Help me suck less

[kate]

Wow, thanks, Oz! I'll give the list you've posted some real attention.

What I did today was run pugs like a maniac. I picked up a TON of gear:

Icebound cloak from Ahrune (and I got the scythe in the bag, I guess if I ever go holy with my tank or something), Ziggurat Imprinted Chestguard (little better than the one I had before), Liadrin's Legguards (gemmed, threaded, etc), Black Spire Sabatons, Libram of the Sacred Shield, Unsmashable Heavy Band, Black Heart, offering of Sacrifice.

My health went from 25.5k self-buffed to 30.1k self-buffed. My defense is now at 241, I've got better/more appropriate gemming and enchants, and so I think it should be a *bit* easier to handle the basic dungeons now - my rets can focus on DPS rather than having to heal the tank as much.

The only sticking point for the rets is gonna be better weapons... They're using the crafted ilvl 200 deals, so I guess I need to somehow get past FoS so that I can farm Garfrost?

As a side note, my experience with boxing (and optimizing etc) and having to basically pay attention to 5 characters at once has made me a REALLY good tank, according to the people in the PUGs. For the first 10 or so I was getting bitched out because of my gear, and by the time it was done people were saying "skill>gear" and the like, asking to stay teamed with me, etc.. What's HILARIOUS about this is that I literally was pressing 3 buttons to tank... One is my 969 macro, 1 is my hand of reckoning, and the other is avenger's shield. I'm so used to having to move myself (and my dps) out of void zones, deal with gimmicks, etc., that when I didn't have to worry about any of that it was just a full-on rampage through dungeons, even with groups where I was the best geared person!

[Ughmahedhurtz]

Other fights that are tricky - the bloody jousting with ToC normal is kicking my ass. I can take 2 of the 3 but then something happens like - instead of my tab targeting the actual enemy, it targets their horse so for a few seconds my people don't move to attack, and in that time one of the enemy gets back on a mount and by that time my whole team is weak enough that they can then take out at least 1, then 2 people, and at that point I've lost. And it's *really* frustrating to go back because that whole bloody pageant thing has to happen first, so it winds up taking forever to try again, by which point I've decided to do something more fun, like stab my eyes with spoons.

Heh, I hear ya. The easiest way to do this from what I read is to park your alts by one of the spots where you have two horses. Then get aggro on your main and run back and forth in front of your alts. This will trample the bosses with your main and not require movement on your alts, just targeting. Worth a shot at any rate.

With FoS, I can easily take out the first boss, but the Devourer just wrecks my party.

He was a stone bitch for me, too. Just keep after him until you get past it so you can queue PoS. Should be plenty of normal runs going so you can queue normals until you finish the quests.


Regarding yours and other comments on Ahune, I'm fairly surprised you're having trouble with this. Yes, the hailstones are hard but I didn't think THAT hard. I'd record a video of how I do it but my poor laptop would die of heat exhaustion. I'll detail my strat and maybe there will be some small thing you're missing that will help breakover into success.

