is the current Blackwing Descent any different?

Main Swapping

I was having trouble figuring out what exactly I wanted to write about today.  I worked on some drafts for some future articles, but that started going nowhere.  So today, I decided to write about main swapping.

Main swapping is something I have a lot of experience with.  I started raiding on my hunter, then moved to my prot warrior, then warlock, then back to prot warrior, then resto shaman, then holy paladin, then back to warlock.  There was never a skill bridge to pass when I moved from one character to the other because I had always maintained the next as my alt.  Today I sit on my warlock main and nine level 85 alts fully understanding all aspects and specifications of every specialization presented by them.

In this article I want to discuss three things: Why Main Swap, When to Main Swap and How to Main Swap

Point #1: Why Main Swap

It’s never an easy thing to ‘main swap.’  Your old character has a defining character for you.  After a main swap you go from one role which everyone in the guild knew you for to one where your talents are going to be in doubt.  This makes main swapping very unappealing and something that will want to be avoided at all costs.

There are a number of good reasons to main swap and any of them should be considered legitimate when you are doing.  The worst reason to main swap is specifically because your guild wants you to.  Main swapping for “progression” can at first seem like a valiant act, but in the end it can be one that will hurt you and eventually the guild.

If the guild needs you to come on your tank instead of your DPS for one or two fights, that’s one thing.  But if your guild wants your tank over your DPS because they’re not even trying to recruit, well that’s something.  Using an alt in a main raid to fulfill what would normally be a mains role.

I always say that I will do anything for my guild in the name of progression, but honestly it has it’s limits.  If my guild wants me to switch to my hunter or my rogue for progression, I won’t do it.  These are the only two classes in the game I cannot stand to play because they honestly feel (and have always felt) very faceroll to me.  There is simply nothing to these classes that will appeal to me.  However if I was asked to play any of the other eight classes, of course I would do it.

Simply put, progression is not a good enough reason for a full main swap.  If you are doing a full main swap (for progression) you have to be doing it for every single boss and this means in the end you are just filling a gap in the guild that can be recruited.  If you just want to progress you can bring your alt in to kill some bosses until they can find a suitable replacement for whatever you are doing.

Another poor reason for main swapping is because your main is fully geared.  I’ve had a lot of guild masters who will relentlessly try to bring their alts into the raid.  Even ones who have main swapped “for the guild” always have this feeling that they want to bring their old mains into the raid in order to keep it as geared as everyone else in the guild.  Once your main is fully geared, great.  Now help all your guild mates out to get fully geared.  If everyone is fully geared well, then it’s time for alt runs isn’t it?  Everyone in the guild helped you gear up your old main and now you’re bringing in a new character specifically for gear.  Can you see how that might be taken poorly?

A good reason to main swap is because you find your current role/class in the raid boring and want something more challenging or far more interesting.  I can fully understand why someone might want to switch from a healer/tank to DPS or even from a hunter/rogue to anything else.  Although a lot of the time it may seem like healer/tank are hard they end up being insanely easy and very boring.  The only thing they have is high responsibility…. but not really a high skill cap that keeps you interested.

Another good reason to main swap is because you want more responsibility in the raid.  Sometimes it can be pretty underwhelming to sit there and just DPS almost the same for each boss as if your efforts didn’t matter so much to each kill.  Healers are assigned specific tasks and if they succeed in their task they know immediately that they did their part in the kill.  Tanks often have  to time cooldowns, interrupts bosses, kite, and do things.  Like I said before, the skill cap on either of these is quite low… however the reward and respect for doing either of them is unfathomably high.

In the end you will main swap successfully if you are doing it for something that is long term.  If you’re a great mage but you’re struggling on your disc priest, why would you even consider making that switch?  A main trade that is good for the guild and good for you will always work out.  One that is selfish or has no motivation behind it will always fail.

2. When and How to Switch

And on that note it is important to note that timing is an important aspect of the failure of your main switch.

