Tuesday (4 May) - Will There be a Raid?

Tuesday (4 May) - Will There be a Raid?

For the second Tuesday in a row, Wild's guild could not field an ICC 25 man raid. The raid was called at 6pm with only 15 guildies in game. There were 18 accepted invites on the raid calendar, so not even all those who signed up showed up. There are 19 sign ups for Wednesday night, but it's an open question as to whether we'll get enough to run.

The MM guild had also posted a raid sign up for a Tues/Wed ICC 10 man run. The week before the start time had been posted for 6:45pm. But on this Tuesday night it was posted for 6pm - the same days and time as the ICC 25. Wild had signed up as tentative for the MM raid, depending on what did or did not happen with ICC 25. Now that Wild was available for the ICC10, there were only two MM guildies that I knew in game, and no sign of either raid leader.

Wild hung around Icecrown Citadel, figuring that if nothing developed I could just fly on up to the Argent Tournament grounds and try to catch the weekly frost raid, which is in Trial of the Champion (ToC) against Jaraxxus. At 6:10pm one of the raid leaders for ICC10, Bd, logged in game.

Wild whispered Bd that the ICC25 raid had been called and that Wild was available if needed. His response was "Oooh, hotness! I think we're going to need you."

Getting the ten man raid together took another forty minutes, so it was 6:50pm before we could get started. This was a pretty normal occurrence that Wild was very familiar with from past raids, and strangely enough, it was kind of comforting to see that little had changed and to be back in action with these guys and gals. Wild only knew about half of the MM raiders, so Bd made introductions, let folks know that Bd and Wild went way back, and said some very nice things about Wild. Wild claimed that I'd paid Bd to say those things and it was Bd's tanking that made me look good. There was a lot of chatter and Wild was already having a great time.

We got down to business. We started with three healers, although as the night went on we sometimes dropped to two. The other two healers were holy priests. Wild was assigned as the main tank healer, that tank being Bd, of course.

I had mentioned to Bd that while I knew the fights in ICC, I had only done them in 25 man mode, never in ten man. In some ways ten man is simpler than 25 man, but with fewer raiders each raider has more responsibilities and sometimes that results in different strategies between 25 and 10 mans. Bd said that there were several raiders that were either new to ICC or were on alts with different roles, so all strats would be covered before each fight. Bd himself had not raided in weeks, so he had some rust to knock off as well.

We buffed up and started on the trash mobs once Bd explained the positioning and the approach. The mobs are not too hard, but careful pulling is required to keep from dragging in too many of them. We also had to worry about traps, because we had no rogue to break them. Wild was curious as well at how Wild would do as one of only three healers instead of one of six, as well as having full responsibility as the main tank healer.

The raid started well, the trash mobs went down quickly, and Wild had no trouble maintaining heals not just on the main tank, but on the off tank and the raid as well. So far so good.

Our first target of the night was Lord Marrowgar. The strategy was very similar to that of the 25 man, so Wild was well within his comfort zone. "Let's see how this goes," Bd said, and we engaged. For the first part of the fight the raid all stayed in close to Marrowgar (except for one hunter who stayed at max range and was designated as the spike killer). Once Marrowgar went on the move, though, which he does several times, Wild's normal routine changed from 25 man. In ICC25 Wild can stand pretty much where he is when Marrowgar starts chasing raiders, moving only enough to avoid the lines of white fire. As the main tank healer, though, Wild needed to stay in range of the main tank, and so moved with him.

For a raid that was still feeling it's way, we did remarkably well, and Marrowgar died on our first attempt. That certainly got folks excited and we quickly moved on to the second boss, Lady Deathwhisper. On this fight there is only one real difference in strategy. In 25 man, two DPS raiders are usually assigned to attack Deathwhisper during the "adds" phases of the fight while the rest of the raid battles the adds. In ten man no one attacks the boss while adds are still alive (Deathwhisper doesn't move during this part of the fight), attacking her only in between spawns of the adds. That actually made the healing a little easier. It's a bit of a crazy fight with a lot of movement. Twice we got "special" mobs that can kill in just two or three hits, and have to be kited until killed. That almost always gets raiders killed in 25 man, but we had good kiters and we handled that well. When Deathwhisper engaged directly, things got tougher. We lost our shaman DPSer, but he used his rez to pop back up. We lost a second raider and Wild battle rezzed him. When we lost the off tank very late in the fight, we had to finish it with just the main tank, and despite a stacking debuff that massively increased damage to the tank, Wild just about broke my fingers mashing heal buttons, we brought Deathwhisper down.

Two bosses down, both on our first attempt.

In between Deathwhisper and the third encounter, the Gunship, there was a weekly quest that can be done to kill an optional boss. I don't remember doing this quest before in ICC25, but I guess that was because Wild so rarely got invited to the raid on the nights they started on the first wing. I researched it a bit, and it looks like there are five weeklies, one of which is randomly selected each week. This week the weekly quest was "Securing the Ramparts" and required killed a rotting frost giant.

Listening to the other raiders talk about it, the fight is a tricky one, and one they hadn't managed to defeat yet. We all wanted to try it, though, so we all picked up the quest and started things up. The battle is a normal tank and spank with one exception - the frost giant infects a random raider with Death Plague about every 20 seconds. It's contagious, so raiders have to stay at least ten yards away from each other. However, when the contagion expires it instantly kills the raider - unless there is one other raider in range. Instead of exploding, it will infect the nearby raider instead. So the trick to this fight is to stay out of range of other raiders, while the infected raider chooses one raider to cozy up to to pass the infection along. That worked well and we killed the frost giant. The reward is a sack of treasure, which can sometimes include rare gear drops, and five frost emblems. Oh yea. [And Wild just realized that he never opened his sack of treasures. Ooh, I wonder what's in there?]

