Wednesday (9 Sep) - Vault of Archavon Expands

Wednesday (9 Sep) - Vault of Archavon Expands

Wild spent an enjoyable Wednesday afternoon collecting his new Tier 8.5 helm. First, Wild used the emblems of conquest from the chain Heroics on Tuesday to purchase a "Wayward Vanquisher" token, then used the token to buy the [Conqueror's Nightsong Headpiece], which is one of five pieces in the Conqueror's Nightsong Regalia set.

The helm has a red socket and a meta socket for gems. Wild wrestled with which of two meta gems to equip: Insightful Earthsiege Diamond (with +int and a 2% mana regen chance) or Ember Skyflare Diamond (with +spellpower and +2% int). Wild's current helm was using the Skyflare, but I decided I wanted the Earthsiege for the new one as I wanted to build up Wild's +int while mitigating the loss of mana regen (mp5) that was on the old helm, but not the new one. I would, of course, add a +23 spellpower gem in the red slot.

The meta gem decision created a new challenge. Meta gems only become activated when certain other gems are present in the gear being worn. For the Earthsiege, Wild's gear had to have one each red, blue, and yellow gem socketed. Wild had the red and blue gems covered, but was not using any yellow gems. The only slot in Wild's gear that did have a yellow socket was the chest piece, which had both a yellow and a blue socket. Wild was using red gems (+19 sp) in both of them. I ended up replacing both gems with a yellow (+12 sp, +10 int) and a blue (+12 sp, +5 mp5). By using the correct color gems Wild also got the socket bonus, another +7 sp. Happy grumbled, but he paid the nearly 600 gold for all those high end gems.

The changes significantly increased Wild's health, mana, and haste; it modestly increased spellpower and crit; with the only real loss coming from mana regen, which I hoped would be overcome by the meta gem regen. In terms of pure stats, Wild's gear was comparable to, and in many areas, superior to uber druid's. The main difference there is that uber druid has gear set bonuses that Wild doesn't have.

When Wild logged back in game at 5:30pm, the guild Message of day said "Vault 9-9, stay out of the fire." Wild puzzled over that for a bit, then it hit him. "Vault" is Vault of Archovan (VoA), the dungeon in the pvp zone of Wintergrasp. "9-9" was the day's date, and the fire reference was to one of the boss fights in VoA. Lots of other raiders logging in had the same puzzled comments, but condensed down it meant we were starting in VoA for our Wednesday raid. Assuming we had enough raiders.

At 5:55pm, 5 minutes before raid invites, we had only 16. At 6pm we had 21, and that raised all our hopes. Wild hustled to the Wintergrasp fortress (which was under Horde control for the next hour) and settled outside VoA. Feral druid, who rarely gets a chance to raid in our 25 mans, was in game and had the time - he was invited, to Wild's delight. Lady Hunter and feral druid are real life friends who live near each other. Distressed at how long she's been absent, Lady Hunter had a chance to use a second computer at feral druids house. It wasn't the best setup, but it worked (sort of), and Lady Hunter also got an invite. We entered VoA with 24 raiders, including 7 healers, 5 druids, and one lonely looking death knight (we usually have 4 or 5).

Until this week there were two bosses in VoA. As of Tuesday, there were now three. Koralon is the new boss in VoA, and the gear he drops is Tier 9. Wow.

Koralon is a fire giant, and deals massive amounts of fire damage from multiple abilities. One of the more difficult things to manage in this fight are the fire pools. Koralon places Blazing Embers at the feet of random raiders that kills very fast. Say one thousand one, one thousand tw . . . oops, dead. The pools are very small, too, and it's hard to see them licking at your ankles. Koralon breaths fire on the raid as well, and has lots of nasty tricks the tanks have to deal with.

Wild was assigned as the main tank healer (along with a paladin) for one of the two tanks. I'd keep that primary role throughout the evening. Main tank healing is something of a touchy issue, as I've reported before. "The tank should NEVER die" is the mandate all healers get from our raid leaders. That would come back to bite us just a bit.

We were excited to be working a new boss, and eager to get at him. We engaged. The two tanks would switch periodically during the fight when the fire damage got too high. Both tanks took a lot of damage, and we stayed very focused on keeping them alive. Wild would spot HoT the other tank when I had the chance, and kept up Wild Growth to aid the raid healers, but nearly all Wild's focus was on keeping heals on "my" tank - and keeping Wild's own heels out of the fire pools. We did pretty well on the first attempt, getting Koralon to 39% before wiping.

We got him to 8% on the second attempt, but three times a tank died (the other one, not the one Wild was responsible for). With 5 druids we kept him battle rezzed and back in the fight, but it cost us in DPS raiders who were killed and we didn't have the rezzes for them. We hit the Enrage timer and wiped. The displeasure of surveydrood at the tank deaths was evident.

A third try. Wild had survived until the very end on the first two attempts, but this time I got double shot with a fire pool and the boss's burning breath and died when Koralon was at 12%. I cheered the raid on from my corpse. We brought him down.

Feral druid, who was moonkin for the evening, whispered Wild, noting our two corpses piled together. We would fight side by side for the entire evening - the tree and chicken team.

Koralon dropped four pieces of T9 gear. The top level gear in Ulduar 25 is ilevel 226. This gear is ilevel 245. We were all salivating at the chance to get this gear. The first thing I noticed, though, was that the gear was specific to a class. Not a collection of classes (ie, most tier gear is usable by three or four classes), but a single class. There was paladin gear, priest gear, and I don't remember the other two. But among the four pieces there was nothing with a druid's name on it.

We took on Emalon next, a boss we have downed many times. We struggled a bit, and wiped on our first attempt. We then started to get the warnings that Wintergrasp was close to opening it's doors to another pvp war. When that happened we'd lose access to VoA. Could we make one more attempt? We aimed to try.

We hurriedly started a second attempt and downed Emalon with 2 minutes until Wintergraps closed the doors to VoA. We scrambled out. The raid leader grabbed all the loot (to be distributed later), and we headed enmasse to our next destination, the Argent Crusade Tournament grounds in Icecrown.

Wild was about to get his first look at Trial of the Crusader, the 25 man version, which also drops T9 gear. Coming up in Part 2.

PS - of course, when I tried to post this at 8am PST this morning (Thursday), the forums are again down. I tried both the Firefox browser and Internet Explorer. This sucks.

PSS - Now posted on http://wildfamilytales.blogspot.com/ (Friday)