Done

See that? That's what a completed Glory of the Raider achievement looks like.


See that? That's what a really ugly proto-drake looks like.

Up in the sky! It's a bird! It's a plane! No, it's... ugh, what the hell is that?

-------------------------------

Tonight, I finished off my Glory of the Raider achievement with a 6-minute Malygos kill. A lot of my guildmates were all ready saved to Malygos-10, so I scrounged up a rag-tag group amongst the top 3 guilds on Malfurion Alliance-side. The group in the end up looking like this. It was more melee-heavy than I generally like for Malygos, and some of the group members would have been better off as different specs all buffs considered, but these guys know what they're doing, so I was confident enough.

After a quick explanation on how we would execute, we dove right in. The holy paladin we started with had to go after a few failed attempts, so our shadow priest swapped to holy and we brought in a boomkin. First shot with that group comp, we took phase 1 down in a blink, only allowing 1 vortex.

Here's what you do: have your DK watch the skies for the origination point of the first spark and call out its cardinal direction. After the first vortex, everyone but the tank moves toward that cardinal direction, and the tank goes the opposite way. For example, if the first spark is in the southwest, the tank goes northeast and faces Malygos that direction, and everyone else moves southwest and stacks on his tail. Heroism is blown, the first spark is killed. The DK then Death Grip's the next spark on top of the kill zone of the first spark. It gets killed as well, so now you've got Heroism and a double spark going. Pop your other DPS cooldowns and tear Malygos a new a$$. If he doesn't go down before he takes off for his second vortex, make sure you at least push him under 50% and keep DPS'ing so that phase 3 is shorter.

From there on out, it was just a matter of focusing fire and not messing up in phase 3. We let the 2 healers keep on healing in phase 3, moved left after every static field, and kept up our 1-1-2 rotations.

Easy peasy.

Now I may lord over the Dalaran landing pad on an ugly ugly mount! Woohoo! At least it flies fast.

Sarth-10 3D - How It Got Done

Stoico asked in comments regarding my Twilight Zone kill:

Im curious, what tac did you use ? dont kill whelps at first drake ? And how about the adds from the other 2 ? And lastly what was your setup.

Im very curious to those questions. As we are heading back in there tomorrow night. For the 3rd time. And we are all very eager to get it down... :)

Let me break it down for you.

First, the raid composition was like this. The unholy DK was the Sarth tank, the prot warrior was the drake tank, and the prot paladin (me!) was the whelp/add tank. For healing, the disc priest took care of the DK and the holy paladin Beacon'ed the DK and kept both the prot warrior and prot paladin up. Once Twilight Torment kicked in, the boomkin and ele shaman took turns helping on raid heals.

As for tactics - our DPS was fairly high, so we were able to take Tenebron down with only one whelp spawn *without using Heroism.* I went around gathering flame adds, then parked myself in front of the portal and waited for the whelps, snagging them in my Consecrate immediately upon their arrival. Once I had a firm hold on them, I dragged my mass of baddies to Tenebron's a$$ and waited. When Tenebron died, the AoE nuked the crap out of the whelps and then turned to Shadron. Somewhere in there the hunter Misdirect'ed Tenebron to the prot warrior for additional threat and then got one of the other drakes to her with Misdirect as well.

After that, I went around picking up flame adds and killing 'em myself with some super-happy-fun-time shield slamming. The rest of the raid blew Heroism and took Shadron down, and then chipped away at Vesperon, being careful not to kill themselves. Once Vesperon was down, everyone but the DK, the two pure healers, and myself went into the portal to take out the acolytes. I HoP'ed the disc priest just to be safe (she got zerged down by random flames the last time we got that far, I was taking no chances) and stood on top of her, Consecrating and killing flames. Once the acolytes were down, cruise control to win. I started having aggro fights with the prot warrior on flame adds while everyone caught their breath and took chunks out of Sarth.

