I felt quite sorry watching the tiny little whelp version of Artra flapping about, blind and aimless in the opening sequence, I pouted when his little body fell to the floor, "Why does it have to be this way?" I implored as he re-emerged as a giant with armour masking his useless eyes....
"KILL IT. KILL THE THING, KILL IT IN THE FACE."
I bellowed as I hurled our rogue at Dwarven Shields using Body and Soul on our 6th attempt. The short version is we wiped all evening and had tremendous fun doing it. In terms of healing I'll make a couple of quick points so I can get to the funny stories:
- It's very simple indeed as long as everyone does what they're meant to.
- The air phase is great for mana regen.
- Longer cast heals can be tricky after a few phases because so much movement is required. I found Prayer of Healing especially hard to get off sometimes, I think this encounter will be a little easier once Circle of Healing receives it's patch buff.
- The sound mechanic is fun, as Matthew McCurley at WoWInsider put it: "It's like that T. rex in Jurassic Park with the lawyer on the toilet -- except with sound instead of movement, so it's really nothing like that at all."
I think the use of gongs (Dwarven Shields) was proving difficult to figure out since there's a balance of clearing sound so that AoE can be healed through, using it when Searing Flames is up without choice, and saving them for desperate need/mistakes. There's not a lot of margin for error with the use of gongs so once we get this nailed it'll be a breeze. Now:
Snot-inducing laughter cause 1: Dugong
Simply tasking a raider with 'doing the gongs' caused him to emit a nasal exclaimation of "DUGONNGG" every time he hit one. At least we knew when he hit one, but it didn't matter much since we were all giggling like children by then. I think we were giddy from the wiping.
Snot-inducing laughter cause 2: Lolgong
Our hunter had to leave and we got our shaman in on standby, who didn't know the fight. We explained the gong mechanism and invited him to walk near and around them so he could get a feel for the range he'd have to stay in. The shiny interact cog proved too appealing and 'GONNNGGG' Artramedes has a 10 course dinner.
In the end a few people got tired and it was hard to get them to focus, since the fight is so dependent on timely movement and proper positioning we called it a night. By the end of it hardly anyone was stacking Sound apart from the unavoidable and kiting the flame was spot-on.
So. Tuesday. Bring it on.
~Reala
