As a purveyor of all things cute and snuggly and pink, I have often felt stereotyping acutely insofar as "only hardcores can be skilled." A moderate player, I felt relief from constant community pigeon-holing when my family group got Watch Him Die in less than an hour last Saturday and, today, one-shot Volazj's Quick Demise and spent 5 attempts in Occulus with only amber drakes to get both Ruby Void and Emerald Void.
If you will note the announcements pasted into the middle of my Glory of the Hero progress, you'll note that not only did we get Ruby and Emerald, but it was my very first time doing heroic Occulus.
This isn't me bragging as much as just being glad that I have proof that I'm not a scrub, and that moderates and even casuals can be just as skilled as anyone.
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Excellent!
ReplyDeleteI still have yet to step inside the Eye of Eternity, but I'll get there eventually.
I swear.
That's a nice one. :)
ReplyDeleteYou can easily do Amber Void as well - we just used 2 red and 3 green ones.
Now I just have to get you to commit to becoming an Oculus PRO so we can score "Make It Count" and I can earn my Red Proto-Drake! /excited
ReplyDeleteMake It Count will be easy enough. You guys will have a strat, and I'll follow it. :D Plus, I might get another upgrade from my 70 epix. There's a lot of cool loot in there for Dusty.
ReplyDeleteskyace -- I'm sure we'll get to that one. :) We've started (since I hit 80) with all the hard ones that our achievers haven't been able to get yet. Yay for wins! Yay for getting the hard stuff done before the easy!
Then they can go back and do all the stuff they've already done so I can get it too. >_> Bwahaha.
My guildies and I have been knocking out a handful of these every weekend or so, took us about 2 hours to do Watch him Die (we had to try several strats XD). Anyhoo, this last weekend we did Make it Count! It actually is not as hard as it sounds, we even had three deaths during the run (one to a trash drake, two on Urom) and made it with about 1 minute to spare. We just decided not to loot period until the end (ran from pull to pull, etc) and did a 1 ruby, 3 amber, 1 emerald drake team. Was fun, but hectic. Good luck!
ReplyDeleteCongrats on your achievements :)
I've just read through your post on the family business blog too and I totally agree with everything you said.
ReplyDeleteThe very reason hardcore guilds such as Ensidia owned the world first WotLK raid achievements was because of team work. They self-admitted to going into them still in tier 6 gear with some of them having only dinged 80 the very day they got the world firsts.
They pulled it off because they've played together for years and years, from original Naxxramas up to Sunwell. They had level 70 gear and yet owned the raids using as far as I can see it: skill and team work.
You're right in saying you couldn't have been carried through. If it were a raid yeah sure it's possible the 9 or 24 others carried you, but in a 5-man heroic situation everybody counts and if somebody isn't pulling their weight it can all fall apart.
Big congrats to you and your guildies/family on the pure skill and teamwork :)
ZOMG I just relooked at your screenshot, you've done Watch Him Die too?!
ReplyDeleteMay I /beg for the strategy you used on Watch Him Die and your recent Oculus ones?
I am having difficulty persuading PuGs or guildies to try it with me and they are amonst the remaining few I need for the proto drake :( People seriously hate the Oculus heroic with a passion.
Watch him die seems one of the most rock solid achievements there alongside the emerald and ruby voids.
Big big kudos for those Birdfall :D
I'm not the one who led us through the strats, but I can remember them.
ReplyDeleteWatch Him Die
DK Tank
Ret Pally OT
Holy Pally Healer
Mage & Shadow Priest Dps
Pull minibosses one at a time, kill their little adds. DK keeps them on him until ready to pull big boss, then Ret Pally steals them and starts to kite. DK, heals, and dps group on big boss, DK puts down aoe to gather little adds, dps goes as fast and hard as possible.
For us, the OT died and we killed the boss JUST before the 3 big adds overwhelmed us. Doing everything as fast as possible without hesitation is important, and dps has to burn burn burn b/c the OT won't live very long.
5-Amber Occulus
On the four tries we failed, someone got their timing off. That's all it takes. The theory is complicated, but once you have a little practice, you can get a rhythm down.
You know this I'm sure, but for other readers, the Amber Drakes are the dps-only drakes. They have a single-shot, a time-stop, and a channeled spell.
Note that for first-timers like me and husband, it's best to teach rotations one at a time. We practiced the damage rotation by calling it in Vent until we knew what we were doing, then we called the time-stop rotation on the third and fourth tries. The final try, husband called the next time stop so that person would be ready.
Rotation
- Player 1 sits off to the side.
- Players 2-5 use their channeled spell on Eregos. This does not pull him.
- Player 1 time stops the moment he sees all four channels and shoots his single-shot. Immediately, he starts channeling.
- Players 2-5 shoot their single-shot the moment they see him channeling (2-5 must watch Player 1 for this) and begin channeling immediately again.
- Player 2 time-stops somewhere in there, whenever Eregos begins to move, which prevents him from calling adds.