Other logistical notes - I put raid icons on myself and the holy paladin so we could find each other. Oftentimes the holy pally was the one with adds on him, so he would run them to my Consecrate.

For blessings in this group with a holy & prot, both having Kings and the holy having improved Wisdom, we did the following:
Warrior - Sanctuary and Kings
Death Knight - Sanctuary and Kings
Paladin - Sanctuary and Kings (10 minute Wisdom on holy from prot)
Priest - Kings and Wisdom
Druid - Kings and Wisdom
Shaman - Kings and Wisdom
Mage - Kings and Wisdom
Hunter - Kings and Might

I judged Light on whelps/adds to help heal myself a little. Not sure what the holy was judging. Auras were Improved Devo from me, and Fire from the holy.

Any other questions? I'll add additional stuff to this post to address anything anyone might want to know.

Something Wicked > Sarth-10 3D

I was too pumped with adrenaline to screenshot when the deed was done, so, this will have to do.

16 down, 1 to go. I needs me some 6-minute Malygos.

I was protection for Sarth3D, as before. I've said it before, and I'll say it again, I think that the whelp tank is probably the most stressful job in the raid. In addition, from about 30% on the 2nd drake to the end, we were down a DPS (dude ate a void zone, I think). So it took extra long.

Toward the end, when it was just Sartharion up, I think I took my hands off my keys to make sure I didn't taunt Sarth accidently and end up wiping us out.

Now that I've got The Twilight Zone all wrapped up, I'm back to retribution. With my loot party in Naxx-25 last week, I've got some pretty suh-weet ret gear now too. Take a gander:

Another Naxx-25 run or two and I'll have new shoulders, letting me exchange ugly shoulders for ugly, puke-y shoulders. I can't wait.

I'm still a bit in shock from that Sarth kill... that sh*t is intense. I'm glad I got it done, though. And very glad to be back in my ret gear.

Once I get that Malygos 6-minute kill, which I know will be cake compared to that Sarth3D BS, I'll have a wonderful screenie of me on my diseased, broke-a$$ proto-drake. Funfunfun.

Until next time, Light be with you. It sure as hell was with me today.

Impatient

[chanting]

Dual specs! Dual specs! Dual specs! Dual specs!

Everybody!

DUAL SPECS! DUAL SPECS! DUAL SPECS!

... if you can't tell, I want dual specs and I want them now.

I've been prot for something like 2 weeks now due to a lack of tanks that want to do anything that I want to do whenever I log in. I hate logging out as prot. It makes me feel untrue to myself.

My ret set is looking spiffy, though. After that undermanned Naxx, I'm pretty happy with where my gear is. Another few 25-man runs and I can grab some valorous shoulders, and then I'll be rid of all my 10-man set pieces.

Still no headway made on the rest of those last two Glory of the Raider achievements. I spent probably close to 3-4 hours working on The Twilight Zone but I'm not as good of a tank as I am a ret paladin - half of all wipes were due to mistakes I made, taunts I missed, or Consecrations I misplaced. The other half were a combination of mistimed cooldown usage on the Sarth tank. I'm convinced that the whelp tank is the hardest job on that encounter. As for the You Don't Have An Eternity achievement, I might be doing it tonight, but I'm not optimistic being able to get a good group together. Probably for the best, I have a paper to write anyway.

Wait, You Want Me To Do What?

Due to inclement weather in the southeastern United States on Sunday night, the 20-man Naxxramas that was planned turned into a 19-man. We started on the Death Knight quarter, cleared up to Four Horsemen, and then *poof*, one of the raid members lost power and was stuck sitting in the dark. No biggie, right? Anything you can do with 20 you can do with 19.

The disconnected member was the main tank.

When it was determined that he wasn't coming back online, I had a mini-panic attack in my head, since I was the only other tank-specced member of the raid. I had just been upgraded from first off-tank to main tank, which is a whole different ballgame when it comes to Naxxramas.

