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A fuller post later, but we got him on the second shot tonight using the “let the first two marks die” tactic, worked a dream

Thanks to Leafshine for the blogroll link, I guess this means the blog becomes a little more of an obviously public place rather than a place for really random witterings.

Anyway some ponderings based on something I was reading earlier, is ICC too much of a leap from TotC, is it “just too hard”.  I’m not convinced.  Ok I started raiding recently, the alliance I joined (Even Odds) was busy working Ulduar 25 and had recently managed to beat up Vezax if I recall correctly and was spending serious pain time kicking a god in one of his many sets of spare teeth.   From the point of view of a tree who hadn’t done masses of healing in a raid setting (though I had pugged up OS & Naxx on the tank) it was hard work but nothing the team wasn’t handling.  Wipes were on the bosses which we all learnt were trickier (Thorim, Crazy Cat Lady and Mimi).

The hard modes tended to be much harder and there are still some which haven’t been properly nailed down (I need to get back in there for the drake).  Either due to much higher situational awareness requirements or simple healing or dps checks in blowing the boss down before the enrage.

TotC25, or as I shall refer to it from now on “The 10th circle of hell – The Boring One”, we mostly blew through the normal mode bosses.  Champs gave and continue to give some problems simply because the mechanics of the fight are so different from the more traditional PvE fare.   I think on balance it was a useful change to keep raiders slightly off balance.

The hardmode version of TotC25 was just that, brutal.  The dps check to get through the beasts had us smashing our faces into the various phases for weeks.  However once the beasts fell (after the enrage timer had tripped on the first kill) we rolled through the Gnome and his Demon friend and the champs went down surprisingly quickly.

So… ICC25

Firstly, Trash!, we’ve missed you.  Yes I like trash, they’re what we need to reset our poor raiding brains before and between bosses, warm up time, time for the comedy wipe because the mage decides to pull both packs in Deathwhisper’s room and so on.  The best bit, they’re not trivial faceroll material.

Marrowgar, he’s a dps and healing check.  The dps need to keep on their toes, keep moving and kill those spikes dammit!

Deathwhisper, watch out for the solo trash on the sides of the room, the AoE damage from them can be pretty nasty if you’re not prepared.  She’s an interesting fight, again lots of target switching needed by the DPS and they need to be on top of their game here to make sure the dangerous targets are nuked quickly before they cause major problems for the tank or the raid.  Then it’s a tank, spank and heal like hell through the AoE from the boss in phase 2.

The ship.  Flying bear butt!!!  Blizzard get your fingers out of whatever you’ve got them in and let me fly as a tree, please, pretty please.  This is just the fun loot fight, nothing special for the healer.

The Deathbringer…  It’s all about nuking the adds and keeping the number of marks under control, the healing is heavy at 30% and gets worse.  More on him in a later post.

So coming back to the difference between TotC and ICC, the jump between TotC25 normal and ICC normal is going to be heavy but let’s be honest it’s progression, it’s meant to be hard.  The relative jump is higher than from U25 to TotC25 but this is it, we’re going up against the BigBad of this expansion, Arthas, that dude we’ve been taunted by all the way through since November 2008.  We want him to be hard.

So in summary, it’s not going to be an easy raid to pug, there is a requirement for co-ordination which isn’t normally found without a group used to working together, happy to accept the direction of team and class leaders and who can keep quiet on vent when it matters and finally, who turn up regularly and on time to work through the wipes, the many wipes without any QQ.

Is that such a bad thing?

Second week of mashing has started, last night’s raid saw us get the first two bosses down with the minimum of fuss, though a few wipes.  Mostly due to some of the dps who missed last week working out the target switching needed for Deathwhisper.

The ship went down as a one shot, this is going to be the “geif lootz” fight of the instance, it’s fun, it’s easy, and it breaks the stress ready for the Deathbringer.

He’s harder, we tried out some new strats on him none of which quite fitted, though there’s progress happening and we know it’s all about minimising the number of marks.  One possibility which will be tried out on Friday will be to let the first two Marks die thus controlling what we hit the 30% level with.  Healing the marks is rather brutal.

