Thursday (12 Aug) - Watching the Clock

Thursday (12 Aug) - Watching the Clock

Our ICC10 G2 fell back on old habits on Thursday night. We didn't get moving until almost 7pm, and took forever to reassemble each time there was break in the action. Smoke breaks, "I just need to run get a gem" breaks, "oh wait I need some potions" breaks, bio breaks, dinner breaks, etc, consumed the night. Every time a raider "needed just a sec" by the time he came back someone else had left. On top of those were some real issues, such as Lady Hunter's laptop crashing and a failed mouse by the off tank, both of which took considerable (and understandable) time to rectify. But even this very laid back group started to ask why things were taking so long.

In between all that we did get in a little raiding.

Following last week's plan, we decided to go after Dreamwalker to start the night. We'd saved her last week, and we were sure we could do it this week as well. As we did last week, Wild and Cr would be the two healers going into the portal, with Pl staying outside healing the rest of the raid.

"Please keep the quishy alive," Pl teased the group and also as a reminder that if she died they all died.

Our first attempt was a bit ragged, and we wiped, but we were just getting settled in. The key to this encounter is how much and how fast healing can be delivered to Dreamwalker. Wild felt he was struggling a bit inside the portal in getting his stacks of buffs. You know how Wild is about flying around trying to catch things (or in this case, just fly through the pulsing orbs in the air around Dreamwalker). Well, he kept flying over and under the orbs, taking longer than usual to get their buffs. I would also discover after that attempt that Wild had forgotten to drink his spell power enhancing flask, losing even more healing power.

Considering all that, Wild's healing per second (hps) wasn't as bad as I thought it would be:

Wild: 13907 hps
Cr: 9430 hps
Pl: 3486 hps (Pl doesn't get the buffs, so her healing is only for comparison purposed with the other attempts)

Over 9k for Cr was a good start and Wild hoped she would raise that number as we continued to practice.

On our second attempt we got Dreamwalker up to 84% health, but toward the end we unraveled. Coming out of the portal, Wild appeared right in front of a zombie (Wild can't see what is going on outside the portal until I leave it). Wild kited the zombie for a bit, but help couldn't get to me and Wild died.

Wild: 14461 hps
Cr: 7686 hps
Pl: 3432 hps

Wild kicked himself for again forgetting his flask. There was a long delay in between attempts and I don't like drinking a flask until right before the fight starts. Flasks are expensive and I don't like to see their timer ticking (they last one hour) while sitting around doing nothing. Wild went ahead and drank his flask and waited for the next attempt.

We beat her on our third attempt. Wild had smoothed out the wrinkles in flying into those orbs and got his stack of buffs up over 20, which is the number I shoot for. I think a stack of 23 buffs has been my best so far. Expert raiders have gotten up to thirty I've heard.

Wild: 17725 hps, 54.5% of the healing
Cr: 8902 hps, 29.4%
Pl: 3549 hps, 10.5% (but almost 100% of the raid healing)

Wild needs to work with Cr on her technique and make sure she is not healing the raid when she should be healing the dragon. If she can get her hps up around where Wild is this fight will be quick and easy. I even thought Cr might be low on +haste and so taking longer to cast, but she's at 642 haste, which is decent, so that isn't it. I'll also look at what spell rotation a holy priest should use for dragon healing, and whether holy priests are a good class for it.

After we won the Dreamwalker encounter everyone wanted to troop over to the elevator and take on Sindragosa. However, assuming that ICC works like other raid dungeons, we have to defeat all of the boss encounters in ICC before the final boss, the Lich King, can be engaged. We've still neither defeated or even attempted three bosses that come before Sindragosa: Professor Putricide (2nd wing), and both bosses in Crimson Hall (the third wing) - Blood Prince Council and Blood-Queen Lana'thel.

Clearer heads prevailed eventually, and we headed for Putricide.

I've said before that Professor Putricide is one of the toughest encounters in ICC. It requires very tight coordination and teamwork, good positioning, and every raider doing his/her assigned roles.

Our first mistake was that no one, not even the raid leader, could explain this fight, which 7 of our 10 raiders were seeing for the first time. Again, this is an issue with the raid that we've always had as far back as Naxxramas when our resident raid strategist stopped raiding. Raid strategy is just not Lady Hunter's forte, and no fault to her for that. Wild can't do it that well, either. But we really need someone in the raid who can.

So, most of the raid was monumentally confused when we made our first attempt. And probably the worst thing possible happened. We did surprisingly well. We got Putricide down to 58% health before wiping. We didn't do much right and we really didn't learn much about the fight other than "hey, this fight isn't so bad!" Wild knew better.

There was a delay between the first and second attempts so Lady Hunter could get her laptop fixed. We then lined up again for the second attempt - and got slaughtered. What happened? everyone wanted to know. We did so well the first time!

The delay between the second and third attempts was even longer (more than thirty minutes) as raiders came and went and our off tank tried to fix his mouse. When we finally made that third attempt, we wiped in less than a minute.

In between the third and fourth attempts, Lady Hunter asked Bd to join us on vent and explain the fight. It was an excellent discussion (a "Bd epix explanation" someone said) even though it was a lot of information for the raid to absorb. Bd sprinkled his explanation with terms loved by all "adolescents at heart" and which raiders happily repeated on guild chat so the rest of the guild could share in it. Bd's favorite line was "So when Tn, who is disguised as Putricide's son, starts spooging up the slime, oh wait, spooging is from the other end, I meant slurping up the slime, he then pukes it up on the oozes . . . " What makes that so hilarious is that this is exactly what one raider has to do in this fight!

Our fourth attempt wasn't bad, even though we didn't last very long. Raiders were trying to follow the strategy laid out by Bd, and mistakes were made, but now it was possible for further practice to correct those mistakes.

It had taken up a lot of time to get in those four attempts, though, and we were 15 minutes away from our usual stop time. With G2 the stop time is a rather vague line, since most raiders can go longer. Trash mobs had also respawned and we debated whether everyone could stay to both clear trash and get in another attempt. We went for it.

We made a pretty good effort on our fifth attempt, getting Putricide to 60% health before again wiping. Beating Putricide requires more practice than most other fights. If we can get in enough attempts next week, we have a chance to get him. As frustrating as this night was for the time we lost, I think G2 is closing in on having a serious chance at reaching the Lich King. I think we would ALL treasure getting the Lich King down and be wearing the title of Kingslayer before Cataclysm makes that a trivial accomplishment.