Tuesday (23 Aug) - Plowing the Fields of BWD

Tuesday (23 Aug) - Plowing the Fields of BWD

Lady Hunter has returned to the fold and made a point to call on Wild for her raid Tuesday night, even though Wild had not signed up for it. When Wild joined the raid as the second healer (Fl, a superb pally healer was the other healer), Lady Hunter announced that she now had two "sick" healers and that was all she needed. "Sick" is supposed to mean "good" I guess, but I'm not up to speed on the slang these days.

We went with a two healer, two tank setup and got started only a half hour late, which is ahead of schedule for this raid. The last time this group raided we dropped Nefarian in Blackwing Descent for the first time. The plan on this night was to clear all of BWD and then start on Bastion of Twilight. Quite an ambitious plan.

The first boss, Magmaw, went down smoothly on our first attempt. Wild has been part of at least three different strategies for Magmaw, but Wild liked this one best. Wild just stood and moved with the melee near Magmaw while raid healing and providing some backup for the tank healer, who really didn't need the backup. Easy as could be. Wild also picked up [Scorched Wormling Vest]. It's an i359 chest piece and although Wild already has an i359 chest, it's a better piece with two sockets instead of the one socket chest that Wild was currently wearing. A small but nice upgrade.

The second encounter, the Omonotron Defense System (the robots) also went down on the first try.

We went to Chimaeron next. Wild had done this fight only once before, and since it had special rules involving the healers I asked for a refresher. In this fight the boss knocks raiders down to 1% health throughout the fight, and health has to be maintained at something like 10% instead of trying to heal to full. More special healing on the tanks, but Wild was asked to focus on the raid and the pally would handle both tanks (with a little help from Wild). It was a really crazy ride. We lost one of the tanks pretty early on, but with both healers going at max we kept things going. We plowed into phase two, but we were bleeding raiders as Wild was having cooldown trouble with his AoE heals as well has having to help keep the lone tank alive. The pally healer died. Wild got a rez on him, but it cost Wild his life to do it. The raid entered Phase 3 with four raiders - three pallies and a rogue. It was an awesome thing to see. The pallies stayed alive with their myriad save me spells while the rogue became a one man wrecking crew. Chimaeron went down.

Then it was Maloriak's turn. This was another fight Wild had only done once before. Once the raid leader started talking I started to remember it better. The strategy had been tweaked in Wild's favor, too. There first time Wild had done Chim there were positioning issues that worked against Wild getting to the center for the big AoE. This time Wild could stand pretty much wherever I wanted and Wild had no problems other than an occasional raider drifting out of range - but they figured out pretty quick that they needed to move when they started taking damage that wasn't being healed. Maloriak went down on the first attempt. Wild was hoping for the [Leggings of Consuming Flame] to drop, but no luck there.

Next up was Atramedes. Wild has seen this fight before, too, once, but we weren't able to bring him down on that run. This time, we had one false start that caused a wipe, and then killed him on our second try. That was Wild's first kill of Atramedes, and it triggered the Achievement for clearing BWD (since I already had a Nef kill).

We had made it to the final boss in BWD, defeating five encounters, in a single night.

We did make two attempts on Nefarian, but we had to ask our shadow priest to turn healer for the fight, since it pretty much requires three healers for the pedestal phase. We didn't too well, but the raid will have all night Wednesday to bring him down. Wild will not likely be there, as we will be visiting friends. But we'll hopefully be back in time for Hunter Fortress!