Wednesday (1 Dec) - Could This Get Any Harder?!

Wednesday (1 Dec) - Could This Get Any Harder?!

This is the last week of raiding Icecrown Citadel before the Cataclysm expansion erupts on 7 Dec 2010. If Wild is going to get his Kingslayer title, it has to come on Wednesday or Thursday night for it to be meaningful.

We got off at our usual start time of thirty minutes later than our official start time. That is, the usual raiders for G2 were ready and assembled at 6:55pm on the platform of the Lich King. We even killed the two flying mobs on the way in to save us time trying to avoid them over the course of the night. Our strategist, Bd, took another thirty minutes after that going over all phases of the fight. It had been two weeks since we were last here, and despite some grumbling about the time lost I thought the time was well used to get our heads in the right frame of mind.

On our first attempt we plowed through the P1 and P1.5 phases in very good order and got LK down to 50% before wiping. It was an excellent first shot. Wild, however, was shell shocked. Wild healed through the P1 phase smoothly and kept everyone alive using his high cast healing rotation that ensured no raider need worry about Infest suddenly killing them because they'd dropped below 90% health for longer than 5 seconds. When P1 ended and we'd started the move to new positions in P1.5, Wild took a quick glance at his mana bar. Whoa! It was at 12%! Wild hadn't seen his mana bar that low in a raid since he'd made level 80. Against the Lich King, 60% mana would be worrisome. Wild never runs out of mana - yet here he was, about to go dry and only one phase into the fight. Wild made some serious adjustments, Innervated to return some mana, and continued. But the rest of the attempt was baffling and horrendous for Wild as I weighed what heals to use and how to keep my mana from running out. The last half of the attempt Wild never got his mana back above 40%.

The reason for this sudden mana drought is The Shattering. First, Blizzard was not happy with mana-happy healers who could cast expensive spells all night long without ever running low on mana. They wanted healers to worry about their mana. They wanted us to think about using healing spells that used less mana, even if they were longer cast, instead of only using our fast, high mana cost spells. Ok, I get that. Wild gets that. The problem is that these changes for Cata are intended to operate in a Cata world where our base mana is something like twice what it is now. We've been put on mana rationing without being given a Cata level mana pool. The other primary healer, our priest Pl, was also struggling with mana issues. Our third healer and dispeller, the paladin Tk, did not seem to have that problem. Overpowered pallies. ;-)

On attempts 2 and 3 Wild tried mixing in longer cast, efficient spells, primarily Nourish. It takes just over a second to cast Regrowth, Wild's "best" heal for the amount of health it returns and the speed of the cast. Nourish only uses a third of the mana, but it takes 2.3 seconds to cast, way too long to save someone from Infest. Wild had to experiment with different spells until he could find something that would keep raiders alive but wouldn't use up all his mana before the battle was over.

Attempts 4 and 5 got Wild settled in. Wild dropped nourish as it was just too slow for this type of fight. Regrowth was again the go to spell, but only when I absolutely needed it. My instant rejuv spell, which was now 30% more costly than it was last week, still had its place, but no more could Wild spam it around the raid "just in case." That meant that DPS raiders had to be more careful and avoid damage instead of expecting Wild to heal through whatever mess they got into. On both attempts we hit 33% on LK, but that would be the highpoint of the night.

We made three more attempts, but we started having serious problems with our vent server. We use vent to call out when bad things are about to happen, when to move and where, and where raiders in trouble can yell for help. When vent became unreliable it crashed three times while even when it was "working" there were break ups in the sound and lag of 1-3 seconds. When five seconds standing in the wrong place can cause a raid wipe, waiting three seconds to find out your five second warning is getting to you with two seconds left ... well, it was just one more complication we didn't need.

Overall our spirits remained high, though, and we will come into Thursday night's raid feeling that we have a solid chance to beat the Lich King. A solid chance, and maybe our last chance, too.