Weekend (2 Aug) - Chunks

Weekend (2 Aug) - Chunks

Chunk #1 - There was a second night of ICC10 on Thursday Night. Wild was off his game as I was pretty tuckered out from the stress of caring for our sick kitty. Our evening started with Festergut, the first boss in the second wing of ICC. We wiped early on our first attempt; came back and fought all the way to the enrage timer on our second attempt before wiping again; and then after a mixup and wipe on our third attempt, we brought Festergut down on our fourth try. Wild led in healing with 5592 hps/40.7% healing but Cr was right there with him at 4605/30.7%. Cr paid Wild a nice compliment, whispering Wild that she was learning all kinds of great healing tips from him. I'd been feeding her data from recount to show her how her healing was going and what to look for to make improvements. She really had no idea whether she was a good healer or not, and Wild gave her confidence that she was doing very well.

Note that for our second night we had been joined by Bd, who ran ICC10 with G1 on Tuesday/Wednesday on his druid. He was tanking for us (G2) on his warrior Thursday night. The guy is indefatigable. Rotface is a difficult fight, one that G2 had yet to master. On our first attempt, though, we got him to 37%, our best performance to date. Wild was playing in a bit of a fog, and wasn't feeling well, but was trying to hang in there. On our second attempt Wild blundered about and got himself killed early, leading to our second wipe. We had more troubles on our third attempt, losing ground, but gained most of that ground back on our 4th attempt when we got him to 40%.

On our fifth attempt the raid was awesome and we brought Rotface down for the first time! Wild was just barely hanging in there, but Cr stepped it up and led in healing with 4613 hps/40.3% followed by Wild with 3549/36.7%.

After the victory over Rotface the raid leader, Lady Hunter, gave us a choice of bosses for our next assault, both of which would be new bosses for our G2 - Valrithia Dreamwalker or Professor Putricide. Wild hates Putricide. Loathes Putricide. Wants nothing to do with Putricide. The raid voted to take on Professor Putricide. Gah.

We only had time for one attempt, and we barely scratched the surface of this fight, getting Putricide to 79% before wiping. It had been a long time since Wild's last shot at this fight in ICC25 with FS. It didn't seem quite as awful as I remembered it to be, but maybe when I'm more alert I'll remember why.

Chunk #2 - I really thought about taking Friday night off. I usually don't have a raid on Fridays anyway, but the MM guild has started scheduling Friday night runs and this one happened to be Trial of the Crusader (T0C). Wild has done ToC many times and doesn't need any of the i232 gear in there. However, for Philly, most everything in ToC would be upgrades. I had signed Philly up for the run, hoping she was geared well enough to get into the raid. Philly begged for the chance, so I dutifully showed up at 6:30pm, Philly in tow. It would be my third straight night of raiding. ToC has both 10 man and 25 man versions, but we only had enough for ToC 10. Philly got an invite. I offered that she could either go shadow priest for DPS or could heal. Philly's main spec is shadow, so I was really hoping she would be given that role. Fortunately there were already three good healers available, including another priest, and Philly got to pew pew! (that's warcraft-ese for killing things).

Philly hasn't done much raiding. She did get into a ToC25 a few weeks back and did clear it. She was very undergeared but the rest of the raid was able to pick up the slack. She's done 5 man Heroics, an occasional Vault of Archovan (VoA), and that's about it. This was her first guild raid and for all practical purposes she was a nub at it. Wild couldn't help her much, either. He is a healer through and through, and isn't much more experienced as a DPS than Philly is. And DPSing as a shadow priest is nothing like DPSing as a moonkin. I think shadow priest DPS is a lot harder, because there are a lot of timing issues that are absolutely essential in getting the most damage out.

There are no trash mobs in ToC. There are a series of gladiator like events, starting with a triplet of mobs called the Northrend Beasts that come at us one group at a time with no pauses in between. We took down Gormok, the pair of frost wyrms (Acidmaw and Dreadscale), and finally Icehowl. Icehowl has a Charge where he targets a specific raider, and it is critical that the targeted raiders get out of the way. Philly was playing with some altered movement keys to improve her strafing moves. Icehowl targeted Philly three straight times. I mean, get real! Philly could have screwed up using the changed movement keys, but the strafing worked and Philly got out of the way all three times. The three mob groups all died, and Philly felt pretty good (well, at least not too bad) at her damage dealing. We had 5 DPSers and our numbers after the Northrend Beasts encounter was:

#1: deathknight - 3769 DPS/27% total damage
#2: hunter - 2891/19.7%
#3: Philly! - 2320/17.3%
#4: tank - 1243/10.1%
#5: tank - 1222/8.9%

Ok, tanks are not supposed to show up in the top 5 DPS in a ten man raid. Not sure what the issue was, but Philly enjoyed her moment while she could. Things would get a lot tougher.

