Oculus: Is this random?

Apparently everyone gets Oculus all the time. I'd never gotten it as random. I decided to specifically queue for it, to see what it was like. I heard it had been nerfed and was curious about what had happened. And there were rumors of extra loot.

It was actually a lot of fun. I still tanked, ended up on the red drake, as I always seem to. But it was a different sort of tanking and quite a nice change. We got the speed kill achievement. Overall it was an okay run aside from the "go go go" DK. He made me wish the old LFG system in which I'd have been the lead and could have just kicked him at the start. Instead I had to settle for taking my time, though of course I couldn't let DP fall off. That would be unthinkable.

Turns out the extra loot is only for random. I guess it was intended to stop the ditching rather than to make people queue for it specifically.

I was feeling badge-happy, having already run a few randoms beyond my daily frost, so I queued again. And got Oculus.

Everyone was nicer, until the last boss. I picked amber so I could work towards the achievement. That failed because apparently no one got ruby. We put someone on ruby. They failed. I got on ruby. The boss died. Then I got some extra badges.

I hope I get Oculus some more.

P.S. This is the third post I've written for today, all on entirely different subjects. First it was Captain Kirk analogies, then frozen orb rolling, and now this.

P.P.S. I would like to apologize to anyone who was led here by the gnome hunters post. That will be for another day. Slight scheduling accident.

I Hate Oculus

It's a cool place. I like the drake idea. It just doesn't work.

The last boss doesn't seem especially hard to me, but there's no way to compensate for noobs through either gear, CC, or picking up slack. This means that either everyone plays properly (good luck with a PUG) or you fail over and over until the trash repops and everyone leaves.

Maybe people can offer some advice and check if my general strategy makes sense.

Red: Tank. Keep up martyr, giving it favor on the GCD. Focus on whelps since the flame jumps and multiplies.
Green: Healer. Transfer health to the tank (red) and regen with the leeching poison.
Amber: DPS. Use the channeled spell to stack charged, then burn them. Use time stop during the enrage, indicated by the shout.

When orbs, come, everyone scatters and then when they're about to end, regroup on top of the boss so martyr can hit everyone again. Maybe a better method would be to have everyone follow the leader in a circle, but the general idea is that people avoid orbs and are close together when that phase ends.

Is there something else I should know? It just seems like Oculus means a slightly challenging run to the last boss, then an hour of wiping before the trash respawns.

In unrelated news, I get annoyed when I see tanks skip stamina bonuses to stack... stamina gems. It's a waste of a free stat just to gimp their avoidance in order to boost a single number.

Ever more unrelated, I'm really having fun figuring things out with my DK. Now it's looking like I should be using my converted blood->death runes as blood runes for Blood Strike rather than always using the converted runes for Scourge Strike. The damage per strike is lower, but it costs half as much and it ensures that the blood stay converted, so I always have free frost or unholy for refreshing diseases or corpse explosion.