Wednesday (4 Aug) - Cashing in on Frost Emblems

Wednesday (4 Aug) - Cashing in on Frost Emblems

We had something of a mishmash of raiders for the Wednesday night ICC10 run with three of our DPS and one healer being new to the instance. Philly, who has aspirations to get into ICC before Cataclysm kills it, was encouraged by the fact that at least two of those raiders had lower gears scores than Philly did. Philly is hoping to into ICC next week with the guild, and may even try a PUG to get the weekly done, which is Lord Marrowgar in ICC. That said, we had our two veteran tanks and two veteran healers available for the raid, so the core raiders were intact. I would also note in passing that half the raid was comprised of women players.

For a change the initial trash mob clearing went very smoothly at the beginning of the raid. Nobody died and everyone made it to the doorstep of Marrowgar without triggering any traps. We also started pretty close to on time. Our priest, Ch, had forgotten to pick up her flasks for the raid, so she hearthed back to Dalaran to pick them up and then flew back on her mount. It's a pretty short flight, and didn't take long, although the warlock in the raid teased that he was affronted by her not asking for a Summons directly from Dalaran to where the rest of the raid was standing. We don't always have a warlock in the raid, and we forget. Like I said, it was a short flight, and then a short walk through two rooms to get to us. Trash had been cleared along the right side of the first room, and then down the middle of the second. The tank, Bd, joked that Ch had a habit of triggering the traps and releasing nasty mobs, but we were all surprised when, partway through the first room, she DID spring a trap. In rushing to her aid we managed to trigger a second trap. And then a third. We fought through them without wiping. I guess we could call it progress that we only triggered three of the traps - there are four total.

The raid leader was initially going to go with three healers since we had a new priest healer, Pl, with us. We really only needed two healers for the first wing, though. An eager Pl was given a chance to show what she could do as the second healer on her first look at Lord Marrowgar. The other priest switched to shadow spec for DPS, and Wild got the job of main healing and helping Pl learn the ropes.

Our first attempt was a wipe, however. Pl, having never set foot in ICC, had trouble seeing the lines of white fire that Marrowgar spreads across the chamber. It was the oldest rule of Warcraft - Standing in fire is bad. Wild tried to help, healing two tanks, the rest of the raid, and keeping her alive, and Wild succeeded for awhile, but Pl just couldn't find a safe place to stand and died. Wild pulled over 6k healing and actually kept the tanks up for awhile - this fight can be two healed, but not even Wild can one heal it. We wiped.

Pl made some adjustments to her settings so that she could see the thing that killed her, and she got her first Lord Marrowgar kill on our second attempt. She did pretty well, considering:

Wild: 5835 hps, 60% healing
Pl: 3827/27%

Philly, also a priest, wondered if she would be able to do as well healing that fight. Her gear level was practically the same as Pl's.

Wild, who would really like to see some healing bracers drop, watched as a pair of bracers did drop, but they were mail armor, which Wild can't wear.

Lady Deathwhisper followed, getting the same fate as Marrowgar. We were even able to do the weekly ICC quest at the same time, a nice bonus. Two bosses down.

Wild: 4461 hps/53.7%
Pl: 3021/29.6%

We had some fun with the Gunship next. Pl, who doing a great job healing and learning the fights, died on this fight, but Wild got her ezzed quickly and we won the battle. Another pair of mail armor bracers dropped. Someone up there just doesn't like Wild.

Wild: 3314/66%
Pl: 2206/24.1%

We reached Saurfang, the last boss in the wing. We decided to stay with two healers. We were doing well, and the extra DPS would help us take out this boss quicker. This was probably the easiest Saurfang battle Wild has seen to date. the spawning beasts never even came close to Wild throughout the whole fight, and Wild made sure the DPSers protecting him stayed very well healed. One of those DPSers got Marked halfway through the fight, but Wild and Pl poured extra heals on him for the rest of the fight and kept him alive. Saurfang fell on our first try and with no deaths.

