More Ulduar
Last week, my guild went back into Ulduar after the recent nerf and successfully downed Flame Leviathan, XT Deconstructor, and Kologarn.
As seen in the photo, I won the Lifespark Visage…I look so awesome wearing it! 😀 (I got that sandbox tiger from a friend of mine in the guild and I love it sooooo much! I had no idea how fun it would be to rock back and forth on a spectral tiger toy while going over raiding details. It’s really cool that you can share it by hopping off and letting someone else jump on. I started joking that I was going to charge people 5 copper for a ride…since I had a line of people doing /tap foot trying to get me to hurry up and get off so they could get on, lol. )
I’ve noticed a lot of things about Ulduar so far – mostly healery things, but some DPS thta we haven’t really had to worry about in the past because of how casual my guild used to be.
Healing Assignments
If we don’t stick to our targets/jobs, we will fail. My job is rather simple – heal the MT and shield the people in range that are going to be taking damage. That’s what Disc does best. Sure, we’re a flexible healing class and if I am able to protect my tank AND throw a few flash heals to help out with raid healing or kick in a .903 second flash heal to save a DPS’ers life, then that’s what I’m gonna do. However, spamming heals on the raid is a sure fire way to eat through my mana pool quick, fast, and in a hurry. For some encounters or if we already have a Holy Pally in the raid, I’ll have to swap over to Holy and don the holy gear to raid heal. Gone are the days when one person’s job was “more important” than anyone else’s. EVERY PIECE of the healing pie is MISSION CRITICAL in Ulduar and we’ve seen that first hand. Raid heals are just as important as Main Tank or Off Tank healing. Without hot DPS doing what they do best (which obviously they can’t do if they’re dead), the boss is not going to go down fast enough, the healers will run out of mana, and then the tanks will die and the raid will wipe. Everything is a domino effect and everyone is just as important as everyone else. With healing assignments ensuring that the right classes are on the right targets, we can minimize losing DPS too early in the fight.
Tanking
Our guild tanks are really good. Our MT is amazing. I’ve run with a TON of tanks throughout my years playing this game since release. So, I feel I can honestly say that our MT is the best one I’ve ever run with. He balances his mitigation/avoidance stats in his gear so well – he makes healing through most fights a lot less stressful than other non-guild tanks I’ve run with. Part of this is due to the fact that he and I have run together a lot in the past, that we play in the same room and can communicate outside of Vent (heehee, sure he’s my boyfriend and I’m probably biased, but I don’t care…he’s AWESOME!), and he understands very well what a Disc Priest can do. If I say, “OH NO” he knows that my cooldowns are cranking and he’s gonna take a big hit and kicks in an extra avoidance technique to keep himself alive. I have a hard time healing other Warrior tanks sometimes because they save things like Shield Wall or Last Stand for the last 5% of the like in TBC instead of when they actually need to kick them in. There’s really nothing more that he can do when he dies…most of the time it’s either something that I had no idea about like damage an aura something about the fight that wasn’t in the research I was doing or my positioning/that I’m silenced/that I didn’t time my cooldown on Weakened Soul just right, etc. Our tanks are in great shape for Ulduar, just have to learn the little tricks of the fights…which will come with time and with additional information when it’s posted.
DPS
This one is touchy. Back in the day, we were inundated with high deeps. We could field 2 10 man Kara groups if we only had the healers and tanks. Over time and with the new expansion, we’ve lost some of our ranks. Now it’s tough to field a geared team of enough DPS to do Ulduar. Incidentally, we have more than enough tanks and healers now, go figure, lol. Even though our guild is in a transitional phase from Casual Guild That Sometimes Has Enough People Online To Do Raids to Casual RAIDING Guild That Tries To Be Fun And Fair While Pushing To Progress In End Game Content. We’ve put a lot of pressure on our DPS to step it up in all aspects of their game….Step it up on your Enchants, Gems, Consumables, Spec, Rotation, etc. They’ve really risen to the challenge and while it’s still hard to field enough DPS to get things cracking, the DPS that do sign up come serious and ready for a challenge.
Summary
We’ve come a long long way in the last year. I’m really quite pleased and proud of everyone involved in our success. I see us a guild who has to fight tooth and nail for every inch and every victory we get. We’re the underdogs. And now we’re doing a great job in end-game content for the first time ever as a guild. Pretty freaking sweet. It’s not easy to change your mentality about the game to see more content, but everyone that’s interested has risen to the challenge like champs. Go Ordo! 😀
Alliance Girl 
WHOO HOO! Great job in Ulduar. We are fortunate that we have enough geared people for 2 10-mans and a 25-man. Our main issue has always been coordination and movement. Why it takes some people 4 ticks of a Light bomb to move is beyond me. lol!
I have that same helm for my Arcane spec and I am hoping to get a second piece of T8 this week. I still juggle my gear between Arcane and TtW/Fire specs for hit while still maintaining the 2-pc set bonus for T7.5. I didn’t think I would care much for dual specs, but I switch between them a lot, depending how much moving I will be doing for the fight.
Keep up the good work!
P.S. I want to nominate our MT as one of the best. I remember how he kept DCing during our Molten Core days and would NOT lose aggro on the mob while his toon still showed up on the screen and he had no control over it. Talk about maintaining threat. lol!
@Markus: I’m surprised at that too. I know that as a healer I can get “tunnel vision” at times because it only takes my concentration dropping for a few seconds for me to lose my tank…but for DPS that is standing there going through their rotation, I would think that the big skull on your head and the big light rings coming off your body would be a nice indicator to GOGOGO! Wow, that was a seriously good tank considering how hard threat was to get and maintain in raids compared to these days!
Gratz on the loot! Still waiting for my first drop. 😦
“the DPS that do sign up come serious and ready for a challenge.”
I’m sure it’s frustrating, but as a former officer this was the only thing I was ever really asking for even from the ones that weren’t so good.
@Kyrilean: Thanks. 😀 I got lucky, we had a lot of casters in the run. It was a nice upgrade for me. I agree about the DPS quote. Really, all I want is for people who do sign up to raid to come ready to rock and roll with a good attitude. If they’re not up to par, we can work on that with suggestions and feedback if they’re interested in improving. It’s hard to change someone’s attitude though.
Love the pic of the Tiger, they are fun to ride! And popular!
@Troutwort: Thanks! I really love that silly tiger! 😀
u know the spectral tiger mount? well a guy named Elendril from Ner’Zhul alliance (night elf hunter) designed that mount for blizzard and works for blizzard lol. i use to play on that server and that’s how i found that out, but the guy was a bit of a loser. lol!!