Wednesday Part 2 (9 Sep) - Trial of the Crusader, 25 man Style

Wednesday Part 2 - Trial of the Crusader, 25 man Style

Note: Still catching up on posts. Still having trouble with access to the Strat forums. It comes and goes.

All of ToC takes place on the floor of a coliseum on the Argent Crusader tournament grounds. A single chamber, enclosed by stadium seating like the coliseums of Roman days. There are four broad areas, not all of which are yet available. We would be starting with Northrend Beasts, which as three encounters: Gormok the Impaler, Acidmaw and Dreadscale, and finally Icehowl. There is no pause between the fights. As soon as one is defeated, the next immediately enters. All three encounters must be completed before any loot will drop. Fail at any point, and you'll have to start over from the beginning. This makes for a very long fight; although not as long as the seven waves plus Boss required in Mount Hyjal (back in the day :) ).

Wild was again tasked with main tank healing. For parts of this fight three tanks are required, and that would stretch our healing. Wild has seen this fight only once, in the ten man version. Wild was the only raider with so little experience (or at least the only raider who would admit it when surveydrood asked for a show of hands). That's ok, I wanted him to have to describe the fight, anyway, and I'm sure others got some value out of that.

We did find a 25th raider before we got started, adding a second DK to the raid (the lone DK was so happy the two hugged each other in welcome), but then lost one of our shaman healers to weather problems, and were back to 24. We had two shadow priests with us, so one of them switched spec to healing so we could still have 7 healers.

The battle is started by talking to an npc. The npc waxes poetic about the contests to follow, taking a half minute of our time before allowing the big doors to open for Gormok to emerge.

Gormok is hell on tanks and melee, dealing a lot of damage the healers have to deal with. ranged raiders have it a little easier, but have to watch out for pools of fire (Blizzard loves that trick). Gormok also throws snobolds (small rat-like creatures) at random raiders. The snobolds cling to raiders and try to eat their face off. All DPS turns to attack snobolds as they appear.

It was a rough start. We had a tank die, and many raiders were hanging in the fire too much. Raiders died and had to be battle rezzed. We finally took down Gormok, and no sooner had he died that the pair of jormungars (large snakes) slithered in.

One of the snakes can be tanked in place while the other has to be kited. The snakes also submerge under the floor and then reappear in random locations multiple times during the fight, requiring close coordination with the DPS and the tanks so that the snakes only aggro on the tanks when they emerge. It is extremely hectic and crazy. A lot of raiders died, although the team of Wild and pally were keeping our tank alive.

We survived the jormungars, but the raid was in pretty bad shape when the monstrous yeti, Icehowl, charged into us. We lost a tank quickly, one of our three, and fought Icehowl down to 39% before we wiped. The victories over Gormok and the jormungars counted for nothing. We would have to start again.

Tank deaths occupied most of the discussion. We knew we were light on DPS, and so the fights were taking longer and putting more pressure on the healers. Two of the tank healers said they were running low on mana. That could be mitigated with the three moonkin druids who could share their Innervates and shaman who could drop mana totems. Surveydrood wanted all tank healing to shift to the tank the Bosses were actively targeted. As a group we advised that we would need better communication to let us know who the raid leader wanted us to focus healing on, healing which would not be going to the other tanks that healers had responsibility for. Wild was already putting HoTs on all three tanks, but if I knew which tank needed extra healing I could focus in on that while still keeping an eye on "my" tank. This was a practice all healers know to do, but we were pressed by this "your tank shall never die" mantra to the point we were not as active as we could be had we been allowed to take that risk - which eventually hurt the raid. Priorities had to be set, risks had to be accepted, and finally they were.

We got through the first two encounters on our second attempt, and wiped with Icehowl at 6%. For almost a third of the Icehowl fight we were down to one tank, but we kept him up a very, very long time. Only the Enrage timer kept us from beating him. A 25th raider doing DPS would probably have won it for us.

That second attempt gave us the practice we needed with the changes in our healing. The raid leaders put pressure on the other raiders to stay out of fires, follow directions, and stop doing stupid things that over taxed the healing.

Only four raiders were dead when Icehowl thundered into the Coliseum for the third time. The tanks positioned him dead center and the melee rushed in as the ranged DPS and healers spread out in a circle around the center. Icehowl pummeled the tank, and when things got too bad the tanks would call a switch off and healers for the two tanks would shift most of our focus on that tank. icehowl turned suddenly and sprayed Artic Breath on a quarter of the raid (that's why we spread out), catching Wild and stunning him for several seconds and watching his health dwindle. Not enough to kill, Wild quickly healed up himself and others and was back on top of the tank healing. Wild kpet trying to guess which direction Icehowl would send Arctic Breath next, but I was always wrong. More often than not he'd hit me. A Massive Crash stunned teh entire raid and tossed up against the walls of the chamber. Icehowl chose a target to Charge, and with only an instant to react, we all twisted right and ran as soon as the stun released us. Should the hapless target not move fast enough, the Charge was instant death. Not only that, but a successful Charge increased his damage, while a missed Charge would stun him for 15 seconds of free DPS. You did NOT want to be the raider caught by a Charge.

This time Icehowl fell.

Four more pieces of Tier 9 gear dropped, and everyone got three emblems of triumph. None of the gear bore the druid name. Shut out again.

However, feral druid whispered Wild that not all was bad. There was also a leatherworking pattern, a leather healing chest piece, T9 quality. Feral druid was a leatherworker. He bid on the pattern and won it, and promised Wild that he would make one for himself and for Wild. Now that will be cool. It would take awhile, though, because the mats will take a very long time to put together.

There were two oh by the ways as we prepared to wrap up a very successful evening. The drops from Emalon had never been distributed. They did that (again, nothing for druids) and then Rh asked if Wild was still on.

Yes, I said in raid chat, wondering what this was about.

Rho spoke. "Wild has been very patient - and persistent - about getting runed orbs from the guild bank to craft a pair of boots that are Best in Slot at our level of progression. It's about time you got them." With that, Rh presented Wild with six runed orbs, worth upwards of 2,000 gold.Wild was a happy cow, for more than just the runed orbs.

I hadn't known that feral druid was a leatherworker. It was great that Wild had the orbs, but he also needed someone to make the boots, and no leatherworker had stepped forward. Wild whispered feral druid, asking that if I bought the pattern from the guild and gave it to him, would he make me the boots? Not only yes, he replied, you'd get them the same day I got the pattern. I know, Wild had balked at the dkp cost of buying both the orbs and the pattern, but giving to a good friend and raiding buddy like feral druid seemed perfect.

I hope to let you know soon how good those boots feel on Wild.

Oops, can't forget the numbers. Healing:

#1: uber shaman - 2028 hps, 16.3% healing
#2: uber pally, 2087/14.7%
#3: Wild, 1728/13.6%
#4: EC, 1603/13.1% (EC is a resto druid guildie not usually in our 25 mans)
#5: pally, 1732/11.7%
#6: super priest, 1876/11.6%
#7: vet shaman, 2080/6.9% (who missed the end of the raid)

On DPS we had three raiders over 4k - a hunter led with 4697 DPS, along with our enhancement shaman and our former strategist mage. Eight others had over 3k DPS. How did the three moonkin fair? Glad you asked:

#4: altpriest - 3742 DPS
#5: surveydrood - 3605 DPS
#14: feral druid - 2166 DPS (he really prefers being cat, but we have too many melee already)