Thursday (28 Oct) - Another Round of Icecrown Citadel

Thursday (28 Oct) - Another Round of Icecrown Citadel

Wild logged in around 5:50pm Thursday night, not sure what was or wasn't going on raid-wise. The G2 ICC10 planned on continuing the raid from Wednesday, and our regular start time was 6:30pm, but things were kind of vague nonetheless. No calendar invite for the raid had been placed on the schedule, either. But the raid leader was in game when Wild logged in and let me know that the G2 planned to raid. If we could get enough folks. The G1, which wasn't planning to raid and for which Thursday wasn't a regular night for them anyway, had decided to raid after all. Not only did they have an almost full ten man raid, they had been lobbying to get G2 raiders into their raid to fill it. The G1 got started about 6:15pm with two raiders who would normally have run with G2. The rats.

It took a lot longer for G2 to fill out our raid, and we wound up with several alts of alts. We had two regular healers, Wild and Pl, which should work fine for most fights. We had one of our regular tanks, but the second tank was an alt who had never tanked in ICC before. Only two of our six DPSers were regulars; the rest were alts. There was the potential for disaster here, but we were going to give it our best shot.

We got started at 6:50pm. Remember that we had killed the first four bosses in the ICC25 run the night before. Even though we were now doing ICC10, both raids were on the same reset now thanks to the patch and those bosses were not available to us. We decided to go back after Rotface, the boss we had failed on in ICC25. Our new tank got kiting duty for the oozes, a tough assignment for someone new to raiding in ICC. We wiped on our first attempt when the learning tank let a big ooze catch him. Kite ooze - good. Letting ooze catch you - bad. This fight also required a priest to take dispel duty since we didn't have a paladin with us. Pl was given that job, and a shadow priest making his first foray into ICC was tapped to switch to healing to help Wild out. We wiped a second time, but made a pretty good shot at it. The pressed into service shadow priest turned healer did pretty well I must say.

It was about 7:30pm and we got word that the G1 had called it a night. They, too, had taken on Rotface as their first target - and couldn't kill him. The G1 "got tired" we were told, and ended their evening without a kill.

On G2's third attempt everything jelled and Rotface went down. We were all pretty jazzed by that. Looks like those two rats that jumped to G1 picked the wrong ship to sail on.

We moved on to take on the easier Festergut next. There was some miscommunication about how the spores were handled with the outside raiders. Wild was the anchor point, but the other two raiders on the outer edge with Wild didn't know that and we ended up moving around a lot more than we should have. We wiped primarily because Wild was out of position too many times at too many critical moments. I asked the raid leader to explain again how it worked. On our second attempt Festergut died.

We decided to bypass the very difficult Putricide and go straight for Dreamwalker. Wild was of course one of the portal healers. The raid leader had one of those "senior moments" when he couldn't remember who else went in the portal and who stayed out. Wild reminded him that normally we had Cr in the raid going into the portal, but she wasn't here. The raid leader then asked Pl if she had ever raid healed on this fight. That drew a laugh when Pl replied that she has been the raid healer on this fight every time we've done it. Pl got to stay in her normal role as raid healer and the shadow priest was again pressed into service as a healer, this time getting to go into the portal.

The battle to save Dreamwalker went very smoothly. Wild had to change his dragon healing strategy because of the changes made by the patch. Pre-patch Wild cast Rejuv and then spammed Nourish until I had to recast Rejuv. Rinse and repeat until a portal opened. Post-patch there was a little more to it, but not really any more difficult. Rejuv was again the starting spell, but following that Wild cast Swiftmend, which then automatically procced another healing spell, Efflorescence. Then Wild spammed Regrowth instead of Nourish until it was time to rinse and repeat again.

It didn't take that long for us to save Dreamwalker and win the fight. Beautifully done. Wild's portal duty healing came in at 17,710 hps. The shadow priest, considering it was his first time ever, did quite well with 8,850 hps. After the fight the shadow priest somewhat sheepishly admitted that he'd forgotten to change his spec before the fight, and had healed the whole battle in his shadow spec. Now that was funny.

Wild was consistently the #1 healer throughout the evening, and I think I'm starting to get a better feel for all of these changes. Wild even made sure to regularly cast Swiftmend, something I'd forgotten to do on Wednesday.

We also took a couple of shots at the Princes because several of the raiders had not seen the fight before. We wiped both times, but it was good experience for the newcomers.

It was a really fun night.

After the raid Wild asked if the raid would be locked for next week so that we could continue working on the bosses we hadn't killed instead of starting over again. The answer was a qualified "I think we will" but Wild will lobby hard for that. Time is running out on our chances against the Lich King.

We are a month and a half away from the Cataclysm expansion, assuming it rolls out on 7 Dec as announced. Things are already happening in game associated with Cata. Up to now the big bad boss of WoW has been the Lich King. In Icecrown Citadel, the Lich King is finally and officially defeated. The new bad-azz is Deathwing the Destroyer, the fiercest dragon of all the dragons with a long history or terror and destruction going back to the very creation of the world. His lair and his prison is deep within the earth of Azeroth in a place called Deepholm. But Deathwing is stirring, and we have started to experience quakes across the land, where the earth shakes and dust rises as Deathwing works to break free. Sometimes his voice reaches the surface, and the very air around us resonates with his powerful voice. Sometime before Cata we expect that Deathwing will break free and begin his assault on the world. We will be helpless to stop him, and that will lead to the Cataclysm. Stay tuned, this is going to get really fun.