On to Festergut. The raid leader took time to explain this fight. It's a simple fight, but positioning must be right at all times. We needed to go to three healers for this fight. Wild was assigned to stay with the two ranged DPSers while the rest of the raid would be crowded into melee range of Festergut. This is the "spores" fight and on our first attempt we handled that part of the strategy like pros, even with several getting their first look at it. There is another trick of festergut's where he targets a random raider and something like vile blight - it's makes the target vomit violently for several seconds, during which you can't do anything. Wild seems to be a favorite target of this spell for some reason. Every week Wild seems to get it 3-4 times on every fight. So it wasn't surprising that Wild was the first raid start trajectory vomiting during the fight. It was early enough that Wild recovered soon enough to save the main tank, which Wild was responsible for healing. The second time Wild was hit with it, however, the tank had just taken a hit - and Wild was out of action. The tank died. We tried to recover, but ended up wiping.

When Wild explained what happened, Ch, who was the off tank healer, said that she didn't know that Wild was incapacitated and asked that I tell her when that happens. I have been without a microphone in raids for so long I don't even think about it anymore. So it didn't occur to me that folks in Wild's new guild wouldn't know that. The vomiting spell had never caused Wild to lose his tank before, either, so the issue had never come up until now.

Lady Hunter chimed in. "Wild doesn't have a mike. Matter of fact, in all the years I've known him I don't think I've ever heard him say a single word."

"Really?" Ch said in astonishment. I made a joke, something about "everyone has their secrets" and then of course someone made the obvious remark that they would buy me a mike, and we bantered back and forth a bit. Wild made a macro while that was going on and then sent it out to the raid.

"Wild is PUKING his guts out!!"

"Will this work?" Wild asked, meaning could they use a text message in raid chat to see when Wild was, uh, indisposed.

Everyone thought that was funny and would work. I thought the whole thing was over, but Bd then chimed in and said, "You know, I think that there was one, time, many many many raids ago, when I might have heard a rumor of a night when Wild might actually have uttered something."

[Note - I've been having a bit of trouble with the program I use to put these posts together. It's called ConnectedText and I use it for a number of projects as well as this one. It's started to lock up without warning, however, and the automatic backup has become unreliable. I lost about half of this post and I absolutely hate having to recreate something I'd already finished. So Connectedtext is no more. I'm trying out Jarte now, which is essentially Microsoft Wordpad with spell check. Ok, here I go now to write the rest of this post - for the second time]

There is a long story I related the first time I wrote this having to do with an old friend, murloc costumes, and the one and only time Wild actually spoke in a raid - but that will have to wait for another time now.

Back to the raid, we killed Festergut on our second try. And yes, Wild had to use his "Wild is PUKING his guts out!!" message - three times.

Wild: 5608/37.4%
Ch: 4605/28.8%
Pl: 4426/27.4%

We moved on to Rotface. Wild always has problems with this fight because there is a lot of movemement required and Wild has always been very "directionally challenged." For some reason being chased by a small but nasty green blob of ooze intent on absorbing my flesh while intentionally running toward a much larger green ooze intent on eating both the small ooze and yours truly rattles Wild's sense of "get the heck out of here!" The good news was that Bd had learned a druid trick that we didn't think was supposed to work but does. We learned that druids can use their Nature's Grasp spell to immobilize an ooze without losing aggro. Losing aggro on an ooze that is chasing you is a big no no, because that ooze then goes looking for someone else to eat who is not going to know that ooze is after them. It's not nice to send your ooze off to kill someone else. No, saying "Surprise!" first doesn't make it right, either.

The only teensy problem with Nature's Grasp is that the ooze has to actually bite Wild for NG to trigger a Root to hold the ooze in place. Well, that dang ooze tends to be nibbling on Wild's heels all the time anyway, and in practice rooting an ooze works extremely well. Once it's rooted, Wild doesn't have to run to the big ooze; he can get out of the way and proudly show off his captured ooze to the off tank who can then come collect it.

For a raid where half the group was seeing the fight for the first time, we did remarkably well. The battle went a long time, and we came pretty close to killing him. It only took one more try to bring him down. The last time this group killed six bosses, it took us two nights. We only needed one night this time. Our new priest healer, Pl, really shined on this fight:

Pl: 4747/37%
Wild: 3491/32.8%
Ch: 2284/22% (Ch was doing all the ozze dispelling in the fight, so was healing only part time)

Oh, and wouldn't you know it, a third pair of bracers dropped. This time they were cloth bracers, which Wild could wear. But they were DPS bracers with +hit on them, great for Wild's moonkin form, but off spec for healing. The warlock won them.

Wild did get gobs of frost badges from the run, what with the badges from the boss kills, the weekly frost quest, and the weekly ICC quest. Wild has 96 frost emblems. I'm just not sure what to use them for.