Lo-Quality WoW

Having missed the Agency’s 10-man ICC yesterday, I wasn’t sure if I’d get any raid time this week.  That’s when the former Schrödinger’s Cats contacted me for a 10-man.  So off we went.

We wanted to start of doing it in Heroic mode again.  So we cleared the mobs and made our way to Marrowgar.  And basically, got our heads handed to us repeatedly.  Marrowgar seemed to unerringly target our healers somehow.  They usually were the first to go down over and over.

I know at least once it was because a new healer on the run hadn’t gotten himself out of the cold flame on the ground.  And he was the one would actually admitted it was his fault, so at least he didn’t try to weasle out of it.  Not sure what happened the other times.  I do know one time I died because I somehow ended up completely surrounded by cold flame lines when Marrowgar came over to me and starting his whirlwind right on top of me. 

We tried several times and just didn’t get close.  I think the best we did was rub him down to 12% hp or so.  And it wasn’t as if we were doing anything very unusual in our tactics, we’ve done it this way the last couple of times.  It just wasn’t coming together. 

So we finally gave up and switched to normal and kicked his bony butt.  Then it was on to Deathwhisper where we went back to Heroic mode.  This one was almost as bad.  I know I screwed up on the first try because by the time we hit phase 2, I was completely out of mana.  Not often I get that low nowadays.

This time, I want to say it was a dps issue because most of our wipes were because we’d either get overwhelmed by adds or we killed one group of adds only to have the next group already appearing, leaving no time to dps Deathwhisper herself.  I know part of the problem was that we only had one real “magical dps” which meant it took awhile to kill the physical-damage resistant adds. 

We also had a few crowd control issues.  Between two hunters, a priest, druid and rogue, we should have had it but more often than not, a mind-controlled raider would run rampant around us.  In fact our priest was rather annoyed by one such failed CC.  “Dammit Key, I threw a fear at you and you resisted it!  How’d you pull that off?”  “Well, you’re just not that scary.” 

And on another attempt, the other hunter got MC’d and managed to off one of our healers.  “Rodman killed Rad?”  “Yeah, check the logs”  “Well, I know one hunter who’s not getting any more heals…”  Another time, our rogue got MC’d and I accidentally shot him with an Explosive Shot.  “No Key, don’t kill me!”  “Yeah, like I’d be able to do enough damage to kill you.”  Which was ironic because a couple of tries later, he tried to stun me while I was MC’d and I managed to kill him with a Volley. 

Another try, we got to phase 2, didn’t lose anyone but took so long that Deathwhisper hit her enrage timer and smashed us flat.  And I indirectly caused at least one other death when a spirit spawned almost on top of me and exploded near enough to another player that he died as well.  I had to start going to extreme range to prevent that from happening.  I just couldn’t get away from the spirits fast enough for some reason.

We finally declared “one more try and then we’ll call it.”  And of course, that’s when we finally succeed.  But man it was brutal.  I think practically all the mana users were almost dry and several times I saw our tanks close to dropping. 

But since we got that far, we decided to do the gunship battle since it’s relatively easy even on heroic.  Which started out rather oddly when my guildmate managed to run completely off the ship and die.  Which told me how tired he was, I know I’ve done that before. 

 This time, we did have two melee dps so they got the cannons.  I also adjusted my tactics slightly.  I usually have my pet on aggressive but near me, so he’ll either be attacking on the ship or hop over with me on the boarding action and then run around over there.  This time, I parked him with the tank defending our airship, but still on aggressive.  As far as I know that worked, but I was too busy to check.

This went a lot better.  Between the 3 ranged dps, we usually were able to clear the axe throwers, turn around and take out the horde boarders, and then have time to hop over to the horde ship as well.  Or at least, that’s what I did.   

So we got through that and just called it at that point.  Knowing the group, we’ll probably do Saurfang on heroic a few times, but I’m not sure if we’d able to take him or not.  Personally, I just want another shot at the Lich King.  If only my Warrior was better geared so I can have her doing these runs…