Wait a minute, I remember this nonsense
So there we were, in the mountains. Ulduar, to be precise. The mission was to continue our lockout from two weeks ago and finally finish the damn place once and for all. As I have recounted in the past, our history in that place is a bit checkered. Between the endless weeks of attempts to kill Thorim, and the most hellish night ever on Vezax, we hadn’t even seen Yogg in a 25man context.
That was all going to change however.
Actually, no, I lie. No change yet. Instead, true to form we headed into the Conservatory of Life first to knock off one of the two Keepers we needed to drop to head into the basement. “20 minutes, tops!” the rallying cry went out. Ahem.
Once we were done with the six or so wipes we suffered in that room we then one-shot Freya. I tanked all three of the elementals, which might have been a bad idea. Snaplasher still hits for a ton, so sadly I needed to bubble and beg Pain Suppressions for those moments.
Clearly we were more interested in just brute forcing our way through the trash. Sadly, being a tier and a half ahead doesn’t give you as much currency with trash as you’d think it would. Once we actually, you know, coordinated a bit on the pulls, and used some (ahem) CC, the pulls were obviously a lot smoother. Also, it helps when I don’t assume Demo is DC’d (seriously, if we go 20 seconds without him saying anything in vent, it’s safe to assume something is wrong) and pull a different mob nanoseconds before he charges after one of his own choosing.
Mimiron was similarly choppy. It took us a while to get down the hallway because someone started up the tram before everyone was on board, and left myself and the healer contingent behind to rot on the platform. Once we actually grouped up and started the fight, despite warning vociferously about the Shockwave/Nova thing, people still died to it. It’s a ten minute long fight, so I hope they thought about while they did while hugging the floor.
FINALLY after about two hours (two Keepers in two hours! arrgh) we finally got down to Vezax’s room. Cleared out the trash with a liberal application of CC and coordination, and set up for the big guy himself. Interrupt rotations were assigned: three groups of three interrupters basically ordered to get their interrupts off as soon as possible. Everyone is pumped to go…
And then Demo DC’d for 10 minutes. Le sigh.
Alright, well, then he got back. Ok, show time, let’s do this.
First Searing Flames comes up and I’m watching the cast bar and suddenly time slows down as eat decimal on the countdown begins to reduce. Nines become eights, and the numbers to the left of the decimal point get smaller. Oh god, flashbacks. A cloud of red surrounds my field of vision. The blood drains from my face. All I can hear over the ringing in my ears are the screams of pain and horror as a wave of Searing Flames washes over the raid.
Flashbacks. What the flying feck just happened?
Next cast–ok–that was a blip.
Another flame sears us all. Oh god. Interrupters–DO SOMETHING. Anything!
Eventually, Vezax has the compassion to put us down.
Once I’m down having a nervous breakdown on vent, we regroup and lined back up in front of the boss. We rush back in and start going through the motions. First interrupt, group one is up. They nail it. Group two next. Next flames is cast, and interrupted. I breathe a sigh of relief. It’s going to be ok.
We unfortunately wiped on that attempt, cause a few folks didn’t know the deal with Shadow Crashes and mana loss, so burnt out early or got burned up early. Either way, lost a lot of dps early and wiped at 3.6%. Gandy, one of the rogues, actually evasion-tanked Vezax from like 7% to 4%, holding threat only with a wave of the pigtails. Pretty awesome.
Alright, we got it this time. Everyone lines up, charges in. Interrupts go flying. Finally, finally, Vezax drops.
That night the top alliance guild on the server got the server first for Yogg+0. Interesting juxtaposition.
Armory Feed
Um – is that a ret setup I see on your bars there? What class was your tank?
@Rhidach
15 October 2009 at 1:15 pm #
Warrior. I go Ret for Vezax, because as much as I’d like to offtank it, it’s impossible to keep any mana up for the possibility the other tank goes squish.
Ulduar is so tedious now, but I did notice that once we got to Vezax the fooling around dipped and we started to concentrate again. You are correct that we did try and brute force through the Freya crap, but only because we are sick of going through the motions. I think that once we kill Yogg I personally will be retired from Ulduar forever.
@Rhidach
15 October 2009 at 1:38 pm #
Ditto, so I hope no one wants to get the Vezax/Yogg achievements that missed either night, because I’m so done with that place.
You know, I once remarked while clearing our way to Freya, 2 packs at a time, that clearing an instance 1.5 tiers behind the gear curve felt like beating up a kindergarden class. Someone promptly ass-pulled a 3rd pack and wiped us.
One day our ranged will understand that there’s a huge difference between a controlled pull of 3 packs, and a completely controlled pull of 2 packs with hey, bonus mobs, after the AoE has already started up. I live in hope.
@Rhidach
15 October 2009 at 3:59 pm #
Some call you a dreamer, but you’re not the only one.
We’re in the same boat with our 25s. We’re chipping away at Yogg, but it’s almost like a job dealing with the sloppy playing most of the raid is showing on anything but Yogg.
A few of us have decided to keep our 10 man group focused on hard modes, and let our 25 man group just clear basic content. It’s not worth the heartache of getting so close just to have someone DC before a completed hard mode on 25.
Not to say I don’t love 25s, because I do, but at some point you have to cut your losses and re-adjust your goals.
Why aren’t you main tanking it? If the warrior goes DPS that’s one more melee interrupt you have available, though he can still interrupt while tanking I suppose. I always wind up tanking him because I generally raid Prot/Holy – and our druid is Bear/Cat. At our gear level (for 10 man) we only use 2 healers for Hard Mode.
We may be trying no lights this week……I don’t even know how to do that with our raid setup..
I feel your pain, brother. We’re finally going back to start working on Vezax and Yogg tonight, after breaking from serious Ulduar progression for about a month. I’m not looking forward to it, because we seem to be in much the same slump as you guys, i.e. not taking Ulduar seriously enough anymore. Even a tier and a half ahead, Ulduar can still eat raids alive if you aren’t paying attention.
@ Adgamorix
My secondary spec is Arms. In order to effectively DPS I need to be in Battle Stance but in order to interrupt I need to either use a shield macro or stance dance to Berserker, neither of which would give me enough time after the GCD to interrupt.
This way we don’t lose an interrupt.