HOL regular - first boss ... WTB skillz

[gitcho]

I'm 79 on my team (pally, disc priest, 3x frost mage) and am having troubles with this boss .... can't outheal his dps even with full out heal-spam.

Here's the link to a better-than-average attempt: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCRIi1LZdnU&fmt=22. He wipes me almost instantly at 1:12 when i'm at 80% health even when a flash heal hits me.

What am I doing wrong?

[Clone]

He hit you for 7667 when you died, I cant see if thats a crit or not, are you defense capped? Id try using divine protection during that beserker stance phase to lower his damage.

Other than that my advice would be that HoL isnt that easy even when you first hit 80. Your dps looks a little low also but that may just be because I am used to seeing shaman bloodlusted numbers during boss fights like that.
It may be hard but the other option is to sheep the adds and kill the boss first.

Hope something I said was helpful anyway :D

[gitcho]

/cry ... dude, this HOL regular and i'm only lvl 79. Nowhere near def-capped - which is why I'm wondering how I'm sucking so bad on this, especially given that Effex was "speed" running this at lvl 77! (see xp/hr ('http://www.dual-boxing.com/forums/index.php?page=Thread&postID=203126&highlight=#post203126') )

Pally armory: http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Bonechewer&n=Team%C3%A2wesome

[gitcho]

oh yeah - i've got screenshots of multiple crushing blows from this guy on my mages and priest at lvl 79! I thot crushing was limited to NPC's 4lvls above! what the heck?

[Enndo]

Try switching your priest to holy.

[Svpernova09]

oh yeah - i've got screenshots of multiple crushing blows from this guy on my mages and priest at lvl 79! I thot crushing was limited to NPC's 4lvls above! what the heck?Crushes are not crits, they're different. at 79, I *think* you need 525/530 defense, if someone knows, please correct me.

Critical Hit immunity for a level 80 player against a raid boss occurs at 540 Defense and requires a defense skill of 140 (689 +def rating) from gear to achieve. The defense cap for heroic dungeons is 535 Defense.

You can use these commands to check your critability:


Raid Bosses:
/script DEFAULT_CHAT_FRAME:AddMessage(121.278*(5.6-(GetDodgeBlockParryChanceFromDefense())),1,0.5,0)
Heroic Bosses:
/script DEFAULT_CHAT_FRAME:AddMessage(121.278*(5.4-(GetDodgeBlockParryChanceFromDefense())),1,0.5,0)
Instance Bosses:
/script DEFAULT_CHAT_FRAME:AddMessage(121.278*(5.2-(GetDodgeBlockParryChanceFromDefense())),1,0.5,0)



http://www.wowwiki.com/Defense

[Starbuck_Jones]

I did check your armory, but the basic cobalt/saronite level 78 tanking set should get you to like 520 ish def. It wont cost you much either (less than 100g in mats total), Do a bit of research. buy the mats and tip someone to make it for you. Take a look at sbjones's link in my sig for what im wearing. All the big peices are these blue crafted items. Only my shield is epic. This should help.

Tempered Saronite and Daunting are the prefixes.

[gitcho]

Try switching your priest to holy.I tried holy for awhile, but switched to disc for running 5man's ... i'll never go back! Maybe it's just my play-style, but DISC is so much better than holy for me ...way more mana efficient (can't remember the last time I ran OOM), and penance is AMAZING!! I never once used my 51pt talent as holy, but am always using penance. Glyphed holy nova and the improved shield make DISC an amazing spec for my team. I can keep my tank up so much better - maybe that's just me.

Crushes are not crits, they're different. at 79, I *think* you need 525/530 defense, if someone knows, please correct me.

Critical Hit immunity for a level 80 player against a raid boss occurs at 540 Defense and requires a defense skill of 140 (689 +def rating) from gear to achieve. The defense cap for heroic dungeons is 535 Defense.

