Wild didn't bother to log in early for the Tuesday night ICC10 run, given how late that run always starts. Wild logged in right at 6pm, and got his invite within five minutes. Of course, we didn't actually get started until 6:45pm, so maybe I'll log in at 6:15pm next week. The MM guild came up short on getting two raids together again, so our group was a very potent mix from both with many of our best raiders. That included our two best tanks and our three best healers. Also, for the first time in several weeks Wild was in a raid with Bd. When we split into two raids several weeks ago, Wild and Bd ended up in different raids. I like raiding with the group I'm in and Mf is a good raid leader, too, but I love being in a raid with Bd not only because be's very good but also because he is always so excited to be playing that his enthusiasm tends to rub off on everyone else.
Bd assigned Wild to be his healer. He lavished praise on his three healers,and was about to name his favorite, and then thought better of it, deciding to say that we were all so good he couldn't pick between us.
"Wild and I go way back back together," Bd said, "and Sh (our shaman healer) is just awesome, and Ch (our main priest healer) is great both in game and in bed" - which had us all laughing and posting ROFL! in chat. Ch chimed in with some ribald comments of her own, but you could hear the pleased embarrassment in her voice. Yes, the two do live together, which is one reason Wild ended up in that other raid group (so Bd and Ch could raid together), which is a perfectly good reason in my book.
We started on the trash and got through two-thirds of it when Bd got a call from work and we waited almost twenty minutes for him to get back. Everyone waited patiently. Ch took over Bd's computer and ran around on Bd's toon making choo choo noises and dancing with everyone. Wild got into the act, slipping into his murloc costume and dancing as well.
Murloc Wild
When we at last got down to business, we really got down to business.
We tackled the first boss, Lord Marrowgar, and you could have video'ed the fight and used it for training other raiders. It went that smoothly, with Marrowgar dying without knowing what had hit him.
Bd moved us on quickly, and we started on the next set of trash before the blood had dried and before the loot master finished distributing loot. We put Deathwhisperer in our sights, and she too fell on our first try with no deaths. We were rolling.
The gunship battle had it's little quirks. There are two shipboard rail guns that have to be manned to take out specific mobs on the other ship. We had two warlocks in the group and, when asked who should man the guns, Bd made the quick decision that the warlocks would man them. One of them had never manned the shipboard guns before, but didn't tell Bd, and during the battle things got a little dicey when he didn't shoot at the right targets. Secondly, since Mf had been the tank assigned to board the enemy ship, I figured that Ch would be healing him (even though I was usually the healer assigned to the tank that does the boarding) and that I didn't need to stand at the rail to heal. We almost lost Mf during the first boarding because Ch got confused about who she should be healing. I saw what was happening and got to the rail to help out, and then took over that job for the rest of the fight. The confusion was because we had mushed the two groups together into one, and so our "usual" assignments didn't always match what we were used to doing in our own groups. It didn't matter, though, no one died and we won the Gunship battle.
Next up was Saurfang, and Wild's group has had ongoing problems with this boss, including some bad luck with Marks on the healers, which is difficult to overcome. Wild and the shaman Sh were the healers for Saurfang on this night, while Ch switched to shadow spec for the extra DPS. Things went pretty much like clockwork, just like the rest of our night was going. Late in the fight Sh was Marked, but with Wild's help he stayed alive. Saurfang went down on our first try. We had cleared the first wing. This was becoming an awesome night.
