Tuesday (8 Sep) - A Hunting (Heroics) We Will Go

Tuesday (8 Sep) - A Hunting (Heroics) We Will Go

Sorry there was no post yesterday. I continue to have problems being able to access the forums. This morning I am again getting the "we're experiencing problems" response using my Firefox browser, but I got it using Internet Explorer. I'm going to post this while I have a chance. This is from Tuesday.

At 6:45pm we sort of knew we were in trouble in getting Lady Hunter's 10 man group going. There were just two of us - Wild and Bd (the warrior tank and raid leader in Lady Hunter's continued absence). At 7:15pm we had added just one more, the off tank/DPS warrior.

Last week Wild and Bd had talked about doing chain Heroics. Bd loves doing Heroics, and does them often. He thinks the world of Wild and would love to get me into some of his Heroics runs, but we just aren't on at the same time that much, and his in game time will get a lot shorter with changes coming in his job. I had told him I'd run Heroics with him any time he found me in game. He's a great friend and tank and running with him is always fun.

So it was not unexpected when Bd asked Wild and the DPS warrior, "wanna do some Heroics?"

Wild had one word for that offer: "Yep! :) " But the DPS Warrior had to leave, so we were back to just the two of us.

The Daily Heroic for Tuesday was The Old Kingdom (OK). Located in Dragonblight, the area has two dungeons, OK and Azjol-Nerub (AN). We figured we'd do both dungeons while we were there.

Before hitting OK/AN, however, we decided to head to Utgarde Keep (UK) first, located in Howling Fjord, which is the normal dungeon daily. Yes, there is a daily for Heroics and a daily for Normal dungeons, which is a misnomer because we do it in Heroic mode. The Heroic quest gives Triumph badges; the other quest gives conquest badges and additional reputation with the faction of your choice.

Utgarde Keep has two dungeons, UK and Utgarde Pinnacle. UP had the normal daily quest, and so we started there.

We rounded out our five man group with Bd's real life neighbor, who was running her warlock alt. She does not raid, so she spends her time levelling alts and occasionally doing 5 mans. Our guilds #1 DPS raider, an enhancement shaman, started life as a rogue, but had abandoned him at level 70 to pursue raising the shaman. Earlier in the day he'd finally gotten his rogue to level 80, and asked if he could join us on his rogue. He warned us that his gear was awful. Ever the optimist, Bd exclaimed, "Perfect! This is a great opportunity to get you some gear!" Finally, just as we were thinking about getting a stranger to fill the group, feral druid popped in game and we immediately talked him into coming with us. He switched to moonkin.

And yes, if anyone is asking, Wild DID pick up the two daily quests before flying off to Howling Fjord.

When Wild did chain heroics the last (and only) time previously, it was as a moonkin in a group that could have run those dungeons without Wild. It was fun and exciting, but there was little pressure. Wild was the healer on this night's run. If anything it was even more fun because Wild was integral to the success of the run.

Bd advised Wild up front that he would be moving fast through the trash mobs, and would not slow down unless Wild got low on mana or called for a halt. The speed of the run really depended on the amount of healing Wild had to do. Fair enough. Wild was ready. Bd also knew that Wild rarely did 5 mans, so at each boss Bd would give a short synopsis of the boss abilities and anything special Wild needed to know as the healer. Those thirty second explanations helped a lot.

There are four bosses in UP, and we plowed through the trash and those bosses in a steady, unrelenting wave of death. Wild never had to call for a halt as I kept the heals flowing. Wild did need to make some adjustments for the rogue. Being melee, he was up close and personal with the mobs, and his gear was just not that good. He kept dying. Fast. I finally decided to treat him like an off tank, and kept a full spread of HoTs on him even when he wasn't taking damage. That gave Wild a second or two to get additional heals to him when he did get hit. Wild used his instant emergency heal on the rogue more times than the rest of the group put together.

We cleared UP. Then we cleared UK just because it was next door. Then we moved from Howling Fjord to Dragonblight and The Old Kingdom. We decided to speed things up for OK, and instead of clearing all of the trash, we cut a swath through only those trash mobs in our immediate path on the way to the bosses.

