Unfriendly Fire

What happens when you put an out of practice Holy Priest with ilvl359 gear, who has experience up to and NOT INCLUDING Nefarian in to 10-man Ragnaros? Click the Lightwell went in to find out!

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

Halfussed and the Fabulous Dragon

To be honest with you, I don't think I can give a meaningful account of our Halfus Wyrmbreaker encounter because it went way too quickly and so well that I'm not even sure what was really going on. If there's one thing to be said for endless wipes it's that you certainly learn the boss mechanics! It was a simple case of outgearing here.

We didn't have a mage or anyone else who could miss the third blast of Furious Roar and interrupt, which worried us setting out, but the damage was so miniscule it didn't bother anyone. Although an interesting note here is that, although you can slightly but not cast or use abilities, you CAN click the Lightwell. You can't do ANYTHING but click the Lightwell. CLICK THE DAMN LIGHTWELL!

Onwards to Valiona and Theralion.. ahh Theralion. Bless you for making endless swathes of heroes shift awkwardly as we're devoured by your Fabulous Flames. And your Dazzling Destruction yes, I hadn't forgotte-- Yes you're very pretty...

I was awful at this fight, I don't know if I was just having an off day or if I could have used my abilities at more opportune moments. Movement is a real pain during AoE damage phases even with the newly-buffed Circle of Healing; PoH is still an important follow up. I couldn't stand still long enough to cast it and others couldn't stand still long enough for Hw: Santucary to be effective. I was struggling to find time enough to stand still for Hymn of Hope as well.

However, this fight was one of the most useful to me for one key reason: I learned how to properly incorporate Prayer of Mending into my methods. I used it as a matter of course as disc pre-Cata, but I've been shamefully neglecting it when I switched to Holy, I don't really know why, there were so many shiny new toys... With the recent patch introducing a powerful buff to it in the form of a new glyph, it was thrown back onto my radar and the Valiona & Theralion encounter proved the perfect way to learn to use it again, and it has consistently been in my top healing abilities since. Plus it makes a very satisfying tinkly sound when it jumps from person to person!

Now... debating whether or not to switch to disc for Chimaeron on Tues....

~Reala

Incinerate Pride

Artramedes is a fun encounter. The two phases are quick-fire and engaging despite their repetition, and the concept of a blind dragon is as entertaining as the mechanics.

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

Maloriak's Flash

Quick progression update: First attempt on Maloriak went similarly to Omnotron; from failraid to a few percent off a kill with a couple of unlucky wipes at the end.

Raid composition: 2 tanks, 3 healers, 5 DPS

Red Vial
Scorching Blast was never a problem, everyone stacked up (healers at the back) and afflicted raiders ran out of the group perfectly. Vent communication meant quick reactions all round, I was grateful for it on one occasion where I got caught by tunnel-vision on my healbot.

Blue Vial
Flash Freeze - people were WAY too slow on releasing trapped raid members to begin with. But once we decided to assign two DPS to be in charge of breaking them blue phases were perfect. Maintaining a 6 yard range was easy, especially on the understanding that healers were not expected to move. I don't think Biting Chill hit anyone but the targeted person.

Green Vial
Definitely where the difficulty lay for most attempts. Our OT was taking a lot of damage, which seemed to spike which was a difficulty even with both healers watching him carefully and me keeping Renew up. Perhaps the rate at which adds were released was the problem.

Phase 2
After the first few attempts we were getting to P2 easily, however Prime Subjects hit hard. I had started to manage my mana well during P1 and but was still using Shadowfiend + Hymn of Hope at the tail end of P1 or start of P2 and there's so much AoE damage in that I can still oom. However we'd normally lose a healer or OT this phase and that would be that.

The guys one-shotted Magmaw and Omno last night so tonight I jump in where we left off on Tuesday, feeling very, very confident. Which is handy because the MT is going to need therapy if he has to spend any more time looking up Maloriak's skirt.

~Reala

Omniwipe

Following up to my post yesterday, the question of my gender came up before the raid even started, sitting around at he bottom of the steps in BWD I had vent on but wasn't speaking as I was busy pushing broccoli and paella into my face before we got going. But it was asked out of interest in /ra and I just made no big deal of saying that I'm female. There was about half a minute of "Oh... OH...." and "A girl in the guild... and she's got skills..." but they quickly settled and we got on with the raid as any bunch of raiders should do. In fact better than most, the raid leader was firm but kind and encouraging, everyone picked up the tactic very quickly and I didn't have to tell anyone to not stand with a flamethrower in their face even once.

Saga commented that she sometimes feels wary of speaking on vent, especially if they have pugs in the group. I completely empathise with this and was very nervous of speaking, but knew that it's something I want to do increasingly and freely. So when /ra was getting spammed and I wanted clarification on something I piped up, to my delight my question was answered and we moved on, simple as that. I spoke a couple of times after that, but mostly resign myself to /ra for now.

Afterwards one of the officers asked if he could have a word, we chatted about mechanics and  mana regen for a while and then he let me know that he expects I will integrate fully into the guild and the banter and everyone's very pleased to have me as a positive and effective raider, but should there be any aggro because of my gender then the officers will step in unless I've handled it myself. I appreciated the thought and I also took the opportunity to let him know that my only concern with the matter, as I spoke about yesterday, is to ensure that I will not get treated any differently or let off lightly or helped more because I'm a girl. He and the other officers respected that.

Actual stuff about the actual game, actually:

The raid itself was fantastic, it was our first run at the Omnitron Defence System and, although we didn't down him, the difference in performance at the beginning and end of the raid was night and day.

Raid composition: x2 tank, x2 healers, x6 DPS

From a Hpriest perspective:

- Mana, mana, mana. We had myself and a Spriest using Hymn of Hope, mine at half way and his at about 20% and I was still running into trouble if aoe hit at a point when everyone wasn't topped off. Will be working on some new gear this weekend as by the end of the night I couldn't have been doing much of a better job of mana management and on the best run didn't cast FH once and still ran in to trouble.

- I'll also be respeccing into Surge of Light, I didn't take it when I was only thinking of HC runs but now it looks like a couple of free Flash Heals might be the difference between that last 10% and wiping, at my current gear level anyway.

- Electron was sometimes tanked too close to where ranged & heal were standing in Arcanotron's Power Generator, so although DPS and mana regen was up, so Electrical Discharge was hitting a few people frequently and was hurting my mana management as, if it was followed up by Incineration, I had to spam Flash Heal 3 or 4 times, which isn't really an option for me at the moment. This Electrical Discharge issue wasn't actually realised until after the raid, the thing about this encounter is that there are so many obvious things to be watching out for as the constructs rotate, that an ability sapping health more discreetly was being overlooked.

- Slightly squishy Warrior tank. I don't know much about warrior tanking but I know they've nerfed something in warrior talent trees that might have been tuned down a little too much by the sounds of things because he's a very good tank who outgeared that fight.

- Heal gearing discrepancy. There's a real gap that needs bridging doing this fight with two healers. In terms of the power of the heals going out I'm almost matching our Hpala, but when I start to get into a pinch with mana it plummets and I feel this is a real spirit gear issue on my part.

So the plan is I upgrade another item, use spirit flask from the word go and carry on fine-tuning my mana management. With a little luck on the construct rotations Tuesday I will be fussing about taking a kill screenshot.

~Reala