Heroic Yorsahj: Oozes (the wordy version)

The strat that worked for us this evening:

Yellow, Blue,Purple,Green -- spread a bit, 4 yds. Easiest.

Purple, Yellow, Black, Red -- stand ON boss, two add spawns, Healing CDs

Green, Yellow, Black, Red -- stand ON boss, two add spawns, Healing CDs

Green, Blue, Purple, Black -- stack, adds (alternative: kill black and spread)

Yellow, Blue, Purple, Black -- stack, adds

Green, Blue, Black, Red-- stand ON boss, adds

Addon used for convenience:

http://www.curse.com/addons/wow/yorsahjpriority

RED:

EVERYONE stand as close as possible on TOP of the boss. Not near him, ON HIM. The further away you are, the more damage you will take. When paired with Yellow/Black, be ready for healing armageddon. Healers and DPS with cooldowns, vocalize them and chain them to get through this. I would pop tranq, and once it was down, pally popped his. If we needed more, warrior popped rallying cry or feral popped tranq.

Adds will be beating on people, including healers or the DPS. If you have a DPSer continuously dieing, they may want to consider using a resist trinket such as Mirror of Broken Images (TB Trinket).

BLUE:
When you get your first blue, use mana cooldowns and slowly whittle the blue down to about 15%. Then, when the next oozes spawn, determine if:

• a) your healers are low on mana
• b) you have a blue in the next ooze spawn

If there is a blue in the next ooze spawn, WAIT on popping the current, low-health void until AFTER the new mana void has been created and is DONE draining mana--this will take a few seconds. Then, slowly whittle down the new mana void in time to renew your decision for the next set of oozes.

However, if you have a red coming and your healers don't need the mana yet, ignore the void. Trying to position yourself to be in range of a drifting void with red forcing everyone to stand on the boss will spell a wipe. If red is coming and you DO need mana, pop it ASAP and either hope you can get it down during the ooze-killing phase, or that your healers are in range to get the mana.

PURPLE:

If you've been prioritizing killing purple on normal, then this is going to be a "new mechanic" for your raid. Make sure all of your healers understand what this ooze does: it is ENTIRELY on them!

Use healing assignments and add the debuff "Deep Corruption" to your raid frames, making certain you can track the stacks. Do NOT stack up to 5 on any given person: stop at 4 stacks. Every heal you cast on a person (that you TARGET and CAST upon that person) will give them a stack. Additional HoT ticks, efflorescence, and similar will not add a stack count.

• Refreshing lifebloom counts as one stack, whether refreshed by LB or regrowth. Keep lifebloom rolling on the tank if you can; if not assigned to the tank's party, then I've heard a suggestion to roll it on a pet instead for replenishment purposes
• Personally, I avoided WG on this because I was worried it would add a stack to everyone, so I don't know how it is handled for certain, but I was quite able to heal my party without it.
• A single rejuv on a dps is very powerful; a swiftmend on them after, especially when they are stacked on the tank, provides additional healing to everyone.
  
• Swiftmend counts as its own stack; efflorescence does NOT cause a stack.
  

I think of Purple like it turns every raider into a water balloon. A water balloon filled with acid. Every heal I cast on them adds water to the balloon. Five fills, and it explodes in a shower of painful face-melting doom across the whole raid.

...blame my resto shaman alt, I've been casting too much riptide lately.

Good luck!

Warning: H-Morchok bug

If you kill Korchom, Morchok does not immediately die. He still requires some killing.

And if you wipe...

You are counted as getting Morchok without getting loot or an achievement or valor points or anything. The instance leaves an empty Korchom corpse and just saves you to a Morchok kill.

....

Ticket time.

Flowchart: Yorsahj LFR

The LFR version of Yor'sahj the Unsleeping.

Ooze priority on it is the favored P > Y > Black, though some raids may opt for Y > P > Black if they think their healers will behave with a Blue/Purple combination :)



Seemed like the most important one to get up, and quickly. >_>

Yorsahj Ooze Priorities

When my guild ran through Dragonsoul last week, our warlock--known to us as Bob even though it's neither his name nor his character's name (mostly because we didn't feel like calling him Damorons, and it stuck even after he changed his character name)--had spent a lot of time on the PTR and had put together a quick guide for us on each boss. He then, essentially, lead the raid as we went through, as the one with experience on it.

Out of all the bosses, the one that truly baffled me even after having downed it was Yorsajh. Oozes, oozes everywhere, all colorful and complicated! AHHHH!

When I went and ran three LFR raids following our normal raid, I tried to get a better grasp of what those oozes do and their priorities, but it was still a bit of a foreign concept to me that I was struggling to comprehend. So, when we started talking heroic modes and that we'd be seeing FOUR at once (3 simultaneous buffs), and I was already feeling a flowchart was needed, I sat down in google docs and made one.

This involved a ton of research and comparison of comments and suggestions. Here are some places I studied:

• Icy Veins' guide
  
• Sumanhi's slightly different version of Icy Veins' guide (had more details on alternative combinations and strats to deal with them)
  
• Wowhead, mostly via the comments due to limited strat details on main page
  
• Wowpedia

(I saw Beru posted something too, using one of the priorities, but didn't get a chance to read that in detail because I was doing resto shammy research at the time. Will edit this with hers as well. As a side tangent, my shaman alt went resto for the first time ever yesterday, and... well, it's a work in progress :) )

So. Multiple suggestions on ooze priorities. Icy Veins even appears to have altered their original to reflect a different priority. And, it seems, no hint of what combinations to expect on heroic mode.

....

---

That said, here are the results of my search:

LFR
There are two different recommendations on ooze priorities here.

• Y > P > Black
  This priority avoids the combination of blue/yellow, instead resulting in a blue/purple. What this means is that the dps kills the void while there is little raid damage going out, and healers shouldn't need to be healing much. However, the healers need to understand not to spam fast heals on the tank during this phase; a single, slow-cast healer should be adequate.
• P > Y > Black
  This priority is for when you just don't want to risk the healers exploding everyone. In the case of Blue/Yellow, things will get nasty and your tanks need to swap quickly as their debuffs will build fast from the yellow buff, and healers will be OoM or low mana. Risk is loosing a tank.

Normal
Normal mode makes green pretty scary. You will want to get rid of it. Again, there are two different suggested priority systems here.

• G > Y > P
  This avoids a blue/yellow and a blue/green scenario, replacing both with a blue/purple scenario where, although the healers need to not be casting 5 heals on any one player, there is little damage going out. The healers need to understand not to spam fast heals on the tank during this phase; a single, slow-cast healer should be adequate.
• P > G > Y
  This completely removes purple (shadow) from the equation, but will have higher healing requirements due to the blue/yellow and blue/green situations.