Think of it from the perspective of your guild master.  Your guild master will almost always never want you to switch mains.  If your guild master is asking you to play a specific character it means either he/she will feel you play that character better than any other option or… he/she is in severe desperate need of someone to fulfill that role.

Maybe you don’t want to main swap.  So maybe he’ll bring in your alt for the fights where it’s needed until they can find a replacement, that’s fine.  You just have to be clear that this isn’t a permanent situation.

On the other hand he might want this new toon as your main.  Problem is your main is needed for all this other stuff.  Main swapping immediately is probably not a viable option.  You will probably need to slowly start giving your duties on fights to other people.

When I was switching from warlock to warrior the full on change was actually impossible.our main problem was that other people could not do the drakes on Kil’jaeden.  So every week I’d clear to M’uru and then when we got to Kil’jaeden I’d get on my lock.  The actual switch didn’t take place until 3.0 came live.

Your situation won’t be as extreme as mine (moving from guild’s top DPS to guild’s main tank).  Obviously these days buffs/debuffs and abilities are brought by lot more classes so as long as people can actually do the job you will be free.

If anything you can get from this it is always best to main swap at the beginning or at the end of content pushes.  At the beginning of content your guild has not felt the impact of you being in the raid so they cannot assign you a role or a duty on fights.  They also will not have geared you up yet for later content.

On the flip side at the end of a content push all the work has been done.  If you want to switch then you are free to do so.

However there’s a pretty major difference in switching before and after a content push.  Before a content push you should be as geared as everyone else in the raid.  However your performance will have to be of the highest caliber.  Basically they should not be able to blame wipes on you.

When you main swap later on of course you’re going to cause wipes, it’s going to be expected, it’ll be an adjustment.  However you will want to be decently geared so that you are as little of an inconvenience as possible. Bringing in a blued geared player will not suffice for heroic dungeons.

Main swapping is not free gear.  It is an investment in work in hopes that after the fact you will enjoy it more.

Heroic Theralion and Valiona 10-man

So while waiting for someone to log on we decided to pull this boss on heroic and see what happens.  What happened was we almost one-shot it.  Of course we made some plans for this boss, as should you.

There are two main differences between this boss on Normal and Heroic. Before I get down to how to deal with them I’ll describe them.

(1) Tank Phasing: The boss applies a stacking debuff on the tank.  Once this debuff hits 5 it will dump your tank and anyone within 15 yards of him into the twilight realm.

(2) Twilight Captains: In the twilight realm there are these dragonkin twilight captains.  Outside of the twilight realm they will appear as unattackable beams of light that shoot random beams of light at raid members.  Over time these twilight captains will stack up so someone will have to kill them in the twilight realm.

Alright so let’s do some low responsibility DPS training!

People With Nothing To Do Training!

In different fights different people will have important roles that if they do not perform them well and specifically, it’s a wipe.  This section is for all those interchangeable people who do not matter on this fight, your surplus DPS.

When each drake is in the air they will cast something on the raid.  The first drake in the air is Theralion.  Theralion will cast Twilight Blast on your raid.  From your strats you’ll know you spread for this because it is an AoE attack that targets one player.  What they don’t tell you is… it is dodgeable.

I wouldn’t suggest this for less mobile DPS classes like moonkins and warlocks.  But for classes like mages, hunters and melee who are insanely mobile dodging it will be worth while.  It’s definitely worth while trying to dodge it later in the fight as things get more insane and your healers are griping for mana.

The position for the attack is decided as he finishes casting.  So you let the dragon cast and move very quickly shortly after.  If you are a DPS in this fight I’d use some of your initial learning wipes to master this as it will most indefinitely come in handy later.

Another important note for DPS is that you can DPS either (or both simultaneously) drakes.  This means even if you are too far away from one drake to DPS it you should try and look for the other while you make your way to the main target.

Now that, that is covered.

2. Shadow Realm!

Your tank will phase into the shadow realm, that sucks.  You will take advantage of this by sending some DPS down with him to deal with the captains.  You want DPS that can tank magic damage and do a lot of nice bursty damage.  Melee with good mobility work fine.

