Friday (16 Oct) - An Invitation to Raid

Friday (16 Oct) - An Invitation to Raid

The start time came and went for the guild ten man on Friday night. There were a total of seven guildies in game. On a Friday night. Neither raid leader stayed more than thirty minutes, and I never saw more than five guildies on for the remainder of the evening.

Wild stayed around to get the daily cooking and fishing quests done. I considered hooking up with a PUG (pick up group), and there were several looking for warm bodies to fill out their raids. Wild was getting that desperate to get in some raid time. But Wild kind of hoped to see some non-guildie friends from Lady Hunter's group around. The only one I saw was already in Ulduar, so Wild figured he'd missed his chance at possibly getting in with that raid.

Wild was still more of less just hanging around when I got a whisper from a mage with a familiar sounding name. It took a moment to place him; then Wild realized it was an alt of Bd's, the warrior raid leader in Lady Hunter's group. We talked for a bit, and I mentioned that Wild's guild wasn't raiding tonight and that I was looking for a PUG to join.

Shortly after that, Wild got a whisper from the non-guildie player in Ulduar, asking Wild if I'd like to join them. Seems they had gotten through the trash mobs on the way to the first boss, Flame Leviathon, but were still filling the raid since they'd gotten off to a later start than usual. Wild was really glad he'd hung around as he accepted the port to Ulduar and joined their raid. Bd also joined on his mage alt. The raid leader (DPS warrior in Lady Hunter's group) and Bd were the only two in the raid that Wild knew. All but Wild were with the guild that we partner with in Lady Hunter's group. I'll call their guild MM.

Since we were already at the chamber where we would face Flame Leviathon, Wild grabbed the first seat he could find, which was as a gunner on a siege engine. We were not in hard mode, and Levi went down very fast.

The raid moved on to Razorscale. Wild wasn't sure what role he was to play. In addition to Wild there were two priests and a paladin in the raid who were potential healers. "Wild, are you a healer, I hope?" the raid leader asked. Wild had joined their vent channel, but in answer I shifted to tree form, showing him I was healing spec. "Good!"

The pally turned out to be the raid leader and the main tank. The two priests, one of which was DISC spec and the other holy, were healers. For assignments, Wild was asked to main tank heal, which was nice given they could have given that key role to the DISC spec priest from their own guild.

Razorscale is not a difficult fight and we killed Razor on our first attempt. As I got to know the rest of the raiders a bit better, I got the impression that most of the raiders were mains and part of the regular group for this raid, with a couple of fill ins like Wild and Bd's alt. They expected to kill Razor on the first try, and moved quickly to the trash mobs leading to Ignis, which can be a bear.

The trash fight with the two molten core giants is always a tricky one and Wild got the role of solo healing the main tank on the side away from the rest of the raid. They do things a little differently, though, sending a couple of DPSers to that side with the tank and healer. Wild was Silenced only once, but I'd HoTed up the tank real well, and we had no problems. Wild breathed a sigh of relief. This was going pretty well.

The next sets of mobs were the ones that pop tornadoes that can kill if the force of those winds tosses you down toward the bottom of the ramp we were on. We killed all but the last two mobs with no problems. But just as Wild thought he'd gotten through that one unscathed, both mobs spawned tornadoes, one on either side of Wild, and I got a double whammy tornado strike. It killed me.

Wild said something like, "Two on one, not fair!" And got the response back, "Come on, Wild, you know you always wanted to do two at once." And I don't think he was talking about tornadoes. ;-)

Wild main tanked the Ignis fight as well. We had some trouble with the constructs, breaking away from their tank and chasing the healers around. Wild healed through it and worked to get into a rhythm with his tank, anticipating when the tank needed to turn Ignis and keeping out of the blackened Scorch circles that Ignis kept dropping. We never really got the constructs under control, though, and wiped on our first attempt.

We tried again, and as the fight progressed Wild got more and more comfortable with how the raid operated and with how the other two healers worked. They were good. Ignis died.

Then it was on to XT. The raid leader liked the way things were going, so raid assignments, including healing, stayed the same. Wild remained the main tank healer. Main tank healing on XT can be a bear, and Wild stayed on his toes, keeping every HoT I had on the tank and making a lot of use of the Nourish spell to cover the larger hits the tank was taking. Wild also helped heal the raid when XT did his Tantrums, and I think only one raider died about halfway through the fight. He happened to be in range of Wild, so I got him rezzed. Wild was the only druid, by the way, so we had only Wild's battle rez.

Two-thirds of the way through the fight someone lit off a bomb bot in range of Wild. Usually those bots are left alone or killed well away from the raid, for exactly the reason that exploding them can kill anyone nearby. Wild hadn't seen a bot explosion in many, many raids. The explosion didn't kill Wild outright, and Wild got immediate healing help from an alert healer, and the battle went on. XT died.

