It was Tuesday night once again. Once again, Wild arrived in game early, made his preparations for the evening, and then flew to Icecrown Citadel to wait word on whether Wild would be getting an invite. To pass the time Wild checked the raid calendar to see his status. Hmm, there was no Standby by his name this time. This time it said Confirmed. Wild was in.
The cynic in me could say, well, Wild questioned the invite process last week, and this week I'm invited. But that wouldn't hold up with what Wild also noted in the calendar - the raid leader who makes those decisions had listed himself as a standby. And he whispered Wild shortly before invites went out, in that gruff manner of his, "Wild, tell me you have a boomkin spec."
"I do," I told him. And I do, and it has the mandatory amount of +hit in order not to embarrass oneself by missing the boss when casting spells. That gear set lacked a lot of other things in order to reach the minimum +263 hit that Wild had to have. But I didn't plan to mention that. I wanted to raid, and if it was in boomkin spec, well, Wild had been getting a lot of practice in that spec in the heroic five mans.
"Good," he sent back, "I don't plan to raid tonight, but I wanted a boomkin in the raid for the buff." Ok, so it's the buff he wants. Hey, if it means I'm raiding, I'll raid "in the buff" if that's what it takes.
Wild joined the raid as a ranged/caster DPS boomkin. Which, once Wild shifted into his chicken suit, seemed to confuse Wild's raider friends. The healing leader tried to assign Wild to healing duty. Friends whispered me, "Did you switch to DPS? Aren't you healing anymore?" The raid leader who would run the raid this night put Wild in the healing group on the raid screen like he's been doing literally for year's with Wild. It was both amusing and kind of neat (now there's a word you don't see much anymore) that so many were so baffled.
Before ICC, however, we trooped over to Wintergrasp, which was under Horde control, to tackle Toravon in VoA. This new boss is something of a wimp, and we killed him easily. He dropped two Tier 10 pieces, neither of which were for druids. Then it was on to ICC.
The first boss in ICC is Lord Marrowgar. I know you know that, but it's been awhile since Wild got to see the flailing skeletal creature. That wasn't Wild's problem, though. I remembered the fight just fine - but as a healer. As a DPS, well, Where do I stand? Where do I run? What do I do? Actually, Marrowgar wasn't so bad. Wild had a pretty good idea what the ranged DPS did on this fight. I could handle this. One thing I will say, though, after the fight was over and Marrowgar was dead, is that it's a lot harder to DPS with a boss breathing down your neck than it is to heal or DPS in Heroics. Wild could not just stand and fire away, like he can do in most Heroics. And it was nothing like healing, where Wild could cast any of several instant heals while on the move. No, this was different.
The second boss was Lady Deathwhisper. Wild knew enough about this fight to know that as ranged DPS, he would be targeting the melee mobs. I had to ask who the tank was for the melee mobs, though, since no instructions were given. A warlock friend in the raid whispered some additional instructions as well, and would help Wild out several times over the course of the evening. It was smooth sailing and the Lady died.
Then came the Gunship Battle. With this group of raiders this fun fight was no contest. Three encounters down.
For the fourth and final boss in this first wing, Wild had to admit that he really had no idea what DPS role he played against Deathbringer Saurfang. Wild hadn't seen this fight much, and the strats had kept changing. Since Wild was basically replacing another boomkin, I asked where the other boomkin usually stood and what his role was. The warlock friend guided Wild to my spot. He whispered Wild, letting me know the other druid focused on the adds when they spawned, and if they got loose he used Typhoon on them to knock them back. Wild's spec doesn't include Typhoon, so Entangling Roots would have to do.
Wild had never killed Saurfang before. Until now. Wild had cleared the entire first wing of Icecrown Citadel. That would have made Wild's night all by itself. But we still had an hour left in the evening. We weren't done yet.
Behind the dias where Saurfang stands there is a portal. Once Saurfang is dead, we can pass through that portal to the next wing, The Plagueworks, and the first boss in that wing, Festergut. If you recall, this is where Wild started last week when he was asked to join the raid on Wednesday. The Festergut fight was fresh in my mind; but then they tried to confuse me with DPS stuff.
Actually, doing ranged DPS on Festergut was easier than healing. Wild had a lot of sympathy for the great tree druid in the raid who anchored the healers and kept the tanks topped off with Hots. Last week Wild was in his position, standing on one spot all night so that raiders would have a mark to run to when the spores showed up. Spores were both bad and good. They were bad because they explode after a few seconds. Getting exploded spores on you was a good thing, though, as it Inoculates raiders, greatly reducing shadow damage and the only thing that will save a raider from Pungent Blight, which is instant death if not inoculated. Spores appear on random raiders, and all ranged raiders run to the "mark" where the tree druid stands so that they'll be in spore exploding range. Then everyone has to get back into position in order to maintain at least a ten yard distance between us to avoid other nasty things getting spread across the raid.
Wild learned from his last encounter with Festergut not to stand too far from where I have to run when the spores come out. Last week Wild missed getting spores when I didn't get there in time and of course died. Wild stubbornly took up position ten yards from the tree druid, daring anyone to try to bump me farther down the line.
We nearly got Festergut on our first try, hitting the Enrage timer and wiping at 3%. We got him now, someone said.
We wiped again on our second try when healers got confused and died early - twice, since both Wild and the other druid battle rezzed them. It's not like this group hasn't killed Festergut before, because they have.
