Rotface
2010 January 7
Yesterday was the first raiding night with a total of 7 Icecrown Citadel encounters. So after Saurfang gave up his spot in front of the door, we finally got to see some new content.
Our pick of the evening was Rotface. We got him down to something around 30%. I won’t link to any tactics. Google is your friend. Hell I surely won’t write up any tactics myself, not now, not after we kill the guy. Especially since Vixsin is doing a great job at writing up shaman centric boss tactics.
The only thing I’m going to do is list some observations. Some related to raiding in general, some related to killing Rotface:
- The bug issue: I share Beruthiel’s feelings about blizzard delivering buggy encounters. I mean they have the manpower, they have the resources and they have their PTRs. But patch after patch we get buggy mechanics and quick hotfixes. That’s not all bad. It just somewhat taints the first exciting night in new content.
- The balancing issue: Blizzard always starts out with rather challenging bosses on normal mode, be it due to incoming raid damage or dps requirement or due to slightly buggy mechanics. After some days/weeks, those encounters get nerfed. Not some little tuning. No, it’s pulling down the bosses pants and make raider laugh at them. I know it’s a balancing act, the encounters have to be somewhat interesting for dedicated raiders but accessible for the broad mass of guilds. I’m just always a little bit puzzled to see this story repeating itself time and time again: release – hotfix – nerf – (nerf) – release – hotfix…
- Rotface balancing: I think the encounter is pretty challenging. I’m pretty sure though the nerf bat will hit Rotface soon and hard. I love the mechanics and the pace, but I guess compared to the first 4 bosses, that’s too big a step in difficulty.
- PTR based strategy guides: The interwebs are full of well written boss guides for Rotface. Many of them are based on 10 man raiding. And sadly, many of them will stick around for a long time while ignoring many important aspects of the fights.
- The Infection issue: The encounter is all about the Mutated Infection. Sure there is some other stuff going on, like his conic AoE, kiting Adds and dodging AoE. But there’s nothing a decent raid wouldn’t learn very quickly, except handling the infection. The main issue: The time between casting an infection on someone will get shorter and shorter! Starting from 14 seconds between casts you’ll be down to an infection every 6 Seconds after some good 3 Minutes (if I haven’t completely misread our WorldofLogs data). Many guides ignore this aspect of the fight. It’s absolutely critical to stay calm, heal the infected people and keep to merge oozes into ONE bigger ooze. This is especially difficult during Ooze explosions. I’m pretty sure though the frequency between infections is going to be nerfed.
- This every raider should ask himself: Where is the add tank and the big Ooze? Is there a big Ooze at all or would I have to kite? Am I infected? Am I a 100% sure I merged my little ooze into a big one?
- Update your Bossmods and GridStatusRaiddebuff.
That’s it for today. Back to Season 5 of The Shield.
A Coin of Ancestry
Looking For Multitudes
Toravon the Ice Watcher (25 player)
1500 Dungeon & Raid Emblems
GAH! The pressure is on … We’re taking our 10 shots at Putricide tonight (in both 10 and 25), so hopefully I’ll have some good offerings up on the whole of the Plagueworks (including the puppies of doom) in the next day or so!
Vixsin´s last blog ..PowerAuras and You: The Beginning of a Beautiful Friendship
I share the befuddlement at boss balance. I mean, there’s been plenty of time for testing and plenty of people to do it and we still get encounters with blatant bugs and questionable tuning? It’s just odd from a company with a reputation for quality like Blizzard.
Loving the new wing though, fun to heal and nice to have a bit of a challenge! Interesting architecture, nice balance of trash time:boss time, etc. Though I’m interested to see how soon (or otherwise) the nerfs come. I mean, we expected Anub’arak heroic to be nerfed but it never was. I wonder if Blizzard deliberately overtune stuff to start with just to make a point to all the folks who whine about content being too easy ~_-
Agreed regarding the Mutating Infection, managing it is the key to the fight. As the pace picks up (if i’m not mistaken, the time between casts is linked to his overall health) healing becomes more and more difficult, especially in light of the reducing healing effect applied to targets with Mutating Infection.
My guild eventually downed him on ten man in ‘normal mode’, after spending 2 – 3 hours wiping attempting the achievement. We were two healing for the achieve and my god is that ever some craziness once he’s below 30% health. We almost got it too, got him to 6% and wiped, then had to call it due to a bad DC and the fact that it was 5 am. Great fun though and quite difficult – I can see the nerfbat coming.
We managed a rather hectic kill on Thursday. We didn’t handle the infections too badly, but I think the Ooze explosions led to more problems than they should have. I think you have to pick the perfect moment to move, if you move to early, people who lag behind will still get hit. If you move too late, we’ll that’s pretty obvious. I think perfect timing when handling the explosions will make this encounter a lot easier.
Grats Drug
How is progress on the rest of plauguewing? Just got rotface down yesterday, long after I stopped counting wipes. That guy is a bitch, and I dont even dare to think of what they have planned for hardmode(how about even moar diseases? 
) Going to get some more tries on the other blob tonight before the reset.
Whats your thoughts on resto shams on this encounter? Both me and the other resto in our guild we’re lagging way behind the priests and druids. Might be that we’re sniping eachothers targets, but i suspect there to be a trend in the new encounters that heavy raid damage=a lot of movement fight, wich favour the trees and the priests. On saurfang, im almost out of a job until theres 3 marks in the raid because of all the hotting and shielding of the predictable raiddamage.
