Wednesday (27 Oct) - Icecrown Citadel 25

Wednesday (27 Oct) - Icecrown Citadel 25

In an earlier post a week or two ago I believe Wild claimed that ICC25 was dead. The patch would come and wipe it away. Well, I was wrong. We had 31 guildies sign up for the combined G1/G2 ICC25 raid on Wednesday night. We had our best tanks, our best healers, and our best DPS lined up to knock'em down. I had made a prediction that we had the makings of a raid that could run the table on at least 10 of 12 bosses. I was wrong about that, too.

The fact that we had so many raiders signed up created a problem for the raid leaders right at the start. Instead of gathering up and getting started at 6:30pm, guild officers met in private for more than a half hour sorting things out. The folks on vent actually started a political discussion about the state of the world. I'm something of a political junkie, but no way I wanted it in my WoW time. But we were that bored. I think it took some of the edge off before we even faced our first hostile mob.

Once we finally got started things did go pretty smoothly, although keeping 25 raiders focused on the task in front of them seems terribly challenging for our guild. We brought down Marrowgar, Deathwhisper, the Gunship, and Saurfang all on our first attempt, clearing the first wing.

The patch had taken it's toll on ICC. The druid battle rez was buggy. Sometimes raiders who were rezzed during battle found that their toon was stunned and could not move for the rest of the fight. Warlocks using their Summoning ability to teleport guildies into the raid reported that sometimes they got an "invalid character" error and the teleport would fail. The most annoying bug, though, which as the night progressed got more and more irritating, was the audio. Every battle sounded like one of those movies where the words you heard were not in sync with the moving lips. For as long as two or three minutes after we had killed a boss, the sounds of that fight would continue as if we were still in combat and boss was still alive. I was surprised at how attuned and reactive I was to those sounds and it was pretty jarring when it didn't match what I was seeing and doing.

I also have discovered that I really, really, miss Wild's tree form. And for a very simple reason. Healing in caster form is fine, and I even like the way Wild shoots his arm into the air and strikes a pose with each cast he makes. But throughout the night I felt vaguely disoriented, and I couldn't quite put my finger on what it was at first. It finally hit me during the Deathwhisper fight. There were 25 raiders all running around, fighting the boss, the adds, dealing with mind controlled raiders, avoiding death and decay casts by the boss, etc. My eyes were glued to the raid frames, casting heals and keeping raiders alive, and glancing at the rest of the screen every few seconds to make sure Wild was where he was supposed to be and wasn't in any danger. And far too many times - I couldn't find him! I'm so used to keying on Wild's tree form that I just haven't adjusted to seeing him in caster form. Instead of standing out in his tree form, now he looks just like two-thirds of the rest of the raid. I want my tree form back.

We were more than an hour and half into the night, past the halfway point of the night's raid, and we had 4 of 12 bosses down. Too much dead time between battles, too much fooling around, too many raiders needing a minute to do this, a minute to do that. The time added up. The raid leader did his best to encourage the raid to stay on track, but he, too, kept getting sidetracked by issues that seemed to have no end. We had more than a ten minute discussion on which boss to battle next, Rotface or Festergut. These two bosses drop a rare item simply called "the blood" used in an epic quest chain. Players on that chain needed one blood each from those two bosses. Who and how they were to be distributed to after those bosses were killed just went on and on. Finally someone asked who really needed them, and it turned out it was only two players, and one needed a blood from Festergut and one needed a blood from Rotface. If we'd checked on that up front we would have saved ten minutes of dead time.

We finally decided to vary from our normal order and take on Rotface before downing Festergut. Rotface is a bit tougher, but we have killed him many times, so the order didn't really matter. When we attempted to engage him, however, one raider who had come in to replace someone who had to leave wasn't able to join the fight. That took several more minutes to sort out, until he remembered he'd gotten into an ICC 10 the day before and had been in on a Festergut kill. Under the new lock out system in place since the patch, that raider was ineligible to join the raid until after Festergut was killed. We found someone else to join up.

After all that, we wiped on our first attempt on Rotface. There are several points in the raid when Rotface announces that he is going to "do a poo poo" (I kid you not, that's what he says) at which point we all run to outer edge of the chamber. getting caught in his "poo poo" is quite deadly. Half the raid got themselves killed getting caught in that poo poo. We know better than that.

We got Rotface to 13% on our second attempt, but it was like we were facing him for the first time. Too many raiders doing too many things wrong. The concentration just wasn't there.