Heroic
Where in normal and LFR it appears that there are only six possible combinations that will spawn together, I haven't found a list of possible combinations for heroic mode's spawns to be able to analyze the priority system. A tentatively suggested system is P > G > Y > Black > Red. Any further information on this would be very much appreciated :)

EDIT: Heroic version


Flowchart graphics are in the works, that include strategy to be used.

Dragonsoul First Night

(Our moonkin and holy pally weren't there, so no stick figures for them)

Dragonsoul. First night in the instance, and six bosses knocked over in four hours, including time for a lot of swapping and boss explanations. The most difficult of the fights we did was Blackhorn (aka Gunship2.0) due to the cleaves and charges combined with the big bombs we had to cluster in, but once we decided to mark the healers with icons to keep other people away from them in the final phase and to have tanks stay out of the Twilight Onslaught (the big swirly) while the rest of the raid soaked it, it became more manageable. Ultraxion was only a problem for figuring out timing of the tanks clicking their phase shifts, and making sure everyone's action bars supported the new button and clicked it on time.



We actually forgot to take screenshots for killpics for any of the bosses, because they didn't feel like bosses and we just kept rolling like we were speed-clearing Firelands.

...

So, they requested a stick-figure killpic.

I enjoyed the refreshment of seeing new content, however, and am looking forward to testing out the hardmodes and seeing if they will provide the challenge we're seeking.

Anyway, we got H-Rag to a heart-wrenching 3% on Monday night before the patch, and there are reportedly some stealth nerfs that remove the lava geyser from P4, so I'm suspecting we'll finish DS normal tonight and head back to clear H-Rag. I'm upset about the nerf to H-Rag (or is it a bug?), particularly as we'll be going in with DS gear upgrades to further cushion the fight.

I am hoping to kick myself into gear about getting more stick-figure guides done. The more you bug me about it, the more likely I will remember to make the time to draw them!

On Current 10s Difficulty

Rahana at Blueberry Totem inspired this next post. So, it's half a reply to Rahana, and half my own rambling on the general topic.

10 man raiding: then and now.

Watching the shift in opinions regarding the difficulty of ten-man content is rather amusing for a former 10-strict guild to watch. As one of the few (and I mean literally, 3) guilds in the world to have gotten a 10-strict kill on HLK in WotLK, the end boss of the expansion, Vortex has watched with some smug delight as other guilds flocked to the 10-man format out of an assumption that it would be easier, only to find it far more difficult than they had expected and watching as 25-man guilds progressed more quickly.

Could 10s have been easier in this expansion? Possibly, depending on the tuning of the bosses.

The vast majority of raiders (and I'm talking those that probably never read this blog or followed ten-strict guilds) had it stuck in their heads that 10s were easy, and had no concept of the relative difficulty. In WotLK they had higher iLevel gear, and that mana and stamina and through-put matter. They had larger raiding rosters to pull from, cherry-picking their compositions for the harder fights. They had less room to spread out, but AoE heals weren't 40 yards in range so even 10's had to cluster up and stick together to a decent extent. The easier aspect came on the management front as there were fewer people to herd in 10s, though recruitment was a PitA.

Now, there are still fewer cats to herd in Cata 10s, but normalization of difficulty levels has ironically been in favor of 25s. I have to wonder if it's intentional, in an effort to keep 25mans viable. This doesn't really bother me: 10-strict was a very difficult format, and I am proud to say my guild is stubborn enough to tackle anything Blizz throws at us, though we may not necessarily be the first to down the content. So the concept that 25s are easier difficulty doesn't really phase me except out of some irony, in the form of "told you so" to those who doubted the difficulty of tens.


The difficulty currently lays as such:

• Composition. In spite of buff and class homogenization, there is a definite disparity in what is "needed" for a raid to excel through the current content, favoring certain mixes of classes and a LOT of interrupts. Going to Cho'Gall without a hunter? Good luck. One of your interrupters out for the evening? Scramble for Nefarian. No warrior? Add-tanking in multiple fights will be entertaining, if hell. Two resto druids out of 3 healers? ....lol, your hots won't tick up fast enough to counter a lot of raid-heal mechanics and your cooldowns don't come up fast enough, have fun wiping. No resistance aura? HAHAHAA. On a related note, I feel bad for rogues. They are the only class my guild has looked at and said "we just really don't need one."
  
• Loot Drops. Most 10m guilds I have talked with or read about have complained about never seeing certain drops. For Vortex, it is the trash-drop wand and the leather caster bracers. Out of two pieces and 10 players, there is less chance of it being something useful than with 25s. Guilds will shard the same drops off a boss week after week, the two drops always seeming to land on the same pieces. If something useful drops, there's a chance the person that needs it either isn't present that day or got rotated out due to compositional issues: something for the guild to plan around, certainly, but I have seen it happen often enough to remember. I will complain less about having only seen the feral bracers/boots/staff once or twice, as it means our mainspec feral has gotten them, but looking at blues in my offspec set is getting tiresome. Granted, I find it amusing that some of my feral upgrades have been straight jumps from blues to heroic-mode epics. It would be nice if the 'randomness' of the drops was twisted to rotate through the item table a bit more reliably, ensuring a more even spread of gear: some randomness is fine, but a bit more variety is also appreciated. Loot matters in progression. The drops can easily determine the rankings: an upgrade for a raider is worth more to the next boss kill than a shard.
• Recruitment. There are more guilds, plainly speaking. It makes looking for a guild harder, as there are more to sift through. It makes advertising for your own guild harder, as you have to shine out from the swarm. There are a lot of excellent guilds, but there are also many that a recruit may find is crumbling as soon as they join. The guild/raid leader may have expected things to be easier than they are, and are struggling to make things work. Raiders may be disillusioned by progression or loot drops, or even the lack of community as a 10-man guild is smaller than the large communities they knew in WotLK or further back. The 10m guild loosing one player--and it is bound to happen--can leave you short on raid nights, and often you may loose multiple at the same time for various reasons. A death spiral if you can't fill those spots.
  
• Hybrid requirements. This is the ultimate reason why we've not considered a rogue, as melee is generally being given the middle finger by boss mechanics: any melee we do get are all hybrids that will swap either to tank or heal on a given fight (cat/bear, unholy/blood, and ret/holy are our melee dps, excluding our two main tanks. Oh, and this crazy girl who is resto/bear and sometimes moonlights as a cat). With a smaller team, flexibility is very important, and that makes hybrids quite necessary. A healer/healer spec is less flexible than a healer/dps dualspec. On top of being able to spec for it, there is also the issue of knowing how to play it: someone who is used to healing is not going to have the UI and reflexes for reliable interrupts, in most cases (I am a prime example of that on H-Halfus when they had me tanking the fight as offspec!). Where a larger guild can support players who stick to one single role, a 10m requires most of its players to fluctuate between roles as hybrids, and this shows in recruitment.
  

