Wild was outside Icecrown Citadel when the invite came his way. I was the last raider invited, so I hustled inside only to find no one there. Ok, get your bearings. I did not at that moment know how far the guild had gotten on Tuesday. I quickly figured that wherever they were, they were likely at the most recently opened portal within ICC. Wild trotted over to the portal in the npc area of ICC and used the last portal listed.
Ok, here they are! Wild joined the raid. Wild quickly counted healers. There were six of us: two priests, two shaman, a paladin, and Wild. Trash mobs faced us. Wild got his buffs and we started. Wild still did not know where he was or what he was facing, but I could figure that out as we went along. At least he wasn't facing a boss right off the bat.
The initial trash mobs were easy enough to kill, but there were some large mobs mixed in that had a very nasty AoE that pounded the entire raid down to almost no health. The raid leader warned raiders to be prepared for this, as they had wiped on those mobs more than once in last week's run. Wild joined the rest of the healers in timing our AoE heals to coincide with the mass AoE damage and that kept everyone alive.
We soon made it to the first boss, and Wild realized where he was. The raid was no longer in the Lower Spire of ICC. We were in the Plagueworks, the second wing of ICC. We were facing the first boss in that wing, Festergut. This was one ugly looking sob.
This is Festergut - an Abomination (Obviously)
When the raid leader asked for a show of hands of those who had never seen this fight, four of us, including Wild, sent a hand skyward. The strategy for the fight was explained quickly, and we engaged.
We were directed to spread out, maintaining at least 10 yards between raiders to avoid multiple raiders getting hit by AoE exploding gas spores. These spores were actually a good thing, as the afflicted raider (assuming he survived) gets inoculated, and they can protect other raiders from more nastiness.
We didn't get far on the first attempt. There was a large explosion and half the raid died. That must have been a Gastric Explosion, kind of like what happens after a lot of pizza and beer. Only this explosion is a lot more fatal. That was tanking hand off problem.
We set up for a second attempt. Wild was raid healing, and was kept very busy due to constant AoE damage across the raid. Then, during periods when Festergut was focusing on the tanks, Wild helped tank heal. During the AoE phase, the amount of shadow damage being done to the raid becomes fatal, unless protected by inoculated raiders. Two healers were assigned to anchor safe zones where raiders would congregate with inoculated raiders during the worst of the AoE. The key to that was to make sure that you were both ten yards away from any other raider, but close enough to run to the safe spot when necessary. Wild made that run successfully three times, but I kept finding myself farther and farther away. Wild didn't make it on the fourth phase change and died. There were other deaths, and we wiped with Festergut at 21%.
I've mentioned before that we have two raid leaders, kind of a good cop stern cop team. The good cop RL told us what a great effort it was, and Wild learned that the guild had not yet killed this boss. The 21% was the closest yet to killing him. The stern cop RL pointed out the DPS flaws, saying that they were not bringing enough damage. Tighten it up, use speed pots, reduce movement, and bring those numbers up.
Wild knew what I'd done wrong, but the RL knew how to fix Wild's movement issues. He tagged Wild as the anchor point for one of the safe areas. Wild would not have to move at all. Wild was happy with that role, but I also knew that I could handle the movement on future fights now that I'd seen enough of the fight to get a feel for it.
We went at Festergut a third time, and this time the abomination went down. Wow, a first kill! And Wild was there.
The new EPGP loot system was in use now. Nobody had gotten around to answering Wild's question on the guild website asking when the system went live. It obviously had, though, and yet there'd been no notification. Oh well, I've already covered the raid management issues. EPGP is pretty neat. A popup comes up on the screen that shows the item up for bid, with all the choices laid out - mainspec, minor upgrade, offspec, greed and pass. You must decide within thirty seconds or it's an automatic pass. The two drops from Festergut were both cloth items and Wild passed on them. Had they been items that Wild couldn't equip (plate gear for example) Wild would have been informed that I could not bid on the item. However, there was a problem with the results, as those with master loot authority weren't all getting the same list of bidders. Most likely a problem with versions of the addon, but that got sorted out.
On the next set of trash there was a mob called Precious. I never really figured what that was all about, or which of the mobs we killed between Festergut and Rotface that Precious was. I'll have to do some more research on that. This part of ICC was still pretty new to folks, and we also stumbled into mobs that we thought despawned when we killed Festergut, but apparently were Rotface mobs. We had no trouble taking them down, though, and despite the rough edges we were soon facing Rotface.
