The uphill climb

If I’m going to take away something from last night, it’s that ICC is somewhat buggy right now. Invites went out at 7 server like usual and two people got in and ported up to the trash before the Gunship Battle. Not knowing any better, they pulled the Alliance trash and wiped, which then bugged that pull. Suddenly the Alliance was standing on top of the teleporter, fighting unkillable Horde mobs. Whenever someone used the teleporter they would get warped up into the middle of the Alliance pack and quickly killed.

It took us about 20 minutes of people running in, rebuffing, repairing, and then some dope would try to teleport and that would cause everyone, one by one, to auto-port up there and be killed. Once the bleeding in my ulcer subdued, we told everyone to wait just inside the entrance, don’t touch the teleporter, and we’d walk to the elevator in Deathwhisper’s room and take that up together.

So we all run over there, and just screwing around someone sits in the pit the elevator settles in. That puts everyone in combat and, again, ports everyone up one by one and kills them.

Finally, after I got some healthy tweaks in, instructions went out over raid warnings and vent: go inside, stand next to the elevator but don’t touch it. Wait for everyone to get there. So everyone gathers, we get on as a raid, and we all go up. So far so good. Elevator reaches the top, Demo and I run off and charge into the breach, some healers and dps follow and some folks hesitate and stay on the elevator. And, of course, the elevator descends, and suddenly the raid was cut in half.

Normally this would have been hilarious, but we just burned 35 minutes on this nonsense. Exasperated, I asked “you guys have used elevators before, right?!” Yeesh. Anyway, no wipes, the elevator came back up and the Alliance dogs were put to heel.

I’m on a boat

We fought our way over to the zeppelin and boarded. Groups were split up with all ranged on D with me, all melee save four on O with Demo, the four lowest dps melee were put on cannons, and three healers were send to O and two stayed on D. Everyone grabbed their rocket packs (which are AWESOME) and we started up the encounter.

We really didn’t know what to expect aside from what we’ve read from the ptr and elsewhere, but generally we stumbled around in the dark and go the Alliance boat to 40% the first time. Smelling blood in the water, we regathered and on the second attempt easily pushed it to the end.

Hilariously enough, O forgot to jump back right before the Alliance ship crashed, so they went down with it. Again, this would be funny if it didn’t cause a giant bug. Our Master Looter went down with the ship and we couldn’t get the purples in the chest. Not only that, but the zeppelin declined to dock at Saurfang’s balcony, so we all had to commit suicide and port up to the next boss. The loot was ticketed, so hopefully the winners will get their spoils soon.

Overall though the Gunship fight was amazing, such an awesome piece of work by Blizzard. Basically free loot and the Chess of ICC, but whatever, the break was nice.

Saurfang

This is how I spend a good chunk of last night: standing behind a recently summoned Saurfang and mashing the Q key to get that first shield slam in.

I made the mistake of using the “loot pinata” invective for Saurfang, and oh boy was I wrong. I don’t think it was ingrained properly to folks how important it was to keep the Blood Beasts away and forstall the applications of new Marks of the Fallen Champion. In our experiences last night, once you hit five Marks the fight is generally over very shortly, especially in the sub-35% range when Saurfang frenzies and starts attacking faster. We had many, many wipes where we’d get it down to 15% and the healers got overwhelmed.

We were, though, making serious progress on the fight, we just needed to get the best execution and get lucky with Marks. After about two hours of attempts it was 11 server and people were jonesing to finish this and go. An hour past our usual stop time, but people stuck around to put this fight to rest. On the last attempt it was again declared that this would be the last try, and sure enough, we dropped the sucker.

As the dkp leader in the Conqueror category of tier tokens I eagerly sprinted to the chest, but alas it was double Vanq. Not totally alas, any tier tokens in the raid is a good thing. I’m glad we managed to score a pair in the first week. Falowin also scored the Deathbringer’s Will trinket which looks to be BiS right now for ArP-using melee dps. Mega grats to him for that.

About the Blood Beasts

They suck. What we did was tell melee to stay on Saurfang and stick to single attacks (ie, no AOE or splash damage) until Beasts were spawned and safely far away. That way, no adds would aggro into melee when they first spawned. The hunters laid down various frost traps and shamans had earthbind totems down and thunderstorms shooting across the terrace constantly.

For myself, I stuck to ShoR, Judging, and Holy Wrath mostly until the Beasts were far enough away or there was enough time on the Beasts cooldown that I could sneak in a HotR. When I never consecrated except for that first 30 second window at the start of the fight before the first Beasts wave. Also, I’d occasionally toss an Avenger’s Shield at a random Beast that was chasing someone to do some damage and snare the little bastard. I like to think that helped.

For benchmarks, try to get through the first two waves without a single Mark of the Fallen Champion going out (though, obviously, the more waves before a Mark, the better). I think on the last attempt we go a Mark on the third wave, the second on the fifth wave, and then one on every wave after that. I believe we killed Saurfang just as the fifth Mark went up.

And that’s the week that was

What an amazing week though! I’m so pumped we managed to get 4/4 in ICC the first week and before the inevitable nerfs. Next week will only be easier, for sure, and then we have some steady farming to do before the next wing opens up.