It isn’t surprising, but your internet connection is extremely important to a guild’s progression. We are counting on 25 lines to work at the same time, which isn’t a small feat, but is certainly do-able. If we have a few people that disconnect or lag during a progression encounter, that attempt is usually done. What is surprising, though, is how often disconnects and lag happen. During our Halion 25 HM encounters, I remember a few fights where we would have someone disconnect every time and possibly have multiple disconnects on an attempt. These hurt the guild, our progression and our morale. Everyone needs to know how to troubleshoot their connection.

I’ve written this in an attempt to help you identify issues with your connection and explain possible fixes.

Read more…

If there is a section that you would like to see added, feel free to leave a comment here or send me an email with the details.

Unfortunately, Fraps locked up and I was not able to record it.

I was able to record this week’s kill.  It isn’t the original, but it is the second and still shows how we do it.

Thideras
<Enigma> – Deathwing

That being said, I’ve stepped down as an Unchained officer and decided to look for a new home.  After applying to a few places, Enigma (Deathwing) decided to take me in.  It just so happens that a previous Exodus member has been here since that guild breakup, Kanibal.  It was actually not my intention to find him, so I chuckle a bit at that.

What does this mean for you guys?  This is going to greatly free up my time that was stuck in managing the guild so I can write more.  I haven’t written an article for my website in some time and I feel bad for neglecting readers.  I haven’t decided on my first topic, so I’m open to input.

Thideras
<Enigma> – Deathwing

Other systems
There are other loot distribution systems available, but they all have their downfalls. Straight DKP seems to be popular, but a lot of people in the guild are against the idea; I don’t blame them. People tend to “hoard” points in hopes of getting that one really good item, passing smaller upgrades in the mean time. This causes their performance to fall behind and actually hurt the guild. It could also mean, in extreme cases, that items that they would normally use are passed as “offset” or even disenchanted! There are additional measure that can mitigate that problem, such as class leads or officers forcing people to take upgrades. This could cause some drama issues as well. New members are also put at the bottom of the pile, so it can take a long time to start getting loot. Add that they are probably less geared than other members and this creates a problem.

Another extremely popular system is EPGP; Effort Points, Gear Points. It is similar to DKP, but it has a decay system to prevent hoarding of points (the more you get, the more you lose) and allows new members to get gear quicker. It also allows us to factor in non-raid contributions, such as depositing items to the guild bank or helping fellow members. This should, in theory, provide a better raiding environment and improve inter-guild relations. The only problem with EPGP is who the items actually go to. What if the item is best in slot for one person, but they have lower EPGP? If they don’t get it (assuming their performance is good, etc), it will actually be hurting the guild overall.

—————————————-

TreeKP

The goals of TreeKP

1. Keep the loot council
2. Reduce the façade of “favoritism”
3. Speed up loot distribution in raids
4. Eliminate point hoarding
5. Be as fair and open as possible

I would like to plant the seed of this idea into your mind so that it may sprout and eventually branch out, possibly even pollinating other minds. Ok, enough with the tree jokes. As stated earlier, this is a system that will attempt to minimize the problems with other loot distribution methods. To do this, we need to combine different systems and add a few new ones to cover the gaps. The base of TreeKP will be a point system loosely based on EPGP and DKP, but modified heavily to fit our needs. Since we still want to keep Loot Council as the main deciding factor, the point system will be a secondary deciding factor; something to help when we need a tie breaker. The point awarding system will be similar to DKP, but modified to whatever suits the guild best.

How to get points

1. Be on and ready to raid before the raid starts
2. Be on and ready to raid during boss kills
3. Effort to improve your job

How to lose points

1. Buy loot
2. Weekly “decay” of points (50%)
3. Officer removal (whatever reason)
4. Miss raiding days (no post, no show)

With this point system, it allows us to give value to actions that help the guild and “punish” those who harm the guild. The system will be public (if the guild wants it, I’d rather leave it hidden), but it will be transparent to the end raider. It helps us determine how often someone gets loot, but is not the final deciding factor. Coupled with the decay factor, it should eliminate hoarding of points. The only problem with this system is the up keep time, but I’m planning at keeping it fairly simple and quick to calculate. Points can be lost or gained which allows us add and remove points as we see fit. Being on and ready to raid before raid time; being on and available to raid during boss kills; improving your skill or raid survivability; etc. We can also give extra points to individual raiders on their first kill and any attempts at the fight in case we are beating our faces on a boss for the night. To add more depth to the system, we want to emphasize that this week’s raid time and gear is worth more than the weeks before it. There will be a decay of fifty percent.

