Naxxramas continued
Today is Monday story time, and a lot of gushing, as I had an awesome WoW weekend. It was time to re-visit Naxxramas and step it up for some progress. The first raid weekend we had cleared Arachnid and Plague quarters, plus Instructor Razuvious, and I was hoping to push past that.
I had not tanked the Arachnid Quarter before, so there were a few flubs. On Anub’rekhan I really sucked at running from the Locust Swarm. Ciderhelm makes it so easy in his video. I ran around the inner edge of the slime instead of the outer edge that Cider used in his video, and at his end spot, Locust Swarm still had 5 seconds on it. Gah! That was a wipe. The second try I ran past where Cider had stopped, well past the door and towards the other side. Still, four stacks on me, not good. Am I doing something wrong or is it normal to run that far? I will actually go practice running around the outer edge sometime today, to see if that helps. In any case, he went down in the second try.
Grand Widow Faerlina went down in 3 Frenzies, easy peasy. On Maexxna I got owned in the enrage the first try, and the second try also went down, but the raid killed her right after I died. Whew. From there we moved on to the Plague Wing, to the really boring Noth fight. Heigan was a huge improvement this time, we got him in 5 minutes, with only one death and a lot of excellent dancing. On to Loatheb, who went down easily again. I did lower personal DPS this time, only 1415, and did not reach the goal I had set me: to outnumber white swings with Heroic Strikes on static tank and spank encounters. Disappointing. However, what was not disappointing was that the Protector token dropped, and I won the roll. Woot, no more spikey shoulders! I love the model of Heroes’ Dreadnaught Pauldrons. Loatheb further showed me some love by dropping Legplates of Inescapable Death, which will be very sexy for the SBV set I am trying to build.
We were still within our time limit of 3 hours raid time, so we went and killed Instructor Razuvious in two tries. Stupid understudies breaking at inopportune times. That’s where we called it, which meant that we had cleared all seven bosses that we’d already downed on the first day, leaving lots of time for progression on Sunday.
Here’s where the fun begins. Yay for killing new bosses. We started with Gothik the Harvester, who promptly totally bugged for us. I was tank on the dead side, having an okay time, until mobs from the live side started joining us. For no reason whatsoever the live side mobs would run through the wall towards our healers. I ran around like a headless chicken trying to pick up all those crazy mobs, it was nuts. Clearly buggy. Despite that curveball, we got Gothik down from his balcony, and from there it was smooth sailing.
We moved to Four Horsemen from there, with one wipe as my healer and I got separated and she died to a meteor. We learned our lesson and the second time it was just fine. I actually felt it was really easy. We used the swap riders in the middle and drag back to corner method, which worked without any hitches. I thought it was a fun encounter, but it’s not the epitome of perfect execution that my oldschool raider co-worker told me about from Naxx-40.
Military Quarter done, on to Construct! I was excited about trying Patchwerk, because I really wanted to improve on my Heroic Strike execution on this tank and spank fight. The healers did a fantastic job on this fight and neither my bear companion OT soaking Hateful Strikes nor me had any scary moments on him. I broke a personal DPS record on him, doing 1554 DPS, which made me pretty happy. I also finally reached my goal of doing more Heroic Strikes than white swings. 77 Heroic Strikes, only 45 auto-attack swings. I want to shift that in favor of even more Heroic Strikes, which actually were 23% of my total damage, along with Shield Slam. If I look at my numbers I also get very happy about my Deep Wounds spec, 8-10% of total damage with a passive skill is pretty hot stuff. So, another one-shot kill, hooray. We even only had one casualty on the Frogger boss that came next!
Grobbulus came next. I didn’t much care for that fight, because walking backwards endlessly got old pretty quickly. We had one or two raid deaths, but all in all it was a pretty nice one-shot job. Before the pull we decided that this guy is the creepiest boss in Naxxramas. Just look at that needle on him. Yuck yuck yuck. To make the nastiness of the fight easier on me, he dropped The Skull of Ruin which is a very fine shield indeed.
