Monthly Archives: April 2011

Yesterday 4.1 finally hit on European servers and as always with a big patch the servers were up and down quite a bit. People were getting disconnected, kicked out of raid groups and bugs were found and fixed.

Some of the funniest – and probably most annoying – bugs were things like Death Knights being able to resurrect people in Arena. I don’t know if it’s been confirmed, but a big PvPer in my guild thinks Affliction Warlocks were double-dipping on their buffs because they met double locks in Arena and died in seconds (while meeting one warlock was fine). I even heard there was a 5s team running around with 4 locks.

Destruction Warlocks in 4.1

I’m not going to focus on the Affliction changes, because I seriously never play Affliction. To put it short and sweet, I hear they were buffed and are now doing some nice damage. So let’s focus on the things that Destruction Warlocks care about!

Dark Intent: The friendly target of this ability now receives 1% (stacking 3 times to 3%) periodic spell damage and healing bonus instead of 3% (stacking 3 times to 9%). The casting Warlock still receives 3% (stacking 3 times to 9%).

Makes no difference for Warlocks, only the target that you’re buffing with DI. However, do note that Warlocks can no longer DI each other, because the lower 1% buff will overwrite your own 3% buff. So make sure those DIs go on Shadow Priests, Resto Druids or someone else you feel will benefit (and most of all, that will make you benefit!).

Rain of Fire damage has been increased by 25%.

They finally increased the damage on Rain of Fire. I still don’t seem to do anywhere near the AoE of other classes, but it’s still a welcome change. Now at least Rain of Fire is better than single target if the packs are bigger.

Soulstone can now be used in combat to resurrect a targeted dead player.

Yes, you read that right. We can now use soul stone to resurrect people who stood in fire after they’ve already died. If you use the glyph they should res with 70% health rather than 30%.

Doomguard’s damage has been increased by 50%. The Doomguard is intended to be the best guardian for single-target damage, and the Infernal the best when there are multiple targets.

For quite some time we’ve been using Infernal for every kind of fight; single target and AoE. Now we’re finally getting to pull out the Doomguard again. Doomguard for single target and Infernal for AoE.

I’ve updated my Destruction Warlock Guide with the changes in 4.1.

Raiding on Patch Day

We went ahead with our Wednesday raid as scheduled last night, and it was a bit of an odd feeling. Maybe it was only because I wasn’t feeling well and was playing worse than I realised, but it felt like everyone was doing several thousand more dps than usual – except me.

On some fights I did a little bit more than usual, but for the most part I was smack right where I usually am, while everyone else seemed to be buffed.

It could be because we had a very melee heavy party (only two ranged; me and a SV hunter), but it was an odd feeling for sure.

We got kicked out of the server once when it went down, came back in to a disbanded raid – but could keep going after that. We had some lag, but nothing horrible.

The Omnotron Defense System encounter bugged out on us about three times before we could finally kill it. Basically one of them would never activate and eventually you stood there with four deactivated golems.

As I said, it was an odd night. We one-shotted the five bosses in BWD despite using two healers instead of our normal three. Continuing onto BoT we one-shot the first two bosses, but needed a second attempt for Ascendant Council, still with two healers.

I suspect it was due to people doing more dps than usual, but also well done on our healers’ part since they’re used to being one more.

Zul’Aman & Zul’Gurub

I only had time for Zul’Aman yesterday before the raid, and it was a lot of fun to go back into that instance. A lot of things are the same, but it felt like they had updated the trash a bit.

We one-shotted all of the bosses, but died maybe three times on the trash which is ironic. You’d think it should be the other way around.

I didn’t have time for Zul’Gurub, but got to do the final boss on my Priest since my brother was in there and needed a dps for the final fight after the random they’d had left. I like that encounters aren’t all tank and spank, even if they’re not difficult. It was quite fun running to chains to make big, ugly trolls jump onto them.

I look forward to trying Zul’Gurub for real this weekend. I have to admit though I went as Shadow on my Priest because after seeing the damage going around in Zul’Aman earlier on my Warlock I’m not sure I dare to heal those Heroics yet.

What are your impressions of 4.1 so far?

PS What was wrong in the picture in the previous post was that all of the new gear my Warlock has acquired look like the Mage tier set rather than the Warlock tier set. Sacrilege, I tell you! (The fact that the Mage set looks a lot better than the Warlock one is besides the point!)

Be the first to like.

Like

Unlike

Let me just start off with saying that this is not a post that will deal with the tactics for the current raid bosses. I’m more interested in talking about how we learn said raid tactics.

We’ve recently changed the way we prepare for a boss in my guild. I always kind of assumed that everyone would have read up on the tactics beforehand, but I’m not thinking I may have been a little bit naive thinking so.

Even so, our Raid Leader would always launch into a long description of any new boss we got to. Explaining every detail. Now, this might sound like a good idea, except it’s not. People quite simply don’t have the attention span to sit through and listen to an explanation for ten minutes. A few minutes in we’d all start to zone out, and it was fairly obvious when we went in and actually started our tries on the boss.

So, our new tactic?

“Ok, guys.. We’re taking a ten minute break. Go watch the TankSpot video or read the tactic. If you have any questions afterwards I’ll answer them, otherwise you should have a fairly good grasp of the fight.”

It’s actually working surprisingly well. People check the tactic themselves instead of trying to grasp the words of someone talking for a bunch of minutes. I think people seem to have an easier way of understanding tactics when reading them or watching a video.

How we learn is different from person to person, and maybe there are some auditory people out there who would learn better by listening to an explanation (but hey, the TankSpot video has talking!), but I know for me personally I prefer reading about it.

I’ll usually read the tactics a few times, checking that I know the names of the important abilities to watch out for – and sometimes I might watch a movie.

After that, it’s just trial and error and having to see the fight in action. Most people learn by doing.

By cutting out the long monologue before new bosses we’ve not saved time in the explanation bit (since watching the movie/reading the tactics doesn’t take less time), but I think that people are understanding the tactics quicker because they can choose the medium that work best for them.

When I had to give raid tactics I did it a lot quicker than our Raid Leader, by only giving the basics. You know, don’t stand in the red stuff – move out of the green goo and taunt at that time. People might get an idea of what to do, but they wouldn’t know why they’re doing it.

So, for the time being, I’m all for people doing their own research.

How do you deal with raid tactics in your guild? Do you explain them verbally on vent or do you expect people to know them beforehand? How do you, personally, learn them best?

Be the first to like.

Like

Unlike