Wednesday (2 Jun) - ICC Mayhem Squared

Wednesday (2 Jun) - ICC Mayhem Squared

It was a pleasant surprise that not only did we again field two ICC10 raids on Wednesday night, we even started those raids in the neighborhood of 6pm. Ok, so it was closer to 6:30pm, but at least it was earlier than 7pm. We had nine raiders in the Mf raid by 6:10pm, but that 10th raider took a long time getting in game.

The evening started off somewhat comically. Since we had not killed Festergut the night before, the trash mobs leading up to him had respawned. The first mobs are three Valkyrie, white winged humanoids that are tough but no match for our raid. That is, as long as we only aggro one at a time. The valkyries fly around a central chamber and can each be pulled into an antechamber to be killed. Our druid tank sort of forgot to pull the valkyrie into the antechamber, and soon the other two joined in the battle. These mobs can stun, and with three of them more than half the raid found themselves stunned. We were all laughing and making hay at the druid tank's expense. With tongue firmly in cheek the tank blamed the rest of us for not being "leet enuf" to handle all three.

Once through the trash mobs, we took up where we had left off the night before, which was Festergut. We took a practice shot at him, and then brought him down on our second try.

After Festergut was Rotface. I think this is where prior MM ICC10 raids ran into serious trouble. In discussing the strategy there were a lot of input about what failed and few who had been successful. Rotface has beaten Wild's butt any number of times, and I'll admit that Wild has caused wipes on more than one occasion in the FS raids while I was learning that fight. A typical attempt Wednesday night went like this:

Buffed and ready, the main tank loped into the center of the chamber to engage Rotface. The rest of the raid followed close behind, giving the tank enough room to turn Rotface away from us, then crowding up close under his legs and into one foul stench coming from the mass of animated dead flesh that was Rotface. Rotface immediately started vomiting, and Wild and the rest of those beneath that flow hurriedly ducked between Rotface's legs to get out of the way. Rotface cast mutation on a random raider, a small damage spell that also causes a small ooze to form a few seconds later. Wild, seeing that he was the target, started looking around frantically for the off tank. The off tank is a blood elf paladin, and is hard to spot as he moves around the room in a counter-clockwise direction. Wild trotted out to the outer edge of the room, hoping to catch sight of the off tank. Behind Wild, that little ooze was practically glued to Wild with very high threat. Wild very much wanted to get the thing off his tail and over to the off tank. The off tank has never been in this role before and the exchange is painfully hard. Wild nearly died, but finally made the exchange. More mutations are cast and more small oozes are created, and more raiders go looking for a frantic looking off tank. When a pass off is successful, the small oozes merged into one larger ooze, to be kited by the off tank. Wild was the off tank healer, and the damage done each time that big ooze got too close was really putting pressure on Wild's healing.

We were already in trouble, with loose small oozes attacking raiders and merging into larger uncontrolled oozes, when the fifth small ooze joined with the big ooze. The big ooze froze in place, and that was our signal to hightail it to the outer edge of the chamber and away from the frozen ooze. The big ooze exploded, sending chunks itself into the air, each one aimed at the spot a raider was standing at the time of the explosion. Anyone still standing under one of those chunks when it came down pretty much died instantly. Almost as an afterthought, we also had to avoid spewing goo coming from four points around the room.

We wiped seven times, with our best attempt being our fifth attempt, when we got him down to 30%. We were tired of Rotface, and started looking at what else we could try. Wild suggested the Princes.

Well, if we were inexperienced against Rotface, we were downright raw rookies against the Blood Prince Council, which is the first encounter in the third wing. The raid leader had never seen the fight. Wild and one other raider were the only ones who'd ever engaged this encounter. But I think it's an easier fight than Rotface, and plus it would give everyone a chance to see it.

The trash mobs are a nasty gut check to get into the third wing, but our confidence grew the better we did on the trash and the farther we got away from Rotface. We arrived at another chamber that Wild immediately recognized as the Blood Prince Council. The three council bosses were currently corpses. In Wild's experience they were already standing up on the dias, so that was a bit confusing. Behind the three corpses was Blood Queen Lana'thel. Folks were confused. I was sure this was the right chamber, and said so, but was told no, it's the Blood Queen chamber. Apparently, and I'm guessing a bit, is that the princes begin as corpses, but as soon as the encounter is started the three princes come to life. The actual battle doesn't start until we move into aggro range of the princes. When we actually decided to engage, the princes appeared and the battle began. We made two attempts, giving everyone a good look at the fight, but wiped both times.

