Posts tagged: guide

Addon Review: AVR (Augmented Virtual Reality)

By Trilliance, April 18, 2010 11:25 AM

* As of Patch 3.3.5, AVR will cease to work! It was fun while it lasted… *
AVR (Augmented Virtual Reality) allows you to draw and add lines, circles and other markings in-game environment itself. All markings may also be shared with others, but I assume they need to have the addon installed as well. Raid leaders will find this addon an extremely helpful tool for explaining strats to the raid. For example, it can be used to mark locations when explaining raid tactics. These marks can even be left visible for the fight itself. Say goodbye to all those flares!

Download AVR here

To install: Copy the folder to your Addon folder, restart WoW and you’re good to go.

Other things you can do with AVR:

  • Draw range circles around you at any range
  • Clearly mark players close to you
  • Bossmods type things, currently adds a red circle on Festergut spores, Putriced Malleable Goo (one target only), Rotface ooze explosion and Sindragosa Frost beacons. (Requires BigWigs for these to work.)
  • Mark any location relative to player position and rotation, for example mage blink landing spot
  • Measure distances

Here’s a screenshot of how the addon looks like in game.

Here comes the best part. The coolest thing is that it integrates with another addon: “AVR Encounters” (aka AVRE) to provide visual effects to highlight various boss mechanics, “boosting” your raid awareness heaps. You can download the godly addon AVRE here.

Currently AVRE supports only some encounters in the Icecrown Citadel raid:

  • Icecrown Citadel: Lord Marrowgar, Lady Deathwhisper, Festergut, Rotface, Professor Putricide, Blood Prince Council, Blood-Queen Lana’thel, Sindragosa, The Lich King (does not work correctly after the platform collapses due to Blizzard zone coordinate bugs).
  • Ulduar: Hodir, Freya, Mimiron, General Vezax, Yogg-Saron.

Example videos:
These are some somewhat early examples of what AVR+AVRE can do. The graphics have been altered a bit since these videos were taken, but you get the idea.

  • Putricide (Unbound Plague):
  • Putricide (Malleable Goo):

Addon memory usage is surprisingly decent… ~780kb of addon memory usage in our Lich King attempts, way lower than some resource-intensive addons such as Grid or Recount. If you have a decent system, it doesn’t hurt your framerate very much. Yes, it does lower it some. If you have a slow computer or low frame rate already, I wouldn’t recommend using AVR/AVRE.

Overall, I think this is a really excellent addon and an extremely valuable tool for raid leaders to explain raid tactics precisely, accurately on the in-game environment. Coupled with AVRE, there is no reason for you to fail at certain boss fights now!

Heroic Festergut Guide (25-man)

By Bushhealer, March 22, 2010 11:45 PM

This encounter is very similar to its normal mode counterpart. The encounter gains only one new ability — Malleable Goo, as well as the standard increase of HP and damage output. His enrage remains at five minutes.

HP: 52,200,000

Enrage: 5 minutes

Raid Requirements

  • 174K raid dps over 5 minutes.
  • All raid members (with some class/spec exceptions) must gain three stacks of Inoculated for both Pungent Blights.
  • Range players must spread 8 yards to avoid chaining Vile Gas.
  • All raid members must avoid Malleable goo, this is identical to the goo in the Professor Putricide encounter and during the fight Professor will bounce goo at random raid members from his viewing platform (the goo cause high amount of damage and causes casting speed to be slowed by 200% for 15 seconds).

Raid Positioning

Raid positioning is the key to a successful kill, the aim of the positioning is to:

  • Spread all range targets at least 8 yards from each other.
  • Allow for as little movement as possible for both dps and healers.
  • Make dodging Malleable Goo as easy as possible.

Raid positioning

As you can see from the diagram above one of the differences in this strategy is how the Malleable Goo thrown at melee is handled. In order to make judging when goo is targeting a melee easy, a path is left through the center of the range, the path is drawn from Professor Putricide’s position to the melees right leg position.

The range spread themselves 8 yards apart either side of the path, making sure they are in range of at least two raid healers at all times.

Healers position themselves three to a side; you want each section to contain one tank healer and two raid healers. The tank healers position themselves some what centered to their respective sides, they will act as collapse points for the Gas Spores, this is not only so the raid has two set markers but also this means the tank healers can remain stationary, moving only to avoid malleable goo. The other healers are free to choose whatever positions they are comfortable with.

