After Wednesday's raid Wild wrote down four things that he felt could be areas that needed more attention and help in overcoming Wild's difficulties in healing the raid and keeping his tank alive. Not since the early days against the Lich King has Wild been so frustrated with his own performance. The raid leader, Bd, was sympathetic, but he felt that enough progress had been made overall in the raid that he did not want to make any changes on the Thursday night run.
The four things:
* Changing the pairings of tank and healer
* Wild's healing not up to the task
* Bringing the third healer in to help Wild
* Avoiding ice patches
Wild and the pally tank, Sb, took our places on the Anshal platform with four DPSers. One of those DPSers was Rs, Wild's druid friend, who finally made it into an MM2 raid. He teased Wild about it, saying "So, you got roped into this too?" We had another new face, a mage that Wild has run with a number of times, although it has been quite a long time since Wild had raided with her. Bd had a new healer joining us as well, Et, a druid like Wild, and they settled in at the Nezir platform. The final group was the same two as last night keeping Rohash busy.
Our first attempt was our get to know the fight again and we wiped pretty fast. Our second attempt went much better, although Wild was burning mana at a record pace. When we wiped after the first transition Wild had reached 8800 hps. But Wild was unhappy. It didn't matter how much he healed, raiders were still dying and Wild was still using up his mana too fast.
Still, we made progress. On our next two attempts we got farther into the fight. Wild even noted that for the first time he and Sb had dealt with Anshal, switched to Nezir, survived that, and got back to Anshal again before wiping. Sb thought he'd let Wild down when his taunt failed and Wild got tangled with the boss and died. We were already out of control and going down by that time. Wild was actually happy that we had managed to get this far, even though it still ended in death.
Bd takes his time when he is thinking things over. But when he makes up his mind he acts swiftly. Bd whispered Wild. "We're making a change, bud. You are switching with Et." That meant Wild would be Bd's healer instead of Sb's starting with our fifth attempt. The fight would be much the same, but there was a subtle difference. Instead of starting with Anshal and then moving over to Nezir, Wild would start with Nezir, and then move to Anshal. Bd did not know about the "four things," but he used one of them (change the pairings) to see if that would make a difference. Of course, his real reason was to be able to watch Wild and see if he could help with the troubles I was obviously having.
He got a good look on our 5th attempt, which we also wiped on of course, and had a suggestion. "You're healing throughput is great," Bd told Wild, "so I was baffled a bit - until I saw how close to being out of mana you were." He told Wild that I needed to back off on the use of the spell Regrowth - I knew that, but I didn't trust the slower, lesser spell Nourish and had kept using regrowth. "Use Nourish," Bd said again. "I have six different ways keep myself alive. Use Nourish. It'll work. You'll have more mana. We'll be fine."
Wild didn't immediately get a chance to fully test out what amounted to a friendly challenge from Bd. Our next two attempts were interrupted by breaks and a computer that failed (not mine, although mine did zonk out on me once, but it was before we started) and it took us time to get settled back in.
Lao poked her head in the game around this time, oohing over the battle and giving Wild sympathetic pats on the back. Wild was feeling pretty low and Lao did a great job cheering him back up.
On our 8th attempt Bd brought the DPS raider from the Rohash platform to the Nezir platform to increase the DPS there and reduce the damage spread across the raid. Wild and Bd hung in there long enough for Wild to really air out the Nourish spell. What the heck, Wild thought, it couldn't get any worse. Standing and casting a 2+ second spell can be a frustrating exercise for a druid with a large arsenal of instant cast spells. Yet it had a strangely calming effect on Wild. We had a few tense moments, but true to his word Bd used his own abilities to help get past rough spots and Wild was not forced into frantic healing. We got through two full transitions before the wipe. So another of Wild's "four things" came to pass. A raider from the Rohash platform - not the healer, but the DPS - came to help in the Nezir battle, which in effect helped Wild with the healing since the extra body spread out the AoE damage a bit more.