Points

1. 1 point for a boss kill
2. 1.5 points for a boss kill on hard mode
3. 1 point for being ready to raid before 7pm
4. Cap of 25 points

If you are on and ready to raid, but are not in for a boss kill, you get the base points. If you are being sat for performance issues or raid awareness, you may be notified that you will not receive points for that kill. Everyone knows that banging your head on a boss for the night can be frustrating and unrewarding. The raid is still “progressing”, even if the boss doesn’t die. With that in mind, we will be giving points for attempts on a boss that we have not killed (hard modes, etc) to keep everyone motivated. This value will change depending on how we good we are doing that night, so there is no set value per attempt. The points will NOT be awarded if we have killed the boss at any previous time. One point will be awarded to any raid member that is ready to raid and at the entrance before the raid begins. This does not mean “I’m logging in” or “I’m on the way to the instance”. If you are unprepared, (meaning you had to go back to a city to get mats or ask someone else for items) you will not receive that one point as you were not “ready to raid”.

There are two portions to gear cost, the base cost of the slot and two multipliers. I’ll use an example that was given to me. Why should a healing plate chest item cost as much as a cloth chest item? With our raid setup, there will likely only be one person rolling on the plate and they are “forced” to take it. With the cloth piece though, you may have upwards of 4-5 people rolling on it since anyone can wear it. There are only two ways to fix this issue. First, set individual gear prices based on who wants it and how much it is needed; this method consumes a substantial amount of time to whoever the task is dumped on. Lastly, we could implement a multiplier system. The more people roll on an item, the higher the “cost” goes. Why do this though? This prevents point hoarding slightly, but it lets us know who gets the big upgrades. This means, if someone were to get Death’s Choice first, they may be skipped for loot a few times to balance it out; considering Death’s Choice is a substantial upgrade for most melee classes. Gear cost is a flat 10 points. If it is a non-armor piece of gear (shield, trinkets, necklace, etc…), it is worth 25% more (12.5 points if no one rolls other than you). The second multiplier is used to increase the cost depending on how many actually roll on the item. For every person that rolls beyond the first one, the gear cost increases by 5%. For example, if one person rolls, the increase is 0%. If three people roll, the increase is 10%.

Multiplier calculations

1. Special gear = [Gear Cost] * 1.25
2. Rolling multiplier (Armor based) = [Gear Cost] * (1 + (0.05 * [Number of players rolling]))
3. Rolling multiplier (Non-armor based) = [Gear Cost] * 1.25 * (1 + (0.05 * [Number of players rolling]))

We also need to have a point cap and a normalization. As you can see (from my spreadsheet at the bottom of this post), there are a few people that didn’t get any gear in the past two weeks. If we don’t set a cap, you are going to have a lot of players with a LOT of points and more “priority”. We want to discourage point hoarding, so setting this limit low will prevent that. Another issue is if someone gets a lot of gear quickly. They get smashed to the bottom of the list and it would take them a long time to recover. We need a way to “normalize” these values each week to keep it competitive. For example:

Without normalizing/with cap:
Thideras: 25 points
Sckep: -20 points
Viralblack: 0 points
Elyndria: 15 points
Sentergies: -15 points

Nothing has dropped for me, so I’m at the cap. Sckep has got a TON of gear this week and you can see he is at the bottom of the list by far. The rest are spread out across the board. At the end of the week, we want to “normalize” this a little bit to prevent such a large gap. We can do this by halving the numbers above and below zero.

With normalizing/with cap:
Thideras: 12.5 points
Sckep: -10 points
Viralblck: 0 points
Elyndria: 7.5 points
Sentergies: -7.5 points

This makes last week’s gear half the cost (and each week before that half of half, etc) along with last week’s kills half the value. This should, hopefully, push people to roll on gear this week rather than saving up points. It emphasizes the cost/value of this week’s performance and gear.

——————-

Since there is an issue on how loot is distributed in any points system, we need to add another factor; something to tell us how much of an upgrade an item really is. This “upgrade number” allows raiders to assign values to upgrades to show how much better the item is compared to what they are wearing. For the number system to work, we have to work on the same “scale”; everyone must provide upgrade lists and keep them updated! If you do not have a gear list available when the TreeKP system is active, you will NOT receive any loot or points. That also goes for not keeping your lists up to date. The system works on a one to five scale.