Now we were at the Gunship. This is the easiest encounter in ICC. Yet Wild was nervous about it. Why? Well, let's go over the fight.

This really is a fun fight. We get to ride a flying ship, and we get to shoot cannons at the enemy ship, grapple with it, and send an assault party across to the enemy ship, using backpack rocket launchers to launch ourselves across to the other ship.

The raid is divided into two groups - defenders who stay on the ship, and the assault party that uses the rocket launchers to assist in jumping/flying across to the other ship. The assault party has to do this several times, returning to the home ship in between assaults.

In ICC 25 Wild has always been in the defenders group. Wild has never needed a rocket launcher. It was an embarrassing fact, however, that Wild did play around with the launchers, and could not figure out how to make them work right. Wild's main fear was that he would be asked to be in the assault group, which would be expected since the main tank would be in the assault party.

The raid leader set up his groups while Wild fussed about desperately with the launcher. Everyone else was lighting off their launchers and flying about having fun. Wild's launcher would catch and fire, but Wild could not get airborne. It was also irritating that using the launcher took Wild out of tree form, too.

Wild was assigned to the assault party. Wild had an out, though. Bd said that he thought the assault party could be healed from the rail of the defending ship, so it was up to Wild whether I wanted to fly over to the enemy ship when assaults were required, or just heal from the defending ship's rail.

In the final moments before we started, Wild surprisingly figured out the rocket launcher. It wasn't a matter of turning it on and then flying, it was in reality more like a cannon. A targeting circle appears when the launcher is lit off - select a spot with the targeting circle, click the spot, and the launcher fires, blasting Wild into the air in the direction of the spot targeted. Having figured that out, Wild flitted about excitedly like a disturbed hummingbird until Bd calmed me down so we could start the fight. Wild's main thought at the time was to figure out how he could smuggle this wonderfully cool launcher off the ship after the battle.

Wild settled in, and on the first assault decided to stay on the defending ship's rail to heal. It allowed Wild to heal the rest of the raid as well, so that was the better position. However, once the tank launched himself onto the other ship, he went out of range and Wild couldn't heal him. Uh oh. Wait, not uh oh, weeeee! Wild hit his launcher, aimed himself at his tank, who was rapidly losing health against a very deadly enemy warlock, and blasted into the air. Wild came down almost on top of the tank and immediately healed up the tank and the rest of the assault party. Mission accomplished, we launched back to the defending ship and continued the fight.

Many of the raiders had not seen this fight before, and there was some confusion. Despite several successful assaults, we fell behind on the defending ship and wiped at 46%. Wild and Bd whispered each other as were were rezzing and rebuffing. I wanted to try to heal from the rail again, so I wanted Bd to stand a lot closer to the enemy ship rail, which should put Bd in range of Wild's spells. Bd would have to go out of range to aggro the warlock target and pull him to the rail, but Bd said that would be no problem.

On our second attempt the main tank's rocket launcher bugged on him and wouldn't work. He could not make the jump. The off tank had not put on a launcher so we couldn't switch tank roles. Wild did what he could, but without a tank for the warlock to focus on, the lock soon started killing off the DPSers sent over. We stayed with the fight as long as we could, getting in some practice, but wiped again.

This "easy" fight was beating our butts.

It all came together on our third attempt. We figured out the positioning so that Wild could stay with the defending ship during assaults, able to heal both the assault party and those still on the ship. We had damaged down the enemy ship to single digits and the assault party was returning to the defending ship for the last time. Then it happened. With a full stack of HoTs ticking on the tank, and plenty of instants off cooldown to keep him alive, the tanks' health went from near full to zero instantly. The main tank was dead. Nobody panicked, the off tank held on, and we won the battle. We were not really sure what happened other than that Bd had miscalculated his jump back to the ship and had rammed into a rail, or the side, or something. Apparently that had killed him. Wild wasn't about to tease him about his "troubles" with a rocket launcher, given Wild's past troubles on that front.

The fourth and final boss in the Lower Spire wing was Deathbringer Saurfang. It's a difficult fight because of some unique mechanics. We tried three times, getting better each time (30%, to 24%, to 21%) but ran out of time. I think we'll get him next time around.

Running ICC10, and running it with this bunch of friends, was the most fun Wild has had raiding in quite awhile. The gear level in ICC10 is i251, lower than the i264 gear in ICC25, but there is still gear Wild would love to get in ICC10. None of that gear dropped, though, but Wild didn't mind, he was having too much fun.

I was also very pleased with Wild's healing. I was very comfortable with main tank healing, and in being able to provide healing to the off tank and raid as well. On the second attempt on Saurfang, one of the priests asked for Wild's innervate as she was nearly out of mana. Wild couldn't help her because I had instinctively cast it on myself as the battle heated up. However, I knew Wild didn't truly "need" the innervate, and on our third attempt I saved it and cast it on the priest instead, without hurting Wild's own healing. Wild is also getting better with his swiftmend casting, casting it 41 times over the course of the evening. The new macro really helps, too.

By the numbers:

#1: Wild, 3607 hps, 43.5% of the healing
#2: chpriest, 2362/22.7%
#3: lgpriest, 2265/20.9%

The DPS was also quite good for ICC10. A pally and a hunter had over 5k DPS while even the lowest DPSer was over 3600 DPS.

Wild has already decided that if the ICC 10 group is ready to go again Wednesday night he'll run with them again, even if Wild's guild gets enough raiders for ICC 25. Some of the ICC 25 raiders might not like that, but I think the raid leader will understand. Regardless, Wild is looking forward to Wednesday night.