I never did anything like this back when I was privileged enough to get to offtank BQL. I guess the closest I’ve ever been was when tanking Loatheb back in Naxx25, I built a good threat lead then alt-tabbed out for the rest of the encounter.
Also: Peggle > Bejeweled.
So, what’s different?
For positioning the raid in this fight, I have two ranged park in front of each of the three skull/barrel spots in the cardinal points of the room, as well as in front of the door. When spills come down they can just side step out of them. Melee stacks on one of Rotface’s legs, then when a Big Ooze ruptures and the rockets hit the air, they immediately shift to the other leg and hopefully avoid any splash damage.
Now, let’s practice maintanking this fight. Stand up from your computer. Face whatever door you used to enter the room you’re in. Now stand there. Now, hold that position. This’ll get tough, but I recommend practicing for about two hours a day for the next week to perfect the technique.
While MTing, since your job is cake, you have the spare time to make your healer’s lives easier. Use a mouseover Cleanse macro and take it upon yourself to immediately Cleanse people as they get diseased. It’ll save the healers some GCDs, and it’s not like you have anything better to do other than maintain a high threat ceiling.
While, it’s stupid easy to maintank this fight, thankfully, offtanking is another matter. The poor OT will be circling the room, doing their best to zip through ooze spills with minimum contact and minimal slowdown. Having Hand of Freedom is a must, as you do not want the Big Ooze catching up with you while dashing through a spill. Same rules for Ooze Kiting apply in heroic mode. Ultimately, don’t let it catch you, and try to keep a wide berth of the ranged and melee to prevent a Vile Gas from splashing onto you.
If you do get pinched by the Gas, have your bubble/cancel macro ready to go to quickly knock it off. You do not want the Ooze catching you, or your kiting career will be cut to an abrupt end. Likewise, if an emergency occurs and for some reason you need to change directions while kiting, pop a cooldown to pass by the Big Ooze.
As a whole, this probably one of the easiest hardmodes. The first time we did it, we almost downed it after losing most of the raid around the 30% mark. Just keep the raid from standing in an ooze rocket, or from screwing up delivery of their little oozes and you’re golden. Autopilot to victory!
The lewt!
Like I said on Thursday, I was concerned the make-up raid scheduled on Sunday wasn’t going to happen. Thankfully it did, everyone showed along with some standbys and on-time we assembled inside the instance.
The menu that night was Heroic Dreamwalker, then normal Sindragosa and Lich King. Assuming we made it to Arthas, this would be the first time we’ve faced him since our first kill a few weeks ago. We’ve been bogged down progressing through hardmodes, and with our two raids a week schedule, didn’t really have the time to get to him on the second night. However, after our amazing showing on Wednesday, he was definitely within reach.
Anyway, Heroic Dreamwalker first. If you’ll recall on Wednesday (last callback to an earlier post for now, I swear!) we had some wipes. In hindsight this was clearly because one of our best portal jockeys was having connection issues and DCing, based on the success we had when he could actually stay on and heal. Last night, we were going through the paces, as I frantically tried to manage adds on my side and keep healers from getting eaten (I think a zombie got through).
I honestly thought we were going to wipe that attempt, we hit the 75% mark–”Press on heroes!”–and then a blazing skeleton got three ticks of Lay Waste off. Miraculously, no one died. Probably thanks to the warbling solo provided by Garrosh. In any case, we pressed on, and before I knew it the dragon stood up and blew the Scourge all to bits.
At the moment we succeeded I felt like I was drowning in a rotting sea of zombie parts, all hope lost. It was kind of amazing seeing the dragon suddenly lift up and end the encounter. Like Gandalf cresting the ridge, but less dramatic, and I don’t remember any white light.
Dorkiest simile ever; I apologize. Either way, it was pretty sweet to one shot the fight after the initial trouble we had Wedne–DAMMIT.
After Dreamwalker came Sindragosa and this was going to be the first time we did her since AVR was broken. As I’ve always maintained, I loved AVR for its ability to put marks on the ground, which removed a lot of the thinking from Frost Beacon placement. … Ok–ALL the thinking. Nonetheless, I read off the beacon placements and everyone wrote it down on a piece of paper in front of them (how… antique) and we got to work.