Rating system

1. The item is a minimal upgrade; for example, trading mana per five for spirit.
2. The item is a marginal upgrade, usually “13 item levels” (or less) of an upgrade.
3. The item is a decent upgrade, usually “13 to 26 item levels” of an upgrade.
4. The item is a substantial upgrade, usually “26 or more item levels” of an upgrade.
5. The item is absolute best in slot, there is no better item anywhere.

The reasons a raider got an item will also be completely public, which will be attached to my normal combat logs post that I make after each raid. This prevents the issue of an officer or raid member not knowing why someone got an item and prevents manipulation/drama like in our previous guild.

Council checklist and thought process

1. Loot drops, list loot
2. Wait for rolls (30 seconds)
3. Calculate cost of the item based on item type and multipliers
4. Check point system to see rankings
5. Check the rating system to see how much of an upgrade it is
6. Take all variables into account (raid performance, point/rating system, etc) to decide loot
7. Give loot to that person
8. Take note of the logic used to arrive at that conclusion
9. Kill more stuff

——————-

FAQ
So, Thideras, what do I have to do?

1. Create a gear list in your respective forum
2. Keep this gear list updated
3. Show up for raid
4. Don’t be a kitten
5. Kill stuff

Why are we not staying with our normal loot council?
You didn’t read my entire post, do it again.

I read the post again, but why do we need this complicated confangled system? (I picture Rolibar asking this to amuse myself)
The main problem with the loot council is we aren’t always completely aware when loot goes out. This means that we may accidentally be unfair when distributing loot. This system ensures that we are more aware and should, in theory, decrease “unfairness”.

Why not DKP/EPGP?
The systems, left stock, can be extremely unfair. Raiders can hoard loot (even if they don’t mean to) and can cause upgrades to go to the wrong person. These systems do not work with a loot council, so I was forced to create one from scratch.

Why a multiplier system instead of a pre-determined cost?
There are a few reasons why I decided to go with this type of system. It eliminates the time lost in determining the cost of an item, which needs to be done before raid. That person would have to have intimate knowledge on all the classes and specializations in the raid to create a list of gear that everyone agrees with. See how that is a bit silly? The other option would have been to use existing DKP/EPGP addons, but I would really rather stay away from those systems and stick with something more concrete. Finally, we/they might make a mistake and set the price far too high or low, which would really mess with numbers. This gives a “live” modification to the loot and specifically tailors it to how many actually need the item.

Can the point system go negative?
Yes, the point system only creates a “priority” list for us. In the beginning, we will have people go below zero, which is completely acceptable. If the council decides that there are too many people below zero, we can decide to normalize the list. This would bring the lowest person to zero and give everyone else the same amount of points. It doesn’t change the order at all, but just makes it easier for everyone. For example, if Thideras is at -10 points, Sckep is at 3 points, Viralblack is at 25 points and the council decides to normalize the list, Thideras would have 0 points, Sckep would have 13 points and Viralblack would still have 25 points.

This all very confusing and complicated still, can you explain it simply?

1. 1 point per normal boss; 1.5 per hard mode boss
2. 1 point for being on and ready to raid before pull time
3. You get points even if you are sitting
4. Cap of 25 points
5. Cost is 10 points per gear; 1.25 multi for non-armor items; 5% more cost per extra person rolling
6. You can gain/lose/miss out on points for any reason

How do you know the numbers are good/right for the point system?
I’ve written a massive spreadsheet covering the last two week’s loot. You can find that here and you are free to play with the variables. Scroll down until you see a list of players on the far left. You can change the “Variables” section to change ALL the values. This allows you to change the weights on the fly to see how they would change the system.

Why, when searching Google for “treekp”, does a black dating site come up?
I have absolutely no idea, but I can assure you that is not me.

Restoration 4 Set Bonus

I ran the numbers when it was first released, and it was under T9′s 4 set bonus. I used a “test” environment (paper) to calculate these numbers. I assumed that I’m in a 100% Rejuvenation rolling strat, maximizing the throughput for each set and removing any other factors. So, let’s break this down to find out what is giving the numbers in the absolute best possible situation. I’ve made a lot of assumptions to assure this is a perfect scenario. We are in the midst of a Rejuvenation rolling fest and I’m going full out; 15 raiders always have my spell active. I’m so good that Rejuvenation never falls off anyone and it is refreshed the literal millisecond the buff falls off (no overlap). The fight is only 60 seconds long. My crit is 20% and spell power is 4000; these are fairly close to my actual stats in raid.  Everyone is also grouped up so that my Rejuvenation “spawn” always targets a player that does not have Rejuvenation on them.

