Sunday Night Strolls - Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn - Copperbell Mines - Level 17

Welcome to the Sunday Night Stroll where I take you through one of many dungeons inside one of the many MMOs that I play and teach you how to heal through it! This week we're going through the third dungeon, Copperbell Mines, unlocked through the main quest story line in the newly released MMO Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn. And most importantly, this weeks video is actually in 1080p HD quality now that I've finally given up on Fraps and started using XSplit to record offline!

Copperbell Mines definitely steps up drastically in difficulty because word on the street is that the higher the level the more difficult the dungeon is and it starts with this one. This dungeon has a lot of new boss fight mechanics that can throw a group who has never done it before through a loop.

Kottos

The first boss unfortunately (or fortunately depending on how you look at it) is almost boringly simplistic. Almost to the point where there's nothing to do. The fight starts off with the room constantly spawning adds into the room. You'll kill at least 30 before the big boss actually spawns, it starts off slow but they begin to start spawning 5 at a time. However, if your DPS have any bit of AoE they'll go done relatively easy. Then the boss will spawn, he doesn't do anything special, not even any conal or AoE abilities. The other thing he does is gain a buff periodically that increases his damage reduction by a significant amount which does nothing more than drag the fight out.

Ichorous Ire

This boss is very interesting and will definitely throw your group for a loop if nobody knows what they're doing. The boss takes virtually no damage from players but there are Blasting Cap adds that spawn when you use the the Improvised Blasting Lever. DPS needs to focus down the add, once it gets to 25% health it will do an AoE that will kill anyone inside of the circle and split the boss into pieces, the tank must have the boss next to the add before it gets to 25% so they can run out in time for the explosion which happens quickly. If the tank tries to run the boss into the circle they will either miss it or they will die. There is a timer on the lever so if you miss an explosion you'll have to wait before you try again. Other adds will spawn periodically that will attack the Blasting Caps so you must be mindful to either dps them down or pay close attention to the Blasting Caps health. Your best best is to stack the Blasting Caps and the boss together as soon as he spawns. You will need to do this three times before he splits into enough little pieces to be killed off.

Gyges the Great

Another difficult fight that takes very keen timing and constant attention by all members of the group. There are boulders spread around the room that block off tunnel entrances. The boss will pick the east side boulder and destroy it. Once it is destroyed an add will emerge from the tunnel and immediately go to the west side of the room and attempt to break the boulder. Your group must attempt to slow down the add and kill it. If your dps is to low another add will spawn before your finished or the add will break the boulder and you'll have two adds to deal with. If you do not dps the adds at all you will eventually be over run. The group must switch between the adds and the boss. The group in the video stopped killing adds at 50% and I tanked about 6 adds before we killed it. I personally like to wait a little longer. I like to kill as many adds as possible until the boulder breaks and we have two and then we switch. Either way works as long as the dps is good enough. Once the second boulder breaks and you have two adds is when you have to switch to the boss regardless because the group is not going to be able to kill two adds and dps the boss. Other than that the boss does an AoE cone ability which shouldn't be a problem since the DPS will mostly be out killing adds. As well, he gains a buff periodically that increases his special ability damage by 50% which is his conal ability which is small and easy to dodge.

Congratulations on your kills! May the loot drops be every in your favor! Next week, we go over the first Trial Bowl of Embers.

Sunday Night Stroll (Weekly Healing Instance Guide) - Final Fantasy XIV - Tam-Tara Deepcroft

Welcome to the first edition of Sunday Night Stroll. This is a weekly article that will guide you through an instance inside one of the many MMO's that I play. This will be one of three weekly articles I will be producing every week in the foreseeable future! This week we're going through Tam-Tara Deepcroft an instance within Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn.

Tam-Tara Deepcroft is the second Dungeon players will unlock during the main story quest line in Final Fantasy XIV. You must complete all of the main story line quests before you are able to unlock the dungeon in the Duty Finder. A minimum level of 16 is required to enter the dungeon.

