Unfazed by a less than satisfactory failed run in ToC on Wednesday night, the MM raid assembled at Icecrown Citadel prepared to take on even deadly foes. We only had one new face in the raid, a pally healer who stood in for our regular pally healer. The raid leader likes druid/pally healing pairs as the healing styles of the two classes complement each other well. We had our regular shaman healer as well, but for most of the night Wild and the pally would be the only healers.
We did not have a rogue to disarm the traps that spring the hidden ward mobs, so we moved cautiously in clearing the trash. We also didn't have a shadow priest to provide the juicy mana buff, so Wild and the other casters would have to be a little more aware of mana use throughout the evening. The raid leader, who is the best tank in the group, opted to DPS, as he has the last couple of raids. I'm sure the point is to build experience with the other tanking players, but it certainly makes things a little more challenging for the healers.
We did not set off any traps clearing the trash mobs and were soon standing outside the chamber to Marrowgar. We all knew this fight now, and had one kill under our belt. We did not even think about Wednesday night as we set up, buffed up, and engaged.
Our first attempt was a near instant wipe when the two tanks got too separated on their initial rush into combat. Marrowgar Cleaved the first tank, killing him instantly, and then, unprotected, Cleaved the second tank. We laughed it off; the two tanks hadn't worked together on this fight before. Learning the fight was the whole point.
Our second attempt didn't go much better, as we had to re-learn a lesson some players hadn't been around to learn the first time we'd faced Marrowgar. We were using three healers on this fight, and the new pally healer stood too far back. When the tanks engaged, he was still out of range of the tank he was healing and boom! the tank went down. We got in some practice, but it was another early wipe.
Things came together on the third attempt and we got Marrowgar down to 22%. I can't say that Wild has gotten comfortable with the fight yet, but at least it doesn't seem quite as insane as it was initially. The margin between success and failure is still very tight. Small mistakes that get a tank or a healer killed are almost certain wipes. Wild still danced a dangerous line trying to keep the critical constant flow of healing coming while dodging lines of coldflame.
On our fourth attempt we had gone through three rounds of "Bone Storm!" marking the shift back and forth between the two phases. Wild got into one of those bad luck situations where coldflame chased Wild from his marginally safe pocket, and then no matter which direction Wild moved to escape, another line of flame seemed to track him down. The combination forced Wild further and further from the raid, and my health dwindled despite Wild's desperate attempts to stay alive. Wild ran out of room, cornered by a wall and by the cold flames . . . and was saved when Marrowgar died.
Bringing down Marrowgar erased all our worries from the previous night. Our death knight won a beautiful sword she was so happy over she had to have it gemmed and enchanted right away. We agreed, and she ported back to Dalaran to take care of it while the rest took a break. When it was time, Wild and the raid leader went outside the instance to Summon her back - only we were not in phase, so we couldn't see each other. Very irritating. A third raider was asked to come out, hoping that he would be in phase with one of us. Wild waited. And waited. And waited. Finally, Wild asked, "Um, should I still be out here?"
Ooops! The raid leader and the third player were in phase and had done the Summons and gone back into the raid, totally forgetting that Wild was still out at the Summoning stone. Wild hustled back in and we got ready for Lady Deathwhisper.
There are four sets of trash mobs in a large pavilion like area at the bottom of a set of room length stairs. Two are mob groupings, and the other two are single spiders with a nasty bite. Past those mobs Lady Deathwhisper waits, and she is one talkative lich. Throughout practically the entire strategy discussion of the trash mob fight, Lady Deathwhisper droned on about what failures we were and how badly she was going take us apart. Talk about giving us an incentive for the fight, we really wanted to just shut her up.
We cleared the trash mobs much more easily than we anticipated. We were ready for the loud mouthed lich.
We had several raiders who had never seen this fight, and as a group we were facing her for the first time. The raid leader, Bd, finished his instructions and Wild realized that he had only covered phase 1 of the fight. There is a phase 2, which Wild knew because I've helped kill her in the guild ICC25 raid. I mentioned that to him and he sort of grinned and said, yea, I know, but I don't think we'll get there on our first attempt and don't want to confuse things.
