Lo-Quality WoW

Friday’s night was interesting in all sort of wrong ways.  I already hadn’t been sure if I’d make it because of a birthday dinner.  Well, at dinner I did my normal drinking and when we finished, I was happy to find that I had made it home in time for the raid.  And I was still feeling the effects of the drinks.

Which in itself, wouldn’t be bad.  I’ve raided before while drunk.  I’ve done most of the fights enough times that it’s more a matter of staying awake rather than doing what’s right.  The problem?  We were missing a Hunter.

Normally our ICC runs have 2 Hunters.  The rare times the other regular Hunter isn’t on, our group knows a couple of standby Hunters, none of which were available.  Since all of them are MM Hunters, while I’m just an SV Hunter, it usually means that I leave the responsiblity for placing Hunter’s Mark on target’s because they have Improved Hunter’s Mark.  So I’m out a practice.  Actually, even in PvE I’ve gotten out of the habit because I tend to blast through things so fast nowadays.

It primarily affects my dps numbers, but you can’t have everything.  A minor thing but still significant.  But again, I wasn’t really worried.  What was a bit more worrisome was the fact that we ended up with no Druid or Paladin, meaning we were missing some of our raid buffs.  We don’t usually run with a Mage and with no MM Hunter’s, it means I was going to be without a Trueshot Aura as well.  So our dps was going to take a general hit.  I did compensate slightly with a Drums of Forgotten Kings and Drums of the Wild.  So, not only was I the only Hunter, I was apparently also the Druid and the Paladin of the run…which became slightly more true than I like…

We started with Heroic Rotface.  Normally our Paladin tank is responsible for the Big Ooze, but since he wasn’t with us, the Death Knight tank took that responsibility with the Warrior tank on Rotface himself.  Since we were short a Hunter, I believe we used the Warlock as an additional ranged for the Vile Gas attacks.  Since I actually find the Heroic version of the fight easier than the normal for some reason, I didn’t think anything of it.

Well, my drunken state meant I was a little slow on my reaction and I was in the middle of an area that got hit with an Ooze Flood.  I also managed to get hit by a Slime Spray at the same time and if it wasn’t for our healers being on the ball, I would have died.  Which became important about midway through the fight.

I suddenly heard “I’m down!  I’m down!” on vent followed by “Key, Ooze!”  The first was of course our DK, who didn’t get through the Ooze Flood fast rough and had gotten rooted and died.  Fortunately, even in my alcohol hazed state, I still immediately found, targeted and starting shooting at the Big Ooze.  Good thing I put out some hefty damage and threat with my Explosive Shot and Aimed Shot.  I don’t keep Distracting Shot on my toolbar normally, one accidentally button push and things get ugly.

So suddenly I found myself tanking the Big Ooze around.  While I never managed to master the “Jump Shot” most kiting Hunter’s learn, I’ve gotten pretty good at strafing while kiting.  The one I had exploded and we actually lucked out slightly when I ended up being the next target of a Mutated Infection.  It meant I didn’t have to go running around looking for at least one of the Little Oozes, I just had to find one more, merge them, then run like a rabbit.

So despite that “Crap!” moment, we actually managed to down Rotface on Heroic.  (I was also sobering up rather rapidly at that point.)  We then moved on to Festergut on Heroic.  The first try actually was going well, we avoided the Malleable Goo well and didn’t have problems with the spore placement.  What killed us was when the off-tank taunted, took one blow and DIED! 

The off-tank realized what he did wrong, and we tried again.  To very similar results.  It was decided that Festergut just hits way too hard on heroic for us to deal with.  So we switched back to normal and took him down with no problem.

Well, at this point we didn’t even try Professor Putricide on Heroic.  Our DK took control of the Abomination, which he had done before and the Warrior took on Putricide, which he hadn’t done before.  Fortunately, it’s pretty basic for that tank.  However, I guess he didn’t understand our normal strategy, which is to tank Putricide by his table for most of the fight.  He started kiting him around the room.  Which in itself wouldn’t be bad, except he was kiting him slowly around the room, which mean that Putricide, and by extension the raid, was near where either the Volatile Ooze or Gas Cloud was spawning.  Fortunately, dps actually was good on switching to target them and it wasn’t an issue.  Putricide went down and we were off to the Crimson Hall.