Going based off Norfair’s amazing post here, we know that Rejuvenation has a coefficient of 0.647 per tick. Meaning that 1 spell power increases the healing done of Rejuvenation (per tick) by 0.647. Rejuvenation has a base tick of 338.

Rejuvenation tick = 0.647 (coefficient) x 4000 (spell power) = 2588 (increase) + 388 (base) = 2976 (base) x 1.06 (ToL increase) = 3154

This means that Rejuvenation ticks for 3154 every 3 seconds. I’m rolling Rejuvenation on 15 people for 60 seconds, so we need to find out how many total ticks that is.

Total ticks = [15 (people) x 60 (seconds)] / 3 seconds (per tick) = 300 ticks for our test

Now that we know how many total ticks we have, we can figure out our total healing with each set and the complete HPS increase. Please note this is a perfect world, and thus, the numbers will be a bit higher than “normal” since there is no overheal.

Base healing (no tier) = 3154 (Rejuv tick) x 300 (ticks) = 946,200 healing
Base HPS (no tier) = 946,200 (healing) / 60 (seconds) = 15,770 HPS

T9 Calculations

We now need to calculate how many crits I would get from our T9 bonus and the total of healing throughput.

Rejuv crit = 300 (ticks) x 0.20 (crit chance) = 60
Normal healing = 240 (non crits) x 3145 (Rejuv tick) = 754,800 healing
Crit healing = [60 (crits) x 3145 (Rejuv tick)] x 1.5 (crit modifier) = 283,050 healing
Total healing = 754,800 (not crit) + 283,050 (crit) = 1,037,850 total T9 healing
T9 HPS = 1,037,850 (healing) / 60 (seconds) = 17,297 HPS

T10 Calculations

Moving onto the more fun calculations, T10. Crit is not a factor here, so it makes it slightly simpler. We need to find out how many Rejuvenation ticks will “spawn” a new one and factor their healing in as well. Again, I’m assuming that it jumps to a person who does not have Rejuvenation and it ticks for its full duration/power.

New Rejuvenations = 300 (ticks) x 0.02 (spawn chance) = 6 new spawns
Healing per Rejuv = 3154 (Rejuv tick) x 6 (ticks per Rejuv) = 18,924 healing
Base healing = 3154 (Rejuv tick) x 300 (ticks) = 946,200 healing
Total healing (T10) = 946,200 (base) + [18,924 (spawn) x 6 (total spawns)] = 1,059,744 healing
T10 HPS = 1,059,744 (healing) / 60 (seconds) = 17,662 HPS

Now let’s total these up to find out how it works!

Base HPS = 15,770 (+0 HPS)
T9 HPS = 17,297 (+1527 HPS)
T10 HPS = 17,662 (+1892 HPS)

Remember these are “fake” numbers, but they do show value. T10 is *an* upgrade, but not as much as people would like to think. This is assuming that no healing goes to waste.

What does this mean?
This means that anyone claims that T10 is “substantially better” than T9 is full of it. Yes, show your parses where you do so much better; they mean nothing. Looking at the overall picture, they should not be better. “But Thideras, I *did* do better than them!”. Congratulations! You’ve discovered “variables“. This means there is another portion of the fight that is not accounted for in my calculations. Skill, damage type, latency, healing style, etc. There are so many variables, there is absolutely no way for someone to calculate all the differences. I did these calculations the week the information was released about the 4 piece and I was not impressed. You know what? I’m still not impressed. I’ve been holding off getting my T10 piece so that other raiders can get their second tier tokens and I will continue to do so. The upgrade is minimal for me and actually frees up my gear choices substantially.

Now, don’t take my post incorrectly.  You should still be going for T10, but it isn’t that big of an upgrade.  As I just stated, I let others take upgrades before me and find other gear in the mean time.  I still do extremely well on “the meters” and my targets don’t die.

The systems will be based off of the Loot Council, but with a backbone of DKP and gear rating system to make gear decisions substantially faster.  The main problem is loot distribution time when there are a lot of people that want a single item; trinkets, necklaces, shields, tier tokens, etc.  People usually rolling for these items have the same level item already, are equally skilled and do extremely well.  We can eliminate 2-3 if they got gear recently, but that usually leaves us with 4-5 people left; how do you decide without anything backing it?

