Resto druid 10m Heroic Amber-Shaper Un'sok strategy

Final heroic boss we will clear in 2012. Most of the main raid is going on vacation/spending time with family.
By now, most people have already seen the "unintended" kill strategy which Blizzard has hotfixed. So that strategy doesn't work anymore. However, this boss isn't that hard to kill even with the hotfix (though our raid leader says.... dps check fight!). I thought it was easier and more fun than Imperial Vizek, but that's just me being lazy because I find dodging more painful than pressing 1,2,3,4. Anyway, let's begin.

Number of Healers: 2. HPS-wise and mana wise, I could solo heal this fight (phase 1 I know I can solo heal to the end of time since we did try the "unintended" method for 2 hourish before the hotfix, phase 2 & 3 I solo healed a majority because other healer turned into a construct 3 times, though mana was a bit tight near the end, but that's easily remedied if I was prepared for it), but why let the raid wipe in phase 2/3 if I turn into a Mutated Construct? So 2 heal, 3 heal is completely unnecessary, unless you're expecting huge explosions (not supposed to happen); those usually will kill off 1 or 2 persons instantly anyway unless DRs are popped.

Differences from Normal:

1. Adds will revive from the amber pools they drop. So during phase 1 and most of phase 2, your Mutated Constructs must drink all the pools. Adds explode after they die causing a small AoE, not sure if they do this on normal, but on heroic, can actually see the HP dip a little.
2. Final phase, boss summons 2 orbs that will target people, must have the 2 orbs touch to kill the orbs. If the orbs touch another player, everyone in 30 yard radius will die. 

Talents: I used Soul of the Forest and HotW. Soul of the Forest because I definitely didn't want the idiot trees mindlessly spamming healing touches, esp into the person with the debuff, and I didn't see any particular time where Tree Form MUST be used, since damage is burst then stop burst then stop, so it's not like a huge burst occurs and there's no time to recover.

Symbosis: I recommend Ice Block again? Well, just so you can Ice Block off the Parasite in phase 2/3, it's always nice to have that option before using a Tranq, unless you want to be suicidal. If no mage available, DK or Brewmaster is fine, damage reduction is still better than nothing. When we got the kill, my ice block was still unused though, but better not used than need to use and not have imo.

Basic Strategy: 
Phase 1: Trivial phase, just make sure your tank constructs keeps stacks on boss and drink all pools left by the adds. Healing is trivial, parasite is the same as on normal, so just heal the same way. Hold all dps until boss has about 40 stacks on the debuff (this number could be smaller depending on how close to berserk you are on phase 3) and do a super burn (HotW!!!) on the boss while he does amber scalpel (makes phase 3 shorter).

Phase 2: Ick phase...

1. Pool drinking: Mutated Constructs have to drink as many pools as possible. We did tank that was leftover from phase 1 drink 2 so he can get dpsed out faster. Then, the next non-healer person that goes in drinks 5, healers will only drink 4.  It's best to do Attack drink drink Attack drink drink but if you're pro, Attack, drink drink drink drink is even better.
2. Keep the stacking debuff attack on the Monstrosity on cooldown, except when there's about 8 seconds left for Amber Explosion, in which case, wait for the Explosion and interrupt.
3. Have the Construct leave only after a 2nd person turns into a construct to make sure all Amber Explosions from Monstrosity are interrupted.
4. Near the end of this phase (raid leader decides when that is, we did 4 mutated constructs), Leave the last person in and they only drink pools now to keep from running out of energy, and when a 2nd person turns into construct, have them both spam the debuff onto the Amber-shaper (and of course interrupt Monstrosity's Amber Explosions). To make it easier, we had person 1 spam boss, person 2 refresh stacks (throw extra debuffs onto Amber-shaper) on Monstrosity and interrupt explosion.

Phase 3: Burn phase...
This phase doesn't last long, only thing to watch out for is if you get the orb on you, run out of raid and find the 2nd person that's targetted and try to run the orbs into each other. If this fails (and let's just say we haven't had it succeed yet) just kite the orbs around and try again, after a while they'll change focus targets. This phase doesn't last long, so just kiting the orbs is probably easier than trying to destroy them, but that's raid preference.

Healing cooldowns:
Tranquility I used in Phase 2 1 attempt just to recover mana, the time we cleared I used at the beginning of Phase 3, but regretted and decided should've held it for middle of phase 3 instead, but also decided there was a chance I'd get orb targeted and would have to run and can't use Tranq when I wanted. So just decide accordingly.
Our other healer didn't even use his cooldown, since he got stuck in a construct, so...it's not necessary to make sure cooldowns are popped at specific times, just pop when necessary or just pop for mana recovery, etc.