There was another priest in the raid who was one of the healers. He had done the priest buffs for the Northrend Beasts, and Philly wanted to do her part, too, so she decided to do the priest buffs in preparation for the next encounter. Wild, the slacker, only has one buff he's required to cast for a raid. Priests have three, and they all take mana to cast and cost "candles" which Philly has to buy. Philly carries around three stacks (60 candles) to make sure she has enough with her at all times.

Philly did the priesty raid buffs, and then there was this moment as she looked at her "other" personal buffs. Buffs like Inner Focus, which give her additional spell power. And Vampiric Embrace, a shadow spec buff which provides extra healing for the entire raid. Philly had forgotten to cast either of them for the Northrend Beasts fight. Sigh.

Lord Jarraxus was the next encounter and we struggled with him. Philly had a chance to work on changing targets as her job along, with two other ranged DPS, was to bring down the Mistress of Pain, a almost mini-boss that spawns periodically during the battle, as well as groups of rock elementals that could be a real pain. My problem as a DPSer has always been learning to target mobs quickly and accurately - I'm still learning. It's just so different from healing. Philly struggled through that and although her DPS fell off we managed to take down Jaraxxus. Yes, Philly used ALL her buffs this time.

The third encounter is a group of six npc mobs called the Faction Champs, and it's designed like a pvp arena match. Philly's job, in addition to helping kill each mob in a specified order, was to cast Mass Dispell (to remove buffs that help the enemy) whenever I could and to use Fear in rotation with the other priest, who would be doing the same thing. Philly was also specced to be able to do a spell called Psychic Horror, which basically scared the snot out of the target for three seconds, even forcing the target to drop it's weapon. How fun is that? Well, it is kinda fun, although being chased around the chamber by a warrior with murder on his mind and a big two handed sword in his hand in between those Psychic Horror moments was a lot less fun.

We drew a bad combination of enemies for this fight. Three of the mobs were healers, and that was going to make this a very long fight. Too long, actually, on our first assault. We targeted the shaman healer as our first target, and the computer played shaman simply outplayed us. We couldn't kill him. Every time we'd get close another healer would heal him back up, like they knew we were focus firing on that shaman. We were all cursing that shaman as one by one we died, unable to keep that shaman from healing back to full health each time we dented him. We wiped.

For our second try, the raid leader opted for more DPS! instead of healing and our healing priest switched to shadow priest. The extra DPS made the difference and we were able to bring the shaman down. With him out of the way, the rest of the fight became one of attrition as we killed one of them for everyone of us they killed, with the numbers in our favor. There were four raiders standing when the last enemy fell. Philly wasn't one of them, though, being the second raider to die. With Philly in motion nearly the whole fight, she had to rely mostly on a couple of instant DPS DoTs for damage dealing, and the rest of the time was dispelling or Fearing things. Her DPS dropped way off, but she was getting the job she'd been assigned done.

Entering the coliseum after the Faction Champs fell were Fiola and Eydis, a matched pair of bosses that shared the same health pool. Kill one and they both die. The trick is that depending on the situation only one of them can be attacked at a time. A second trick is knowing what "color" or polarity (light or dark) you have to be to be able to attack the right target. Wild has done this fight many times as a healer and once you get a feel for it it's not that hard. As a DPS, though, Philly had to be a lot more aware of what was going on. Shooting at the wrong target will deliver no damage, and not being wrapped in the right color will get you killed. Considering it was Philly's first time doing this in ten man, she did pretty well in making the polarity shifts every time - but once. The resulting explosion from missing that transition nearly killed her, but Philly was thoughtful enough to have Shielded herself and survived it. She shifted polarity and continued the fight. The strategy for the fight was a little easier than Wild remembered from a targeting perspective, too. DPSers had to figure out which of the two bosses to attack under the strategy Wild learned, but this time it was the two tanks who made that decision. For the DPS, we were told to always attack the target being main tanked. So all Philly had to do was ensure that she was attacking that target. The battle went pretty long, but we finally killed them.

Philly had another "Oh crap" revelation after this fight, unfortunately. Before coming into the raid, Philly had studied up on her spell rotation so that she would get the order right. Under the correct conditions, a powerful Damage over Time (DoT) spell called Shadow Word: Pain (SW:P) would automatically refresh itself on the target, meaning Philly would not have to cast it as long as she kept up her rotation. SW:P contributes a LOT of damage. Philly forgot one tiny detail about her rotation. Before SW:P can be "refreshed" she has to cast it one time during her opening string of spells. She forgot to make that opening cast of SW:P. That little slip meant that she hasn't had SW:P on any of her boss targets the whole evening. That really sucked. Lots of learnin' moments for Philly.