What did we use?

I don’t want to say that it’s an exploit but it’s most definitely not something blizzard would have thought of when designing this encounter.  Basically instead of taking a group of people down to deal with this you take down a single Sub Rogue,

Sub rogues have insane numbers of survival tools, including feint reducing damage even more, recuperate granting DPS, killing mobs giving more recuperate and slice and dice, and most importantly shadowstep granting burst damage and mobility.  A sub rogue will need no healers and can stay in the twilight realm permanently working down ads.

The alternative is sending two DPS and a healer down to deal with this.  It’s a poor solution but if you have no rogue it is the route you will have to take.  The main difference here is once all the ads are dead your two DPS and healer will come back up.  They will only go down when the tank hits five stacks to clean up ads and then come back up.  With two DPS down there they will die insanely fast.

These ads have rouglhy 80,000 health so it doesn’t take much to destroy them.

3. Did Someone Say Tank Swap?

Tank swap on this fight is based on your composition and how confident you are in your DPS.  We used a single DPS in the twilight realm permanently so we felt we could afford to lose an extra DPS to bring in that extra tank.  However if your DPS is weak you really will not be able to afford it.

If you can afford the extra tank your off tank taunts the boss as soon as your main tank is transported to the shadow realm and goes back to doing his thing (which ends up being nothing).

An alternative approach is to have DPS either tank it or kite it.  Hunters and plate DPS can handle this fine.  The boss should be kept relatively centered so that the tank can pick it up when he comes from the twilight realm, try your best.

4. Meteor Positions

While Theralion is on the ground you may remember that Valiona is up top shooting Meteors at people.  In normal mode you would handle this by stacking a melee and a ranged group and then moving your ranged group around to dodge big piles of void badness.  In heroic this will not work because two targets will be selected for the AoE debuff that pulses based on your damage or healing.  With two of those in your raid you’d just blow up your raid.

So instead you will have  your regular melee stacked group on top of the tank and your range spreading around the boss.

It should be noted that you only need to split meteor damage with one person.  I was awfully far from the boss and unable to get into melee in time so I just followed one of our healers around until it hit.  On one instance I netherwarded and soaked a full meteor myself (not suggested at all).  Instead what you want is a constant weaving of ranged running into melee and running back out after meteor lands.

It’s honestly not even a huge DPS loss.  I still pulled 22k DPS on our first kill while constantly being meteored.

You will find black stuff spreading all over the place so make sure that people are spread out in the first place.  Much like in normal you want to be as close to the black stuff you dodged so that the next time he targets it on you he will cover less surface area with black stuff.

You will end up finding  yourself adopting this approach into your Normal strategy (if you do it on alts) as it ends up being easier anyway.  It’s a healing and DPS upgrade by doing it this way.

Best of luck on this kill, if you’re following a rational progression path this one should fall over easily for you.

10-Man Heroic Conclave of Wind

I believe more fight than any this will represent the biggest progression cock block to any guild.  This is specifically because the fight can be broken down into three platforms in which each platform is insanely important.  Remember when you are planning your raid you have to make sure that all platforms are taken care of.  When we first tried this out we brought our standard group and found out very quickly that we would need to bring a specialized group in order to kill this.

In this little guide I will be going down what you need on each platform and what people need to be doing on each platform.

Nature Platform – Anshal

On normal this platform spawns ads that need to be killed.  As well he spawns these circles that heal him and the ads up so he needs to be kited out of those.  The basic strategy in Normal is to group them up and kill them.  Simple enough.

However in heroic mode these ads have quite a bit of health so you will need some bad ass AoEers to take care of this.  However unlike in Normal you can only have THREE DPS TOTAL on this platform.  So you will most definitely need some badass AoE on this platform. You will also want a misdirect be it a hunter or a rogue.  That threat needs  to snap on to the tank immediately so that you can AoE like mad.