Healers

This fight is not that challenging for healers, probably the most trouble you will have will be either from Vile Gas deaths or tank cool down fuck ups.

  • Tank Healing vs Raid Healing

The encounter starts of with intense raid damage via Gaseous Blight, with 0 stacks of Inoculated all healers should be focused on the raid, if you have holy paladins healing your main tank then this includes them as well (just beacon the tank and spam the raid). Most of the deaths in this phase will be because of Vile Gas, so make sure all healers are ready to put some direct healing on each player in their range inflicted with Vile Gas, don’t think one of the other healers will pick up the slack because chances are they are one of the Vile Gas targets or moving to avoid malleable goo.

As the fight progresses all healers should move off the raid to help out with the tank healing, from two stacks of Inoculated onward raid healing should be minimal and all healers should be spamming the main tank.

  • Aura Mastery

We found the best time to use aura mastery is as the first and fourth spores explode, this significantly reduces the damage from both gaseous blight and the gas spore which combined at that point is extremely hard to heal if combined with RNG like vile gas and goo.

  • Tank Cool Downs

Tank and healer cool downs should begin to be rotated once the raid has three stacks of Inoculated, to use cool downs before this point is a waste and just means your healers aren’t healing effectively.

Range DPS

If you are a pure dps class you should be looking at 9-11k dps, RNG plays a little bit of a roll in this due to Vile Gas.

  • Dodging Goo

This is by far the hardest thing for range in this fight, the best way to deal with the goo was to try and position yourself where there is never a player directly between you and Professor Putricide (Note this is not always possible). Turn your camera so it is looking behind you and judge as best you can whether the goo is heading your way and then move accordingly.

  • Spore Running

Gas spores spawning

If you have a spore then you should be moving towards your nearest marker ASAP, delaying and then realising you need to run to the other side of the room can cause a wipe. Also keep in mind you may need to run it into the melee.

Players move to their respective positions

  • Inoculated Stacks

Shadow priests and mages have the option of not moving in for spores in order to gain Inoculated stacks, this is because they can Disperse, Ice Block or cast Invisibility to avoid Festerguts Pungent Blight. Advantages are they have the ability to push their DPS and also reduce the chance that goo is thrown at a group stacking for a spore. Disadvantages are they do not gain any resistance to Gaseous Blight and take high amounts of aura damage throughout the entire fight.

Melee

For the most part this fight is the same as normal mode for most melee; as such most of you should be pulling between 10-12k dps.

The following must be achieved by the melee in this encounter;

  • Position Rotating

Melee is assigned two positions they must rotate through to avoid being hit by malleable goo. Both of these positions must be on the path shown below to ensure the goo is always traveling in the same direction. In order for this to work all melee must be stacked on each other at all times. A spotter calls  incoming goo on melee, all melee must now shift to the next position and re stack, the rotation continues.

Incoming malleable goo on the melees position

Melee shift completely avoiding the goo explosion, this rotation continues

  • Spore Running

On occasions two melee players will both gain a gas spore. In this scenario good communication is needed to make sure one of the players moves out to a range group.

  • The Melee Spore

This is relevant for the whole raid even though it only concerns melee. If you are the melee spore then you must position yourself between the tanks and the melee group so that everyone receives Inoculated, including the tanks! If a tank has the spore then the melee must shift in closer to ensure they are hit by it.

  • Bloodlust

We found the best time to use Bloodlust was after the 6th Gas Spore has exploded. This would give the raid the most DPS up-time without having to move for another spore. You could argue the 3rd Gas Spore would give the same amount of DPS up-time, but in that case he would not be in Execute range (~30%). Once everyone has moved back to their positions blow bloodlust and burn the boss. Using Bloodlust at the start is bad because it would cause massive FPS lag and affect everyone’s movement from Malleable Goo.

And that’s it! With no deaths and no DPS being hit with goo this boss should fall down without too much trouble, leaving you free to enjoy your phat lewts!

The Professor doing his thing...

If you have any questions please leave them in the comments below.

Achievement Guide: The Traitor King

By Trilliance, December 27, 2009 10:44 AM

The usual Over-achievers group got around to doing this achievement last night and got it in typical Clique fashion — on our last attempt of the night. We don’t have our own video to show but even better, we have come up with a Strategy Guide for you! Good luck in getting this achievement, it was quite fun!

