Wretched.
That’s how I feel after our last few sessions in EoE.
For two or three nights running, we attacked that dragon. From the first pull, we did great in phases 1 and 2. Typically we’re going in to phase 3 with five minutes left on the timer.
We rarely see that five minutes go in full.
Invariably I die within the first 30 seconds, but I doubt it has much effect since I can’t seem to heal worth a damn during that phase anyway.
It is very frustrating and made me want to crawl into a hole and pull the hole in after me.
It’s so difficult, to do everything in your power to ensure that you are geared appropriately, have the right consumables, have studied rotations and methodologies, and can go a full fight and still have plenty of mana left in most, then to find that it all boils down to a gimmick fight in which none of the hard won lessons apply.
“Bring the player, not the class”, they might parrot. I contend that that is a cop-out.
You would never go into a raid with no healing classes, would you? Of course not.
If class isn’t important, then why do we have them? If levels and gear are not important, why are they in the game? Why don’t we focus more on looking fabulous than getting that hideous mock turtleneck helm for its lovely stats?
Because class matters. Because gear matters. Because level and experience .. matter. That malarkey about “bring duh player not duh class” was nothing but a catchphrase and it’s taken on a twisted life of its own.
This phase is unrewarding and discouraging. Right now that’s how I feel. I regret rolling on that damned key at this very moment because it put a quest in my quest log that I am at this moment considering … not doing.
We do Ulduar tonight, and I dearly hope we bring our ‘A’ game because I could really use the boost associated with doing, well, well for a change.
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I had well over 40 wipes on that fight before we got it. I hated that dragon.
Perversely, that is encouraging, thanks
Now this is gonna sound complainy and it isn’t meant to be but how do you think I feel when I am basically in charge of everyones well being by how good I fly a dragon away from lightning balls. I am learning this fight too same as everyone else and while I am fairly confidant in my ability to navigate the fight myself (not that I haven’t screwed up a couple times too). I am the guy everyone is supposed to follow and thats all well and good in a everyone follow me and do what I do sort of thing but in a everyone else on follow autopilot so if I screw up it kills everyone way thats not very much fun on my part. I understand the process behind it and I know that if I do get to be that good at it it would make that fight a easy farm raid but its a little hectic and not exactly what I was expecting to have to do. So maybe I was complaining but it was more of venting about the wiping and not getting Maly down and not an actual complaint about how it was going. I too am looking to taking our frustrations out on some Ulduar bosses.
Yeah, that whole “follow somebody” strat wasn’t working too well, and it’s not that I blame the pilot, but that approach seems to gives some the imprsesion that they don’t have to worry about that anymore rather than learn how to do it.
After I die I get a very good view of the fight and those that last the longest are not relying on anyone else to drive for them.
Personally I didn’t think it was fair to put that on your back but then I didn’t know whether or not that was a topic on Vent or private chat so I kept my pie hole shut.
God, I hear you, I loathe vehicle fights for precisely this reason – it reduces everything you’ve worked towards to something entirely out of your control. As I say, I’ve done Occulus precisely once because of these kinds of frustrations.
I don’t know if any of this will help (and remember I r not at all srs raider) but these are some things from the fight I found helpful, and some advice from the blog when I was talking about this fight:
1) You could alway set your guild some homework – I believe there’s a daily quest in Coldarra (Aces High) which puts you on dragon back. It won’t actually help you in the fight all that much but it’ll get people used to the abilities of the drakes, and it’ll also help with handling – especially if you get everybody used to moving together in a clump.
2) Healing – Stack up five DoTs (number 1 ability) on Malygos, then hit the AoE heal. Rinse, repeat. Simple. I don’t know if this is the prescribed way to do it but it worked like a charm for me. Trying to do individual heals seems to be really fiddly and not worth the effort. So if you’ve got 2-3 healers blasting away with the AoE heal, you won’t need individual heals anyway.
3) don’t follow a guy! I think, like Heigan’s dance floor grooves, this leads to more trouble than it’s worth. It stops people taking individual responsibility (”oh I’m getting hit by lightning, but the star isn’t moving so…*dead*) and actually I think lag probably has a significant impact on people not moving quickly out of the lightning attacks.. However, *do* have a marked dude so that people know where to clump, and don’t end up either higher or lower than the main clump and therefore don’t get hit by the AoE heal.
4) Conceptually speaking, I find the fact you have to worry about going UP and DOWN as well as in all the usual directions extremely difficult to handle. Essentially I try to inscribe, in my mind, a flat circle around Malygos, like I’m on a monorail and can only move left or right – if you can get everybody thinking like this is becomes easier to stay together when you have to move out of the lightning attacks. I wonder if I’ve expressed this at all helpfully. But essentially you want to be moving along an X axis only, not a Y one. (and that’s why a marked person is important, even though nobody should be reliant on ‘following’)
5) MOAR healers. While you’re essentially “practicing” I would consider maybe having 3 healers rather than 2 (for phase 3 only, obviously). Since you’re using dragon heals, you can just ask your worst geared DPS to do it. That way, although you might run afoul of the enrage timer, you’ve got more healing output, so more people will stay alive longer, so people will get more practice moving and being on the dragons. And when it gets to the point that enough people are alive that you *do* hit the enrage timer, you can swap your DPS back to DPS.
6) Finally thought alone those lines – since I believe the strength of the dragons scales with gear, have you thought about having your 2 best geared people on healing, regardless of their usual role?
Sorry if you’ve already thought about all of this, or some of it stupid and unhelpful. I am probably a very poor source of raid advice so take everything I’ve said under advisement.
But best of luck to you and don’t let Maly get you down!
This is all worth following up on, and a few I’ve been pondering already, so nice to know it makes sense to someone else too. I’ll suggest the moar healz thing for next time, especially.
The worst of it is that we just rock the first two phases. Our top tier DPS are beastly.
Zomg!Essay
Lawl – a blog post, at least!