Anyone who ran Sunken Temple before it's condensing in World of Warcraft will find the concept of this dungeon familiar. The objective of the dungeon is to run around the outer edge and activate four orbs protected by mini bosses to unlock the final boss.

First Two Orb Rooms

The first two rooms that contain orbs are identical to one another. Each room will contain one mini boss called a Damund Priest and two adds called Gravediggers. Your group will want to dps the small adds down first because once you kill the Priest another mini boss will spawn so getting the adds down so you no longer have to deal with them and to reduce the tanks damage taken is the best course. Since these foes are mini bosses they don't do anything special. Once the Damund Priest is downed it will spawn an add called the Void Soulcounter. This boss doesn't do anything special either as he is also considered a mini boss. Once you have cleared each room you must remember to interact with the orb to unlock the final boss.

Final Orb Room

The last two orbs are inside the same room and are locked behind a smoke wall. You'll have to initially pass the room to go into the adjacent room to find Beads that will calm the Smoke Monster from Lost so you can click the final two orbs. Since there are two orbs next to each other that means that there are a few more adds to deal with. There is one mini boss and four adds, everything pulls at once as soon as you aggro something so you must pull everything in the room. Even though there are more adds the fight is the same as the previous rooms.

Galvanth the Dominator

Galvanth has quite a few abilities that you need to watch out for. First, he will do a large AoE around him that does a moderate amount of damage. As a healer, always make sure you are standing in ranged to be sure that you don't need to move from it. He will periodically tether himself to an Inconspicuous Imp, while he is linked to the add the boss will be immune to damage so you must kill the add before you can progress. Most of the time he will only link himself to one Imp but once he reaches below 25% health he will link himself to two Imps and you must kill them both. His final ability is spawning two random add monsters modeled after things you have seen out in the world. The adds don't do anything special but it is still best to kill them as soon as possible as they can pile up and wreak havoc if left unchecked.

All in all, the instance is still teaching players the general mechanics but the difficulty level has slightly increased from the first dungeon. Next week, we will cover Copperbell Mines which is a significant jump in difficulty and took my group quite a while on some bosses to figure out the mechanics! Thanks for reading and have a leisurely Sunday!

Sunday Night Stroll - Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn - Dungeon Guide - Sastasha - Level 15

Sastasha is the first dungeon of three you will receive in quick succession. You must be level 15 and completed the main plot story line quests where it sends you to the instance entrance and instructs you to use the Duty Finder to complete it. Unlike the following instances, there aren't any objectives you must complete to get through the areas of the dungeon, it is very linear and difficult to get lost in.

Chopper

Chopper is the first boss in this instance, he is a dog like creature that hits the tank like a truck. Previously, in a separate room in the instance, there will be a piece of paper that says "The Captain likes his seas blue". This is a clue on how to make Chopper spawn as there are three different colored coral in the room (red, green and blue), interact with the blue coral to find a switch which will cause Chopper to spawn. You have a bit of time to run before he aggros so your tank as time to pick him up. Chopper is a tank and spank with very few abilities however if your tank is under-geared (and since this is the first instance he probably will be) he will take A LOT of damage and constant heals will have to be pumped into them to keep them alive. Chopper also does a small AoE ability that does a significant amount of damage if you are hit by it.

Captain Madison (Version 1)

Captain Madison is sitting in the room with two adds. Ideally, the tank will be able to hold aggro on all three mobs (which in my experience, probably won't happen, because aggro seems to be difficult to generate against the healer to new tanks) and they will start taking high amounts of damage. The group needs to dps down the adds before they kill the tank. Once the adds are down, and you realize you can't kill the annoying parrot, the boss will need to be dealt with. Most of the damage in the fight comes from the adds so healing will seem much more lax. Once Captain Madison reaches 50% health he will giggle and run off but don't worry, you'll see him again.

Captain Madison (Again...)

