Philly/Wild talk fairly regularly with an old friend who started with and still has a toon in FS while also having a toon in MM, like I do. It's fun talking about old times, but the topic always comes back to discussing the changes in the FS guild. As mentioned before, ICC25 raids were suspended indefinitely when too many guild raiders either left the guild or stopped coming to the raids. The two ICC10 mans continued with a select group of raiders who have raided together for a very long time. They are all close friends and have worked hard to conquer each new dungeon has it comes out. They've earned their rewards. The knock on these two raid groups, though, have always been that they have been unwilling to open their raids to other guildies to help them learn the encounters and help them gear up. "Start a new ten man" is the common response, and when that fails the guild is again left in kind of a haves and have nots situation. Efforts to convince the two raid groups to rotate in one or two guildies each week to build up enough geared raiders to ensure a successful 25 man was resisted under the rationale that it would slow down the progress of the ten mans. So I guess it was really no surprise that when we reached the tougher wings of ICC25 and struggled, and we had raiders who were not geared well enough or experienced enough because of lack of exposure to the ten mans, the more experienced raiders grew frustrated and stopped coming.
Well, on Tuesday the guild leader for FS announced that he was testing the waters again for a possible third ICC ten man. Frankly, I think that is doomed to failure, just as every other attempt to maintain a third ICC10 has eventually failed. Nothing has changed in the guild to make a third raid any more likely than before. No one in either of the established ICC10s wants to help a third team get on their feet. The explanation seems to be along the lines of why shouldn't the new team go through the learning curve like they did? Why should they sacrifice time and badges and progression? So, we were talking about that, and my friend, who is an alternate and part time raider in the ICC10 man that was still working on downing the Lich King, told me that the raid leader had informed him that he wasn't really good enough for their raid and that he would no longer be invited. It's just sad.
Of course, the subject of leaving the guild came up again, with the major factor seeming to be that we are still here because some of our oldest friends are still here. That begs the question of well, why don't we all just leave together? Here's the bottom line - of all of Wild's oldest friends in the guild, none of them play much anymore. Even my friend only recently started playing again after leaving the game for months, and may decide to stop playing again. Wild is the only truly active player. If Wild had left FS any of the previous times that we had gone through this, Wild would have missed out of opportunities to raid the best 25 man dungeons in the game, from Mount Hyjal to Naxxramas to Ulduar to Icecrown Citadel. The 25 man raiding will return, even if it goes dormant until Cataclysm. And Wild doesn't want to miss that. FS has survived longer than any other guild Wild would have jumped to, and despite it's problems is still a strong guild. I like MM, and have invested Philly in their future, but there is no overriding reason for Wild to join MM, and every reason to believe that FS will rise to the challenge of the 25 mans when the time comes.
Moving forward to the Tuesday evening raid with MM, we had an interesting problem. There were so many MM guildies wanting to raid that the raid leader started looking at whether we could field a 25 man raid instead. While we were working through that Wild got a whisper from one of the FS guild ten man raid leaders. He asked if Wild was interested in joining a ten man Ulduar run. Wild had never finished Ulduar, clearing two wings and part of a third, defeating ten of 13 encounters. So it would have been interesting to do a complete a clear with the kind of firepower we could bring to that older dungeon. However, there is nothing in Ulduar that Wild could use. Even the legendary main hand mace that can be obtained only through defeating the last boss, Algalon, and doing another series of quests, is not as good as the mace Wild is currently wearing, which dropped from the very first boss in ICC25. He mentioned that they were doing a "mount run." I didn't remember there being a mount reward in Ulduar, and didn't find any information about it when I checked, but regardless I wasn't much interested in a mount anyway. I declined, saying "thanks, but I am running ICC10 with MM on tues/wed now." I got a "have fun" back from him and that was that.
