Monday (5 Dec) - Hour of Twilight (Part 2)

Monday (5 Dec) - Hour of Twilight (Part 2)

When we left off Wild had just entered Dragon Soul. We were in a large, open field completely surrounded by mobs. That was a little unnerving until Wild realized that many of those mobs were on our side. As we studied the layout it became clear that the enemy mobs were arrayed in a path meant to defend the entrance to Wyrmrest Temple. We prepared for battle.

Quick aside - I was going to whine/rant about the increasing erosion of good strategy information about bosses and trash mobs that seems to have reached it's nadir with DS, but I'd much rather go kill things, so ...

We killed things. A few raiders died while we learned what the trash mobs were capable of, but we were very pleased when it took us just three trash pulls to arrive at the entrance to Wyrmrest Temple. We did have one teensy obstacle, though. That would be Morchok, an elemental doing it's best to tear down the Temple. Currently, Morchok was pulling great dragons out of the air and flinging them to the ground with bone crushing force.

We engaged. Things went pretty smoothly - at first. In the first phase it's pretty much tank and spank. Raiders stayed close enough to Morchok to minimize damage from Stomp. Periodically a crystal formed and lines arched out of it, tagging three random raiders. Wild was tagged by the first crystal and Wild ran to it with the other two who had been tagged. Wild cast barkskin on himself and HOTed up us tag-ees, and after a few seconds the crystal exploded and knocked us all back a few feet. This happened several times.

We made it through that phase and entered Phase 2. The tanks had some special requirements to deal with in this phase, but Wild and the other healers weren't having any trouble keeping heals up. Morchok then pulled the whole raid to him and became immune. Morchok released us, large fragments of crystal formed, and a thick black ooze began pouring out from around Morchok. The ooze was deadly, and could only be avoided by hiding behind those crystal fragments. Wild had limited sight lines for healing from behind that fragment. We had been warned that standing too close to the fragment would also cause damage. The black ooze sluiced it's way around the fragment Wild was behind, but not close enough to deal damage. Others weren't so fortunate and three died.

We wiped at 55% on our first attempt. The mechanics didn't seem all that tough, though, and we went at Morchok again. This time we got him past 20%, where he did a soft enrage that increased damage and speed of attack. We came within a hair of killing him on our second attempt, getting him to 0.2%!

On our third attempt Morchok went down.

We were elated at getting our first DS mob down. Morchok dropped [Petrified Fungal Heart] an i397 healer necklace that Wild dearly wanted. His putrid roll of 15, though, fell far short and our shaman healer won it. B-tard!  Oops, I mean Gratz!

We had intended only to try the first boss, but with the quick success we still had time to go further.

With Morchok down we were able to enter Wyrmrest Temple. Inside were many npcs that we would normally see at the Temple. There were also dragons stationed inside, ready to fly us to our next encounter.



We repaired our gear at the Temple and then chose a dragon to fly us to the next boss, Warlord Zon'ozz. He is some kind of famous faceless warrior from the wars of the Old Gods. I mean, this dude is OLD. I'll just call him Ozz.

Wild's temporary mount flew Wild over a great maw of moist tentacles - and dropped me! It was a long fall, but eventually a parachute opened and guided Wild down to the floor of a large, circular cavern.





Ozz stood in the middle of the cavern. Arrayed around him were four sets of mobs. These mobs do require a little finesse to take down, finesse we learned on the fly. We wiped twice, but eventually figured out that for us the best method was to target and kill the Eye (one of the mobs) first while keeping the Claw (another mob) busy so that it wouldn't Flail us to death. Once we had that figured out the mobs went down smoothly.

Ozz was another matter. The key to this fight involves tossing a deadly ball of energy between tanks and the ranged group. It's not dodge ball - we want to get hit by it. We never quite figured out how to do that successfully. We wiped all three times we tried. 

That ended our first guild run in Dragon Soul. We did down a boss, which we couldn't do on our first (or second, or fifth) attempt in the Firelands. Only seven more DS bosses to go.  :-)

Bd encouraged everyone to give the LFR a try. The LFR DS has only the first four bosses. You must be at least i372, so we don't have to deal with badly undergeared players, and it's 25 man only, so there is some wiggle room for mistakes and the occasional idiots. Boss kills only drop four items instead of the usual six, however, so the chances of coming home with loot are pretty low.

Wild signed up as a healer, and IMMEDIATELY got an invite. Wild was jazzed - but confused. When he was portalled in it was not at the beginning of the raid. Wild realized he had been brought into a raid in progress, and had no idea who this boss was or what Wild should be doing. No one seemed to care, though. They had apparently just wiped, and were buffing up for another attempt. Wild picked a healer in the raid, and just followed him as the raid attacked, doing raid healing and keeping HoTs on one of the tanks. It was fun with virtually no pressure other than personal pride in doing a good job and not screwing anything up. And the boss went down. There was a whole list of gear drops, two of which were druid/healer loot, but Wild did not win either of them.

I later looked up the boss we had killed. It was Hagara the Stormbinder, the fourth and final boss in that DS LFR. So, Wild could now lay claim to killing the first and fourth bosses in Dragon Soul. Wild would have a hard time explaining the fight, though, since I didn't really understand much of what was going on.

