Thursday (30 Jun) - Post Patch Raiding

Thursday (30 Jun) - Post Patch Raiding

As usual Wild logged in a half hour early for the evening raid. Usually I use that time to make sure Wild is raid ready, and then I go get in a little fishing to make more +int food, which Wild can go through a lot of when raiding. Wild got a bonus for being early this time - the raid leader for the evening was putting together an impromptu Baradin Hold (BH) run and snagged Wild to heal.

I thought a new boss might be added to BH, but there is still only the one. Instead, the patch changed the trash mobs from humanoids to flying eyeballs. I'm sure there is lore behind that, but I haven't looked it up yet. The guild tried to do BH a couple of days before, and the new trash mobs slaughtered them! They found out later that BH was bugged and the eyeballs had been set to 25 man difficulty, not 10 man. We were very relieved that had been fixed by the time we arrived at BH on Thursday night. The trick with the eyeballs is that the whole group has to be AoEed down within ten seconds or really nasty explosions start to take place. The start was simple - stack on the tank and AoE like mad. We didn't get to see the explosions as we crushed the eyeballs. Our group downed the boss almost as easily. An i365 druid caster pair of boots dropped which went to Wild by default (good thing, Wild had rolled a "3"). It's a pvp item that won't fit into Wild's raid gear, but still very nice to have.

The raid leader then dropped the BH raid and began inviting those that had signed up for the Bastion of Twilight raid. Wild knew most of them, including Pl, the priest healer that Wild often raided with. The third healer was a friend of Bd's, a paladin, who was not in the guild but had helped out in raids a few times before. Bd was impressed with the healing she had done in prior raids, and Wild took that as a friendly challenge now that I was officially a regular in the guild raid.

We had one glitch during the trash mobs once we started BoT. There is a section where we run a gauntlet of mobs. When we reached the last of them all of the mobs we had killed reset and we could not complete the gauntlet until we went back in the other direction and re-killed all the mobs that had reset.

The triplet of drakes for the Halfus fight was only mid-difficulty. Last week it had taken us 7 tries to kill him. On this night Halfus died on our first attempt.

We cleared some more trash with no unexpected bugs and reached Theralion and Valiona, the second encounter. There is a new feature in 4.2 called the Dungeon Guide. In it you can read about every dungeon and raid encounter, and every boss including all abilities. No need anymore to have to swap back to wowhead to read up on a boss - it's all right at our fingertips now. Bd had us all open our guides as he walked us through the strategy, using the Guide to help us better understand the dangers and how the strategy accounts for it. Pretty useful.

The general positioning we use is that all raiders are in melee range except for four selected ranged raiders, who stay at range for the whole fight (except for Blackout, of course). Additionally, Bd asked Wild to be the sole raider clearing the Blackout debuff. Wild must watch for Blackout, note who it hit, time when the raid should collapse on the tank, and then clear the debuff when all (or most if there are laggards) are packed next to the tank, then clearing the debuff quickly. Waiting too long increases damage on the raid, but clearing too early could leave raiders too far away, which causes much higher damage. Blackout could kill raiders before the patch; we have a little more leeway for mistakes now.

On our first attempt Wild tried to do his debuff duty but on every Blackout someone else would clear the debuff before Wild. That was monumentally frustrating. We did pretty well on that first attempt, anyway, getting the pair of drakes to 45%. Wild then whispered Bd afterward, asking what had been going on with Blackout. The new visiting pally healer admitted she had been clearing the debuff. I didn't care either way, she could do it if she wanted to that badly. But no, Wild couldn't weasel his way out of that chore. The pally healer wasn't a regular - Blackout clearing was Wild's job - now and forever, I guess.

We only had time for two more attempts, with our best getting down to 29%. The meteorites seemed to confuse some people, so that was one issue. Avoiding the flame breath from the drake currently on the ground was another issue that our group needs to get better at. I hope I will be around Friday night for our second try, as I think we will beat those two.

But if Wild doesn't make it to the raid, that means the anniversary couple (our 22nd today) party got extended into the evening instead of restarting after the raid. I'm a happy guy either way. :D