Good first steps!
Heroic Marrowgar was a joke. Not much harder than normal Marrowgar himself. I found this shocking when, on the first attempt, he was at around 50% health, we were two Bonestorms in, and one person was dead. I was expecting a minor speed bump like when we first did this on Heroic 10 mode. But nope, easy one shot, and the slot machine burped out the purps.
We did LDW on normal, obviously, and then went on for Heroic Lootship. About the only hiccup there was being I was jumping over, a missle hit one of the spiky things on the side of the ship that a Resto Druid was parked on, and the game decided that despite being in midair I was hit as well, so I went flying off sideways into the gap in between the ships. I reappeared in the middle of the deck and sprinted back over to the other side, but by the time I got there and picked up Muradin, three melee were dead. I’ll never hear the end of that.
Normal Saurfang, which we could probably do, but my thinking is find what the baseline for how many easy hardmodes we can do every week is, and then build it from there. To maximize upgrades.
After Saurfang we headed to Putricide’s hallway and cleared the trash to go to Festergut first. This is where things got interesting. Once I was done explaining what was different on heroic mode, and how I wanted everyone in melee to stack on a marked person and switch legs every time a Goo got launched, we had an epic wipe where people consistently got hit. Bah. Eventually we settled into the ES model of progression: slow, steady gains. Within short time we were hitting the enrage timer, so now we just needed to up dps to actually drop the boss.
It was around this time the Fates decided to throw a monkey wrench in the works. First, one of the dps (a warlock) had to drop for a work emergency, so I invited one person to come in and got no response. The warlock that left dropped a summoning stone and hearthed out. I then invited another dps with similar results, no response again.
The first dps I invited (who was having connection issues earlier in the night but assured me they were fixed) then accepted and we summoned him in. He starts running in place and looks like he’s DCing. I sigh and remove him, as the second dps I invited finally accepts and joins the raid. Unfortunately the DCing dps is still there, running in place, and we can’t summon the other guy since there are 25 people in the instance. As the guy finally disappears, the summoning stone disappears as well.
I sigh, and Zilga and I run outside to summon the dps who’ll give us 25 people. Unfortunately once we get near the summoning stone outside, we realize we’re both in different phases and can’t see each other. Another sigh and we both hoof it in as the 25th makes his way to us.
As we reach Festergut’s room again, one of the druids manages to somehow pull Festergut with a Crashin’ Thrashin’ Racer and starts the encounters. Some of us bolt into the hallway and hide while Festergut kills any unlucky afkers or those who stayed behind in the room. As the three or so of us that survived the wipe catch our breath in the hallway, someone trips a hidden trap, and a flood of geists come barreling down towards us. At this point I have to laugh, because it’s officially gotten ridiculous.
Eventually the geists die and we get back to business. Progress starts rolling again and by the end of the night we were wiping at around 4-5% on the last two solid attempts. Disappointing, but at least we know we can get it once people tighten up dodging Goos and the whole not-dying thing.
At 9:30, half an hour before end time, the trash respawns in the hallway. I decide to give everyone a break rather than spending 15 minutes clearing trash for two more attempts on the boss. We just want and quickly demolished normal Dreamwalker for a “shake off” kill.
So with the night over we stood at 2/12 heroics. Not godly, but we made good progress on number 3, who I’m sure we’ll brush off with little trouble tonight, allowing us to knock down #4 (Rotface) and put in solid attempts on #5 (BQL).
Armory Feed
Ah, you guys didn’t get Festergut? :( I thought Anafeille said you guys “got it”… guess you meant you “got the fight and will get it”. Good luck next week on it! :D
You can easily do BQL as there’s literally no changes on that fight. It’s the exact same, just a higher DPS requirement and you have to move immediately when you get the uh, linking thing.
Rotface can get a bit hectic with all the vile gas nonsense, but it’s fairly manageable.
@Rhidach
16 June 2010 at 12:37 pm #
That one is full of lies! (I kid, Ana.)
We’ll totally get him tonight. If that trash didn’t respawn we would have had him last night. Or, that 30 minutes of ridiculousness.