Am I happy with raiding as it currently stands? Well, I am having fun with it, and I am certainly still playing. I love my guild, and I love playing my class. There are certain fights that I wish they will retune or reconsider the mechanics of (H-Chim as a resto druid) but hey, there are changes coming down the pipe for my class that will make it more bareable. Relative difficulty of content against 25s doesn't factor into my enjoyment of my own format; I wouldn't've been playing 10-strict through the entirity of WotLK if that were the case.

Watch us Wipe...

As a reminder, my guild's warlock runs a video stream of our raids! We are currently working on H-Maloriak and are hoping to kill him for the first time this evening. The stream has a chat bar that I periodically join in on :)

Aside, we are recruiting specifically a holy/ret pally or a resto/dps shammy to join our roster.


Raid times:
7:30-11:30 EST, Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday

Healing Chimaeron: Part 2

So after a lot of really good discussion on this topic and another kill of Chimaeron, I felt it a good idea to follow up on Monday's post with more consideration of healing this particular boss fight.

What I find most fascinating is the different ways druids have found to handle the situation:

• a) Lifebloom on tanks per normal, and spot-healing with regrowth/nourish and rejuv+swiftmend for the Low Health debuff.
• b) Lifebloom on tanks per normal, and spot-healing with HT.
• c) Rolling 3-4 lifeblooms in a group with a nourish rotation.
  

Each method has its merits, though I find I prefer method C for its lighter mana cost.


2 Holy Priests + Druid?
I have now done the fight with a priest/pally/druid team and with a 2priest/1druid team. I found the paladins best for tank healing of the three classes: with two priests, we decided to see if I (druid) could focus on the tanks while rolling a 3rd LB on myself, but there were unfortunate occasions when a double-strike came too soon after a massacre and I couldn't get the tank's health high enough. My suggestion for mitigating that comes down to that tank's communication: if they know it's coming soon and don't think they'll survive, calling out for cooldowns (NS+HT, or other healers' help) could aid in preventing the necessity of a battle res. It's hard to call, though. We had this tank-gib happen twice out of 7 attempts; one of those times was on our successful kill attempt, where a battle-res brought the tank back up in time to get back in there and continue. So, it is manageable, but unpleasant compared to a more dedicated tank healer. The priest in the tank-party was helping where she could, but she also needed to prioritize clearing the low-health warnings from those not covered by the lifeblooms.

Alternatively, the druid could focus purely on tank healing, and the priest in that party will cover the rest. Tossing out the third stack of lifebloom gives the druid more time to cast bigger heals on the MT without needing to restart their refresh cycle of nourish casts. Might try that out next week, if we have the same healer composition!


2 Druids + Priest?
Jen of Stories of WoW asked me (and anyone else willing to ponder on it) for suggestions on how to heal this fight with two druids + priest. I haven't raided with a second resto druid yet this expansion, as our moonkin is now dual-specced as a tank, but I think having one of those two druids using the lifebloom healing rotation (3-4 lifeblooms rolling) and the other focused purely on tank healing could make this work. The priest would probably need to cover PoH on both groups during the fued/massacre to help the druids out, though.

I would probably set it up like this:

• Druid 1: LB both tanks (2 targets), alternating with other tank-specific heals. Purely a tank-healer.
  
• Druid 2: LB on both resto druids and their 5th party member (3 targets), using the 3-stack healing rotation I posted earlier this week. Use the 4th block of the cycle to throw regrowth/4th LB/swiftmend to tanks: swiftmend should be easy if the first druid is keeping up rejuv/regrowth on the tanks.
  
• Priest handling the other party on their own, and aiding the tank party as necessary during fued.

Thoughts? Discuss :)

Healing Chimaeron

Most of the bosses I've faced so far have been dealt with in a similar fashion for me:

1. Keep lifebloom on a tank.
   Pop ToL if I want to roll lifebloom on two tanks. Refresh it with nourish or, if necessary, HT. I'm pretty comfortable with rolling two lifeblooms, though sometimes fumble them from range or spell pushback.
   
2. Rejuv and swiftmend on raid damage
   ....trying to place the green puddles appropriately for maximum healing effect. Nourish, lifeblooms, and NS+HT if necessary and the tank doesn't need it more. Pop ToL if I need to spam lifebloom across the entire raid.
   
3. OoC procs for regrowth or HT.
   As the most expensive heals, why not make them free?
4. Tranquility!
   ...if the raid is spiraling the drain, and WG if it's less dire.

Generally speaking, it's worked, if a bit underwhelming on the mana management when I need to raid heal. THIS DID NOT WORK FOR CHIMAERON.

Chimaeron took my healing methods and said, "Okay, let's see how much I can screw with you. RAID HEALING, GO!"

I panicked. An entire raid constantly near death is a healer's nightmare to begin with, but the concept of just keeping everyone afloat above 10k health is a manageable one after you spend some time seeing everyone constantly drop to 1 hp and not die, due to Finkle's Mixture. You adapt; you say, "okay, as long as I keep you above 10k hp, you'll all live." I added a little Grid debuff warning for the Low Health debuff.

But I still was panicked.

This was not the standard healer panic of seeing lots of low health bars... no, this was the panic of facing a fight I didn't think I could, in current druid mechanics, handle. The raid damage was too high, and my HoTs weren't ticking fast enough to top people past 10k before the next health-dropping ability splatted them to the stone floor. And in my attempts to make it work, I was going OoM by 90% boss health.

I was upset. I was frustrated. And then my raid leader chucked me in a vent channel with the other healers and said "make it work."

Silence. My frustration boiling over, I waited for the others to speak first. Was this boss even possible for us right now? I wasn't sure. I didn't know if the others could handle the raid healing, and I knew that I alone couldn't handle the tanks.

You know what?

We made it work.

Props to Togopan (holy priest) and Draukadin (holy pally): I was the third wheel in that fight.

We grouped all of the ranged DPS in one party with the holy priest, who was chain-spamming Prayer of Healing in all its party-only glory (edit: yes, it can be cast on other parties, but we had him focus on only one party). He set up a lightwell in melee range. We put the other two healers (me, holy pally) with the melee (one cat) and the tanks in the other group: two healers dedicated to this group. And while Draukadin used Beacon and Protector of the Innocent and Flash of Light and Holy Radiance and all those wonderful paladin spells, and while the two tanks taunted the boss back and forth during the double-strike to keep from being sliced in half by Chimaeron's claws, I built a healing rotation and stuck to it.

A healing rotation.


