Friday Night (4 Mar) - Moving on to Blackwing Descent

Friday Night (4 Mar) - Moving on to Blackwing Descent

BWD is located in Blackrock Mountain, along with BRD, LBRS, UBRS, BWL, and MC. Don't worry, there won't be a test. Let's just say that BWD fits right into the rock and fire theme of every prior dungeon and raid in the Mountain.

The entrance is on an open air platform near the top of the Mountain. Inside there isn't much to see. Turn right for one boss, turn left for another. We went left up a short flight of stairs. The raid leader had done his prep for the both, a monstrous lava worm named Magmaw. Just in front of the worm were two trash mobs. Just in front of them a third trash mob paced back and forth.

Wild has attempted this fight when our group couldn't kill the two trash mobs at the back, much less Magmaw. Some say those two trash mobs are tougher than the boss. Wild has also been in on a raid where we did kill all three trash mobs. Nobody in the guild has taken down Magmaw, yet. Which might make this a good time to discuss how progression is being measured in cata. Normally progression is stated in terms of which raids and which bosses in those raids have been defeated. However, many players have started counting just the total number of bosses downed, dropping the raid names, since none of these raids have a large number of bosses. Every guild and PUG is tackling bosses almost in the exact same order, so the raid itself is just assumed. I counted all the bosses/encounters in the four cata raids, and got 14 (just for comparison, note that Wrath raids like Icecrown Citadel has 12 bosses, and Naxxramas has 15). I've seen others use 12; I don't know why. I'm using 14 until I get an explanation for 12. So, Wild has defeated Argaloth, which makes him 1/14 on cata bosses. Have to start somewhere.

We started our BWD run at 7:16pm, and easily killed the first trash mob. The mob pair that came next really put the pressure on the two tanks. The two mobs had to be kept apart, and they had to be killed close to the same time. Every few seconds, both mobs dropped all aggro and then attacked the raider that was the farthest away. That meant that the two tanks had to make sure that they were always the farthest away when the mobs dropped aggro. The melee raiders made sure they were on the near side of the mon, while the rest of the raid (ranged) clustered together between the two mobs. The mobs do huge damage and the healers have to really put out the heals to keep them up.

It took us four tries, but we killed the mob pair. And left us face to face (well, if a worm had a face) with Magmaw.

There are several ways to do this fight. Wild likes the one where he can just stand and heal without moving. But no, the raid leader wanted to do the strat where the ranged moved back and forth between two points. For positioning, the ranged stood with the tank (we were only using one tank for this fight, so Rs switched from feral tank to moonkin), and the melee set up at another point where they could run in when we started. We decided that we would really need three healers for Magmaw, and one of the raiders offered to switch to another toon, a holy priest. He was modestly geared, but we felt it was worth it even though we lost a lot of DPS.

Fn counted down to start, Wild Hoted him up, and we began. The tank lost 60% of his health in the first few seconds, and then the raid was hit with an AoE assault and the healers scrambled to keep everyone up. The amount of damage being done was insane. Suddenly, the tank jumped away from the boss, flying across the room. What? I don't remember reading about a boss ability like that? Magmaw slaughtered the nearby melee and we quickly wiped. The red faced priest admitted that he accidentally hit his Life Grip spell, which does exactly what we saw - pulls a friendly player away from whatever trouble he was in. Pulling the tank away from a boss was not exactly what one had in mind, though.

Our second attempt was really our first, where we got to experience Pillar of Flame. This is why we move between points. Pillar is part massive explosion and part birthing mother. Timing the thing is a bear, too. When we Magmaw start to cast Pillar of Flame, all us ranged standing at our pre-determined point start moving - nope, we have to take a couple breaths, wait until the visual queue appears on the floor under our feet, and THEN we move - run like hell, actually, to the other point. If all goes well no one will take the explosion damage that throws those caught in it into the air (so everyone knows what fool failed to get out fast enough) and therefore no one will be in range of the small army of parasites that pour out of the spot where Pillar struck.

When Wild saw Magmaw start up Pillar, the one potato two potato look for the visual queue went right out of his head and Wild headed for the second point a couple of steps ahead of the others. Magmaw dropped Pillar on Wild's position (instead of at the first point where we wanted it) and the parasites swarmed out just as the other ranged raiders got to it. Oops. When parasite hits a raider they stick a bomb on the player which explodes ten seconds later for huge AoE damage and also spawns more parasites. We wiped.

The raid leader decided to try another strategy - the one where Wild doesn't have to move, the smart man.

We did better on our third try, getting Magmaw to 84% health. Wild's healing numbers, by the way continued to improve over the course of the night.

We kept at it, changing trying different things. Our moonkin wasn't specced into the spell Typhoon, which we found out was very helpful against those parasites. So he hearthed and respecced to get it. We went back to two healers for awhile to bring in a mage alt with some special tricks to get more DPS on those parasites. Wild went back to moving between points and actually figured it out.

We pushed far enough that the tank got to do the Spike maneuver that he was all hot to get to. You have to see it to believe it - it's hilarious and gruesome at the same time. But what held us back was that despite teh almost overwhelming DPS, we were not getting them killed before they reached other raiders, and once the explosions and new spawns started we were toast.

We made nine attempts and when the three trash mobs respawned while we were prepping for attempt 10 we decided to call it a little after 9pm.

It was an outstanding evening of learning and having fun. The raid leader spent some time after the raid talking about how he does things and what he expects. He said that he has only two hard and fast rules (1) Be on time - if more than 10 minutes late expect to be replaced; and (2) come ready to raid with potions, flasks, food, etc - plus, doing enchants or socketing gems, grabbing a cig, paying the pizza man, etc, will not be allowed on raid time. Wild silently applauded both. I really liked how Fn ran his raid. Fn hoped that we would all be back next week, and said that he would get a raid sign up in place for next week.

By the way, wild got his healing per second up to 8500+ hps while the paladin was at around 9200 hps and the priest at 5800. Wild was much happier with his numbers.

Weekend News

On Saturday morning MM reached guild level 19.

Wild is away Sunday as I will be in Costa Mesa, CA (about two hours north of San Diego) for a job opportunity.