We didn’t have much of any issue with the beacons and easily dropped her. There was a short hiccup at the end where I disconnected but thankfully I’m not that critical. It was at like 3% and everyone autopiloted the encounter to its conclusion.
Two one shots and we were only like 45 minutes into raid time. That gave us a solid (almost) three hours to go tussle with the Lich King. And, dontcha know it, we one shot him too. Scored achievements for a swath of folks that couldn’t make our first kill, along with the 2H sword and the caster staff. Of course, by the time that was done we still had about two and a half hours left in the raid.
There was some discussion what to do with the rest of the night and we eventually we decided to go to Ulduar and bang out some hardmodes and hopefully grab some more shards for Ildara’s Val’anyr (heh, now that’s a work in progress to say the least).
We ended up getting Orbituary, additional Ignis and XT achieves for those who needed them, and then spent about 30 minutes working on the Iron Council. A lot of people left between ICC and Uld and unfortunately we didn’t have enough folks to push that last 20 seconds of the fight. On the bright side, we did get a shard for Val’anyr, so that expedition wasn’t a complete wash.
One day we’ll finish that stupid mace. I’d like to do it now, but it’s impossible with our two-night schedule to dedicate any time to a raid two tiers back, so the pieces that Ildara has now will continue to rot except for occasional half-hearted attempt to augment their numbers. Even if the mace still BiS, from the looks of it.
At least we’ll be making a Shadowmourne pretty soon! That’s a bright spot on my otherwise abyssal Legendary record.
I must say, I am disappointed I didn’t face this boss back when the buff wasn’t at the absurd heights it is now. There something I’ve always found appealing about being reduced to a fine paste between the ulcerated knuckles of an infantile flesh giant.
To start, I apologize for skipping the three fights between this and my first ICC25HM strategy post–ie, LDW, Lootship, and Saurfang–but of those Lootship is a joke and a one sentence post seems like a waste of the tubes it could have potentially been printed on, and the other two I’ve yet to do. 10s hardmode, sure; not 25s. And I’m surely not going to write how to do a fight I’ve yet to do myself. What do I look like, a paid WoW writer?
Another sidenote: I can’t take credit for the subtitle to this post. I first read that phrase in this thread on the tanking forums way back in February and it remains one of the more hilarious descriptions of the fight I have ever seen.
So, what’s different?
First, let’s talking about this fight from the tank’s perspective. It hurts.
Sorry, I can be more descriptive. Thanks to this buff that Festergut will be stacking up to three in a rotation, by the time he gets to the third stack he’s going to be mashing you into hamburger. Lets look at a log snippet.
[20:53:19.080] Festergut hits Rhidach Parry [20:53:19.954] Festergut hits Rhidach Dodge [20:53:20.932] Festergut hits Rhidach Parry [20:53:21.844] Festergut hits Rhidach 36036 (B: 2028) [20:53:22.840] Festergut hits Rhidach 29806 (A: 2818, B: 2028) [20:53:23.725] Festergut hits Rhidach Dodge [20:53:24.743] Festergut hits Rhidach Parry [20:53:25.649] Festergut hits Rhidach Parry [20:53:27.131] Festergut hits Rhidach 31705 (B: 2028)
You might look at that and say, “oh 36k, that’s not that bad.” Check the times between attacks–he hits every 9/10s of a second.
Even with phase 3 being so ominous, the hardest part of the fight for your healers will probably be two stacks, when the damage is still rampant for the raid and the tank is being hit 60% harder. Try to avoid panicking and popping a cooldown early, you’ll need it very shortly.
When the third inhale happens and Festergut is rocking a 90% buff, you’ll probably need to rotate cooldowns. I’m a huge fan of using everything at my disposal: raidwall, an armor pot, bubblewall, my 4pc bonus, and external cooldowns. Don’t blow everything at once, obviously, but pay attention to the damage as it’s coming in and choose which card to play wisely.
Still, chug that Indestructible Pot ASAP. A healer will probably external cooldown you right off the bat (or, at least, mine do–they barely trust me to tie my shoes in the morning). Follow that up with a bubblewall, then close with popping a trink or the 20% absorb of your raid wall. With the buff at 25%, this should be pretty smooth sailing.
