Posts Tagged ‘ Cat ’

Check Your Buffs, Flasks, Presences, Forms… Gear… SPEC?

Back in the day (/rockingchair) when we had a Death Knight main tank and raid leader, he would, now and again, forget which presence he was in and attempt to tank something in oh… say… Blood Presence. This would invariably result in the best of our DPSers ripping aggro, then dumping aggro, then whatever big bad beastie we happened to be picking on would proceed to chomp the healers and pandemonium would ensue.

We would all be standing at the spirit healer, looking around and wondering ‘What happened?’. Well, our Raid Leader being an honest chap and not wanting raiders to start fretting would sheepishly pipe up that “Oops, I was in the wrong presence…”

We’d all laugh and head back to the boss and then rib him about it when he was getting ready to pull. Hence, the raid leader’s mantra:

Check your Buffls, Flasks, Presences, Auras, Stances, Forms…

That was standard for a good long time.

Then came Dual-Specs, and my Sunday DPS runs.

What’s my Sunday DPS runs got to do with this? Well, on Sunday I slip into my DPS spec, and my DPS gear. I’ve got a button bar that shows which gearset I’m currently wearing so it’s easy to keep an eye on that, but it’s not quite the same for Talent Specialization.

Especially when both specializations are Feral. If my dual-spec were resto or balance it would be quite obvious that something was amiss. (Why is there moonkin/tree of life on my shift bar?)

I’m sure you can all see where this is going.

On Tuesday, as I mentioned before, we split into tens. What I didn’t mention was our spectacular, wonderful, very impressive one-shot of the XT-002 Deconstructor.

No thanks to me.

I nabbed Main Tank duty because the main tank just kinda stands there. Very often in Wrath, MT duty is the less complicated, so, as a raid leader, I like taking these jobs because it allows me an easier time to keep an eye on everyone else.

Back to the story at hand. I was main-tanking XT. Everything was going as planned, then the first heart phase came. I shifted to cat and started letting loose. We popped our Bloodlust at this point and I’ll be damned if we didn’t get XT down to 54% by the end of that phase.

Wow, great job!

Just a few more percentage points and we were on the second add phase. This time we didn’t have a Bloodlust. I was still doing quite a bit of damage, and noticed copious crits that I don’t usually see while tank-specced.

It registered as ‘odd’ but not ‘important’. At this point I was more worried about the double-wave of adds we had incoming. I was yelling for Death and Decay from our two Death Knights and praying our only two ranged DPS were up to keeping the incoming robots under control.

Soon enough we were through the second heart phase and this is when things got interesting.

The healers were starting to get a little stressed, what with our OT holding 3-4 pummelers, tantrums coming, and the occasional Boombot making its way to the melee. I glanced down at my bar and noticed Barkskin wasn’t on Cooldown.

Well, ok, /mangle.

Nothing.

I have Barkskin macro’d into my Bear mangle.

I have Barkskin macro’d into my Bear mangle on my BEAR SKILLSET BAR.

So I manually slam Barkskin, hit ‘N’ after that and see, with a sinking heart, the lower Paw illuminated on my Talents tab.

I was in cat spec.

I was tanking without Thick Hide, without Protector of the Pack, without any of those oh-so-necessary talents that make Bears the wonderful things they are.

I was even CRITTABLE NOT DODGING!

But here we were, by this point just beyond the last add phase. We were so close, the healers were gasping, the DPS going full-tilt trying to mop up the scrapbots as they came in and my health was veering all over the place.

I popped Survival Instincts during a tantrum, Frenzied regeneration soon after that. I used my Defender’s Code and prayed for Essence of Gossamer procs. I was more careful with keeping up Lacerate for the Savage Defense procs than I’d ever been in my tanking career.

Just hold on, just a little farther, I’m sorry, I’m sorry… please don’t let my stupidity be the ruination of what has been such a wonderful thing…

Then the repair bots came in. Our ranged were out of mana, our melee were already giving everything they got and one…. two…. three….

four….

XT hovered between 1 and 2% for what felt like an eternity.

Then all the repair bots were dead, there were no more to come, and the DPS pushed what little they had left

20k health

10k…

5k…

dead.

They’d done it. With my health oscillating wildly, my healer gaspingly out of mana and beginning to question his worth for anything, we had killed the robot.

A One-shot, and no thanks to me, but I am DAMNED proud of the team we had that night.

2009
05/08
CATEGORY
Instancing
10 comments

And Little Did I Know…

That beneath his peaceful, unassuming bark…

was a raging feral feline just waiting to be unleashed!

picture-1

This is a copy of the WWS from last night. I’ve focused on our kill for 25-man XT-002 Deconstructor.