Philly entered ToC10 knowing that there was loot in here that could replace half her current set of gear. She had only three pieces that were better than what she might find here: her two pieces of Tier 9 (shoulders and pants) and her boots. Did I tell you about her boots? No? Philly is looking at Happyface in a new light. After Wild nixed the idea of crafting a pair of i264 Deathfrost Boots for Philly due to the cost, Happy quietly began monitoring the AH and trade chat for bargains on the costliest item, primoridal saronite. Little by little, Happy started getting them, one bargain at a time. Happy then had a long talk with Wild, and just before the start of the raid Wild presented Philly with a newly crafted and nicely enchanted pair of Deathfrost Boots. Philly would have kissed them both, but, well, you know, lips of an undead, and all that . . .

Philly is a jewel crafter, you will recall. Jewelcrafters can craft special gems that are more powerful than those everyone else uses. For example, the best spell power gem in the game has +23 spell power. The JC only spell power gem has +39 spell power. There are restrictions - Philly can socket only one each of each primary color gem - red, yellow, and red, so she can't have more than three total special gems socketed across all of her gear. Philly has never felt she had gear worth buying the recipes and expending hard to get tokens for the material to make those special gems. Until now. The Deathfrost Boots had two gem sockets, and Philly knew it was time to use her special gems for those boots, as Philly will still be wearing them come Cataclysm, I'm sure.

After killing the Northrend Beasts, Lord Jaraxxus, the Faction Champions, and the twins Fjola and Eydis, Philly had won no loot. None. There was only one drop that she could even roll on - a really nice +mana regen trinket that would have been a great addition to her healing set. But healing is her off spec, and a main spec healer won it. Philly was looking at all the potential loot that "might have been" and figuring she was now likely to finish ToC with nothing to show for it.

The last boss in ToC is Anub'barak, a great big bug. It's a straightforward fight, although it has it's tricks and traps, with a lot of swarming adds and three phases to the fight. On our first attempt Philly got surrounded by mobs and died in the opening moments of the battle. So much for seeing how SW:P helped out her DPS. Sigh. The raid got Anub to 14% without Philly's help, and wiped when we hit the enrage timer. Would a living, breathing Philly have made the difference? Maybe.

We had an aborted second attempt when an unlucky spike trail took out several raiders at once. The pull surprised folks and I don't think we were really ready to go.

On our third attempt we killed Anub to finish off ToC. When all was said and done Philly could at least say that her DPS was better than that of the tanks. :-)

The other four DPS beat her by fairly wide margins, however:

#1: hunter - 3950 DPS/21% damage
#2: warlock - 3625/19%
#3: deathknight - 3590/19%
#4: hunter - 2338/13%
#5: Philly - 2111/11%

It wasn't what Philly was hoping for, but it's something she can use to motivate herself to improve on.

Philly got her last chance at loot after the Anub kill. A leather DPS item dropped, which made a nice grab for the feral druid in the raid. A caster staff also dropped called [Perdition]. It did not have +hit, so it wasn't a "DPS staff" but the staff could be used by either DPS or healing casters and so both could roll on it as main spec. Three raiders rolled on it - and Philly won the roll.

[Perdition] is an i232 staff that is significantly better than the i200 pair of main hand dagger and off hand that Philly was currently wearing. If Philly had been asked what one slot she wanted most to upgrade, she would have said it was her weapon slot. Philly had no problem tossing those two pieces in the trash as the staff was better than both even before it was enchanted and gemmed. Oh, and the staff has one gem slot.

It was getting late, but Philly rousted Wild out of bed (ok, Wild, it wasn't THAT late). Wild agreed that Philly's new staff should have the best enchant on it, and used five of his own abyss crystals (out of the 15 he owned) to enchant the staff with +81 spell power. Philly then cut her third special gem to fill the gem socket in that staff. Philly may one day replace that staff, but for now it's the biggest upgrade she's gotten in some time - after those boots, of course.

What was funny was that when she first equipped Perdition, removing the two i200 items that the staff replaced, Philly earned the achievement called Epic, which meant that Philly was no longer wearing any gear less than i213. It was a nice accomplishment for Philly, but the gratz and kidding from the guild when the Achievement was announced, while welcomed with good humor, highlighted just how far Philly still has to go.

There are more "Chunks" to follow.