Friday/Saturday (18 Sep) - The Co-Op Caper (Part 1)

Friday/Saturday (18 Sep) - The Co-Op Caper (Part 1)

Before getting into the weekend raiding, the Wild family has demanded that I get caught up on some recent leveling progress. Almost everyone earned at least experience points for completing the Cata pre-launch events last week, but there were a couple who actually gained a level. Rakta, on the alliance side, DINGED! to level 13. That made sister Chaitee a little nervous, since she's at level 14 and they are both hunters. Java promised Chaitee that she will get some leveling love in the near future to maintain her status as the senior hunter. The semi-retired Jocelyne DINGED! to level 22. Despite her semi-retired status, she is now the highest level paladin in the family. Now it's level 20 paladin Java's turn to get antsy for some leveling. Finally, there is Mery. Mery is the family's leatherworker, but her skill has been somewhat stagnant at skill 225. The leatherworking profession is going to be changed significantly with Cata. The guidance leans toward recommending waiting to level professions until after Cata arrives. The crafting recipes are better, and the materials required are changing to make skilling up quicker. Mery can afford to wait. However, there are going to be a lot of players planning to do the same thing, and materials for gaining profession skills will likely be hard to come by and expensive. In preparation, Mery has been farming materials that she will then have on hand when the profession changes are implemented (primarily thick leather and rugged leather). Before she could farm, though, she had to clear a bank that was chock full of lesser skins and other junk she'd accumulated. Her entire stock of light leather was crafted into medium leather, medium was crafted into heavy leather, and heavy was crafted into thick leather. If I recall the numbers, it took the equivalent of 17 light leather to craft a single thick leather.

Then Mery went farming. Mery spent a lot of time in Felwood killing wolves and bears and skinning them for thick leather and rugged leather. She'll probably wind up with more thick leather than she needs, but that can be crafted into rugged leather. Mery still needs a boatload of rugged leather. After that it will be knothide leather she'll be after (I think).

Mery needs one more thing, too. She needs to get to Outland and find the Leatherworking trainer there. Mery is not high enough level to go there on her own. She needs a warlock to Summon her there. Hey Sis! Maybe on Monday she can get Mery a portal to Outland!

Oh, by the way, when Mery started her farming she was level 48. She's now level 50.

ICC25 Part 1 (Part 2 will be in a separate post as this was getting pretty long)

On Friday and Saturday Wild accepted invites to an ICC25 co-op raid. The raid was run by the guild BH, with support from Wild's guild, MM. Raiders who committed to coming on both nights received priority for invites. The raids were scheduled for a 5pm start, and those late by more than fifteen minutes could be replaced. Wild wondered what the rules were if more than 25 players signed up. Would preference go to the BH guildies, or would it be balanced between the two guilds? As it turned out it was a moot point. Wild's guild had only seven raiders sign up who could make both nights, and two did not show up. The rest of the raid came from BH. That seemed to Wild to be a pretty poor showing from our guild, but then Friday night has always been an unpopular raid night for MM for some reason. The point was that this was a BH led raid, with support from MM.

Wild got his invite right at 4:45pm, when invites were scheduled to start. I watched the raid fill long enough to see the "healer" group fill with five raiders. Wild wasn't in that group, so I whispered the BH raid leader to let him know that Wild was a healer. I got a quick response, thanking Wild for letting him know.

The raid was nearly full and most of us were already in Icecrown Citadel when the raid leader posted the vent info. We were using BH's vent, so Wild had to set up and enter the vent information. When I tried to login, however, there was no connection. I tried several times, whispered some MM guildies but they weren't having any trouble, talked with the raid leader, and nothing worked. I even rebooted to no avail. Wild was the only raider who could not get into vent. I have set up numerous other vent sites, and when I tested them they all still worked just fine. But not BH's. It was very frustrating. Here I am with a new group of folks and I will not be able to hear what is going on! I half-way expected the raid leader to tell me that I would have to leave the raid if I could not get vent to work. We had six healers, and ICC25 only requires five. There were three druid healers, more than necessary. I really thought Wild was toast, and I would have understood if they dropped me from the raid.

Wild wasn't asked to leave, however. Perhaps Wild's own Guild Leader, who was in the raid, weighed in privately. After all, Wild was one of only five MM guildies in the raid. I'll never know, but Wild got to stay.

Wild hooked up with good friend Bd, who was also in the raid on his druid (one of those three druid healers), and asked him if he'd keep Wild up to speed on whatever was being talked about in vent. Bd, bless him, not only passed along everything that was said, but we also exchanged tips and advice on druid healing and boss strats throughout the night. Bd is truly one of Wild's best friends in game.

