Hellscream’s Warsong and Strength of Wrynn now provide their bonuses to player pet health and damage, as well as the absorption amounts of Power Word: Shield and Sacred Shield.

As for when patch 3.3.3 is going to be released? Probably not this week.

I’m jumping the gun by a couple of the days, but believe it or not the Brew Hall turns one this week. March 17 marks the official date that I made my first post. It’s been a very fast and fun year.

Thank you to all who continue to come here each day.

I’ve decided to start back up with my recap of the weekly events, and in this case frustrations. Lots of spleen venting for today.

Raiding

Our ICC (25) team downed another boss this week. Hooray for progress, even if it’s slow. With Valithria Dreamwalker down this opens the door to experience my most hated boss in both 10 and 25-man modes – Sindragosa.

It’s not often that I screw the pooch in a raid, but it does happen from time to time. Last night, on what had to be our most promising attempt of the evening, I died and started a chain reaction of epic fail that led to another sub 10% health wipe.

For me, Sindragosa’s Icy Grip/Blistering Cold will rank right up there with Heigan’s Dance and Thaddius’ jump as my most hated raid mechanics of all time. I’ve actually mastered this in phase one. It’s in the final phase where I now struggle.

I use disengage to help get some distance once I’m sucked in. In the first phase I have the luxury of positioning myself so that this works flawlessly every time. In the final phase my positioning is not always the greatest, and sometimes disengage can and will take me in a direction that’s “unpredictable”. Instead of backwards, I’ll go sideways and end up lost. Such was the case in this one attempt.

By the time I got my bearings straight and realized I wasn’t any further back than where I started, it was too late. It really broke the rhythm of the group and ultimately we wiped around 7%. It also led to another round of “you guys need to pay attention and run out” from the raid leader.

These encounters all come down to consistency. You have to execute the mechanics every time, not just some of the time. We’re going back in tonight and I suspect we’ll take a break from Sindragosa and focus on Putricide instead. For the final phase I may just have to quit with the disengage and turn and run like every other class.

Other Stuff

On a happier note, I finally got my Reins of the White Polar Bear. I’m done. No more defending my title, abusing the workers, going down in the pit, and destroying the eggs. No more mountain water, salted yeti cheese and snowballs (which I throw at the quest giver every time).

The Hunting Party Podcast will be recorded live tomorrow,  Saturday the 13th of March at 5:30 PM EST. Here’s the new URL: http://www.huntingpartypodcast.com/2010/03/live-show-page/

This will always be the same, now, and will always appear at the top of the site.

The key to your raid getting a boss on farm is for you to get the boss on farm first. When I’m learning a new encounter, and it looks like there will be wiping, my goal is to die when all hell has broken loose; I want to be the last dwarf standing.

Wiping is a natural part of progression raiding. It happens. The fights in ICC have a lot of movement and require tons of raid awareness to get through them.

The biggest mistake that I see people make is they perceive their class function to be their primary job, and as such they prioritize this over everything else. And why not? It’s the one thing that doesn’t change from encounter to encounter. It’s the one thing you already know how to do; it’s easy.

The reality is survivability should be the number one priority and everything else should be secondary until the mechanics of each fight are second nature to you. Survivability is a responsibility of everyone in the raid. It is not about healers doing a better job of keeping you alive, it’s about you avoiding as much damage as possible, even if it comes at the expense of your dps. It’s about understanding the fight and reacting to events immediately. As Rilgon over at Stabilized Effort Scope writes, you should never hesitate.

How does one get better? How do you go about getting a boss on farm? You can start by putting away the meters. On these early attempts the meters are nothing but a distraction. If you can’t bring yourself to disable the meters, at least keep them minimized and review the numbers after the fight.

Get familiar with your defensive capabilities and have them at the ready. Deterrence isn’t a standard part of my rotation, but when learning fights such as the Blood Queen I find it to be an invaluable ability. Also, consider going with a speed enchant such as Tuskarr’s Vitality. Some high-end guilds actually require all of their raiders to have some form of speed enhancement.

