Blog Articles by keyword: sunwell



Felmyst down

by Tachyon on Wed. 22. October 2008, 00:24

Filed under: sunwell, raiding, felmyst

Brutallus went down last Thursday, so tonight we could attempt to beat Felmyst.
The fight is not that hard post-patch 3.0, and after a few tries we got him down.



It's not that spectacular for a raiding guild post-patch 3.0, as the bosses all have ~30% less HP than before, but to me it's relieving to get a chance to see some more bosses before the expansion, so I'm as excited as ever
In this encounter, the Improved Blizzard specs (all of the 3 mages in the raid were deep frost) came in quite handy to AoE the pulk of skeletons that spawned from the Demonic Vapor trail.

Felmyst dropped 3x the mage/rogue/druid token. We changed our loot policy to free roll, as 3 weeks before the expansion loot does no longer matter, we're equipped well enough for the few remaining BC raids with or without the drops.
I rolled a 89 and am now prowd owner of the Boots of the Tempest.

I completely missed to learn Mixology until two days ago. This new passive ability for Alchemists prolongs the duration of flasks from 2h to 4h, and also increases the effect slightly (e.g. Flask of Pure Death from +80 to +103 fire/frost/shadow spellpower). Very nice addition for raiding alchemists, I wish this came earlier.
If you're an alchemist, and did overlook Mixology just like me, go visit your profession trainer in Shattrath to learn it.

Patch day and first raid in 3.0

by Tachyon on Fri. 17. October 2008, 17:43

Filed under: raiding, patch, sunwell, brutallus

Wednesday was patch day here in Europe. The servers were burdened by a clusterfuck of returning players, all simultaneously trying to log on, resulting in realm servers switching on and off as if they were lights on an early christmas tree.

Those lucky to get in usually had a minute or two to check which addons were injured the most, to download updated versions where available once the servers dived again.
I'm blessed with a divine patience, so I kept revolving in the logon/crash cycle until I got all of my addons updated and my UI setup right again.
In the late evening, the servers became more stable, allowing me to learn the new spell ranks, build my new deep frost spec, buy the new pvp items (trinket and cloak), get myself a shave and a haircut and do a quick BG before I logged off.

Yesterday (Thursday) my guild finally picked up raiding again after more than a month of idling. The participation for the Sunwell raid was high again, everyone who could showed up to test their new builds in action, so we had to bench a few of us.

Raiding was nearly impossible due to the heavy lags and zone crashes, which caused us to wipe quite often. Sometimes when dying, the 'resurrect now?' message popped up, and it also worked: one would be resurrected on the spot, only to be ported to the graveyard on sheer minute later (usually on the next pull, especially when on sheeping duty), or worse, being steamrolled by the armada of added mobs that went berzerk in the raid. Alliance players camping the entrance, putting the unlucky lagging horde souls out of their misery, added their share to our repair bill.



We finally got to Kalecgos, where we had to assemble a Field Repair Bot 110G (nomen est omen). Now the boss had 30% less HP (leaving about a 2M left), and with the new talent builds, we faced another problem, which was doing way too much DPS on the Kalecgos compared to the damage we did on Sathrovarr (they have to die almost simultaneously, or the portals won't spawn again, resulting in a reset of the encounter). It was a little chaotic, but we finally managed to kill him.
I would have needed the bracers, as I was still one piece shy of the 4xT6 bonus, but due to bad luck no single mage T6 token dropped.

It was alredy late (11 pm), but nevertheless we headed to Brutallus to give it a try, despite being short of healers. The first try looked so promising that we decided to do a serious attempt, and managed to kill him in our second try in only 4 minutes.

My DPS was abysmal, I ended up as 7th on the damage meter, with a little over 2000 DPS. I can and must do better next time. Trying to weave Deep Freeze into my rotation on Fingers of Frost procs was pointless, getting out of mana and having to use evocation was inexcusable, and the water elemental had its usual share of resists (18%), which was surprising, as Blizzard announced that it would inherit the mage's hit rating, which obviously not the case (let's still hope for WotLK).