There are two mini-bosses to fight in between the first and second wings, called Precious and Stinky. Yes, that is their real names. They are not hard, once you know the mechanics of the fight. We breezed through the Precious fight and then quickly grabbed Stinky. The tank, Bd, made the odd call to pull Stinky in the opposite direction we had taken on Precious, and that put many raiders out of position. Both mini-bosses have an ability called Decimate, which drops every raider down to almost no health. To combat that, everyone stays grouped up close to the tank during the fight so that when Decimate hits everyone is in range of the mass AoE healing required to survive Decimate. But we were too spread out and raiders started dying. Wiping on a mini-boss is not only embarrassing, it can also be funny. The shocked laughter started when the first raiders went down, and grew as more died and it looked like Stinky was going to get the better of us. When the second tank died that left only Wild and Sh, the two healers, alive, and by that time everyone was screaming at us to finish him off! Sh died, leaving only Wild. I got off one moonfire before I died (which would continue to do damage after I died), but I didn't think it would be enough to kill him. At this point it's a wipe - we're all dead. Clever Sh, though, who as a shaman has an instant self rez, popped his rez. He knew he'd have almost no time before Stinky wacked him again, so Sh dropped an explosive totem just before Stinky killed him a second time. The totem exploded, and Stinky died. Sure, we all had to release and rez at the graveyard, but hey, if the monster dies, it's a win! And credit to the two healers who made DPS moves to make it happen. :-)
We had our choice of Rotface or Festergut at the start of the second wing. Festergut is the usual first choice as he is a bit easier than Rotface. But for that reason Bd talked us into going after Rotface first. "We've got Rotface on farm now, so let's get him down and that will give us an easy start on Festgergut tomorrow." Rotface is on farm? I'm sure that was on the mind of everyone in the raid that raided with Mf. I don't think we'd killed him even once yet in our group. But Bd's raid had killed Rotface two weeks in a row, and he was sure we could do it with this group, given our successes on the night so far.
Rotface it was. Wild does not like this fight. Wild is always nervous about the role he is almost always assigned, which is to heal the off tank, who spends the whole fight running in a circle around the outer edge of the chamber being chased by oozes, because if they catch him they can two-shot kill him. Ok, so the off tank has the worst assignment in this fight - but Wild is the guy that has to keep him alive. And he's often out of range of Wild, which makes Wild have to maneuver a whole lot more than I like to on this fight. Wild is trying to keep an eye on where the off tank is, is watching Rotface to avoid his regular streams of vomit, avoiding pools of rank green burning slime that spills across the floor, and, most importantly, hoping against hope that I don't get an ooze on me, and that if I do, I'll notice the raid warning telling me I've been targeted. Once targeted, Wild has to start running as well, hopefully in the direction of the off tank, in order that the off tank can add my little ooze to the bigger ooze that is chasing him around the room. Oh yea, and remember to hightail it away when that big ooze decides to explode. I really don't like this fight.
We wiped on our first attempt, breaking our string of perfect kills. We got Rotface to 25% though, which was pretty good. It was getting close to 9pm, when our raid ends, and Bd asked if we wanted to give it another try. We did, and on our second attempt Rotface fell. From some in the raid it was their first Rotface kill.
We hardly needed to debate sticking around a little longer to take on Festergut. He died easily on our first attempt. Six bosses down in a single night. "Hey," asked one raider, "anyone want to stay around long enough to get one more frost badge? There's a mini-boss in the third wing we could get to that would clear trash to speed up tomorrow?" Yep, there was enough gas left in our raid for one more challenge.
Sister Svalna is a level 82 elite. Getting to her meant getting through a whole bunch of mobs staged on the floor in front of us, on the stairs behind those, and on the platform at the top of the stairs where the winged Sister hovers above all of them.
Wild has seen this fight in ICC25, but not many others had reached this point before. I couldn't really remember which mob groups to aggro in what order or how many would attack when we started, so we guessed. The first couple of groups went well. On the stairs, however, our lone hunter let his combat pet get a little too aggressive, and suddenly we had about ten elite mobs in our midst. That was both scary and exciting. The two tanks gathered them up, the healers kept the tanks alive, and the DPS started dropping AoEs on everything in the room. That also brought Sister Svalna into the fight, and things got even more interesting. Our measured, step by step approach had become a full scale war.
Which we survived, bringing down the Sister as the priority target and them cleaning up the rest of the mobs that we hadn't already killed. It was a fitting conclusion to a fine night of raiding. RAWR!
Wild didn't get any loot, having lost the roll on the one item I wanted. It was an i251 healing ring, which reminded Wild that I was still wearing an i245 ring, the worst piece of gear Wild owns now on his healing set.
Wednesday night's raid should be really fun and challenging. I don't think anyone but Wild and maybe a couple of others have ever seen the fights we could choose from - Professor Putricide (please, NO!), the Blood Prince Council (that would be my choice), or Dreamwalker (which even Wild has encountered only once). All will test this group to the max.
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