This week has been an adventure.  I have taken myself all over Azeroth and found myself fighting so many enemies that I became increasingly angry.  Finally I couldn’t take it anymore and the anger within manifested itself and I became a hulking manifestation of death.

Pop Quiz:  Where am I in this screenshot?

What do you win if you are correct?  I do not know, but probably something really cheap like …

Today marks the advent of the 3.1 major content patch going live on the Public Test Realms for the first time.  With this patch we see massive changes to most classes and specs to improve or nerf their viability as tanks, healers and dps.  While there are bigger changes to many other classes, the big changes for Warriors have thus far only been given to us by new glyphs.

Glyph of Heroic Strike – Increases the critical strike chance of Heroic Strike by 5%.
The soul change to our glyph repetoire.  This glyph used to be a bread and butter for the 10 rage it gave when Heroic Strike critically hit.  We now have something that will not only help Fury and Arms warriors, but it represents a signficant increase in threat production.

Glyph of Barbaric Insults  — Your Mocking Blow ability generates 100% additional threat.
This used to change Mocking Blow into another taunt ability.  Why they are changing a less than stellar glyph from a semi useful glyph into one that makes it so much less useful I do not rightly know.

Glyph of Shockwave — Reduces the cooldown on Shockwave by 3 sec.
The impact of this new treat is yet to really been number crunched.  Yet, I would not be going out on a short limb if I said this is really just not worth it.  Changing Shockwave from 20 seconds to 17 second cooldown should not signficantly impact a tps rotation that is dominated by two six second cooldowns.

Glyph of Vigilance — Your Vigilance ability transfers an additional 5% of your target’s threat to you.
This is a complete waste of a glyph.  Well correction, with current threat parameters we really have little use for changing Vigiliance from a 10% to a 15% reduction in a single person’s threat.  This glyph may find a use if the threat ceiling falls signifcantly with Ulduar’s opening.

Glyph of Enraged Regeneration — Your Enraged Regeneration ability heals for an additional 10% of your health over its duration.
A purely PvP orientated glyph if I ever saw one.  There is really no real use for this glyph in a tank’s glyph set.  There are much better choices of glyphs out there.

Glyph of Spell Reflection  — Reduces the cooldown on Spell Reflection by 1 sec.
This glyph is just plain too much of a drop in the ocean to be worth anything.  Reducing a lot of cooldowns by 1 second may be worth more.  However, reducing this with a glyph slot is far from worth the cost of any other glyph.

Glyph of Shield Wall — Reduces the cooldown on Shield Wall by 3 min, but Shield Wall now only reduces damage taken by 40%.
The be all end all of the new glyphs.  Combined with Improved Disciplines we now have a signficantly less powerful damage reduction tool on a cooldown equal to that of a Death Knight’s Icebound Fortitude. 

—————

The Impact:

With the addition of Glyph of Shield Wall we now have the option to have an extremely short cooldown ability with strong mitigation benefits.  Why should we be concerned over this?

Simply put, we all got together and whined and complained about Warriors getting the rear end of the stick when it came to Effective Health and overall burst mitigation.  What we got was a forced clone of a Death Knight ability.  It may look really nice, and it may actually prove to be a boon to Protection Warriors, but we need to think about what this really means to us.  This glyph becomes as mandatory to protection warriors as Meditation is to priests of any spec.

This is a glyph that we will be balanced around.  Do we really want to be balanced around having a specific glyph?  Are other classes being balanced around them?  To some extent, but it is still an option for an Elemental Shaman to pick up Lightning Bolt or Flametongue Weapon.

This fundamentally changes our skill toolbox.  While the new version of Shield Wall will be of great use, we are sacrificing our “Oh #$#!” button for something that will be a basic part of our survivalbility.  Ask yourself, how much do you think the average Death Knight tank uses Icebound Fortitude?  That’s right, the answer is pretty much every cooldown.  Can they survive without it? Yes, but they also have multiple other cooldowns to work with.  If we become balanced around using this every cooldown, where will Warriors be?

