This is a continuation of Thursday night raiding. Second post.
Most of the Cata raids can be traveled to quite easily since they are located in new Cata zones that have portals available in Orgrimmar. Blackwing Descent (BWD), however, is in Blackrock Mountain straddling two non-cata zones on the Eastern Continent. There is no portal, and really no good way to get to it. Wild chose to take the zep from Org to Stranglethorn and then pop into flight form and fly the half-continent distance to the mountain. Wild has actually been to the entrance of BWD before now by entering the mountain on foot just as Wild has done hundreds of times for Molten Core, UBRS, LBRS, and Blackwing Lair. But now there is a wide ledge cut into the side of the mountain near the summit where there is both a Summoning Stone and an instance entrance to BWD. That was where Wild headed.
We assembled and entered BWD. We had our choice of a right hand or a left hand turn and not much else. The first boss was Magmaw, a large lava worm. The worm was to the left, up a short flight of stairs.
At the top of the stairs we could see three mobs. One was halfway between Magmaw and us; the other two were close to Magmaw. There didn't seem to be any information about these trash mobs, so we set targets and each tank took one mob. What about the third mob? It was a dragonkin, so Wild was asked to find out if I could Hibernate it. Ooooh, crowd control! Wild hasn't been asked to do that since Wild got to use Entangling Roots on the cats in the Auriaya boss fight in Ulduar. Wild got the call because the rogue chickened out, professing that the dragonkin was immune to Sap.
Well .... it turned out that the dragonkin was immune to hibernate, too. But trying to cast it on him did attract his attention. The tank, Bd, bless him, tried to intercept the dragonkin that had Wild in his sights, but the dragonkin started a whirly thing with his two-handed weapon (the weapon was longer than Wild was tall, by the way) and Wild was reduced to thin slices of beef. We wiped.
We tried several things, none of which worked very well. We did kill one of the mobs after successfully managing to pull just the one. There was no way we could single pull the other two near Magmaw, though. After the first half dozen wipes someone had to say, "Come on, guys, let's kill this trash. I'm looking forward to wiping on Magmaw."
When we finally called it quits those two dragonkin trash mobs were still standing. At least we got one out of three. That's something. I guess.
Wild did get some healing numbers. Wild might as well consider the trash mobs as bosses since they are tougher than most bosses we've fought in WotLK, with boss level healing required.
#1: Ff priest, 7445 hps, 29.4% of the healing (raid healer)
#2: Wild, 6545 hps, 28.4% (group 2 tank/group healer)
#3: Bf shaman, 4330 hps, 17.2% (group 1 tank/group healer)
We wrapped up our raid night. Wild went back to Org to lick his wounds, and contemplated signing up for a random dungeon. Bd was looking to put together a guild heroic 5 man dungeon run, but despite more than 20 level 85s in game, he was having trouble scaring up enough guildies to go. Bd asked Wild to heal for it, but I told him frankly that Wild was not geared well enough. Bd got that same comment from several folks. In retrospect, Bd decided that a normal dungeon run would better help the guild, as many of us still needed to ramp up our gear. Wild eagerly signed up for that.
The five of us that grouped up were all level 85 so we were sure to get one of the three level 85 dungeons. Wild hoped for Grim Batol, because there is a chest piece there I want, but we got Halls of Origination, which seems to be the dungeon of choice by dungeon finder. We worked through HOO without any problems. Since it was the daily Wild got another 70 justice points and needs just 15 points more to buy another i346 piece. One more daily dungeon run will do it. Wild was wearing the Earthen Ring tabard and got a nice chunk of reputation and is at 10668/12000 to Revered. One more level 85 dungeon run and Wild should reach Revered - and access to two more i346 items.
We planned to run one more normal dungeon, but Bd got distracted by the smells of Mexican food coming from his kitchen, broke for dinner, and then decided to call it a night.
Wild could have run another normal dungeon, but also called it a night, figuring he could run the daily dungeon on Friday and get both JPs and Earthen Ring rep together.
Friday - Grim Batol, Anyone?
Friday afternoon Wild logged in and puttered about, hoping a guildie tank friend would show up and we could run the daily random dungeon. This time of day we had more under 85s leveling than we had 85s, and there wasn't much interest in a dungeon run. So.
So.
So.
Despite what I am now calling "polemikiphobia" (fear of the warcraft dungeonfinder - and yes, "polemiki" is a real greek word) I threw Wild into the dungeon finder.
Three minutes later Wild got his invite. The dungeon was Grim Batol. It was exactly the dungeon I would have picked myself. There are four bosses. We had a hunter, a rogue, a paladin, and a death knight. The paladin had signed on as the tank.
The tank took his time on the first trash mobs, as both he and Wild took the measure of our group to see how much trouble we might be in. We were handling things and approached the first boss, General Umbriss. The General held Wild's chest piece, and he'd better drop it (assuming our little group could kill him). We engaged the General with no discussion other than a "r?" from the tank, which was his shorthand for asking if we were ready. It was the wild west, with damage flying everywhere. Wild had to blow his instants to keep the pally alive. The DPS also took considerable damage but made an effort to get out of the way of Blitz, which is the General's big move. Wild admits he got distracted by the pally trying to die and got glancing hit from Blitz, but Wild had the health to survive it. Not so the DK, who died, and I let him so that Wild and the tank could finish off the General. Which we did. Going to be one of "those" runs.
Wild's chest piece did not drop. Blizz then messed with Wild's head when on the next trash mob pull a wonderful chest piece dropped. It had everything the boss chest had! Then I noticed it was a cloth piece. /cry.