We had fifteen minutes left on the night and we readied ourselves for a third attempt. Our very good and always upbeat raid leader was unfortunately coming to a slow boil over all of the issues. I could tell he had much higher expectations for this night. Well, so had I. One of the death knights called up his Army of the Dead early. It's a timing issue. Do it late, and you don't get the full effect of the spell. Do it early, and the only somewhat controlled small army that is called forth might wander a bit too close to the boss. Which is what happened, and Rotface engaged before we were ready. Two-thirds of the raid lumbered into belated action to engage Rotface. The other third ran away, assuming it would be a wipe. The chamber doors closed and Wild and the two-thirds of the raid that stayed inside had no chance - since all three tanks had been among that other fleeing third.

Well, it was a quick wipe, and we still had ten minutes, but the raid leader was done. He called it a night, unwilling to witness another potential debacle.

I fully expected us to be back at it on Thursday night, so I was surprised when we were told that there would not be another 25 man scheduled until after Cata was released. We are now really, really done with ICC25. The G2 does plan to raid ICC10 on Thursday, though. Under the new system the first wing, which we've already killed in ICC25, won't be available for the ICC10. I hope the G2 does a better job than our ICC25.

On the positive side, raiding with these folks remains a lot of fun. They/we are good people, we are just not hard core raiders (or even medium core raiders, I suppose). We play hard, but we don't take things too seriously. After the third wipe on Rotface, one of us made this comment: "You know, there are a lot of guilds who can clear ICC25 in two hours on a single night." That's a true statement. No one responded to that for a few minutes. Perhaps we were all considering what that meant for ourselves. The eventual response from another guildie: "If that's what you want then go join one of those guilds."

That's really the bottom line. We like our guild, because of the people in it, not because of how many ICC bosses we can kill in a night.

The other bit of news from the ICC run is that Wild, at long last, won a roll on an item in ICC that I actually needed and wanted. It was [Athor's Abacus], a powerful i264 trinket that replaces an i251 piece. I felt a little bad beating out our ace priest, Ch, on the roll (I rolled a 98 to her 80 something) because she would have been replacing an i232 piece. But after how many times Wild has lost the roll for that item, I knew I might never get another chance. Wild took it.

It's hard to compare healing numbers pre and post patch since this was ICC25 and not ICC10, so it might be a better comparison once Wild has done ICC10 Thursday night. We used five healers, and it seemed that the total healing was a little lower than it was pre-patch. That's just a feeling, and it might have more to do with healers learning the changes in their healing rotations than spell changes and such, but only time will tell. Anyway, here they are:

Overall Healing -
#1: Wild, 4000 hps with 24.4% of the healing
#2: Ch (priest), 3975/22.1%
#3: Pl (priest), 3587/21.1%
#4: Kd (paladin), 3517/13.0%
#5: Tk (paladin), 3220/12.9%

Wild took a bit of pride in the fact that the two G2 healers (Wild and Pl) were #1 and #3 compared to the other three healers from G1. And the G2 did not have our other healer in the raid, Cr, who couldn't make it.

Checking his own numbers, Wild learned that his Regrowth spell critted over 90% of the time, making this spell one of his most powerful go to spells now after the patch. That used to be Nourish, but Wild rarely used that spell because the cast time has been increased by a lot. Another change was to Lifebloom, an instant spell that Wild used to spam alongside his Rejuv spell. Lifebloom can only be used on one raider at a time now, preferably on the tank. Wild was tank healing for the raid, so I got a good look at how the changes worked out for a tank. Rejuv made up most of the healing, but Wild's three stacks of Lifebloom was a solid second, confirming that this spell must be kept active on the tank full time. Living Seed, a proc that Wild wasn't sure would provide much additional healing, was fourth overall. Wild almost did not take the Living Seed talent. Now I'm glad I did. Finally, Wild totally forgot about another spell, Swiftmend. I figure Wild lost a good bit of healing, because with the patch Swiftmend is tied to another new healing spell called Efflorescence. Those two spells combined have the potential to do a lot of healing, and Wild simply didn't use it. Something to remember.

Wild's Tank Healing -
#1: Rejuv, 38% of the healing on the tank
#2: Lifebloom, 29%
#3: Regrowth, 21%
#4: Living Seed, 8% (other spells were below 5%)

Rejuv had 64% overhealing across the entire raid, but that's because I still tend to spam that instant spell on raiders who haven't even taken damage yet. It's a preventive measure that Wild can use as long as mana doesn't become an issue, which right now it isn't. All of Wild's other casts were very efficient, with under 10% overhealing. that bodes well for when Cata hits and mana is supposed to get scarce.

While the healing numbers seemed a bit off, the DPS looked right in line with what was expected, and perhaps a shade higher.

#1: shaman: 11060 DPS
#2: hunter: 10647
#3: DK: 10422
#4-5: 9k+
#6-8: 8k+
#9-12: 7k+
#13-15: 6k+

Wish us luck Thursday night.