It is finally done…

The recent changes to some of the achievements required to accomplish for this Meta achievement both helped and hurt our eventual obtaining of the Drake.

The biggest three changes of course have to be with Gotta Go!, Watch Him Die, and Ruby Void.

Gotta Go! -

The change from 2 minutes to 4 minutes was a huge one. Most people couldnt get much under 3 minutes before the change (myself included). This has gone from the single most difficult achievement to obtain to one a lot of groups just happen to get while completing the dungeon.

Watch Him Die -

This is now the second most difficult of the Heroic Achievements. Where it was once possible to use pathing to gain an advantage by having your healer stand on the ledge. Blizzard has seen fit to place an invisible wall preventing use of the ledge and other areas in the battlefield to your advantage.

So now you are left with 3 distinct strategies. The “Kite Strategy”, the “Kill Adds Strategy” and the “Pure Zerg Strategy”.

The “Kite Strategy” is where we found our success. By having myself pull the watchers and adds, intervene and run to the zoneline while using cooldowns, and a speed potion we were able to heroism and down the boss with 1 person alive. Not the prettiest of kills, but it got the job done.

Ruby Void -

Once one of the easiest achievements in Oculus, now is probably one of the single most difficult achievements in the meta. Where you were once able to use 5 greens and dot and kite, you are no longer able to do this.

The 5 Amber strategy is the only feasible strategy to use on this encounter now. You can not rely on “overgearing” the instance like you can for others. You can only rely on the compentancy and coordination of your group. (As well as their willingness to work on it til you got it done.) This task took our group hours to get down correctly. We had multiple close calls, but in the end it was only with a little luck of the RNG on when he spawned adds did we get the win.

Take a look at this video.  Done by a fellow tank, the video guide is invaluable in making the 5 tank system work. We however inverted the channel cycle to make our kill happen.

Now That I Am Back… Stay Tuned For A More In Depth Guide To Each Heroic Achievement.

When Blizzard recently announced their new paid character recustomization, I honestly did not think twice about it.  Then… I realized something.  Human men are ugly.  Just plain ugly.  If you aren’t a “beardo”, you look like you were slapped in the back when you had bitter bear face.

I have always played female characters.  In Final Fantasy XI my main character was a Mithra.  Yeah in that game you are forced into a female role.  Well, my theory has always been, you play how you want to play.  Personally, I believe being able to look at your avatar and not cringe at its ugliness, or being willing to wear such ugly helmets such as the Battleworn Tuskguard because the alternative looks worse, are both signs that things need to change.

So yes, I “recustomized”.  My warrior is now a girl.  Human females got the shaft in the new hairstyles added in the barber shop.  Yet, I like my new cut.  As our only “real” female warrior called it, “Its the Soccer Milf Mom look, its so cute!”

Changing Things Up

The process is fairly straight forward.

1. Log out of the game.
2. Log into your account page and select and choose to recustomize.
3. Select which character you wish to recustomize.
4. Wait approximately between 5-60minutes.
5. Login to your account and recustomize your selected character.

There are a few things to remember when you decide to recustomize. 

1. While you can change your name, you do not have to.
2. The hair and jewelry customizations are limited to the original “Vanilla” options.  The new Barber shop options are unavailable.
3. You can not charge your “gametime” credit card automatically.  You are forced to input a payment method.

All in all, the recustomization options are extremely limited.  Basically these options are a small extension of the already available Paid Name Change option that has been around for some time now.  You are now given the option to “regender” your character and rename them at the same time.  While the 15 dollar fee is pretty minimal to revitalize your WoW experience, the actual bang for your buck will vary.

The biggest concern I have is that Blizzard will start to offer payment only character modifications that will become mandatory.  I really hope this slippery slope doesn’t occur.

What do you think?  Is recustomization a good thing?  What are your concerns?

For the Alliance!

