Wednesday (28 Apr) - Icecrown Citadel Once Again

Wednesday (28 Apr) - Icecrown Citadel Once Again

With 24 guild raiders signed up and confirmed for the Wednesday raid, Wild could be pretty sure we would be raiding ICC 25. Wild was invited, and I accepted. The MM guild 10 man ICC was also on the ticket to start 45 minutes later, but no one Wild knew from the MM guild were on to talk to about that, so Wild went with his own guild.

Even with 24 confirmed raiders, once invites went out we were able to muster up only 22 raiders, which amounted to every level 80 guildie in game. Our struggles to fill a raid continue. We decided to start anyway, figuring that we should be able to handle at least the first three bosses, and maybe a fourth, even short on raiders.

As you know it's been weeks and weeks since Wild has seen the early encounters in the first wing of ICC. Lord Marrowgar, who's he? Oh yea, he's that skeletal boss with the many arms and heads that floats around in his chamber, visible from the entrance just inside ICC. The first boss. Yea, that one, I remember now. How about the strat? Strat, I don't need no stinking strat! Oh yes I do. Wild raked through his memory - ok, close up to melee range on the boss, when he started running around be sure to stay out of the lines of white fire, heal raiders that get hit with Spike.

For Wild, it looked like an easy kill. Marrowgar went down on our first attempt, even short three DPS raiders. The raid leader called it sloppy, though, and it took longer than usual to kill him. We were already behind schedule.

Marrowgar holds more loot that Wild wants than any two bosses in ICC. He has four items that are upgrades to Wild's healing spec, and a +hit ring that would be marvelous for his moonkin spec. Did any of that drop? Well, the DPS ring dropped, and Wild bid on it as an offspec item. But it went to a mainspec warlock. Oh, and a little thing called [Frozen Bonespike] dropped as well. Remember the Quel'delar quest chain that Wild went through to get that very special mace, [Hammer of Purified Flame]? The one Wild worked so hard to get so that he could replace his very undergeared old weapon, because Wild was for sure never going to get the weapon he really wanted out of ICC? Well, [Frozen Bonespike] is the ICC weapon that Wild figured he would never get. And Wild won the bid for it. How good is this weapon? Wild will still be wearing it when Cataclysm comes. There isn't anything better short of Heroic level ICC 25, which Wild will never see (there, I said it again). Even so, after all that effort, Wild was a little sad to be putting away his Hammer so soon after I'd gotten it. It served Wild well, and will have an honored spot in Wild's bank bags, along with other treasured weapons of the past.

After Marrowgar was Lady Deathwhisper. We'd gained another raider and were at 23 strong when we brought her down on our first attempt as well. Wild was having fun, even as the raid leader groused about how long it was taking. If this was a slow, sloppy run, I can see how on "better" full runs with all the regulars how they could sweep through 6-8 bosses in a single night. Wild got to roll on another item, but it went to someone else.

The Gunship battle came next, and it was as fun and easy as Wild remembered. It had been easy fight even the few times Wild had done it in the past, and this was no exception. There were no druid specific drops this time, but a "handy" pair of cloth DPS caster gloves dropped. Before we put the EPGP loot system in place to determine who won gear, it was courteous to pass on gear once you had already won something. Wild did that only once under the new system, and the gear I'd passed on got sharded. Wild doesn't do that anymore, letting the system make the determination. Wild bid on the gloves as an offspec. If anyone in the raid bid on it as mainspec that would trump Wild's bid. No one did, and Wild got the gloves. The icing on the cake is that Wild uses the same i245 gloves for both healing and moonkin, and the new i264 gloves, even with the +hit on it, was better healing gloves than Wild already had. Offspec, yes, but still worthy for Wild's mainspec, too. I liked the name, too: [Gunship Captain's Mittens].

