Great raid week, or *the greatest* raid week?
In the past few weeks we’ve been running two 25 nights, doing most of Coliseum on Tuesday and then VOA and finishing up Coliseum on Wednesday. Worked well, we got stuff done, people got their purps, everyone was happy.
So I wake up Tuesday and find out that Blizz is throwing a monkey wrench in the works: they’re releasing patch 3.2.2. Obviously, I’m shocked. I wasn’t away from WoW so I was not expecting a patch to come out–
Actually, I’ll explain this. Running joke is patches only come out when I’m on vacation or traveling for work. For example, 2.4 came out when I was in Florida for work (bee tee dubs, running Heroic Magister’s Terrace on a crappy hotel wireless connection while loaded on minibar booze = best thing ever), 3.0 when I was in Marseilles, 3.2 when I was in New Hampshire, etc.
Right, so back on topic: suddenly we had Onyxia to squeeze into the calendar, and by squeeze, I mean we actually had plenty of room for the old girl. To appease the masses yearning for dragon’s blood we decided to go after her after VOA that night. Moreover, the initial thought was Onyxia was resetting Tuesday night so it’d be stupid not to kill her when we could do her again the next day. Though, as we learned, not so much.
So we rip through VOA25 and then get our butts down to Dustwallow for Onyxia. The pvpers were out in force with a contingent of Horde sitting on the summoning stone, making getting the stragglers a little easier.
Once inside we burnt our way through Onyxia’s trash until we were face to face with the Brood Mother herself. Now, my only experience with this encounter was once at level 70 when I completed the huge quest chain for the hell of it, and then a few times at level 80 to gather scales for cloaks and to nab my t2 helm and Quel’Serrar (originals, both). I was not familiar with how the mechanics would work when at the proper raid level, aside from what I learned from the hilarious and classic Onyxia Wipe Animation.
So ES charges down the hill with the DK picking up Ony and me hanging in the rear on whelp and add duty. We get her to 70% quickly and she takes flight. The whelp train leaves the station and I immediately do my best to round as many as possible and help with the burn down. The AOE must have been intense because my fps dropped to 19 quickly, when it’s usually 60 in raids. A few people actually got dc’d, hah.
The adds go down and someone cries in vent “Deep Breath, look at her and move away from it!” Contrawise, the mouth breathers all stare at the ceiling in confusion and get roasted alive. The rest of us darted away and fall back together to deal with the eventually descending Onyxia. Of course the DK tank bought it, so I ran over and grabbed Ony to position her for phase three. The priests start rotating their Fear Wards and I used a bubble/debubble macro to slip out of one fear.
After going through the fear-break fear cycle a few more times Onyxia dropped to the floor and gave up her purples. A hunter and warlock helm dropped as well as the Sharpened Obsidian Edged Blade which is damn sexy. I was one for my Ret set. Loot is distributed and it’s only 7:30 server time, we’ve only been raiding for 45 minutes or so, amazingly.
A couple of us tabard hearth to the tournament and begin summoning the rest. We all pour into the Coliseum and start working our way through… and one shot every boss. We were out of there in two and a half hours, a few minutes shy of the 10pm ST cap I put on the raid.
Faction Champs in particular was an absolute joke. Usually we lose 5-8 people in the encounter, but with the nerfs done to overall damage we didn’t lose a single person. Sure, some of that can be explained by “practice makes perfect” and all, but the whole danger feeling of the fight was lost. Anub itself was also a cake walk. They toned down the damage the Burrowers were doing to the point where I never felt threatened, even while holding three of them at once. I’m not going to lie, I was kind of disappointed.
Well, that was Tuesday night: VOA, Ony, Col25. All cleared, all one shots. Amazing night.
And then last night we were kind of at a loss for what to do so it was decided we’d finally put to rest one of the ghosts haunting our guild: Sarth25 3D. We went in and did two learning wipes to figure out the finer points that most guilds knew of months ago, and then killed Sarth easily on the third go. So lots of folks got their titles and my pal Gulli got the drake for his mount collection.
Speaking of progress, I was looking at wowprogress, at the suggestion of Falowin, to see how our guild was doing there. Apparently we’re ranked 10th on our server and hilariously got the 17th kill in the world of Twins25 (which obviously doesn’t mean much, considering there’s a billion guilds tied for 17th along with us). All this progress and we’ve never killed Yogg. It’s kind of funny.
After Sarth I put together a dream team for ToC-10 heroic. It’s been our goal for a while to start working on that, and after Monday’s bloodlustless snafu we marched in last night with renewed vigor, determination, and shammyness.
Beasts we amazingly one-shot, and this was after wiping to them 13 times on monday. I’m assuming there must have been a stealth nerf in there, because I swear we were too slow to kill Gormok but the worms died sickeningly fast. Then Icehowl we just went through the motions with and burnt down with a minute left on the enrage timer. A nice morale boost for sure. 50 attempts left on the clock.
