Wednesday (25 Jan) - Word From a (Former?) Raid Leader

Wednesday (25 Jan) - Word From a (Former?) Raid Leader

So, raid leader and guild leader Bd came back on the radar Wednesday afternoon - sort of. Our new RG2 raid leader, Vl, finally caught up with him out of game. Where has he been? On vacation. Why didn't he tell anyone what was going on? He didn't or wouldn't say. When Vl pressed, telling him that many of us were upset at his disappearance, all he could say was that he and Lady Hunter could have handled that better.

Vl did what she had to do, and got Wild's support when she clued me in to what she had learned. Bd turned the raid lead over to her (not that we hadn't already done that). Bd also said he might come to the raid on Wednesday night, and Vl said that was fine - if we had a spot open. Vl has taken charge, and that's a good thing.

Vl and Wild were the first in game for the Wednesday night raid. The raid sign up remained a joke, with only three signed on (including Wild and Vl) and a long list of guildies (13) listing themselves as Tentative. As we approached the 6:30pm raid start time, we'd added just that one other raider that had signed up. Two of our regulars, Pl and Gv, were in game, but when Wild whispered them they said they couldn't make it. Gv's work schedule is very fluid, and work would get in the way of raiding tonight. His wife, Pl, rarely raids without her husband.

Wild was ready to throw his hands up in frustration. Vl, though, beat the bushes, cajoling and coercing and flirting with players. "I know that's Ct on that alt, get on your raiding toon and come join us!" she would say, finger pointing. Wild was whispering each and every potential raider, making them say yes or no instead of hiding behind their alts. Frankly, some were shamed into coming, and others came because they felt they should support the run, even if they weren't real excited about it. We weren't picky.

We started with three, and added two more, including a second tank. Two guildies Wild had never seen in a raid were talked into coming, and one of our regular pally DPSers, who'd begged off coming, changed her mind and came along. She even agreed to switch to healer, which she hates. I don't remember what time if was when we got our tenth raider, but it wasn't that far past our start time. Big kudos to Vl for her masterful work getting it together - it was an accomplishment worthy of the finagling of Lady Hunter.

We had a good pair of tanks and solid healing, but our DPSers were likely to be uneven at best. Without hunter Gv and with big melee pally hitter, Pa, healing on this night, the damage dealing would be a challenge. By the way, Bd never showed up.

Wild set the healing assignments, switching things up just a little. Normally, Wild prefers to heal Chr, who usually handles main tanking duties. However, last week the other tank, Shg, was so excitable that he kept jumping the gun and wound up as lead tank by default. Wild wants his HoT spells on the tank that is taking the most damage, so on this night Wild assigned himself to Shg and gave Chr to the pally healer, Pa.

The back and forth in vent was also pretty lively. Wild even got into the act - well, not exactly. Pa whispered Wild shortly before we got going, asking "Why don't you talk on vent anymore?" Wild and Pa (as Od, her first main) go back aways, so long ago she obviously forgot about Wild's status on vent. "I never talk on vent," Wild told her. "It's distracting." Wild waited a second, and then sent another whisper back to her, "But I love to listen!" That got a laugh, and we had a little back and forth.

Pa - I'm going to be good tonight
Wild - No youre not :P
Pa - yes I am!
Wild - for how long?
Pa - I try to be all the time
Wild - LOL, wasn't that you talking trash to Chr?
Pa - i just asked if i could play with his big stick

After that things got really interesting ... oh yea, we had to start killing things, too.

Our first boss was Morchok, and we wiped on our first attempt as our newer raiders settled in. As feared, our DPS was low and we hit the enrage timer. On our second attempt, the DPS made a great leap forward and down went Morchok. I know it isn't much, but I am declaring that Morchok is on farm, even with our grab bag collection of raiders.

Raid Leader Vl selected Yor'sahj the Unsleeping for our second boss, which we all agreed with. Our other choice is much tougher. Yor summons oozes every minute or so. They are large and colorful, and come in sets of three, each entering from a different spot in the large cavern. The color coded oozes are killed in a specific order from most dangerous to least dangerous. In the LFR raiders can make a lot of mistakes and still down Yor without a lot of effort. In regular ten man, small mistakes can get you - and often others - killed.

Wild has done this fight many times, killing Yor often in the LFR but so far never in regular ten man. There are like eight different kinds of oozes, and Wild admittedly hadn't committed all of their various abilities to memory. On this night Wild had his epiphany, where it all came together. It was so simple, too, but Wild hadn't seen it and no one ever explained it. Here it is. Rule #1 is ALWAYS collapse to the tank; ie, stack up. Most oozes are best handled that way. Rule #2 is that there is one exception to Rule #1. Green oozes are most deadly when raiders are packed together, so stay outside the four foot radius circle that conveniently pops up on it's own when a green ooze is active. This is the ONLY time not to stack up. Rule #3 is that if there is a purple ooze active - don't heal! Healing gets other raiders killed. There is another ooze (blue?) that temporarily causes mana to go to near zero, but be careful and patient and all mana will be returned. Follow those simple rules to avoid doing stupid things.

Our first attempt was forgettable. On  our second attempt we got Yor down to 47%, the best we had ever done. We practiced some more on attempts three and four. On our fifth attempt we dragged Yor down to 20% before hitting the enrage timer. We still had thirty minutes of raid time left, but Vl had been getting some whispers that a few raiders had other things to do. Rather than force a continuance on raiders who had not been 100% on board joining the raid to begin with, we decided to call it. We'll have a whole evening on Thursday to tackle that pesky ooze miester. I hope. If we can scrounge up ten raiders again.

Wild is trying hard to be optimistic about this raid. There are really only four of us (Wild, Vl, Gv, Pl) seriously trying to make the raid a success, and two of them have real life scheduling issues. Our fifth raider, Chr, is hard to pin down. He usually comes on the raid, but only after being talked into it. As for the rest it is always a challenge and it's never the same group of guildies.

Healing Numbers:
#1: Wild, 13.5k hps, 36.0% heals
#2: Pa, 12.4k/32.7%
#3: Vl, 8.4k/19.1%

The DPS was, frankly, under whelming. Only one DPSer broke over 21k dps, the rest dropped precipitously to around 17k and then all the way to 12k. We couldn't blame them; they did the best they could.

But we are making progress all the same. If we can only keep it going.

PS - Seven of us headed into the Fall of Deathwing lfr after the raid. It was a nightmare. I'd never seen such a terrible group. We wiped four times and only got three of four bosses, failing to complete the run. It was fun running with guildies, but the raid itself was a big mess. One fun addition, too. One of our guildies has started raiding with another guild, even moving his main to that guild. He still keeps a raiding alt with MM2. He was on his main in the same lfr run that we were in, and Wild commented on that in raid chat. He saw the chat, but didn't understand what I was saying. So I whispered him that there were seven MM2 guildies in the raid with him. That got a smile and a laugh. He was healing on his druid, too, and he and Wild had battled each other for lead healer. Surprisingly, we both lost out to another druid healer (three druid healers meant no loot for Wild) who is also in MM2. Wild just had to look him up. His gear is i381, whereas Wild's is i387. How did he outheal me!? Stats-wise, Wild way out gears him in spirit and haste, and has 12k more mana. He seems to have put all his eggs into mastery, which is much higher than Wild's. He's not hast capped, either, but he uses an i359 Mastery trinket! I don't get it, but he still beat out Wild.