The fourth and final boss in the first wing is Deathbringer Saurfang. The last time Wild saw this Orc boss, he was not yet on farm and was still giving us trouble. Wild was also in moonkin form for that previous fight. On this night I sort of remembered the fight, but didn't get positioned right. The raid leader reminded Wild where to stand. Once the fight started things went far smoother than Wild had ever seen it, and Saurfang died. Just like that, we had cleared a full wing of ICC, Wild had gotten two new pieces of gear, and we still had a lot of time on the clock. This is what Wild has been missing every Tuesday night in the past.

We moved on, clearing trash to Festergut in the second wing, the Plagueworks. We had a raider die on the trash, which oddly enough became a repeated theme the rest of the night. The raider claimed a bonespike had killed him, according to his combat log. Bonespikes, of course, are an ability of Marrowgar, who was dead and even if alive was no where near us. Interesting.

On our first pull of Festergut the tank died and we wiped. Not immediately, though. We tried to recover and fought a losing battle for a few more minutes before it became obvious we were going down. We had the best healer in our guild main healing that tank, so a perplexed raid leader took some time to try to figure out what went wrong. You don't second guess your best healer, though. All she could figure out was that she must not have gotten off a heal in time. Wild also screwed up, although that wasn't the reason for the wipe. In this fight spores form on random raiders, and those who get spores have to move to pre-selected spots where other raiders can converge on the spores to get a buff. I hate it when Wild gets a spore the first time they spawn. We were at the point of the fight when raiders were moving in toward the tank, and Wild was late remembering that when I got a spore I was to move in the other direction. Wild did a 180 and raced toward the rim of the room, but too late and several raiders took some heavy damage. No one died, though.

On our second attempt the raid leader repositioned Wild at a spot where I didn't need to move at all. See, I'm finally getting our raid leader trained on how to best use Wild. ;-) Festergut died.

A different raider died on trash getting to Rotface, our next target. Truly weird, as the raider said he'd not gotten aggro on anything.

The Rotface fight went well. Wild danced around Rotface, successfully avoiding every Vomit he cast at him, and twice got an ooze that he successfully kited over to the ooze tank like I was supposed to. Rotface fell on our first attempt.

Six bosses were now down and we had a choice - we could continue to farm by taking on the Princes next, or we could go pay Professor Putricide a visit, who was definitely not on farm. The raid was given a choice. Wild voted for Putricide. Not that I like this fight - it sucks - but I'd gotten some good advice about how to manage the battle that I really wanted to try out and practice. The raid decided to take one shot at Putricide.

We started as we always did, with the whole raid crowded on top of each other in the center of the room. Putricide had his back to us, working at his lab on the west side of the room. The tank aggroed him, brought him to the center, and when Putricide dropped his first slime pool we all broke from the center and headed for our positions. For healers, that position was the south corner. I'd always thought of it that way, as a way to remember how to get back to it when positioning changed. Wild's new thinking, though, also knew that part of the room as the orange tank area, something that had never been clear to me in prior fights. The "orange tank" had nothing to do with our tanks. It had nothing to do with the fact that one of our tanks was a raider who had been purposely transformed into an abomination to eat the slime that Putricide drops. I knew it had something to do with an orange beam and experiments that Putricide repeats throughout the fight. And now I knew that the "orange tank" was exactly that - on the southern side of the room a large tank hung on the wall full of orange goo. So why do we go to the south side of the room, where the orange tank is, when told to go our green positions?

Let me explain further. The first "unstable experiment" that Putricide does produces an ooze (a mob) from the green tank on the north side of the room. That ooze shoots a green beam that impales a random raider and does significant DoT damage while also immobilizing the raider. The ooze moves toward the raider and if it reaches the raider it explodes, doing damage and a knockback to everyone nearby. The DPS do their best to kill the ooze before it reaches it's target, and so we stand on the opposite side of the room from where the ooze starts from to give the DPS as much time as possible to kill it.