1. Run straight ahead toward Ahune's spawnpoint and stop about halfway between the keystone frost patch on the left and the spawn point frost patch. Stop your rets here stacked on top of each other.
2. Go click the stone with tank, then run back and stack on top of your rets facing the same way. Move everyone up to the edge of Ahune's frost patch.
3. Put up seal of light if you don't have it on already.
4. About 3 seconds after you go into combat with Ahune, pop Sacred Shield.
5. As soon as the hailstone pops, target him and start DPS. MOVE BACKWARD (Use your "ALL move backward" keybind) and keep moving backward or you'll get knocked down on top of the first spike and can't move off of it in time.
6. Hit your "Flash of Light-->Self target" keybind as needed.
7. As soon as the hailstone dies, start spamming /follow and your assist/attack macro. DO NOT USE IWT DURING THIS PHASE. Trust me.
8. Run your tank in figure 8's between the two frost patches. If you keep spamming follow and DO NOT STOP, you should never hit a spike or maybe only one ret if he melees an add and stops following. Flash of Light should easily keep you healed up from damage.
9. While you're doing figure 8's, just keep targeting adds and try to run the rets over the top of the adds or close enough to get in a swing or two in passing. This will keep SoLight healing you.
10. Also, while doing figure 8's, pop Divine Plea to keep mana topped off. Objective here is to be at full health and more than half mana when the ice core pops.
11. When the ice core pops, switch to Seal of Corruption (or whichever seal you have glyphed for dmg) and DPS the core. Use wings here.
12. When you see the message that he's about to emerge soon, start backing up out of the frost patch. This will avoid the first spike that's hard to see in the ice patch.
13. Switch to Seal of Light again and recast Sacred Shield.
14. WHen the second Hailstone appears, kill him while watching for spikes. You can generally avoid spikes by backing up with the tank in a broad circle and spamming IWT on the rets. Every 4-5 seconds, hit /follow to close up the rets to avoid the spike.
15. Once hailstone dies, switch back to SoLight and repop Divine Plea if it's fallen off.
16. Go back to figure 8's while killing adds. This phase may be more difficult to keep one ret from getting spiked if he gets pulled by one of the wind adds. Just hit your instant flash of light button and have them all cast on the one that got spiked and you should be good.
17. Keep doing figure 8's and wait for the core to pop. You should have enough DPS even in trashy gear to kill the core the second time around.

There are a few assumptions to the above that helps tremendously:

• You have keybinds for "move all toons backward/forward/left/right"
• You have IWT bound to an easy key to spam while spamming follow and attack macros.
• You have flash of light bound to easy-to-reach keys for "heal everyone self-targeting" and "everyone heal toon X"
• You have your Seal of Light/Seal of <dps>" bound to easy-to-reach keybinds.
• You have your "oh shit" buttons on easy-to-reach keys. (Bubble, LoHands, etc.)

Relative to some boss fights, Ahune is not difficult but it does require you to plan your changes in seals ahead of time. Hope this helps.


Oh, and Oz, I'm running two laptops over WiFi on my brother's crappy cable right now, so I average about 190ms pings.

[OzPhoenix]

Ughmadhedhurtz,

Thanks for the detailed run through of Ahune - as yes, he's utterly wiping the floor with my all melee team at the moment. I'll run through it over the weekend and see how I can apply your tactics and strategy to my team. Will let ya know :-)

Kate,

I actually didn't do any one-boxing of my tank, but then I was fortunate enough to be able to execute a gearing plan that was fairly comphrehensive soon as they hit 80, and had the assistance of another 5-boxer on my realm (3 cheers for Slats!...hehe) to get me past Devourer in PoS. And yes, in PoS you can farm the first boss for the i219 2-handers which are real nice for the Rets.

Keep up the efforts - hehe, seems like we're a very gear dependent team at the start, but rest assured once there's a bit of triumph gear on the rets, you'll really start to see the forward progress. :-)

PS: Do have undergeared All-Pally strats for the other bosses too, if you run into a need for them.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

OK, on a lark and just to make sure gear didn't make all that much difference, I stripped off most of my gear and ran Ahune tonight for my 2 badges per my above strategery. Here's the paper doll stats I started the fight with:

Tank = 24.6k, 2895ap, 16% crit, 10exp, 199 hit, 427 dps, 20.68% dodge, 15% parry, 9% block, 501 defense (LOL!), 21284armor, 2899 gearscore.

DPS = 17k, 2941ap, 22% crit, 0exp, 280 hit, 484dps, 11% dodge, 5% parry/block, 400def (default), 9343armor, 2300ish gearscore (ROFL)

Yeah, I had to do the core twice but ONLY twice, I killed it just as the 3rd hailstone popped. Average DPS on the rets was ~1400 overall with 1325-1525 on the third hailstone, mostly from divine storm and consecration AoE on all the adds.