Actively use a boss addOn such as DBM or DXE. Don’t just install and forget it. Take the time and familiarize yourself with the timers and alerts for each encounter. Since the first few attempts are likely to be wipes, try backing off the dps and watching these mods. The information they provide is incredible. Seriously they are like GPS for boss fights.

Evaluate what you did wrong after each attempt. If you died to a specific mechanic, make a point to not die by that same mechanic next attempt. Find a new way to die.

Finally, try setting a goal for yourself for getting the boss on farm. I’d like to think that I can figure out the mechanics of most encounters in six or so attempts. It doesn’t always happen, but more often than not I find that I’m the last dwarf standing.

Good Hunting!

]]> http://thebrewhall.com/2010/03/12/last-dwarf-standing-wins/feed/ 0 Darkbrew http://thebrewhall.com/2010/03/12/the-hunting-party-podcast-episode-23/ http://thebrewhall.com/2010/03/12/the-hunting-party-podcast-episode-23/#comments Fri, 12 Mar 2010 14:05:17 +0000 Darkbrew http://thebrewhall.com/?p=1535 ]]> I had nothing to do with this one. This is all Euripides and Frostheim. I was at a basketball tournament watching my kid nephew shoot bricks all day. Kid was building a house!

Every show we do from now on will be live, and released on iTunes after it’s been cut together. Here’s the site where we host our shows.

As always, here is the iTunes store link, the Hunting Party Podcast feed, and the direct XML feed. If you email us comments or questions, we’ll read them on the next show. Send an email to huntingpartypodcast@gmail.com. Also, we love iTunes reviews. Every time you neglect to leave us an iTunes review, a feral druid beats a hunter on the DPS meters!

If you don’t do syndicated podcasts, and just want to download this week’s MP3 and play it on your player of choice, click here.

]]> http://thebrewhall.com/2010/03/12/the-hunting-party-podcast-episode-23/feed/ 0 Darkbrew The Hunting Party http://thebrewhall.com/2010/03/10/icc-tips-sindragosas-icy-grip/ http://thebrewhall.com/2010/03/10/icc-tips-sindragosas-icy-grip/#comments Wed, 10 Mar 2010 15:28:34 +0000 Darkbrew http://thebrewhall.com/?p=1509 ]]> Our 10-man raid team is working on Sindragosa. The other night, I ran into some trouble with the Icy Grip/Blistering Cold mechanic. I can’t tell you how frustrating it was, especially since my issues began on the latter attempts.

Icy Grip/Blistering Cold is an annoying mechanic that needs to be handled consistently. Hunter’s have some good options at their disposal that not only help themselves, but can aid the raid (ooh, this could be my new mantra).

Icy Grip / Blistering Cold

Icy Grip – Extend tendrils of frigid wind to pull all nearby enemies to the caster (think Cyanigosa from Violet Hold).

Blistering Cold – Deals 30000 Frost damage to enemies within 25 yards (this is for 10-man normal, it only gets worse from here).

Every so often she’ll pull the raid to her using Icy Grip. You then have five seconds to get 25 yards away before she casts Blistering Cold and effectively one-shots you. There are a couple of ways that hunters can handle this.

Method One – Just Run Out

1. This option requires that you simply not suck. You get pulled in, you turn around, and you run out. This worked just fine for me on many an attempt, but somewhere along the line it became less effective so I began to look for other options. Behold, method two.

Method Two – Disengage/Aspect of the Pack

1. Believe it or not Sindragosa’s Frost Aura does not trigger the daze effect of our movement Aspects. Ka-Ching! When I get pulled in, I jump disengage to get some distance, and then pop Aspect of the Pack and run. Just remember to turn Aspect off as soon as she’s done casting. Obviously Cheetah will work, but why not help raid, eh?
2. I’ve read that you if you disengage while she’s pulling you in you’ll drop to the ground, and may not have to run out as far. I’ve been too scared to risk a death, so I haven’t tried it yet.