- Player 1 uses his single-shot immediately when all 4 are channeling (which should be the moment after they all shoot) and begins to channel.
- Players 2-5 single-shot immediately when he starts to channel, then go back to channeling.
- Player 3 time-stops the moment Eregos shakes off Player 2's time-stop.
After the next attack rotation, Eregos will become immune. You can only do 3 time-stops for each phase.
While he's immune, move one quarter around the circle (marked by little floating islands) and prepare for the next rotation.
- Player 4 takes Player 1's place as the odd man out and time-stops as soon as Eregos is in range.
- Players 1-3/5 begin to channel as soon as Eregos is in range.
- Player 4 shoots and begins to channel.
- Players 1-3/5 shoot and return to channeling.
- Player 5 time-stops as soon as Eregos begins to move.
- Repeat attack rotation.
- Player 1 time-stops as soon as Eregos begins to move.
Eregos will become immune again. Switch to Player 2 as the odd man out, that player will time-stop as soon as he's in range, and so on and so forth. He should die after this third rotation. If you haven't done your rotations in perfect sync, you'll be dead by now anyway.
:)
So it's really all about getting the rhythm down, and I found that breaking it into segments to learn (and having vent to call out the next time-stopper) was the best way to go about it. The hardest part is getting confused about whether you've already single-shot him.
Importance of Roles
Channeling - Gives extra burst damage to single-shot. Failing to channel for the odd man out means failing to kill Eregos.
Single-shot - Cannot be done twice in a row by any one person, which is why you trade off. I forget why. >_>
Time-stop - Prevents him from spawning adds and, well, attacking. If your time-stops are in decent order, you should have almost no damage to your party.
-------
I think that's all. XD
PS - You can also be naked so that the wipes on practice don't cost repair bills, and one player can buff the other 4 drakes. (Dismissing a drake removes all buffs.) We used my priest buff.
ReplyDeleteFor Watch Him Die, we used a different strat:
ReplyDeleteholy pally
bear tank
blood dk
2 hunters
pally pulls the adds, then bubbles as DK throws down death & decay. DK then kites the adds up to the front of the dungeon, while bear tank and hunters bring whachamacallhim down asap. The adds came back to us just as we got the boss down, DK still in the dungeon so he got the achievement too.
I don't know how much of it was luck, it was our first attempt and the holy pally swore up and down it was *the* way to do it.
That's great thanks a lot Birdfall :D
ReplyDeleteIt would be far too complex for the average PuG on my realm so back to begging guildies it is ;)
Seems like the same strat, Sara -- 2 aoe tanks, 2 dps, 1 heals.
ReplyDeleteWe had a little trouble with the OT holding threat on one of the 3 big adds, and we're not sure why we kept pulling him over since we didn't touch him. So it's important the OT can hold his group. On our successful try, I'm not sure what we did different but the OT kept them all until death and it let us burn the boss.
... I guess so. In my head, they were TOTALLY DIFFERENT!! but rereading it now, you're right, it seems to be pretty much the same. Sry bout that.
ReplyDeleteXD No sorry. <3
ReplyDeleteI'm the Holy Paladin mentioned in the Watch Him Die strat. The key to our strat is two-fold.
ReplyDelete1) Paladin OT w/ Engineering [I suspect a Hunter would work well too!]
2) High DPS
We didn't pull them all at once (which seems to be what Sarayana did). It CAN work but there is SO much that can go wrong with all of those mobs. We took it slow and steady, killing all the "little" adds and just leaving the watchers up. So the first part of the fight is "normal" until Narjil (the one of the far right) aggros.
When Narjil pulls, the Paladin (ours is Ret, but it could be any spec) casts Holy Wrath (the stun keeps Narjil from casting his blind effect) to gain aggro and uses Gnomish Rocket Boots to get all the way back to the start of the instance (any rocket boot effect would do, but our Ret Pally is a perfectionist). He waits there for the adds to catch up (they move slowly) while the other 4 party members pull the boss. When the adds reach the Paladin OT, he uses Divine Shield and the adds turn around and start back toward the group. Another Holy Wrath and perhaps a stun grenade could buy a little bit more time.
Our DK Tank used Army of the Dead's taunting effect to keep us alive for the last 10% of the boss's health in spite of the watchers' return.
I would expect a Hunter to have to set a Frost Trap, Volley into the mobs, run back to the start of the instance, Feign Death, and hopefully have another Frost Trap there to keep them continually slowed.
I strongly suspect that a well-geared Resto Shaman would be best for the group OR a group with any other healer and a Shaman DPS (for Poison-Cleansing Totem). The DPS can be any class as long as they can output good numbers. Our Mage having Ice Block, healer having Bubble and Priest having Dispersion was very helpful to the encounter, though.
Also, I suspect a Swiftness Potion could factor in instead of the boots?
ReplyDeleteThat would make the paladin more vulnerable due to the lack of a potion (only 1 in combat) but at the same time he'd get to keep his plate boots on (for more damage mitigation to buy a vital few seconds) and there wouldn't be the risk factor of the boots malfunctioning.