Of Idiots and Aspects

My guild was able to field an entire Naxx-25 full clear on Valentine's night. That's fairly impressive...and sort of sad.

I haven't been raiding as much lately, which is partially due to real-life constraints and partially because both mage and druid need only 25-man upgrades but I can only realistically do one per week. The mage has a lot of second-best-in-slot items; the druid seems to be able to perform at the same level with lesser levels of gear (she's still in a few blues). But since I actually had plans on Valentine's Day, I missed this week's Naxx-25.

I've been busy gearing up my protection pally, who I think is finally at a level where her gear no longer makes me cringe. She's ready to main-tank Naxx-10 and has already done VoA and Sartharion this week.

But, since the guild's scheduled continuation of Naxx-25 on Sunday night was no longer needed since they already cleared it, they decided to do a Maly-25 instead. It went very well and we two-shot it. Since I still haven't gotten around to doing the Aces High quest, I'm still fairly shaky on Phase 3, but I've had a lot of chances to field-practice the technique now. My druid has already successfully done Malygos-10, it seems the 25-man version is actually easier.

I do think Arcane is a better spec for Malygos than Frostfire, once you get into the rhythm of the fight. Arcane is all about timing. Once you try the fight enough times, you get a feel for when there are natural breaks in the timing that allow for you to Evocate or reposition or do whatever else you need.

The Malygos Fight
I started out by popping Icy Veins to speed up initial casting. Keep in mind that at this point there's no sparks down yet. After the first vortex phase and a spark comes down, I sit squarely in it and pop Arcane Power. At that point someone's already popped Bloodlust usually, so there's a little window of time in which to just go balls-to-the-wall. POM-AB can be saved with Arcane Barrage and Fire Blast for vortex phases. After the second vortex I'll usually need to Evocate. I do it once more, during Phase 2, and mana gem in between as needed. I've been having no mana problems since I fixed my spec to include Student of the Mind.

Phase Two is still my least favorite phase, because it's possible to get into a rotation. Half the time is spent running between balls and trying to target stuff in the air anyway. And Phase Three just involves spamming the rotation over and over (1-1-2 or 3-3-3-4). On our successful attempt, only a few people died on Phase 3, everyone else stayed up and we finished with almost a minute to spare.

3-Fail Sarth
After finally getting the Champion of the Frozen Waste on my mage (long overdue, in my opinion, since she was ready for that title a long time ago), I decided to try main-tanking Sarth for a shot at my tier gloves, and joined a pug. What a mistake that was...

I'm used to seeing undergeared people in Sarth-10, since well-geared people don't bother with it anymore, but it seems that each Sarth-10 pug just gets worse and worse. I started thinking something was very wrong when five people, including a healer, didn't go into the portal on the first drake, and died. That drake took about five minutes to kill. The two hunters were doing 900 and 1000 dps, respectively. The healer that died, a very undergeared priest, was using Binding Heal as her most frequently used cast, and Healium who is extremely well geared (just got the Malygos-25 robe) soon found out that this priest had never healed before. Not just had never healed a raid before -- had never healed before, at all. She didn't even know how to "target the main tank." We were basically doing Sarth with one healer.

Five people, all from the same guild, including this priest and the two hunters, earned their very first Emblem of Heroism on that first drake. Not even a single heroic completed, or even attempted, as our number-one-dps (a rogue) pointed out. The hunters were now claiming lag as a factor in their performance.

We keep clearing trash, during which I find out that my offtank (another prot pally) is very good. Offtanking is a fairly involved and often thankless role, but he does it admirably -- he picks mobs off of me to tank, doesn't try to taunt off me, goes into the portals, and doesn't die. His gear is actually better than mine in some slots, but he's not enchanted, so I ended up with more effective health and avoidance. The other priest used this time to discover that Flash Heal and Greater Heal are better spells than Binding Heal. The hunters continue to lag, or just suck, or both.

I expected to wipe on the first actual Sarth attempt, and we did. What was surprising was that after five people died on the first Flame Wall (guess who they were...) the five that remained (me, the offtank, Healium, a dps warrior, and a rogue) brought Sarth to 6% until we finally wiped from being overwhelmed.

We rez everyone and try again. The two hunters died again on the first Flame Wall (if they were actually lagging, this is pretty understandable since I've definitely experienced this problem before myself, and it's infuriating). But everyone else, to their credit, learned quickly and didn't die until the very end, and we ended up killing it. The less fail of the two hunters won his tier gloves. Face now planted squarely in palm.

Just goes to show how easy the current content actually is, I suppose. Nothing in this game is an actual gear-check except for Sarth with drakes up.