Our guild’s raid week has been continually condensing itself down into fewer days.  The last 2 weeks we have had 3 day weeks instead of four.  Last night we came to a crossroads as to condense ourselves into a mere 2 days for all 25 man raid content, or do something fun.

We chose the fun.

Racing against a Trade Channel PuG, we circumnavigated Azeroth leaving death in our wake.  We laid siege to each of the 4 Horde leaders like they were nothing.

Lor’themar Theron -

Defacto leader of the blood elves now that Kael’thas has shown his true colors.  Lor’themar is the weakest of the 4 Horde leadership.  While he is the only leader to have more than 1 guardian, both Halduron Brightwing and Grand Magistar Rommath are rather weak.  Rommath is a lame Magistar and hardly (if ever) casts anything.

Lor’themar and his guardians are the easiest of the four.  His court and city guards are actually 5 levels lower than those of the other cities, being only 75.  Ride right up to the door, training any and all guards you get, and AOE the cityguards down.  They have ~12-15k health total and are easily dispatched.

Lady Sylvanas -

The newly reminted and sexy as hell Sylvanas is still a pushover.  Her room however is full of a few more guardians and Battleground NPCs so they make her a little more difficult as the Battleground Master NPC’s are a heck of lot more hearty than the level 80 city guards that will arrive to protect her.  Unlike Lor’themar and Thrall, she has no secondary boss near her to deal with.

Tip to anyone that attempts her.  She vanishes, give her a raid mark.  She dissapears and drops threat at an extreme rate at times.  Having a mark on her will allow you to find her a lot easier and get the encounter done and get back out of Undercity.

Thrall -

Logistically the most difficult task of the four.  Where in Silvermoon City and Undercity, you probably did not have many players add, Thrall almost always will have players trying to thwart your advance.  This is made worse with Winterveil being an Orgrimmar centered event.  You WILL get horde.  Use whatever methodology you see fit to stop them.  Typhoon and Blastwave spam at the door will do you well to a point, but having specific group set aside to kill people works as well.

Or you could do what we did, and had all of our mages just spam aoe and offtanks solo the healers.  (Holy Priest vs Prot Warrior = dead holy priest.)

The biggest issue with Thrall is not Thrall himself.  It is not even the PvP element of the encounter.  It is Vol’jin.  Unlike the guardians of Lor’themar, Vol’jin is a serious threat to your raid.  He will cast an AoE Hex periodically.  So if you value your raid, not only have offtanks standing by.  But have a druid tank.  Multiple tanks using PvP trinkets or Every Man also will work well here.

Thrall himself is a push over.  He does not have near the power he does inside the Mount Hyjal raid.  He will periodcally cast Chain Lightning.  This has an extremely long cast time and really is no threat to your raid regardless.

Cairne Bloodhoof -

Cairne can knock you off Thunder Bluff.

That is basically the fight.  Cairne is located near a building, tank him inside it.  Put your back to a wall.  He is the hardest hitting of the 4 bosses.  If you can deal with the bursty damage on your tank and handle the periodic threat drops, you will survive to throw some steak on the BBQ.

Again, he is also easy to isolate from incoming players because of the size of his door and the ease at which a pair of mages or moonkin can knock people back from it.

Closing Notes -

Some interesting things to note about doing these.

1) It is possible to get phased into the Siege of Undercity questline when entering the city via the sewers.  This is a real inconvenience.  However, you will get credit for killing Sylvanas even if you are phased.

2) The quickest route from Undercity to Orgrimmar is to hop on the Blimp.  However, the guards will attack.  Also note that Orgrimmar Blimp tower guards both use nets and have a ranged attack that knocks you down.  This includes knocking you off your mount.  Using vehicles here such as Grand Mammoths and Choppers is a great use here.

Doing this was about the most fun I have had in a while.  Beating out the PuG group that was trying made it a little bit more fun, I must admit.  Waving at them gathering at the sewers as we left made me smile a little deep inside.  I know am I bad or what?

