Friday/Weekend (2 Oct) - Elites, An Endangered Species?

Friday/Weekend (2 Oct) - Elites, An Endangered Species?

Wild was greatly encouraged by the turn out for the Friday night guild raid. This was our first planned ten man raid since the guild announced that 25 man raids were being put on hiatus. No raid sign up had been established for the Friday raid, and with no DKP at stake for not being around at the raid start time, it was an open question as to how many would be in game. But we had a good turn out. At least 15 raiders showed up, perhaps a few more. It took a little longer than usual to sort out who was here, what classes and roles needed to be filled, make the invites, and, of course, decide where we were going.

The two raid leaders for our 25 man raids were part of the ten man, only they were on alts, since both lead their own ten man teams. Rh was running his druid tank alt, and surveydrood introduced us to his newest level 80, a pally tank. We had four veteran healers available, and all were invited: Wild, P-Jo, the other priest (who's nickname I still have to dig up, but let's call him pH), and a returning resto druid, Mg, who had gone off to do other things for a few months. There were other alts and players with varying levels of gear and experience. We weren't a PUG, exactly, since it was all guild raiders, but it certainly was a different looking kind of raid than we are used to running.

The decision was to head to Ulduar. Most of the raiders had at least some familiarity with at least some of the bosses, so that would give this group a small leg up. We did not set any hard modes, either, going with the normal (and still dangerous enough) mode.

Wild was assigned to a chopper for the first encounter, Flame Leviathon. For normal mode ten man we don't launch raiders onto the top of Levi to kill turrets as the extra damage was not usually necessary to beat this fight. That made the chopper job a bit easier since Wild and the other chopper driver would not be trying to save parachuting raiders tossed from the top of Levi. The choppers had another chore, though (in addition to the normal role of dropping oil slicks in front of Levi), and that was to pick up power canisters and deliver them to demolishers, who used them to fuel their weaponry. P-Jo got to be a siege engine driver for the first time. Rh took the gunner position on her tank, and with Rh's guidance P-Jo quickly learned the controls.

There was a learning curve to the fight, but no serious miss-steps, and Flame Leviathon met it's match, breaking apart when it's health crunched to zero.

We headed to Razorscale next. The priest, pH, asked Wild what the healing assignments would be, and with P-Jo's backing ensured that Wild would again be handling that role. With Lady Hunter's group, I knew all of the regulars and knew the strats we used, and could set healing assignments based on that. With this new group, Wild checked in with the raid leader to make sure we were thinking along the same lines.

Razorscale only needed two healers, and the raid leader asked that the two druids handle the healing so the two priests could go shadowform for the ranged DPS. The two tanks for the evening were both pallies: surveydrood's alt and a very fine pally who often tanked our 25 mans. Wild assigned Mg to Rh's druid, and Wild took surveydrood's alt.

On our first attempt we did pretty well, considering. We wiped, but like many fights, you need to experience it at least once before getting a feel for it. On our second attempt we killed Razorscale.

Razor dropped [Eye of the Broodmother], a trinket with very high crit and a strange ability that stacked additional spell power with each hit or heal. Wild is not a big fan of what I call "gimmick" abilities which require something to happen in order to get the benefit. But when Mg explained that on average the gimmick produced an additional 125 spell power (compare that to Wild's best trinket, which can deliver 111 spell power) and, well, Wild rolled for it.

We are not using DKP for these runs, so items were rolled on and went to the highest roll, with the usual courtesies of class and need. Wild didn't win the roll, but it went to someone who could use it, as did a good bit of the gear won during this raid.

So far so good, so we decided to try the decidedly more difficult Ignis. In 25 man there is only one strategy. Kite Ignis in a square around the chamber while chasing and killing the constructs that spawn using a rather complicated process of catch, burn, douse, and kill. In ten man Wild discovered that there is another strategy that's simpler, but can be used only if there is enough DPS to make it work. We decided to use the simpler strategy, which is a lot easier to learn.

Before we could get to Ignis, however, there was a rather difficult stretch of trash mobs. First is a pair of Molten Giants. They pack a huge AoE wallop and can also Silence. They are separated from each other when the battle starts so that their attacks don't overlap. One giant is pulled to the right, where eight raiders are assembled. This giant will be killed first and, hopefully, quickly. The other giant is pulled to the left by one tank, with one healer with him to keep him alive until the rest of the raid can join in after killing the other one. Wild was healing the tank pulled away from the rest of the raid.

