Weekend (14 Aug) - News From Boulderfist

Weekend (14 Aug) - News From Boulderfist

Boulderfist is the home of the GoH guild, an Alliance guild that is part of Wild's extended family of friends. Members of both the DER and Sis families have relatives on Boulderfist, and recently the Wild family added their own.

That newest member of the Wild family, death knight BB, was in game both late Friday and Saturday nights. She spent her time gathering flowers and rocks to begin building her AH business. Once she gets her professions sufficiently raised she'll likely be heading to Outlands.

While BB had little exciting news, Sis family member Tea had a full plate over the weekend and brought this report to share:

BWD Done and Done - Part 1

Well, Tea saw a bit of action this last Sunday. She was not on much due to a mother-in-law visiting but the mum was gone by Sunday morning and Tea was back in business.

She was roaming around SW, checking out the AH, when she noticed the time was almost raid time. Excited, she pulled up the guild roster and became unexcited. There were only 10 people on and not one was Silver (the usual leader of the raid). Ug.

Silver made it on, just in time, and started the raid invites. At this point there were about 12 people on in the guild. Surprisingly, the pug came together faster than Tea expected (despite spending too long finding who was already locked in the raid and had joined our group) and we were off on our 25 man. But as with any pugs it means the high chance of people who don’t know what they are doing. We saw this. One was obvious before the pug started. We had a chatter box of a DK. Then there was the inane conversations that start up when they discover a *gasp* girl in vent. One of the reasons I try not to talk in vent unless I am with people I know or absolutely have to. So Silver was stuck dealing with dumb males.

The raid was pretty uneventful; surprising due to newbies not knowing the fights and a DK not noticing when to run out when targeted. We one-shot all bosses then it came to Nef ... Sigh. The first phase went off well, despite positioning issues when people started shooting too soon at Ony. The 2nd phase is where we failed. This is the one where Ony is now dead and the room fills with lava (Wild’s favorite phase). At this point everyone is on a platform (three groups) with a baddie, while Nef flies around above us. It is the job of one or two people on the platform to interrupt a spell that the baddie does while the casters shoot at Nef.

In summary there was an extreme lack of stuns and thus wipes. Two, maybe three of them. On top of that was the comments from the DK.. “Oh, I stunned him three times!” but this did not show at all on some addon that tracks this (probably recount). This is the same DK that I mentioned earlier. One that through the whole dungeon blamed his lower damage and such on lag and mom aggro. I am skeptical about both, but the mother aggro might have been real.

To sum up the end, Nef dropped, angel’s rejoiced and life went on. No new gear from the raid, but Tea got enough points to get a new chest.

Now the next tale, which will make this an even longer email and was the bane of Tea’s night.

Part 2 - Kersplat - Trials, Turbulence, and BoT

After BWD Tea was thinking about retiring for the eve. Couple of things were stopping her. First she had to go buy her new chest and socket and enchant it up. Second, Turd was on. Turd is her pvp buddy she does not see too much. While she was chatting up with Turd, Jho started forming a 10 man BoT. Spotting Tea he cordially invited her. Tea had other things to take care of before she could go and told him she would be a bit. If he still needed a person once she was done, she would be game.

Tea came back on and Jho still had the spot open (Jho is marshmallow man where the girls are concerned) and Tea was in. Now the problem with this raid is that it was a 10 man, not 25. Ten man you need to be able to pull your weight better or have some really good people to carry you. Tea had the latter.

I can’t tell you the bosses names, because they all blended together. Ug, the fights were bad. The first few were not bombs but not great.

[Insert by Wild: Too bad the BoT fights couldn't have been explained better; it's really frustrating to try to learn on the fly, and those boss fights all have little "gotchas" in them (like standing IN the fire instead of staying away, or running TO the tornado instead of away) that raiders need to know about.

The first boss you downed was Halfus along with three dragons that the raid activated once Halfus was engaged. Given the strength of the raid the raid leader likely activated all three up front and just overpowered them, but in Wild's raids we have to selectively activate them.]