The solution is a loot council with a backbone.  What do you mean by “backbone” Thideras?  I mean a partially hidden DKP/EPGP system that can be transparent to the end raider.  Everyone can see how they are doing point wise, but they won’t “bid” on an item like in traditional DKP systems.  This allows us to know how often people are getting gear, which is a major flaw with loot council.  Another aspect that we are using is completely new, the raiders assign values to gear upgrades to show how much of an upgrade an item is.  1 means the item is a side-grade and generally not worth it, 10 means the item is BiS.

With those two systems, we take the strong points of each and none of the weaknesses.  I will be refining the details of TreeKP this week, so look for an update shortly with a lot more depth.

When we joined

Sckep, Prithivi and myself all came from the server Dalaran.  We did come as a “package” deal as we knew each other outside of the game and were rejected from guilds for that very reason.  Guilds don’t like “package deals” and I understand why.  I believe a lot of the drama did start with this.  I can only speak for myself, but I’m a trusting person unless given reason to not be, this also bit me later.

Before Icecrown

During Ulduar and Trial of the Grand Crusader, we made some amazing kills and eventually moved to the top of the server, everyone was proud of the guild and had good reason to do so.  We went from server 4th or 5th on the server to 1st very quickly and I’m proud of the progress that we made.

Progression during Icecrown

I’ve noticed that our progression has become stagnant.  I don’t mean in the sense that we weren’t progressing, because we were doing fairly well.  The problem is Exodus has become a literal “Zerg” guild.  Why properly theorycraft a fight when you can just do as many attempts as you want in a night?  People get tired of failing an entire night without knowing what is really going on.

What Cathulu says, goes

Exodus had always been a Council run guild, but Cathulu strong-armed the guild into a monarchy.  Instead of giving his officers the power they needed to run the guild, he attempted to completely run it himself.  I’ve talked to past officers and I’ve even seen it myself as the healing lead; we had no say on who gets in.  If he wanted “x” sat, they were sat; absolutely no arguing even if you had the logs and logic to prove they were doing substantially better than “y”.  So, now we are sitting people based on what one person wants and have to somehow explain this to the raid members.  How do you even do that?  Tell them, “I’m sorry, but even though I’m healing officer, I have no say on what healers actually stay in.  I’m being forced to sit you because the GM says.”?  I’m not sure about other officers, but I was 100% honest with the healers, so I actually did let them know.

Being honest with players, how not to do it

Shortly after Archtype X broke up and joined Exodus, we found a few players that were sitting a majority of the time.  The one that I noticed was Prithivi.  She was frequently promised to be brought in for fights, but those promises were quickly broken.  After a few weeks of this, she finally stepped down from raiding.  During this time, Cathulu was attempting to “soften the blow” for me by attempting to change what I think about Sckep/Prithivi.  According to when I started, “All drama related issues are to go to Cathulu”.  Why?  He isn’t the guild therapist and certainly doesn’t have a degree for it.  He wants to learn about the bonds between people and then manipulate them.  He attempted to do that with me and partially succeeded, but we caught it before it got serious and talked things through.  An old officer stepped up and told us what Cathulu was trying to do.  He didn’t like Prithivi and wanted her to stop raiding, but didn’t want to lose Sckep or myself.  Why he couldn’t just come out and tell us this?  I would have probably been upset that he wanted to do it, but at least I wouldn’t be as furious as I was after learning what he tried to do.  What makes even more interesting is that he did this with multiple people.   He attempted to make them look bad so they would step down, sit them all the time and then lie to their face about what was going on.  There are MANY good raiders that were lied to, saying they were better than their replacement and that they would eventually get in.  All he did was tell people what they wanted to hear, they weren’t being replaced.

Incomplete list of players that were put through this
Prithivi
Kanaus
Yssis
Elyndria
Opollo
Putrid
Jhone
Theeslan
Jaieden
Jaconso
Theylon
Velinaras

Even this short list speaks volumes.  All were told they were good and were never told that they had been replaced.  This list does not include officers, but there has been 6 officers that have left during the time that I’ve been here.  I’ve talked to a few of them, but it isn’t my place to openly discuss why they left.  I also only included previous members that I knew went through this, so I’m sure this a long list before this and eventually a long list after.

Cliches

Anyone that is in the guild, or was in the guild, please check your chat history logs.  You will see that he attempts to gain your trust through (what seems like) pre-calculated phrases.  “Your a good friend, who, strangely, i’d do anything for”.  I mentioned this to a friend after looking over my logs with him for the past 6 months and he found the exact same quote.  Repeat this for other phrases, ad nauseam.  After this discovery, I find this much more disturbing than I originally thought.  Why would someone think out phrases to gain trust and use them on multiple people?  I just don’t get it.  Please, keep an eye out of these; don’t fall into the same trap that I did.  Cathulu also keeps using the “I’ll just give you GM” phrase a lot when confronted with raid members leaving.  It is purely a defense mechanism used to defer raiders from leaving.  I believe that I’ve heard it around 6 times so far in the past few weeks; he will never follow through.  He will also use promotions in the guild to convince members to stay.