@Anafielle
16 June 2010 at 4:27 pm #
Full of lies, eh? Your true colors emerge…
I don’t know if you are aware of this or not, but the summoning stone at the heroic dungeons combines all phases. So if you don’t see each other at the ICC stone, you can take a 10 second flight up to the other stone and you will see each other and be able to summon.
@Rhidach
16 June 2010 at 12:33 pm #
Completely flew my mind at the time, ugh. Good reminder though.
Eh, well, there’s always next time.
That, and the time it takes to run out to a stone isn’t much better than the time it takes someone to fly directly from Dalaran. Hopefully they’re not in IF with their hearth on c/d.
We had a similar situation with Festergut, and when we went back on Wednesday we one shot him. Likely you’ll have the same lucky.
Blood Princes we found to be surprisingly easy as well which we just got down last night; so I definitely recommend you do them soon as well. We used an extremely conservative strategy to help reduce raid damage on the encounter, and while the boss took a while (Close to 8 minutes) almost no one died. We moved Valanar to the door and Taldaram to the right side of the room facing the wall; so that melee would always be between Taldaram and the ranged for Fireball soaking. Melee never touched Valanar, and instead spread out around the room to avoid extra damage from Empowered Vortex. Ranged were positioned around the room and were vocal about Kinetic Bomb placement. Keleseth was generally kept near the center of the room, but due to the nature of picking up Nucleus’ he tended to roam a bit; but keeping the center open helped for that and so melee could swap to him quickly from Taldaram or from spread around the room from Valanar. And then making sure dispellers were around the room to handle Sparks. They only have 30 million HP so it’s far from a DPS race, if your raid survives through the encounter it should be fine on enrage.
Also, apparently with recruitment picking up (Hey, who knew that when you start getting 277 loot, people want to join you…) I’ve been able to…deal with the loot issues thanks to having an actual bench to work with. It’s surprising how much more I can enjoy a raid when loot bickering and infighting are kept out of it…
@Rhidach
16 June 2010 at 1:45 pm #
Awesome, I’m glad things worked out better for you! I agree, raids are so much better without that ancillary, gnawing layer of stress sucking the life out of you.
If we get through Festergut and Rotface quickly, I think people would be willing to see how Princes goes. Keeping melee off Valanar makes sense, since we run so melee heavy the Empowered Vortexes would not be pretty. Thanks for the suggesstion!
Grats on the new kills.
I was also a little surprised at how easy 25-man Marrowgar was. I found it quite difficult to heal through on 10 man hard mode, but 25 wasn’t too bad.
Good luck on the rest!
Jasyla’s last blog ..7/12 and a new look
glad you could admit to trying to wipe us on gunship. evasion only lasts so long, friend.
Oh man, yeah, I’ve definitely had nights like that! And yeah, I always try to sneak in a “shake off” kill just to end the night on an up note.
But grats on making a start on Hard Modes! And my GoogleFu might be failing me but did you do any writeups of your 10-man hard-mode experiences…?
saif’s last blog ..Kingslayers
@Rhidach
17 June 2010 at 12:09 pm #
Only a few of the fights. I’ve been slacking. :\
Sweet! And no worries, I doubt we’ll do more than a handful of bosses on Tuesday. Which gives you a couple of weeks to catch up. >:) J/k
Got our first LK kill on this week so I’m eager and excited for some Heroic action. :)
saif’s last blog ..Kingslayers
@Rhidach
17 June 2010 at 12:20 pm #
Congrats! Welcome to the Kingslayer club, haha.
We spend 2 nights on Heroic Festergut on heroic 25. On the 2nd night, we finally got him down successfully. Just for hell of it, we one shot heroic Rotface as well, and was able to turn in weekly. After downing Heroic Blood Queen, the 25 man call it a night, and the 10 man achievement farming run starts. Not surprisingly with our 25 heroic Festergut fresh on our mind, we 1 shotted him and Rotface as well… Overall, a goood night for us as well.
@Rhidach
17 June 2010 at 12:07 pm #
Heh, awesome! We did the same thing last night. :)