You must kill a mini-boss who drops the keys to the captains quarters [we won't ask why HE had them ;)] to proceed. Captain Madison is again beside his two buds who you must kill before you go after the boss. At about 50% health Madison will call out four Scurvy Dog adds that the tank will need to pick up. The adds don't have a lot of health and can be dps'd down fairly easily or you can attack the boss. Either way, Madison will run off at 25% and the dogs will remain so you have to kill them either way.

Denn the Orcatoothed

Captain Madison will finally get his but not at the hands of your party, instead he will die at the hands of a giant fishman. Justice has been served. Denn is a pretty simple boss fight that can become incredibly complicated if the group doesn't know how to deal with him. Denn himself only has one ability which is a frontal cone ability that has a small radious and is very easilly avoided. The meat of the fight comes when the boss periodically makes the four grates around the room bubble. There doesn't seem to be a set amount that bubble, it sometimes was only three and sometimes it's all four. It takes long enough that one person can interact with two grates and the tank doesn't take enough damage that the healer can't help out. It is important that you try to lock at least two of the grates as adds can pile up very fast. If you do happen to get adds (we didn't in the attempt I recorded because the pugs knew what to do) they are easily killable and you should get them down as quickly as possible.

Congratulations, you just completed the first instance in Final Fantasy XIV! Enjoy your loot!

Sunday Night Stroll - World of Warcraft - Heroic Jin'roch the Breaker – 10 Man Heroic Throne of Thunder

Welcome back to the Heroic Mode Healing guides! Today, we tackle down the very first boss inside Heroic Mode Throne of Thunder, Jin'roch the Breaker. Once an ally of the player, who aided Warriors and Paladins in destroying Hakkar in the original Zul'Gurub prior to the destruction of his land during the Cataclysm, he was dominated by the Thunder King and augmented into the monstrosity that guards the door of the Throne. Even though he is considered the easiest fight on Heroic Mode Throne of Thunder this fight requires that everyone be raid aware as dropping the wrong thing in the wrong place could get everyone killed. So let's break this down into phases.

Our Raid Makeup

2 Tanks – Both Bears

3 Healers – 1 Disc Priest, 1 Mistweaver Monk, 1 Restoration Druid

5 DPS – 1 Affliction Warlock, 1 Frost Mage, 1 Fury Warrior, 1 Shadow Priest, 1 Boomkin

Phase 1

There will be a small burn phase where nothing really happens, at this point it's all up to the tank. There are four statues in each corner of the room that the tank will be thrown into one based on which one they are furthest from, your tank will be moving to the upper right hand corner so they can be thrown into the lower left hand corner statue. You don't want to be close to where the tank lands as they do a significant amount of AoE damage and stun you if you catch the falling tank with your face. When the tank lands, they will create a growing patch of water that everyone needs to stand in as it gives you a buff to damage and healing, this is where you want to pop Heroism and burn the boss.

Jin'roch will target a random player with a ball of lightening that will chase you with growing speed. Once it reaches you it will do a moderate amount of damage and leave an AoE on the ground. If you drop the AoE in the water, it will do a large amount of damage to everyone in the water that is continues so everyone has to leave and lose their damage and healing buff. If you drop an AoE on top of someone elses AoE it will one-shot your raid. There are encloves made by the giant statues that are out of your way and never get touched by the water, you want to transform to travel form and punch it over there. You can fit about 5 or 6 AoEs on one patch of grates so you should never have a problem.

Once a phase, Jin'roch will put a Debuff on the raid called Ionization that is dispellable. When you dispell the debuff it will do a large amount of damage to the player and do an AoE affect, if anyone is within 5 yards of you they will die, if you dispell someone who is in the water with you everyone will die. Run out, look around to make sure no one is around, pop Barskin to mitigate some of the damage (I was a bit undergeared, didn't pop any defensive cooldowns and got one shot) and dispell yourself. Most classes can pop something that can dispell the debuff, some will just have to let it run out because of the new 8 second cool down on our cleanses.