Rotface is even prettier than Festergut
Rotface has also never been killed by the guild in 25 man. If Wild needed to move a lot during the Festergut encounter, the movement was three times as bad against Rotface. Rotface spewed vomit that had to be avoided. The very walls of Rotface's chamber dumped spreading pools of acid across the floor, and small oozes sludged their way through the raid, doing minor damage at first, but merging with each other into bigger and nastier oozes that then explode disgustingly - and fatally for those in range. Not only does the ooze explosions hit nearby raiders, it tosses more disgusting stuff into the air that aims at raider positions as they come down.
It was a crazy fight. The raid circled Rotface with one tank handling him in the middle. Wild was the tank healer for this fight. Two other off tanks were responsible for kiting and safely exploding the oozes. Wild was almost immediately caught in the spewing snot from Rotface, but I remembered there were three snorts and managed to get out of the way of the second two. A wall belched yellow slime and Wild shifted to another quadrant to keep his feet out of the mess. When the explosions occured, raiders ran to the outer edges so that they would be somewhere other than where they were standing before. Then we returned once the stuff stopped falling. Wild avoided oozes for most of the fight, but one finally attached itself to Wild. The damage was minor when it's small. Wild looked for the off tank as the strat was to kite the sickening little fellow to the off tank and let it join with the bigger one the tank was kiting. Wild didn't get there as the raid was collapsing by that time and we wiped.
We did remarkably well, though, getting Rotface to 26%. The primary problem were the oozes. Too many had fused together and killed people. Getting those oozes out of the raid and to the off tanks was critical.
There was confusion on our second attempt and we went down quickly.
Then came the third attempt, and we came oh so close, finally wiping at 4%. We killed Rotface on our fourth attempt, another guild first. And Wild was there. Again!
I know. Pictures or it doesn't count. Well, here they are:
Festergut Kill
Rotface Kill
Rotface dropped three items, and they all appeared in EPGP windows at the same time. With only thirty seconds to respond, Wild had to act quickly. One was cloth, and Wild passed on it. The next was a +haste trinket with what Wild thought was a spell power proc feature, so Wild rolled mainspec and then, with just a few seconds left, rolled mainspec on a leather healing helm.
There was more loot confusion. The loot master announced that Wild had won the trinket and the RL moonkin had won the helm. Two other raiders, though, had bid mainspec on the trinket but their bids had not appeared to the loot master. Wild had also made a mistake in bidding mainspec on the trinket. The +haste was used by DPS and healers, but the spell power feature only procced when doing damage. Wild had missed that part. Had I seen that I could have bid offspec, but not mainspec. The issues were handled very carefully and thoroughly. Both the RL moonkin and Wild were ready to turn over our loot depending on who it rightfully belonged to.
In the end the moonkin RL was determined to be the winner of the trinket. Wild, as the only leather wearing mainspec healer in the raid (and of course I had bid on it) won the ilevel 264 helm. That makes four i264 pieces, if one is counting (points at DER :P ).
Beyond Rotface is Professor Putricide. We made one attempt on this even more complex fight in which Wild ran the leather off the soles of his hooves, and managed to get to 49%. Time was tight, and Wintergrasp belonged to the horde, so at that point we changed focus and headed for Vault of Archovan to take on the new boss, Toravon, that drops Tier 10 gear.
Wild has seen Toravon only once, and had come away from that with the T10 pants. We killed Toravon rather easily, and all the loot went to paladins. Nobody was interested in any of the other bosses in VoA, and we called it a night.
Wild had one more task to accomplish. During the ICC run Wild had reached Honored with the ICC faction called the Ashen Verdict. This faction awards a ring that is upgraded each time a higher faction level is reached. Wild was wearing the ilevel 251 version. Wild returned to ICC and traded that ring in for the better i259 ring.
Ok, so there were two more tasks. The WG battle was about ready to start. JB had clued Wild into the fact that honor points gained in battles like WG could now be used to buy i264 pvp gear. Really. JB showed Wild the one she picked up, an incredible cape. Wild's greatest need in terms of gear was a new weapon (which is mostly wishful thinking only) and new bracers to replace the badly worn, i226 [Bracers of the Broodmother] which came from Ulduar. Wouldn't it be nice to get at least an interim upgrade by getting the i264 pvp bracers? Wild needed about 45k honor, and had 32k of that just gathering dust. Wild decided to start doing WG again. It'll take four or five runs to get enough honor to get those bracers. JB now wishes she hadn't told Wild about it. Now she'll have to share time with Wild in getting the rest of the gear she wants.
No comments:
Post a Comment