Fatherpeteus

The Bear hits pretty hard, the Eagle is a gimp That fight is all about collapsing and spreading back out, and some raid healing. The Lynx is like the bear on PCP - With bad luck he can two-shot a T4-5ish tank with his sabre lashes. (Those are really nice to dodge!) Healers have to be really on the ball there. Dragonhawk is a very different fight. Offtanking is trickier than tanking the boss - 20 adds at a time, with other lethal effects going on around you. I've never tried that without a paladin OT, although I gather a bear can do it (but it must be more complicated). The boss himself is similar to the eagle, but does an enrage around 30% and starts hitting pretty hard. Malacross and Zul'jin are much harder on the healers than the tank because of massive raid damage. Zul'jin doesn't need an OT.

The cape from Illhoof and the one from badges are both pretty nice.

I'd like to help - CoH priest, regular FP raider with 2100 healing unbuffed. It's a fun fight! (Availability is subject to weather - If it's really nice out I may be at the beach!)

I definitely defer to Beck (and anyone else who has a warrior tank higher than my L20 draeni - lol) about warriors and rage and all that stuff As a healer I know what you mean about the avoidance tanking thing. Bored healers during a dodge spree = bad news on the next damage spike. I usually don't mind though, there's probably something good on TV! The mechanics of the different tanking classes are very different (makes for kindof cool variety). Pallies need a lot more avoidance (along with block rating) to be uncrushable because our shield isn't as cool as the warrior's. And when we're AOE tanking 20 dragonhawks or ghouls or whatever, theorycrafters say avoidance is best. Stamina is recommended for progression boss tanking (although it's kindof rare for a Tankadin to have that role), and threat is good for farming bosses. Tankadins do have a similar problem with getting mana-starved in certain situations if we don't take enough damage (and if we have no mana for consecrate we're pretty well ducked for AOE tanking!) AOE tanking being a very different beast from standing toe to toe with Gruul or Supremus, and we can always take enough damage to keep the mana and threat up by making sure a couple of the mobs are at our back so we can't parry or block them. But yeah, I don't know if warriors are as bad with the gear-swapping for different tanking sets - My bags are so full of gear, I'm always having to discard stuff I don't really want to I have a full healing set and dps set of course, then stamina gear, threat gear, and avoidance gear just for tanking. At least when I mix and match that stuff I can usually come up with a set that works OK for any situation. Ideally to approach gear-swapping, you can get a lot of bang for the buck by enchanting to the strength of your alternative pieces. Then you can carry [item]Devilshark Cape[/item] with a +2% Dodge enchant as well as [item]Gilded Thorium Cloak[/item] with +120 armor enchant. Then one swapped piece makes a big shift from avoidance to mitigation. Shields are another good one for specialization... [item]Crest of the Sha'tar[/item]+Stam gems and enchant, then [item]Bulwark of the Amani Empire[/item] with BV enchant (and even a parry or agi gem?) for a great threat piece. I probably overdo it with all the min-maxing and gear sets, but meh. It's there. --- Aigle, after I tried to armory you and found a L64 pally, I figued it out ^^ ... Waraigle stacks up really well on the Be Imba site! With all of the investment in good gems and enchants, it says you are ready to tank anything in ZA (or SSC or TK, and even start BT or Hyjal). And you can easily improve your weapon (Zul'Jin drops a nice axe) and ranged slot, and some others. The easy bear boss drops [item]Jungle Stompers[/item] too, that you could use. Go get started on ZA, you should be ready!