With the beginning of the Arena and PvP seasons today, I thought I would discuss a little about Resilience and the Defense Cap.

What We Know:

The defense cap for level 83 raid bosses is 540 Defense Skill or 5.6% critical hit reduction.  This is not so easily obtained these days.  With the removal of warrior and paladin talents for pure defense talents this becomes quite a bit more difficult than it was in The Burning Crusade.  There have been countless articles on TankSpot.com, TankingTips.com and various tank blogs that give you step by step instructions and gear guides on hitting the cap.  But what if you simply can not afford those epic Titansteel pieces?  What if drops just are not going your way?  Well the solution is here.

Resilience:

Arena gear is now upon us.  To be sure, it is no where ideal for PvP.  They have made great strides in making the gear to be less attractive than it was in TBC.  However, resilience can cover up some early wholes in your gear quite adequately.

Lesser Flask of Toughness:
The easiest of all the resilience methods to become crit immune.  At 80 this flask gives you .6% worth of crit immunity.  Roughly equal to 15 Defense Skill.

Enchants:
There are 3 Resilience enchants currently available.  Two of which are from TBC and are for such small amounts that using them over a defense enchant would actually be worse.  The Enchant Chest – Exceptional Resilience is the best you can do currently in Wrath and it is only for 20.  A significant amount over the 15 from the TBC enchant, but both have an extremely steep price.  Giving .24% crit reduction it is more than the .18% reduction the 22 defense rating to chest enchant gives however.  Yet at this point, its a wash and the Defense enchant is much cheaper.

Kharmaa’s Grace:
Another 20 Resilience rating option.  It is not cheap though, and it doesn not cost money.  For 20 Stone Keeper’s Shards, or about the price of a single heroic run’s worth of shards you willg et .24% crit reduction via  a gem.  The +16 defense gems on the other hand will give you much less.  You will lose the avoidance given by the defense however.

Conclusions & Theories:

The Lesser Flask of Toughness gives us a different way to look at early gemming and gearing.  We all need to be uncrittable.  However, it may flat out be better for our early progression to be gemming for stamina and using this flask instead of being forced into gemming for Defense.  If you are a good raid tank, you are more than likely going to be using a Flask of Stoneblood to gain your 650 health.   Early on you want as much Effective Health as you can get.  Now how you get this health is the key.  If you do this with a flask, you are gainign 650 health.  However, if you decide to use 3 +24 stamina gems instead of those 3 +defense gems you are using, you will gain much more while raid buffed.

Sure you are losing a small chunk of avoidance, but while you are getting your feet wet, this is a better option for your raid as a whole.  As you gain more and more defense from gear, you will be better off, and so will the raid.  Yet ensuring you are uncrittable with as much health you can get is the key to early survivability in say the Spider Wing of Naxxramas, than that extra 1% avoidance.

With the Paladin reaching level 80 on Sunday I had the opportunity to really sit down and think about what order I was going to be purchasing my badge gear.   Let me first say that I know there are a few lists going around the web.  I now have two tanks at 80.  One of which was geared to the nines with Sunwell level gear, the other starting out in more lackluster gear.  This list is geared towards the latter. 

I offer you my own personal beliefs on what order you should be picking up your “Badge Gear”.

First off, what can a plate tank get from badges?

Off Set Pieces:

• 25 – Chained Military Gorget
• 35 – Crygil’s Discarded Plate Panel
• 40 – Waistguard of Living Iron
• 40 – Valor Medal of the First War

Warrior Tier 7

• 60 – Heroes’ Dreadnaught Handguards
• 80 - Heroes’ Dreadnaught Breastplate

Paladin Tier 7

• 60 – Heroes’ Redemption Handguards
• 80 – Heroes’ Redemption Breastplate

The Order:

The order here really depends on how lucky you have gotten inside instances.  There are quite a number of really nice blue drops that are actually fairly comparable.  There are also some very good, if not plain better Epic drops inside the heroic instances.

