Wild limped in game with his gimpy computer Wednesday night around 6pm. Wild had signed up as "tentative" for what was the planned second night of raiding for the G1 group led by raid leader Mf (I learned later that they didn't raid on Tuesday). The other raid leader for the G2 group, Bd, was expected back from a two week hiatus and had signed up for Mf's raid. Bd was already in game when Wild arrived, but I quickly learned that Bd was ill, under medication, and would not be raiding.
Wild was in game only a few minutes when Mf announced in guild chat, "Looking for 2 healers, 1 tank, and 3 DPS for BWD." I did the math - nine guildies had signed up for the raid (that doesn't count the three of us who signed up as tentative), so at the raid start time only three of those nine were in game. That was disappointing. Wild whispered to Mf, letting him know that I was available but that I might have lag problems. Given how few guildies that had signed up were present, Wild wasn't surprised when he got an immediate invite.
A couple more guildies trickled in that was on the sign up, and Mf added a few more who were in game and agreed to come to the raid. We got to nine raiders but could not get a second guildie tank - we had expected Bd to fill that spot but he said he just couldn't do it. Mf brought in a warrior tank from outside the guild to round out the raid. It looked like we had a raid!
Wild figured he was healing, but with a paladin and three shaman in the raid I wasn't sure who the other two would be. The paladin, Fln, who I had never seen before (although he was a guildie) was tapped to heal, and Sh, a good shaman healer Wild has run with many times, was the other. Wild knew all of the rest of the guildies in the run, some previous members of G1 and other newer members of the guild.
The pvp zone, Tol Barad, was under Alliance control at raid time so we would not be making a Baradin Hold run this time. That also meant that we couldn't use the Tol Barad portal in Orgrimmar as a jumping off point to get to Blackwing Descent (BWD), which was located in the Badlands on the opposite continent. That left taking a zep either to Tirisfal Glades or Stranglethorn Vale, and then flying to BWD. It was inconvenient, but it was also funny that going this route was now considered inconvenient. Pre-dungeon finder I would not have thought twice about making that trip. The DF and it's instant portal directly from wherever you are to where you want to be can be blamed for that. I wonder when Blizz will get around to simply eliminating dungeon/raid summoning portals and allow us to self-port to them instantly. We're halfway to that point already.
Wild arrived at the BWD Summoning Stone and helped summon the rest of the raid. We entered Blackwing Descent. This was Wild's second trip to BWD. The first was with the G2 group, which failed to get to the first boss. That was almost a month ago. Of our entire raid, the raider with the most experience in BWD was our non-guildie guest tank. Which gives one an idea of the state of our raiding.
Inside BWD there wasn't that much to see. A simple hallway with stairs to the right leading to Omnotron and stairs to the left leading to Magmaw. Either could be tackled first, but Magmaw is generally considered the first boss in BWD. That's where we headed. Magmaw's cavern is modest sized, and there are three trash mobs, one which can be singled out, and then a pair of mobs near Magmaw that must be pulled together. Magmaw is a large worm-like creature. Only the upper half of it's body is visible.
With took our time getting buffed and ready, and then pulled the single mob. A month ago it took us several tries to kill that first trash mob. On this night the mob went down right away. We were off to a good start. The pair of mobs we now faced were essentially mini-bosses that needed as much coordination and effort as a real boss encounter required. The two tanks pulled their targets, separating them from each other while the ranged DPS/healers hung back. Shortly into the fight the two mobs abruptly pulled away from their tanks. One went after the other the tank, as we wanted, but the second one plowed into the ranged raiders and we quickly wiped.
It was a matter of positioing. The two mobs periodically lose the aggro on their tank and go after the raider farthest away from them. Our ranged group apparently was farther away from one of the mobs than the opposite side tank and Boom! dead ranged. It wasn't that tricky once we had that figured out, but we still had to actually kill the two mobs, which we did on our third try. Success!
Wild took a peek at the healing numbers for the three trash mobs just to get an idea of where the healers stood. It's been widely reported that paladins currently are the hands down best raid healers right now. No other healing class can touch them. The numbers in the current raid bore that out. Our paladin healer, Fln, had over 9300 hps and 39% of the healing, easily besting Wild's 6200+ hps and 28%. The shaman, Sh, came in with around 5800 hps and 22%. The healing was intense even on the trash mobs, so Wild was sure he was putting out every ounce of healing he could muster. Wild would need a lot more than that against Magmaw.
