Weekend (6 Jun) - It's Just a Tournament

Weekend (6 Jun) - It's Just a Tournament

Blizzard Announcement - The Tuesday maintenance this week is going to be a full 24 hours, beginning at midnight Monday. No warcraft at all on Tuesday, and one can bet it will go longer than that. The reason is to "prepare for the expansion." Patch 3.3.5 is on the test server, but the consensus on the forums seem to be that we are not getting the patch, but more likely this is the first of many server maintenance efforts as they prepare for what they expect and hope will be a huge influx of new players come Cataclysm. What the heck am I going to do on Tuesday? Well, I'm going to vote in my local elections. And I have a doctor's appointment. Fun stuff. Not. On with the "real" stuff.

Why is there a thing called Trial of the Crusader? There is no Warcraft lore that ties such a thing to the Lich King, or the Burning Crusade, or any other aspect of the world of Azeroth. The beasts, beings and bugs that make up the Trial have little connection to the lore of the land, with a couple of exceptions.

One could say that ToC exists just so that players would have something else to do in groups and raids. But if that were the case so why not develop something that was part and parcel of the wider storyline?

Closer to the truth, though, is many players are attracted to and fascinated by the idea of gladiator style combat. It began at the beginning, with open world pvp between alliance and horde (the very foundation of the game world itself), and dueling between same faction players, and then later becoming formalized with the pvp Arena system. Gladiator type combat has always been with us.

If it was popular for pvp, why not for pve as well? I can't recall if there was a gladiator style area in the vanilla WoW days of two continents and no pre-expansion pack. None come to mind, anyway. However, with the Burning Crusade expansion and the creation of Outland, the zone of Nagrand featured not one, but two such places. In one area of Nagrand controlled by ogres, there is a gladiator style questline where a series of Champions must be defeated. It was extremely popular and both guilds and random 5 player groups could almost always be found waiting their turn at the tournament, hoping to get the very nice goodies that could be won. The weapon Wild won at that tournament lasted him through several levels. There was also the Ring of Trials, a pvp zone within Nagrand for gladiator style combat.

The second expansion and the creation of Northrend brought two more gladiator style areas that I can think of, one in Grizzly Hills and one in Zul'Drak. Both of these are 5 man group based pve contests against a series of Champions.

There are probably other such events as well that I've forgotten about.

So I guess it was inevitable that there would be more such contests, and on a grander scale. And so we have Trial of the Crusader, which features for the first time raid level gladiator contests.

When ToC was the "latest thing" it was very popular for the high end i232 (10 man) and i245 (25 man) loot that was offered. It is still farmed regularly by PUGs bridging the gap in gear between heroics and raiding, but I think that the 5 man ICC raids are now the more popular for that and ToC is fading.

So, on Saturday Philly was kind of surprised to see that someone was trying to get a ToC25 raid together. The raid leader was asking in trade chat for one healer, and a few ranged DPS. Philly has never been on a ToC25 raid, and has only been in on a ToC 5 man once (which is actually called Trial of the Champion). On a whim Philly requested an invite, offering both healing and shadow specs, depending on which one he wanted. "Shadow please" was the quick response, and Philly got an invite.

With the exception of some pvp gear and one badge reward, Philly had no gear better than i226. All of the loot in ICC25 was ilevel 245. A great opportunity for Philly if in fact this raid could accomplish anything. Watching raid chat and checking out those that had been invited, it was clear that this was at least a partial guild run. Perhaps some guildies of the raid leader were bored and decided to try to run ToC25. A further sign of good organization was that the raid leader asked for everyone in the raid to get on his guild's vent channel. He was not belligerent about it, but kept encouraging folks to log in to vent to help make assignments and run a smoother raid. The very fact that he accepted Philly into the raid was a strike against the raid, as Philly was not likely to put up very good numbers. However, Philly assumed it was because he needed a shadow priest. Yet even when he got a second, and better geared, shadow priest to join the raid, there was no request for Philly to leave.