1: Heroes’ Dreadnaught Breastplate/Heroes’ Redemption Breastplate -
Taking for granted that you will be upgrading from the Breastplate of the Solemn Council, this is the biggest pound of pound upgrade you can get.  Granted, the upgrade is much much less for a Paladin than a warrior, it is still where you should be heading.  While there is a single Epic tanking chest piece in 10 man Naxxramas, it is itemized for Death Knight tanks over a Paladin or a Warrior.

Paladin Note:  Unfortunately, early on in the gear cycle you may not be able to stay defense capped with the loss of the 38 Defense ungemmed or 14 Defense loss when filling the socket bonus with Defense gems.  If this is the case, I would suggest pushing this down the list a slot and pick up #2 or #3 first.

2: Heroes’ Dreadnaught Handguards/Heroes’ Redemption Handguards -
Both sets of Tier 7 gloves are near identical.  The only real difference in them is their sockets and bonuses.  While there are 2 sets of epic tanking gloves via Reputation and Heroic boss drops, they simply do not stack up to the Tier versions.  If you happen to pick up the Horn-Tipped Gauntlets, you can choose to push these down the list.  However, you are getting such a large upgrade over these, that it is suggested you pick the tier up ASAP.  You can get lucky enough to pick these up out of the Obsidian Sanctum, but that may take longer than you are willing to wait.  However, they are definately the second best piece here.

Paladin Note:  Even if you have picked up the heroic drop, the expertise on that set of gloves is extremely less useful to us as a Paladin.  Both Hammer of the Righteous and Shield of the Righteous are both rolled as a ranged attack and can not be dodged or parried.  The +hit on the Tier 7 gloves is very important to us as it gives spell and melee/ranged hit.

3: Chained Military Gorget -
There are quite a decent selection of blue instance drops that are almost comparable to the badge neck piece.  The neck piece may be the cheapest of the items, but if you happen to have picked up the Shadowseeker’s Pendant from Ahn’kahet, it may not be the biggest upgrade for you.  The upgrade is still significant.  Do not overlook the +hit on this item.  Threat may be somewhat an after thought on a great number of early raid encounters, DPS is not.

4: Waistguard of Living Iron -
To be honest, there really is not a real reason to use badges on this early.  Ancient Aligned Girdle from Heroic Azjol-Nerub is arguably as good or a better piece.  The advantage you get with the Living Iron is the socket and the slightly spread out diminishing returns on the avoidance numbers.  The biggest plus to this piece is its socket.  While it is yellow, it gives a great deal of flexibility in socketting.  If you are in need of a little more defense to be capped, then gem it yellow.  If not, go ahead and drop a stamina gem in there for more Effective Health.  If you picked up the AAG, there is no real reason to upgrade unless you need said flexibility.

5: Valor Medal of the First War -
Moroes part deux.  What else can be said about the Valor Medal?  Ninety percent of tanks are going to be forced into using Seal of the Pantheon or one of the TBC defense trinkets in order to be defense capped.  Those same tanks are going to be either using their second trinket slot for Stamina.  Simply put, there really is not much of a permanent place for this in your equipment list until you get some upgrades out of Naxxramas.  We are at a point in progression that no matter how you shake it, Effective Health is greater than Avoidance.  Pick this up last.  You WILL want it, but there is no real reason to pick it up before any other piece.

6: Crygil’s Discarded Plate Panel -
Why?  Simply put why?  While this is flat out the best of the “easy” to get pre-raid shields, it just is not that much better than the The Royal Crest of Lordaeron or the Titansteel Shield Wall to warrant purchasing this.  If you can not get the Lordaeron to drop for you and can not afford the TSW, then this is always an option.  This will be your biggest upgrade over a blue you have after your chest piece, but there are simply two nearly as good pieces readily available.

