Thursday (7 Oct) - Pushing the Envelope

Thursday (7 Oct) - Pushing the Envelope

Our G2 group for the second night of ICC10 was the same as the Wednesday night group except for one. One of our tanks wasn't able to come, and we brought a death knight in his place. Our moonkin druid switched to tank spec to become the second tank. The bosses we would be facing this night were a magnitude harder than the earlier bosses we had conquered the night before. A third healer might have been a good idea, but we had only the two of us, Wild and Pl. Our raid leaders were confident that we could handle it.

We had wrapped up Wednesday night wiping three times on Professor Putricide. After clearing some trash, we faced him again. Bd, who is becoming our strategist, had one change to make. Our standard strategy had all of our ranged DPS and healers grouped close together to mitigate the damage from slime explosions. A number of things could force us to move from our starting position, such as pools of burning slime on the ground, attacks by the green and orange slimes, attacks by malleable goo, and the list could go on. We all needed to move in the same direction and stop at the same place so we could stay together, and that is where we were having problems.

Bd set up three specific locations in Putricide's chamber. We were to start at Spot#1, and when we were forced to move we would move to Spot #2, and then to Spot #3, and then back to Spot #1, etc. This way whenever a move was required we all knew where to move to. I liked it, and so did everyone else.

The off tank (the druid) started things by running up to Putricide, who is standing with his back to us, performing experiments at a table. Putricide turned to attack the OT, and the main tank engaged, drawing Putricide away from the OT and pulling him to the spot where he would be tanked. The OT took considerable damage in that exchange, and Wild had to hit some emergency spells to keep him from going down. With the OT safe, Wild turned to help the main tank. Meanwhile, the OT took over Putricide's experiment at the table and turned himself into a Mutated Abomination. The OT/Abom's role is primarily to eat the pools of slime that form all over the chamber. Those spreading pools are deadly, and cleaning them up was critical. In addition to tank healing and raid healing, Wild had to remember to heal the OT/Abom as well. Wild had learned that healing the "person" (ie, the druid) didn't work. I had to heal the Abom form the druid was in. For that, Wild targeted the Abom and set him as his Focus. That gave Wild a raid frame I could use to heal him.

All that was well and good, except for one thing. Bd had gotten so excited getting us ready and laying out the new strategy he forgot to do a ready check before starting the fight. Two of our raiders weren't even in the room when we started. That immediately put us out of kilter and the battle turned into a practice session that quickly led to a wipe.

We rezzed and buffed up and started again - after a ready check, of course. Our group of ranged DPS and healers practiced our spot shifting as the fight proceeded. We had a lot of opportunities, too, as spreading pools of slime kept forming under us. The OT/Abom was having a heck of a time clearing them, and we had to abandon our selected spots because it was death to stand in any of them. Wild had a personal problem, too. Being left handed I tended to turn to the left when danger struck, but our spot shifting required right turns, not left turns. I had to consciously make Wild move in the "right" direction, but I wasn't always successful. Despite that we got Putricide into the second phase and almost to the third phase, wiping at 36%. Phase 3 starts at 35%.

We were excited and eager to go at him again. Our OT/Abom was frustrated with the slime eating, saying he kept getting "invalid action" messages. Bd explained that there were tricks in positioning to ensure that "Eat Slime" worked every time. They talked about that for a bit. A couple of raiders went afk, one of them them for a smoke and another to corral his kids. It was 15 minutes before we were all back and ready to raid again.

The long wait showed in our third attempt, but the worst problem we had was that the gods of chance frowned on Wild with a vengeance. Wild found himself chased by the orange slime three times during the fight. The orange slime is near instant death if it comes in contact with a raider. It chooses one player to chase, but everyone must stay out of it's way. A line of orange light ties the slime to the raider. When that line hits you (ie Wild) it's stop everything and RUN! Wild ran. Wild also changed form from tree healer to cat and hit my "run like hell" button, a burst of speed that helped Wild get a few paces further ahead of the orange slime. Meanwhile every DPS in the raid was burning down that slime as fast as they could. Wild survived the first slime attack. Wild survived the second one, too, only just barely because when I dropped to cat form I realized that my "run like hell" button was still on cooldown. Oops. The third attack killed Wild, but things were pretty well lost by then. Having half your healers running for his life for most of the battle was bad for the health of the rest of the raid, and raiders had been dying. We wiped.

We went at him again. We got him into the second Phase. The OT/Abom had found his calling and was slurping up those pools of slime like it was spilled bottles of vodka. Wild even remembered to keep heals on him without him hollering "Wild! Heals please!" And me grumbling, "I'm a little busy here, hold on to your entrails!"

