Wednesday Afternoon (5 May) - One of Those Days

Wednesday Afternoon (5 May) - One of Those Days

Sometimes it makes sense to quit not when you're ahead, but before you get any further behind. I didn't know that Philly's first heroic dungeon of the day was a precursor of worse to follow.

When Philly got her invite to a random heroic dungeon, she arrived at a dungeon run already in progress. Three players were deep inside the dungeon, which Philly figured out was Utgarde Pinnacle (UP). A fourth player had apparently died and been rezzed, while a fifth player must have quit the group. Or maybe more had quit it was taking time to assemble a new team. Either way, it was a long run, all the way to the final boss, Ingvar. So Philly missed out on badges and gear from three other bosses that had already been beaten. "Well, let's try this again," said the tank. We attacked. The good news is that we killed Ingvar, and Philly got her frost badges. The bad news was that Philly still has yet to see her first cloth drop in a random heroic. This is getting to be really irritating. Philly was pleased with her DPS on Ingvar, but you have to wonder how bad this group was before Philly arrived, because she came in first in damage dealing, delivering 1739 DPS (her best in a heroic so far) and doing 28% of all damage in the truncated run. What Philly particularly liked is how she handled Ingvar's special abilities. Ingvar has to be killed twice, and has to re-targeted several times, and Philly managed that very well. Still, to lead with under 1800 DPS in a heroic raid doesn't say much for the other DPSers.

Philly put herself out there again for a second random, since the first one was so short. The dungeon she got that time was Occulus. Sorry, Philly wasn't about play dragon rider in a dungeon Wild has taught all of his family to hate. Philly left.

Leaving a random gets one barred from joining again for thirty minutes. Wild needed to do the weekly frost raid, so Wild moved in. It didn't take long to get a ten man raid together, led by a tank that Wild has run with before. The target was Jaraxxus in ToC, but to get to him we'd have to defeat the Northrend Beasts, three encounters, one right after the other. We had three healers and two tanks and it should have been pretty straightforward. However, none of these fights are plain tank and spanks; each of the three beasts (one, a pair of beasts) has special abilities that you cannot just ignore. So Wild started getting a little anxious when we struggled to bring down the first beast, Juramonger (or something like that). His trick is the snobolds he throws at people, but there was crazy damage happening to raiders all over the place, and Wild found himself having to do a ton of healing on the two tanks as well. We did get the beast down. With no break we got the pair of frost wyrms next. This encounter is chaotic even when things were under control, but raiders were stepping in front of the wyrms and getting burned, and didn't seem to know what to do about the Burning Bile, spreading it around to other raiders. The off tank died, and Wild had to use his rez to get him back in the fight. We got the wyrms down, and faced the final beast of the first encounter, an easy fight with only one condition - get out of the way when he Charges. I guess that was easier said than done as raiders kept getting hit by Charge, dying and also making the beast stronger.

In a staggering upset, we wiped before even getting to Juraxxus. We tried a second time, but Wild didn't even make it as far finishing off the wyrms, as raiders kept re-infecting Wild with bile while Wild was frantically trying to save the tanks. Wild had been told to raid heal only on the second attempt despite my warnings that the other two healers could not keep him up. Wild tried the HoT only approach for the tanks, but was forced to emergency re-engage to keep them both from dying. So it was Wild who died, full of the bile someone else had infected him with, and the raid wiped a second time. The raid leader was of a mind to try again, but players fled the raid. The raid leader still had three supporters willing to rebuild the raid, but then he quit the raid himself. Despite being dead for half of the wyrm fight, Wild still did more than half the total healing in the raid. Wild still needs to get that weekly done.

Wednesday Night - What Can I Say?

What's that old saying? "You made your bed, now lie in it" or something like that. Wild logged in game about 5:40pm on Wednesday night. I immediately got a whisper from the guild raid leader. He noted that Wild had declined on the raid calendar for the ICC25, but since I was in game he asked if I was "available and interested" in joining the raid. I whispered back that that I had gotten into an ICC10 on Tuesday with friends and that I was going to run with them, but that if the ICC10 raid continuation fell through I would be available. He asked that I let him know as soon as I could, added that they would start the raid short a few folks, and that Wild could join them at any time.

