Wednesday (12 Apr) - A Warmaster and a Spine

Wednesday (12 Apr) - A Warmaster and a Spine

If our RG2 raid had been as organized and prompt as we were for this week's raid, we would have long ago downed Deathwing. For some reason, the end of an expansion seems to galvanize the raid. We actually started early on Wednesday night. Everyone was eager to get moving.

In between the battles we learned that our esteemed raid leader, Bk, had just been to see the movie, "Titanic 3D." Some of the other male raiders thought that was worthy of giving him grief. "Theese eese velly funny to me," one raider said in vent. "I am having interesting thought about this and give heem sheet for going to womanly movie." A couple of other raiders wondered what the issue was. "It's a comedy, right? When that ship tilted and people started twanging off the superstructure, I laughed my butt off!" It went on for a bit more. Pretty funny stuff, and it didn't phase Bk at all. He admitted he'd seen the movie at least ten times. It's a great date movie, was his implication.

Later we took time out to congratulate guildies who had wrapped up a very difficult, time consuming guild achievement, "Stay Classy."  To get this achievement the guild has to have members who are of every race and class and every one of them has to be at least Honored with the guild. That works out to:

7 orcs (hunter, shaman, warrior, mage, rogue, warlock, death knight)
9 trolls (hunter, priest, shaman, death knight, warlock, mage, rogue, warrior druid)
8 blood elves (hunter, priest, warlock, death knight, mage, rogue, paladin, warrior)
7 tauren (druid, shaman, death knight, priest, hunter, warrior, paladin)
7 undead (mage, rogue, death knight, hunter, priest, warlock, warrior)
8 goblin (mage, rogue, death knight, shaman, priest, warlock, warrior, hunter)

The reward for getting the achievement is the unlocking of our 8th guild vault slot, the maximum number of slots allowed.

After activating the slot, we all wanted to fill it with the most useless stuff we could think of. Ok, it was funny at the time.

As for the raid on Wednesday night, we had a couple of bumps in the road, but for the most part it went extremely smoothly with only two wipes on the way to downing Morchok, Yor'sahj, Warlord, Hagara, and Ultraxion. This is where we finished last week's Wednesday run. Wild was out for last week's Thursday run, which the raid spent the evening working on the 6th boss, Warmaster Blackhorn. They didn't down him last week, and Wild is now back to help out this week.

Was there loot? Wild won an upgrade to his off-hand, replacing his i384 for the i397 version, raising his gear score to i393. He lost the roll for the i397 Tier 13 chest.

Thursday Night - The Warmaster Blackhorn encounter is one of the most difficult fights in Dragon Soul. The mechanics in normal mode are not that different from the lfr version, but normal mode is far more dangerous and some things that raiders can ignore in the lfr can get the raid killed normal mode.

The battle takes place onboard a flying ship. We assembled on the deck of the ship and the raid leader, Bk, talked strategy and made assignments. The battle began with elite mini-bosses leaping onto the ship. The two tanks picked them up and our DPSers attacked. A small purple swirl appeared on the deck near Wild, and Wild stepped into it, as did two other nearby raiders. A ball of dark purple lanced into the same spot and exploded. All of the raiders standing on it took damage, and that was a good thing. Those were attacks on the ship, and by raiders taking some of the damage, there was less damage done to the ship. Periodically a LARGE swirly forms, and the whole raid has to hustle into it. Damage from the big swirly (I think it's called Onslaught) hits the raid hard, but again, we have to minimize the damage being done to the ship. Meanwhile, flying trash mobs are also attacking, and ranged DPS are assigned to shoot them down.

On our first attempt we didn't pay enough attention to the swirlies, and paid for that when the ship took too much damage and came apart, sending us all to our deaths fall below. Warmaster Blackhorn hadn't even arrived yet.

Attempt #2 went better, but our priest healer went down, and then Wild went down trying to get her battle rezzed. Oops, another wipe. We cleared through all of the mini-mobs and flying mobs and got to Blackhorn on our third try. Note that Blackhorn's flying mount also sticks around and attacks after delivering Blackhorn to the ship. A ranged raider was assigned specifically to attack the mount and "encourage" the beast to flee. We nearly had Blackhorn, but Disrupting Roar complicated our healing and raiders weren't prepared for Shockwaves. We got Blackhorn to 5%, but wiped.

We got off to a bad start on our 4th try, recovered, and made a fight out of it, but wiped again. We got Blackhorn to 12% on our 5th try.

On our 6th attempt Blackhorn fell. This was the RG2's first kill of Blackhorn. The G1 raid had killed Blackhorn three weeks ago, I think, but since then have not been able to duplicate that feat. With this kill, we were even up in the friendly competition with G1. Well, with more than half the raiders participating in both raids (mains and alts), it's not that much of a competition, but both raids still want to be the first to get to the final encounter.

We then got ready for the 7th boss encounter, Spine of Deathwing. I've seen the video of the fight, and read up on the strategy, but I'll admit that the encounter made no sense to me. The fight is nothing like the lfr, and as either healer or DPS, nothing Wild or JB did in the lfr mattered in normal mode.

The walkthru that Bk took us through, though, using the deck of the flying ship as the "Spine," helped quite a bit to visualize what would happen when we made our jump from the ship to the back of the airborne Deathwing. That first jump was a nightmare. The air was full with the parachutes of our raiders, and we landed on the back on Deathwing in a confusing jumble. Four tentacles slashed about the air. The tanks and melee DPS moved to the attack, crowding the right side of Deathwing. Deathwing started to roll to the right. That's the signal for all of the ranged players, including the healers, to move to the left side of Deathwing's back to keep from falling off (actually, we should start moving as soon as the melee raiders do). You can guess what happened. We botched it, and several raiders, Wild included, were tossed off of Deathwing.

This kind of fight is trouble for Wild. I find it very hard see what I need to see on the black, light absorbing back of Deathwing. There are tentacles, and large mobs, and many small oozes, and cracks in Deathwing's armor that all meld together into a messy tapestry that Wild can't make any sense of.

Fortunately, Wild's role is fairly straightforward. Stay with the ranged group. Slide left when the melee move to the right, and visa versa. At the appropriate moment, move forward to the "corruption" but don't STAND in the corruption until the last possible moment. Standing in the corruption HURTS and does very high damage, but standing in the corruption also lets little tentacles latch onto our feet and hold us in place. During that part of the battle we WANT Deathwing to roll, because it will toss several nasty mobs off it's back that would otherwise decimate the raid. There's much more, and the DPS have a lot of things to do. The healing is incredibly intense with things like Fiery Grip and Searing Flames doing truly nasty damage across the raid and to targeted raiders.

We made four attempts, and on our fourth attempt got far enough to handle our first barrel roll to toss off some mobs - and for Wild to run out of mana despite Innervate and pots and careful use of Harmony. Our pally healer was already dead by then. Spine of Deathwing is one very challenging fight.

With the Blackhorn kill, the RG2 raid has downed six of eight Dragon Soul boss encounters. Hopefully, the 7th will come soon.