We had probably our best farm night in, well, forever in ICC-25 last night. Thanks to the 15% buff we steamrolled through the Lower Spire, then knocked over (or picked back up, however you want to term it) Dreamwalker, then smashed through the Blood Wing, then finally demolished the Plague Wing. Three hours are the first pull we had 10/12 bosses down, killing everything we have on farm. This completely frees up tonight for three hours of Progression Fun Time. I’m very happy.

Perhaps one of the best parts of the night was our third, and last, attempt on BQL. By all accounts we should have wiped on this attempt. Towards the end one of the dps died and one bite was put on the offtank, another on a healer in the last wave because the biters were going to get MC’d. We missed the enrage timer at the end, so Lana’thel turns gigantic, angry and red.

Seconds earlier I popped an armor pot, then as the timer hit zero I popped both my trinkets (Glyph and Key) for extra dodge and some damage absorption. Stupidly, I had Forbearance on me from popping Divine Shield when someone got feared right next to me during the second air phase. Locked out of my bubble, I basically prayed. This is what happened:

Somehow, I avoided every melee hit (except for the one that killed me and proc’d AD). I took some heavy hits from Shroud of Sorrow, but that wasn’t so bad for me. For everyone else, it pretty much blew them up immediately.

Anyway, the point being: behold(!) the improbable power of avoidance. It doesn’t always know you exist, but can be amazing when its golden countenance doth shine down upon thee.

The revitalization of the guild continues apace! Last night we swore revenge on the epic beatdowns the Blood Queen had inflicted upon us. We, along with our trusted friend the 10% buff, were going to get our pound of flesh from her sparkling hide.

The first pull was around 7:00 or so, after quickly doing the raid weekly and then shuffling over to Icecrown. Once we were through the trash I gave a rundown of the fight to the four or so people who had never done it before. After rambling for ten minutes, I then gave the cliff notes version:

Swarming shadows, run to the walls, don’t drop it in melee. Pact of the darkfallen, get to the middle. Air phase, spread out six yards apart. Bites, do them.

And then we were off to the races. We had an epically awful first go attempt that failed at around 45%. No matter, those four people saw the mechanics of the fight. The next attempt we got her to 12% or so before she enraged. That filled me with hope. I told everyone I believed in them, and then we proceeded to wipe for the next two hours.

Sigh. You people just can’t make things easy, can you?

By the end I was starting to despair, as I’m sure people could tell by the lack of enthusiasm in my voice. I knew we were capable of the kill but we needed to overcome those stupid little mistakes that would get someone killed. People dying in airphase. Not getting bites off and getting mindcontrolled. And so on. There are a hundred ways to mess up, and just one death usually meant falling behind the enrage timer.

What I think eventually turned the tide was making the first biter wait as long as he could before biting the second person. This would then push the second wave of bites to after the air phase, rather than right before it. Once we started doing that, we stopped losing people during the first airphase. The only downside being that this reduced how much time we had at the end with all vampires up, but thanks to Mr. 10% Buff we had the wiggle room.

After the two hours of wipes some off us were rezzed up at the boss, others released and started to run back in, only to find the Valks back up and circling the Upper Spire. I started to run down the hallway to meet them, but all the packs there had already respawned. Those of us left behind wiped ourselves and then met everyone at the teleporter to reclear back up to BQL.

It was already 9:30, basically thirty minutes before the raid would end and it was starting to look like we weren’t going to get her.

I knew, despite any despair I might be feeling, we couldn’t use the respawn as an excuse to quit early. That attitude was fatal to the guild and we had to break it, or it would break us. So, reclear we did, and made our way back up. Some folks took a quick break and we readychecked, flasked, and were off.

I pulled and we all started to pour in the hurt. 65% before the first air phase, ahead of the timer. Bites occurring after she came down, so we were safe for that.

To help this crucial point along, I popped Divine Sacrifice/Guardian to shave off some damage. I also bubbled because someone got awfully close and I didn’t want to accidentally kill them. Thankfully, no one died during the airphase. Everything was going well, people just needed to hold it together.

More bites go out and the second airphase happens. Again, no deaths. Then the last wave of bite assigns go out and I watch the window for the addon to report back successful bites. I watch Vampires 9-13 get created quickly, then with sweat dripping down my brow, the last few trickle in. Vampire #14. “Two more guys!” Vampire #15. “One more, get that bite off!” Vampire #16. Everyone was bit.