Once the ooze has been killed, the raid leader calls out the kill and then calls out "orange positions!" That's the signal to change positions and move to the north and near the green tank. The ooze that then comes out of the orange tank is a bit nastier than the one from the green tank. This ooze also does damage to the targeted raider, but the raider can move and in fact has to move, kiting the ooze away from other raiders but in the direction of the ranged DPS so that they can target and kill it. If the orange ooze reaches it's target, the explosion is much worse and could wipe the raid. The orange ooze can also change targets, which is another reason to keep it kited away from other raiders.

Then we do it all over again. And again. And again. If you understood all that on your first read through you are a better man/woman than me. I think I finally understand it, but it will take Wild a few more battles to be able to react without having to think through it.

And all of that doesn't even cover the fact that all of this goes on through three phases that add even more challenges.

Although Wild was pretty pleased with how he did, as a whole we didn't do very well on our one try against Putricide. After the wipe we headed for the third wing, Crimson Hall, and the Princes. The only trash on the way occurs in a hallway between the central zone of ICC and the Crimson Hall wing. Once we enter that area a swarm of mobs descend that are AoEed down. It's not too difficult, unless stragglers don't make it into the hall before the mobs start coming.

We had another guildie come in game and our warlock was getting ready to Summon him. Four or five of us were with the lock and the raid leader to help start the Summon. Everybody else filtered into the hall and the mob swarm started. Huge doors immediately slammed shut, splitting the raid into two groups. The raiders inside the hall had to face down an kill the mobs. Luckily most of the healers had gone into the hall, and could keep folks alive. On the other side of the door all five of the raiders started taking AoE damage that would continue to tick until we left the hall - which we couldn't do until the fight on the other side of the door ended and the doors opened again. This had happened once before in an earlier raid. Only one player got caught on the wrong side of the doors, and he wasn't a healer. Despite a healing potion and bandages, he still died.

Luckily our little lost group had Wild, and I kept everyone healed. The raider we summoned was a shaman, and he helped with the healing once we got him in. Not a big issue, but still one of those things raid leaders hate to see, particularly on a "farming" run.

We wiped on our first attempt at the Princes when a tank again inexplicably died. Despite that we got the tank battle rezzed and made a real fight of it, getting the Princes to 3%. We killed them on our second attempt. We were down to just twenty minutes now, and the hope that we would be able to take some shots at the Blood Queen were gone as it would take that long to clear the trash. That was pretty disappointing, as Wild has not even seen Blood Queen yet. We trooped back to the Plagueworks and took on Putricide one more time. Nope, we didn't beat him that time, either.

Perhaps it wasn't the best raid of the month for the guild, but our fortunes on Wednesday night were certainly better than our non-raid of the night before. On the whole it was a great night for Wild, getting two excellent i264 upgrades, downing seven boss encounters on a single night, and even gaining some confidence against Putricide. It also showed what Wild was missing every time Wild ended up as a Standby on those nights. Those seven boss encounters are seven extra frost badges, and there is even a quest (I think its a weekly) that gives 5 more frost badges. That adds up pretty quickly.

Wild's healing numbers were also much improved and more consistent, which could be expected given that Wild wasn't beating his head over and over against bosses like Putricide. Aided by Wild's healing spams on trash Wild did real well in the overall healing numbers and even came in pretty high in the boss fights as well, ranging from 2nd to 4th among the six healers.

Here were the overall numbers:
#1: Queen Priest, 4097 hps, 19.6% of the healing
#2: Wild, 2957/14.3%
#3: zshaman, 3089/14.2%
#4: hlshaman, 2897/13.6%
#5: hgpriest, 2718/12.8%
#6: bshaman, 2653/10.0%

When we took a five minute break at about 7:45pm Wild checked to see how things were going with the MM 10 man ICC. If they had been able to get started they should still be playing. However, no one from the MM guild were in game, so I would have to conclude that either the raid leader wasn't able to make it, or he couldn't get enough raiders to start. Wild is signed up for the MM guild Thursday night run starting at 6:45pm. I hope we get a chance to run.