I thought the "reset bosses swing timer" (fast extra attack) thingie was when the boss parries you, rather when you parry him? When you parry, doesn't it make your next (counter-)attack faster? (I gathered that's one of the bonuses of the expertise stat, that reduces your target's parries. It also makes Parry a bit of a threat stat.) Side note: Not all bosses can crush (ex. ZA bear) - Dunno exactly why bliz made that choice, but there it is. Some other bosses are the same (Illidan, Archimonde can't iirc.) Trash shouldn't be able to crush unless it's L73 or has some special bonus (apparently you have to be 3 levels higher to crush the target.) Besides crit immunity, Defense is a very good avoidance stat. A Defense gem increases parry + dodge by almost as much as a Dodge gem, and then adds bonus shield blocks as a bonus... Assuming you want avoidance more than/as well as stam. That's probably more of a big deal for tankadins than prot warriors, I dunno. Tankadins love teh avoidance, and get threat from blocks. For tankadins several of the defense enchants are better than stam / mitigation options (but I'm not sure how warrior's needs compare): Meta (12 Def/+10% BV ~ 18 Stam/Stun resist) - BV gives you threat if you need it, and it scales. 18 Stam + Kings is a lot though, so might be good to choose based on your needs (maybe one of each on different sets of gear?) Helm (Glyph of the Defender > 10 stam) - 2% Avoidance ftw Cloak (120 Armor ~ 12 Def > 12 Agi) Gloves (10 Sta ~ 15 Agi ~ 240 Armor) - Armor is better for very high level gear, as it scales. Agi = .6% dodge + threat. The stam armor patch is cheap! Bracers (12 Sta ~ 12 Def) Chest (150 health ~ 15 Def) - Defense scales, as long as you don't need the health. I notice warriors tend to stack stamina gems in every slot. There's probably good reasons for that (mainly your 75% shield block thingie). Pallies need to stack a zillion different stats, it's annoying! Even for a warrior, I would give some thought to socket bonuses before just tossing +12 stam in everything... If you have a single red socket that would give you a +4 stam bonus, why not use a dodge gem? More bang for the buck is good! About ZA - My tankadin has no problem MTing everything in there, although of course it depends on your healers. That frigging Lynx hits hard! With Karazhan or badge gear or equivalent in every slot, you're good to go. Brightpetra is all set except for my old blue hat, that will be replaced when damn Hexlord Malacross finally drops his! http://be.imba.hu/ is a very cool site - Check out what they calculate you are ready for, as well as tips on gear tweaks!

lolz @ mana pots!

Thank God, say prot and ret pallies ^^ Auras affecting the whole raid is... Interesting...

We R hardy! They probably just had to fix some wheels onto their dogsleds - I've been caught like that too, when the snow runners started really scraping south of the border...

HARSH dagger rogue nerf! I guess we were too OP?

Good job last night on Curator and Aran (and Chess!) while I was there - Got Aran down without his Mass Polymorph / Mass Pyroblast, so DPS was good! (Aran is squishy to physical damage, so the no-caster group was a plus.) I'll try to be on Sunday night if you have room, to help you finish up.

Yeah, I know where you are coming from. I don't have any problem with you using the system. If it works for you, that's fine - It just doesn't work for me is all. Kill point systems really only work for a group who are at a similar place in progression IMO. The T6-geared helpers probably aren't going to come back week after week - They are just there to help you succeed that night. So imo it might help you get more help if you just RTU stuff. 'Course, if you have a good group of regs who like the system, by all means don't fix it if it ain't broke! And if you need help at Karathress or Vashj, if I'm around I'm happy to help to get my quests done.