(Yes we killed him! and 10 seconds before the enrage too! /confetti)

Top five DpS, we have a Combat Rogue, a Retribution Paladin, TWO(!) feral felines, and a Destruction Warlock.

Beyond our success last night, beyond this new feeling of synergy I have with the other officers, beyond all of that, I think I’m most excited about seeing one of our members (who had struggled in the past) finally find his niche.

He’d been running as a healer before and, quite frankly, had the raid awareness of a can of beans. He was particularly suceptible to healer tunnel-vision, and the source of much frustration during our Sartharion 3D attempts. He wasn’t a bad healer, but when he was put in a situation where he needed to pay critical attention to something other than health bars his skill began to falter.

We in Unemployed have found ourselves fortunate enough to have a slight (SLIGHT!) over-abundance of healers. Enough definitely so that we could safely rotate one or two in and out of DpS slots as needed. So, to our newly-furred friend, I popped the question yesterday before the raid: “Would you like to forsake your branchey roots and devote yourself full-time to the fine art of ripping face?”

The answer was yes.

My hopes weren’t particularly high, however. I suggested Rogue Power Bars to him, and I pointed him at Feral by Night and Face Mauler, thinking the best I might be able to hope for was to set him up with something that told him what to do and when so that at least he wouldn’t be an embarrassment.

What did I get for my under-estimation?

I got freaking blown away.

I asked him after the fact which addons he’d installed and was using. The answer? Just Rogue Power Bars. He hadn’t bothered with the skill-eliminating addons I’d so derided in my post last week. It was all him.

I am so freaking proud! I feel a little ridiculous that I feel so strongly about this, I feel like I took a wobbling, unsure little chick and have finally helped it find its eagle’s wings.

PS?

BEST KILL-SHOT EVER

2009
04/29
CATEGORY
Raid Leading
3 comments

You Ought To Be Ashamed

One of my very favorite feral blogs, and one of the first I turn to when I have questions (Of Teeth And Claws) wrote an article about rotation advisor addons. In his post he talked briefly about two of the up-and-coming more popular programs, and ruminated at length* over weather or not they constituted ‘cheating’.

His tentative opinion was that yes, using a rotation advisor goes a long way to removing skill from the game.

I agree completely! Blizzard is already removing skill from the game (360 swipe). Personally, I find it shameful to have an addon that tells you what button to press. In my experience, there’s quite a bit of joy to be had in topping the damage meters, especialy if you know you’ve done it yourself!

A number of his readers tried to defend the use of rotation advisors by saying their main job is tanking. It’s implied that tanking is so harrowing that they just can’t be bothered to learn about and maintain a viable dps rotation.

It’s not, there’s no excuse! I’m a main tank, and tanking is my main job, if I want kitty loot I have to wait until I can either get it on offset or invade someone else’s raid. I’m still rocking a (very bad) blue trinket and NONE of my gear is BiS.

Yet yesterday, I raided 25-man Naxx with my husband. I finally got to clock my DpS on Patchwerk (last week healing was fail, a tank went down, and I ate a hateful very early in the fight). While this week I still ended up eating a hateful strike, it wasn’t until Patches was at 1%.

I clocked at almost exactly 5k dps, and I topped the damage meter. I topped Grobbulous too, and Sapphiron. I did 5.5k on Loatheb WITHOUT the benefit of spores. My AP was 7.5k and my crit was 47%. I was using Karthis’s cat spec and using his advice and my own brainmeats for a rotation. Keep all buffs and debuffs up at all times, shred for damage and combo-points. I used Ferocious Bite when everything was up (which was very often with the 2pc T7 bonus and the Shred glyph)

The only addons I use to aid with DpS is rogue power bars. Last night I was only using mangle every once in a great while. I was one of two kitties and there was a bear besides, so I knew mangle would be up.

The point I’m trying to make is that you don’t NEED a cruch like that. Sure you could use it, but when you’re watching a little window, waiting for it to tell you what button to push where does your raid awareness go? If a patch comes out and your addon breaks will your dps tank? Without my RPB my job gets a good deal more difficult, but I’m still perfectly capable of watching my own buffs and the boss’s debuffs for the information I need.

My first exposure to an addon like this was when I downloaded and installed Shock and Awe for my shaman to help me track maelstrom stacks. It had a priority window. I used it for about five minutes and then turned it off in disgust. I still use the tracking timers, but the priority window is gone.