So there are two dragons. They do different things. Shoot fire on the ground (avoid that area). Open portals that you can get sucked into (Tea did this) and you should also avoid this area. You need to collapse and spread at times … Tea did that part pretty well. And you need to dps the two different dragons. Tea failed there and just focused on one, not noticing that the other was about. How she did not notice? *Shrug* Could have been due to the mind overload and constant thoughts of “what the hell is going on?” that she had through the whole raid. She died at one point during this fight but was rezed.

[Insert by Wild: The two dragons, Therelion and Valiona, we call the Twins. The key to this fight is knowing when to collapse on the tank and when to stay at range, depending on which affect the two dragons are using and which affect you are being targeted with. A key mitigation in this fight for 10 man is to always keep four raiders at range at least 10 yards away to avoid nasty stuff happening to the tank/melee. ]

Her performance went downhill from there. We come up (order might be as mixed up as Tea’s memory here) to some other bosses. Two dudes, one is fire one is water. I guess you swap dps and try to keep them about the same level in health. Also when once starts freaking out (shooting a lot more than usual) dps needs to go over and focus on the one that is freaking out. There was also something in there on not shooting at a certain time, but Tea never figured out when.

This is where it got bad. So there was the two wipes. That was fine, since they did not seem to be Tea’s fault. The third try at these guys is where it got bad for Tea. After a certain point the two original dudes went away and were replaced with air and earth dudes. Tea did NOT expect this. The fight not being explained to her. But she did her usual thing and just attacked what it seemed that everyone else was attacking. Well at some point in this fight Tea noticed people floating on clouds or something. And someone on vent going “why the hell is the priest not getting on the (insert cloud name here)” He started to tell her to get on the big giant tornados around the room. Tea usually avoids things on the ground so had been avoiding anything in the room. Tea ran at the low clouds with lighting, nothing, other than maybe getting zapped. Then she ran at the tall tornados and got pushed back.. Tea had no idea what he was talking about. So Tea, like many before her, just played dumb and pretend she was not on vent.

[Insert by Wild: The third encounter is the trickiest one, as Tea found out. You start with two bosses, one targeted by melee, the other by ranged. After they are brought down, you get two more bosses. Once THEY are defeated, they merge into one boss for the final phase. The key for DPS on this fight is to DPS down both bosses at the same time to an even 25-26%. In the second phase raiders MUST get a debuff that comes from the tornadoes and the gravity wells, which alternate - failing to get the correct debuff in time for the many big AoE casts is instant death.]

She informed Jho she was playing dumb and he did not blow her cover. She was on the “phone” rather than being in vent. She was doing what the DK was doing in the BWD earlier, playing dumb and hoping to just get through the thing. The downside about Tea playing dumb was, like I said, much more difficult for other players in a 10 man, than it is in a 25 man.

Tea decided she was off the phone and back in vent when they got to Cho’chang, or whatever the last boss is. She needed clear instructions, ones that were not always the best or non-existent on past encounters (Jho is not a RL). The instructions on him were better. We wiped on the first attempt but she was pretty good with the mechanics of it. The only areas she really had issues with were the slime adds (she does not do aoe damage well unless she can target another player) and the tentacles at the end. With the tentacles it threw her due to them saying “get in close” but the range thing on her DBM showing red, like they needed to be spread out more. We wiped with Cho at less than 1%. Next time she followed the instructions better, having had seen the fight, and we dropped him.

[Insert by Wild: Cho'gall is the final boss. The DPS has a lot of responsibility on this fight, particularly with the slime adds, which for us is what has kept us from defeating Cho'gall so far. Those slimes have to be killed quickly, as they will continue to multiple with each new spawn, and they HAVE to be kept out of the raid as being touched by them ramps up the corruption debuff and can quickly turn a raider into a hostile. All raiders have to watch for the mind controlled players, too, who have to be stunned to un-mind control them quickly. Don't know the range on killing the tentacles, but that's just one more thing the DPS have to do in this fight. Gratz on killing Cho'gall in the end, though! Wild's raid has not brought him down, yet. ]

Tea thanked Jho for the invite but told him she would stick to 25 man raids until she knows the raid well enough. She would probably have been happier if they had kicked her and moved on without her after the dragon bosses.

Once I put Tea to bed I went downstairs and poured myself both a cup of tea and a cup of wine. Double medication was definitely in order..