Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Tip for Slimes

A couple of nights ago, I did some of Naxxramas (10-man) for the first time. Having your very first Naxx fight be Four Horsemen is rather intimidating, in light of that fight's history.

Aside from me completely failing on Kel'Thuzad and the Frost Blasts, it went pretty well. Killed some stuff, got a couple of epics, and even made the Thaddius jump.

I did die to the slimes after Patchwerk. It was odd because I blew up, didn't see any slimes near me, and had to pan my camera around to see the slime that killed me. One of the people in the raid gave me a tip which I had not seen before, so I thought I'd pass it along:

Don't run in the middle of the gap between slimes. Run right behind one of the slimes.

Pretty simple. I'm not sure why my natural reaction was to aim for the middle. The problem is not to maximize distance from both slimes, but to maximize distance from the incoming slime.

Now I have to master healing the Frost Blast targets fast enough. Any tips? I think I have to figure out how to get Grid to display that debuff properly.

20 comments:

  1. I have yet to heal the 25 man, but in the 10 man I had two separate ways of healing the frost blast victim. The first was to get at the edge of the raid, and visually see who was getting hit. Pretty old school, but it works well enough.

    The second is that our raid leader had his DBM warnings on and that shows a raid message as to who was hit with it. This worked better because I could stand more in the middle of the raid and reach everyone.

    My only other advice to is that when the frost blast cooldown is up, you make sure you save your holy shock for the target. Sometimes a 1.5 second cast just isn't fast enough. I heal as a priest, but I have to make sure that PWS is ready to go when it hits, so it's the same idea.

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  2. Bubbling and running through them not only makes it so you don't die, because it makes them blow up, you act like a lead blocker for anyone with latency.

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  3. I bubbled the first time I had to run through. But then I had to run back because there was something that needed to be disenchanted on Patchwerk. That was when I died.

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  4. 10 man, for healing the frost blasts, I use DF/HS then FoL... no problem.

    I find reading the raid warning and then finding the person's name to be too slow - I use xperl, and have the debuff displayed on the raid frames (looks like a snowflake :) )... quick scan for the debuff, DF/HS, FoL, life's good :)

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  5. The best way to spot Frost Blasts with Grid is a correctly configured GridStatusRaidDebuff - which helps in other situations as well.
    You can download it from WoWAce or Curse, i use it since Black Temple and it's one of my "must have" raiding Mods.

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  6. Although I use Clique + Grid for almost everything else, I've found that mouseover macros can helpful for healing Frost Blasted targets on the Kel'thuzad fight. I'm at work right now so I can't copy/paste directly from WoW, but the macro I use is basically a

    /stopcasting
    /cast [target=mouseover] Nature's Swiftness
    /cast [modifer=alt, target=mouseover] Healing Wave; Lesser Healing Wave

    combination. (The modifier is there because if Nature's Swiftness is on cooldown, I have to use Lesser Healing Wave instead of Healing Wave; Healing Wave alone is too slow.)

    I like using this as a mouseover macro because it's often quicker for me to target the player who's been Frost Blasted than it is to find them on Grid. The iceblock is pretty obvious ... the little bitty debuff icon, not so much.

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  7. I agree -- I healed this on my shaman in 10-man last week for the first time not tanking or dpsing, and visually healing seemed the easiest way. I need to get a new copy of the GridStatusRaidDebuff module; mine doesn't have any of the naxx debuffs in it. With that said, I like being able to play "heads-up-healer" with a mouseover macro and quick/instant casts.

    The ice block does 104% of the players health over 4 seconds, so pretty much any heal can save them if they're close to topped off. I was mostly using riptide/lesser healing wave on my shaman, although I could see riptide/healing wave if I caught it early enough.

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  8. I just configured Grid to show the Frost Blast as a debuff on the one of the corners, works like a charm and that way you can see it immedietely. You can do that from Grid->Status->Auras->Add new buff/debuff. Just write "Frost Blast" there, then go choose a way to show it.

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  9. Yesterday's guild raid showed me that the so-called Frogger boss is the hardest encounter in WoW since the SSC's (in)famous Elevator Boss. ;)

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  10. The hardest part IMO is keeping in range of everyone (and out of 10 yards), usually there's some range dps who wants to run away and hide in some corner :P
    I have configured Grid to change the color of the health bars of those with Frost Blast, which makes it easy to spot who has it when the boss mods warning appears. I do a HS + HL on the target, and if there's two people blasted, I do a HS on one and HL on the other.
    If you have plenty of melee, I find it useful to BoL one of them, incase they mess up and 3 of them gets Frost Blast.

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  11. Call us crazy but we typically call out the person's name over vent. As for keeping up with the damage lead off with a holy shock the spam holy light.

    I've bound divine favor as a shift modifier to guarantee a crit when i need it.

    shift+holy shock followed by a big HL should take care of it.

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  12. Calling a name over Vent is, in my experience, too slow. We have the raid lead (and everyone else) running DBM, and when someone gets Blasted they get a raid icon. I then huck a Shield and Flash Heal (CoH on 25man where chaining on melee is almost unavoidable), and go on with life.

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  13. Just save Holy Shock for when someone gets Ice Blasted. You don't have to heal them to full, you just have to heal them. I use a mouseover macro and watch for my Grid to light up who got it. Then, just Shock the target and you never have to stop targeting the tank/boss (I mouseover everything and keep the boss targeted so I can easily Judge, watch timers, etc.)

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  14. Frogger -- Your post is accurate as of today. The main cause is lag; the server thinks you are in a different position than your client shows on your screen = boom! There is one big BEWARE: Blizzard has an open bug on lag in Naxx and you can blow up by running too close to the back of a slime. So, when the lag gets fixed, you will have to adjust back towards the center or start booming again.

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  15. The only real way to do is to watch the screen. KT isn't really healing intensive so you can spend most of the time looking at what's going on. The room is dark and the ice block is bright blue, so its pretty easy to identify who needs the healing.

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  16. If you use DBM you can toggle the warnings for each boss ability. I leave only Frost Blast activated to cut down the noise.

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  17. I notice a lot of reliance on mods in these comments, as well as looking for debuffs or trying to see the actual ice block on the screen. I find all of these methods to be too slow, personally.

    What I recommend is setting KT as your focus. There isn't much movement in the fight aside from a slight sidestep out of the Shadow Fissure and a little bit with the mana bomb thing. So, once you are positioned comfortably, you can just stare at your focus frame of KT, while you are mostly casting FoLs and SS on the MT.
    Then, whenever KT switches targets(which should be immediately apparent), you click on the target and start a heal on them. Depending on your haste and whether or not you have Light's Grace up, you can cast a Holy Light or FoL, and then follow that with a Holy Shock.

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  18. On ice block:

    Listen for the sound. The freezing sound is unique, and when you hear it, look immediately for ice blocks.

    Open with Holy Shock, then HL / Flash depending on the HP / more than one person being hit.

    I've healed for years, and while I think grid is useful and makes things easier, simply relying on mods for abilities like that makes you a worse player.

    -Azreal

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  19. To show who has the Frost Blast debuff on grid, you need to add "Frost Blast" to the debuff list under Status >> Auras >> Debuffs : Add new Debuff. Type in the debuff name Frost Blast, then hit enter.

    Then you can use the Layout to show you which player(s) are affected by Frost Blast.
    I prefer using the Center Icon for all cleansable/important debuffs.

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