Friday/Weekend (8 Nov) - Busy Busy Weekend

Friday/Weekend (8 Nov) - Busy Busy Weekend

It was a pretty busy weekend, and the process usually is to take things in chronological order - but JB was too excited to wait her turn.

On Sunday morning JB participated in her first Wintergrasp battle of the day around 8am. The Horde was on the attack against the defending Alliance. We came very close to losing it. Too many Horde raiders took the Allie bait and descended on the west walls of the fortress. Short of raiders, they stacked all their people on the west side. Only late did the raid leader start YELLING in raid chat to abandon the west wall and get to the east wall, which was mostly undefended. With time running out, we crashed through the east wall and won back the fortress. JB picked up her three WG Marks of Honor and headed back to Dalaran. After every victory there is a mass Looking For Group going on in local chat as the victors form up 10 and 25 man Vault of Archovan (VoA) raids. JB does not advertise herself as she is still pretty under-geared, and everyone is asking for healers, tanks and 3k+ DPS raiders, of which JB is none of those. Often they even require proof that you've already succeeded in VoA (no rookies), or require a gear score so high those guys probaby don't need anything out of VoA other than the rare mount. That's ok, it's their raid, but it leaves JB out.

After the first rush of groups died down, another request for raiders for VoA 25 appeared in trade chat, along with a specific request for shaman. Hmmm. JB sent a whisper back to the raid leader, being honest about her gear: "elemental shaman hit capped but average gear, let me know if you need me." JB got an invite.

It took about 15 minutes more, but the raid leader put a full 25 man raid together with two tanks and five healers. JB was the only shaman.

There are three bosses in VoA - Archovan, Emalon, and Koralon, in the order of easiest to hardest. The boss everyone wants is Koralon, and that is who we started with. There were a few trash pulls first, single bosses which gave JB some good practice in getting her totems down, and rolling through her spell priority rotation. One thing that no one with a heal button can help, though, is that JB kept one eye on her health. Her DPS was no where high enough to draw aggro on the trash mobs, though, so she could fire away pretty much full bore without worrying about getting the bad guy's attention.

We got to Koralon quickly. JB knew the dangers of this fight through Wild, which was to immediately get out of the fire when it forms under her feet. Three seconds was long enough to kill JB, so she had to react fast. It was nice not having to look at the 25 boxes of the raid screen (when healing), and focus only on blasting away and watching for those fires. We got Koralon to 22% before we wiped, which is better than some of the guild Koralon attempts Wild has been involved in lately.

On our second attempt we again got Koralon down under 25% and were still in the fight. JB cast Bloodlust, speeding up the spell/melee attacks of the raid. Three times JB jumped away from the fires, and helped her healers by tossing on some self healing before going back to the attack. With a third of the raid dead, Koralon fell. JB had her first VoA kill.

Once Koralon went down the raid started losing raiders. The raid leader shored up the raid and we made two attempts on Emalon, getting him to under 50% both times, but not killing him. This "easier" fight includes four other mobs that have to be killed while still tanking Emalon. Which mob the DPSers attack depends on which one receives Emalon's Overcharge, which increases the mobs damage dealing. If the isn't killed before reaching ten stacks, he explodes, wiping the raid. JB struggled to keep the right mob targeted, the only indication being the mob will start to grow larger. Wild never even looked at them when healing, and JB, dazzled by the lights of Chain Lightning and Lightning Novas from Emalon, was often late switching targets. We wiped on Overcharge on our first attempt, and with more raiders bailing we came up short on our second attempt as well. Abandoning Emalon, the raid leader tried to hold things together for what should have been a really easy fight against Archavon, to at least get badges (and for JB, hopefully loot, too). But more raiders left, and nobody else would come since Koralon had already been killed. The raid broke up. Raiders can be so impatient.

Still, it was an incredible first experience for JB. Koralon dropped four items, two were plate and one was druid only (none of which JB can use). The fourth - well, there were a lot of salivating raiders. Koralon dropped the extremely rare [Reins of the Grand Black Mammoth]. This is a huge ground mount that can carry two passengers in addition to the rider. Five races were eligible, including troll JB. There were 12 rolls. JB rolled an 84. Not bad, will it hold up?

Sorry, no. Three (that's 3) raiders rolled perfect 100s. The three rolled again, and two of them tied with a pair of 98s. Amazing. Those two rolled for the third time - one rolled a 71, and the other a 93. The winner rolled a 100, then a 98, and then a 93 to win the Black Mammoth mount. That guy had better go out and buy a lottery ticket.

The raid DPSers were very good at the top, with two pushing 5k DPS and three others also over 4k. Any numbers under 3k started to look pretty weak. Anyone in that "weak" range? JB, raise your hand.

JB wasn't the worst DPSer. Matter of fact, when after the second Emalon wipe a raider mentioned that there were three raiders doing under 2k DPS, JB was NOT one of them. JB had to be in hard +hit cap gear because there were no moonkin or shadow priests in the raid which would have allowed JB to lower his +hit gear for more damage dealing. JB never missed on a single spell cast, which is what I wanted so I could evaluate JB's DPS in a raid setting.

Ok, so here are the numbers (I missed the first Koralon #s, so they are shown only in the overall DPS):

Koralon Kill: 2660 DPS (3.3% of total DPS), 17th place out of 20 (minus healers)
1st Emalon: 1976 DPS, 3.1%, 17th again
2nd Emalon: 2556 DPS, 4.3%, 12th

For those really, really interested, here is more. These are the four main spells JB uses for dealing damage:

Overall: 2238 DPS
Lightning Bolt (36.8% of damage, 35% crit, 2785-7189 range of damage per hit)
Lava Burst (28.9%, 100% crit, 7735-9616 damage)
Chain Lightning (20.5%, 30% crit, 2305-6901 damage)
Flame Shock (13.9%, 32% crit, 1316-2993 damage)

The rest of the Friday/Weekend goings on will come in the next post.