We engaged and Wild set up cautiously halfway around a corner, trying to use line of sight to make sure I didn't get Silenced while still being able to heal the tank. Wild took a couple of hits and started to self-heal with the tank at full health. Wild didn't get off his self-heal as I did not get out of LOS and was caught in a Silence. All I could was stand there as the Giant killed me. Then he finished the job by killing the tank. Bad, bad Wild.

Fortunately, the rest of the raid brought down the first giant right at that moment and were able to pick up and kill the other one.

We moved on to battle more trash mobs on the stairs that spawn huge tornadoes that not only do heavy damage, they toss raiders high in the air. And if you happen to be tossed down the stairs, the fall damage can be fatal. Wild is used to fighting those mobs near the bottom of the stairs, which lowers the chance of dying from fall damage. This group used a strat that pulls the mobs to the top of and away from the stairs. That's fine, unless you happened to be Wild, healing the kiting tank as he rushed up the stairs, mob in tow, and got caught flatfooted by a spawning tornado - and tossed down the stairs. Wild was dead again.

"I'm not usually this squishy," Wild joked weakly as I was getting rezzed for the second time. But Wild's unlucky streak wasn't over, as I would die yet a third time before we got all of the trash mobs cleared. Wild was rezzed again, dusted himself off, and put it all behind him to set up the healing for the Ignis fight.

For Ignis we needed three healers, so P-Jo switched back from shadow to healing. P-Jo would handle raid healing as well as keep raiders alive that were scooped up by Ignis and tossed and simmered in his crotch pot. Wild stayed with healing surveydrood'a alt, who would be chasing the constructs around, and Mg had main tank healing duty.

Using the new (to Wild) Ignis strategy, the entire raid set up in the shallows area of one of the pools. Ignis will not be kited around the room; he'll be tanked standing in the water. Water douses the Scorch that Ignis does. The tricky part is the constructs. They will all come racing to the raid, where the off tank will pick them up. They aren't killed, though, because when killed they explode, delivering a massive AoE to anyone close to them. They are simply tanked. Over time the constructs will become too numerous to contain, and since gnis gains additional damage dealing with every living construct, Ignis has to be killed fast.

It is really an easy strategy, and we felt pretty good when on our first try we got Ignis to 42% before wiping. We tried a second time, but the results were worse than the first. Looking at the level of DPS we were putting out, the raid leaders agreed that we didn't have enough to make this strat work.

For attempt #3 we went with the kiting strategy. Even with the additional complications of that strat and many raiders seeing it for the first time, we still got Ignis to 47% before wiping. The main tank doing the kiting had never done it before. It's tricky getting Ignis to drop his Scorch where WE wanted him to, not where HE wanted to, so there were some badly placed Scorches, but overall the main tank did a remarkable job for his first try at it.

We had him on our 4th try. Ignis is a long fight of attrition, and everyone has to stay focused for the whole fight. The tank was doing the four square kiting, healers were saving every raider tossed into the pot, the construct team (which included Wild) were capturing and killing the constucts, and the DPS kept up a steady barrage of damage on Ignis.

Ignis starts the fight with around 6 million in health. When we got him down to under 500,000 (less than 10% health left) we started getting excited. The fight had gone even longer than usual, though, and we had run out of rezzes for dying raiders, but this monster was going down.

We fought hard, losing raiders stingily, but we started to feel the pressure build. When we hit 100,000 health left we had 8 raiders up and things went very fast from there ...100,000 ... 50,000 ... 25,000 ... 15,000 ... we were down to four raiders, counting Wild ... 10,000 ... three raiders ... 5,000 ... 2 raiders ... 2,500 ... Wild died, leaving only surveydrood's alt, the pally tank ... 1,000 ... surveydrood self-healing and tanking and DPSing at the same time, a truly impressive thing to watch ... 900 ... 800 ... 792 ... surveydrood died.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaagggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!

We wiped with Ignis' health at 0.01%. One one hundredth of one percent. It was epic, and we were all juiced for the 5th attempt. And we killed him.

Riding the high from the near kill of Ignis and then taking him down, we swept like a tidal wave into XT and downed him on our first try.