Once again I'll mention we are Recruiting.... 

Christmas Time Soon

Happy Holidays. Going on mental vacation... back in 2 weeks. :D
I hope for a great present from santa...

Resto druid 10m Heroic Imperial Vizier Zor'lok strategy

Anyway, cleared this boss finally. We used the idiot proof strategy because we are bad at mechanics, but sure good at dpsing. Anyway, onto phase 1-3 strat. Anyway as promised, I will finally post all the strategies we used for this boss.

Healer Number: 3 (2 for strategy 3, the super overgear strategy). Healing output is not really the issue, it's more 3 because there's a chance for both healers to get Mind Controlled on platform 3 and phase 4. Hence, causing 0 healer situations which usually results in wipes. O yeah, if you do 2 healer, just split the healers (so 1 healer on atten side and 1 on MC side, obvious...but i'll mention anyway), and dps out healer first instead of 2nd if healer gets MCed.

Differences from normal:

1. Platform order is the same: Force and Werve, Attenuation, Mind Control. 
2. When boss leaves for next platform, he will now leave an Echo on the platform. The Echo will do the same attack as the boss did on the platform.  For example, if boss goes from Platform 2 to 3, he will leave Attenuation Echo on Platform 2, while he's on Platform 3 doing Mind Controls.
3. Attenuation will now shoot out these extra green orbs in addition to the usual yellow ones. Dodging these is a pain but there's videos all over the place showing you how to dodge. However, let it be known, when someone (looking at our bad tank) hits yellow or green orb, it'll break the orb into 2 and kill people behind them. I especially look at our tanks because they don't die when they hit the orbs and so we didn't notice it was the tanks screwing up the dodging until looking at logs the next day. Instead we blamed the poor people who died.... we are sorry.
4. In phase 4, boss will create an Echo that will do Attenuation about 10 seconds after the boss does Attenuation.

Symbosis: Hunter or Mage for deterrence/ice block so you don't die during Attenuation, it's a crutch, but I sure like having a crutch. However, if you get Mind Controlled or if your Symbosis target get mind controlled, there's a high chance the AI will cancel your symbosis. So annoying since the only part you really need the crutch is during phase 4 when both Echo and boss is attenuating. I think this is a bug, but blizzard doesn't cares about druids and our symbiosis anyway.  I did find out that if the person you symbiosis isn't on the same platform with you, there's less chance of cancelled symbiosis.

Talents: HotW, use it during hero burn phase. I don't really see any point to getting ToL or Force of Nature this fight, so might actually use Soul of the Forest... though.... Force of Nature during Attenuation dodging might be nice and good for saving someone. However, if your raid dodges correctly, this is not necessary. I actually used Nature's Vigil for this fight in the end (I'm not sure why? I think I just left it from the previous boss and didn't change), but it doesn't matter that much.
O yea, get Disorienting Roar!! can't stress this enough. It's absolutely necessary for Mind Control phase.

General Strategy:
Platform 1: Trivial, same as normal.
Transition: Send Tank and Healer (i don't recommend druid, since 2 target tank healing is not our strong suit and Force and Werve hurts when not in bubble) to Platform 2 to tank the boss, while the rest of the raid kills Echo on Platform 1.
Platform 2: Dodge Attenuation until boss is about 61%, then send Tank and Healer to Platform 3 (this time you can send druid, we used to send paladin, but during MC the paladin was too annoying).
Transition: During the Echo's first Attenuation, send 1 more healer, 3 dps over to platform 3. So 4 people will remain on Platform 2 and kill Echo.
Platform 3: Disorient Roar the MCed people and help CC with cyclone if necessary. O yeah, have your group use up their non-talent AoE CCs before they arrive on the platform (otherwise, they'll just use it if they get MCed), so warrior fear, priest fear. If you have a priest, do have them talent into a 2nd fear, that one is used for CCing, but put on cooldown the one all priests have.  Basically, druid is the least scary class to get mind controlled. Have hunters and mages put their deterrence and ice block on cooldown too so they don't go "invul! wahahahaha"  When boss transitions this time, he doesn't leave an Echo.
Phase 4: Boss will fly to mid, don't bother running to him, just stay on Platform 3 and dps. Boss will pull raid in when the cloud's gone. Basically rest is an Attenuation nightmare. 2 strats, one is the regular way: pull boss into corner so that the Echo will spawn in the corner, then leave a tank and healer (the ones used in Transition of platform 1 to 2) with the Echo, rest moves all the way across to the other side with the boss and dodge Attenuation by running away from boss and hope the Echo's Attenuation doesn't reach the main raid. We used strategy 2 and later 3. Strategy 2 requires 3 healers, you pull the echo in the middle and the boss into the corner, burn down echo, so you only get 1 double attentuation, well that's how we cleared it first time, but later we found out it's much more trivial to do strategy 3 once you're overgeared. Strategy 3 only uses 2 healers, which is a bit tougher during the force and verves, but nothing that bad. Then just burn the boss as soon as he transitions into phase 4, survive 1 double attentuation and he's dead before the next force and verve.

