As you know by now, I’ve had an issue with mr Heigan (with the obscure nickname “the Unclean”, does it refer to dirty thoughts or is they guy actually out of soap?). Or “Heineken” as he was renamed by Fimlys of Twisted Nether in their last show, even though I think beer is the last thing you want to load yourself with if you want to participate in his step show.
Anyway, surviving a dance session with this Heigan guy has been one of my long term goals, one of my resolutions about what to accomplish in the game during 2009. Up until now I had noticed small progress – going from one run over the floor to one and a half, making one turn alright. But to be honest succeeding felt pretty distant.
Do you notice the grammar? It’s all written in a historical tempus. Because my Heigan Issue is no more! Larísa has danced with Heigan until he gave up! I don’t know if it was because his feet hurt or if he had any other problem, but he sure didn’t look healthy as he was laying on the floor.
Friday night raid
It all happened last Friday at an off-night 10-man Naxx guild run. It was an awesome raid in every way you can think of: relaxed and fun with a “Friday at midnight atmosphere” – all of you who have tried raiding at that peculiar time of the week know what I mean. It was also very successful – we cleared the whole place in a few hours. Most of our drops could be used by someone and the big winner of the night was a fellow mage who dinged 80 pretty recently and got loads of upgrades in her first Naxx run. I got a head myself, Cowl of Sheet Lightning, with the meta socket I’ve been longing for such a long time, so I was very glad too.
But what made me most happy in this raid was that I didn’t suffer from the terrible lag that keeps driving me nuts in the 25 man raids. I don’t know if it was because it was just 10 man or if it helped that I had just downloaded a new drive routine for my graphic card and tweaked a couple of settings, but this run I could actually move my character, if not always lag free, at least sufficiently well to be able to go where I wanted to go.
And suddenly the Heigan dance wasn’t half as hard at it had been before. It was doable and even pretty fun. I was almost disappointed we only had two rounds of him. It was a very special feeling to not watch the dancing from the floor position, but to be one in the running crowd.
One of the dancers
The Heigan Dance experience made my thoughts wander back in time, 30 years ago, when the song Yes Sir I Can Boogie (which this post title refers to – younger readers who have no idea of what I’m referring to can listen to it here) had its all time high. Whenever it was played at a school party, I used to watch the other kids as they were dancing, me sticking to the walls, pretending I didn’t want to dance. But Heigan was different. This magical night I wasn’t a watcher anymore. I was a dancer.
I heard my fellow mage complaining – she died pretty early in the fight. “I was moving, I can swear!” Oh, how familiar wasn’t it? I could completely understand as her frustration and I’m quite likely to go back to seeing the fight from a dead perspective next time I do it in a 25 man raid – I have no big hope that the fps improvement was for real.
But still, after this experience I won’t be as depressed about it at I was before.
Now I know I can boogie!
Anyway, surviving a dance session with this Heigan guy has been one of my long term goals, one of my resolutions about what to accomplish in the game during 2009. Up until now I had noticed small progress – going from one run over the floor to one and a half, making one turn alright. But to be honest succeeding felt pretty distant.
Do you notice the grammar? It’s all written in a historical tempus. Because my Heigan Issue is no more! Larísa has danced with Heigan until he gave up! I don’t know if it was because his feet hurt or if he had any other problem, but he sure didn’t look healthy as he was laying on the floor.
Friday night raid
It all happened last Friday at an off-night 10-man Naxx guild run. It was an awesome raid in every way you can think of: relaxed and fun with a “Friday at midnight atmosphere” – all of you who have tried raiding at that peculiar time of the week know what I mean. It was also very successful – we cleared the whole place in a few hours. Most of our drops could be used by someone and the big winner of the night was a fellow mage who dinged 80 pretty recently and got loads of upgrades in her first Naxx run. I got a head myself, Cowl of Sheet Lightning, with the meta socket I’ve been longing for such a long time, so I was very glad too.
But what made me most happy in this raid was that I didn’t suffer from the terrible lag that keeps driving me nuts in the 25 man raids. I don’t know if it was because it was just 10 man or if it helped that I had just downloaded a new drive routine for my graphic card and tweaked a couple of settings, but this run I could actually move my character, if not always lag free, at least sufficiently well to be able to go where I wanted to go.
And suddenly the Heigan dance wasn’t half as hard at it had been before. It was doable and even pretty fun. I was almost disappointed we only had two rounds of him. It was a very special feeling to not watch the dancing from the floor position, but to be one in the running crowd.
One of the dancers
The Heigan Dance experience made my thoughts wander back in time, 30 years ago, when the song Yes Sir I Can Boogie (which this post title refers to – younger readers who have no idea of what I’m referring to can listen to it here) had its all time high. Whenever it was played at a school party, I used to watch the other kids as they were dancing, me sticking to the walls, pretending I didn’t want to dance. But Heigan was different. This magical night I wasn’t a watcher anymore. I was a dancer.