Healing Rotation: Backstory

To truly appreciate my situation, you have to understand something about healing rotations. I was once told, back in Wrath, that I was a horrible player because I didn't use a healing rotation. This was coming from a sub-50 alt whose main was a caster DPS class, of course: a player whose entire world is focused on damaging a mob, not healing someone. Not triage. The concept of not using a casting rotation was a foreign, evil, wrong, bad, ludicrous idea to him. Of course, him saying I was bad because I didn't use a healing rotation to triage my raids became a huge running joke in my guild. Me with my Bane of the Fallen King title, world-2nd 10-strict guild to get it, was bad because I don't use healing rotations.

Healing rotations don't work, generally speaking. Healing is a more fluid creature, reactive to the health pools, aggro, gear, and decisions of the raiders around you as the combat situation shifts, new creatures coming in, walls of fire charring people, aggro being stolen or swapped, debuffs being gained, and so on. Healing is a triage situation: who is taking the most damage, and is more important to the overall survival of the raid? What spell is best for the situation: how fast are they dieing, is the mana use worth the cost or is it sustainable, will it leave me unable to save someone more important later? Rotations were not for such dynamic situations. Rotations were for healers who weren't capable of quick thinking, healers who couldn't do their jobs.

So, healing rotations were a joke. Something we laughed at.

The irony of the situation struck me hard last night, as I started testing how many lifeblooms I could roll and what I could fit into the refresh cycle during a break in the raid.


The Rotation

With party 1 covered by the priest, the paladin self-sufficient with his own heals and the tanks half-covered by the paladin as well, that left me 2 people I absolutely had to keep up, and then whatever else I could throw at the tanks. Okay, I know I can roll 2 lifeblooms: why not a third, if that's all I'm doing?

Shortly after the pull, I popped Tree of Life and got my lifeblooms rolling: four to start, with a focus on keeping three main ones up. If the fourth dropped, I didn't sweat it. I told the paladin which of the tanks I was keeping a constant lifebloom on, and that's all that really mattered. Lifeblooms on me, tank1, and melee cat. These are the three I would try to keep up come hell or high water. While ToL was still active, I popped lifeblooms on tank2 and anyone else I could reach, and started my nourish rotation. I went straight down the last three players of my grid frames because our alphabetical arrangement made it pretty easy.

1. Nourish self.
2. Nourish tank1.
3. Nourish melee cat.
4. Cast something shorter than nourish/HT: regrowth, or instant casts. WG, or lifebloom on tank 2, or regrowth on a tank, or on someone who had lingered with Low Health for too long. I could, if I was tight in my GCDs, cast two insta-casts (rejuv + swiftmend, or two LBs) before needing to refresh the cycle, but this was risky.
   
5. Rinse, repeat.
   

With this, I could have kept 4 full stacks of lifebloom rolling by using LB on tank 2 and nourishes on the other three, and at times I did have this going. But I appreciated the flexibility of the fourth block of my rotation to sometimes cast regrowth during an OoC proc, or use WG, or swiftmend, and letting the 4th lifebloom bloom itself on tank2 was often beneficial.

On the plus side, I had absolutely no mana issues: nourish and lifebloom are our cheapest heals. It was only when I fumbled the stacks and lost one (or all) and I had to use the more expensive heals instead until ToL came off of cooldown and I could restart my lifebloom stacks that I then had any sort of mana problems. In future attempts, I will be looking to cast my innervate on the poor OoM holy pally instead.


Beyond my Heals

Due to the cast-heavy and time-strict nature of balancing 3-4 lifebloom stacks, it was beneficial that I was chosen to be the stack target for Fued. They stuck a big orange circle on my head and I stood near melee with the lightwell and it wasn't until about 20% boss health that I moved even an inch from that spot. Everyone would periodically move over and hang out and give me hugs while spamming their own survival/healing cooldowns (feral's tranquility, moonkin's tranquility, etc etc) and I kept chugging along with my healing rotation. They'd flee as the bot came back online and massacre was cast and poisons would start flinging around, and I was still standing there, trucking along through my rotation.

And then at 22% or so: I pop ToL again. I spam lifeblooms across the whole raid afresh, and tranquility, and get everyone as high as I possibly can because come the 20% mark, there's no more healing.

I look up. I see the boss before me, the Mortality debuff bright near my minimap, and I gulp. "Well, here goes," I say to myself, and start DPSing. I smile to myself that I have no DPS rotation. I spam wrath, and try to keep moonfire and insect swarm on the boss, while everyone in ventrilo is going wild with trying to survive as long as they can and DPS, and when it's finally my turn, I'm bearform and using frenzied regen and barkskin in vain hope of surviving more than a couple seconds, strafing away to keep my furry tail from his claws, even as I'm tugged across the room by a priest's lifegrip and Chimaeron swipes out and double-strikes my face.


An interesting fight. One that challenged me, as a healer, in brand new ways. While I would hate having a "healing rotation" as strict as that become the norm, it was a challenge that I enjoyed, simply for its deviance from the norm. I know better, now, my limits on how many lifeblooms I can roll at my current haste level.

See you next week, Chimaeron. I won't be panicking this time.

On Learning

Learning styles vary between people. While I think many can learn from multiple methods and there is cross-over, it's good to understand the three primary learning styles (visual, auditory, tactile) and realize which you prefer and learn best with, as well as understand that not everyone else will learn from the same methods that you prefer. Myself, for example, I categorize as primarily visual, secondarily tactile. Others prefer auditory learning and discussion, and still others may find they have no problems learning by any of these.

Why is this important for gaming? Encounter strategies, learning your class, learning how to play: how information is presented to you will impact how well you understand the material, which in turn impacts performance. If you know you won't learn as well with one method, seek out material that is presented in a way that is easier for you to understand.

As a side benefit, understanding these learning methods impacts other areas of your life, including schooling and career. I'm a firm believer in "never stop learning," and even when a friend tries to explain something or you're trying to troubleshoot a piece of tech/equipment, knowing your own preferred learning methods can help you to overcome a frustration you may have in not understanding it.


Visual:
You need to see it to understand it. Someone telling you verbally what to do--like those raid leaders who just ramble on in voice chat before a pull--don't help you. For some, even reading it in text isn't enough. You need visuals. Visual details also tend to stand out for you.

• Diagrams, charts, videos with written instruction and visual pointers
  
• Highlight, font changes, visual IMPACT
• Illustrations, pictures, comic strats!
  
• Symbols, icons

I am primarily a visual learner, myself. That's why I make comic strats and illustrate my points where I can: I want to see it, I want to show it. I need screenshots and stick figures. I need an idea of what something looks like in order for me to fully comprehend it. Space, distance, layout, positioning... all are important to me.


