gormok
Latest
Shifting Perspectives: Why effective health needs to die, part 2
Every week, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting druids and those who group with them. This week, we examine the issue of effective health in more depth. We've discussed in the previous column why effective health is important; here, we're going to discuss why it's not as important as you might think if you had nothing beyond the collective opinion of the Tanking forum to go on. While this has something to do with the mob mentality of the forums themselves, it has more to do with how the concept of effective health isn't usually placed in context. Tank death on hard modes is quickly attributed to EH discrepancies, with rather less discussion on encounter mechanics, inappropriate gear, or that great but frequently unacknowledged bugaboo -- player error. It is for this that I say effective health needs to die. What is effective health? I neglected to put some hard numbers on this in the last article, but calculating base effective health is actually pretty simple. It's your health as modified by the damage you'll take after armor contribution (AC), or Health / (1 - AC%). A 50,000 health tank with 25% armor contribution has 66,666.67 effective health (50,000 / 0.75). A 50,000 health tank with 50% armor contribution has 100,000 effective health (50,000 / 0.5). A 50,000 health tank with 75% armor contribution (the maximum functional AC) has 200,000 effective health (50,000 / .25).
Raid Rx: Healing heroic Northrend Beasts
Every week, Raid Rx will help you quarterback your healers to victory! Your host is Matt Low, the grand poobah of World of Matticus and a founder of No Stock UI, a WoW blog for all things UI, macro, and addon related. his week, we step into one of the more challenging hard mode encounters: Northrend Beasts in Trial of the Grand Crusader. Welcome to the NBE encounter. And no, I'm not referring to Megatron. NBE is shorthand for the Northrend Beasts Encounter. It's a straightforward engagement on normal. Once the switch is toggled to heroic, the fight goes into over drive. There's a few changes that us healers need to grasp. For one, there's a strict time limit on each set of beasts. Can't kill Gormok quick enough? Too bad! Ready or not, here's the twin snakes!
Ready Check: Northrend Beasts
Ready Check is a column focusing on successful raiding for the serious raider. Hardcore or casual, Vault of Archavon or Ulduar, everyone can get in on the action and down some bosses. The Northrend Beasts are the first series of encounters inside the Crusaders' Coliseum raid instance. Today we'll look at their non-Heroic version. You actually fight four different critters, all of whom are the Biggest and Toughest of their racial types in Northrend. That Tirion sure is a kidder, isn't he?The four bosses that make up the Northrend Beasts are: Gormok the Impaler, a massive magnataur Acidmaw & Dreadscale, a pair of Jormungar worms that Hunters cannot tame Icehowl, a really big Northrend yeti These encounters all take place immediately after one another, so you're not going to have a lot of time to buff, rebuff, and drink in between the fights. You can consider the entire encounter to be like an endurance test, but it goes by fairly quick. Let's jump behind the cut and get started on how to kill them all.
The Light and How to Swing It: Tanking the Northrend Beasts
With the Light as his strength, Gregg Reece of The Light and How To Swing It faces down the demons of the Burning Legion, the undead of the Scourge, and helps out with the Argent Ren Faire up in Icecrown on the weekends. This week, he takes a look at tanking the fantastic and terrible beasts that the Argent Crusade has collected for their Trial of the Crusader event.The Argent Crusade has assembled a number of trials for champions, crusaders, and grand crusaders alike to fight through as they decide what forces they will take in their assault against Icecrown Citadel itself. Today, we'll take a look at the first of the events in Trial of the Crusader which is the Northrend Beasts encounter. They've assembled Magnataur, Jormungars, and Yeti (Oh My!) to test the mettle of those wishing to compete. We'll take a look at tanking each of these beasts after the break.
