Wednesday (18 Nov) - From ToC to Onyxia to Ulduar

Wednesday (18 Nov) - From ToC to Onyxia to Ulduar

The new Trial of the Crusader (ToC) MM guild raid kicked off at 3pm on Wednesday - with three raiders. Even the raid leader, feraldruid, was running a little late. I must admit that if nothing else, this was a patient bunch. We eventually got the raid to a full ten, with our first pull at 4:25pm, nearly an hour and a half late. There were some familiar faces - Bd, the warrior tank and raid leader for the regular MM guild Ulduar run, feraldruid of course, and a shaman that used to come to Lady Hunter's raids. Wild also met a lot of new friends, some in the MM guild, a couple that were real life friends of feraldruid, and other friends of friends. Wild decided to try this raid because with just the one raid per week (the guild Alt-10), Wild was missing out on other raids that the group didn't get to. Ideally, Wild should be doing ten man raids in Ulduar, ToC, Onyxia, and VoA. Of those four, ToC was the raid that Alt-10 spent the least time on, so to Wild it made sense to "guarantee" doing that raid with a group in which it was their main focus.

Bd and a lady pally was assigned to tank, and we started with two druids doing all of the healing, Wild and Bw. Bw's gear was pretty impressive. He has the full five piece set of Runetotem's Regalia, which is the Tier 9 set, the best Tier set you can get without doing the really hard modes. The set is bought with emblems of Triumph from doing 25 man raids. Bw had to have spent 210 triumph emblems to get the full set. By comparison, Wild has never spent one triumph emblem on anything, and he has a grand total of 21.

We made two attempts on the first boss encounter, called Northrend Beasts, which is actually a wave of three boss encounters with no breaks in between. The first boss, Gormok, we were able to kill, but could not beat the second encounter, which is a pair of frostwyrms. With just two healers, both of us druids, the healing pace was frenetic, and both of us topped over 3k healing: Bw at 3.4k and Wild at 3.1k. I guess Wild can now brag at being a "3k healer" although that is very dependant on the type of fight and the role. Even at that healing rate we could not keep the tanks alive due to the spiking type damage in which, sa druids, we quickly ran out of emergency heals.

For the next two attempts we used three healers, asking the shaman to switch from DPS to healing. That was marginally better, but we still did not get past the first two encounters. And with the very late start, we were out of time. This is a new group, so there will be growing pains as we get used to each other and get more experience with the encounters. It was certainly fun and Wild will try to make that raid each week. And hopefully we'll begin closer to our start time.

From the MM ToC raid Wild rolled right into the Alt-10 raid. This group believes in "just in time" arrival. At 5:50pm there were two of us in game. At 6:05pm we had our full ten of mostly regulars. One note - it looks like surveydrood has bowed out of the Alt-10 on a permanent basis. It was partly due to friction with another guildy that initiated the small firestorm about the problems with guild raiding, but it was also because he had offered to help get the Alt-10 going, but had never intended to be a long term participant. Surveydrood was our second tank on his pally alt, so with him gone we have had several different raiders filling that role depending on who was available. For this night's raid hpriest (one of our regular healers) was asked to switch to his paladin and tank.

Wild had just arrived at Ulduar when the raid leader told us we were going to start at Onyxia. Several raiders got a chuckle at that as they, too, were at Ulduar or were on their way there. So off we went to Onyxia.

Raiders enter Onyxia's Lair through a spiked gate that in vanilla WoW required a key. Anyone can open it now. Inside is a dark, narrow passage that winds around to a small alcove in the rocks. No one takes that passage, though, as a short way in we can jump down from a ledge to that same alcove. From there is a wider passage with a few trash mobs that can be a little tricky if more than one is pulled at a time, but is otherwise pretty easy to manage. The raid leader let hpriest (on his pally) tank the trash mobs as he was very new to tanking. One purpose of the Alt-10 is to get raiders experience, so this was good.

Once through the trash mobs, the passage opens up into a large, circular cavern. A sleeping Onyxia lies at the opposite end. On either side of the cavern are two smaller spaces full of whelp eggs.

