Heroic Faction Champions

We had the ‘good’ problem of more raiders than spots last night. I say it’s a good problem because it’s certainly better than not having enough raiders for your team.

Boston asked for volunteers to sit, and I thought about it, but I knew we were doing Heroic ToC10. I wanted to be in the raid and as one of our geared tanks; I thought I would be needed. Not only that, but if I sat, the team would miss out on my lovely singing voice and vent, and I’m sure nobody wanted to miss out on that.

As an aside, I’m been banned from singing on at least three vent servers. I feel sort of like the guy in the Cantina Scene in Episode IV. “You just watch yourself, we’re wanted men. I’m been banned on three Vent servers!”

Annnnnnnnnnnnyway, we two shot Beasts and three shot Jarraxxus. All night it seemed like I was having threat issues.

Let’s talk about threat for a second. For the entire expansion, the only time I’ve had threat issues as a Paladin is on gimmick fights like Malygos and Hodir where the DPS is getting some ridiculous buff. In a normal fight, I have no problem keeping a very large threat lead. Normally the next closest person will be at around 65 to 70%.

That’s started to change in ToC, especially early on the in the fight. The main culprit seems to be our Destruction Warlock, although our Hunter can ride my threat as well

I don’t know enough about Locks to even guess what the problem is. I can tell what the problem is not though; it’s not a player skill issue. Our Warlock is a really strong player. He knows the encounters and strats backwards and forwards. He’s the kind of guy that can fully explain to you not only his role, but also what every other person in the raid should be doing. I would bet he’s putting every bit as much research into maximizing his personal contribution to the DPS team. I don’t know Corruption from Conflagrate but I bet his 3/17/51 spec is EJ tested, EJ approved, with all the appropriate threat reducing talents.

Hand of Salvation seems to help, but there are many times I want to Salv him and he’s out of my range.

“General Calrissian, our tanks can’t repel aggro gen of that magnitude!”

After Beasts and Jarraxus, we came to our current nemesis, the Faction Champions. Two weeks previously, have we taken on these guys, and verily, it has come to pass, that twice they have smackedeth us down.

The enemy team consisted of a Boomkin, Holy Paladin, Enhance Shaman, Rogue, Mage, and Priest. I think the Priest was Disc because he kept casting Penance.

The plan was to have Blue (Warrior) go Prot and lock down the Holy Paladin. Boston (DK) would do what he could to keep the Rogue off our squishier teammates. We’d rotate crowd control like Cyclones from Lakini and Hexes from Stark (Shaman) on the Enhance Shaman to help our DPS escape. We would try to blow up the Priest, and then start on the other DPS.

Our first attempt, the Priest never got below 80%. It was pretty much what we had seen in our other attempts. On Heroic, the Faction Champions get a trinket and are immune to Taunts.

The next attempt we sent in Danath (Warrior) to fear. The Faction Champs all blew their trinket right from the get go. I popped Wings and laid into the Priest with my Ret DPS. Between Arcane Torrent, Hammer of Justice and Repentance, I was able to stop 3 heals from going off.

More so than just about any other fight, I really have to fight tunnel vision on Faction Champs, but at the same time I need to “stay on target”.

This is also a fight where you notice your own contribution much more than you notice what everyone else is doing. I saw where my Cleanse got Blue out of a sheep so he could get back on the Holy Paladin. I saw where my Hand of Protection saved Blackhaus (Priest) from being killed by the Rogue. I know the rest of the team was using every single one of their abilities to help us try to win this encounter; it’s just that I didn’t see what they were doing or I would tell you all about it.

This time the Priest started to go down, but we must have run out of interrupts because she started to get some heals off. Then she dropped into Execute range and we got her. One Faction Champion down. I glanced up at my raid frames. We were still intact, a good sign.

We changed to the Enhance Shaman, and we were able to burst him down. I checked the Raid frames again. We were down Neo (Warlock) and Ofn (Rogue). Two for two. I figure even if we buckle at this point, we’ve made really good progress in this attempt.

We chose the Boomkin next. We got him down, but it had been costly. We had lost Black (Priest). Lakini (Druid) was Johnny on the spot with a Battle Rez. Okay, so I did notice SOME of the things other people did.

Now it was the eight of us remaining against the Rogue, Holy Paladin and Mage. We went after the Rogue next. He was tricky using Shadowstep to get away from us.