While all this was going on, raid leadership decided to start us out in Heroic Mode. Wow, that came as a surprise to Wild. Wild has seen one fight in Heroic mode - the Gunship - and that was in ten man, not 25. It was pretty exciting, though. Everything would be harder, and there would be curves thrown at us Wild had never seen before, and it was going to be oh so cool!

On our first exposure to the Heroic Mode (HM, also called Hard Mode) trash mobs, they very nearly ate us alive. Despite the best efforts of five healers (the sixth went DPS at the start) raiders were dropping all around us. The graveyard wasn't far away, and until we got to Marrowgar we could rez and rejoin the fight in progress, so as raiders died they'd release, rez at the graveyard, and rush back in. The raid never stopped moving. Wild died once and made the graveyard run back into the action.

We made it to Lord Marrowgar. It was pretty thrilling to get even that far. We stayed with HM and engaged. The fight was close to the same as normal mode, but there was more damage and more bone spikes on more raiders. The lines of fire hit much harder, and staying away from them was extremely critical. Raid damage was through the roof and Wild and the other healers had their hands full. We wiped, but the attempt was good enough for us to give it a second try in HM. We added the sixth healer for additional healing help and went at Marrowgar again. It was tight, and right at the end Marrowgar blasted us, killing ten raiders including Wild. But Marrowgar was already going down. Wild had his first Heroic Mode ICC25 kill.

Wild's eyes bugged out when Marrowgar dropped [Frozen Bonespike] the HM, i277 version of the same i264 dagger that Wild was wearing. Wild rolled on it, but finished second, losing to a shadow priest. That would have been a monstrous upgrade for Wild, alas. In addition to the dagger, an i277 cloth caster belt also dropped. Wild rolled on it as offspec, but also stated that he would pass to cloth wearers. Wild won the roll, which would be a marked improvement for his moonkin spec. That same shadow priest that beat Wild out on the dagger asked for the belt. Wild gave it a few seconds thought, but since I'd already offered to pass the item to cloth wearers I went ahead and let him have it (the belt, not the point of my now inferior dagger ;-) ). But not without teasing him that he should pass me that dagger in return. Of course, no way was he doing that.

We moved on to Deathwhisper, and man did that fight give us trouble. The problem was that Deathwhisper mind controls three raiders at certain points in the fight, and those of us mind controlled watch helplessly as we attack and kill our fellow raiders. The raid was having so much trouble keeping them under control they asked that the three druid healers break off healing and use our Cyclone spell on the mind controlled players to keep them from killing people.

We made two attempts in heroic mode and then decided we weren't ready for that. After switching back to normal mode, Deathwhisper went down easily.

We again turned on HM for the Gunship battle, and that was fun and exciting and successful. Another heroic boss encounter down.

Saurfang came next. Time was getting to be an issue, and raid leadership determined that we would stay in normal mode for the rest of the evening. The RL wanted to get at least six bosses down on our first night.

Saurfang went down on our first attempt. Saurfang dropped [Greatcloak of the Turned Champion]. This is an i264 caster piece similar to the i264 cloak Wild already has - but the Greatcloak had +haste on it and Wild's current cloak did not. Wild wanted that cloak, and rolled on it. Wild finished second again. Sigh. But a few minutes later Wild got a whisper from the winner, offering to pass the cloak to Wild. He figured Wild needed it more than he did, and he wanted to save his mainspec roll for other gear he was interested in. The fact that Wild had already passed along gear earlier in the evening might have been a factor as well. What goes around comes around, and sometimes that's a good thing. Wild got the cloak, and was a very happy camper.

Despite saying we would stay in normal mode, when we got to Festergut we tried him - twice - in heroic mode. It wasn't working for us and we went back to normal and brought him down.

Rotface stepped up to the plate, and although Wild got himself killed in this fight the first time an ooze attached itself to me, the raid brought Rotface down on our first try. In normal mode, of course.

There was considerable interest in going past the 8pm stop time to take on Putricide, but it wasn't unanimous and we called it an evening. We had our six boss kills, though, two of them in Heroic mode.

I didn't do a very good job of monitoring the healing meters on the night. Things were moving fast, I had to keep up with strategies with a new group, and learn changes for Heroic modes, and without vent everything was that much harder. I did get a read on the overall healing. Of the six healers, the top three were all from BH, including their druid healer who was just a monster, finishing first well ahead of the rest of us. His gear included a lot of Tier 10 pieces and several i277 Heroic pieces. It was more than gear, though, he was just really good. Wild was fourth in healing, leading our guild, with Bd's druid and our raid leader shaman providing good support as well. If we'd had our two top priest healers in the raid, MM could have given the BH healers a run for it. As it is, us MM guildies should step it up against the tougher bosses we'll be facing Saturday night.

Stay tuned for the Saturday night run in Part 2.