We wiped on our third try when we lost a tank early in the fight. A very frustrated tree druid growled that he'd been hit with Vile Gas seven times, which causes the affected raider to become disoriented, and, in the tree druid's case, unable to heal for 2-6 seconds at a time. No wonder the tank fell.
Some new directions were issued for the next attempt. Raider positioning was adjusted to ensure that folks could get to spores more effectively, as raiders were still dying from not being inoculated. For example, mages who could Blink, could be farther away since Blink could be used to instantly transport them to the spore location. Wild lost his favored position next to the tree druid because a druid's Barkskin spell would absorb enough damage that I would not have to run to the spores mark. I admit I was a bit dubious about that, and didn't like having to move a lot farther away than I would have liked. Well, we'll just try this and see.
On our fourth attempt we wiped again with Festergut at 7%. But Wild was absent for about half of that fight. When the first spores came out Wild cast barkskin and it did keep Wild alive. On the second round of spores, a nervous Wild watched the cooldown timer of his Barkskin spell (which I can only use once every minute - a minute is a long time in combat) count down. I didn't get the spell up while spores were out, but I did get it done before Pungent Blight hit, which would have killed Wild otherwise. This was not as easy as it sounded. Wild did not get Barkskin up the next time as it was still on cooldown, and died.
On our fifth attempt, Wild's second attempt while learning this new Barksin method, I finally got it down. I used a range of solutions in order that Barkskin was used less often, saving it for when I absolutely needed it. Three spores spawn each time they come up. One ends up at the tree druid spot, and another ends up in the melee area. The raider with the third spore stays away from the other two because the exploding damage goes up if spores are close together. Wild first looked to see if that third spore was close by, and if so I went to it to get inoculated. Second, if no spore was nearby, Wild used his Barkskin. On the next spore spawn after a Barkskin, Wild made absolutely sure he could run to the tree druid spot to get inoculated. It worked. Festergut died.
It was right at 9pm, our stopping point. There is a quest which we had all accepted that required a series of actions in order to complete it. It was complicated enough that so far the raid had not even tried on previous raids. The quest reward was quite nice (5 frost emblems) and we talked about trying to get the quest done before we called it an evening. Only one person had to complete the quest for everyone in the raid to get the reward, and it required a player to get spit on by the next boss, Rotgut. After getting Slimed by Rotgut, the raider had ten minutes get back to the quest giver and complete the quest. We didn't have to beat Rotgut, we just had to keep one player alive long enough to complete the quest.
We decided to give it a try. Not only did we complete the quest, we killed Rotgut as well.
It was a big night for Wild. Six boss encounters down in one night, and a bonus 5 frost emblems to boot from the quest. Wild had also won at item that dropped off of Deathwhisper, the second boss we'd faced. It went down like this:
Deathwhisper dropped the weirdly named Nibelung, an i264 two-handed staff for DPS casters. Wild was a DPS caster for this evening, but really, Wild was a healer just playing caster. I did not feel right bidding mainspec for it, so I bid it as offspec. Apparently only one other raider bid, a shadow priest, which would be a main spec bid for her. She won it. She then said she would pass on it since Wild was a caster tonight.
Well, that was extremely nice of her, but Wild responded back asking her to keep it since since 99% of the time Wild is going to be healing, and she would get more use from it. Nope, she said, I want you to have it. Wild got the staff.
Now I know that Nibelung tends to drop frequently, and that there are many other weapons in ICC better than this one. Many of the casters either already had a better weapon, or were saving their EPGP points for something else. The shadow priest already had a very nice staff, which doesn't mean that she couldn't have used Nibelung - she could, as it had greater spell power than hers. So Wild was very grateful for getting it.
What made Nibelung a DPS caster weapon? It has a special feature that when attacking things with it, it will sometimes spawn a Vyrkul warrior (a viking) to fight by Wild's side. Neat, huh? The rest of the stats on this fine staff worked just as well healing as it does for DPS. Wild doesn't much like staffs for healing, though. I prefer a main hand/off hand combination, as it is more flexible and usually when combined offer better stats. Not this time, though. Nibelung was good enough that Wild had no choice but to make it his mainspec healing weapon as well. Wild will still do the quests to get the Quel'Delar main hand mace, but that is a lot less urgent now.
Wild had also earned enough frost badges to purchase his second T10 Lasherweave set piece, the shoulders. It's not a Sanctified piece, so it's an i251, not an i264, but it still counts toward the set bonus, which is what Wild was after. Wild now has the two piece set bonus, which increases the damage of Wild's constantly used Wild Growth spell. Wild's gear still lags the other druid healers, but I keep closing that gap.
I know you've all been wondering how Wild did on the DPS meters. Frankly, Wild was terrible, but I expected that. Take two tanks and six healers away from 25 raiders, and you have 17 raiders left to do DPS. Wild finished 17th.
The top DPSer was a hunter with 8634 DPS, one of four who topped 8k (2 hunters and 2 rogues). There were 4 at 7k+, 4 at 6k+, 3 at 5k+, one at 4k+, and then there was Wild at 3463 DPS. I'm glad they needed that moonkin buff. :)
I had a blast, though, gained a greater appreciation of what raiding DPSers have to go through, and learned enough about DPSing ICC to feel comfortable filling in as DPS when/if needed. This was one of the "High" nights of raiding for Wild.
Oh, and I thought you'd like to see Wild's new look with his cool looking Nibelung and those shoulder, which look like they could take a bite out of someone.
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