You can use these commands to check your critability:


Raid Bosses:
/script DEFAULT_CHAT_FRAME:AddMessage(121.278*(5.6-(GetDodgeBlockParryChanceFromDefense())),1,0.5,0)
Heroic Bosses:
/script DEFAULT_CHAT_FRAME:AddMessage(121.278*(5.4-(GetDodgeBlockParryChanceFromDefense())),1,0.5,0)
Instance Bosses:
/script DEFAULT_CHAT_FRAME:AddMessage(121.278*(5.2-(GetDodgeBlockParryChanceFromDefense())),1,0.5,0)



http://www.wowwiki.com/Defense I thought crushing blows were removed from the game for NPC's <4 levels above you. This is from http://www.wowwiki.com/Crushing_blow
Important Notes: As of 3.0, crushing blows mechanism have been changed. Now only mobs four level higher than you can deal crushing blows. Therefore, uncrushability is irrelevant for raids. Here's the log of what I was hit with :

http://rmck.com/fraps/WoWScrnShot_053109_013527.jpg

I did check your armory, but the basic cobalt/saronite level 78 tanking set should get you to like 520 ish def. It wont cost you much either (less than 100g in mats total), Do a bit of research. buy the mats and tip someone to make it for you. Take a look at sbjones's link in my sig for what im wearing. All the big peices are these blue crafted items. Only my shield is epic. This should help.

Tempered Saronite and Daunting are the prefixes. Thanks for the tip - I'm trying to figure out how to gear once I hit 80. There's too much info out there on what to do next ... i dont even have 60% flying on my toons (let alone cold-weather) but am using the free flying mounts from "honest max."

What do you think about taking the 1800+ gold on each of my toons and using it to buy epic crafted gear for my tank & healer so I can do heroics right away and THEN start going for money so I can get regular flying -> cold weather -> epic flying?


Mostly, I'm hoping someone can offer some advice on what I'm doing wrong with this instance ... is it a gear thing or am I simply "doing it wrong" ?

[Moorea]

maybe get away from swirl ?
(I haven't personally tanked this boss so I don't remember ... only thing I do remember but was fine in your video is to not pull when he has lightning buff (unless you want the achievement that is))

[gitcho]

Crushes are not crits, they're different. at 79, I *think* you need 525/530 defense, if someone knows, please correct me.

It depends on your level and the boss level.

80 = 540 against a 83 mob (boss level). So count backwards by five. :)
79 = 535 IF the mob level is 82.. 530 is its 81?

Lets as a different question.

Lets see the OP's tank rotation macro. It almost sounds like he doesn't have holy shield up enough.

EDIT: OMG GET SOME GLYPHS! :Dyou're right - i'm only using "shield of righteousness" and "hammer of the righteous" on macro - the rest I click manually and probably forget holy shield more often than not. What are you guys using for a cast rotation on your main pally tank?

[Starbuck_Jones]

I wouldn't blow your bank for epics at this point. You can get some really nice and cheap crafted L78 tanking and pvp gear on the cheap. Once your tank can get knocked around and your healer can keep him on his feet, the rest falls into place. DPS helps but not near as much as a standing tank. 60% cold weather flying should be a top priority. Once you get that you can unlock and do the high paying daily quests. Earn 1000g in 90-120 min and buy an epic a day.

[Theradin]

Watching the fight, it's possible your problem is healing. General Bjarngrim is a fight that doesn't permit you to have your tank's health at anything less than maximum at all times, yet for stretches of the fight it seemed your tank was operating at half. In the same period, your priest appeared(?) to be idle. Your tank's health seems to be at a point that can survive the burst, so you might need to do something to increase healer throughput to make certain your tank's health is topped off -- either adjusting talents or spec; moving healing off into a spammable and high mana macro specic to this fight; or giving healing a bit more attention.

I'm a big fan of keeping healing as simple as possible, doing nothing more than spamming gheals.

[Zerocool2024]

So... just by running over your stats, they seem rather low.

Not boasting or anything, but, it seems that your Health/Defense is lacking a bit.

When I was 77 with my DK team, I had 19K health without any outside buffs, and about the same defense, maybe a little more, but all my DK's never reached cap till Heroics.

Now, I know, you are running a different setup, but, hell, even with the STA buff you should be getting a lot more HP.

I don't see a problem with skill, just gear. Though, I did notice that you didn't kill both the Pawns before engaging the boss, so, that is a no no.

[hibiki]

I tried holy for awhile, but switched to disc for running 5man's ... i'll never go back! Maybe it's just my play-style, but DISC is so much better than holy for me ...way more mana efficient (can't remember the last time I ran OOM), and penance is AMAZING!! I never once used my 51pt talent as holy, but am always using penance. Glyphed holy nova and the improved shield make DISC an amazing spec for my team. I can keep my tank up so much better - maybe that's just me. Me too. Only difference is I didn't glyph for holy nova. I still use it to kill the non elite skeletons in H CoS. How do you heal with your disc priest? I have a castrandom macro with PoM, Penance and PW: S tied to my tank/dps spam button.

[Taliesin]

I have a castrandom macro with PoM, Penance and PW: S tied to my tank/dps spam button.

