Saturday

Tips for Newbs in Naxx

There's some stuff in Naxx that seems so obvious that no one should ever have trouble with it...yet your first time or two in, you are almost guaranteed to mess it up. Here are some tips which I found helped me a lot. :)

1. Turn UP your spell effects. Many bosses in Naxxramas use AoE abilities, and it's essential to be able to see them and move out quickly. Even if you must have all other settings at the bare minimum, you really can't get away with not having your spell effects up.

2. On Heigan, face the platform and strafe. This is much, much easier than facing and running forward, and makes following others less tempting. Just remember not to strafe all the way to the wall on the end sections, as you will not be able to get back out in time.

3. Don't hug Zeliek. There seem to be an awful lot of strategies for the Four Horsemen, but this one point is important. He casts a chained holy attack--a little like chain lightning, but it can jump to an unlimited number of targets and the damage increases every time. Here's a picture:




To be fair, it's a little bit simplified--you'd need more than one person standing in the wrong place for the spell to jump to anyone standing at max range. On the other hand, standing too close to the melee puts you at risk of taking damage even if the other ranged DPS are safe, and that's rough on the healer. It is best simply to NOT stand anywhere between melee range and max casting range. (Also do not stand within melee range unless your raid leader has told you to do so--having too many people in melee with Zeliek can also cause deaths.)

4. Run behind the slimes on Frogger, not between. It's tempting to squeeze in between to slimes, but even with perfect timing, latency can still be an issue. Instead, wait for a fresh slime to spawn, and run directly behind it. You should be able to make it through running diagonally from left to right, moving with the slimes somewhat.

5. During the Grobbulus fight, when you drop your poison cloud you will raise your hand. If you just can't watch your buffs to see when you're going to drop the poison cloud, watch your character--there is a distinct animation when dropping the poison cloud, giving you enough warning to get out before it ticks and kills you. (I am going to assume that you know where to run to when you get injected--this is just a little trick to make sure you don't kill yourself.)

6. Run forward and hit your jump key right as you reach the edge to get to Thaddius's platform. If you jump to soon, or walk up to the edge and then jump, you're not going to make it. Rather than relying on a friendly mage to cast slow fall, it's worth it to put the time in to practice and get it right. Blackfathom Deeps has an excellent area for practicing your jumps in--if you've been there before you should remember the broken walkway. (I know I do--I had to be summoned across by the party's warlock because I just couldn't get across.) If you're not comfortable starting with something so challenging, I'd recommend Wailing Caverns to start with--you can always go back to BFD when you're a little more confident. Once you can make all of the jumps in BFD, Thaddius should give you no trouble at all.

7. Watch your charge and keep an eye on Thaddius. Your raid may have someone on vent calling out when the polarity is about to shift or when it has shifted, but nothing beats being completely aware of the situation yourself. Make sure you have your UI set up so that even if you are healing you are able to see when he begins to cast Polarity Shift. When he starts the cast, switch to watching your charge--as soon as it changes (if it changes) run straight forward, through his legs and out the other side. Do not rely on anyone else to time your movements on this fight--vent can lag, but that doesn't mean it's the lag that will get blamed if someone crosses the charges. ;)

Thursday

baby in need of a heart transplant

EDIT: Looks like things worked out for them--the donation button has been taken down and the website now says: "Thank you for your prayers and support!! Because of you we are currently en route to a transplant facility! Details to come!"


http://www.katu.com/news/local/40324212.html

This is the part that really gets to me:

"The baby's parents have health insurance but it does not cover transplants. And the family makes too much to qualify for coverage under Oregon's state health plan."

I can't imagine how horrible that would be, to think you're doing everything right for your family and then find out that you might have been better off if you had done nothing at all. Life just seems so unfair sometimes.

On the one hand, the family does seems to be fairly well off, looking at the photos they have up on their site. I'd like to see more of what kind of effort they're making (selling their home? taking out loans? trying to work out a payment plan with the hospital?). And I can understand why, if it's such an expensive surgery, the hospitals would be unwilling to just do it for out of state patients.

On the other hand, there's no way any normal people have 1.5 million on hand, and he's a cute little guy.

I guess I'm just sort of on the fence about this...I want to help, but I don't want to feel like I'm being taken advantage of. 1.5 million is a lot, do they have any plans for what to do with the money they receive if they don't get enough, or if the baby dies before the surgery?

I'm still deciding for myself, Jon and I will talk about it when he gets home. We won't give more than we can afford, but it's not too big of a loss to us to skip a couple meals out and stop buying oreos and chips for a while, and if what we give helps to save a life than it will be more than worth it.

Click here
for a link to their website.

More stomping, less howling...

I haven't been keeping track of all the pet changes on the PTR right now, but the ones that affect me seem pretty interesting.

Wolves are getting their howl changed quite a bit:

-Furious Howl now only affects the hunter and her pet (currently bugged so only pet gets the buff?), but it now stacks with other AP buffs. It's about time, and I am just thrilled about it. :)

-Duration increased to 20 seconds from 10, but cooldown increased to 40 seconds. The AP amount looks like it has been increased to make up for this. I'm not too excited here, honestly--I liked having my buff up all the time. We'll have to see how it pans out, but mostly I think its just stupid. Having to time big shots to get the buff? Still not being able to trigger the buff manually because the cooldown will be short enough to put it on the pet GCD? Fail.

Hydras (and all other Tenacity pets) are getting some love, though--Thunderstomp will now be a Tenacity talent instead of for Gorillas only, so I won't feel bad about avoiding the buttscratching, banana-stealing nuisances. Sassy already stomps around quite well, I think she's been practicing.


One thing I haven't heard about is Bad Attitude, which seems to be bugged for me (no idea if it is on the PTR, this is on live). It's a 2-minute cooldown, so even with full points in Longevity it shouldn't be on the pet GCD, I think--but it's acting like it is, and I have to spam the crap out of it any time I want to use it, just like I used to with Roar of Recovery. It's way too long a cooldown to leave on autocast and hope it's up when I need it, though. Not happy about it. I'm thinking of taming a normal croc to test it out, but I'm not sure where to go with it after that. Maybe I should skim the o-boards first.