My raid downed Prince Malchezzar (and the Legions he commands) today. It was my first Prince kill, and the second Prince kill for the guild.
It's a neat fight, but I find some of the other raiders' reaction to it very puzzling and, to be honest, a bit frustrating. First a description:
Imagine a grid. Malchezzar is tanked in one of the squares on the edge of the grid, and the raid sets up in an adjacent square to dps him. Every so often an infernal will fall down and occupy a square, making it uninhabitable, and unable to be moved through. The square the infernal falls on is essentially random.
(There's also some other stuff involving enfeebles dropping people to 1 health, very fast attacks leading to crushes, and flying axes, but it's not really relevant to my issue.)
The problem is that the raid often insists on staying in the same squares, and hoping that no infernals hit the two key squares. Which is crazy. Every time we did that, infernals would box us in, and then when one did land on a crucial square, we would be unable to move to a safe pair of squares.
Of course, every time this happened, people would say that it was just bad luck, that if only the infernals had come down on different squares we would have been fine. But just because a fight has a random element, doesn't mean that you can't come up with a strategy to deal with that random element.
If you wipe over and over to the same thing, it is no longer bad luck, but bad strategy.
In any case, we eventually started moving more, shifting the Prince early, and keeping the number of escape squares high. And it worked. One dead Prince.
Then he dropped loot: [Helm of the Fallen Champion], [Gorehowl], and [Ruby Drape of the Mysticant].
We have no shamans and so the rogue and I roll off for the Helm and I win! Yay, Tier 4! Up next is [Gorehowl].
RL: Roll Need
*crickets*
RL: Roll for toy
*crickets*
Me: Umm, I'll take it no one else wants, but doesn't warrior tank want it?
Warrior: Nah, not interested.
So I have a random [Gorehowl]! Woot! I feel kind of bad about winning the T4 now, but I really wasn't expecting the lack of interest in the axe.
But anyways, this leads to the dilemma of what I should do with the T4 Helm. I currently have the T4 Protection gloves and the T4 Retribution gloves (from a raid when there was no other paladins/rogues/shamans). And I'm also currently Holy Spec and mainly healing in raids.
I'm still kind of interesting in tanking, and I do have a decent tank set built up where the T4 Protection Helm would slot nicely. But I don't think my guild needs me as a tank anytime soon. I could get the T4 Holy Helm, but then I would end up with 3 pieces, each from a different set, and that just seems silly to me. But Retribution is tempting me, and I would have [Gorehowl] to smash faces with.
I really have no idea which helm to pick.
NOTE: you suck! Sorry I'm just a little jealousy. My karazhan run just downed Curator for the first time this week. If you like tanking take the prot helm. You can always tank 5man's when your not running karazhan. Or take the holy helm if it's a big upgrade. If you got 2 gloves already you probably will get the 3rd before too long. Justicar Diadem isn't an upgrade for me as I'm an engineer and have the Justicebringer 2000 Specs If it's not really an upgrade get the piece that is the biggest upgrade.
ReplyDeleteDrakesilver on perenolde
I've always been a fan of "guild first, me second" thinking. In other words, what is your role when you're raiding (10- and 25-man)? Healing? Get the holy helm. Tanking? Get the prot helm. I would be extremely pissed if the MT took his token and bought his dps piece first instead of his tanking piece just because he's on a 5v5 arena team where he dpses.
ReplyDeleteIf your guild will let you DPS in the raid (Good luck on that one... although you do have Gorehowl, so maybe?) spec for Ret and get the Ret Helm. If not, then take Holy, because that's your spec (unless you have better or slightly comparable gear like the banana helm).
ReplyDeleteIn short, take the gear for your spec you plan on being for long term, and then take the extras down the road, that's what my plan is for tanking gear.
As for your prince strategy, sounds exactly like my group, but at the end we hit a bit of real bad luck and wiped with him at 1% (with no consumables 'cuz we were experimenting), QQ , we got boxed in (The key is to move the guy somewhere when you only have 1 escape route available). We'll be downing this punk later on in the week though for sure.
