We had no trouble filling the Alt-10 raid Friday night, and in fact we had 12 guildies interested. There could have been more, as we had a larger than usual bunch of guildies in game than we have been seeing lately on Friday nights, and many of them did not know the guild was running a ten man on Wed/Fri. I just don't understand why guild leadership had not put anything up on the guild website about the raid situation by now. So I posted my own on Saturday morning, as follows, titled Alt-10 Raiding Schedule and Sign Ups:
"Perhaps it's not my place to make this post, but I've gotten a number of questions lately about what is going on with guild raids.
The short answer is that guild 25 man raids have been discontinued for now as we have been having difficulty getting enough raiders to fill the raid.
In it's place the guild started running a third ten man raid. This raid is called the Alt-10. Unlike the other two guild ten mans, there are no regulars for the Alt-10, and anyone that wishes to participate is welcome and will get opportunities to raid. Alt-10 has been focused primarily on Ulduar, but has also gone to Onyxia and will schedule other instances as raid makeup and interest dictates. Mains not locked into another raid are a primary focus in helping get those mains better gear and more experience, but alts are also welcome and encouraged to come.
The Alt-10 raids on Wed/Fri with invites starting at 6pm.
Ultimately, the guild wants to get back to 25 man raids. Growing the participation in the Alt-10 raid and expanding on it is one way the guild is working to get back there. So sign up!
If you want to add your name to the invite list, please contact [the two raid leaders]."
Ok, back to the raid itself. Healing, always Wild's first interest, was set with three - Wild, Hpriest, and Mg, another druid. I hope everything is ok with P-Jo, as I haven't seen her around recently and this makes the second raid night in a row she's missed. And we miss her.
We had our two alt tanks, and a good mix of DPS. The question at the start was, where do we go first? With both Wild and Mg healing, Ignis did not seem a good place to start without a moonkin druid to do the construct killing. That started a discussion about who else might be able to tank, freeing up the alt-druid tank to take that role. The Alt-10 keeps hoping to engage more tanking mains to join in instead of alts so that we have additional experienced tanks to choose from, but so far we have not had any. There was a lot of interest in going after the harder bosses in the Keepers of Ulduar area (such as Thorim or Freya), but the raid leaders wanted to start on something a little more familiar to begin the evening. We decided to go after the Iron Council, which we had attempted but came up short on Wednesday.
We changed up the strategy again for IC. Steelbreaker would be tanked at his usual spot, and Molgeim would be pulled to the back as usual. However, Brundir, usually pulled to the back as well, was pulled to the side, with a DK assigned to tank him. The DK did not have tank gear, nor was he speced to tank, but Brundir did fairly light damage (with one exception called Overload, which can be avoided), so we felt it would work.
Wild assigned the other druid to main tank heal for Steelbreaker, Wild took the off tanks on Molgeim and Brundir, and the priest was assigned "raid healing and keeping the rest of us alive." The priest not only had to raid heal but needed to be flexible in aiding Mg and Wild in keeping the three tanks alive.
On our first attempt things started well. Wild was main healing two tanks, positioning to be able to reach both, as well as trying to HoT the tank on Steelbreaker. That worked well for awhile, but damage to the off tank on Molgeim got away from Wild, and the tank died. A loose boss is not something we could recover from, and we wiped.
We again got off to a good start on our second attempt, but this time it was the main tank on Steelbreaker who went down. The deadliest attack Steelbreaker does is called Fusion Punch. One hit knocks the tank's health down to about 20%, but it also comes with a very nasty DoT. The pally tank can purge that DoT, but he has to do it instantly, or die. He didn't get it purged in time, and no amount of healing could save him. We wiped again.
On our third try we killed all three bosses. The chest of goodies held a very nice caster ring, but the warlock won it, I believe.
Where to now? Her name is Freya. Once a beneficial god and protector of all living things, her beautiful gardens, called the Conservatory, are now full of deadly creatures bent to the will of the Old Gods. Wild has never seen Freya, nor her gardens. There are a lot of trash mobs to get through, we were advised. Once we got in there, and started working through the mobs, I wondered if we would ever see the end of them.
The Conservatory
Freya in the Conservatory
First there were the flowers. Pretty little things, petals bouncing as they moved. They travelled in bunches, and always with a larger flower nearby. One tank took the big flower, and the other the bunch of little ones. DPS focused on the large flower first, and once we'd killed it everyone crowded up to the other flowers and they were DPSed down.
Very nice, the raid leader commented after flowers went down. But we are a long way from finished.