Gluth was next, after a short interlude where a certain MT and raid leader fell off the pipe to be squished to bits in the room underneath. Ahem. I got to do the Frogger boss again and managed to not fall off the second time. Down the pipe into Gluth’s room, where I drove our ret pally crazy by making her kite the zombie chow. She did a fine job, and we got another one-shot kill. An irritating part of the fight was that my taunts somehow got resisted a lot, when the OT and I were trading off to let the debuff expire. Dead puppy anyway!
Only one boss left in the Construct Quarter and Naxx decided to toss another bug our way. On the first magnetic pull of the mini-bosses, I got swapped with our ret paladin, and then Stalagg squished the DPS and healers on that side and came to join us confused tanks on the other platform. Fail. The second try, everything went according to plan, they died together, we jumped (or rather levitated) over to Thaddius, and then we killed him without a hitch. Construct quarter cleared!
Did we want to have a look at Sapphiron? You betcha! Watching him form is as cool as I thought it’d be. The first two tries weren’t so great, as we would always have the blizzard right above the iceblocks people were hiding behind, or we had a person hiding behind a block turn into a block, screwing things up for everyone else. Bad luck, for the most part. Our third try, we finally did it, and got yet another boss down!
All good things have to come to an end, and we had only 25 minutes left for tries on Kel’thuzad. Our first try was pretty bad. We didn’t have time to look at the mechanics of the fight much beforehand, I wasn’t really prepared, and so it was over once KT joined the fray. The second try we did went a lot better, we had him at 25% when a) two of the healers were down, and b) I lost focus and died to a voidzone. Bad Kadomi, no biscuit.
Regardless of that, I would call this an amazing success. Two raids in, we are 14/15, which is probably a testament to how easy Naxxramas is, and yet, it feels like an accomplishment. Who ever says girls can’t play, doesn’t have a freaking clue. I am pretty sure that next ID we’ll clear the place. I won the key to Eye of Eternity and would love to eventually get a foot in that door.
Congrats.
On the Anub’rekhan fight we have found it easier for the tank to just stay in place through the entire fight and get healed through it. Someone will call Lotus Swarm 10 seconds before it happens and all DPS will move to the middle to avoid it. OT will pick up the add when it comes out at the middle.
On Maexxna tell the OT to stand next to you after she enrages. If he sees you getting low on Health (about 25%) to taunt her off you, when you back to full health taunt her back. This will give the healers 1 or 2 critical seconds to top you off once more.
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On Anub’rekhan, I’ll start running when Locust swarm is around 10 seconds away. As I run, he stops to cast and then has to catch up with me, and by the time I reach the other side, he’s finished with it.
As for the void zone, I feel your pain, I did the same thing for my 10 man run on Saturday. I was all feeling big and bad because I flawlessly picked up the two adds, then suddenly, I look down in time to say “Aw crap.” And I’m dead. My paladin friend picked him up and tanked him down for the win, but I felt like a big fat nub. Grats on your progression, good luck getting KT down.
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I failed 3 times in a row to KT void zones. Even the time where most of the fight I was watching for them, then got distracted by my cooldowns (trying to make sure I had top threat, we have some happy DPSers), and ate another. I gave up and let the OT have him while I was much happier standing off to the side, throwing up a FFF, and then grabbing the adds when they appeared.
We’re doing Heroic KT tonight. I’m looking forward to bashing MC’d people and picking up the adds again!
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Naxx is just awesome to tank. I’m a sad panda our weekly alt 25 man Naxx didn’t take place, so no tanking exercise for me.
drug´s last blog post..PTR, Ulduar, Arcane Mage and good old Times
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Congratulations! That’s really great to hear. I have no specific tips to offer; sounds like you all did great. Oh my, how we wiped on thaddius in my previous guild. You’re group are obviously very skilled and attentive.
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Wow Raquoon, sounds awesome, gotta try that
I usually just try to run at the very moment he starts casting.. tuskarrs vitality ftw.. then i usually pop half of my cooldowns when arriving on the other side, thats when the big damage happens. But to be honest, its mostly about the healers standing at the right spot at the right time, casting their biggest heal when the tank arrives with the big bug.