Auditory:
You prefer to hear it spoken to you. The words, vocalized, make everything make sense. Lectures and speeches can keep your interest (assuming the topic itself isn't boring), and verbal discussions are no problem for you. Reading something out loud often helps with comprehension. Conversations about the topic help cement things in your mind, and you are good at picking up sound effects.

• Reading aloud
• Discussions, conversations
  
• Lectures, or podcasts, or videos with detailed verbal instructions
  
• Songs!
  

For me, I tend to start zoning out and misunderstand when all I'm getting is verbal words (much to Scythe's dismay!). I also have trouble focusing on one voice over others: when multiple people are speaking at once, it can just become a wall of noise. You can pick out some of your visual learners based on their preference to type rather than speak aloud in ventrilo/team speak.


Tactile:
Learn by doing. Hands-on is a great way to learn from your own mistakes. Truly tactile learners need to participate. They can often see why something is the way it is only when they have it right in front of them: they need to play with it and experience it, manipulate it and see what happens.

• Test Runs
  
• Models: mock up a situation with your action figures or by positioning in-game, build it!
  
• Labs, field trips
• Experimentation

The problem is that you have to go and make those mistakes to learn anything, sometimes at the expense of others who already know not to make those mistakes, if it's a team environment like a raid. Games like the old BT Teron Gorefiend simulator game help these players immensely, as do periodic breaks to get up and stretch. Spending time at a test dummy will often help these players learn, as with soloing content and general practice at playing their class and using a particular ability. If worse comes to worse, drop them into large-scale pvp where it's sink or swim!


Raiding with them All
The take-home lesson for raid leaders/officers: your raiders won't always learn the same way that you do. Provide or direct your raiders towards different types of resources, and don't expect everyone to all understand just by watching the same video that magically made everything make sense for you. There are a lot of resources out there, and while it will take some research on your raiders' part, they can often find something right for them to understand whatever they're struggling with.

A note on Videos: You might expect these to be an excellent resource for visual learners. They are, in terms of watching the playing field and seeing what the players do... but in terms of spoken instructions voiced over the video, they are better for auditory learners. A more visual learner may benefit more from a written strategy + a diagram than they will from an instructional video, while an audio learner will prefer a video with a recorded set of instructions. Some videos may have written instructions included, or arrows added to point out things: those are of benefit to visual learners. So: beware labeling all videos as "good for visual" vs "good for auditory" learners. Each video is different.

The most difficult type to work with as a raider is the purely tactile, as they need actual raid time to understand a concept, at the expense of others' time. For them, patient preparation and review of mistakes is key. What did they learn from that wipe? Pre-emptive mockups of a room for positioning and use of flares can help these players understand, just as much as for the visual learners. Telling them to all physically get up and stretch during a mid-raid break can also have good results, rather than having them all just tab out to browse the web: physical activity is a great way for many to re-focus themselves, after a long session at the computer. If it's a class mechanic they need work on, practice practice practice!

Wall Feast

The real reason why we got HLK10-strict down:



Wall feasts. This is what happens when you get superstitious with raiding. You spend 30 seconds of buffing time trying to get a fish feast stuck in a wall, and everyone waits patiently without complaint, because IT IS NECESSARY FOR SUCCESS.


Been a busy week. Scythe and I had been working on changing up the guild website and using different, integrated software for its front page, and it's finally up and running. We've had stick-figures in the margins on the forums previously, but now we get to have them on the front page, too. I like the personalization, it gives it more of the guild's character.

Anyway.

Puppy.


Has gotten big.

And likes playing in the bathtub.

XD

Surviving HLK: Beyond the Pixels

While these tips are directly from my experience working for 3-4 months with my guild to down 10-strict HLK, these also apply to any long-term, multi-aspect team encounter that is pushing the envelope and comfort zone of your raid.

There is more to killing hardmode Lich King (HLK) than what the game presents to you. The fight's difficulty tests your cohesion and teamwork as a guild: your ability to adapt, learn together, and not fall apart as your guild pushes the envelope in what it can do. HLK is a fight with many moving parts, and every player present is important and could easily wipe the raid with their own small mistake.

We lost one raider specifically over the stress induced by the fight in the five months we were working on it; other guilds lost far more, sadly. It is the unfortunate circumstance of a high-stress boss fight, and the most difficult part of overcoming a pinnacle encounter like HLK.


Accountability
You must be able to own up to your own mistakes. If you and your fellow raiders are incapable or unwilling to recognize they made a mistake, your guild will not get very far on fights like this. I suggest this mentality:

• You will, inevitably, make a mistake. Don't be ashamed of it: just learn from your mistake, and figure out ways to prevent it next time.
• Admit to your mistake. It will keep others from grumbling behind your back or thinking that you don't know you messed up. Whether it's an apology, a curse, a simple admittance, a groan, or just a /facepalm, some recognition that you know you messed up will keep others off your back.
  
• Even if someone else admits "blame," if you were a part of it or could have helped prevent it, speak up. Were you lax on casting a cooldown? Or a heal? Were the cooldowns not up, from casting them too soon? Were you out of range due to bad positioning? Did you zig when you should have zagged around that defile? Turn your back to the mob you were tanking? Misunderstand a vocal call? These things help prevent the mistake from happening again. Progress in teamwork development.
  
• Someone else will also, inevitably, make a mistake. Don't corner them too often about it, if they know of the problem and are attempting to resolve it already. If it must be brought up in order to help them fix a repetitive mistake, avoid getting frustrated about it: defensiveness and frustration is stress your raid doesn't need. Focus on getting the problem resolved, and be sure to applaud when it's finally fixed.
• Apologize when necessary. Recognize when it's needed, and make use of it to keep the group working as a cohesive unit. Your raid MUST be a team.
  

Flexibility
The strategy will change. Group makeups and individual player strengths will force your guild to approach the fight in, likely, different ways than others have, especially if few other strategy guides have been posted for the fight you are attempting.

Vortex's primary HLK discussion thread reached 11 forum pages. There were a few multi-page side discussions, as well, nevermind all of the vocal planning done in ventrilo or over whispers. Our tanks switched around, our healers switched around, our offspecs were tried and tested, melee were given an unfortunate shaft in favor of ranged dps, and we all had to smile and nod and try not to take things personally. I was shocked we ended up needing a resto druid: I was originally arguing that I should be sat out, feeling incapable of keeping the tanks alive by myself. We made it work, though.

• Your strats will change, sometimes drastically. Be ready to try new things.
• Trail and error. Don't just ram the brick wall hoping you'll eventually break through: there is more than one way to get to the other side, you just have to find the one that works best for your guild.
  
• Keep up your spacial awareness. HLK has a lot of moving parts to it, so you will be shifting location from moment to moment and attempt to attempt.
  
• Keep an open mind about others' ideas.

