Viledead

Who is going for the staff in this run? I'd imagine a main raider must be on their way?

Well Monday's I tend to be available the most coincidentally. However, with work travel and some other stuff, I wouldn't bet on 100%. Probably 75%. Feel free to mark me as backup?

If it's monday 90% chance I'll be there!

congrats!!

I click the button because healers don't click the crystals.

Re: running to crystals - I did see that and that occasionally people didn't stack. However, the range of stomp is actually bigger than people think - you don't have to hump the boss by any stretch.

actually in group 1 anarch switched to heals for h morchok and hadn't done it in forever and it worked..

Of course at it's simplest yes this is always true. Better dps makes life easier sure, but a well coordinated tank/heals and "gimmick" roles for dps almost always is more important than dps for learning/progression. Eventually you need better dps which will be required to shrink tough mechanics, beat enrage, or just speed up the night. For instance, no wipes on HM morchok had anything to do with dps throughput - after 2 hours we didn't even get to that point (best was 65% or something - wait til people see soft enrage...). It was the gimmick role (soakers), positioning, tank deaths and healing throughput. Woah yeah that is hard. Whenever I quit I have a super short temper for about a month.

Lets just kite one and burn the other: lol snuggle hm morchok is pretty much all about healers once dance is learned. However, dps CAN AND SHOULD mitigate stomp/crystal dmg - ie nether ward, glyphed totem (grav was using), dispersion, iceblock, ret pally's bop'ing, lay on hands, etc. Without even looking hard, basically most didn't. I think nerfed HM FL made people lazy. And I too was surprised by the low dps overall.

tbh total hps once we finally 8 healed was not far off - i think it's an issue of figuring out stomp-crystal a bit better (ie movement) per prydain's shoutbox comments. And deft i know you called out dps - and dps overall is significantly lower than other 25m raids starting on hm's. Everyone looks like 390+ except for me i think.

Quote of the day material! Seriously - this is a great point. If a raid group is filled with above average players in 10m, you can almost full clear normals in 1 night...first time in. 25man has less room based on competence (mainly due to dps underperforming) but ultimately even normal mode barely requires vent other than tank swaps and healer cds (or yelling at the melee who bounced the ball an extra time...

Look at the Microsoft and RIM business models. Less than a year ago RIM was saying that Apple/Android have no chance and that people love RIM devices (man that was funny!). Since then cell contracts came up and they got destroyed. Same with MS - everyone thinks steve jobs is a patron saint but just as important is the fact that Microsoft had done nothing OS wise since the initial release of WinXP other than suck customers dry and release 1/2 baked software. @Bash What also happens is even if the original devs at blizz leave and start their own company again (presumably once the non-compete is up which is barely enforceable anyways), they still will struggle because they'll have lived that life. Tough to go back to being creative.

What's unfortunately ultimately is that despite all of WoW's recent flaws and RL issues that will come up for people, no other game has come close yet to the sense of community. Sure there are older games (ask any SW:G fan), but the fact that you could play with both RL friends and extended friends on a constant basis was/is great. I've logged in just to chat to RL friends - WoW was almost a MSN Messenger. I really think that LFR should be different bosses - some of the best moments in WoW was downing that boss finally (for almost everyone who raids). Now downing the boss on normal difficulty when you've downed it over and over on super-eze mode just isn't as much of a high. Also - re: Blizz milking WoW - the Activision future is now. Divisional funding, P&Ls, shareholders, etc...all stifle innovation. You can kite the top of the hill for awhile, but soon others will innovate. Ask Microsoft about Apple (and now Google). I don't think SWTOR is any Apple/Google - but there will be one. And I tend to think it will be browser & phone-based ARG. The core model needs to change to really see a breakthrough.

Swtor doesn't yet have that community feel that keeps dragging people back to WoW. Especially with no server forums. They need to do more to get there - but I think they know this. Lvl 1-50 is about 200 hours without xp cheats (like the warzone ones from before)....so there really is enough content to keep hardcores engaged for a month, and casuals for 3-6 months. They are already releasing new content this month. I think the biggest drawback is that the UI is not customizable - it's amazing for many people just how important recount is. Hell at least we KNOW heldarram is afk on trash! I also think SWTOR will need to find a way to gain the "professional gamers" interest - esports is growing and they shouldn't miss it. (ie competitive raiding, competitive pvp). I also think the "old school WoW" talent trees are a mistake. However, what swtor really does show me at least with their fairly aggressive content schedule with much less cash overall than blizzard is that WoW is completely being milked, and we're kind of all suckers. I know bash will say "yeah duh" - but hell even he's back casual after saying he'll never play again. The problem is that Dragon Soul suffers from the TOC problem - same bosses over and over on different difficulties. On different alts. Eyes Bleed. But snuggle - RL is important and can't get forgotten! Not only that, it really should be the priority.

he still did burn/conserve - just thrown off because of early death and interrupted evocation

Mordechai is arcane too. There is still a difference between a good arcane mage and a bad one. Keeping mana at ~90%+ in conserve is not quite simple - especially with +int procs. Also to be good at arcane, you have to know fights to time burst and not waste. I don't think it's massively more easy than a lot of other specs (at least to play "average").

