XT-002 Deconstructor - Hard Mode (Heartbreaker)

Difference: Several new abilities, activated by destroying the exposed Heart of the Deconstructor.

Once engaging hardmode he heals to full and increases health by 60% (50% for 10man) and damage increased by 15%. His heart is severed so will no longer have the 'exposed heart' phases. The only adds to be dealt with are those summoned during the breaking of the heart phase.

Strategy-wise similar to normal mode, with some important differences. The raid damage is very predictable providing you know the events and are prepared.

Main Sources of Raid damage:

1. Tympanic Tantrum now does significantly more raid damage and assigning a healer to each party is critical. Unlike normal mode the full duration will kill a raid member if they are not healed, even if they are 100% prior to Tantrum due to the increased damage. AoE healing for this event should be determined and assigned prior to pulling.

- Disc should preshield their group when the Tympanic Tantrum cooldown is up and use the Borrowed Time haste to cast Prayer of Healing, shield self and Prayer of Healing again. Use Penance in-between to spot heal any raid member on low health then Prayer of Healing again as Penance doesn't consume Borrowed Time. Holy should use Prayer of Healing and Circle of Healing (use on different party if they're low) whenever it's up.
Glyph of Prayer of Healing really shines in encounters like this.
- Druids should use Wild Growth and also be in the group they're assigned to for Tranquility.
- Paladin Beacon of Light tank while healing melee groups or spot healing any victims of Light Bomb.
- Shaman can either Chain Heal the melee group or range provided they're positioned according to their partys.

Disc have the 'passive' 3% raid wide damage mitigation from Renewed Hope.
Paladins should use this time to 'Raid wall' with Divine Sacrifice/Divine Shield to assist the healing.

Tantrum cooldown is on a one minute cooldown, and it's important to make sure the raid is topped up in preparation for it.



2. Searing Light : More commonly known as Lightbomb is the same mechanic as normal mode requiring healing, HoTs+Shield is enough, and in addition, will spawn a Life Spark that deals damage to nearby enemies as the tank picks them up. We be sure to have the Searing Light debuff wear off as we move towards the melee group to assist the tank in picking this up.

3. The Life Spark casts the Static Charged debuff which deals 2k Nature damage to the raid every 3 seconds until it's killed. Not significant but need to be aware of especially if Tantrum isn't far off.


4. Gravity Bomb : Same mechanic as normal requiring PoM+Shield+Renew routine, and in addition, spawns a Void Zone with the traditional "don't stand in it" rules. We run these out away from the raid and for added fun, try get a perfect pattern.



This can feel like a long fight and you will glance at his HP and think 'what are the dps doing' but reality is he has a lot to start with. Mana conservation is important as with any hard mode and it's worth swapping in regen trinkets.
Plan Hymn of Hope's with other Priests and be sure the druids help the healers out with innervates if needed, especially towards the end of the encounter.

Due to the DPS requirement of destroying the heart to engage the hardmode healing spots are limited to maximise dps. 5-6 is recommended by most guides and depends largely on the AoE healing strength of the classes.

Hodir Hard Mode (I Could Say That This Cache Was Rare)

Difference: Dps race, kill him in 3 minutes instead of ten.

4 Main Sources of Raid damage:

1. Most significant is Frozen Blows two to three times. Definately do NOT have Biting Cold on you. Paladin Divine Guardian/Sac and Priest's Prayers of Healing while in Starlight.

2. Freeze: 5-7k Frost damage to players within 10yds, rooting them, dispellable.

The following are easily avoidable by moving and not being 'that guy':

3. Biting Cold - Exponential DoT every second, moving resets the stack as well as jumping and campfires. Never more than two stacks! And zero for Frozen Blows.

4. There's also Icicle - 12k Frost damage in a random area and leaves Snowdrift which protects from Flash Freeze, turn on 'Projected Textures' so you can see the circles onthe ground before they land.


Healers: Up to 5 if only one Priest, otherwise 3-4, at least 2 on the MT and rest raid healing. Dps needs to be on the ball with avoiding Icicle and Biting Cold damage.

At least one Paladin, any spec with Divine Guardian is useful for Frozen Blows.
Priests, more the merrier. Most resources I've seen have people mentioning 1-3 Priests, and group heals in Starlight seems to work well with Frozen Blows.\

Healing is all about handling the raid damage, which is significant during Frozen Blows, dps need to help by moving and being aware of what's around them.

Important stuff: Storm Cloud (Crit Buff called Storm Power from the Shaman NPC) Bossmods should put Mark on players head. Can spread buff to 6 players for 135% more crit damage (no good for healers but it's very important to spread this to the dps when you get it). Looks like lightning around you plus the raid icon should make it obvious. If in doubt, add 'Storm Power' to your Grid Auras and spread the love.

Next is the Haste Buff Starlight (cast by the Druid NPC).

DPS only: Worth noting that when next to a campfire, you have a chance to put Singed on the target, definately worth keeping in mind. One sourse mentions a good way to stack it is having a Survival Hunter or two next to the Toasty fires and using explosive shots. Otherwise, casters try to stay near the fires to keep the debuff up, but the priority should be standing in Starlights for haste.