Other than those two abilities, Jin'roch will do a periodic AoE damage that will need to be healed immediately as it is generally followed by one of his other high damage abilities. Once he goes through an orb or two following the Ionization phase two will begin, you will want to head towards a designated area for everyone to group up on a grate. My group chose the grate that will lead you out of the area once the boss is dead. Someone will always get an orb during the transition phase, as a class with a lot of speed ups you should try to drop it and run to the area instead of dropping it in the general area that everyone is going to be stacking on. A warlock should be dropping a portal near your location so you can get to your designated area as quickly as possible.

Phase 2

This is the “can you dodge things while still being able to heal through ridiculous amounts of damage” phase of the fight. Jin'roch will sit in the middle of the room and channel a lightening storm that does a massive amount of magic damage, makes the water on the ground electrified and no longer usable by players and will also create lightening pillars. The lightening pillars are just the carriers of the real danger, they will spawn about eight balls of lightening that spread across the room until they despawn by hitting a wall. Your raid will want to group together on the far end of the stack area of your choice so that you can all run together so AoEing healing is in part possible. As a Restoration Druid, I have found it to be a really good idea for you to Symbiosis the Shaman in your raid so that you can use their Spiritwalkers Grace during this phase and run while channeling Tranquility. Unfortunately, our Shaman was out this week so the video does not feature this tactic in action. Your Tranquility will be up for the 1^st and the 3^rd Lightening Storm phases. Pop personal cooldowns such as Barkskin and Lock Cookies while giving Ironbark to a cloth damage dealer without a large amount of damage mitigation.

You have to rely on your group members to not only be able to dodge the balls (which is honestly pretty simple unless you're either terrible like me or you get cornered by 6 of them at once) while still being able to pop personal cooldowns/heals of their own to survive through this phase. If they just expect the healers to heal everyone while you run, your raid is going to wipe as the damage is too extensive and either you're going to live and they're going to die by you not being able to heal them or they're going to live and you're going to die because you stopped moving to heal people taking damage. Heal what you can but don't put yourself in danger to do so.

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You will have a total of four phases maximum to be able to kill the boss before all four corners of the room have electrified water and your raid has no where to stand and the boss kills you. All in all, this is a basically a mechanics check which will test players on being able to make split second decisions based on what is happening with the raid. I have a ball on me and we're transitioning to phase 2, where can I run to to drop this ball without killing everyone? The lightening pillars are coming down and the balls are heading our way, in what direction can I run so that I don't get hit by them as I press my defensive cooldown button and attempt to Rejuvenation blanket the raid? I personally love the mechanics fights as I tend to excell on them (except for this week apparently where I couldn't dodge anything).

My guild is currently progressing on Horridan and getting to Door 3-4 consistently so we may see a kill article within the next few weeks unless we decide to move to Ji-Kun instead! Thank you for reading, good luck and may the coin rolls favor Spirit Leather and Vanquisher tokens!

Sunday Night Strolls - World of Warcraft (PvP) - Deepwind Gorge - The Map and How To Heal On It

General Overview – What The Heck Are We Doing?

There's a lot going on on this map and coming into it for the first time can be a little bit confusing. The map is a giant oval with three different capture points all in a straight line and one base on the North and South positions. Each individual capture point is the same distance for both Alliance and Horde so it's not set in stone which side point should be taken by either faction as either is an option. However, in my experience, 9 out of 10 games each team will have one or two players turn right coming out of the gate, leaving each faction with one captured point while the rest mass in the middle to fight for the center capture point.

The primary goal is to keep two of the three capture points taken for your side and then the “flag” aspect is brought into play. There are two bases on either side of the map that have a cart filled with mined gold. You must go to the opposite factions base, take their gold cart, and carry it back to your base to steal gold from your opponents. Taking a gold cart from the opposing factions base does in fact reduce their resources. This brings a whole new aspect to the gather resources type of map. If the enemy team is turtling two of the points with good AoE and you're unable to cap an objective you can run and get a mine cart which will either make them leave one of the points to come and kill you, which allows your team a chance to cap a point, or they allow you to just go and get the gold and make a comeback.

