So close, yet… actually, pretty damn close

Wednesday night, the second and last raiding night according to the new schedule, we went into ICC intending to hammer out some progression–FINALLY–and maybe kill a wing boss. We’ve been taking potshots at Putricide, and barely at that, over the last month thanks to some seriously crappy attendance.

As I said, finally, we had good attendance Wednesday night and the stars seemed aligned for a wing boss kill. We got some quickie tries in on Putricide the night before, getting him to no more than 70%, but that was with us really only half-trying at the end of the night. The remainders of Tuesday night indicated two issues: rDPS on the boss was low, because those 70% attempts were lasting 6 minutes or so, meaning the boss wasn’t going down fast enough, and that we’d have to go through a bunch of wipes before everyone got used to avoiding the environmental damage.

To remedy the first issue (the low rDPS) we adopted the “stay on green” strat that would minimize how much time melee (and god, do we run melee-heavy) had to run to get to their target. Staying on green side meant that the Volatile Ooze would die expediently, and give us downtime to work on the boss. This definitely resolved the issue, suddenly we were forcing Phase 2 after the first Gas Cloud.

We went through a few wipes working out the kinks, like moving away from flasks, positioning for when the green ooze explodes so people don’t get knocked against the wall or a corner, avoiding the malleable oozes, etc. Everything was slowly coming together and suddenly our 70% attempts jumped to 50% attempts, and then we were dancing on the precipice of Phase 3.

Sidenote on phase transitions: one of the Rogues discovered if you Vanish during the Tear Gas cast (phase transitions) you don’t get stunned and can continue dpsing the boss/slime. A mage also pulled this off with Invisiblity. I’m guessing anything that takes you out of combat will do the same–Feign Death, etc.

Anyway, so we through the motions attempt after attempt, watching the health counter be lower and lower every time we wipe: serious progression. The bonus dkp flows like wine to keep everyone motivated. Honestly, I didn’t care if we didn’t kill him, I was having fun learning the fight.

Finally we start consistently pushing the good doctor into phase 3, although the first time it happened we weren’t prepared, had an add still up, and in the confusion managed to die one by one. But we were getting there!

We followed up with a few more phase 3 attempts, getting Putricide at the lowest to 20%. By this point it was getting late (attempts add up quickly when each can take up to 10 minutes), and performance was starting to reverse course. Thirty minutes before raid end we shuffled off and closed the night with VOA.

Am I disappointed we didn’t kill Putricide Wednesday? A little, but not totally. Last month we spent a whole night wiping on Rotface when he first came out, not scoring a kill, and then the following week we two shot him. I’m fully optimistic that next week we’ll build on what we learned and drop this sucker.