I just had to open my big stupid mouth.
Last night was the first raid for our new holy/ret pally, and as we all began the ascent towards Jin’Rokh’s plaza, I mentioned offhand that my last guild had this curse that whenever it was some new meat’s first raid horrible things would happen. The curse of the new guy, so to speak.
Someone accused me of leveling a jinx, which I immediately brushed off, because that’s just superstitious nonsense. (Ha… ha… yeah?)
We actually wiped on Jin’Rokh — which was utterly bizarre, because the last time he killed us was probably the first night we were in Throne of Thunder. It was at this point I got nervous.
Then, on the way through the windy trash, Voss’ internet gave out. Same thing for our other raider in that area of Canada, so it seemed to be a provider issue. That left us with one tank and only 9 people on in guild, all of whom were currently in the raid. Eep.
So we cleared the trash up to Horridon, hoping that maybe a miracle would strike and Voss would triumphantly return. No such luck. He logged back into mumble via a phone app and told Alaron to swap to tank and we would have to 9-man it. So it went, and the fight actually went down with very little trouble.
We continued on towards Council which threatened to present the first real hurdle. We managed to 9-man the fight, though it was messy, and slow, and being down that one dps made pushing the empowered troll really tight until Sul was dead. When all was said and done, if you told me the fight took 10 minutes to kill, I would not have been surprised.
On to Tortos and we managed to pick up a 10th person, after he was able to log in using a tethered phone connection. Despite having Alaron available to tank, the absence of Voss’ turtle-like ego demanded that I grab the opportunity to single-tank the fight. I’d always wanted to do it, but it seemed pretty selfish when you’re sitting there with two tanks.
I don’t think Alaron minded switching back to his main spec in the slightest, and so I did my best to handle all the tanking of that fight. Battle Healer wrangled bats for me, and I threw out all the AOE I could. Unfortunately, as a result, I totally dropped the ball with lining up ShoR and the bites. Thankfully though my health never seemed to be in any serious danger. I’m hasty enough that I was probably catching half of the Snapping Bites between internal rhythm and quantity alone.
Also, I must admit that I got a little giddy at all the Vengeance I had. It was a dirty feeling.
When Tortos was toppled, we headed further into the depths to poke Megaera and hopefully finish the night (it was 20ish minutes before raid end that this point) only one boss behind our usual. We tore through trash and got set up to hopefully knock over Meg. Alaron was back to tank, and we pulled. The fight was uneventful, as it’s always been since our first kill, and we had no problems salvaging what we could from the evening.
In the end, the night could have gone a lot worse, so we really got off easy with only 5/12 at raid end. And of course — lesson learned — never speak of the Curse of the New Guy again.
Good recap.
Horridon was kind of messy because 1) as a part-time tank, add pickup is not one of my better skills and 2) I was talented into Faerie Swarm for some reason, which applies a snare to Faerie Fire. Not good when you pop off an FF on a ranged target; it takes the FF damage, starts running towards you, but doesn’t reach you before healing threat pulls it away again. I think I ended up taking less damage then you in that fight solely because the healers soaked up a lot of add hits. :)
Council…ugh. As a primary-spec cat, I’m geared heavy-mastery, which is sub-optimal for bears, since it’s just passive damage reduction. Like you pally speedfreaks who stack haste, bears stack crit to pump their AM, instead of the typical tanking stats.
Anyway, The last time I did this with Voss, I “held” Sul (he spends most of the fight chaincasting on the raid anyway) and swapped Malakk back and forth. That let me focus solely on keeping Savage Defense up with it’s huge dodge bonus.
This time, since we were switching Malakk and Marli, I kept having to mentally switch between using Savage Defense and Frenzied Regen + interrupts. I didn’t do a very good job, and I took a TON of damage. Healers deserve a medal.
Tortos…Let’s just say it was probably good that Pargath’s “oops” moment came after Itanya called for help, as I had popped HOTW and was channeling my super-tranq. Stone Breath doesn’t interrupt channeled spells! :)
Also, I’d have to look at the logs to be sure, but I think you ran out of melee range once to chase down bats on Ulla and I took a 450k Snapping Bite in cat form. BAD PALADIN. Good healers. :)
Meg was fairly uneventful, though Voss calling in coaching instructions from the “sidelines” was great.
Haha, yeah, I definitely had a panic moment on Tortos where I had to exit melee. I needed to grab bats and tried to stay close, but obviously, not close enough!
You did great though! Sorry for giving you the harder job on Council. I didn’t realize you and Voss did it the other way.
We gave the new guy trial by fire and he held his own]
Also, do not like bats chasing me
We had something the opposite happen.
Our DK had been pissy and grumpy for weeks and last week just stopped showing up and disconnected his phone. We were panicking about what to do when our benchwarmer fired up his pvp mistweaver monk. He created a brewmaster spec and geared up in craftables and pvp purples, got his item level up to 483. Well. He had fewer hitpoints than the mage. We decided to run Jin’rokh and see what happened.
It was an incredibly smooth two nights of raiding. We got through 9 farm bosses total (a bit slower than usual but not too bad) and I caused the only two wipes we had aside from goofing around on snails. And the miracle part was that out of 9 bosses our new monk tank got 7 drops, and there were actual usable drops for 5 other people in the raid. Unheard-of!
Wow, that really worked out for you guys! I was worried where that story was headed.