Wednesday (6 Jan) - On the Trail of Beasts

Wednesday (6 Jan) - On the Trail of Beasts

Wild arrived at the Argent Tournament grounds around 5:40pm for the 6pm Wednesday raid. Normally Wild would go hang out at the eastern platform where the 10/25 ToC raids formed up to enter the Coliseum. Wild felt a little weird about that on this night. Wild opted to hop on his bronze dragon mount instead of simply shifting to flying form as was his norm, flew up to the roof of the Coliseum, and hung out there, around the corner from the eastern platform.

Wild saw that the raid leader, Bd, of the MM raid Wild had signed up for, was in game. Wild whispered a Hi! to him, and he came back with his usual "Sup, Wild!" I was typing up another whisper to him when I got a second one from him. "WOOT!" He'd seen that Wild had signed up for his raid. And confirmed that Wild would definitely get an invite.

It wasn't just the MM raid that was forming up, though. Wild's guild had scheduled a ToC25 raid for Wednesday as well - same time, same place. Wild had declined the guild raid invitation, so they knew I was not participating. That's what made it weird to hang out at the eastern platform - Wild would be among guildies, guildies Wild would not be raiding with on this night.

The MM raid took it's time forming up. There was one raider who overslept, and two others who had user interface problems that had to be worked out. But it was still shy of 6:30pm when we got started. Bd, who Wild is used to seeing as the tank, delegated tanking duties to two other raiders. We had three healers, Wild, plus Sh (a shaman Wild has run with before), and d-priest, a holy priest who was making her first visit to ToC. Wild opted to raid heal, with the other two getting main tank and off tank responsibilities. Wild had run with four of these good folk before, so Wild got to get acquainted with five new raiders as well. All were in the MM guild. Wild was the only non-guildie in the raid. And at least four were women. Wild isn't used to so many women's voices in vent.

As we made final preparations, Wild was also monitoring guild chat to see how the ToC25 was going. It wasn't. Only 14 raiders showed up, and they had to cancel the raid. Those that did show eventually formed up an Onyxia ten man raid, so it wasn't a complete loss. Perhaps it's still too soon after the holidays. Perhaps there will be better participation next week. Perhaps.

The "sauciness" Wild had learned to expect from this group started up before Bd finished covering the strategy for the first boss encounter, Northrend Beasts. Lady Hunter, who had joined the MM guild some time ago, but raids only rarely due to some complicated housing issues, was visiting with Bd and was in the raid. I gave her a shout out and we traded hugs and barbs. So perhaps I shouldn't have been surprised when, in the middle of Bd's explanations, a loud buzzing noise drowned out Bd. "You told us to wrap up our preparations," explained Lady Hunter, the source of the noise (but through Bd's mike, since she was sitting next to him), "and I wanted to make sure the vibrator was working." That created a few minutes of pandemonium, with Bd trying to finish his explanations but often losing the thread of his remarks every time a new, ever more racy, comment popped up in raid chat.

I can't say that we settled down, but we did finally get started.

Northrend Beasts starts with Gormok, a single boss fight that is a typical "stay out of the fire" and "get this snobold off my back!" fight. Ok, so the snobold throwing (a small ratlike eat your face creature) by Gormok is a bit different. It had been some time since this group last raided, and there were some new faces even between the MM guildies, so there were some expected bumps as we got used to each other and re-familiarized ourselves with the fight. Gormok is only the first of three waves of bosses: a pair of frostwyrms, Acidmaw and Dreadmaw, follow on the heels of Gormok, and then Icehowl follows the wyrms.

Our first three attempts were somewhat like practice runs, and we got better each time, killing Gormok on our 2nd attempt, and getting to Icehowl on our fourth. The fourth attempt was awesome. We had been steadily losing raiders and only minutes into the icehowl fight we were down to just five - Wild healing, a DK tanking, and three DPS. On of the DPS, a mage, stood so far away Wild couldn't heal him, and I couldn't move to him because it took me out of range of the tank. He never thought to move into range of the one healer left, but somehow he managed to keep his health around 30% for the longest time. The rest of the remaining raiders Wild was going crazy trying to keep alive. I'm not sure what the enrage timer is for Icehowl, but the timers are generally ten minutes. We used up all ten minutes, all five of us staying in the fight until he enraged and killed us. We had him down to 10%, and I'm sure we would have eventually killed him - around midnight, maybe. :-)

We beat Northrend Beasts on our fifth attempt. Then came Lord Jaraxxus. We healers had a steep learning curve on this one. We had the same assignments as before, but Jaraxus comes with two special wrinkles. One is Incinerate Flesh. Raiders who get this must immediately receive massive healing. IF absorbs the heals (ie, all that healing doesn't actually heal him) but IF falls off after absorbing 30,000 worth of healing. The other is Legion Flame, and raiders who get this must run away from the raid, leaving a trail of fire in their wake, and then come back when it ends. Any time a healer got either one of those, raiders started dying, because we were still working out how to cover for each other when those things happened to us.

We worked on positioning, looking for a way that we could all stay in range of each other without creating worse problems by bunching up. During the set up of one of the attempts, d-priest was standing too far back, outside Wild's healing range. I had moved forward as much as I could, but she was still out of reach.

"d-priest, could you come just a little closer, please, I can't reach you." She moved a little bit toward me.

"Close enough?"

"Come in a little more," Wild responded.

"Now? Should I come again?" she asked.

Wild replied, "By all means, your position is perfect, and it feels so good!" I'd call the hubbub after that more pandemonium, but really it was just our normal state of craziness.

We never did kill Jaraxxus, and after four attempts we called it a night. That seemed less important that how much fun Wild had, and I'm looking forward to Thursday night's shenanigans.

Wild led in healing, working with Bd to find the right assignments for the best results. Wild moved to off tank healer on Jaraxxus, because the OT had to move a lot and Wild could move with him. D-priest had some mana problems, and Wild gave up his innervate to keep her going. We did struggle some, but I think we are ready for the next round.

Healing:
#1: Wild, 2390 hps, 40% healing
#2: Sh, 2127/30%
#3: d-priest, 2307/28%

After the raid and back in Dalaran, Wild saw that Rh, the raid leader for the guild ToC25, was still in game. I whispered him, feeling that I owed him an explanation for declining the raid when in fact, I was in game. He understood and approved of Wild doing whatever I thought best to progress. Of course, a better geared and experienced Wild will help down the road in guild 25 mans, but mostly I think he was just glad that I took the time to talk to him about it. He joked at the end, telling Wild, "but don't forget about us!"

Wild is very happy to be raiding again.