Egads. If I'm reading what you are saying correctly, you pretty much have your priest casting heals non-stop through every fight? I'm guessing you haven't had to fight anything that requires any kind of mana conservation?

My priest has always been holy with some disc, and she's almost never had mana issues. As with just about anything, it comes down to proper gear and using their abilities as effectively as you can. Mine only uses Greater Heal directly on group members, Prayer of Healing when the group is taking significant damage, and Prayer of Mending when dealing with periodic damage or AoE damage (usually I just use PoH in these cases as well). If no one needs an immediate heal, she doesn't do anything so that she can fall out of the 5 second rule to regen mana faster. I've been meaning to try Flash Heal instead of Greater Heal, but I just haven't felt a need to change something that's already working for me. Perhaps waiting longer on heals and using big heals when I need to has allowed me to regen more between heals (I smell some testing for me to do). However, I also gave my priest priority for any spellpower gear with spirit/mp5 over any other class while gearing up.

And FYI, my priest doesn't even have the 51-point holy talent. Just wasn't worth it to me; too situational and rarely has a use. You can see her build here ('http://www.wowarmory.com/character-talents.xml?r=Duskwood&cn=Sarres&gn=Frostmourne+Guardians'). Before you ask about her glyphs, she uses Renew and Flash Heal more than anything else in raids. With her current gear, she no longer needed to be glyphed for her heroic spells.

[Clone]

Yeh some very helpful comments here, number one thing being keep holy shield up as much as possible. Other thing is make sure you prioritise those 60% flying mounts, you really wont want to be without them at 80. The 280% mounts are definately optional though.

[gitcho]

yes - thx for the feedback. I changed my pally tanking macro to :
/castsequence reset=combat Holy Shield,, Hammer of the Righteous, Consecration, Shield of Righteousness, Judgement of Wisdom,Exorcism
and it works great - good aggro-holding & no waiting for cooldowns - thanks Fur!

How do you heal with your disc priest? I have a castrandom macro with PoM, Penance and PW: S tied to my tank/dps spam button I don't macro the heals ... I use a G15 keyboard with G1-6 mapped to heals on the tank [1] shield [2] flash heal [3] renew [4] greater heal [5] prayer of mending [6] holy nova .... numpad 0 is penance on the tank.

RE. my lousy strategery: I had a friend look at the video today who watched and simply said "get the heck out of the whirlwind!" ... When i reviewed it, i was fine until his whirlwind destroyed me. I had a closer look at the video and the damage from his whirlwind seems to hit in pairs every few seconds ... i parry the first 2 hits, then parry/take the 2nd pair, the 3rd pair of hits lands hard, and the 4th kills me.

:pinch: I suppose I should try just moving out of the way ...

[Moorea]

note that you don't actually need northrend flying to do quests/dailies/... as I learned recently (after I splurged for it) see
77 and flying in northrend ! ('http://www.dual-boxing.com/forums/index.php?page=Thread&postID=205686#post205686')

[Ughmahedhurtz]

Just curious, but why is there another normal mob with him in that movie when you died? Rule of thumb for him is kill the two healers first. (Correct me if you weren't trying to do that, but it looked like you had the boss to 40% and a healer still alive.) Once the two small guys go down, you're only taking damage from one source. With two sources of dmg and you not being defense capped, an accidental double-hit/crit is going to be painful. :P

[Smoooth]

Sorry guys but you are all wrong with your crushing blow info. You are all confusing crits with it.

The only stat that is taken into account for crushes is your BASE defense skill, as in the skill you see in you skill list("k" by default).

Take the level of the mob you are fighting and multiply this by 5. Now subtract 15. If your base defense skill is lower than this you can be crushed.

To the OP: your base defense skill is only 236! You can have this skill at character level 48. This pretty means you leveled up to 80 without taking hits on that character. Just go into a low level instance and gather up a ton of guys and let them whack on you and only heal yourself. Once your base defense is 400 you won't ever be crushed again.

quotes from wowwiki

When the attacking mob has more than 20 points of weapon skill above the player's current base defense there is a chance of being struck by a crushing blow.

If your Defense skill is fully trained for your level, neither more Defense, nor Resilience, nor any other kind of bonus can reduce the nominal chance for you to receive a Crushing Blow.

[Moorea]

maybe get away from swirl ?


