The FS ICC25 raid began Tuesday morning with 16 guildies signed up. When Wild logged in at 5:50pm Tuesday evening that number had actually fallen, to 15 sign ups. At 6pm, the raid start time, there were nine guildies in game.
It became official a few minutes later. Guild leadership posted the following on the guild message of the day: "Due to lack of participation, 25 man raiding is currently suspended." Suspended, not just for this night, but for the foreseeable future. FS is not the only guild having issues. Nearly every raiding guild is looking for raiders, and are having trouble filling 25 man raids other than quick shots like VoA or the weekly frost raids. The specter of the xpac, Cataclysm, has players looking toward what is coming down the road, and there is growing lethargy about ICC25.
Fortunately for Wild, ICC10 man is still alive and well. And with the demise of the FS ICC25, Wild's Tuesday and Wednesday nights are now clear to run ICC10. In the MM guild, ICC10 is flourishing. In addition to visitor Wild, there were 17 MM guildies in game wanting to do ICC10. They are considering starting back up a second group. MM has no ICC25 man raid, and currently has no plans for one, so they face the same issues on that front as FS.
Our raid leader, Bd, was in game around 6:15pm. Invites went out, and by 6:30pm we were on our way. I feel I need to point out that Wild is the most experienced ICC raider in the group. Even Bd, a very well geared and experienced tank with two other level 80 alts, defeated the 4th boss in ICC, Saurfang, for the first time last week. Some of these raiders had never seen the first boss in ICC until last week. Wild is loving this group. ICC is new and fresh for them, and that excitement is contagious.
We started with three healers with Wild as the main tank healer. We had a paladin healer tonight who would handle off tank healing, and our priesty was assigned raid healing. We plowed through the trash quickly enough, and then engaged Lord Marrowgar. Wild remembers that when he first started doing ICC25, we wiped again and again before we finally could kill him consistently. Last week in ICC10 we had surprised ourselves by killing Marrowgar on our first attempt. Was that just a fluke? No. On this night Marrowgar again went down on our first try after a long, well fought battle, and all ten of us were still standing.
Wild decided to monitor his boss healing in addition to overall healing this time, as I was interested in seeing what that looked like as a tank healer (Wild generally was a raid healer in ICC25). Wild led in healing on Marrowgar with 4392 hps.
Next in line was Lady Deathwhisper. Last week several raiders died on this fight, but we still took her down on our first try. This week, the Lady fell and we had no deaths at all. We were rockin'. Wild again led in healing with 3099 hps.
The third encounter was the Gunship, and last week we had trouble getting a good feel for the fight, wiping several times before finally winning. We felt we were ready for it this time. If you recall from last week, this is a ship battle in which we have to storm the enemy ship several times. Since these are airships, rocketpacks are used to launch raiders to the other ship, and then launch back to the home ship. Half the raid rockets to the enemy ship, while the other half stays behind to defend our own ship. Wild is the healer for the group that rockets to the other ship, but Wild stays behind, standing on the home ship railing so that I can heal the raiders on both ships. That only works if the raiders on the enemy ship stay close to the enemy ship rail - stray too far, and Wild can't heal them.
We had all kinds of problems with the attacks on the enemy ship. On our first attempt the encounter bugged and the tank found himself unable to move, and out of range of Wild's healing. There were other issues as well, and we cut the attempt short, intentionally wiping to get a fresh start.
We were almost unable to even start the second attempt. The gunship battle would not reset, and we all stayed in combat, even though there was no one on the ship to fight. We all trooped off the ship, but that didn't help. Then we noticed a lone trash mob that had no business being there, since we had killed the mobs in that spot to get to the ship. We shrugged, and killed the mob. That reset the gunship, and we were able to start again. Weird.
However, we wiped again on our second attempt. The tank was having a hard time with the rocketpack, and our moonkin druid was having UI problems. Twice the tank died trying to rocket back to the home ship from the enemy ship. Wild was going crazy, trying to understand how he could keep dying despite stacking every heal I had on him. My fault, my fault! the tank would say. Wild even launched over to the enemy ship and rezzed him the first time. But I didn't have a rez available the second time and we wiped again.
The third attempt didn't start any better. The moonkin locked up while on the enemy ship and died there. Short one raider, we sent one of our defending raiders over with the storming group on the next run. He forgot to stay near the rail, and Wild was busy saving the off tank and couldn't jump over. That raider died on the enemy ship as well. Wild followed the tank to the enemy ship on the next attack, intending to battle rez the moonkin so he could battle rez the other DPSer that had died. But Wild's battle rez wouldn't work on the moonkin, who was apparently still bugged, and so I rezzed the other DPSer.
Back on the home ship the defender's had lost another raider and we started to get behind. Wild was throwing heals every which way. We made a final assault on the enemy ship, succeeded without losing anyone, but in the process Wild got himself killed. Fortunately, Wild was soulstoned and I was able to use that to rez and get back into the fight. The off tank died. We were down to six raiders, but we could focus on the one ship now and managed to clear the decks of bad guys. Finally, we had won. That was a lot of activity, even though the level of total damage being dealt was less than in the earlier two boss fights. Wild led with 49% of the healing at 2583 hps.
