Thursday (22 Jul) - Rockin' With MM

Thursday (22 Jul) - Rockin' With MM

Night #2 of our push into the Plagueworks wing of Icecrown Citadel commenced very close to our scheduled start time of 6:30pm. We had to re-clear trash to get to the waiting Rotface, but that did not take long. For Rotface we would be back to using three healers. There were so many moving parts to this fight it took three healers to keep track of all the damage being done.

Before all that, though, there was the matter of Wild's guild decision. While everyone was assembling for the raid, Wild whispered his friend Bd, who was an officer in MM and one of several MM guildies who had in the past given Wild an open invitation to join MM. "Hey, Bd, I have a favor to ask."

Bd was busy helping to get the raid set up, talking with the other raid group that was also planning a run, chatting with friends, and in general doing ten things at once, which is quite normal for the cheery and always upbeat warrior. "What do ya need?" he whispered back.

"Do you think you could invite Wild to join MM?" Wild whispered back. Five minutes later I still hadn't received a reply. Wild had already been invited into the raid by Lady Hunter and I was standing inside ICC with about half of those raiders. Perhaps Wild felt a small bit of anxiety when the answer didn't come back immediately - but I also know Bd. He's probably already forgotten I'd whispered him, I figured, so Wild whispered him again. "Hey, Bd, do you remember me asking you for a favor?"

There was a short pause, and then Bd yelled over vent to the whole raid, "Sh-t! Wild doesn't have a quild tag!" at the same time Wild was whispering him again, "If you'll have me I'd like to join MM."

"Hells yea!!!" he sent back. And Wild got his guild invite. Wild got a lot of congratulations and plenty of teasing about how everyone thought Wild was already a guildie. There was no question that Wild had made the right choice.

Now, back to Rotface. I think I've described this fight before, so let's take a look at it this time purely from Wild's point of view during the actual progression of the battle. Wild was assigned to keep heals on the off tank, Bd. The off tank's role was to kite around the nasty oozes that would spawn all too frequently during the battle. Simple, right? Not exactly. The main tank dealing with Rotface got a dedicated healer, and the raid healer also had a special role in purging the ooze when it formed and making sure that the raider with an ooze on his trail was kept alive.

So, here goes. The main tank counts down, and just before the charge Wild drops a Regrowth on him to give him a bit of heal of time (HoT) lovin' for the start of the fight. Wild runs in a few steps behind the tank and takes up position under the butt of Rotface. Yea, Wild needed goggles and a full mask to stand under that leaking hole. Wild started healing, adding more HoTs to the main tank and dropping some "just in case" hots on the off tank who I was responsible for. The first 30 seconds aren't too bad. Rotface made his first move, twisting around and taking a big breath before hawking out a long stream of vomit. Wild, knowing that was coming, ducked between Rotface's legs to avoid the spew. At the same time the first ooze formed, attaching itself to one of the melee raiders. Wild refreshed the HoTs on the off tank, who was on the move toward the raider with the ooze. More nasty yellow-green stuff is coming from the walls, and Wild has to dance aside to avoid it. Rotface spews again and the maneuvering Wild catches some of it. Healing himself on the move, Wild sees that a second ooze has formed and that in the space of two seconds the off tank is down to half health. Wild hits his "oh crap!" spell, getting the off tank back to full health and follows that with more HoTs. The two oozes merge into one larger ooze that the off tank is now kiting. That's the good news. The bad news is that a third ooze has formed and is chasing the main tank healer. The main tank is losing health fast while his healer is on the run. Wild pours healing on the main tank, and then quickly switches back to the off tank, who was getting his rear chewed on by the big ooze. Wild is still dancing back and forth between the legs of Rotface avoiding his vomit. A raider is dead. When did that happen?

"Wildshard has a mutated infection." Oh crap, now Wild has an ooze on his tail. Wild breaks away from the group of raiders around Rotface and heads toward the door. That is just so Wild can get his bearings and look for the off tank. Wild is running along the outer edge of of the chamber, and the off tank is behind me. Sigh, that's not going to work. Wild pops a couple of HoTs on himself and does a 180, taking some peripheral damage from the ooze as I pass by it, and then kiting the thing between the off tank and the big ooze that is chasing him. I definitely did NOT want to get close to the big ooze, so as soon as I made the pass, Wild veered off and immediately started healing the off tank. The small ooze merged with the big one, with the off tank avoiding most of the damage associated with that merger.

Wild turned back into the center only to hear that the big ooze was about to explode. Wild veered back out, hoping to find a spot that had not been occupied by another raider when the exploding pieces of big ooze came raining down around us. Wild was safe, other raiders were not so lucky and died.

Things started going downhill. Some oozes got loose and ran amuck in the raid, spraying AoE damage on everyone in range. Wild was frantically trying to keep too many raiders alive, and when a big ooze swallowed up the off tank, Wild could not get heals to him fast enough and he died.

It was a wipe.

We made a promising start on our first attempt, getting Rotface to 61%. Our best attempt was our 5th, when we got him all the way down to 18%. All told we tried 7 times. We didn't bring him down, but I think we were all a lot more confident at the end than we were at the beginning.

What now? The raid leader made a smart call. Rather than get into a rut against Rotface, which might have the not so good side effect of enforcing the bad habits that were causing us to wipe, she opted to switch to a fresh, new boss, and let us think about Rotface for next week.

So we left the Plagueworks and headed for the fourth wing, Frostwing Halls. Ok, wait a minute. What happened to the third wing? It's still there. Let me explain. Once the first wing has been cleared, raiders can choose to go to any other wing in any order. All we have to do is clear the trash mobs to those bosses. Normally, the wings are done in order as the encounters generally get tougher wing by wing. But then each encounter has it's own special requirements, so a wing and a boss may be chosen because the raid makeup best fits that particular fight. That was the call made this night. The best choice of boss for our group was found in the Frostwing Halls. The boss? Valithria Dreamwalker.

If that name is familiar it's because we attempted this boss last week, and most of the raiders this week has now seen this boss at least once. Several raiders hadn't, though, including Lady Hunter, who was playing her paladin, Kt. Wild and Kt would be the two priests that get to have all the fun of going into the phased area of the dungeon through portals and flying around and healing the dragon. Last week Wild was petrified of that fight - now Wild can't wait to get in there. The really hard healing job went to our priest, who would have to stay outside the portal and heal the entire raid.

We made four attempts on Dreamwalker, making modest progress and getting her health up to 63% (remember we win this battle by healing her up to 100%). The only thing we couldn't figure out was why Kt's healing numbers never came close to where they should be. It didn't really affect the outcomes of the attempts this week, as the raid was wiping on the swarming mobs long before we'd have time to fully heal the dragon, but it would become an issue if we didn't figure it out. Wild was healing for over 10k hps, which was still a bit low, but Kt was healing for under 5k, lower even than the priest, and even with all of the healing buffs provided by going inside the portal. That's one thing we'll need to figure out for next time.

Ok, so again, like last week, we came away from our second night of raiding without a boss kill. But Wild didn't mind. He had a new home, and good friends to share it with.