So roll on the weekend for our first kill of old orc face.

Wolf has been mucking about with a ret spec recently but it’s not where his heart is, if he’s whacking something in his mind he should be front and center, have the full attention of eveything in sight (particularly his favourite healer) and be kicking the boss in the wossanames while the dps cut it down to size.  This running around trying to keep within range of the mobs as they run around just isn’t his thing.

So… tanking remains the first love and healing comes back into the picture as the backup spec.  Based on the gear sites he’s actually naxx ready, not that I believe this for a second as I know what’s wrong with the kit (enchant and gemming for starters).

However the is another ulterior motive, guaranteed LFG runs.

Time to be selected when joining as tank or healer… seconds

Time to be selected when joining as dps… 5-10 minutes

Stress level balance Tank > Heal > DPS

So for grinding instances healing is the high throughput minimum effective stress option.

Go go emblem farmer!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edZw3CCBr3o&hl=en_US&fs=1&]

Well the new interface works, it just works, nicely. As a team we pugged twice last night and Namtar took a random dungeon from the queue as well.

Forge of Souls (FoS)

The boomkin we were lined up with was a silent type, but seemed to be pretty effective, though possibly a little pewpew happy while I’m trying to get aggro on the mobs (which hit hard….), we lived apart from a double pull of the Wardens.  By the gods those buggers need to be taken one at a time.  Got slightly snarky at one of the need rolls but what the hell it was an upgrade for the party which meant better healing for the final boss (he’s a sod).

Pit of Saron (PoS)

Damm fine DK, knew his stuff and was relaxed enough about the wipes on the bosses.  Unfortunately we couldn’t get the end boss down, I think we have some gearing work to do on the dps and heal side, pushing up my avoidance is going to help as well.  Remember kiddies, these bosses are bigger and badder than anything else seen in the 5-man world so far.

DTK (on Namtar)

15 minutes, hooked into a guild run, and we just nuked through….

So on balance, bring it on, more pugs please

As part of the “let’s have some DKs” on an alternate realm to get to the cap where we know some other people (H & C) so the question becomes, are they going to fight their way up and be self sufficient or do they get a sugar daddy? So, the decision has been made, Korengelf is packing his bags (Mal can handle the tailoring and enchanting side of the family business). So BoA gear which isn’t in use is being moved into his packs, he’ll be sent over with a pile of gold, mats, glyphs and all of that fun stuff.

Also “She who owns auction houses” will no doubt work out what is cheap on ER and expensive on AM so we can gain some extra gold that way as well.

All of which also opens up the spare slot ready for Cata for the Worgen.

So… Worgen mage appears to be on the cards.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIWe3PLC-P8&hl=en_US&fs=1&]

Ok it’s nice. The raid has a proper feel to it, we have trash. We have trash which caused the dps to complain “yeah just AoE them down, I hope this isn’t going to be the norm” followed by a single mob which caused some serious pain and deaths. Nice one blizz, keep throwing those unexpected curve balls at us.

The five-man content is pretty, and given that the healing on Unferth wasn’t a cakewalk I’m expecting it to be a proper challenge with Tincan. The attunement side of things is nice, we have to work through the three wings. The last one hurt like hell, though it didn’t help that we were four-manning at that point and just couldn’t nuke down the adds fast enough on the gauntlet section.

I like the content, the bosses are throwing some curveballs, the end boss in the Pit is going to be a swine to heal at a more normal level of kit, there’s some interesting stuff there. I think we’re going to be spending some time fighting our way though it for kit and the iLevel of the kit on normal version is 219.

Loot! Epix! Achievments!

So the plan for tonight (and other non-raiding nights) is to beat the hell out of Icecrown. So Bucanneers, gird your loins, pay your repair bills, sell something to pay for the incoming repair bills (for they will hurt). We need to beat the hell out of the new instances (and by the gods they hurt).

Edit: … gem.. enchant… gem… enchant…