Wednesday (5 Oct) - Lady Hunter Returns

Wednesday (5 Oct) - Lady Hunter Returns

Wild checked the raid calendar around 5pm on Wednesday and the Lady Hunter raid had four guildies signed up. The raid had been posted sometime the day before, so there hadn't been much time for guildies to notice it was up, and it was only for the one night instead of the usual two. Wild tried to pretend disinterest, but couldn't stay away. Wild logged in about five minutes before the 6:30pm raid start time.

Lady Hunter was in game already, which was surprising, but a good sign. She asked in guild chat for volunteers for the raid. Lady Hunter didn't wait for Wild to answer the call; she sent Wild an invite, already knowing I wouldn't say no. Wild is so predictable. It was just Lady Hunter and Wild in the raid for awhile, but guildies trickled in and more invites went out. At 7pm we had nine raiders with our 10th, a tank, finishing up a Heroic. That took longer than expected and it was 7:30pm before he joined up and we headed for the Firelands.

This night was not a trash/rep run. We were after Beth'tilac and we killed only those trash mobs we needed to get past to get to the big spider. We had four women in our raid: Lady Hunter of course, two of the three healers, and a mage. It was pretty lively on vent (maybe it's sexist to say that there is a lot more back and forth commentary the more women there are in vent, but that seems to be the case :-) ). Wild set up the healing assignments (I was getting tired of having to try and heal everybody not knowing who was assigned to who).

We worked our way to Beth'tilac easily. We once again had raiders who had not seen this fight, including one of the healers, a druid. She whispered Wild for advice and I went over what she needed to look for and do from a healing perspective. She's relatively new to the guild and a little under geared, but she has made some real progress since joining the guild.

Beth dangles from her web near the floor of her lair when we first approach her. She then glides up into the web above us once the encounter starts. Nobody in the raid had any experience climbing up into that web, which three raiders have to do for this fight. The more I see of this fight the more convinced I am that experienced raiders who can handle the battle in the web above are absolutely essential to winning this fight. Nothing we do on the floor of her lair matters if things don't go well up in the web.

All three of the raiders tapped for web duty were good raiders, but would be climbing into the web for the first time. We made five attempts and on three of them we wiped due to (1) the tank got too close to the hole in the web and fell through. Without the tank up in the web, Beth instantly killed the healer and DPSer that were still up there; (2) the healer up in the web did not know about the hole in the web, which during the phase change is how she gets down to the floor of the lair. She stayed up there too long and died; and (3) the healer thought the tank had already ascended up into the web, so she climbed up there only to find she was the first up in the web - without a tank to protect her, Beth quickly slaughtered her.

On our fourth attempt the team was having some success up in the web, and that made the battle on the floor of the lair more important. Wild used all his special heals - tree form, Tranquility, etc, to keep the raid alive while main healing the tank who was kiting the drones and the even nastier little spiders that spawned. The other druid healer, who stayed on the floor with Wild, did well, too, for her first time. We got Beth to drop down and return once without a wipe, but did wipe the second time she came down. She has to descend three times before we enter the second phase. It was progress, anyway. The last attempt was forgettable.

The top end DPSers were around 18k, but it ranged down to about 12k. Wild averaged about 15k hps with the pally healer at 10k and the other druid around 8k. The numbers are still good enough that with some practice we should be able to take Beth down. The problem is always that we never know who will be in the raid. We never have a enough core raiders to form a team where everyone knows their role and does it.

Wild got his raid fix, though. And there is always hope it will be better next week. Oh, he also bought a new pair of boots, ilvl 378 and one of the leather working pieces that top end leather workers can make. Wild had to go outside the guild to get it, as our LWers haven't reached the point where they can get the pattern. Wild inched up to gear level i366 (from i365). There is a pair of gloves Wild will be going after next.

With the raid running a little late there was only Shevils representing Hunter Fortress for the after the raid fun. Shevils queued up and then went and did some of the Brewfest quests while waiting for the queue to pop. JB was the last Wild family member to go through and complete all of the Brewfest quests, culminating in her getting the ram mount (she has two of the ram mounts, actually). Wednesday was the last day of Brewfest, though, and Shevils was only fooling around. She did try the ram races, but that takes a lot of practice to be able to complete the quests. Long before Shevils had gotten the hang of things, the BG queue popped. It was Warsong Gulch. We had a pretty high level team: 1 level 27, 2 28s, and 7 29s. The alliance team fought well at mid, but never got their hands on our flag. We beat them 3-0. Shevils was a little disappointed that she only came in 2nd in dealing damage. Shevils is 57% of the way to level 30. She'll probably go ahead and finish leveling to 30 this week.