Let me put it this way, I'm still patting the fire out on my robes, the embroidery is ruined.
Raid: Firelands 10 man Normal
Boss: Ragnaros
Comp: Tanks x2, Healers x3, DPS x5
Now I can't speak for those who have got to this stage normally, i.e. DOING ANY OTHER BOSS IN THE RAID EVER. So this is less raid analysis and more a hilarious (and painful) anecdote, and an interesting experience.
It's worth mentioning that:
In fact I was enjoying Deus Ex, which as you all know is effing superb (What? You don't? Go educate yourself.) when MiniMorvel kindly invited me to heal a 'bloggers Zulroic'. It was only when I got there and saw who else was in the group that I realised it was a group made almost entirely of the alts of healers. I'd tell you what happens when you fill a group with healers but what happens in Zul'Aman stays in Zul'Aman.
So, Raggy, it's worth mentioning that I was the only one in the group who hadn't been before. I was initially completely fail at avoiding the waves of lava caused by Sulfuras Smash. This surprised me as I rarely have an issue with slow-moving get Out Of The Way mechanics. I'm only playing WoW on and off at the moment though, much less raiding, much less raiding several bosses above my station. The result of which was severe tunnel-vision on my UI, in the end my raid leader (also a healer) suggested I pay more attention to the tactics for now and he'd pick up the slack. This was good advice, everyone else knew what to do so I had a little room to be slower on heals and quicker on getting out of the way of various forms of creatively entitled fire.
After a couple of wipes I was avoiding them completely and had P1-2 tactics pretty much down, between DBM and my raid leader's well-timed calls, wasn't missing a trick all the way in to phase 3. However, our set up and composition meant that losing any DPS made phase 3 a real struggle, in the end we didn't down him that night. Living Meteor gave me a hell of a run the one time it targeted me and I realised I had no instant offensive spell readily available to me, so I ran around screaming for a bit with my spellbook open all over my UI and slammed Shadow Word: Death. It was too late though. Lesson learned, SW:D is in one of my action bars.
The ability that really kept catching me out though was Engulfing Flames and this frustrated me. Maybe I was just too tired by this point but I could not react fast enough when I know that's not normally a problem. I'd like to see how I handle this on a second run through, hopefully it was just fluke spaziness.
The last point to mention is that I was surprised at how well my mana was holding up since this is still normally an issue in raids (not at all in HCs). We had two healing priests and a Shadow priest, so 3 Hymn of Hope potentials plus other class cooldowns at our disposal, but I found I could go for a good while without using it (I was popping Shadowfiend early though, around 70% mana).
I felt pretty guilty about the wipes that could be attributed, at least in part, to me but on the other hand I'm totally out of practice and the encounter is far above my gear level. I still managed to have a great time with good friends and guildies though, epic win.
~Reala