Then Jarxxus we had some trouble with initially with getting the portals down in time until we decided to shrink it down to one tank and six dps. This made life so much easier, because basically if you find yourself with two Mistresses of Pain, you’re looking at a world of hurt. That’s two counterspells going around, two healers that can be pounced at a time, it’s chaos. On the attempt we killed him we executed the fight perfectly. Portals went down very fast so we were never left with more adds than there would be in the normal mode. Took six wipes to learn, but when we got it, it was a thing of beauty. 44 attempts left on the clock.
Then onto Faction Champs–and oh boy did we luck out with group composition. We had the pally and druid for healers–that is, the two easiest to control. And no warrior, which made Zilga, the one clothie breathe a sigh of relief, even if the DK was still there (ZILGA DOWN!). So the kill order we settled on was Enhance Shaman, DK, Hunter, then Druid, Pally, and Shadow Priest. Nailed the fight on the second go, leaving us with 42 attempts left.
Unfortunately that was it for the night, have hit the time most people had to bail. We’re reforming on Monday and hoping can clean up the place and score the A Tribute to Skill achievement.
Overall, though, an amazing raid week. One I’m proud to be a part of with a great bunch of people.
Armory Feed
Congratulations – sounds like our raid week – minus the 25s.
Here is a tip for H Twins – which you probably already know.
Tank them together.
Our Druid tank and I hold the twins side by side between the two rear portals. This way all the “splash” damage (totems, retadin DPS, blade flurry, etc) hits both targets, letting you double dip into the shared mana pool. We had a problem with one of our healers dying early – so we put him in a protective ‘bubble’ between the melee – guaranteeing he didn’t get hit by balls of death.
We also go super lucky on Beasts (Heroic). Icehowl enraged at 2% – right as he charged into a wall knocking himself out. WIN!
@Rhidach
24 September 2009 at 12:28 pm #
Thanks Adgamorix, I actually never thought of that. That’s a great tip and will definitely make things a lot simpler!
It was a great week. Progression is the best part of the game in my book. But when you have undergeared or underskilled people it often can feel like you have absolutely no chance at clearing something. When you have a group like we did last night you KNOW you’re going to clear it, it is just a question of mechanics. Time now to clear Uld 25 once and for all, and then conquer Grand 25….
Wow Congrats on a great wipe free night of 25s! Our guild had about the same experience until we reached Anub in TOC 25. Then suddenly we wiped 5 times in a row before gettign Anub down. In every attempt we lost a healer of tank to the evil D/C monster of patch night!
Also: Could you describe your single tanking method for Jaraxus on heroic 10 man? Our guild has been unable to get Jaraxus down on heroic 10 man since they increased the portal/volcano health. I think your single strategy might be the ticket for us as well. I’d like to know if you had a ret pally or someone pseudo-off-tank the mistress/infernals? Were hunters MDing to main tank? Or did the main tank just grab all?
@Rhidach
24 September 2009 at 2:02 pm #
Nope, I tanked everything, myself. When Mistresses came out of the portal I immediately Hand of Reck’d them and held them in place. The trickiest part is the Infernals because they come out so fast that you need to make sure Reck, AS, and Judgement are off cooldown and available for grabbing them. The extra DPS was instrumental for getting the portals down in time.
Falowin – that’s why we went to a straight 10 man guild. Only 10 members – so nobody sits, and everyone has to be awesome. Doesn’t hurt that we’ve al known each other since Vanilla.
@Yoggie – We do this the same way – here’s how.
Tank – Amathalanea – Protadin
Heals – Shaman/Disc Priest
DPS – Hunter, Feral Druid, Retadin, Rogue, Doomchicken, Mage
Start in the center – move as necessary for Legion Flames on Melee.
I target the portal right when it pops and drag Jaraxxis to it – this lets all the ranged /assist off me and saves a few seconds. When the mistress comes up I pop Cpt America – and all DPS nuke her down.
Repeat for the Infernals – but our kitty feral will occasionally pop to bear to taunt them – I generally AoE taunt – and then move when they get close to the melee and start their AOE.
It’s not bad – but it does require some finesse. One missed or out of range taunt – and you’re probably going to lose someone. Now that we’re going for the Tribute to Insanity – we use two tanks to reduce any “Oh SHIT” moments.
Question about 25m Ony – how many guardians did you get, and how many whelps? We’re thinking about taking our 10 man crew in there and just abusing her again.
@Rhidach
24 September 2009 at 5:39 pm #
Even in 10man there were a lot of whelps. I’d guess at least 30 total. And if I recall correctly we had 2 guardians comes during the flight phase.
…and it haunts my dreams that I missed the raid on Tuesday :’(
At least I got to do the 10 mans.
Hopefully next week will be just as amazing, we’re actually going to try and cut our teeth in Grand Crusader 25… Eek!
Yeah – that sounds about right for 10 man. I’m just trying to deduce if 10 manning her in 25 mode is feasable. I’m sure we can out last her, but her adds are what concern me.
Yup there are usually around 30 or more whelps per wave on phase 2, and well we did get around 2 guardians on 25 man, but they didnt pop at the same time, it was like a 20 sec interval between spawns
A similar thing happened to us on the Deep Breaths, as you might expect. I saw a large number of people standing right in its path, except…
…Almost nobody died from it. The thing is a total joke now. It ticks for 5k per second or something like that.