Halp! I feel i’m not really getting the most out of my spot here.
We’re doing fine. Rotface is down. Of course Festergut wasn’t a real challenge for a well organized Raid. Putricide seems a great encounter, tons of little things to watch out for, nice level of difficulty and the promise of a boss who’s going to keep us busy for some weeks.
If you aren’t happy with your healing output, don’t look at healing meters. Healing meters don’t tell you anything. They give a tiny bit of information, if you compare 2 players of same class, spec and healing assignment.
But you can’t compare druid priest and shaman healing through healing meters. That’s just not viable due to healing mechanics.
Example: My HPS is proportional to how much I use Chain Heal. In many situations, RT/LHW is a much better choice though. So I could spam chain heal to make my HPS look good or I could pick the right spells for the right situations to help the raid.
I feel like I’m a strong asset to our healing team. CH is still great to heal tanks/melees and the raid (if not spread out). RT/LHW is a just an awesome combo to heal specific debuffs and people dropping low. RT/HW is insane burst HPS.
Shamans aren’t very mobile. But same goes for holy paladins and many caster DPS. If that’s annoying to a resto shaman, I wonder if he picked the right class. We aren’t that mobile, but that’s just something we have to accept and make the best out of it: Know encounters: be sure to know every possibility to squeeze an LHW in, even during fights with a lot of running. Don’t go idle during movement, recast ES/WS, RT.
Nono, i’m not unhappy with the class, not at all
Its just that in a lot of the fights, like Saurfang, i just can’t cast fast enough to get a heal in. i know theres a lot we bring to the table, my issue is that if the encounters get harder, say like in hardmode, that it would be advisable to bring another holy priest instead of a shaman. Not because we suck or anything, but because on some encounters there is so much raid damage combined with the need to move. I’m not only comparing healing meters(even if that is another indicator to my what I’m worrying about), but also the ability to heal during these encounters. In some cases, like Rotface, where it can be critical if two healers get the disease, or even just one, to be able to heal on the run. And theres alot of running on rotface and Putricide. So far I feel it’s fine, it’s not that big a deal, and theres a lot of other fights that suit the shaman more, as it usually is.
What it boils down to I guess, is that I feel that priests and druids might be a better choice for a raid doing the hardest content, without losing much by replacing a shaman. Paladins have their tank healing niche that they rule at even if they have to move. Now, i’m not “emotionally” worried about this, as it might have seemed from my other comment. But I wanted to raise the question if our lack of mobility might become a bigger problem as ICC opens up. And if so, how to deal with it, and how to be more effective in those fights.
Doh! Another wall. Damn you keyboard
I see your point. I had similar concerns at the beginning of WotLK, but this was pre IWS/CH buff.
The first guy who was really vocal about this problem was Mek from Ensidia. His main argument was this: I’m an excellent player. But Priests/Druids/Paladins do a better job at healing than I do. I have some viability as RT/LHW spammer, but Resto has forced me more or less to go elemental.
I understand Mek’s concerns. But (and this is a huge BUT) Mek is in a raiding guild with exceptional players. So, if we take truly excellent players with perfect hardware/internet connection and let them heal, yeah, maybe Priests, Druids and Paladins have a slight advantage over us resto shamans in a hard mode environment. For 95% of us normal players skill outweighs class balancing by a large margin.
While I understand Mek’s concerns and his frustration, I don’t think he knew what impact his statements would have on the shaman community. Raid leaders started doubting if shamans are the right pick for their healing team. Resto shamans started doubting their healing abilities. It was, and to some extent still is, horrible. Because healing classes ARE BALANCED at this point. You can take the player and don’t have to take the class. Unless you’re in a top 50 guild. And even there, I see many resto shaman still doing fine.
The mobility issue is really not an as big deal as it seems. Just learn the fights and maximize your output in high mobility encounters. Caster DPS have spells with cast time as well. If running around from time to time would absolutely cripple their DPS, I wouldn’t be seeing the numbers I’m seeing now.
The analogy in real life would be this: You have a nice wife. But next door, there’s this juicy good looking neighbor. We’ll, drooling over that girl will surely fuck up your relationship. Start working on yourself and don’t look at the greener grass over there. Unless you’re really unhappy with what’s going on.
I chose to play a shaman because I like orcs and bloodlust. I enjoy both DPS specs. Yeah, maybe I’d be a marginally better healer if I rerolled priest, but I don’t enjoy shadow so I’d be stuck at healing. Yeah maybe I’d be a better raid healer as druid, but I don’t enjoy the pace and style of druid healing as much as I enjoy resto shaman.
Concentrate on what you like about shamans and shaman healing. Work with the tools you have and never ever be self-content. Be excellent. Be a pro-active healer. If you feel like you’re slow, learn to see where the damage is going to land. And most important: don’t start an encounter with that slight feeling of inferiority towards other healing classes. If you do that, you will fail.
Yoshi, thanks sensei
I’ll cleanse my doubts from my soul and be a peaceful pond of awesome.
http://www.ensidia.com/mek/blog/1060/
http://lifeingroup5.com/?p=58
That’s one of Mek’s posts about the state of resto shaman healing an Vixin’s response. Good stuff to read.
Rotface annoys me because I swear I was standing there forever waiting for my little guy to merge into the big guy, and many times it was just buggy it took way too long. Sometimes this forced me to ice block on top of the big blog until mine linked to it then blink back to the boss to continue my dps. Right now it is just doesn’t help a challenging fight when it seems so buggy.
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