Back to the MM raid, we had more than enough to field two ten man raids, but that would then leave a couple of folks out, so we pushed the time out a little later and we were able to pull together a full 25 man raid without having to bring in PUGs. We had two very solid tanks, even with Bd, who usually tanks, going on his druid healer instead. We had six healers: THREE druids, two holy priests, and a paladin. Two healers were assigned to the main tank, and Wild was assigned as the sole off tank healer. The other three raid healed.
I admit to being a bit worried when we finally got started. Afterall, Wild had been in on an MM ICC25 last friday that self-destructed when we couldn't properly pull the trash mobs. That raid had needed PUGs to fill it, and we didn't have that issue this time, but then this guild has very little experience in ICC25. The raid leader acknowledged that this was his first time leading an ICC25 raid. That part I wasn't worried about at all; he was a good raid leader, had tanked in ICC25 raids, and knew the fights.
We started on the trash, and worked through it efficiently and professionally. We had a rogue, and were able to avoid all of the traps as we killed our way to the first boss, Marrowgar. We had only one miss-step, when we aggroed a second mob group before we had finished up the one we were working on. A few raiders died, but we fought through it, killing all of the mobs and saving a wipe.
We set up for Lord Marrowgar. The positioning strategy was different than either of two other strategies I had seen before, but the basics were still the same. For this strategy, the main raid set up to the right of the entrance with the tanks standing at the door. This is the opposite of what I was used to. The tanks would pull Marrowgar to the door, and the rest of the raid would then run up behind Marrowgar, settling in well within melee range to avoid the lines of cold fire that would start spilling out as soon as the battle started.
This is a two tank fight, with both tanks needing to be properly positioned at all times so that the huge damage of Marrowgar's Cleave is shared across both tanks. We opted to go with three tanks to further spread out the damage being done by Cleave. Wild was the only healer asked to solo heal one of the tanks, which I've done before in ten man but never had to do in 25 man. The other two tanks had two healers assigned, although two of them were asked to raid heal as well.
We made two attempts. On both attempts Wild was hard pressed to keep his tank alive, and we failed to get to phase 2 of the battle before wiping. The tanks were struggling to coordinate their movements, which are absolutely critical to this fight. Out of position tanks were taking the full brunt of Cleaves and despite extraordinary efforts by the healers it was inevitable that tanks would start dying.
On our third attempt Wild kept his tank alive into the second phase, where Marrowgar wanders around attacking random raiders. We were able to rez the two dead tanks but shortly after Marrowgar returned to Cleaving his way into the tanks, their positioning slipped and they started dying again.
Maybe I should say something about what was going on while we were raiding. There were at least five lovely - and very vocal - ladies in the raid, and egged on by the rest of the raid, the one liners and running commentary on vent had us all in stitches. On the mild side were comments that it was a good thing that the healers weren't playing the drinking game where we took a shot whenever a raider died. That got an immediate response from the healers, Wild chiming in with "what makes you think we're not playing that game?" and another healer with "what, I'm not supposed to be drinking after each death? Oops."
On the subject of sex (of course, sex was a topic of even more import than booze) there were eye popping depictions - from the ladies! - of boobies:
( . )Y( . ) anyone?
And then someone had to say something about bacon being a better flavor than au naturale and the pronouncement from one young gentleman that he intended become rich as the inventor of the bacon flavored douche. "I'm the bacon douche king!"
And then there was this:
It was a long time before we even thought about running another attempt on Marrowgar, which at some point we tried and wiped a fourth time. Nobody was much bothered by that by then.
So, we didn't really get anywhere, but it was a heckova lot of fun, and one of those rare chances to bring a lot of friends together.
If it mattered, Wild led in healing with 3195 hps and 19.5% of the healing. Wild was out hpsed by our main priest healer with 3699 hps, but she came in second to Wild in total healing with 18%. Bd, on his druid, got 3rd place honors with 3049 hps/16% healing. The other druid, who was also an alt of a tank, finished last (6th) with 1738/9.3%.
For Wednesday we plan to switch back to ICC10 for a more serious raid, but I wouldn't have wanted to miss Tuesday night for anything.
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