The overall goal is to get to 1600 gold before your opponent.

15-Man Raid – Whats Your Role In All This?

Healing. And that's it.

If only it was that simple! In PvP, specifically as a Restoration Druid, you have a quite a few jobs in a map like this. The most important job that you have that not a lot of healers understand is flag capping. The DPS are too busy channeling their AoEs, stunning and CCing the enemy teams healers and trying to kill the DPS that are targeting you. They do quite a lot and they don't have the ability to try and channel the flag capture. As a Resto Druid it is easiest for you to capture the flag as the heals that you are going to be using in PvP are going to be instant cast. Once you Rejuvenation Blanket and Wild Growth you have more than enough time to channel the flag.

As a Restoration Druid your secondary objective is both healing and CCing enemy healers. You always want to keep Cyclone up until your diminishing returns kick in and then Typhoon whenever possible. This is the same for any battleground but I feel the need to mention it because not a lot of people do it.

3 Capture Points and 2 Flags - Where Are You Most Useful?

When you have both points to capture/defend and flag carriers to take care of where as a healer are you going to be most useful? As a Restoration Druid, you always want to be where the most players are because that is where you will be the most useful with your kit. As a healer, you never want to be defending anything, there are always going to be skirmishes over a point whether you're controlling the majority or not and that is where you want to be. A good rule of thumb is you either always want to be in a fight or heading to a fight, if you're not, you're wasting a lot of your potential and a healer should rarely ever be sitting at a point defending (for the record, tanks or classes with not great AoE should be defending points on this map).

If the enemy team is leaving the points alone and are aggressively going after your flag carrier then going to keep them alive is always a priority but there are better healers for that position like Holy Paladins and Disc Priests. If you ever feel like you're not doing a lot or not really sure where you should be, open up your map and find out which mine has the largest clump of colored dots and head in that direction. Unless of course they're fighting on the roads then just let them die as a lesson.

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All In all, I really enjoy the play of the map. It feels exactly like Eye of the Storm except it doesn't take six years to get from one point to another to help defend it. I've always really liked the smaller maps anyway as it gives Pugs less places to fight in that are completely irrelevant to winning and discourages just straight up honor farming in the middle while the flag carriers cry because they keep dying. This is definitely one of the better PvP maps of the expansion and will be one I plan on playing heavily in the near future.

Tell me what you think about this expansions ever growing PvP Map list? Do you have a favorite new map or has a Mists' PvP map annoyed you so much that it's been added to your blackout list?

Sunday Night Strolls - World of Warcraft - Heroic Yor'sahj Guide for Healers

Heroic Yor'sahj Kill Shot - I ran off to Hagara like a nub so I'm not in this one either.

<Conquest> of US-Ner'zhul (who is recruiting!) defeated Heroic Yor'sahj on 25-man last night only after about an hour of attempts. I feel like this fight is really interesting for healers because it, for the most part, centers around us and our ability to figure out what color combinations do what and how to handle them. This is important for all parts of the raid to handle however there is a major change in Heroic Mode that make the healers steal the show.

In Heroic Mode you have four summoned slimes instead of just three. And some combinations are worse than others. Normally, in Normal Mode you kill Purple on sight so you never see what it actually does. In Heroic mode Purple is much lower on the list and is rarely killed so you need to know what it does, since it is centered entirely around us.

The Purple Slimes give the entire raid a debuff. Whenever they receive a direct heal they gain 1 stack of Deep Corruption. When you reach 5 stacks that player will "blow up" and everyone around him will take 90,000 damage. This generally causes a wipe because you either can't heal everyone up in time because of the debuff based on the other slimes damage or multiple DPS die and you can't meet enrage timers/kill slimes fast enough. Here are some things you can do to survive Purple Slime and heal your raid to victory.