My advice to any aspiring kitties out there is to give these addons a try, but turn off the rotation advisor window. You all chose to roll druid, and your wisdom with choosing such a fine class is apparent. Trust your feral instincts and say no to the part of the addon that wants to turn you into a clockwork chimp.

We are feral cats!

*For an elf, he ruminates quite well, in my humble bovine opinion.

2009
04/27
CATEGORY
Game Mechanics
17 comments

In Which Tiger Proves She Knows What She’s Talking About

I finally got to put all my hard brain-work to the test.

On Sunday I participated in a 5-hour mega-raid that spanned the entirety of Naxxramas, the Eye of Eternity, and wrapped up with the Obsidian Sanctum (1D).

First of all, raiding for five hours is rough. Second of all cats can DPS. Like mad we can DPS (4k worth of dps if you were curious). Third of all, with the new Shred glyph, our rotation has a lot more wiggle-room.

But yes, the entire five runs I got to run around in my pure, unadulterated kitty-ish glory. I also realised that I doubt I could lead raids from a DPSing role. Whilst DPSing my attention was focused intently on my timers and my own position (I’m notoriously poor at getting out of whirlwinds), leaving little to no attention to spare for the actual raid.

It was a very good thing that I wasn’t leading at this point, so it wasn’t an issue.

Back to the ‘rotation’. With the refreshing on Rip (and the longer Rip through another glyph) I found myself with extra combo points to burn. Burn on what? Ferocious Bite of course!

In the past I would probably be able to FB once every other boss or so. I just wouldn’t ever usually find myself in that perfect zone where Savage Roar had enough time, Rip had been recently refreshed, I had five Combo Points, and Tiger’s Fury was off (or nearly) Cool-Down. Now however with the extra super awesome long Rip I’ve found myself in that situation two, three, sometimes four times during a single boss encounter!

With practice I think I could do even better.

Haste, is AWESOME now. The very first thing I noticed when I started to dps was now I have flashing paws of kitty fury! Pa-pa-pa-POW!

/bat

/batbatbatbatbatbat

Lots and lots of fun!

As it’s Monday, I’ll leave you with a little Moosik. ;) Rolled up just for me, to you, from Pandora. The Killers, All The Things I’ve Done. (Maer, you should enjoy this)

2009
04/20
CATEGORY
Game Mechanics
4 comments

I Killed A Dragon, And Learned Something New

So, you’re runnin’ around in ful feral glory, rocking a bearcat spec, dpsing in the best kitty gear you’ve been able to get your hands on. The 3.1 patch is still somewhere over the horizon and thanks to your abysmal gold-making abilities you’ve barely got enough for regular raiding, so constant re-specs are unheard of.

You’re nowhere near the top of the damage meters and, while leagues ahead of your DK and Warrior tank-offtank counterparts, you still wish you could eke out more DPS.

I made one change in my rotation last night that netted me approximately 300 extra damage per second.

I switched from casting Savage roar on five combo points to casting it on three.

My previous combo point rotation was:

5 cp – Savage Roar
2-3 cp – OOE – Tiger’s Fury
finish up to 5 cp – Rip
5 cp – Savage Roar
5 cp – WAY OOE – Rip falls off, Rip

OOE is out of energy. I’ll end up using Tiger’s Fury, depending on crits, somewhere either before my first Rip of shortly after. That helps get me up to 5 CP again to refresh Savage Roar (which is only about halfway ticked down, but if I don’t refresh it then it’ll fall off entirely)

Then, by the time my Rip is ticking down dangerously low I’m OOE again and have been for quite some time. It’s all I can do to keep Rake and Mangle up with the energy available, let alone squeeze in Shreds. Inevitably, by the time I make it to 5 combo points again Rip has fallen off and my DPS has taken a hit as a result.

Last night I switched things up a bit.

3 cp – Savage Roar
5 cp – Rip
3 cp – Savage Roar
OOE – Tiger’s Fury
5 cp – Rip
3 cp – Savage Roar
5 cp – OOE – Rip
3 cp – Savage Roar
Still OOE – Tiger’s Fury

During the build-up of Combo Points for the third Rip I found myself going OOE again, but since I had cast Savage Roar on 3 cp before instead of 5 I had a cushion of time to wait for my energy to regen and by the time I had 5 combo points I was in plenty of time to refresh Rip without it falling off.

If I get a chance I’d like to try to test these two variations in the rotation against a dummy. I’m thinking 3 minutes of DPS-time for each test, self-buffed, and without using Berserk.

2009
04/09
CATEGORY
Game Mechanics
5 comments
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
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