Titansteel Note:  There are much better uses for your Titansteel purchases/cooldowns than the TSW.  The Tempered Titansteel Treads are by and by the best choice for your limited gold/transmutes.  The TSW is great, but the sheer amount of Defense Rating on the epic BS boots will be better put to use in a slot where you can not as easily obtain an epic upgrade.  If its the choice between using Badges for the Crygil and using Titansteel for a single piece, use badges and pick up the TTT with you Titansteel.

Conclusions:

All in all, the gear is only a small selection of the Pre-Raid epic gear that can be had.  Venturing into heroics can gain you bracers, weapon, a ring and pants as well.  These pieces are often times as good or better than some of the 10 man gear from Naxxramas or Obsidian Sanctum.  The paladin choices are now pretty much spot on with the warrior choices.  We are a far cry from the days of old.

Editorial:

In early The Burning Crusade, we had a badge gear system designed to do one thing.  Fill in itemization gaps.  Early badge gear was mostly Resist gear, novelty trinkets and Libram/Relics.  These were all meant to fill in gaps and give certain classes (ie Paladins) a heads up on gear requirements to begin what was a much steaper raid curve than we have today.  With 2.3 and Zul’Aman, Blizzard furthered this paradigm.  We received yet more badge equipment that was designed specifically to help certain classes succeed as well as gearing for different situations.  The huge amount of shield block value on the plate tanking gear was a sign of this.

In 2.4 and the opening of the Sunwell, we saw a slight paradigm shift.  Where once we had gear meant to fill in gaps of itemization, we had gear focused on getting some undergeared guilds the opportunity to push further into content.  Wrath and 3.03 has come and we are seeing a continuation of this paradigm.  It is all about giving as easy access to the starter raid content as possible.

Is this a good thing?  Yes and no.

Making it easier to access raid content is a great strategy.  Giving us same ilevel and actual Tier gear via badges, is not.  I would really prefer seeing another paradigm shift come 3.1 and Ulduar.  Where we see itemization filler gear of a middle ilvl between tiers.  Help people get into the content, but allow them to see actual upgrades inside the content.  Oh and please, remove the Tier for badges and give us back the 3 drop per boss system.  People want a sense of feeling special and accomplished.  The current badge system eliminates a good deal of that.

We have been working hard at moving forward in progress as a guild since we resumed 25 man raiding.  We have no hit the penultimate achievement that Wrath has to give us.  Malygos is dead.

We lost 2 people during the fight early, yet both were resurrected.  We managed to keep everyone alive and after 3 hours of attempts get her down.  While we are definitely not the first, we have finally achieved a feeling of accomplishment in Wrath raiding.

Phase 1: The Dragon

Malygos himself is a rough fight as a tank.  The fight is about movement for us.  We are not only trying to keep our survivability as high as possible, but we need to be keenly aware of the entire battlefield.

The basics of this phase are simple.  Make sure two things do not happen. 

1) Only the tank gets breathed on.
  This is quite a simple task if you can continually coordinate the direction in which the raid runs after Vortex.  Be firm, and do NOT have a default direction.  Our group either goes North or South, with the tank going slightly to the East or West opposite the direction of the last spark called.

2) All Sparks are dropped for the DPS.
 It is essential that your DPS get every Spark buff they can get.  Having multiple Death Knight’s makes this easier, but it is the tank’s job to make sure the dragon is positioned where the DPS have the best chance to kill it on top of themselves.

If you can managed these two tasks, you will get out of Phase 1.  (Well if your DPS is high enough and your healers can manage the extremely high healing load.)

Tips for Tanking: 
Take a gander at the Project Marmot video of the 10 man encounter.  The 10 man and the 25 man encounters are not extremely different.  As a tank, the biggest difference is the frequency of Breaths.  In the 25 man fight, you can expect an IMMEDIATE breath upon landing from Vortex.  This does not happen in the 10 man.

Tank Malygos as far away from the center as possible.  The outer blue ring is the best area to do this.  There is a real downside of this as you will need to produce a good deal more threat as you would if you were closer to the center.  Malygos has no Cleave or Tail Whip and a HUGE hit box.  Yet rogue “Tricks of the Trade” range is quite small.  Making them unable to give you and control their own threat.