Despite the three attempts needed to down the Gunship, we arrived at the fourth boss, Saurfang, with a full hour left of our evening. Wild even picked up a +crit trinket that he'll be able to use in moonkin spec. So we were feeling pretty good about our chances against this boss. Until we remembered that last week it took us nine tries before Saurfang died. Let's try to do better this time.
There's better, and then there's better. On our first attempt we got Saurfang to 15% before we wiped. And we only wiped because just when we thought we had him (he was at 25% and going down fast) Saurfang gleefully cast Mark of the Fallen Champion on Wild. We were using only two healers because it takes a lot of DPS to bring that bad boy down. The Mark does massive, continuous damage, and if the Marked target dies Saurfang gets a big heal. Wild not only had to heal the main tank, I had to heal myself as well. The other healer, the pally, had to keep heals on the off tank and also help Wild heal himself. This is not just normal healing, this is crazy fast and constant healing. It was amazing we held on as long as we did, but Wild finally fell.
We rezzed, buffed back up, and tweaked strategies, while our mischevious moonkin dropped some toys called foam swords. Several raiders started sword fighting and the rest of us were cheering them on. We were laughing and clapping and just having fun. Someone eventually ventured to ask, are we waiting for something? A slightly sheepish raid leader, who was among those wielding a foam sword, admitted that no, everyone was ready. There are few raids where one can just stop in the middle of a run and have some innocent fun for no other reason than - it was fun!
On our second attempt we killed Saurfang. The pally outhealed Wild on that one, getting 3436 hps and picking up 48.6% of the healing. Wild got to 3015 hps and 43.9%. Great job by the pally!
Our priest had gotten one modest drop earlier in the evening. She had also passed on that +crit trinket earlier so that Wild could get it. Surfang dropped cloth bracers that were an upgrade for Wild, one of the few he could use in ICC10. The priest rolled on it, and then said that since she had already won an item she would pass to anyone else that wanted it. It was a large upgrade for her, though, and we knew how badly she wanted it. After teasing her with some fake rolls against her, she won it.
We all stood around for a minute after the loot was distributed. The raid leader finally said, "Well, this is as far as I've ever been in ICC, and frankly I haven't looked at the strats for what comes next. Anybody even know what boss we should going after now?" When we sorted out who knew what, Wild and the off tank warrior were the only two who had ever been beyond this point. The other eight were entering entirely uncharted waters.
Wild said that Festergut would be our next target, but that there was an awful lot of trash mobs between us and him. Luckily the off tank was familiar with the trash mobs from a tanking perspective and so became our guide for our next steps. An excited group of raiders passed through the portal that took us out of the Lower Spire wing we had just defeated, and into the Plagueworks, home of Festergut, Rotface, and crazy Professor Putricide.
We handled the trash mobs cautiously, learning as we went, but managed that well. The raid group's first encounter with Stinky and Precious was, well, precious! These are mini-bosses that use a massive AoE called Decimate that drops every raider down to single digit health. The two fights take a serious toll on the healers, and we went back to three healers for those fights. The raid leader was so impressed with the healing on the Stinky fight he posted the results in raid chat:
Stinky Healing:
#1: Wild, 6652 hps
#2: priest, 5663 hps
#3: pally, 5028 hps
Now that is some heavy healing. And no one died.
Oh, and here is what Stinky looks like:
The excitement level went up another magnitude when Festergut came into view. Said the raid leader: "Man oh man, that is one UGLY SOB." Festergut let us know what he thought of us by snorting snot from his nose and then farting in our direction.We were already half an hour past our 9pm end time, but we all wanted to take one shot at Festergut. Wild and the off tank laid out the strategy, and we gave it a try. Like many first attempts, the strategy may make sense when you hear it, but until you see the fight in action it doesn't really sink in. Everybody knew to run to the spores when they spawn, and in ten man there are only two of them. Wild had his usual bad luck and was one of those who got spored the first time they spawned. Wild has made some bad decisions in ICC25 when he'd been first to get spored, but Wild was learning from his mistakes and it paid off now. Wild realized that there was no spore in the center where the tank, off tank, and melee were at work of Festergut. Wild rushed to the center so that they would get the benefit of the spore debuff. The rest of the raid was confused, though, and few of them managed to get to the other spore out on the edge of the room. Without the debuff, they all died. And we wiped.
In was an incredible evening, though, and my prediction is that Festergut will fall on Wednesday night, and maybe even Rotface. Sadly, Wild won't be there. I have a real life commitment that evening and won't be home. But I'll certainly get the details from Bd on Thursday.
And now, I have a honey do to accomplish - empty our upstairs walk-in closet so that the Mrs can paint it. Will she never finish that can of paint?! If she runs out of walls before she runs out of paint the cats may be next.
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