Keep this in mind: There are other tanking, healing, and dps helms available.
ReplyDeleteFor tanking, your other choices are the Eternium greathelm that drops in opera. I don't really like this one, tho. There's the 50 heroic badge tanking helm, that's very nice, and I'd try for it if I didn't get my T4 tanking helm before the 2.1 patch. If you're an engineer, there are the goggles. At the very least, recognize that the T4 prot set bonuses are crap. Don't let that be a decision.
For healing, there is the Mask of Pennance, which is pretty nice. You probably have this. I believe there is another healing plate helm that drops in Kara, but can't recall off hand. I think there is also a 50 heroic badge healing plate helm, that you may look into.
For Ret, the T4 set bonuses are decent (not the best). Your only other choices, are the Ruby Helm that drops in a heroic instance (can't remember which; mana tombs? it's a blue hel, tho, not epic). Or go with a dps warrior-type helm. Can't recall any high level ones off hand, but then again I haven't researched ret gear much.
My advice is to be efficient with your gear. Go for the best piece for each role. Do research, find out what other pieces are out there, and whether they'd be better than the T4 for what you want to do with them. The 50 heroic badge helms are very nice, and easily obtainable, so it would seem to point to you getting the T4 ret helm.
Gotta love the epic 2h BS weapons. Lots of warriors are blacksmiths so they're working towards their deep thunders/lunar crescents/etc. As a result, stuff like Gorehowl is accessible to us shamans and paladins. (I'm a shaman; I got my Gorehowl a few weeks ago off our guild's second Prince kill.)
ReplyDeletePersonally, I think the entire Holy set for Justicar is horrible considering the Illumination change and the off-set items available. Gauntlets of Renewed Hope instead of Justicar Gloves. Pauldrons of the Justice-Seeker instead of the shoulders. Legplates of the Innocent instead of the leggings. 50 badge helm instead of the helmet. The chestguard is off Magtheridon, so hard to get at, but the Illhoof chest is comparable.
ReplyDeleteDon't get the holy set, in my opinion. Get the off-set items, even though they're ugly recolored Lawbringer. Whether you choose ret or prot gear is a different story. The tier 4 prot set is stamina-light, and the tier 4 ret set usually goes unused. A lot of paladin tanks say that warrior tank gear is better than spell damage pally tank gear for raid tanking, and I tend to agree. Use paladin tank gear sparingly, and only in select spots. The spell damage and intellect requirement for raid tanking is usually low and the "warrior" gear (Iron Gauntlets of the Maiden, Eternium Greathelm, 50 badge helm, etc) has more raw "tank" stats, making them favorable in some cases.
If you plan to ever use that Gorehowl, I'd get the ret helm. Retribution is the absolute hardest spec to gear for - you can find several different options for tanking through heroic turn-ins, craftables (Felsteel helm, anyone?) and other raid drops. Ret requires a very specific set of attributes to be effective - >5% +hit, ~25% crit, high AP, some intellect and mana/5 to keep the blue bar up, some spell damage to add to judgements/crusader strikes, and a slow, high top-end weapon. It's very, very hard to get those stats together, while a tank spec just needs to stack enough avoidance to be uncrushable and then has several options open to how they tank (armor/block value stacking, hp stacking, dodge stacking, etc) and therefore several options as to what gear to get.
Long story short, I took the ret helm. The prot helm is nice and a great option, but there are serviceable alternatives, and the holy helm is outshined by gear with mana/5 with the current functionality of Flash of Light spamming.
-Baelor, 70 paladin
Runetotem server
Get Ret and become a champion for our cause!
ReplyDeleteIn a similar situation I just pass. I allready have the heroic badge helm and attuman gloves so if my first peice is ret and everbody had passed then its nobodys business but my own.
ReplyDeleteWeltall?
ReplyDelete...aah, Xenogears, what a game.
Wow, that's pretty amazing because the same thing happened to me. Well, the T4 was defaulted but I got gorehowl by default. I agree with you on the whole raid hopes to get lucky thing. It pisses me off and the raid leader refuses to change the strat.
ReplyDelete