The Magmaw fight has a number of moving parts, but is actually a simple fight with one crucial element - the parasites. There were two schools of thought about those parasites. The method first developed for this fight called for most of the raid to move back and forth in unison across the width of the room, all of us esentially kiting the parasites while ranged DPS killed them. Very bad things happened if raiders don't stay closely tucked in together as they move, and even worse things happen if a raider is caught by a parasite, so very good coordination is required. The method we used, which is now the common method used, is for the whole raid to be grouped up in melee range of Magmaw - except for one ranged DPS. That raider would then be the only raider that would have to avoid the Pillar of Flame and belch of parasites it delivers. That raider, with the help of the other ranged DPS in the group of raiders, had to kill and it necessary, kite those parasites, finishing them off before they could get into the rest of the raid. There were two Pillars, so there were two waves of parasites.
We gave it a shot, got a look at what was going on, and wiped. On our second shot Wild started checking progress - attempt #2 got Magmaw to 93%. Ok, not much there, but it was a start.
We made progress in small increments: #3, 89%; #4: 87%; #5: 85%. We were making headway, but we were still coming up short on that crucual element - killing the parasites before they infested the rest of the raid. I'm sure the DPS was going crazy on the attack, and the healers were slamming heals down as fast as possible with no regard to mana. On that 5th attempt we got a glimmer of the second part of the fight involving chains, smashing Magmaw's face, naked women (ok, so I just threw that in there, I thought you might be day dreaming), and a spike through Magmaw's head. Well, we got as far as seeing the chains come out, but by that time we were well on our way to anther wipe. We made three more tries, this time using one of the tanks as the kiter so that the two ranged DPS could stand and blast away, but we just couldn't pull it all together. The 85% was our best effort on the night. Wild was just happy to be raiding.
After the raid Mf asked us to stay on vent for a few minutes as he wanted to address some raid issues. I would have thought he would talk about raiders not showing up after signing up, but I guess that was better discussed directly with those who were missing the raids. Mf started by saying that he was very glad we were all here, and glad that the guild was back to raiding. That said, he was concerned about the level of commitment. Cata raids are nothing like Wrath raids - we have to be at our best, and we have to be prepared. He then laid down some rules.
#1) Gear - if you don't have a gear score of at least i340, you cannot be effective and won't be invited. Getting to i340 will get you in the raid, but a score of i346 is what raiders really need to have to start seeing some success, and each raider should make a concentrated effort to get to it.
#2) DPS raiders - Cata is all about dealing damage. If our DPS can't reach a minimum of 10k DPS on boss fights, we will fail. I'm not knocking anyone here tonight, but do what you have to do to get there.
#3) Mf did an Armory check on each raider, and was disappointed to find that some raiders had not even bothered to put gems in some of their gear sockets. That is sloppy and completely unnecessary. Guild JC's can provide whatever anyone needs. Period. Proper gearing, proper consummables, enchants, etc, are all part of being prepared to raid.
I agreed with all of the above, with one caveat that was also brought up by another raider. We are still struggling to get ten guildies together to raid each week. The desire to raid seems to be missing from a good portion of our guild. We may be forced to bring in under-prepared/geared guildies, or we simply won't be able to raid. There is really only one solution to that, and it's a cat chasing it's tail kind of thing. The guild will get excited about raiding when we kill a Cata raid boss and show off our new shinys. But we can't down a Cata boss without geared and prepared raiders, which we are short on. I just have to hope that we'll make a breathrough - then the floodgates will open.
Over the course of the night Wild made steady progress in moving my healing numbers into range of that pally. Here was the final tally:
#1: Pally (Fln): 9986 hps, 34.5% of the healing
#2: Druid (Wild): 8227 hps, 30.9%
#3: Shaman (Sh): 6059 hps, 20.4%
Wild's best number on a single attempt was 10007 hps - the pally topped even that with 12191 hps. Gives Wild something to shoot for.
The final tally on the DPS (a minimum 10000 dps being the goal):
#1: shaman, 10626 dps
#2: warlock, 10162 dps
#3: warrior, 9631 dps
#4: shaman, 8733 dps
#5: tank, 7455 dps
#6: DK, 5746 dps
On Wild's part, his i342 gearscore meets the requirements, but I have some work to do to get to i346. Wild has 11 pieces of gear at i346 or better, leaving six that come up short: shoulder, wrist, neck, one ring, one trinket, and the relic. No matter what plan I come up with, it's going to involve dungeons. Lots of dungeons. I hope Wild is up for that.
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