Philly had other disadvantages that she vowed to correct if she survived the raid. Philly's "consummables" were not the best. All level 80 raiders should have as a minimum one high end food buff and one high end drink buff, and enough of both to last throughout the whole raid. Wild uses Flask of the Frost Wyrm (drink) and Firecracker Salmon (food) for increased spell power. Philly has gotten along with lesser items, but even worse, she came to the ToC25 raid with no food buffs at all. In most raids, even PUGs, someone has a food buff called Fish Feast which is sharable to everyone in the raid. No one felt the need to use a Fish Feast for ToC25, and Philly's DPS contribution would be the lesser for it. Philly plans a fishing expedition to catch the glacial salmon for the food buff and bugging JB to make her some flasks for future opportunities.

After making sure everyone was inside the Coliseum and buffed, tank and healing assignments were made along with some very general guidance to remind folks of major things that might result in a wipe if forgotten. Philly had her own private assignment. To help her with her always troubling targeting when playing shadowpriest, Philly set her focus not to the tank, but to the other shadowpriest in the raid. That way if Philly got confused she could always target the same mob as the other shadowpriest. The first encounter was the Northrend Beasts.

Gormok was the first of three assaults, and from a healing perspective it is a straight tank and spank. From a DPS perspective, however, Philly had to deal not only with the boss, Gormok, but with snobolds, mobs that Gormok tosses onto random raiders. Healers were almost never targeted, but ranged DPS was a favorite target of snobold tossing. In addition, it was the job of ranged DPS to kill the snobolds as quickly as possible. Philly was glad to have had the other shadowpriest set as focus, as he was nearly always faster at setting his target on a snobold. Philly didn't get "snobolded," and we brought Gormok down. Philly was having a lot of fun. Then the pair of frost wyrms, Acidmaw and Dreadscale, slithered through the Coliseum doors. Wave 2 of Northrend Beasts was beginning.

Philly knew enough to target the mobile Acidmaw at the start of the fight, but once the two wyrms submerged and re-entered a couple of times Philly sort of lost track who she should be shooting at. The other shadowpriest seemed to be going back and forth, most likely DoTing both and then focus firing one until the Dots wore off. That was just a guess, though, even as Philly tried to follow suit. So many of Philly's spells, though, require her to be standing still and it was tough keeping a good spell rotation together. Philly nearly died when she wandered into frontal range of Dreadscale and got hit by a knockback. Philly was keeping a Shield on herself full time, and that blunted the attack enough for a healer to save her. Philly felt a little of the love a DPSer must feel for a healer who saves their bacon like that. We brought down Acidmaw and Dreadscale.

Icehowl came next. The only comment before we engaged was "please don't get in the way of Icehowl's Trample." Several times during the fight Icehowl will knock the entire raid up against the outer wall, stunning us. He'll then target a random raider and then, as the stun wears off, Charges in the direction of that raider. The target and anyone in the path of the Charging Icehowl is pretty much killed instantly. Worse, it means that Icehowl didn't stun himself by ramming his head against the wall, and we'd lose precious seconds we could have been attacking him while stunned. Everybody stayed out of his way, and Icehowl fell.

"well, we didn't wipe," mused the raid leader. Philly was getting the definite impression that he's run this raid more than a few times. The loot rules were pretty broad. Everyone was allowed to roll on one main spec, one Trophy, one treasure (crusader orb), and as many off specs as we wanted. Philly rolled on [Barb of Tarasque], a DPS caster +hit dagger that Philly could have used all the way to ICC. She didn't win the roll, however. A [Trophy of the Crusader] token drops for each encounter, which, along with triumph emblems, will buy a Tier 9 piece. Philly rolled on that, too, and won it.

Lord Jaraxxus was Summoned in for the next battle. This fight is a pain for healers since Jaraxxus has some special DoTs just to push healers to the max and also summons some very nasty adds. For DPSer Philly, though, Jaraxxus was a lot of fun. Philly kept target on Jaraxxus, and then switched to kill the Mistress of Pain add and then to the infernals that are summoned by miniature volcanoes. Philly delivered some decent damage (2746 DPS, ok for her gear level) on Jaraxxus.

