Thursday (29 Mar) - The Mushroom Strategy

Thursday (29 Mar) - The Mushroom Strategy

The Wild Family thought they had sucked DB deep enough into the pve world of dungeons and elite monsters that the sorcerous mage would surely soon be signing up for raids. Ahh, but the enticement of the pvp battlegrounds and raining arcane death upon the opposing faction was just too delicious to resist. DB has regaled us recently with his battleground exploits and growing piles of kills and gear to raise the mountain of corpses ever higher.

And now, it seems, it may be that DB is pulling a Wild family member, Philly, back into the world of pvp. Philly is level 82, about halfway to level 83. It would take some effort to level up to 85. Philly's main spec is currently shadow priest, but for pvp she would much prefer the disc healing spec, which is her off-spec. Philly once thought she would become a holy priest as a pve dungeon runner and raider, but it turned out that JB slipped in ahead of her in raiding priority.

Philly may still get her chance at pvp. Wild sewed her some new clothes, six pieces of Frostsavage pvp gear. It's modest gear, to be sure, but the good stuff won't come until she reaches level 85. She'd better get to working on it, though. With Mists of Pandaria and even Diablo 3 on the horizon, time will start to get very thin.

The RG2 raid Thursday night started with Ultraxion. Our makeup was the same as Wednesday night, except that our young druid healer was not able to make it. Raid leader Bd, usually on his tank, swapped over to his shaman healer for the evening. Every time I see that shaman healer in action, I wonder if it might be better for JB to change his elemental off-spec to healing. Wild is hard pressed to keep up with Bd's shaman. We'll see.

Along those same lines, there was a mild rift at the end of the raid on Wednesday night. Sb, who has three raiding toons, generally tanks with RG2. He is also the player who started up and is running the new third raid, G3, on Saturday and Sunday. Last weekend was the first full, two day run for G3. The week before the RG2 raid did not run, so Wild signed up for and got to run with the new G3 (as did a few other RG2 raiders who wanted their raiding fix). After the RG2 raid on Wednesday, Sb asked to speak to the raid about his new raid. Sb, like any raid leader, wants to build a group of regular raiders to fill his raid. He had noted that a few of the guildies who had participated in the G3 raid were running in the RG2 raid. From Wild's perspective, that was kind of a "duh" moment. I doubt any of the RG2 raiders planned to permanently switch to G3, and even Sb had no intentions of moving his RG2 tank to G3. Still, Sb wanted to get a clearer idea of what toons were going to commit to the G3. That will sort itself out, I'm sure. Wild is staying with RG2. My Sat/Sun availability isn't steady enough to be a regular raider on those days. I will likely make JB available when I can, but they currently have plenty of interested DPSers; it's healers they need. JB will be taking a hard look at her off-spec. It's not too late to switch from elemental to resto, although elemental is a lot of fun.

The raid was in a good mood Thursday night. The rogue got his usual ribbing, but not nearly so often as on Wednesday night. Lady Hunter made a rare appearance. It was nice to see her in a raid, and we definitely could use her to beef up our ranged DPSers. It took us three tries to clear the dragon trash for Ultraxion, but it didn't take that long and we seemed to have found the right approach to making that successful.

The Ultraxion battle is a case of highs and lows for Wild. The battle starts with bang as we try to maximize the damage to Ultraxion before the dragon starts to wind up his really nasty stuff. Wild got to DPS during that first phase, as usual. Wild added a new attack to his normal Insect Swarm DoT and Wrath spam. Druids have a spell called Wild Mushrooms. It's really part of the arsenal of moonkin druids, and I mostly forget about them when healing. It's not a moonkin only spell, though, and Wild decided to add it to his attacks on Ultraxion.

Wild mushrooms work like mines with a remote detonator. Wild can use up to three mushrooms. Wild placed each of his mushrooms in a tight group in the spot where Ultraxion is fought. If this were a pvp battle, the mushrooms would be invisible to the opposing faction. Wild wasn't sure if the raid could see them or not, but that was quickly determined. "I see mushrooms," someone intoned, speaking like the kid in The Sixth Sense when he said, "I see dead people." Once the battle was joined Wild detonated his mushrooms and ramped up the rest of his assault. And yes, Wild waited long enough to be absolutely sure he didn't detonate them early. Wild wanted no "Fan of Knives" moment with his mushrooms.

After that first assault, the fight becomes one of attrition and tight attention. The raid stays in one spot, never moving. There is little room for error, but it can also be a little boring, sort of like the frog in the simmering pot. Ultraxion's attack grows slowly, but ever more deadly. The DPS have only one task - pour on the damage with everything they have, all the time. The tanks play a game of taunt the dragon that must be played perfectly or the raid dies. For the healers, well, I loved Bd's advice to the DPSers. "Don't worry about anything other than hitting the Twilight button when told to and keep the DPS coming. The healers are the ones peeing in their pants."

By the time Ultraxion has ramped up to full ferocity, the healers could find themselves in all out panic mode keeping raiders alive. There is an urgency that can cause the healers to rush things, over-heal and get into mana issues, or even miss their Twilight button, but that can't be allowed to happen. The incoming damage grows exponentially, and it follows that so does the healing, but the pace of the fight itself never changes. So don't get ahead of ourselves.

On our fourth attempt Ultraxion died. Wild was so focused he kept healing for several moments even after the dragon fell. Now that's concentration. Wild also proudly points to his mushrooms as the deciding factor.  ;-)

We didn't have much time left, but did take two shots at Warmaster Blackhorn (on the flying ship). We go from an encounter with no movement at all to one where standing in one spot will get you killed. We crashed the ship both times, and most of our time went into discussing the fight, but it was fun and with the practice we'll be better prepared for next week. Sb won his first raid drop for his tank after four weeks of raiding. It was just a ring, but he was delighted to get anything at all. May the gods of RNG (random number generator) favor us all next week.