I think raid finder and easy modes could be the biggest feature introduced in awhile. However, after the 1st week when everyone is behaving well, it's starting to become a bit more...well....WELCOME TO WOW PLAYERS LFR! Chronic afks. Bots. Purposeful deaths by dps (variation of AFK). DPS pulling. Weekend casuals who fail completely (you know - the ones for whom the new 5 mans are big time progression). I can't see how Blizz can avoid coming up with a Personal MMR-style rating for PvE. On the other note - I think the encounters are almost all excellent, with the well-accepted point that the final one is not as compelling as most final bosses were. I do think Ultraxion should be a gear/skill check (skill being if you perform the best you can) - otherwise the fight is very easy (click a button all at the same time! Now just you 3! now all at the same time!). Also for ultraxion, you'd beat the timer but a fair amount more if all dps pot'd. But this is a losing argument because I guess people can't afford pots somehow. (about 1/2 dps pot most times).

pretty sure fire is highest dps spec across everything (sim'd patchwerk style)

@pikachu - press more buttons and go fire!

epics have been handed out like candy for years OLD BITTER MAN... I <3 LFR

bash - isn't that like saying the new 5 man heroics with 378 gear is "free gear for everyone?" Heroic raids seem to be really all that matter now anyways if people need to "prove" skill. Well, and time.

to add to this - i was doing LFR on work laptop at the office occasionally alt-tabbing to get work done.. So it's *possible* that I missed some stuff.. no clue about twilight sappers yes for both purple swirls for bloods - when you kill them, no matter where you killed them, they would drop something on the ground. tank who has the amalgamation thing would just run it over the blobs on the ground. so you could see one go from 0 stacks to 8 (or whatever) right away. no stuns by tentacles madness - there was this big tentacle thing in the back you had to burn, then kill bolt, then kill off that tentacle thing, then aoe adds (all the same), then finish of deathwing limb. Order was platform you start on, left, far left, far right i think. maybe it was far left second, i forget. For small tentacles cleave dmg was easy enough - there were a few raiders who got on them right away and they were burned without anyone even noticing them.

yep had to get blood stacks on the guy. The bloods when they died put little globules on the ground, which could be picked up at any time. Madness - yeah switching to bolts is mandatory, but they had under 2 mil health and dropped super fast. little adds from hemorrage were easily aoe'd. when we didn't do blue last, the adds had to single targeted rather than aoe'd because every 10 seconds they would recover 50% of health. by doing blue last this didn't happen. war master - yeah people had to go stack in void circles - the only mechanic other than a front cleave that matttered. there was raid dmg, but nothing healers couldn't handle. I haven't seen any of these fights on normal, and like most of the raid didn't even watch videos before. In fact, I had no idea what final 4 bosses would look like other than ultraxion (which I saw in prydains group).

yeah getting some will of unbindings even LFR is great for the raid. Surprising that every raider isn't doing LFR - but it is truly a gamble (ie losing WoU to that half afk lock in blue pvp gear with no gems/enchants). For ultraxion - just take a bunch of dmg. Looked like about 100k I'm guessing. Edit - also ilvl 384 tier is probably an upgrade for set bonus purposes for a lot of people. Edit Edit - it also means people will at least see and become familiar with basic mechanics.

per Berms request, thought I'd through up quick thoughts on LFR final four bosses. All in all: doable. ultraxion - about 1/2 the raid never clicked the button. Only wiped once because healers didn't know to click crystal things. Raid dps was low, but didn't matter. Warlord - nothing special - just getting people to stack when necessary. Honestly it barely felt like a boss - just "super" trash. Ranged kill ranged stuff. Spine - we 1 shotted because we had a raid leader take over and constantly give instructions and mark. We actually failed at killing the thing that closes the plate the first time, but still no problems (health was low when re-opened it). Dmg from adds is relatively low - when we had tons of bloods up I probably had aggro on most and didn't die. Madness - I had to go after two wipes because it's looooong. But the group probably did it. choose blue last because raid dps will be low. tank picking up that spawned tentacle thing was slow, so be careful to wait for him to establish threat. People can't die before final phase or you probably won't have the dps to get back on deathwing because adds will take too long. All in all, as I said completely doable. I would recommend to do raid finder earlier in the reset cycle right now as I think we all noticed that sunday/monday is filled with alts doing 12k. Weekend days are probably bad too with all the ultra-casuals. tl;dr: wiping on madness near the end sucks.