Thursday 2 (14 Oct) - Wild Uses his Tongue

Thursday 2 (14 Oct) - Wild Uses his Tongue

The MM guild G2 ICC10 raid on Thursday night was a rousing success. Not only did they clear their way into the third wing, they made a first kill of the Blood Queen, a battle Wild would have dearly loved to have been a part of. But since Wild missed the Wednesday run, and since all ten of the Wednesday raiders were back for Thursday's run, there was no room for Wild.

Wild fussed around with his gear for awhile, hanging around hoping to get into a weekly frost raid, but none seemed to be forming up. Wild considered doing a random heroic, but that didn't seem like much fun at all. How come when Wild hangs around Dalaran there isn't anything happening, and when Philly hangs around Dalaran guildies throw ICC raids at her?

Wild was pondering Philly's fate (he had a few ingenious ideas how to get back at her) when a guildie whispered. "Hey, Wild, in an ICC group?" Wild didn't know this guildie, BB, that well, but he's been around a long time and we've raided together on occasion.

"Not this week," Wild whispered back.

"We're trying to cobble one together tonight, want to join us?" BB replied.

Are you kidding me? "Sure!"

It really was a cobble it together kind of thing. We wanted only guildies in the raid, and three groups of raiders had already done ICC this week. That didn't leave a whole lot of folks, and we were likely to see a lot of alts. BB was a tank, though, and he already had a second tank coming. With Wild healing, we just needed one more healer and some DPS. Nobody was in a great deal of hurry, and as guildies popped in game we'd grab them or their alt and press them into service. At least two guildies who agreed to come had not even set up their toons since the patch, and BB told them to take whatever time they needed to get ready. Wild got to know a few more guildies that I don't usually raid with, and they got to know Wild. Wild was happy to get a raid, and didn't mind waiting around chatting, which is what Wild had been doing before the raid turned up anyway. Wild even ran across an old friend from the Karazahn raid days! He was in the guild as a warlock, but I knew him way back when on his druid. Wild gave him a shout out and we talked about old times and old friends, many of whom were long gone now.

We thought we had our ten raiders, and began filing into ICC. One of the raiders, though, had forgotten that he'd been in an aborted ICC earlier in the week and had killed the first boss, Marrowgar. He could not join us. It took us another twenty minutes before a guildie logged on and was practically dragged into the raid. She didn't have a lockout problem because she'd never been inside ICC. She was a priest, and we had two other priests already. No matter. We had ten raiders. There was a discussion about who the healers would be, since the other two priests also had healing specs. That gave us three priests and Wild as possible healers.

"Which of you four want to go DPS?" BB asked. Wild was quick to say that I preferred to stay a healer. That got a laugh from the rest of the raid. Someone quipped, "When was the last time someone volunteered to heal?!"

The two priests already in the raid quickly volunteered to go shadow spec DPS. That left, uh, the new priest with no ICC experience as the second healer. "No problem," said BB. "Wild is experienced and geared through the gills and can handle whatever healing we need." Made Wild feel good. No pressure, though, huh?

Wild's entire experience in a group dungeon post patch was that one random heroic five man, which told him only one thing of note - he needed more haste to speed up his spells. Wild had worked on that by reforging several pieces of gear, giving up hit and crit stats to increase haste. But Wild really had no idea how things would be in a ten man ICC raid.

Wild was also using the Blizzard standard raid frames since Xperl was still out of commission. I'd been playing around with some other addons to help with buffs and procs, and when pulled into the raid I still had one of those addons, Power Auras, active. All this jumped into Wild's mind the second we started combat on the first set of trash mobs.

Wild cast his first healing spell. Nothing happened. Just didn't get the key pressed, I thought. I use mouseover commands for healing, using the number pad, with each key tied to a specific spell. It's fast and simple. Wild cast another spell. Nothing. More attempts, more Fail. We were just working trash mobs, but the damage was starting to mount, and our young priest healer must have been wondering when all this uber geared, experienced healing was going to start helping her out. With no other option, Wild started click healing, something I haven't done for years. Click healing is: Click on a raider, and then click on the heal you want. Click on another raider. Click on a heal. It is slow. It is cumbersome. It takes my eyes away from what is happening around Wild. It affects Wild's ability to move. It sucks.

We got through the trash mobs. Wild's healing numbers weren't bad, but I had worked up a sweat trying to heal everyone. Fortunately, the new priest was doing an excellent job. I let the raid leader know that I needed to reboot (the game, not the computer). I planned to turn off Power Auras and pray that the reboot would fix the problem. It was the only thing different from the UI setup I had when Wild ran that random heroic, and the mouseover commands had worked just fine.

