While there was no sign up for the Wednesday raid, and several guildies were plainly confused about what we were or weren't doing (including one who posted on the website that he could not make the 25 man raid), most of the usual gang of 15 or so that always show up were again in game. The alts for the two raid leaders, a feral druid and a paladin, were our tanks. We had four raiders who could heal, but we were a versatile bunch and all of us at one point or another played roles other than healing. Bottom line is that, with minor exceptions, Wednesday's raid looked much like the raids from last week.
Ulduar was our target. Our battle with the first boss, Flame Leviathon, was swift and decisive, taking him down very quickly.
Razorscale was up next. Wild was in charge of the healing, and put Wild on the main tank and P-Jo on the off tank, with both of us raid healing. Two healers had worked out ok last week, but this week we wiped on our first attempt when we could not keep the tanks up. For some reason it was easier to manage with two druid healers on Friday, but did not work with a druid/priest pair on this night. We added a third healer, another druid, Hd, who, coincidentally, is a returning player who'd missed a lot of game time and only recently got her toon to level 80.
With three healers we had no trouble with Razor and the dragon fell.
Last week we had then taken on another optional boss, Ignis, but we bypassed him this time as the raid leaders did not feel we had a good raid makeup that that fight. Instead, we headed straight to XT. I was a little concerned about Hd's healing. She was a good healer, but under geared, and Wild preferred that pH, the other priest, help heal instead. Hd was happy to switch to moonkin. Wild was main tank healer for the pally, with P-Jo and pH working the off tank and the raid.
Wild was pushed a little main tank healing the pally. He wasn't under geared, but like the alt feral druid tank, they weren't as well geared as the tanks Wild normally healed for. There was certainly more challenge to it, and with the other two healers very busy themselves, Wild held complete responsibility for the tank. Wild, for the first time in awhile, was burning through his mana at a higher rate than he would like. We were doing well, though, and we were getting good damage on XT. However, we struggled with the adds, particularly when a couple of the bots reached XT, healing her by 30% and extending the fight. It was touch and go at the end, but XT died.
Hd had to leave after that, and we replaced her with a deathknight alt of another raider.
Kologarn, the giant viking, came into our sights next. And he was trouble. There are two main concerns with this fight. One is Grip, where Kologarn tries to "crush the life out you!" which he is fond of hollering when he snatches a raider in his gloved hand and squeeeeeezes. The other is the eyebeams, lightning strikes of usually two at a time that target a raider and then chase them, doing collateral damage to anyone close by as well. Kologarn took a fancy to Wild and I was Gripped at least six times during the battles with Kologarn. Wild never died from it, thanks to P-Jo, who kept those Gripped alive. Wild did die - twice - to those blasted eyebeams. The strategy with those beams is when targeted, run to the opposite side of the room away from other raiders. When not targeted, immediately step out of the way of nearby eyebeams to avoid getting hit with collateral damage. Poor Wild got his head on backward for one of the eyebeam attacks, stubbornly thinking that he wasn't the one targeted, and trying to step away from it, all the while it followed him around, fellow raiders frantically scattering to get away from Wild. Sigh. Not Wild's best moment.
It took three tries, but Kologarn finally fell. Kologarn dropped another one of those "gimmick" trinkets Blizz loves so much, called [Spark of Hope]. The gimmick was a good one, though, which when worn reduces the mana cost of all spells by 42. That's pretty darn nice to have, amounting to thousands of extra mana, even if Wild did have to remove a +100 spell power trinket to equip it. Oh yes, Wild won that one.
Then it was on to Auriaya, also known as the Cat Lady.
Two trash mobs have to be taken out before reaching Cat Lady that require special handling. The pair must be tanked apart from each other, must die within a few seconds of each other, and during the fight they also release a large spark that travels from one to the other. I'm not sure what the spark does if it reaches the other mob, but it would be bad. Most often a moonkin is used to cast Entangling Roots on the spark continuously to hold it in place while the DPS burns it down. We had no moonkin as Hd had to leave after XT. We had no one else who could do the equivalent of a druid root - except Wild, of course. So Wild stayed out of tree form and during the trash mob fight Wild Rooted each spark as it formed, spamming roots until the spark was destroyed. In between sparks, Wild HoTed up the two tanks to help with the healing. The trash mobs died, and Wild got to do something besides healing. Cool.