With all the excitement of this fight, it’s easy to forget the rest of the raid has a role to play as well. (Ah, the joys of tank checks.)
To start, position Festergut on the far left wall, facing the skeleton face, with the melee stacked behind him and the ranged in an arc behind that. Ranged needs to be conscious of Vile Gas, just like in normal. Don’t get that in melee!
As a whole, the raid will be most concerned with two things: beating the enrage timer, and dodging Malleable Goo. Failing at the latter will likely make the former impossible, because every time the Goo splashes on a character their casting and attack speeds are slowed 250% for 20 seconds. That is crippling in a dps check.
For melee, they should stack on the boss’ leg. Start on the left leg, diagonally left of it so the space in between Festergut’s legs are absolutely clear. Then when Goo is cast, strafe over to the right leg and stand right of that. Every Goo cast should be met with a strafe.
When spores go up, the way we handled them were ranged would stack on one spore in the back. Melee would get another one. And whichever spore was extra in ranged or melee would dash to the tank and stack on them. This way everyone got their inoculation and we didn’t have to worry about extra damage from someone getting two spores. The only downside is one Malleable Goo can hit all your ranged or melee when they are at their most vulnerable, so coordination and attention is so very key to make sure people more out of any incoming Goos.
The entire fight is much like normal: a dps check coupled with a tank check. Dodge Goos, don’t get crushed into kibble, and you’ll be golden. Victory in this fight is directly, inversely proportional to how many people get hit by Malleable Goo. If you’re missing the enrage timer, that is the likely culprit.
The lewt!
I love each time Garrosh manages to get his Warsong out a little louder. Last week we killed 5 of the twelve heroic fights, with multiple wipes on Festergut and Blood Queen. This week we one shot both of those, easily. Part of that was of course knowing the intricacies of the fight a little better after the kill, but another huge help was surely another 5% more awesome.
Not to mention all the delicious HPs! I wants them all.
Er, but moving on… To add to our plate, the schedule called for adding Heroic Princes and Dreamwalker. I was initially (hell, still am) concerned about the raid schedule this week ever since Tuesday was a no-go. We have a make up night scheduled for Sunday, but even so I was very worried my all-important goal of Heroic BQL or bust every week was out of reach if we didn’t get to her last night. Mostly because Sunday has the possibility of being iffy.
So after two wipes on heroic Blood Princes, Frank started whispering into my ear dark tidings and it being an hour away from raid end I was beginning to debate in officer chat if it made sense to kill Princes on normal to guarantee BQL being down this week. The other officers (rightly) told me to simmer down and we did another go.
And killed them that next attempt. Egg on ma face!
As we running up the ramp and clearing to BQL I noticed my ShoR icon was faded out. My shield was also unequipped. I immediately panicked, thinking I sold it or destroyed it by accident, and searched my bags for them. I looked up at the top of my screen and my durability number was at 44%.
Not able to find the shield, and in near full-blown panic, I opened my character sheet and saw the shield still equipped, but at 0/120 durability. All my gear was at 44% but my shield was completely broken. Ye gods.
I don’t know why I announce these things in vent. I’m just giving Anafielle fodder for her eventual coup.
Anyway, we briskly one-shot Heroic BQL, which was pretty impressive. Though, after my moment in the sun, any plain-jane kill just feels so… pedestrian. Loot dropped and it was basically a carbon copy of last week. Anafielle got the heroic token, another Dying Light went to another mage, and everyone else groaned. At one heroic token a week right now, these things are hot commodities.
With about thirty minutes left in raid, the lot of us dodged over to Dreamwalker to start plugging away on her heroic mode. We had a few abortive attempts with one of our best portal-jumping healers disconnecting, so didn’t get very far unfortunately. 10 server rolled around and the sun set on our second, and best, night in 25 heroic modes yet. Very exciting stuff, 6/12 in one night.
Now let’s hope Sunday happens!
This is the first in a series of guides to the bosses of Icecrown Citadel 25man Heroic Mode. I’ll be adding more of these as time goes on and as we down new bosses.
So, what’s different?