The clock kept ticking, and the ICC25 got started with 20 raiders at about 6:10pm. The MM guild ICC10 had five raiders in game that were in the Tuesday raid. Bd, the raid leader, was not yet in game, but was expected. We formed up the raid, but had only seven. Being patient helps with this group. A lot of these players have real life constraints which we just have to work around. Bd made it in game, and we managed to get the raid filled and on our way a little before 7pm. Wild had already let the ICC25 raid leader know that Wild would not be joining them.

Our target was a continuation of our assault on Deathbringer Saurfang. We'd made three unsuccessful attempts on him Tuesday night. Our raid composition was slightly different. We didn't have a shaman this time, so we did not have a Bloodlust to help during the enrage. Our DK tank could not make it, but he was ably replaced with a druid tank that Wild spent a lot of time in Kara with. We had the same three healers. One of our best DPSers, a hunter, wanted to run on his moonkin to see how well Typhoon would work on the beasts that are the bane of this fight. Typhoon is a wall of water that not only does damage, but has a knockback that helps to control them. I've seen that work effectively in the ICC25 raids.

On our first two attempts we struggled to get into a rhythm, but we had Saurfang to 2% at one point in the second attempt. That is good, but not as good as it might sound, because Saurfang has special abilities that allow him to heal, and even small mistakes can get him right back to high levels of health.

For our third attempt, we decided to try letting raiders die. Hmm, maybe I'd better explain that. At certain points in the fight, Saurfang casts Mark of the Fallen Champion on a random raider. It does massive and continuing damage, and can't be debuffed or removed in any way. It just has to be healed through - for the rest of the fight. Over the course of the fight more and more players will be hit with it, putting a lot of pressure on the healers. If a Marked raider dies, well, that's one of the ways that Saurfang gets healed. Some strats, though, say it's better just to let the Marked raider die, and let Saurfang get the heal, so that the healers can focus on the rest of the raid. With that in mind, we also decided to move one healer into DPS, in order to hopefully speed up the damage dealing.

We made attempt #3. And #4. And #5. The moonkin, disappointed with his lesser geared druid, went back to his hunter. We gave up letting Marked raiders die. We needed every raider, and the two healers would just have to make it work. Meanwhile, Wild is watching the ICC25 man healer channel, so I can tell what their progress is by seeing the healing assignments. They were on a fresh run, on bosses they have long had on farm. They had already killed Marrowgar and Deathwhisper and were working on the Gunship.

We made two more failed attempts. What's that, #7? The ICC25 had beaten the Gunship and were now even with the ICC10, working on Saurfang.

Attempt #8 was going to be our last attempt. We botched it, though, with the tanks having timing problems with taunts, and a tank was slaughtered very early in the fight. Another wipe. The ICC25 downed Saurfang and started working on Festergut in the second wing.

It was 9pm, our raid window was over, and we were pretty tired and strung out. The ICC 25 downed Festergut and called it a night. Bd asked his raiders to stand up, stretch, slug down an energy drink if that would help get the adrenaline going, and offered to give it one more try. "Let's not end this on a botched attempt. I know we're tired, but I think we got one more shot in us."

On attempt #9 Deathbringer Saurfang died. What a rush! We even got a special achievement called "I've Gone and Made a Mess" for bringing Saurfang down before he could cast Mark of the Fallen Champion three times.

The axe that our retribution pally had wanted so badly off of Saurfang did drop. She rolled a 96 and won it. She was beside herself with joy, and for her, it was all worth it. Bd got his first Saurfang kill as the tank and raid leader (although some of the raiders had been in on previous kills with other groups), so it was very worthwhile for him, too. And of course, it was a nice success for the MM guild ICC10 raid in general.

What about Wild? He spent the evening making eight unsuccessful attempts on the same boss and ended up with one kill on the evening and no loot. Had Wild joined the ICC25 raid, he would have helped kill five bosses and had a chance for i264 level loot from those kills. The FS ICC25 raid has good people, and Wild does enjoy running with them. They are very good raiders and are focused on success. The issues with attendance that we're now having, I think, have more to do with the coming expansion than anything else. There are a number of real life conflicts right now, too, but it always seems to be that real life interjects itself much more frequently when an expansion is on the horizon. It's only human nature. That said, Wild just loves the ICC10 group, in a group where each boss feels like a new experience, where the raiders are eager and excited just to be together taking on fresh challenges, and finding our own ways to succeed.

Was it worth it for Wild? It was.