Thursday night was our second night for the MM Toc10 raid. In their own guild they are called raid group 3. Most of the raiders in this group (Wild learned as he gets to know them better) have seen individual success in ToC10 with the other guild raid groups, but the new raid group has not been playing together for very long. They started in Ulduar before the holidays, but never really got on track as they were missing some of their key members. Wild got in on one or two of those early raids, but at the time Wild's guild was still fielding a 25 man that took precedence. The MM ToC10 took the holidays off, and this week was their first week back, and at near full strength.
For Thursday's run the raid makeup was slightly different than Wednesday's. The holy priest was gone, and we had a shadow priest instead. Wild loves shadow priests, as they really improve mana regen. Bd, the raid leader, switched from his warrior to his druid to be the third healer, along with Wild and Sh, the shaman.
On Wednesday it took us five tries to defeat the first boss encounter, Northrend Beasts, and we made four attempts on the second boss encounter before calling it an evening. You could say we were rusty. We started the second night against that second boss, Jaraxxus, a demon with many nasty tricks.
And we killed him on our first attempt. We were all pretty stoked after taking Jaraxxus down, but there were plenty of challenges still ahead.
The next boss encounter was the Faction Champions. Wild has seen this fight only once before. The Champions are 14 npcs, five of which appear once the event is started. There is almost always a healer, sometimes two, but it takes knowing what their names are to tell what their roles are. For us the names read as follows: Anthar Forgemember (holy priest and the healer), Baelnor Lightbearer (retribution paladin), Irieth Shadowstep (rogue), Kavina Grovesong (moonkin druid), and Noozle Wizzlestick (mage).
That list was also the kill order for the fight, in what is a five vs ten pvp battle. Don't feel smug at the 2 to 1 advantage on our side. These are Champions, and very tough. The strategy is pretty straightforward. Killing the healer (the priest) was our first priority. As long as he lived he'd make sure all the others stayed alive. Number two was the toughest, the paladin, who was murderous and very hard to kill. Then the rest in order. Two raiders were assigned to harass the rogue while the rest focused on the kill order. The rogue, left to his own devices, was a deadly, stealthy attacker, and we wanted him kept very busy until we got around to killing him. Everyone was told to keep moving, watch who targets you, and play it like these Champions were alliance players in some mid-field battlegrounds fight, winner being the last team standing.
It was a rout. That is, we got slaughtered on our first attempt. The rogue slipped away, and started slicing throats. The moonkin created a lot more havoc than expected, Wild seeming to bear the brunt of his attention and dying early, and the priest appeared capable of out healing all the damage being done to him. Wild wished JB were here to give him some pvp tips, as he was not practiced in any of this pvp stuff. Bd came to the rescue, though, reminding Wild that I could use my own interrupts and saves like Cyclone and Stomp to keep attackers at bay.
We wiped again on our second attempt, but the rogue was controlled correctly and we came close to killing the priest. On our third attempt the dang moonkin again outplayed Wild, although I like to think I gave him at least a little trouble before I died. There were two more deaths, but this time the five faction Champions died. A sweet +crit trinket dropped, but we had lots of DPS in the raid that wanted it.
After the Faction Champs came the Twins, Lightbane and Darkbane. Wild has seen this fight only once, although he was involved in many attempts on that one night. Wild would have real trouble with this one, on many levels. First, the strategy was different than what Wild had practiced on in that one other encounter. Second, Wild had started getting half second delays in his spell casting. This is a problem that sometimes pops up and then goes away and I haven't been able to figure out what causes it. I've checked fps (frames per second) and other indications that it might be caused by a server side problem, but there were no obvious issues. It may be some problem with my internet carrier, or maybe my wireless mouse. So far I haven't been able to nail it down. When it happens, though, Wild's spell casting goes into semi-slow motion.
The twins are called Lightbane and Darkbane for a reason. They both have the same abilities, and they even share the same pool of health, but they are the polar opposites of each other. When the event is started, four portals form at each corner of the room, two light, and two dark. Every raider must click on one of the portals to become light or dark, which shows up as a glowing circle under our feet. What color you are, and it must be changed many times during the fight, can be extremely confusing. Get it wrong, and raiders die.
The raid leader explained the fight, giving directions on vent for the tanks and DPS on what color they should start with and what commands would be called out in vent when colors had to be changed. Trying to keep things simple, the raid leader gave the healers private instructions so that the rest of the raid wouldn't get confused. In some ways the healers had it the worst, as our color shifts didn't always make intuitive sense. The difference between what Wild was used to and this strategy is that the raid leader then divided us into two groups, one for the light twin, and one for the dark twin. Wild was in group 1 on the Lightbane side. That meant that everyone in Wild's group selected dark; except Wild, who had to select light. The second difference is that the two portals Wild was used to using to initially select our colors from were in the back of the room, away from the two bosses. On this raid, we were grouped up near where the bosses would spawn, and would get our colors from the portals nearer the bosses.
