Weekend (29 Nov) - Mish Mash and Mighty Beasts

Weekend (29 Nov) - Mish Mash and Mighty Beasts

It was mostly Philly this weekend, and mostly about raising her skills in jewelcrafting. With help from Melasahnd on grinding mining nodes for ore and gems, and help from JB on scouring Family member banks for odds and ends needed for various recipes, and more help from Happy on purchasing those things that we could not find or farm, Philly became a Master Jewelcrafter with a skill of 360. Now it gets even harder. The JC trainers are out of new recipes up to the current max of 375, and the only recipes available that yield skill increases from 355-375 are drops from various dungeons. Many of these recipes are available on the AH, but at very high prices in the 200-300 gold range. Philly is weighing which recipes to get, depending not so much on the value of the cut gem, but how cheaply she can buy the uncut gems or the ore to prospect the needed gems.

At skill 350 Philly had the skill level to talk to the Grand Master trainer for the 375-450 skill grind, but when she went visiting Philly was reminded that she needed to be level 65 before they would grant that wish. So Philly went back to levelling, enough to get to level 64, but until she can get those new recipes (and reach level 65) jewelcrafting will have to wait a bit.

JB and DER had some incredible fun in pvp on Friday night. JB managed to miss Wintergrasp, but DER introduced JB to the wonders of level 80 pvp in the familiar Warsong Gulch (WSG), and new adventures with visits to Alterac Valley (AV) and a first visit to Strand of the Ancients (SoA). JB still needs to learn her way around AV, but those matches, even when we lost, were a lot of fun. JB even somehow managed to finish 5th in total damage (out of about 25 raiders) in the first AV match. How she did that I don't know, but she'll take it. That didn't stop her from getting killed by every rogue and death knight that bothered to notice her. SoA, which is sort of like WG in that there is a fortress to defend and attack, and siege vehicles, still baffles JB, but she's only seen the battleground twice - so more practice is in order! JB has gotten most of the better gear from WG already, and there are some nice things JB wants to work for in AV and SoA. More fun to come, I'm sure.

As this is being written late Sunday afternoon, Wild is waiting to find out if he'll get an invite to the guild 25 man ToC raid scheduled for a 6pm start. After missing last week's inaugural guild Sunday 25 man, and unsure whether Wild would be available this Sunday, Wild did not sign up. There are 21 confirmed raiders on the raid calendar, and there may already be some non-guildies invited as well, so Wild will have to wait and see if there's a spot. I hope the turn out is a good one, as I want our guild's 25 man raiding to succeed, even if it means missing the raid this week.

Sunday Night - When the guild raid leader logged on, Wild quickly whispered him, letting him know that while he wasn't signed up, he was available for the raid if there was a spot open. The raid leader, Rh, said he would gladly add Wild to the raid list. Then he laughed and said that he'd assumed Wild would show up and had already included me in the raid. Laughing, I told him that was great (good thing I decided to come).

We didn't have enough guildies, but even so the turn out was pretty good, with 20 guildies joining the raid. We filled in with five non-guildies (three of which were complete strangers drawn from players who were using the "Looking For Group" tool). By the time we got started, however, one of our guildie healers had gone offline, apparently with computer problems. We went ahead and started with 24 raiders, seven of us healers, including three druids. The non-guildie druid was impressively geared and was in a well established raiding guild. Wild wondered why he would need to LFG for a raid spot with another guild with that kind of resume.

The 25 man version of Trial of the Crusader is very like the 10 man version. The ToC Coliseum is a single, round chamber with one large door from which the deadly champions we are pitted against emerge. Wild's experience with 10 man ToC has been primarily with the Alt-10 group, and our success - well, it's been fun and a good learning experience, but we had yet to complete even the first encounter (at least when Wild was present). That first encounter is called the Northrend Beasts, and soon after we assembled, the first of those beasts, Gormok the Impaler, trotted through the gates and engaged.

Gormok is half-man, half-beast - a four footed, two handed behemoth. In addition to his normal attacks on the tank, he likes to throw snobolds - no, not snowballs, snobolds - creatures that latch on to a raider at the shoulders and try to eat their face, while dropping fireballs at their feet. Wild feared those snobolds, until I learned that he only throws them at DPSers, never healers. Hah! Wild got a lot braver after learning that.

We brought Gormok down, and without pause two frostwyrms slivered through the doors. The large, prickly wyrms infect raiders with two different kinds of toxins that can only be removed by getting two raiders with opposite toxins close together, which cancels out both. Calls in raid chat from those infected shared an urgency as those toxins ate away at them. The frostwyrms periodically submerge beneath the floor, and then re-emerge at random locations. Wild and the rest of the raid scattered at the first submerge, so that fewer would be caught in a wyrm's clutches when it emerged. The tanks rounded up the wyrms and we went through several iterations of that before the frostwyrms died.

