Wednesday (21 Oct) - At Last, A Raid

Wednesday (21 Oct) - At Last, A Raid

Wild perched on the edge of a tall, flat topped section of an Ulduar pillar, the talons of his flying form gripping the ancient stone, wings flapping lazily in the light winter breeze. For too many nights recently the evening wait for a raid had ended in disappointment with not enough fellow raiders available. On this Wednesday night, Wild waited to see what the turn out would be for two raids, the guild run that has been dubbed the Alt-10, and the MM raid which had voted to start their raid on Wednesday nights as well. Wild had received invites from both raids.

The Alt-10 raid was looking very promising with six of the eight raiders that had signed up already in game ten minutes before start time. Given the still troublesome lag and difficulty in getting logged in, this was good news. Wild also got a whisper from the MM raid leader. Wild had declined the MM raid invitation, but with the uncertainty each raid night on whether the Alt-10 would field a raid, they were ready to add Wild to their group if Wild became available.

Invites to the Alt-10 raid were made right at 6pm, and our number quickly grew to 8, with the last two just having to push their way through the lag and logon obstacles. Excited that we were really going to raid, Wild swooped down from his perch and entered Ulduar with the rest of the raid. Inside Ulduar, there were some peculiar problems related to the lag. One of the raiders was passing out food buffs, and the simple transaction via the trade window was taking more than a minute to complete. We would also discover that looting took many seconds longer than it should, but neither of those things were more than just an irritant. The battle against the denizens of Ulduar, fortunately, proceeded without any significant problems. Wild and the MM raid leader wished each other good luck (he had also filled his raid).

The Alt-10 has a core of about 6-7 raiders that typically make every raid night, and this night's raid was no different. We had our two tanks, and three of our four healers (P-Jo got tangled in the logon mess and was never able to extricate herself). DPS included two hunters, two warlocks, and our rogue. We were a little light on melee, but the rogue typically leads all DPS and so Wild counts him twice :-) .

We all pretty much knew what vehicles we should grab a seat in. Wild and the priest grabbed our choppers, the rest got into the driver or gunner seats of the demolishers and siege engines, and we were off. Flame Leviathon never knew what hit him as we set our best time in killing him and without losing a raider. Very smooth.

Levi dropped [Eye of the Broodmother] a very nice trinket that had also dropped in the last Levi fight. Wild didn't win it the last time, but this time he did. Wild now has two excellent trinkets with very odd conditional stats. The Eye's primary stat is that it stacks spell power bonuses with every hit or heal, up to an almost continuous +125 spell power throughout a fight. The other trinket, which Wild already has [Spark of Hope], reduces the mana cost of every spell cast by 42, which in effect allows Wild to cast a lot more spells for the same amount of mana.

We moved on to Razorscale. We had trouble with the dragon on our first attempt. The raider assigned to the catapult had not done that job before. The fight requires timing, keeping Razor in the air until the spawning mobs on the ground are killed, then bringing him down with the catapult. Halfway through the battle the catapult fired early, and we had an angry dragon in our midst while other mobs were still chewing on us.

We got through that, but we had further troubles with what was described as too many DoTs (damage of over time). We don't usually have two warlocks, who have a lot of DoT spells, so that was the likely source, but I never clearly understood what the issue was, other than the DoTs might have held the dragon on the ground too long, where Razor does a lot more damage than when airborne. We wiped.

The Alt-10 raid is not just so alts can have some fun and get some loot, it is also a learning raid. I like it that the time is taken to discuss and adjust when something doesn't go as planned, and that is what we did with the problems on our first attempt. On the second attempt everything went smoothly and Razor died.

