Thursday (16 Sep) - Second Night Roundup

Thursday (16 Sep) - Second Night Roundup

The afterglow from Wednesday night's successful victories over seven boss encounters was still with us Thursday night. However, we were all aware that the stubbornly cheerful Professor Putricide still stood in our way.

There were still trash mobs to get through, and we had to get everyone invited into the raid, and buffed up, etc etc. We also had a bit of raid leader business to attend to. Our scheduled start and end times for both Wed/Thurs is 6:30pm - 9:30pm (PST). One of our regular raiders can only stay until 9pm on Thursdays, which cuts our raid time a little short. The RL asked the group if it would be feasible to move the Thursday times to 6pm-9pm. The short answer was no, there were several raiders who could not commit to getting logged in by 6pm. Wild had a slightly different take on the question, which got some laughs and knowing nods: "I can make it at 6pm, but really, we hardly ever get started at 6:30pm, so ... " We didn't change the times.

Back to the task at hand, we were so worried about Putricide that the suggestion was made that we start with the Princes fight instead. Here the raid leader, Lady Hunter, was adamant. "We can't avoid him, and we need to build on the practice we've had while it's fresh in our minds." Of course, Lady Hunter was a bit more succinct, something like "F-NO! We're going to kill this b-tard!"

Lady Hunter then totally surprised Wild: "Wild, I need you to boomkin for this fight." I had to read the line in raid chat three times before it sank in. Cool!

Wild was delighted to be able to get in some boomkin raiding, but why the change? It certainly wasn't because of Wild's magnificent damage dealing abilities, since they'd never seen Wild strutting about in his chicken suit, much less seeing him in live combat. The change in strategy actually had more to do with the healing than with the DPS. Most successful Putricide fights use only two healers, primarily so that the extra DPS raider can spped up killing the slimes that spawn. The green slimes in particular can explode several times if they aren't destroyed quickly, and that is often the reason for wipes. Ranged DPS is best for this task, and boomkin is a ranged DPS spec, ergo - Wild's chicken suit.

We began. From Wild's perspective, doing DPS is a lot harder than healing. I know that's because of the large gulf in practice and experience between the two, because 99% of players will say that DPSing is much, much easier than healing or tanking. Wild's primary target was, of course, Putricide. But whenever a green slime spawned, Wild had to immediately switch and help destroy it as fast as possible. If we are good, the slime will only explode once. If we are very, very good, they die before they can explode. At the same time Wild has to be moving, avoiding all kinds of dangers.

On our first two attempts Wild was still getting settled in, but it was clear we were killing the green slimes faster and getting enough damage on Putricide to get into the second phase faster. But that second phase was killing us - literally. We might have started to get uptight, but our third wipe actually got us all giggling helplessly. We had barely gotten started on the first phase when Putricide suddenly turned to Lady Hunter and killed her before she could even think about doing her Feign Death trick. Putricide then ran amok, killing everyone around him. What happened?! No way the tank could have lost aggro. Well, yes he could, since he had a system failure and got disconnected. Putricide was certainly delighted that there was suddenly no one tanking him, and proceeded to help us all into the graveyard.

Wild had his best moonkin moment on the fourth attempt. Wild delivered 5098 DPS, which isn't bad for ranged DPS on this fight, but is far from really good. Wild was 4th in DPS on that one attempt, but frankly Wild was usually 5th among the six DPSers. Wild was helping, but was it enough?

The bad news, though, was that we were still not getting very far into the second phase. Raiders kept dying. The question on everyone's mind that was finally voiced on vent was, "We got Putricide into the third phase and down to 28% or so last week using three healers. Why did we change things?" The short answer to that was that nearly every successful kill of Putricide was done using two healers in order to have that one extra DPSer. "It's a two healer fight, and that's what we should be doing." The group went back and forth, talking about it, while Wild stayed out of it, waiting for the right opportunity to weigh in. I didn't want to undermine the raid leader, but I also had a suggestion when the time was right.

Eventually the talk came around to the healers. Pl offered that because many of her holy spells are longer cast, she has to be stationary while she casts them. That's fine when single target healing, but she also had to switch to heal raiders attacked by slimes in addition to her tank healing role - when both tank and raider were in trouble at the same time, someone lost. The other healer, the paladin, had slightly less of an issue with longer casts, but it was still an issue. Wild weighed in. "I'm fine with either DPS or healing, but I should point out that the druids are the most mobile of all healers as I have a lot of instants I can cast while still moving." That prompted the main tank to add, "I have to say, and nothing against the healers at all, but I was using my O-sh.t! save me spells early and often, the healing is just not getting us there. To be honest, we need Wild in there healing. " After a bit more discussion, there was a compromise. We would stay with a two healer strategy, but Wild would move back to healing and the pally healer would switch to melee DPS. The pally healer was Cr, in case I forgot to mention that. She usually DPS's with the pally, and isn't as experienced at pally healing. Still, she was annoyed and suspicious that she was switched because of her "bad" healing, and thought that Pl should have been made to switch. I disagreed, knowing Cr would do a lot better DPSing than Pl.

