10 man raid night, and we’re looking to make a bit of progress in Ulduar. After some delays due to the WHU BBQ, the patch and related server shutdown, we’re finally at our progression point for the first time in weeks.
We started with Auriaya, who we like to wipe on for some reason. Despite only 9 people and a messed up pull by yours truly, we one-shotted her. More shammy loot drops, same as every boss in Ulduar, and we move on through the trash toward Hodir.
We had an interesting afk theme during the raid last night. It seemed like half our raid was doing something else in RL during the raid. Among the ones I recall were boiling water, laundry, changing printer toner cartridge, taking care of internet service change, etc.
Maybe Afk Rogue is rubbing off on us? I’m not entirely joking here. Bad habits are contagious. It’s easy to think to yourself, “AFK Rogue goes afk all the time with no warning, and I’m just this once going to hop over and take care of some business…” But then someone else does it, and someone else, and pretty soon it’s every boss.
Combined with constant afks and people just plain off their game, Hodir proved to be a wipe fest again. I think we went something in the neighborhood of 10 wipes on him – I lost count. This is particularly frustrating because from all accounts, Hodir is not a terribly difficult boss.
I myself contributed with weird lapses in concentration. On two separate attempts I screwed up on the Flash Freeze and didn’t get on the mounds in time. One of those I somehow mistook a normal icicle for the flash freeze mound, and happily stood there until I was frozen. Stupidity is sneaky like that – it’s internally indistinguishable from not stupid until BAM, you’re dead.
My personal favorite afk of the night was when I asked for an afk (partially to shake my my concentration back on – this was right after my second mess up on flash freeze) and Hrist announced a 5 min break. We broke, did our stuff, and came back to fight Hodir, when Cocky Mage announced “I’m going to need a break after this attempt.”
About 40 minutes before our quite time Cocky Mage had had enough and announced he was done for the night (I think he actually had enough long before — he’s usually not with us on progression stuff and isn’t used to our classic progression wiping. He wanted to leave Hodir and do something else). Hrist got his vengeance by announcing that we’d pop back and kill Razorscale with the 9 remaining before calling it.
So at the end of a painful and mostly futile night we had succeeded in getting Hodir to maybe 58% on our best attempt (though we were steadily, but slowly, improving). Afterward the Cheerleader was looking for just a little bit of encouragement. Something to cheer about.
Hrist did not provide it.
Hodir’s a weird encounter. No amount of DPS awesome can make up for even the slightest amount of icicle stupid. That said, no amount of icicle awesome can make up for DPS average.
Basically people need to learn which of the buffs they need most and how to get them, as well as be aware of the icicles and not screw up on it. As soon as enough people get there, you’ll start having 10 minute kills and can work your way down from there.
My group still thinks we can do it without all being Frost-resist geared. It’s usually the same people who I’m breaking out of ice blocks after the Flash Freeze.
Lifetime Frogger Deaths – 0
Lifetime Flash Freeze Failures – 0
…those need to be default achievements that become lose-able. I’m more proud of those than I am of half of my real achievements. I’d add in a Sarth flame wall achievements as well, though I (and certainly my pet) don’t have that one.
Aye, we’re doing it with no FrR gear (except for the tank).
Dunno about frogger – the thing is it’s the lag that tends to kill on that. I used to laugh at every frogger death and didn’t understand how anyone could die on it. Then one day I had a lag spike, was not near anything, and died. Boo.
Oooh, but I have the Lifetime Lava Dance Deaths – 0.
/SAP!! for your information short of the day of the raid I haven’t had an AFK moment in a raid in awhile and I haven’t done it during a boss fight in a long time so /rude! anyway I do think its just a matter of being in the right spot like I said this fight doesn’t seem overly complex really sure we’ll get it sooner or later
i have 1 lava dance death… when i accidentally hit disengage key >:O
I think a lot of groups have that kind of only-half-true stereotype, AFKR. We have a rogue who used to die constantly, and it became a running joke. The ribbing pushed him to work on his survivability so much that he probably dies less than most of us these days, but he still takes crap for it.
Though he walked too far on Kologarn last week and fell through the boss to his death. That sh*t was priceless.
haha weve had tanks falls on kolo. it was a hoot.
Nah I know its only for fun plus I did used to AFK ALOT due to stuff out of my hands and there is plenty I get them back on just won’t mention it here also there is worst stuff out there to be ripped on over
Why else would I make my name on here AFK Rogue if it bothered me?
I think a certain 25 year old from Hawaii was trying to move in on your action last night AFK.
Managed to get “that cache was rare” last week, as we happened to have group nicely tunes. We use one tankadin with a bit of frost resist, 2 healers (priest and shammy (for blood lust)), a couple of melee, then 5 casters/ranged. The npcs are the no1 target in this fight, and we found freeing these earlier increaed our dps on boss significantly. We had all the ranged under the buff beams jumping up and down every 5 seconds to stop the debuff. The tank took a large kiting circle, although some people say this is better with Hodir stationary. Managed to get him down with 3 seconds to spare. We had good raid direction with significant instruction on vent when the flash freeze came.
This fight needs a group setup specially for it if you want to make life either yourself.
ps i will learn to type one day
I did what you said we were supposed to do Frost… let them know in advance that I need a break. and it wasnt even a long break. I was ready when you guys got done buffing, so you shut your pie hole.
We find the tanking position of Hodir makes this encounter alot easier. Given if you hold him the adds tend to scatter around him making buffs float around and forcing people after Flash Freeze to run around wasting time.
If your tank can pull Hodir over to his Frozen Cache the adds will move towards him and will bunch up. As the adds bunch, the buffs will overlap. Increased DPS and less time running to adds after freeze.