Creativity
Along with flexibility, I firmly believe that all raiders need to have input on your guild's strategy development. One single person coming up with all of the ideas will make your progress move more slowly. Every raider should be responsible for looking at the strategy and finding ways to adapt it to your group's skills and makeup, both for the part that they themselves play as well as the parts they could potentially aid with, or have class knowledge of. That many more eyes with different perspectives of the fight provides that much more insight into how things work.

• Think out of the box. Know your class' spells in and out, know your abilities, and find ways to make them work to the raid's advantage: this includes tank-saving cooldowns, stuns, knock-backs, and other CC.
  
• Speak up if you have an idea.
  
• Don't take it personally when your idea is found to be flawed, or if your idea just doesn't seem to work with the guild's composition. Focus on what's important for the raid to succeed, and not just your own personal bubble.
• Don't read against the grain.
• Judge your strategies not by how far you got with them, but how effective they were at solving the problem they were supposed to remedy. Can it be improved upon? Was it the fault of the wipe? Can it be incorporated into other ideas? Don't throw out a strategy or idea unless you really find a better method.
• Mock up a quick sketch in MSPaint or a similar program if you need to show a diagram. "Picture is worth a thousand words," etc. Don't spend hours on it, though: spend less time explaining your idea and more time finding holes in it before you waste time wiping to it. For example, one from Halion is here. Our LK ones ended up not being used for the final strat ;)
  

Dedication
If you refuse to believe the fight is possible for your guild, then your heart will not be in it, and you will make more mistakes and not even bother trying to fix them. You and the rest of your raid team need to be dedicated to overcoming a difficult boss in order to make it happen.

• Don't panic.
  
• Take breaks as a group periodically through the raid night for a breather, to keep your mind sharp and remove distractions like the need to bio or just stretch. Just don't waste others' time with unannounced AFKs or very extended ones, of course.
  
• Remember that there is always something you and your raid can improve upon for the next attempt.
• If you have a rough night, leave it at that: a rough night. Come to the next raid ready to rip the boss apart. That extra out-of-raid time is spent resting and reviewing what can be fixed.
  
• Encourage each other. Even if it's jokes of ritualistic head-shaving and application of warpaint prior to attending the raid. At least, I think he was joking about that........
  
• Find ways to make each other laugh: wall feasts, mini pets, fear ward on the tree to keep her from fleeing in terror. This is supposed to be fun. As long as these jokes do not get in the way of the raid itself (throw them when waiting for the RP to finish) or actual discussion of strategy adjustments, they're great for loosening you up.
  
• Believe in your fellow raiders' ability to improve. Stay positive.
  

Respect
Ultimately, maintaining respect for each other in the face of mistakes and months of wipes will keep your raid going. Avoid belittling each other, and avoid reading against the grain as much as possible. More bluntly, just stick to the mechanics facts and try not to sound like an ass to others. If you're at each others' throats, your guild is more likely to fall apart or quit raiding than it is to overcome the boss. Don't let the Lich King win... and don't let Yogg's whispers come true.

...your friends will abandon you...

Comic: Earth, Wind, and Fire 10m

Took us a few attempts to work out how long Alyae could last solo-tanking an enraged Koralon. Panicking resto druid!



Yes, the maces look like shovels.
*I* thought it was funny. :3

Efflorescence: Know your Green Goo

By most reports and my own experience, projected textures is currently bugging to not actually show in spite of being enabled and graphics on ultra. I heard a little horror story about Hodir in a Ulduar run.

EDIT:
Fanthisa pointed out a fix for this, that worked for me and many of my guildies: interface->display->DISABLE the option to "emphasize my spell effects."

Regardless, you can still see the spell effects drifting lazily up from the floor in all their raid-eating glory. Except, now, some of those effects are not the notorious "bad," or even the fellow-raider consecrate or death and decay of neutrality. Some of them are good. Like the massive shiny domes of holy light, or the twinkling sanctuary of angelic aurora light.

Or the more easily mistaken green puddle of efflorescence.


Good green puddle:

• Leaves flying up in the air like a reverse autumn fall. This is symbolic of resto druids loosing their tree form, as their leaves drift upwards into the digital ether.
• Hazy green aura. The fact that it looks like many other poisonous, acidic, nuclear, or otherwise deadly hazy green auras is mere coincidence. Green is life. Green is nature. It's retribution for my complaints that our old tree form had wilted yellow leaves.
  

Bad green puddle:

• Anything else.

Got it? It's not that difficult, is it? No, of course not.

...

Yeah, let's go with some pictures.


Pretty straight forward on this one. Big green puddle, vs hazy green leafy light. If you mistake the moving green oozling that's slurping around trying to eat someone to be an efflorescence puddle, you have some serious awareness issues that I can't help with.

This next one is more tricky.


....yep.

Vinn diagram of hazy green.

If they add leaves to a bad green effect in a later instance, we're screwed. Let's hope we don't face off against the green dragonflight anytime soon. For now, if you see leaves falling up into the sky in your green puddle, you can assume it's safe.

Unless it's layered on top of a bad green.



....

Hrm.

Good luck!

...as your pathetic reset point betrays you!

Once upon a time, rather than having to engage Sindragosa upon the death of her lesser winged comrades, we would reset her by pulling her through the gates into the gauntlet room, thereby giving us the opportunity to pull her at our own choosing and without prior combat engagement with another dragon.



Yeah. That's not happening anymore. I narrowly escaped doom by making it up the elevator shaft, and the guy beside me was no so lucky as she teleported him to her before she decided to despawn.

HLK 10 Video: Priest/Pally

Our other set of guild filmers have completed the second half of their HLK kill video, complete with story-driven prologue and credits. For reference and posterity, I'll include Part 1 again. If your computer can handle it, I suggest HD :)

The videos swap between the views of a shadow priest (Kuchki, white health bar and TidyPlates) and a prot pally (Alyae, green health bar and ThreatPlates).

PART 1
HD link


PART 2
HD link

HLK, Vortex's videos

The following videos were taken of our first kill of hardmode Lich King, September 19, 2010 as a ten-strict guild. Most of our strat can be found here.

---

Warlock PoV
Driven by: Harsesis, specced as Demo

This video is split into two parts, and can also be watched in 720p HD (I recommend fullscreen... I just left it at 360 for those with slower connections). His grid frames show incoming heals; the top left-most player is our offtank, and bottom left-most our maintank. Note the moonkin (Beranabus of RNGesus) casts tranquility around 4:10 because our disc priest was grabbed by the first Valkyr; our tank healer tree (me) was also grabbed by a valk once, but luckily the healer grabs were not back to back!