Group composition we used: 2 tanks, 6 healers, 17 DPS.
The trickiest part of this fight is going to be the Bonestorm. You’d think Marrowgar would hit harder on the tanks but, honestly, he doesn’t. He was hitting me for an average of 26k last week, which on a tank pushing 70k hp is a tickle. I’m very comfortable two tanking this fight and freeing up one dps, rather than splitting the Sabre Lash three ways.
Coldflame turns into a fun game of hop-skotch. You and your partner tanks will be spending any non-Bonestorm moment of the fight strafing left or right. Likewise, I usually mark myself and the other tank, and then (because such is privilege of MTing) I call out in vent which way I’m going during each burst of Coldflame. Usually left four times, then right, rinse, repeat, etc.
To make it easier on the rest of the raid, they can just hide in the red circle under Marrowgar. Coldflame trails form just outside it. Tanks could theoretically do this too, but with only the two of us I’m worried about the tight confines of the inner hitbox leading to accidental Sabre Lashings. Plus, strafing is much more fun.
So, like I said: Bonestorm hurts. But, thankfully, it’s easily mitigated by a strategy posted by Rilgon on Stabilized Effort Scope. There is a cast time when Bonestorm is about to happen, so as soon as I see him casting it, I split one way, my co-tank splits the other. We spread to opposite ends of the room along the base of the ice. Likewise, a pre-appointed Hunter goes to one side of the door, and a Boomkin heads to the other. Four points to a square. Everyone else clumps in the middle.
The reason four of us spread out is Marrowgar will generally target the person farthest away from him to park a Bonestorm on top of. If it’s a tank, great; if it’s the boomkin, he can Barkskin; if the hunter, he can use Deterrence.
Ranged need to kill spikes that pop up in Bonestorm ASAP. Coldflame likes to worm its way under those people. If the Hunter or Boomkin that eat Bonestorms get spiked, I throw a Hand of Sacrifice on them to be safe.
If Marrowgar jumps into the middle, I pop Divine Sacrifice (the whole thing, not just Divine Guardian) and soak up some of that damage. Putting your healers in a group with you isn’t a terrible idea to give them some breathing room in those “oh crap” moments.
Honestly, this fight is a cakewalk and you’ll probably one shot it on your first attempt like we did. The hardest part for your raid will be scattering out of the middle of the Bonestorm if Marrowgar dives into the quivering pile your raiders are surely forming.
The lewt!
Tuesday is the first night of the raid week for us. This is always an issue on patch nights because the patching process inevitably grinds to a halt. So it was the first night of Ulduar, so it was last night. Our server didn’t even come up until 9:30 local time, a full half hour before we usually call it for a night. A huge debacle ultimately.
So, what did we do to pass the time? At first we congregated on the guild forums and Vent, complaining about downtime and the like while eagerly anticipating a start to the night. As time bore on though it became more apparent that Blizzard was taking their time. At around 8 server time, the first batch of servers started to come up, so to pass the time I rolled a DK on Chromaggus on a whim.
Eventually I got sick of all the nude alt parades and yell spams, and hunkered down to just focus on figuring out Real ID. My position on the feature has generally always been one of exuberant willingness to adopt. I have no illusions of privacy on this, the Interwebs, and recognize that anyone reading this blog could probably easily find my real name and address if they wanted to. So, it honestly doesn’t bother me that the people I play WoW with know my real name. Likewise, it doesn’t bother me that their friends could look up my name via that.
That said, I recognize there are legitimate concerns with the system. If someone’s be e-stalked they rightfully could have objections to their real name being out there. I’m not going to throw stones having never been in such a situation.
Nonetheless, that’s my two cents on Real ID. Oh, and some kind of Invisible status would be nice for those that like to hide once in a while. And I’m sure Blizzard will in due course add such a thing, I sincerely doubt this is the final iteration of Real ID that we will ever see.
Anyway, I digress. After some time a group of us decided to roll some lvl 1 alts on Aegwynn and form a guild to use as a refuge when Lightninghoof was down. Apparently all we needed was 10 silver to make a guild charter, so a mob of us scoured the Durotar country side, jumping harpies like a flood of feral carnivore squirrels, and ripping whatever currency we could from their hides.
