Tuesday (2 Aug) - Sweet Serenite

Tuesday (2 Aug) - Sweet Serenite

It was quite amazing to see our guild blossom into a 25 man Blackwing Descent raid on Tuesday night. One ten man raid that runs on Mon/Tues plus one ten man raid that runs on Tues/Wed, both working BWD, made up the core of the raid. There were raiders from the Thurs/Fri raid that also signed on, such as Wild. There were friends from another guild that typically raid with one group or another of ours joining us. And there was Lady Serenite, one time guild leader of FS, long time online friend from the earliest days of FS, and until lately long retired from the game. She had been ill, and had restarted her WoW account to have something to do while she recovered. More than a few of her many friends asked her to come join us for the raid if a spot came open. She and Wild chatted for quite awhile and Wild kept her informed on how invites were going. She got her invite, but got lost trying to find the entrance to BWD at Blackrock Mountain. Wild guided her in.

Lady Hunter, who led the Tues/Wed raid group, was in the raid of course, and Wild felt doubly blessed being in the raid with two of his favorite Ladys.

Raid start time was 6:30pm, and actually getting started at 7pm was pretty much on time for us. Lady Ser had asked Wild when the raid was to start and I told her that it would be at least 30-60 minutes later than when it was scheduled. She laughed, noting that nothing really changed with this group of characters.

The banter between raiders while we assembled was lively and got so risque players were packing their kids off to bed to get them out of speaker range. Lady Ser made some comment about "boobies" and got a "dirty whore!" line back at her, followed by "er ... I mean you wild woman" which Wild followed up with "you mean Wild's woman don't you?" Emotes were flung back and forth, another friend from long ago raids regaling the group with Wild's more memorable (or more forgettable from Wild's view) times I got lost in Karazahn. In the press of getting everyone invited and assembled, a baffled guildie found himself ninjaed into the raid the moment he logged in and quickly Summoned to Blackrock Mountain. "Uh, guys, what am I doing here?" he asked. BWD! Several raiders hollered to him. "LOL. I'm not even 85 yet!" Oops. We even made the classic mistake of entering the raid in 10 man mode, not 25 man. Wild was actually able to enter, but a second later was summarily booted out and I ended up somewhere in the Blasted Lands. The raid leader made fun of himself for the gaffe and switched us to 25 man mode.

We didn't so much settle down carry the excitement right into Blackwing Descent. We had what seemed to me an overabundance of healers in the raid - seven in all. I don't really know what the right numbers are anymore since I never see 25 man raids. We had two paladins, a shaman, a priest, and three (three!) druids. The pallies got tank healing duty, with Wild and another druid backing them up and raid healing. We had four raiders seeing BWD for the first time, one of whom had never even raided before! Most of the raid, however, was very familiar with 10 man BWD, and the fights in 10 and 25 man are considered to be very similar, just scaled for the number of raiders.

Normally we would start with Magmaw, but one of our rogues was yammerin' for Omnotron (apparently he desperately wanted a drop from that encounter). Since it didn't much matter which fight we started with, we went after Omnotron. That battle played out smoothly and we set down all four of the robots in order. Just like that we had a 25 man kill! One of the great things about doing 25 man is that the number of boss kill drops is much higher. Normally 2 items drop in 10 man. When Omnotron went down in 25 man four items dropped. There are very few gear slots left where Wild could use an i359 item, though, but one of them is rings. Both of Wild's rings are pvp rings (i365 and i358). Wild won the ring, replacing the i358.

It was then on to Magmaw. That battle almost got away from us when one of the raiders doing the lava worm wrangling struggled to get his chains and then managed to fall off. That was somehow straightened out and Magmaw went down.

Maloriak was our next target. It may sound like we were moving right along, but that really wasn't the case. It's one thing for a raider or two to dally or need a short "brb" in a 10 man; it becomes unwieldy in 25 man, and we just weren't practiced enough at it to have the additional rigor and press needed to keep a large raid focused. There were delays and discussions, side conversations and question and answer moments, and general milling about every moment we weren't actually engaged in combat. Nobody really minded any of that, though - we were all having a blast together.

We wiped on our first attempt on Maloriak. The DPS was confused over when to DPS the boss and when to DPS the adds, and that slowed everything down. We were not in any trouble of wiping, and could have fought him darn near forever with the amount of healing we were packing, but there was one small thing we didn't think about - the Berserk timer, which is what got us wiped.

It was a straightforward fix, though, and Maloriak went down on our second attempt. We had hoped to get to another boss, but time ran out on us.

For the wrap up, the first thing that should be noted is that this is the first - the FIRST - 25 man the MM2 guild has done since the formation of the guild. If Wild had his way we would be doing 25 man every week! But that is not the plan. The time and effort to get a 25 man together is just not something our guild is prepared to take on every week, so a once per month schedule is being considered. It can only be one night, though, as we just don't have enough raiders that can be available twice in one week.

In 10 man we would have gotten six drops from the three bosses we downed. In 25 man we got 13 drops. About two-thirds of the drops found willing raiders who needed them, so it was a powerful night for gearing up raiders.

Wild did fine, finishing 3rd overall in healing on the night:

#1: pally - 10111 hps, 18.8% of all healing
#2: druid - 9320, 16.8%
#3: Wild - 8683, 15.4%
#4: priest - 6635, 12.0%
#5: druid - 7099, 11.6%
#6: pally - 7687, 11.2%
#7: shaman - 5745, 7.3%

The DPS - Our top DPSer was a hunter at 16.9k DPS who did 7.6% of all damage.

DPS # of raiders at that level
16k+ - 1 DPS
15k+ - 1 DPS
14k+ - 5 DPS
13k+ - 3 DPS
12k+ - 1 DPS
11k+ - 1 DPS
10k+ - 2 DPS
9k+ - 1 DPS

We had one DPSer who barely made 6k DPS, but you could guess who that was - Lady Ser, invited more for her company than for her DPS.

If only we could do this more often.