Karazhan

So, last night, here I am on DV, completing some warrior quest in Arathi, and the GM of Death's Advocate (the guild I ran Kara with earlier in the week) whispers me: "Come to Kara with us. :)"

Woooot Woooot! They like me; they really like me! So, log on Dax and get summoned.

The raid was still on Moroes, and I'm not sure how many attempts they had already made that night. We ended up making 3 or 4.

One attempt was an accidental pull by one of the tanks. Whoops, shackle, shackle, keep tank healed...wipe. We were pretty much ready for the pull, but it seemed like my shackle kept breaking early and wreaking havoc on the raid.

The first attempt, we tried the strat that we've tried before, killing all the adds, then jumping on Moroes. I can't remember the specifics of the fight, but I think one of the tanks went down pretty fast, and things went south from there.

Then we switched to the kill the casters, keep the melee shackled and jump on Moroes. As long as the shackles held, we could do a reasonable job on Moroes.

Just a reminder, all of the following analysis is based solely on memory and is subject to misfiring synapses, mis perceptions, ignorance, and flat out wrong information! I have no hard data to back up my views. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!

The healers can usually keep the tanks going and the shackles up.

The tanks can usually maintain aggro through the blind/gouge situations, so Moroes doesn't go after #3 on the aggro list.

One problem is running OOM during the fight for the healers. We are not to the point where we are running OOM because of the garrotes, at least I don't think we are. It seems that by the time we're dog piling on Moroes, the other priest is low on mana. That said, I have no idea what my mana level is about that time, so take that with a grain of salt! 8~P!

This is the longest fight I've ever been in, and I'm wondering if I should trot out the shadow fiend early, so I can bring him out later for more mana regen.

I use a pot per fight, but I know I need to pot earlier in order to take advantage of the 2 min cool down. I hate overmanaing, if that's a word (like overhealing....), but I think I'll have to start doing that so that I can avoid the OOM situation. I really need to get over my inherent stinginess and become more of a pothead. erm, yeah.

Another area I need to improve in is knowing who is doing what. I just realized last night that we have three tanks, not two! We have two immediately on Moroes and the third on the casters. Crap! Now, thankfully I'm not the guy that needs to unblind one of the tanks, but I DO need to know what my tank is doing and who their target is. While a Moroes Vanish means another Garrote, the up side is that the two tanks get a little respite from his damage. The add tank, for lack of a better word, gets no such breathing room. So depending on who I'm healing, that GH I was just going to chain cast might be mostly wasted because the expected damage didn't happen.

I mentioned shackling, and I'll expound on it now. Mages, I feel your pain! I will never take a mage's sheeping a mob for granted again. Even chain trapping doesn't compare to shackling, although last night I used some of the strategy in chain trapping (ct) to help with shackling.

The advantage that shackling has over ct is that mobs do not have to be pulled into it. They can be shackled in place. Also, if a shackle is resisted, I can immediately start another shackle - no cool down other than the global one. I can also reshackle early to reset the shackle timer. As I've mentioned in another post, I can keep my shackle mob targeted, so I can watch that little timer count down and reapply as necessary while still healing the raid.

The down side? It seems that on these particular mobs, shackles break early. I have not tempted fate by seeing how long my shackle will last; I always reshackle before the timer has completed half of it's duration. Even with the frequent shackling (at cost of my mana!), the mobs still end up running around for short periods, where they wreak havoc on the raid.

So, solutions?

Well, for starters, I need to look for a shackle addon that will give me a bigger indication of when my shackle breaks. That little box on the portrait isn't doing the trick; I need something flashing on my screen or a bigger box by Healbot that I can watch.

I need to employ the chain trapping strategy of moving to maximum distance from my mob to give me time for recasting shackle. There may be a down side to this if I don't have aggro on the mob, and it heads for someone else. I'll have to carefully play around, erm, check that, TEST, yeah, CAREFULLY TEST this strategy to see if it will work as I plan.

Buy some pot! I need to make sure that I have such a quantity of mana potions that I'm comfortable quaffing them without regard to saving them for OH CRAP situations. Yes, I'll have to watch the pot cool down, but in reality, I usually get one shotted, so health pots aren't a concern.

The tanks on Moroes deserve some company at the beginning of the fight. After aggro is firmly established, I need to trot out my slimy little shadow fiend and get some mana lurvin's. With this and the pots (as well as making the most of the 5SR), I should be in good shape for when the dog pile happens.

Hopefully tonight or soon, I will get the +healing to gloves (35, I think), which will raise my +healing to over 1280. I'm still making Primal Mooncloth in the hopes that I'll go to Bot or Arc and get that Whitemend recipe. In the absence of that, I hope to at least have the mats so someone can craft it for me.

Dax in Kara, AGAIN!! WOOOOOOT!!