Weekend Part 1 of 3 - Will Wildshard Ever Raid the Firelands?

Weekend Part 1 of 3 - Will Wildshard Ever Raid the Firelands?

After the Friday raid Wild had hoped to get a Firelands raid going, but we lacked tanks and enough raiders with the minimum required ilevel. Disappointed, and pretty wrung out from the Bastion of Twilight raid, Wild still stayed in game to get his Dailies done.

As Wild worked killing mobs, saving baby bears (yes, that old Hyjal quest has found it's way into the Molten Front Dailies) and howling at the moon (a new quest where after slaying a mob Wild turns into a wolf and howls - ok, guess you had to be there). Our raid leader is completely focused on BoT. He will not entertain starting up a regular Firelands run until we have cleared BoT. I know we are not ready for the Bosses in the Firelands, but the wealth of BoE drops from the trash mobs offers a pretty good chance at gear that is far better than what drops in BoT. That's assuming we could handle the trash mobs, which Wild has yet to see.

Finished with the Dailies, Wild headed back to Orgrimmar. The talk in the Trade channel was lively. Wild almost missed the "lf FL healer, rep run". Which is tradespeak for "Looking for a healer for the Firelands raid and we'll be killing trash mobs for reputation and BoEs."

Ok, what the heck, I'll bite. I didn't know the person or his guild (Dirty Horde). "Still looking for a healer?" Wild whispered to him. There was a pause while I'm sure he was checking the Armory.

Before all this happened, however, there was a BoT run. In a way it was one of the most exciting nights of raiding in some time - but excruciating as well.

We had defeated Halfus and the Twins on Thursday night. The trash mobs between us and the Ascendant Council can still cause us some heartache, but none of them survived our assault. We've seen enough of the first and second (of three) phases of this fight to start to get a feel for it. Wild knew the strat, had seen the fight a few times, and had gone back over the abilities of all of the bosses and phases - things were starting to make sense.

Our pally healer, Gn, did not show on Friday night, but she was replaced by another pally healer who used to be a regular on the MM raid with Wild. I hadn't seen him in awhile so we chatted a bit. The rest of the group were regulars except for one warlock who joined us for the first time on Thursday night, and was back for Friday's raid.

Wild usually heals the warrior tank on Fel, but tonight Wild was assigned heals for the druid tank on Ig. There are different things to look out for for each tank, but Wild was familiar with both. The battle started. We had modified the strategy slightly regarding clearing debuffs by assigning specific raiders that responsibility. Wild watched for the Burning Blood debuf. When it hit a player, that player was supposed to run to the ranged group because it gives the ranged DPSers additional damage against the Bossses. Wild then has to clear the buff before it kills the player that has it. Wild is also looking out for Heart of Ice, which the affected player has to run to the melee for the same reason. The pally healer had that debuff responsibility. Wild also had to watch for Waterlogged. Anyone getting this must cleanse it with fire, or it's near instantly fatal when Glaciate is cast. There is a lot of moving around. When we got the bosses down to 25% and shifted into Phase 2, things got even more frantic.

Phase 2 is a frantic chase. Fel and Ig retire, and we get Arion and Terrestra. Their abilities are a little bit easier to deal with, provided you have chased down a tornado or a gravity well, and you got the right one in the right order. The tornados move faster than most and tend to disappear and reappear elsewhere. It's hugely frustrating to locate and chase them down in the limited time we have, all the while still trying to heal and DPS. The gravity wells are slightly easier, but are still a pain to find in the midst of everything that is going on. Get the wrong one, or miss getting one at all, and you'll suffer massive damage from either Quake or Thundershock. Wild knows from experience that he can survive that hit, but not by much. I'd much rather catch that hurricane or find that well. We wiped during the second phase.

We shocked ourselves on our second attempt, flying past Phase 1, taking down Arion and Terrestra in P2, and entering the third phase for the first time. In Phase three the four bosses merge into a single entity called Elementium Monstrosity. This is really a DPS race to kill the Boss before we all die from the heavy fireworks that get worse every second - ice patches which keep growing, fire balls dropped around the room in ever greater numbers, a chain lightning cast that damages anyone within ten yards, and our favorite, gravity crush, which grabs a one or more players and crushes them. We got "EM" down to 15% before wiping.

On our third attempt we got into the third phase and took EM down to 2%! We just couldn't quite get enough DPS on him.

On our 4th attempt we started to tire, failing to get out of P2. We started making mistakes, and failed again on attempts 5, 6 and 7. We were past our stop time, but the raid leader wanted one more try. Show me what you can do, he challenged us.

We started, took Fel and Ig down to 25% and moved into P2. Raiders had trouble getting to the right safe spots, and Wild burned up a lot of healing, forced to go Tree of Life to keep things in hand. We pushed into P3. We pushed our limits and EM fell to 15%. Another round of chase the hurricane and the gravity wells, and EM was at 10%. Wild rezzed a dead DPSer. Wild was also on his second innervate.

We fought on. EM fell to 5%, then to 4% ... Wild kept glancing at the dwindling number. We reached 2%, equal to our best attempt.

The incoming damage had reached a crescendo, and despite all three healers efforts, health bars kept falling and raiders were dying.

We wrung out every ounce of DPS we could muster - and wiped with EM at 0.7%.

GAH!

We were done. And we will be back to do it all over again next week.

Wild was pretty happy on Thursday at his healing in comparison with the other two. But our visiting pally healer, Fl, on Friday showed Wild what could REALLY be done:

Final healing tally on the night:

#1: Fl, 10847 hps, 36.6% of all healing
#2: Wild, 7313 hps, 28.3%
#3: Pl, 6051 hps, 23.3%

I couldn't help checking Fl's gear - nothing under i353, and with three i378 pieces. Very, very nice.

Part 2 of the night is coming up.