Both our healers were running dry. I switched Stark’s blessing from Kings to Wisdom and waited until Black was completely OOM and hit him with a Lay on Hands. Now I realize 1,950 isn’t a lot of mana, but it was about 1900 more than he had.

We got the Rogue down finally and worked over the Mage. Then all that was left was the Holy Paladin who was so OP that he continued to cast in the air as Boston Death Griped him over to us. Darn, OP Paladins. He popped his Bubble but Blue (Warrior) was ready to take care of that problem.

The crowd roared as the last Faction Champion went down. There wasn’t the exultant cheer in vent you normally get with a new Boss kill. I imagined everyone slumping in their chair and breathing a huge sigh of relief. We had done it. Faction Champion Heroic was down.

We made a couple of pulls on Twins to see the differences. Raid damage is just ridiculous. We tried a couple of different strats but nothing seemed to work well for us.

We decided to extend the Raid ID. While there are some upgrades from the first three bosses for people, we’d like to try to clear the place, maybe before 3.3.

Boston also made what I feel like is a smart move of dialing us back to just two raid nights. He doesn’t want people to get too burned out on raiding right now. We’ll take an extra night off and be ready to hit Ice Crown “full throttle” when it opens.

I think my initial guess of 11/17 was probably too optimistic. It looks like the loot tables are still being finalized so it could be another couple of weeks before it drops.

Comments

Beanalby said…
Congrats on the hard fought victory!

I like seeing detailed accounts of raid accomplishments like this, our friends & family guild doesn't even have enough 80s to do 5mans yet, so I enjoy being able to experience things vicariously through others' stories.

Good job!
Adlib said…
Woot! Grats! This Wednesday was our usual last night of raiding for the week (usually M-W), but we were a whole 5 people short of a full 25 man (burnout and faction changes are not cool). So we split into 2 10m heroic ToC groups, and we made significant progress! Factions Champions are hard! The mage hits people extra hard with arcane barrage, and they CC and focus fire A LOT more. What ended up working for us was burning down the biggest dps first and then targeting the healers. That seems counter intuitive, but it worked! My group last longer than our other group since we didn't have as many disconnects and issues as the other one did. It was a good night!
Elleiras said…
It sounds like the lock is threat capped. As someone who plays both a prot paladin and a destrolock in 10 man raids, I can say with some authoirity that threat capping is actually a tanking issue -- or perhaps a game design issue, as threat capping strikes me as Blizzard's way of telling us (tanks) "okay, you've stacked enough stamina and avoidance now; go work on threat!"
Grimadin said…
Grats Honors, always good to hear about another success for your group.

I am sure that collective sigh could be heard for a long ways when that one was over.
I made this huge comment on why destro locks in particular have threat problems, and what a tank can do to fix the issue. Then I realized that it might as well be a blog post.

http://childrenofwrath.blogspot.com/2009/11/why-warlocks-are-tanks-worst-nightmare.html
erikbranson said…
As a prot pally main with a destro lock alt, I concur with The Renaissance Man's blog post above. Destro locks have huge burst potential with very little aggro reduction. Soul shatter reduces aggro by 50%, but it is best used after a good bit of aggro is already built up. So it is very common to see a lock push the tank early in the fight. Neither of you are doing anything wrong...its just the way it is.
Nuff said…
For heroic twins try this.

Have the healers & 1 tank start off white and everyone else start off black. Have everyone stack up on top of each other with both mobs next to each other right next to the white portal.

Healers run around grabbing the white balls and let the group stand still and let the black balls come to you. Its about avoiding the balls and NOT getting the buff...you get plenty with vortexes.

If you have to swap then 7/10 are next to the portal and just click it and move the mobs over to the other portal to fight. If you have to dps the bubble off the mob you are NOT targetting, just switch targets and dps/interrupt...don't bother to swap colors first you don't need to...this helps a ton with the timing.
Ooke said…
not to mention that lock's soul shatter often gets resisted, even by a hit capped lock. It's strange.

And any Hunter that doesn't use Feign Death when necessary is a Huntard.

Faction Champions is a PitA fight grats on getting it down.

For Twins it's all about those silly orbs. In my guild we pair off ranged people usually a DPS with an opposing colored healer who do interference for each other on the orbs which keeps the raid damage down a notch.

And I hope you have a Mortal Strike type person for Anub'arak who I know you'll meet soon. In phase 3 it's practically necessary.

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