Friday/Weekend (22 Nov) - Wild Goes Boomkin on Alliance

Friday/Weekend (22 Nov) - Wild Goes Boomkin on Alliance

Wild was smart enough to hang around in Dalaran until the destination for our Friday ten man raid was certain. But I was pretty sure that, with Wintergrasp Fortress in Horde control, we would be heading there first. Sure enough, as soon as we were all assembled he told us to pack our bags and make haste to Vault of Archovan (VoA) in Wintergrasp.

We started one raider short of ten, but decided to clear trash and attempt the #2 boss, Emalon, while waiting on our tenth. Given our predeliction to use two healers, Wild kept silent when it became clear the healers would be Wild and another druid, with the priest in our group going shadow spec for the extra DPS. We managed well enough, and Emalon went down on our first try.

We got our tenth raider, and we went after the big guy, Koralon. We actually did quite well on our first attempt, but the raid damage was too much for the healers to keep up while still keeping two tanks alive. Two healers would not be enough. Wild said as much to the raid leader, who surprised Wild by being surprised that we had only two raiders healing. Sometimes it's hard to fathom what this raid wants from their healers. Wild asked the priest to switch to healing spec as our third healer. We made two more attempts on Koralon, but couldn't bring him down. Wintergrasp was resetting for the next battle, and we had to leave.

On to Ulduar. We were breaking in another rookie tank as our off tank, and we were starting with the very difficult Cat Lady. The opening pull is the nastiest part of the fight, and it took four tries before the tanks worked out the kinks. The fifth attempt was near epic, as the fight seemed to go on forever, with all three druids in the raid using their battle rezzes to keep the fight going. When one of the tanks finally died, we were on the verge of wiping, but nobody gave up and seconds later Cat Lady went down. It was a troubling sign, though, that we had to ask our rogue to switch to his shaman main to help with the DPS. We were just not getting enough damage on the boss. On his shaman, he led the DPSers with over 4k DPS on the final fight. When I checked the DPS for the previous attempts, his rogue was also the lead DPSer, with over 3k DPS. Only one other raider had over 2k DPS. Under 2k DPS in Ulduar is not good, and it greatly extended the fights.

Between the Cat Lady and Iron Council attempts we had a long wait as the raid leader/main tank got a call from work and had to step away to handle it.

We were feeling a bit rushed by the time we were all ready to go again. We made four attempts on the three bosses of the Iron Council encounter, but never managed to kill even one of them. There were a lot of mistakes; even Wild cost us one of the attempts. One of the bosses has a very high damage explosion type attack that is easy to avoid by moving away from from him when he starts to cast it. Wild had measured the safe range on the first two attempts, and when I set up for the third attempt Wild went back to the same spot. I didn't notice that the tank handling that boss had positioned him closer than before. When the blast went off, it caught Wild and I died.

Four tries were all we had time for, and we had to call it a night.

Wild wasn't ready to give up on the night, however. Wild has 24 triumph emblems, and needed just one more to be able to buy the druid relic that he desperately wanted. Triumph emblems can only be earned in 25 man raids or in the daily Heroic. A new Wintergrasp battle was about to start, and often 25 man VoA raids are formed after the battle - assuming the Horde won.

Wild decided to go to Wintergrasp. It was his first ever trip into the zone for anything other than doing the fishing daily. And he went as a moonkin so that he could kill things.

Wild had a pretty good time. With three AoE spells Wild could really light up a battlefield. Add two DoTs from Moonfire and Insect Swarm, and lots of allie raiders were running around with ticking death on them. And with Wrath as his six shooter, Wild got pretty good at burning down enemy cannon as well. Running around in a chicken suit attracted a lot of unwanted attention, though, and Wild died quite a bit from focus fire attacks. Moonkin have a lot of defensive ways to stay alive, I just wasn't very good at them. I did like to drop my treants whenever I could. Having three trees running around bashing things helped confuse things a bit more. It was a longer battle than I normally see with JB, and the longer an attack goes the less likely the victory. But we got the win!

Wild started the battle with 41 lifetime kills. He ended the battle with 148. Sweet. :-)

Unfortunately, no VoA 25s formed up. Wild wanted to get a guild daily Heroic run going, but there were so few guildies around that didn't work out, either. Wild waited around hoping to catch on with a PUG group, but my luck stayed rotten and Wild finally called it a night. Maybe over the weekend Wild could get it done.

However, there was very little action over the weekend from anyone in the Wild Family. With Thanksgiving coming and several friends and relatives coming to stay with us, most of the weekend was tied up with preparations. Wild even had to bow out of the new 25 man raid scheduled for Sunday, which I really hated to do. Wild isn't sure about Monday night's old school raid, either, but maybe we'll get enough done so that Wild can get there.