“Pop bloodlust, burn cooldowns, NUKE HER!”

I pop wings and immediately start laying as much dps in as I can. It’s about 40 seconds left on the enrage, 25% to go. I’m watching both her health bar and the enrage timer with equal parts dread and hope. Shouting encouragement into vent, both tick down to the inevitable. Finally, with about 1% to go we had only a few seconds to live. Finally, with her hp in the decimal points, it was obvious she was about to enrage. I quickly popped bubblewall, both trinks, and an armor pot, bracing myself for the burst.

It was all for naught, though.

With a screech she then collapsed to the floor, never getting a hit off. We killed her the millisecond she enraged.

It took a second for the kill to sink in, and then I quickly clicked on her body to see the loot. And there it was. The shield. The Icecrown Glacial Wall. The bulwark I had been drooling over since it was first revealed. (Yes, yes, I know, the heroic 10man shield is better, let me have my moment, damn you.)

Taking up the IGW, I put to rest the ghosts of all the shields I had lusted over before, but been thwarted in my attempts to obtain. The ALD, Bulwark of the Amani Empire, Bulwark of Azzinoth. All had escaped my ambitions. Finally, I had broken the curse.

More importantly (far more importantly), this was a huge victory for the guild. We went from weeks of early exits, no new kills, endless demoralizations. It looked like ES was on the way out. This week we bucked the trend though, we refused to leave, we didn’t let excuses prevent us from continuing to try fights.

I’d like to take credit for it, but I honestly can’t. I’m a terrible guild leader and an even worse raid leader. Sure, I can explain the fights, I can diagnose wipes somewhat efficiently. But, I am just as susceptible to despair as any rank and file, and after those numerous wipes I was all but giving up on the inside. It was only by the light of the optimism of my officers and the happy warriors of the healing corps that the mood of the raid stayed afloat and we were able to muster the will to down this blood-sucking bitch.

This victory belongs to the entire guild. You guys earned it!

I’m trying to think of a fight that puts as much of an emphasis on personal responsibility as Blood Queen does. And, by personal responsibility, I mean each raider paying specific attention to a buff that they have that realistically the raid leaders cannot see the status of and cannot feasibly direct the execution of in the midst of the encounter.

I suppose Thaddius would be a good analogue, since you really didn’t know if people were paying attention to their polarity until they had managed to zap-fry to death a huge swath of innocent people, their whole lives ahead of them, like a toaster dropped in the pool at the youth center.

Blood Queen presented a unique challenge for us if only because while we excel in many areas, coordination and good old fashioned attention-paying is not especially our strong suit. The attempts done on Blood Queen were a few weeks ago, done mostly as exploration, and resulted (I’m told, I wasn’t there) in some fantastic wipes. Then, last week after murdering Putricide we gave her the ol’ college try and, while failing, had enough success to know the fight was definitely feasible.

Last night we put the first serious night of attempts on her. We finally got to her lair at around 8:30 server or so, giving us a solid 90 minutes to lock down the fight.

Aiding us in our journey of pain would be an amazing addon that Demogar found called BloodQueen. You put in a priority list of bites and the addon will track who has the vampire debuff, the timing on their bite, and assign for them (communicated through raid warnings and whispers) who they have to bite.

So in the screenshot above Cendra got the debuff first, and then ten seconds before he could bite someone the addon told him to go for the first person in the priority list: Morvain. A /rw went out, an icon was put on Morvain’s head, and Cendra would then run off at the proper time to bite his assigned target.

The addon was working pretty well last night, and despite some issues with the mechanics of biting (mostly people not standing close enough to their target) we’re doing pretty well on bites until the third wave. At that point we were having issues with people losing track of who they had to bite in the endless sea of notifications and raid warnings. At that point someone came up with the idea of making a separate chat window for whispers so you can see and not lose track of your assignments. Brilliant, definitely helped.

Another suggestion was made by Zilga, apparently the ambassador of Healsylvannia, who declared “the healers claim the middle.” During air phase they would immediately retreat there, spread out, and begin tossing out whatever heals they could to keep people up while bloodbolts whirled overhead. Once they started doing that the air phases went super clean with only an occasional death. Game changing strat swap.

Tonight we have the whole night drop BQL. At first last night I was filled with fear and loathing that she would turn into a new Putricide, a fight that would take weeks for us to down and even then would hardly be clean enough to henceforth be declaredly a farm fight. BQL however, once we made those strategy changes, didn’t seem so bad. We have the dps, it’s just everyone executing their jobs precisely and maximizing personal dps. I think tonight we can drop her… our last attempt things were really clicking and I think if someone didn’t drop a swarming shadows in the middle of the room and kill a swath of people we could have killed her. We wiped at 14%, with half the raid dead.