Raid Videos

todo:Streaming links for Yogg-Saron, Zul'Jin, Jan'alai(youtube for now), Org raid and Illidan


Yogg Saron (big download, need to add to streaming site)

Kalecgos

First boss in Sunwell Plateau. Since Kael'Thas in Tempest Keep this one took time to get on top of. Sadly the guild lost its raidleader during this time which ended up being a turning point for the guild, sadly not a good one. Regardless, we kept at it with some stepping up to help run things including myself and we freed Kalecgos (you don't actually kill him, he's a good guy who became possessed by Sathrovarr the Corruptor.

It had been some time since I made a video for Offtime so I made this one special. Spent a bit of time and effort on it to make it good mainly for the guild and also to reflect the effort we put into learning it. We'd gone through a lot and recruiting was tough. Losing some key members to IRL hurt but we pulled through. It took a while to make but I think the wait was worth it. Being a two-realm encounter I used of our mage Destinex' fraps as well to play with some effects.

Some RP for fun and ends up with a pull of Brutallus while we were on a high. Music is "Nightwish-The Poet and the Pendulum" and "Within Temptation-Our Solemn Hour".

When daylight savings kicked in my schedule changed again, I was able to raid with offtime again which was cool. After learning the zone we started to do bear run attemps. Which is killing the first 4 bosses within 20 minutes and you get a Amani bear mount in the last chest. This took some learning but the effort eventually paid off. Being on a 3 day reset it wasn't too painful but we could only afford one mistake at the time. Eventually we had it down so well we had over 8 minutes left. We started selling the 10th raid spot to the realm for aroung 5k which we splite up among us, they had a shot at loot and a guaranteed mount and it was a lot of fun.

Below are our first kills of some of the bosses I was there for.

Zul'Jin

Final boss of Zul'Aman, certainly an fun encounter and after we got familiar with the phases and abilities, turned out to be easier than Hexxlord I thought. Transformers is the theme of the day, no idea why, just seemed fun to edit with.

Hex Lord Malacrass

Second to last boss and probably the hardest in terms of mechanics. The worst being he'll use abilities of a random member of the party, cc and raid healing as well as composition finally got us through this one, dropped some nice caster gear too. And of course the best item in the game today, Army of Darkness.

Dragonhawk Lord Jan'alai

Eagle Lord Akil'Zon

Teron Gorefiend

This didn't take that long for us to learn and we all had to be Hunters for a moment, if they were chosen for 'Shadow of Death we were safe. Those that weren't familiar with petbars soon became obvious but we got there in the end. Practice is all it took.

First kill was fun and we also used the encounter to gauge our dps numbers for when we started working on Brutallus in Sunwell as it was an 'all out' fight. One of my favourites for sure.

Video was fun to make and on this kill I wasn't chosen to die (probably a good thing), a few have asked me for the soundtrack and I have no idea what it was called, I made this a few reinstalls ago and no longer have the sonyvegas work files to find out. Its in my mp3 collection.. Somewhere..

It was around this time I had an IRL schedule change and could no longer raid with Offtime. After a few weeks of no raiding I started to miss it, knowing the guild was progressing through Black Temple without me the only option I had at the time was transfer, as there were no Aussie guilds on the server. Leaving my alt there I tried out a Singapore which was the same timezone as me at the time. Very different atmosphere than I was used to but I stuck it out. They had T6 content all on farm for several months and it was a change of pace. First night I had to learn quite quickly every boss from Teron Gorefiend upwards as they ploughed through the instance. Seemed too easy, there as no vent chatter and apart from the learning curve, got quite boring and I began to miss raiding with Offtime. I did make some friends there and a couple I still chat with regularly on msn today so it kept me raiding. Eventually my schedule changed again and I was able to return to Offtime's times and raiding.

Illidan

Not my video as I wasn't there for the kill, Destinex one of the Mages took this and is a good video, pretty sure this is the first kill.

Rage Winterchill

Our first look into T6 content began here, and was one hell of a relief after the hurdle that was Kael'Thas. Only problem was we only had 15-20 attuned fully so had to clear Vashj and KT for several more weeks to get some good regular numbers in for the T6 assault. It payed off and we stormed through the first few bosses in Hyjal, some much easier than ones we'd encountered in SSC and TK. We were one of the first guilds on the realm to be into the new content and felt pretty good haveing a change of scenery finally.

Rage Winterchill was a pushover really, but it did mean players getting their PvP trinke, Hyjal was all about the waves and waves of trash. A wipe meant a lot of wasted time even on the trash. The soundtrack here's dedicated to our GM Drparks.

Anetheron

Kael'Thas

One of the big blocks in the game, even after killing Illidan I know I'm not alone considering KT as the hardest encounter in the game for it's time. We spent weeks learning this and we had many phase 5 efforts. The time he went down was easily the biggest rush I've had in the game and not much has come close. We got pretty good at it as at the time we had to get players through this and Lady Vashj to get attuned so we could progress through the T6 content of Mount Hyjal and Black Temple, the first few bosses of which were a cakewalk after the KT encounter. I think it still gives people headaches today but will always be one of my top favourites for sure. This video was my first major project after learning Sony Vegas, was a lot of fun to make and stirred some emotions from the guild on the video thread forums, just what I was going for.

High Astromancer Solarian

My first ever attempt at a raid video, it's fairly ordinary to my later work, but still one of the funniest I'm told... More dots....

Misc stuff

Old guild anti-afk policy

TBC Orgrimmar Raid, run but complete failure :)

15man Pug Tempest Keep/Hyjal (80s, no music, posted for fun and the pug)