Healing Strategy:
Tranquility the Force and Werve of the 1st Platform, and it'll be up again by phase 4 when you need it. You can try healing during Attenuation dodging, but I recommend just watching yourself, since if they get hit once, unless they started the orb chain in the 1st place (in which case other people in group will probably get hit) high chance rejuvs will not save them.
That's pretty much it... it's not a healing intensive fight, in fact, i spent the a good solid 80% of the time casting wrath... it's just annoying Attenuation dodging in phase 4 with 2 Attenuations going simultaneously.


Once again I'll mention we are Recruiting.... 

Windows 8 Minesweeper Achievements & Medals

So new Windows 8 has a much cooler Minesweeper with Adventure Mode and Achievements.
Being the fan that I am, I decided I will sacrifice my statistics so I can complete all the achievements and medals.

Achievements  (these are trivial):

1. Savior of the World: Just win a game on each board size (Getting this will probably get you the other 3 achievements).
2. Good Start: Just complete a minefield (easy mode is fine)
3. Good Memory: Completed a minefield without using flags (do this in easy mode)
4. Happens to Everybody: Trigger your first mine

Medals:

1.  Click Click BOOM! : Trigger a Mine on 2nd click, you can do this consciously or just get it naturally while attempting other medals.
2. The Sea of Flags: Just flag 100 mines. It can be done over multiple boards.
3. Burgeoning Explorer: Uncovered 1000 squares. Again, can be done over multiple boards. 
4. Quick and Easy: Win East in under 30 seconds.
5. One With the Chord: Win 3 games where the only moves you made were Chords and Flags (with exception of 1st tap). Trick here is win 3 this way, no taps allowed. I just did 3 easy modes. The wins don't have to be consecutive, but it's better to do them in a roll so you don't lose count. And if you're wondering what Chord is, it's when you mark all the mines for a number and you click both left and right mouse button together. For example: if there's a # 2, mark the 2 mines it's touching, then duo button click the #2 and the 4 that are not marked mines will be clicked.
6. I Guess I Was Right the First Time: Mark a mine w/ a flag then changing to question mark, then unmark it and detonate.
7. Flag It Up: Disarmed  1000 mines. Once again, can be done over multiple boards.
8. Bug Collector: Found 50 ladybugs without disturbing them. Change the theme to garden and flag 50 ladybugs, can be done over multiple boards.
9. Oh COME On!!!!: Thank you poster in the comment section! This achievement is annoying... because I think it's written in counter-intuitive way... but anyway, make sure you mark the "safe" tile with a mine flag and explode the final mine. So the final picture will be all mines correctly marked except for 1 (will have X on it).

The rest of the medals are for adventure mode. Basically tedious but doable. I'll update this another day.

Resto druid 10m Heroic Wind Lord strategy

Healer number: Um, we 2 healed, because our dps can't kill boss in 3 recklesses otherwise. Btw, imo, 2 healing this fight is a lot more fun than 3 healing, I would recommend highly if your raid's not dying from lack of heals. 2 healing is probably only possible because of OP disc priest, though I can see monks able to do the same, since it's another atonement type class. 3 healers is fine, since worst comes to worst, you need another set of reckless which makes execution a tiny bit harder. Berserk timer is no where close, we killed it with 3 minutes to spare.


Differences from normal: Corrosive Resins do a whole lot more damage now, so running is necessary not an option.
Amber prison affects people near you, so run out of raid but close to someone to click you out.
Um, nothing else is different for healers. Though CCers do have to know that there can only be 3 CCed at once instead of 4.