Dear current and future raid members

Don’t let Cathulu lie to you about us.  We were good players that caught on to the games he played.  He claims that only reason we left is that we were “bad”, which is quite the opposite.  I know, for a fact, that he is bribing people to stay in the guild by promoting them.  I also know that certain people in the guild (you and I know who you are) that are attempting to drag our names through the dirt.  Feel free to say whatever you want, the people who knew me won’t believe a word you have to say.  The final thing I learned is that when leaving a guild, you learn who your real friends are.  I was duped into believing that most of the guild liked me, when exactly the reverse was true.  I’m sorry for trying to be funny and a good raider.  Both those traits come naturally to me and it is extremely difficult to try and be “bad” and “unfunny”.

Dear Cathulu

I know that you “never wanted to talk to me again” and you sure do a lot of talking to me after saying that, but I would like to dedicate a full section to you.  How mushy!  I know that I originally said that I was “branching out” when questioned as to why we left, but I believe you deserve to be told what I really think.  You are responsible for the downfall of this guild.  You are the one that switched it from a council to a monarchy.  You are responsible for good players leaving the guild.  The only thing I will apologize for is seeing through your guise and letting others know.  I’m fine with Exodus continuing on in the future, but you shouldn’t be leading it; you don’t deserve as good a guild as this.  I honestly can’t believe there are people out there willingly taking advantage of someone that is trusting. You are the literal definition of scum.

The “After Exodus” story

I won’t discuss who is involved with the new guild, but we are starting one.  The keen-eyed may have noticed that the page title at the top of the website has changed.  We will run Unchained like Exodus should have been run, a council of good, honest raiders.  No one “owns” or “runs” the guild by themselves.

All this discussion of the guild is making me sappy!  Ha, tree joke.  I can hear the “/facepalm” emotes from way over here on Borean Tundra.  Anyways, if you made it this far, thank you for hearing another side of the story and I hope it clears things up.  As always, I loved Shadow Council and a lot of the players there, but it is time for me to leave.

Any of my friends are welcome to talk to me.

After speaking with a lot of our former members, I’ve noticed that a lot are reporting that Cathulu told them “they were the best x in the guild”.  If this happened to you, sign up on the site and leave a comment!

Why is this fight hard?  The fight itself is extremely technical and requires perfection.  There is a lot to remember during the fights and it varies greatly from phase to phase.  I’ll briefly cover each phase since we haven’t finalized our strategy just quite yet.

Phase 1 (100% – 70%)
The Lich King is tanked just outside the metal circle that covers the room.  Ghouls spawn around him and are slowly killed through multi-target abilities (Maul, etc) and direct AoE when called for.  A Shambling Horror spawns frequently and has roughly 2 million health.  We leave melee on the Lich King and ranged on the Shambline Horror.  He will randomly cast [Necrotic Plague] on a raid member.  They need to stand next to the Shambling Horror before it ticks and have it dispelled, otherwise they will immediately die.  This will move the debuff either to the off-tank (which it can be dispelled again to the Shambling Horror) or the Shambling Horror, which will do substantial damage to the mob.  Along with all that, he casts [Infest] every 20 seconds on all raid members.  It does around 10,000 partially resistable shadow damage and applies a DoT.  The longer this DoT is active, the more damage it does.  The only way to remove the debuff is bring the player’s health above 90%.  He will continue to cast this through all phases except transistion phases. This phase is fairly easy as long as the raid members can get to the mob quickly.

Phase 1.5 (70%, 1 minute long)
He starts channeling [Remorseless Winter] for one minute and all raid members must get out to the far edge of the platform.  We form three groups in a line.  The tanks and melee are in the middle.  The ranged are split into two groups, one on each side of the tank/melee group.  During this time, random raid members will have Summon Raging Spirit cast on them and need to move to the tanks before the debuff falls off and the spirit spawns.  He will also be casting [Pain and Suffering] during the the phase transistions.  At the end of one minute, he will break the outside edge of the platform, making it substantially smaller.  You have roughly eight seconds to get off it, and one that doesn’t will fall to their death.