The third and final champion of Northrend Beasts, Icehowl, thundered in. The great whooly mammoth-like beast, with elaborate, curling horns, is an easy fight IF - (1) the raid was still in good shape after beating the first two encounters, and (2) if the raid could survive Icehowl's Massive Crash and the immediate Charge that follows it. We had come through the first two encounters very much intact. Icehowl was corraled, and we got our first taste of Massive Crash as every raider was tossed up against the walls of the Coliseum, temporarily stunning us all. Icehowl chose a target, and the great muscles of the his legs bunched to Charge. The raid leader called out who that target was. Icehowl Charged a spare instant after our stun wore off, and 25 raiders hurtled away from the point where Icehowl was aiming. Everyone got out of the way, and Icehowl slammed his head into the wall at the spot vacated by the targeted raider. Icehowl was now stunned, and the DPS went back to work. Icehowl Charged many times. He was nearly dead when a raider got tangled in a Charge. That raider was Wild. I had misjudged the direction I needed to go and got hit with a glancing blow. Glancing blow or not, it was instant death. Worse, it meant that Icehowl was not stunned. Even worse than that, hitting a raider sent him into Frothing Rage, which is essentially a raid destroying Enrage.

Luckily for Wild, Icehowl died an instant later, saving Wild from having to explain to the tank and the raid leader how I got the whole raid killed. Wild had been soulstoned, so I quickly rezzed and pretended innocence, whistling merrily as everybody gathered to get a gander at the loot.

We could now take a break to repair and buff up for the next encounter, Lord Jaraxxus. Wild has seen this fight only a couple of times, with guild runs before we had stopped doing 25 mans. I don't like this big red guy, and there are a lot of moving parts to this fight.

Wild was raid healing and also tasked with keeping a stack of Hots on the main tank, who also had two other full time healers. Juraxxus hits very hard and the tank is under constant assault. Jaraxxus has at least two raid wide affecting spells that other raiders try to interrupt before he can cast them. One, called Incinerate Flesh, is like a Shield around a raider. Instead of absorbing damage, however, it absorbs healing, and if that shield doesn't get enough healing absorbed, it starts to spread Legion Flame across the raid, a deadly fire damage AoE that not only affects those around you, it leaves a trail of fire wherever you go.

Wild was busy dealing with all of that when a nether portal opened up, and spilled out a Mistress of Pain. She throws high damage spikes at random raiders. If that raider also happens to have Incinerate Flesh or Legion Flame, it is likely fatal. I think that's what got Wild the first time. Wild got a rez, though, and was soon back in the fight. The Mistress was quickly killed, but she was followed by an erupting volcano that spewed out three felflame infernals. The raid scattered away from the volcanoes as the off tank tried to gather the infernals. The volcano also erupts for some heavy damage to those around it. Wild died a second time, not from a volcano, but I believe from Fel Lightning, which is one of those spells that was supposed to get interrupted.

The savior for this fight was the fact that there were five druids (3 healers, 2 DPS) in the raid, and we made full use of all of our battle rezzes to keep people alive. Wild really didn't see how we could win this fight.

But we did. It was Wild's first kill of Jaraxxus.

Wild was ready to call the night a success. Not. We still had time plenty of time to go after the next encounter, which Wild had never seen.

The Faction Champions are horde and alliance npcs. Obviously, a horde raid will fight the alliance npcs and visa versa. In 25 man we will be facing ten of them. Ten? You bet. There are fourteen total, so other than knowing that there will be three healers, we won't know who we'll be facing until they arrive. All four healing classes are represented (druid, shaman, paladin, and priest) and those classes also have DPS specced npcs as well.

This is like a 10 vs 25 arena match, only don't let the numbers fool you, because the npcs have a couple of advantages. First is that they are all level 83 raid elites versus us poor level 80s. Second, although their own AoE classes (such as mage, warlock) can fully use their AoE abilities, the faction champions have a built in immunity to AoE, taking 75% LESS damage than normal. Raider AoE is mostly worthless in this fight. Tanking is mostly worthless, too. Who would we tank, with ten to choose from?

The instructions for the fight took some time. There was an awful lot of taunt him, don't taunt her, crowd control this other one, kill this guy fast, etc. The short summary is that there was a kill order list, with the healers mostly the first to be taken out, although the "must kill fast" list was depressingly long. Since there are no tanks to focus healing on, every healer is a raid healer for this fight. Healers were assigned to heal their own groups. Just do whatever you had to to keep them alive.

It was actually a fun fight. Wild poured out the healing pretty much non-stop, and small battles between raiders and npcs went on all around him. The npcs even coordinate and focus fire on individual raiders. Wild was a target for a moment, but other healers helped Wild heal through it. Another time a hunter's lion pet latched on to Wild, so I kited it around until the hunter died and the pet vanished with his vanquished master.

The battle had entered it's eighth minute when the tenth and final npc fell. We had won another encounter.