And I want my damn shield to drop.

Wednesday last week may have sucked, but on the bright side it gave us a jump start on our 10man group and allowed us to go into ICC-10 last night with all but the two wings bosses and Blood Council down.

First things first, we hit up Blood Council and despite a dopey wipe (hunter pulled aggro on Keleseth, died, his orb hit the ground, everyone died in the ensuing chaos) the second shot was a quick and clean kill. Netted the orb achievement again, because nothing makes that fight easier than siccing a pet on an orb.

We then bounded up the ramp to the first trash pull before the Blood Queen. Bad things ensued. First we tried a straight pull but it went south very quickly. Second time we tried a little more CC but I got gibbed before we all got in position (I hatehatehate the Tactician). Third time we got a clean pull but the other tank and I soon died, leaving two healers and two dps up with about three mobs. They then proceeded to somehow kill all the mobs with coordinated CC while us losers ran back in a classic cavalry maneuver. By the time we heroically returned, the dps had mopped them all up. Well played.

Once we were done with the trash pull from hell we dispatched the four guys at the top of the ramp and tried to figure out how we were going to handle Blood Queen. After kind of rambling off everything I remembered reading about the fight, we all basically agreed we weren’t going to do a good attempt until we say the fight ourselves. So, we pulled and had a hilariously disastrous wipe, though we ended up seeing the different aspects of the fight: the brain link, the swarming shadows, the vampire bite, etc.

Going back we retooled the strategy a bit (ok, actually formed a strategy) and pulled again. This time we lost a few people early on to some silliness but kept going to get more practice. Had her down to ~60% that time.

The third attempt we had more a plan going and new what to look for. We also had one of the dps (actually, a druid healer going boom for the raid) switch to heals. Seems counterproductive for a dps race fight, but the dps we had was good and we needed the breathing room that a third healer would provide. The third attempt was awesome and despite losing someone early in the fight (who was then brezzed) and a rogue (Falowin, of course) at around 40% we managed to kill her right at the exact second when she enraged and murdered both me and the offtank.

So, wow, our first wing boss down. I was expecting that fight to be a lot harder.

Exuberant after dethroning the Blood Queen, we then bounced back to the Plague Wing to bring a fiery vengeance down upon Professor Putricide. Our very first attempt and it was clear that we had built upon the knowledge we gain from previous attempts. And, also, the dps we had was nuts. We hit phase 2 after the first green slime was dead. We pushed it to phase 3, but we had an orange slime up at the same time, and a little too many puddles on the ground. Wiped in the ensuing chaos.

Still, great first showing! We were all pumped. The next try we got it again to phase 3 but I screwed up the tank switch and kept accidentally outthreating and pulling off Nordic, the warrior tank, when he would taunt it off me. We wiped because I had 5 stacks and he had 2. /facepalm

I clearly wasn’t giving him enough time to build rage after he was crammed in the Abom the entire time. So third attempt I swore I wasn’t going to wipe the raid that time and we had similar results. Quick switch to phase 2, a hop, skip, and a jump to phase 3, and then I’d back off when not tanking Putricide so as not to pull threat. We lasted a lot longer and finally downed the bastard about 5 stacks on me and 4 on Nordic. Down to the wire, for sure.

But it was a kill nonetheless! Very exciting, two wing bosses for the first time.

I’m trying to think of any tips for Putricide that I can impart (I surely can’t offer anything for BQL, haven’t done that fight enough) and the main thing I can emphasize is the fight revolves around how quickly you kill and how well you control the green/orange slimes. If you can down each before they reach their victim that’s more time you have on Putricide. And, furthermore, it’s so very key to make sure everyone stays as far back as possible from where the slimes spawn (except for hunters, who can feign off a link) so there’s a maximum distance between add and target.

Once you get down to phase 3, it’s all about the dps and the tanks not screwing up their switches (ahem). Tensest part of the fight, but the easiest as well if everyone is alive and everyone is doing their job.

The best part of last night is for sure the realization that the group we had last night could easily kill the Lich King. Well, maybe not easily, but with some practice. We have the capability, now we just need the opportunity.

And now to parlay this knowledge into the 25man so we can kill a wing boss there…