Wednesday (15 Feb) - It's Elemental, My Dear JB

Wednesday (15 Feb) - It's Elemental, My Dear JB

JB ran another Twilight random on Wednesday afternoon, and was surprised and pleased that the chosen Heroic was Hour of Twilight. Finally, another chance at getting JB those pve i378 shoulders. The dungeon did drop i378 pve shoulders, yea! Oh, wait, they're not the ones JB wanted? Nope, they were +int shoulders intended for resto and elemental specced shaman. Silly boss  Benedictus, who was supposed to land JB her +agi shoulders, gave JB another i378 weapon, instead, this time a fist weapon. JB will be able to cover a whole wall with extraneous weapons by the time she is done.

Ok, JB could take a hint. It was time to fully flesh out her elemental spec.

JB visited the Elitist Jerks website to find out about the elemental spec. JB assumned it would be something like Wild's moonkin spec, but other than that she came in empty headed. No comments from the peanut gallery, now, remember all those weapons JB has.

The first bit of news was good. Gear for elemental shaman is the same for resto shaman, other than Tier pieces where the set bonuses are different. JB doesn't expect to be a healer, but it was nice to know that she could, if necessary, change specs between elemental and resto without needing a whole new set of gear. JB then got down to the details, and Happy will be paying for that grudgingly over the course of the next several days as she re-specs and gathers up glyphs, enchants, gems, etc etc.

Once JB gets her elemental spec UI ready, she'll run some target dummy numbers to see how JB does. Elemental uses a spell priority for casting spells, just as enhancement does, but there are fewer spells to worry about. As elemental, JB doesn't have a problem with periods where she can't cast spells because of cooldown issues (like enhancement has); her only spell casting constraint is mana. JB doesn't have many instant cast spells, so movement is a consideration, but JB can talent/glyph some spells so that she cast still cast on the run. I'm liking how the spec sounds, but the proof is when I put it to the test.

It was Wednesday night, so Wild must be raiding. We put together a pretty good team of regulars, and got started on time. Vl was back in the saddle leading the raid, with Bd in the role he likes best - talking. About boss strategies, of which he is expert. Wild had a ticklish assignment, though. Wild is the lead healer, and makes the healing assignments. Vl is the raid leader, although Bd, the former raid leader, often has input. Vl is also a healer, and after Wild had given her some healing advice last week, she was anxious to put it to use. Vl, who is our regular raid healer, wanted to tank heal. I was fine with that, but I wanted her to heal Bd, so that Bd could give me feedback on how she handled it. So I had to talk to Bd as well. Wild got it all sorted out and we were ready to rock.

Dragon Soul's first boss, Morchok, practically threw in the towel the minute we showed up. Morchok is definitely on farm. But he's the only one on farm. We moved on to the ooze king, Yor'sahj.

Last week we had been forced to go to a one tank strategy, because we only had one tank. We got our first kill last week using that strategy, so we decided to go with it again this week. Our tanks were Bd and Ct (a very good tank who can only make our raids part time). Bd had tanked Yor last week, but this week Bd and Ct talked it out and Ct was assigned to tank. Ct was better geared than Bd and we figured that would be easier on the healers. I had already assigned the priest Pl to heal Ct, and decided to keep it that way. Wild would back up Pl when things got nasty, and Vl was back to raid healing.

We also stated our mantra for this fight, in case anyone forgets. And someone always does:

 1- Purple, green, yellow (our ooze kill order)
2 - Stack on the boss for all oozes except green (spread out on green)

Obeying those two rules are the key to success.

We did well on the first attempt, getting Yor to 33%. It was Vl's first look at the one tank strategy and she was impressed. Our second attempt did not go well at all, however, as the DPS struggled to kill the oozes and adds quick enough. When we wiped on the third attempt as well, a little bit of frustration started to seep into the comments. The DPS were chastised for not getting the adds down. The DPS complained that they weren't getting heals. Wild didn't believe that healing was the issue, but since Ct and Pl were doing quite well with the single tank setup (so the problem wasn't the strategy), Wild switched the druid healers around, putting Vl as support to Pl on the tank Ct (which she wanted to do anyway), and Wild took over raid healing.

On our fourth attempt nobody died - except Yor'sahj the Unsleeping.

We moved on to the eyeball and tentacle trash we have to clear around the third boss, Ozz. Wild totally lost control of his healers as both Vl and Bd tried to assign roles that Wild had already put in place. All three of us were talking in vent and/or typing in raid chat and in the tank channel. Bd had created the tank channel so that the tanks could talk without clogging the raid channel. They then thought it was a good idea to add the healers to the channel, too. Then they had a question for the DPS and they ended up in the channel, too. So basically the raid channel was duplicated in the tank channel. Sigh.

The tank was getting impatient. So was Wild. I've got the tank, Wild told our gaggle of raiders. With healing support, the tank decided to take that as a Go, and he and Wild engaged the trash mobs. I guess the other two healers were still confused, because at two mobs went down before anyone but Wild was healing. No problem, Wild kept everyone alive. By the time we downed the first set of trash mobs we were all laughing and making mock accusations. Wild was accused of wanting to take over all the healing for himself. The other healers declared they were switching to DPS alts. Wild told them to go ahead, he could handle it!

We rocked through the rest of the trash, and got ready for Ozz.

Ozz is a fun fight and I like it, but we are still pretty uncoordinated at bouncing that ball of deadly energy back and forth. Wild was in the melee group, and we held together pretty well, moving in and out as needed, and with Wild doing the critical dispelling. Wild has been with the ranged before, too, and it's tougher until folks learn to keep one eye on the ball all of the time. The ranged team has to move as a group to intercept the ball when the tank bounces it back at them. A practiced group can keep the ball on track with little movement needed, but our bounces veered off course enough that the ranged had to shift to intercept. We made three attempts, and got better, but we still let the ball get away from us, wiping each time. We'll get better.

All in all, it was a good run with a group that is starting to settle in as a team. Wild needs to take firmer control of the healers.

Wild has an overabundance of valor points, so after the raid Wild headed to the VP vendor to see what was left to buy. Hmm, pretty much nothing. Wild did have an i378 ring he could upgrade. There are two +int rings for sale. Wild already had one of them, which are unique-equipped, so Wild couldn't buy and use a second one. The other ring was a DPS ring with +hit on it. However, it came with a socket, which Wild's i378 ring did not. Wild did the math, and overall it was an upgrade, so Wild bought it. That was enough to raise Wild's gear score to i390. There is really nothing else Wild needs now except for Tier gear, or the i397 versions of i384 gear Wild got from the lfr, and that only comes from Dragon Soul.