Wild has one word to sum up the day: [Chelley's Staff of Dark Mending].
Ok, that was more than one word, but it was one piece of gear - one fabulous piece of gear.
Happy and Lao happened to be in game at the same time on Friday morning. We talked shop, comparing notes on various materials and how they were selling or not selling. In the course of our conversation Lao mentioned that she'd seen the Dark Mending staff for sale on the Auction House for about 20,000 gold. That's a huge amount of gold, but that is one great staff, and it typically cost 25-30,000 gold. Happy said that Wild lusted after that staff, but that Wild had had all his credit pulled after he bought those fancy shoulders with the wings. Not to mention all those crazy Waves cards Wild talked Happy and even Lost into buying for that tsunami trinket thing. Nope, Wild's purse strings were definitely tied shut.
Wild hadn't been able to beg, whine, trick or coerce Happy into relenting on that staff by the time the Friday raid came around. Wild was really happy about how the raid was shaping up, though. Not only did we have a full group, we had to turn several guildies away, instead of the usual begging them to come. Bosses are going down, and now more players are starting to get interested in raiding. The raid leader, Fn, was so pleased he reiterated that he would be setting up a second raid night soon.
We didn't disappoint on this Friday night, either. For the third straight week the Horde held Tol Barad on our raid night, and precisely at the 6pm start time our group trooped over to Baradin Hold. And for the third week in a row the boss Argolath died by our hands.
We headed over to the Bastion of Twilight. We set a steady pace and cleared the first section of trash mobs with no trouble. An i359 healing necklace dropped from one of the mobs. Wild already has an i359 necklace, but it lacks spirit. This necklace had a lot of spirit. No one needed it as main spec, either. Wild considered it, but decided to pass. It would be a small upgrade at best, and the pally said he could use it on his off spec.
We moved to the next round of trash mobs, pressing through them even faster than last week. And we got another gear drop from one of the mobs. This drop caused quite a commotion. The drop was [Chelley's Staff of Dark Mending].
Unless you are doing PvP Arena matches for the i372 weapon (which for Wild would be never), or doing Heroic mode raids for the i372 Heroic version of this staff (we're a long way off from that), this i359 staff is the very best healing weapon in the game.
I could tease you about the rolls and how that went, etc etc. I could note that Fl, our superb pally healer, is wielding [Torturer's Mercy], an i346 main hand to go along with his i359 shield. Pallies like their shields, but more importantly pallies can't use staffs. Sw, our shadow priest but often healer, wields [Modgud's Blade], an i346 main hand to go along with her i359 off-hand. Priests can use staffs. Sw was in shadow spec when I checked her gear, so perhaps she uses something different for healing (since both pieces of gear had +hit on them). Since she was healing at the time she could have rolled on that staff. She didn't. Perhaps she preferred the weapon she had. Perhaps she remembered that the very nice off-hand she was wearing now was passed to her by Wild last week after Wild had won the roll for it. Karma.
Wild was the only one that rolled for it. Wild's i346 mace went into storage, replaced by the i359 Dark Mending. There are those rare days when the gods of WoW do smile down on us.
We got to Halfus, the first boss encounter. We got the absolute worst combination of dragons that we could have gotten - Storm Rider, Slate, and Nether. Dam the bad luck.
We went with the three healer, three tank strategy that worked for us last week. Poor Sw, though. Our shadow priest was needed for healing for most of the evening. She doesn't mind, but we all know she'd rather be pew pewing, and she's good at it. At some point I hope we can get a full time third healer. But we were definitely on a roll.
It took us only three attempts to kill all three dragons and Halfus.
We pounded through some more trash mobs to get to the Twilight Enclave and the two dragons that ruled it, Valiona and Therelion. This encounter is not really very different or more difficult than many other encounters. Except for one thing - the timing of raider movement during certain segments of the fight are so touchy and particular that were are having a terrible time coordinating those moves. Only one tank is required for this fight, since only one dragon is on the ground at a time. One dragon is always in the air bombing us with meteors or strafing us with fire. The dragon in the air was mostly just a distraction we dealt with. It was on the ground where we had trouble, and more trouble. We stayed with three healers.
The main trouble spot is when the dragon on the ground casts Blackout. Blackout has a timer, but we never let it expire. When Blackout is cast, there is a short delay before it actually strikes the targeted player, doing considerable damage to that player and also doing constant AoE damage to the rest of the raid for as long as it's active. All raiders collapse into a tight pile at the dragon's tail, and as soon as we are in position a designated raider dispels Blackout. When Blackout is dispelled or expires, it does an even larger blast that is distributed among all raiders standing tightly close to the targeted player. Even being one step away from the target player increases dramatically the damage being done to the other raiders.
The real problem lies with that short pause between the cast of Blackout, and when it strikes the target. We have yet to figure out a way to make that work effectively, and we start falling farther and farther behind each time Blackout is cast.
That doesn't mean we can't get to phase 2. We can, but we're never in very good shape by that time.
Our first two attempts of the night followed the strategy we used last week. It really wasn't working, and so we shifted to different strat that other guilds have used as well. This strategy doesn't change much as far as Blackout goes, but it does help to avoid further damage from Twilight Blast, which the airborne dragon drops on a random raider, leaving a pool of quick death if you stand in it. To control where the Blast falls, all ranged raiders (DPS and healers) stack together and we moved together to avoid the pools.
The change in strategy helped, and by our fourth attempt we had the dragons down to 55% health.
In phase 2 it is simply remembering when to run away from something and when to run together, all the while avoiding numerous other nasties the dragons have at their disposal. Wild was the magnet for all of that nasty stuff on this night (this is the Dying part of the title). Wild died a lot. An awful lot. Even more than usual. A lot more than usual. Rs, the druid tank, reserved his battle rez just for Wild, because I always needed it. We made seven total attempts, and Wild got battle rezzed four times (and died soon after a second time after three of those rezzes). In Wild's defense he wasn't really doing anything differently than the other raiders. Wild claims that all that good karma from winning Dark Mending had to be balanced somehow - and Wild paid it back in spades.
On our best attempt we got the dragons to 53%. As Wild said last week, this is a doable fight. Get Blackout figured out. Get Wild's karma balanced. And we got this.
Here's the healing numbers. Wild isn't all that happy with his performance, but then again he was dead most of the time.
#1: Fl (pally), 9845 hps and 37.4% of all healing
#2: Sw (priest), 7113 hps/24.6%
#3: Wild (druid), 7013 hps/24.2%
PS - Happy heard about the Staff. He was walking around pretty smug about all that gold he saved. Then he got to thinking about all the gold he could have made if Wild had let him sell that staff on the AH. Happy turned from smug to glum. Karma, ya know.
[Chelley's Staff of Dark Mending]
After the official raid was finished, we decided to reset the raid instance and make another trash mob run in the hopes of getting additional gear drops. There were only eight of us available to stick around, but we had no problem taking down the mobs with just 8. The only change was that Wild, who normally isn't needed for crowd control, volunteered to use his hibernate spell to Sleep the dragon trash mobs in the mob groups that had one. The spell worked great, and kept the mob out of our hair until we were ready to kill it. It was fun, but unfortunately our luck with drops went sour and we did not get a single one.
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