The tank will be kiting these ads while maintaining threat using some large radius AoE mechanic (blood boil, thunderclap, consecrate, swipe).  So you want AoE that are going to be able to dump threat.  This means moonkins and elemental shamans are going to be pretty undesireable (unfortunately).  However hunters and fire mages will be amazing.  I’m not saying it’s impossible for hasn’t been done, merely saying it is suboptimal to have certain classes here.

As well you will have to worry about Toxic Spores.  This is a spell that will deal AoE damage so before the ads are even touched they will need to be stunned or frozen until the cast time on Toxic Spores has gone.  Additionally you can just have all ranged on this platform and have the tank kite and get healed through what he has splashed.  Just make sure you have some sort of AoE snare for your tank otherwise he will not be able to kite.

All the DPS on this platform will have to jump across when The Djinn are nearly at full strength.  If you are not using a prot paladin on the frost platform your tank will have to jump as well.  The healer will want to be away from the bridge as the boss will B-line it for him until the replacement tank shows up.

Yes, the healer will always stay on this platform at all times.

Frost Platform – Nezir

This platform is roughly the same as on regular.  On Normal you place a single tank with a single healer here.  You prefer the holy paladin/prot paladin combination so that they can both bubble off their stacks.  Your tank is almost constantly kiting so he’s not in the blue stuff on the ground and is eating frontal cones which he is pointing away from his healer.  There is a stacking and pulsing frost debuff that increases frost damage by 10% so the old strat was to just double bubble it off.

In Heroic you will need two healers assigned to the Frost Platform.  The two healers will alternate between Frost and Wind.  The healer will be responsible for three people on the frost platform, himself, the tank, and a DPS who will be on the frost platform 50% of the time.

Obviously this DPS is going to need to be someone who has high survivability so it needs to be someone who can burn cooldowns to survive or take less damage.  So this cannot be a hunter, if you have a hunter for this I guarantee you that you will wipe (unless you have some bad ass heroic geared healers).

The first jump should take place at about 5 stacks. The healers switch spots and both healers are losing their stacks of a debuff.  When it comes time for the ultimate both healers need to be on the frost platform.  The healer who jumps over is the one without the nature debuff.  If neither have a nature debuff then it is the one with the higher stacks of frost.

Your tanks should switch places (if they need to) as soon as all of the ads are dead on the Nature platform.  This should be near to the time of the ultimate so it usually works out.

You can see why a prot paladin is going to be pretty preferred.  You have a tank swap going on from West to East and a healer swap going on from North to South.

Wind Platform – Rohash

In Normal you have a healer or DPS chill out on this platform and dodge storms and wind blast.  It represents the highest skill base for this fight on Normal.  The change on this platform is actually the ones that makes this fight so impossibly difficult for so many guilds.

Rohash now applies a debuff that will increase damage by 5%.  Basically all those weak sauce spells that did no damage will now hit like a truck as this debuff stacks.  So your healers will be switching back and forth between frost in order to clear this and the frost debuff.

You will need two DPS on this platform.  One of them has to be specifically a rogue.  The other can be whatever you have left over.  If you have to CHOOSE someone from your guild to do this pick up someone with a lot of survivability cooldowns or mitigation.  This person will after all be ping ponging between frost and wind damage.

So your rotating DPS is there for his DPS at a specific time.  This person needs to break down a shield off of the Wind Djinn.  While this shield is active everyone on this platform will be taking increasing AoE damage until this shield is DPSed off.  As soon as this shield is DPSed off the spare DPS jumps over to the frost platform and does some damage to it.  Keep in mind if you are this person, healing is pretty bleak on this fight so do whatever you can to survive while you’re not DPSing down a shield.

Healer will be doing the standard thing.  Jump over once the frost healer is at 5 stacks and return to nature after the ultimate.

The rogue however has a very class specific role that only a rogue can do.  The rogue has to stay on the wind platform and keep recuperating himself every time he takes any damage at all.  Obviously when the shield comes up he should be DPSing but after that, back to recup spamming.  This rogue has to be aware of the tornados as they are very unfriendly to melee and will knock you off the platform.