Talents: I used HotW for reckless burn, plus 2 healing, it's nice to have the extra int just for constant throughput. So.... I experimented with Nature's Vigil, and came to the conclusion: don't use Nature's Vigil, since it does "smart" dps and ends up breaking CCs if the person you're healing happens to be standing close to a CCed target.  Sure it doesn't happen all the time, but happening once could screw up the CC and dps, etc etc, so why use it and risk an extra wipe, especially when HotW works just as well if not better?
I used Force of Nature instead of Tree Form because Force of Nature's 1 minute cooldown matches up completely with Rain of Blades. Tree Form 3 minute cooldown is kinda... well, only time you need the extra AoE healing is during rain of blades, and since that's 1 minute, you'd miss 2. That's my argument anyway. Feel free to play with SotF, but my only beef with that is, you have have a swiftmend/wild growth ready during that, and if you're not careful (i.e. wasn't watching timer)... when it's on farm, you don't have to worry as much, but on progression, I'd just don't want to have to worry about that extra timing issue, just summon dumb trees and heal as usual (i'm lazy...).

Symbosis: I recommend Ice Block (esp if 2 healing) for getting out of Amber Prisons or not running during corrosive resin (save this for during rain of blades, especially later in the encounter when healing gets a bit tighter).

General Strat: So dpses need to get adds low, then boss to 90% and then kill add sets one at a time. Reckless does not stack, so don't kill all the adds at once.

Healing wise, just heal heal, nothing special. Like I said, Force of Nature 2 seconds before pull (might as well, it's free healing, you can wrath and moonfire a bit in the beginning for kicks), and they'll be up for all the Rain of Blades except one at the end, that is when you use Tranquility.
Use HotW and burn when boss gets recklessed. Don't step in Wind Bomb.

An extra advice if you have shadow meld, use it when adds respawn during the final reckless (I got slaughtered by these adds once before figuring out that when I see them running at me, they really are running at me and not the tank and hence should shadow meld), or stand close to tanks (but not too close, don't want to spawn wind bombs under them) and hope your tank picks up adds fast.


Once again I'll mention we are Recruiting.... 

Resto druid 10m Heroic Garalon strategy

So finally progression-ing again. And H Garalon is down :).
Healer Number: 2.5 heals is not really necessary, but we did it this way, since disc priest atonement is... whatever, basically blizzard favors priests. Though 2 healers is definitely doable I feel.

Differences from normal: Garalon now crushes on timer instead of when pheromone is passed. It will still crush when people pass under him. Debuff after taking pheromone is now 4 minutes, so it forces almost everyone in the raid to kite pheromones at least once.

Symbosis: Mage (ice block), hunter (deterence), basically invul abilities is nice.

So 2 things to work out: kiting order, healing cooldown. But! if your dps doesn't meet check, it's not clearable no matter how well you do kiting, healing. Our clear attempt was about 30seconds from berserk, but previously we did hit berserk.

Kiting:
So only hint I can give is kiting order should be 2 tanks (3 crushes), healer (1 crush), dps (1 crush), healer (1 crush), dps (1 crush), healer (1 crush), dps (1 crush), dps (should be no more crushes at this point), 2 tanks again.  Obviously if you have 2 healers only, replace one of the healers w/ dps.

So when kiting, when crush occurs, ice block, and you'll be immune to stun and the crush damage, so it's super nice.  Same w/ deterrence and divine/bop from paladin.

If you don't have invuln abilities, don't be a stupid kiter, before a crush, make sure you run a bit from the yellow dot that forms to warn you where the amber pool will be, so you don't get crushed on an amber pool and just die.

Cooldowns:
So at start, heroism should be up, HotW dps boss, but not the legs.... let dps/atonement priest pad w/ legs. Once again, I choose Force of Nature this fight to help weave in heals during every other crush. But you can pop Force at the start to derp and they'll be up by 2nd crush. First crush don't really need healing cooldowns because of heroism.


Positioning: ranged all stack together on top of healer (mark the healers), melee will hang out w/ legs and tanks with 1 more healer. healer 3 will be kiting. Requires sorta working out, but not really... since majority of the time, all players except tanks would be in range of all non-kiting healers.

General advice:
Save as many legs as you can near the end, so once the boss stops crushing, you can take down 6% of his hp just by using the extra legs.

As always, open to discussions/questions in comment section. I don't quite like what i'm writing on this boss, it feels like a disorganized mess... but it's really not a healer dependent fight (once you get used to the damage, etc).

Once again I'll mention we are Recruiting....