Despite my hopes of getting at least 90 minutes to clear up to Saurfang, eventually the crisis (so to speak) dragged on until 9 server time, and with no Lightninghoof in sight we just called it for the night.
Did anyone get to raid last night? Also, did you all take Real ID for a spin, what’d you think of it?
I had the casa to myself on Friday night and I was determined to over-imbibe that night before I had to trudge off to an… interesting… wedding the next day. To help me along in my personal goals, we convened a drunk raiding night. The initial plan was Blackwing Lair (to get Gulliveig the Broodlord’s head), then BT for rep and a shot at some cool Illidan items, then whatever else we had time for before we pared the raid down to 10 people and went to wrap up the three achievements a few folks needed to get their Uld10 drakes.
Because we were starting with BWL, of course a group of unattuned folks had to do the caravan through UBRS and the Rend event. I don’t know if anyone’s done this lately, but the bane of these trips has been that if you kill Rend before he jumps off his dragon, the event bugs and you need to reset the instance. Thankfully, we didn’t pull that this time!
Once finally in BWL we quickly shot through the whole place in like 30 minutes. My person interest in the place is limited to the remaining three pieces of T2 I need–boots, belt, chest. A few folks needed the achievement, and I think someone else wanted the Elementium. In any case, it was a smooth run and in no time at all we were porting to Shatt and flying off for Karabor.
The transit apparently proved troublesome for a few of us. Those with the Touring Rockets decided to dump their passengers, so while yours truly is like a cat with buttered toast on his back, Anafielle was not as lucky.
Splat.
I’m currently really liking Black Temple. It’s huge but not drawn out. Boss fights are still somewhat interesting (I say this as someone who never ran the place in TBC), and a complete run has a Goldilocks duration. Plus the stuff off of Illidan is pretty awesome–the blindfold, the shield I covet, the creepy staff, etc. I think it took us about 90 minutes to burn through the place, and once the Betrayer hugged the floor, we decided to dodge to Silithus for an AQ40 run. Because, why not?
Once we were done re-enacting Starship Troopers and I was satisfied with pissing everyone off by constantly asking in a drunken manner, “Is this the gauntlet? How about now?!” we then finally broke down to a 10man to get some folks their drakes. I wasn’t planning for this to take very long, so I told the five that had to drop group to hang around and we’d run Hyjal or something after. 20 minutes, tops.
Anyway, while the 10 of us ran Orbituary, Disarmed, and Iron Dwarf, Medium Rare, Anafielle was passed out on her keyboard. And then there were 14!
Once the Ulduar fun ended we headed over to Hyjal and steamrolled through the place. After Archimonde fell, I realized it was way past my bed time and staggered off to wake up early the next morning, hungover, for my drive to the wedding.
On Sunday, after having run AQ40 the other day, I noticed my reputation with the Brood of Nozdormu was around 31640/36000, within spitting distance of the next level and putting me one step closer to being able to really start the Scepter quest chain. So I flew down to Silithus to cash in my stockpile of Qiraji Lord Insignias and hopefully push it to neutral. As I was clicking through the multiple goes of the repeatable quest, I watched my reputation slowly trudge up to maxing out Hated.
After cashing them all in I was at 35640/36000. When I was done blubbering like a girl, I went back to farming carapaces.
Finally, 10 agonizing minutes later I had the 200 I needed, turned them and prepared for that delicious green swirl of neutrality.
Wait… that’s not right… Neutral is after… no… not more carapaces… NOT MORE CARAPACES.
I’m not much of a pvper, but when accidentally opening up the pvp window I noticed that it was AV weekend. So, on a whim I jumped into a match which was about to start. Someone asked in /bg who was the tank. Some guy in 232 gear speaks up first, but since I have a chip on my shoulder since the last time I was in AV, I volunteered as well. Some guy must have inspected us both, because he immediately decreed that I was tank.
We zerged right up to Vann, skipping the mage at the halfway point. Looks like Alliance was doing the same, because I never heard them engage our midway guy-person. Like I said, I never do battlegrounds. I don’t know these names.