Taunt Malygos as you hit the ground after a Vortex.  Most of your DPS will be able to dps during Vortex.  However, it is rare that you can do anything.

Vortex is the ideal time to reestablish debuffs on Malygos.  Thunderclap and Demo Shout will both hit him no matter how far away you actually are in the cloud.

Phase 2: The Disc Riders

There are only 2 of these in the 10 man version, easily handled by a single tank.  However in the 25 man, bringing an Off tank is a near necessity.  This is the stage of the fight people will die.  Make sure you have a main assist and that ALL dps are getting the Nexus Lords down ASAP.

Tips for Tanking:
Make sure you Taunt/Heroic Throw/Avengers Shield/etc.  as the Nexus Lord’s are coming down.  They descend in a circle and will only come to you when they hit ground level, but its possible and required to have your ranged DPS them as soon as they can.  Thus, you need to produce threat on them as soon as you can.

As seen in the PM video, Improved Shield Reflect is a boon for this encounter.  While it does not actually do much damage, it does help quite a bit throughout Phase 2.  Elliminating some healing load on the healers and dealing a decent amount of damage through reflections makes a difference.

There will be a good deal of AOE damage and chaos going on early on in the phase.  Make absolutely sure you are holding onto all of the adds between you and your offtank.  Even 1 death, can mean the difference between a kill and an enrage.

Be Patient…  Do not get on a disc unless you are the very last melee.  I know it is all about fun and what could be more fun than riding around on a Tron Disc?  Still, do not prolong the encounter by thinking the Scions need tanking, they don’t.  You are better off on the ground and that Rogue, Shaman, or Retadin is better uptop.

Phase 3: 112112115

For us, this was all about coordination and movement.  There are a lot of different ideas about this phase.  The “Every Man For Himself” methodology works for some guilds.  This was not our idea of fun.  There is the 5 group method, this too wasn’t for us.  We did the “Big Red Blob” method.  Sticking together, 3-4 people healing and everyone else stacking DoT’s as high as we can while keeping enough energy to shield.

Tips for Tanking:
There is no tanking.  Make sure you stay alive.  Make sure you are stacking your DoT’s as high as possible.  Strafe to Move.  Stack Combo points while strafing.  Do NOT stop dpsing unless you need to shield.

Learn to Walk and Chew Gum at the same time.

Phase 4: The Loot

The biggest thing I can say about the end of the encounter is WOW.  This fight is pretty nicely done.  Its definitely a challenge, and it produces a sense of accomplishment to any who defeat it for the first time.

Best tip for the end is, listen to Alexstraza and do not think that you should hit the “Leave Vehicle” button.  Use the portal.  Leave Vehicle = death.

After last week’s 10 man clear of Naxxramas, we decided to start up 25 man raiding.  We were a little rusty.  We had some … ummm… how do I put this?  Attention issues versus Thaddius at the end of our raid time.  So we came back tonight and finished off the instance with about 30 minutes to spare. 

 In 7 total raid hours, alot of “I got a phone call”, “brb, bathroom” and “I gotta change a diaper” downtime and we got the instance fully cleared.  Not a land speed record by any means.  Yet, we are happy.  Next stop Sartharion for our second crack at him in his 25 man version.  This time with drakes up.  Then on to Malygos for the real test.

A shell of its former self:

Naxxramas is just plain not what it used to be.  Ok, let me preface this with admitting that I was not playing the game long enough before TBC came out to have experienced 40 man raiding of Naxx.  The farthest I really got to see preTBC was the entry to BWL.  I did however, have the pleasure of taking Mihli into Naxx post TBC for several weeks between the levels of 58-63.  She managed to walk out of there with the best named weapon in the game “Claymore of Unholy Might“

Now that I have gotten that off my chest, I can honestly say that Naxxramas 10 and 25 are both shells of their former selves.  These are true entry level raids.  So much so that several wings have been cleared by complete PUGs.  I would not be surprised if a PUG has not cleared the entirety of both the 10 and 25 man versions somewhere in the world.  The instances are that easy in the early going.