I've never kited Anub'Rehkan during Carrion Swarm!
I've never dragged Grobbulus around the room!
I've never timed my cooldowns for Maexxna's enrage!
I've never tanked Grand Widow Faerlina!
I've never main-tanked Patchwerk or Loatheb!

Yea, you can cross "never" off of all of those. Talk about a trial by fire.

Here's what happened in my head:
"So, yea, uh, Cathmor? I know this is your first clear of Naxx-25, and you're still in mostly 10-man tanking gear, and you've never main-tanked the entire instance on either raid difficulty, but, um, you're going to have to go ahead and be the man from here on out. Good luck! You're going to need it..."

I've been part of a tanking duo in Naxx-10, so I knew all the fights generally from a tank perspective, I've just never been in the driver's seat for some, and I'd never set foot in Naxx-25 as protection spec aside from a few wipes to Patchwerk as part of an ill-fated PUG I constructed.

Final result? 7 epics ninja'ed (not really, I paid DKP for them) - mostly tanking upgrades, enough Valor tokens acquired to buy Valorous legs, and everything but Thaddius, Sapphiron, and Kel'Thuzad was killed. We ran out of time, otherwise we would have cleared the entire thing.

Missing 6 people, mostly DPS, with various relatively undergeared alts mixed in to the raid really puts a dent in overal raid damage output - we got hosed by the enrage timer on Thaddius at the end of the night despite no one dying.

However, hooray for tons of gear upgrades! I now have 4 pieces of tier 7 in my ret set, so I can give first-hand observations on the differences in skill cycles between t7 and non-t7. That is, whenever I finally spec back to retribution... which won't be tonight, since I need to finish tanking the rest of that Naxx.

Tanking is a lot more fun nowadays than it was in Burning Crusade. There's more interactivity, since there's more buttons to push. In BC, it was just Holy Shield, Judgement, Consecration, repeat, with an Avenger's Shield thrown in every once in a while. Now, I have something to push every single GCD, and even additional buttons to consider that I simply don't have the time to use. That's above and beyond positioning the boss and using defensive oh-sh*t abilities like Divine Protection or a trinket.

Speaking of oh-sh*t abilities, I want another one. Lay on Hands doesn't prevent, absorb, or avoid damage, it just heals me to full. Right now, if I anticipate trouble coming, I can either pre-emptively Divine Protection myself, or use an on-use trinket. Lay on Hands and Ardent Defender don't kick in until I'm all ready in dire straights.

Anyway, back to the daily grind. I gots work to do so that I can go to class, then eat dinner, then tank the rest of Naxx, and then sleep.

Mount Rewards Removed from "Glory of the Raider" Achievements

Bornakk dropped the hammer.

Time for me to panic.

SONOFABIATCH I'MSOSCREWED NEEDSARTH-10 3-D NOWNOWNOW

So, um, if you know a way to force people to do your bidding and complete The Twilight Zone and You Don't Have An Eternity, like, now, that'd be greaaaaaat. I want a 310% mount and I'm literally 2 achievements away.

Someone go throw a wrench in the works at Blizzard, I need them to delay 3.1 until I finish these.

More OS-10 3D Musing

I've seen it first hand in the whelp tank position, now I can talk turkey. I specced protection for the encounter - the guild's usual prot paladin doesn't usually do 10-mans so I got to fill in. 'Cuz I'm awesome like that.

I was in a group that was stacking magic damage, like so. You'll notice a ret paladin in there, which I was envious of since I was toting a shield on my back that evening. The ret was more for a blessing than for anything else, since he didn't fit the schema of magic stacking. Also, an unholy DK was used to tank Sartharion. Myze contends that a feral is just as good if not better, but the DK is a guild officer and one of the best geared tanks in the guild, so he's the one that got the nod.
We got nearly through the second drake a few times, but ran into a few issues:

1. Enraged fire adds gibbing me.
2. Fire adds aggro'ing healers while my screen is full of whelps.
3. The warrior had to move the drakes around to pick up adding drakes, which put people in danger of eating a shadow breath when the drake was turned.
4. Threat on the drakes was a razor-thin buffer.

