The Journey Continues

Fellow greetings again Internet. I know I have not been very active on this blog and I do apologize for the inconvenience. As it currently stands, I have taken up the duty of keeping up with writing raid tactics and our Guild’s insider blog on tankspot.com, which sadly eats most of the time I have for writing blogs. However, I currently find myself sitting in Dalaran and having plenty of time to spare before our next raid so I decided to start up my Writer and and put some words down.

First, for those who are interested you can check our Increment Insider blog at our tankspot. For those who insisted on screenies of our progression should find plenty in there. Progression-wise we are currently holding at 9/12 in ICC25 HMs. A fact we are very proud of and have had several experimental goes at three different HMs; Professor Putricide, Sindragosa, and Halion just to see which we would like to commit our time to.

A lot of news filter in about Cataclysm almost every day. Many times I’ve gazed upon them and thought to myself “that deserves a mention in my blog” but there are so many that it is impossible to keep up and in the end, this blog isn’t really about publishing latest news. Just what seems important to me. On that note, details about the new Tier 11 gear sets have been released, with a couple of screenshots.

The part that strikes me about these sets is the fact that tanks might again care about the Tier bonuses, which we clearly did not need to do towards the end of Wrath. Sure, they were a nice addition but was somewhat mellowed by the fact that Blizzard decided to add much more sexier gear pieces to both the frost vendor and drops from ICC. Looking at the Tier 11 bonuses I feel a certain excitement as a tank, a feeling that these might almost be a must-have thing.

Warrior’s Earthen Battleplate:

2pc - Increases the damage done by your Shield Slam ability by 5%.

4pc - Increases the duration of your Shield Wall ability by 50%.

Death Knight’s Magma Plated Battle Armor:

2pc - Increases the damage done by your Death Strike ability by 5%.

4pc - Increases the duration of your Icebound Fortitude ability by 50%.

I do wish Blizzard would get out of their habit of adding a threat boost to our tanking sets and more complicated elements, like added health regenerated by our Death Strike. The whole concept of threat has a very controversial feel for me. I wouldn’t want to make it trivial but nor do I want to generally worry about it. Some tanks have whispered about the return to TBC’s type aggro where tanks where holding aggro was the single-most hardest thing to do in the game.

That’s ridiculous in my opinion and I’m glad to report Blizzard has officially agreed with me on numerous occasions. Tanks should have all the tools they need for holding aggro, if they use all their respected abilities properly. If you’re only spamming one button through the entire encounter you deserve to lose aggro but otherwise, for players who know what they are doing, it shouldn’t be an issue and not warrant threat bonuses in Tier sets. To me the pleasure of tanking is in pulling, positioning, taking the hit and surviving it so rest of the raid can do their jobs.

Likewise, for me  Tier sets represent an addition to your abilities, not their completion. Seeing that Shield Wall’s duration goes up by 50% is awesome and means I can survive for much longer. Seeing a threat modifier in the sets just means threat would be partially gimped prior to getting the set. That type of sets also inevitably lead situation during the next upgrade process, when you will not have that ability, thus making your performance rather poor until you get the two new pieces, or worse the next set will not have it at all and you run on half power for the rest of the patch.

Deeper into the Citadel

I must say, after we got our 25-man lich king kill, feels like the game has started anew for us, as if the many encounters and corridors that grew old and boring have suddenly come to life with the advent of hard modes. Now every fight feels like an experience and the thrill of combat has returned. Before that, you pulled, you tabbed some buttons and it was over.

Anyone who enjoys challenges and does not wish to settle for mediocre, for easy kills and epics, should endeavor to experience these fights on hard mode because they really do come more alive once the margin for error requirements of performance go up. Our start was somewhat slow, almost as if we were feeling the strength of the ice with a stick and slowly explored and tried the various fights in Icecrown Citadel.

Now the exploration period is over and we’ve cracked up the gear. Eight out of twelve bosses have falled on hard mode, consisting of most of the lesser bosses. Of the wing bosses, Saurfang and Blood Queen Lanathel have been vanquished, leaving only Sindragosa and Professor Putricide. Only Lady Deathwhisper remains of the lesser bosses. She will be the next target, once the lockdown resets.

The past two weeks have been particularly good for us, as we’ve done a lot of good progress and improved our team in quite many ways. We’ve lost a few players to various circumstances, which is always sad, but we have still been able to move forward. If anything, our progress has surprised us and I have actually missed capturing several of our encounters because I did not suspects us to be successful the first time around.

I do have one new movie to offer though, which is the Deathbringer Saurfang kill. It was a kill we had to work for; getting him down to 10% or even less half a dozen times, but when he finally went down, the success is sweet.

Deathbringer Saurfang 25HM

Enjoy and stay tuned.

Ruby Sanctum Explored

Time to breath a little bit of more life into this blog and no better time than, when you have a lot of thoughts to comment with. I will begin with this look into the finished product that is the Ruby Sanctum, last raid instance to be published in this expansion. I wrote a lot about before during the PTR so I will not bother going through all of that again.

Rather, I decided to provide a look through a new medium that I am exploring, which is video capture. With the LK down on 25-man, we are feeling good about our guild. Makes you comfortable that as a group, you have helped the guild build back up from the deep gutter that we were in, only couple of months ago. With that knowledge giving us a big boost of confidence, we are coming up with a few new projects and my favorite pet is the video capture of our encounters.

It has already started and through a lot of trial and error I have released two video captures. They are both from Ruby Sanctum, as it provided a perfect testing ground for a new editor. The two videos are our first 10-man and 25-man kills. No heroic tries yet, but chances are we will be going for those in the near future. Depends how we divide our raiding time between the ICC hard modes and the Ruby Sanctum.

Personally, I did not find the normal modes that difficult. Naturally, he hits a lot harder on 25-man difficulty and the challenge is primarily on surviving, especially in the Twilight realm where everyone is moving and healers have a lot to deal with. But any decent group will not have a lot trouble with this encounter. As of fact, most of us in the group agreed that the trash mobs in Ruby Sanctum are a lot more annoying than the bosses themselves.

Anyway, here are the links to my two vids, first the 10-man Halion and then the 25-man version. Hope you enjoy.