Cho'gal is an ogre-magi, but then I guess you already knew that from the title. Bet you didn't know he has two heads, and at least one of those heads is quite insane. He was the leader of the Twilight Hammer clan, and those were some really crazy folks. He's a big sucker with an "X" across his chest. That's because Cho'gal is supposed to be dead, killed by Rend and Maim Blackhand for his traitorous acts. Cho'gal also had a lot to do with the creation of the death knights. I asked Naithipe for some information on that, but she wasn't interested in talking. Naithipe rarely is.
Cho'gal, who in reality escaped, went into hiding in the Temple of Ahn'Qiraj. While all the rest of us were wrestling with the Lich King, Cho'gal got crazier and crazier, intentionally deforming an already nasty profile. A number of heroes went after Cho'gal and defeated him by bringing the Temple of Ahn'Qiraj down on top of him. So he's been supposedly killed twice now ... but wait! There's more!
No one knows how Cho'gal survived a second time, but he did, showing up in the early days of the Cataclysm. His forces were attacked in the Twilight Highlands and he was driven into the Bastion of Twilight - where he now waits for intrepid raiders to test their strength against him.
Intrepid Wild and nine other raiders got their first look at him on Friday night.
Cho'gal reminds Wild of Icecrown Citadel's Rotface - just a little. They are both ugly as sin, and in both fights there is a lot of puking going on. Cho'gal has more slimes than Rotface, though, and he has a neat gimmick called Corruption which can be quite annoying.
It's a two phase fight, and I'm going to jump right into it.
Everyone in the raid set up close to each other at the center of the chamber. Not packed tightly together, but still close enough so that all of the many abilities that Cho'gal and his adds throw at us can be managed without having to run all over the place. Da, our regular druid tank, drew the short straw and engaged Cho'gal first, drawing the ogre close to the circle where the rest of the raid was positioned. The two tanks swap with each throughout the fight.
Wild had dispel duty on this fight as well. Every raider is subject to getting Corruption from various attacks, some of which are avoidable and some of which are not. In addition to healing, Wild's job was to clear a debuff from raiders when the amount of Corruption they had reached 25. Wild could not remove the Corruption itself, only it's effects.
The first seconds of the fight were pretty light on the healers. We then got our first add, called a Corrupting Adherent. This thing is not all that dangerous itself; it does do some shadow damage and adds to the Corruption of unlucky raiders unless it's quickly pulled away from the raid and killed. It's main danger is what Cho'gal does to it thirty seconds after it spawns - five oozes form and begin slowly moving toward raiders. This is another reason why the raid clings together. DPS HAS to focus fire those oozes down before they reach the raid, and we don't want the oozes wandering off after raiders who are far away.
Cho'gal also mind controls two raiders at a time who will begin channeling a damage enhancing ability. Raiders have to interrupt that channeling quickly using just about any interrupt we have. Wild used Stomp on one raider to break the mind control.
To this point in the fight things were going quite well from Wild's perspective. Wild had been assigned as the swing man healer. The pally was main healing whichever tank was currently engaged against Cho'gal (tanks take enormous and spikey damage, requiring very close attention by their healer) while the priest was raid healing. Wild had to help the pally tank heal during periods when the damage became insane and then had to help raid heal when Cho'gal started throwing out AoEs. All the while not forgetting his dispel duties. Wild was really having fun.
Things started to get dicey with each new adherent add that spawned. The adherents themselves could be handled but with each new one five new oozes spawned. Let me be clear - after the first adherent spawns, we get five oozes. After the second one spawns, we get TEN oozes (five from each). When the third adherent spawned and we had FIFTEEN oozes to kill, some of them started to reach the raid.
We didn't get to Phase 2 on our first attempt, but did get Cho'gal down to 42%. Overall, we were pretty pleased with that first try.
On our second attempt we pushed Cho'gal to 25% to enter phase 2. We didn't see much of that phase because by that time we'd had four adherents spawn and we weren't dealing with those 20 oozes very well. We wiped with Cho'gal at 24%.
We made one more attempt, trimming the percentage to 23%. The oozes are our problem; everything else we handled well.
But wait a minute! What about the puking? I know that is what everyone was waiting to hear about. Well, Wild kept waiting to start hawking up his dinner, which starts happening when a raider gets to 50 Corruption. The tanks, poor souls, were doing some of that throwing up, attempting to aim it away other raiders as it is quite caustic, but in the three attempts it was only in the last attempt and during phase 2 that Wild hit that 50 mark and starting soiling his shoes. Messy, very messy.
After the raid the raid leader called in the healers and the tanks for a private conversation. He asked if there were periods when things slackened up and for any other observations on what may be affecting our success. Wild, as the swing healer, got to see both tank healing and raid healing. Frankly, Wild had to admit, raiders were doing pretty well avoiding the things they could and that, even the times Wild got mind controlled, the healing was pretty much under control. The pally healer chimed in that there were a few close calls tank healing, but it wasn't until the tanks started to get a heavy dose of Corruption that things started to get out of hand. That was one of the things the tanks wanted to work on - how to reduce the amount of Corruption they were picking up. What it all boiled down to, really though, was killing the oozes before they started infiltrating the raid. Sometimes the raid got a little too spread out, which reduced the effectiveness of AoE damage since the oozes would spread out, too. We were getting a good handle on that, though, yet oozes were still get through.
The two obvious solutions were 1) kill the oozes faster with more DPS or better control (ie, slow them down); and or 2) DPS Cho'gal down to 25% faster to avoid that fourth ooze spawn. The adherents stop coming when we enter phase 2. In fact, if we enter phase 2 after the fourth adherent has spawned but before the oozes come, the add will despawn without any oozes forming. Going with just two healers instead of three was doable except for one thing - mind control. Healers getting mind contolled, even for a short time, could be deadly, particularly if Cho'gal happens to pick both healers at the same time.
Wild will help himself more next time. Wild typically just kited the oozes around when he got targeted, going in circles and trying to stay close to the rest of the raid who were still trying to kill them. Wild has three ways to slow those thing down, though, and intends to use them next time - roots, stomp, and cyclone. I don't know if they'll all work on those oozes, but Wild is going to try.
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