We started with three healers, two druids and a pally that was new to the group. We also had a priest that was new to the group as well, but he was asked to go shadow spec. Wild loves shadow priests, because they have skills which increase and extend mana. Hpriest got to tank Onyxia.

The fight starts with Wild pre-HoTing up the tank. We have to run all the way across the cavern to engage Onyxia, and the tank always took some big hits in the initial going. The HoTs kept him alive long enough for us to get into position. Once engaged the tank turned Onyxia toward the back wall of the cavern to keep him pointed away from the raid and so that Onyxia's knock back would only throw the tank up against the wall instead of across the room. The battle went on for a bit like this. The tank took heavy damage but raid damage is light and all healers are focusing on the tank.

Onyxia started thinking about taking wing, and at that point the tank started kiting the dragon across the room and out of the way of the next phase of the fight. Onyxia leaped into the air and starting raining fireballs down on the raid. Whelps poured out of both sides of the cavern, and from another direction a large, nasty dragonoid came pouncing at us as well. With Onyxia in the air, main tank duties changed to grabbing and killing the large dragonoids. The off tank gathered up the dozens of whelps, getting them all together so that the AoE DPSers could burn them down. Healing can get dangerous at this stage, as both tanks and raiders need healing help, but overdo it and you'll have whelps in your face.

"Flame Breath!" The raid leader called out this deadly frontal attack. Wild still hasn't mastered the trick of being able to see where Onyxia is and what direction she's facing when she started to cast that Breath, so Wild sees where is neighbors are running and high tails it with them. That doesn't always work. Wild followed a tank once - they can survive a Breath, and so don't always get out of the way. Wild can't. Ouch. And then sometimes Wild follows someone who has no idea which way to run either. Then we both usually die. But Wild was guessing right most of the time and hanging in there.

Onyxia descended to the ground and the process repeated itself. The second time Onyxia took wing is the hardest. We have been fighting her awhile, there were a couple of dead raiders sprawled on the ground, and the packs of the whelps never seem to pack together as well as the first time. Wild kept up the healing, swatting at whelps that kept harrying him. The pally tank found two of the dragonoids running about and it was touch and go keeping him alive while they were killed. Flame Breath seared raiders caught (luckily) only on it's fringes. Onyxia dropped down again, and the tank fought to get her positioned away from the raid, but not before her tail sweep sent raiders, including Wild, soaring across the room. That tail sweep, or her wing buffet, which is the frontal knockback, kept slapping raiders all over the cavern as we struggled to contain her movement. With all that going on the fires that erupted through cracks in the floor were no more than one more deadly nuisance to avoid.

It took us four tries. The first two were with three healers. We weren't getting enough damage on her, though, so the other druid went moonkin and Wild and the pally healed. On our fourth attempt Onyxia died.

Onyxia dropped three pieces of gear, none of it usable by a druid. She also dropped a bag of jewels and a 22 slot bag that Wild did not roll on. Why? Because Wild had rolled a 98 out of 100 and won the one item Wild really wanted, the [Head of Onyxia]. Turning in Onyxia's head offers a choice of three items, two of which Wild has no need of. The one he took, though, is a magnificent one: [Polished Dragonslayer's Signet]. Calling it just a ring doesn't do it justice. This is an ilevel 245 ring, which is higher level gear than the ilevel 232 Tier 9 set Bw has. Ok, so it's only one piece of gear. But it's now the highest level gear Wild has ever attained.

After Onyxia the raid leader asked if anyone was saved to ToC (being saved to an instance means you can't join a different raid to that instance until it resets on Tuesdays). Wild raised his hand. I was the only one. So we didn't go to ToC, we headed for Ulduar.

We destroyed the first boss, Flame Leviathon, so fast we won the Achievement for the speed kill. We had done so well with just two healers on Onyxia, we decided to stay with that for the bosses in Ulduar, too. Down went Razorscale and XT-02 on our first try. I was particularly proud of the XT kill with just two healers, as this is a very healing intensive fight. Kologarn was a different matter, as Kologarn's Grip took a healer out of action. We added a third healer, and Kologarn fell as well.

Two people had to leave and we ended the night there. Had we stayed, I'm sure the Cat lady would have fallen as well. Ah, well, she'll wait until Friday.