I think I can solve all those problems with some fancy raid comp shuffling. First, holy paladin and a BM hunter in for the ret paladin and disc priest. This will address all 4 problems:

1. Hunter can tranq shot fire adds if I have trouble getting them out of the flame walls.
2. Holy paladin healing with Righteous Fury up will draw the fire adds to him, making them easier to find and pick up. Plus, the holy paladin is less likely to get gibbed by a fire add than most other classes.
3. Misdirect can either shore up the threat or save the drake tank the trouble of moving.

So, issues solved without loss of anything buff-wise besides Inspiration and 3% raid-haste. The raid comp would look like this. As long as the holy paladin grabs Kings in his/her spec, the tanks would have Sanctuary/Kings, and all the casters would have Wisdom/Kings. I'd want the holy to either be 51/17/0 +3 for Divine Guardian, or 51/5/15 for super-happy-fun-time buffage.

If the guild had a dependable boomkin and a resto shaman on hand to sub in, I would prefer something more like this, but beggars can't be choosers. That comp has 2 Heroisms, Insect Swarm, 2 blessings... everything but a healthstone, and the raid could have a warlock parked outside to give us those.

Some notes for the encounter on stuff I did and stuff I should do, in case there's a next time:

• Visibility was poor when the whelps were up. I broke out the ol' Archimonde "zoom the f*ck out" camera command to help for next time:
  

  /console CameraDistanceMaxFactor #

  ... where "#" for me was something like 30 to allow me to zoom out however far I liked.
• When Tenebron's portal is up, have a Consecrate overlapping the portal, shading toward one of the healers, and stand in between the portal and the healer. This ensures that the whelps stay clumped and don't go wandering off, making pick-up a b!tch.
• I'm going to use Seal of Light next time instead of a damage seal. Single target TPS didn't matter for me, my stuff wasn't getting DPS'ed until I had put down at least 2-3 Consecrates worth of AoE threat on them, and all the damage that was being done to my stuff was AoE.
• Once the whelps are AoE'ed down after Tenebron is killed, don't help on the drakes. I tried to help DPS on one of the drakes, and the second I hit Hammer of the Righteous I pulled the other drake off the drake tank. Shadow breath on the resto druid, all went to hell. I are stupid. Just stay out of flame walls and pick up fire adds, DPS them down myself.
• Pay more attention to the flame walls. I started moving a bit late on a few of them and got some fire adds enraged. Especially considering there was no rogue or hunter to tranq them, that was bad news. Any time I died before a healer or tank bit it, it was because I had one or more enraged fire adds on me.
• Block value is king for whelp tanking. My 10-man raid armor with Holy Shield up stood up to the mass of nasty better than a 25-man geared death knight tank, according to a few people. Plus, Blessing of Sanctuary on the other tanks is verra nize.
• If I need to, I can drop my defense a little for additional pure avoidance, block value, stamina, or block rating. The whelps/fire adds are not level 83-equivalent like a raid boss, so I don't need 540 defense to make sure they won't crit me.
• Make a macro for the Sartharion tank to bubblewall him:
  

  #showtooltip Hand of Sacrifice
  /target *insert tank's name*
  /cast Hand of Sacrifice
  /cast Divine Shield
  /targetlasttarget

  I have Divine Guardian in my tanking spec, so when I use this, I'll redirect 30% of the damage on everyone in the raid, tank included, to my now-immune self, plus I'll redirect an additional 30% on the Sarth tank into my Divine Shield. Hand of Sacrifice and Divine Guardian stack, right?
• I need to make a mouseover macro for Righteous Defense, there were times when a healer said "I've got whelps/elementals on me" and I couldn't see jack sh!t past the whelps I had on *me*, so I wanted to just hover over that person's name in my raid frames and taunt 'em that way. But, the usual functioning of Righteous Defense is hit the hotkey, click the target, unless you're targeting a hostile. So it got all borked when I was trying to tank a bunch of things AND taunt things I wasn't targeting. I think a simple one will do here -
  

  #showtooltip
  /cast [target=mouseover, help, nodead] [] Righteous Defense

I can't wait until I get another shot at this. Once I get this done, I'm nearly guaranteed Glory of the Raider, since I know that I can do undermanned Malygos/Sartharion and handle 6 minute Malygos.