I heard my fellow mage complaining – she died pretty early in the fight. “I was moving, I can swear!” Oh, how familiar wasn’t it? I could completely understand as her frustration and I’m quite likely to go back to seeing the fight from a dead perspective next time I do it in a 25 man raid – I have no big hope that the fps improvement was for real.
But still, after this experience I won’t be as depressed about it at I was before.
Now I know I can boogie!
14 comments:
We just did that fight tonight. Our GM kept saying; 'Run, walk walk TURN!'.
I was on the catwalk! 8-).
Grats on downing him, and good luck with the bosses to come!
x
the one thing a lot of people don't realize about heigan is that you need to learn the timing yourself, and then just ignore the rest of the raid.
A lot of people try to raid mark one player, and tell everyone to just follow the blue square, but this doesn't work for a few reasons. the main being that if you've ever run two copies of wow on the same machine in mom-maximized windows, you really get an appreciation for 'what they see' and 'what you see'. If you have someone on follow, you're hugging their ass on your screen, but on theirs, you're about 15 feet back.
This is frustrating in arenas, when you're trying to backstab oneone, and getting the "not in range" error even though you're right on top of them. Blizzard says "min range 8 feet" on tooltips, but there's actually a huge amount off leeway there to people with modems don't get the short end of the stick.
With heigan, once you know the timing, and can just force yourself to ignore the rest of the raid, it's actually really easy.
I myself was one of the 'watchers' of the fight until about 3 runs ago when it clicked, now it's the easiest thing in the world ;)
grats on the downing, and that hat you've been wanting!
very nice.
next song-- Safety Dance
The turning point for me was when I started watching the ground. As soon as I turned my focus to getting to a fissure that had just erupted, the whole fight got a lot easier.
I think "Let's dance" from David Bowie is an excellent song for Heigan since I'm a Bowie fan. But "I can boogie" works just fine too :)
I do hope Blizzard gets the lag on their servers fixed. Gluth was unplayable yesterday. Hitting a button and seeing your action three seconds later is not playable. We're paying each month. The least they could do is give us decent servers. And without "all instance servers are full".
Grats on Heigan, took me a few tries to get the feeling right. And lag spikes or fps dropping to zero when the lava spawns are a nono on the fight.
Congratulations
I have not done this fight yet so cant even picture this in my head hahaha.
I need to play more i think.
Gratz!
Did 25-man Heigan for 2nd time this weekend and I did die on one attempt, but generally I survive.
Ixobelle is right. Learn the spots yourself because following people is a sure death sentence.
@Moonfire: thank you! Actually we've cleared Naxx both in 10 man and in 25 man. But even if I'm glad to be a part of a team that clears it, I'm even a bit happier to do it staying alive on the bosses. So this was a happy moment to me.
@Ixobelle: Thank you! I think you're right about the strategy: you have to stop looking at others and focus on your own dance, nothing else. But it takes some courage to do it.
@Jong: Safety dande? Haven't heard that one, maybe it's something made after 1980... :)
@P: I'm not sure where I looked - I just ran. :) But I'll think about it next time, that sounds wise.
@Carra: I'm an old Bowie fan as well, so "Let's dance" will do for me as Heigan signature. For this very blogpost it lacked the right feeling of triumph though.
Yes, the lagging at Stormrage drives me nuts. You know, since you're on the same server. It ruined our raiding last night - we couldn't even make Patchwerk due to lag which made spells go off several seconds too late and finally decided to call it. So no Heigan that raid. I can only hope it's better on tuesday, but honestly I don't know why it should be. I haven't heard about any incoming hotfixes.
@Esdras: Thanks!
@Kyrilean: yeah, it's just that it feels weired that your eyes cannot be completely trusted in this fight. The hardest part is probably in the beginning. Once you're up running in the right "slot" you can just keep running and you'll be fine. No need to stop and look at the other players.
Gratz on your achievement!
One reason why players die is they overshoot it when it's time to go back to the left side so when they start heading left they are already too far in the right and will eventually die.
We all should get the title 'the unclean' for free... I've spent ages looking for a laundromat in Dalaran... let alone some kind of public bath (those ponds have mammoth dirt in them)
Hell there isn't even a mage around that can magically remove these stains from my ebonweave gloves.
2 billion years of magic and they still can't remove a blood stain *mutters*
@Herc: I think you're right. It has definitly happened to me more than once that I've run too far.
@Captain the First: haha I think that comment deserves a blog post of its own. Please write it!
I have no idea what you're talking about, but I was smiling and nodding throughout the post.
I don't dance. Unless I've had a few. . .well more than a few, and then its more rhythmic staggering. . .
Good times. . .
Great job and congratulations on one of my favorite Naxx bosses.
For me, I had to stop listening to calls on Vent to run or move and just watch for myself. I was either too slow when I heard the calls or had lag and just didn't do very well when I tried to let someone else do it for me.
Grats again!!
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