With all the focus on Nezir and Anshal, we were abruptly reminded on our ninth attempt that there was a third boss out there - Rohash killed the two raiders who had been doing such a great job with that boss all night. It was an unexpected wipe and that could have knocked us completely off our game. It didn't.
On our 10th attempt it all seemed to fall into place. Wild now had a healing rhythm that included Nourish over regrowth. He discovered he had a decent amount of mana available throughout the fight. Wild was trusting that the tank could and would help himself if Wild was temporarily busy with raid healing, or escaping ice patches, etc, which lessened the pressure further. In short, Bd's healing advice made it possible for Wild to heal this fight, which brought to pass the third of the "four things." By the way, we brought one genie down to 7% before wiping. Suddenly this fight went from impossible to OMG we might actually beat these guys!
For our 11th attempt Bd talked about positioning to help avoid the ice patches, which was still a frozen thorn buried in Wild's hoof. He didn't really talk about how Wild should handle it - but did walk Wild through what Bd the tank was doing so that Wild would know exactly how Bd would respond to each situation. Wild took that information and laid out a track that I would follow whenever we had Nezir engaged. Wild also used a strafing tactic (thank you, Hunter Fortress!) to maintain that line, which not by accident ran parallel to the expected track that Bd would take. It worked. Oh yes, avoiding ice patches was the fourth of the "four things."
We killed two of the three genies and came within a whisker of killing the third - but our timing was off and one of the dead bosses resurrected - another wipe.
The progress was phenomenal, though. The first major breakthru had been the DPSers finally figuring out how to drop all the adds on the Anshal platform. That meant raiders were changing platforms with higher health when moving to Nezir and those going to Anshal were not encountering left over mobs. Add the "four things" and we knew now that it was only a matter of time before we had this fight down.
It took a Warrior (Bd) to straighten Wild out. In the interest of full disclosure, though, that warrior also has a level 85 druid and he knows a bit about druid heals. More important than the tactics and healing advice, though, was that Bd took the time to encourage and help Wild without getting mad, complaining, or blaming Wild for the wipes. I don't know if the switch in pairings will remain as they are next week, but Wild is a lot more confident that whichever tank he is asked to heal, he will be up to the task.
Wild and the genie Nezir
I also wanted to share Lao's report on her magnificent manipulation of the Auction House recently that had our AH expert, Happy, both jealous and impressed!
"As Happy can attest to, the AH can involve skill and psychology, but at time it comes down to luck. Being at the right place, at the right time.
It is almost a given that as soon as I bite the bullet on a big ticket item (that has a price lower than I have seen it historically) without fail within 48 hours I will see it up for 1k+ less than what I paid. I call this the 48 hour curse. Usually that is the bad luck side of the AH, but one that you have to accept. But the other day Lao meet the very good luck side of the AH.
While Wild was getting himself spun around in Four Winds Lao was doing her usual check of 85 cloth gear on the AH. At this point there are only a few things on the AH that interest her. She could use a chest, bracers, and gloves. The gloves she is going to get shortly with rep, but she liked to window shop anyway. She was doing her usual look and she sees one (of the two) cloth chest up for 10k bid 12k buyout. She bought it out, without hesitation.
Now to back up, every time that Lao has seen this chest on the AH it goes around 20-25k, so 12k was just screaming “TAKE ME!!” But now that Lao had the chest, what would she do with it? It was more the healer chest but it would be an upgrade for her anyway. Or she could turn around and try to sell it for a higher price.
Lao decided to throw it up there for 20k bid and 25k buyout. If no one bought it she would wear it, and if someone bought it she would make a nice profit. First day, nothing. Last night, nothing. Checked this morning, Sold. She spent 12k on it and got back (after the AH cut) 20k. Nice 8k profit.
And like I mentioned before, I checked the AH, and someone had put the same chest up for 2k less than what I had it up for. This time luck was on my side, mine was bought before this one was up, no such luck for the buyer who got the 48 hour curse."
No comments:
Post a Comment