EDIT: Changed the RD macro slightly due to a reader comment.

Inching Closer

Naxx-10 raid achievements complete - snagged Spore Loser and Just Can't Get Enough tonight. Incidentally, Spore Loser is not a requirement for Glory of the Raider, so I didn't actually need to do it. All that's left for Glory of the Raider is now...
You Don't Have an Eternity - need a high-DPS group and a decent DPS DK to position the sparks for me.
A Poke in the Eye - shouldn't be too hard.
The Twilight Zone - I'll get it when I get this done.

I upgraded my tank gear tonight with a t7 helm and some Tempered Titansteel Treads, so the next time I go into the OS-10 3D encounter, I'll be even easier to heal.

So, I'm looking at a 6 min Malygos kill, an 8-man Malygos kill, and OS-10 3D. 2 of those 3 are considered some of the hardest content in this level of raiding, aside from Undying (which I all ready have!), which is all in the hands of careful tanks and attentive healers. With what I have left, I need to kill Malygos twice, which means even if I get OS-10 3D and 6 min Maly this reset, I'll need to do undermanned Maly next reset to finish it off.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go pass out and not think about these achievements until the weekend at the earliest.

Siha, I saw you tag me for the screenshot meme - I'll do it over the weekend.

Min/Max'ing Raid Comps for OS-10 3D

After polishing off an Undying run in Naxx-10 last night, I've been pumped up about finishing Glory of the Raider. The crowning glory in that achievement-pack is The Twilight Zone, which is accomplished by defeating Sartharion in Obsidian Sanctum with Shadron, Tenebron, and Vesperon still alive at the start. This is considered the hardest thing to do in Warcraft currently.

I've set my sights high.

I'm going to roll with a 3-tank, 2-healer set-up. With the help of MMO-Champion's RaidComp feature, I've been playing with raid comps and trying to min/max it so that I can squeeze every last drop out.

According to StratFu, it's best to focus on magic damage or physical damage for the DPS. Under that assumption, I've created a magic-centric and physical-centric comp to discuss.

Magic-centric comp
In this comp I'd need to spec prot and tank drake(s) and whelps. The frost DK would tank Sartharion, and the prot warrior would handle the other drake. I chose the DK to tank Sarth because of his ability to use a cooldown just about every breath. The holy paladin would handle tank healing, and between Beacon of Light, Earth Shield, and Chain Heals, the healing is hopefully covered. Replenishment from the shadow priest, Ferocious Inspiration from the hunter, and the rest of the yokels buff each other with magical fun. The DK could be unholy as well, I'm not sure it makes a difference. Additionally, a feral druid could be used to main tank Sartharion.

Physical-centric comp
This comp can tear a single target to shreds, but I'm afraid for its ability to deal with the whelps. The only true AoE in this group comes from the 2 hunters - the rogue has Blade Flurry, the tanks have AoE stuff, and the ret paladin (me!) has Divine Storm and Consecration, but other than that, they're hosed. However, the group does have everything else it needs - both armro debuffs, 2 blessings, an AoE tank (prot paladin), a tank healer (disc priest), a raid healer (resto shaman), Replenishment (ret paladin), etc. Either the prot warrior or feral druid would tank Sarth, and the prot paladin would be on whelp duty.

How would you fine-tune these comps to the Sarth-10 3D fight?

EDIT: And in case I feel like going with 2-tank, 3-healer comps:
Magic-centric 2 tanks
Physical-centric 2 tanks