In most of the events in ToC, the mobs either have a lot of stuff to say before they actually become hostile, or stand around untouchable until we activate the event. So when the portals formed up Wild went up to white portal to get his color as Lightbane entered the room and also headed in that direction. I expected Lightbane to ignore me. Instead, Lightbane aggroed on Wild. No one was ready for that, least of all Wild. We wiped.
That was pretty embarrassing, but I chalked it up as a lesson learned. For the rest of the attempts Wild had to quickly get to the portal and select my color before Lightbane got close enough to aggro. I didn't make a big deal out of it, but for next time I'm going to suggest we all use the back of the room portals to pick up our colors, and only after that should the two groups move to position to attack the twins. It's much safer that way.
Our second attempt went ok for what was really a first real attempt, but Wild struggled with his balky spell casting and that frankly cost us as my group started dying. There is nothing more frustrating than knowing you got a heal off in time to save a struggling raider and then seeing that the heal never landed. And seeing him die.
Some of the DPS were asking in vent why Wild was light while everyone else was dark, and then that got me confused as to whether I had misunderstood the pattern I was to follow. I whispered the raid leader. He confirmed that I was doing it right, but the rest of the raid didn't know that because healer colors had been explained in private. We got that sorted out as well and went at the twins again.
On our third try Wild tried mightily to anticipate heals and practically battered his keyboard and mouse into plastic fragments trying to overcome the spell casting delays. The shaman, who was in elemental spec for the extra damage, helped out with chain heals, and we managed to hold together deep into the fight. During the course of the battle the raid leader would call out "DPS dark! (or light)" which meant what it said. DPS only change colors by running to the appropriate portal and changing to that color. Sometimes he would call "Raid light (or dark)" in which the entire raid needed to switch to that color. In the old strat Wild would always stand near a portal of the opposite color so that if I needed to switch it could be done quickly. With the new strategy that wasn't as easy to do. Delay too long, and really, really, bad things happened if you were the wrong color. I worried obsessively about that, afraid the mouse click would fail me just as I was trying to switch colors.
No matter how hard we worked at it, though, Wild's group mates started to die. At the end, we had the twins down to 5% health and the only raiders left were the five in the other group. All of Wild's team had died. The other group saved our bacon, hanging in there and getting that last 5%. We had won. It was Wild's first kill of the twins.
There is but one boss left - Anub'arak. If that name sounds familiar, that's because you've seen it before. You might think this big bug is the same as the one in the Spider wing of Naxxramas. Well, the two look alike, but the Naxx one is called Anub'rekhan. Let's say they are very close cousins. But you have seen Anub'arak before, in the five man dungeon Azjol-Nerub. The bug has kind of a cult following by those who played Warcraft III, the Frozen Throne. Anub had a prominent role in that game, and was considered a very bad dude. So, many folks were very disappointed when WotLK came out and he turned up in a lowly five man dungeon, and as the measly first boss to boot. So Blizz fixed that, having Anub'arak return as the final boss in ten man ToC. And here he lives up to his deadly reputation.
Throughout the evening the two primary healers were Wild and Bd, both of us druids. The third healer, Sh, often had other duties and wasn't even in healing spec for some of the fights. Bd is a great tank on his warrior, and he has grown into a pretty darn good healer on his druid as well, consistently beating Wild in hps and total healing. So what happened with Anub'arak was both surprising - and hilarious.
Wild had never gotten past the twins before, so I did not know what was about to happen when we started the event for Anub'arak. The floor of the chamber shattered, and we fell a long ways into a lake deep below ground. Swimming to shore, Wild saw a vast cavern. Far from where Wild shook the water off his hide, a circle cut into the floor marked where Anub would appear.
Wild was back on raid healing duty, Bd was main tank healer, and Sh was healing the off tank. We moved closer and Anub appeared. We buffed up and made sure everyone was ready. Bd gave the main tank the ok to engage. Wild likes to drop both Lifeblooms and a Regrowth on the main tank close to when he engages, even if I'm not the tank healer. It just gives the tank a little extra healing over time for those first key seconds of the fight. But unlike Wild's other raids, where there is a three or five second countdown, the main tank just starts running to the boss when he feels ready. Wild got a couple of lifeblooms on him and then started raid healing, unable to get a regrowth on him. Less than fifteen seconds into the fight, the main tank died and we wiped.
"That was me, I did that!" Bd said in vent. He said he misjudged how hard Anub hit and didn't recover in time to save the tank. He of course got mercilessly ribbed about it, we all had a good laugh, and we set up for our second attempt. This time Wild was able to get lifeblooms and a regrowth on the main tank as he started his charge, and I saw that Bd had dropped some HoTs on him as well. Wild decided to follow Bd in as I planned to refresh my Hots on the tank before starting to raid heal, just for some added help. But the main tank died before either Bd or Wild got in range of him. He was too far ahead of us, with both of us having misjudged how long the run was to the boss. Of course we wiped again.