We made it into the third phase. A few things change in the third phase. The slime pools start spreading faster, and the Abom is no longer available to slurp up the pools. The OT becomes a real off tank and the two tanks switch off with each other as the two healers try to them alive. As the pools of deadly slime grew, the two tanks wrestled Putricide around the room, trying to find safe places to stand. Wild and most of the raid trailed behind the tanks, but that was proving a bad place to be. Pools of slime merged, closing off what were safe lanes a second before. As a group we all seemed to decide at the same moment - we must get ahead of them! We made a rush past the battling tanks, plunging through slime in some cases, and found a momentary safe spot in front of the fight. Wild had kept his instant heals pouring in, but now had a moment for bigger spells. DPS casters set their feet and blasted away. The pools of slime kept coming, the tanks had to move into our safe spot, and we all moved again, hunting for another area of dwindling cleared space.

We were cornered. It was kill him or die. There was no place else to go.

Putricide sadly told us the news, "I don't think I'm going to make it." We killed him.

It was an awesome kill. With Putricide down we had cleared the first and second wings of Icecrown Citadel, and even one boss in the third (Dreamwalker on Wednesday).

It took us 15 minutes to work through the trash to get into the third wing once again. Our target now was the Blood Prince Council.

The Princes - Valanar, Keleseth, and Taldaram. Each has their own special abilities, each share the same health pool, and two of them are always immune to attack, rotating between princes the single prince that can be damaged.

We'd seen the Princes before, but this was the first night where we had enough time to really work and learn the fight. Our first attempt was little more than to get a feel for the flow, both on the attacks on the Princes and on our own positioning and movement. Wild and Pl had specific positions which we were supposed to stick to. The two positions gave us the best overlapping healing range, although Blizzard never makes a boss encounter where there aren't places out of range of a healer. Wild learned that letting that big ball of flame hit him HURT - but it didn't kill him. Other things could kill him, though, as both Wild and Pl learned when we tried to hold our positions. Ok so a "little" movement was a good thing. We wiped and set up for another try.

On our second attempt we stayed with our starting strategy, which was to have one tank hold two princes and the other tank the third prince. The two prince tank had to move quite a bit, though, and both Wild and Pl was soon running around out of position trying to stay with the tanks. We wiped again.

We changed strats for the third attempt. We went with three tanks, adding the death knight to our warrior and druid tanks. Our third attempt was madness from a healer perspective. All three tanks seem to run off in different directions, and we had to almost immediately abandon our positions to chase after them. We wiped in a hurry, and Wild was feeling some frustration. Two healers could not cover all the damage that was being done and have to run all over the place at the same time. In truth, the Princes strategy calls for three healers. We stuck with two. We also had to consider whether to make another attempt. It was 9:00pm, and on Thursdays two of our raiders could only stay that long. After a discussing it we all agreed to stay long enough for one more shot.

The DK offered that he was uniquely qualified to tank the one boss that required the most movement, Keleseth. I didn't get the specifics, but the raid leaders thought it was a great idea to switch around the tanking assignments, which as a side benefit should limit the movement of the other two tanks. We'd only have to chase one tank, the Keleseth tank, who was dangerous only when he was in his active phase.

We started our fourth attempt, and Wild almost immediately noticed a difference. Wild had range on at least two of the tanks all of the time, moving a bit when that one out of range tank needed help, but generally managing to hold my position. Wild shifted to avoid incoming attacks, survived those he couldn't, and kept up a flurry of heals without a break. The tanks were taking damage constantly, sometimes in steady, debilitating streams and sometimes in large, scary gulps. The scary gulps forced Wild into spamming Nourish on the at risk tank ala Dreamwalker, and Wild's mana bar dwindled fast. Wild noticed his mana bar down under 20% and cast Innervate to restore it. I should have paid closer attention and done that sooner so that I'd have time for a second innervate three minutes later, but it was too late to worry about that. Shortly after that Bd asked Wild to cast innervate on Pl - but Wild had used it. The druid tank took a desperate chance and popped out of tank form to cast his innervate on Pl, keeping her in the fight.

The fight seemed endless. With his innervate still on cooldown, Wild drank a mana potion to squeeze out a few more heals (only one potion is allowed per fight). Wild was down to 10% mana, still thirty seconds away from another innervate. Wild didn't think his mana would last that long.

It didn't have to. The Princes fell. We had our first kill of the Blood Prince Council!

Wild delivered 7647 hps and did 58% of the healing. Pl saved lives with her 4732 hps and 30% healing.

For the first time the G2 had brought down nine of twelve bosses (9/12) in Icecrown Citadel. It's still a hard road to get those last three bosses, and the Patch might destroy any chance at getting there, but for now, for tonight, the conquest of nine bosses was enough for Wild.

Postscript: Many of you know that our cat, Taz, had cancer and that we have been doing everything we could for him. On Thursday "everything" meant having to let him go when his disease became overwhelming. He was two weeks short of his 12th birthday, and he came to us when he was six weeks old. We miss him very much.