We then got into the chained ettins area. Ettins are very large gangly things. One would think that when we rescued them from the warlock like mobs that have them chained, they would be grateful, but no they tried to kill us as well. Wild didn't even notice when we engaged the second boss, the ettin leader Forgemaster Throngus. I'm not sure the pally was aware he was a boss, either, until we started getting really wacked around with Mighty Stomp. He also has a trick where his other big ability comes from a random weapon pick. I think it was dual blades we were hit with, another whirly weapon thing that is best to stay out of the way of. It comes with a debuff, and Wild remembered a little belatedly that he should dispell it. We killed him, though.
We wound our way through more trash. The tank was setting targets and using cc on the mob packs, but some of the four pulls with only one being cc'ed was pretty scary. After two raiders died due to aggro from mobs that the tank couldn't or didn't pick up, the tank admitted that he was a little light in gear. I looked him up in the Armory, and his gear score was i325, which isn't too terribly bad for a normal mode dungeon. He seemed to need an inordinate amount of healing, though. Particularly for a paladin.
We were three-fourths of the way through a long string of mob groups when we over-pulled, drawing a second group into the group we were already fighting. That was bad. We almost made it, but wiped. The hunter had enough and bailed on the group, but there are always more DPSers. We instantly got a warlock to replace him. The warlock was an improvement, and handed out candy and gave Wild a soul stone. Hunter who?
The third boss was Drahga Shadowhunter. I don't like him at all. With the guild runs this boss is handled by anchoring Drahga in one place so that when he jumps to his dragon we can maintain control over him. The pally may have tried to hold him steady, but Drahga dragged us around anyway. Drahga shoots shadwbolts at random players. Our guild tank always interrupted them before they fired, but the shadowbolts flew everywhere on this fight. What got us, though, was Invocation of Flame. This releases an elemental that strikes a random player with a yellow beam (some say it's red, but it looks yellow to me). Players were ignoring the elemental and the players targeted with the beam were letting the elemental reach them, so bad things were happening everywhere. We wiped.
Wild rarely offers strategy advice (since its mostly ignored anyway), but when the tank told us that he wasn't sure of about this fight and asked for help, I gave it. Wild explained that all DPS should focus on the elemental and kill it, except for the player who was targeted. The targeted player needed to run for his life, because there would be a big, fatal explosion if that elemental caught the targeted player. And pretty please if the tank had an interrupt available, interrupting those shadowbolts would help his healer a lot.
On our third attempt we were doing pretty well, but it was just taking a very, very long time to kill the boss. Wild used up his innervate and his healing potion and was sucking up every point of mana my regen could give me. The boss was down to under 10% when I had to let someone die to keep the tank and I up. Well, two somebodies, it turned out to be. Both those deaders quit the group, which was the best thing they could have done for us. Dungeon Finder did something right and dropped two more DPSers into the middle of the battle. They were at full health, of course. Wild groaned in horror, though, when the mana well went bone dry and the tank died. And then cheered when Drahga fell right after the tank.
The two newcomers took it in good spirits when told they'd replaced two players who had quit the group, which was why the newcomers had been dropped into the middle of a boss fight. None of us had ever seen that happen before. Kudos for the newcomers, too, who recognized what was going on and waded right in.
We worked our way to the final boss, Erudax. This fight has only two things we have to remember - (1) kill the adds before they break any eggs, because broken eggs release unkillable whelps to AoE us for the rest of the fight; (2) when Shadow Gale is cast, this is one of the few times you want to get INTO the purple void zone that forms, as around that safe spot there will be a hurricane AoE. We actually discussed this before the fight. But I guess you have to see it, first. The fight went on endlessly and we wiped. Did anyone bail this time? Nope. Now that everyone had seen the fight, we went at Erudax again, and that time he died easily.
Wild got no loot from GB, not even something to disenchant. The run did give Wild enough JPs to afford that i346 belt he's been wanting. Wild also took a peek at his Earthen Ring reputation - did he reach Revered? Please please?
I did, with 336 points to spare toward the 21,000 he'll need for Exalted. With Revered rep Wild could now buy an i346 upgrade to his leg gear (with two sockets!), and also got an i346 cape upgrade. Overall Wild had three pieces of gear to enchant, a very expensive belt buckle to buy, and four gems to fill the new sockets he had.
When it was done, Wild's gear jumped from i333 to i336.
The Old Look
The New Look
Wild's list of wants (short of Heroics) got much smaller with those acquisitions.
Current Gear - what's available
Chest (i325) - can still get an i333 from Grim Batol if it drops
The rest come from Dragonmaw rep (currently at Honored)
Ring (i333) - DM Revered (i346)
Belt (i346) - DM Exalted (i359)
Neck (i333) - DM Exalted (i359)
Wild would love to upgrade his trinkets, too, but Wild needs +int trinkets and the i325 and i316 trinks he has are the best available. Wild also has no pre-Heroic way to get a better relic (i316), either. And Wild has no better option than what he has now with his i333 at shoulder, bracers, and boots.
If you're thinking about building up JPs for more i346 gear, that's an option - but not a good one. At most Wild can get 70 JPs per day. It takes 1,650 - 2,200 JPs to buy the gear Wild would want. Do the math - it would take 24 days.
Alternatively, Wild could spend those 24 days doing the daily heroic dungeon run and collect Valor Points. VPs can be exchanged for i359 gear.
It's time to start looking at Heroics.
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