Without the help of another guild, we would not have been able to run Lady Hunter's ten man on Tuesday night. Our co-raid leader, Bd, has an alt in another guild, and occasionally raiders from that other guild have joined us. Bd had sent an in game mail to all the regulars letting us know that he intended to fill in the raid with folks from the other guild if we did not get a good turn out.
Well, our raid was a half and half raid, with five regulars and five more joining us from the other raid. P-Jo couldn't join us, but we got a well geared holy paladin who Wild has raided with a couple of times and proved to be very good. For our third healer we got a druid making his first Ulduar run. Our regular off tank was absent as well, and so another raider new to Ulduar, a protection paladin, was tapped to off tank. For DPS we had a moonkin, rogue, warlock, death knight, and a melee paladin. The mix of players was very good and Wild quickly took a liking to the new raiders.
Since paladins are better tank healers than raid healers, Wild assigned the pally healer to the main tank. Wild took off tank healing, and asked the new resto druid to raid heal and to handle the special situations that every boss has. That would work well throughout the night.
We did not set hard mode for any of the encounters as Bd wanted to get through the early bosses so that we could work on those we hadn't mastered yet. Flame Leviathon was up first, as always, and we destroyed the big tank on our first attempt. One down.
We made a detour to an optional boss, Razorscale, because we usually have good luck against the dragon. We wiped on our first attempt, and P-Jo, who was listening in on vent even though she couldn't play, told the raid to "Bring out the kitties!" Most of us have cats of one sort or the other as in game pets, and we dutifully released them from their kennels to join us. Of course, they can do no real damage, but we use them as good luck charms. The kitty charms worked - Razorscale fell on our second try. Two down.
Wild worried a little about the next boss, XT, because of the robot's Tantrum, which can severely damage the whole raid. With the pally focused on healing the main tank, Wild and the other druid healer had to really pour on the heals during tantrums. It worked out fine, though, and XT went down. Three down.
With things going very much in our favor we turned to another optional boss, Ignis. Two good tanks are needed for this fight, one to handle Ignis and be able to kite him around the room along a designated path, and the other to race after spawning constructs and perform a somewhat complicated series of actions and movements to kill them. Bd decided it would be better if he did the constructs, so the pally became the main tank. Raid wide damage by Ignis is even worse than with XT, and Wild needed to be able to raid heal, so the pally healer got to be the main tank healer for the pally tank.
There were too many working parts for the newer raiders to take in on the first attempt, but we still got pretty far along before wiping. Once again, though, we had it down by our second try and killed Ignis. Four down.
After dealing very smoothly with some difficult trash mobs, we went face to belt buckle with the very giant Kologarn. We have a couple of kills against him, but this is still an iffy fight for us. Not on this night, though, as he went down on our first try. Five down.
Our moonkin had to leave and we brought in a healing shaman. We asked the new resto druid to switch specs to moonkin, and we were back in business. Wild didn't even offer to go moonkin as I knew Wild's heals were needed.
We could have taken a third detour to try the Iron Council optional encounter, but we only had an hour left and Bd was anxious to get some attempts in on Auriaya, the Cat Lady. We have yet to kill her.
We decided to try a new strategy that required moving from spot to spot in a circular pattern. This helped keep Auriaya from stacking spawning cats on us. For this fight it is critical to stay grouped closely together, preferably with the cat lady facing toward us. Wild had a hard time having to continuously change position, getting out of position more than once, which got Wild killed and other raiders as well.
We tried three times against the Cat Lady, and while we didn't do that well, wiping pretty early each time, it was practice that we needed.
Since we changed healers partway in, there were only two of us for the whole evening, and we were pretty well dead even with each other.
#1: Wild, 2054 hps, 34.2% of the healing
#2: pally, 2365/32.4%
The other resto druid was healing at around 1500 hps when he swapped out to moonkin. The shammy was also around that number. Both did fine as the third healer.
I don't have any DPS stats for the night as I forgot to reset the meter after Flame Leviathon, which badly screwed with the results.
Long after the raid broke up and Wild was back in Dalaran, Wild noticed that he was still wearing the Argent Dawn Commission trinket. He'd done all of Ulduar without his usual healing trinket, losing over +100 spellpower. Sigh.
Wednesday - Before the planned 25 man run for Wednesday night, Wild had to scratch his Scholomance itch. Now that Wild had some idea of how things were laid out in there, he planned to find out where this place was keeping the other 11 bosses he didn't see the first time. Wild was able to move faster through the nearest rooms, tagging the patrols and pulling them to a clump of mobs to AoE down with Hurricane. Wild moved so smoothly from group to group he had to stop for mana to regen periodically (Hurricane is a great spell against lower level mobs, but it does use a lot of mana).
Wild found doors and side rooms the second time through that he hadn't seen on the prior visit. More bosses appeared - and died. It wasn't long, though, that Wild found himself outside the room with the wooden door and those spell immune skeletons. Not these guys again. Druids are a very versatile class; there has to be a better way to deal with them. There was, and Wild's strategy took best advantage of all of a druid's tools.
First, Wild switched to caster form and cast all of his HoTs on himself - lifebloom, rejuv, and regrowth. Wild then dropped into bear form while those HoTs were still ticking and Charged the room, rounding up every critter in there; undead, skeletons, even a spider or two, not to mention the rats. When Wild had them all in one place he switched back to caster and let his three leetle friends loose on those skeletons. Wild refreshed his HoTs and shifted into moonkin. Then blasted what was left with Hurricane.
Pause for effect.
All was unearthly quiet in that room. Not a creature was stirring, not even a level 1 rat. Every mob was dead. That's how you do it.
It was a good strategy, one that Wild discovered he would need again. Wild found another basement room that was sectioned off into four long corridors. All four of those corridors were filled with undead and skeletons. Using his caster-bear-caster-moonkin strategy, Wild rounded up mobs one corridor at a time and burned them down with the Force of Nature trees and Hurricane.
The Skeletons DIE!
The Trees Win
Nice Pattern
Nice Pattern
It took Wild exactly 90 minutes to do a complete clear of Scholomance, killing all 13 bosses and every living and unliving soul in the place. It took four minutes for Wild to find his way out. :)
Even before turning in all the scourgestones Wild collected, his rep improved from 9223 to 11748, leaving him needing just 252 rep to Revered. Turning in the scourgestones did the trick. Wild now has a +15 spellpower to bracers enchant usable by low level players.
DER and Wild are planning a few old school dungeon crawls together. There is the chance for some gold and goodies, as well as getting the achievement, of course, but it's mostly for the fun of seeing places that some of us never got to experience.
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