I used lay on hands towards the end of the 2nd hailstone as I flubbed the transition and got hit by a spike. Otherwise, aside from it being a bit close when the hailstones died, the rest went pretty much as I described above. You have a few more adds following you around as you don't kill them as fast when undergeared but SoLight kept me topped off between phases and I was always at full health except during and shortly after the hailstones.

I'll grant you that he's a lot more unforgiving with low gear but it isn't as bad as I thought it would be.

On a latency note, I'm showing about 215ms when the fight ended. Oh, how I miss my Verizon FiOS fiber sub 30ms pings. :P

[Seldum]

Heres a tip from a "not so good/geared" player But I guess everything helps.

Gear your tank. Gear your tank. Gear your tank. Gear your tank and then gear your tank.

I did quite a few PUG's to get some triumph badges for my tank. I have only just begun to do heroics with my team and they are poorly geared. But I have been able to clear UK+UP on heroic. So in theory I could continue doing this to farm badges.

I think the fastest way for you to gear your group would be to get a hold of some pvp gear. For me thats way more easy than to farm heroics in the beginning. And the pvp gear is awesome for 5-man instances.

Also, I noted you don't have a gem on your belt. Equip the "eternal belt buckle" or whatever the name is. Its cheap and everything helps.

[kate]

I've now geared my tank about as well as I'll be able to short of joining raids/farming a TON of frost emblems. I'm still going to get emblems for the tank ring, and I'll need bracers and a better trinket for one slot - at that point I'll be all purpled out.

For getting my rets past Devourer of Souls, I'm thinking I will probably pay a tank + healer combo to drag me through 2x so they can all get credit, and then I will farm my brains out in PoS for some better weapons and all that happiness.

Also going to try to farm Ahune again tonight - I'll try that strategy, Ugh!

[Fat Tire]

[OzPhoenix]

Heh, I hear ya. The easiest way to do this from what I read is to park your alts by one of the spots where you have two horses. Then get aggro on your main and run back and forth in front of your alts. This will trample the bosses with your main and not require movement on your alts, just targeting. Worth a shot at any rate.
He was a stone bitch for me, too. Just keep after him until you get past it so you can queue PoS. Should be plenty of normal runs going so you can queue normals until you finish the quests.


>>>>THE LONG BIT WHERE UGH EXPLAINED THE FIGHT<<<< Was very helpful --- Oz.


Oh, and Oz, I'm running two laptops over WiFi on my brother's crappy cable right now, so I average about 190ms pings.

Ugh.

Your children.

I will bear them.

I GOT AHUNE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Couldn'a done it with you matey. Thanks so much for the tips. I practically leapt outta my chair when he died (on the THIRD Phase 2.... lol).

It was ugly, I was mashin' keys I was runnin' like a chook with my heat cut off - but I don't care coz

I GOT AHUNE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

PS: Sorry Kate for hijacking this thread a bit, but...

I GOT AHUNE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Ughmahedhurtz]

Congrats. Sometimes, we just hit a mental block and need a quick kick-start from a different perspective to get going again. Glad it helped!

[OzPhoenix]

Congrats. Sometimes, we just hit a mental block and need a quick kick-start from a different perspective to get going again. Glad it helped!

More than anything else (and this might be of some help to Kate as well), changing the Rets off their DPS Seal to Seal of Light during the various Phase 1's made essentially all the difference. That combined with constant, circular motion, meant they rarely took a spike, and pretty much always had full health.

One Ret did die before it ended, but by the time the third Phase1 kicked in, I was sucking dry on mana, so that combined with an unlucky spike hit did him in. The other 3 rets and the prot survived. On the updside, Ahune was sitting at about only 50 or 60k when the third Phase 2 opened up.

This allowed me to complete all the Midsummer Festival events, and also got me my 50th and 51st frost badges, making me the proud owner of 5xi264 cloaks (trinkets next frost purchase).

I'd edit the over-exhuberance in my previous post, but it was written right after I downed Ahune so it's a pretty genuine reflection of the feeling of satisfaction I got from this still pretty under-geared Paladin teams success.