Wednesday (14 Apr) - So When's He Going To Post Something?!

Wednesday (14 Apr) - So When's He Going To Post Something?!

Real life keeps catching up with me and smacking me around. Our garage drywalling, ceiling work, and painting is finally done. All the stuff we had before the work that we had carted out and into a Uhaul truck is now back in the garage. The Mrs first comment was, "It looks just as jammed packed as it did before!" Sigh.

But we're getting there. It's "almost" the way we want it, but I'll be at it again for most of tomorrow re-arranging large, heavy objects. I did get a very nice free standing tool chest out of all this, and I'm pretty happy about that.

I wasn't so happy to hear from the mechanic getting some maintenance done of the RV. That "work" thing keeps sniffing around and I may have to pay attention to it if this keeps up.

Wild missed the raid on Tuesday all together. Just didn't have time and didn't even sign up. Felt a little bad about that, but it turned out they had more than enough folks and instead of downing the usual six bosses, they killed eight. What did that leave the Wednesday raid? Say hello to Professor Putricide once again.

We couldn't get 25 raiders, so we went with 23 for most of the evening. We were overstocked with healers, too, so a couple of them were pressed into service as DPSers. Wild didn't get the DPS call this time as we already had two moonkin in the raid.

Wild keeps learning things every time we bash ourselves against Putricide. One day I might actually figure it out. What kept frustrating me is that the healer positions would be explained for the fight, and then two minutes into the battle the healers wouldn't be where the instructions said we were supposed to be. I mean, it sounds pretty simple - green slime go south, orange slime come to the middle. Well, sort of south, and no, not actually in the middle, but sort of in the middle but toward the edge. Wild still found himself standing alone. Oh, but of course if this or that is occurring you need to be standing somewhere else entirely. I could go nuts.

The raid leader decided to mark a raid healer and a tank healer so that the rest of the healers could follow along where they went. That worked pretty well at first, and Wild did pick up some nuances in positioning while tank healing. But guessing which way to move and where to stop was still kind of hit or miss. Ok, why did he go there? I'd wonder, following dutifully. But the marks would disappear and the raiders would forget to refresh them. It's much harder to pick out individual raiders when they aren't marked in some way. One of the newer shaman had been assigned as a tank healer late in the evening, and Wild decided to follow along with him. That probably helped Wild the most. First, his movements and positioning made sense, and I could usually predict and move with him instead of waiting until after he made a move. It also helped Wild's confidence that the other healer had even more trouble tangling with nasty things we were supposed to be avoiding, and Wild healed him a whole lot more than he had to heal me.

Wild had one major screwup. The tension had gotten pretty high as we plowed through attempt after attempt, mostly not even getting out of phase 2 and into phase 3. But this time we had gotten into phase 3 and we were desperately trying to hang in there and end this thing. Wild got hit with the orange beam - the kind that requires the target to run for his life. Wild ran the wrong way, running into trouble instead of away from it. We wiped at 7%. On the surface it was, well, things happen, etc, but beneath the surface I'll bet the two raid leaders were getting their chat logs filled with whispers. But you know, I was doing my best, and in reality overall Wild was doing fine. Wild didn't die any more often than anyone else, and stayed alive deep into most of the attempts. Wild's healing held up well, too.

We spent the whole evening on Putricide. Nine attempts total. On our best shot we got him to 3%, and Wild was around 'till the end on that one. Eight bosses killed on Tuesday, zero on Wednesday. I just love ole Putricide.

This is the week that the guild is going to start their lockout strategy to hopefully start to balance the two nights better. So next Tuesday, instead of having a fresh ICC, that raid will be starting on - Putricide. The fresh run will start on Wednesday. I just have to wonder how many raiders will suddenly discover that Tuesday is a bad day for them and sign up on Wednesday instead.

Here's how things fell out healing-wise:

#1: shaman, 4120 hps, 10.2% of the healing
#2: shaman, 3957 hps, 9.5%
#3: Wild, 3397 hps, 8.5%
#4: shaman, 3314 hps, 8.0%
#5: visiting druid, 2786 hps, 6.4%
#6: shared as two healers also took on some DPS as well

The visiting druid was one of two PUG raiders we picked up to fill the raid. We didn't get to 25 raiders until the sixth attempt.

Wild also made some progress on a little thing called the Quel'delar quest chain. You know, the one with the very cool mace called [Hammer of Purified Flame] at the end. But it's late and I'm tired, so that will have to wait for the next post.

Oh, and Philly keeps sneaking up on level 80 - 79% of the way.