RE. my lousy strategery: I had a friend look at the video today who watched and simply said "get the heck out of the whirlwind!" ... When i reviewed it, i was fine until his whirlwind destroyed me. I had a closer look at the video and the damage from his whirlwind seems to hit in pairs every few seconds ... i parry the first 2 hits, then parry/take the 2nd pair, the 3rd pair of hits lands hard, and the 4th kills me.

:pinch: I suppose I should try just moving out of the way ...

glad I'm not the only one who saw that :-) yw :-)

[hibiki]

I have a castrandom macro with PoM, Penance and PW: S tied to my tank/dps spam button.

Egads. If I'm reading what you are saying correctly, you pretty much have your priest casting heals non-stop through every fight? I'm guessing you haven't had to fight anything that requires any kind of mana conservation? I guess I haven't while boxing. I've only cleared H UK, H CoS, and H HoL with my group. My disc priest usually does about 80% overhealing due to stupid spam, however I usually end the boss fights with over 30%-70% mana depending if I remember to use shadowfiend and if I'm fighting Loken or not. I talking heroics here, not raiding. I don't stupid spam on raids. Actually come to think of it, stupid spam might work on raids too. Disc priests usually get assigned to the main tank and raid mobs hit harder. PW: S has a 15 second cd(weakened soul), Penance has a 6.4 sec cd with glyph, PoM has a 8 sec cd, I think I stupid spam in raids just with out the macro. I get my mana back from rapture and spirit is useless to a disc priest. We go for tons of Int, some Crit, then Spell Power. If you running a holy priest, then worrying about the 5 second rule is a good thing. For disc priest, the 5 second rule applies to how long that slice of pizza has been on the floor.


My priest has always been holy with some disc, and she's almost never had mana issues. As with just about anything, it comes down to proper gear and using their abilities as effectively as you can. Mine only uses Greater Heal directly on group members, Prayer of Healing when the group is taking significant damage, and Prayer of Mending when dealing with periodic damage or AoE damage (usually I just use PoH in these cases as well). If no one needs an immediate heal, she doesn't do anything so that she can fall out of the 5 second rule to regen mana faster. I've been meaning to try Flash Heal instead of Greater Heal, but I just haven't felt a need to change something that's already working for me. Perhaps waiting longer on heals and using big heals when I need to has allowed me to regen more between heals (I smell some testing for me to do). However, I also gave my priest priority for any spellpower gear with spirit/mp5 over any other class while gearing up.

And FYI, my priest doesn't even have the 51-point holy talent. Just wasn't worth it to me; too situational and rarely has a use. You can see her build here ('http://www.wowarmory.com/character-talents.xml?r=Duskwood&cn=Sarres&gn=Frostmourne+Guardians'). Before you ask about her glyphs, she uses Renew and Flash Heal more than anything else in raids. With her current gear, she no longer needed to be glyphed for her heroic spells. Actually I'd like to ask about your glyphs. :D Is renew even worth it in raids? I usually find that renew sits on the target while other healers heal them back to full hp. I tried slapping in on the main tank for a while and have noticed that it just sits there with the disc priest's bubble or the pally's holy light tops them off. I went with the CoH and GS glyphs. I now smart heal 6 people in raids with the CoH glyph and the GS glyph resets the cd to 1 minute if the target doesn't "die". Another thing, I looked over your spec and have 2 questions. Silent resolve, threat really shouldn't be a problem anymore. Or are you doing some pvp? Surge of light = free flash heals. I know it can't crit, but it doesn't cost any mana either.

[gitcho]

Sorry guys but you are all wrong with your crushing blow info. You are all confusing crits with it.

The only stat that is taken into account for crushes is your BASE defense skill, as in the skill you see in you skill list("k" by default).

Take the level of the mob you are fighting and multiply this by 5. Now subtract 15. If your base defense skill is lower than this you can be crushed.

To the OP: your base defense skill is only 236! You can have this skill at character level 48. This pretty means you leveled up to 80 without taking hits on that character. Just go into a low level instance and gather up a ton of guys and let them whack on you and only heal yourself. Once your base defense is 400 you won't ever be crushed again.

What I don't get, is that my pally was 79, and the General is 81. That's only 3 levels. WOWWIKI (http://www.wowwiki.com/Crushing_blow ) :
Important Notes: As of 3.0, crushing blows mechanism have been changed. Now only mob four level higher than you can deal crushing blows According to wowwiki, I should NEVER receive a crushing blow, no matter what my stats. I was able to down the general after trying the strategy of moving out of the way, but it was VERY close - i was down to 16 hp at one point in the middle of a flash-heal spam ... very tough fight for me for some reason. Anyhow, doesn't matter as I dinged 80 on all my guys now (WOOT!!) and I'm getting def-capped with the tempered saronite set (thanks for the advice on that sbjones) and the titansteel shield wall ...