Oz is just a cc fight really. Once the responsible people know their job, it's easy and not a gear check. Dorothea - Not tankable, dps her at start. Tito - Pet spawns early in the fight, shift dps to him and burn him down fast before he ganks a healer, then back to Dorothea. Straw man - Stunned by fire spells. Chain scorch, or whatever. Assign one mage, warlock (or shaman?) to chain-burn him. Off-tank and kill him after Dorothea. Roar - Chain fear. Off-tank and kill him second-last. Tin man - Big cleave. MT just kites him around the far end of the room for the whole fight, away from everyone else. He slows down over time (I think that can be sped up by frost spells on him.) Witch - Spawns after the initial group are down. Very easy. Staying out of the tornado is a plus. ---- Netherspite is the most technically challenging fight in the instance by far imo. Stay organized on vent about who will be next into each beam, and profit. Green Beam tips - Start off with a non-mana melee dpser in it for the whole phase, as it doesn't hurt them. Healers go in if your mana is low or if extra healing is needed, but don't stay for more than 25 stacks. This beam gives you mana (and massive healing power), but the longer you stay in the less mana you will have after you step out. After 35-40 stacks you'll come out with no mana, and be useless for 2 minutes. Keeping that green beam off the dragon entirely is a huge priority!! It heals him depressingly fast - lol The healer in the blue beam should spam heals like crazy, focussing on the tank and the person in the blue beam (vulnerable to shadow damage). Spamming HoTs or area heals just before leaving the beam (with 20+ stacks of healing power) will do some crazy healing! The healing power buff persists for a few seconds after you leave the beam too, so keep spamming. A good safe way to deal with this key beam is for the offtank to plan to take it for the phase, and healers call out if they need to hop in for extra mana or healing at some point. Red Beam tip - It's not a big deal if this one gets on Netherspite for a bit. One tank can easily take the beam for the whole phase, if he steps out for a few seconds, then back in. Do that a couple times during the phase, and you avoid the one problem with the red beam - As it stacks up on you, you get tougher but have less and less hp. You can get down to 1hp, and die to one lucky hit! Blue Beam tip - This one is easy to manage. Again not a big deal if it gets on the dragon momentarily. Just have whatever dpser is available (i.e. they don't currently have the 2-minute blue exhaustion debuff from being in it before) call out on vent "I'll take blue next". Again step out after 25 stacks or so, because any more will make you take too much damage from his shadow AOEs. General beam tips - Best way for smooth beam transitions (blue and especially green) is for the person who is taking it over to stand in front of the person who has it. Then when they move out, it's immediately on the new person. Void zones can kill you fast, but you want to keep your beam off the dragon. If a void zone opens up under you while you are holding a beam, move forward or backwards NOT to the side - That way you keep your beam. Beam people (and everyone) should stand close to the dragon. There's no advantage to being at max range, and if you end up out of range of the healers you'll die to shadow AOE. Phase 2 tips - In the banish phase there are no beams to worry about, so just dps the boss. Clothies shouldn't stand under his feet - You could pull agro and get stomped. Some people run to the walls, but it isn't really necessary. He spins around and randomly shoots cone breath attacks - If you are in close you can avoid them by running through/behind him. If you get hit, just bandage. Make sure to communicate about who will be picking up the beams when the phase ends, and remember that they could appear in a different point (red could be where green was, etc.) Organization and communication between beam-takers = epix!

I'm interested... But to be all honest and stuff, I wouldn't go for that deal unless the rest of the raid was similarly geared to me. I don't mind helping guildies who don't happen to have the opportunity to get T6 gear... But to have the raid leader turn around and tell the overgeared helpers that they don't deserve the one useful thing that drops for me there, would be a deal I might not have the stomach for. Yaknow what I mean? To tell the overgeared people who probably kindof carried the group that they don't get to roll on the one or two piece of nice gear that drops (Tsunami Talisman or whatever), when it would never have dropped without their help... Meh. Maybe the Vind semi-pugs have improved since the last one I did with them, but that time Father and one Vind main did more effective healing than the other 5 or 6 healers combined After their green-geared alts wiped us 4 or 5 times on Mag, it was a little annoying to have the raid leader declare that he was going to claim the one good drop himself because surprise surprise he had the most points. Nice deal if you can get 24 people to agree to it I guess! About the Karathress quest starter - We could just find someone who has a saved instance with him down and walk in and talk to the NPC, couldn't we? Or does the NPC despawn? Father does need that, and much more importantly the damn Vials off Kael and Vashj. Exalted with Hyjal and no ring, ftl Anyway, I don't mean to dump on your idea - I just had a bad experience with those guys I suppose An FP Vashj (or Kael) kill, I'm 100% down for any time! And if some Vind people want to come along - They can roll for the loot on an equal basis IMO, because I would appreciate their help. ----- Edit - Now that I think about it, I'm actually saved to SSC this week I think, first time I've been in the instance for a couple of months ^^ Went with a really strong PuG who one-shot Lurker and nearly one-shot Tidewalker, but had to quit because we started late. I wonder if they ever went back and cleared Fathom-Lord? I should check that tomorrow...