The reboot did not fix the problem. Now I was looking at either a bug in the Blizzard raid frames (unlikely, since no one else had the problem), or - gulp - maybe my keyboard driver problem from Wednesday wasn't as fixed as I thought it was. We were standing in front of Lord Marrowgar. It's a good thing that Wild is very paranoid about his healing. In addition to the macros on the number pad, Wild also has all his healing spells arrayed on a button bar - just in case. Well, here Wild was, in a just in case scenario.

I made some quick adjustments to my user interface, positioning the button bar with all Wild's heals next to the raid frames which had the buttons for targeting each raider. It was still click healing, but it was the best I could do.

I don't know how we did it, but Wild and his superb understudy kept the raid alive and Marrowgar died. We tackled Deathwhisper, and despite all of the requirements of movement to stay away from various things that would get Wild killed, we defeated Deathwhisper. We moved on to the Gunship. Wild was so taken with the sight of being able to see the rocket pack on his back (Wild didn't have tree form anymore, and that had always hidden the pack) I misused it when I was playing around and got myself killed. We were all goofing off and no one seemed to mind. The Gunship was a hoot, and we won.

The Saurfang fight was coming up next, a level of difficulty harder than the three previous fights. My finger was getting cramped from all the clicking. The priest was beating me in total healing and Wild was really glad she was doing so well. We started the Saurfang fight. There is a minute and a half of talking before the fight actually starts. It's actually a great story, the first or tenth time you heard it, but really, get it over with already! I was looking at my user interface for the umpteenth time, hoping for inspiration on what the problem was with my macros. I looked at the macro spells arrayed on a three-by-three bar which mirrors the number pad. I noticed something odd. The three-by-three bar did not have any numbers on it. At first I didn't know why that seemed odd. Then a burning light burst out of my head and seared my eyes off. Ok, not really, but that's what it felt like. The three-by-three bar did NOT have any numbers on it. That meant that the key binding that told the computer to execute the command placed on the buttons of that bar was missing. My spells weren't working because none of the number pad keys were bound to the macro commands I'd put on that bar. And I suddenly knew why.

Time was ticking down and there were only seconds until the fight started. Wild opened up the addon Dominos and went to the keybinding panel. I quickly set the key binds for the number pad and pulled out of Dominos just as the fight started. My macros WORKED again! The postmortem was easy. Dominos had a newer version which I had loaded some time after the random heroic Wild had been on. Installing the new version had wiped out the key binds, which doesn't usually happen, but, in this case, it did. It was a trivial fix, but oh my, the pain it caused until I figured it out!

Saurfang died, and a bit later, so did Festergut. Wild led in healing in both fights, but Wild gave the priest healer a huge amount of credit for stepping up and doing a magnificent job.

We ended the night sort of how we started it. We attempted Rotface, failing on our first attempt purely out of lack of concentration. We set up for a second attempt, our last of the night. Buffs were done and everyone was ready, bu not ready check had been sent yet. At that moment, in real life, all hell broke loose downstairs as a major cat fight broke out. The Mrs was hollering for help. Wild typed in a quick "BRB" (be right back) and rushed off to rescue whoever it was that needed rescuing.

While I was gone the raid leader sent the ready check. He knew Wild was missing, but figured it wouldn't be for long. He started the fight. Wild was only gone a couple of minutes, but a couple of minutes is a very long time in combat, and an eternity if you were the poor priest required to heal the entire raid in a damage heavy fight. When Wild joined in three raiders were already dead, including the tank that was supposed to control the many oozes that spawn. Oozes were loose all over the place and the wipe, when it came, was already inevitable by the time Wild joined in.

Given the ragtag nature of the group, we were all pleased with our progress. We got to get in a guild raid instead of missing out or hooking up with a PUG, and had a great time. The run also showed Wild that the changes brought forth by the patch have made us at least in part over-geared for Icecrown Citadel, in which the boss fights were not changed at all by the patch. The fact that we could clear the first three bosses that easily, with Wild click healing it! says a lot about how much more powerful we are now. It's also a warning. All this power is short-lived. The dungeons and raids we will be facing in Cata will be tuned to account for these patch improvements. Beware.

Oh, and Wild has something to say to Philly. Nice ICC boss kill, Philly. Nice - one - boss kill. Notice the FIVE bosses Wild killed, with a broken interface. So there. /sticks tongue out.