The guild 25 man raid is starting to sort itself out into consistent groups. Just as a reminder, invitations to the raid are priority based - raiders who are considered Tier 1, and particularly those who are considered the better raiders within the Tier 1 group, always have priority for invites. Loot from the early bosses in Icecrown Citadel must still be flowing, since the Tier 1 raiders are still showing up on Tuesday nights enmasse to get their 4-6 farmed bosses. Wild will not likely start to crack into that group until the current group doesn't need anything from those bosses anymore.
The Wednesday night group is also starting to look much the same each week as well. There are, of course, many of the same raiders from Tuesday, but I would guess that number runs around 15, with the rest being raiders that weren't invited or couldn't make it on Tuesday. Among the healers, there is usually 3-4 from Tuesday, which leaves 2-3 spots for what I think the guild rates as Tier 2 healers - Wild, a shaman, and a paladin. The three of us are almost always ready to play on Tuesdays, but as I've noted each week, neither Wild nor the other two get invited. But they do need at least two of us on Wednesday.
Wild and the shaman got a confirmed invite for the Wednesday raid. This is the night we typically bang our heads against new bosses, or bosses that we may have killed before, but still have a lot of difficulty with. To me, I think the guild has things backward. The best raiders (according to the guild leadership) come to the farming run, but fewer of them show up for the more difficult encounters, where they would be most needed. And then they send in what they clearly think is their second string team against the newer content.
In any event Wild was just happy to have a spot. Wild never knows what encounters the raid will be facing on Wednesday. Sure, I could just ask, but it's become kind of a game for Wild to try to deduce where we're headed. The best clue is when entering Icecrown Citadel. A warning always comes up letting raiders know that they are entering a raid that is already in progress, in case that is not what they want to be doing. The warning also says how many bosses are already down, but not who they are. Almost every Wednesday that number is 6, which means that we are likely going to get just one boss down and then start pounding our head on a nasty boss like Putricide. This Wednesday night, however, that number was 4. On Tuesday, our #1 team of raiders decided to take some extra time to take on a boss encounter we haven't defeated yet - Blood Queen Lana'thel. They failed.
It was obvious that the four downed bosses were the four easiest in the first wing, the Lower Spire. From there the guild could go to the Plagueworks wing, or the Crimson Hall wing. The Tuesday group had come up short against the Queen in the Crimson Hall, so I was sure it was going to be the Plagueworks tonight, and it was.
Festergut was our first target, and while he is not an easy boss, Wild is starting to feel like he knows the fight and can handle it. Still, it's a tough boss to start the night on, but we got him on our first try.
We moved on to Rotface, and he made things a tad more difficult for us. We wiped on our first attempt, although we got him down to 6%. Now that I'm comfortable with this fight as well, he's actually starting to become fun. Wild even felt comfortable handing the oozes which had so vexed him last week. All of the bosses in this wing are rather talkative, and if one takes the time to listen to what they say it's really pretty funny. Those bosses do seem to enjoy the fight as much as we do.
Wild has been shut out of loot for the past several raids, but in the Rotface loot there were not just one, but two items that Wild could use. One was an ilevel 264 leather healing shoulder. Wild already has an ilevel 251 shoulder that is part of the T9 set. Since I only have the two pieces of T9, I would lose the set bonus if I replaced it. The other item was an off hand that I wanted a lot more than those shoulders, but so, probably, would a lot of other raiders. The shoulders came up first, though, and I decided to bid on it, but I bid it as a minor upgrade, not as main spec. That meant that if I won it it would cost me less in dkp (or EP, as our system labels the loot points we get). The other druid healer won it. Checking his gear, he had three pieces of T9, so he could afford to upgrade his shoulders without losing the set bonus. Good for him. I bid main spec on the off hand - and won it. Surprise!
The third boss in the Plagueworks is Putricide, but the raid leader surprised me by changing direction and turning us into the Crimson Hall. There are only two encounters in this wing, and they are both challenging.
The first encounter we call "the Princes." The full name is Blood Prince Council. There are three Princes, and they share the same health pool. All three have to be fought at the same time, but only one of them will take damage at any given time. Wild has done this fight before, as the healer for the tank on one of the three Princes. On this encounter Wild was assigned raid healing. It's an interesting fight where one tank has to collect purple balloons to stay alive, and the others have various explosively fun things to do. As a raid healer, Wild healed about half the room while the other raid healer took the other half. Every now and then Wild would intercept a swirling green ball that came his way, trying to intercept it at an angle so that Wild would take a little damage, but not too much damage. Those green balls have a target, and can be fatal if it reaches the target at full strength, So raiders try to deflect it, absorbing a little damage as it goes by. Wild was a target once himself, and I kited it around long enough to survive the inevitable impact.