As has been mentioned before, success or failure with the Cat Lady begins and ends with the pull. Do it right, and the chances for success go way up. Do it wrong, and it's a wipe. Every time. The pally was the main tank and would be handling the Cat Lady. pH was assigned to heal him. Wild took the feral druid off tank, who would be handling the trickier pair of pouncing cats that accompany Auriaya.
On our first attempt Wild's tank died within seconds. We tried a second time, and Wild could keep the tank up only barely longer before he died again. Druids only have two emergency heals - once Wild uses up Swiftmend and Nature's Swiftness aided Healing Touch, any large heal took several seconds to cast. And the tank wasn't lasting that long. A better geared tank might be able to weather the damage better. So we decided to switch tank roles, putting the pally tank on the cats and the feral druid on Cat Lady. In addition, taking into account Wild's class shortcoming in fast, big heals, we enlisted another paladin in the group who had been doing DPS all evening to switch to healing. The pally healer and Wild both would heal the pally tank on the cats during the early part of the fight, and the pally would then switch over to the main tank on Cat Lady once we got the cats down.
It worked, and we got through the initial pull successfully. The rest of the fight was exciting, blasting away at the Cat Lady, the whole raid tightly grouped together to mitigate the AoE damage she does, getting Feared every few seconds and then immediately rushing back to position after the Fear, and finally Auriaya died.
It was Wild's first kill of the Cat Lady.
Wild also won a cloth shoulder piece from Auriaya, [Mantle of the Preserver]. It looked good when Wild compared it to his ragged T7 shoulders, the oldest piece of gear he was still using, and none of the cloth wearers wanted it. Later, after going over it in detail, it proved to be a poor match. The good stats were in areas Wild was fine, but the important stats were actually worse on the new piece than on his T7. Wild was not going to be able to use it, and that old T7 had to stay.
We still had a little bit of time left and made our way to the Iron Council. The Iron council is three bosses. The biggest and meanest is Steelbreaker, who is usually the first kill target. The other two bosses are rounded up by the off tank and pulled away from Steelbreaker until he is killed.
Wild has done this fight successfully in both 10 and 25 mans, and knows what to do. Knowing what to do and doing it proved to be two different things. Wild, as the off tank healer, was not able to keep the feral druid tank alive long enough even to get the two bosses pulled away. We tried twice, and twice Wild's tank died. The second time Wild used both his emergency heals, but it wasn't enough to save him.
We ended the evening, though, having made more progress than last week, and Wild got his first Cat Lady kill and two drops. A good night overall.
After the raid Wild was still fretting over the Iron Council fight, so I whispered to surveydrood (the pally tank alt who is also usually a druid moonkin/healer in our raids). He's also one of the two raid leaders. Surveydrood can be a bit imposing in the raid, as I've commented on before, because he seems to be able to see everything that is going on and is quick to correct any miscues practically the moment they happen. But he was fair and straightforward, and if Wild was doing something wrong I knew he would tell me, and offer suggestions for changes.
We had an excellent private conversation. We went over general healing principles for druids, all of which mirrored what both of us were doing. We had minor differences in style, with Wild still clinging to regrowth over nourish as Blizz tries to force druids into a nourish centric healing pattern, which surveydrood has already adopted. So not really any significant differences in healing strategy. For the specific Iron Council fight, two suggestions came out of the discussion. In pre-healing before the fight, both of us put up a stack of three lifeblooms, but surveydrood also adds a regrowth for the 27 second Hot as well. That's easy enough for Wild to do, but it didn't address the core issue. When we start the fight, the off tank has to run in and aggro two bosses, and then pull them a good distance away from the rest of the raid. Wild is running with him, refreshing HoTs and (in the fight) casting the only two big instant heals I have. Surveydrood said he uses Nourish to heal the off tank, which can't be cast when moving. Bottom line is that he finds a way to get into a position where he can stop and heal with nourish at the point the off tank slows to kite the two bosses, which is the point at which he is likely to start taking heavy damage. Tricky, and not something that Wild has needed to do on prior Iron Council fights, but apparently it's something Wild will have to figure out how to do.
Surveydrood added that the feral tank was a bit under geared to handle the damage from those two bosses, so it was a tough heal no matter who or how it was done, and who knows if any healer could have saved him under those circumstances. So don't sweat it, he told Wild.
We wrapped up our conversation, and Wild thanked him for the advice. "Any time, bud," he replied.
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