In California where I live, there is always a group of men hanging out around the Home Depot looking for work. This week (and it's only Tuesday) Wild is like those folks outside the Home Depot. Wild's official raid nights are Thurs/Fri. They are run by Bd, our raid leader and guild leader. He is back from his vacation - but I guess not all the way back because he has not been around and there is no sign up for the Thurs/Fri raid.
So on Monday Wild hung out in Org around raid time for Mf's Mon/Tues BWD raid. Wild had his sign ready - Out of work Healer, will raid for Food Buffs.
Mf took me into his raid, which turned out to be the Firelands. Wild covered that in yesterday's post.
Wild decided that this was good, and so Wild hung out again on Tuesday night holding his sign. The Mrs hadn't missed me yet (maybe I should worry a little at that?), but on this night Mf did not have any work for Wild. He had only four raiders sign up and he was tired of spending an hour just trying to fill his raid. He said he was shutting down his raid for the time being and planned to do some recruiting before restarting his raid.
There were a lot of cars going by that Home Depot on Tuesday night - well, I mean, guilds and PUG groups wanting players for their various raids. Since Mf had canceled his raid, Wild was free to see what else there was to offer. Wild wanted to keep his options open for BoT on Thursday, so a BoT PUG was out. There was a 25 man BH that needed healers. Wild offered to come to that one, but they didn't want any more druids. Racists! I should call the ACLU. There were some Firelands runs forming, a couple of which looked promising. Meanwhile, Wild had been hoping to see Lady Hunter in game, since Tuesday is supposed to be the first night of her raid group. She still hadn't showed by 6:30pm, and Fn, one of her tanks, started invites without her. Sooooo, there was a raid planned tonight. But think of this - out of our three raid groups, one raid leader canceled his raid, a second never showed for a scheduled raid, and a third was missing. That's our guild. Wild waited around to see how Fn's invites went. After about 15 minutes Fn put a call out on guild chat - need healers and DPS for BWD. Wild waved his Home Depot sign at Fn, and Wild got an invite. In fact, they were ecstatic to get Wild into their raid. Wild started looking for the catch, which was that there were only five of us so far. We got to eight guildies and stalled. Mf and his canceled raid then came back in game and he joined us on his shadow priest. The tenth raider we PUGed, but by chance the PUG we got was in our former guild, MM, and well known to us. We were set.
I don't know what Wednesday will bring, but I think Hunter Fortress might have to wait as Wild will be holding out his sign one more time.
Uh ...
Oh, yea, there was a raid Tuesday night. Lady Hunter's group had saved the raid from the week before. They had just reached Nefarian and had barely got him to Phase 2 (of three phases) before they had to end their night. So now we would be heading straight to Nefarian with the whole evening ahead of us (well, what was left of it after patching together a raid) to get real cozy with the dragon. In case I forgot to mention it, Nefarian is the final boss in BWD.
The first thing Wild learned is that we don't start with Nefarian. We start with a muscled up Onyxia (another dragon we have seen in various prior incarnations). We entered BWD and took the big, evil elevator down a floor (yes, that elevator is evil; it kills people. Not Wild. Not yet). Make a right turn and go down the steps and there she is - Onyxia, preening herself on a little podium thing. Wild followed some raiders past her and up the other stairs, but our rogue stopped to say hi. Fn happened by and managed to keep the rogue alive when a ruffled Onyxia did some ruffling of her own. I suppose that is necessary to the fight, as Onyxia then flew down another level and perched herself in the middle of a chamber with three round, raised stanchions located around the room. So far this has all been pretty cool. We separated into three groups. One group on Onyxia, one on Nefarian when he showed up, and another to deal with the mobs that form, which involves kiting. Wild's healing duty seemed simple enough - keep the tank that was on Nefarian alive. If only that was all there was to it. And by the way, we have to jump down into the chamber to start the fight, and it's a long way down! And does some damage.
Pre-Fight View - That's Onyxia down on the floor below
On our first attempt Wild was sure he'd been told to help heal the Onyxia group as she was kited by her tank to the right side of the room. She has a nasty lightning storm among other things, but that was the main thing to watch for. It came from her sides (she breathed fire in front and tail swiped at her rear - despite the tail swipe raiders were told to get very comfy up under her tail if they wanted to survive the lightning. Ugh, what a smell! Wild was to move to heal the Nefarian tank once Nefarian showed up - which happened a lot faster than I expected. Wild was halfway to my tank (Nefarian is kited, of course, to the other side of the room from Onyxia) when Onyxia cast her lightning storm - Wild was too far from Onyxia to hide under her tail but not yet not far enough away to avoid the lightning. Dumb cow. Dead cow.
Wild died on our second attempt when he tried to survive Electrocute at less than full health. Electrocute can't be avoided as it is a raid-wide AoE, but at full health it can be survived. Another lesson learned, and we did get a little farther into the fight.
I don't remember what killed Wild on the third attempt. I think Wild was still groggy from the first two deaths.
On our fourth attempt Phase 1 came into focus for Wild and went smoothly. Phase 2 engaged, the dragons went airborne, and the whole chamber was instantly filled with lava right up to the height of the pillars. Wild had his instructions - jump up onto your designated pillar to get out of the nasty lava, where a nice little mob will try to knock you off the pillar back into the lava which was quickly fatal. Wild's little group on the pillar was Wild, his tank, and the rogue. The tank, a pally, was interrupting the mob's casting to stop it from knocking us off, but missed one and the rogue went flying into the lava and died. The other groups on the other pillars killed their mobs, and it was just the tank and Wild trying - slowly - to kill that third mob so we could go into Phase 3. Wild was having some serious mana trouble by that time, and when the other raiders started chanting at Wild to DPS the mob to speed things up, the tank said NO! I wants da heals!
We did eventually kill the mob and we did get into phase 3, which is an all out DPS assault. We were pretty beat up by then and only got Nef down to 72%. But we made it to phase 3, at least, a lot further than their attempts last week.
We made FIVE more attempts, with out best getting Nef to 25%. We even switched up the start a little, moving the druid tank to Nef and letting the pally tank handle the mobs in phase 3. Wild got to chase his tank around the room while he kited the mobs around and that was the attempt that got us to 25%. That was our 8th attempt and we went overtime to get in one more shot. Wild sabotaged that last attempt, unfortunately, when the klutzy cow missed his jump onto the pillar for phase 2, panicked, and killed himself in the lava.
Recovering after Our Best Attempt
If Wild were in GoH I'm sure he'd be getting a visit from a guild officer offering some sage advice: Get out of the lava. Don't stand where the lightning will hit you. Be at full health for the electrocute. Don't be a klutz. Yes, ma'am. Yes, ma'am. Yes, ma'am. Yes, uh, no ma'am.
We'll see if Wild learned his lessons on Wednesday night.
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