Thursday (19 Jan) - A Real Raid Night

Thursday (19 Jan) - A Real Raid Night

The plan for our Thursday night raid was to get our ten raiders, wrap up the Ulduar raid we had started on Wednesday, and then dive into Dragon Soul.

We didn't quite achieve the first part. We came up one raider short of ten. Wild was encouraged, though, that we had seven of nine raiders from Wednesday return for the second night. We lost both our tanks, one who we knew was gone (retired from WoW) while our other tank (on an alt) was called on to tank with his main raid. Our missing tank from Wednesday did show up on Thursday, though, and Vl had already gotten another tank to come. I'm hoping these two tanks, Chr and Shg, will be our regular tanks. We actually had a full ten raiders, but one of them had joined Mf's raid on Tuesday and had forgotten she was locked out, unable to join our raid. Another hopeful thought is that this raider will join us next week as a regular instead of being a fill-in with Mf's raid. Bit by bit we are getting a stable raid together.

As planned, we began our night in Ulduar with nine raiders. We intended to drop the last two bosses, get our Achievement, find a tenth raider, and head into DS. The final two bosses are located in "The Descent Into Madness" area. We killed General Vezax in a spirited fight that was very challenging for the healers. There is a mechanism that doesn't allow mana to regen and makes Wild's innervate and mana potions impotent. Few of us had seen this boss before and we wiped once as all the healers went out of mana. We researched quickly, and figured out the process for attaining more mana and killed him on our second try. Unfortunately, we could not bring down the final boss, Yogg-Saron, in the two tries we had time for. Only one raider had ever seen this fight, and this multi-phase battle has many special conditions that must be accomplished and managed that have nothing to do with how over-geared we were. We didn't understand the mechanics, and we didn't have time to figure them out.

We had picked up a tenth raider and we were anxious to change our location from Ulduar to Dragon Soul.

Our two tanks are quite the free spirits, and on trash mobs we giggled through every fight. Raid checks, mob marking, and Go! commands fell by the wayside. While it may have looked chaotic, it kept everyone on their toes and intent on what we were doing. We needed to get pumped up, and the craziness certainly did that.

We attacked the first boss, Morchok, barely slowing down. We fought well and no one died early throughout a very long battle. A little too long, it turned out, as Morchok went into Enrage and wiped us. We had him down to 3% health. The DPS pressed harder and Morchok went down on our second attempt. Wild whispered Vl, "Gratz! Your first boss kill as a raid leader!"

Normally, the second boss is Warlord Zon'ozz, Vl opted to go after Yor'sahj the Unsleeping next. I hadn't known we could pick from the two of them. There are two dragons in the main chamber of DS that fly raiders to some of the bosses, and Wild learned for the first time that either dragon (one going to Oz and the other going to Yor) could be used. Yor is an easier boss than Oz, so it was a good choice.

We made three attempts on Yor, getting some practice on this boss, but didn't bring him down.

On the whole, it was an excellent night. After three weeks of no raiding, getting a group together two nights in a row is a major accomplishment. Our rookie raid leader is now blooded in Dragon Soul and has a kill to her credit. Wild dubbed the raid the revived G2 (RG2). We are a long way to stability, but we've got a toehold in DS and I hope that encourages more participation.

With at least a stable set of three healers, raid leader Vl (who is a druid healer, herself) turned over healing assignments to Wild. Wild named himself main tank healer, with priest Pl on the off tank and Vl raid healing. Here is the DS results:

Healing -
#1: Wild, 10.7k hps, 34.7%
#2: Pl, 10.2k, 30.3%
#3: Vl, 7.2k, 20.4%

DPS -
#1: Hunter Gv, 20.3k, 18.4%
#2: Hunter Sn, 18.9k, 17.1%
#3: Paladin Pal, 17.3k, 15.6%
#4: Warlock Lc, 14.8k, 13.4%
#5: Mage Tr, 14.7k, 13.3%

In local guild news, guild leaders Happy and Lost felt it was necessary to demote players that have been absent for more than a month. Those players are still guild members in good standing, but will have only the minimum guild perks while in a non-active capacity.