Anyway, we get to Vann, I check to make sure people are behind me and I pull. 30 seconds later Vann went down, the results screen came up and yours truly was top damage done. Gogo aoe damage on five mobs at once.
We run two ICC-10 heroic groups on Sunday, which jokingly have adopted the names Team Rocket Alpha Snowflake and Team Bravo Sunshine Ponies, if I have those right. My team (Alpha) started an hour late because the second tank forgot we were raiding. Ana’s team meanwhile continued their lockout from last week, on time, which had gotten the guild-first kill of Saurfang 10H last week.
Swearing revenge, Team Alpha responded by spending ten attempts on the same fight while Bravo went to work on heroic Putricide. Finally, after about an hour we knocked over Saurfang.
Alas, Bravo managed to match our previous heroic kills (Fester, Rotface, and BQL) and then one-up us with Dreamwalker. While the rivalry flares up I’m just happy the guild is getting these progression kills. I’m a softy like that. Nonetheless, next week Alpha is prepared to take back the crown.
And, in other news, I really, really need to do strategy posts for heroic fights.
Personally I feel like the standby system we started using back in February has saved this guild, much in the same way the DKP system did back in Ulduar. We haven’t missed a raid since it was initiated, and since we began maintaining a “buffer” of folks to always ensure there are 25 raiders available, we haven’t missed a raid. Both Tuesdays and Wednesday nights have been happening like clockwork, and I consider than an amazing success.
Of course, there are always the folks who refuse to accept the system. Being put on standby is antithesis to them, and they will lash out if they don’t get their way.
One such example happened the week of our Lich King kill. We had a hunter (who was also an officer) that took a long hiatus for his wedding. He came back, raided for about two weeks, then went on hiatus again. It seemed like being newly married wasn’t working with raiding. Whatever, no problem. But then he came back a month ago and wanted to raid again. So he came to a raid and DC’d constantly while in combat. On one BQL attempt he even wiped us because he was the first bite and, of course, disconnected. Game over right there.
The following week we extended the lockout and pushed hard on the Lich King. Looking out for the success of the raid, as I am wont to do, I benched this hunter so he wouldn’t cause a wipe from an ill-timed disconnect. The hunter responded by quitting the game. He sent letters out to a wide swath of people thanking them for being good friends and all that, and all I got was the crushing feeling that I wronged someone.
I know I did the right thing, I couldn’t take someone that could potentially wipe the raid to progression attempts on last fight in the last raid of the expansion. Still, it was pretty depressing that this person–an officer no less–was so blinded by their own… perhaps selfishness is the word… that they couldn’t look beyond their own wants to see they could legitimately harm the progression of the raid and guild.
Another more recent example of this is a healer we have that just returned from their own wedding-induced hiatus. This particular person was usually never benched because they were the only healer of their class and it was pretty helpful to have that particular class/spec there. Anyway, when this person went on hiatus last month we lost one healer due to school aggro and another due to moving. We were down to barely having enough healers, and if a healer couldn’t make it one night, we might not have been able to raid. It was way tighter than I would prefer to allow.
So, I did the only logical thing I could do, I recruited. We brought in a few healers bringing the total number of healers up to 8. The buffer was restored.
This person comes back from hiatus and is nonplussed to see that not only did we recruit more healers, but also another one of that class/spec. And not only that, but they were (horror of horrors) benched on Wednesday. I got a miffed whisper asking why this was (because it was your turn) and why did we recruit healers (because we had to) and why would someone be benched only one of two nights (so people don’t have to be locked out for a whole week)?
Not only that, but it was asserted that rather than being on standby for one night, this person would prefer to be benched for the whole week so they won’t get saved to raid that won’t be finished and can just pug it. This left me a bit speechless, because again I’m not accustomed to running into such focused self-interest when I’m here trying to promote group cohesion. There’s really nothing to say to that other than that next time I’ll just bench this person for an entire week when it’s their turn.
I guess for me it has always boiled down to this binary question: if you had to sit out of a raid once a month to ensure that the guild always has a raid of 25 people available, would you be willing to that?
If you answer yes, you are good peoples in my book. If you say no, then we really have a problem. That’s a pretty huge philosophical chasm you and I have to cross.