• First things first: Divide Your Raid Into Groups - Have 1 Healer Per Group, When Purple Is Alive, Only Heal Your Group. This allows the lowest possibility of having purple explode the raid. If you have every healer just heals whoever is taking damage (like we usually do) then stacks are going everywhere and eventually someone with 4 stacks in going to take damage and people are going to heal them and people will explode, which causes more healing everywhere, which causes more explosions and a wipe. If you only heal your group then you know who has stacks and no one will receive more than 4 direct heals.
• If Purple and Green Are Alive, Set Up World Markers, Have Your Group Go To the World Marker, Spread Around It - This helps a few things. First it makes it easier for people to find places to spread out. If you're running a 10 man guild you can skip this step because spreading out is easy. But if you're a 25-man you know having 25 people spread out 5 meters and still be able to hit the boss can be hard. So having 5 people spread around one World Marker will make that part of the equation much easier. It also helps so that all of the people in your group are in range of heals. If the group you are assigned too is all over the room and two of the are out of range, you're running around trying to find them to give them heals and you may get too close to someone and cause more healing for someone else. This is never good. Stick together, but not too close together.
• Know What Spells Do and Do Not Give Stacks of Deep Corruption - This is obviously extremely important. If you Wild Growth or Tranquility during a Purple Slime you're going to kill everyone. You need to know whats safe to heal other groups with and what isn't. Druids aren't very lucky in this department, almost all of our heals give at least one stack.
  
  
• Gives One Stack - Use These On Your Assigned Group
• Rejuvenation gives 1 stack on cast (not per tick)
• Regrowth gives 1 stack on cast (not per tick)
• Swiftmend gives 1 stack (Efflorescence gives no stacks)
• Lifebloom gives 1 stack per cast (not per stick, 3 stacks of LB will give 3 stacks of Deep Corruption, Bloom gives no stacks)
• Nourish gives 1 stack
• Healing Touch gives 1 stack 
• Gives No Stacks
• Efflorescence is our only heal that gives no stacks at all. So Swiftmend someone with low stacks to help with a raid heal.
• DO NOT USE!!!
• Wild Growth - You cannot control who this heals, it only gives 1 stack but you can't choose who those stacks go on. This can wipe a raid if it decides to heal someone with 4 stacks.
• Tranquility - Every time it ticks it gives a stack, this will wipe a raid on a Purple Slime, you shouldn't need it for Purple phases anyway since it doesn't do any raid damage by itself.
• Lifebloom - I would say it's better safe not to use this during Purple. You can use it if you're only going to put 1 stack on someone in your group but there are much better heals to use a stack on. Do NOT put this on a tank (unless that tank is in your group to heal, which he shouldn't be).
• Put Deep Corruption Stack Icons on Grid/Healbot - I personally didn't do this because I could just remember who got what heals but some healers are officers or raid leaders and will need the help. Deep Corruption is the name of the debuff. This will add extra insight as to who should not be healed.
• Watch Your Personal Debuff or Create a Power Aura - Know When It Refreshes - There are two separate debuffs. A timed debuff and a stacking debuff. When the timed debuff falls off everyone's stacks will reset back to zero. You have a clean slate to heal everyone to 4 stacks again. Look at your own debuff and notice when your own stacks fall off or when the timer starts back up. It will go through 2 full duration before falling off completely and you can heal freely.
• Pre-Hot! - Cast Wild Growth before the Purple Slime is about to hit the boss. Give the current tank 3 full stacks of Lifebloom. And cast Rejuvenation on everyone in your group before the debuff comes up. This allows you to get as much healing as you can before you have to count your heals carefully!

Heroic Yor'sahj the Unsleeping is an extremely interesting fight for healers. Normally Heroic fights are "Oh my god, everything hits twice as hard and tanks have to to this and DPS has to attack these new adds but healers, your job is exactly the same, heal your heart out!". This fight gives us a chance to choose our heals extremely carefully based on an ever changing environment. If your healers are the backbone, here's their time to prove it! Have fun and may many bosses fall before your feet (or paws or hooves or whatever else you stand on!)

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