My fellow fire mage comrade, Ashenshogar, excelled with >2600 DPS and (to his surprise ) ended on position #1 in the DPS meter, congratulations!

This was the first time we killed Brutallus, pre-patch we only managed to get him down to 17% before he enraged. Too bad the boss despawned before I was able to make a screenshot, but my guild will hopefully post one soon on the <Dal Marok> home page. We're now excitingly looking forward to beat Felmyst and Eredar Twins, which I think we manage before the expansion comes out.

Oh, and I was given the mage token we looted from Brutallus, so I'm now finally at 4x T6, which means my Frostbolts will to 5% more damage next time.

Brutallus

by Tachyon on Tue. 10. June 2008, 23:30

Filed under: brutallus, raiding, sunwell, mage, dps

Actually I intended to just play a few rounds of battleground PvP, and look for any groups seeking for a mage for the last couple of bosses in Zul'Aman (desperately need the trinket from Hex Lord Malacrass!), which is the usual things to do for me on half play evenings (I came online shortly before 22:00).

So I was quite surprised when recieving a whisper of Schayol in midst of a battle in Arathi Basin, if I'd feel like doing some learning tries on Brutallus. I didn't hesitate for a second, learning a new boss fight I never encountered before is always a challenge for me, although I'm convinced that my gear is yet not quite sufficient for sunwell bosses, especially for Brutallus.



Brutallus is the second boss in Sunwell Plateau (after Kalecgos). He's got 10 Mio. HP, and a Enrage-Timer of 6 minutes, which basically means that the raid has to deliver 27'777 DPS sustained to kill him before he runs havoc. Divided by the usual number of 16 DPS classes, this means that each one of them has to provide an average of 1736 DPS sustained, given that no one of them dies during the encounter. Quite a challenge, that is, so advantage of each and every DPS buff has to me made, from Destruction Potions, Flame Caps to Drums of Battle, to live up to such a high DPS score.

My mage's equipment consists of a wild mix of T6 (robe, shoulders, 2 rings), T5, heroic badge rewards, PvP items and further items of dubious origin (Karazhan, Zul'Aman, crafted BoE), not quite at the level of a T6 mage. What especially hurts is not having the 4x T6 bonus (5% increased damage for Frostbolt and Fireball), gimping my damage output compared to the other DPSers in the raid.
At the moment, I'm at 1206 spell damage, 126 spell hit rating (capped for frostbolt), 69 spell haste and a mere 187 crit rating, that's quite below the stats I think I ought to have for Brutallus.

But as the raid's main goal was not to kill the boss by hook or by crook, but rather gather a solid feeling for the encounter and learn to handle the tactic and timing, it didn't matter that much, so I enjoyed the wiping and checked how well I'd do in terms of DPS.

The entire raid DPS was very low, as we did the tries unbuffed (half of the raid at least used some flasks/elixirs/buff food to check where in the DPS spectrum they lie). The group setup wasn't ideal either (I did have a shaman in my group, but the moonkin with the tasty 5% crit aura was in the other two mages' group), and we didn't use the Destruction Potions and Drums of Battle yet, but nevertheless the DPS was to weak overall.

I managed to settle on 1650 DPS, not really bad, but there's definitely some room for improvement (4x T6 bonus missing), but at least I was among the 4-8 top DPS in the damage meters.
One point that amazed me was our warlocks' DPS, they were the only ones to make more than 2000 DPS. It's sick how they scale with gear, compared to us mages...

The low DPS wasn't really a problem at that evening, as we happened to wipe always long before reaching the enrage timer (best try was 4:30 min), so we first have to learn how not to bite the dust before the damage issues get addressed.

I assume that the raid will manage to beat Brutallus within the next 1-2 weeks; the gear is more than on a ok level for almost everyone in the raid, and once we manage to keep our damage dealers alive until the enrage and learn how to maximize our DPS, the boss shall finally fall...
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