Wednesday (13 Jan) - How About Quadruple Vision?

Wednesday (13 Jan) - How About Quadruple Vision?

In a tale of two raids, Wild felt a bit like two people as I watched both the MM ten man raid of ToC (which Wild accepted an invite to) and the guild's Icecrown Citadel (ICC25) raid prepare for business. As the 6pm start time for both groups drew near, I could see a pretty good turnout of guildies from Wild's guild. If the new group of players the guild has been working with show up in force they should be able to field a full raid. On the MM side, it was harder to tell how preparations were going. The raid leader, Bd, was in game but afk (away from keyboard, ie, real person not present), and none of the other MM folks that I knew were around yet. Wild only knows the MM raiders that I have run with so far (and added to my Friends list), so there could be others invited to tonight's raid that I haven't met yet.

Around 6:10pm Bd whispered Wild: "Hey, just checking, are you in on the ICC25 man your guild is running?" Bd still has an alt in Wild's guild, and he follows what goes on in the guild. Wild replied: "No, I'm going with you if you'll let me crash your party." Wild got an immediate invite to the MM raid. We were only about half full, but other MM folks trickled in and we were ready to go at 6:30pm. Wild met some more new folks and added them to my Friends list so that I can see when they are in game.

The ICC25 guild run filled all but one spot from guildies who had accepted raid calendar invites and from the newcomers. The one open spot was held open until 6:15pm waiting on someone who had signed up. They went ahead and started on the ICC trash and filled the last spot moments later.

A quick word about raid calendars. When a raid is placed on the calendar, names are added for all those the raid leader thinks might be interested in coming. Since this night was going to include many non-guildies in the invite list, every effort was made to include every guildie who ever raided or might want to raid, so that no one could say they were left out. On raid night, that list was reviewed. First were the raiders that Accepted the invitation, and so were expected to be there on time. Raiders could also Decline, indicating they couldn't make it, or could pick Tentative, which means maybe. We had a lot of players select Tentative. None of those who selected Tentative, even those who showed up for the raid, were invited. There were enough Accepted to fill the raid, and those that committed up front got higher priority. There were also quite a few guildies who never responded to the raid invite at all. Special situations aside, I don't think those folks will be invited next time.

Even after both raids started Wild had a way to at least partly follow what was happening in the guild ICC25. We use a special chat channel for healers. Wild is a permanent member of that channel, so I could follow along with whatever the healers were talking about as their raid progressed. I know that they killed the first boss, Lord Marrowgar, which is a great accomplishment for a first run. They were after the second boss, Lady Deathwhisper, when things got a little too busy in Wild's own raid for me to follow along anymore.

About that raid Wild was in. Last week we spent most of our evening on the first boss encounter, Northrend Beasts (NRB), which is a wave of three boss encounters without a break. I'd like to say we did better this week, but I can't - because we did a LOT better. Like cleaning NRB's clock on our first attempt!

The second boss encounter, Lord Jaraxxus, had also given us a whole mess of trouble last week. Down the demon went on the first try. Last week it took a second night of raiding to bring down Lord J. We were cooking.

The third boss encounter is a change of pace called the Faction Champions. As explained last week, this is like an Arena pvp bout - five hostile npcs against our ten man group. The five npcs are randomly assigned from a larger pool of npcs, and we got a very bad set this time with three healers in it. Well, said one raider, we shouldn't be taking a lot of damage, but the bad news is that it's going to take forever to kill anything. These fights require a lot of crowd control (cc) to try an keep some of the npcs out of the fight while we dealt with more immediate targets. Wild was healing, but the raid leader also asked if I would Cyclone the tree duid npc whenever I had a chance to try to limit the amount of healing he did. Wild kept him targeted and, when I wasn't trying to stay alive, I'd cc him with Cyclone.

Staying alive didn't work too well on our first attempt, as we had cc problems with other npcs, and we wiped. We wiped a second time but came a lot closer. Wild was getting the hang of basically fleeing everything that looked cross eyed at him while never stopping a continuous spam of instant heals - wild growth, rejuv, and lifebloom on anyone and everyone in range. On our third attempt it was easy to see when the balance tilted in our favor. There were still four bosses up, but one of the big DPSers was dead, another was effectively cced, and the remaining hostiles could not hurt us. We took our time and burned them down one by one. Three boss encounters in one night. With time still on the clock.

The fourth boss encounter was the twins, Darkbane and Lightbane. The raid was split into two groups on opposite sides of the room, each with a tank healer. Wild was the roving raid healer, and I think I wore my tree form roots down to broken splinters on this fight running back and forth between groups, raid healing both groups and also having to know which tank to backup heal depending on which boss Shielded, as well as changing our "color" between dark and light depending on circumstances. It was crazy fun, and the twins died on our first attempt. It's got to be too good to be true.

We moved on to the final boss, Anub'arak. Yep, here was that same bug yet again, for the fourth time.

This particular manifestation of the bug has three phases. The first two rotate again and again until Anub gets down to 35%, where he enters the third phase. Our first attempt was a quick wipe due to miscommunication between the tank and healers. We got that out of the way and started again. We pushed through the first phases, tanking an angry Anub and killing the many mobs that spawn. In phase 2 Anub submerges beneath the floor and chases random raiders with very deadly surface spikes. Back and forth between the phases, again and again. A raider went down outside Wild's range. I was the only druid in game this night, so Wild hustled into range and rezzed the player.

Anub hit the 35% mark. In this phase it's important NOT to heal too much, as Anub draws health from the health of the raid. At first we healers were still flush with too much adrenaline and kept up the healing until the raid leader had to call out for us to back off. Like I've said before, NOT healing is the hardest thing in the world for healers to do. Last week there were two druid healers, and our small heal rejuvs worked extremely well. With only Wild able to use instant HoTs, it was a trickier proposition to keep raiders below 50% health without getting them killed. Wild counted three times I saw raiders get down to 1% health before he started ticking upward again. But no one died except Anub'arak.

Not only have we now cleared ToC10 two weeks in a row, this week we cleared it all on our first night! Of all the gear that dropped, only one ended up being sharded, so the group is getting some good upgrades. There were no specific gear drops for Wild, and the couple of off spec pieces that I would have loved to have rightfully went to DPS mains who needed them. Wild is getting badges, experience, and a rousing great time out of ToC so far, just no gear. But it will come.

Wild and a paladin healer vied for the top spot in healing, and he won with 2780 hps and 33.4% of the heals. Wild wasn't far behind at 2377 hps and 32.9%. It was a good night. And good night - until the next post.