Where we ran into our first Hunter deficiency issue.  Normally, the 2 Hunter’s are responsible for Kinetic Bombs.  So this time, they assigned the Warlock for the other Kinetic Bomb.  Two problems with this though.  One, the Warlock had never done it before and two, something I didn’t know, is that it’s only direct damage that keeps the bombs in the air.  Which meant that all the Warlock’s DOTs weren’t going to work, he’d have to pet it. 

Which he found he couldn’t quite do.  And actually, since he didn’t even know what the Kinetic Bombs were when we explained it, he started attacking the Dark Nucleus instead, the ones our off-tank needed to survive.  They way their aggro works is that they don’t have a threat table, they just aggro on whatever last damaged them.  And with DOTs on them, it meant that even when the off-tank hit them, the DOT would tick the next second and be back on the Warlock. 

Once we got the Dark Nucleus/Kinetic Bomb issue straightened out, the Warlock still was having issues with them.  So, with a heavy, drunken heart, I took on both bombs to allow the Warlock to just concentrate on dpsing the bosses.  Fortunately, I’ve singled the Kinetic Bombs before, and I’ve worked out a few tricks, like setting my pet on passive so that I know when the bomb he’s attacking is done and I can send him after another.  With that issue straightened out, the Blood Prince Council went down.

Then it was on to the Blood Queen herself.  Which again, began a comedy of errors.  Some of it was again people not knowing what to do or at least how we do it, such as the two people with Pact of the Darkfallen going to the center of the room.  Others were people either biting the wrong people or not biting at all and getting Mind Controlled.  We finally called it a night, although we were getting pretty close at the end.

Saturday night we reconvenied and ran to the Blood Queen.  Again, since Heroic is not particularly any more difficult than normal, primarily just a dps issue, we did it as a Heroic fight.  This time, we got everything just perfectly and she went down.

Then it was on to Sindragosa, which is where we spent the rest of the night.  And it was a long damn night for it.  About a third of the people hadn’t done the fight, and half didn’t know our tactics for it.  And it wasn’t entirely new people, but a few of our regulars still haven’t gotten the tactics down correctly.

So part of the issue was the tanks, primarily positioning issues and getting the whole “run, remove the debuff, run back in” cycle.  Which on one hand, was a good thing since at least our DK tank wasn’t even sure his gear was up for tanking that fight.  But during one try, I got the Frost Beacon on me and I ran towards the tail, which was where the next placement was supposed to be.  Except the tank turned her at that moment, meaning I got a Tail Smash full in the face.  Which in itself wouldn’t have been bad, except we were near the stairs and I didn’t fly too far, in fact I flew into the middle of two other dps and we all got Ice Tombed. 

Which became the theme of the night.  People didn’t know to avoid the people tagged with the Frost Beacon, which caused a couple of instances of multiple Ice Tombs.  Other times, people would place the Ice Tombs too far away, meaning the tanks couldn’t remove the debuff and died.  One guy was running the wrong way, and when they corrected him, he RAN THROUGH THE RAID, trying to get into position.  And naturally, that ended up with half the raid Ice Tombed.   And that’s when people even realized they had the Frost Beacon.  Once, I was Ice Tombed, I was broken out and then immediately Ice Tombed again!  The Frost Beacon player didn’t move and as a result, everyone except one tank and one healer got Ice Tombed!

Needless to say, it was a long frustrating night.  After a couple of hours, we finally started getting people to at least go to the correct side of Sindragosa, but was still often placing it too far away or would stand too close to someone else who had the Frost Beacon.  And almost cruely, the Frost Beacon’s were almost always going to the newest members, not those of us who had done the fight a couple of times and knew generally where to stand.

So we called it a night.  Sunday night was a wash because again we were missing people.  If we have enough people, we’ll probably give it another go tonight, hopefully with a regular tank back.  Not that I think that would help all that much, the tanks managed to work out a lot of the positioning issues by the time we finished.  Then again, with our regular tanks, there’s less chance of me getting a tail in the face or suddenly find myself with a very large dragon running towards me (which usually happened when a tank died, and happened more than once on Saturday.) 

But then again, I’m sort of happy we didn’t get to the Lich King.  There’s some very good reasons we do the Lich King fight with two Hunters and trying it with one Hunter may be doable, but it wouldn’t not be easy on me or my nerves.  At least I should be sober for the next run…