Everything went smoothly (the rogue stopped dying, too, and was blissfully happy with the bagful of new gear he was accumulating) when things went very wrong against the final boss, Herald Volazj. We wiped.

A group like this should never wipe on a 5 man Heroic boss. Particularly a boss named Harold. "Oooh, I'm so scared! We're up against Harold!" Sorry, that just doesn't work for me. Ok, so it's really spelled Herald, and isn't really his name. I'm calling him Harold anyway.

Well, Harold has a peculiar ability called Insanity. Let me be absolutely honest here. Even after having seen this fight, and then read all of the information and strategies, I still didn't get it. As best I could describe it, Insanity causes shades, or duplicates, of each of us that must be fought and killed as part of the boss fight. There is a fight in one of the pre-WotLK raids (I can't remember which or what boss it was) where something similar was done. However, on the pre-WotLK boss fight each raider had to fight their own duplicate with no help from anyone else. I thought this fight was like that, based on how it was explained.

We started up the fight and after some early combat Harold cast Insanity. Wild kept trying to find his "visage" which is what the duplicate was called for this boss. No visage, and because Wild was out of sync with what everyone else was doing, Wild died, and we wiped.

A new set of explanations, the only part of which that really sunk in was that Wild needed to keep himself alive at all costs. Plus, stay out of tree form, because Wild's visage will heal himself more if in tree form, making the fight harder. Ok. I can heal out of tree form, no problem.

We beat Harold on our second try, which I guess is what matters, but I still don't understand this fight. So here is the best explanation of the Insanity ability I could find:

From wowhead: "Every party member will see the other party members turning hostile, and attacking. It's a phasing event - your friends didn't turn against you, as the Herald suggests, they were merely shifted into a different phase, fighting their own "bad" friends. Each one of the images has 4,000 HP, and casts 1-2 spells specific to the class and spec the original player belongs to. It is recommended to nuke the healer first, or any fast-hitting class if you are the healer yourself. Volazj will remain invulnerable and channeling the spell until the event is over.

Whenever one of the players kills all 4 images assigned to him, he will phase out seeing another of his friends fighting, and will be able to give a hand. When all 20 images are dead, Volazj will become attackable again, and in fact will attack. From now on it's rinse and repeat fight."

So, if I get this right, every player will be in his own mini-instance, fighting against the other four "visage" players. As players kill their four visage opponents, they join with the other players that are still fighting, aiding those fights. Wild, in his own little mini-instance, didn't try to attack and kill the four visages of my friends. I chose just to heal myself and stay alive until help arrived.

Wild's "visage" is a pretty good healer, even when out of tree form and controlled by the computer - and in each of the mini-instances there were grumblings in vent chat about "stupid resto druids who just won't die" throughout the battle. Wild, for his part, stayed alive, wondering what was going on. When other players started to zone in where I could heal them, I did. It took a long time, but we won. Hmm, maybe I'm starting to understand this fight.

After finishing off the "last" boss, we decided to go after the optional boss that only appears in Heroic mode and after killing the other bosses. Amanitar is his name. This boss likes mushrooms, and the whole fight is based on using the "good" mushrooms and avoiding the "bad" mushrooms.

We wiped twice on this fight due to bugs. The first time, the tank, who had backed up to a large fountain so that the boss was turned away from us, suddenly found Amanitar behind him. The boss was in the fountain, which is not an area in play. Supposedly. Amanitar one shot the tank from behind and then wiped the raid.

The second time we changed the tanking location away from the fountain. But after we got through the early part of the battle a flood of new mobs stormed into the fight, surprising the heck out of us and we wiped again.

The third time nothing weird happened, and we killed him. I didn't pay any attention to mushrooms, and it didn't seem to matter. Bugged, or Wild just healed everyone through the damage, I don't know. It worked.

We had planned to take on AN next, but our rogue had to leave, and we called it a night. Wild got a bunch of conquest badges and two triumph badges as well. Time to go buy some gear.