-- Part 1 --


-- Part 2 --

The MT dies around 3:10, and the OT picks it up after the locks mess their pants and soulshatter. The tank was soulstoned, which is how he resses himself while the others are in Soul Harvest phase and then battle-resses the ele shaman around 3:36. The tree stands in a bad place around 4:15 and nearly eats it ;) This is why we must stay away from our soakers! We are all alive when he reaches the 10% mark.



...gg moonfire spam from the giggling resto druid.

---

Shadow Priest, Prot Pally PoV
Driven by: Kuchki, specced as Shadow, and (to be added) Alyae, specced as Prot

This is the "short," raw version. They plan to expand the video with dual views between the two players and an intro sequence.

World 2nd, US 1st...

10-strict Bane of the Fallen King!




Kae: "I was singing along to Owl City's Fireflies as he went down... interspersed with SHIT and UH OH."

I am fairly sure we got it recorded from a couple different view points :) Will be linking them up as soon as they're hosted!





YAAAAAY


((Edit note for Beru: had nourish, swiftmend, RR glyphs))
((Edit 2: if you're one of those that likes staring at meter parses, have at: WoL, WMO))
((Edit 3:

---

Raid makeup:

MT: Feral Druid
OT: Prot Pally
Heals: Disc Priest, Resto Druid
Ranged DPS: Marks Hunter, Shadow Priest, Boomkin, Ele Shaman, Destro Lock, Demo Lock
Melee DPS: ....... ?

(Does me punching the Lich King in the back a few times count as melee?)

Healing ICC10: HLK as a Resto Druid

Edit: This guide was written for patch 3.3. Alas, we can no longer roll lifebloom on two tanks anymore, as of 4.0. I suggest keeping it on the shambler tank, as their health tends to spike more with the enraged adds. Go ToL to roll it on both tanks towards the end, as LK's plague-induced-stacks start eating the MT. Similarly, lifebloom is now very cheap to cast and no longer grants mana back when it blooms, so those tips are also now outdated.

With repeated attempts into the sub-20% range, I'm ready to expound upon healing Heroic Lich King (10-strict). This fight very nearly requires that you have a disc priest in your raid: they will very likely be your co-healer. My own guild, Vortex, has chosen a resto druid as the second healer to aid in the final phase's AoE healing and movement requirements, but we are fairly confident that any other healer could handle that spot.

EDIT: well, we killed him, US-first and world-second kill for strict-ten's. I added a few notes to the final phase; this is the strat that worked for us!


Phase 1:
"WTF I'm tank healing?"

With the disc priest put to bubble-shielding the Infest, your primary job as the second healer will be keeping the two tanks alive. For the sake of limiting the movement of the DPS, don't stand with them: stand either in between the ranged and the tanks, or on the other side of the tanks from the ranged dps group. This prevents others from having to move away from your shadow traps. Also, always make sure you are within running distance of the adds so that you can drop off your disease on them. FYI, it is safe to stand in front of the Lich King: he has no cleaves or cone attacks.

Below is a general diagram of how we handle Phase 1. Light blue is the platform, light gray is the inner circle, blue dot is the useless ice blocked dude, and the dark gray is the outer, cracked ring of the platform. Purple circles are example shadow traps that we've moved away from :)


Rejuv, lifebloom, and regrowth: try to keep all three running on both tanks as much as possible. Use nourish around them, and cast it proactively rather than reactively. You should (hopefully) have between 1/4 and 1/2 mana left at the end of this phase, if DPS is strong. For the sake of mana, I recommend letting the lifebloom stack bloom off of one tank or the other (only one at a time) whenever possible, but here are a few conditions:

• do NOT bloom when both tanks are low health, as you can't immediately restack them; get one tank up to higher health before letting the other bloom.
  
• do NOT let both bloom at the same time or you'll be scrambling for GCDs to restack both.
• do NOT let the add-tank's bloom when s/he has an enraged shambler, or has two shamblers and there is no Tranq shot in the raid. Keep it rolling and bolster her with nourish.
  

Use swiftmend to pop a tank up while you are moving. Save NS for real emergencies, but don't be shy about using it and thus waste precious seconds in indecision that could kill a tank. The tanks will drop low from time to time. They will need to use their own cooldowns to help you out, ESPECIALLY if you have no tranq shot in the raid (no tranq shot is doable, but painful). Don't worry much about healing anyone EXCEPT the two tanks; you can pop wild growth on the main tank (MT) to spread wild growth out to melee, but the domain of raid healing should be left to the disc priest. Only help with raid healing if they request it and the tanks are both topped off. Otherwise, your raid heals will result in a healing gap on the tanks that the disc priest may feel the need to help with, which in turn results in a bubble gap that will spiral down to a wipe to Infest... or a dead tank.

Don't hit a shadow trap, and don't run in front of the shamblers. Be very aware of where EVERYTHING is around you: this can be difficult when you're glued to the tanks' health bars, but it is very necessary.

If you have ghoul aggro, don't let it stick on you long. Call out for a tank to taunt them off of you, or run them to a tank, if necessary: ghouls have a nasty habit of dazing you while you're trying to escape an incoming shadow trap.

---

Transition:
"Hope the RNG gods put enough diseases on the shamblers."

As LK nears 73%, get yourself towards the outer rim of the room without letting HoTs drop. Make note of how many adds are up, and definitely make sure the add tank maintains full HoTs. As the Lich King reaches 70%, he will transition as normal, and you can let HoTs momentarily lapse off of the MT until he begins picking up spirits. Mind that you don't cross in front of the shamblers while moving forward.

Make sure the group splits roughly half and half on the shelf, sort of like so:

We have the shambler tank cross over to the far right of this diagram, while the MT picks up spirits and tanks them in the center of the dps' cluster.

Keep full HoTs running on the OT until the shamblers are dead of diseases; the little ghouls won't hurt much and only require a rejuv or so to heal through. As the MT picks up and begins tanking the spawned spirits in the middle of the group, begin reHoTing him and keep the HoTs going, though allow your lifebloom to bloom off for mana. Use an innervate in this phase if you need it, otherwise use it early during the next phase.

---

Phase 2:
"Let's do the Defile Dance!"

As the group is running in to meet the Lich King again, get full HoTs rolling on the MT if they've dropped at all and be ready for some big hits, as the Lich King's buff stacks from Phase 1 may not yet have dropped off. Keep some HoTs rolling on the OT, as well, until the spirit she is tanking from the transition is dead: the MT will be taking far more damage, however.

Ironically, this is probably the easiest phase for me. While the disc priest is back to raid-bubbling around Infest, I go back to tank healing... but we only use one tank, so I don't have to maintain two lifeblooms again. In normal mode, we choose to swap tanks for soul reaper, but for heroic, we've moved to a single-tank strategy, using cooldowns for every reaper to shield the tank. This allows me to keep HoTs rolling on the MT at all times, and allows our OT (prot pally) to focus on just maintaining soul-reaper cooldowns and stunning the valkyr. The OT should periodically be taunting to ensure she maintains secondary threat on the Lich King in case the MT dies.