Then came Kologarn, with his eyebeams. Wild doesn't much like this fight, particularly as the main tank healer. Between fleeing from eyebeams to trying to avoid the Silences while still keeping the main tank alive - and not dying myself or getting others killed - well, just ugh. This raid group handles eyebeams a little differently, actually running out of the room when they are targeted. Apparently that doesn't reset the fight, as it often does on other fights. Unsure what was safe to do and what was not, I stayed with the method I was used to, which is flee to right corner of the room away from the main body of the raid. Unlike Wild's earlier troubles with that in guild raids, everything went smoothly, and Kologarn went down.

The raid got a bit more excited about that kill. The impression Wild got was that they were used to needing more than one try to beat Kologarn. Wild got loot off of Kologarn, a chest piece that I can use for Wild's moonkin spec. Wild was the only leather wearing caster (a rogue was the only other leather wearer) so it pretty much went to Wild by default. That got to be a sort of joke, though, when the loot master sent the chest piece to the wrong raider, and when I didn't receive it for awhile we weren't sure what had happened to it. The raid leader got it sorted out, and it finally ended up in Wild's hands.

With each new boss the main tank healer responsibility got a little tougher. We tackled the Cat Lady next, and Wild remembered all the trouble he had healing the beginning of that fight the last time the guild took her on. But Wild did not have any trouble at all this time, getting past the deadly initial pull with everyone still alive.

We fought her hard through the first phases, all of us up tight against her until she Feared us away, then rushing back. This raid set things up differently, but Wild could follow what they were doing and stayed in sync with them. When the Cat Lady started spawning new cats, we went on the move, staying with the Cat Lady while we fought her and her pet, then jumping out of the deadly pools of seeping feral essence the pet casts.

It was the most fun Wild has had yet on this fight, and the Cat Lady died.

After this fight there was a discussion on whether to move on to the Antechamber bosses, or go get the optional boss encounter called the Iron Council. Wild voted for the Antechamber, as I haven't seen much of those bosses. The vote was tied 5-5, but ultimately they opted to go after the Iron Council, which they'd had a lot of success with. To make things more interesting, they decided to try it in hard mode, which they'd never attempted before.

There are thee elite bosses in the Iron Council. Normally, the toughest boss, Steelbreaker, is killed first, then the other two bosses are killed. In hard mode, Steelbreaker is kept alive while the other two are killed first. While that might not sound like much of a difference, it is. Each time a boss is killed, the elites that remain gain an extra ability. Keeping the deadliest boss, Steelbreaker, alive to the end means that he'll have two extra abilities, making him thrice deadly.

Main tank healing Steelbreaker is extremely challenging, with a lot of sizable hits that a HoT healer is less equipped for than, say, a DISC priest who can use her Shield ability on the tank to absorb a lot of that unpredictable damage. The raid leader opted to go with his DISC priest for main tank healing for this fight, and Wild didn't blame him. The other priest stayed with off tank healing and Wild was asked to raid heal. That in itself would be challenging enough, as Steelbreaker and the other two bosses were tanked on opposite sides of the room, and Wild would have to move back and forth between them to keep everyone healed.

We made a good first attempt on Steelbreaker, getting both of the other elites down, leaving only Steelbreaker. One of the new abilities Steebreaker gets when he is the last boss standing is a debuff that causes the tank to explode after sixty seconds. Either kill Steelbreaker in that time or have another tank ready to go. We thought we had the DPS to kill Steelbreaker in those sixty seconds - we didn't. The tank exploded (poor fellow), and we wiped, but it was a pretty exciting fight anyway.

We tried a second time, but the off tank died early in the fight while Wild was out of range healing other raiders fighting Steelbreaker. Another wipe.

We switched back to normal mode, where Steelbreaker is the first killed. That still took us three tries, but we finally got all three bosses killed.

We'd been at about three hours, and they were very tempted to keep going, but with the late start they didn't want to push things. We called it a night.

The raid leader told Wild that his group runs on Fridays and Mondays, and that Wild was welcome to join them on Monday to continue the raid if I was available. Monday's not a guild raid night, and if they start on time Wild should be done by 9-930pm. Wild was impressed with their group, too. And on Monday they'll be after bosses Wild rarely gets to see, and even more rarely gets to kill. I told them I thought I could make it.

I haven't posted healing numbers lately, but since Wild was healing with two new partners here they are. Wild and the DISC priest traded on and off with the healing lead throughout the evening, but she stepped ahead for good during the Iron Council fights.

DISCp: 2400 hps, 31.8% of the healing
Wild: 2103/31.4%
Holyp: 1724/21.0%