And we still weren't done. Following the Faction Champions are the Twin Val'kyr, Fjola Lightbane and Eydis Darkbane. They are winged humanoids - angels fit only for nightmares. Here is where last week's raid had faltered and failed, and a new strategy was going to be tried. I'd explain the strat to you, but it had a lot to do with dark DPSing light, and changing colors from light to dark and dark to light, and staying away from the pretty light and dark balls, and, well, it didn't make much sense - until Wild experienced it firsthand.

Even after the long explanation of the fight, as we prepared to start Wild had to whisper to the healing leader, "now which color am I supposed to be when we start?" He whispered back that "it doesn't matter at the start, but listen for the raid calls and follow them once we engage." Ok. I think.

When the fight started the two winged bosses sailed in, and at four points swirling vortexes formed, two light colored and two dark colored. Following the majority of the raid, Wild trotted up to a light vortex, clicked on it, and was rewarded with a glowing white light at Wild's feet. A smaller number of raiders chose a dark vortex, and received a dark light at their feet (kind of purple colored, actually). Wild was again raid healing and HoT healing one of the two tanks, and the start of the fight was fairly straightforward. Then little melon sized white and dark balls popped right out of the walls all around the entire chamber, and began floating toward the center. They move at slightly less than running speed, so they could be outrun, but there were a LOT of them. Wild tried to avoid the dark balls, but one got him, burst, and did heavy damage.

The raid leader called out "DPS dark!" which meant that all DPS that were now "light" needed to rush to a dark vortex and switch. DPSers had to be the opposite color of the boss they were attacking, so when the target boss changed, they had to switch colors. Boss targets changed when the non-target boss puts up his Shield. That shield has to be destroyed fast or it will heal the boss up to 50% of it's total health. Another raid call, "RAID Dark! (or light)" meant that everyone except for tanks and specifically assigned raiders had to switch to the designated color. Those special raiders were always the opposite color, and their job was to burst as many balls as they could of the color that would hurt the raid. Make sense? Not to Wild, at least not at first.

Breaking the boss shield proved to be a problem and despite initially getting the two down to 17% health, they kept healing themselves and we eventually wiped. Oh, I probably forgot to mention that the twins share the same health pool, so damage or healing to either one affects them both.

It took us four tries before everything started to sink in. Wild learned the hard way that taking too long to get to a vortex to change color was instantly fatal, so Wild started hanging out near an opposite color vortex so that he could switch quickly when it was called. Of course, that wasn't always possible if Wild was trying to stay out of the way of opposite color balls.

But still, on our fourth attempt, the twins died. And Wild had another first kill.

So, we are done? Well, yes and no. Yes, we were out of time, and the raid was ending. No, we did not clear the encounter, because there was still one more boss left - Anub'arak. Maybe next week.

About the loot. ToC drops a LOT of loot. On every encounter a Trophy of the Crusade drops. How to use this item is so complicated I hesitate even to explain it. Let's just say that it is used to buy T9 gear, but that the calibre of T9 (T9.0, T9.25, T9.5) determines whether the trophy alone is good enough to get the gear, or if additional emblems (highest level triumph emblems) must also be used. Only one trophy is awarded per encounter, and Wild did not win any of the four that dropped, but I need to get more information on what they buy and with what other tokens. Why do they have to make these things so complicated?

The regular loot drops, summarized for all four victories (note that all gear was free rolled on, and priority was given to "same gear type", ie, Wild had priority on leather items, but had to defer to cloth wearers on cloth items):

1 leather item, but it was for DPS, and a rogue got it
1 dagger - also for DPS
1 mail item - Wild can't wear mail
5 plate items - sigh, Wild can't wear plate
4 cloth items - all were DPS items, two items the druids actually got to roll on, but one went to a main spec DPS/moonkin, and the other one Wild lost the roll on to another druid healer.

So, out of 12 items, Wild got to roll on just one. A very lucky paladin, the only plate wearing healer in the raid, got three of the plate items since they were healing gear.

Wild was very, very happy that he'd gotten that new idol to improve his healing. The impact of that idol was significant and without it Wild would have lagged behind the other healers by a lot. Also affecting the totals was that it was a 25 man raid, which requires a higher level of healing than the 10 mans.

There were seven healers:

#1: Pad (non guildie druid) - 3945 hps, 20.2% of all healing
#2: Rz (guild shaman) - 3025/14.2%
#3: Sp (guild druid) - 2840/13.7%
#4: Wild - 2718/11.7%
#5: p-Sb (guild priest) - 2686/10.9%
#6: Hd (guild paladin) - 1862/6.1%
#7: Hpriest (guild priest) - 1757/4.8%

I can't recall for sure, but I believe that Wild's overall 2718 hps was his best healing number, like, ever. Also, on the very healing intensive Twin Val'kyr fight, Wild broke into the top three with some amazing healing numbers: pad (5.6k hps), Rz (4.2k), and Wild (4.1k) - over 4,000 hps for Wild!

Now that Wild has a taste of what 25 man ToC is all about, Sunday night is going to be a regular raid night for sure.