Friday/Saturday (19 Sep) - The Co-Op Caper (Part 2)

Friday/Saturday (19 Sep) - The Co-Op Caper (Part 2)

And speaking of Saturday night - Wild fixed his problem with the BH guild vent. As expected, it was problem on my end, and a simple one to fix when I finally figured it out. I then encountered another problem that was not so easy. Before there will be a Cataclysm, there is going to be a Patch 4.0. That patch has been in beta testing for awhile. I need to repeat that this is NOT Cataclysm, which I and a lot of others were assuming. However, many of the changes in the game associated with Cata will be implemented with this patch. The patch is huge, 1.5GB and still growing. As always, it is set to download in the background well ahead of it going live. This time, the auto downloader failed on my computer. Not only did it fail, it refused me access to the game, running me in a circle every time I tried to work around it. I was in the middle of watching a tight game between the Padres and Cards and it was two hours to game time, and neither game was going my way.

Long story short, I ended up having to run the Blizzard repair tool, something I swore I'd never do because it essentially resets the game to it's defaults and wipes out all of the third party addons I depend on. The reset worked, but it took me right up to game time to get everything put back in it's place and where Wild felt ready to raid.

As for the Padres, they broke a 4-4 tie in the 9th and won it 8-4. Let's hope Wild's game goes as well.

The Saturday raid was a continuance from Friday, but not every raider could make both nights. There were some new faces, and the MM guild was able to bring seven raiders. The tanks and healers were the same crew, though, and one could make the case that the tanks and healers were all that really mattered. I don't think that, given the strong DPS I saw on display Saturday night.

We started with Professor Putricide. I didn't know at the start that the BH guild had really struggled with this fight. They expected to spend a lot of time on it, and never even considered trying it in Heroic mode. On our first attempt we got Putricide into the second phase, and even though we wiped it was clear we were doing a lot of the right things. Wild was very happy to be able to hear the ongoing directions on vent, which really helped Wild stay in sink with the rest of the raid.

On our second attempt Putricide went down. There was an incredible cheer from the BH folks, and the BH raid leader made a point of congratulating everyone for bringing him down. Wild knew how he felt, having just killed Putricide in our own G2 ten man a few days before. It was a big deal.

We decided to go after the princes next. We stayed in normal mode because the raid leaders were a little wary of this fight, although apparently they've killed the three princes before. We made it look easy, taking them out on our first attempt. Wow, two bosses down already. An emboldened raid talked about dealing with the Blood Queen (BQ) and then maybe taking some shots at Sindragosa. Might we even get to the Lich King tonight?

The BH guild knew BQ, have beaten her. Twenty-three of twenty-five raiders have seen and participated in one or more BQ battles before now. Wild was one of the two who had not. BQ has one very unique element on which the whole fight rests. It's a mechanic that exists in no other dungeon or boss, which makes the Blood Queen a very unique encounter.

What is it? Not long after the fight starts, the Blood Queen will bite a nearby raider. That bites turns that raider into a vampire. The bitten raider then has fifty seconds to bite another raider and turn that raider into a vampire. And then those two raiders have to bite a raider. To be honest I don't exactly know how it all turns out, but I do know that failing to maintain that doubling of vampire bites will wipe the raid. Vampires that fail to bite a victim within 50 seconds will become mind controlled by the BQ and we would shortly learn just how bad that would be. Wild and the other healers caught a small break. Healers are supposed to be the last raiders to get bitten. If all goes well BQ will be killed before the vampires have to resort to biting healers.

Of course, there were also the usual things to deal with. Constant AoE damage to the whole raid, a linked attack that forced three raiders to rush into each others arms or all three will die, a purple flame that can only be doused by running while leaving deadly trail in the wake of your passing, and, well, you get the picture.

We started our first attempt, in Heroic Mode. It was crazy, and it was thrilling. Wild didn't get bit, being a healer. That and the fact that a raider failed to bit a victim within fifty seconds, got mind controlled, and started killing other raiders. We wiped with BQ at 57%. Not bad, considering it was in Heroic Mode.

We tried again. We wiped again. Oh, I forgot to mention that there is a flying phase when the blood queen Fears everyone, flies up in the air, and drops realy nasty bombs on us. That was what got Wild killed on this attempt.

One of the BH raiders DC'ed during the second attempt and was never able to get back in game. We spent the rest of the evening with 24 raiders.

Ok, so maybe we aren't quite ready for HM yet. We switched back to normal, and went at BQ again. We got really excited on this attempt, getting BQ to 14%. By the time we wiped we had not one, but two mind controlled players and the healers were running on mana fumes. We got this!

So we thought. We wiped some more times - three more times, in fact, making it six attempts.

On our seventh attempt - we wiped again, at 17%.

Given where we thought we could end up tonight, we could have been discouraged. But spirits were very high. Who knew how this co-op deal would work out. For the BH guild, Wild learned that half their raiders got their first Putricide 25 kill on this night. We swept through the Princes and though we didn't kill BQ, we certainly made her nervous. Wild learned on other thing, too. The BH guild has tried this co-op thing once before. With that other guild (not identified) the raid leader said it took them six weeks to get to the same point we had reached in two nights.

Wild's MM guild may have provided only seven raiders, but we made up half of the six healers and provided that crucial extra bit of DPS as well. Our best DPSer in the raid, a DK, finished 7th out of 16 DPSers and pulled a little over 7k DPS. The DPs leader from BH, though, had over 11k and there were three other DPSers with over 10k. Our DPSers provided dependable damage to complement the big hitters in BH.

Both Wild and Bd really raised the bar on our performance compared to the first night. Now, to be fair, I have to say that the BQ fight is the type of fight made for druid style healing, and it showed. Wild, for his own part, could feel the improved quickness of his spell casting with the increased +haste from the cloak he'd won on Friday.

Wild topped all healers on the 6th attempt, a long battle where a lot went wrong and the healers were worked to exhaustion. Wild led with 9578 hps, a new record, while his druid counterpart in BH got 9788. We did exactly the same amount of healing, 17.3% each.

When the night was done, the three druid healers owned the three top spots on the healing charts. The BH druid finished at the top, but Wild came in second, where on Friday night Wild had finished fourth.

Healing numbers averaged over the entire evening:
#1: BH druid, 6247/16.0%
#2: Wild, 6160/14.9%
#3: Bd, 5076/12.7%

Maybe, just maybe, Wild might get to see the Lich King. I just never thought it might happen with an ICC25 group. Wild can't wait for next week to get here.