Ascoli

Good news everybody, all our work will not be for nothing: "We plan on tweaking those loot tables a little for 4.1; Al'Akir will drop some random necks and cloaks as well as helm or shoulder tokens in addition or in some cases instead of his current loot."

Did you look into pvp bear specs? I did a little bit of research on prot pally pvp, I could give it a shot though I can't really change my spec (prot pvp spec is very close to the "standard" pve raiding spec). I'd have to reforge my pvp gear in favor of crit instead of mastery (not really a big deal since crit is fairly close to mastery for ret as well), as well as get the str/crit/resil shield (one week of arenas) and str/crit/resil one hander (another 2 weeks of arenas). With 4.1 we're also getting a nerf to self healing, but that applies to ret as well. Edit: also would need to reglyph every time, but that's no big deal.

He probably tried to post in "CS Battlegroup Briefing" which appears to be locked down (I can't post there either).

Uhm, so yeah, if you're going to farm for herbs, try to skip azshara's veil, whiptail, cinderbloom, stormvine, cinderbloom and cinderbloom. I might have bought a little too much...

For those who don't want to read the math at the end, here's basically what I say: dps need to up their game (by staying alive would be a good start), with our current setup, we need an average of 12.5k dps (without the damage increase debuff) for the ppl that are on the boss. Pallies, use your bubble at 6-8 stacks of acid rain to cut the damage taken from acid rain in half. I also watched a bunch of vids, most groups seem to get through the phase in times ranging from 2:40 to 3:10 mins. They also have the tank holding the stormlings. I'm really not sure what would be best. We might as well give a shot to having me try and solo the adds but I'm not sure how long I could keep up with the killing on time and the dps still need to be on their game. With Holy tanking the adds we might get more overall dps on the boss but we need to control the way we down the adds, can't just aoe them down, needs to focus and time the kills properly. Another option is to try and go down to 2 healers, but I'm not sure what sort of damage to expect in p3... Here's some math for Al'akir: He's got 30.5 million health, p2 starts at 80% and p3 starts at 25%, so we need to do 16.775 million damage to get out of p2. Looking at the logs of our better attempts, it seems that our breaking point is 12-14 stacks of acid rain. So ideally we will want to be in p3 by the time we hit 12 stacks. Acid rain increases every 15 seconds so that gives us 3 minutes in p2. Stormlings come out every 20 seconds which gives us the 9th by the time we get 12 stacks. If we start killing adds at the 3rd spawn, that means we have a min without a buff and say we kill them every every 15 seconds we should by up to 8 stacks by the 3 min mark. If I'm the only one killing the adds then I will be doing next to no dps on the boss (still not sure I can pull it off, they have 300k and I have 15 seconds to kill them, I don't do 20k dps). So that leaves 5 dps and Holy (who does something like 75% of the damage an average dps should be doing). Let's say A is the normal dps of someone, then the damage done over the 3 mins will be (60+15*1.1+...+15*1.8)*A = 234*A. So we need 5.75*234*A = 16775. This means we need our 5 dps doing an average of about 12.5k dps (without the buff), which manage to pull off in most of the other fights. If we just decided to instantly kill the stormlings and the 10% buff had say, 70% uptime, we could probably manage to pull it off in the 3 mins if every dps did 13k dps... Not much more than the "properly executed" method. Some acid rain numbers: ticks every second for 500 increasing by 500 every 15 seconds, we resist around 20% of the damage. So that leaves 468k damage to everyone over the 3 mins. 252k for pallies if they bubble at 6 stacks.

If you thought Al'akir had a lot going on, take a look at Cho'gall: tankspot guide

It was a bit rough but we got through Blackwing Descent. Thanks to everyone for calling things out and putting up with my lack of communication on fights. Hopefully Kailand will be back on Thursday to lead us in our fail. I'm guessing we will spend at least part of the evening in The Bastion of Twilight so take a look at the vids I posted above.