Pleased with the raid's progress, the raid leader moved us all back to the door for the next encounter with the Faction Champions. Ten hostile npcs faced off against 25 raiders in arena pvp style combat. The first four to be attacked were marked in the order they were to be killed. After that the raid leader called and marked the next target as the prior one died. Philly flitted about the room, keeping a Shield up and tossing instant DoTs on the prime target while on the run. Standing still got her attacked, so it was hard to get off more than one non-instant spell before having to break away from an attacker. Nothing could save her, though, when a whirlwinding warrior chased Philly in circles around the room until she died. Well, at least I kept him out of the way of other raiders for a few seconds. Philly was already the third to die, but it was Philly the raid leader asked to be battle rezzed. Back in action, Philly spun, ran, and Feared herself out of trouble, but after the fifth hostile npc went down that dadblamed warrior was after Philly again. "You're pretty popular with that warrior," the raid leader quipped. Philly died again, and watched the rest of the battle from her corpse. Throughout the frantic battle, the raid leader calmly called for this or that raider to crowd control, switch targets, battle rez, dispell, etc, always in a mild voice. When something went awry, such as when he called for the rogue to be focus fired, but marked the mage instead, you could practically hear the shrug and he'd say, "Ok, the mage will do." We lost seven raiders even after all the battle rezzes were used up, but all ten hostile npcs died.

The most difficult fight for Philly was Fjola and Eydis, also known as the Lightbane and Darkbane twins. Philly again compared the fight to Wild's healing experience. Healing the fight was pretty straightforward, with healers rarely having to "change colors" during the fight and always knowing who to heal. For the DPS, that target - Lightbane or Darkbane - depended on a number of factors, including color changes based on the type of casts the twins were doing. Attack the wrong boss, and I believe no damage (or less damage) is done than by attacking the right twin at the right time. Miss a color change, and it's likely an instant death. Philly probably wasn't hitting the right target every time, but from what I could tell the other shadowpriest was miss-targeting on occasion as well. Philly must have gotten some good crits in as she upped her DPS to 2880 for this fight. We were very happy to see them die.

Remember that earlier in the week Philly was in the weekly raid to kill Anub'arak? Well, as paraphrased from the ToC strat guide, "Anub'arak's death was merely a setback." Anub was back as the final boss in ToC. There are so many prominent figures in WoW that reappear elsewhere when they have supposedly been killed that someone suggested there should be a "Death was just a Setback" Achievement award.

The battle with Anub started with the Coliseum floor breaking beneath our feet. We fell a long way into a lake. Swimming out and shaking off the water, we walked a short distance to Anub's lair. Anub is a straight tank and spank with adds, livened up by Anub submerging under the floor periodically and also sending out lines of spikes that are quite deadly if the front of the wave hits a raider who is not standing on permafrost. Of course, there is no permafrost on the floor of the chamber. Balls of it float about in the air over our heads.

"Uh, Philly, if you're listening (the raid leader always prefaced his requests with "if you're listening") could you take care of shooting down the permafrost?" Sure, Philly told him, having never done that chore before. The raid leader added, "a Pain and a Death is probably enough to bring them down." Those were shadowpriest spells, Shadow Word: Pain, and Shadow Word: Death. Philly was aware how low on the DPS chart she was, DPS that would hardly be missed, which was why she was perfect for the job. Philly didn't mind; without permafrost raiders would die. Dropping those balls throughout the fight was important.

Once the battle started, Philly circled the chamber continuously, targeting the balls of permafrost and bringing them down. Philly was just a little short of spell power to bring down a ball with just the two spells, Pain and Death, but a quick hit with her Mind Flay was enough to finish it off. Philly was pleased with the coverage of permafrost she was able to keep on the floor, since it started dissipating as soon as it splashed down. Of course, not being able to DPS the boss played havoc with her DPS numbers, but Philly wasn't going to be leading any charts anyway.

Anub went down, and Philly had her first clear of ToC25. Philly rolled on a really, really nice ring as main spec, but two other casters out rolled her. However, both of them had already won main spec rolls, and Philly was awarded the ring. Counting the Trophy, which will be used to buy shoulder gear, Philly will replace two i200 items with i245 items, significant upgrades for her. Even if she still dreamed about that dagger that she didn't win.

By the way, the raid leader said at the end that he runs ToC25 almost every Saturday around 2pm server, for anyone who's interested. Yep, Philly might want to get into that again.

Philly's overall numbers for the evening was near the bottom (#18) at 2309 DPS. Her counterpart, the other shadowpriest, did 4714 DPS and finished 9th. The top caster (a mage) finished third with 7129 DPS. There were some powerful DPSers out there. Fortunately, nobody minded us lesser types as long as we contributed as well as we could.

The ToC25 was the major action over the weekend, but there were plenty of other things going on. More to follow.