Wild felt a little cheated that he was still missing the 2nd and 3rd bosses. Wild dove into the LFR again, and this time it was a group starting with the first boss. The LFR exclusion rules are a little different from normal raids. In a normal raid Wild would have been locked out of the raid and wouldn't be allowed to join until after the first boss was killed (since Wild already had a 1st boss kill that week). In the LFR, though, Wild could still join and fight the 1st boss, but Wild would be locked out on loot rolls for that boss, again, since Wild had already gotten a chance at the 1st boss loot on the prior kill. We did kill the second boss this time as the tanks had a much better idea how to manage the ball tossing thing. Wild only had to stay stacked up with the ranged raiders and stay alive.

That took us to the third boss, Yor'sahj the Unsleeping. Good ole Yor tends to squirt out multi-colored oozes throughout the fight that the DPS have to kill in a certain order. The tanks have a tough job managing tank switches, but their most important roll is yelling as loud as you can possibly yell in raid chat when the DPS target the wrong mobs. PURPLE!!!!! YOU IDIOT! KILL PURPLE!  is one excellent example of raid leadership. I don't know if Wild was following a proper raid strategy, but I found that healing the tanks/raid in between ooze parades was easy, and that when the oozes did form up Wild would saunter around behind the DPS and follow them and the oozes back to the tanks (where they hopefully would be dead by that time - the oozes, not the tanks). Wild had a couple of uncomfortable moments before I learned the follow trick when I was watching one ooze and nearly walked right into another one. I know I know, the combinations of colors all have meaning and some are more deadly than others. Apparently we didn't get anything too dastardly because no one died except for Yor. No, Wild didn't get any loot on this one, either.

After the kill we again had to portal back to the Temple and take flight with another dragon. I can see how all this going and coming could get irritating after awhile. It didn't help when Wild DCed while flying to the next boss location. It was even more annoying when Wild was deposited at the graveyard. Which was strange, because Wild wasn't dead.

Wild's guild came to the rescue. Specifically, Bd came to the rescue. Bd hollered out in guild chat: "Starting up a DS LFR. Who wants in on it!" It was a no brainer for Wild. Wild quit the LFR he was already in, ported to Org, and threw things at Bd until he invited me into the group he was forming. Actually, Bd asked Wild to join him - Wild just likes to throw things.

We only got five guildies to sign up - they have to have i372 gear, which kept some from being able to come - but that was fine. We could talk on vent (well, Wild could listen) and Bd could give us tips about the bosses. It was pretty hilarious, though, when the raid leader for the LFR tried to boot Bd from the raid. The raid leader and Bd were the two tanks for the raid, and apparently the raid leader for some reason wanted a different tank. With four guildies to back Bd up, we snuffed that idea right off the bat.

Running DS in 25 man with a group of guildies was the most fun Wild had all evening. We slew all four bosses and Wild got his achievement for the clear. No, Wild didn't get any loot from the one boss that offered Wild loot, but it was still a blast. Two guildies did get loot, though, and that helps our raiding.

I know this is going long, but I couldn't help but add one more raid to the mix. On Tuesday afternoon Happy was at the Auction House (of course) when he saw a trade chat request for a Baradin Hold run. The new patch added a third boss to that raid, Alizabal, Mistress of Hate. They needed just three more to fill a 25 man raid, and they needed healers. Wild wasted no time tossing Happy and jumping in game. Wild got his invite.

I am embarrassed to say how long it's been since Wild was in Baradin Hold. I just couldn't work up enough interest to bother, even though Wild could have benefited from the Tier drops each boss drops. I wasn't going to make that mistake again.

The Ali fight in 25 man was a piece of cake. There are really only two things to remember - stack up on the tank, and when this one ability is used by Ali (I can't tell you what that is because Wowhead won't tell me - dang thing has been giving me trouble all day) - anyway, the raid leader will know what it is, and DBM announces it - anyway, just run away when that ability pops and then stack back up again.

Wild was so busy patting himself on the back for getting his BH kill I didn't see the first loot drop. The three drops after it were cloth and mail gear, which of course didn't interest Wild. Wild hung around because I thought they might need to DE some items that no one rolled on. Then this popped up in raid chat: "It's so sad that druid pants drop and we have no druid healers in the raid."

"Huh?" Wild said to himself.

Raid leader - "We DO have a druid healer, and only one. Wild?"

"Huh?" Maybe Wild said that aloud this time.

"You want to roll on those pants or not?"

"YES. OF COURSE!" Wild rolled, not really having a good idea what it was he was rolling on.

Wild will be saying prayers of thanks to the WoW gods and that raid leader for many weeks of BH runs. The drop Wild almost let get away was [Deep Earth Legwraps], the first of five pieces of Wild's Tier 13 set. Oh, the ilevel? i397. WOOT!  By the way, I love the look of this set - the designers called the look "phosphorescent mushrooms" with writhing plant roots and clusters of fungi. Mmmm, Mmmmm, good. I just wish we didn't have to wear a dress. Oh well, Transmorgrification will take care of that.