Sadly, Deterrence does not work against Blistering Cold. I tried it and got crushed.

What sort of things do you like to do that make this mechanic and/or this encounter easier? I’d love to know.

Good Hunting!

Please not that this show was recorded lived on February 27, 2010 via Ustream. The Hunting Party Podcast will be a live show from here on out. Each episode will be made available on iTunes after it’s been cut. If you wish to listen to the show live please visit the Hunting Party Podcast website where we host our shows.

As always, here is the iTunes store link, the Hunting Party Podcast feed, and the direct XML feed. If you email us comments or questions, we’ll read them on the next show. Send an email to huntingpartypodcast@gmail.com. Also, we love iTunes reviews. Every time you neglect to leave us an iTunes review, a feral druid beats a hunter on the DPS meters!

If you don’t do syndicated podcasts, and just want to download this week’s MP3 and play it on your player of choice, click here.

]]> http://thebrewhall.com/2010/03/10/the-hunting-party-podcast-episode-22/feed/ 0 Darkbrew The Hunting Party http://thebrewhall.com/2010/03/09/things-were-not-writing-about-3/ http://thebrewhall.com/2010/03/09/things-were-not-writing-about-3/#comments Tue, 09 Mar 2010 05:16:33 +0000 Darkbrew http://thebrewhall.com/?p=1495 ]]> We’re busy today. Application deadline is looming and we’ve got a lot of coding to do. Therefore we’re not going to write about last night’s ICC (10) Sindragosa attempts.

We’re not going to write about how nice it was to see our raid leader playing a ranged toon instead of a tank.

We’re not going to write about how we enjoyed watching him fail at Icy Grip/Blistering Cold after chastising us about it a couple of nights earlier.

We’re not going to write about how he busted our chops for failing to remove stacks of Mystic Buffet and then couldn’t get them off himself.

And we’re definitely not going to write about how he probably helped us turn a corner with strategy and that we expect to get her down next time we go back in.

Would’ve been a fun post though.

There’s an old saying that says when in Ironforge don’t mess with the kegs. When we got to faction champs there was some disagreement on the part of the pugs over the designated kill order. The pugs thought we should kill all the healers first. Not only did they disagree with our strategy, they failed to followed it.

If you’re invited to pug in another guild’s run you’re a guest and need to play by their rules and follow their strats; even if it’s going to get you killed, or worse lead to a wipe. Feel free to contribute to the strategy, but don’t be a jerk about it, and never deviate from the strategy once the encounter is engaged.

Whether you’ve killed the Lich King, almost killed the Lich King, or have braved the deeps of the Fargo Deep Mine, it doesn’t matter; it’s not your run. It’s only going to lead to you getting kicked out of the raid, which is what happened to our pugs.

And if you get kicked out of a raid you can’t get any loot (which is presumably why you’re there). ‘Bout dang time!

PS – Regarding our strategy? It was epic fail of course

]]> http://thebrewhall.com/2010/03/08/when-in-ironforge/feed/ 0 Darkbrew Death's Verdict http://thebrewhall.com/2010/03/05/live-podcast-saturday/ http://thebrewhall.com/2010/03/05/live-podcast-saturday/#comments Sat, 06 Mar 2010 01:37:34 +0000 Darkbrew http://thebrewhall.com/?p=1467 ]]> The next episode of the Hunting Party Podcast will be Saturday, March 6, 2010 at 4:00 PM EST. We’re starting a little earlier this week so that Euripides can join in on the fun. I unfortunately may be absent. Don’t all cry at once, lol.

This week we’ll talk about more BM changes, Hunter stats in Cataclysm, and some interesting thoughts on how SV hunters should handle lock and load procs. Do I smell another friendship bracelet heading Frosts way? Tune in tomorrow to find out.

Happy Hunting!