I found this link for Halfus on wowpedia, it shows which dragons are up for the week as well as their abilities: halfus.info I'm skipping the Valiona and Theralion vids since I think we got it down, just need a few more attempts. Here are some vids for the following fight (Ascendant Council): tankspot guide

Since we breezed through the "farm" content and got an hour of wiping on Al'akir on Tuesday what about taking a look at Bastion of Twilight for part of the evening on Thursday (even if we don't down Al'akir)? If we start off on Al'akir and it looks like we're making significant progress then I have no problem with staying on him, but I have no interest in spending the evening wiping for 3 hours because people are dying in P1. In any case, doesn't hurt to take a look at vids of Halfus since I assume that's where we'll be heading next once Al'akir is dead? Halfus Wyrmbreaker video

Just thought I'd post a since it explains the fight fairly well and includes the tanking strategy we have opted to use.For those who don't want to watch the vid: MT is tanking all the time OT taunts every double attack MT immediately taunts back when the double attack is done The way I see this: Chimaeron hits like a truck (let's assume ~140k unmitigated), but he hits pretty slowly (attack speed is 4s plus an extra 0.8s from the 20% attack speed reduction of Judgements of the Just). The OT needs to be topped off so after the first of the double attacks he still has more than 10k health. Everyone else (including the MT) in the raid just needs to be above 10k health (everyone should have > 100k health, so ~10% seems like a good number to aim for). We also need to make sure everyone is spread out (at least 6 yds) to avoid having caustic slime hit more than one person (the tanks can stay together since they don't get targeted by the slime). And well, there's the rest of the fight, stack (close enough that melee can hit, but far enough that hunters can also hit) when bile-o-tron is offline, last phase, etc. If we do exactly this we should (hopefully) have no issues with low mana for healers or unexpected tank deaths.

I hear this week's combo for Halfus is the easiest. I know we're still working on BWD but it might be worth taking a look to see if it's something we could do quickly... Edit: Nvm, apparently there are 8 trash pulls before the boss. Probably not worth the time.

Found this vid with a decent strat for 10-man Magmaw: In this vid they have a single person at range which means only one person has to worry about the pillars and we don't lose healing/dps from travel time. Single tank also seems like a valid strat. On Tuesday I was pretty much sitting there for a long time not doing anything until Holy got eaten at which point I taunted (doesn't really do anything since he's not hitting anyone until released from the spike). While the tank gets a 50% armor reduction debuff it's only something like 20% more damage from melee hits. Assuming Holy can survive being eaten and spit out I don't think Kadi (or whoever was healing Holy) would have any problems keeping him up with the debuff. I know Holy also tweaked his spec a bit (for self healing) which should help alleviate the required heals.

*looks at the achievement list and signs up*

Me.

This raid is over, thanks to everyone that showed up during the past weeks.

They use vent and I'm not sure what they need, right now mostly people so we don't have to pug half the group.

I've been running ICC 25 with Knight Horde Avengers and another guild pre 4.0 (for Shadowmourne shards) and since the 2nd guild is working on their 10-man we're looking for more people so it's less puggy. If you're interested, it's on Saturdays, invites starting around 8:15, goes on until around 11:30. If you let me know in advance I can add you to the calendar event. You're welcome to bring any toon which isn't too badly geared... Right now it's a bit slow (lots of dead time in between fights... no impatient tanks?) but hopefully things will go smoother in the future. On a good night we usually clear the lower citadel and at least the first two bosses of plague.

Kailand's at a conference so he's going to be missing. It's up to you what spec you want to be, we all outgear ToGC so it shouldn't really matter. I'm not too worried about tonight, let's just go in and try to finish the place in a reasonable amount of time. I realize people are still in the process of relearning their classes and this is a great opportunity to do it in a raiding environment.

Still looking for people for this... I won't push for insanity unless things go really smoothly and people still want to try. I'll be quite happy with "A Tribute to Mad Skill" (or even "A Tribute to Skill"). So most likely no more than a week or two.

I'm thinking Thursdays at 8... starting once we're done with Ulduar of course.

There is no fancy title attached for this achievement (soon to be feat of strength). However, a lucky raider will be awarded a Swift Horde Wolf assuming we manage to complete this. Anyone interested?

Had some last minute drop outs, could use another healer for this Thursday's Champion of Ulduar run. Let me know if you can help out!

All you can eat (last achievement)... Been reading up on this achievement. A lot of groups have been zerging this... 1 healer, 1 tank, go crazy and ignore ice blocks. I don't know if we can manage the dps, but it might be worth a shot.

Well done everyone. This is it for the Undying runs, onto Ulduar!

Well, it does say "as a raid instance"...