We wiped on our first try because someone was shooting the purple balloons and the tank that needed them died. That called for some explanations before the next attempt. The Princes went down on our second try.
Wild was one of three raiders that had never seen the next boss, Blood-Queen Lana'thel. Many of the raiders had seen her only once, the night before. We have never beaten this encounter in 25 man. I read up on the fight, and learned that players get bitten and turned into vampires during this fight. That sounds like fun.
The somewhat rectangular room looks like this:
There was a pretty long conversation about the strategy. This is a fight where part of the raid has to enter a portal to fight the Queen, while the rest of the raid remains outside fighting the many mobs that spawn. Wild was in the group outside the portal, and so I can't really say what went on inside the portal, but apparently that is where the real action was.
Wild researched this fight before the battle started, but what I saw was very different from the strat guides at wowhead and (later, after the raid was over) at other websites, all of which were written while the encounter was still only on the test realm. In these strats there is no mention of portals.
The guild strategy that was tried on Tuesday had the outside group on the east and west sides of the room north of the Queen. But scatter damage by the mobs the tanks on each side were fighting had the nasty side effect of getting the healers killed. For this night's attempt, we decided to try placing healers on the north and south sides, centering them and getting them out of any chance of scatter fire from the mobs, but still in range to heal our fellow raiders.
We started the fight, and Wild watched mobs like abominations, skeletons, worms, etc, pour into the room. DPS brought them down and Wild kept up the healing. Sections of the raid would go out of range (into the portal). That part of the action I never saw. Healers weren't supposed to get bitten and turned into a vampire, but if there was any of that going on I couldn't see it. Certainly nothing tried to turn me into a vampire :( and Wild did not get any of the other nasty attacks - not the "aura of despair" or the "pack of the darkfallen" or "swarming shadows." There was even an "air phase" when the Queen takes flight. Didn't see that, either.
But everyone was certainly ecstatic when the Queen died and we won. It was the guild's first kill. And we second stringers did it, on our first attempt, and after the first stringers had failed the night before. I have to admit that it felt pretty good.
We had time for one shot at Putricide, and while it was a good attempt we didn't kill him. I'm still not really comfortable with this fight, and apparently neither are others.
Wild's healing was sufficient, but I wasn't happy with it. I know what's wrong, though, but I am going to have to make some gear decisions to fix it.
Here is the numbers:
#1: Mg, our best druid healer, 5213 hps, 20.4% healing
#2: priest, 5131/19.6%
#3: paladin, 5884/18.2%
#4: shaman, 3011/10.7%
#5: Wild, 2700/9.5%
#6, the other shaman, 2597/8.9%
Wild has good gear. Not as good as Mg's, but not that far off, either. The problem is speed. Haste is a stat that reduces the global cooldown that determines how quickly the next spell can be cast. The more haste you have, the faster you can cast, and the more heals you can get on targets. Wild went into ICC Wednesday night with 322 haste. Mg has 860. Mg also has a lot more spell power, which makes his spells stronger, but the key issue is that Wild cannot cast anywhere near as fast as Mg. Druid HoTs are often over-written by other healer spells, so we always have a lot of overhealing. Mg had 54% overhealing, for example. He's fast, and his spells have time to tic before being over-written. Wild gets his heals off later, and runs the greater risk of getting over-written (getting even fewer tics) or even landing after another healer has gotten off his heal. Wild's overhealing was 70%. That's the highest overheal number I've ever seen with Wild. Think of that - 70% of Wild's heals did no healing. Lots of room for improvement there.
Wild now has an awesome off hand, called [Shadow Silk Spindle]. It has +haste, and would immediately bump up Wild's haste to 382, which is at least a start. There is a catch, though. Wild currently wields a two-hand staff. It's a DPS staff, but it's so good that Wild uses it to heal as well. I can't use the two-hand with an off hand. To use the Spindle, I need a one handed weapon to go with it. Wild has one, of course, the one he was using before he got the staff, called [Wraith Strike]. That one hand is an ilevel 219 weapon, though, hardly a match for Wild's current gear level. Combining the stats of the one hand and off hand and comparing them to the staff - well, Wild is going to have to make a tough choice.
Overall, every stat but one is better using the Wraith/Spindle combo than the staff. The one stat that takes a hit is spell power. With the staff Wild's spell power is 2719 (compared to Mg's 2995). With the combo Wild's spell power is 2507, a loss of over 200.
Wild has his work cut out for him.
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