The RG2 Thursday night raid got off to a good start. Our entire group from Wednesday's raid was back for a second run. That had to make the raid leader, Vl, very happy and proud. Not to put too good a spin on that, though, it also meant we had the same DPSers that struggled on Wednesday night. We should get better, having gotten in that practice the night before, and our lowest DPSer swapped out his shadow priest for another alt he hoped would do better.
Once we were all in the raid, Vl Summoned us all to Dragon Soul. We trickled in through the portal and arrived at the rocky open area where Morchok makes his home. Oddly, not only was Morchok not visible in the distance, there were no trash mobs hovering behind the local portal in front of me. Vl popped in with Wild, and we both tried to puzzle out what was wrong.
"Where is everybody?" Vl asked in vent.
"We're at Yor'sahj the Unsleeping, where are you?" Chr responded.
Wild and Vl looked at each other. Oh, the thought hit us at the same time. We'd killed Morchok on Wednesday. No wonder the place was deserted. We sheepishly skipped into the portal to Yor's chamber. We couldn't help but grin at each other, though. We'd killed Morchok. That was cool. Now we had Yor in our sights.
Well, long story short, it wasn't our night. We made two attempts and didn't get very far. Shg, one of our tanks, had to go. We brought in Wy, a druid with a feral cat main spec but who could also tank. She knew the fight, but it was her first time tanking Yor. Wild picked up the healing for Wy so I could get a feel for how well she handled things (ie, how hard would it be to heal her).
We did better on our third attempt, and Wy did just fine as well. We lost another raider, though, who had to see to a sick child. We could not find a replacement, and we finally had to call the raid.
Wild was hoping that with a full night to work on Yor we would bring him down. That wasn't to be, but I believe we are still in the two steps forward, one step back mode. Nobody seemed to be discouraged, so Wild is definitely looking forward to next week.
Healing:
#1: Wild, 10.3k hps, 36.8% heals
#2: Pa, 8.8k/26.4%
#3: Vl, 6.9k/21.1%
During the trash kills in Yor's chamber Wild was doing his usual thing - keeping his HoTs on the main tank and keeping him fully healed, dropping AoE heals on the raid to help Vl out, and routinely adding heals on the off tank as well. More and more it seemed that Wild was having to heal the off tank, and I started to wonder why. Pa is a good healer, Wild has confidence in her, and I'm sure Pa would do fine without Wild's help. But still, something seemed to be missing. Vl is a druid healer and she's always been given raid healing duties because of her gear level (i377). Even so, I thought Vl should be putting out more healing than she was.
In between trash mob battles, Wild asked Vl if she was keeping HoTs on the off tank. It's basic healing 101 for druid raid healers to keep a stack of lifeblooms and a rejuv on one of the tanks. Since Wild was already taking care of that for his main tank, Vl should be doing the same with the off tank, delivering consistent heals that would help Pa as well.
"Hmm, no, do you want me to?" she answered back. I had to wonder if anyone had ever set down with her and helped her improve her healing?
"Yes, pls," Wild sent back to her. She did, too. Wild checked recount after we called the raid, and her HoTs on the off tank accounted for a large part of the tank's heals. I'd like to get Vl a chance to tank heal instead of raid healing all of the time. I can't do that with Pa as paladins don't make the best raid healers, and I don't want to do it with Pl (priest) until our group is in better shape for us to experiment a bit. Vl's healing should be higher, though, so Wild intends to talk with Vl about healing and see if we get her numbers up.
Wild's LFR runs this week were both good and bad. The bad came in two parts. First, for some reason the raiders seem to getting worse instead of better. Wipes were non-existent in the first weeks Wild ran them, but this week we wiped again and again. I think raiders are getting careless - and bored. The second bad is that Wild has started to have user interface problems in the LFR. Wild keeps track of his heals using the Blizzard standard raid frames. Each type of heal has a little icon that appears on the raid frame of the raider Wild cast a heal on. In the past two weeks those little icons stopped showing up. Mostly it is Wild healing himself where it most often occurs, but it happens with other raiders as well. It appears that the heal did cast, but Wild gets no icon to show that it hit. Since so many of Wild's heals are HoTs, I NEED those icons to tell who has Hots on them and who doesn't. It is REALLY frustrating, but I have no idea what the problem is.
The good thing about the LFR is that Wild built up his valor points and bought an i397 ring, replacing an i378 ring. The addition raised Wild's gear score to i389. The pickings are getting pretty slim, now, however. Very soon there will be nothing that Wild needs that can be bought with valor points. Wild's biggest needs are a second i397 ring and new shoulders to replace his i378 ones. Neither can be bought with valor points. The ring is unique, so Wild can only buy one. The other +int ring is a +hit ring that isn't that great. And you can't buy shoulders with valor points. Sigh. Wild is almost to the point where the only way to improve his gear is full, non-LFR raiding.
And just for fun, Wild re-discovered his murloc costume and was surprised to find out that he stays in costume even when mounted. Here is Wild in murloc costume, on his flying carpet.
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