Close by was another group of 4-5 mobs. This group included humanoids, dragonoids, an elemental, and probably a beast (I think), all with differing abilities. Two had to be crowd controlled. The warlock was assigned to Banish the elemental. The dragonoid could be Hibernated by a druid, and Wild volunteered for that duty while the other druid healed. The kills went smoothly. We cleared a couple more groups of mobs of each type, and then we came upon Elder Brightleaf. The Elders are mini-bosses. Left alive (which would be hard mode) they add additional abilities to Freya. Since this was the first time our group would be facing Freya, we wanted to kill the Elders first. There are three Elders, each with their own abilities. The raid leader explained the fight against Elder brightleaf, we engaged, and the Elder died. Those who had fought the Elders before on their mains said that despite being mini-bosses, they were pretty tough, so we were off to a good start.
More trash mobs, more crowd controlling and killing and snuffing out the pretty flowers. Another Elder went down. And then there was more trash. And then a third Elder went down. It took us the better part of an hour to clear all the trash and take down the three Elders.
And then there was only Freya.
Freya is another giant woman, like the Cat Lady. WoW developers must have loved the movie "Attack of the 50 Foot Woman" because there seem to be enough of them scattered about Azeroth to field a football team.
There are a lot of moving parts to this encounter, and it took a very long time for the raid leaders to explain the mechanics of the fight. By the time our heads were stuffed with a thousand details, I think we were all chomping at the bit - let's kill something!
We took off after Freya, who tends to wander about in her Conservatory. The pally tank grabbed aggro and the first wave of adds spawned. They were flowers, but a special kind of flower, the kind that when they die explode quite spectacularly. We rushed to get in a circle around Freya, close enough that all of the flowers (which attacked raiders at random and could not be tanked) were in AoE range. The DPS tried to burn them down to around 20% health. Flowers were running around everywhere, though, and not all were hit with the AoEs. Then they started exploding as they died. Raid leaders called out for the raid to widen the circle so that fewer raiders would be hit when the flowers exploded. Raiders were already dying, and flowers were still about, when the next wave arrived.
Three elementals spawned in the middle of the chaos. Raiders assigned to tank the elementals went after them. While all that was going on Wild was hit with a Sunbeam from Freya. Wild scrambled away from the beam, which does damage in a eight yard circle. Even with all of the adds, you couldn't forget about Freya, either. Freya still had to be tanked, although during the waves of mobs she heals so fast it is useless to attack her directly. Things fell apart pretty rapidly, and we wiped.
Not a bad first try, we were told. This is a very complex fight. No kidding.
On our second attempt the first wave consisted of one mob, an Ancient Conservator. the Conservator is the third type of mob that can spawn. The waves are random, the only condition being that the same type of wave never spawns twice in a row. When the Conservator appeared, mushrooms began sprouting around the area. Wild did some more scrambling, getting under a mushroom as I continued to frantically heal. The Conservator Silences any raider that is not under a mushroom, stopping both caster DPS and healing for 8 seconds. Another raider had taken refuge under the same mushroom as Wild, and a skull popped up over his head. He'd been infected with Nature's Fury, which does AoE to any nearby. Recognizing the danger, the infected raider raced away, looking for an unoccupied mushroom to get under.
We managed to kill the Conservator just before a wave of flowers spawned. We did better with the flowers, clearing them before the third wave, which was another Conservator. Pre-occupied with healing those hit with the exploding flowers, Wild was late getting under a mushroom and had to wait through the 8 second Silence before I could heal again. We barely got through that phase before the three elementals spawned. Each elemental has different abilities, and like certain other encounters, all three must be killed within a couple of seconds of each other or they will simply respawn again when killed. Managing the tanking and DPS for the three elementals was giving us all kinds of trouble and we wiped again. And that was only three waves. We had to get through six waves.
We wiped a third time. And a fourth. And a fifth. But we were learning. We had the flowers and the Conservators down pat, and Freya was being handled well while we worked through the waves.
We've got this, a raid leader said. On our sixth attempt we got through four waves and then wiped again. Dang! It was five minutes short of 9pm, when are raid would end.
Ok, want to go one more time? we were asked. Let's see if we can get through the waves. I'd at least like to take some shots at Freya. The big Beitch has been laughing at us all night.
We agreed, and went at her a seventh time. And we got through all six waves. Wild's charge, though, the off tank, took some horrific damage and Wild and his fellow healers just couldn't keep him alive. Battle rezzes had already been used by then and all he could do was watch as we entered the second phase, the battle with Freya herself. Freya fussed, and she stomped, and she cast sunbeams, and she dropped nature bombs all around her, the tank keeping her moving so we could avoid them.
And then, just like that, Freya died. Woot! Alt-10's first kill of Freya.
Freya drops the T8/8.5 gloves, which on this drop was intended for warriors, hunters, and shaman. The gloves went to a very happy hunter, who happened to be the only hunter in the raid with no warriors or shaman.
We only killed two bosses (or five, if we counted the three mini-bosses), but it was a great night and capped a great week of raiding.
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