Wild did not get any loot, but lots of folks did. It was a great end to the week. Wild is looking forward to next week where hopefully Wild can get into both guild and Lady Hunter raids.

Uh, so what's with the title "Elites, An Endangered Species?"

Thought you might ask that.

JB was already on an elite roll with the defeat of three level 75 elites in the Shade of Arugal quest chain. On Saturday JB was back to deal with another level 75 elite, Ursoc the Bear god, in Grizzly Hills. JB was on the way to that appointment when DER, who was questing in Dragonblight, asked for some additional firepower against his own collection of elites.

"You got it," JB replied, just let me take care of Ursoc first.

JB arrived at Ursoc's den and spoke with Tur Ragepaw, who had offered to help with the fight against Ursoc. What was interesting about this particular task is that not only was Ragepaw a druid, he offered JB his choice of spec: resto, moonkin, or feral tank. Given JB's earlier success against level 75 elites, she asked Ragepaw to go moonkin. "Let's just burn him down," a confident JB told ragepaw.

There is a long path between Ragepaw and Ursoc's den, lined with non-elite bears. That slowed us down as the two made their way to Ursoc. The monster-sized bear came into view, and JB opened the assault. With both JB and Ragepaw delivering the goods, JB expected Ursoc to go down quickly, but concern grew as it became obvious that Ursoc had considerable health and was dying a lot more slowly than JB. Ursoc was also interrupting JB's casts, slowing the damage. JB realized too late that she should have started out slower and let Ragepaw take the brunt of the damage from Ursoc, but it was now too late to shed aggro. JB fought to keep heals up, but it became a losing battle of heal and do insufficient damage or DPS and risk death. JB took the risk, and died.

After rezzing JB conferred with Ragepaw again. Stung by Ursoc shrugging off her DPS, she asked Ragepaw to heal this time. JB felt that two healers (since JB could still heal herself if needed) was better than risk having Ragepaw go down too early as a tank. The combination worked, and Ursoc died. JB was so happy she nearly walked away without completing the last step in the quest, but remembered in time, getting back to the corpse to perform a ritual before the body despawned.

Ursoc's Corpse

Note that a new Ursoc had already spawned by the time JB got back to finish the quest. Good thing Ragepaw was already gone or JB might have ended up fighting Ursoc again.

With JB's work done she headed to Dragonflight to find DER already kiting a huge satyr-like beast with the torso of a man and the body of - an elephant? Also known as Gigantaur. Wanted for "Bein' ugly." JB landed behind the beastman, dropped totems, and then ran out of range of them as she chased after the mob and DER, who was making sure to stay well ahead of the hard hitting mob.

Huffing and puffing to get in range, JB tossed a Flame Shock at the Gigantaur to get his attention and then hastily dropped totems and cast Lava Burst as the mob turned and charged back at JB.

Oww! That thing hits hard! JB was not able to get a rhythm going and was surprised by the amount of damage she was taking. In short order JB went down.

Ok, do over, I wasn't ready for that!

The elite DER was after was one of three DER had found Wanted Posters on. Kill them all, and an even nastier bad guy came into our sights. DER shared the Wanted Poster quests so JB could complete them as well.

When JB was ready the pair went chasing after the elephant man again. This time, with DER constantly in the mob's face, JB was able to pound away, as well as dropping an occasional heal on DER, who held his own quite well. It was no contest and Gigantaur died.

The second criminal was hiding behind several mobs we had to clear first. Magister Keldonus had no where to hide, though, and we took him down. Then, while looking up where to find the third elite, Keldonus respawned on us - so we killed him a second time.

The third elite was a drake that we had to bring down to earth, named Dreadtalon. The drak gave a spirited fight but was squishier than the other two and crumpled quickly.

DER and JB returned to the quest giver to complete the three quests and pick up the final challenge, a level 75 elite frostwyrm. Sarathstra was so deadly it was recommended that he not be attempted with less than five players. We would take him on with two.

At level 72 one would think DER would have trouble tanking the big icy wyrm, but the deathknight has a lot of tricks up his sleeve. Twice JB had to add heals, but other than that DER manhandled and frustrated the elite while JB steadily burned him down. With just two of us it took a little time, but the result was never in doubt. Down he went.

There must be more elites out there that we could take on, but for now they all seem to have gone into hiding. Elites are definitely on the endangered list when DER and JB are around.