On to the juicy bits.  The rogue must pop cloak of shadows when his debuff hits stack 12.  A little after this the ultimate will hit.  While in the ultimate the rogue must feint once every 6 seconds and spam recuperate while in the cyclone.  What this will do is remove the debuff (no extra 30% damage in the cyclone), extra 50% dmg mitigation from feint in the cyclone, and he will be healing himself.

After you come down, rinse and repeat.

Alternatives to a Rogue?

The most challenging part of this fight for 10-man guilds that don’t have a rogue is going to be dealing with that wind platform.  Off the top of my head there are two ways of dealing with this fight without the rogue:

1. Frost Mage/Ret Paladins: Frost mages can remove the debuff using ice block and ret paladins can remove it using bubble.  Obviously you would need a frost mage and a ret paladin together (or two frost mages).  So when the mage goes up he will use his frost barrier then to soak up some of that damage.  Additionally he will slow fall to reduce fall damage.  When the ret paladin goes up he will drop pretty darn low and will use word of glory once Sacred Shield procs.  This will grant enough health to survive falling. The ret paladin should also consider using Divine Protection while up there to mitigate damage before sacred shield procs.  When the ret paladin lands he should pop Zealotry and spam himself with Word of Glories until the shield appears on the boss.
2. Have your DPS alternate similar to how your healers do.  The only exception is that the person who has cleared off his debuff on the frost platform first must jump over just before the ultimate as everyone else.  You want two classes that will have some magic way to keep themselves up during the ultimate.  Moonkins (can heal themselves), destro locks (30% dmg mitigation to magic), enhancement shaman… you get the idea, people who can take care of themselves.

A reader was gracious enough to post us this video:

It’s a little bit hard to tell what’s going on but basically the mage is iceblocking the first and third ultimates and is clearing off his stacks for the second ultimate just before it hits.  To clarify further he is clearing his stacks by jumping over to the frost platform and jumping back just before the ultimate hits.

Anyway that’s my little take on the Conclave of Wind on Heroic.  Best of luck to you.

How to Survive an Alts Raid (And Live to Have Another)

So you’re doing really good but you need a break.  Someone suggests alts raid and that gets everyone excited.  95% of alt raids fail (madeupstatistics.com).  They fail for a number of reasons in this article I will out line a few.

1. Have a Standard

Chances are you (and your guild) have been spending all of your time gearing your mains and learning raids on your mains.  People rarely want to put work int two toons (not to mention that first).  People like to be carried.  It’s no surprise then that you will find your guild mates are putting pretty minimal work into their alts.  So you need to maintain some semblance of a standard.  It’s better in an alt run to feel over geared than under geared.  Imagine how geared you were on your first kill for your guild.  You probably were in all or mostly blues.  I know I was.  Why should your alts be any different?

I would start with a greens check, make sure nothing green.  After that I’d look for relevance.  Healers wearing hit gear and DPS wearing spirit gear can be scary.

2. Be Prepared

People should flask and bring food, you did your first time.  On top of that people will need that competitive edge.  When I’m preparing for a fight on my main I will watch a video from the point of view of my class (warlock), look at WorldofLog/WoWMeterOnline break downs for top DPS of my class and I look for any gimmicks I can exploit.  Lord knows I didn’t figure out that you can bane Magmaw’s head on my own.  You are probably not going to go to this much effort on your alt.

You will need to know what your alt does on that fight (basic idea).  For example in my raiding situation I switch from warlock (a dps) to pally (a healer).  This is a pretty big switch.  Sure I need to know my new spell priority but I also need to know boss timings.  For example on Magmaw your ‘tell’ for doing high DPS is when people are initially jumping on his head to chain him down.  However as a healer you know this is a sign for insane amounts of healing on a tank.

You have to be able to get used to this switch and all of your team members will have to.  As a healer you usually stand in stuff a lot more often to get heals off to save the raid.  As a DPS they just don’t have that luxury and so you may quickly find your top healer is your most incompetent DPS.