The 2 videos below show the general strategy:

Hunter PoV (1:40):  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ihlv9wjNf7c
DK PoV (9:37): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUFUhzNrJIw

Here are some tips on how to get arguably the hardest ToC 10-player achievement:

  • The Scarabs you are supposed to kill only have a minuscule Health Pool of 17k, handle them with care!
  • NEVER DPS Anub’arak! You don’t need to kill him.
  • You have to kite all the scarabs through 4 Burrow Phases. When Anub’arak burrows the 4th time, that’s your cue to start killing all the adds.
  • Kite together! With exception of maybe the Hunters, stick together like glue!
  • During the first few attempts when you learn how to kite, it may be useful to kill all the Scarabs to have an idea of how many scarabs have spawned, especially when you know you are going to wipe.
  • The key to succeeding is not to let the scarabs hit you as much as possible. Acid-Drenched Mandible stacks hurt! To do this you need to stay in front of the Scarabs and stun/snare any that come from the front. The debuff stacks up to a maximum of 40, where it will hit for 48,000 per tick!
  • Kill Nerubian Burrowers as fast as you can. 1 or 2 up during the kill phase is manageable, but 4 or 5 will wipe your raid.
  • If you are behind the kiting pack, you may want to cut inside through the ice to rejoin the party. Sometimes, it is easier to just walk on the ice even though it slows you.

On our kill attempt, we used the following class composition:

  • Tanks: Warrior (MT-Anub’arak), DK (OT-Nerubian Burrowers)
  • Healers: 2x Resto druids – They are the best healers here due to the mobile nature of the encounter.
  • 2x Rogues – FoK Anesthetic poison to deal with Enraged Scarabs. Able to Cloak off high stacks of Acid-Drenched Mandibles
  • 2x Hunters – for Frost Traps and Tranq shot.
  • 1x Ele Shaman – for Earthbinds, “Rank 1″ Frost Shocks, and Thunderstorm. Use Thunderstorm carefully – it hits for ~4k non-crit and if you are not careful Scarabs may die prematurely.
  • 1x Frost Mage – “Rank 1″ Frost Nova, “Rank 1″ Blizzard. Be careful of your Water Elemental hitting Scarabs (do not glyph it) and put it to passive.

Class Tips:

  • Rogues: Use the lowest DPS weapon available and imbue it with Anesthetic poison. You’ll be using this for most part of the fight, but remember to swap weapons when you start to kill all the Scarabs.
  • Hunters: Stay in the ‘center’ killing orbs and Nerubian Burrowers! Lay Frost Traps in any gaps you see that Scarabs will path over. Help to Tranq Shot Enraged Scarabs. Try as much as possible to follow the kiting party so not to be out of range of heals. Use Aspect of the Wild!
  • Resto Shamans: Glyph Riptide. Use 2 piece t8/2 piece t9 Resto set for reduced Riptide duration, and LHW relic. You don’t want to be healing and left behind the kiting party. Use Frost Resistance and Earthbind totems. Rank 1 Frost shock any loose Scarabs not on Ice patches.
  • Elemental Shamans: Use Earthbind totem to root adds. Make sure that no one is in melee range of Scarabs before rooting. Use Thunderstorm if you need to but only when they are on Full HP. Rank 1 Frost shock any loose Scarabs not on Ice patches.
  • Death Knights: Deathgrip orbs into ‘gaps’ of Ice patches (see 2:25 of the 2nd video). Chains of Ice adds that spawn in front of you and is heading to the kiting party.
  • Warriors: Intervene and Charge is your best friend. Use it to stay in front. Charge and stun any adds that spawn in front heading to the kiting party.
  • Mages: Go Frost! Use Rank 1 Frost nova only when Scarabs are catching up to the kiting party and it’s absolutely necessary. Ice Block when you have high stacks of Acid-Drenched Mandibles.
  • Warlocks: Affliction is possibly your best spec here. Run around, DoT orbs and Nerubian Burrowers, though Shadowfury might still come in useful. Up to you here.
  • Paladins: Hand of Freedom people who are lagging behind. Hand of Protection removes Acid-Drenched Mandible stacks, use it on raid members with high stacks.

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