Wednesday (3 Mar) - Finally, Wild Gets a Heal-Check

Wednesday (3 Mar) - Finally, Wild Gets a Heal-Check

Wild didn't have to consider whether the guild 25 man run Wednesday night might need Wild. Wild had declined the invitation earlier in the week, but sometimes they still come up short on the second raid night. They had a full complement of confirmed raiders on this night, though, so Wild could focus on the MM group ICC10 run.

The raid calendar had many new MM guild names on it. Wild would learn later that the MM guild had combined two of their ten mans into one. Of the seven signed up (including Wild) there were five new faces. The raid leader, Sh, made it in game just after 6pm, but it was 6:35pm before we got a full ten and could start. The raid leader also made an announcement that left Wild with a sinking feeling. Our first raid leader had had to bow out of running the raid when his job situation changed. He has never come back. The new raid leader had his own job situation change this past week, and will likely no longer be able to raid on a regular basis. This is pretty bad news for Wild. As happened in Wild's guild, the MM guild is having trouble maintaining more than one ten man, and with the loss of Wild's two best contacts in the MM guild (the two raid leaders), and the MM guilds consolidation of ten mans, I no longer know where Wild stands. Even assuming Wild will still get invites to the MM group run, it seems those runs will still be somewhat iffy, at least until a new raid leader is identified. At least tonight's raid (Thursday) is still on, assuming we get enough folks.

We got off to a very strong start Wednesday night. We cleared through the trash with only one wipe. We did not have a rogue with us, so we couldn't detect and clear the traps that spawn really nasty mobs called Wards. Bad luck resulted in us tripping three traps on the same pull, which caused the wipe.

We had a picture perfect battle with the first boss, Marrowgar. Wild had a scary moment when I almost lost the off tank, which I had been assigned to heal, but I saved him and Marrowgar went down on our first attempt. Wild usually raid heals for this group, but we had a newish holy priest with us and Sh wanted Wild to tank heal instead, so the priest could raid heal.

The second boss, Deathwhisper, is an easier boss than Marrowgar from a healing perspective, but it's a tricky fight for the DPS, who have several targeting assignments that change depending on the situation. Ideally there is one DPS on Deathwhisper, caster DPS on the melee mobs, melee raiders on the caster mobs, and then everyone on the special mobs that spawn. There are several waves of mobs, and they all have to be killed before we can focus on killing Deathwhisper. Unfortunately, the DPS just couldn't get the job done. We tried five times, and each attempt took a LONG time because us healers kept everyone alive for forever, but we ended up wiping in the end every time. Part of the problem was the retribution paladin in the group, a new raider I didn't know. Paladins are known for their survivability, with bubble shields, heals, and lots of "save myself!" spells. This guy died at the drop of a hat. The poor raid healer was practically spamming heals on him and Wild as good as had him in my tank level HoT rotation, and he still died. Even if he ignored the tank he should have been supporting and single handedly went after other mobs, he still should have been able to survive it. I suspect, despite several explanations, that he was attacking the melee mobs when he should have been attacking the casters. That would have caused a damage reflection, and all that damage he thought he was doing to the mob would have reflected back and hit him instead. In short, he kept killing himself.

We will hopefully be back at Deahthwhisper Thursday night, and if we can get her down, we should also be able to beat the Gunship encounter which follows it.

Healing numbers on the night:

#1: Wild, 2690 hps, 37.3% of the healing
#2: Sh, 2579/30.6%
#3: priest, 2500/25.3%

It was odd that after Wild got a number of gear upgrades, I had little chance to test things out in a raid situation. Eventually Wild got into the OS Sartharion raid for the weekly, which gave me some data to work with, although that raid pretty much overpowered the instance. So Wednesday night's ICC10 run was really the first time since Wild got his two piece T10 set bonus and the new Nibelung staff that I've had a chance to see the results.

According to the wow-heroes website, which has a gear scoring (GS) system that is often used by PUG raid leaders to check if a raider is geared well enough to come to the raid, Wild improved from around 2600 to over 2800 GS. In theory Wild is geared well enough to be a healer for all raids, even the hard mode ones now. Of course, gear says nothing about ability, experience, and knowledge of fights, but for PUGs sometimes GS is all they have to go on. Wild may start finding himself in PUG ICC raids if I can't get a stable ten man home.