3. Don’t Pretend You’re on Your Mains

Too often people think to themselves that they do not need to CC on their alts because they don’t on their mains anymore.  If you were to do a pull without CC you might get through it… but at the end of it your healers are going to be stark OOM and realistically killing them didn’t go any faster since it’s all single target DPS.  You need to know what’s an appropriate level of content for your alts to handle.  During Burning Crusade we did a third 25-man Hyjal every week which was exclusively alts.  We would be doing so well until we got to Gargoyle packs.  Gargoyle packs need to be tanked by a ranged an interrupted until they hit the ground.  Of course our alt ranged were all meter hogs looking to just AoE down the ghouls up front.  After several wipes to this I just got stern with my fellow raiders and told them what they have to do for each wave.  After that things seemed to go well.

When we got to Archimonde we wiped relentlessly.  It was not a gear thing or a DPS thing, it was a consumables thing.  On our mains everyone has so much MP5 and spirit that we didn’t need pots for almost anything.  On our alts however regen was so poor that it was necessary.  The next time we tried this again (as in us having enough time from our two main 25 runs to actually do this) everyone’s alts were far better geared.  The boss died pretty easily.

Consider this for a second, you were recruited to your guild to fulfill a specific need that they had.  Do you think that 10 random alts are going to be optimized to fulfill the same type of raiding requirements?  Probably not.  Honestly you will be lucky to find two alt tanks and three alt healers, not to mention five alt DPS who aren’t all hunters or all rogues.

4. Don’t Change Loot Rules for Alts

A lot of times people want to bring casual level mains into alt raids and suddenly the loot rules are changing.  It’s /roll they might say, unless it’s your main then they are given loot.  Unless this is one of your main raiders who shows up weekly don’t make any special stipulations.  People bring their mains  to raid because they want to kill bosses and they want to progress.  People bring their alts to raids because they want to gear up their alts.  If you start denying alts gear then suddenly you will have less people willing to go on alt runs.  It’s nice to think that people will just do content for Valor Points but realistically they will want more out of it.

Another important note is that gearing alts over mains won’t necessarily hurt you.  People who are in alt runs on their mains probably either weren’t good enough for the mains run or cannot make regular raid times so depriving them of gear won’t be such a big deal.  An alt can quickly become a main if the need arises.  My first switch came in the Burning Crusade when I was playing a warrior main tank and moved to a demosac destro lock.  Our guild was running three Karazhan groups a week, one Gruul’s Lair, one Magtheridon’s Lair, one Serpentshrine Cavern a week, and one Tempest Keep a week.  If you are aware at all of how this progression model worked out you needed 0-2 tanks for all of the encounters in Karazhan, 2-3 tanks for Gruul’s Lair, 4 tanks for Magtheridon’s Lair, Serpentphrine Cavern requires 2-4 tanks,  2-4 tanks for Tempest Keep.  So with such varying tanking needs it happened that tanks were constantly taking turns sitting out.  With three Karazhan groups we had six tanks.  This meant that during progression pushes tanks would be sitting out more often than not.

So what I ended up doing was switching to my warlock when we went down to two karazhan groups and picking up loot on it.  One tier later I’m one of the top DPSing warlocks in the world.  Next tier I’m back to tanking.  Alts can easily become mains when you are in tight progression spots and need people who know the fight.  On my holy paladin alt I have healed Heroic Maloriak, Heroic Atramedes, and Heroic Chimaeron because healers weren’t available for our 6-day raid schedule.

5. And Finally Don’t Give up On It

Look your first guild run wasn’t a blooming success.  As a raid leader in an alt run you have to emphasize that these are undergeared alts and that things will get better over time.  You can’t expect to kill Nef on an alt in greens.  It takes time to slowly altgres your way to the top.  Remember the main reason for an alt run is to gear your alts, not progression.  Who cares if your alt can’t kill Cho’gall?  A successful alt run is one in which bosses die and people get loot.  You don’t need to get the same stuff as you do on your mains, nor should you expect to.  In the end the success of an alt run will be decided based on it’s continuation throughout the upcoming weeks.