It was a tough but good night. The two MM raid groups are hoping to hold together and we are planning on running again next week. Wild wishes he and Bd were in the same raid, but Wild is happy with the team he's on and is looking forward to our next assault on ICC.

Wild didn't win any loot from ICC, but things did come together for him later when he signed up for the weekly frost raid, Anub in Naxxramas. When Wild signed up for the Naxx25 raid he was only the third raider invited. Fifteen minutes later when there were only eight of us I was wondering whether signing up for this was a good idea. I was still wound up from the ICC run, though, so Wild hung in there. The raid started filling. We got to 20 raiders and Wild was still the only healer. The raid leader, who was also the main tank, whispered Wild, "Hey, Wild, think you can solo heal this?" Uh, is he asking Wild to solo heal a 25 man raid, which usually has five healers? Well, Anub is the first boss and a rather easy fight, sooooo . . . Wild whispered back, "Never tried it but if I'm all you got and you're that good of a tank, then sure."

We did end up getting a priest as a second healer. The raid leader/tank asked the priest to keep him healed and asked Wild to heal the other 24 raiders. When it was all over and Anub was dead Wild had done more than 90% of the healing, had saved the tank at least twice, delivered twice the healing to the tank than the priest did, and no one died. "Nice heals, Wild," the raid leader passed along to Wild on raid chat. Wild saluted the raid leader's tanking.

Wild has been laboriously collecting badges the hard way, through the weekly raid and through heroics, since he is no longer in an ICC25. Wild hasn't exactly been that regular in getting a heroic done each day for the two frost badges, so imagine his surprise when he realized that he had 93frost badges in inventory. Wild needed 95 frost badges to purchase his next piece of i264 gear. Wild hadn't done a heroic yet that day, and those two badges beckoned. Wild switched to moonkin spec and dialed up the random heroic dungeon finder. It took so long to get a group that Wild was weighing whether to just go to bed and try again tomorrow or switch to heals to shorten the queue. Wild spent the time converting triumph badges into heroism badges to buy a new heirloom item, a four step process that Wild had to repeat forty times. What a pain, but it passed the time, and Wild finally got his group.

The destination was Halls of Lightning, the five man dungeon at Ulduar, so it was one of the newer and more challenging of the heroics. There usually isn't much to say about heroics, other than it got done, sometimes smoothly, sometimes sloppily. This one, though, was pretty entertaining because the pally tank was constantly challenged by a fury warrior who kept doing everything he could to pull aggro off the tank. Wild and the lock in the group weren't helping, either, as we blasted away with our AoE attacks and daring mobs to aggro on us. The pally seemed to enjoy the challenge and we made amazing progress, burning through bosses almost as fast as the trash.

Fate finally caught up with us against a crush of large, high health mobs that took out the shaman healer as well as the fury warrior, who finally pulled a little more aggro than he could handle. The warlock was smart enough to pull back his attack to let the paladin tank get full control of the three mobs, and Wild dropped out of moonkin and started healing. The pally held the mobs, the lock stepped up the attack, and Wild kept the three of us alive until the three mobs went down. We high fived each other and then rezzed the dead ones and finished the dungeon. By the way, on the final boss in HoL, Loken, Wild did 6289 DPS, his best ever on a boss.

Afterward, Wild took his 95 frost badges to the Frost emblem vendor to collect my new goodie. Wild could have picked up a T10 piece, which would make it his third T10. However, the druid T10 set is a rather poor set. Wild had his two piece T10 set bonus, and was another 95 badges away from a 4th T10 and the four piece set bonus. Worse, it would only be an i251 T10 since it would take a drop in ICC25 to upgrade that to i264. To put the nail in the T10 coffin, a new chest piece was Wild's biggest need, and his biggest stat need was +haste, and the vendor had for sale a non-T10 i264 chest piece with over +100 haste on it. For his 95 badges, Wild got [Vestments of Spruce and Fir], replacing his current i245 chest piece. Wild is much happy.

Mery and EZ should be happy, too, because Wild, feeling magnanimous, is going to bless both with new heirlooms more fitting their armor class of leather/mail than the cloth items they are sharing now, and with stats more fitting of a hunter and shaman than the caster stats. EZ in particular is excited. She'd thought her pvp game time would be greatly diminished as the 30s pvp team moved into the 40s bracket, but her friend and mentor Lao lobbied hard for her, and EZ will still get her in game time and some levelling time as well. Mery would seem to be the odd girl out, but she has her own rooting section with Ando, and will also get game time. Somehow Wild will have to work all this out.