DOS was sweet. You put in your 5-1/4" floppy (or tape, lol), loaded your app, and never ever saw a blue screen of death or equiv. If something went wrong, you knew with absolute certainty that the culprit was user error. Now while naturally you still suspect the noobler did something stupid, you simply can't prove it. Unless you turn their scanner keyboard over and tomato juice pours out. True story.

I'm disappointed with the Discipline Priest tree - I was intrigued by the idea of a 50-21-0 deep spirit healer for raid untility with their mana return and tank-buffing talents, but it doesn't really work out. All of the great healing talents are stacked at the top of Disc (so it takes 52 or 53 points to get them, meaning no Angel Spirit from the holy tree), and to get up there I have to waste several useless spell damage talent points. Or Absolution I suppose for cheap decursing, but meh. Yeah, Arcane Mage looks pretty nice. I should really try deep Arcane now with my mage - I've never been happy with Fire (damn slow spells!), and levelled all the way up with Frost.

I recommend you go out and pick up the latest "PC Gamer" mag, and look at the current dream system and mid system they spec out in each issue. They list out the parts for a dream systems that's ~$4,000 (quad-core processor, dual video cards for $6-800, etc, etc), but the mid-range system is more like ~$1,000 with all of the parts that are still really nice but have come down in price. They also list a $500 "low-end" system that's still more powerful than what I'm using - lol So yeah, you might be able to get a great system for $1,000 by just taking their mid-range parts list to Canada Computers and making it yourself or paying a more-geek-minded friend with diet Cokes.

How have the uncircumcised guys compared, to claim it's not harder? While you make a good point about boys and their shower time with their little friend (lol), that's all fine for teenagers... But most boys won't clean anything unless someone stands over them watching. Do you really want to have to stand in the shower with your 10-yr-old son? Awkward! ^^

<-- Peteusmax in WC3. Never tried DoTA, but have a few thousand ladder games under my belt. So frustrating with the newb (and hostile newb, and team killer) allies, but still so addictive! --- OK, heading back to the beach now! ^^

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http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v436/temjin11/You%20need%20to%20eat/ynte-kid.jpg Here are some classics (read - I've seen them a couple times before): http://www.allowe.com/images/DemotivationalPosters/Demotivation20.jpg http://www.allowe.com/images/DemotivationalPosters/Demotivation16.jpg http://www.allowe.com/images/DemotivationalPosters/Demotivation15.jpg http://www.allowe.com/images/DemotivationalPosters/Demotivation21.jpg http://www.allowe.com/images/DemotivationalPosters/Demotivation03.jpg

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Mudkip - I choose her!

I feel you Beck, butbutbut... Doesn't the thought of Gina "Crush"ing the life out of you with those over-developed thighs trump Ali? *swoon* http://www.maximonline.com/todays_girl/girls/gina_carano/gfd_l4.jpg http://i192.photobucket.com/albums/z208/LuvNaomi/kedzie_vs_carano_weigh_ins.jpg

I had my PVR (Canadian TIVO) set up to tune in the new American Gladiator just because there's nothing else on (and because I have a crush on Crush!) This week's episode got me out of my chair a bit - They introduced a new event where the contestants run back and forth across pillars over water, and three gladiators swing back and forth on ropes "Tarazan-style" trying to knock them off. Both female contestants took a boot to the kidney that sent them flying into the water, and one of them got flattened by a flying tackle in a different event. It was frigging awesome! lol