Phase 2 (70% – 40%)
This phase starts immediately after he breaks the edge of the platform and is the hardest portion of the fight.  We are currently working on this phase, so this strategy will probably update.  Currently, we tank the Lich King in the center and have everyone (including melee and ranged) directly behind him.  He will cast [Defile] on a random raid member.  [Defile] is a black puddle that appears beneath who ever it is cast on.  We all know that “black stuff is bad”, but this is worse than most; the puddle grows for any damage it does.  For example, if you have 1-4 people standing in it, it doesn’t grow very fast.  If someone drops their puddle below the raid, it will grow faster than you can get out of it; easily causing a wipe.  Right now, we are working on a strategy to mitigate this threat.  The other half of the fight another very interesting mechanic.  He will summon 3 Val’kyr which will carry players off the edge of the platform.  They can be slowed and stunned, but they can not be snared.  They have roughly 250,000 health in 25 man and must be killed immediately.  He also casts [Infest] during this phase, healers beware.

Phase2.5 (40%, 1 minute long)
This is exactly the same as Phase 1.5 except there will be four spirits spawned.

Phase 3 (40% – 10%)
There is no more Infests during this fight.  He will still cast [Defile] during this phase, so it is important to keep spread out.  He will summon spirits often around 15 yards above the himself, they have roughly 2.6 million health and will need to be AoE’d before they start coming down.  They can be stunned and snared.  They will explode when reaching their target, so they need to be eliminated quickly.  He will also case [Harvest Soul] on a random raid member that will do substantial damage; they must be healed through it.  If the cast is allowed to finish (they don’t die), they will be brought into a room with a friendly and hostile target.  If a DPS/tank get in, they need to kill the hostile spirit.  If a healer gets in, they need to heal the friendly spirit.  Once it dies, they are put back in the normal fight with everyone else.  Overall, this fight is quite simple once you understand the basics.

Phase 4 (10% – 0%)
THE WHOLE RAID DIES, DO NOT RELEASE.  The Lich King will kill everyone instantly and some RP takes place.  Again, DO NOT RELEASE.  After roughly a minute, Terenas Menethil will ressurect everyone and you burn the boss down.  No damage takes place and you can not wipe at this point.  Grats, you killed him!

Kill video – http://thideras.com/videos/exodusraids/Icecrown/Lich_King_kill.mp4

Abilities, spells and debuffs:

[Essence of the Blood Queen] – The debuff you receive after you are bitten.

[Frenzied Bloodthirst] – After Essence of the Blood Queen fades, this debuff is applied.  You must bite someone else otherwise you go into an Uncontrollable Frenzy.

[Uncontrollable Frenzy] – You gain this debuff if you don’t bite someone within 15 seconds of receiving Frenzied Bloodthirt.  This is basically a mind control.

[Pact of the Darkfallen] – Cast on 3 random non-tank raid members.  They must move to the same spot and let the debuff pulse to remove it.

[Swarming Shadows] – Cast on a random non-tank raid members.  You will gain the debuff and have about 3 seconds to move before fire appears beneath your feet.  A single instance of fire does very low damage, around 1k per tick.

[Twilight Bloodbolt] – This is cast on all raid members during her flight phase.  The damage is NOT shared among nearby allies.

Strategy and fight information:

The fight itself is simple in design.  At the beginning of the fight, she will bite one person in the raid.  This will give them the [Essence of the Blood Queen] debuff and lasts for one minute.  This debuff will double any damage done and cause them to heal themselves when attacking.  After the debuff falls off, they gain [Frenzied Bloodthirst] and must bite another raid member.  If you do not bite another raid member, you are charmed and start attacking the raid. This introduces a very interesting mechanic as you have to bite exponentially more people as the fight goes on.  Blood-Queen herself has a hard enrage at 5:30, so this fight is extremely short.  Since she has a high health pool, you will want need to coordinate who and when you bite.  This is the key to beating her.  If you have too many vampires, the raid will wipe due to mass mind controls.  If you have too little vampires, you will hit her hard enrage.

There are two random spells she will use on the raid, [Pack of the Darkfallen] and [Swarming Shadows].  Three players will be given the Pack of the Darkfallen debuff.  Every 3 seconds, it pulses and causes around 4-5k damage to the player and anyone around them.  The only way to remove this is have those three raid members group up and wait for one more pulse.  The other spell, Swarming Shadows, is cast on a player.  After 3 seconds, fire starts appearing where the player is standing.  It is best to have the afflicted player run directly to the edge of the room and follow the wall.  That is the best way to increase usable area.  The fire itself does around 1k damage per second per fire.  So, don’t be afraid to run through the fire quick if you need.

