Wednesday Night 2 (10 Mar) - Of Plagueworks and the Crimson Hall

Wednesday Night 2 (10 Mar) - Of Plagueworks and the Crimson Hall

On Tuesday the raid had cleared six encounters in ICC25, the four in the Lower Spire, and the first two in the Plagueworks. There are only three bosses in the Plagueworks, the last being Professor Putricide. They had taken some shots at him on Tuesday but did not down him.

On Wednesday the raid opted to bypass Putricide and head into the Crimson Hall, the third wing of ICC. Wild had never seen this wing before, much less either of the two encounters in there. Our regular healing leader was absent, and Wild found it somewhat odd that none of the other three regular healers in the raid picked up the role. Surveydrood, one of the two raid leaders, took over that role instead. Even though Wild hasn't raided ICC that often, I can monitor what is going on with the healing by watching the assignments posted in the healing channel. Wild's role as the one druid healer (they generally only want one), is to maintain HoTs on all the tanks (as many as three) and raid heal as needed. Two to three other healers were dedicated to raid healing, so Wild's raid healing pickens were often pretty slim.

We cleared through some initial trash mobs with no problems, and then paused in front of another group of trash mobs of 5 or 6. "Hmm," said the tank, Rh. "They have pets with them this time." A pregnant pause as other raiders who'd been this far absorbed what they were seeing. After a moment, someone asked, "Are we going after the dragon?" Then it dawned on us. "Oh, no, we're not. This is the wrong hall." We had stopped outside the Frostwing Halls, where the dragon Sindragosa has her lair. No, we really didn't want to go in there.

We shifted over to the Crimson Hall and set up for the first encounter in that wing, the Blood Prince Council. The Council is three bosses. They are lined up along a raised stage opposite where we enter. Their names are Valanar, Keleseth, and Taldaram. The three bosses all share the same health pool, but only one boss can be attacked at a time, and that rotates between the three princes throughout the fight.

The guild practiced this fight on Tuesday but did not down it, although they might have won this encounter in previous weeks. It was all shiny and new to Wild. Healing assignments were made over vent, instead of in the healer channel as is the custom. Wild was assigned as main tank healer for a DK tank that would be responsible for Keleseth. Keleseth was on the left side of the stage, and all Wild had to do was stand in range of the tank and heal him. The other two tank healers were given similar instructions, and all of us were advised that the tank healers really didn't even need to move other than to avoid the nasty things that were sure to happen when we started. Ok, I'd read up on what types of attacks that would be used; hopefully I'd learn to recognize them and react as the fight developed.

On our first attempt we did pretty well, although we were losing DPS raiders faster than we could overcome. Wild's tank had a special role. He had to gather large purple balloons that spawned around the room called dark nucleus. The balloons provide shadow damage protection and he needed 4-5 of them to stay alive through the damage Keleseth delivered. They were easily kited and the idea was that ranged DPS would grab any that were too far for the tank to go after and bring them to him. All of that was going swimmingly, but when the tank lost two of his balloons (they do dissipate eventually) Wild misjudged the amount of additional damage he would take and the tank died. The raid leader called a wipe, as battle rezzing a tank in this situation would not stop the wipe from happening.

We began again. Wild's tank went down in the first two minutes of the fight. Another wipe. Tank movement was supposed to be contained to the front left of the room, and off of the stage. However, when the tank couldn't pick up enough balloons he ran up on the stage - and out of range of Wild's heals. With only two balloons for protection he died before Wild could get back in range. That was lesson #2 for both Wild and the tank. Overall the raid leaders were additionally concerned about the positioning of the DPS, and so we spent some time going through all the positioning for the fight.

A third try. This time Wild got to experience all the "joys" of this encounter. Twice Wild was blocked from healing when kinetic bombs dropped between Wild and his tank. Those bombs are supposed to be killed by the DPS before they touch the ground, but sometimes they didn't get to them and Wild got hit and knocked back. Another knock back came from a shock vortex. Both times Wild scrambled and got heals to the tank (and himself). There are a number of different kinds of attacks, from high damage lances to balls of flame that target individual players. Those balls of flame are deadly if it hits the target at full force, so when a ball forms the target kites the ball while other raiders come in range and take a little damage, diminishing it's strength when it explodes.

Wild's tank couldn't contain himself to the area assigned, but Wild stayed on him, chasing him down wherever those balloons led him. And we defeated the Blood Prince Council. No druid gear dropped. Wild did bid on a pair of cloth gloves, but a clothie got it as I expected.

We made one attempt on the trash mobs fronting the second encounter, Blood-Queen Lana'thel. There were quite a large group of mobs, and what was supposed to be a pull of three brought the whole group down on us. We hung in there for quite awhile, but the damage proved too high and raiders started dropping. We wiped. The two raid leaders must have conferred with each other, as they then changed direction and headed back to the Plagueworks to take on Professor Putricide.

I lost count of how many times we attempted the Professor. Wild tried very hard to find the flow of the fight, that point when it became second nature in moving from position to position depending on the phase and the condition of the area you were trying to reach or trying to avoid. I didn't find it on this night.

There are three phases to the fight, although we never got past the first two. Within those phases there are also "green" periods and "orange" periods. Wild liked the green periods. Wild knew where he was supposed to be and could improvise when that area was swamped with puddles of unhealthy goo of one kind or another. If you can't stand getting sticky messes all over you, this is not the fight for you. I never quite figured out the orange period, though, particularly when Wild was hit with the orange beam Gas Cloud. That beam loved Wild, knowing how much I loathed it, and I got it again and again. That cloud had to be kited, supposedly in a direction that took it in an arc around the group of ranged DPS that would kill it before it reached it's target and did raid wide damage. No matter where Wild ran, however, it was always the wrong direction, or so the raid leader was frantic to tell me in vent. I swear I knew where those DPSers were supposed to be, and that I was headed their way, but when that group has to move to avoid other kinds of damage Wild became completely befuddled. We even tried having one of the most experienced raid healers marked so that the rest of us could see where he was standing as a guide, but the mark always fell off the raider short minutes into the fight. The raid leader yelling "come to us, come to us!" didn't help, either, since where "us" were depended on what was going on around them. And with the blistering haze of combat all around us in flashing shades of bright yellow to deep red, Wild could barely make out those next to him vice trying to see someone across the room.

What I didn't even talk about was the fact that one of the tanks has to become an abomination for parts of the fight, and must eat and vomit the most disgusting stuff. Be sure to volunteer for that part. Yea, right.

Wild certainly made his contribution to our many wipes, but I wasn't alone. Overall the raid made some good progress, and we were particularly happy with the smoothness of the transition between the first two phases. The general damage being dealt to the raid wasn't that bad, either, except that mistakes in this fight were very unforgiving, causing high damage AoE hits that wiped out whole chunks of the raid at a time. Putricide enters phase three when he hits 35% health. Our best effort got him into the low 40% range. This is an extremely difficult fight, one of the most difficult in ICC.

Wild did ok on the healing, but I was hoping for a better performance.

#1: pally, 5069 hps, 20.1% of the healing
#2: priest, 3968/17.2%
#3: shaman, 3368/12.7%
#4: Wild, 2587/11.1%
#5: shaman, 2638/10.8%
#6: pally, 2552/8.5%

I was totally wrung out at the end of the night. Tackling new bosses is hard. But Wild is very thankful and happy to have been there.