Ok, it’s sort of hyperbole. But, well… you’ll see.
We started the night with Festergut Heroic, after about 12 wipes on him last night we were itching for a quick kill. It wasn’t a one shot, but every one of the five attempts we did we shaved a percent off his health each time we wiped to the enrage. 5%, then 4%, then 3%, then .9%. Then the last attempt we had this amazing go with no Goos hitting melee, no healers getting gibbed, probably a few ranged getting hit, but generally a great attempt.
As we got closer to the enrage we were riding the razors edge. It was obviously going to be very close. Anafielle hits 9 stacks a few seconds before enrage, I pull it off her with Righteous Defense, then as he turns gigantic and throbby red, I bubble, Hand of Reckoning, and do as much damage as I can. As soon as the fixate fell off, Fester turned and splatted Ana into a fine paste. With molecules of his hit points remaining, Valgard (a ret pally who also bubbled) and I did our best to whittle what we could down while Vili ankhed back up and continued to heal furiously. Finally, moments before aoe death overcame us, we chipped away that last few thousand hp and Festergut dropped to the floor.
Epic, to say the least.
And best of all we spent generally little time on Festergut, so we had a lot more breathing room for the rest of the night. My initial goal at the beginning of the week was a little bold, I thought: Heroic Marrowgar, Lootship, Festergut, Rotface, and BQL. Perhaps a boss or two too much, but it was a worthy first week goal. After the wipefest on Festergut last night, I dialed it back a bit in my head, just getting Festergut and Rotface down would be good enough. So, that’s the attitude I started the night with: just get the twin uglies down and we’ll be in a good spot. Right-o, off to the races.
So with Festergut dropped, we scurried off for Rotface. I heard this fight was easier than Festergut’s hardmode, but I had no idea. Our very first attempt turned into an utter clusterfrak at around 30% with 2/3rds of the raid dead, and yet we almost killed him. Thankfully we wiped, and could do it for real. The second time around we killed him with no issue. Another easily farm-able hardmode, I love it.
Then we tumbled over to the Blood Wing and dispatched the Blood Princes. I basically explained the BQL hardmode as “more dps needed, one mistake wipes us, don’t screw it up!” It was delivered lovingly, I swear.
Some were pessimistic about the dps required to drop her, but for some odd reason Frank was in hibernation and I was feeling sunny about our chances. It was probably some head trauma.
Anyway, off we went and on the first attempt we lost a few people in the air phase. And by a few people I mean the two that had the bites. Somehow no one noticed and right before the enrage someone observed, “hey we haven’t had any bites lately.” Woops, 30% enrage wipe.
The next time we lost some people on airphase, yet despite brezzes, eventually it was a wipe with the enrage hitting at 8%. The fourth go we had a really close wipe, something like 4% or so. We could so get this, just needed one flawless attempt. Just one.
The fifth attempt we had just that. No deaths, no mistakes, bites went to the right people. I had high hopes as we trudged through the motions. Finally as we came to the moment of truth, we were looking to be just shy of the enrage. About 2% left as it was going to hit. As we usually do, the enrage hit and all the Pallies bubbled. Eventually only Ana and I survived, BQL runs up for air phase at around .5% and starts blood bolting. Looks like a wipe as we furiously judged and tossed wrathful hammers.
In our darkest moment, a glimmer of hope. Vili bolts up and spot heals Ana and I, only to be struck down once more. Ana soon follows. Somehow I persisted and a lingering Rip from Purraj the feral druid got the killing blow.
When the dust settled, I surveyed my surroundings, sighed a heavy breath of relief, and then immediately tweeted my victory.
What? Rez? Oh, yeah, I could do that. I was duly chastened.
When rezzes were finished, the loot window went up, we all bid, and I managed to score my first 277 piece: the heroic t10 token. I am so excited to begin building my blue tier set. Even if it cost me nearly a kilo of dkp!
With the excitement contained and about 10 minutes left in raid, we dodged over to Sindragosa and one-shot her, which put us exactly where I started this week hoping we would be: all farm bosses dead plus those five benchmark heroic kills. And we did it, we totally did it. I am so proud of my raid crew, another fantastic week.
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