Patch 3.3: First Impressions

Since Patch 3.3 has been out for only a couple of days, I know most of us are still taking it all in and digesting the information, but I wanted to take a minute and give my first impressions.

Icecrown Citadel (raid):

Last night I cleared the first 4 bosses in both the 10man and 25man version. In fact, my guild was one of only two guilds on my server to kill all 4 bosses on their first night of attempts. I know that doesn't mean much, but it's a small victory that makes us happy, and we can spend the rest of the week trying to finish up ToGC. Any, here are my impressions.

Lord Marrowgar: If Leotheras, Supremus, and Naj'entus had a baby, its name would be Lord Marrowgar. I think how you view this fight really depends on how long you've raided. Since I raided quite a bit in TBC I've seen something similar to all of his major mechanics before.

With that in mind, the fight was pretty boring to me. There was no sense of danger or challenge to the fight. The Whirlwind hit like bean back and would only do serious damage if you stood in it. Same for the fires. As for the bone spikes, I spent so much time on one I thought I was going to be rotisserie chicken, but again How many times have we seen this mechanic? All you have to do is create a simple targeting macro and the bone spikes are simple.

All that said, I can see this being a real pain on heroic mode. As a general rule I had hard time avoiding the Whirlwind and fires completely. The room is very small and there just isn't that much room to spread out in and still have range. His abilities may become much more troublesome when they hit harder.

Lady Deathwhisper: I found this fight more satisfying . Maybe it's because we wiped a couple of times, but it didn't feel like as big of a push over as Lord Marrowgar. As I said, we wiped a couple of times. That was mostly due to trying to find the right balance of boss DPS and Add DPS. I don't think it is a hugely difficult fight, I felt like the bosses mechanics were more dangerous. Playing poorly could kill you and cause your raid not to succeed.

Gunship Battle: It may be a victim of high expectations but I was disappointed and bored. It may also be a result of my role in the fight. I was on the ship defense team and the fight consisted of three things for me. 1. Don't get hit by a rocket. 2. DPS the adds. 3. Wait for more adds.

There was no variation in the fight or me, and I didn't feel like there was any real threat. At no point did I feel like we were in danger of being over run by adds. I think this fight could use some of the original Magtheradon mechanics. I think it would be a great idea to have some sort of lock out on how often you can use the cannons or your jet pack. That would at least force a more of a role rotation in the fight.

To make matters worse we were rewarded with no loot. The chest bugged out on us and we were not able to click it. Hopefully, we will be able to recover what was inside with a GM ticket.

Deathbringer Saurfang: In my opinion this is the first truly challenging fight in the instance. I felt the threat that the Boss and the Adds represented very early on and it made the fight more fun.

I also want to talk a little bit about the Typhoon strat presented by Tankspot. I'm sure many of you have read it, but I will explain it in short. You don't want anyone to be hit by the Blood Beasts, so you have a mookin get aggro using Hurricane and force the adds to run through slowing affects like Frost traps. When the adds get close you Typhoon them to knock them back and stun them. While this is going on the ranged single targets them down.

The problem here is that they are highly resistant to AoE attacks, and the resistance seems to be closer to 90% then the 75% that Tankspot reports. As a result I had a ton of trouble getting aggro and/or pulling aggro off of the healers. I now think the best way to manage this fight is with slows, like crippling poison. The adds have fairly low health and will go down quickly as long as they have some sort of slow affect.

Icecrown Citadel (5man):

I ran all three instance on Graylo, and they seemed pretty cool. Its a little hard to judge since I out gear the instance by a mile, but the fights seemed interesting and they looked pretty cool. Ont top of that, the gear is pretty sweet and you get a ton of Frost Emblems the first time you go through it. I can't wait to get the Mage and Priest in there to get some gear.

Looking for Group:

Like everyone I was looking forward to getting a new instance, but it was expected. The new Looking for Group tools is what has me most excited. As a general rule I love running instances. As a raider, it is why I pay the subscription fee each month. My trouble has always been that I hate looking for a group. Usually it took just as long to find a group as it did to do the instance. If you lose a tank or healer midrun, your up a creek with out a paddle. For these reasons, I don't run 5mans that often, and I never run them while leveling.

I've only tried the new LFG tool on Graylo, but so far I think it's awesome. I had some trouble on Tuesday, but I'm chalking that up to patch day craziness. Every time I tried it it found a group fairly quickly, the group was fairly competent, and results were achieved.

The funny thing is I think it might make be a better player. I'm used to having very good tanks at my gear level. Pulling aggro usually isn't as big of a consideration as it should be. Now that I am playing with tanks well below my gear level I am having to learn to pay better attention to my aggro.

I still have some questions about this tool. How well will it work in a couple of months when the interest in it has died down? I also want to see how it will work for my lower level alts, but as it stands right now, I am pleased.

Squawk and Awe:

Just in case you had not seen it before, Squawk and Awe has been updated. You can find it at WoWInterface.com here. The only issue I had with the new version was that the cooldown timer didn't start until after the buff had expired.