Thursday (11 Nov) - So It Goes

Thursday - So It Goes

"The encounter against the Lich King, appropriately for its level, requires above average raid performance. Personal mistakes, even more so than in the other Icecrown bosses, can quickly become raid mistakes and, soon after that, wipes. " - Wowhead.com

We were much more focused on Thursday night. We can once again say that we have mastered the first phase of the fight, and the transition to the next phase. Most of our time was spent trying to master the second phase, or what the raid leader was calling phase 1.5. The phases are not so clear cut as in other boss fights, and that, more than anything, may be what makes this battle so difficult.

In simplistic terms, there are three phases:
Phase 1: The start of the fight
Phase 2: Starts when the Lich King falls to 70% health
Phase 3: Starts when the Lich King falls to 40% health.

In reality, the phases look something like this:
Phase 1: The start of the fight. We're facing ghouls and shambling horrors, and LK is casting Infest and Necrotic Plague.
Phase 1.5: Starts around the 72% point. The ghouls and horrors should be dead, but now Raging Spirits appear. Infest and Plague continue, and added to that are two more spells, Remorseless Winter and Pain and Suffering. All raiders must move to new positions.
Phase 2: Moving past 70%, Plague stops but the rest of the spells continue. The tank starts getting hit with a new spell, Soul Reaper. We get a new mob - Ice Spheres. This lasts about sixty seconds.
Phase 2.5: Raiders move again. LK casts Quake, destroying the outer edge of the platform. No more mobs from prior phases, but now we get Val'kyrs, flying mobs that pick up raiders and carry them out over the void and drop them to their death. Infest and Soul Reaper are the only spells still active from before, but a new one is added: Defile.
Phase 3: Starts at 40%, and we haven't gotten that far yet. However, this phase is a repeat of phases 1.5, 2, and 2.5. Only there will be a new set of mobs and new spells from LK to add additional difficulty and flavor.

How far did we get Thursday night? Our best effort after 7 attempts was 49%. That attempt was actually better than the attempt last week when we got LK down to 44% because we were a lot better coordinated this week. In other words, last week was a fluke. This week, on this night, I think we earned that 49% with solid play.

At 9pm two of our raiders had to leave. Instead of ending the night, though, we brought in two new guildies who hadn't had the pleasure of dealing with the Lich King before. It was cool seeing how excited they were to be getting their first look. We got in a couple more decent attempts and then called it a night.

Some random comments on the night:

On our very first attempt we got LK down to 68% and into p1.5. That positive start set the tone for the rest of the evening. Wednesday's debacle was completely forgotten.

Our main tank from Wednesday could not make it Thursday so Wild's druid friend Rs took over main tank duties. I love working with him as the main tank healer, and the cagey guy loads up on the praise so that I will try all that much harder. Rs whispered Wild before the start of the first attempt. "Wild, sorry you'll have to be healing me tonight, but PLEASE keep me alive!" Wild whispered him back. "I got your back, Rs." Many attempts later we were driving hard into the second phase, trying to survive a Defile pool, when Wild was picked up and carried off by a Val'kyr. Wild, unable to heal or doing anything else while in the clutches of the val'kyr, said "Halp!" in raid chat. Rs immediately demanded that the ranged DPSers redouble their efforts to "save my healer!" But the DPS couldn't kill the val'kyr fast enough and Wild was dropped to his death. After the wipe we were joking around about it and a DPSer said something like "Well, Rs, it wouldn't have mattered if we'd saved Wild, we were pretty much done by that time anyway." Rs protested. "Not true, as long as Wild is alive I'm pretty much invincible." What a nice compliment to Wild's healing.

Rs has Wild's back as well. On attempt #6 Wild forgot to watch his own health and let an Infest kill him very early in the fight. We had only two druids, Wild and Rs, for battle rezzing. Obviously Wild couldn't rez himself, and Rs was the main tank and way too busy battling LK to switch out of his tanking bear form to caster in order to rez Wild. Yet when phase 1.5 hit and the raid shifted position, Rs popped out of bear form as he moved, LK hot on his tail, and battle rezzed Wild. Wild had to wait a second to clear some raid damage that would have ruined the rez, and in that instant Rs sent a raid chat "Wild I hope to gawd you got that rez!" I did, and Wild was able to rejoin the fight.

I did track the healing numbers, but I discovered that some of my key healing spells were not being recorded properly by the recount addon. Two spells, Swiftmend and Efflorescence, are not showing up correctly. Both are specialty spells that I mix in with my more often used spells, and Efflorescence is new since the patch. The two feed off each other as well, so it looks like the recount author hasn't got that right yet. That made me wonder if other healers had similar problems. In particular, recount is supposed to capture shield absorption numbers and add them to healing numbers now. Yet when I looked at the absorption numbers they didn't look high enough. That would affect both Pl (our priest healer) and Kd (our paladin healer), since both use shields to absorb damage. Hopefully this will get straightened out, but for now just note that the healing numbers, while still worth looking at, are not as accurate as I'd like.