The Raid that never was...

Today was supposed to be the day that Highmaul, the first raid in Warlords of Draenor, opened up. Our group was going to down the first 3 bosses and call it a night... at least that was the plan.

Instead, Kel'Thuzad went down. It appears to have been the result of another DDoS attack as well as an issue with Blizzards' Authentication servers that affected multiple realms. The result was that, instead of logging in and raiding at 8 PM Pacific my guild couldn't get in until closer to 10PM Pacific... at least about 5 of us did. The others... well they never were able to log in.

Oh well. We pugged it... with minimal success. We'll try again on Thursday I guess.

On the plus side, I'm liking the feel of Highmaul. The first bit of trash is a nice mini-boss, and then you're thrown right up against Kargath. Nice introduction to the raid - I hope it continues to go well, assuming I can actually get into the game on Thursday...

Read More

Bonemaw Workaround (Shadowmoon Burial Grounds Heroic)

I just finished running Shadowmoon Burial Grounds on Heroic difficulty. I'm not going to write a full guide to each dungeon, because frankly better people than I have already done so, but we did figure something out that works quite well against this boss.

Bonemaw during the Inhale phase

A quick overview of Bonemaw:

He basically has two mechanics that you need to worry about. The first is Body Slam, which will do some damage and knock players off into the water. The second is an Inhale ability, which will suck players into his mouth and cause an instant death. I've been told you can run away from it if you have a burst of speed like ability, but the in-game mechanic designed to work around it is to stand in the patches of Necrotic Pitch that Bonemaw shoots on the ground.

The pitch acts like a glue and, although doing some decent damage, will not allow you to be sucked in during inhale.

The simple start is to avoid the ground slam and then stand in the pitch when he begins his inhale.

However a rogue in my guild found a good workaround for this.

If you happen to be too far away from the pitch when the inhale phase starts, just jump down into the water. Swim to the water spouts that are conveniently placed around the boss zone. Once inhale is done swim to the waterspout and you'll be pushed back into the boss zone.

Water Spout

The downside of this is obviously you're not doing any damage to the boss during the inhale phase, but you're also not taking any damage, which might help you healer out a bit.

If you want a full strategy guide to Bonemaw & Shadowmoon Burial Grounds, please visit the excellent guide over at WoWhead.

Shadowmoon Burial Grounds Guide

Bonemaw's Loot Table

Read More