You will need to watch ALL timers. They are all important to you.

• Infest: if the timer is ticking down and someone is missing a shield (due to bubbling fail, disc priest taken by valk, or the target loosing their shield to standing in a defile), the disc priest needs to CALL OUT who is missing the shield if they will need help clearing the infest. In cases where 2-3 people in a party missing a shield, things like the moonkin or a feral druid using tranquility is a great split-second rescue; otherwise, the MT-healer can usually save those couple people. A ret or prot pally can be asked to use lay-on-hands to counter a disastrous infest, as well.
  
• Defile: the group needs to move out of the center circle to drop these. About 3-5 seconds before it goes off, run yourself up towards the throne side of the platform so that, if you're targeted, it'll drop the defile harmlessly out of the path of everyone. Just don't run far if a valkyr is about to spawn. We have most of our raiders drop their defiles up in this region, while a few of our dps scatter to the sides. The key is making sure the defiles are not in the center of the platform (it's hardest when it's on tanks) and that all raiders scatter from each other in the seconds before defile is dropped. Having a largely ranged-dps raid aids in this.
  
• Valkyr: be close to the center. It's the same as normal mode, which you should, by now, be able to handle :) My only note here is that you try to refresh lifebloom to full on the MT before the valk swoops down in case you're the one grabbed, so that the tank has more time with HoTs while you're in the valk's clutches. If you are the one grabbed, make sure to call it out, so that your co-healer knows they need to cover your job and so that others know they may need to blow extra cooldowns/potions.
  
• Soul Reaper: the raid needs to maintain a cooldown rotation on the MT, assuming you are not tank-swapping. As the reaper begins to tick off, spam nourish so that it will quickly offset the health drop, before the tank takes another hit. If you are tank-swapping, monitor it so that you can catch both the drop in health from the first tank, and the incoming hits on the second.
  

After ten zillion attempts, you begin to know the defile timers by heart. First Valk: wait for it to swoop down, then position yourself on the far side of the ice block for defile. After defile, move back in. 2nd Valk coincides with the 2nd defile: either may come first, though usually the defile comes right after the valk; move quickly, then regroup. 3rd valk, then move for defile, then regroup. 4th tends to coincide again. Etc.

For a general idea of the movement, refer to these diagrams:



Note that people are avoiding putting a defile puddle at their back, as compared to the dead center of the room. This is because if they were picked up, the valkyr would take them over that puddle, which would inhibit melee assistance as well as possibly drop them into the puddle when they are freed. Using a pair of example defiles, you can see by the red-tint where you don't want to stand when a valk is about to spawn (unless you're a warlock with a teleporter at your back).


As with normal-mode, make sure the group doesn't transition past 42% without grouping at the edge of the platform together. Don't let the group move to the edge until after a valk spawn, and mind defiles: push him to 40% only when there is no risk of either a) people getting caught in the middle during the transition or b) people getting valk'd while too close to the edge for a rescue.

---

Transition:
"Hai, I can haz mana?"

I generally heal everyone during this phase. Similar to the first transition, sans the adds, though I recommend having both tanks picking up spirits to split the damage they're taking; keep them both lightly HoTed, but you can give your lifebloom button a bit of a breather in favor of rejuv and wild growth, with nourishes to quickly boost someone who the Pain and Suffering debuff is stacking high on, or tanks.

Innervate again if you need it: the next phase will be intensive.

---

Phase 3:
"Ghost-bombs! FLEE!"

The group can just step onto the platform and work immediately on killing the leftover transition spirits. In the meantime, we had the MT and healers work their way towards the center platform to pre-position themselves; this worked because we had such mobile healers. This first bit doesn't last long: just get HoTs rolling on anyone who needs it, as the whole raid will shortly be Soul-Harvested. Also, make sure no one stands in front of the adds' silence-cones.

With the whole raid getting sucked into sword-land, group up immediately in the center, then follow a pre-determined "leader" (likely a tank or melee appropriately marked) around the room. Heal everyone. Rejuv-blanket, wild growth on cooldown, swiftmend as emergency. Use every GCD. This is going to be hard when you've also got to be following someone through the shifting maze of falling bombs. I really suggest having that leader be vocal in vent about movements, ie "going a bit towards the center" or "moving a bit further, watch the bombs behind us" or "hold up here, don't go too far," being the vocal shepherd while you're distracted by keeping everyone alive.

A few notes:

• The sword-phase is the best time for a bear tank to provide an innervate to healers.
• Anyone who takes an ankh, battle res, or soulstone after the group is sucked into the sword will have that time peacefully unmolested on the platform, where they can heal themselves, rebuff, and poke the Lich King. I don't suggest having people suicide needlessly for this... but it is a good use of people who get pancaked by spirit explosions.
  
• About 5 seconds before the sword phase ends, get HoTs restacked on the MT.
  

Defile will be cast immediately after you exit out, so begin spreading to the sides as soon as you zone back onto the platform. Focus on keeping the MT alive, and yell at the tanks if they split too far from each other; monitor the soul reaper timers closely. The OT should periodically be taunting to ensure she maintains secondary threat on the Lich King in case the MT dies. Stay generally out of the center of the platform, and run circuits of the outer edge. Slowing traps will go in the center, and the tank will run through the middle from time to time to set them off.

We kept non-tanks out of the center line of the room (north to south) aside from dropping traps, because they used this line to kite the Lich King back and forth each add spawn. We aimed to keep it free of defiles, and the soaker (be it the OT or a dispersioned shadow priest) would hop in to absorb a chunk of explosions; all other players needed to steer clear of it. If you, as a healer, get out of range of one of the tanks, let your other healer and the tanks know over vent so that they can cover appropriately while you get back in range.

You can take one ghost hit at a time (two if you have a priest bubble plus barkskin). Use your barkskin to help shield against impact. Spread out a bit from the rest of the group, and constantly be on the move so that you can pop rejuvs around the raid while keeping the MT standing. Don't stand right next to the tank in case a defile drops. A range mod set to 10 can help you with keeping clear of others who are taking an explosion near you.

Once the leftover transition adds are down, the raid will focus on dpsing the Lich King and killing the flying spirits. Just focus on staying alive and keeping the whole raid up, especially the MT around the Soul Reapers. Have your raid make use of all available CC and survival mechanisms to handle the spirits: moonkin typhoons, dispersion, frost traps, etc.


...good luck :)





Nazantia: "So that was Kae's fault?"

12.4%...

Heroic LK!



ARGH! So close, I can taste it!