The most difficult fight in Naxx is now Four Horsemen.  Not because they hit hard, or because you need 8 tanks, or the strategy is difficult to grasp.  It is challenging because of the logistics and communication involved in defeating the encounter.  People talking can be a tricky thing to pull of sometimes.

Spider Wing-

Anub’Rekhan used to be difficult.  Now you can fairly easily keep the tank up through locust swarm without any kiting.  Grand Widow, is actually more of a logistic challenge in the 10 man version than the 25.  A theme that is repeated throughout the instance, including the pinata that Maexxna has become.

Plague Wing-

Noth used to be harder.  At least in the 25 man he blinks around and drops aggro like his old self.  Its too bad this mechanic is subpar in the days of all tanks having 20 yard taunts.  “Oh my god he blinked… taunt.  Problem solved!”   Heigan is only a challenge to the movement impaired.  Hell his pre-gauntlet is no longer a gauntlet and his aggro radius is so small you can almost walk right up to him and poke him with a stick before he aggros.  A far cry from what once was.  Loatheb … have I used the word Pinata already?  (To be fair, Loatheb can be tricky on the 10 man if you do not have a priest.  Between PoH and CoH they can almost solo heal the raid.  The other healers just have more difficulty with the fight mechanics.)

Construct Wing-

Patchwerk is the first boss that is actually difficult in the 25 man.  I would not call him a real challenge in the 10 man if you have 2 geared tanks and healers with an ounce of skill you will win.  The 25 man version hits so hard that after tanking him you walk funny for an hour.  Grobbulus is all about not being dumb with poison.  Gluth is a bit more of a challenge, but not to tank or heal him.  Just to make sure he doesn’t get a feeding.  Thaddius is a stupidity check.

Death Knight Wing-

Razuvious, not much of a challenge, Gothik… someone told me from the Beta that he was actually difficult.  They lied.  As I said before the Horsemen are a logistical challenge.  Yet they are still much easier than before.  No more lingering ghosts marking people…  Just plain makes it that much easier.

Frostwyrm Lair-

Not much has changed from Saph and Kel though.  The only difference I can remember is  that Kel doesn’t Mind Control in the 10 man version.  In the 25 man version he MC’s 2 people at a time with a VERY long cooldown on the ability.

Do not get me wrong here.  The instance itself is a heck of a lot of fun.  Just for us rolling through it in our first 2 raid nights, just makes me think a little.  I wish it was more of a challenge.  Thank god for Malygos.

The Loot:

Four items per boss… four!.  Makes the instance kind of feel like more of a Pinata than it should be.  I do have to question a little as Blizzard had said there were continue to be 3 tokens per tier drop and while Gluth can drop 2 random pieces, those 2 do not make up for the fact that the others only drop 2.

I managed to get lucky and pick up the Last Laugh tonight.  This axe is so far above any other tanking weapon its beyond words.

Only problem is that I was forced to drop Mongoose on it.  It is really sad that Blizzard did not think carefully enough to give us some real end game tanking enchants in the expansion.  Greater Potency’s 50 attack power would be interesting.  The 26 agility enchant may be intriguing as well.  But why not a neo-crusader style enchant.  Or god forbid, a 25+ strength enchant.  Blizzard, we do not want AP, give us our strength enchant!  (While you are at it, give us a new and easier to obtain stamina to bracers enchant.)

A good number of my guild-mates have been complaining about not being able to exit vehicles.  We even had one person who had to literally have his dragon die each time he flew around in The Occulus because of this bug.  One of them found this macro that allows you to exit any vehicle without the exit vehicle button.

/script VehicleExit();

It needs to be capitalized in the right spots, or it will not work.