We were using only two healers for this fight because the hardest tasks were on the DPS. Our shaman healer switched to elemental spec and joined the caster group. We had three raiders designated as casters, three as melee (the hunter was declared melee for the purposes of this fight), two tanks, and two healers. You want to talk complicated, this one will make your eyeballs pop out. Deathwhisper (DW) is enshrouded in a mana shield and can't be hurt as long as it's up. Raiders assigned to attack the shield have to divide their attention between the shield and the mobs that spawn. Three mobs spawn on alternate sides of the room, one group at a time, and keep spawning until the shield goes down.
Here's where is gets trickier. The caster mobs are immune to magical damage (ie, immune to spell casters) and have to be killed using the physical attacks of the melee raiders. The melee mobs are immune to all physical attacks and so have to be killed by the caster raiders. It gets worse. DW periodically enhances a mob, making it much deadlier than the others, and that becomes a focus target to quickly get it down. It gets worse. Sometimes the killed mobs don't stay dead, as DW resurrects them.
The battle started when we started attacking DW's mana shield. Three mobs spawned on one side of the room and the rest of us engaged. While Wild was keeping folks healed, I had to dance out of the way of pools of death and decay DW tossed out into the room, as well as decurse a nasty debuff that slowed all raider functions (movement, casting, swinging a weapon, everything) by 75%. And let's not forget about the shadow bolts she casts against raiders as well - she likes to target raiders with the least amount of health.
We were busy trying to remember everything we were supposed to do, killing the things that came at us, getting two of the enhanced mobs down, yelling in frustration when DW would resurrect a mob we'd just killed, and suddenly one of the raiders hammering the mana shield called out, "Shield down!"
Enter phase 2. Which we hadn't talked about. The raid leader was spam talking the strat for phase 2 while it unfolded around us. Bd talks very fast even when he's calm. Under fire, the stream of words were so swift and tightly packed we wondered if Bd would pass out for lack of breath.
With the shield down, the mobs stopped coming, but now DW directly attacked the raid. A tank managed to get hold of her, but two raiders died who happened to be too close to her when she came gliding into our ranks. Wild knew that shades would also be spawning, mobs which can't be killed but can kill a raider with a touch. We held together surprisingly well despite the initial chaos when we entered phase 2, and got DW down to 39% before wiping. A very good first attempt.
Our second attempt was also a wipe due simply to bad timing when we hit phase 2. Wild was hit with the slowing curse and then immediately socked inside a circle of death and decay. No way Wild could get out of the DnD slowed down, so I had to take two seconds to decurse first. A tank had also gotten the curse, and Wild was the only raider who could do the decursing. The other healer was too far away to help as Wild tried to get out of the dnd, and I didn't make it. Slowed to a crawl, and with no one to decurse, the tank died as well.
On our third attempt we shut the lich up.
Two bosses down now in ICC10. It was about 8:30pm and we wanted to take a shot at the third encounter, the Gunship Battle. However, one raider had to leave, and there were some other delays. We had ten minutes left in our night by the time we cleared trash to the ship and were ready to go.
As I've said before, this is a fun fight. In the 25 man ICC raid, only four of the 25 raiders were given jetpacks, and Wild thought that was all there were. Not so. The raid leader pointed out the npc on the ship that issued jetpacks, and told everybody to don one and have some fun with it. What a blast! The most hilarious thing was watching our druid tank in bear form. The jetpack was anchored at the bear's haunches, and firing off the rockets sent a blast of flame shooting out his . . . well, you just had to see it. Poor Wild's jetpack was broken (meaning I never did figure out how to do any more than light off the jets, but couldn't get airborne). The pack didn't work at all in tree form, either. Oh well, we didn't have time for Wild to experiment anymore, and we set sail.
Wild's jetpack
We had fun with the battle, even deciding to go past 9pm to get in a second try when we fell short in the first one. We wiped again, primarily due to problems with the boarding party, but this is a very doable fight.
Wild didn't get any gear this time, although two cloth items dropped that would have been upgrades. The clothies needed them, darn those guys and gals. :)
Wild and the pally paired up extremely well as the two healers, and our stats pretty much mirrored that.
Wild: 2704 hps and 38.3% healing
Upally: 2721 hps and 36.0% healing
With a little faster kill of Marrowgar we could reasonably expect to get to the fourth and final boss in the first wing of ICC next week.
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