[Taliesin]

Actually I'd like to ask about your glyphs. :D Is renew even worth it in raids? I usually find that renew sits on the target while other healers heal them back to full hp. I tried slapping in on the main tank for a while and have noticed that it just sits there with the disc priest's bubble or the pally's holy light tops them off. I went with the CoH and GS glyphs. I now smart heal 6 people in raids with the CoH glyph and the GS glyph resets the cd to 1 minute if the target doesn't "die". Another thing, I looked over your spec and have 2 questions. Silent resolve, threat really shouldn't be a problem anymore. Or are you doing some pvp? Surge of light = free flash heals. I know it can't crit, but it doesn't cost any mana either.

I don't raid much, but I find Renew to be a good way to be able to divert my attention to the whole raid. I tend to keep a Renew on the tank, and if there's at least one druid healer in the raid, then HoTs are usually enough to keep the tank up without the constant heals. The idea is that, yes, there should be enough residual healing from everyone else that I really don't even need to directly heal very much (not counting Patchwerk). Seems to be more efficient on mana, but depends on what the other healers consist of. Otherwise I get some flash heals in there. If the other healers have a tendency to not notice that Renew is already on a target, then this may not be ideal to use, but the people I ran with were smart enough to catch that. Same goes for if individuals get hit just once, like right when dropping a mutating plague during Grobbulus where they are pretty much guaranteed to take a few thousand damage. The Renew will top them off and only wastes a GCD to let me be ready for a big heal elsewhere if needed. CoH is very handy for fights like Loatheb, but otherwise I find that I don't use it very much since there's not always multiple people taking damage at once. If I ran with a different guild, I might find that I need to change my synergy with the other healers.

But I should point out that my spec is a balance between multibox healing and solo healing. Surge of Light would be nice for raiding, but does me no good in my multibox configuration (I don't flash heal myself). I agree the threat reduction isn't a big deal anymore, and pretty much pointless in raids, but it's a carry-over from when I wasn't quite as well geared as I am today, and my priest used to have to get some heals off really early in heroic fights. She just hasn't gotten a spec update to quite match my group performance of today, so I have no problem with giving up threat reduction for Surge when I get the chance to do so. I don't claim this is a great raid spec, but was providing this as a decent 80 entry-level holy spec that worked for me.

I'm definitely not an expert healer, but so far I haven't found any major problems in how I do things (yet). I'm actually trying to stay away from raids for now, and her spec will probably reflect that.

EDIT: Now that you have me thinking about it, my priest build has received the least about of scrubbing since hitting 80. She's definitely overdue.

[Smoooth]

Sorry guys but you are all wrong with your crushing blow info. You are all confusing crits with it.

The only stat that is taken into account for crushes is your BASE defense skill, as in the skill you see in you skill list("k" by default).

Take the level of the mob you are fighting and multiply this by 5. Now subtract 15. If your base defense skill is lower than this you can be crushed.

To the OP: your base defense skill is only 236! You can have this skill at character level 48. This pretty means you leveled up to 80 without taking hits on that character. Just go into a low level instance and gather up a ton of guys and let them whack on you and only heal yourself. Once your base defense is 400 you won't ever be crushed again.

What I don't get, is that my pally was 79, and the General is 81. That's only 3 levels. WOWWIKI (http://www.wowwiki.com/Crushing_blow ) :
Important Notes: As of 3.0, crushing blows mechanism have been changed. Now only mob four level higher than you can deal crushing blows According to wowwiki, I should NEVER receive a crushing blow, no matter what my stats. I was able to down the general after trying the strategy of moving out of the way, but it was VERY close - i was down to 16 hp at one point in the middle of a flash-heal spam ... very tough fight for me for some reason. Anyhow, doesn't matter as I dinged 80 on all my guys now (WOOT!!) and I'm getting def-capped with the tempered saronite set (thanks for the advice on that sbjones) and the titansteel shield wall ...Well your problem is your base defense skill is that of a lvl 48, at least when I looked at your armory. You only need a defense of 400 to never be crushed which all levels 80s should have. Wowwiki is just assuming you do. Most solo boxers get hit enough that their defense is 400 very soon after hitting 80.

Just as an example, after I boosted a paladin to 60 I took him into RFC to get his defense up. I was being crushed by the level 18? mobs in there for a few minutes until my base defense went up high enough.