I was going to start this post with a long, scientific study of the various effects of healing styles and spell usage. I even warned readers that there were a lot of numbers involved. That it may be incomprehensible to non-druid healers. And that if decimal points or wide-butted, cloven hoofed tauren druids scare you, your best bet might be to skip it all together. Well, that long winded discussion is still in this post, but at the bottom, not the top. So all you fans of wide-butted, cloven hoofed tauren druids will have to jump down to the end of the post to get your fix.
Thursday Night Raid - There's No Crying in Dungeons
The RG2 raid was in game and on time on Thursday night. I don't think Wild had been able to say that about this raid before now. With Vl and Pl both out, Aj was enlisted to be our third healer. Aj is a priest alt of a very good pally healer from G1.
So, everyone knows the drill by now. On Thursday nights we spend the evening wiping on Warlord Zon'ozz .... well ....
Shocka-locka-BOOM! The Warlord crashed and burned on our very first attempt!
The crazy thing was that our death knight got a key stuck and trotted right into Warlord before the raid was ready or even fully buffed! Oh no! We just got here and already it's a wipe. Bd, the tank, however, rushed in, nabbed Warlord, and hollered in vent, "Just roll with it!" Roll with it we did.
Wild was tank healing. Wild was a bit befuddled, but healing doesn't require thought, the fingers know what to do. Wild battle rezzed the death knight while pouring heals into the tank. The rest of the raid found their positions. Wild, who should have been tucked up with the melee group, stayed at range for the first phase of bounces, but it didn't hurt anything, and then stacked with the melee after that. When the bounces go well things go very fast, too. The second phase came and went in a blur of battle. At the third phase we killed him. The death knight took a lot of ribbing. Not only did he die at the start of the fight, he died again near the end of the fight, too. No one else died.
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| Warlord Zon'ozz First Kill |
After the kill there was some very relieved partying. We felt like we'd gotten a very large boulder off our backs. So, what to do now? Go after the next boss, Hagara, of course.
The Hagara fight on normal mode has many differences than the one in the lfr. The ice lances and ice blocks are significantly more deadly, and we were warned that the ice walls spin around the chamber must faster than in the lfr. Before Hagara, though, were a lot of trash. Wild was lulled into the trap of thinking this wasn't going to be hard because of the trash mobs. In the lfr, it's an uncoordinated madhouse and a lot of healing is required because raiders are running around being stupid. In our ten man, the mobs were targeted and marked. We also used crowd control to reduce the craziness of the many mobs. It was easy as it could be.
Then there was Hagara. Wild was again the tank healer. We played the game. We started with tank and spank on Hagara followed by a race around the outer edge of the platform during the lightning phase. Then another tank and spank followed by the ice wall phase. I think there may have been two lightning phases, but anyway, it felt very much like the lfr and we were all doing quite well. The DPS pounded Hagara down to 3% and Wild was racing around the outer edge with the ice wall phase just about done. Wild saw the ice wall coming his way, but hey, Wild was close enough to slip past it before it got to me. Well, Wild misjudged the speed of the wall and was caught. Instant death. Fortunately, both of the other healers were still up, the tank got his heals, and Hagara died.
We went from week after week of fruitlessly bashing our heads on Warlord, to killing both Warlord AND Hagara on our first attempts of the evening. We were truly stoked.
There was still plenty of time left of our night. We had cleared the first four bosses, which comprise the Siege of Deathwing. With the fifth boss, we were at the beginning of the Fall of Deathwing. The fifth boss is Ultraxion.
As we were setting up for this fight, the Mrs peeked into the room to give our calico her evening pill (she has asthma, and sometimes has trouble breathing). We were deep into strategy discussions so I gave her a quick wave. "Ready for takeoff!" I heard her say. What? "Flaps down? Doors sealed?" What is she talking about? Then it hit me. I was wearing headphones so I could speak on vent if I needed to. One look at me with those headphones, in a dark room behind an array of three video screens (the two computer screens plus the flat screen TV), lights blinking from the stack of computers, cable box, printer, et al completed the picture of a pilot readying for takeoff. The Mrs thought it was the funniest thing she'd seen since ... well, we won't go into that.
Unlike Hagara's trash, which turned out to be pretty simple, the trash mobs we faced before Ultraxion made his appearance were much more challenging. This is one encounter in the lfr where wipes are pretty common from both the trash and the boss. In normal DS fourteen dragons lovingly raised are turned against their master. Deathwing flies about an open platform, and there is a long set piece of bla bla bla we have to wait to finish. I do love the ending, though. When the master (I forget which famous npc it is) realizes that her dragons have been cruelly turned against her, she tells us all that they are no longer her children. In a heart rending, but steely voice she says, "Bring them down."
Bringing them down is the hardest part of this pre-boss battle. All fourteen dragons are flying above us, out of range of melee. The job of the two tanks is to aggro them, draw them down, and kill them one and two at a time. Ranged raiders were told NOT to aggro dragons that had not be targeted by the tanks, in order to control the flow of the fight. Those dragons weren't just waiting to be killed, however. They flew over us, pouring deadly dragon breath down on us, a breath that left greats swaths of the platform still burning even after they passed. We killed and we killed, but more and more of the platform was getting engulfed in flames, and there were fewer and fewer places to stand. Just a few seconds in those flames was death. With eight dragons down Wild and Bd got separated by a wall of flame. The battle took Bd away, and Wild could not follow. "Holy Sh-tballs!" proclaimed our priest, Pl, as she died.
Wild retreated from the flames, finding four others who were practically standing on top of each other - flames in front, a very long fall directly behind us. There was no where to go. The rest of the raid died. Our little group had the second tank in it, a paladin. There was a rogue, our other priest, and a death knight. There was Wild, too, but, sadly, Wild died in the killing of the 9th dragon. The remaining dragons circled the platform and, one by one, they found the little group. The priest was bone dry of mana, barely able to get off any heals. They had no ranged DPS, so the rogue would leap into the air to hit a dragon, so it would come close enough to melee. Otherwise, the dragon would just flap around breathing fire on them. Wild had a great view of events from his corpse. Pally tank heals and the healing abilities of the death knight helped keep them alive. After what seemed like an endless battle, all fourteen dragons went down. Well, that's not the best way to go about it, but it was pretty dammed glorious all the same.
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| Ultraxion Trash Battle |
The first part of the fight starts out a little slow and there isn't a lot of damage being done to the raid. It's a great time to pour the maximum amount of DPS at the big dragon, though. So all the DPS were dropping high damage cooldowns at the beginning of the fight, including a rogue spell called Time Warp, which greatly speeds up casting for the whole raid. In that first burst of DPS, Bd wanted Wild to go Tree of Life. There is an interesting twist to this healing talent. When in tree form, more than heals can be cast. Like wrath, a staple DPS spell of moonkin druids. Wild was tasked with DoTing Ultraxion with insect swarm and spamming Wrath until Time Warp ended. Very, very cool. Wild added 4-5k dps on each attempt. It wasn't a lot, but it sure was fun.
We made seven attempts on Ultraxion. Wild never got to use his crystal, but we learned a lot. Most of our issues were tank related, so the fights didn't last very long, and they will have to work those issues out for next week.
As for loot, Hagara did drop shoulders, but they were for shaman, not druids. Other raiders got nice loot from Hagara and Warlord.
The night was a blast. Our best night in a very long time.
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Still here? I know, where is the promised wide-butted, cloven hoofed tauren druid? Next time ....
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