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Yeah Steele, we used to do it that way when we started naxx. But found after a while that it was more of a pain for the healers to be in the right place at the right time. I usually pop one of my trinkets right before the cast to give the healers a break. You will not be able to do anything during the Lotus Swarm but stand there and get hit. Its up to the healers to keep you up. On the second casting I pop shield wall to give time for the cooldown of the trinket to be up. One good thing about this strat is that range dps can keep hammering away at the boss during the Lotus Swarm so he goes down faster.
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Another tip for sapphiron: if the blizzard is moving towards the ice block… step back! you must be behind the iceblock, but you can be however far behind you want, aslong as you are in a straight line to tha bomb. on another note its well possible to clear naxx in under four hours including some wipes without stress, i hope with getting accustomed to the bosses things will speed up and your raid will have another night open for OS+1 or Maly.
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On the Gothik the Harvester fight, I am pretty sure I know what happened. If you have Vigiliance on someone that is on the dead side, it will cause some of the dead side guys to come over to the live side, where they immediatly switch to the healers. Make sure to either have the person click it off, or use it on someone on your side.
-Tankar
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I am jealous of your Heigan times! We had an epic 21 minute wipe at something like 26k last time I was there. >.<
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I personally find that using a speed buff of some kind on Anub’rekhan. Aspect of the Pack, Unholy Presence, etc. Even failing that, having a Mage or Warlock stand on the outer edge while DPSing and then Intervening to them when he starts casting will give you a big head start.
Just make sure your healers know what you are doing so that they can adjust to keep you in range.
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The best way to ensure that your taunt will land is to get more hit rating or to use the glyph of taunt.
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Doing Thaddius with DotH makes me weep tears of joy at how awesome we are
I like the idea of having the OT taunting during Maexx’s enrage – she hits REALLY hard and I’ve seen a lot of tanks go down in the last 5 seconds of that fight. I believe this particular repair bill was because Disc Priest got web wrapped to the wall during the enrage. Curse you, RNG.
Next week, we’ll get KT. Can’t wait!
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$teele Reply:
March 11th, 2009 at 11:28 am
having a druid that throws out all his dots on the MT before web spray makes this encounter a walk in the park
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Yeah, just back to the wall, have healers at max range, and eat the swarm on Anub-10. At 10 seconds, melee gets out, healers make sure they’re set at max range to be out of the swarm, and they 2-heal you through it. If you catch it in time, shield wall will help with one. Much easier, much less things to go wrong than running. Ranged can keep up DPS, as long as they’re aware you’re not creating threat at that point.
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Best strat for sapphiron was giving to us by a new member that been playing since vanilla wow and had done the old naxx.
You will not get hit by the AOE if you standing on the grates by the back walls. The trick is to avoid the AOE damage you get when someone is ice block. When Sapphiron starts going on the air everyone should star running towards the wall but make sure they stay 10 yards away from each other. As soon as the ice block happens run to the back wall. If you have a shamy healer mark him and ask everyone to run next to him. They can do the chain heals and heal up to five players at the same time.
The MT should run to the Conner grate by the door, as soon as the AOE happens he will start running towards the boss.
We done this in both 10 and 25 man and it has worked every time.
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Awesome job
A good wow week for all of us huh 
You’ll get Kel and Maly is not time!
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How come your blog is black text on a black background? It makes it impossible to read, and I really don’t want to have to continue highlighting all the entries to read them =/
Is it just my computer or something? Am I not loading a second background or something?
Boo. QQ!
Averna´s last blog post..New glyphs on sale in Dalaran!
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I just came across your website while reading worldofmatticus, and I have to say , girl you make me proud of being horde!
I never played alliance in my 3 years of wow life and my only BE is the paladin , because I had no other choise, and the gay´ish look of the male BE really freaks me out.
My main is a troll shaman, resto4life, and I have a baby warrior lvl 72. tauren (because they were the best tanks before the HP nurf), and I will keep your blog in my favorites from now on !
Good luck in Naxx, and I hope to see your tips for Ulduar soon!
Strength and Honor!
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admin Reply:
March 18th, 2009 at 5:43 pm
Yay for the horde!
I finally have net back so I will start posting again very soon. I actually have a couple alliance characters lying around, but my heart’s not in them. It’s all about the horde.
Blood and Thunder!
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“Clearly buggy.”
Annnnnd now I’m giggling. XD
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