After all that, we finally got started once more. As expected, we burst through phase one very quickly, taking light damage that Wild and Pl could easily handle. Wild had three roles - keeping HoTs on the main tank, raid healing, helping Pl with slime healing as needed, and keeping an eye on the off tank, who was "in disguise" so to speak, doing a special role in the fight. Ok, so four roles.

The second phase started well. The ranged raiders (DPS and heals) have to stay close to each other to mitigate damage from exploding slimes, and also to maneuver together to avoid the malignant goo that Putricide throws at us in phases two and three. Things started to unravel, and Wild got very, very busy. We were all still alive, though, and making progress. Wild had been tossing HoTs on the off tank regularly, and his health bar remained at full, so Wild was shocked when the off tank called out in vent that he was down to 20% health! What the ... ! Wild looked again at the off tank. Full health bar. Then I got a sinking feeling. Instead of looking at the health bar on my raid screen, I targeted the off tank directly an looked at him in his disguise - Gah! 15% health! Wild cast all three of his HoT spells directly on the off tank instead of on the raid bars, and quickly got him up full health. In all the time Wild has been doing this fight I never knew until now that I had to directly target the raider doing that special role.

Shortly after that we got Putricide to 35% and shifted into phase three. The slimes stop coming in this phase, but the malignant goo kept flying at us and there was still those exploding bottles dropped on the floor by Putricide starting in phase two. In addition to that was a new threat. The off tank's special role was to "eat" the puddles of yellow acid stuff that kept spreading around the room. Once in phase three, those puddles can't be controlled and keep they spreading until Putricide is killed or we are overwhelmed by it. The puddles act like an enrage timer, so we only had a limited time to finish Putricide off.

Wild was frantically healing and moving, moving and healing, desperately helping Pl with main tank healing while trying not to let anyone die. The acid pools grew larger and larger, and the main task other than staying alive was to weave in between pools and avoid getting trapped with no safe place to run to. Wild, who is not the best at maneuvering through all this mess, did an expert job twisting and turning between acid pools and staying both in range of the main tank and keeping an open, safe lane of travel in front of me.

And then, lo and behold, and at long last, we finally heard the words we longed to hear from the Professor:

"Bad news everyone.... I don't think I'm going to make it..."

It almost makes one sad. Almost. No raider died. There was a lot of cheering.

In the end the raid leader was right. This is best done as a two healer fight.

[Note: Professor Putricide has some pretty funny lines. To hear some of them, take a listen here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PStC-LNZ2s

After all that, perhaps it was time to rest on our laurels for the week. No, we were energized by the victory and still had time on the clock.

We went after the Blood Prince Council, or "the princes" for short.

There are three princes, each one with different abilities, but all sharing the same health pool. Each prince had a tank assigned, and each tank had a healer assigned. Wild had asked Bd, who was making the tank assignments, if he wanted a healer for each tank. He said yes, so Wild made the assignments, making Bd the tank Wild would heal since his job is the diciest and requires the most movement. Bd didn't see my post and made different healing assignments. Wild went with it, stating in vent, "Ok, what Bd said for healing assignments." Bd did see that, and laughed.

We took a shot at the princes, and was doing pretty well when Bd suddenly died. Bd has a crucial role in gathering up and controlling large, nasty balls of purplish stuff that if out of control will wipe the raid. If Bd dies, we fail. We failed.

For the second attempt we changed healing around to what Wild had initially decided on, which allowed Wild to run around with Bd and keep him healed. That worked great, but then the same thing happened again. Bd suddenly went from "I'm fine" to "I'm dead."

We were all perplexed - until the pally healer asked a question. "Umm, how important is it that I decurse all these debuffs on Bd? Because it's affecting my healing."

Bd started laughing so hard he was snorting into his mike. Healing wasn't the problem. It was essential to the fight that no one decurse the debuffs on Bd. He NEEDS those debuffs to stay alive. And the pally was stripping them off him every chance she got. Now it all made sense. Just like Wild not knowing about the direct healing on the off tank with Putricide, these little "I didn't know that!" moments do happen.

Prior to our next attempt, Wild teased Bd with this comment in raid chat, where everyone would see it: "Cr, don't tell Bd, but on the next attempt I'll do the decursing." Druids can decurse, too, and I was basically saying I'd be the one to get Bd killed the next time.

We made two more attempts on the Princes (no, we didn't do any decursing), getting better each time, with our best being 27%. We've got this one figured out. It's only a matter of practice, now.

"Practice" led to the post raid discussion about whether to engage the lock or not on the raid. The question was whether to start with Princes next week or start over again from the beginning. I admit I was a little surprised that as many as four raiders wanted to start over from the beginning. They were on quests and needed the badges and gear. Wild was adamantly opposed to that. "I want us to get to the Lich King, and that's the goal we should be aiming at." If this raid becomes a farming run on bosses we've already mastered, I'll stop bringing Wild and try to find another raid Wild can get into. They can fill Wild's spot with someone else, or I can bring Philly if they want me in there. But my goal is LK, not badges. The raid leader agreed that the raid would be locked. So I'll wait and see what happens when next week rolls around.