It was too much. Our toons were not only dead, but we were killing ourselves laughing so hard. Bd knew what the problem was. He wasn't drunk enough yet. I have to be drunk to heal, he announced, and I plan to get there right now! Five minute Tequila break! We all cheered. I don't know how many hit the liquor locker during those five minutes, but we were all raring to go when we reassembled. As the main tank got ready for his charge, Wild whispered to Bd, "Race you to Anub!" I think I got a step ahead of him as he fired a barb back at me, but we both arrived together with the tank at Anub and we both plastered the tank with heals until we were sure things were well in hand. The battle began in earnest.
While the tank battled Anub, and the DPS pounded the boss, the off tank was hunting up the adds - more bugs that periodically spawned. Frozen patches of ground formed and the bugs were pulled to those areas. Staying on frozen ground, which formed when designated raiders shot down floating spheres (and which eventually dissipated), whenever possible was a key element to staying alive. Wild's mysterious spell casting delays disappeared, much to Wild's relief, and my healing picked up considerably. There is a phase 2 to the fight, and Anub burrowed under the ground. Above ground, scarabs that do not attack during the first phase, become hostile. They are numerous, easy to kill, but pack a pretty good wallop so avoiding them is the best choice. When you can. At the same time the tunneling Anub randomly targeted raiders and began chasing them with a string of spikes visible above ground. The spikes die out only when they hit a patch of frozen ground. If they reach the chased raider on non-frozen ground, the impact can be single shot fatal. The rule of thumb is that no matter what, stay away from the spikes, and do not be standing where that spike explodes, whether you are the chase-ee or not.
The two phases alternate until we get Anub down to 30% health. We made a good attempt, but wiped with Anub at about 37% health.
On our fourth attempt we got him to 30%, but we were already tilting into another wipe.
We had time for one more attempt. We had already seen huge progress from last night to tonight, and could comfortably rest on our laurels, having downed three encounters tonight. But we really wanted that bug.
On our fifth attempt we again got Anub down to 30%, and we were still in good shape with no raiders dead. The fight takes a crazy turn when we enter the third and final phase. Anub became a straight tank and spank fight. We still had a few leftover mobs to kill, but no new ones spawned. Of course, there is a wrinkle. There's always a wrinkle. In this phase Anub heals himself by drawing health from the raid. The higher our health, the more healing he gets. So healers have to let raider health get down to 50% or less (except for the tank), and keep it down there, without getting anyone killed.
The hardest thing in the world for a healer is to NOT heal someone who obviously needed heals. It is completely WRONG down to the very core of our being. Wild did not know how fast Anub would be draining health, or how much Wild's smallest HoT, rejuv, would recoup that health. I knew that using any bigger spells would likely raise health by too much. Wild kept his eyes on the raid, totally focused on those health bars, and tweaking constantly to maintain that low but still survivable bubble of health. Wild was so focused I was momentarily confused by the cheering.
Anub'arak was dead. We had cleared Trial of the Crusader.
It was an incredible rush. Wild and Bd talked excitedly with each other for quite awhile, going over what we did, what worked, what didn't, and just revelling in the victory. What a night.
Wild thought he'd retired for the evening, even leaving the game for awhile. But I was too stoked to call it an evening. Plus I had an ulterior motive for coming back in game. Wild has been collecting triumph emblems. With thirty emblems Wild could buy the T9 i232 gloves, which would give him two T9 pieces and get him the two piece set bonus. But he already had a decent pair of gloves, and gloves would likely be the first T10 piece he bought once he had enough frost emblems (60 of those were needed, drat Blizz!). Wild only had 30 frost emblems, so maybe I should go ahead and get the T9 gloves. Wild resisted temptation, however, and the magnificent clear of ToC had raised Wild's truimph emblems to 45. I only needed five more and Wild could buy the T9 i232 legguards, which would be a major improvement over the i219 T8 trousers Wild was now wearing.
What's the best, and quickest, way to get a few more triumph emblems? Calling Dungeon Finder, get me into a heroic!
When the call came, I couldn't have picked a better one myself. Our random group got Violet Hold, one of the easiest and quickest heroic of them all. We blasted through there in under twenty minutes, and it would have been even faster except that there are forced wait times between bosses where for minutes we just stood around waiting for them to spawn.
How many emblems did Wild get? Five. Forty-five plus five equals fifty (if Wild has his math right). Wild got his T9 pants and his two piece set bonus (he also has the T9 shoulder gear).
Bd led in healing with 2543 hps and 36.8% of total healing. Wild did ok with 2245 hps and 27.6%. But I'll be working on raising that percentage and gauging my progress in comparison with Bd.
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