Two times during the fight, she will have an air phase.  She will run to the center of the room and do an AoE fear.  You should use Fear Ward and Tremor Totems to keep healers going.  Immediately after the fear, everyone needs to spread out and be at least 11 yards from each other.  For every player near you, it does another bloodbolt; each hitting for 10-11k.  During the air phase, ranged should be doing as much DPS as they can.

To add upon everything listed above, she has an AoE pulse ([Shroud of Sorrows]) that hits everyone for 4500 shadow damage every two seconds.  I’d like to note that you can resist the damage and you can use shadow protection potions if needed.  You will need a lot of raid healers for this fight.

World of Logs – Combat Parse
WoW Meters Online – Combat Parse
Link to kill video

As always, I’m up for discussing the fight in more depth than I have above.  Feel free to sign up on the website here and post a comment or talk to me in game.

Thideras
<Exodus>
US Shadow Council

Before the release of the new bosses on the live server, I was hoping that the bosses would be slightly harder than the first four.  I’m not completely disappointed.  Before the raid tonight, we were able to throw a 10 man group together to see the new fights.  The first thing that surprised us was the difficulty of the trash.  After Saurfang, we ended up with the patrolling Val’kyr, the two abominations and the entire next room.  Needless to say, it was a wipe and a harsh lesson that you can’t just fly through trash.  With this, I was extremely happy.  Finally some incentive other than attempts left or loot to kill a boss quickly; trash respawn.  I don’t want to spoil the quality or quantity of the trash too much, so I will stop describing it.  You are in for a treat!

Rotface and Festergut, once learned, are quite simple fights.  Here are the explanations for each fight and their accompanying video.

Festergut:
You will want to spread out in a circle around the room.  As long as you stay outside the dark circle, you will not aggro him.  When the fight starts, the room will be pumped with a yellow smog.  This smog has three levels of damage.   The heaviest will occur immediately and reduce each time that he sucks some in.  He will randomly cast a debuff on players which will disorient them and cause them to “spew” damage (literally) in a frontal cone.  If you have this debuff, you can NOT barkskin. Everyone will need to be spread out until the next part.  About 20 seconds into the fight, three spores will spawn above three player’s heads.  The spore is a debuff and will follow them when they move.  You will need to be in three groups, the melee and two ranged, for this phase.  The ranged will be on opposite sides of the room.  When the spore’s debuff fades, it will give anyone within range a debuff that reduces shadow damage; which happens to be the spell type of Festergut’s AoE.  Each debuff stack will give you 25% reduction in shadow damage and you can get three before he does his AoE.  That is the most difficult portion of the fight, make sure that everyone gets the debuff and spread back out.  Other than that, it is a DPS check with 40 million health to burn through.  For Restoration Druids, you will want to pre-HoT the raid as the smog will do quite a bit of damage at the beginning.  Keep HoTs up on as many people as you can as there is always constant raid damage going out.  This fight favors Restoration Druids heavily.

Rotface:
This fight heavily favors slime and the color green; bright green.  During the fight, the spouts of slime will cover the edges of the room in four different sectors; the pattern is random.  If you stand in that slime, you will take heavy damage combined with a slowing effect.  The boss has a frontal cone AoE, so everyone will need to stay behind the boss at all times, even if he turns to face a player.  Tank the boss where he stands.  The boss will randomly target players and give them a disease, do NOT cleanse unless they are in an area without other players.  When they receive the debuff, move away from the raid.  When the debuff runs out or it is dispelled, a small slime will follow you around and hit you for minimal damage.  You can not taunt the mob and no other players can gain threat on it.  If two slimes cross paths, they “add up” to form a single slime.  Once five slimes come together, it starts casting an explosion.  When it explodes, it sends little slimes flying at players. Wherever you are standing when the cast finishes is where a little slime will fly to.  You can easily avoid getting hit by remembering where players were standing once it explodes and move to a “clean” area.  Also, the slimes will drop slime puddles that you do not want to stand in; they are more annoying than anything and are very good at reducing the small space, that you are already restricted to, to almost nothing.  This fight is extremely chaotic, and to me, extremely fun.  Since this fight makes you move a lot, keep instant cast HoTs rolling on the raid.

Here are the videos for the fights.  I moved these to a different codec, so you should NOT need to download anything special to view them.  If the video does not work, get Media Player Classic (LINK) to view them.  Please let me know if you are having difficulty with the videos since they are in a new format!

Festergut video link
Rotface video link

-Thideras