We didn't have a good raid makeup for Ignis, so we skipped him and went directly to XT. As usual Wild handled the healing assignments for the raid. Wild is actually getting used to the idea of being the healing leader for the raid. When we set up for Razorscale, I assigned three healers, even though in earlier raids the raid leader had wanted only two for that fight. I'd seen how three healers worked in the MM raid from last week, and liked how that worked without taking too much away from the DPS. I gave the raid leader the opportunity to change that, but the assignments stayed. XT went so smoothly Wild had time and mana enough to DPS XT's heart during those phases, doing my usual 0.1% damage for the raid. :-)

Kologarn followed XT. You all know how Wild feels about Kologarn and those eyebeams. Well, I think Wild exorcised all of his anxieties for good on this fight. Wild had assigned the pally healer to the main tank, and the priest to raid healing and healing those in Kologarn's Grip. Wild was backing up the pally healer with HoTs and supplemental healing while also raid healing. On the very first eyebeam, Wild was the target. I dashed to the right side of the room as I was supposed to, healing through the damage and keeping away from the other raiders. No sooner did Wild get back in position I was again targeted with an eyebeam. Wild somehow kept all his Hots on the main tank while dancing across the room keeping his own health from dropping too low. Wild didn't get halfway across the room on the way back to his position when he was hit again.

Well, you know the old method of teaching someone to swim? No? You just throw them in the water. Learn or drown. Survival is a great training tool. The whole eyebeam thing started to get pretty funny. Wild was hit again and again. "There he goes again," someone said in vent, the umpteenth time I was hit. Wild never died, did not kill anyone else, and Kologarn fell. Afterward, Wild was laughingly applauded for absorbing every eyebeam Kologarn threw at the raid, allowing everyone else to go easy mode. I think Wild is over his anxiety about this fight.

From Kologarn we rolled right into Auriaya, the Cat Lady. Wild got "spark duty" again against the trash mobs, and once they were down we tackled miss kitty herself. We were really on a roll. It's not that she was an easy fight - she never is - but that we all stayed with the strategy and handled our assignments. With no mistakes to take us off track, Auriaya died. Hearing her blood curdling scream as she died is a lot more music to the ears than her snarl of wrath at the start.

There was some debate over where to head next, but after a short discussion and a break we moved on to Hodir. Three weeks ago Wild had never seen Hodir. Now he was already like a well known friend. There is a lot to deal with in this fight, but Wild likes it. We took almost too long, with the enrage timer looming over us, but we kept up our steady, no mistakes pace and we had just enough time to kill him.

We were nearly out of time, and decided to go back to the iron Council, which we had bypassed. Our makeup wasn't optimal for that fight, and when the raid leader described the healing he wanted Wild joked with him that he didn't have that many raiders, much less healers. I spread things out the best way I could, with Wild being the middle man (uh, middle cow) to move back and forth healing both the Steelbreaker tank group and the group tanking the other two bosses.

It was a tough fight. Wild was able to keep his movements down, but being between the two pockets of combat made Wild a regular target and I was having to heal through that mostly on my own. Most of Wild's focus had to be on assisting the tank healer on Steelbreaker, as the damage was high and unpredictable. Despite a dedicated healer for the off tank on the other two bosses and Wild's Hots, we lost our off tank. Losing a tank on this fight is really not something we can recover from, and we wiped.

We were very pleased with the effort despite the wipe. Our group has struggled with this fight, particularly in getting everyone into the right position at the start of the fight, which was critical. Our setup had been perfect, and that was progress.

On our second attempt Wild made a point to get extra healing to the off tank and the priest healing the off tank made his own adjustments. We were doing very well when the main tank on Steelbreaker took not one, but two of those unpredictable damage spikes. Wild got off an instant Healing Touch, but nothing could overcome the double whammy, and the tank died. It was another wipe. The double whammy was a Fusion Punch, which can inflict more than 20k damage, coupled with a Rune of Power forming under the tank at the same time, which increased the Fusion Punch damage by another 50%.

We chalked it up to bad luck, which is always a factor, bidding it's time at the periphery of every raid.

We were out of time, but the names of the dead were many on this night: Flame Leviathon, Razorscale, XT-002, Kologarn, Auriaya, and Hodir.

Come Friday, Wild will be eager add to that list.

Wild finished third among the three healers, but didn't care because we got the job done, putting the right amount of healing in the right places at the right time. Bosses went down and we had very few deaths as well.

#1: Mxpally, 2630 hps, 34.7% healing
#2: hpriest, 2107/26.9%
#3: Wild, 1811/26.7%